 Welcome to Hard Questions, where we gather pastors together to take on your tough questions and answer them right from the Bible. I'm Tom Hollis, the moderator, and today our panelists include Dr. William R. Glaze, Bethany Baptist Church in Pittsburgh, Pastor Mark Motor, Berean Church in the south hills of Pittsburgh, Pete Giacalone, Lead Pastor, South Hills Assembly Guide Church, Bethel Park, PA, J. Anthony Gilbert, pastor of another level ministries in the north hills area. Well, pastors, thank you for being with us. We've got some tough questions. These guys aren't going to be able to answer these questions at all today. No, I'm just kidding. They're going to answer them from the Bible, but we're taking your hotline questions. We love hotline questions. And these deal with assurance. They deal with drugs. They deal with the promised land. So let's start with this. That's the way I know they're so wisdom. Now, where does that so go? Is there like, is there like a, oh, I just want to know where it goes until he comes back for everybody. And, um, because my son had passed away, it'll be four years here. It's September 11th that he passed away. And I was just wondering, I don't know. He was, he was baptized in Jesus' name, but he didn't have a holy, he didn't have a holy ghost. But, okay. When I prayed, when I prayed for him at the hospital, we had people praying and stuff for him. And I told him, is this true that God knows your mind, your thoughts and everything. Okay. To David, you say when he can't talk. Well, first of all, our prayers and condolences to your family. I mean, that is a difficult time to walk through. So just pray that the God of all peace will be with you today and with your family. But there's a lot of different questions in there. And a lot of, a lot of difficult ones, but we'll start off with Pastor Glaze here. Yeah. Again, you know, we offer our condolences and I just want to begin by saying in Romans chapter 10, it says, if thou will confess with our mouth, the Lord Jesus, and believe in thy heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shall be saved. And whosoever verse 13 shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. So in a sense, there is a, a means that when people get saved, that there's the belief in the heart and there's a confession with the mouth. But if a person can't talk, you know, God understands that. And so the fact that, you know, your son might not have been able to talk, the key is, is that he believed in his heart. And if he believed in his heart, the Bible says that whosoever shall believe in the name of the Lord shall be saved. He was saved. And I just want to assure you this, that when your son closed his eyes in death, that he woke up in the presence of the Lord. And 1st Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians chapter five, it says to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. So your son, based upon his profession of faith in Jesus Christ, the belief in his heart that he is with the Lord right now, where that's where the souls of people go who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior when they die. That's great assurance of salvation. You know, and if I can just read that verse, we are, I love positive verses. We are confident. And then he has a another confident there. Yes, well pleased, rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. We're confident. We're well pleased to announce to you to be absent from this body is to be present. I love those kind of, that verbiage. I love that verbiage. That's, that's a great verse. Yeah. I'm just diddle what they said. I think Dr. Glaze handled it very well and shared everything from the root to the fruit on that one. So absolutely. Yeah. So just one thing is that, you know, God wants us to come to him as early as possible, as young as possible. Sometimes people wait, they wait for, for to do different things. Let's not wait. Let's not wait until the moment that we, that we are close to crossing that threshold. It's the time to seek the Lord today is the day of salvation. Amen. That's what the scripture says. So, amen. Let's go on to the next question. Yeah. My question is, I've heard it preached that like if you live from the music that, you know, glorifies drugs or alcohol, or like if you watch pornography, that you let certain spirits into your home. And I was just wondering, if somebody comes and visits your home and those spirits are there, can those spirits get on the other person? Like, even though they're not listening to it or watching it and they, they're like unspecting people, can those spirits get on them people as well? Thank you. There is an unseen realm. There is a spiritual realm that is hard to discern sometimes, but the word has things to say about that, Pastor Jay. We know, I think one of the things that's important, always remember, devils can't just come and just do whatever they want. One of the things that I think the church could learn a lot from that demonic spirits, I think sometimes are even better educated on the where they understand their great attorneys. They understand legal rights. And that's the thing you have to understand. People say, why shouldn't you listen to those things? Why shouldn't you watch those things? Because you may be giving up legal right. You may be giving up your peace. You may be opening the door and the dev says, now I have access to something. So as people say, well, could a spirit come in now? Sounds like he's talking about from his standpoint, if somebody comes into my house, could they have that? Well, hopefully you don't have those things going on in your home. But if you go to somebody else's home and they're doing a bunch of things and your spirit says, you need to get out of there. If you disobey the Holy Spirit, you can open that door that whatever you're watching and the Holy Spirit would not be prompting you to get out if he did not think there was something you needed to get out from. So I think it's important that we understand it's not just, you know, if I watch something one time or if I do this, that or the third, that immediately something can happen. There's always legal ground. There must be disobedience. There must be sin. There has to be something that the devil can say, now I have a right to you. And that's why when people come out and come into freedom, they go back to denounce. They go back to repent. They go back to confess the word in their sins. Why? Because now I'm breaking free from the legal right that Satan had on me. So that's my little spiel with that. And I'll give a personal story. When I was about 25, I was in ministry. I was staying at a friend's home in a particular bedroom. I went to bed by myself that night and I had this desire to smoke cigarettes, which I never really smoked. It wasn't an issue. And then I literally felt like something was choking me around my neck. And I recognize that there's a spirit in this particular room. Someone was staying in that room before me. I recognized, yeah, they had some issues with smoking, with some other things. And so I commanded the enemy to leave. And the thought came to my mind, well, you didn't fast or pray. And I said, well, that's true. But Jesus did. And I take authority over you in Jesus' name. I felt it a second time. I literally felt like there were hands around my neck. So I walked over to the door. Not that you have to do this, but I opened the door. I said, get out, not only leave this room, but leave this house and never return. I stayed there several more days, never had an issue. If you're a believer and you know your authority, you recognize even in the devil's presence, the presence of Jesus is always great. Well, I love that, Mark. Again, to take off on what you said, Jay, is the Spirit of God telling us to get out or take authority, you know, and in that instance, that's what you did. It's strange to me that a room could hold a presence or something, though. I don't I don't know where, you know, whether that is definitely in scripture, but it's in your experience. It was in my experience, for sure. Yeah, any past glace. Well, you know, I would say because, you know, the question that he was asking is, is that, you know, if you're in a place where these things are, these spirits are, can they attach themselves to you? And I'll just say this in First John 4-4. It says, greater is he that's in you than he that's in the world. So if you're a Christian, you know, you don't have to necessarily worry about, you know, those things affecting you unless, like Jay said, unless you give them the right to do it. You know, if you just think, you know, whatever demon out there is present, who resides in you is the Holy Spirit. He's greater than any demon. So, you know, no demon can attach themselves to you when you've got the Holy Spirit living in you. Yeah, I'm worried about us walking in there. It's like, hey, Mark's coming in here. It's going to be trouble. Years ago, I was the chauffeur for David Duplace, Mr. Pentecost. And that was the time when Pigs in the Parlor, the book Pigs in the Parlor came out. And it was really, really bothering me. And I had David Duplace to myself because I was his driver. And I turned him, and I asked him, and he leaned over. He was the type of guy when he talked to you. He'd lean over, almost get nose and nose with you. He leaned over to me. He said, son, let me, let me share this with you. Because it was, it was the whole idea of demons attacking Christians. He said, my Bible tells me, and I'll never forget it. He said it was such authority. My Bible tells me that when they took the blood and put it over the doorpost that that blood was able to keep the death angel away from him. And then he leaned, and he put his hand on my heart. And he said, how much more when the blood of Christ has been applied for the believer we have, we are saturated with the blood of Christ. And we have nothing no one ever to fear because greater is he that is in us. It chills over here. That's good. Thank you, pastors. And thank you for the question. Well, coming up in 60 seconds, we ask, are we to pray the Old Testament promises for our lives today? Welcome back to the show. We're taking your calls from our hard questions hotline. Now, if you would like to leave us your question, you can call us at 412-349-4326. We'd love to hear your question on the air. So please give us a call. We love getting everyone's questions. So let's go on to our next one. Yeah, my name is Joe. And I have a question. Why did Jesus instruct the disciples when they send them out to proclaim the word, not to ask for money, but if it was offered accepted? Thank you. Okay. I hope this isn't a loaded question or something here, but let's go ahead, Pete. All right. It's Luke chapter 9, verses 1-5. Then he called his 12 disciples together and gave them power and authority over all demons and cured diseases. He sent them to preach the kingdom of God, to heal the sick, and he said to them, take nothing for your journey. But without faith, it's impossible to please God for they that come to him must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. God is telling them that money must not be the issue. Money must not be your total dependency. When I was at Walnut Grove, I was in the prime of my life and church was paid off. I was making a handsome salary. God spoke to me and said, it's time to resign. And I said, where am I going? He said the evangelistic field. I don't know. And I argued with God for months. But finally I gave in. I had missionaries come and yell at me. Robert Owen pulled me aside privately. He said, I, man, do you know what you're doing? I said, no, I never know what I'm doing. But I know I heard from God. And you know what? We did not have a table. We had nothing to sell. I had no books to sell, no tapes to sell. That seven years, God provided for me better than ever. And I never knew, Tom, because I had no price tag on my ministry, I never knew what I was going to get from week to week. But from that, you can ask Elaine, never did we make less, never did we have more. And Jay, I know that's true for your life, too, when you see the times that you've stepped out in the face. So I believe this was a testing element for them. Take note, don't take an extra baggage or anything like that. Trust me. And I believe God's calling us back to that place. He's calling the church back to the place and individual believers that He's calling the church back to the place. And individual believers that He must be our complete trust. And I believe that's a word of knowledge right now for many people who are watching, that God is calling us to trust Him like never before. That's such a good point and such an important lesson to remember. What I meant by whether Joe's questions loaded is he asking whether it's right or to take offerings, period. That was my little take on that. But let me ask you questions. Well, and this is one of the things that kind of confused me is that Jesus didn't tell him not to ask for money. And that's what he said. He said here, why did Jesus tell him not to ask for money? Jesus never told him not to ask for money. He told him not to take money. He said don't take silver or anything like that. So I think that that's one thing in the question that needs to be corrected because to me that's a big part of what's being asked. And then if you go over to the Matthew passage, Jesus said that the workman is worthy of his food. So what he was telling him, don't take anything. He said, because you're out serving me. And he's going back to what Pete said, you're out serving me and I'm going to take care of you. That's good. And I think there's two things to springboard off of that as well because that's where I was going to go with it. He said, wait a minute, the workman is worthy of his hire, which means when you are blessed by those missionaries, evangelists, pastors, wherever they are, you should be making an investment. That's what you need to take care of them. You should be taking care of them. It's not a price tag. That's what I'm saying. Don't put a price on it. How important is this to you to take care of what I sent? And that's the thing. So that's where a lot of people get funny with it, but I think it's great. Seed, time and harvest. It's all about, hey, making an investment. People that live, like for them, well, you don't go to your doctor and say, well, hey, it's free, right? It's my body. No, you have insurance to take care of that. But in the kingdom of God, he's saying, don't you put a tag on it. And what I like too, the Bible talks about how Jesus said, when he hired a certain man, he said, go work for so and so. And at the end, I will pay you what is right. So even when men and women of God get it wrong, God has somebody else that will come in and make sure that they take care of it. Because if God says you should have got this amount for that and they miss their blessing, God will make it up to you on the back side. So he said, don't worry about putting a price tag on it. You just do what I tell you to do. And I'll make sure that you say that that command by Jesus is not necessarily something we all do all the time because there are times God calls us to walk with him in a certain area of trust. I'm making a trip to Pakistan in the fall. I'm going to take some extra clothes. I'm going to take some money. And so the reality is there are those times where God says, as he did with you, I want you to trust me in this. There are other times he says, take what you need, pack and go and preach the gospel. You know, I have to tell you Andrew's story when he was in seminary. They went out on a preaching expedition. They gave him five pounds, five English pounds. And he says, five pounds for six weeks of ministry. We're going to have to take the offering. And they're like, nope, you can't take it. Not a lot to take offering the whole time. And not only that, you've got to pay the five pounds back when you get back. And God provided every step of the way. Adam at the head paid. But it's OK to ask as well. So yeah, lots, lots there. Let's go on to the next question. My question today for the panel of lecturers is I hear a lot about Christians today praying God promises in the Old Testament like taking Canaan land, the promised land and stuff like that. Is God really answering prayers like that? Does it really come into fruition in Christians' lives? This is a great question with a lot of different levels. So thank you for the question. Let's start off with Pastor Bill. Yeah. Well, as we read the Old Testament, there are definitely promises that were just made to Israel. And they weren't to go beyond that. You know, when you think about the promises that he made to Moses and Joshua that everywhere your feet shall try, you know, I'm going to give to you. You know, so that was, that was a promise that was made to them. However, I do think that we can draw analogies. You know, as far as, you know, what's Canaan for us? You know, Canaan is entering to the promises that God has made us. So, you know, even though I think that there are specific promises that were only to Israel, we can still take those in a sense and say, you know, I'm going to claim this, you know, even, but I think to me, you know, again, this might come from my teaching background. You know, I think the key is the first and foremost and then to say that I'm going to draw from that and I'm going to use this in my life just like they trust that God to do this, I'm going to, I'm going to draw from this and trust God to do this for me. Yeah, I think that that kind of thing, to use that example, to use his example about entering the Canaan land, I've heard people claim that, you know, this, but they're applying that scripture to something current day. Pete, where do you follow? Neomyah, Neomyah, I mean, when I think of this scripture, Neomyah hears about what's going on in Jerusalem and he says, I said, I pray, Lord God of heaven, oh great and awesome, you who keep your covenant and it's not, and I don't believe it's so much that God needs to be reminded of his covenant because God is ever mindful of his word. But I believe we need to speak it so we become more faithful because again, faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. So as we speak that word, that's how God provided for Israel, something takes place that we know that we know he'll do the same for us. Because he's the same God, he's the same God in front of them. Mark. That's good preachers. Some people have thought, absolutely. Some people have thought that Canaan's land is a type of heaven. But I don't believe it is because there were giants in the land and there are no giants in heaven. So I believe there is a Canaan's land for us and God sets a table for us in the presence of our enemies. So that's not in heaven, that's in the here and now. So I believe as Dr. Glaze said, there are some analogies we can walk in because if the Old Testament was believers were blessed, we know the new covenant is a better covenant on better promises. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you think about it too, God gave them the law and all the things that he released them to go into the Promised Land to possess it. What did he do when he gave us a new covenant? Right. And he says, now go in and take back authority in the land and win the souls back. So we fight the same battles. So there's an allegory in all of that. There is a shadow and type of they had a Promised Land. We have a land filled with promises. We have enemies that we have to face. They had enemies, they had to face. They had to go in and take back dominion. And that's what we're doing. So it's just about being able to find out where the Holy Spirit is speaking. There are things that we'll have to face. And frankly, I have seen ministries where they've marched around their church seven times and shouted and everything. And there's nothing wrong with that. But it's interesting, Jay, in the Old Testament it was a physical battle with spiritual behind it. Here it's a spiritual battle that we live in the physical. So great question though. Well, coming up in just 60 seconds we're going to ask is the death penalty biblical? Stay tuned. Well, let's go to our next audio question. Yes. My question as adults 20, I think it's verse 13 says do not commit murder doubt should not commit murder. My question is should a man or a judge have the right or the ability to sentence any other man or human being or woman to death? It was also but it committed murder or whatever. But should they have that right and that ability since they didn't give life to anybody? All right. So let's go right into this. Pastor Mark. Great question. One of the ten commandments as was quoted was thou shalt not kill but the Hebrew says you shall not murder. And when Jesus quoted this in Matthew 1918 that's what he said. You shall not murder. It is not always wrong to kill but to murder. When it comes to capital punishment prior to the law God gave a command to Noah once he replenished the earth and the Scripture says God speaking if anyone take a human life that person's life will also be taken by human hands for God made human beings in his own image. So I see that God himself instituted capital punishment. I won't take the time to read it but there's a passage in Romans 13 4 that talks about that and I'll just mention this. I see three kinds of killing allowed in Scripture. One is self-defense. If someone's trying to attack you and you take a life in self-defense I believe that's justified. Secondly would be war if it is a righteous war like we did in the second world war trying to protect the Jews and keep mayhem from crossing through Europe and then the third area is capital punishment. I know that's not popular right now but I see it in both Testaments and I think that we need to stand by the Scripture in this area. Alright. I totally agree. As a matter of fact in Romans 13 something that people sometimes glance over it says here for rulers are not a terror to good works but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good? And he says he is the minister to you for good but if you do evil be afraid for he does not administer an Avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. And he said for this reason you're also paying taxes. So the Bible shows us that we're paying taxes to make sure we're protected. People talk about defund the police. That's completely crazy. Please. No, I want police around because there's a lot of folks out there and I believe that capital punishment all those things I believe that's all a biblical saying I know we have to pass on everybody else that there are innocent people that have spent years in prison and they find out they're innocent what do we do if we're going to accept capital punishment how do we not how do we make sure we do not punish the wrong person or put the wrong person to death. Well, you know and I think that's where due process came in and I get frustrated with due process because if you see somebody kill people I mean we got technology you got cameras and everything and you see there's this person really need due process but you know I go back to and I just you know talk about the experience of a lot of African Americans you know in this country you know during slavery times and how that you know for looking at people a certain way or you know being accused of things you know they didn't get due process and they got the death penalty and so you know I think that you know again I'm for the death penalty based on Genesis based on Romans and in favor of the death penalty but you know I do think that there has to be due process that's rendered to make sure as much as possible that the person who's being accused actually did what they did yeah well the scripture is very clear on the basis of two witnesses the scripture is crystal clear on it so again two eyewitnesses so when you have two eyewitnesses and I agree with you you know there are a lot of African American people and not just them but many oh yeah many many many you know I just think that while I agree that that's where the scripture is I think in the process I have to tell you at this stage of my life I'm not in favor of the death penalty just because I feel like there's too much opportunity in our present system of justice for incorrect things to happen but the scriptures do say that so I'm going to leave this kind of open-ended here although I'm against all these guys and they know more than me so well at the end of the scripture I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go I will counsel you with my loving eye on you Psalm 30 to 8 that is important we hope you enjoy today's program and we want to hear from you email us your question to hard questions at 432-349-4326 have a great day I hope you enjoyed our answers today seek God while he may be found Amen