The other night I was serving as a room monitor in a room on the Christian chat server that I belong to. We had a user in the room who has a habit of posting false teachings. On that evening he tossed out a lot of questions. Some were rhetorical in nature and some seemed almost juvenile in the way he phrased them.

One of the earlier questions he asked was what Jesus might have meant in Matthew 19:28 when He used the word, "regeneration." I answered him that the Savior was speaking spiritually. For a time that seemed enough for him but he kept on asking the questions one after another, seldom requiring a response.

At one point, a young man came in and asked for prayer for his ailing mother. No problem there, except that the young man asking all the questions, suddenly had all of the answers and told the guy that not only would he pray for his mother but that she would be healed. I take exception to people who tell others, especially a vulnerably hopeful person, that God will do a work when they have no way of knowing whether He will or He won't. God is Sovereign, and He will choose to do as He sees fit. Our job is to wait on Him hand and foot. Waiting on what He does or doesn't do may not be the easiest thing to do, but it is what we are supposed to do.

Things came to a screeching halt when the gentleman who operates and is the steward of the server happened into the room and finally had had enough when the false teaching began to come out. He did what he had to and muted the room for a minute and told the folks assembled online there that the teaching being given was, "way off track."

Unfortunately, instead of accepting the polite rebuke and asking where he may have gone wrong, and then choosing to discuss the Scriptural matter privately to find a Biblical position to stand on, he chose to tell a graduate seminarian with a minor in Biblical Greek and a New Testament expert, that he didn't know his Bible. While that could be true of someone with similar credentials it certainly isn't the case here. He persisted in being rude and ended up getting banned from the room for time to be given a "time out" for further rude and retaliatory behavior. He ended up getting banned for while from the whole server when he went to another room and rehashed the whole episode and declared that he was "right" and was owed an apology.

It would be a much simpler life if even among believers that we didn't allow the sting of pride to force us away from dealing with our errors the way the Bereans dealt with questions they had about teachings they were unfamiliar with. One also deals with questions regarding Scriptural concerns one is familiar with in the same way, by searching the Scriptures daily to see if what we're thinking is Biblically sound. The Bereans did this because they trusted God and believed His Word to be their source of truth and the best commentary for it.

Take the word "regeneration" for example. It appears only twice in the English Bible. Both times are in the New Testament. Our Lord is recorded to have used it once in Matthew 19:28 and once also by the Apostle Paul in Titus 3:5. "Regeneration," is translated from the Greek word, "palingenesia." It comes from two other words, "palin," meaning --again, and "genesis," meaning birth or beginning. It simply means a "new birth" or "a new beginning" or even a, "new order."

When Peter inquired of the Lord about a Heavenly payback for all he and his friends had sacrificed for the Lord, Jesus looked at them all and answered patiently by saying;

"Assuredly I say to you, that in the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Matthew 19:28

What exactly is meant by the Lord in His use of the word "regeneration" in the broader spiritual sense is a matter for people who wish to speculate. I do not. I choose to wait--- on Him. I do know though, that in the context of the verse He was in fact speaking of the spiritual future, to His close friends around Him, and to us. I think finding the meaning of the fullness of His statement is worth being patient and waiting for.

I'm very glad my pastor stands up for the Word. I'm also very glad that the Christian chat server I'm a part of, even in my small way is staffed by personnel who stand up for the Word as well. They sometimes endure a verbal lashing for this, but that really doesn't amount to anything that can't be handled in a godly way like anything else.