Central Church - Who We Are

Question: : Is a person saved who believes in Jesus but they think that Muslims' worship the same God?

Answer: They could be. This is a question that has caused some confusion for a lot of people. Because the Muslims worship one God who created all, it seems that they must at least be thinking about the true God to some degree. Of course, because the true God has also revealed himself as a trinity, to a large degree they are missing out on aspects of who He is. If a person who professes to be a Christian can be helped to understand that we believe Jesus is God, as is the Father and Holy Spirit, and that Islam's God, Allah, denies this, it might help them realize that to a degree we are not equally informed about who God is, and to that degree the Muslims do not worship God as truly as we can.

I think, however, that it does not help us to reach Muslims if we make it our task to show them that they do not worship the same God. They do, they just do so inaccurately. We and they are better served by helping them to see how our lives have been changed by the grace of God and by challenging them to look at what their way of salvation leaves them with. They cannot have great confidence that they will be accepted by Allah if their salvation is dependent on good works and obedience. Loving them and showing them the genuineness of our lives in Christ is the first step to getting them to reconsider their theology.

Randall Johnson

Question: : Please advise if Sarah had sex with the king when her husband Abraham had her lie about being his sister the first time. I know this is a strange question, but it came up in our small group. I have always believed that because she honored her husband and obeyed him that God protected her. The other night it was pointed out that the king laid with her. I am trying to understand if she should have refused to lie for her husband out of obedience to God or was she supposed to obey her husband regardless of her convictions about obeying God. Thanks for looking into this for me.

Answer: There were two instances in which Abraham had Sarah lie and say she was his sister (a half truth) and not his wife, so that powerful men in the region Abraham was visiting would treat him favorably and not kill him in order to acquire Sarah as wife. In Genesis 12 Abraham and Sarah are in Egypt due to famine in Canaan and the Pharaoh takes Sarah as his wife. The King James Version says, "Why saidst thou, She [is] my sister? so I might have taken her to me to wife" (12:19), which suggests that he didn't actually take her as wife. But the Hebrew, as most modern versions reflect, is better translated as in the NIV, "so that I took her to be my wife." It does not say that Pharaoh lay with her, though that is a possibility.

Abraham handles things the same way while sojourning in the Negev of the Promised Land, Canaan, when he fears Abimelech (Genesis 20). But here it specifically says that God kept Abimelech from touching Sarah (v.6). Does this mean God did the same thing with Pharaoh? If we honor those in authority over us and obey them, will God see to it that we are not harmed? If Sarah had refused to obey Abraham because he was asking her to do something against God's revealed will, would God have protected her from her husband or from her husband being killed and then being taken as the Pharaoh's or Abimelech's wife?

When I think of other situations in which people obeyed God instead of the human authority in their lives, it did not always result in protection from harm. When Peter and John appeared before the Jewish court, the Sanhedrin, they were told to stop preaching in Jesus' name (Acts 4). When they refused they were beaten. Later James, the son of Zebedee, one of the original 12 apostles, was killed and Peter was imprisoned (Acts 12). I'm reminded of Jesus' saying in Matthew 10:28, "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul." I think our perspective should be that of the friends of Daniel who were commanded to bow and worship Nebuchadnezzar's image and refused. They said, "If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O King, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up" (Daniel 3:17,18).

Did Sarah have sex with Pharaoh against her will because of obedience to her husband Abraham? The text is not clear. I do not think it would have been something she could even have conceived of doing in that culture to disobey her husband in this matter. But perhaps she should have told him no. Even so, there doesn't seem to be any promise that if we disobey our earthly authority in order to obey God, that God will protect us from the consequences of it. He did protect Daniel's friends. He didn't protect the apostles. But He does protect our souls, the most important protection of all.

Randall Johnson

Question: : Why did Jesus' penalty for "sin" need to include physical and emotional pain - why not just spiritual separation from God?

Answer: First of all, I agree with you that Jesus' penalty payment had to include physical and emotional pain, or God would have found another way. The question is, why couldn't he have simply (is that possible?) have separated himself from Jesus spiritually without all the suffering of the cross?

I cannot imagine, actually, that Jesus could have experienced spiritual separation from the Father without at the same time experiencing physical and emotional pain. That is the definition of hell, to be separated from God and the resulting pain such separation causes.

But I think the other thing to consider is that if Jesus would only have experienced spiritual separation and there was no way to observe his suffering, we would not have had the assurance we need that God has fully taken on our pain, has been accustomed to pain all our existence, and embraced that pain in such a way that He redeemed the experience. We suffer so much exactly because we are made in God's image, but we sometimes think that He is somehow exempt from pain. The cross has forever put that myth to rest. We still cause God pain when we "grieve the Holy Spirit" (Ephesians 4:30). We can come to see that God is in pain when we go through physical and emotional pain ourselves.

Randall Johnson

Question: : A friend of mine asked me a question about frogs. She had been told that in the Bible frogs are considered evil spirits and from the devil. Is there any scripture in the Bible that supports that theory?

Answer: Frogs are mentioned in Exodus 8, Psalm 78:45 and Psalm 105:30 in regard to the plague of frogs that God sent on the Egyptians. In Revelation 16:13 John sees a vision of the dragon and the beast and the false prophet (Satan, the Antichrist and the Antichrist's prophet) spewing three unclean spirits out of their mouths in the form of frogs who create armies of the earth that Satan attempts to use to defeat the army of Christ from heaven.

In and of themselves, frogs are not evil spirits. They are part of God's variegated creation and serve a crucial role in the ecosystems where they live. However, humans have tended to distort their perspective of God and construed animals as having divine traits, even worshipping certain animals as representations of God. The Egyptians apparently viewed frogs as having divine power. "In the Egyptian pantheon," writes John Hannah in The Bible Knowledge Commentary of the Old Testament, "the goddess Heqet had the form of a woman with a frogs' head. From her nostrils, it was believed, came the breath of life that animated the bodies of those created by her husband, the great god Khnum, from the dust of the earth. Therefore frogs were not to be killed." God's order through Moses to cause the frogs to become a plague was another way of showing the Egyptians that He was the true God who had power over their gods.

The evil spirits in Revelation taking the form of frogs may hark back to this concept of frogs in Egypt being part of the plagues God sent on that nation. Here they look like frogs but are actually demons. This is all symbolic, it seems, of how Satan will attempt in the last days to defeat the kingdom of God through the use of human armies that these demons round up.

So, are frogs considered evil spirits in the Bible? No, but they can represent evil spirits in that they represent the plagues that came on the earth in times past. Those who seek to view frogs as evil spirits are in danger of succumbing to the same false notions of idolaters who wrongly twisted created beings into objects of worship or fear.

Randall Johnson

Question: : Why to innocent babies and young children suffer at no fault of their own when God could stop it?

Answer: In one sense there are no innocent people on earth. Because of Adam's disobedience and because he is/was our race's head and his decision determined our fate (of course, we would have chosen the same way), we are under the penalty of sin and the world has been subjected to futility (Romans 8:18) so that there is much suffering in the world. No one deserves to have a perfect life and yet God still chooses to bless the good and the bad (Matthew 5:43-48).

Still, that does not usually make us feel better when we see helpless children suffering through no fault of their own, that is, at the irresponsibility of others who should have been taking care of them. I do not know why God allows this. All I do know is that I trust that God is good, loving, righteous, and wise beyond all my abilities and that He can be trusted when He says that His plan is good. He has the ability to take what was a bad, perhaps even torturous experience and turn it into something powerful. It may not be in this life, however, and Romans 8:18 and 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 seem to suggest that the more we suffer here the more glory will be ours in the kingdom.

We do know from 2 Corinthians 1 that God wants to show us His comfort in our pain so that we can share it with others. The things we suffer as children are to be used to shape our ministry to others.

Randall Johnson

Question: : I am somewhat confused. I have some Christian friends who drink wine with their meals and they have told me that in John chapter two Jesus was at a wedding and they had run out of wine and Jesus turned water into wine. And also in 1Timothy 5:23 it was suggested to stop drinking only water and use a little wine for your stomach. Now I was saved and raised in a Baptist Church. We were always told to be teetotalers. Is drinking wine a sin unto the Lord? Who is right?

Answer: The Bible makes several ideas about alcohol very clear.

One, alcohol is not to be consumed until one is drunk. Paul told Timothy to drink a little wine instead of water for his stomach problems (1 Timothy 5:23), but he also said in Ephesians 5:18, "Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery." Proverbs 20:1 says, "Wine is a mocker and beer a brawler; whoever is led astray by them is not wise." Proverbs 23:29-35 gives a vivid description of the poor soul who is given to much wine. Not being given to drunkenness is a requirement for elders (pastors, 1 Timothy 3:3). Those who find themselves craving alcohol are under the control of something other than the Lord, and this is wrong.

Two, alcohol is to be enjoyed in moderation by those whose conscience is clear that it is not a sin for them to drink. Psalm 104:14,15 says God provides "wine that gladdens the heart of man" and so it becomes a standard of the value of other things in comparison (Song of Solomon 1:2, "your love is more delightful than wine"). But for those who have been taught that it is wrong to drink it would be violating their conscience if they drank and that would be a sin. Paul talks about this in Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8-10 under the concept of eating things sacrificed to idols. Those who had come out of a pagan culture and embraced the Way of Christ many times felt it was wrong to eat meat that had come from a sacrifice to an idol and then sold in the marked place. And since they did think it was wrong, for them it was wrong.

However, this does not mean it is wrong for everyone. If your conscience allows you to drink alcohol within the Biblical guidelines, then you may drink and no one should judge you for this. But because many who may feel they have the freedom to drink know that it causes others to drink contrary to their consciences, or that it causes undue issues and questions, they gladly sacrifice this freedom to better serve others.

For Jesus to create wine by miracle (and apparently it was high quality wine, which surprised the guests there) at the wedding in Cana of Galilee (John 2) means He did not feel it was wrong in and of itself to drink, or he would have been encouraging sinful behavior in the wedding guests.

Randall Johnson

Question: : If God is all-powerful, why does he allow evil in the world?

Answer: It is impossible to give a complete answer to your question because it delves into an area of knowledge that is beyond, apparently, what finite minds can understand. Let me direct you to a couple of articles on our website that deal in some ways with this issue and then I'll try to give you an answer.

How can there be a hell if God is love?
Why doinnocent children suffer?

The Scriptures tell us that God made things good, that no suffering occurred in the world as it first came from His hand (Genesis 1). But with the introduction of Adam's disobedience God deemed it necessary to change the way the world worked. For example, he kept Adam and Eve from eating from the tree of life in the garden so they wouldn't live forever (Genesis 3:22) and subjected what should have been the most rewarding aspects of their lives (childbirth and work) to pain and suffering. I believe He did this out of love and out of justice.

Justice demanded that He impose consequences for disobedience. After all, He had provided everything we needed and we foolishly, ungratefully and rebelliously chose to try to do things our own way and maintain control, so we thought, of our own lives apart from Him. Love demanded that He not let us live lives of comfort and thus never feel a need to move toward Him, when in fact He is the one we need the most. If I were trying to help my child grow into a self-sustaining and loving adult, the worst thing I could do is let my child get away with things I know would hurt him and warp his development. I could guarantee that he would grow selfish and with a feeling of entitlement that would be destructive to himself and others.

There are undoubtedly other reasons God introduced suffering into our world. For one thing, we need to learn to care for those who suffer in order to learn what it means to love people. Secondly, we need to see what people are capable of doing to others in order to examine our own hearts and see the power for evil that resides within, so that we don't think we're different from "evil people" or that we don't need rescue and forgiveness as much as they do. And there are other reasons that perhaps we don't have the capacity to understand. But if we trust that God knows what He is doing better than we do (and that shouldn't be hard since His knowledge is infinite and ours is so limited, but in fact it is hard because we arrogantly think we know better than He does) then we can trust that even though we can't fully explain the reason for evil and suffering in this life, He can and He knows it is important for it to happen this way.

So the answer to your question is that God's omnipotence (all power) is not really the issue when it comes to suffering. He could, He has the power, to stop all suffering, but He does not want to, obviously, because He knows it serves a greater purpose to allow it.

Randall Johnson

Question: What does the Bible say about swearing?

Answer: It depends on what you mean by swearing. If by swearing you mean using ugly words in order to shock or intimidate people, there is very little specifically said about that in the Bible. Proverbs speaks a lot about the way we abuse words generally (Proverbs 11:9; 12:18; 18:21 to name a few).

If you are talking about making an oath in God's name, the Bible says a lot about that kind of swearing. The command against using the Lord's name in vain in Exodus 20:7 is a command against swearing an oath in Yahweh's name and then not keeping it. The typical oath or swearing in this case would be something like, "May God strike me dead if I am telling a lie." If you violate that oath, you have brought God's integrity into the mix and abused it. Of course Jesus taught us, in the sermon on the mount in Matthew 5:33-37, that we ought to simply tell the truth and not swear oaths, in recognition of the fact that our integrity needs to come from our hearts and not some external threat of punishment.

Randall Johnson

Question: Is the President of Iran, who's visiting New York right now, the anti-Christ that is going to come into play before Jesus returns? There's something so strange about him and something that seems very evil.

Answer: I don't know. The characteristic of the antichrist that I am looking for is someone who seems able to broker a peace treaty between Israel and her enemies (Daniel 9:27). At this point, Ahmadinejad doesn't seem poised to be able to do that. His denial of the Holocaust and strong anti-Israeli stance do not put him in good stead to broker any peace with Israel. But things could change and so we just don't know what specific individuals will be used by God to accomplish His purposes.

Randall Johnson

Question: Lately I have been struggling with whether or not tattoos are forbidden in the Bible. Is there any Biblical certainty here or does it fall under the conscience?

Answer: Leviticus 19:28 says, "You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh on account of the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the LORD." It appears from the cultural context that this was a prohibition against tattooing some image related to pagan idolatry on one's body as a way of showing fidelity to that god or gaining some control over that god. Unless this is somehow analogous to what you are wanting to do, it would not seem to apply to you. The principles of the Law of Moses are still applicable to us, but we are not under the Law of Moses anymore, but under the Law of Christ (1 Corinthians 9:19-21).

The Bible does warn us to treat our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:18-20), and there is potential for infection from tattoos done in places that do not take proper precautions. The only other consideration is wisdom to consider whether you will always want this tattoo. They are removable but at great cost and discomfort.

I would ask the Lord if He wants you to get a tattoo and to help you evaluate your motives for getting one. This will help you make a decision. For more input check out these links for a variety of opinions: for it, against it, balanced, balanced.

Randall Johnson