This is a great joy for me to be here because I have been so profoundly blessed by the impact that over the last couple of years the Lord has brought on our STEM environment here in the academic world. And I understand because of our complete submission to the Word of God that we are in a unique place to bring together an understanding of the universe from the very mouth of the Creator.

And the dynamics of that are just beyond what the world could ever even imagine. I think I got a little dose of that in the video today and some of the things you saw with regard to the development of the zygote and the embryo and the wondrous work of God.

So I'm not a scientist and I don't intend to be, but I have studied on the fringes of science as part of understanding Scripture. I did a series on Genesis. I went through the first eleven chapters of Genesis and this was my deepest foray into science trying to tackle the issue of creation.

And it came out in a book, The Battle for the Beginning. Some of you may have heard of it or seen it around if you want, they're available. You can read through that approach to Genesis that comes from solely a biblical understanding. And I keep hearing from, I think it was Andy Stanley recently who said when science and the Bible collide, science is always right.

Which is a strange thing for a pastor to say and like abandoning your field. But that's what he said and we have found just the opposite to be true. But I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to just say thank you for coming to the Master's University, I hope you had a good time.

I hope the folks have provided what you need to build some relationships, make some new friendships and feel like you have partners in the battle that you fight out there in the midst of the university environment. So we want to be your encouragers and I was just telling Ty Denne, we need to do this as often as we can to continually encourage you.

We're prepared to just keep doing it. But I do want to talk to you a little bit about the positive side of your ministry. We can't just play defense. We may be in a tough environment, but you can't just hunker down and play defense because that's not what the commission is, right?

Wherever you are, you've got to go on the offense. You've got to represent the King and the kingdom. And I understand you have to do it with some wisdom and judiciousness and some discernment. And I'm sure the Spirit of God will give you that. But what I think is most important for us, if we are going to do what the Lord has commissioned us to do, even in a very difficult environment, no matter how challenging and hostile that environment is, we have to be crystal clear about what the message is.

There are so many vagaries within the framework of "evangelical Christianity." And over the last couple of years, we've had this Christian deconstruction movement, #Exvangelicals, which means there are some people coming into evangelicalism, some people going out of evangelicalism, and everybody at every point seems to have a different definition of what it is.

If you listen to Christian radio or watch Christian television or go to your Christian bookstore, there seems to be no end to the optional ways that you could understand what's essential in Christianity. But you need more than that. You don't need to be lost on that issue. You don't need to be unclear on that.

You need to be crystal clear on the heart and soul of the gospel. That's what's on my heart to share with you today. And it comes out of a text in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, "I am hopelessly bound to the Word of God and to the texts of the Word of God." And this one is really a very, very clear summation of the gospel and of our calling.

It's 2 Corinthians chapter 5. And I think maybe a good place to start is in verse 17. I'll read it to you, and then we'll talk about it. Starting from verse 17 to 21, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. And he has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ as though God were making an appeal through us.

We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him." The word that appears most frequently in those verses is a form of the word reconcile.

That's really the heart of this. The commission that we have been given by God is here called the word of reconciliation or the message of reconciliation, namely, that God is reconciling sinners to himself through Christ. This is the word of reconciliation, and this is the ministry of reconciliation. So I think just to define our great commission in terms other than the familiar great commission, say of Matthew 28, is to understand that we have been given the ministry of reconciliation.

And it comes down to the fact that we proclaim the message that God desires to be reconciled to sinners. That is the heart of the Christian calling, the ministry of reconciliation and the word of reconciliation or the message or the teaching of reconciliation. Now we all understand alienation, and I think we're all familiar with the fact that the Bible is crystal clear that we come into this world alienated from the life of God.

Those are the very words of the Apostle Paul in the book of Ephesians. Everybody is alienated from God, alienated from the life of God. We are enemies of God, and God is our enemy. Even while we were enemies, Romans tells us, God sought to reconcile us. So we have to start with the realization that the whole human race is at enmity with God, hostile toward God, and God is hostile toward them to the degree that He has prepared not just temporal judgments, and there are many of those on sin, but everlasting judgment on sinners.

So reconciliation is the issue. I have had conversations a number of times through the years on airplanes with people who ask me what I do, and one of the common ways I answer that question is to say, I tell sinners they can be reconciled to God. Are you interested?

It's amazing the result of that question. I remember flying across the country. There was a long-haired rock musician next to me, and when I asked that question, he got up and left, and it was a five-hour flight, and I never saw him again. So there is that reality. No, I'm not interested.

I'm not interested. But this is substantially the foundation of the gospel. You as a sinner can be reconciled to God. And most people have the sense that God is good and holy. I mean, that's kind of what's in the groundwater of our civilization, and that they are not. And so they understand, even if it's a rather primitive understanding, the reality of reconciliation.

They also live with disappointment, lack of fulfillment, guilt, fear, anxiety, all those things that are really not bound up only in the issues of life, but in the existential reality that you don't know what's coming after this, but you could be, frankly, in a lot of trouble. So the message of reconciliation is the good news.

And to understand that is to be able to offer the sinner something positive, the most positive message that the sinner could ever hear. So I want to talk a little bit about this idea of reconciliation. And in the same passage that I just read, you saw that the Apostle Paul designates all of us as ambassadors.

That's in verse 20, ambassadors. That means that we literally have been signed as representatives of a foreign kingdom to be in an alien environment with a message of reconciliation. That's why we're here. I often say that. The only reason the Lord didn't take us to heaven when we were saved is because He wanted to use us to reconcile sinners.

If we were saved for fellowship, we ought to go to heaven where fellowship is perfect, because down here it's sometimes difficult. If we were saved for righteousness, we ought to go to heaven where righteousness really exists because down here it's pretty difficult. The only reason to leave us here and suffer the weaknesses of those kind of elements is because we are the instruments that God uses as ambassadors in an alien environment to tell people that they can be reconciled to God.

And that's the message. Now what does that look like? So I want to break this passage down for just a few minutes. Just some simple aspects of it. And here's the starting point. And I think this is a very important starting point. Reconciliation is by the will of God.

Reconciliation is by the will of God. If you go back to verse 18, all these things are from God. What things? The things mentioned in verse 17, all the new things that come in regeneration, all the new things that come when you're a new creature, all the new things that come through salvation, they all are from God.

And I think it has to be established in our minds firmly that when we go to preaching and proclaiming and giving testimony to the ministry of reconciliation, the good news of reconciliation, God is on our side. God is by nature a reconciler. Repeatedly, particularly in the pastoral epistles of 1st and 2nd Timothy, we read God our Savior, God our Savior, God our Savior, God our Savior.

Now this sets God apart from every other religious and ethnic system in the world. No other religion has a God who is by nature a Savior. They are gods to be feared. For example, in Islam, there is no salvation. There is no path of reconciliation. There's only alienation and a wistful hope that somehow it might turn out better than you think.

But our God is by nature a saving God. People ask the question, "Why did God destroy so many people in the Old Testament? Why did God want the Canaanites killed? Why did God drown the whole world?" Seems as though God is by nature wrathful, vengeful, angry, hostile, judgmental. But the fact of the matter is the big question is not why did God judge, but why didn't God judge everybody instantaneously?

That's why the Apostle Paul says that God is the Savior of all men, especially, little Greek adverb, melista, especially those who believe. God is not just the Savior of those who believe. He's the Savior of those who believe in an eternal sense, but His saving desire is on display even to the rest of humanity all the time.

How is that so? Well, because the Bible says the wages of sin is what? Death. You go to Genesis, the day you die. And how long did Adam live? 900 plus years. What does that say? God didn't kill Adam when he took a bite. The very fact that sinners live, survive, enjoy what theologians call, I guess, common grace.

They can enjoy love and beauty and adventure and everything that life offers them is because God puts on display His nature as a Savior by not giving sinners what they deserve when they deserve it. In that sense, He's the Savior of all men. Sinners need to be reminded not that God is this terrifying judge with no compassion, but rather on the other hand, He is slow to anger, slow to anger, and full of mercy and full of forbearance.

And sinners take massive advantage of that without ever recognizing it. The forbearance of God is to lead to repentance. So the good news is this, you don't have to convince God to save sinners. You just have to convince sinners to come to Him. You know, if you're in Roman Catholic environment, there is a dominating idea there that does a terrible injustice to God, and it's this.

God Himself is very hard, kind of tough, busy, occupied with things that God has on His plate, you might say. So God probably isn't going to be disturbed by you. He's not going to want to have to deal with your issues. So you don't want to go directly to God, and He's pretty harsh anyway.

You might want to go to Christ, but the problem is Christ might be a little too occupied for you as well, and He might lack a measure of compassion. So if you really want to get to God, you go to Mary. That's what's behind the whole system of Mary in the Catholic religion, that Mary plays on the sympathies of Jesus to make Him more compassionate and more long-suffering and more willing to forgive.

I mean, it's a line as simple as this, "Jesus can't refuse His mother," which funnels everybody through Mary, who, by the way, hears no one's prayers and never has. But it strikes a blow against the very compassion of Christ and the compassion of God. Reconciliation is by the will of God.

He had to design the means, right? He's the one offended. If there is to be reconciliation, we can't design it. The offended one has to design it. And God our Savior, who will have all men to come to the knowledge of the truth, has designed a means of reconciliation.

So the good news is when you go out as an ambassador of Christ to speak about reconciliation, you have the full force of heaven on your side as God, through you, is speaking. He actually says that, "God speaking through us, be reconciled to me." I would hate to think about having a job like convincing sinners of reconciliation if I also had to turn and convince God and get Him to ease up, but that is already a given.

That is already a given. And He demonstrated it, obviously, in that He sent His Son to be the sacrifice. We'll see more of that in a moment. So reconciliation is by the will of God. You're doing God's work. You're preaching God's message. And He literally is speaking through you.

It's in verse 20, where it's God making an appeal through us. We beg you. When we beg sinners to be reconciled, that is God begging sinners through us, a marvelous reality. And again, only in Christianity do you have a God who is by nature a Savior. So reconciliation is by the will of God.

Secondly, it is by the act of forgiveness. It is by the act of forgiveness. In order to be reconciled to God, verse 10 says, "God stops counting your trespasses against you." This is amazing. A holy God who has every right to punish sin, and every sin ultimately is punished, forgives you.

The forgiveness of sin, what we're talking about in the gospel is forgiveness. We're not talking about a happy marriage. We're not talking about a better life. We're not talking about prosperity. We're not talking about some kind of soul satisfaction. We're not talking about purpose, purpose-filled life or whatever. We're talking about forgiveness.

And the only way you can ever be reconciled to God would be to be forgiven. I mean, that should make sense because it works that way pretty much in the human realm, doesn't it? When you have been violated, when you have been assaulted, when you have been mistreated, if there's ever to be a restoration of a relationship, it's going to come through the path of forgiveness.

And reconciliation is by the act of forgiveness. You find that back in Psalm 32, Psalm 51 as David pours out his heart pleading for forgiveness. You find it in the New Testament where Jesus forgives sins. You find it in the epistles where the Apostle Paul says that Christ came for the forgiveness of sin.

This is the essential reality that makes reconciliation possible. So I remember talking to a Muslim one night and I was reading a Bible. I was flying to Texas to do a men's conference and I was looking at my New Testament and this Muslim guy was sitting next to me.

He kept looking over and glancing over and glancing over and finally he said, "Excuse me, sir, is that a Bible? Is that a Bible?" And I said, "It is a Bible." And he said, "Well, what is the religion of America? Is it from the Bible?" I said, "Well, mostly." But I said, "Let me tell you what the message of the Bible is by asking you a question." I said, "You're a Muslim?" "Yes," he said.

I said, "Do Muslims have sins? Do you have sins?" "We have sins. We have so many sins I don't even know all the sins." So I said, "Do you do them?" "I do them all the time." In fact, I'll never forget this line, he said, "I'm flying to El Paso to do some sins." I said, "Oh, I wasn't sure I needed all that information.

You're flying to El Paso to do some sins?" He said, "Yes, I met a woman there when I immigrated through the naturalization gate in El Paso and we're planning to do some sins." So now I was in pretty deep. And I said, "So what's Allah going to do about you doing sins?

What does Allah think?" And he said, "It's very bad. It's very, very bad. I could go to hell. I could go to hell." So you could go to hell and you're doing those sins anyway. "Yes, I can't help it." I said, "Well, do you have some hope you can escape hell?" And this is the second line that I'll never forget.

He said, "I hope the God will forgive me." And I said to him, "Well, I know him personally and he won't." And he looked at me like, "You're in the middle seat on Southwest and you know God?" Well, he didn't even understand that kind of a statement. You know, if you knew God, you'd have your own jet.

You wouldn't be in the middle seat on Southwest, no. I said, "Yeah, I do know God and I know him personally and he won't forgive you unless...unless." And I poured out the gospel to him. And I could tell him with confidence that God will forgive your sins if you come to Christ.

I can tell him that. That's what Jesus meant when he said to Peter, "You have the keys to the kingdom." He didn't mean you can open the kingdom yourself by any means. He meant you have the keys, the gospel. You have the keys to the kingdom. It's the gospel that unlocks the kingdom.

It's the gospel that opens the narrow gate to the narrow way. So I told him there was complete forgiveness in Christ. He couldn't believe that he could know there was full forgiveness. I don't know what his response was. I got his address, sent him a lot of material, never heard back.

But it's always a wonderful thing to be able to say to the sinner, "All you have to do is come to God through Christ and he'll forgive all your sins, past, present, and future." So reconciliation is by the will of God, by the act of forgiveness. And then there's a third aspect here.

It is by the obedience of faith. It is by the obedience of faith. We beg you, be reconciled to God through Christ. Put your trust in Christ. He is the only way. There's no salvation in any other. There's a picture of spiritual warfare in 2 Corinthians 10 that I've always found fascinating.

It kind of describes the spiritual battle in proclaiming the gospel, 2 Corinthians 10, 3. The Bible says we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. And what that means is walking in the flesh, he doesn't mean carnality. He means we're human. Okay, so we're human, but we can't fight the spiritual war with human weapons.

In the next verse, "The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses." If you're going to lead someone out of the kingdom of darkness, if you're going to smash that fortress, you have to have something more powerful than human ingenuity.

We need something divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. And what are those fortresses? Verse 5 explains, "Destroying logismos," speculations, ideas, theories, ideologies. Every thing, lofty thing, high thing raised up against the knowledge of God and taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. Literally, in order to reach this person and bring about the obedience of faith, we have to crush their present ideologies.

We have to destroy their speculations, theories, philosophies, psychologies, religions, worldviews. And they are further defined as every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God. Any ungodly idea. So in this ministry of reconciliation, you're going to run into the realization that you're going to need to lead someone to the obedience of faith in Christ, and that simply means to obey what the Scripture says about Christ and what Christ Himself says, which means that He's going to have to abandon His current ideology.

The word for fortress is the word for tomb, the word for prison, and the word for fortress. People's ideological fortresses become their tombs, for sure. So this is where your ability to proclaim the gospel, to give them the truth about Christ, show them the Word of God concerning Christ, the Spirit of God can use that to shatter their fortifications.

And the fortifications are defined in a very simple way. They're defined as anything raised up against the knowledge of God. Any ungodly idea has to be smashed, has to be abandoned in favor of obedience to Christ. So this is complete shift. It's not adding Jesus to your life, it's the destruction of your life and the replacement with Christ.

That's why Jesus said, "If any man comes after Me, let him deny himself." You abandon, you don't add Jesus, you abandon sinful ideologies, ungodly ideas. This is where your ability to articulate the Scripture, some knowledge of textual proofs for the truth of the gospel, even some good tools of apologetics can be of help to you.

Because it's not just saying something like, "Jesus will make your life happier," and playing to emotion. That's going to be a superficial move, the move of a moment with no lasting influence. If they're going to come to Christ, they have to abandon the previous fortifications. They have to leave them behind.

And that's why Jesus said it's hard to believe. It's hard to believe. The disciples said to Him in Luke 13, "Are there only a few who will be saved?" Jesus said, "A few will find the narrow way." It's hard. It's hard to hate your father, your mother, your sister, and John says in John 12, your own life.

Literally to hate your own life. Whatever structure your life has, whatever ideological structure, whatever set of beliefs hold you intact for time and eternity. If they're not the godly ones, they have to be crushed. So evangelism is not something that is simple. It's not enough to say, "Pray this prayer and you're in." There has to be a destruction.

And that can only happen when you bring the truth. So there's only one, the sword, there's only one weapon to destroy error, and what's that? Truth, truth, truth. So you bring the truth concerning Christ against the lies. So what are we seeing then? Reconciliation is by the will of God, by the act of forgiveness, and by the obedience of faith.

Faith is the knowledge of a reality that allows me to entrust my life. You have to learn Christ and unlearn everything else. So this is the ministry of reconciliation. There's one other very important term just to kind of wrap it up. Reconciliation is by the will of God, by the act of forgiveness, by the obedience of faith, and finally by the work of substitution, by the work of substitution.

And for that you come to the final verse, verse 21, 15 Greek words that sum up all of Christianity, really. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. This is beyond any other reality, the essential reality.

If you understand that verse, you understand the gospel. Because the big question is, as Paul articulates in Romans, how can God be just and the justifier of sinners? How can He do that? If you put yourself in a court setting and a judge comes in and a criminal is brought into the court and a criminal said, "Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty." And the judge said, "Okay, I've heard your confession, I affirm you're guilty, but I'm going to forgive you and let you go." There would be an outrage in the court, right?

Because a judge has one responsibility, to uphold the law, right? You can't do that. That's not justice. So God could be accused of being an unjust judge if you just go to Him and say, "Okay, forgive me, forgive me because I ask," and God said, "Okay, you're forgiven and that's it," then God would be a justifier but would not be just.

So how does God maintain His justice and also be the justifier of sinners? And the answer is in that verse, "He made Him," meaning Christ, "He, God the Father, made Him who knew no sin," who is that? Christ, the only person who ever lived in the world that knew no sin, "He made Him to be sin on our behalf." This is the great doctrine of substitutionary atonement.

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf. What does that mean? Well, you hear some wacky preachers say, "Well, on the cross Jesus became a sinner." No, He didn't. He's holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners. And He validates that on the cross because at the pinnacle of His suffering on the cross, He says, "My God, my God, why have you," what?

"Forsaken me?" and if He was a sinner, there would be no reason to ask that question. He's not a sinner. What does it mean that God made Him to be sin on our behalf? It simply means this, that God punished Him for the sins of all who would ever believe.

This is substitutionary atonement. God literally punished His Son for the sins of all who would ever believe through all of human history before, during, and after He lived on this earth. Peter puts it this way, "He bore in His body our sins on the cross." Isaiah puts it this way, "He was wounded for," what?

"Our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, chastened for our shalom." This is the great truth. All sin is punished because God is just, and it's either punished in the sinner who committed it or punished in the substitute who took the sinner's place. This is an incredible truth. Let me phrase it another way.

God treated Jesus on the cross as if He lived your life. Can you grab that one as a sinner? He treated Christ on the cross as if He lived your life, and He unleashed the horrors of judgment, and the darkness lasted three hours, and for three hours Christ bore the full punishment for all the sins of all the people who would ever believe through all of human history.

Sinners in hell will forever be in hell, and the punishment will never be complete. Christ completed the punishment in three hours for everyone who ever believed in human history. How is that possible? And the only answer is because He's an infinite person. He had an infinite capacity for everything, including punishment.

So God treats Jesus as if He lived your life. You know, when I say that to a sinner, it's a pretty shocking thing. But that's not all, because the second half of the verse says so that He might become, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

What does that mean? He treats Jesus as if He lived our life, so He can treat us as if we lived His. Amazing. That's what Isaiah 66 is talking about when it talks about being covered with robes of righteousness. God looks at Christ and sees you and is satisfied with the punishment.

God looks at you and sees Christ. This is the monumental doctrine of imputed righteousness that goes along with the doctrine of imputed sin. That's a great exchange. So when you think about the ministry of reconciliation, it all comes down to God being just and the justifier of sinners, which means He must punish sin, and He did it in His Son so that He could forgive us.

And when He forgave us, He really forgave us. He permanently forgave us because the punishment was paid in full by Christ. And when He sees us, He sees His Son. That's why the Bible talks to us about believers being joint heirs with Christ. This is the good news that sinners need to hear.

And of course, it's why our salvation is forever, because Christ bore the full punishment, no double jeopardy. And it's why true believers never defect, because we literally are covered by the righteousness of Christ. People who defect, John says, never were of us, 1 John 2:19. So this incredible ministry of reconciliation, this message of reconciliation is the heart and soul of our calling as ambassadors in this alien world.

And whatever your circumstance, you know, in my case, you could say, I have it easy. I'm talking to people who love me. In your case, you might be talking to people who hate everything you're saying. And Jesus said that, John 7, 7, He said, "They hate me because I tell them their deeds are evil." It's that issue of sin that generates the hostility.

I mean, just imagine standing up in a media environment today and being honest about homosexuality, LGBTQ, child mutilation. I don't know how long you'd survive. There's more to the message than that. The message has to start with the reconciliation to God. And at that point, the Holy Spirit has to do the convicting of the sinner's heart, right?

So my prayer for all of you is that the Lord will use you in ways that maybe you don't even expect to be His ambassador and tell sinners they can be reconciled to God. And when it's something they want, then they give you the right to tell them how it can happen, right?

Father, thank You for Your Word. Thank You for Your glorious gospel. Thank You for saving us. Thank You for these dear folks. Lord, I pray that You will do exceedingly abundantly above all they can ask or think through their lives. Use them in the environment they're in to do Your eternal work for Your glory.

Fill their hearts with joy in the privilege, we pray in Christ's name, amen. Amen. Would you like to take a couple of questions? Sure. Ty Denne wondered if I'd take some questions. I'd be glad to. Maybe you need to catch your breath. You didn't expect that. Yeah. About anything.

Okay. Yes, sir. Thank you, Pastor, for the message. Yeah. You have no role in the doctrine of election. Neither do I. Neither does anybody else. Spurgeon said when somebody complained, "Why are you preaching the gospel to everybody if some are elect?" And he said, "Because nobody has 'ye' stamped on their back." So, my responsibility is to preach the gospel to every creature.

How God harmonizes. Let me help you with that. Because people say, "If God chooses, then how can the sinner have accountability?" I mean, that's a dilemma that ought to encourage you. Because if you understood the mind of God, you'd be God, and if you were God, then God would be like you, and we'd be in a lot of trouble.

So you want a transcendent God. But a way to explain it is this. If I ask you, for example, "Who wrote the book of Romans?" That's a simple question that you would hesitate to answer, right? You want to say Paul, but you know you can't. You want to say the Holy Spirit, but you can't say that either.

Why? Because every word is inspired by the Spirit of God, and yet every one comes out of the vocabulary and mind and heart of Paul. Another way to look at it is if I ask you, "Who lives your Christian life?" Who lives your Christian life? Do you live it?

Yes. That's the point. Because you have the exact same apparent paradox. Anything that brings the divine into the human contact in the realm of redemption leaves you with that same apparent paradox. Paul says it this way, "I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live," and then he says, "Yet not I." Because even he doesn't get it.

"But Christ who lives in me. Everything good in me, I give Him credit. Everything bad in me, I take responsibility." So this is in every doctrine there is. If I say, if you're saved, do you believe in eternal security? You're secure. Yes, because Jesus said, "All that the Father gives to me will come to me and I'll lose none of them, but raise Him at the last day." But we also read that we have to persevere in the faith.

So you have both of those things side by side, and that's plenty of evidence that this is a transcendent reality that extends beyond our scope. I'm just glad to say this. God can use me, but He doesn't need me. He can use me, and I can have the joy of that and the eternal reward of that, but the saving He does.

And this is everywhere. Everybody, everybody who reads the New Testament understands predestination. Everybody who reads the Old Testament, well, what is God calling Abraham out of the whole world of humanity and identifying a people from the loins of Abraham and not everybody else? Israel, my elect, Christ, my elect, the church, my elect.

At the same time we see that unfolding all through Scripture, we also see human responsibility. How God harmonizes that is for Him to figure out. Yes? >> I have a question regarding the university, not even specifically my area, because I saw for example, the university has incorporated psychology, which I believe most of them come from pagan books.

>> Yeah. >> And actually the university program is not only one university, it's multiple, and many of them inside are even Christians. So how do I... What's your suggestion or different counseling for people, students who already chose that area even as Christians, is the first question. The second question is in China, for example, the whole education system is really imposing or even the theory to students.

You have to get A or even 100% of that to get into university, get better education. So how do you, by the way, give some counseling advice to people in such program? >> Yeah, no, I appreciate the question, but I would just remind you that one of the strongest churches in the world is the Underground Church in China.

We have students who have come here from China. We have students in the Master Seminary from China who are products of the Underground Church because the Lord can save His people wherever they are. Whatever the ideology is, the Spirit of God can break through. And that's happened in China.

And I saw the same thing in the former Soviet Union. Jeff was saying it was 60 times in the Soviet Union. I wasn't there that many times, but I went a lot for conferences, and I met the Underground Church and the Aboveground Church, the Registered Church. And while communism was doing everything it could to stamp out Christianity, the church was flourishing and growing.

So it's a matter of taking the opportunity to proclaim the truth, and it's the work of the Holy Spirit to break down the fortresses. But you need to have an answer to every man who asks you the hope, so that there's a reasonable biblical answer for what's wrong with that ideology.

But it doesn't matter what the ideology is. You could say in America there's freedom. The church in America, in my experience, is far weaker than the Underground Church I saw in Russia. That's not actually—sorry. That's not my real question. I'm not really concerned about their faiths. I think they're really like after fire, they're more pure.

But really, do you suggest them, like, practically speaking, get out of that discipline of psychology, or how do you practically—? Well, look, there are some things in psychology that are helpful. The study of human behavior, educational psychology, there are things about human behavior that can be cataloged and understood.

But when you try to define the deepest issues of a human being with something like psychology, you're never going to get there. You're never going to get there. And that's why, to be honest with you, the whole counseling movement has disappeared. No psychologist or psychiatrist that I know anything about does any counseling anymore.

They just give you drugs. I mean, they can't deal with anything. But that's not to say that there aren't psychological reasons how people learn or how people are made more effective in any kind of skill. Sure, there are elements of human behavior that have been studied and need to be studied and can be helpful in understanding how to navigate in the world and all the relationships that we have.

But when it comes to sin and righteousness and judgment, psychology offers nothing. Yes, sir? You've written quite a bit in your life, in the past. Yeah. When is it that something triggers you and you say, "I need to expound on this and get this out to the public"? Well, it can happen a lot of ways.

It almost all starts from my preaching. When I preach something or through a subject or a passage, and I feel that this is speaking directly to not just something that's always around, but maybe a more dramatic moment in the life of the church or the life of the nation or the world, I might say, "You know, this needs to go into print." Sometimes it's just in the flow of things like commentaries and study Bible and all that.

Yeah. Right now, I'm working on a book called "The War on Children." So that's obvious, right? I mean, somebody's got... And the challenging thing with the book on "The War on Children" is if you try to describe how bad it is, no matter what you say, you're one week behind something worse.

So you can't chase the tale of that. But yeah, it can be an issue like that. That is a very dramatic issue that needs to be addressed because people need help. And I really do write for people who want an answer from the Word of God. Sometimes the people around me, elders, pastors that I work with say, "This is a subject you need to work on." So it can come from a lot of angles.

But it's got to be something that is in my heart because I have enough things to do that I won't get it done if I'm not highly motivated. Pastor John, thank you so much for being here with us today. My pleasure. Thank you. If you could stay here for a little bit because I want to ask you to close us in prayer.

But it sounds like we have your permission to hold the Mathema Symposium next year again. For whatever good my permission is, you have it. Well, thank you. We appreciate it. And I want to thank you all for coming. And I know some of you traveled very, very far from Northern California and even as far as the East Coast to be here with us this weekend.

So we really appreciate it. If you're going to be in town all weekend, we actually have in the bulletin a list of local churches if you're going to be around tomorrow, including Grace Community Church where Pastor John will be speaking again in the morning. There's also in the back a list of ways to stay in touch.

So a year is a long time to see you all again. But we have a mailing list. There's a QR code so you can sign up for that. If you're interested in contributing an article for the Mathema Journal, we spoke about that yesterday. Please, we would love to get in contact with you.

There's a website there. Oh, and it turns out, we do have several open positions in the Science and Engineering Department here. So if you have ever thought about, or maybe after this weekend, interested in joining the TMU faculty, or you have no friends or colleagues, please feel free to point them to that.

Last thing, really quickly, this fall, we have another event that may be of interest called the Theotech Conference. That's theology and technology. And Dr. E., can you remind us really quick of just what the topic is, and maybe what day it's on. Theotech, 2023, October 28th. This year's theme is intelligence, creation, evidence.

What is intelligence? How is it created? Where is the evidence? Be there. Okay. Thank you, Dr. E. And I want to thank our speakers for coming, Tara, and Jeff, and Abner, and Pastor John and Mark for being here with us this weekend, and for all of you. So thank you.

And Pastor John. And we need to say thanks to Tye Denae, she's here. Special gift to us. Would you mind praying for us and our guests today? I'm glad to. Father, we are so grateful for the truth. What can we say? The truth is everything. It's absolutely everything. And it settles our hearts for time and eternity.

Thank you for the joy and the peace, the contentment, the wonder, the anticipation, and the hope that comes from knowing the truth. We thank you for every individual who is here, and we pray that there will be opportunity. Just immediately we ask, Lord, for them to put into usefulness and practice some of the things that they have learned or refined in the time here.

Make this a useful, helpful opportunity that will allow them to be more effective in everything that they do, and particularly in the ministry of reconciliation to which you have called us all. And may they see fruit for their efforts and their labors. For your glory we pray in Christ's name, amen.