Call-In Classic Christianity Radio – Bob George P480 (10-10-19)
Synopsis
Bob received calls from several listeners, answering questions in the world today as well as the practical issues. Bob explains the gospel message and applies that to the practical problems people face today. Bob addresses the practical issues of life, such as anger issues stemming from fear, marital problems, and living in freedom from religious tradition, by the practical message of the gospel, Christ in you, the hope of glory. We are born dead and in need of life. That is not a religious thing. That is a very practical message God came to bring to man through new life in Christ Jesus.
The reason Gloria is struggling in marriage is because she is unequally yoked to a non-believer who does not have any indication he is willing to live with her, being adamantly opposed to the message of Christ Jesus and is abusive to her. God’s word provides instruction to a believer that he has freedom to leave a non-believer to live in peace. God wants us to live in peace. Yet, if a non-believer is willing to live with you, is not opposed to you being a Christian and is not abusive to you, then let him stay with you, for God may use you to lead him to Christ.
Bob enjoyed a conversation with Don on the issue of fasting. Bob says that many such issues in the typical religious or in Christendom today are on what people are told to do. They are told to tithe or be baptized and sick them for Jesus. So many times people are told what to do, which is often erroneous teaching, applicable only to those Jews under an Old Covenant system before Christ Jesus came to complete the work he did. Yet people are also not taught what Christ already did. Even when we are told what to do by well-meaning preachers, we are often told incorrectly or without basis for someone living under a New Covenant of grace. God is the initiator and we are the responder is the key concept Bob explains.
Vena received instruction on how to best help a Catholic friend. Her friend is knowingly living in adultery with a boyfriend and is depressed. You are depressed when you are living a life contrary to a life God wants you to live. A person like that is unstable, double-minded. You cannot help someone by being silent with truth.
You must point a person to truth in God’s word. Adultery is sin because God’s word tells us that. You may not be able to live up to what God says is right but you never want to get to the point where you call something other than what God calls it. Adultery is sin. Jesus took away that sin when he died on a cross. Sin is a symptom of a deeper problem, and that is you are dead spiritually, and in need of new life, and the only life available to you is the resurrected life in Christ Jesus. If a person is to walk in freedom, he needs to know what error is. A person needs to be instructed in the word of God as to what God says is absolute truth. You correct error with truth and the only absolute truth we have is the truth in God’s word. You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free. Sadly, many people in the world today would rather trust their church tradition rather than find the truth in the word of God we hold in our hands today. The only we we can truly live is to live in complete trust in what God has already done and allow Him to live His life in you and through you.
Ellen called to ask a question after reading the ”Born Free” gospel tract published by Bob George. Her question on how man was born spiritually dead was made more clear to her after understanding how man was created with body, soul and spirit, unlike the animal kingdom. Sin entered the world when Adam sinned by eating of the knowledge of good and evil, deciding for himself what is right from wrong and essentially rebelling against a trusting relationship with the living God. By doing so, he died to what vacated him and that was the Spirit of God in him. Since then every man born in Adam was born with a dead spirit, alive to the world but dead to God. Man must be born again spiritually. Ellen thanked Bob for sharing the full gospel with the primary emphasis being on the resurrection. The full gospel is the death, burial and resurrection of Christ Jesus.
Transcript
Gloria from Pittsburg, PA
Gloria: I have a question for you on marriage based on 1 Corinthians 7 about if you are married to an unbeliever and if they want to stay with you stay, but if he wants to leave, then let him leave. My question is this. I am in a mentally, emotionally, abusive marriage. I cannot even drive in a car any more because of road rage. I wanted to end my life three times. I am always under stress at home because I never know. It is affecting my health. I am wondering. He has left me in his spirit and mind and love. There is very little communication. We have tried counseling. He and the counselor. He would not go. How much do I have to hang in there and do this? I never had health issue but gallbladder.
1 Corinthians 7:12-16
12 To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. 13 And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. 14 For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.15 But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace. 16 How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?
Bob: Gloria, let me ask you a question. Are you a born again believer?
Gloria: Yes
Bob: Is your husband a born again believer?
Bob: No
Bob: In the passage you just talked about, if you are born again and married to a person not born again, then you are unequally yoked. What it says there is this. If a person does not mind you being born again, is not adamant to that, is not in rebellion toward that, it says hang in there because your life might ultimately effect him to come to Christ. On the other hand, if you have people who say, “I do not want to be married to a Jesus freak. I do not want anything to do with this.”, then God’s word says let him go for God wants you to live in peace.
Bob: In regards to the passage that say He wants you to live in peace, you cannot live in peace when you have someone abusing you physically, mentally and in any other way, then there is no way to have peace in that any more than a Jew can live in peace with Arabs and Al-Qaeda when they are trying to wipe you out. There is no peace with anyone who wants to wipe you out period.
Bob: In a situation where a person will not change their actions and their mind. He will not come to Christ for your husband’s problem is not that he has an anger problem. Deep down in his heart, his problem is fear. The only thing that can solve that fear problem is to come into a personal relationship with God. Perfect love casts out all fear. That is the issue that has to be the problem in the marriage. A refusal, and that is all pride, to come to Christ and to allow Him to change your heart.
Bob: Now, I think what you can do is this. I think you can be into a situation where you are drawing the line and being able to say, “look husband, I have had enough of this, and I am not putting up with this anymore. If you do not change, then I am going to get out of here because I am not living in peace with you and the bible says I ought to live in peace. The reason is because we are unequally yoked and it is your stubborn refusal to come to Christ Jesus”. In other words, put it down that either you are getting to get help coming to Christ Jesus or you are not going to be able to take it anymore.
Bob: That is all I can say on that particular subject to help you. We do have a tape series on Marriage, a Matter of Identification. I would advise you two to pick that up and listen together and learn together.
Don from Corsicana, TX
Don: I want to get right to it to save you some radio time. I am retired and studied bible a lot. I have listened to you since 1991. What I am wondering about is this fasting business. They are really on this fasting. I cannot understand what fasting has to do with. I could never read this in the Levitical law.
Bob: What is the benefit of fasting? What is fasting? What I say is that is holding fast onto Christ Jesus. You know, there are many things in life that you will find out that you get so engrossed in, that you do not even take time to eat. My wife used to paint. When she was painting, she could paint 9 to 12 hours and never think about eating. She is preoccupied with painting. You can do the same thing with study. That is what true fasting is. It is not saying I am not going to eat. It means I am going to spend so much time getting to know God. It is not just eating. I am going to spend time keeping my eyes focused on Jesus.
Bob: Many people put so much energy in what you do. We have all of this Christian life totally reversed. All we are told about. We only think we know about is what you as a Christian ought to be doing. We do not have a clue what Jesus did. We do not usher in a New Covenant of grace. There is no more sacrifice for sins. There is no more confession booths for sin. We are not taught those things. What people say is important is what you are doing. You are saved and came to Christ and they say “here is tithing envelopes and sick them for Jesus”. Then you are told you have to fast. Then all of a sudden you are in a do-do religion. The only thing you know about is what you ought to be “do-do”ing.
Bob: What good does it do for you and me are told to do if we do not know what Christ has done. That is why God is the initiator to all things. We are the responders. He is the initiator. So if He is putting on our hearts to take time out to study the word, fine. Go study the word.
Bob: I was talking to Bob Davis in my early days as a new Christian, a supplier friend who had a tiny apartment in Newport Beach in CA. He let me use that. I would go down there for days and days and do nothing but study the word of God. I did not worry about eating or sleeping or anything. I was just absorbing the word of God.
Don: I was hearing about 21 days of fasting.
Bob: The only fast I have ever been on in my life was when I was in Campus Crusade for Christ. A lot of people in lay division decided we wanted to be real spiritual. So we went to the mountains in San Bernardino, CA, staying in a cabin. Every one gathered around and had our time of prayer. Every one got on their knees in prayer and waited for someone evidently to hear from God. In about an hour, you start hearing people snoring. Then they say let us wake up a bit. If I think if I was not mistaken, there was either a Super Bowl or something on the news. So we figured that would not be too spiritual to watch this event. We turned on the television and it was a Madonna commercial. We had about 5 minutes. It was like escaping the Titanic sinking. That was the end of our fasting activities.
Don: I was baptized in a Baptist church. I am nearly 65 years old. I heard a well known Baptist preaching talk on that one day. He talked how spiritual you would get by fasting. That was the first time I heard a baptist preacher say that. I just never get to understanding that. The same thing about baptizing.
I baptized and everything. I had some shortcomings in life. Some people think that it was because of God’s punishing of me.
Bob: Let me just say this to you Don that there is no condemnation awaiting those who belong to Christ Jesus.
Romans 8:1
1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus
Don: Yet book of James confuses me. I have a big problem with the book of James. It seemed to me James was very concerned about people friends stressing the law.
James 2:20
20 You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless?
Bob: No, if you understand what he is saying. He is saying, that faith without works is dead. That is true. If you have a true faith in the true Jesus, He will be producing the work through you. It is like a branch. If you say to a branch that without abiding in the vine is worthless. But if the branch is abiding in the life of the vine, then the life of the vine will start producing fruit in and through you. I do not think James had a complete knowledge of ultimately what was revealed to the apostle Paul. I would hate to have his job. It should not be confusing to you at all. He is saying that true faith in the true Jesus will produce Jesus works. No, that is not a confusing book.
John 15:1-8
1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
Bob: On this fasting deal, Don. The only thing I can say is. What is your bakery out there in Corsicana?
Don: College Street. What did you say?
Bob: College Street and that is where they make those fruit cakes?
Don: Fruit cakes and they make everything.
Bob: If I had to eat those fruit cakes every day, I would probably be fasting.
Don: I would too. I went there to work out there one time. I like all this other stuff, cheaper stuff.
Don: I want to get of this phone. Maybe you have time to take another call.
Don And Bob: Laughter together, enjoying their conversation with each other
Vena from Los Angeles, CA
Vena: Thank you very much, Bob
Bob: You are welcome, Vena
Vena: I am a Christian. I have a friend who is a bible reading Catholic friend. She is with a gentleman with children. The ex-wife of that boyfriend hassles her on family with her own kids. She is depressed, you know. She asked me to listen to her. She believes that she is helping her boyfriend and is so they will not be out doing other things. He cannot really afford it. She has depression. I just let her talk. She wants me to remain silent and just listen.
Bob: She is living with her boyfriend?
Vena: Yes
Bob: So she is living in adultery?
Vena: Yes
She is Catholic?
Vena: Yes
Bob: Is Catholic doctrine for living in adultery?
Vena: No
Bob: Do they promote that? I do not think so. Why would you be sitting around saying that you are a Catholic, living in adultery, helping this guy, when the word of God says you are not. You are living in sin. So what she is is an unstable person, unstable in all her ways. She is so unstable, living in this, rationalizing and justifying it and at the same time going through depression over it. How can she help from being depressed knowing full well she is doing something totally contrary to what God says to do and is yet justifying and rationalizing telling you, her friend, to be quiet, so possibly you could believe her ignorance.
James 1:8
8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.
John 8:32
32 “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Bob: I would say to her. “I have no intention at all at listening to error you are about to perpetuate. You have to start in the word of God. The word of God says that you are living in adultery. His cross forgave that sin. But let us not sit around saying that is not sin when the bible says it is sin. Unless you come to agree with God concerning your condition, you are never going to agree with Him concerning His provision. Right now you are spitting in his face, ‘saying you do not know what you are talking about God. I am helping this guy’. He is saying, ‘I do not care whether you are helping him or not, you are living in sin.’” That is what we have to stand in. That is not a popular stance, Vena. That is not what the world likes us to think. But the issue is that is what truth is. I am not condemning her in saying that. I am just saying you have got to call something what God calls it unless you think you are greater than God.
Bob: Again, her very existence, the fact she is depressed, then trying to tell you to listen to her so she can use information so that you can get depressed, does not make any sense. I would not listen to her for 5 minutes. I am not going to listen to you because you are depressed out of your socks and truth sets you free. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that if you are depressed you are not free. So you have error in your mind and God wants to correct that error with truth. There is only one source of truth and that is not Catholic tradition. It is the word of God.
John 17:17
17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.
Vena: I think I will write to her.
Bob: Sure, write to her what you want to say.
Bob: That is one of the tragedies of Catholicism. They do not have a proper opinion, if you want to call it that, or admiration for the word of God. They trust more in their traditions than in the written word of God. The one person writing to me will tell you that tradition and verbalized word is just as important as the written word. That is nonsense. I know who wrote the book of Romans and Ephesians. Nobody said something out of their mouth. Anybody can say something and make a tradition out of it. But when it is written down it solidifies it.
2 Peter 1:21
21 For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Bob: That is one of the reasons people like that get depressed because they do not know where to go find absolute truth. When you find absolute truth in the word of God, you are able to put your faith in an absolute God that you did not just hear about from somebody. But literally read the word of God in our hands today, which is phenomenal. Okay, Vena.
Vena: Thank you so much.
Bob: You are so welcome. Thanks for your call.
Ellen from Glendale, CA
Ellen: I read your book, “Born Free”, where you said that Adam and Eve died spiritually.
Bob: Yes
Ellen: Yet they kept living physically. When we are born, are we dead spiritually when we are born?
Bob: Yes, Ellen. Adam and Eve were created by God and when He created them, He created them complete. They were alive bodily, soulishly and spiritually. God said to Adam, “In the day you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you will surely die” What death is, Ellen, is the absence of life. Just like what is darkness? It is the absence of light. The life of God departed from Adam because Adam chose that.
Genesis 2:16-17
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Bob: The attitude of Adam is this: “I do not need you, God, to determine right from wrong and good from evil. I will do that on my own”. Because he chose that, to be on his own, God departed from him, leaving him spiritually dead, alive to the world but very much dead to what vacated him, which was the life of God.
Bob: Now when Adam and Eve had children, we are old in the fifth chapter of Genesis, when Adam and Eve were created in the image of God, but when Adam and Eve had Seth, Seth was born in the image of Adam.
Genesis 5:1-5
1 This is the written account of Adam’s family line.When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God.2 He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.
3When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. 4 After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. 5 Altogether, Adam lived a total of 930 years, and then he died.
So Adam and Eve were created and you and I were born. We are born in Adam as he became dead. No baby comes out of his mother’s womb saying, “praise Jesus”. We have to be taught that. Then we have a choice as to whether we are going to remain spiritually dead or whether we are to to turn to life in Christ Jesus. That is what it means to be born again spiritually.
Ellen: I do not understand. I was reading James. James says, “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.” James 2:26 I was wondering how that fits?
James 2:26
26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead
Bob: A body without the Spirit of God in him, although living, but if he dies without the Spirit of God living in him, he is dead. That is not a passage to question the way in which we have entered into this world, dead spiritually. The body without the Spirit is dead spiritually. That is just the way it is. The body without the Spirit of God living in you is dead, dead to God. Your body is dead to God. Your soul is dead to God.
Bob: Your human spirit, which separates you from the animal kingdom, Ellen, is dead to God. A carrot has a body. You have a body and a soul and so does a dog. But a born again person or a person who is a human being has body, soul and a spirit. In our particular case, we came into this world with that human spirit empty of God. That is why you have to be born again of that Spirit. When the Spirit comes to indwell us then we have been made whole and complete in Christ Jesus. We are born physically. Adam and Eve were created. You and I were born until we are born again. If any man be in Christ then he is a new creation. The spiritual birth is a creation of God. Our physical birth is a creation of mom and dad.
John 3:5-7
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ ”
Ellen: Thank you very much.
Bob: Does that help, Ellen?
Ellen: Yes, that helps. I got the idea in my head that I was dead spiritually.
Bob: Good. If you have come to Christ by faith, then you are alive. The kind of life he gave you is eternal life.
Ellen: Yes
Bob: For Him to do that Ellen, to give you life eternal that cannot be destroyed, He had to eternally take away the cause of spiritual death and that was sin. So his cross is what eternally took away the cause of spiritual death so that he could raise you from the dead with a life eternal, one that cannot be taken away from you.
Ellen: I appreciate that you are the only minister I have heard that tells us the two things that causes us to be saved. One, the Christ on the cross and secondly, fully being the resurrection received. No other minister has said that.
Bob: It is a sad thing. I think it has been Satan’s ploy to get us to not teach the cross and the resurrection but to put the emphasis where the emphasis does not belong. What we end up with most people is we have a half gospel. I am not one to say what you can be saved by or not, but I think it is difficult to be saved with a half gospel. Jesus is not a half God but he is a full God. The death, burial and resurrection is the gospel that saves us. The emphasis on the resurrection was the emphasis of the early apostles and should be our emphasis as well. Unfortunately we stopped at the cross and leave people devoid of life.
1 Corinthians 15:1-4
1 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures
Romans 5:10
10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!
1 Corinthians 15:12-19
12 But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
Ellen: Yes. You helped me by letting me know we have a human spirit. That was left out of the bible, the difference between the human spirit.
Bob: The human spirit is what God gave us to be indwelt by His Holy Spirit, where our human spirit and His Holy Spirit joined together, is what makes us complete. That was what was left devoid when God left Adam.
Ellen: That should be in the bible about a human spirit and the Spirit of God.
Bob: It talks to us about our spirit being dead. That is what separates us from the animal kingdom.
Bob: Ellen, I am glad this has helped. You keep growing in grace, my dear.
Ellen: Thank you kindly.
Bob: Bye Bye.
