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Hello and welcome to the Waking Up to Grace podcast, where we celebrate and explore the finished work of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Tune in to the Waking Up to Grace podcast on every major platform. You can also listen to our episodes and read our full transcripts at wakinguptograce.com. And now, here's Lenny.

Lenny: 0:22

Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. Glad to have you listening and happy to be here. Today's study is going to be centered around Romans 1, 19 through 20. These passages are generally taught as describing the concept of natural revelation, that God can be found in nature, that we are without excuse when we reject Christ because we can see the mountains and trees that God has created when we're out in nature. This view of the Lord's creation is thought by many to have the power to bring us to salvation somehow. We should know God when we look at the world he created and therefore have no excuse for unbelief. The question I'll be asking today will be, is the concept of natural revelation what Paul is teaching his audience here? Does Paul believe that Yahweh can be found by experiencing the wind blowing through the trees? Or a beautiful sunny day with crystal clear skies? Does Paul teach us that Christ is revealed to humanity simply through nature and our surroundings? I think when we look at the context of the passage, we find that there must be something much more specific that Paul tells us of in Romans 1.19-20. So let's dive in, shall we? I'll be using the ESV translation for our study today. If you're new to the Waking Up to Grace podcast, I'm doing things quite differently from other podcasts. I'm now creating study guides for our Roman studies. I started doing this at episode number 46. You can find these study guides at wakinguptograce.com on our podcast episodes pages. There will be a link to each episode page in the description section of my podcast episodes in your podcast app. Just click that link and it will take you right to my episodes page at wakinguptograce.com. My hope in putting together these study guides is that they'll help others in the church to ask the right questions about Scripture. According to our Lord, the truth will set us free. So should we not seek biblical truth through a careful investigative process? If we end up in error, we'll receive the opposite of being set free. So I say we should make every effort to be sure that what we believe is true. We have nobody to blame but ourselves if we don't. So it is my hope and it is my purpose that my podcast and these study guides will help you to be transformed by the renewing of your mind the way Paul describes in his letter to the Romans. I encourage you to always check to make sure that what you are learning is true. I believe that when we seek, we will find. Don't ever believe something just because someone with credentials says it. Today, most of what we see as the church is not following guidance from the Spirit of God. Instead, they ignorantly seek truth from leaders who are actually suppressing the glory of our Lord. Life is too short to miss out on the gospel of grace and realize the blessing of Christ living in and through you. But enough of the intro. Let's get started on today's study. Let's pick up from where we left off in our last Romans study to gain some context. Paul says, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. That's Romans 1, 16-17. In episode number 49 we talked about the gospel. also known as the good tidings of our Lord, being revealed by faith. The righteousness of Yahweh was revealed through the gospel of Christ Yeshua. But is the gospel good news for everyone that hears it? Paul seems to tell us that it is not good news for everyone in the next verse of his letter. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. Is Paul speaking about the gospel here? I'd say he definitely is talking about the gospel here. He was just talking about it in the verse prior, about the gospel being the power of God for salvation. And now he's saying the wrath of God is revealed from the heavens in the same context of the gospel. The question we've got to ask ourselves then is, is Yahweh an angry God or a just God? Is he just angry, blowing his temper? Or is justice being served when God is angry? Does he have a right to be angry? Is he just in his ways? In scripture we see absolutely he is just. His laws are good and holy, according to Paul. But let's look at some other passages to be sure that the gospel can mean wrath for those who reject it. Let's see if Yahweh uses the gospel in his divine justice system. In John 3.36, John the Baptist proclaimed, "...whoever believes in the Son has eternal life." Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. What does believing the gospel do for those with faith? Well, it gives them eternal life, according to this passage. So who does God's wrath remain on, according to this passage? It would be those who don't believe. Whoever does not obey the Son. It starts out saying whoever believes, and then whoever does not obey. What he's saying is that those who don't believe, you won't see life. The wrath of God remains on you. what would then be the outcome for those who reject the gospel? It would be wrath. The wrath of God is still on you. We're into that passage. Then Paul says in Romans 2.8, But for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. So how to avoid God's wrath and avoid being brought to justice for our sins before a most holy God? Paul continues by saying, On that day when, according to my gospel... God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. And that's in Romans 2.16, a little bit later in the letter that we haven't gotten to yet. Can we confirm that Yahweh judges men through the gospel of Christ though? It says it right there. So we have to be able to say that. That helps set some context for what we were reading in our study today, doesn't it? Did Paul believe the gospel was how God was judging mankind? Yeah, he absolutely does. The gospel is judgment. For the unbeliever and its salvation. For the believer and life. And what's the judgment? What's the wages of sin? Death. Spiritual death and literal death. So keep this in mind as we go into the next verse in our study. We left off with Paul saying in Romans 1, 16-18, For I am not ashamed of the gospel. For it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed. And then we read, That's verse 19. Is this statement being made by Paul connected with the previous verse? I would say for sure it is. This is all connected. He's not changing the subject. He's saying, for what can be known? He's just adding into it. So I'm not seeing any kind of change of subject. If we study the passage and look at it, check it out for yourself. I'm not seeing any change. So the next question would be, if what can be known about God is the gospel, who is them? Who is the they here? It says the gospel is plain to them because God has shown it to them. Who is he talking about when he says them? Doesn't sound like he's talking about to the saints in Rome that he's writing to, does it? If them is something broader than just the saints in Rome, such as mankind in general, let's just say, if we take it that way, has the gospel been shown to mankind? Paul continues in verse 20, For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world. There again we see they and them. Is this still a continued statement in the context of the revelation of the gospel? I would say for sure it is. Can our Lord's eternal nature and divine power be found in the gospel? Yeah, we learned that earlier in Romans. The gospel is the power of God. The resurrection, the power of God. We see Paul answer this earlier in his Romans letter, Romans 1.4. We read, So has the gospel been clearly perceived since the creation of the world? If we think back on episodes 42 and 43, the gospel was certainly declared throughout history by Yahweh through mankind. But, Is mankind what Paul refers to as the things that have been made? Or is it something else? Later in our Roman study, Paul says something very interesting. In chapter 10, verse 17, he says, So faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the word of Christ. But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have. For their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world. Now we have to realize that Paul is not the original author of this statement. Their voice has gone out to all the earth and their words to the ends of the world. This is Paul quoting Psalm 19.4. Most Bible translations make this indication in some way to help us. The ESV uses quotes and the NASB uses capital letters as an indicator. And then we can search in the columns or footer for the passage reference. But it's Psalm 19.4 and it reads... Their measuring line goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world. And them he has sent a tent for the sun. So let's dig a little more into Psalm 19 and see how the gospel was declared to the ends of the world. Are you ready for this? Psalm 19.1 So this is just digging further into that Psalm 19 passage Paul was quoting in 19.4. Psalm 19.1 reads, The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. The Hebrew word for sky here is rakia. In Genesis 1, we see that the stars are in this expanse. The Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, uses the word firmament instead of expanse. For reference, Genesis 1.14 reads, And God said, Let there be lights in the expanse, or firmament. The Hebrew word for firmament here is rakia. So David in our psalm is talking about the same thing that we see here in Genesis. Along the lines here, but on a different note, the word zodiac means path or way. The zodiac is the stages of the sun's path through the heavens in 12 months. And another very interesting fact is the word sign used here in Genesis is from the Hebrew word auth. So when he says, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years about the stars, the word sign is a Hebrew word auth, which means the sign or the seal. Evidently, when you examine the Hebrew letters in auth, you get aleph, which means leader, vav, which means nail, and tav, which means cross. So you'd have leader, nail, cross. And let them be for signs and for seasons, for days and years. Isn't that interesting? Is it possible that the gospel of our Lord is written in the stars and that all the things we're told about the meaning of the stars is actually an error? We hear things about our star signs and what that means about you, your birthday, and what kind of personality traits you have, all these different things, and predictions. Is that really what the stars are telling us? Is David talking about the stars pointing us to Christ? Did Yahweh actually have a plan written in the stars? The plan of redemption? Let's read on and see what we can take from the rest of Psalm 19. 19, 1-4 says, kind of putting it all together, we read, Did David just tell us that the sky pours out speech day to day? And night to night reveals knowledge? The sky? In the King James Version, instead of reading, There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. In verse 3, the King James says, There is no speech, nor language, where their voice is not heard. Is David saying that this gospel and the stars can be heard in any language? Would that mean even after the Tower of Babel and the scattering of the nations? that the stars could still be read, and that they can be read in all languages? In the next verses about the sun, David says, and this is Psalm 19, 5-6, "...in them he has set a tent for the sun, which is a bridegroom coming out of his chamber. It rejoices as a strong man to run his course. Its rising is from one end of the heavens, and its circuit to the other end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat." So can you see the zodiac here? Zodiac is the stages of the sun's path through the heavens in 12 months. Can you see that here? I'm seeing it. The next verses baffle many, thinking that there is an abrupt shift in focus. Let's think about this a minute. So we read, The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right. Rejoicing the heart, the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true. They are righteous altogether. They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover by them your servant is warned. In keeping them there is great reward. Who can discern his errors? Equip me of hidden faults. Is this a shift of focus, or is David telling us that this can all be seen in the sky? David finishes Psalm 19 by saying, Also keep back your servant from presumptuous sins. Let them not rule over me. Then I will be blameless, and I shall be acquitted of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the mediation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. Is it possible that the gospel is written in the stars and they had a knowledge that has been lost today? Is it possible that the gospel was written in the stars and observed by those in ancient times? Is it possible that in the period of more than 2,500 years before written scripture, that the gospel was revealed in the firmament through the stars? When we think of major revelations of the gospel prior to Israel, do we not have to consider Abraham? About Abraham, Paul wrote, In Galatians 3.8, the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, And then in 3.16 he writes, How are we told that Abraham was revealed the gospel? Let's look back at Genesis and see what we can find. Genesis 13.16 says, I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. So we have the promise of many descendants. But we see more in chapter 15. In 15.1-6 of Genesis, we read, After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Fear not, Abram. I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great. But Abram said, O Lord God, And the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. Yahweh tells Abram in verse 5 to number the stars. The word number here is from the Hebrew word safar, which can mean intensively to recount. That is, celebrate, shoo forth, speak, talk, tell. It comes from a root meaning, a book or a scroll. So when Yahweh told Abraham to look toward heaven and read the stars... Look toward heaven and read the stars. Then what happened next? Abraham believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness. So the question is, did Abraham believe in God about having many descendants save him? Or did he actually see the gospel written in the stars? Did believing God about having descendants make Abraham righteous to God by faith? Or was there something more that he saw? In Hebrews 11.17, we read, And then Paul says in Galatians 3.16, Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He did not say, and to seeds, as referring to many, but rather to one, and to your seed, that is Christ. Did Abraham believe his son Isaac was the seed? Is it possible that Abraham believed that his son Isaac was the Redeemer? In Genesis 22, we read, Then Abraham said to his young men, Stay here with the donkey. I and the boy will go over there and worship and come back to you. Is it not slightly shocking? that he didn't argue with Yahweh about this at all? Did this very same Abraham not try and convince Yahweh to save people from his wrath in Sodom and Gomorrah? Basically, trying to negotiate with Yahweh about how many people that he would save from his wrath? Is it safe to say that he saw more than just a whole bunch of stars that meant he'd have a whole bunch of descendants? I think it is. Well, I gotta say, I'm just grateful for the church. In conversing with my sister the other day, it came to my attention... that I missed some major points in this episode and in the study guides, so I had a chance to make some updates to it now. We were just having our ordinary conversations about Christ, Yeshua, and Yahweh, and all of a sudden it just clicked. It's like God said, like, hey, you forgot something in your message. So I get to get that update in. So let's finish this thing up. We read in Psalm 147, 4, He determines the number of the stars. He gives to all of them their names. So in episode number 40, we studied how Hebrew names always had meaning. And if Yahweh named the stars, would they not also have meaning? Would those names not also have some sort of meaning to them? In Job, we see a couple of the constellations of the Zodiac actually mentioned by name. In Job 38, 31, we read, Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades, or loose the cords of Orion? Can you lead forth the Mazaroth in their season? Or can you guide the bear with its children? Now the book of Job is the earliest completed book of our Bible. It is said to have been written about 2900 BC. The specific 12 constellations, recognized today as the Zodiac, are referred to as the Mazaroth in Hebrew. And then again in Job we read, By his wind the heavens were made fair, his hand pierced the fleeing serpent. That's in Job 26, 13. The fleeing serpent here is Hydra. The constellation Hydra takes seven hours to pass overhead because of its length. It's the longest constellation in the sky. So do you think that these passages in Job indicate that there was an ancient knowledge of the zodiac and its constellations? I would say absolutely they do. They obviously knew about these constellations, and that was a long time ago. 2900 BC, having that recorded at that time, that's a long time. So we see that ancient evidence has been found that has recorded information about the constellations and their names. Where did this knowledge originate? Did people just stare up at the sky and figure this out? Or were they taught? Ancient Persian and Arabian traditions ascribe the invention of astronomy to Adam, Seth, and Enoch, interestingly. So that would have been way early on, having atoms going back to the beginning. Scholars suggest that the signs of the zodiac, or Maseroth, and the names of the stars associated with them originally were created as a mnemonic device by these forefathers of the Hebrews to tell the story of the Bible. Historian Flavius Josephus says Seth and his offspring preserved ancient astronomical knowledge in pillars of stone. And for what it's worth, the book of Enoch states that an angel revealed the constellations to Enoch. An angel. So it's not really surprising that the knowledge of this could have come from the angels. I mean, we've got to remember that Adam walked with God in the garden. Enoch walked with God. Adam in the garden would have had the divine counsel with him. He was amongst God and his divine counsel. Just walking among them. There again, is it really that far-fetched to think that they were taught early on about this by the Lord or the angels? Not at all. I don't see any kind of surprise there. So we have all this ancient information about the possibility of a gospel and the stars, but we haven't discussed how in the world the wise men found the newly born Christ. We know that they followed a star, but how did they know this information? In Matthew 2.10 we read, So it says when they saw the star, so they were following something in the skies. Did the wise men who tracked down the newly born Messiah get their information from the stars? Were they following the stars to see when and where he might be born? Is it possible that the constellations told of the birth of Messiah and even the timing of that event? The first sign of the zodiac is known as Virgo, the virgin, a young maiden holding a leafy branch and or a small sheaf of grain. In the Maseroth, aka the zodiac, the Hebrew name of this constellation is Bethulah, which also means virgin. and she holds a branch in her hand. In this constellation, the brightest star is Spica, Latin for ear of grain. The Hebrew name for the star, Tzemek, means branch, as does the Arabic name, Elzemach. In Egyptian, the star is Aspolia, or the seed. There are 20 Hebrew words that can mean branch. Smach, I don't know if I'm saying this right, but I'm trying. Zemach is consistently associated with the Messiah, the branch who will sprout up out of the root of David. We see that in Isaiah 4.2, Jeremiah 23.5, and Zechariah 3.8. The three Deccan constellations associated with Virgo are Coma, Centaurus, and Boutes. In the Egyptian temple of Dendera, Coma is portrayed as a woman holding a child. E.W. Bollinger quotes the Arabian astronomer, Albamazar, making a statement about Coma. There rises in the first Deccan, as the Persians, Chaldeans, and Egyptians, and the two Hermes, and Aselius, teach, a young woman, whose Persian name denotes a pure virgin, sitting on a throne, nourishing an infant boy, the boy, I say, having a Hebrew name. Are you seeing that the constellations may have a deeper meaning than what we're taught today? Many Christians are afraid to talk on this subject, as if it is some kind of pagan worship. But would it be surprising if the truth in the stars is being misinterpreted by the ungodly? Let's look at a passage in Revelation. Let's take a look at an interesting passage in Revelation. In the Revelation of John 12, 1-2, we read, And a great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. So where did this great sign John refers to of appear? It appeared in heaven. And what have we learned about the heaven so far in our study? What would it mean here? I think he's referring to the sky, the rakia. Where did we see the word sign used early in our study? He says, and a great sign appeared in heaven. Where did we see this word before in our study today? Oh, it would have been Genesis 1.14. And God said, let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years. The word John uses for sign here is semion. This was the term used in the ancient world to describe the constellations of the zodiac. The constellation Virgo, in fact, has a crown of 12 stars. Is this a coincidence? I don't think so. It's been said that the 12 stars could represent the 12 signs of the zodiac, which may be symbolic of the 12 tribes of Israel. In Genesis 37, 9, we read, Then he dreamed another dream, and told it to his brothers, and said, Behold, I have dreamed another dream. In this passage about Joseph's dream, his father, mother, and the twelve tribes were symbolized by the sun, the moon, and twelve stars of constellations. Then pulling all this together in a message called Biblical Astronomy and the Birth of Christ, David Curtis notes, In his book, The Birth of Christ Recalculated, Ernest Martin says, In the period of Christ's birth, the sun entered the head position of the woman about August 13th and exited from her feet about August 2nd. But John saw the scene when the sun clothes or adorns the woman. This surely indicates that the position of the sun in the vision was located somewhere mid-bodied of the woman between the neck and knees. The only time in the year that the sun could be in position to clothe the celestial woman, to be mid-bodied, is when it was located about 150 and 170 degrees along the ecliptic. This clothing of the woman by the sun occurs for a 20 day period each year. This 20 degree spread could indicate the general time when Christ was born. In 3 BC the sun would have entered the celestial region about August 27th and exited from it about September 15th. If John in the book of Revelation is associating the birth of Christ with the period when the son is mid-bodied to the woman, then Christ would have had to been born within that 20-day period. From the point of view of the Magi, who were astronomers, this would have been the only logical sign under which the Jewish Messiah might be born, especially if he were to be born of a virgin. Even today, astrologers recognize that the sign of Virgo is the one of which has reference to a messianic world ruler to be born of a virgin. The key to narrowing down the date of the birth of Christ is the moon. The apostles said it was located under her feet. Since the feet of Virgo, the virgin, represent the last seven degrees of the constellation, in the time of Christ this would have been about 180 and 187 degrees along the ecliptic. the moon has to be positioned somewhere under that seven degree arc. But the moon also has to be in that exact location when the sun is mid-bodied to Virgo. In the year 3 BC, these two factors came to precise agreement for less than two hours. As observed from Palestine on September 11th, this is the only day in the whole year that this could have taken place. David Curtis says, now I'm not an astronomer, but if Martin is right, then it seems quite clear that Christ was born on September 11th in the year 3 BC. What about December 25th? Martin states, Jupiter, recognized by Jews and Gentiles alike as the planet of the Messiah, was located in Virgo's womb and standing still, directly over Bethlehem, on December 25th, 2 BC, when the child was a little over a year old. Matthew states that the Holy Family was settled in a house by the time the Magi visited. So there is actually possibly some significance to the date of Christmas, which is kind of interesting because I always thought it was just a pagan holiday. I think this topic is extremely fascinating. If you find yourself interested in biblical astronomy, there are a couple of books I can recommend. These authors really dig into it and go into the details and start uncovering and unfolding what can be uncovered and unfolded about this gospel and the stars. One of the books is called The Witness of the Stars by E.W. Bollinger, and another one is The Gospel in the Stars by Joseph Seiss. You can find them both on Amazon. I know there's some more where those came from, but these are, I would say, some good starting points. So hopefully that will give you guys something to ponder out there, some ideas. So although the idea of natural revelation telling us that there is a God does hold some water, It doesn't really tell us who God is and doesn't allow us to really know God. It doesn't allow us to know Christ or know the gospel, does it? When we think of it that way, why would Paul be teaching such a thing? He teaches that the gospel is salvation. That's the power of salvation. There's no other way. So how would mountains and trees and wind be telling us anything about Christ? It doesn't. God has to draw us, but we also have to have the gospel. The gospel is the vehicle that God uses for salvation. We have to understand the gospel. Going back to what we were talking about earlier, you could say that the gospel is being revealed through mankind, but then why does he later quote Psalms in such a way? I feel like we have to come to the conclusion that there's something in the stars and in the sky that we just don't understand today. It's been lost in history. And we just don't see and can't see some of these passages the way they would have seen it in those days. I think we should stay open to these ideas because it helps us to better understand the depth of some of the amazing things that God has done. I mean, a gospel written in the stars. Is that not cool? The Bible is just a host of truth and knowledge that's just unbelievable. Anyhow, that's what I got for this week, and I look forward to seeing you guys on the next one. Talk to you then.

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