Permanent and Provisional

0:02 Looking at our world from a theological perspective. This is the Theology Central podcast, making Theology Central. Good evening everyone. It is Thursday, February sixth, twenty twenty five. It is currently six fifty pm Central Time, and I am coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. Now, if you have a pencil, well, you can use pen Okay, you can use a mark or you can use whatever. If you have something to write with, you'll need some paper or at least you know something to write on. And I want you to write down two words. I want you to write down the word permanent. And secondly, I want you to write down the word provisional. Permanent, provisional, permanent, provisional. And we're going to talk about, well, is this permanent, is it provisional?

1:02 What's the difference? What does this mean? Why are we going to talk about permanent and provisional? And we're going to talk about all of that, but before we can, we have to talk about something that wasn't permanent. And that's the title of my last broadcast, my last broadcast. If you noticed when you looked at the sermon's two point oh app or if you're looking on Spotify or any of the podcasting apps, you would have noticed that I called, and I gave the title for that last episode Hebrews and seventy a D. Hebrews and seventy a D. All right, maybe it should it be Hebrews and seventy eighty. Okay, maybe I've got the whole thing grammatically incorrect. Okay, but I put seventy a D. That's how I wrote it out, seventy a D. And I didn't give it any thought.

1:53 I just moved on. And the reason I didn't give it any thought is whenever I'm preaching or teaching on seventy a D, I always say seventy a D, seventy a D seventy That's how I always speak. Seventy a D seventy eighty. I say it a million times, right, seventy a D, seventy a D, and I always speak it that way. That's how I always speak it. Never gave it any thought, never, never was an issue, just never. So when I typed the title, then I put seventy a D. However, you'll notice it no longer reads seventy AD. That title was not permanent it was a provisional title. It changed, all right. And what changed is now it reads AD seventy A D seventy. Now why did I change it? Well? I changed it because someone emailed me at two forty four pm Central time and pointed out, hey, that's not actually correct, and I was like, okay, that's man.

2:54 Oh now I feel dumb. Now I feel foolish. Now I know I could just change it. Ninety nine percent of you would never even notice. You probably didn't even notice that it was changed. Most people probably wouldn't care if it says AD seventy or seventy eighty. Some of you would. But the point is, I do want to be accurate. I do want to be correct because well, I mean the other day I was I was challenging and correcting a podcast because they kept saying, you know, this happened in thirty three AD, and then they were pulling facts from sixty six AD, and I was going after their accuracy and not being factual. All right, So I do want to be as accurate as possible. Now I'm the first one to admit, like, I'm not willing to.

3:37 You know, by no means am I trying to. I try to be as real as I can. I'm the first one to acknowledge grammatically not always the best, right, I'm not always the best. You can hear sometimes my subject verb agreement, and you can hear sometimes I say a lot of things incorrectly, And I know I'm very bad when it comes to sometimes being grammatically correct. And ever seen anything I've ever written, Punctuation is not a strong It's not my strong point either, Okay, So I tend to go with my strong suit would be like ideas, big ideas, breaking ideas down necessarily, especially writing it. I'm by no means am I strong at that. I think when college professor said, you have great content. Great when you write, it's amazing. Great, whether you're writing a story, whether you're writing this, The content is great, just you've got to learn to state it in a more grammatically accurate way. And maybe you know, I don't know, you want to throw in some kind of punctuation because it looks like just one long run on sentence. So I know that I have that weakness. I'm the first one to admit that. But because if I'm going to challenge accuracy somewhere else, I need to be challenged so someone pointed out they emailed me and said, AD goes before the number A D seventy, meaning the year of our Lord seventy unless it is a century when it come where it comes before second century AD. And then so

5:12 the person was was, you know, kind of like they were, Yeah, I think they were being somewhat friendly about it. But I was like, oh man, they they got me, they got me here, and so I immediately changed it. Now to be fair, I will throw this in there. Ady seventy is structured according to the Latin convention. Right, it really is, since AD and O domini right means in the year of our Lord. In Latin, the adjectives and descriptive phrases typically precede the noun they modify, which is why AD seventy follows that order in the year of our Lord, right, and the year of our Lord seventy.

5:55 That's if you were to write it out in the year of our Lord seventy. However, modern English generally places adjectives and descriptive phrases after the noun the year seventy A D, which is why seventy AD feels more natural to many English speakers. So that's the way I always say it seventy a D, seventy a D, seventy a D, seventy a D. Because I say that, then in my mind, well that's how I'm going to write it. So AI, this is how AI says it. While eighty seventy reflects the Latin structure and is technically the traditional and academically preferred form, seventy a D follows a more natural English word order, which explains why it's commonly used in non academic settings. Now it's a podcast title a non academic setting, well it is. However, if your podcast is about theology, about being accurate, well then I should have done it correctly.

6:58 So I definitely made that change. So it was not permanent. It was provisional. I will say this, All of my titles are provisional and can be changed, and they needed because now I need to go back and look at the whole thing. I think the whole thing is grammatically incorrect. I think the whole thing is messed up. So I will go back and make sure it's grammatically correct, and I do apologize for that, and because I do want to be accurate, and I'm grateful to someone took the time to email me and point that out. But I wanted to. I wanted it to be acknowledged, right because I don't I do not like and I do get bothered sometimes when when I've listened to a sermon and like, you know, the whole thing is just a train wreck.

7:41 The whole thing is just like a mess. In many cases, they won't come back and offer a correction. They'll just delete it and it's no longer. I think. I like to leave my in some ways, I would like to have left my mistake. If I had enough room in the title, I should have just left put two titles there, the incorrect one and the correct one. That would be better, because that's the way we all learn, right. If you see my mistakes, then you won't make the same mistake. I mean, there's lots of times with grammar or punctuation, someone else will say something. I'll be like, oh, okay, I got to remember not to do that, because I do that all the time. I do that all the time because I do. I do make some serious mistakes sometimes, so that I wanted to just get that out there, to offer the correction and put the correction on record.

8:30 But it also serves as a good example of permanent versus provisional. Permanent versus provisional. Well, it may not be a great example of provisional, but it's a great example of not being permanent. Right. So here's what's going on. Here's what we're going to do. This is going to go relatively quick. This we're going to go back to. I still have that sort of The Lord newspaper right here in front of me from January third, twenty twenty five. I am getting my money money's worth for that, or I should say you're getting your money's worth from this paper. I mean, you didn't pay for the paper, but you're getting your money's worth because I'm tearing this issue apart, and really it's amazing how many hours of broadcasting can come from just a few things and an issue of the sort of the Lord newspaper. But on page twenty one they have an article entitled seventeen Things that come with Christ. That article caught my attention because I took a course at a Bible institute I attended. I think it was like a semester long, and we had to go through all the things that we obtain because of salvation, and we had to find it and then you know, explain what it was and cross reference scriptures and just kind of it was almost like a semester long project.

9:53 I loved it. I thought it was fun. I thought it was great. So I'm like, oh, this seventeen things that come with Christ. Okay, I wonder if are going to have the same things. I was just kind of interested to see where there was going to go. Now, they quoted Hebrew six ' nine, which immediately kind of bothered me a little bit because they quote Hebrew six ' nine and immediately, in fact, in this entire article where Hebrew six ' nine is the text, they never reference eighty seventy or seventy a D. They never reference it once. And that's why I did the last broadcast about Hebrews and seventy a D. All right, so so we've already covered seventy a D. We've covered everything about it. But I'm going to read here a little bit of the article and wait till you listen for the words permanent and the words and the word provisional. Are the word permanent and the word provisional? You're ready? Here we go.

10:44 Now once they quote they quote Hebrew six ' nine. But beloved we are persuaded better things of you and things that accompany salvation. Now again we and you, we have identify the we and you. The you is not you and me the Okay, it has a historical context. Go back and listen to the last broadcast. Now, of course, this article doesn't start with the original recipients. It starts with good news exclamation point. When you received Christ. You received not only eternal life, but also many other things that came with Christ. Okay, Now, immediately I stop and go.

11:30 You quoted Hebrew sixt' nine. How in the world have we been injected into this? How did we end up here? Are we not going to talk about Hebrew six ' nine in its original context and how it relates to eighty seventy or seventy AD? But okay, it's not going to do that. I should have expected that. They go on to say, at that time, the article continues, at that time, you speaking of us may have been unaware and unknowing. Even now you speaking of us maybe un away where and unknowing of all the bundled things you received with Christ inconceivable. Well, can I wait a minute, I don't know how this all became about us? But it all became about us. All right, great, we've covered that.

12:15 Next paragraph. You're ready, Here we go. Next paragraph. At salvation, Christ welcomes you into the Family of God. They quote John Chapter one, verse twelve. I don't quote, yes, put it in parentheses. Are you ready? At salvation, Christ welcomes you into the Family of God with at least seventeen additional unearned and unexpected gifts. So when you become a Christian, you receive, according to this seventeen additional unearned and unexpected gifts. Right, these are Now it's going to list the seventeen. Are you ready. You may want to write these down. It's going to list seventeen faith, belief, repentance, atonement, amputation, reconciliation, ransom, regeneration, justification, grace, mercy, propitiation, adoption, redemption, sanctification, peace,

13:57 and eternal life. Besides these in my list, there are may there may be more incomprehensible. All right, now, let's go through this again. According to this article, when you get saved, I'm gonna read directly their words. When at salvation, Christ welcomes you into the family with at least seventeen additional unearned and unexpected gifts. This seems to be trying to claim these seventeen things is what you get when you become saved. Now there's art. We could get into a whole argument about order salutis in the order of salvation.

14:40 This gets into a major theological dispute. I'm not here to engage in that dispute right now. I'm looking for the words permanent and provisional. That's what that's that's all I want to focus on right now. Because some of you are like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait some do some of these procede salvation? Or do these from some of it? We could get into that philological argument Christians are not agreed upon. I know it's shocking. In two thousand years there's still no agreement upon that. But just those are the seventeen things. Let me name them one more time, and I really challenge you to write these down right So at salvation, Christ welcomes you into the family with at least seventeen additional unearned and unexpected gifts. Are you ready? Here we go, Number one faith belief. I'm going to count these out.

15:29 You can just write them down and write down the number so number one are well, I'm just not going to give number faith, belief, repentance, atonement, amputation, reconciliation, ransom, regeneration, justification, grace, mercy, propitiation, adoption, redemption, sanctification, peace, and eternal life. Besides these in my list, there may be more incomprehensible. All right, next paragraph, the next paragraph here, it's really actually it's just a sentence. It's not even a paragraph. It's just a sentence. All right. So right here where the crease of the paper is, when you receive Jesus, you also receive these seventeen things. So you get all seventeen of those things when you receive Jesus.

16:33 Now I can't. Oh, there's so much we can get into a discussion here, but I'm trying not to go there. I'm trying. I'm trying to pull back. Don't go full blown into all the philological arguments here. Just go with this, all right. So now, when you receive Jesus, you also receive these seventeen things. So those seventeen things we receive when we receive Jesus. Okay, great, Now here is the line that I want to focus on. Ten of these are permanent, Seven are provisional. Out of the seventeen, according to this article, ten are permanent. Ten of them are permanent.

17:23 Things you received when you receive Jesus. You receive seventeen things. Ten of those seventeen are permanent. I want you to try to identify the ten permanent things. Seven are provisional, seven are provisional. Now, permanent just means it's there. It's not going to change the way. This article describes provisional as provided when you need them. So ten things are just they're they're permanent. Seven are provisional. They just show up when you need them. They just show up when you need them. Now, I could go right in right now and just go all the way in, but I did not want to do that. I wanted to make this relatively short. I want to I almost did this as a Bible pop quiz. We need to get back to doing those we really do. But we'll just right now, we'll just leave this here almost like you know, as far as you know, a Bible study, I don't know.

18:28 I don't even know watch series even to put this in, But maybe a Bible study exercise, I don't know. But what I want you to consider is I want you to consider all seventeen of those things. I want you to look at those seventeen and if you were to say which one which, if you were to try to identify which ten are permanent in which seven are provisional. I'm not saying this is even right. I'm not saying that the sort of the Lord paper is even right on this this division. But I had never seen anything like this, right, I had never seen, oh, these seventeen things, These ten things are permanent, these seven are provisional. It caught me a little off guard. I wasn't quite prepared for that. So it's caught my attention since I got the paper, and I've just been thinking about and thinking about it. So I just want to kind of present it to you. So let me go through the seventeen things again. Are you ready? Here we go, right? Faith, belief, repentance, atonement, imputation, reconciliation, ransom, regeneration, justification, grace, mercy, propitiation, adoption, redemption, sanctification, peace, and eternal life. Now, out of those, I want you to identify the ones you think are permanent and the ones you think are somewhat provisional. I guess you get them as you need them. Now, if we to look

20:01 up the definition of the word provisional, because to be let's be as accurate as we can here, I should have started with that. But provisional, if I can read, if I can spell correction correctly, provisional means arranged or existing for the present, possibly to be changed later. All right, So arranged or existing for the present, possibly to be changed later. They kind of go with the idea here providing or serving for the time being, only existing only until permanently or properly replaced. It's temporary. So that's kind of the way I see it as temporary. But I think they're going more as it's not just what a permanent thing, it's something that it continues or it shows up whenever you need it, I guess is the way they're doing some this division of permanent andion. First of all, their use of Hebrews six ' nine here to get here is already I think problematic from a hermeneutical standpoint, but we'll cover that later. Permanent and provisional seventeen things.

21:16 I want you to go through that list, and I want you to determine this is permanent or is it permanent or is it provisional? Could something be both? There's a permanent part of it, but there's a provisional part of it, And would we call it provisional? Would we come up with a better term. I'm just handing it to you to work on, all right, So the seventeen things one more time. Faith, belief, repentance, atonement, imputation, reconciliation, ransom, regeneration, justification, grace, mercy, propitiation, adoption, redemption, sanctification, piece in eternal life. I want you to look at those seventeen and I want you to determine are some of these permanent or some of these provisional? Which ones would you make permanent? Which ones would you make provisional?

22:06 They break it down ten permanent, seven provisional. You you can, you can, you can do whatever. You can try to guess which ones they make permanent, which ones they make provisional. You can determine, then create your own list of which ones you think are permanent or provisional. Do you think some are both? Do you think calling any of them provisional or any of them permanent? Do you think that's an accurate description? You can just go to town just go to work on it, right, That's all I want you to do, right now, right now. I could, I could, I could hand you a number of assignments, but I won't hand you an assignment. Well, well, well, I guess we'll make this like a Bible study exercise. Right, but we're gonna we're gonna work on this. Okay, We're gonna do a lot of work on this. All right. I guess I'm just gonna stop right there. I'm gonna stop right there. All right, There you have it. There's your work.

23:03 You've got seventeen things that supposedly we receive when we receive Christ. Now already there. We could get into an argument about order salutis and the order of Salvation and where does this start all of that. We can get into all of that. But I just want you to write down the seventeen and not worry about the order salutis and where it falls into play. I just want you to determine, hm. Is that a permanent or is that provisional? Or is that both? And if it's both, how is it both? If it's permanent, what do you mean by it being permanent? If it's provisional, what do you mean by it being provisional. Now, of course, here, the way they describe provisional is they just put these seven that are provisional, and it just has in parentheses provided when needed, right, and it just says these seven are always available when needed. It is because times will come in your life when you need more. And then it starts naming the seven. I'm not going to tell you what those are now, if you have access to the sort of the Lord newspaper, don't look, okay, don't look.

24:15 All right, Thanks for listening. We'll stop right there, all right, Go go study, Go make your chart, get your a whiteboard out, go go have fun. Go do that, and we'll talk about it. We'll talk about it some tomorrow, all right. Well, we'll probably be talking about it for a couple of days that possibly, we'll see. All right, Thanks for listening, everyone, have a great day, great evening. Permanent provisional. Now I'm gonna go check my title for the last episode and see how many grammatical mistakes I made and it may be changed again. It may it's definitely not permanent. All right, Thanks for listening. God bless