Call-ins Radio Broadcast Friday 06/25/2021

Call-In Classic Christianity Radio – Bob George P646 (06-25-21)

Synopsis

As you study the scriptures, hold onto those things that are true. Do not let more obscure passages lead you into confusion and error. Let us not forget that the goal of instruction is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. The only thing that counts is faith that expresses itself in love.

There are scriptures that are very clear, such as the gospel, that requires faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and nothing added to that, nothing that you do, but what God alone has done for you in Christ Jesus. Hold onto that truth, that in Christ Jesus, you are a forgiven person, and that you have eternal life because of the eternal consequence of the cross, with His righteousness imputed to you. You must have a firm grasp on such truth. Be single-minded on that, and do not be double-minded, mixing law and grace, or doubting that Jesus took away all your sins, thinking that He only took away some of your sins. Jesus took away all of your sins from the eyes of God before you were even born. You are not saved by the death of Christ, but by the life of Christ. His death was necessary for life to be given, but His resurrected life, alive, living in you, is what saves you.

But there are scriptures that we cannot be dogmatic on, either because there is not sufficient information to draw absolute conclusions on, or God has not revealed the truth of that to us yet, or it is something God has sealed that He does not want us to know. An example of the latter is in the case of the apostle John on the island of Patmos and God told him not to write certain things down, for those things are not to be revealed.

A common question asked is what happens to our bodies when we die or at the rapture? And, before the rapture, what about the bodies of those who have already died? When do we get our new spiritual, glorified bodies? Now, there is information to draw reasonable conclusions on that, and Bob George has done that to form his conclusions on such questions, but he himself says he is not dogmatic on that. But he uses logic from the following scriptures to form his conclusions; 2 Corinthians 5:8, 1 Corinthians 15:42-50, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Genesis 3:19, and 1 John 3:2.

As believers we are all growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. To many men out there, when we were lost, we viewed women as sex objects. But when you were born again, when Christ came to live in you, your attitudes and thinking changed. Your mind gets renewed. As Timothy addressed the believers, he told us how to regard one another, to not rebuke an older man sharply, to treat older women as mothers, younger men as brothers and younger women as sisters. As you think about it, all people are people for whom Christ died and made alive again. They are children of God. So what does that make us? We are part of a new family, the family of God. So how do we treat someone who is our sister now? Someone to admire, yes, but not to lust after. So we are instructed to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

Transcript

Ray from Ridgeway, VA

Ray: I have been a listener since 1994. I heard you teaching about being set free. I finally turned it over and have been set free since.

Bob: That is phenomenal, Ray.

Ray: I have a question on the resurrection. I heard you teaching one time, that those who are in Christ, that the moment they die they are resurrected right then with a glorified body.

2 Corinthians 5:8
⁸ but we are of good courage and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.

Bob: There is a lot of different teaching in regard to this. I can tell you why. I am not totally dogmatic on this, but I do know this. When you die, you are absent from the body and you are present with the Lord. I do know that while I am here on this earth that I am given a body you live in, the temple of the Holy Spirit of God. It does not make sense to me that when I die I become homeless.

Ray: That is true.

1 Corinthians 15:50 (NASB)
⁵⁰ Now I say this, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

Bob: So, I do know that flesh and blood is not going to inherit the kingdom of God, so there is no such thing as at the end times, of this body of ours being resurrected, inasmuch as flesh and blood will never inherit the kingdom of God and my body is flesh and blood. The only thing that is going to be resurrected is a glorified body that is made by God. It is not ours and not made of any substance of ours.

1 Corinthians 15:42-49 (NASB)
⁴² So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; ⁴³ it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; ⁴⁴ it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. ⁴⁵ So also it is written: “The first man, Adam, became a living person.” The last Adam was a life-giving spirit. ⁴⁶ However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual. ⁴⁷ The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven. ⁴⁸ As is the earthy one, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly one, so also are those who are heavenly. ⁴⁹ Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly.

Bob: It is sewn one way and it is raised another. It is sewn as a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. You and I have no idea what a spiritual body looks like, but we do know what a natural body is. We will not need that natural body again. It will be raised a spiritual body. We do know that the raising of the body is not going to be this one. It is going to be a spiritual body. We know that. The issue is, when is that going to occur? Some people think that is going to be the end times, and that could be. But, what I believe is this. I do not think that if I am complete here, why would I be incomplete in heaven? That does not make sense, does it?

Ray: No.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 (NASB)
¹³ But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as indeed the rest of mankind do, who have no hope. ¹⁴ For if we believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead, so also God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep through Jesus. ¹⁵ For we say this to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep. ¹⁶ For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷ Then we who are alive, who remain, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. ¹⁸ Therefore, comfort one another with these words.

Bob: I think that when a person dies, they immediately go into the presence of God. Everybody agrees with that. But a lot of people say that is just spiritually. Your spirit goes up to God but your body has to wait for the rapture. But I do not see that in the rapture. When I read in Thessalonians concerning the rapture, if that is a split second event, then why would it say that the dead in Christ shall rise first, and then we who are remaining behind will go meet them in the air, when it is a split second event? That makes no sense even from a writer’s standpoint. So I believe we are with the Lord at the very time that we die, that we immediately go into the presence of the Lord and are given our glorified body at that time. I do not believe we are complete on this earth and then become incomplete. If I have a body now, complete, and then get a new body, later, then I become incomplete. I also do not believe in the way it is taught, why it is taught. The answer in Thessalonians would have come from the question. If there is going to be a rapture, and we are taken out of the world, what happens to those who died beforehand. The dead in Christ are the first to rise. They are already there. We who are left behind, are there at the time of this event. There are definitely two deals going on, before and after the rapture. If I am left here at the time of the rapture, then at that moment, I will go in some way and get a glorified body. God is going to have to do that. This one is not going there.

Bob: You are going to hang onto this thing. Flesh and blood is not going to inherit the kingdom of God. So this teaches that our present bodies are going into the presence of the Lord, these fingers are not going into the presence of God. Flesh and blood do not inherit the kingdom of God. So I am going to have to go up there in a glorified body. So then, what happens to this body? I am hanging onto something that is plain English, that flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom of God. Are these bodies that we have at the time of the rapture will they go and disappear?

Genesis 3:19
¹⁹ By the sweat of your face You shall eat bread, Until you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”

Bob: Somehow God does something with these things, coming from dust and should go back to the dust. At my age, you are glad it goes back to the dust. Is that happening? Or could it be at the rapture that the bodies stay here. Because our bodies stay here, and then we who are in Christ, leave this body, and it says we return to dust. Could it be we are left here, and all of these bodies are left? That would lead Christians to the anti-Christ saying we are all trouble-makers. They all died and we are alive.

Bob: I am not dogmatic about it nor am I just going to believe what is said on the rapture because someone taught it. I think it could go both ways very easily. But I am leaning on what I just explained. I have to go with what the Lord says. To me that is logic. This body of mine has to stay here and rot.

Ray: It is to me also.

1 John 3:2
² Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

Bob: There is no exception that these bodies go back to where it came. These bodies came from dust and to dust they will return. He says the old body is going to be resurrected. You just cannot be. When He comes back, we shall see Him. When He comes to see us, there is not going to be the Spirit in us, the old body. You are going to get a glorified body. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. I hold onto that because it is very clear English. I believe you get your glorified body, and when your time to die, you leave that old body alone.

Marsha

Marsha: There is a verse in the New Testament saying that slanderers, drunkards and adulterers will not inherit the kingdom of heaven. If a born again believer is in the midst of committing adultery when the rapture takes place, what happens?

1 Corinthians 6:9-11
⁹ Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men ¹⁰ nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. ¹¹ And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Bob: Marsha, it is a good question, but quite frankly it is a question that cannot be answered until you understand the cross. I appreciate your call and your concern. Every time you ask that question, you get solidified on what Christ came to do. If there is any way in the world we could have gone through life without sinning, then Christ Jesus would have stayed home.

Isaiah 64:6
⁶ All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

Romans 3:23
²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God

Romans 3:10
¹⁰ As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one

Bob: There is a problem if we understand the truth of that. We are all sinners and will continue to do so. So He had to solve that problem. He came onto this earth, walked in perfect love, for His entire time, and thus fulfilled the law of sin and death. Therefore, He went to the cross on your behalf to take away your sins. He did not take away some of them. If you come to Christ who only took away some of your sins, then you are not saved. There is no Jesus like that. There is no Jesus that has forgotten one. To come to a Jesus who may have forgotten one then you are not saved. There is no Jesus like that. The Jesus of the bible is the Jesus that took away the sins of the entire world.

1 John 2:2
² and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

Bob: You have to count on that before you start interpreting this other. You are going to have to deal with the obvious in scripture. Did He take away all the sins of the world?

Marsha: Absolutely.

Bob: Then where are the sins of the world? On the back of God never to see them again, and taken away from the eyes of God. He is not dealing with man today on the basis of sin and death. He is dealing with man on the basis of new life in Christ Jesus.

Romans 8:1-4 (NASB)
¹ Therefore there is now no condemnation at all for those who are in Christ Jesus. ² For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. ³ For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Bob: The only sin attributable to man is the sin of the rejection of the Son of God, who accomplished that for us. Anyone who has come to Jesus Christ for His resurrection life, and has come to Him to receive life, and to receive His righteousness, not ours, but His, are born again.

Colossians 1:13-14
¹³ For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Bob: If you are born again, in Him you have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. In other words, if you are in Christ, you are a forgiven person. Are we together?

Marsha: Yes.

Bob: If that is true, then how can you ask that question if you kept on sinning would you go to heaven?

Marsha: Because ministers like Charles Stanley and Adrian Rogers, when he was on the air, would say …

Bob: Marsha, sorry to interrupt you. I care less what Adrian Rogers or Charles Stanley said, and they are nice people and I know them. That is not the issue. The issue is what the bible says. The passage you are talking about is merely identifying the actions of the lost people. Lost people can do good things, Christian-sounding things, just as Christians can do lost-sounding things. The issue is that was identifying the lifestyle of people who do not know the Lord. That does not mean if you know the Lord you cannot do one of those things. But it is saying this is the lifestyle of people who do not know the Lord.

1 John 5:12 (NASB)
¹² The one who has the Son has the life; the one who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.

Bob: Marsha, you cannot grab a hold of such an obscure passage and negate what it says in the bible that if you have the Son, you have the life, and that is eternal life. You have to get solid on truth. Your foundation needs to be solid as a rock. Until you are solid in the fact that there is nothing that can separate you from the love of God, and there is no sin that would keep me from going to heaven. The reason is not because of me but because of Jesus, who took away my sins.

Marsha: Are there not people who commit adultery and things like that and they are still going to heaven?

Bob: Marsha, I do not know how to reason with you. We just went over that in great detail. Let us forget the idolatry bit. Commit adultery and still go to heaven. Where is that sin of adultery?

Marsha: Behind the back of God.

Bob: Does that not answer the question?

Marsha: Yes.

Bob: Yes. You are thinking in double. You cannot be a double-minded man.

Marsha: I do not want to be.

James 1:5-8
⁵ If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. ⁶ But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. ⁷ That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. ⁸ Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

Bob: According to scripture you are unstable in all ways. You cannot be double-minded. You have to be single-minded. In fact, He took away your sins before you were in Christ Jesus. Every man is born into this world with his sins taken away. He is not saved. You are not saved by getting your sins forgiven. You are saved by resurrected life. You are saved from the consequence of sin, which is death, by the gift of God, which is life. But as far as forgiveness of sins, they were provided for the entire world.

Marsha: Bob, your teaching is the plain teaching of the word of God. Then another person comes on the air, and says if a man dies in sin, he is not going to heaven. Then I say, wait a minute, Bob says this because the bible says this and the bible never lies.

Adrian Rogers, I do not know him. But Charles Stanley, I would be surprised if he ever said something like that, for I think he has a better understanding of what forgiveness is. But again, I do not listen to them. I do not listen to Christian radio and I do not watch television. I do not want to get my mind confused with a bunch of garbage. There are some programs that are well worth watching, but if you sit there at 7 to 11 just listening to Christian radio, you will be confused out of your socks by the end of the day. There is so much contradiction in teaching out there. I just listen to the bible.

Romans 12:2
² Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Acts 17:11
¹¹ Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

Bob: So camp on what is true, that the reason you have eternal life is because of the eternal consequence of the cross, where Jesus took away from the sight of God, that cause of spiritual death, which is sin. Because He took away the sins of the entire world, and that means all of your sins, and you came to Him for life. In that life you came to Him for, you have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, His righteousness imparted to you, the promise of eternal security and you are a child of the living God, and there is not one thing you can do or anyone else could do that would ever cause you to not be a child of the living God.

Marsha: When I do that, and God gives life to me, how can you tell He has done so? I am not looking for some lightning bolt.

Bob: You would not be on the phone calling me if you were not born again. When you were lost did you ever call up a radio station to ask about spiritual things?

Marsha: No. I just love you guys. Bob, thanks. I do not want to hold you because I know you have so many callers. God richly blesses you guys.

Bob: God bless you too, Marsha.

Larry from Long Beach, CA

Larry: Is there a difference between a spirit of lust versus being possessed by a demon? I see a lot of pastors that would say you cast a demon out of a non-believer. They would pray over him and say “Come out right now.” Is that biblical as far as a believer being possessed, or just having a spirit of lust or something? What is your understanding on that?

Bob: Larry, when you are dealing with that kind of thing, first of all, I can say in my 40 years of being in Christ Jesus, I never dealt with those things. I do not think men who I have known in the past, great men of the past, like Dr. Chriswel and Bill Bright, have ever dealt with those things personally. I think people like Bob Larsen, that is all they do. They think there is a demon behind every bush and every refrigerator. They make money trying to convince people there is a demon everywhere, and ever out there commanding demons to come out.

Luke 11:17-26
¹⁷ Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them: “Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall. ¹⁸ If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? I say this because you claim that I drive out demons by Beelzebul. ¹⁹ Now if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your followers drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. ²⁰ But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
²¹ “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. ²² But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up his plunder.
²³ “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
²⁴ “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ ²⁵ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. ²⁶ Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first.”

Bob: It seems to me that to get a demon out of a person is you get the right man in and the wrong man goes out. I led a lot of people to Jesus in my time and I know quite well that all of them were demonically influenced, as I was, as well as everyone on the face of the earth, demonically influenced. I think sin comes from deception. Sin comes from deception. Demonic influence is from Satan, the deceiver. The things we hear and watch on television or hear on radio, are demonically influenced. To try to persuade people through deception, to believe a lie. God is truth. Jesus is God and you must worship Him in Spirit and in truth. Satan cannot be worshipped in spirit, only in the flesh and in lies.

John 4:23-24
²³ Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

John 10:10
¹⁰ The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

John 8:44
⁴⁴ When he [Satan] lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

Bob: As far as that casting out of demons and that kind of thing, I think there are a lot of people who have tried to make a spectacular issue out of that. How come in all of my years I have not been involved in that kind of thing? I am not out seeking it.

Bob: I compare that to this conversation. “Have you been within ten feet of a lion?” “Well, I have.” “How come you are still here and not mauled?” “The lion was in a cage.” “But what if you got into the cage with the lion, and then sit around in your groups talking about how you got mauled last week? If you are going to get into the cage with the lion, you are going to get mauled. What is the solution to that? Stay out of the cage.”

Bob: If people want to get involved in Satanic activities, they are going to be controlled by Satanic activities, acting like it is religion. Those people you see on television, they are all frauds and charlatans. They are into the spectacular type of thing in order to draw money. Everyone thinks, “Oh, what spiritual people.” They are not spiritual. They are con artists.

Larry: Can a child of God be demon-possessed?

Bob: No, they cannot. They can be influenced, as all of us can. But demon-possessed? No way. Jesus and a demon cannot live in the same house.

Larry: How about the way they are praying? Somehow they have a spirit of lust, and they try to cast out the spirit of lust.

Matthew 5:27-28
²⁷ “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’[Exodus 20:14] ²⁸ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Bob: The bible does not say that, does it? No. It says if you lust, it is the same as adultery. What is the solution to lusting. Quit lusting. Recognize these women you are lusting after are children of God, people whom God created in Adam and Eve, and after a while what you begin to do is look at women, not as sex objects but as people whom Christ Jesus died and rose from the dead for. I tell people to look at women, when talking to Christians, as who they are, as children of God, as sisters in Christ. My wife is my sister in Christ. The woman sitting next to me in church is a child of the living God, my sister in Christ. If I see people as sisters, then you will have a little difficulty lusting.

1 Timothy 5:1-2
¹ Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, ² older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.

Larry: So it is a choice.

Bob: But you cannot cast that out of you. Common sense tells you that. You cast that demon out, and then a girl walks in a mini-skirt, and evidently that demon returns in a hurry. No, that is not demon possession. That is just a part of life. Basically you do not cast out a choice we made.

Bob: Again, what you are dealing with, Larry, is the fact of what Jesus said. Lust after a woman is the same as the sin of adultery. That is put on the back of God never to be seen again. That sin will not send a man to hell. No sin will send man to hell except the sin of the rejection of the Son of God. All sins were placed on the back of God never to be seen again by the eyes of God. God is not dealing with you on the basis of sin. If He was, He would have to deal with us on the basis of sin and death. You cannot separate law from death.

1 Corinthians 15:56
⁵⁶ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

Bob: So He is not dealing with us on that basis. He is dealing with us on the basis of a new life.

Romans 8:1-4
¹ Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, ² because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. ³ For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Bob: There is not a man alive that is not normal, who has not lusted after a woman one way or another. They are beautiful creatures. You can sit down and say that you have never lusted. Then you could say you have never lied either. The issue is you come to realize, as a lost person, a woman was a sex object to you. As a child of God, you begin to see people differently, as sisters in Christ. Ultimately in due time, that is going to take over your mind, and to quit looking at women as sex objects but to look as people for whom Christ Jesus died and given life to. That changes your whole attitude of looking at a woman. That does not mean you are not going to look at a woman and not admire her. I would not know why you would not admire one. They are beautiful creatures. I do not know why they would admire us. But looking at them with admiration and lust are two different things. God just has to renew your mind on those things.

Romans 12:2
² Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Larry: Okay. Thank you, Bob.

Bob: You are welcome. Bye. Bye.