Welcome to Bible Believers Fellowship and the ministry of bbfohio.com. I'm Pastor Greg, and I welcome you to our current events update, and then our study in Acts chapter 17, verses 16 through 18, titled, Therefore Disputed He. The conclusion of this two-part message can be found at bbfohio.com as we now begin with part one of two. The current events update. Number one, Israel at war, 6-23-24, day 259, still 120 hostages unaccounted for, 50 plus believed still to be deceased, however, that would leave around 70 possible living hostages. Sadly, this young lady, Nelma Levy, turned 20 while in captivity. And yes, if she's alive, her mother said, every day without you is a day without air. The uncertainty and dread I experience is suffocating, and each passing day that you are not with us feels like an eternity. That's what her mom had to say. In the meantime, few Muslims, Marxist liberals, non-dispensational Christians are calling for the release of Naama and the other Jewish hostages. Think about that. These people hate and despise Jews and Israel so much, they don't care about those hostages. They don't mention them. Every time they bring up Israel and lie about it being a genocide over there, They never bring up, I say never with the qualifier. Of course, there's always an exception that proves the rule. But I rarely ever hear them bring up those poor hostages. They rarely mention, oh, by the way, we understand that if they would release those hostages, the brutality of the war would come to an end. Israel would still be hunting Hamas, but the brutality would come to an end. And right now, it's just war. And of course, go back and listen to our previous current events updates if you haven't heard them, because we've dealt with all the facts about the lie about this being a genocide. The facts about civilians killed during times of war. The fact that there's way less civilians dying in this war than there are typically in most wars. And then there's the claims about, quote, innocent civilians in Gaza. Continues to be exposed as a lie. This was an old report I just want to remind you of. Children as young as 10 took part in the massacre. Aaron Smolenski, a potato farmer, watched Gazan children go house to house in his kibbutz on October 7th. The boys laughed as gunmen shot or dragged away Israeli families. And that story is told over and over and over. It wasn't a military thing, it was an all out, you talk about genocide, that's what that was. It was an example of what Hamas would do to the Jews if the Jews weren't able to defend themselves. If Israel put down their arms tomorrow, well they put it this way, if the Muslims put down their arms tomorrow, there'd be peace. If the Jews put down their arms tomorrow, the Jews would cease to exist. That's the difference. Many thousands of civilian apartments and houses were prepared in advance, this was found out in March, with weapons from light arms to anti-tank missiles in the houses of the civilians. Hamas operatives dressed as civilians enter these homes and fire at Israeli forces. using these pre-stored weapons. So they can walk in, they're not armed, but then they find the weapon inside and start shooting at the IDF. The IDF kills them and they're counted as civilians. It's a lie. Hamas built strategic and long combat tunnels under crowded urban areas. IDF has shown images of many of these tunnels. Explosives required to destroy the tunnels collapses many of the buildings. And so they're blowing up the tunnels, and then the tunnels are filled with all these weapons, and then that causes a lot of the collapse that then our news media shows you and says, look at what Israel's doing to Gaza. What's happening is because of Hamas stockpiling weapons and causing these buildings to come down. That's the facts. Important buildings constructed over the years were planned and advanced. They have found original construction drawings that have tunnels and shafts underneath, including new wings at Shifa Hospital, Indonesian Hospital, and UNRWA headquarters. They were built for the purpose they're being used now by Hamas. A core Hamas strategy is to bury explosives under roads and on walls of houses on both sides of the street. to hit oncoming IDF forces. The D9 bulldozer is the main IDF counterweapon, but of course this causes heavy destruction to roads and buildings. They take this big thing and they bulldoze it and they come in and they blow things up and what's it do? It blows the roads up and the building. Who put the explosives there? Hamas. And so on and on it goes. Finally, the IDF already knows that among the best places to look for tunnels, weapons, and rocket storage and launch sites are schools and mosques. Many mosques have therefore been damaged or destroyed. Hamas bet wrong that these would gain permanent immunity. Amen. You're fighting somebody and you find out that they're using their churches, we'll say, not even mosques. Let's say you go into a country and they're using their churches to hide military supplies and arms, weapons, missiles, and so forth, you blow it up. Bye-bye church building. Islamic Hamas is what they ought to be calling Hamas. Hamas is doing what Mohammed did. Islamic Hamas hates Jews more than they love their own people. I sell t-shirts. We stand with Israel. Amen? Number two, just the Bible says in the last days shall come a great falling away. Jesus said when the Son of Man returns shall he find faith? Well, this place called Fuller Theological Seminary. How many of you know Fuller Theological Seminary? You may not really be familiar with it right now, but if you went back to the time when I got saved 30, 40 years ago, I was saved 30 years ago, but going back to my childhood, Fuller Seminary was the premier or one of the premier evangelical schools. If you've heard of Wheaton, Moody, Fuller. Those were the three big ones back then. It's gone. Fuller Theological Seminary is an interdenominational evangelical seminary nestled in Pasadena, California. That tells you one of the reasons. Founded in 1947 by Charles Fuller, a great evangelist. But Charles Fuller made the mistake that a lot of other preachers did. Instead of passing his ministry off to someone who's called of God, he passed it off to his biological son. And his biological son was an apostate to begin with. So the school was doomed from the beginning. He immediately started bringing in bad blood into that school. It says they have a pretty standard statement of faith, though, in order to be considered evangelical. That's what they began with. But as it says, they try to navigate between neo-orthodoxy and theological liberalism. That's the left in religion. In actuality, however, liberals long ago captured Fuller. That was my point. It has become a cauldron of progressive theology. But parents have been sending their kids off to that school thinking they're going to get a good Christian education and they wonder why their kids become minds full of mush and go off into apostasy or totally renounce Christianity. That's why. And it's also a cauldron of bad beliefs about the Bible, despite its lofty claims to the contrary. Now, it says here, if you want to lose your faith, Fuller is a great place to be. Here's the original statement on sex and marriage. Fuller Theological Seminary believes that sexual union must be reserved for marriage, which is the covenant between one man and one woman, and that sexual abstinence is required for the unmarried. Amen? Okay. This is the new statement that they're considering. The only reason it's been held up is because it came out publicly. While fostering diverse thought on the inspiration of scriptures, there's the problem, and various social remedies. Fuller recently proposed revisions to his code of conduct. OK, this isn't the statement. This is the statement about the statement. I've got to clarify. These changes, if implemented, would ensure that students are not expelled for engaging in same-sex activity. A step, they say, is toward creating a more welcoming environment for LGBTQ students. See, if you're a true Christian school, here's your welcoming environment to everyone. Repent. believe the gospel, then come to a Christian school. Same thing's true for the local church. Local churches are more concerned, most local churches, I'd say probably 90% of them today. That includes fundamental churches. They're more concerned with numbers of people and sizes of offerings than they are standing and being faithful to God. So they say, come as you are, stay as you are, as long as you put money in the offering plate. What it's supposed to be is repent, believe the gospel, then you're already in the body of Christ, so you're welcome in the local church gathering. All the local churches supposed to be are gatherings of people who are in the body of Christ. And you gather in a locality so that you can get there back and forth in a reasonable amount of time. That's what the local church is. That's not what most local churches are today. So here's the proposed new statement. Quote, there are thoughtful Christians in churches that have different interpretations of allowable sexual activity. Really. Not if they're really Christians. Not if they're true churches. Therefore, we expect all members of this global evangelical and ecumenical seminary student and learner community to live with integrity consistent to the Christian communities to which they belong. What it means is if you're a United Methodist, you're a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Churches of America. If you're a member of the Presbyterian Church USA, anything goes. Come on to our school and live it up. As long as you're true to, what's it say there? Consistent to the Christian community to which you belong. All those denominations have basically no real sexual morals. They're against rape. I mean, as far as consensual sex, the sky's the limit. And that's what's happening. And here's how it happened. Abandoned the King James Version. Charles Fuller, the evangelist, used the King James Bible. The school he founded and handed off to his apostate son threw it out. They abandoned the King James Bible. What did they do? They rejected the authority. Now it's whatever you want to believe. It doesn't matter. Pick your version. Pick your text. Whatever. And then you embrace error and apostasy. That's the way it goes, and it's been repeated thousands of times in colleges and seminaries. Tens of thousands of times, probably into the hundreds of thousands of times in churches, all around the world especially, where they throw the King James out or the equivalent text in that foreign language. They throw out the authority of scripture when they do that. And then it's just a matter of time before you totally have gone into error and apostasy. Amen. So be informed and pray accordingly. All right, well, we're in Acts 17, verses 16 through 18. And we're continuing our study of Acts 17, traveling to Athens. where he saw the city wholly given to idolatry, as we mentioned singing our first hymn. So let's read those verses, 16 through 18. I'll have you read the even with me. So jump right in there with verse 16. Now, while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews and with the devout persons and in the market daily with them that met with him. Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him. And some said, what will this babbler say? Others some, he seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods, because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection. Amen? Now, whether you realize or not, we said a mouthful there, reading those three verses. Paul has come down from Thessalonica to Athens, and now he's going to basically size up the situation. It doesn't say anything about him taking a day off. It doesn't say anything about him taking a sabbatical or anything like that. He just gets to town, he looks around, he confronts and exhorts the Athenians. Verse 16 was his assessment, verse 17 is his disputation, and verse 18 is his exhortation. This is a great little outline for all of us. Anywhere we go, when we're able to look around, see what's going on, able to confront somebody and present the gospel, Paul goes from one mess to another. How many of you feel like you do that? And so we ought to be able to identify with Paul here in verse 16 with his assessment. It says, now while Paul waited for them at Athens. Athens, we have in Athens, Ohio. This is not Athens, Ohio. Greece is the word. Some of you get that. And on the map, that's kind of from the zoomed out view there, and we zoom it in, you see Thessalonica's a good ways up. And you come down to the more familiar part of Greece that looks like a hand sticking out in the Mediterranean. You ever notice that? Kind of looks like a hand sticking out of there. at the bottom, and if you were to walk that, according to the maps that I looked at, it'd take you about four days at a brisk walk. So it'd take me a week. But even driving, it's a five hour, 20 minute drive, unless you take the bus, six hours and six minutes. I guess they make several stops. But this is a modern look at it if you're driving it. It's a straight shot south. You know, I think that's close to what it's like if you were to drive from Cleveland to where I grew up. It's almost, because you hit south of Columbus, it's not an interstate, so it slows you down a little bit and go through a few bottlenecked towns. So anyway, that gives you an idea of the traveling that has taken place here. And it says, his spirit, referring to Paul, his spirit stirred in him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. Now, I don't know about you, but current events, almost everything we talk about, I feel a stirring. But it's even more so when it's something that is happening to you in your life. Some of you never get out, but some of you who do get out once in a while and face the world, you know what I'm talking about. We have to sit back and think about what we're facing and not allow the flesh to take over. It's like the other day we were driving and as I'm going straight, the car behind me turns and they're flipping us off and screaming at us. And I told Jenny, I said, yeah, there's the one yelling at us. And she didn't get as good a look or hear what they were saying or anything. I couldn't hear what they were saying, because I had my radio up. But I could see the number. They weren't telling me I'm number one. But they were using one finger. I'll just let you figure that out. And you want to just turn around and, yeah, where am I? But why were they upset? Because they had read the bumper stickers. We drive a billboard. And we turned our fit into a billboard. And so people read that. And it upsets people. But it's amazing that the one thing I know upsets them more than anything is the taking back the rainbow sticker. And so what I've learned is when I see that, to immediately have the right view of it. And that is, all right. You got to somebody. I mean, we're not just there to tick people off and make them mad, but how many of you know that's how things usually start? I know when I was living in sin and rebellion, I started angry. People confronted me, wanted to talk to me about Jesus and repenting of my sin and all that, and I'd get angry. That's how it started. Well, thank God they did or I might not be here right now. If you think, we're going to come back to this, but if you think that being a good Christian means you never make anybody mad, you got it all wrong. That certainly isn't being Christ-like. Jesus ticked them off and they killed Him. Amen? One of the worst things, if I hear anybody say this at my funeral, I'm going to get up. I never knew Him to say a harsh word. First of all, I'm not being cremated, and I'll be embalmed, but I'll find a way. And I'll say, you lie. I never knew him to have an enemy. What a terrible thing to say about somebody. I mean, you ought to have enemies. If you're living a spirit-filled life and taking a stand for what's right, you will have enemies. I'm not saying you call them enemy or you say they're enemy because you may not even feel that way about them, but being honest, you know they don't like you. They hate you. If they could, they'd turn you into the Gestapo. I thought Johnny said they'd be an immediate uproar of laughter. Now, contrary to my conversation with Jenny, I'll go ahead and put her out on front street here, that Jenny Albaugh, we were talking Wednesday. But, you know, she said, you know, I've kind of got an image of being like the bear or whatever. I'm like, you know what, that's only someone who's super sensitive would feel that way about me. I'm not, you know, I'm just being honest with you. I know there are so many times I just stand there. So many times I don't say anything. So if people think I'm like this, you know, they don't realize how often I'm just standing here saying. But, you know, people get that idea because of the world we live in. Nobody's standing for anything. So you got the guy who does take a stand and suddenly he gets that reputation. I'll take it, but the honesty, you know, honest thing, I know that, well, what I said to her, I said, go back when I was a kid, the preachers would have thought I was a softballer. I'm here to tell you. And anyway, we get stirred up. We ought to get stirred up. when we see the city, the whole stinking country being given over wholly to Sodom during the month of June, it stirs me up. I have deleted, unsubscribed, canceled, sent messages. I'm not going to stop all month long every time I see that wicked six bow that they put out there and talking about pride. I'm not going to stop. Everybody in this room, you should be telling them when you see that, that's wicked. I'm not coming in your store until you take that garbage down. I'm not responding to your sale ads in my email until you stop sending them out with the symbols of Sodom. Well, you think any town that has a federal building, you're going to see this as long as senile Sodomite Joe is the president. And you go through Chillicothe, like Mayberry, but the federal buildings all have the Sodomite flag right there in Chillicothe. This is how, if you wanna be like Jesus, this isn't even in probably the new versions, I don't even know, but they totally ignore this verse in most churches. Mark 3, five, and when he, referring to Jesus, had looked around about on them with what? Anger. We've told you before, the new versions change the Bible many times, and one of the things they change is when it says, Jesus says, if any man is angry with his brother without a cause, The New Versions take out without a cause and say if any man is angry with his brother, he's in danger of hell. Well then Jesus would be in danger of hell. But the reason why the New Versions are garbage and you should stick to your King James Bible is because Jesus was angry for a reason with a cause. And so he was being greed for the hardness of their hearts and so forth. Go back and read that in context. But if you're not sick, disgusted, and angry today, you're in a spiritual coma. If the world you're living in, you feel comfortable in it, repent. Get down on your knees and say, God, help me to see the world the way Jesus saw it. Help me to see the world through biblical eyes. As J. Vernon McGee used to say, put your Bible goggles on. And that's how you look at the world. But Paul speaks up. And that's his disputation, verse 17. It says, therefore disputed he. Now again, just like with the word anger, the Laodicean effeminate churches today actually teach that it's wrong to argue or debate. He challenged, contradicted, and argued. That's how that word dispute is defined. One example is from Noah Webster's dictionary from 1828. Dispute And I'll go to the number one definition below. To contend in argument. To reason or argue in opposition. To debate. I like this. To altercate. That's a good one. And to dispute violently is to wrangle. Violently meaning with a lot of, you know, not violently in the sense of attacking someone physically. And so on and on that goes, but that's what the word dispute means. That's what Paul did.