Latest / Every Church Flourishing by the Great Commission Association / Episode 25: Must Pastors and Church Leaders Go to Seminary? Is Online or In Person School Better? Plus: 666 OR 616: The Mysterious Mark of the Beast and the Earliest Manuscript of Revelation

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Episode 25: Must Pastors and Church Leaders Go to Seminary? Is Online or In Person School Better? Plus: 666 OR 616: The Mysterious Mark of the Beast and the Earliest Manuscript of Revelation · Every Church Flourishing by the Great Commission Association

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Speaker1: Dr. Cameron Schweitzer is at Gateway Seminary, is the director of the San Francisco
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Speaker1: campus and associate professor of historical theology.
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Speaker1: Today, you're going to hear him talking about doing theology in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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Speaker1: Jonathan Edwards, who's probably the best theologian America has produced,
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Speaker1: and his radical story of salvation, where he says...
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Speaker0: In a very serious and significant way, it was as if scales fell from my eyes.
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Speaker0: And for the first time, I saw the depth and gravity and heinousness of my sin,
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Speaker0: but the even deeper and richer and more beautiful grace of God in the person
0:38
Speaker0: and work of Jesus Christ.
0:59
Speaker0: Practical advice, soul care, and resources that work together to build up your
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Speaker0: local fellowship and the broader kingdom of God.
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Speaker0: Join hosts, Pastor Chris Cole and Dr. Chase Thompson from the Great Commission
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Speaker0: Association, led by Dr. Mike Stewart, as they explore the frontiers of ministry
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Speaker0: and aim for the goal of making every church flourish.
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Speaker1: Hello, everybody, and welcome in to episode number 25 of the Every Church Flourishing
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Speaker1: Podcast, which is sponsored by the Great Commission Association of California.
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Speaker1: Today, we've got Dr. Cameron Schweitzer, who is the head of Gateway Seminary's Bay Area campus.
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Speaker1: Pastor Christopher Cole and I had a blast with this interview with Dr.
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Speaker1: Schweitzer, and we were honestly bummed out when it had to end.
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Speaker1: We're going to talk to him today about a lot of things over the next two episodes,
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Speaker1: but our focus is on this episode of
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Speaker1: training pastors and church leaders. Should, must pastors go to seminaries?
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Speaker1: Are there alternatives to training leaders?
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Speaker1: What about online classes and that sort of thing?
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Speaker1: And then we're going to end today talking about the upcoming San Francisco Bay
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Speaker1: Area Theology Symposium that Dr.
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Speaker1: Schweitzer and Gateway are putting on, which is going to discuss immigration
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Speaker1: in the church and how churches and pastors should handle illegal immigrants
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Speaker1: as well as Christian nationalism and
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Speaker1: Several other honestly explosively controversial topics.
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Speaker1: So you get to listen to Dr. Schweitzer today while he is in one piece and relatively
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Speaker1: healthy. He might be a little bit at risk after that theology symposium.
2:42
Speaker1: I tell you more about Cameron Schweitzer, but we do a pretty good job today
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Speaker1: of introducing him in the interview. So let's jump over to it now.
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Speaker1: So we are here today with special guest, Dr. Cameron Schweitzer.
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Speaker0: And Cameron is the director of the Bay Area campus of Gateway Baptist Theological
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Speaker0: Seminary and the associate professor of historical theology there.
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Speaker0: He's a 2022 PhD graduate of Gateway Way Seminary, where he wrote his dissertation
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Speaker0: on the always exciting Jonathan Edwards, in particular Edwards' academic interests, right?
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Speaker0: So you have academic interests in systematic theology, biblical theology, historical theology,
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Speaker0: philosophy, apologetics, and ethics. So that's like your aficionado type field.
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Speaker0: We're going to get into other things that you love too later.
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Speaker0: But Cameron has published several articles and book reviews in the Puritan Reform
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Speaker0: Journal, the Jonathan Edwards Study Journal, the Studies in Puritanism and Piety
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Speaker0: Journal, the Calvin Theological Journal, and Thamelios.
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Speaker0: So he's been quite busy like all the time, like you write all the time.
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Speaker0: And he's also published several chapters in the second and third volumes of
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Speaker0: the Jonathan Edwards Miscellany's Companion. So welcome to our show,
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Speaker0: to every church flourishing.
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Speaker1: Yeah, this sounds like a really important, smart guy. I forgot to take my ginkgo
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Speaker1: biloba this morning, so I hope this Coke Zero is enough to keep my brain firing.
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Speaker0: Let that artificial caffeine boost.
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Speaker1: Yeah, it's got to do something.
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Speaker0: Your artificial brain cells.
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Speaker1: So is there anything we missed in that introduction to you?
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Speaker0: The only thing I need to add, of course, would be familial, that my wife and
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Speaker0: kids would be very upset if I didn't say that I have another life outside of
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Speaker0: my life with Gateway Seminary.
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Speaker0: Namely, I'm married to a beautiful woman named Sandra. We've been together since,
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Speaker0: well, married since July of 2019, dating since 2018.
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Speaker0: We have two little kiddos at home, Malachi, who just turned four,
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Speaker0: and my daughter Haven, who's a year and a half.
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Speaker0: Outside of Gateway, I mean, they're my everything. I've been following Christ
4:50
Speaker0: since, I only wasn't bringing this up because we had talked about what we may
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Speaker0: talk about. So I know you're going to bring up my conversion.
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Speaker0: So I kind of assumed it, but yeah, of course, I've been following Christ since
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Speaker0: I was just on my 18th birthday when I was converted really radically when a
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Speaker0: friend invited me to church in February, 2009.
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Speaker0: One other thing, though, you said one other thing I need to add,
5:07
Speaker0: and the publishers of my forthcoming books would be remiss if I did not promo
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Speaker0: them that in the next year I will have three books coming out.
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Speaker0: That's a lot. It is. Thankfully, I'm co-doing everything. So you can do more
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Speaker0: when you do it with other people. Yes. Right. As the saying goes,
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Speaker0: if you want to get there fast, go it alone. But if you want to get there and
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Speaker0: finish, what? Go with a crowd, right? Or go with others. However that old saying
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Speaker0: goes. I just made that up. I parodied it.
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Speaker1: Now it's going to be an old saying.
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Speaker0: Now it's an old saying as of two minutes ago when I thought of it.
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Speaker0: But there are going to be, you're going to ask about the Nicene Creed conference
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Speaker0: that we did last year in the Bay Area that some of your listeners would have been to, hopefully.
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Speaker0: And there is a book coming out by B&H that will be released,
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Speaker0: Lord willing, at the SBC next year on the Baptist celebration of the Nicene
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Speaker0: Creed that I'm co-editing with Ryan Rippey, who's a pastor up in Benicia.
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Speaker0: There's another book I'm co-editing on Edwards with a man named Rob Boss who
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Speaker0: leads the Jonathan Edwards Society, and it's a book called The Integrated Edwards,
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Speaker0: How Edwards Can Shape and Inform Modern Conversations on Theology,
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Speaker0: Philosophy, Ethics, and Pastoral Ministry.
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Speaker0: Then the third book, I'm co-authoring with a friend of mine named Ben on how
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Speaker0: to succeed, thrive, and survive in the hardest to reach places in ministry.
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Speaker0: And Whitvenstock will be publishing that one, but those all should come out next year. Okay.
6:22
Speaker0: So I need to pump those numbers up. Yeah.
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Speaker1: Anyways. This podcast is a significant driver of Christian bestsellers.
6:31
Speaker0: I'm quite sure. Yeah. So I came on.
6:32
Speaker1: You're in the right place.
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Speaker0: Totally self-serving.
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Speaker1: The next Rick Warren, you know, Billy Graham of publishing.
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Speaker1: So let's lead off with these three most important questions we have for you today.
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Speaker1: And the rest of them are just more secondary.
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Speaker1: And the first one is, what is your favorite cereal?
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Speaker0: Well, as I was saying earlier, I'm kind of a health nut.
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Speaker0: So I see your first two questions. And I know you ask a lot of people about
6:57
Speaker0: soda as you drink a Coke Zero.
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Speaker0: Cereal-wise, I've not, you know, had like typical cereal in a very long time.
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Speaker0: But there is a healthy cereal I like called Catalina Crunch.
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Speaker1: I'm familiar.
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Speaker0: Which I eat as a snack, but I'm very rarely over breakfast eating a bowl of
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Speaker0: cereal. For breakfast, I'm either eating something called Teff,
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Speaker0: which very few people have ever heard of, or...
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Speaker1: I have not.
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Speaker0: I'm going to pump the health of Teff on this podcast, but it's the ancient grain
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Speaker0: of Ethiopia. It's very good. It tastes like cream of wheat, but way better for
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Speaker0: you. So my favorite breakfast cereal is probably Teff, but that's a warm brown porridge.
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Speaker0: Okay. Catalina Crunch is a favorite.
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Speaker0: I don't drink soda, but I do like myself a spindrift or a poppy.
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Speaker0: Those are good. Yeah. But I'm not drinking, drinking, drinking.
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Speaker0: I'm not drinking any soda for a long time, guys. The good grammar.
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Speaker1: That's good grammar. Okay.
7:43
Speaker0: I speak goodly sometimes. You do.
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Speaker1: You do. And the third question, what theologian would be the worst companion on a desert island?
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Speaker0: Oh, no question. My dead mentor, Jonathan Edwards.
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Speaker1: Okay. Yeah. I think, I thought you might say that. That's why I threw the question
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Speaker1: in. And just very briefly, why would he be so bad?
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Speaker0: Well, he was not the most personable of people, as the old saying goes,
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Speaker0: to talk about more old sayings, unless he was very close to you and comfortable.
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Speaker0: He was very aloof or seemingly off-putting in his whole situation.
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Speaker0: He didn't say a lot, which is why he didn't endear himself to a lot of people.
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Speaker0: So unless I earned his trust, he would not be the warmest of companions.
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Speaker0: And then secondly, his wife very famously was the one who took care of the house
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Speaker0: along with their slaves.
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Speaker0: So he was of so heavenly mind that he was of no earthly good in a very literal sense.
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Speaker1: So you probably would have to do all the work.
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Speaker0: I'd have to do all the work. And the problem is, is I very much am like Edward
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Speaker0: and I can't do anything to save my own life.
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Speaker0: So I can't, I've held a gun like twice in my life. I've never built a fire.
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Speaker0: I don't know how to fish. So it's like, I would not be much more helpful.
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Speaker0: We would just be like begging for our lives that God would send someone to save
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Speaker0: us. Yeah, it was said of Edwards that he at any time didn't even know how many
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Speaker0: milk kiln he had in his house who spent, you know, 12, 13 hours in his study.
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Speaker0: Nice. Yeah. So Edwards, no question, I think would be the worst companion on
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Speaker0: a desert island. The other would have been Martin Luther, just because you never
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Speaker0: know what that hothead would do from one day to another.
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Speaker1: Yeah. Okay. Great answer. Well, I'm going to kind of step back and lick my wounds
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Speaker1: over my guilt about eating so much cereal and consider my life choices.
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Speaker0: And drinking a lot of soda.
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Speaker1: That too. That too. This has not been a good start for me. So,
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Speaker1: Pastor Chris, why don't you lead us into the promised land?
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Speaker0: Yeah, let's go into something that you did just mention about crying out to God for salvation.
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Speaker0: And you mentioned this earlier, that you had a radical conversion at the age
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Speaker0: of 18. Tell us about that and what made it so radical? How many minutes?
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Speaker1: You have up to 170 minutes.
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Speaker0: Got it. Okay. 70 times seven, it would seem.
9:48
Speaker0: I don't even want the short version or the long version in our podcast format.
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Speaker0: So the short version is that in my senior year, my best friend of the time,
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Speaker0: Jeremiah, was dating this girl named Brianna Dickey.
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Speaker0: And Brianna Dickey's family were the godliest, kindest people I'd ever met.
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Speaker0: And when they met me for the first time, it was the summer before my senior year of high school.
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Speaker0: And I was very lost, very lost, even though I was going into a Christian prep
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Speaker0: school, I was very clearly lost. And I was the worst of all sinners.
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Speaker0: I was proud, arrogant, foul-mouthed.
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Speaker0: Name the sin I would have been pursuing it. They met me for the first time that
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Speaker0: summer at the beach, and they just realized quickly how lost I was.
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Speaker0: And like Rosaria Butterfield has said in her very famous book,
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Speaker0: the gospel comes with a house key.
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Speaker0: And for me, their hospitality proved to be one of the two means that God used
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Speaker0: in his sovereignty to draw me to himself.
10:38
Speaker0: The other being my high school senior year Bible teacher, Dan Rice.
10:42
Speaker0: But the Dickies in particular, the ones who then led me to church where I heard
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Speaker0: the gospel and was converted.
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Speaker0: But suffice to say that over my senior year, they began to invite me and Jeremiah
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Speaker0: over every Tuesday night for dinner.
10:54
Speaker0: And having grown up with a single mom who was a nurse who didn't know how to
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Speaker0: cook. Sorry, mom, as you listen to this. Her Kraft blue box mac and cheese mixed
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Speaker0: in with frozen corn and ground beef.
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Speaker0: You know, good, but not all that appetizing. And I compared it to Miss Dickey's
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Speaker0: cooking. And so she made amazing dinner. So it made my saying yes every week
11:12
Speaker0: to go over to their house for Tuesday night dinner is very easy because she
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Speaker0: made a new and amazing meal every week.
11:17
Speaker0: And when I was there, they took an interest in me. They asked me questions about my life.
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Speaker0: They prayed. They cared for me as a person. They showed hospitality.
11:24
Speaker0: Paul said, seek to show hospitality, and that they didn't.
11:27
Speaker0: They weren't overtly preachy to say that.
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Speaker0: They were just kind and loving. And fast forward several months,
11:33
Speaker0: they invited me to church for the first time.
11:37
Speaker0: And now by this time, Jeremiah and her had broken up. And much to his chagrin,
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Speaker0: they all wanted me to remain in their lives.
11:44
Speaker0: And so each of them, after they broke up, the father, the mother,
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Speaker0: and then Brianna each called me and said, hey, we'd understand why you still
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Speaker0: wouldn't come around, but we still want you in our lives. Please come around.
11:52
Speaker0: They'd so endeared themselves to me that I couldn't say no.
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Speaker0: So now February 2009, I'd known them, I don't know, eight, nine months at this time.
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Speaker0: They said, hey, do you want to go to church with us? And at that time,
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Speaker0: they were going to Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside,
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Speaker0: California, where Greg Laurie is the senior pastor, a very famous megachurch.
12:07
Speaker0: And they would go to their Sunday night service, which was called Sundays at
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Speaker0: 7, which was led by a pastor named Steve Wilburn, who used to be their youth
12:15
Speaker0: pastor, but then took on their Sunday night service.
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Speaker0: And now he pastors the last time I heard a church he planted in L.A.
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Speaker0: Called the Core Church. So nevertheless, we show up on Sunday night.
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Speaker0: I still remember where I was sitting in the middle of the sanctuary next to their sound booth.
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Speaker0: He preached a sermon on 1 Corinthians 5, and the refrain of the sermon was.
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Speaker0: You know what you're doing is wrong, and you need to repent and turn to Jesus.
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Speaker0: And now he had allegorized that image that Paul uses of yeast working through
12:39
Speaker0: the dough, like this idea of corporate sin in the corporate body of a local church.
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Speaker0: And he made it, you know, sin in your heart and how it infects your whole person.
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Speaker0: So, right doctrine, just not really what that text was talking about.
12:50
Speaker0: But every word of that sermon hit me personally.
12:53
Speaker0: In that church of several thousand people, it was as if God was alone speaking.
12:57
Speaker0: And now to give my Christian school credit, I went to Arrowhead Christian Academy,
13:01
Speaker0: which is now Redlands Christian School. It's a very fine Christian prep school
13:04
Speaker0: of the Dutch Reformed tradition. We had good Bible-believing Bible teachers.
13:08
Speaker0: We had chapels that, for the most part, had really solid speakers.
13:12
Speaker0: And so I had heard the gospel. I'd read the gospel. Like the Bible says,
13:15
Speaker0: I had eyes and didn't see and ears, but didn't hear.
13:17
Speaker0: I had a heart that didn't believe. But that night, as is typical in a megachurch,
13:21
Speaker0: they, you know, would have done the altar call.
13:23
Speaker0: And in the altar call, I remember they brought out the guitar player,
13:26
Speaker0: you know, the whole, there's one more person out there, that sort of thing.
13:28
Speaker0: And it was in those final moments that God came after me.
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Speaker0: The only way I can describe it is analogically to say that like what you see
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Speaker0: of Lydia's conversion in Acts, that was similar to mine. And that as he's giving
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Speaker0: the gospel, there's just this weight of my sin was becoming ever clearer.
13:46
Speaker0: And in a very serious and significant way, it was as if scales fell from my eyes.
13:50
Speaker0: And for the first time, I saw the depth and gravity and heinousness of my sin,
13:56
Speaker0: but the even deeper and richer and more beautiful grace of God in the person
14:01
Speaker0: and work of Jesus Christ.
14:02
Speaker0: And whether you want to say it was my spirit, it was God speaking to me very
14:06
Speaker0: clearly, I've paid for your sins.
14:09
Speaker0: I've risen from the grave. You need to turn and believe in me.
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Speaker0: And in that moment, I just wept profusely as a 17-year-old. And I,
14:15
Speaker0: you know, I didn't raise my hand to like, you know, I want to say the sinner's prayer.
14:19
Speaker0: I didn't walk the aisle. I didn't go down to the front. I didn't even pray the
14:22
Speaker0: sinner's prayer. I just remember sitting in the pew weeping as Brianna and her
14:26
Speaker0: mom, Brenda, put their arms around me and they prayed for me.
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Speaker0: And I remember praying, Lord, save me. I'm sorry for what I've done. Save me.
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Speaker0: And my life was radically changed to such an extent that when I went back to
14:36
Speaker0: school over the next couple of weeks, people thought that I was now faking that
14:39
Speaker0: I was a Christian to like make fun of all the Christians, that my mockery had
14:43
Speaker0: entered a new stage of like in character, you know, method acting, I guess.
14:47
Speaker0: But it was Dan Rice who, like Barnabas with Saul, took me by the hand,
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Speaker0: so to speak, and extended me the right hand of fellowship and helped to show
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Speaker0: other people, no, Cameron's legit.
14:57
Speaker0: Like this is a legit conversion. And so much so that a couple months later,
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Speaker0: as we had the senior chapel, they then asked me to be the one who gave the little Bible message.
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Speaker0: And that was probably the second step in my call to ministry,
15:07
Speaker0: where then I had all my, You know, teachers come up to me after and say,
15:10
Speaker0: you know, that was so good. You need to go into ministry. God's calling you,
15:13
Speaker0: young man. I have no idea how bad that message probably was.
15:17
Speaker0: But it was good enough that at 17, 18 years old, everyone said,
15:19
Speaker0: you know, God's put this calling on your life. And that was the beginning of
15:22
Speaker0: then my eventual call to ministry. So that's the short version of that story.
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Speaker1: That's a fantastic story. And I note that it started with regular people,
15:32
Speaker1: not pastors, not somebody on a church staff.
15:35
Speaker1: So many testimonies start out that way, that people come to Jesus through the
15:41
Speaker1: ministry of non-professional pastors and ministers.
15:46
Speaker0: Well, like Jeff Orge did in his great book just a couple of years ago, Shadow Christians.
15:50
Speaker0: The way Christianity expanded was through shadow Christians,
15:53
Speaker0: nameless Christians, shadow faces that just faithfully do the work of God as
15:57
Speaker0: they go about their lives, as they travel, as they start businesses,
16:00
Speaker0: as they raise a family. And that was true for me.
16:02
Speaker0: And now, mind you, I just want to put it like this. Trust me,
16:04
Speaker0: at 17, 18 years old, no one in my life would have thought I'd be where I am
16:08
Speaker0: today. No one. Because of just my plan in life was to be a lawyer,
16:12
Speaker0: to make a lot of money and go live at the beach and live a playboy lifestyle.
16:16
Speaker0: That was the height of my existence as someone who grew up in the hot Inland
16:20
Speaker0: Empire. And the fact that now I'm, you know, in my mid-30s, I'm a seminary professor
16:24
Speaker0: with a PhD in theology, no one would have thought that.
16:28
Speaker0: It's just a testament to the reality of conversion and to the truth of the sovereignty
16:32
Speaker0: of God and salvation and the reality of conversion and sanctification.
16:36
Speaker1: Fantastic. Well, let's shift a little bit to Gateway and your role now.
16:42
Speaker1: You are the third Gateway professor we have had on in the past month or two.
16:47
Speaker1: Really? Yeah, literally.
16:48
Speaker0: Who else has been on?
16:50
Speaker1: The Doctors Ferguson.
16:51
Speaker0: Really? Both of them?
16:52
Speaker1: Yes, both were on and back to back, I think. Tell us what it's like to be the
16:58
Speaker1: director of the San Leandro Gateway campus to do that, to lead that ministry.
17:05
Speaker0: Yeah. So I need to be clear and specific with language. So it is a regional
17:10
Speaker0: campus and not an extension center. Okay.
17:12
Speaker0: And that's an important distinction to make because in a creditor's eyes,
17:16
Speaker0: that makes all the difference.
17:17
Speaker0: So the regional campus has full accreditation, both nationally from the Association
17:22
Speaker0: of Theological Schools, that's ATS, and then regionally from WASC,
17:25
Speaker0: the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.
17:27
Speaker0: So that a regional campus is a full-fledged campus able to offer in-person full
17:32
Speaker0: degrees, or an extension site or an extension center
17:35
Speaker0: is not recognized as a legitimate, quote-unquote, campus in the eyes of the
17:39
Speaker0: accreditors, and so then is derivative of a fully accredited campus,
17:42
Speaker0: whether it's a regional campus or the main campus, then offer a part of a degree or part of training.
17:47
Speaker0: Okay. So that's an important distinction to make so that people know as they're
17:50
Speaker0: listening to this, that if you live in the broader San Francisco Bay Area,
17:53
Speaker0: you have the capacity to come to the Gateway Campus now in San Leandro and earn the full MDiv or the.
17:59
Speaker0: MA in Theology or what's known now as the MTS or the smallest degree being the
18:02
Speaker0: MTE or the Master of Theological Essentials.
18:04
Speaker0: And I could describe each of those degrees if you really wanted to get into
18:07
Speaker0: the weeds and I can bore you to tears with that information.
18:09
Speaker0: But someone could come and earn that entire degree over the course,
18:13
Speaker0: the MDiv over four or five years if they went full-time.
18:15
Speaker0: So that's a significant thing to recognize is that though we're not the main
18:19
Speaker0: campus in Southern California or the former main campus up in Marin off seminary
18:23
Speaker0: drive, that someone can still earn a full degree.
18:25
Speaker0: It's just, we're not going to have as many classes offered per semester or as
18:29
Speaker0: many different kinds of professors that you may want to take at the regional
18:33
Speaker0: campus versus the main campus.
18:34
Speaker0: But I will say this, that I've been here now for three years and I am now the
18:39
Speaker0: third director. So we're just talking in threes. I'm the third person,
18:42
Speaker0: third director, third year here. I'm just going to highlight the three as I'm into numerology.
18:47
Speaker0: This is by far, and this is to not see- So you're half of 666.
18:51
Speaker0: That's true. Whoa, whoa. Number of the beast. Yes.
18:54
Speaker0: That's 616. We could talk about that either. So I'm not in any way trying to
18:58
Speaker0: downplay what has happened over the last few years,
19:01
Speaker0: but I would say that this fall is by far the strongest professor lineup we've
19:06
Speaker0: ever had since I came here in the spring of 2023.
19:09
Speaker0: I mean, the lineup is stellar. And so what I tell folks is that you're able
19:12
Speaker0: to get a high quality education here in person at the regional campus in the
19:16
Speaker0: Bay Area and have no lowering of the academic bar.
19:19
Speaker0: Of course, there is a difference, like you said, from the main campus.
19:21
Speaker0: We don't have as many students. We don't have as many extracurricular festivities
19:25
Speaker0: as Dwight Schrute would have said on the office without all the pomp and frills, so to speak.
19:30
Speaker0: Has all the necessary things, but without all the pomp and frills.
19:32
Speaker0: So we have chapel once a month rather than every week. We have a couple events
19:36
Speaker0: of a year versus an event every month like the main campus does.
19:40
Speaker0: So that's some of the important differences. Now, being a director of a regional
19:43
Speaker0: campus is quite interesting in that I have to wear a lot of different kinds of hats in my role
19:48
Speaker0: so that unlike someone who's, you know, full-time faculty, they just focus on
19:52
Speaker0: teaching, on research, on writing, preparing to teach grading.
19:55
Speaker0: I don't have that luxury.
19:57
Speaker0: I teach a reduced course load, and then I have many other responsibilities on
20:01
Speaker0: my shoulders, like recruiting, you know, prospective students,
20:04
Speaker0: networking with pastors and people who.
20:07
Speaker0: Lead in ministry, who can send us students, raising money, managing the campus,
20:12
Speaker0: recruiting faculty, raising money.
20:14
Speaker0: There's a lot of different things that my role entails beyond just teaching,
20:17
Speaker0: which I do need to do, and beyond research and writing, which I do need to do.
20:21
Speaker0: So I have to do a lot of different things in my position. So to that end,
20:26
Speaker0: you were talking about part of your role is recruiting. Yeah.
20:29
Speaker0: So let's give you the opportunity to make a pitch right now.
20:32
Speaker0: We have a lot of non-pastors, active church leaders that are listeners of this podcast.
20:39
Speaker0: So in addition to the pastors, and there are pastors that listen to this podcast
20:43
Speaker0: that are throughout our association that don't have a seminary degree.
20:47
Speaker0: So why should a church leader or a pastor that has not yet received a seminary
20:54
Speaker0: degree, why should they consider obtaining a seminary degree?
20:58
Speaker0: And, you know, in fact, we'll even let you pitch that a little bit more specifically.
21:03
Speaker0: Why should they consider Gateway when they could do so many other online programs
21:09
Speaker0: at other schools or other places and stay in the Bay Area as well or in Central California?
21:14
Speaker0: That's a great question. I mean, I get that question all the time,
21:17
Speaker0: whether it's explicit or implicit over the last 11 years of recruiting on behalf
21:20
Speaker0: of the seminary. Now, I want to first say something that will sound odd,
21:25
Speaker0: but I do mean it, but I've been saying it for a long time.
21:28
Speaker0: Seminary is not necessary. Wow.
21:31
Speaker0: So that's the thing that- We have that on the record. You have that on record.
21:35
Speaker1: Title. That'll be the title for the podcast.
21:36
Speaker0: Seminary is not necessary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can see the AI generated image
21:41
Speaker0: right now. This is going to be so good.
21:44
Speaker0: So let me nuance that, but I was going to give you guys some bold statements
21:47
Speaker0: for clips. So there's a sense in which seminary is necessary and is not necessary.
21:52
Speaker0: So in the sense of seminary is not necessary, it's not necessary to go to a
21:57
Speaker0: school to learn how to do ministry or to learn theology, right?
22:00
Speaker0: Because, you know, you've studied, you've studied that throughout church history
22:04
Speaker0: and even in places in the world now, there's not the capacity or the ability
22:07
Speaker0: to go to seminary, right?
22:08
Speaker0: So you wouldn't say that in order to be a faithful pastor or a faithful missionary,
22:12
Speaker0: you have to go to seminary, it's necessary.
22:14
Speaker0: No, it's not necessary. People have been doing it all throughout time,
22:17
Speaker0: faithfully, and not having gone to seminary.
22:19
Speaker0: What is necessary and what is not negotiable is what Paul says in 2 Timothy
22:24
Speaker0: 2.2, where he says, Timothy, what you've heard me say in the presence of many
22:27
Speaker0: witnesses, entrust to faithful men who can teach others also.
22:30
Speaker0: And in that, there is a summary of what seminary ought to be or what biblical
22:36
Speaker0: training in a college ought to be for ministry to Bible college.
22:38
Speaker0: Namely, there has to be, if I can theologically synthesize that verse for you,
22:42
Speaker0: there has to be a learning of truth, right?
22:46
Speaker0: What Paul says, what you've heard me say in the presence of many witnesses,
22:48
Speaker0: which we know from the rest of Acts, he says from, you know,
22:50
Speaker0: canon to canon, I've not ceased to proclaim the whole counsel of God.
22:53
Speaker0: He's faithfully divided the scriptures for his protégés so that you have to
22:57
Speaker0: learn what the Bible is, what it teaches, its main doctrine.
23:00
Speaker0: That's theological training. That's worldview training. Like we talked about
23:03
Speaker0: earlier, Chris, that people have to know.
23:06
Speaker0: The doctrines of the Bible to be able to pass on the faith because the faith
23:10
Speaker0: is codified in propositions.
23:12
Speaker0: Even though people hate propositional theology and propositional language,
23:15
Speaker0: we talk about that, but all of this is propositional.
23:17
Speaker0: You have to know the propositions of the Bible. That doesn't happen by osmosis.
23:21
Speaker0: That has to happen by learning. It's not like that episode, Jimmy Neutron Boy
23:24
Speaker0: Genius I watched as a kid, where he came up with an invention where he made
23:27
Speaker0: books in a gum. You chew the gum, you learn the book. That's not how it happens.
23:30
Speaker0: You have to learn it from someone else. You have to read yourself.
23:32
Speaker0: You have to learn. But then secondly, Paul says to Timothy, you have to be able
23:35
Speaker0: to entrust it to faithful men who can teach others also.
23:37
Speaker0: As you know, that's multiple generations. Paul, Timothy, men, other men also.
23:42
Speaker0: So four generations of ministry there. So then you also have to be trained in
23:45
Speaker0: the capacities and in the aptitudes or the abilities to be able to replicate
23:50
Speaker0: and pass on what you've learned in terms of faithful doctrine,
23:54
Speaker0: faithful practice, right?
23:55
Speaker0: So that's what is not negotiable. You have to, as a Christian,
23:59
Speaker0: know sound theology and then have sound methodology to be able to make self-replicating disciples.
24:07
Speaker0: And where seminary comes in then as a parachurch ministry is to be able to help
24:12
Speaker0: the local church fulfill
24:14
Speaker0: that aspect of its calling to raise up more faithful men and women who are called
24:19
Speaker0: to full-time vocational ministry to be able to lead out in that regard.
24:24
Speaker0: And that's, as we know, what parachurch ministries come to do is they've come
24:27
Speaker0: alongside the local church to help the local church fulfill one of its God-given missions.
24:32
Speaker0: And one of God's given missions of the church is to raise up and appoint elders,
24:35
Speaker0: send out qualified men and women into the harvest field that's ready for heart.
24:40
Speaker0: And that's what seminaries and Bible colleges do is they help the local church
24:44
Speaker0: pastor train their future leaders, because not every pastor or church has the
24:47
Speaker0: capacity to teach their young men or women Greek and Hebrew.
24:50
Speaker0: Not every church has the capacity to train in church history or in the finer
24:55
Speaker0: points of dogmatic theology or in backgrounds of the New Testament,
24:59
Speaker0: which are all important and necessary things in the teaching ministry of the
25:03
Speaker0: church. Just like it's helpful—.
25:05
Speaker0: To come to the seminary and write your pastor, and there's faithful pastors
25:08
Speaker0: in this room, who can help train their young men or women in how to rightly
25:13
Speaker0: divide the word, how to counsel, how to share the gospel.
25:16
Speaker0: And I think some of the best training happens on the job, so to speak,
25:19
Speaker0: in your context with someone training you how to do it like a mentor-mentee relationship.
25:23
Speaker0: However, it is helpful to then go to seminary to have someone like Jim Wilson,
25:28
Speaker0: who's one of Gateway's most published professors, who's an expert in communication
25:31
Speaker0: and in preaching, to help you think through how can I preach better or to learn
25:35
Speaker0: from someone like the retired Don Dent who spent three decades on the mission field faithfully,
25:40
Speaker0: you know, teaching others about Christ.
25:42
Speaker0: Like there's something to be said about learning from a Don Dent about how to
25:45
Speaker0: share your faith and how to make disciples.
25:47
Speaker0: My former supervisor. Your former supervisor. Don Dent. Which was one of the
25:50
Speaker0: most, let me just say this, like one of the most common questions I got on the
25:53
Speaker0: road when I was recruiting was something about Dr. Orge. And then the next question,
25:57
Speaker0: if it wasn't about Gateway, I was like, do you know Don Dent?
26:00
Speaker0: So all that to say, to answer your question, that's what I mean in the sense
26:03
Speaker0: that seminary is and is not necessary.
26:06
Speaker0: That the need to train the God-called men and women to the ability to know the
26:11
Speaker0: truth and to be able to pass on the truth and to live the truth, that's indispensable.
26:16
Speaker0: But how that's done ought to be in the local church, but not every local church
26:20
Speaker0: has the capacity to do that. So then seminaries and Bible colleges came along
26:23
Speaker0: to help the local church fulfill that call.
26:25
Speaker1: Okay, that's great. Let's keep talking about Gateway. but also San Leandro.
26:29
Speaker0: Oh, I didn't give the pitch for why gateway in person. Thank you.
26:33
Speaker0: I want to make sure I answer your questions. One of the things I despise in
26:36
Speaker0: interviews or podcast things that I've watched is like anytime you have like
26:40
Speaker0: a politician or sometimes a leader, they get asked a question and they just
26:43
Speaker0: totally avoid the question.
26:45
Speaker0: I don't ever- We thought you were avoiding this. We were like, really? Okay.
26:48
Speaker0: No, no, no. I'd never want to be someone who could be accused of avoiding a question.
26:51
Speaker0: So yes, Chris, your other question about why ought someone in the larger Bay
26:54
Speaker0: Area come to do in-person education versus just do name the school online.
26:59
Speaker0: I would say that there is something to be said about incarnate seminary training.
27:03
Speaker0: Right. God didn't send an avatar. He didn't send a Zoom. He didn't have a Zoom
27:06
Speaker0: call. He didn't, you know, simply set up something online. He himself came in
27:10
Speaker0: the flesh. Granted, that wouldn't have been possible 2000 years ago.
27:13
Speaker0: And that is my inputting the present into the past.
27:16
Speaker0: I think you get my point. There's something to be said about incarnate ministry,
27:19
Speaker0: even with as good as an online program can be.
27:22
Speaker0: And our online program is great. A lot of schools have really great online programs.
27:25
Speaker0: There's always something to be said about the tangible in-person experience
27:29
Speaker0: of seminary that you can't replicate through the best online program.
27:33
Speaker0: There's something about being in a room with brothers and sisters and engaging
27:37
Speaker0: in the important truths that you engage in in seminary.
27:39
Speaker0: So I would say, yeah, I mean, why would you want to go do something online if
27:43
Speaker0: you have the capacity and the ability to do it in person?
27:46
Speaker0: And by ability, I mean that there is a school within a reasonable driving or traveling distance.
27:52
Speaker0: Then if you do, if you have that option, then you should do it.
27:54
Speaker0: And then at least at Gateway here in the Bay Area, like I was just saying a
27:57
Speaker0: moment ago, our lineup for the fall is stellar.
28:01
Speaker0: I mean, I'd put up that lineup against any, not just teaching site, but any seminary.
28:06
Speaker0: I mean, we're going to have Dan Gertner teach New Testament.
28:09
Speaker0: He's coming in from Kentucky.
28:10
Speaker0: We're going to have Ryan Rippey teaching educational ministry of the church.
28:14
Speaker0: Todd Bolton from a big church up in the North Bay is going to be teaching Greek.
28:17
Speaker0: We have a man whose name's currently escaping me, who leads a ministry called
28:20
Speaker0: Biblical Counseling Worldwide, who's going to be teaching our biblical counseling class.
28:24
Speaker0: And then Alan Cross from Petaluma is going to be teaching our missions class,
28:29
Speaker0: stellar. And then as the least of all the apostles, I will be teaching theology. So...
28:34
Speaker0: I mean, our lineup for this fall is very, very good. And so you're going to
28:39
Speaker0: get a high level in-person experience from Bay, other than Dan Gertner,
28:44
Speaker0: but I mean, that guy's a beast anyways.
28:46
Speaker0: Come take Dan Gertner. You can take one class. Come take Dan Gertner's New Testament class.
28:50
Speaker0: The guy who's rewriting the Word Biblical commentary on Mass.
28:53
Speaker0: I mean, he's like a scholar's scholar, guys. I mean, he's at the top, cream of the crop.
28:57
Speaker0: But you're going to get the best in-person education that Gateway has,
29:02
Speaker0: I think, at the Bay Area campus.
29:03
Speaker0: And as I say to our faculty, as I bring them on, as I say to our prospective
29:07
Speaker0: students, what we're trying to cultivate at the Bay Area campus is a rigorous
29:10
Speaker0: Christ-centered education.
29:12
Speaker0: That Christ is the center of all that we're doing. It's a rigorous Christocentrism,
29:16
Speaker0: as I like to describe it. So that Christ is rigorously held to as the center
29:20
Speaker0: of all things, right? From him to him, through him are all things.
29:23
Speaker0: Christ is all in all, as Paul would say.
29:25
Speaker0: But that also we're trying to cultivate an atmosphere as a campus that has the
29:30
Speaker0: kind of academic rigor that fulfills the command to love the Lord with all our mind and our strength.
29:36
Speaker0: So that I tell prospective students who come to the campus, I mean,
29:39
Speaker0: yeah, you're going to study things like Bible and theology or ministry or what
29:42
Speaker0: have you, but the level of academic rigor that we're expecting of our faculty
29:47
Speaker0: and of our students is Bay Area level master's training.
29:51
Speaker0: So that I tell our faculty, you should be teaching these classes,
29:55
Speaker0: have the sort of reading and assignment expectations.
29:57
Speaker0: That'd be the case of you're studying a master's in philosophy or religion at
30:00
Speaker0: Stanford, or you're getting a master's in English from Cal.
30:03
Speaker0: Like it should be Bay Area level rigor. And considering who most of our students
30:07
Speaker0: are, that's what they're expecting. They're expecting high level academic rigor
30:11
Speaker0: at the master's level. And that's what you're going to get by coming to the
30:14
Speaker0: Gateway campus in San Leandro.
30:15
Speaker1: Yeah, the Bay Area is kind of like Cambridge or Oxford or whatever. or extremely academic.
30:21
Speaker1: So I can tell you're not the biggest fan of online classes. You prefer face-to-face
30:27
Speaker1: incarnational classes, and I totally get that. My seminary education was really
30:32
Speaker1: a combination of pretty much every way it could happen.
30:35
Speaker1: In-person, compressed interactive video from another campus,
30:40
Speaker1: online classes, and intensives.
30:42
Speaker1: So talk a little bit about, let's say there's a pastor outside of the Bay Area
30:47
Speaker1: and far away from Ontario.
30:50
Speaker1: What does Gateway offer for online classes? And I guess just listening to what
30:56
Speaker1: you're saying, you would encourage
30:58
Speaker1: somebody if they are going to take online classes to at least take some in person
31:04
Speaker1: if possible. So talk about that. How does Gateway approach that?
31:07
Speaker0: Yeah. So as Adam says, Dr. Groza says, we're trying to get more seminary to
31:11
Speaker0: more people. And so it used to be back in the day that like when Chris Cole
31:15
Speaker0: went to seminary, sorry, back in the day. I know.
31:18
Speaker0: I just realized I said that and I was totally ageist.
31:21
Speaker0: Totally ageist. You know, we did have dinosaur lifts that moved us from one,
31:27
Speaker0: Or like my uncles used to joke that they would walk to school uphill both ways
31:31
Speaker0: in the snow in July in Rialto.
31:33
Speaker0: So there was a time when seminary was only in person.
31:38
Speaker0: And the idea was that if you felt you needed to go to seminary,
31:40
Speaker0: you had to uproot your family if you didn't live within driving distance to
31:43
Speaker0: that campus and then move there.
31:45
Speaker0: And hopefully, once you've received your training, you would go back or you
31:48
Speaker0: would go to the mission field.
31:49
Speaker0: And what we've seen over the years in California, whether that's Cal Baptist
31:53
Speaker0: and the programs down there or Golden Gate in the past, is that the numbers
31:57
Speaker0: are less than stellar of when
31:59
Speaker0: people, at least I can speak of CBU because I went to CBU, of people who would
32:03
Speaker0: go from CBU to another seminary and not California to ever come back.
32:08
Speaker0: It's very hard to then get people to come back when you move somewhere where
32:11
Speaker0: you can buy a house for, like they're giving them away for free almost.
32:15
Speaker0: You know, you find a nice young lady, you get a nice salary from a church.
32:18
Speaker0: Like, well, why would I go back to then lead a cantankerous church of 40 people
32:22
Speaker0: where they're going to pay me $40,000 and the average living around me is $200,000.
32:26
Speaker0: Like that's a hard sell. But there was a time where that was the only option.
32:29
Speaker0: But when I was in seminary about a decade ago, like you, it seemed like there
32:32
Speaker0: was this movement to now start to have online, to have some different kinds of learning.
32:37
Speaker0: So when I went through Golden Gate, I was taking classes at our Brea campus,
32:40
Speaker0: the former Southern California campus.
32:42
Speaker0: I was then doing some online. And then when Ontario came, then I started to
32:47
Speaker0: do my classes there in addition to online. So gateways shifted over the years
32:51
Speaker0: to not only have our in-person campuses in Southern California,
32:54
Speaker0: the Bay, Arizona, Denver, and Vancouver, Washington, but.
32:57
Speaker0: In addition to Hawaii, a proliferation of teaching sites in like Sacramento
33:02
Speaker0: or Salt Lake City or Boston, Hong Kong or Taiwan, you can also do things online.
33:07
Speaker0: And so you can get your full MDiv, your full counseling degree,
33:10
Speaker0: whatever, fully online at Gateway, meaning you wouldn't have to come one day
33:14
Speaker0: in person, which is great.
33:15
Speaker0: Like if you live in the middle of nowhere, Alaska, or if you live in rural Montana,
33:20
Speaker0: like, and that's what I meant earlier.
33:21
Speaker0: There's not the ability for you to go to an in-person seminary.
33:24
Speaker0: It's just not practical. So that we do have that asynchronous online model,
33:28
Speaker0: which means for someone who needs to fit in seminary to the margins of their
33:33
Speaker0: life, that's the value of online education.
33:35
Speaker0: You can do it at 1 in the morning or 11 a.m. or 4 p.m.
33:39
Speaker0: Whenever your schedule for work and family permits. And that's the value of
33:43
Speaker0: online education is its flexibility.
33:45
Speaker0: The downside, of course, is then you lose something of the in-person experience
33:48
Speaker0: and the value of incarnate, you know, incarnate seminary training.
33:51
Speaker0: And that's the seesaw, right? Because then the downside of in-person is then,
33:54
Speaker0: yeah, you have to adjust your life a bit.
33:55
Speaker0: You have to then drive an hour. You then have to give up your Monday night or
33:58
Speaker0: your Tuesday night or what have.
33:59
Speaker0: But for those who need the online experience, we have the fully online programs
34:02
Speaker0: of all of our master's degrees.
34:04
Speaker0: We also then have the remote access classes, which allows you to try to split
34:08
Speaker0: the horns of that dilemma and be a live student via Zoom in our in-person classes
34:13
Speaker0: and anywhere on any of our campuses, rather.
34:15
Speaker0: And then lastly, as I've been mentioning, we are proliferating our resources.
34:19
Speaker0: Teaching sites. So that if like, you know, your church is down in the South
34:23
Speaker0: around Santa Maria with Daniel or San Luis Obispo.
34:27
Speaker0: Or, you know, around Monterey, and I've had those conversations with some of
34:30
Speaker0: those pastors, that if you can gather five or six men or women who want to take
34:34
Speaker0: classes for credit, we can start a teaching site.
34:36
Speaker0: We just need five or six people who want to take master's level credit for earning
34:41
Speaker0: a credit or earning a degree.
34:42
Speaker0: And we can start a teaching site in that location. Then you can just add auditors on top of that.
34:46
Speaker0: But the finances require five or six in-person students paying the tuition.
34:51
Speaker0: And so we can multiply teaching sites. You can take online, you can take remote,
34:54
Speaker0: you can take, you know, classes in person. If you live near a campus,
34:57
Speaker0: we have summer intensives. We're just trying to, again, multiply the avenues
35:01
Speaker0: of seminary training so that more people can get more training.
35:04
Speaker0: You know, I was super excited to hear you announce about Dr.
35:08
Speaker0: Alan Cross. He just got his doctorate degree coming and joining,
35:12
Speaker0: teaching a class this coming semester, right?
35:14
Speaker0: Alan, we've got to give him a shout out, is a fellow director of missions,
35:19
Speaker0: the director of missions for the association in Marin County.
35:23
Speaker0: So we love to hear of our DOMs made good. We are useful for some things.
35:27
Speaker0: Those of us that work on association-wide- Not a vestigial appendage. And everything else.
35:31
Speaker0: But I know that Alan has a deep passion for working out a theology of a biblical
35:39
Speaker0: response to immigration issues in the United States.
35:42
Speaker0: He's very clearly passionate about that. He's the author of one of the resolutions
35:47
Speaker0: that the SBC just debated and discussed.
35:50
Speaker0: He had part of the input into some of the resolution language that was engaged there.
35:54
Speaker0: So, you know, seminary is about live theological issues, not just sort of historic
36:01
Speaker0: or dead theological issues, right?
36:03
Speaker0: It's about the way we live out the reality of our belief in God right now.
36:08
Speaker0: Seminaries can help train towards that theological reality.
36:12
Speaker0: So if that's sort of the frame, what would you say are some of the main theological
36:17
Speaker0: issues that we need to address in the American West in the 21st century right now?
36:25
Speaker0: That you feel like, man, we've really got to get a grasp on sort of recognizing
36:30
Speaker0: these theological issues, addressing them.
36:33
Speaker0: Training and equipping pastors for them or church leaders for how to handle
36:37
Speaker0: those theological issues in their contemporary present church context.
36:43
Speaker0: Yeah. Well, let me add the comment about Alan Cross. So we will be having our
36:47
Speaker0: second annual theology conference, theology symposium in the Bay Area,
36:51
Speaker0: first weekend in October, October 2nd and 3rd.
36:53
Speaker0: And we're trying to address one of those pressing issues right now in America,
36:56
Speaker0: which is the question of politics and religion.
36:59
Speaker0: And so we will be stepping on that not controversial topic, the landmine hitting
37:03
Speaker0: the beehive. I am so excited to see how many pieces you come out of this conference
37:08
Speaker0: with and in. In tact. Yeah.
37:10
Speaker0: I've been saying that if I can- One piece for every tribe of Israel. That's right. Wow.
37:14
Speaker0: The 12 elect, the elect tribes. I want a little bit of Issachar and Zebulun, hopefully.
37:20
Speaker0: Maybe some nap to like. If everyone comes, and I'm hoping two to three hundred,
37:25
Speaker0: four hundred at most, I'm really aiming for the stars at this point.
37:27
Speaker0: I want everyone who comes to leave a little bit upset. If everyone leaves a
37:30
Speaker0: little upset, then I know we hit the central mark.
37:33
Speaker0: But I bring up Alan because he's going to be one of our rock star speakers and
37:37
Speaker0: he's going to be addressing that very question of how odd evangelical churches
37:41
Speaker0: think through the very touchy subject of receiving immigrants and even illegal
37:45
Speaker0: immigrants. What do you do with that? So he's one of our 12 speakers.
37:48
Speaker0: He's going to address that topic. We'll have someone else address the topic
37:51
Speaker0: of, was America founded as a Christian nation? I'll have someone address the
37:54
Speaker0: question of, what is a theology of free speech?
37:57
Speaker0: Another topic is going to be, does the Old Testament nation of Israel provide
38:02
Speaker0: the theological structures for a Christian nationalism in the 21st century?
38:07
Speaker0: That person is going to be saying no.
38:09
Speaker0: Then I'm going to have someone else argue that we ought, as Christians,
38:13
Speaker0: to have an obligation to support the nation of Israel. That's also going to
38:17
Speaker0: not be controversial, right? Wow.
38:19
Speaker0: Yeah. So it's going to be— You are going to end up in pieces.
38:23
Speaker0: Most likely. Right. Yeah. And then the name that's been confirmed that I can
38:28
Speaker0: then say is that the president of Nine Marks is going to be coming.
38:31
Speaker0: Interesting. Yeah. So Dr. Jonathan Lehman is going to come. And we're still
38:34
Speaker0: working out exactly what his topic is going to be. I have a meeting with him tomorrow over Zoom.
38:38
Speaker0: But I mean, this is going to get there's gonna be like national eyes on what we're going to be doing
38:43
Speaker0: Brad Dacus is going to be speaking at the Pacific Justice Institute So I mean,
38:46
Speaker0: this is going to be a conference not to miss October 2nd and 3rd in person in
38:51
Speaker0: in the Silicon Valley I'm still trying to figure out where it's going to be,
38:53
Speaker0: but it's going to be really really good.
38:55
Speaker1: So that symposium sounds great. I attended last year's symposium via YouTube,
39:00
Speaker1: and I actually hope to be there in person this year.
39:03
Speaker1: Last year's topic was all about Baptists and the Nicene Creed,
39:07
Speaker1: which was, I don't know, at the time, kind of mildly controversial.
39:11
Speaker1: But this year should be steaming hot. Well, speaking of controversy,
39:16
Speaker1: early on in the podcast, you heard Pastor Christopher and Dr.
39:20
Speaker1: Schweitzer talking about the Mark of the Beast 666.
39:24
Speaker1: And then Cameron said something enigmatic when he mentioned the number 616.
39:30
Speaker1: What was all that about? Well, I know it was a lighthearted comment,
39:34
Speaker1: but it's worth discussing in a slightly deeper way because I myself am pretty
39:38
Speaker1: fascinated by eschatology or the study of the last things or end times.
39:44
Speaker1: And that number, 666 or 616, comes from Revelation 13.
39:51
Speaker1: And then Revelation 14 kind of describes its significance. Let's read about
39:55
Speaker1: it. This is Revelation 13, verse 11. John says, I saw a second beast coming out of the earth.
40:00
Speaker1: It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon.
40:04
Speaker1: It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf and made the
40:09
Speaker1: earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast whose fatal wound had been healed.
40:16
Speaker1: Skipping down to verse 16, it also forced all people, great and small,
40:20
Speaker1: rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on
40:25
Speaker1: their foreheads so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is
40:30
Speaker1: the name of the beast or the number of its name.
40:34
Speaker1: This calls for wisdom.
40:36
Speaker1: Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast,
40:41
Speaker1: for it is the number of a man.
40:44
Speaker1: That number is 666. And then we go down to Revelation 14 verse 9.
40:51
Speaker1: We find out a little bit more.
40:52
Speaker1: And it says, A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice,
40:56
Speaker1: if anyone worships the beast in its image and receives its mark on their forehead
41:01
Speaker1: or on their hand, they too will drink the wine of God's fury which has been
41:06
Speaker1: poured full strength into the cup of his wrath.
41:09
Speaker1: They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels
41:14
Speaker1: and of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment will rise forever and ever.
41:20
Speaker1: There will be no rest day or night for those who worship the beast in its image
41:25
Speaker1: or for anyone who receives the mark of its name.
41:29
Speaker1: This calls for patient endurance on the part of the people of God.
41:33
Speaker1: Who keep his commands and remain faithful to Jesus.
41:37
Speaker1: So, hey, that's a big deal, right? Now, if you are an amillennialist,
41:42
Speaker1: and a lot of academics and scholars are, you probably aren't very concerned
41:47
Speaker1: about the literal meaning of 666 or 616,
41:50
Speaker1: because the amillennialist view holds that the 1,000-year reign of Christ mentioned
41:55
Speaker1: in the book of Revelation is not a
41:58
Speaker1: Literal future earthly kingdom, but more of a symbolic representation of the present church age.
42:05
Speaker1: And in that perspective, Jesus is currently reigning spiritually from heaven,
42:10
Speaker1: and Satan has already been bound to a greater degree to prevent him from stopping
42:14
Speaker1: the spread of the gospel.
42:16
Speaker1: This period of spiritual rule spans from Christ's first coming to his second
42:21
Speaker1: coming, and ultimately history will culminate in a single glorious return of
42:26
Speaker1: Jesus, followed by the general resurrection, the final
42:30
Speaker1: Judgment, and the eternal state.
42:31
Speaker1: And amillennialists generally view the Mark of the Beast like a spiritual representation
42:38
Speaker1: of allegiance to worldly anti-Christian powers and the ideologies of Satan.
42:45
Speaker1: And they typically sort of view the mark on the forehead and the mark on the
42:49
Speaker1: hand in very symbolic ways.
42:51
Speaker1: Now, others view 666 and the Mark of the Beast much more literally.
42:56
Speaker1: Many, many lines of ink have been spilled over the years talking about the Mark
43:01
Speaker1: of the Beast, and there are so many theories about it, ranging from the
43:06
Speaker1: somewhat biblically plausible to the utterly absurd.
43:10
Speaker1: And I recall growing up in the 80s that many were convinced that UPC codes,
43:16
Speaker1: which are like the barcodes that are found on things you buy at the store,
43:20
Speaker1: that's what they scan at the register, they thought those were the mark of the beast.
43:24
Speaker1: Others believed it would be like an injectable chip or something along those lines.
43:29
Speaker1: And the Greek word there for mark is the word keragma, and it means like a stamp
43:35
Speaker1: or a mark, and it comes from a word that means like trench, as in digging.
43:40
Speaker1: So very likely we're talking about possibly some sort of surgery or maybe some
43:48
Speaker1: sort of engraving or etching along the lines of a tattoo or something like that.
43:53
Speaker1: I suppose an implantable chip in the futurist view, thinking that Revelation
43:59
Speaker1: is talking about the future.
44:00
Speaker1: Could qualify here, but it is a bit of a stretch.
44:05
Speaker1: So what exactly is the mark of the beast? And the answer, of course,
44:09
Speaker1: is we don't know for sure.
44:11
Speaker1: And I am skeptical of anybody who claims to know exactly because we're just
44:17
Speaker1: not given enough information in that passage to know what it's talking about.
44:22
Speaker1: And as I mentioned earlier, there's all sorts of controversy about how exactly
44:27
Speaker1: Christians today should interpret the book of Revelation in general.
44:32
Speaker1: That said, if it is a futurist book pointing to things that are going to happen
44:37
Speaker1: in the future, we're given enough information to probably know the mark of the beast when we see it,
44:44
Speaker1: and I don't think we've seen it yet, at least not in widespread distribution.
44:49
Speaker1: I believe it will be very, very clear, and not something that you can be like
44:53
Speaker1: tricked into getting like some sort of injection or thing that's given to you by deceit.
44:58
Speaker1: Of course, in the early 2020s, some people were thinking that the mark of the
45:02
Speaker1: beast was a COVID vaccine or something like that.
45:05
Speaker1: And no matter what you think about vaccines or the COVID vaccine in general,
45:09
Speaker1: these are not the mark of the beast. And only really, really bad exegesis of
45:15
Speaker1: these passages can get you to that conclusion. The
45:18
Speaker1: Passage from Mark 13 and Mark 14 seem to indicate that the Mark of the Beast
45:23
Speaker1: will be like received with a conscious submission to it and not ignorantly,
45:30
Speaker1: not like a huge deception.
45:32
Speaker1: And so what the passage says is it'll be on the right hand of the forehead.
45:36
Speaker1: It will be economic in some ways, like there'll be a financial kind of system
45:41
Speaker1: set up where you can't buy or sell without the mark.
45:45
Speaker1: And I kind of keep up with anti-fraud technology because I think that's one
45:50
Speaker1: possible way we could get to a mark of the beast.
45:53
Speaker1: I could see a leader or government attempting to make money,
45:57
Speaker1: cash obsolete somehow, and require some sort of unique ID or payment,
46:03
Speaker1: be somehow attached to a person.
46:06
Speaker1: And the way they kind of get that across to people is sort of an anti-fraud thing.
46:11
Speaker1: Maybe. The mark will somehow tie back into
46:16
Speaker1: The beast, the Antichrist, the man of lawlessness, and perhaps the kingdom or
46:20
Speaker1: country or group of countries that that individual might be leading in a futurist interpretation.
46:27
Speaker1: And even if we see the mark coming, Christians will not be able to prevent it
46:33
Speaker1: because God has ordained these events and they aren't written down in the Bible
46:38
Speaker1: for us to try to stop them.
46:40
Speaker1: We have no command to fight against the implementation of these technologies.
46:45
Speaker1: And I don't know, do so if you feel led or whatever. But the point of the passage is very simple.
46:49
Speaker1: Don't get the mark of the beast. The point is not fight against every technological
46:55
Speaker1: innovation that could be the mark.
46:57
Speaker1: God's word is going to come to pass. And I guess bottom line,
47:01
Speaker1: if we take this book to be literal and speaking of the future, And I generally do,
47:09
Speaker1: But with a very loose hand because the amillennialist perspective is fairly persuasive.
47:15
Speaker1: I'm a historic premillennialist, but I am open to other views because...
47:22
Speaker1: It's a book that's not very super clear how we should take it.
47:27
Speaker1: So, bottom line, don't get a mark, chip, tattoo, engraving, implant,
47:31
Speaker1: or whatever on your wrist, arm, or forehead that has anything to do with buying
47:36
Speaker1: and selling. And I don't really see that going on right now.
47:40
Speaker1: But that's not the point. The point is the enigmatic 666 or 616 that Cameron brought up earlier.
47:48
Speaker1: As you can imagine, for hundreds of years, over a thousand years,
47:53
Speaker1: nearly two thousand years, Christians have discussed that number extensively
47:59
Speaker1: and fiercely debated its meaning.
48:01
Speaker1: Many believe that John, the writer of Revelation, intended the number to be
48:06
Speaker1: used in a way as like a code, and therefore many people use gematria, which is like
48:11
Speaker1: a way of assigning a number to letters and fashioning a sort of code as a way
48:17
Speaker1: to interpret 666, and there's a lot of problems with that
48:21
Speaker1: approach, but John never tells us exactly how 666 is the number of the name
48:28
Speaker1: of the beast and never tells us what code he might be using.
48:31
Speaker1: And Christians have guessed like so many things over the years of what he's been thinking.
48:37
Speaker1: And many have definitively declared that Nero or Roman Catholics or this or
48:44
Speaker1: that pope or Mikhail Gorbachev or Ronald Wilson Reagan, each
48:50
Speaker1: Letter, each of his names has six letters or Hitler or Stalin or whoever,
48:57
Speaker1: this president, that president,
48:59
Speaker1: Or the Antichrist or the beast or whatever, somehow making their name match up to 666.
49:05
Speaker1: And that gets us to the real question.
49:07
Speaker1: Is the number of the beast 666?
49:10
Speaker1: 616 or something different. And here's the thing.
49:15
Speaker1: Some ancient manuscripts of the book of Revelation read 616, not 666.
49:24
Speaker1: And this, of course, is not a hidden conspiracy theory. We've known about this
49:28
Speaker1: for a long, long time. It doesn't mean your Bible is wrong or that somebody
49:32
Speaker1: recently discovered some sort of secret conspiracy in the basement of the Vatican.
49:38
Speaker1: Most manuscripts from back in the day in early times, the Greek manuscripts,
49:44
Speaker1: the Latin manuscripts, etc.,
49:46
Speaker1: Favor 666, but 616 is a genuine early textual variant.
49:55
Speaker1: And in fact, Papyrus 115, which dates back to the 200s, is the oldest surviving
50:04
Speaker1: manuscript of the book of Revelation that we have.
50:07
Speaker1: It is stored at the Oxford University Asmolian Museum and
50:13
Speaker1: It writes the number 616. So literally the earliest copy of the book of Revelation we have has 616.
50:22
Speaker1: And also Codex Ephraimia Rescriptus, Codex C, which is from the 400s.
50:28
Speaker1: It's located in Paris. It also has 616.
50:34
Speaker1: And Bruce Metzger is one of the great evangelical textual critics of the 20th century.
50:39
Speaker1: He says this, and I think it's a really good explanation. He said that the Greek form of Nero
50:46
Speaker1: Caesar, written in Hebrew characters, is equivalent to 666, whereas the Latin
50:53
Speaker1: form is equivalent to 616.
50:57
Speaker1: In other words, there's a slightly different spelling of Nero Caesar in either
51:02
Speaker1: language could produce 666 or 616.
51:06
Speaker1: And that leads to the first major theory, the preterist theory.
51:10
Speaker1: And a preterist is somebody who views most of what's in the book of Revelation
51:15
Speaker1: as having already happened. It's not the futurist view.
51:20
Speaker1: It sees Revelation as mostly, not completely, but mostly fulfilled in the first century.
51:26
Speaker1: And many preterist scholars think that John was pointing to Caesar Nero,
51:32
Speaker1: or perhaps to a symbol, to Nero is like a type or a symbol of the persecuting Roman Empire.
51:39
Speaker1: Nero was sort of the first Christian monster under the bed from a
51:44
Speaker1: human perspective for early Christians because he was a ruler who was associated
51:49
Speaker1: with brutality, persecution, imperial power, blasphemous claims,
51:55
Speaker1: all of that kind of stuff.
51:56
Speaker1: And the idea that Nero is
52:00
Speaker1: 666 or 616 doesn't really settle every question because, yes,
52:05
Speaker1: Revelation was written to
52:08
Speaker1: real first century Christians and real first century churches,
52:12
Speaker1: but it very clearly looks ahead to the final victory and return of Christ, which,
52:18
Speaker1: I don't think it's happened yet, and most biblical teachers don't think it's
52:22
Speaker1: happened yet, and that's why many futurists see the beast as a coming sort of final antichrist.
52:30
Speaker1: First John tells us there's been several antichrists, and most futurists expect one big major
52:38
Speaker1: Final boss kind of beast antichrist deal, a real future ruler who will demand
52:44
Speaker1: worship and wield political, religious, and economic power.
52:48
Speaker1: And Revelation scholar Grant Osborne says the coming Antichrist would be a Nero-like
52:55
Speaker1: figure who would be the anti-type of that evil anti-Christian.
53:01
Speaker1: And historicist interpreters kind of view 666 sort of differently.
53:06
Speaker1: They see the beast imagery as unfolding through the history of the church,
53:10
Speaker1: especially through recurring systems where political power, false religion,
53:15
Speaker1: coercion, persecution, kind of stand up against Christ's people.
53:20
Speaker1: And a lot of Protestants over the years have applied that to the Roman Catholic
53:25
Speaker1: papacy or to any one of multiple corrupt kind of church state systems.
53:32
Speaker1: And their warning is worth hearing and thinking about, even when we disagree
53:38
Speaker1: with their specific identifications.
53:42
Speaker1: Tyranny doesn't always come in a villain costume or a supervillain kind of appearance.
53:49
Speaker1: Sometimes evil comes carrying a Bible, a flag, or a sword and
53:54
Speaker1: demanding unquestioning loyalty while deriving some of his power and authority
54:02
Speaker1: from a religious perspective.
54:05
Speaker1: Then there's the symbolic or idealist approach to Revelation. G.K.
54:10
Speaker1: Beale kind of goes along with that. And he says 666 represents the completeness
54:16
Speaker1: of sinful incompleteness.
54:19
Speaker1: Six falls short of seven and three sixes may sort of indicate a counterfeit
54:25
Speaker1: trinity, which is evil pretending to be divine, but always sort of falling short.
54:31
Speaker1: And so the beast can look impressive and can do miracles and be powerful,
54:36
Speaker1: but he's not to the level of Jesus.
54:39
Speaker1: And that brings us to really a good pastoral conclusion, whatever view you hold,
54:45
Speaker1: and there's so many of them.
54:47
Speaker1: The mark of the beast in Revelation is tied to worship, and it's tied to allegiance,
54:53
Speaker1: and it's tied to oaths, and it's tied to compromise.
54:57
Speaker1: And scholar Craig Keener says
54:59
Speaker1: John is writing less to satisfy our precise end-time curiosity itself.
55:06
Speaker1: And more to warn us about compromise. So we probably shouldn't panic every time
55:12
Speaker1: a new technology comes around.
55:14
Speaker1: Don't assume the next debit card technology or barcode or whatever app can accidentally
55:20
Speaker1: separate a believer from Christ for eternity.
55:24
Speaker1: But it's worth asking a deeper question. What am I being pressured to worship?
55:28
Speaker1: Where am I being tempted to compromise? because Revelation is not mainly trying
55:35
Speaker1: to make us afraid of the future.
55:37
Speaker1: It's calling us to be faithful to Jesus right now in the present,
55:41
Speaker1: to be watchful and waiting for his return, not trying to calculate the precise
55:47
Speaker1: day, hour, minute, second, or whatever, but we are to be doing things.
55:52
Speaker1: The great commission work of the master while we wait for his return.
55:58
Speaker1: So if the futurist perspective on Revelation is correct, then I believe when
56:03
Speaker1: the Antichrist or beast comes onto the scene, it will be a whole lot clearer
56:08
Speaker1: how the number 666 relates to him.
56:11
Speaker1: And on that thought, I really agree with this guy, Andrew of Cesarea,
56:16
Speaker1: who was a bishop from the 500s, like over a thousand years ago.
56:20
Speaker1: And this is what he says about Revelation way back when.
56:23
Speaker1: For the sober-minded, time and experience will reveal the actual significance
56:29
Speaker1: of the number of the beast and the truth of whatever has been written about it.
56:33
Speaker1: For were it necessary that such a name be clearly known, John the Seer would
56:39
Speaker1: have revealed it. But Divine Grace did not consent that the name of the Destroyer
56:44
Speaker1: be noted in the Divine Book. So, you know what?
56:47
Speaker1: We don't have to know. Let me close out by giving you an update on what's going
56:52
Speaker1: on with the Great Commission Association.
56:55
Speaker1: We have an evangelism workshop coming up in Gilroy, California,
57:01
Speaker1: August 1st. Let me read a little blurb about it. Need help equipping your church
57:05
Speaker1: members to proclaim the gospel as they go?
57:08
Speaker1: Well, we have the perfect workshop for you.
57:11
Speaker1: Learn a simple and holistic process to help followers of Jesus begin and sustain
57:16
Speaker1: a culture of evangelism.
57:19
Speaker1: The plan is to train on the effective ways to engage and create in your church
57:24
Speaker1: a culture of evangelism.
57:27
Speaker1: And our target is church members, not just leaders. Join us for an amazing event all about your church.
57:34
Speaker1: And there will be evangelism workshops in English and Spanish.
57:39
Speaker1: It costs nothing to attend.
57:41
Speaker1: It's August 1st at Gilroy First Baptist Church.
57:45
Speaker1: Register at gcasbc.org. And if you're a Southern Baptist,
57:51
Speaker1: California pastor, or church leader in UCOM, your church will be eligible to
57:57
Speaker1: receive a $1,000, no-strings-attached
58:01
Speaker1: evangelism grant that you can spend on outreach this year.
58:06
Speaker1: And I can tell you, I've been to these evangelism conferences before and legit
58:11
Speaker1: got that $1,000 check in the mail a few weeks after going.
58:16
Speaker1: So it's a real deal. Well, that's all for me.
58:19
Speaker1: Good day to you. We'll see you next week and Godspeed.