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Transcript 384A — Understanding 1 Corinthians 12:3
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Yes. I want to talk about I Corinthians 12:3, where it says, "No man can say that Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Ghost."
HC: "No man can say that Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Ghost," or "by the Holy Spirit."
CALLER: It starts off, "Wherefore I give you understanding that no man speaketh by the Spirit of God calling Jesus accursed, and that no man can say that Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Spirit." I don't care about the first part, but I'm interested in the second part.
HC: You see, some folk have the idea that as long as someone is speaking about the fact that Jesus Christ is Lord of their life, as long as they are speaking of the fact that they know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that He was raised from the dead, and so on, therefore they must have the true Gospel, they must be involved in the true Gospel.
The problem, however, is that Satan also says this. Remember the demons that were being cast out by Jesus. They said, "We know who You are. You are the Holy One of God. Have you come to torment us before our time?" They acknowledged that they were under the lordship of Christ. They acknowledged that they were going to be judged by Him. And these demons weren't even close to salvation, obviously.
The real problem is that God is not interested in what we are saying with our lips. God is interested in what we are saying with our heart. Many people pay lip service to the feet that Jesus Christ is Lord. They use all the terminology. And intellectually they believe that He is Lord. But as a matter of fact, in their heart, in their will, in their total being, they have not surrendered to Him as Lord. They are not saying that He is Lord with their conduct, with the fact that they have hung their whole life on Him. And therefore they are not saying that He is Lord, even though with their lips they are saying this.
Do you see the distinction?
CALLER: Where does it talk about confessing Christ? Is that I John?
HC: I John 4, I believe, or I John 3.
CALLER: There it says that we're supposed to test the spirits, and you said yourself on your program many times that we cannot tell who is a Christian, who is a born again believer. So what reason does it tell us to test the spirits to see if they be of God, or telling us here to look for believers by this test, if we can't tell? You can't tell a man by his actions. Many of the people who are not born again believers appear sometimes the most dedicated. So then, if we can't tell, what is the purpose of trying to tell?
It's kind of a commandment to test the spirits. How can we test them if it's so complicated? How do we tell, if we can't tell at all?
HC: First of all, there are two areas where this is particularly applicable, and there is one area where it is not applicable. We cannot go around looking at other people, trying to decide whether they're born again or not That is not our task. "Judge not lest ye yourself be judged." That is not our task.
But the first area where this is very applicable is in looking at our own life. If we are saying, "Jesus Christ is Lord," and yet our will has not been surrendered to Christ, if we don't read the Bible earnestly, with a view to being obedient to whatever we find there, then we do not have the Holy Spirit. And we can test ourselves, what spirit we have.
Many people have lulled themselves into an idea that they're saved when they're not saved at all. And so that's the first area where we have to make judgment, how do I stand before God? Am I really saying with my heart that Jesus Christ is Lord? Or am I only paying lip service to it?
The other area that we have to make an evaluation is when we are fellowshipping with a congregation. Now there are congregations that say that Jesus Christ is Lord. And yet we look at the doctrines that they teach. We look at what they do with the Bible. If they go beyond the Bible looking for divine truth, then they are not being obedient to the scriptures. If they do not accept the whole Bible as the divine Word of God, then they are not being obedient to the Word of God. And then the likelihood is that we would not want to fellowship there.
CALLER: Doesn't the requirement of not falling into a false gospel include intellectualism? Now I know that you're doing everything that you can to teach the truth on the air. That's what you've done. But for the people that are out of your reach, or the people who don't have the mental capacity to understand the Bible, or the people who don't have the reading capacity, they're forced to look to someone for leadership because they themselves are not capable of studying or determining the meaning of the Bible. They doesn't intellectualism become part of that condition of finding the truth, Mr. Camping?
HC: First of all, we have to decide what our relationship to God is. It is not based on understanding. It is based on faith. We don't come to God because we understand the Bible. We come to God because we trust the Bible.
Now a person with an I.Q. of fifty, with a very low-grade mentality, can be a born again believer just as quickly as a college professor can. It has nothing to do with understanding. It has to do with trust.
Now a person who does not have a teacher that can guide him into some of the verses that otherwise are really troublesome, and can open up the plan of salvation to a higher degree, can still be born again. And if he is born again, he will become very uncomfortable when people come at him with a gospel that goes beyond the Bible. God will protect His own.
In John 10, in I think verse 8, Jesus is talking about thieves and robbers that come into the sheepfold. And the context of thieves and robbers in the Bible is those who come with other gospels. And He says, they have come in, "But My sheep will not hear them." Or later on in John 10, in verse 27 He says, "My sheep hear My voice." That is, they know that the Bible is the voice of God. "And they shall never perish. And I have given them eternal life, and no one shall snatch them out of My hand." God Himself is the one who cares for His own.
We're not kept in the truth because a teacher guides us. We're kept in the truth because God Himself protects us. And if we are a child of God, and a teacher comes along with truth, then immediately you'll sense, "Say, this man is true to the Word of God. And I can begin to trust him a little bit."
On the other hand, if we are a child of God and we begin to hear someone teaching that is outside of the Word of God, that is, suggesting divine truth from sources outside of the Word of God, or suggesting that the whole Bible is not the Word of God, there's going to be an uneasiness. You may not be able to put your finger on it, but you're going to be very uneasy, "I wonder if I can trust this man altogether."
CALLER: Let me ask you one other short question, Mr. Camping. Was the wine that Jesus' disciples drank real wine? Is there any way to know if it was real wine?
HC: I believe that the wine the disciples drank was real wine. I do not believe that Jesus drank wine.
CALLER: Was the wine that Jesus made out of water real wine? Was that an alcoholic beverage?
HC: I believe that was real wine. But I do not believe that Jesus drank it.
CALLER: I see. He made it for the other people?
HC: Yes.
CALLER: I was looking in the Strong's Concordance tonight. In the hundreds of references to wine in the Bible, are most of them alcoholic beverages?
HC: I find no evidence at all where we find the word wine to believe that it was anything but alcoholic beverage.
CALLER: I see. Is there any reference to something like beer in the Bible?
HC: No. There is a reference to grape juice and to grape skins, grape seeds, but not to beer, that I'm aware of.
CALLER: So you think that was real wine in the Bible.
HC: I think without a question it was real wine, whether it's called new wine or whether it's called, there are a number of words used for wine in the Bible, and as near as I can tell in every case it's talking about an alcoholic beverage.
CALLER: Okay. Thanks a lot, Mr. Camping. You are very helpful, and good night.
HC: Thank you for calling. Good night.