Does it really matter if a person is a Roman Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, or Presbyterian as long as they believe that Jesus is the Christ, born of a virgin, died, rose from the dead, and is now sitting at the right hand of God as our Savior?
Join our engaging session where we tackle various theological and ethical dilemmas with insights drawn from scripture. From exploring the much-debated topic of judging who will enter heaven to interpreting the significance of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, our dialogue is enlightening. Furthermore, the ethical implications of end-of-life decisions and the role of personal choice and family consent are critically examined, offering a thoughtful perspective on contemporary issues faced by believers in daily life.
If there was a man in your church who had the qualifications of a deacon but was divorced, could he still be a deacon? What if he was divorced and remarried? Well, stay with us to find out what the Bible has to say about this issue. How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in God. This is Steve Schwetz, and I welcome you to another edition of the Question and Answer program with our Bible teacher, Dr. J. Vernon McGee. I hope that you’ll be able to pull up a chair as we listen to his answers to the questions of his many listeners. This program is a ministry of the Through the Bible Radio Network. Our first question comes to us from a listener in Shawnee Mission, Kansas. He writes, Does it really matter if a person is a Roman Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, or Presbyterian as long as they believe that Jesus is the Christ, born of a virgin, died, rose from the dead, and is now sitting at the right hand of God the Father as our Savior?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, may I say to you that when you mention some of these here, Very frankly, today, even some of the denominations would not accept all of this. So the label that is on you really hasn’t anything in the world to do with it. You will not be in heaven as a Methodist or a Baptist or a Catholic or a Church of Christ or what have you, or an independent. You’ll be there because you’ve trusted Christ as your Savior. And that’s the important thing. Labels are of no value. That’s like an old preacher, a young couple came to him and said, we’re moving our membership to another church. They have a lot of activity there. They have a basketball team and they have a volleyball team and they have banquets and we want to go there. So we’d like to have our membership move. And he thought for a moment and he said, well, I don’t think it will hurt to change a label on an empty bottle. The label that’s on you, friends, doesn’t amount to a row of pins. Doesn’t matter whether you’re saved or not. The important thing is, have you trusted Christ as your Savior? Now, when you’ve done that, I believe you’ll seek out a church that believes as you believe. And I think it’s important to be in a church that believes as you believe. And I’m sure you can find one. So that the label is certainly not the important thing at all.
SPEAKER 01 :
Now here’s a question from a listener in Wisconsin. It says, In view of the many passages in Scripture that speak against judging others, does a church or a pastor have the right to judge who will go to heaven and who will go to hell? It seems to me that we should leave the issue for God to judge. What do you think?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I’m not quite clear really what you’re asking for because I think it’s quite obvious that All of us have opinions. Maybe you wouldn’t want to call it judging, or maybe you would call it judging. Those that are around us that we know, I hear it constantly. I hear a statement like this, oh, so-and-so is a real, genuine Christian. And I hear somebody else say, well, there’s some question about that party. I don’t think he shows any evidence of being a born-again Christian. Well, that is something that I think most of us are doing constantly. We do pass judgment on our friends, and we are concerned about those that we are not sure about, so that the way that you’ve asked the question, if you mean that there are some people who are a minister, you say a church or a minister makes a decision, I never heard of that before, but if they’ve got a list of those that are going to heaven and a list that are going to hell, well, that, to my judgment, is carrying it a little too far. To begin with, I don’t think we know. Then if we think we do know, we have no right to make a judgment. And certainly a person is in the hands of God and not in our hands. And that’s a true, especially those that have lived their lives. Now, I have heard people say concerning someone that is dead, pass a judgment on them. Well, after they’re dead, it’s for sure they passed out of our hands and we no longer can pass judgment on them because it’s no longer in our purview at all. So that I’m not quite clear what you’re getting at here. If there are churches and ministers that are making up lists, two different lists, I would say that’s definitely wrong. But if we’re in our everyday life where we live and meeting people, going in and out among the children of man, why, we form an opinion, but I don’t think we’re sitting in or attempting to come to any final decision. We just wonder in our own minds and express an opinion, and I don’t think the average person I hear that speaks like that They’re not attempting to form a judgment in the sense that what they say is QED, that it is final, and that that’s the way that it’s got to be. If they are, of course, they’re sitting in the place of God.
SPEAKER 01 :
We come now to a question from a listener in Venice, Florida. It says, in Revelation 10 verse 11, John is told that he will prophesy again. I looked up the word prophecy and it means speaking. Would you please explain how John is going to preach or speak again to kings and nations when he’s on the island of Patmos? Am I correct to assume that one of the witnesses in Revelation 11 could be John, since God told him he will preach to many nations?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I see what you’re getting at, but And this, as far as I’m concerned, I knew. I never heard anyone suggest that one of the witnesses might be John. And I personally think that is entirely out of the question here. It’s true John was on the Isle of Patmos, but he will speak through the word of God to kings and nations. And he certainly has done that in his gospels. in the epistles and in the book of Revelation. Now, you want the corollary to that. In Hebrews 11, 3, it says concerning Abel, “…he being dead, yet speaketh.” So that in the time of the writer of Hebrews, here Abel was speaking. But how was he speaking? He was speaking in the Old Testament. And he speaks today. How does he speak in the Old Testament? How does John speak today in the New Testament? The record is quite clear, the books that he wrote. And so he speaks today. That’s not out of line at all.
SPEAKER 01 :
Our next question comes to us from a listener in McBain, Maryland. She writes, Revelation 6 verses 9 through 11 mention the souls of the slain saints who were under the altar. Will these saints be at the marriage supper of the Lamb with the church? Could you also explain when the marriage supper takes place?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, they’re going to be there, but not just like the church. The church is not a guest. The church is the bride at the marriage supper. Now, it is now the position of many of us that the marriage of the Lamb that John mentions in Revelation, the last part of Revelation, that that takes place in heaven. but that the marriage supper takes place down on this earth where many guests are invited. There will be not only the tribulation saints, but there will be the Old Testament saints. And we see that given to us in the 25th of Matthew, the first parable that’s given of the five wives and five foolish. And these five wives were waiting for the coming of the bridegroom and the bride, that is, for the Lord Jesus and the church to come to the earth. And then there’s to be the marriage supper. And we’re told that five of these are are going to be present at the marriage supper. I’m sure the tribulation saints will be there. John the Baptist said he would be there. He says, he that hath the Bride is the bridegroom, but John said he was just a friend of the bridegroom, and he was going to be there and rejoice. So we have that understanding of what is meant there. And then you ask, when does the marriage supper take place? Well, I think that during the great tribulation period, there’s great rejoicing in heaven with a church that has just come up. The marriage has taken place, rewards have been given, and now they come to the earth when Christ comes to establish his kingdom here upon the earth. Then the marriage supper takes place, and I would say that it takes place at the end of the great tribulation period and at the beginning of the millennial kingdom here upon this earth. That is the belief now of a great many of us. We, I think, are pretty much in agreement relative to these details, but we could miss some of the details, that’s for sure.
SPEAKER 01 :
Here’s a question from a listener in Fresno, California, who writes, Do you believe that a person should be allowed to die who is believed to have little or no hope of recovery? I’m thinking of an elderly man who was considered to be in a vegetative state.
SPEAKER 02 :
I believe that when a person becomes a living vegetable, that the relatives ought to be ready and willing to make a statement whether they would want him maintained in life. And it’s all done by an artificial means, you see, at that stage. And I would say that it would be just the withdrawal of medicines that are keeping them alive in that state. And those medicines are artificial, they’re not a cure, and they maintain that. There are others that are plugged into a machine. I would not want to live as a vegetable at all. I would not consider that a kindness on the part of my loved ones to just maintain life like that because that’s not living at all. And I think that when a person comes to that state, then the relatives ought to make a decision. And then if a person in his right mind has reached a place where he’s incurable and cannot recover, but a machine is keeping him alive. I think he’s the one to make the decision of whether he’s to go on with that, recognizing that there’ll be no cure at all. I think that would have to be a decision for him to make. I don’t think that’s a decision for doctors to make. I don’t think it’s a decision for nurses to make or hospitals to make or for a judge to make. I think that it has to be entirely in the hands The individual, if they’re able to make it, and if they become a vegetable, it’d have to be the relatives make the decision.
SPEAKER 01 :
Here’s a question from a listener in Louisville, Kentucky, who asks, I have a complaint about some of the other radio and television ministries. It seems to me that as soon as they get your name on their mailing list, they shower you with requests for money to maintain their broadcasting. Now, I don’t have this difficulty with Through the Bible, so I’m asking for your thoughts on my complaints.
SPEAKER 02 :
I thoroughly agree with you on that. I find that I’m on the mailing list of certain Christian organizations. I never ask to be on the list. No one asks that my name be put on. They just got my name from some mailing list that they bought or they exchanged theirs for someone else. I understand a great deal of that is being done today and that I get literature about work I know practically nothing about them. Some of them I know absolutely nothing about. I feel like it’s a waste of money to send me the literature. I get some colored magazines that are very expensive. I know that because we’ve investigated whether we should issue a magazine, but we never sent it to anybody that didn’t request it. But we decided not to go that route because of the fabulous expense that you incur in publishing literature like that. So we’ve steered away from it when I’ve been out of town for a week or maybe sometimes a month. And I come back, my secretary has it in a box. And I take it home and I sit down with a wastebasket and I dump it. I have sometimes gone through that second-class mail, junk mail, and put every last piece of it in the wastebasket. And what a waste of money it is. I estimated the other day that the literature I had would cost you around $50 just to publish it today. That is, publish an amount of it and me get just one piece of it. Why, how very expensive that is. And I consider that today a waste of the Lord’s money, and it’s an evidence that promotion is being used and trying to reach people that apparently are givers because they’ve given to some program and they get your name from that program. I know that one organization, and I support that organization, I believe in it. It’s a missionary organization. I’ve been to their field. I know what they’re doing. But they’ve made the mistake of trading their mailing list with another organization. I think it’s entirely wrong. And I found myself on the mailing list of this other organization that I know nothing about. And I don’t want to know anything about it because I’ve got all I can handle. And I’m sure that’s a condition of most of you folks. So I must say it’s, to me, junk mail. Now, we’ve attempted to avoid that by, you have to get on our mailing list because we just don’t mail out just to be mailing out things. And we protect our mailing list. You can’t get our mailing list. So we attempt to maintain that policy, and we’ve followed it down through the years. Now, this party says that they support their church. Well, that ought to come number one for you. And if you’re in the kind of a church you can’t support because they are not doing a work for God today, or they don’t believe the Word of God, then you ought to get in a church that you can support, because you ought to support your church. Now, this party goes on to say that they give just a certain limited amount. to their work and also they give a limited amount to a certain radio programs in the view of the fact they didn’t send any in this letter, I’m sure they don’t support us, which is perfectly all right. Then the question this party has, do you think I’m too critical? No, I don’t think you are. I thoroughly agree with you and that’s what I’ve been trying to say. Do you agree with their methods? No, I absolutely do not. If I did, we’d be practicing them, and we do not practice them at all.
SPEAKER 01 :
Let me take a moment and recap for you the mailing list policy for Through the Bible. No person is added to our mailing list unless they personally request to receive our mailings, and no person on our mailing list will receive requests for financial support. Finally, our mailing list is for our use only, so information is never sold or given away to any other person or organization. Now, let’s move on to our next question. It comes to us from a listener in Roanoke, Virginia, and they write, Would you allow an innocent party in a divorce to serve as a deacon or deaconess?
SPEAKER 02 :
May I say to you that a great deal would be determined by the rules and the policy of the church. Now, if you’re asking me what I would do, I would say that if the innocent party in a divorce, I would allow him to serve as a deacon and her to serve as a deaconess. I would not use that because if before they were saved, they got married and got divorced, why, God has forgiven them if they are now a believer. And if they’d committed murder, I wouldn’t keep a murder from becoming a leader in the church. Now, the other side of the coin is this. Certain churches have certain policies. And I would not go against the policy of the church. If you’re in a church and the policy of the church is under no circumstances to let a divorced person serve as deacon, I would not make an issue of it because there’s no reason to try to cause turmoil. That is on a certain person. It would be embarrassing for that individual, probably end up by that individual having to leave the church. Now, I had that happen in the church that I served. It was the policy. And I tried to change the policy while we were considering this individual. I wished that we would have gotten by that situation and then brought it up while tempers were down. people could think normally and see what the Word of God really had to say, but I didn’t do that, and so as a result, why this party did have to leave the church, or didn’t have to, but they felt embarrassed by it that they’d been turned down. Now this party asks, says, could you give scripture references to back up your opinion? Let me turn your question around, and can you give any scripture that would contradict what I’ve said. That’s the important thing. I don’t think that you’ve got a verse in Scripture that says the innocent party in a divorce can serve as a deacon or cannot serve as a deacon. And so apparently this viewpoint has come down through the years because there was a time when divorce was not permitted on any grounds whatsoever, you know. So I think that today we have a better understanding of the Scripture at this particular juncture that when it was all based at one time, man should be a husband of one wife. Well, a great many have used that. Well, the situation under which Paul gave that was that several men had several wives. One man may have two or three of them, you see, and the others would have maybe even more. And Paul is saying that a deacon should not have but one wife. So I think that that scripture has been pretty well straightened out. And then Paul speaks of the innocent one in a divorce in the seventh chapter of 1 Corinthians. And I think it’s very clear. that if the unbeliever does not want to stay with the believer, they can go and the believer is not bound at all. So if the innocent party in a divorce, and I would say that would be the scripture that would cover it. Now, I do not think there’s any scripture that contradicts that.
SPEAKER 01 :
A second query from the same listener brings us to our final question for today. He writes, would you allow an innocent party that has remarried that had been divorced to serve as a deacon or deaconess?
SPEAKER 02 :
Of course I would, because one follows from the other, that the purpose of getting a divorce is to remarry. And that’s the reason that, of Christians, that I generally, if there’s any hope at all of salvaging the marriage, I ask them not to get a divorce, but just a separation. and not a divorce because there may be a way of healing that. And a divorce means that a person wants to be remarried or can be remarried. And that’s the only grounds that would be for a divorce would be to permit the other one. I remember I tried to get a lady in the church I last served to not get a divorce but separation. because she said to me that I do not want to marry, I just want to raise my boys and all that sort of thing. She put up quite a pitiful tale and so I told her I thought then if that’s the way she felt and for the sake of the inheritance and legal matters that She wanted the divorce, and that is the reason. But that wasn’t the reason. She wanted to get married again. And I always felt that she was wrong in that divorce, by the way. And probably she’d been wrong in the separation because she misrepresented things. The reason I tell that is because There are so many angles to this question today. And as I said, there’s no verses of Scripture that just put it down just like you were asking for. There are no verses quite like that. Thou shalt not remarry if you have been divorced. It’s not quite like that. The Lord Jesus made it very clear that there was a ground for divorce. And did Paul say that desertion would be one for a child of God? I think that that’s probably what he’s saying. But you need to know all the circumstances. There’s so many angles to this. And I would suggest to this party that you consult some Bible teacher that is acquainted with the circumstances there and could give you, I think, a much more definite answer than I could. Mine is broad, I think, and all comprehensive. I don’t mind facing up to it, but the point is you need specific advice for a specific case. I have a notion the way you ask it that it’s been the policy of that church not to follow this. And if that is true, you would not want to make an issue on an individual. Wait later on and try to get the policy changed. When it hinges on an individual, you embarrass the individual and cause deep and hurt feelings.
SPEAKER 01 :
If you’d like to know more about the issue of divorce, you may want to consider getting Dr. McGee’s booklet, When Divorce is Scriptural and Marriage is Unscriptural. or his hardback book, Marriage and Divorce. Listen for ordering information in just a moment. Now, if God has blessed you through the question and answer program, we’d like to hear about it. The only way that we know that God is using this broadcast is when our listeners let us know. So we ask that you take a moment out of your day right now and send us a brief letter or postcard and let us know if you’re listening and enjoying this program. Now, for a deeper understanding of the word of God, and an increase in the growth of your faith, we’d encourage you to join us this week and every week on the Through the Bible radio program. We’ll continue Dr. McGee’s five-year journey through the whole word of God, book by book and chapter by chapter. If you’re serious about your study of the scriptures, then we’d also like to invite you to be placed on our mailing list for our notes and outlines. To order a CD of today’s program, request a resource catalog, purchase the materials I mentioned earlier, or to be added to our mailing list, simply call 1-800-65-BIBLE Monday through Thursday from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. Pacific Time. That number again is 1-800-652-4253. Or write to Questions and Answers. For those in the U.S., Box 7100. Pasadena, California, 91109. In Canada, Box 25325. London, Ontario, N6C 6B1. Many items can also be found in our online bookstore at ttb.org, where you can also sign up for our e-newsletter and download the PDF version of our notes and outlines. Now we pray that our God will answer all your questions and solve all your problems.
