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Apologize, ladies and gentlemen, for altering the timetable somewhat, but, um, we have so altered it, I trust, that after lunch we may revert to our normal proceedings with the minimum of difference. And so in this session, I propose to take the questions that you have written down for me and answer them as best I can, and then, if there is time to spare, to use that time for certain further observations on this part of Genesis upon which I tried to talk this morning, but only managed to do so very sketchily and unworthily. So first of all, to your questions, and I better forewarn you, I think, that, uh, I have, in answering questions, a very bad reputation. That is, when I'm asked a question, so I'm told, I have the unfortunate habit, instead of giving a reply, I ask a further question. Instead of making things more simple, I end up by making them more complicated. I don't think I was like that before I came to Ireland, but... on that different views are possible. The first question then refers to something that came up last week, and you will find the basis of this question in the second letter of Peter and chapter two, verse one, where it says, but there arose false prophets also among the people, as among you also there shall be false teachers, who shall privily bring in destructive heresies, denying even the master that bought them. And the question relates to that phrase, the master that bought them. Does that not imply, the questioner asks, that if they were bought by our Lord, they were covered by his redemption? And therefore, if, as this verse says, God eventually brings down his eternal judgment upon their heads, would they not have a basis for complaint? Because they were bought by the Lord Jesus, that should mean, according to the questioner, they were covered by his redemption. How then can God, uh, judge them? My answer to that in the first place would simply be this. Coming at it from the practical end, what it means when it says they deny the master that bought them, is that they repudiate all claims upon their lives issued by the Lord Jesus and his apostles. The passage is in talking in particular about their immoral behavior. These are men who, if an apostle rebuked them for their immoral behavior, would have said, but who are you to tell us how we ought to behave? And if the apostles had quoted to them the words of the Lord Jesus, they would have denied that they were subject to those words. There are, of course, people around like that today. Some of them do it in, in very refined sense, but they will tell you that the commands of the apostles on matters of morals and a good deal else, and even the ideas of our Lord Jesus are no longer applicable, and therefore you may go quite contrary to them, and it is all right. The difficulty is that these people wanted at the same time to be recognized as Christian, and did profess to be Christian. I take it, therefore, that when they deny the claims of the Lord Jesus, they show that their profession of Christianity is empty. It is not genuine. Now, our Lord talked about that kind of thing, did he not, in some of his parables. In Luke chapter, uh, twelve, for instance, at great length he indicates to us the behavior that he expects from those that profess to be his servants. And he asks us to consider who is that faithful and wise steward. When the Lord comes, he will reward such a faithful servant of his. But then he, uh, goes on to say that, uh, if the servant begins to say, my Lord delays his coming and begins to beat the men servants and the maid servants and to eat and drink and be drunken, the Lord of that servant shall come in an hour when he knoweth not, cut him asunder, and appoint his portion with, and as I understand it, the Greek should then be translated with the unbelievers. Because such behavior is evidence that in spite of his profession to be a servant of Christ, the man is an unbeliever, and his portion is appointed with the unbelievers. So our Lord said in the Sermon on the Mount, you judge a prophet by his fruits. If his fruits are evil, you decide that he is a false prophet, he is not the genuine article. How then does Peter say that our Lord bought such? You will notice the term he uses. You can translate the term, if you like, redeemed. It is referring, of course, to our Lord's sacrifice at Calvary. I think the best thing I can do is simply to repeat what I said on the last occasion, uh, by referring to our Lord's parable in Matthew chapter thirteen. talks about a merchant who bought a whole field in order to get the treasure hidden in that field. In that sense, our Lord has bought the whole world and all that's in it. One day, says Colossians, he is going to restore all things in heaven and in earth. He's going to take the whole lot under his control. It is his by right, not only by rights of creation, but by rights of redemption. Therefore, he has a claim on these men. They profess to own it. In actual practice, they deny it. And I conclude that a man who denies the claims of our Lord based on his redemption is no true believer, and therefore will not be covered from the guilt of his sin by the sacrifice of Christ. And I hope I have not yielded too much to my English, uh, uh, character and made things more complicated by the answer than they were before. Now let me turn to a quite different thing, question number two. It says Peter sadly failed the Lord when he denied him three times. Will Peter recall this in heaven? If so, will this not detract from his enjoyment of heaven? And would it be the same for us? I suspect the question means, question is thinking now very, very properly of heaven and inclined to, to take it very literally, as he should do, and think of now, what are we going to feel like when we're there? And if when we get home to glory, we are still able to remember the things that we did wrongly here on earth, when we seriously grieved the Lord, will not the memory of that spoil heaven for us? Well, as to the fact of memory, in heaven, shall we remember? I think the answer must be undoubtedly yes. Let me put it to you simply this way. Shall we remember, when we get home to heaven, that our Lord was crucified for us? Or shall we forget all about the cross when we get home to heaven? That is impossible, isn't it? The Revelation five admits us to that great vision of John the Apostle where the very song of heaven is, worthy is the Lamb that was slain. If in heaven we remember, therefore, and never forget the fact that our Lord was slain, shall we remember why he was slain? Hmm. You say we shall remember he was slain for the sins of the world. Shall I find myself in the situation that I can remember that he was slain for your sins, and I say, yes, they're a poor lot, they scarce deserve to be here, but can't remember any of my own sins for which the Lord died and suffered? Unlikely, isn't it? And then we have the story given by our Lord of the rich man who, lifting up his eyes in hell, was in torments, and Abraham said, son, remember. He could remember. So if we have to say, yes, scripture seems to indicate that we shall remember in heaven. Point number two, will this not detract from the enjoyment of heaven? You do really ask some hard questions, don't you? I want in the first place to say no. Then in the second place, let me give way to my weakness and ask you a question. Does God at this moment ever feel sorry about his people's sins? At this moment. Hands up those who think that God at this moment is sometimes sorry and feels sorrow at the sins of his people. No, yes, yes. Seems to be quite a substantial lot of people here that feel that God from time to time feels sorrow over the sins of his people. I ask if anybody thinks that God is anywhere else but in heaven. So if God is at this moment in heaven, and if God at this moment feels some sorrow in some sense, whatever that means of God, feels some sorrow and grief over people's sins, sounds to me extraordinarily like... as if there could be a kind of sorrow in heaven, no? No. But how then? I shall have to leave that one with you to sort out, can't I? Uh, we can be sure of this one. God is in heaven, wherever else he is, transcendent Lord of time and space, and therefore existing quite outside heaven, I dare say. But in heaven too, and from Old Testament indications, God distressed in some sense over the sins of his people. And tell me, my brethren, but don't tell me, think it over. This is my privilege of asking questions. At Calvary, did God himself feel no grief? And where was God when he felt it? So, we must, of course, grasp, and we do grasp those scriptures that say that in the eternal state there's no more sorrow, crying, and tears, no more curse, for the former things are done away. We must balance that with the fact that we shall, in those days, look back upon the occasions of earth. That will not destroy our, uh, enjoyment of heaven. We shall look at things then as God looks at them. In that sense, we shan't want to hide the memory of what we did wrong. It will be for the everlasting glory of Christ that his sacrifice put it right. But I do not think that our memory will be wiped clean of what we did on earth. You say, sir, you have got things terribly wrong. That could well be. You say, but doesn't the Bible actually say that, for instance, God will not remember our sins anymore? It does indeed. But pray consider what the term means. The term God will not remember our sins, their sins and iniquities will I remember no more, doesn't mean that God up in his heaven has forgotten the fact that we are sinners. It is a legal term. When in the ancient world a sovereign or a judge remembered sin, it meant that he called the whole thing up before his judicial court. That's what remembering sin means. As the widow said to Elijah when he came to her place and her son eventually died, oh, she said, you've come to bring my sin to remembrance. And to call it up for investigation, trial, decision, and passing a verdict. It is, in that sense, therefore, a judicial thing. You will read in the Revelation, for instance, that when great Babylon was remembered before God, then forthwith her judgments fell. What God is saying when he says, I, their sins and iniquities I will remember no more, thank God it means this, that he will never bring up our sins into his court of justice, bring them before his bar, and pronounce the sentence of condemnation. Never do that. Why not? Because the matter has been settled. And thus our Lord, who shall be judged, says, he who hears my word and believes on him that sent me has everlasting life and comes not into judgment. Why not? Because the judgment's already been. And we have been justified. There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. It is then, as I take it, a legal term. Let's move on to something else. Paul says in two Peter chapter, uh, sorry, Peter says, uh, uh, talks in two Peter chapter two of false teachers. Question number one: Paul in first and second Timothy chapter four, also in one Timothy chapter four, names five men who were leaders in false teaching. Were these men members of the local churches of the time? And if so, could they not have been excommunicated? Do these passages refer to the same conditions, that is the passages in two Peter? Well, the answer to the first question, could these men not have been excommunicated, is of course they could have been. Perhaps the answer ought to be also they should have been. But, uh, very often it happened, did it not, that in the early churches there were some utter rogues, and the church was powerless to do anything with them. There was a certain Diotrephes, you remember, who not only, uh, wouldn't, uh, receive ordinary members, but cast them out of the church, but he was for refusing access even to such one as John the Apostle. Uh, John the Apostle says, when I come, I'll deal with him, you'll see, but it would appear from that context that there wasn't anybody locally who was able so to deal with him. Similarly, um, uh, Paul warns the, uh, believers, the elders of Ephesus, doesn't he, that after his departure, grievous wolves would enter inside. How long they were allowed to remain inside, we are not told, of course. But the fact of history is that alas, so very often, false teachers and prophets have arisen up, and sometimes they have dominated their church and many another church as well. Question number two: an abundant entrance. Is Noah an example of one such Christian who has this kind of entrance and Lot the opposite. I think I know what the, the question means. Can you say that Noah was an exemplary man, uh, who was pleasing to God, he was perfect in his generations, and because he had lived an honorable life in the eternity to come, will have an abundant entrance, where Lot, righteous man though he is declared to be, um, fell, uh, into, uh, uh, unfortunate, sad, and sorry ways of living towards the end of his life. And therefore, while he's a righteous man and will enter the eternal kingdom, may not necessarily have an abundant entrance. I would think that they are two reasonable examples of the kind of thing that Peter is talking about, though we do remember, don't we, that dear old Lot came a bit unstuck at the end. You could, if you like, contrast Abraham with Lot. To Abraham there were promises given, and he and Lot set forth on the same pilgrimage, looking for the city that hath the foundations. Abraham was promised the land and inheritance, seed, and that he would become a blessing. And eventually, in his trust in God, seed was given him, and Isaac was born to perpetuate his family and to enjoy the consequent inheritance. Lot chose to go where business dictated, apparently for that reason only, without due consideration of the wickedness of the cities to which, for the sake of business, he was taking his family. It would appear that his testimony in the city amounted in the end to very little. His daughter had married men who perished. His wife lost her life, looking back longingly to Sodom, even when the flames of God's judgment were upon Id. Lot escaped to his cave. And in desperate attempt now to keep his family going, resorted to methods that better be left undescribed. A sorry exhibition of the flesh, if ever there was. Moab was his son and simultaneously his grandson. One cannot help thinking that he forms an example of what scripture talks about, of people who, because they are saved, will never be lost, but could find at last that their works are burned up. They suffer loss, though they themselves are saved, yet so as by fire. On the matter of temptation, the third question asks me to comment on one Corinthians ten and verse thirteen, which says that God is faithful, will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able, but will, with the temptation, make the issue, the way of escape, as the English translates it, or some versions in English translate it. But will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. And the question says, hmm, well, if you escape, then you don't bear it. What can the verse mean? Make an escape from it so that you can bear it, because if you manage to get out, you don't bear it. And I see the point of the question. Some people, of course, would want to say that the translation here given, uh, should be otherwise. I myself accept it for the moment as it stands. I think that what Paul is saying is this, that God puts us through trial, but before we enter the trial, he has measured how much we can stand. On his part, he is faithful. He will not permit us to be tested beyond our point of endurance. So say, when that point of endurance is reached, God pro- in his faithfulness promises that the pressure of the temptation shall be removed. There will be a way out of it. So that now we can see that we have borne the temptation to its end and not broken down under it. We have been able to bear it. Why have we been able to bear it? Because God didn't allow it to go beyond the point where it would have been impossible for us to bear it. In that sense. Whereas if God had allowed it to go on further, we would have broken down under it. He makes the way out, therefore, so that we can, if we will, bear it while it lasts. You say, but not all Christians do bear it. Some of us break down. We do at last. But then this verse suggests to me that if we do break down, then we can't say, oh, but that's not fair of God. God gave me a test that was far too big. I couldn't have been expected to bear that. Oh yes, you could. If God allows it, he has measured it, and we could bear it. That isn't not to say that we always do. We break down so very soon sometimes. That must be regarded as our fault. There is, of course, mercy for those that fall. Um, question four, chapter two, verse one again. Is there significance that there is a change from prophets to false teachers? The question is observing, presumably, that in two Peter chapter two and verse 1, Peter says there arose, that is in Old Testament days, false prophets among the people. And then he adds, as among you in New Testament times, there shall be false teachers. And, uh, my questioner asks, is there significance that there is a change from prophets to false teachers? Does this suggest that the prophetic gift in the New Testament churches had ceased? I'm not so sure that it indicates that by this time the prophetic gift had ceased, but I suspect that by this time you're arriving at a point, as Jude subsequently puts it, when the believers realized that the faith had now been delivered for the saints. They had the revelation of God, that hereafter there would nothing further be added to the faith. That is what Jude appears to be saying, as far as I read him, in his short epistle. We are to contend for the faith that has been once and for all handed over to the saints. That does not seem to me to suggest that all the functions of prophecy have thereby ceased, but its function of making known new doctrine, yes, by this time, if not ceased, was coming towards its end. Now let's turn to a different set of questions completely. They have reference, most of them, to the passage that we were looking at this morning in the book of Genesis, chapter five uh, to chapter nine, the story of the flood. And several of the questions deal with the same thing, um, namely chapter six and verse two. It says, reading verses one and two, it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of all that they chose. Question number one says, here, who are the sons of God? And another one says, please explain the meaning and significance of the sons of God taking wives. Who were they? Genesis 6, verse 2. Now, this is a matter, for one reason or another, uh, interests believers of all shapes, sizes, ages, and nationalities, in my experience. If there is one verse more than another that I've been asked to comment upon in my small experience in many different countries, it is this verse, and why shouldn't it excite people's interest? It is their poor job if we weren't interested in what scripture talks of. The questioner probably knows that, uh, Christian people hold widely different interpretations of this verse, and who knows, the questioner may have put the question, hmm, just to find out what will this babbler say upon this topic. One more curiosity to put into his theological museum. I don't know. The views divide over the question, were these the sons of God angels, spirit Spirits beings? beings? Or were they some branch of the human family? You say, why should anybody ever think they were angels? Why, because normally in the Hebrew Old Testament, the term sons of God, bnei Elohim, is the term used for angels. You'll find it so used, for instance, in the first chapter of the book of Job. It came to pass on a day when the sons of God presented themselves before God, that Satan came among them. But ne Elohim is a Hebrew phrase for angels. And therefore, you might think that that settles the matter. But many have found difficulty here, because in verse three— it, uh, verse two, it says that these sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair and took wives of them. And people have said, how could the angels possibly do any such thing? Does not our Lord tell us that angels cannot marry? Well, no, he doesn't. Actually, he says he, he, what he tells us is that they don't marry. Neither are given in marriage, and the passage, if you will care for the reference, is, of course, Luke twenty one— Sorry, uh, Luke twenty, Verse thirty four. Jesus said unto them, the sons of this world marry and are given in marriage, but they that are accounted worthy to attain to that world and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for neither can they die anymore. They are equal unto the angels. And therefore, many people have felt that that verse means that angels can't marry, and certainly can't marry humans, and that therefore, Genesis chapter six verse two cannot mean that spirit beings, uh, came and married human women. In fact, that great, notable, and famous expositor Campbell Morgan, if I remember rightly, said that there was one thing Genesis six two could not mean. It could not be referring to angels. You'll see. And many feel likewise convicted of that same position. Who were they then, according to them? Well, there have been a variety of explanations. Perhaps the most common one has been that these sons of God were the godly line of s- of Seth. Men that descended from Seth, the patriarch Seth, and formed a godly line, leading up to people like, uh, Enoch and Noah and so forth and so on. And that what Genesis six two is saying is that this godly line of Seth, having maintained a noble godly s- uh, uh, behavior for some many centuries, alas, in the end fell and went astray and married the ungodly. So that is number one explanation. There are others who hold that there were mankind before Adam, pre-Adamite man, and they would be inclined to say that this means that, uh, true human beings went and, uh, had union with a sort of a pre-Adamite man. Well, now, as I say, that explanation convinces many a very serious and competent mind. It is not a view I share. All I propose to do now is to tell you why I don't share it. I don't share it because, one, it seems to me to be impossible to get it out of the meaning of the Hebrew. At this point, perhaps the question itself may give us an opportunity just to reinforce in our thinking the basic terms of this passage of Genesis. Let's go back to chapter five, verse one. This is the book of the generations of Adam. Adam, as I said before, was the name of the first man, his personal name, like yours is Tom or Billy. But again, Adam in Hebrew is more than that. It is a word meaning man. And it is used in that sense in verse two. Male and female created he them and blessed them and called their name Adam, man, not Adam and Eve, but man. For here is the generic term man. As the scene from monkey, human being, if you like. He called their name human being. Now notice the word is, of course, singular. With that in mind, you come across to verse, chapter six verse one, and it came to pass, now many English versions read it came to pass when men began to multiply, but that is not what the Hebrew says. Hebrew says simply it came to pass when man began to multiply. He's still thinking generically of this new creature, man, when human beings, if you like, began to multiply. When man began to multiply on the face of the ground and daughters were born, that the sons of God saw the daughters, not of men, please, no, no, no. It does not say that the sons of God saw some daughters of some men. But sons of God saw daughters of man. And of course, it's straight Hebrew for human females. And you will see that the writer goes on to, uh, retain that, uh, idea of man. The Lord said, my spirit shall not always abide in man, not in men, man. And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man, and the Lord said in verse 7, I will destroy man. We are thinking of the race, we are thinking of the Genus, man as distinct from animal or angel. Because that is the sense in which the term is used, then I suggest to you in verse two, the only way we can take that Hebrew is simply to allow it to mean what it means all the way else through the chapter. Sons of God are put in opposition to daughters of man. Daughters of man, therefore, are human females. That would imply that the term sons of God are spirit beings, angels of a different genus. If you say, how could that be when our Lord says that angels, spirit beings cannot marry? Well, our Lord doesn't actually say that, does he? He says they don't. And perhaps in such obscure matters as these, we ought not, we ought to be careful to remain exactly according to what our Lord says, and not necessarily go beyond it. He says that angels don't, certainly they normally don't. Jude, the sister epistle to second Peter, seems to throw light upon this matter somewhat, doesn't he? He says, you'll see, verse six of his epistle, angels which kept not their own principality, but left their proper habitation. What does he mean by habitation? Maybe he's talking of their general sphere. You may compare the word he uses, if you know a little bit of your Greek, the word he uses there with the word Paul uses in two Corinthians five of the believer, that when we go to home to heaven, we have a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Paul is referring to that spiritual body that we shall there have. Here he says that these angels kept not their house. And what they did he compares with, notice verse 7, even as Sodom and Gomorrah. What was the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah? Well, they went after strange flesh. There was a perversion in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. What these angels did was even as Sodom and Gomorrah, it was in some sense a perversion of their original state and function. More than that, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I wouldn't say. I leave it there. I merely tell you the reasons why I ho- hold my own view. Finally, I'm asked to comment on two things. Does Genesis nine six still apply? Genesis nine six, as we saw this morning, concerned itself with the, um, death penalty. Whoso shedeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man. Jews of the old world took it that these commandments being addressed to Noah were to be regarded as commandments for all mankind, and not just specifically for the Jewish people. If we say, what view does the New Testament take of this? Well, as far as I know, the New Testament consents with the fact that the governor, king, ruler, judge is appointed by God. He is God's servant at some level, at any rate, and he bears the sword for the execution of justice. I know nowhere in the New Testament where that is denounced as being, uh, against Christian teaching. People will say, but does not the New Covenant, does the New Covenant repeal or alter God's command in Genesis nine six? Well, that would be a big story. Suffice it to say that, as far as I know, the New Covenant hasn't really got anything to do with Genesis nine verse, uh, 6. The New Covenant is new because it is different from the Old Covenant. The Old Covenant was the covenant with that God made with the house of Israel as a national theocracy. The New Covenant is made with us today, insofar as it is made with us today, is made with the believers, with the church, if you like. The church is not a political theocracy. The church doesn't have magistrates. I don't quite myself see how the New Covenant will be meant to apply to the world outside anyway. It's not meant, it's not made with them. It is made with believers in the Lord Jesus, so that in that sense, I don't think the New Covenant perhaps has any real bearing on the topic. Bearing on it, perhaps, is our Lord's word to the woman who was taken in adultery. She was brought before our Lord. She possibly had already been s- uh, condemned. According to Jewish law, the sentence would have been s- death by stoning. Only at that stage, in Judaism, the death penalty was not normally carried out. What they were putting to our Lord was the question, presumably, was should this woman, should the sentence be carried out? You'll see. Our Lord, in replying, neither do I condemn thee, refrained from carrying out that sentence. Did not deny it was just. Indicated that he personally had no intention of, uh, carrying it out. You ask why that is. Suspect you'll have to trace that to the ministry of our Lord, not come to judge the world. One day he will. When a certain man from the crowd appealed to him to interview in a s- intervene in a civil dispute, speak to my brother that he divide the inheritance with me, our Lord declined, saying, who man, who made me a judge or a ruler over you? It was not in our Lord's ministry to take up in this world a judicial post or execute the judgments of the law, either civil or criminal. And therefore, I think again, our Lord's attitude does not in that sense really bear upon the topic of whether a lawfully constituted government should use the death penalty for murder. As far as I know, the New Testament, uh, takes it for granted that the civil authority has this power and rightly uses it. It does not, as I understand it, uh, go on to say that it is a Christian duty or the part of a Christian qua Christian to pronounce upon these things. But now our time is more than gone. You have been very patient, and it's your good, uh, uh, uh, etiquette and breeding, doubtless, that has restrained you from all sorts of protests. But it was you asking me questions, and that I've done my best to answer. Please observe the spirit of intended, uh, undogmatism in which I have tried to answer.