In this episode, we delve into the complex topic of gun control, examining it through the lens of scripture. Dr. J. Vernon McGee responds to a listener’s question about Malachi 3:6-10, emphasizing God’s unchanging nature and calling for a return to faith. The conversation further explores the sensitive issue of firearms in the home, bringing in perspectives from the Bible and current societal challenges.
Gun control has been an issue debated at great length. Many times these discussions or debates get rather heated. Although scripture doesn’t mention guns specifically, there are principles that allow us to understand what God’s perspective would be on this issue. So join us to find out what these principles might be.
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of foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in his excellent word. What more can he say
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This is the question and answer program of Through the Bible Radio Network with our Bible teacher, Dr. J. Vernon McGee. We hope that you’ll be able to join us for the next 30 minutes as Dr. McGee applies his wit and wisdom to answering the questions of his many listeners. We open today’s program with a question from a listener in Indianapolis, Indiana. He writes, Could you please explain the meaning of Malachi 3, verses 6 through 10? What is meant by, I do not change?
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And I’m turning now to Malachi, the third chapter, verses 6 and 7. For I am the Lord, I change not, therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts.” But ye said, Wherein shall we return? Well, may I say that if you’re acquainted with Malachi, and if you had our book on Malachi, You would understand this, that Malachi uses a different method of reaching a very skeptical people. He actually adopts almost a cynical method, I would say a very subtle method. He is using Almost ridiculed. He goes on here to say, and I can follow through with the verses you’re asking about. He says, will a man rob God? And these people very piously, you know, they said, why, where in have we robbed him? Why, we haven’t robbed God. We are very religious people. And he says, in tithes and offerings. God had commanded them to bring tithes and offerings. They didn’t do it. Offerings were always above the tithe, by the way. And these people were not doing that. And as a result, why he’s saying to them here, why you ask the question, why we’re not robbing God? He says, I want you to know you are robbing God. And he spells it out for them. Now, the point that he makes, therefore, in these two verses you asked about, he says to them, Return unto God. Repent. Come back to God. And they said, why? We haven’t even left him. We go to the temple every day and worship. And a great many people are regular and go into church, but they’re far from God. Very far from God, by the way. And he is saying here to these people, and they are very cynical, and he uses that method to stir them up, by the way. Now, apparently, the verse here that disturbs you is the one that says that, I am the Lord, I change not. And God never changes, that is. God didn’t learn something today that caused him to change his mind from something he said 2,000 or 3,000, 4,000 years ago. He never learned anything when he read the morning paper. He already knew it. In fact, he was back of a great deal of the news himself, although the news media would not dare give him any credit for that at all.
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We have now a letter from a listener who had a complaint concerning Dr. McGee’s position on firearms. He writes, During one of your programs, you promoted firearms in the household using some verse in the Old Testament. This type of thinking is dangerous in today’s shoot-first society. Is not this line of thought an antithesis of what Christ was all about?
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All right, let’s consider this for just a moment. The Lord Jesus said, and remember now, it’s the Lord Jesus’ teaching. He said that a strong man’s arm keepeth his own household. That is, if he doesn’t have a sore deal, get one in that day. And today, he’d get, I think, a pistol to protect his home. Now, I recognize that I’m now touching a very sore spot. I realize that’s, first of all, an emotional problem, and it’s being handled in an emotional way. Two men that were shot were the cause of this great emotional upheaval, and then they said, let’s get rid of the guns. Now, wait just a minute about getting rid of the guns. When you say that the guns shot these men, I think you’re wrong. A gun never shoots. Always has to be a person, the individual. The problem not with the gun, the problem is with the individual. Now, if you do take away guns from everybody, I’ll tell you what’ll happen. They’ll get a mace today, the crooks will, the thieves will, and the murderers will get a mace. You know a big club with spikes out on the end of it? They’ll beat your brains out with that. Actually, I would think a bullet that snuffs out your life in a minute It’s better than having your head beat into a pulp by a mace. I’ve never felt that was a nice way to treat folk, by the way. Now, Christians did that, especially on the Crusades. It’s amazing how they beat heads in with that sort of thing. They were wrong. And today, if they were going out unprovoked, and shooting people, Christians were. I would say they’re wrong, but no Christian would do that sort of thing. A gun is a protection for the home. Now, there is a danger, sure, in a gun, because it’ll go off. and it should be handled in a very careful manner, and it should not be put where children can get it. A young person out here in California was killed by his brother, picked up a gun, I don’t think it was a pistol. I think it was a rifle. And he didn’t mean to shoot his brother, but he did. That, I think, is due to the fact that parents are not using proper care in teaching the use of a gun. I remember when I was a boy, my dad took me out hunting. And he spent an entire afternoon explaining to me how to load the gun, how to carry the gun, how you always, when you go through a fence, keep the barrel pointed down or straight up. It’s best to lean the gun against the post, or you can hold it down, but never carry it where you’re swinging it around where it could shoot any direction. And if you have other people around, you are to use judgment in the use of it. In fact, the matter is there are more people here in California being killed by automobiles that are being killed by guns. And to get rid of the automobile, you would eliminate a lot of people being killed. I grant you that. But they’d still run over them with a horse. They’d still run them down with a horse and buggy. They did it in the old days. Maybe not as many as they do today with automobiles because everybody’s got an automobile. But you see that we’re handling the problem from the wrong end. Now, no Christian is going to shoot anyone unprovoked. Now, the Lord Jesus is the one who said, a strong man arm keepeth his household. That means that you ought to have a gun to protect your loved ones. A man, I know, he was a Christian, and he thought as a Christian he ought not to have a gun. And two men broke in one night with guns, by the way. The thief always has guns, and the thief always will get one. And they stole everything that he had, got quite a bit of money in jewelry, and raped his wife. And he said, if I’d had a gun, I could have protected my property and my loved one. He said, I wished I’d had a gun. Frankly, friend, I wish he had one too. And that’s the only way a gun can be used by a Christian as I see it. I consider that a very scriptural sort of way. And one of the things that the Constitution provided is the defense of the country. And you and I live in a big, bad world. They’re not all lovely people today. Did you know that in our contemporary society that you’re rubbing shoulders every day if you walk down the street with well-dressed people? They have polite manners. that they’d shoot you in a minute. And if they knew that you had $500 in your pocket, they’d kill you for it. Kill you in a minute for it. May I say to you, long as we’re living in this big, bad world, the Lord Jesus says a strong man’s arm keep with his household, and it hasn’t anything in the world to do with the fact that some crazy maniac goes out and shoots somebody. The problem is that these crazy maniacs should be locked up, and that those who commit crimes should be punished. We have a lot of soft-hearted judges today, and they’re also soft-headed judges. And they are not enforcing the law. And until the law is enforced, you’re going to have to protect yourself. And I personally think it’s going to get worse than it is.
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Now, here’s an interesting question from a listener in La Mesa, California. She says, when the Israelites were presenting their offerings and sacrifices, did they do it as looking forward to Jesus, or was it merely out of obedience to the law? Did they worship Jesus?
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No, they did not. Actually, there is some question of whether they, as a nation, that is the bulk of the people, whether they actually understood the meaning of the offerings. They thought they were a do-all and be-all and were an end in themselves. But every instructed Israelite, and there were many of them, believed, as the writer to the Hebrews says, that the blood of bulls and of goats cannot take away sin. And I think that you would find back in the Old Testament that many did understand when Abel brought a little lamb to God, he was not a cave man. He was not a Neanderthal man. He didn’t bring that to try to appease God. He brought that because God had commanded it. Somebody will always raise the question, well, where did God command it? Well, it’s not in the Genesis record that He commanded it to be brought and that it looked forward to the coming of Christ, but the writer to the Hebrews makes that clear. By faith, Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. Now, he did it by faith. And that means, as the Scripture says, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. So God had commanded that these offerings be made and that they pointed to the coming of a Messiah. And that runs all the way through the Old Testament. So that the offerings in the Old Testament, made in the tabernacle and then in the temple, pointed to the coming of Christ and even before that as we’ve indicated with Abel. Therefore, it can be safely said that God saved in the Old Testament on credit. In other words, that the sin had not been paid, the penalty had not been paid. And it wasn’t paid until Christ came and died on the cross. And that, by the way, is what I think the writer to the Romans, Paul, means when he makes it very clear in Romans 3.25, whom God hath set forth, and that is Christ, of course, to be a propitiation. That is a mercy seat through faith in His blood to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past. Now, that doesn’t mean your past sins. It means the sins that were committed by man before the cross who brought a sacrifice, like Abel, for instance, not only for the remission of sins that are past through the forbearance of God, the patience of God, to declare, I say at this time, his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. And therefore, it would be impossible to trust Christ as Savior until He came. And as Paul makes it clear here that he can now justify you by trusting Christ. And you don’t have to bring a sacrifice at all. There was no merit in the sacrifice. The merit was in the faith. that believed that God would send one that, as he had promised to Eve, that would bruise the serpent’s head. And therefore, down through the ages, men came in faith. And we look back in faith. today. And this party asked the question, how did they know the scripture yet unwritten? Well, of course, they did not know that at all. That is all in the Old Testament and in the bringing of the sacrifice that they pointed to the coming of the Messiah. And every instructed Israelite, by the way, did believe that.
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Here now is a listener who disagrees with Dr. McGee. The letter comes to us from San Francisco and says, I heard Dr. McGee say that God answers prayer and that sometimes his answer is no. Could you please explain your scriptural support for this view?
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The scripture that I use for that, of course, is found over in Philippians in the fourth chapter. And Paul says there, pray about everything. and worry about nothing and in everything with prayer and supplication. And then he says, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And the amazing thing is that he says, when you go to God in prayer and pray, you thank God for answering your prayer because He’s going to answer it. And a lot of times he says, no, he won’t answer it except according to his will. Now that is something this party brings out and I’d want to read that. That’s my scripture, by the way. That’s what they asked for. Now it says, my reading and meditating and prayer leads me to believe that prayer, not according to the will of God, aren’t even heard. meaning he ignores them. Nothing is wrong with God. He wants and encourages us to pray, but his way. My belief in this area is based on, and then she gives, oh my, what a lot of scriptures she gives. But in view of the fact that, and I’m not going to take time to interpret each scripture, but I’m sure that she put 1 John 5, 14, and 15 because Jesus, That seemed to be the answer to it. And I’m going to turn now to 1 John, and I want to read these two verses that she refers to in 1 John 5, 14 and 15. And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us. And to hear us means to answer it. And that’s exactly what Paul is saying over in Philippians, that with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. He’s going to answer your prayer. And he’ll say no if it’s not according to his will. And John merely confirms that. This is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us. And if we know that He hears us whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him. And how do you know that you’re in the will of God when you pray? You don’t always know that. But how can you know? Well, you can know it after you’ve prayed and don’t get the answer the way you wanted it. Now, I could give you illustrations. I don’t have time to do that in my own case, that there are times when God has said no to me, and later on I found out that was the best answer He could have given. He slammed the door for me to go to St. Louis years ago, just slammed the door right in my face even. I cried about it. and I thought he’d let me down and all that. Wow, it’s the greatest answer I ever got. He said, no. And that’s the right answer. And so you can know you’re in the will of God. And I was out of the will of God when I wanted to go there. That was quite obvious. So, you’re in the will of God when you get your petitions as you pray them. That’s what John is saying. So, I don’t feel like that your interpretation is quite accurate of this first passage of Scripture, and I’ve looked at some of the others, and certainly they do not confirm your viewpoint at all, but rather this passage does confirm that which is opposite.
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From Kent, Washington comes a thought on church attendance to which the listener would like Dr. McGee to respond. She writes, I’m concerned about some friends whom I have debated with concerning the attendance of a local church. They have left a church which has had many internal problems and even open sin. They now listen to and watch radio and televised religious broadcasts and have a home Bible study. They say that these are sufficient to cover the mandate in Hebrews to forsake not the assembling of yourselves together. Would you comment on this?
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Well, I seriously question that statement that listening to radio and television meets all the requirements of assembling of yourselves together because it’s definitely not assembling yourselves together. And a little home Bible class today is not quite the meeting of a church. And though I’m on radio, and maybe I’m cutting my throat by what I’m saying to you right now, but I do want to say that I think you ought to be connected with a local church. And I recognize the problems that there are in finding a good Bible church. And even in some so-called good Bible churches today, I find that there’s a great deal that’s wrong. And you’ll not find a church that’s 100% right. I’ve never been in one yet that I thought was perfect. All of them have their problems and their difficulties. Now, when it’s a question you mention of open sin, and there are fundamental churches like that, why, I would withdraw from it. But I would not take the attitude that now that I’m listening to radio and listening to the through the Bible radio, let’s say, and I’ve got a home Bible class, and that therefore is all I should do. Well, maybe temporarily, but I do not think that’s the answer. I think that you should be a member and an active member of a local church. And I recognize that there are problems and difficulties, but certainly you’re not going to find a perfect church.
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We end with a statement from Dr. McGee concerning several letters that he received that indicated there was a misunderstanding of his teaching about Jesus being the perfect Nazarite and his response to those letters.
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In the vow of the Nazarite, which is found, by the way, in the sixth chapter of the book of Numbers, And it is a vow that either a man or a woman could take. It was voluntary and it was for those that wanted to come into a closer relationship with the Lord and to serve Him in a more acceptable manner. And there was a certain ritual that went along with being a Nazirite. There were three things that the Nazirite was not to do. He was not to eat any fruit of the grape at all, either eating the grapes or the raisins, or any liquid that was made from it, such as grape juice, and no wine. He was not to touch these. Now that was all symbolic. He was to find his joy in the Lord and not in these elements, you see. And it is strictly, therefore, a ritual. And then he was not to use a razor at all on himself. That means he was to let his hair grow and be a regular hippie, I guess. Only he was not a hippie in that day. And the long hair At that time, the popular viewpoint of it was not what it is today. In that day, long hair was something you were to be ashamed of. And Paul says that a man was not to have long hair because it’s a shame to him. And very frankly, some of the long hairs I see, I think they ought to be ashamed of themselves for looking like they do. But anyway, that was part of the Nazarite vow and it reveals that he’d be willing to bear shame for the Lord. And then the third thing, he was not to come near or touch a dead body. And that means that if he had a loved one, even his mother or father died, he’s not to go to the funeral. In other words, he’s totally committed to the Lord. And he puts that first, we would say top priority. Now these things that he did are all symbolic. That’s all in the world that they are. And may I interject here and say that Any ritual is not real. It’s symbolic of something. Any ritual in any religion today is merely symbolic of something else. And this was symbolic of the one who was to come, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the perfect Nazarite.
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Well, we hope that you’ve been sufficiently enlightened by today’s questions and answers. If you’d like to study the Word of God on these issues and many more, then we’d like to send you our current resource catalog. You know, studying the Word of God is more than a 10-minute devotional. It’s a lifelong journey. And that’s why we encourage you to join us each weekday on the Through the Bible radio program heard on this station. Notes and outlines are available for the asking. Don’t forget this is Letter Month, and we’d love to hear from you. Let us know how these programs are blessing your life. We can be reached by calling 1-800-65-BIBLE, visiting our website at ttb.org, or by writing to Questions and Answers. For those in the U.S., Box 7100, Pasadena, California, 91109. In Canada, Box 25325, London, Ontario, N6C 6B1. Knowing we have a great and mighty God, we pray that He will answer all your questions and solve all your problems.
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In this episode, we delve into the complex topic of gun control, examining it through the lens of scripture. Dr. J. Vernon McGee responds to a listener’s question about Malachi 3:6-10, emphasizing God’s unchanging nature and calling for a return to faith. The conversation further explores the sensitive issue of firearms in the home, bringing in perspectives from the Bible and current societal challenges.
