15 - The Purpose: Resisting the Cosmos with Confidence in the Strategy of Envelopment

© Charles A. Clough 2014
Charles A. Clough
1 John Series

Lesson 15 – The Purpose: Resisting the Cosmos with Confidence in the Strategy of Envelopment

19 Jan 2014
Fellowship Chapel, Jarrettsville, MD
www.bibleframework.org

Let’s open in a word of prayer.

(Opening prayer)

Now these review questions, the first one is what is fellowship according to John and how does it differ from the act of regeneration at the time that we savingly believe in Jesus Christ for eternal life? The answer of course is in 1 John. If you look in 1 John 1:3, we’ll follow that text.

1 John 1:3 he says:

^NKJ 1 John 1:3, “that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.”

Fellowship is the word for share. This doesn’t refer to the point act in which we become Christians (the belief act); but it’s the moment-by-moment Christian life that the Apostle John enjoyed; and he wants to share what that means to us on a moment-by-moment basis.

So the theme of the epistle; and it should be well appreciated by us since the church’s name here is Fellowship Chapel. We ought to know what fellowship means. So that’s the answer to question 1.

Question 2, well, what is it that’s spoken of here in the epistle? Verses 1 and 2 give us the answer to that question. That is:

^NKJ 1 John 1:1, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, …”

That is the manifestation historically of the eternal life that had been going on for all eternity within the Godhead. The Father eternally loving the Son; the Son eternally loving the Father; the Father eternally loving the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit eternally loving the Father; the Holy Spirit eternally loving the Son; the Son eternally loving the Spirit. So you have these six relationships going on within the Trinity. That had been going on for all eternity. So he says … that’s why in verse 2 it says:

^NKJ 1 John 1:2, “the life was manifested,”

Well obviously, it wouldn’t have to be manifested if it was seen. So something historically occurred that was different.

“and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you”

Then he says:

“that eternal life which was with the Father …”

So it’s a manifestation of the structure of the personal relationship within the Trinity.

Question 3 is if God’s nature is:

^NKJ 1 John 1:5, “that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.”

How are we brought into harmony with that nature on a moment-by-moment basis? Now if you look at the text that we’ve gone through, what would we say to that? In other words, that is a quotation of verse 5 that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.

If that’s the case and God has a perfect righteousness, the next question obviously is how are we brought into harmony with that. Well, what do you notice in verse 7? In verse 7 it says:

^NKJ 1 John 1:7, “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, …”

That’s how we have fellowship with one other.

“and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.”

So the answer to how we come into harmony is that we have to walk in the light, which leads us to question 4.

Question 4 is how do we do that? How do we walk in the light? Again, if we look at verses 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 together; it’s quite clear that we confess our sins.

^NKJ 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

So, when we become aware of our disharmony with God’s nature, we have to acknowledge that. Questions 3 and 4 are dealing with what in our everyday vernacular of our culture you hear the expression “Well, let’s get real.” People use that casually and sometimes very shallowly because they don’t think through what I am saying when I say, “Let’s get real.” It means I understand reality. Now for us as Christians understanding reality is really understanding reality and understanding reality means understanding who God is because God is the source of all reality. So, we are face-to-face with verse 5 again.

^NKJ 1 John 1:5, “… God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.”

That is reality. Our problem is we’re sinners and sinners by nature do not want to face reality. If verse 5 is reality and I’m a sinner, I’m not too anxious to come into that kind of a light because it’s intimidating. This is why you have atheism and you have sin and you have these things is because it’s not that people don’t know reality. People can know reality but not like reality and so they act against reality and that’s sin.

So, if we can think of what John telling us here … Notice, to kind of bring this point home, look at the language in verse 6. If you read verse 6, what verb in that sentence in verse 6—there’s a verb in there and a noun. That should focus us on this issue of reality.

He says:

^NKJ 1 John 1:6, “If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.”

The word “lie” and truth is in there. See, those words are words talking about reality and how we think about it. Then if you go down to verse 8, notice the verb in verse 8.

^NKJ 1 John 1:8, “If we say that we have no sin, …”

If we say we have no sin, what verb follows that? Deceive. If we deceive ourselves, then that means we are out of accord with reality, doesn’t it? We’re fooling ourselves.

^NKJ 1 John 1:8, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

If we can keep thinking of our cultural slang (“get real”) what Christianity is saying, what John is saying right here, is the only way you “get real” is to deal with your relationship with Go,d because if you can’t deal with your relationship with God, you’re not real and you’re not getting real and you can’t get real. This is the source of this.

Then beyond the verb “deceive ourselves” in verse 6 (the action there), look at verse 10.

^NKJ 1 John 1:10, “If we say that we have not sinned, …”

What do we do? We make God a liar. Pretty serious accusation! As we go through John’s thinking, this is his basic introduction; this is what he wants us to get straight because we’re going to increasingly, beginning today, get into a section of conflict with the culture around us and with the pieces in reality that are going on around us. But before he takes us into conflict, he wants us to have our feet firmly grounded on truth.

All right, question 5 on the handout—what does the Christian life constantly require in Heaven beyond our sight? I asked this question because if you don’t ask this question, you won’t become conscious of the fact that the Christian life is supernatural and deals with issues beyond psychology and sociology. Psychologists and sociology in our culture want to think and have us think that they are the real ones and that religion is subsumed as just one sort of subsection.

One of my sons had a conversation yesterday morning with a state senator in Virginia. My son had written a letter protesting the fact that now Virginia, in the recent election, elected a liberal governor who the first week in office did away with marriage as we know it in the State of Virginia. So, my son Jonathan wrote a very eloquent letter challenging him on this point.

Usually when you write letters to politicians you get this little boiler plate response—“I’m glad to hear from you and so on, la-la-la, contact me if you have any further discussions.” Well, he got a phone call from the staffer of the state senator and said the state senator would like to talk to you. They had a delightful conversation for about 20 to 30 minutes yesterday morning about this issue of marriage in the State of Virginia. In the dialogue going on, it’s not that the state senator was going to change his position because my son challenged his position, but here’s what happened. Very interesting.

First of all a commentary.

He said, “You know, you’re the first person who has stood up for traditional marriage without calling me a name.”

Now that’s a great testimony to our positions. We can’t articulate an intellectual argument at an adult level. We have to name call. Let the other side involve the ad homonym. That’s called an ad homonym fallacy—when you can’t answer an argument, you name call somebody. Our culture is full of that.

So he was intrigued that my son had written a pretty coherent letter. He wanted to understand our position. Jonathan spent 20, 30 minutes on the phone going through the logic of why natural marriage is natural. But here is the thing. When you are in these dialogues, when you are in these adult-level dialogues, not the name-calling tweeky things; but if you do get an opportunity for an adult-level conversation, one of the first things is follow Proverbs 18:13.

Proverbs 18:13 tells you to listen before you speak, so you understand what the other person is saying before you rudely intrude. In listening to the state senator, two interesting things came up in the dialogue. I think we all need to understand this. This man reflects the general culture all around us. One of the things he said when my son was defending the fact that Judeo-Christian religion for the last 3,000 years has held to this definition of marriage. His answer to that was this.

“Mormonism in the last century argued that black people could not be in the Kingdom of God; but they’ve changed.”

Now if somebody says that to you and you’re listening, you’re listening to what they just told you, what religious belief have they just told you?

Somebody tells you “Mormons last century believed that blacks could not be in the Kingdom of Heaven; but they’ve changed.” Now that’s what they’re saying to when you’re defending our position. If you listen, what have they just told you about their view of religion? It’s subject to man’s opinion. It’s a social construct. This is fundamental; and we have to understand this. If you don’t understand this, you won’t even read the Bible correctly.

In the last 30 to 40 years in the realm of sociology and liberal thought, the idea of some of these big boys that write all this stuff—you can read it in their writing. This is not Clough spouting off here. This is what’s been written. Their argument is and these are the sons and the daughters of the Enlightenment, that movement three centuries ago that said man will reason his way to truth independently of any outside help.

The problem is creature minds are finite minds. They’re not infinite. A finite mind can’t create a universal truth because a finite mind has only partial experience. Therefore, starting from man who’s finite, you never can construct an absolute. No finite mind can construct an absolute negative. An absolute negative requires an infinite mind.

So right away the Enlightenment starts off on the wrong foot. Then further on top of the fact that we are finite minds, we are fallen finite minds. We don’t like reality because we know very well according to Romans 1 who’s there and to whom we are ultimately responsible. That’s offensive to sinners. So we have a vested interest not only in limiting our thinking, but of avoiding certain truths.

So in the last thirty or forty years we’ve had this idea that language is insufficient to state truth. Language is a construct of this. Language and thinking start here. But if language and thinking start here (pointing to my head), if that’s where it really starts; then everything is a social construct.

When the state senator said to my son, “Well, Mormonism last century said blacks can’t be in; but they’ve changed.”

What he was insinuating is why can’t you Christians change? Why can’t you adapt to society that’s going on? Why is it that you so stubbornly adhere to these truths? So if you hold to the Scriptures, you’re going to run into this over and over and over again.

The other thing he said and as my son and I were critiquing the conversation; I said, “Jonathan, you want to see something else that the guy said.”

On the other side he said, “Well, as a state senator I would never agree to demanding that you Christians hold to anything but your traditional view in your church wedding services.”

Now what does that tell you about his thinking what religion is? What does that tell you? Yeah, it’s politics as usual. But behind the politics as usual there’s a belief about religion. Let me repeat what he said.

“I would never tell you that you could not practice your faith in the church.”

Last clause—in the church. What does that tell you about religion in his view?

(Comment)

It only exists in here. You are free to do whatever you want to in here, but don’t take it out the door. That is exactly the problem of the Christian business lady in New Mexico that refused to photograph a same-sex wedding. She wasn’t doing it in here. She was doing it out there in the public place. So be prepared. If you’re going to be a believer and you’re going to consistently follow the Lord; you’re going to have a problem in the public square.

We have first amendment rights and we need to sue wherever necessary, aggressively, whenever your first amendment rights are abrogated. We have to stop being cowards and lazy people. This is a battle. It is a war not of our choosing. They have decided to begin the war. If you want a war, be prepared for battle. We’re not changing. So these conversations are important to understand how they think so we know where we stand in a situation.

When you see something like Romans 2:1–2 and this tells you what’s going on topside, that tells you that we have to—reality means in order to walk with the Lord in light we have to have an advocate with the Father. No other religion on the planet has any ability to have fellowship with an absolutely holy God. No other religion does that because there’s no other advocate. That’s unique to Christianity. Name me another religion that has substitutionary atonement. Anybody?

Question 6 is how do we know that we are abiding in Christ? Chapter 2 verses 3, 4, and 5 tell us. That is that we keep His commandments. We went through that.

Then question 7 is what area of daily life does John pick out as the litmus test for keeping Jesus’ commandments? That is strange and that we need to develop later as we go through the Epistle. That is how we treat other believers, loving the brethren. This is a big theme Jesus does in the Upper Room Discourse. But let me have the second slide here [Slide 2].

Do you notice the progression that we just did? In the first few verses it was emphasizing God’s nature, which is unseen, but it’s sensed through our conscience in Scripture. Then we got dealing with the fact that we have to walk with the Lord, we have to abide in Christ, and that is keeping His commandments.

Where do we get those? The first one is kind of a conscience thing. But how do we keep His commandments? Where do we get them? Scripture. Where do we get Scripture? From history, God’s historic revelation.

Now we come to a historic person who is seen. Then this matter comes to: if we are in the light we will love the brethren; we will love the work that God is doing in our fellow believers. That’s the influence of this person.

Remember we spent four weeks when we started in 1 John developing how John thinks. I kept saying you are going to encounter the Trinity over and over and over. Lo and behold, right in the structure you’ve got the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Father is the unknown. The Son is Who is seen in history, and the Holy Spirit is the Son’s influence in people’s lives. So, the Trinity deeply embedded itself in John’s thinking.

Those commentators that say this epistle is so hard to outline, we don’t understand the flow of John’s thought. Well, yes we do if we look at this as a rhetorical structure.

There is one other thing I want to point out about Christ’s commandments, keep His commandments. If you only get Christ’s commandments from the Scriptures and if we get the Scriptures only from history in a historical situation, that forces us as believers to have a certain position about the Scriptures in history.

Let me give you an account of what’s going on in our culture again so we understand what we are up against. In the Temecula Valley Unified School District in California last October, a 7^th grade student was publicly ridiculed by a teacher for reading the Bible. The classroom assignment had been to read a non-fiction book. The teacher told the student in front of the class that the Bible was fiction and refused to give him credit for the assignment. Now in that case, by the way, this is your tax money does this.

Now we have a teacher arguing with a student that the Bible is a fictional book. The teacher should have been challenged politely and courteously.

“How do you know it’s fiction?”

See, we don’t ask these questions. When we hear this stuff instead of just reacting, we need to force the other side to justify such stupid statements.

I brought a book in this morning I wanted to make you aware of. This book is written by one of the leading Christian philosophers of India. Not too many of them live in India. But this particular man studied under Francis Schaeffer as a young college student, went back to India as a Christian and was insulted one time by an outstanding Indian philosopher-politician who argued that the Christian religion had destroyed the culture of the Indians and that it was the missionary enterprise that was nothing more than a British foreign policy strategy to subjugate the subcontinent of India to the British Empire. Therefore, Christianity was a dangerous thing and the Bible was a sub-book.

So he spent some time researching the question and he wrote this—The Book that Made Your World. It took 500 pages to show how what we value in the West. The idea, for example, of representative government, the idea of constitutional government, the idea of limited government, the idea of business ethics, the idea of charity and compassion, spoken by an Indian in a culture that has what in their society? It begins with “c”. A caste system. This man has been arrested in India for attacking the caste system as an Indian Christian.

Here we have a book that should have been given to such a silly teacher who argued that the Bible is fiction.

The student should have said ... “Oh, you mean that the book that changed and built Western civilization is fiction, is that what you’re saying, teacher?”

The structure then—this is the flow of John’s thinking.

So now we come to 1 John 2:12 and if you’ll see the next slide [Slide 3]. Remember we’re following the idea that unlocks this epistle. There is a sense to John’s flow. Right now all we need to look at is the second row in this chart. We come now to this new section, which is the thesis, the central proposal of the speaker.

All the rest of this that we’ve gone through—we’ve done the questions. We’ve looked at it in the flow. This is the introduction to his deliberation. We haven’t gotten to the argument yet. He’s giving us the background so that when we get to the argument, we are prepared to understand the flow.

And, what is his thesis? In the right column you’ll see the purpose is to exhort believers to maintain the fellowship of eternal life while living in a hostile environment, because if in the hostile environment we become casualties, the result of that is it destroys our prayer life and destroys our productivity so that when we come before the Bema Seat we’ve wasted valuable time in our Christian life by being unproductive. That’s John’s heart as a pastor. He doesn’t want his believers to come before the Bema Seat and say, “Gee I wasted 80% of my life on earth because I was so intimidated by the hostile environment, so I went into my little shell.”

He doesn’t want us to do that.

So we go in 1 John 2:14. We did this a number of weeks ago go so I’m going over it again. You’ll notice he says in verse 12—those of you most of your translations from verse 12 down to verse 14 have it as poetry. See how it’s changed a little bit. Some translations do this; some don’t. I don’t know why they broke it out like this, but I think it’s probably because they treated each of these sentences as a new paragraph. So the translators tried to give you that sense.

^NKJ 1 John 2:12, “I write to you, little children, Because your sins are forgiven you for His name's sake.

¹³ “I write to you, fathers, Because you have known Him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, Because you have overcome the wicked one.”

Then he repeats himself.

^NKJ 1 John 2:13, “I write to you, fathers, Because you have known Him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, Because you have overcome the wicked one. I write to you, little children, Because you have known the Father

^NKJ 1 John 2:14, “I have written to you, fathers, Because you have known Him who is from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, Because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you …”

It’s not an age breakdown because it’s out of order. He doesn’t go from to children to young men to fathers; he goes from children to fathers to young men. Lo and behold here we come up with again this triadic structure that John’s fond of. You’ll notice in the first children. In your outline I say proceed from a position of strength. I have four little observations there; but what I want to do is if we’ll go to the next slide [Slide 4].

Two groups of three—the first one is little children. What does he talk about the little children doing? He says to the little children … these are all by the way from when we went through these before. These are not chronological categories of believers. These are more viewpoints in how we fellowship with God.

So, view this when it says children that this is when we are in relationship to our Father we are very much like little kids, to our daddy. The way we express our little kidness in verse 12, is because our sins are forgiven for His name’s sake. That gets to that back primary relationship with the father as a child. Then he says a second “little children”, a different Greek word there.

“Because you have known the Father”

This is childlike. This is the particular aspect of being childlike in relationship to the Father.

Then he talks how to be grownups in our relationship with God. You’ll notice both times when he talks about the Father.

“Because you have known Him who is from the beginning.”

So this is a grown up aspect of our fellowship with the Father.

^NKJ 1 John 2:13, “… Because you have known Him who is from the beginning …”

which is talking about the Son who was manifested. Notice again we’re moving from the Father—unseen—to the Son who is seen.

Then we get to the young men who have declared war. This is the warrior part of our fellowship with God. So, we relate to God as little children, we relate to God as grownups; but also can related to God in fellowship as warriors, as young men who are standing firm against the culture.

^NKJ 1 John 2:13, “… I write to you, young men, Because you have overcome the wicked one …”

This is kind of review but the young men as warriors hang together. This is the whole point as I said before last week. This is what’s bothering those of us who have been in the military about what happened at Benghazi, because this is something different. We all want to know that if you are under fire, is your buddy going to leave you there wounded (i.e., leave your body there) or are your buds going to come get you and help you out? When you’re in a battle, you hang together. So here again it’s like the Holy Spirit. This is the influence of the Holy Spirit in people’s lives.

(Question)

The movie Lone Survivor certainly raised this issue that you don’t leave buds. Even that operation was screwed up because the communication didn’t go right and they couldn’t extract these four guys and wound up losing 19 people total trying to get them out.

Well let’s go now to 1 John 2:15–17. We’ll just start that because we don’t have much time left.

(Question)

Joel’s bringing up the legacy aspect of John. As we said in the introduction, John was an old man. He is the only apostle that lived that wasn’t killed. Apparently, he died a natural death; but if he did die a natural death, he’s the only apostle that did. All the rest of the guys were martyred.

By the way, all the apostles were martyred and not one took up arms against the government. Why then were they martyred? I’ll tell you why they were martyred. They were martyred for the same reason Christians are increasingly being hated in our culture. It’s because we have an allegiance that is superior to the highest political office.

The Caesars of the Roman Empire felt threatened, as you would if you can put your mind into that of a pagan; and you’re the guy that’s the head of the country. You have these resistant people that talk about a Kurios (the Greek word Lord) who is above you and they refuse to give you absolute allegiance. Their absolute allegiance is reserved for someone above you. Wouldn’t you feel threatened too?

In my son’s conversation yesterday morning with the state senator that also came out in the conversation. That is that Christians have got to understand, that we’re [the government] in authority. No, you’re not our authority. Jesus Christ is my authority. I am more impressed with Him than I am with you.

(Question)

Laura is asking the question that on left side of the chart (1 John 2:12) we’ll see it’s a present tense, “I write”. On the right side, “I have written” other than for the little child. I don’t think one it’s referring to the gospel in the epistle. I think what this is it is part of John’s testimony, a testimony biblically has two witnesses. I think what he’s arguing is, and we do this in our everyday conversation, how many times when you instruct your child do you repeat yourself? I mean any parent here knows—“I tell you this” and “I’ve told you this.” We all know how that goes. I think that is part of what he’s doing here. This is a familial kind of thing.

Notice he does repeat himself and that gets back to Joel’s point that there’s a strong emphasis here on testimony, testimony, testimony. John is serious.

To add to what Joel said, let me bring up another point—these are Jewish people. What does the 9^th commandment tell you? If you are going to stand up and claim as a Jewish person and that you are testifying, what does the 9^th commandment obligate you to do? You have to be a true witness, right? The 9^th commandment is the perjury commandment.

So that’s the fallacy of people who argue that this Jewish book is fiction like this California teacher. If it’s fiction, you’ve got an ethical problem now. Now you’ve got Jews under the 9^th commandment, violating the 9^th commandment. Explain that one teacher.

Now in our remaining minutes, we just want to introduce what we’re going to start in this next section, 1 John 2:15–17. This is the next section. The first section of this resistance group said that we have to start from a position of strength. We don’t enter into a controversy from a position of weakness. We enter into it from a position of strength.

The position of strength that John emphasizes is your relationship with the Lord. Your relationship to the Lord, my relationship to the Lord as saved people, is greater than an unsaved person, right? An unsaved person isn’t in contact with reality, are they? You are in contact with reality in your relationship with the Lord, so you have a strategic advantage right from the get-go.

John says, “Don’t feel intimidated by these false teachers. They don’t have what you have. They don’t have a moment-by-moment relationship with the Lord. You have an opportunity to have that. Dwell on that. That’s your center of strength because that’s your personal adjustment to reality.”

In verses 1 John 2:15–17 we want to look at one verb. If you’ll follow with me, I am reading from the New King James here.

^NKJ 1 John 2:15, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

^NKJ 1 John 2:16, “For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world.”

Then in this last verse he gives us insight into the strategy of God, which is an encouragement to us.

^NKJ 1 John 2:17, “And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.”

This is a powerful passage and we want to unpack this, but we only have time this morning to look at the first verse.

^NKJ 1 John 2:15, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”

How is the verb “love” used here? Surely the verb love can’t be referring sexually? Well, what does the word love mean here? Anybody come up with a synonym?

Self-sacrifice, worship. The word love here—think about the Old Testament. Where in the Old Testament—the Book of Deuteronomy in particular—do you see the word love used? Deuteronomy is written like an international treaty.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”

Thankfully by reading non-Jewish documents outside the Old Testament it is quite clear how they were using the word love in those contexts. It is because we have Egyptian documents that speak of the Pharaoh demanding of the vassals that they love him. Now he’s not a homosexual. What did the Pharaoh mean by that? Serve—an allegiance. That’s the power of what’s going on here.

Now that we’ve clarified the love, the love here is allegiance. It’s loyalty. It can be a worship thing. It involves an allegiance to your ultimate authority, basically. You worship that which is your highest authority. What he’s arguing is, don’t give allegiance to the world when it belongs to God.

Now there is one other interpretive problem. When you see something like “love the world” or look at the last clause, “love of the Father”. See “of the Father”—that’s a genitive—possessive. When you see “love of X”, the thing that has to go through your mind to read that is—is this saying love that belongs to the object of the Father, in other words I love the Father—or is this talking about the love that the Father has for me?

Love the Father has for me is a subjective genitive, meaning the subject (Father) is loving to me. It’s the love of the Father. That’s a subjective genitive because the subject (Father) is doing the loving. Or, is this an objective genitive where it’s the love of the Father. We love the Father. Which one do you think it is?

(Comment)

It’s the objective genitive here. It’s true the Father loves us, John 3:16. But in this verse, what he’s talking about isn’t the Father’s love for us. It’s our love for the Father. I’m showing you this because when you read these things, you have to think carefully so we absorb. We listen to John and what John wants to tell us. So in verse 15, do not accord the world as your ultimate authority is what he’s saying.

^NKJ 1 John 2:15, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”

You can’t do one and not violate the other one. There is an antithesis here. This ought not seem strange because isn’t this the same antithesis Paul does in Galatians—walk in the flesh or walk in the Spirit? It’s the same antithesis. It’s just John’s way of saying it. This elderly man is saying this. You can’t accord and make the world your ultimate authority. We could explain.

We’ve run out of time. We’ll go into what cosmos (the world) is and spend some time in that next week.

(Closing prayer)