Mentoring the New Believer - Lesson 9

We just finished Lesson 6. Let's move on to Lesson 7. We’re going to try to get 7, 8, and 9 done today. Lesson 6 was on God and trying to paint a vision of glory and splendor and helping them know how to respond to him. Lesson 7 is on Who Jesus Is. Lesson 7 is primarily concerned with the Incarnation and the Deity of Christ, that He was fully God and fully human, Is it really important for a new believer to believe in the full humanity of Christ? Is it really important? I mean, is it an essential, critical thing? And I had never really thought that it was in evangelism tracks and stuff like that. I'd never come across it until I was preaching. And in 1st John, 1st John 4, John is having to deal with what's called Docetism, right? People saying that Jesus only appeared to be human. He really wasn't fully human. And so, John says, ‘Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God, every spirit that acknowledges that…’ that's an odd translation. Every spirit. It's every person. (Class member: No, the Spirit.) Dr. Mounce: I'm just surprised to see that in the NIV. Anyway. Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. In other words, for John, it’s the affirmation of the full humanity of Christ that's required to identify if the person is really speaking by the Spirit of God.

 ‘But every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus…’in other words, that Jesus is come in the flesh… ‘is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is in the world.’ So John makes a belief in the full humanity of Christ an essential element of what it is to be a Christian. And when I saw that, I said, ‘okay, well, then that has to go into the new believer’s curriculum.’ And so, this chapter is about the full divinity of Christ and the full humanity of Christ. The main passage is Acts 2. We've already talked about that, Peter's Pentecost sermon. They tell the story of who Jesus is. He calls them to repent, to repent of the misunderstanding of who Jesus is, and to turn. Most of his sermon is built around that, because in the sermon, Jesus is called Lord. This is the story of Jesus that I gave you the book for, and this is what it looks like on the website so people can read it here. Gary read the whole book for us and put it up there. So again, if you have people that want to know who's Jesus, what's he all about, this is a great place to come. And whether they want text or audio, they'll be able to get it. So, Lesson 7 is on the full humanity and the full divinity of Christ. Most of this is self-explanatory, and I don't think I need to spend a whole lot of time on it. The thing that is difficult is, at least potentially difficult for a new believer, is to help them understand that they can't fully understand the Incarnation. And yet we believe in the Incarnation, fully God and fully human.

Because, you know, out there, people have all kinds of views of who Jesus is, right? The fact that he is fully God isn't one of the normal things that people have. He's a good man, he's a good prophet, that kind of stuff. I think the discussion needs to be with the new believer is, okay, even though it's a mystery, do you understand that we believe Jesus is fully God and fully human? My daughter called me the other day. She had started dating a guy. She got into a discussion with him that he wasn't convinced that Jesus was God, and she called up and said, ‘where are those verses again?’ It's helping finding one or two places that the Bible is very clear that Jesus is God is a really a good thing to make sure the new believer walks out with. Okay. Because that would be one of the questions he's going to get asked by his family. He goes back, he’s a convert, and they go, ‘now, what have you done and why have you done?’ ‘Well, I believe that Jesus is God.’ ‘Why would you believe that?’ The hard thing is that a lot of the statements that we use in theology to show that Jesus God are not the kinds of statements that is easy for a new believer to explain. For example, the Bible calls Jesus the Son of God, right? But, as I'll say in the sermon, when Jesus said he was the Son of God, the Jews just tried to kill him because he was claiming to be God. You know, we look at that passage, we go, ‘wait a minute, he's trying to be the Son of God, whatever that is.’ Muslims obviously think of Son of God differently than Christians do.

 But there was something about Jesus' claim of being the Son of God, which in his context equated to pure blasphemy, claiming to be God, and it was going to get killed for it. What's hard on the divinity statements, I think, in Scripture is that the writers are trying to leave room for the Trinity, and that's what's hard. You know, ‘Iand the father are one.’ What does that mean? They're not obviously exactly the same thing, right? Is there more to God than Jesus? Yes, there's the Father and there's the Holy Spirit. And so, the statements on the divinity of Christ, because of the Trinity, can be a little tricky. So I'm just saying find a verse or a passage or something that the new believer can really hang on to, so when he’s asked, ‘what do you believe about Jesus?’, he doesn’t have to go through this long, convoluted argument, but say, ‘well, the Bible says the Word was with God and the Word was God, and that's Jesus is God.’ So just give him a handle, something to hang on to. I think that's important. So anyway, that's really all that I had to add to this chapter is that it's because of what John says, we need to make sure that a new believers understand Jesus is fully God, fully human. And that's part of the minimum it takes to be a believer. You've got to believe in the full, in the Incarnation, okay? It can be, I mean, it's hard for us at times to explain it. So, I mean, put yourself in the shoes of a new believer, right? That's hard. As opposed to other chapters, I didn't have a whole lot to add at that point. Okay, so the chapter is getting a good grasp on who Jesus is, fully God, fully human.

 Chapter 8 is a little harder, and that is helping them understand what Jesus did. In other words, this is all about the Cross. We're picking up pieces from the first lesson on conversion. We talked about that. When they're retelling their conversion, we've got to make sure that the conversion’s real, that they knew enough to respond and they responded properly. And if someone says, you know, ‘I'm sorry for my sins,’ obviously we know there's no such thing as justification by sorrow. And, you know, someone has said back in Lesson 1, ‘well, I believe that Jesus died for my sins.’ This is the chapter where you kind of take that and expand on it and say, ‘do you really understand what happened?’ The problem is that there's no real analogy to it, and things that have no analogy are hard to explain, right? But what exactly happened on the Cross is Chapter 8. I use two basic images. I use the image of Jesus as the Lamb of God, and I used the Temple curtain being torn in two. I chose the Temple curtains because I think it's one of the coolest stories in the Bible. If you were raised outside the church, you probably won't have any idea even what the curtain is or what the Temple is. But you can explain Lamb of God. Of course, the old debate in translation circles is if you're translating for a culture that doesn't have lambs, or they're sacrificial animal is something else, what do you call Jesus? And I heard about one Wycliffe translator who translated ‘behold the Pig of God who takes away the sins of the world’, because their sacrificial animal in that culture was a pig. And I'm not sure I agree with that.

 But it's interesting. Most people, I think, you can help them understand the sacrificial system. So that's what happens in the lesson is I take a passage in Leviticus, and I walk through the process of what a sacrifice looked like. You brought the animal, you slit the throat, and the priests sprinkled the blood of the animal on you and on the altar. What I'm trying to do here is, I was raised...were you raised propositionally or were you raised story? Were you raised being told theological truths about the Bible or were you raised being told stories about the Bible that had theological points? (Class members respond unintelligibly). Dr. Mounce: Both stories? Yeah, I was raised more propositional. So, I'm having to learn the power of stories and telling them and stuff. And I just think as you tell the story, the Lamb of God, what you see is the horribleness of sin, and you see the mercy of God at accepting the death of an innocent in your place (so substitutionary atonement and the fact of forgiveness.) And so, as you describe even something as gruesome as the sacrifice out of Leviticus, you can tell the story and convey the image of what it is that means Christ died. Prepositions are hard things in a language. When you say that Jesus died for you…if you ask someone sitting in church 20 years and asked them to explain “for”, would they be able to do it and what would they say? So we get all this Christianese this stuff, I think. And at times we say, ‘if  Jesus died for me or Jesus died for my sins’, but we don't really know what that “for” means. I guess maybe this would be a good discussion to have with your mentors.

 And that is, what does it mean for Jesus to die “for” me? How would you explain it to the mentor? (Class member: In my place.) Dr. Mounce: Okay, in my place; that’s substitutionary atonement.  (Class member: Because of.) Dr. Mounce: Because of…it would be the appeasement of the wrath of God; propitiation. (Class member: In spite of.) Dr. Mounce: Yeah, while we are yet sinners, Christ died for us; the mercy of God. I mean, there's a lot wrapped up in “for”, isn't there? When you have these kinds of words, you got to kind of step back and say, ‘can you explain   what that word means and not use any Christian jargon?’ Because a new believer is not going to know it. I remember the first time I tried to preach a sermon and not use any Christianese. It was one of the worst sermons I ever preached because all that I was used to thinking was in terms of traditional church language. Since then, you know, I've developed ways of talking that I think a nonbeliever could understand. But I just think it's a really important thing. For example, I say, Christ stood in the Cross for me, what I could not do for myself. That's my phrase that I use for ‘Jesus died for my sins’. I have acted and I have become the kind of person that is separated from God. And the only way that I'm going to live in a relationship with him, the only way he's going to be my friend, is if something is done about all the bad things that I've done and the bad person that I become. I can't do anything about it. But what happened on the Cross is a bit of a mystery. But Jesus did for me on the Cross what I could not do for myself in giving me access to the Father.

 And I think we've all developed ways of explaining these things in terms that someone who wasn't raised in the church can hopefully understand. So the image of a Lamb of God is one way, I think, to do that.

The other thing that I do in this talk is I go into Communion because I was trying to find an image again that would really help someone understand the message of the Cross. And that's what Communion’s about, right? What do you all call it? (Class members: Communion, Lord’s Supper.) Dr. Mounce:  What I do in the sermon then, is I go through the story in Exodus of the plagues and the release and the celebration, and then I go, but 1400 years later, from the time of Moses to Jesus, and I emphasize what Jesus said, ‘This is my body.’ He's looking at the bread. ‘This cup is the New covenant in my blood.’ And I'm sure that Jesus emphasized the word “my” because the cup no longer represented what happened 1400 years earlier, or whatever the date of Moses is. It represents what Jesus is doing on the Cross. It's a wonderful time to have Communion, is that as you're explaining what happened on the Cross, watch it acted out in Communion, proclaiming the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ until he comes again. And the Eucharist or Communion becomes a really good symbol of helping people understand what it was. I think one of the coolest conversions I ever saw was in Communion. I mean, I know everyone's different on that, but we used to have…I used to tell people no sad faces. I think we kind of get these churchie sad faces during Communion. This is the most joyous time.

 I mean, no sad faces at Communion. The curtain has been torn in two and we have access to the Father, and we're celebrating that. So I used to tell people, no grimaces, no fake church, miserable…oh, Jesus died. And I said, this is the time of celebration. In fact, what we're going to do is that in the Exodus story, no one was alone, right? Remember the story. If your family couldn't eat the whole lamb, you had to go get your neighbors and get them together. Because this is a potluck. This is a community celebration. And so, we used to set up tables around the corporate worship center. And people would come, and I’d say, ‘do not come alone. Or if you are alone, get someone, pick up someone, come as a group. This is a community experience. It's not an individual experience. It's a time of celebrating what Christ has done for us. It's a time of joy and it's a time of victory.’ When the Jews left Egypt, they weren't sad, right? When the Passover happened, they weren't sad, they were joyous; they plundered the Egyptians; they were kicking their heels in joy. And that's what we should be doing in Communion, I think, as well.

So that's basically what's going on in Lesson 8, learning more about what Jesus did on the Cross. Again, we're getting into chapters that are a little more straightforward, and I don't have much to add beyond what I've said in the sermons. All right. Wayne's got two good chapters on this; Chapter 7 is on the actual Atonement. He talks about why it was necessary, why Jesus had to die, and he goes through it through a very, very long discussion on all the different theories of the Atonement.

 You know, there's been a lot of theories, the Christus Victor theory, and the Example theory. And a lot of them, it's really when you put them all together, is when you really have an accurate picture of what happened on the Cross. I told you last time that I had finished all my disagreements with Wayne, and I'm sorry; there was one more disagreement that I have, and it's why I'm not a Five Point Calvinist. So just to make sure you're aware of it; in Chapter 27, when he's talking about the Atonement, the last major section is on the extent of the Atonement. He's also, by the way, got an interesting discussion here on the Apostles Creed, on the phrase ‘he descended into Hell.’ Wayne holds to the position that that phrase was added to the Apostles Creed and that it never originally said ‘he descended into hell.’ And I think he's right. But that's in there. In this one, it’s page 594, but it’s point “d”, the extent of the Atonement. Wayne believes in what is historically been called Limited Atonement. Wayne prefers the phrase “particular redemption”, just like those other clarifications that we've had to make. This is nothing that a new believer is going to get into, but if you have your mentors using this book as a reference book, this topic might come up. I'm…explain a little differently than him. What the doctrine of Limited atonement or “particular redemption” says, and it has to do with timing, that’s the key point; that when Jesus died on the Cross, then that is when sins were forgiven. So your sins were forgiven not at conversion, but at the Cross. So the problem is, if Jesus died for the sins of the whole world and not everyone responds, becomes a Christian; then you got people going to Hell whose sins are forgiven.

That's what's behind all of this. Jesus died for the sins of the world. And if the sins were actually forgiven in 30 B.C. or whatever the date was, then you've got a problem is that if, in fact, all the sins of everyone on the world was forgiven, then you got people going to Hell whose sins have been forgiven, and you can't do that. So that's the motivation behind Limited Atonement. And the doctrine of Limited Atonement says that Jesus (Wayne doesn't say it this way; some of the older reformed systematics do), that Jesus only died for the elect. Because it's only the elect who are going to respond to the message of the gospel. So the only sins that were forgiven were the sins of the elect. Ergo, you have people go to Hell whose sins were not forgiven. It's a timing issue. I don't know how other people handle it, but there's Bill Mounce when he was eight. I don't believe my sins were forgiven, in actuality, here; I think they were made potential. The forgiveness was made available, and it was applied to me in conversion. Because there’s a timing issue, I can say, you know, Jesus Christ desires all people to be saved and come to knowledge of truth; that Jesus died for the sins of the whole world. I mean, I don't have any problem saying that because of this timing issue. But Wayne says, and traditional reformed theology says, the sins were all forgiven here, while they were applied to me back here (this is what Wayne will say) ...‘in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.’ So that's the main verse they’ll quote; forgiveness happens here. So he has this pretty long discussion of “particular redemption”, but it all has to do with timing.

 When were the sins actually forgiven? (Class member: The ticket was paid for at the Cross…cashed it in when he died.) Dr. Mounce: That's a good way to say it. I use the word of application. It was applied to me. Bruce Ware does most of the Systematic Theology in Biblical Training. And he's a Four Point Calvinist. This is where Bruce and Wayne are different. Just to be aware, this discussion is going on in there, and you may just want to tell your mentors that this is the last section, and it's just…you can skip it. It's not a big deal. But I just wanted you to be aware that was in there. We had a wonderful week of translation with the ESV, where this was one of my lead questions I came with, I told you about. I announced to Dr. Packer and Wayne that they had one week to convince me in Limited Atonement was biblical, not…you can't try to prove it with a theological system. You've got to prove it with the verses. And at the end of four lunches or five lunches, and it was very friendly to me, said, ‘you're right, it's not in the verse explicitly, the Bible explicitly, it's our theological system. We have to have it because of the system.’ And I go, ‘great, thanks. I don't believe it.’ (Class member: Who said that?) Dr. Mounce: Vern Poythress was one of the translators. It will be really important that your mentors have again, especially if you are in a church where there's a lot of Catholic influence, Anglican influence. Lutheran influence, that your mentors have a really clear awareness of what people are going to think about the Lord's Supper. If the person was raised at all in those circles, when they come to Communion in the church, it's going to be really weird.

 Have any of you gone to at least to observe mass in Catholic Church? Okay. It's really important to Lisa to have seen it and to experience it. And, you know, the wafer on the tongue and the holding up of the cup and why they do what they do. One of the odder experiences of my life was…this was very early on. I wasn't pastoring yet, but I was helping out in a church. And a couple that had been raised Catholic became Christian. There are Catholics who are Christian; in this particular person's case, he wasn't. And they became a Christian and they started attending our church. The pastor asked me to help with Communion that Sunday. So, we were up front, and the table was there, and we had sent the crackers out and had come back. And I was picking them up from the ushers or the deacons, and I went to put it on the table, and I wasn't looking what I was doing. And I hit the front of the table and dropped it all.  It went everywhere. The worship pastor was helping me, and he just buried his head. He did not know what to do. And all that I could think of was this couple that had been raised Catholic, and they were about ten rows back. I didn't even know if they had seen it because the snickering only went back about three or four rows. But Jesus, his body is all on the gym floor (and it was a gym floor). And so I had to give a two-minute quick discussion on our view of the Lord's Supper and why that wasn't Jesus on the floor. Everyone, about seven or eight rows back…’what’s he talking about?’ Because they hadn’t seen what I did, but it was because of these young converts that I've got to explain this because this would be overload for them.

 In Catholic they believe in transubstantiation, that it actually becomes a physical body and the physical blood of Jesus. If they’re Lutherans they believe in consubstantiation, which is Christ’s body is physically present in and among and under the elements. If they're raised in Baptistic circles, then it represents the body and blood of Christ, and that's not as big a problem. If they have no idea what's going on, then they really need to be instructed. I was in a Communion service once where I was…it was very, very uncomfortable because the pastor had had a conversion call. People had responded. Communion was next and he was all excited, as he should have been, about the new believers. And we just launched into the Lord's Supper and never once explained what it was. And he was making the point…what he meant to say was, ‘we don't care what denomination you are, that if you are a believer, you know, then you're a member of the church and you're welcome to join.’ What he didn't say was that if you're not a Christian, don't do this. The warning about eating and drinking judgment upon yourself. There probably were non-Christians that were participating who had no idea what they were doing. I just think it's a lot of different teachings culturally. Got to make sure that the new believers know what it is. Now, let me ask you this. When I was in Scotland, I had a friend, teaches at Wheaton now, actually saw his witness almost his whole life (Wheaton College in Illinois). He and his wife got one of the really… there are certain positions that the grad students all wanted. His particular one was he took care of one of the Baptist churches in Aberdeen.

 And it was really cool because it gave him a place to live and a stipend for a little bit of work. And so, for those of us that were living in the dorms and stuff… love to live in a church, or something like that. But anyway, he had a great position. And his wife, they had me over dinner once after church, and we were eating salad and she goes, ‘how do you like the croutons?’ I thought it was an odd question. I said, ‘very good, thank-you.’ And she said, ‘you probably should know where they come from.’ Okay. She said, ‘well, what we do is that we serve Communion here. We cut all the edges off the bread, and you get all these cubes, and we serve Communion. And then I take whatever's left over and I sprinkle seasoning on and put it outside and let it get a little stale, and we use it for croutons’; which I thought was pretty creative, but I was sitting there eating the body of Christ with iceberg lettuce and thousand island; seasoned body of Christ!  And how would you feel about that? Would you do that? It’s a little weird if we Baptists (assuming a lot of y'all are Baptists), if you make it too representative, it doesn't mean anything. And so somewhere there's an imbalance. Now, I had the same problem with my son because what we did at our church is that we get big loaves of bread that you had to rip. Why don't you serve white grape juice? You serve red grape juice because it's to remind you of the blood, right? So, we serve crackers, so they crunch to remind you of the death.

 The other thing that some people do, do you have…to tear it, which is to remind us of the dripping of his body, a physical killing of his body. But Hayden, when he was a little kid, I mean, almost a minute after church was done, he loved this bread and he was running from station to station, grabbing up the bread and chewing it, asking where the peanut butter was, because it tasted really good with peanut butter. And we finally said ‘we’ll buy you a couple of extra loaves every time we go shopping for Communion bread, and that's what you ingoing to have. So there's a balance in there, and I think, at least in my traditions, we've trivialized the symbolism so much that we can use the bread for croutons. Other traditions have made it a means of grace where God makes you holier, and it's the physical body, and you just got to know where the people are coming from. So you got to be able to explain the three positions, I think. (Class member: Any thoughts on some churches that dip the bread?) Dr. Mounce: Yeah, I don't care what they do as long as it's significant to the participant. When we laid out a table, there was bread, bread with cups, and then a large cup in the middle with a loaf, and you could either take it individually or you could dip it. Dipping is part of some church's traditions. I remember the first time I ever saw real alcohol use was in Scotland, and my brother had come over, and we were sitting in a high Anglican church; and the cup was going back and forth, and they were wiping it,  just cleaning it because everyone was…I'd never drunk from a common…

 I mean I really liked the symbolism of common cup. I mean, it was pretty powerful. (Class member: Why would they want to offer the alcoholic and the non-alcohol, the grape juice and the wine?) Dr. Mounce: Well, you offer the nonalcoholic for alcoholics.  You never, ever, ever insist that people drink alcohol because all it takes is a little Communion cup and you've got a real problem. So I think that's part of it. And, you know, many American traditions have viewed that alcohol is inherently evil, even though that's contrary to the Bible. (Class member: Right. My question is really more, why would they insist on using the alcohol?) Dr. Mounce: Because Jesus did. The wine in that day, you could not get drunk on their drinking-wine. There was just a very little bit of alcohol in it, enough to kill the stuff in the water. (Class member: …Jesus saved the best for last.) Dr. Mounce: That wasn't normal drinking. I'm talking about normal drinking. So, you know, the assumption was this was a Passover celebration. And as part of the Passover celebration, it probably was a stronger wine or a better wine or something like that. Yeah. In this day and age, you've got to be so careful with alcohol at any level, not only for the older people in the church that were taught that movies, cards, dice and alcohol will sentence as a mortal sin. It's more for alcoholics, I think, and that you just got to be so sensitive to that. When Jesus said, ’as often as you do this, do it in remembrance of me.’ What's “this”? Was he just breaking bread together, meeting. Think historically, think historically, what was going on? Passover.

 See, I'm inclined to believe that Communion should be once a year, which actually is a very, very old tradition in Scotland, one of the more conservative denominations. They don't have any instruments. I mean, they're pretty, boy, can they could really sing, though. I mean, four-part harmonies, as beautiful as I've ever heard. But Jesus says, ‘as often as you do this, you do it in remembrance of me.’ This is Passover. Now, the counterargument is that the church started celebrating Communion much more frequently, and there's no indication that they were wrong in doing so. So I don't think it's wrong to have it more often. But Passover was once a year. And what this Scottish denomination did, and many others have done, is that they make a really big deal out of it. And so Wednesday you start and you come to classes, and you start learning about Communion, and you start getting your heart right, and you get a ticket. Then you come back Thursday and then you come back Friday, you come back Saturday. So there's 3 to 4 nights where you're listening to sermons and praising and preparing to do Communion, and you're getting a ticket. Because on Sunday, when you actually partake on Communion, you have to present all the tickets because you have to show that your heart is ready to celebrate the Christian Passover. I really, really like that. I've been in churches where they do it every week, and my goodness. I mean, and how can it mean anything when you do it that fast? I'm not saying it's wrong to do that, but I remember our tradition was once the first Sunday of every month, which is probably what most people do. And I remember we missed a Sunday because it didn't match the content of the sermon, and I knew it would match the content of the next sermon.

 So we put it off and we heard from some people that that wasn't acceptable. And so we asked them why was it such a big deal? Why did it have to be done on the first Sunday of the month? And the first said, ‘well, that's when I purged my soul.’ I'm thinking, if your soul needs purging, shouldn't you do it now? Why are you waiting? I mean, it didn't make any sense to me. So other people do it once a quarter. Some people, I don't know if they still do, they do it once a year. I don't think you have to do it one way or the other. But and I never do this, but I thought it would be a really good idea if once a year you made a really, really big deal out of it. And I think that that might be kind of helpful. (Class member: In the Book of Acts, Chapter 2 is in speaking about taking the bread out of the four things they did. That's usually most of the people take their conclusion that Communion should be there.) Dr. Mounce: Yeah, we know the church celebrated Communion much more frequently, and that's why I'm saying I don't think it's wrong. But I do know when Jesus said, ‘do this in remembrance of me,’ it was Passover. And so he was saying, ‘don't celebrate Passover looking back 1400 years. Look at the Cross. That's what you're celebrating now.’ (Class member:  I purposely…unintelligible.) Dr. Mounce: Yeah. I can still remember a class, I was a Bible major in college, I can still remember the class where the teacher was explaining the Communions past, present and future. It really stuck in me. ‘As often as you do this, you are proclaiming the Lord's Death until he comes.’ So it's looking back at the death. It's the present proclamation, looking forward, anticipation to his return. It can be a meaningless ritual for our new believers if we're not really clear as to what it is. And we have to be aware of cultural baggage depending upon where they may have come from. But it can also be a very meaningful experience if they understand what it is. It's just not croutons, and peanut butter and jelly. There's something else going on. (Class member: Ravi Zacharias usually says the past, present and future. He says this is the one time you worship God past, present, future. And then he also says so one time you use all your senses. Smell. Taste. He does a really powerful description of how meaningful it is.) Dr. Mounce: I never thought about the senses. That's very good. Yeah. (Class member: That's what we have back in India. Most of the preachers brought that aspect of the past, present and future, and 5 senses.  That whole Eastern concept is involved in it.) Dr. Mounce: That's interesting. Are any of you familiar with African cultural myths and what happens in the continent? Not American African traditions, but African traditions. I'd be curious what… (Class member: They all vary...additional comments unintelligible) Dr. Mounce:

 I mean, I've never seen wine or poured or anything else as gold. I wonder if you put a die in it. it tastes terrible…yuck! So the encouragement is just make sure that the mentors know about the background. I don't go into this in this sermon. So it's something that you going to have to be aware of. Okay. All right. Let's take a break, and then we'll come back and get filled with the Holy Spirit.