Hey everybody, this is Pastor John Ewart from Inglewood
Baptist Church in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina.
Thank you so much for tuning into our podcast.
You're going to hear from God today as we share from his word
about important issues facing your life that can guide you
according to the Bible. All right, well, thank you so
much for joining me here. And for those who are listening
online, thank you for joining this session that we're in.
I hope that you'll go back and listen to the last session of
this series. If you missed it, as we talked
about the eternality of God, we will dive into heaven starting
in the next session very specifically.
But I did feel like we needed to spend one more session and kind
of introductory work to talk about some of the alternatives
to what we're going to teach over the next several sessions
as we talk about heaven and hell and the hereafter.
There are a lot of, lot of views out there.
Now for some, this is this is a review.
Maybe I mentioned some of these things briefly in our evangelism
series and also our theology series and in the previous year,
if you go back and listen to all those, but we're going to dive
much more deeply into several of these in this session.
So thanks for joining, joining us for this.
So be a lot of scripture too. So, so get your Bibles ready or
or get your get your app ready. Because in our world today,
there are many, many perceived paths to life, and that includes
eternal life that we live in a very pluralistic, and we'll talk
more about that in a moment, very pluralistic society.
And some of these, some of these options, these false options
have existed for centuries. Some of them are as old as many
parts of Scripture. And so from the very beginning,
there were heretical and false teachings that plagued the
church. In fact, much of the New
Testament is actually written in a response to that false
teaching, especially when you think about the writings of
John, for example. And so others are being created
day by day. There'll be a new one tomorrow,
there'll be a new one the next day, there'll be a new one after
that. And so we need to kind of
categorize some of these things and, and put our minds in the
right spot as we move forward. Because once we move forward
from this session, I'm going to assume we believe the Bible.
I'm going to assume that what the Bible says is our authority
and that we're going to guide the rest of our conversation
based upon that. But it felt like we needed to
touch base on this because Satan does use these things.
He uses the opposition to God's truth.
He uses the twisting of God's truth, the distortion of that
truth, and the distortion of God's word to tempt many to
believe in a whole variety of unbiblical teachings.
He did that in Eden and he also tried to do it with Jesus in the
wilderness. Is that really what God said?
You know, there's a whole lot of that in Satan's lair.
Is that really what God said? Didn't God really say this?
And so some of these twists are are Christian like, while others
are very, very distant, distant from any Christianity connection
whatsoever. And we'll talk about both of
those kinds of categories. But just to remind everybody, if
you, especially if you're a guest, but also to remind us
that here at Inglewood, we we adopt and we believe is our
statement of faith, what we call the Baptist faith in message
2000. This is a summary.
It's not it's it's it's not necessarily dictatorial, but
it's a summary of what Southern Baptists believe.
And it actually started years ago.
This is a few versions later, but it started years ago when
the press could not understand what Baptist believed.
And they they were thinking a lot of the Catholic Church or
hierarchical type denominations and you have this conglomeration
of independent churches. What do you people believe?
And so they needed to write some summary documents to help
explain to the outside world. This is what most Baptists
believe. That's how the Baptist faith the
message started. Now, this is a, an official
adoption that we we adhere to and it says we affirm the Holy
Bible as the inspired and infallible inerrant word of God
and as the only basis for our beliefs, which is represented by
the 66 canonical books of the Old and New Testament.
In other words, we believe in the Bible.
We believe the Bible is perfect and we believe that it's
actually God's word. It doesn't just contain God's
word, it is God's word. That's a view that I've
mentioned to you before twice called human constructivism to
where people believe that men wrote the Bible, that God
inspired them, that men wrote and and men wrote in their own
way. And so the Bible's full of
errors and the Bible contains the word of God, but it is not
the word of God. We believe in full inspiration
to where the Bible is the word of God perfectly inherently.
So we also believe in what we would call absolute sufficiency.
That's a, that's a doctrinal term.
Don't worry, we're not going to be doctrinal all night.
But the absolute sufficiency basically means that everything
we need to know, we get to know that God has revealed to us what
we must know and what we need to know in order to live for him,
to know him and to live for him, to live the Christian life.
The Bible is sufficient as a guide for life and a guide for
our knowledge of God. That doesn't mean we probably
know every single thing about God like we talked about last
time, but we'll learn more about him as we walk with him.
And then later on in eternity, we'll learn a whole lot more.
So our true path to eternity needs to be found in the
authority of the Word of God, which is where we'll be from now
on in the sessions to come. But this world is fragile.
That's a nice word. This world is fragile and this
world is fleeting. This world is flaky.
See, if I can think of other words, this world is wishy
washy. This world believes one thing
one day and another thing the next.
Martin Luther described the world as a drunk man on a on a
donkey. You know, he totters to one side
and when you straighten him up, he just falls over on the other.
And so the world is constantly trying to figure this all out.
You need to be here Sunday morning in the sermon series
that I'm preaching when this is being recorded.
I'm in the book of Romans. I'm going to be in Romans
chapter 1. We're going to be talking about
not only God's wrath, but also how man looks at the creation
instead of the creator and how he's, he's all over the place
because of that. And so we need to, we need to
recognize, we need stability. We need moorings, we need
something to hang on to. So the Word of God gives us that
because the Word of God is not fragile.
And so to fully understand the biblical truth about heaven,
hell, and hereafter, we do really need to maybe clear the
path a little bit. This is not what we're talking
about. This is not what we're talking
about, which is what we'll do here in a moment.
So let's let's take a look at some of these now.
Again, this may be a bit of a review for some of you, and some
of you would already know all of these.
You may not know every one of these, you'll know many of
these, but but we're going to, we're going to dissect them a
little bit. So maybe it'll be a little
deeper than what you've normally taken a look at, because false
teachings about what takes place after death are really quite
old. And whenever humanity is faced
with this question, this big time question of truth and of
life and death, rest assured, somebody's going to come up with
a false answer. It's inevitable that somebody's
going to come up with their own idea of what of what to believe.
We live in a world of my truth versus your truth.
And people live off of that stuff.
So let's just talk through these.
There's probably about 11 of them.
And so the first one, and again, we've mentioned some of these
before, and some of these will be quicker and easier than
others. Some of these we're going to,
you know, rest in pretty hard for a while.
And so the first one is just the false path of atheism, because
we might as well start where there is no God and there is no
eternity. And so this is not only a false
path to eternity, it's a no path to eternity.
There is no such thing. When you die, you cease.
When you die, you're simply food for the worms.
And so every bit of life is the life you live here biologically
on this planet. And when it's over, you're over,
and there is no more. I do want to always encourage
you because this statistic holds true for decades.
Frankly, the Pew Research Group, which is a very, very stable,
very trustworthy research group, will share with us that only 5%
of US adults identify as atheists.
And many people will say, well, I know more than that.
I'm like, well, maybe the closer you are to a college campus, the
higher that percentage gets, unfortunately.
But the percentage has almost never gone above 5% of the total
population. And so they get a lot of press,
they get a lot of attention there, sometimes get a lot of
noise. But atheists are really not very
popular. And atheism in the United States
of America has never been very popular, frankly.
But I this next part is what I thought was interesting because
it's not necessarily how many are in the Midwest or in the
Northeast, but I wanted you to see where the highest percentage
of atheist lived. They're right here.
And so the there is a myth, and I'm going to take a few minutes
on this myth and blow it out of the water.
People still use the term the Bible Belt.
They use it in vernacular. They also use it in news.
And that's a real misnomer. If you think the South is the
Bible Belt, you need to go to Atlanta.
You need to go to some big urban areas, and you'll find that that
the belief systems in the world views of these southern States
and these southern cities are not biblically oriented at all.
The only thing Bible Beltish about the southeastern part of
the United States is the number of church buildings per capita,
not necessarily the number of Christians, not necessarily the
number of worldview people holders.
It's the number of church buildings.
And so, but it's still used, it's still thought that way.
People think everybody here goes to church and everybody else
goes to church. And I've thought, how many times
do I get to tell you over 70% of the people within 10 miles of
where you are right now don't go to church?
And that holds true across most of the state of North Carolina.
I've seen 7172, et cetera. It's pretty common in the state
of North Carolina. And so the the, the Bible Belt
has a lot of empty church buildings.
Studies have been done on what do you do with an empty church
building. The number one use is a bar and
a restaurant and so many churches.
In fact, this week there will be somewhere between 72 and 100
churches shutting their doors for the final time in the United
States of America right now. And so we have to plant new
churches just to keep up with the closures.
So if you think there's a church on every corner, there might be
a building, there might be a few people in those buildings, but
most of these churches are unhealthy.
Out of 400,000 churches in the United States of America,
360,000 of them would be unhealthy.
And so a healthy church is a rare find.
So if you happen to be in one or you think you're in one, get a
little sticker and put on your car window.
This is Englewood Baptist Church, we're going to restock
some new some new, some new logo wear in the bookstore for you
too, so you can proudly wear it to Lowe's and and Walmart so
that when I'm at the store, I won't just have former members
of Englewood come to me. You can identify yourself as a
proud active member of Englewood or hide one of the two,
whichever you got to do Psalm 141A verse you know, you may not
know it's Psalm 14. One, it says, the full says in
his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt, they do
abominable deeds, There is none who does good.
And so we're going to look at some theological assumptions
that are common throughout these false paths here in a little bit
and talk about that false path. 1.2 I noticed I didn't quite
give it #2 yet is called humanism.
And often times humanism and atheism are lumped together and,
and rightly so, because sometimes it's kind of the same
thing. But in humanism, there is a God,
it's just us. And it's often recognized as
that. In other words, there, there are
actually proactive statements and true humanism that would
talk about the rational scientific ability of man to
accomplish everything he wants to accomplish.
And so it's not necessarily the same as just general atheism
where there's no belief really whatsoever.
And so again, there's no eternity here.
Man is supreme, we, we are the God.
But it is a very right. I'll just read this definition.
A rationalistic outlook or system of thought attaching
prime importance that means #1 importance to human rather than
divine matters. Humanism affirms our ability and
our responsibility to lead ethical lives.
And so, in other words, it's all up to us.
We can achieve whatever we want to achieve.
If man puts his mind to it, he can achieve anything.
And you pay attention to your television set, you pay
attention to TV commercials, whether it's about tennis shoes
or sports or makeup. And you pay attention as to how
much you deserve and how much you ought to get, whatever you
want and how you're really in control of everything.
And, and see what's going on in that message that's out there.
We're in charge and we are capable.
And one of the problems that mankind has is we send the sin
of ability. We believe that we are able in
and of ourselves. When we are not, we are enable
and we were never created to be able.
It wasn't the design of our lives.
We were meant to be depended upon God.
So Deuteronomy 432 says for ask now of the days that are past,
which were before you, since the day that God created man on the
earth and asked from one end of heaven to the other whether such
a great thing as this has ever happened or was ever heard of.
So we have a beginning. We have a Creator, we have a
Lord, we have a God. He's in control and He is
capable, and we need to be dependent upon Him, obviously.
But false, false path #2 is weird.
And it's very, very common. This is an extremely common
belief system in our culture in the United States of America.
Far more common than atheism is agnosticism.
They might not refer to themselves as agnostics.
There are agnostics in churches. There are probably agnostics at
Inglewood. There are maybe agnostics in
this room right now who really don't know for sure and don't
believe we can know for sure. I encounter people all the time
who are either, and we'll get to deism in a minute, who are
deists or agnostics who believe in something, but we're not sure
what it is and I don't think we can really know what it is.
And agnosticism is is who knows. So it's the belief that the
existence of God is unknowable. In other words, we can't know if
he's real or not. It's in another definition is
that human reason is incapable of providing sufficient rational
grounds to justify either the belief that God exists or the
belief that God does not exist. So to know or not to know is
beyond this and it cannot be determined.
And this is a very popular belief system with people.
In my travels I used to meet people, we'd have this
conversation all the time and what would throw them off was me
and my certainty. In fact, that's happened here at
Inglewood with people who have visited who proclaimed the fact
that that, you know, your guy knows and believes what he's
really talking about. The people I know don't.
And, and we have these conversations and the fact that
assurance and certainty are powerful testimonies in a world
that does not know and maybe does not believe they can know.
But the fact that I can say to people that I know beyond any
shadow of a doubt that if I were to drop dead right here, right
now, that I would be immediately with the Lord.
And I know that beyond anything, and I do not fear death is
something that startles people. It rattles people.
Sometimes people who are in this boat, but also people in works
righteousness that we're going to talk about later are in that
same boat to where they can't know for sure or they don't
think they can know for sure or they just don't know for sure.
And so this is a belief system that relies too much.
Now, true agnosticism isn't just the the ignorance, it's just not
whether I can know or not. And I mean that word in the
right use of it. It's the fact that it it it
relies completely on human ability and reason to know it.
It has no room for leaves no room for faith.
And if you're using your facts to prove the existence of God
instead of allowing faith to filter your facts and help you
to believe in God, you're always going to be a you're going to be
down a hard road. And so to think through what
this means. And so Hebrews 11/1 is that
verse that many of you would have memorized that now faith is
the assurance of things, what hoped for in the conviction,
conviction of things not seen. I can't see this.
I can't hold this, I can't dissect this.
And that's enough for some to say, well, then you can't know.
And so we work through the arguments for the ontological
arguments for the existence of God and some of the things that
we've talked about in the past. I'm very likely, I just don't
know when I've been struggling with what's after Romans a lot.
Frankly, for those who would have no idea how any of this
works, I actually do try to plot out the whole year.
It helps our worship team, it helps pastors, it helps
everybody to know here's what's going to be coming up at certain
times of the year. Source preaching is concerned
and Wednesday night and I was I was going to do the epistles of
John at some point. I'm wondering if I don't want to
walk with John through all of his writings.
I would really like to do a gospel with you all.
And so I've wondered about doing the Gospel of John and the
Epistles of John and then the Book of Revelation do everything
that John ever wrote, but that that would take more than a
year. So we're anyway praying about
that. Thank you.
Thank you for the encouragement. Not asking for a vote, but I
appreciate it. If you start putting things on
your cars, that's the Inglewood Baptist Church, you can vote.
So no, I don't know. I don't promise.
I was behind somebody who had
one on their car and I was kind of wishing they didn't.
I won't tell that story because you're probably here.
So first John 5, first John 5 says this, and I just want you
to know the Word. I'll emphasize it every time in
these few verses. I write these things to you who
believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that
you have eternal life. And this is the confidence that
we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His
will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us
and whatever we ask, we know that we have the request that we
have asked of Him. And if you skip to verse 18, we
know that everyone who's been born of God does not keep on
sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil 1
does not touch him. We know that we are from God and
the whole world lies in the power of the evil. 1 and we know
that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so
that we may know him who is true and we are in him who is true in
his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal
life. One of the things you got to
understand is John uses the word know 39 times in first John, the
whole purpose of this book was to fight a false teaching called
Gnosticism where they felt like they had their own secret
knowledge of God. It was a knowledge base, very
Greek oriented type false teaching.
So John is trying to nail down what knowledge really is.
And if you notice in this one verse, I know you don't have it,
but it says we we know that the son of a God has come and I'll
listen to this next phrase and has given us understanding so
that we might know him say we need the Holy Spirit.
We need, we need God to help us to have faith.
We need God to help us to be able to believe our own mind,
our own facts, our own physical evidentiary procedures are not
enough. We need something supernatural,
miraculous to help us to know him.
And so the word for no is gonosco, which literally means
to come to know. But it's not just a head
knowledge, it's experiential. And so the word gonosco and the
root word of that carries a strong sense of experiential
knowledge. Not just some intellectual
understanding, but something that I've learned through
personal experience, something that I learned through personal
relationship. This is an interactive
knowledge. And so this isn't just something
I dream up in my head or that I've read enough facts to prove
to me what this says. This is an experience I'm having
with God who helps me to understand I need the indwelling
Holy Spirit to really help me get all this.
And so it can mean to understand it means you get it.
That's what it means. And the poor agnostic just
doesn't get it. And so we pray for him.
Sort of related, but totally different.
How's that is false path #3 and that's deism.
We don't use that word, but I mentioned this to you that when
we talked about this before, this is also one of the most
prevailing religions of America and deism.
Many of you would think of the Founding Fathers because you
know that some of them were deist or deist deistically
oriented. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas
Jefferson, James Madison were leading deists of their day, for
example. Some would accuse Abraham
Lincoln of being a deist as well.
And so when we, when we look back in history, we think of
that. We don't necessarily use this
word today, but this, this is a very common belief system in our
world today. And this is where there's a God,
but he's distant and he's impersonal.
And so he created everything, but he doesn't have anything to
do with anything. It's the the classic
illustration of the watchmaker or the clockmaker.
He made the watch or the clock wounded up, put it on the shelf.
They'll never look at it. They'll never touch.
It has nothing to do with it again.
So he's very non interactive. And so depending upon where you
fall in deism, and there's a whole continuum of deists, they
have different beliefs about the immortality of the soul and
about eternity. So this is the first group we
see that might believe in eternity.
But again, they're not going to be sure about eternity because
of the distance between them and God.
So they're not agnostic, but they're still not knowing for
sure at all because of their belief system.
So they have no assurance. But Deus would also have trouble
with the gospel most of the time.
Because God would never lower himself to come be a person.
The incarnation would never happen.
God would never lower himself to become man.
God would never submit himself to the cross.
God would never allow himself to be punished.
This is why I argue out loud, even though this would be not
not pleasing to somebody who falls into this religious
system. But Islam has a lot of deist
tendencies to it. A law is a very deistic God.
He is not interactive in the same way Yahweh or Jehovah.
So if you ever hear anybody say, well you know, same path, two
different lights, that's not true at all.
A law and Yahweh are not anywhere near the same character
or nature or action or feeling. And so this is a very distant
fatalistic experience at times. So some of the great world
religions hover around this, although they don't, they don't
use this word, but they'll hover around this belief that you
might know about God, but you really don't get to have the
ability to know God himself. You have no personal
relationship with him. You're you're trying to maybe
please him in some distant way, in a works righteousness kind of
way, which we'll talk more about in a minute.
So the Bible obviously portrays a very different relationship of
intimacy that we that God wants us to have.
The reason we created in the 1st place, why we're here, why you
breathe, why you exist is for this Romans 815 is one place we
could look at many, but it says for you did not receive the
spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you've received
the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry ABBA Father, an
intimate term, a family term, a relational term that I can have
with God. Galatians 46 And because your
son's God has sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying
ABBA Father, we need the spirit of the Son in our hearts so that
we can understand him, so we can know him, so that we can believe
in him. False path #4 If you're familiar
one to you, I'm getting into some more unfamiliar in a minute
universalism. Everybody's in the pool,
everybody get on board. But you really got to understand
there's also a continuing universalism.
You have moralistic universalism to where there are limits.
So in other words, the really, really bad people didn't make
it, they just cease to exist. And so there's some line there.
Hitler didn't make it, for example, or somebody like that.
But it's always a relatively A relative line that's totally
subjective of who gets to decide good, who gets to decide bad.
Pure universalism. It's 100% across the board.
And of course, some of this is based on a very poor
understanding of the nature of God, which I'm going to talk
about on Sunday morning. Again, I'm going to talk about,
I mean, this passage starts off with God's wrath and the fact
that people struggle with that, even that concept of a wrathful
God. It's just the Bible.
I'm just preaching through a book.
So it assumes also this right to define things themselves.
But again, most simply just going to preach everybody to
heaven. God's too loving to do anything
else. God's too loving to send anybody
to hell. God's too loving to punish
anybody. We're going to really deal with
that in the book of Romans. And so, so because of this,
there's an emotional affinity to universalism.
If I'm a universalist, I don't have to deal with the weight of
lostness. I don't have to worry about
anybody. I don't have to be evangelistic.
I don't have to be missional, I don't have to worry about
whether somebody's lost or not, whether they heard the gospel or
not. I don't have to worry about any
of that. So it just takes the whole
emotional weight of burden off of me to where I don't have to
can be concerned about my neighbor.
But they also could not or would not teach about the full nature
of God or all the Scripture because the nature of God that
they they're obviously, and we're going to see more of this
later. They're obviously going to cling
to the fact that God is love, which is incredibly true, but
it's actually in that love nature that also makes God holy
and in His Holiness. A holy God, a God is not going
to allow those that he loves to be corrupted and to be
destroyed. And so he steps in against sin
and hates sin. He abhors it is what the Word
will say. We'll see that again when we get
to Romans one later. But anyway, the Bible makes it
very clear, very different truth.
Matthew 7 And not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will
enter the Kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my
Father, who is in heaven on that day.
Many. And notice that word, many, not
just a few, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not
prophesied in your name? Cast out demons in your name, do
mighty works in your name? And then I would declare to
them, I never knew you depart from me, you workers of
lawlessness. And then Revelation 20, if
anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he
was thrown into the lake of fire.
And we're going to come back to those passages.
And when we actually talk about hell and we really look, we're
going to look honestly in future sessions, what does the Bible
really say about heaven and hell?
Not what does Hollywood portray, not where, you know, TV shows
portray. What does the Bible really say
about these things? What really happens the moment
that you die? And what happens between now
and, and the second coming? We're going to talk what about
Old Testament people who died? We're going to talk about all
that stuff in the, in the future sessions.
False path #5 pluralism is this. This is probably the number one
religion of our country. Many roads lead to home.
According to pluralists. Your truth and light are yours
and mine are mine. And you go your way and I'll go
my way. And we're all going to end up
kumbaya. And together around the bonfire
at the end might be a hotter bonfire than some people know.
But here's the thing that these next couple of things you need
to grab a hold of. This also plagues the
evangelical church. I would be shocked if there were
not pluralists who attend Inglewood Baptist Church every
single Sunday when I LED a doctoral program at Southeastern
Seminary. And by the way, Scott Pace was
elected the new president of Southeastern.
Many of you know Doctor Pace, Doctor Aiken also had a major
health scare at his They were honoring him and he actually
passed out and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance.
He's doing fine. Teresa has been talking to
Charlotte, so just pray for Doctor Aiken.
He's doing fine. Dehydrated doesn't.
Anyway, the stinker doesn't eat breakfast.
And I hope, I hope he hears this one day because I've travelled
with him all around the world and the one thing I have to have
a backpack full of her diet Cokes for his breakfast.
And so anyway, well, I'll leave him alone.
He doesn't feel well. Poor little feller.
But when I was the doctoral, when I LED that doctoral program
we used to have, I've said this to some of you before, we would
have our students do theological surveys of their churches.
Most of them are pastors. And we stopped doing it because
it was too depressing. They had universalists, they had
pluralists, they had synchronous, they had all kinds
of people. These were Baptist churches,
traditional Baptist churches, but this is just a testimony to
how little theology is being taught sometimes in our
churches. And so it's also a testimony to
the fact that those of you who listen to this online, there are
a lot of people in this room who want to come and learn.
And I appreciate you all being here.
I do. Midweek has been a phenomenon to
me, and I appreciate you being here.
So this is widely accepted in our culture by people who
identify as Christians. And so it becomes interesting.
It's, it's again, it's an easy way, like, it's like a, or like
universalism. It's an easy way to deal with
the weight of lostness. I don't have to have a burden if
everybody, you know, everybody just kind of believes in
something, we're all going to end up there together.
And so I don't have to worry as much about that faithful
Buddhist. I don't have to worry about that
faithful Muslim. I don't have to worry about that
faithful Hindu because they're faithful, they're going to make
it. And that's what pluralism is
going to teach. Now, various levels, again,
there's a continuum in all these categories.
Some are going to say that only those who are faithful or good
within their faith system make it, while others are more wide
open, even to the point of almost universalism.
They believe in something. And so if you're really good at
worshiping the rock and that's what you worship and you're
really true in your worship of the rock, you're just fine.
Everything will be OK. You'll find your way there and
so this can be this can be related to both universalism and
pluralism. Unfortunately for them, the
Bible does not teach this. The Bible is very exclusive and
it and so John 14 six most of you could say it out loud.
Jesus himself said I am the way the truth and the life and no
one comes to the Father except through me.
He's the only doorway, he says in a sermon on the Mount or at
toward the end, he says in Matthew 7.
He says enter by the narrow gate.
For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to
destruction. And those who enter it by enter
by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the
way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
And I'm going to come to some other verses in this next
section because to be honest with you, false path 5.2 is just
a version of either universalism or pluralism, but it goes by a
different name. It's more specific, and it's far
more dangerous. This is one of the most
dangerous false teachings that is making a push right now in
the Christian Church, not in our culture, but within the
Christian Church. It's called inclusivism.
That sounds like a great word, and many times that is a great
word. We want to be inclusive.
We want people from all backgrounds with the gospel is
inclusive. It's for everybody.
And so we like that word. But inclusivism is actually a
very specific theological viewpoint about salvation that
is simply not biblical yet they're going to use Scripture.
This is very complicated and it's growing rapidly.
Unfortunately, many, there's several folks I know, friends of
mine from Southern Seminary in Kentucky who actually write
books about this against it. It believes in the opportunity.
Here's the nutshell. It believes in the opportunity
to trust in Christ after you die.
And so, so mainly, usually normally most inclusivist would
say it again, it's for the faithful from other religious
perspectives. So you were faithful in whatever
your belief system was. You're going to get to heaven.
And when you get to heaven, there's going to be this great
reveal. And suddenly you're going to be
aware that the reason you were able to have faith in your
Islamic path or your animistic Pagan path is because of what
Jesus did on the cross. So it's all about Jesus.
And you got to watch this tricky language.
So they'll use John 14-6. Jesus is the way, the truth and
the life. And no one can come to the
Father except it's Jesus the whole time.
But it's, you know, in this throne room scene, you're going
to see Jesus or meet Jesus or have this awareness of Jesus and
suddenly it's going to click and you're going to have the
opportunity. All the main whole reason I was
a faithful Buddhist was because of Jesus.
See, And so it's complicated, but it uses common evangelical
language. In Scripture, John 1232, they
would use this verse. And I, when I am lifted up from
the earth, will draw all people to myself.
So everybody who believes Philippians 2 So that at the
name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and
under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
You're just going to get to do that after you die.
You'll kneel there on the steps. Muhammad will be right there
kneeling next to you. The Buddha will be there
kneeling with you, and everybody will be kneeling before Jesus
because he's the reason that the light exists and it's very many
paths and facets and angles. See first Timothy 24.
God desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge
of the truth. Or even Acts 4, which is a very
specific passage that could be used for exclusivism.
You know, we would use this to say that Jesus is the only way.
Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel,
that by the name of Jesus, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you
crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by him this man is
standing before you. Well, this Jesus is the stone
that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the
cornerstone, and there is salvation and no one else.
For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which
we must be saved. You just get to do it after you
die. Now most inclusive, this would
say you had to be a person of faith before you die, not
Christian faith. That didn't matter.
Again, you could be you could be a Wiccan and a really good
Wiccan, but you believe in your Wiccan.
You're Wicca to the point of you know that light that you had all
comes from him. And when you get there, you see
him in this grand display and you recognize and you're
convicted. The problem with this is the
Bible doesn't teach this. So the Bible teaches clearly
that we must be saved before we die, while we still have the
conscious ability to believe in Jesus Christ while we're still
here and accept his free gift of grace.
Salvation has to happen this side of death.
The shortest, clearest verse I could think about was Hebrews
927. And just as it appointed for man
to die once, and after that comes judgement, we have to
believe or think about things like this.
Second Corinthians 510 For we must all appear before the
judgement seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what
is due for what He has done in the body, whether good or evil.
In other words, while you were here physically here, part of
your judgement is going to come from that or Revelation 20
again. Then I saw a great white throne,
and him who seated on it, from his presence earth and sky fled
away, and no place was found for them.
And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the
throne, and the books were opened.
Then another book was opened, which is the Book of life, And
the dead were judged by what was written in the books according
to what they had done, done here, done in life.
And the sea gave up the dead who were in it.
Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were
judged each one according to what they had done.
Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.
This is the second death, the lake of fire or Jesus talking in
Matthew 13. Let both grow together until the
harvest. And at harvest time, I'll tell
the reapers, gather the weeds 1st and bind them in bundles to
be burned, but gather the weed into my barn.
So it will be at the end of the age.
The angels will come out and separate the evil from the
righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace.
In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The other side of this is, is that nowhere in Scripture?
Nowhere in scripture, not anywhere in Scripture.
Is there any evidence or any suggestion whatsoever that you
have the ability to make that decision after death?
And so that's the way it really worked.
It would be in here. All right, let's go a different
direction for a few minutes. False path number six,
pantheism. This is a word that you probably
don't use very much, but this is actually at the root of some of
the New Age movement and other and other movements that you'll
find this one and the next one, God is in everything.
The word pantheism actually comes from Greek words that mean
pan or all or everything and the theos, which is God or deity.
And so all God, everything God, everything's God, all of reality
is God. And so when we die, we simply
become part of the whole because we're all part of the whole.
Another word for this would be monotheism to where we're all
one, we're all part of the one. This is kind of like this is
kind of like the force in Star Wars, you know, to where we're
all part of it together. When we die, we just become all
things in the world are one and one is in all is All in all
things. What is All in all things is
God, eternal and immense, neither born nor ever to perish.
So God did not just create things, He is those things.
So God is in the tree, God is in the rock.
God is the rock, God is the water, God is the cloud, God is
everything. Well, the Bible says in Genesis
11, in the beginning, Elohim Barad, God created the heaven,
heavens and the earth and the earth was without form and void
and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of
God was hovering over the face of the waters.
And so we see that God transcends the creation.
He's not one with it. He, he, he indwells us.
God does not indwell inanimate objects.
That's not in the Bible. He endwells living things, He
endwells us. And so this often leads to 6.2
because they're kind of related to one another.
It often leads to what we would call animism.
Animism is often thought of as a a crude or or old fashioned
indigenous native type religion. This is where you would worship,
you'd have a rock idol or you'd worship the fire or you might
worship a volcano. So that so that.
So that's often called animism. And in many of our colonial
missions terms, we would use those words for it.
But it's also more than that. And it's actually far more
popular today than you might know, their entire organizations
based on animism today in the United States of America.
The idea here is anima is a Latin word for breath and, and
it's the belief that places, objects and creatures all
possess spiritual essence. So it's very much a subset or
maybe pantheism to the said side of it.
They're related to one another. It's nature worship, it's
inanimate object worship, right? So they're worshiping the
creation instead of the creator. You need to be here to hear
Romans 1. It's exactly what he's talking
about in Romans 1. So animism is not the same as
pantheism. Although they're often confused,
there are some differences. The main difference is that
animus believe everything to be spiritual in nature, but they do
not necessarily see the spiritual nature of everything
as being united. Pantheists see this whole unity.
There's a unity behind everything.
We're all part of a great one, whereas animus would see
individual things. So I know you wanted to know
that, but but, but in other words, animus, animus put more,
put more uniqueness on each individual soul there, whereas
pantheism, everything shares the same.
So in many of these worldviews, human beings in both of these,
we're basically just animals. We're basically equal with other
animals. We're equal with plants for that
matter and and natural forces. We're not higher in any way in
the created order. We're simply one of we're just a
more sophisticated primate. We're just a smarter ape in
these kinds of belief systems. And so paganism are some aspects
of Wiccan, which you would probably use the word witchcraft
are very much tied into these types of things.
The difference between a, say, Christianity or religion versus
witchcraft, a witch, the whole purpose, well, it's more
complicated. A great design of witchcraft is
that I can manipulate these forces.
I can manipulate these natural forces to either bless me or
curse you. And so I have the ability to get
in touch with this and manipulate this to where I can
use it in my spells or my curses or it's under my power to be
able to manipulate that. I'll be honest with you, that's
also what the prosperity gospel almost teaches, that somehow I
can manipulate God, It's magic. I can manipulate God and make
him do whatever I want him to do.
And I can claim things and, and make him provide those things
for me. And so don't miss the connection
to some of these pieces. Again, this is where a lot of
new age movement is. It's also, I'm, if you were out
in Arizona, where we were for years, we had people in Sedona.
Some of you probably been to Sedona on vacation.
You have people who go to Sedona to get in touch with the vortex
of the red rocks, and they're going to go out there and lay
and listen to the vibrations and the rhythms of the rocks.
He'll speak to them and talk to them.
They'll worship trees, they'll worship nature.
They do all kinds of things like that.
And so you also get some mix in this with Eastern religions.
There is some animism and even pantheism in some of the Eastern
religions. Let me just whet your appetite
with Romans One, we're going to break this down in great detail
in the sermon series on Sunday mornings.
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God
has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes,
namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly
perceived ever since the creation of the world, in the
things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
She's talking about general revelation to nature and
history. For although they knew God, they
did not honor Him as God or give thanks to him.
But they became futile in their thinking and their foolish
hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became
fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images
resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
In other words, the idolatry that surround especially these
Gentile background believers in Rome.
Therefore God gave them up in the lust of their hearts and
purity to this honoring of their bodies among themselves, because
they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and
served the creature rather than Creator who is blessed forever.
Amen. Then we got a couple more.
We need to hit here some path #7 works righteousness.
This is almost everybody, many of the above, and just about
every world religion. Well, every world religion
except, except biblical Christianity, but even including
variants of Christianity. Live and die by works
righteousness. It's the holy scale and the
ladder somehow achieving, sometimes somehow earning my way
to heaven. It's very fatalistic, often fear
based. I can't know for sure.
I hope so. I think I can.
I hope I can.
If I can just get to the next step, if I can just climb one
more rung, if I can just please the divine, maybe, just maybe,
just maybe I can get in. And so there's a lot of problems
with works, righteousness, very familiar passage that you would
know. And you ought to know if you
don't know as Ephesians 28 and 9.
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not
your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a
result of works so that no one may boast.
So we recognize that I can't, I can't work my way up.
And but this, the Christianity, biblical Christianity is the
only, the only faith system that teaches grace.
It's the only faith system that teaches that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us, that God actually sacrificed
himself for us and now gives us the ability to believe in Him
and to know him and to trust in him because he came down to us.
It's the only faith system to teach everything else.
You got to work your way up to him, make your way up to the
Golden Tower somehow to please the God.
But this isn't just old world paganistic religions.
This is also variants of Christianity.
You'll see this in people who knock on your door.
Some of you will have a background in this in the church
you grew up in. Listen, those who don't believe
in works righteousness, it's a fairly sin getting to be a thin
slice of humanity, frankly. And so you need to embrace
grace, false path #8 annihilation ISM.
Other people who knock on your door believe this.
They may not come, they may not start with this, but this is
something they believe. Jehovah's Witnesses are
annihilationist, for example. This is the belief that that
heaven is normally forever, but hell is not.
And so you go to hell, you burn up, you're gone forever.
The the eternality of punishment, I wrote an entire
huge thing on this one time. The eternality of punishment is
just too severe for the crime of sin.
It's too much to burn forever in hell.
That's too much that there's no way that can be true.
It's too much. Well, you need to come back to
future sessions. Don't listen to me.
Listen to the word of God that I'll share with you about what
hell really is and why hell really is and who's there and
who's going to go there and how to avoid it.
See, the problem is we misjudge sin again in Romans.
Just listen to what he's going to say next.
We misjudge sin and we misjudge God's view of sin.
We also misjudge our own choices about sin.
And so we take it flippantly and we've reduced God into somebody
who really doesn't care that much.
He's going to let us slip by who who really won't punish us
because that's how we want life to be.
We don't want accountability. We don't want to be held
accountable. We don't want rules.
We don't want, we don't want barriers, we don't want lines
drawn. We want to be able to do
whatever we want to do the way we want to do it, whenever we
want to do it. And I'm looking for dew.
Dew to the free, looking for war.
That's what we want. And every message I get feeds
me. Every message says I deserve it.
I deserve my burger the way I want it.
I deserve the car I ought to have.
I deserve the house I should have.
I deserve the job that I should have.
I deserve everything. I deserve it all.
I should have everything all right.
And it's a problem. Sometimes we misjudge God's
nature. Matthew 25 And these will go
away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal
life. I onion.
I onion is the word for everlasting without end.
Jesus calls heaven I I onion. It's harder to say in English.
Jesus says heaven is I onion and hell is I on the on.
You can't have one without the other.
Biblically, linguistically, theologically doesn't work.
You don't get to take that word out.
You don't get to change what you want out of that false path #9
purgatory. Speaking of works, righteousness
systems, purgatory is the the Catechism of the Holy Church.
The Catholic Church, let me just read it, defines purgatory as a
purification so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter
the joy of heaven, which is experienced by those who die in
God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified.
And so it notes that the final purification of the elect is
entirely different from the punishment of the damned.
And so this isn't hell, so to speak.
It's something else. And so the purification is
necessary because the Bible says in Revelation 2127 that nothing
unclean will enter the presence of God in heaven.
So everything has to be purified, everything has to be
made clean before you can go on to heaven.
And that we might die with with our mortal sins forgiven.
And I don't have time to go into the different levels of sin in
the system, but some of our sins might be forgiven, but we still
have impurities and other sins that are not forgiven.
And so we still need the temporal punishment due to due
to the sins that aren't forgiven yet.
Revelation 2127 says but nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor
anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only
those who are written in the Lamb's book of life.
Here's the problem is that it's assuming in complete grace.
It's it's assuming that the forgiveness by Christ alone is
not enough. You could make the same
arguments for inclusivism or for a works righteousness as a
whole. It's incorrect from the
beginning. Scriptural support for this is
used out of context, and then the rest of the scriptural
support is found in the Apocrypha and 2nd Maccabees,
which was a book that the church council's determined was not
divinely inspired, nor did it belong in the final Canon.
And so you might say, well, where's this in the Bible where
you're not going to find it in your Bible?
And so Christ's work here, here's the truth is that
Christ's work was complete. You got to understand that in
this system, and I know some of you were raised in a Catholic
system, and I don't want to be totally disrespectful to you.
I have relatives who are Catholics.
I have a sister who's a charismatic Catholic, which is a
reformer within the Catholic Church who actually believes
salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone.
And she and I have those conversations.
She likes the trappings and the formality of the ritual of the
church. So she doesn't want to leave it.
She's like Martin Luther a little bit.
But but the problem is, is that when the Church controls grace,
and you can only get grace through the sacraments, through
the church, and not recognizing that Christ is the source, then
you're going through man and not God.
And so you're starting at the wrong spot.
So scriptural support is that Christ's work here is complete.
No other sacrifice is needed if you've trusted in Jesus Christ
as your Lord and Savior. He forgives you, and He
completely forgives you, and He completely cleanses you.
I don't need to be further cleansed.
I might need to confess my sin as I'm walking through life
first, John 19 would say. But that has nothing to do with
my salvation anymore. That's not how salvation works.
His grace and His forgiveness are sufficient.
John 17 four I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the
work that you gave me to do or Hebrews one which you would know
is he's the radiance of the glory of God and the exact
imprint of his nature and he upholds the universe by the word
of his power. After making purification for
sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high
because he was done to tell us die.
He said on the cross it is finished literally.
The debt is paid. The debt is marked cancelled,
literally. I've paid for it.
You don't need someone else. You don't.
When we die, we will be with Jesus.
We don't need to go some intermediary place.
And we will come back to this idea over and over again in the
weeks to come. We're going to talk about soul
sleep. We're going to talk about the
state that we're in the moment we die.
We're going to talk about resurrected bodies.
We're going to do all that. But just remember Second
Corinthians 58. Yes, we are of good courage and
we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord,
because that's where we'll be. It's false path #10 is
reincarnation, or another word for that is transmigration.
You might hear the word transmigration sometimes being
slipped in by people who don't really want you to know you're
talking about reincarnation. And so the wheel goes round and
round and round. Obviously reincarnation is a
central tenet of many East Asian and South Asian religions, such
as Hinduism and Buddhism and Sikhism and Taoism.
Some forms again of Wiccan, of paganism and animism would also
be involved in reincarnation ideas.
But again, Hebrews 927 says, and just as is a point for a man to
die once and after that comes judgment, or again, Second
Corinthians 58, we're going to be away from the body.
We're going to be with the Lord. There's 0 indication that we're
coming back. You're not a cardinal in the
garden. Thank you for those who know
what I just said. False path #11 I saved this one
for last for a reason. Syncretism.
Not a word you'd use often, but this, along with pluralism are
probably the leading edge of the sword in our culture today.
Basically, syncretism means I can take what I want out of all
these other pieces and make up whatever I want.
Historically in missions life, for example, there were classic
examples of syncretism, often tied to Roman Catholicism and
missions in places like South America or Africa where they
would take their native and a Mystic belief system, mix it
with Roman Catholicism and come up with something else.
That's where voodoo comes from, by the way.
It's an African work that comes to the islands from Africa, and
it's a mixture. It's a syncretic belief system
to where they would mix pieces of each.
So you mix well, you can mix individually or you can mix as a
group. And that's the problem today.
It takes the parts you like, you leave out the rest of that one
and you add more of what you like from something else and you
come up with your own. So my truth is my truth and it,
and it's almost like it's a, it's a holy bubble that you
can't enter. There's and there's no way that
can be pierced by you. Your truth is your truth.
You do whatever you do. I'm going to do what I do.
My truth is my truth. And it has become almost an
impenetrable shield in our culture today.
You hear it everywhere. You hear it on on TV, you hear
it in movies, you hear it in sports, you hear it from
celebrities, you hear it from preachers, frankly.
So this takes us back to our introduction again.
To some degree, the Bible warns about syncretism.
The Bible proactively advocates for a pure and exclusive
relationship and devotion to God, and it spells out exactly
the way that's supposed to happen.
We are called to resist the temptation to conform to the
surrounding culture and to maintain the integrity of our
faith, the biblical faith. We have to have an authority.
And if you don't have the rock solid mooring of the Word of God
in your life, then you're going to slide all over the place.
So ask God to help you believe in His Word, because the Bible's
message is clear. Syncretism undermind undermines
the foundation of that relationship of true worship, so
to speak. So it's essential for followers
to adhere to these teaching, the teaching of Scripture, and avoid
blending their faith with with conflicting theologies.
That's what was going on in the early church.
That's that's much of what Paul had to write about and John had
to write about because people were taking Judaism and mixing
it with Christianity, pressing it upon Gentiles or vice versa,
or the Greek world view or the Roman world view was coming in
because these people were coming from such diversity and they
didn't have this like we do. So it's, yeah, I can be hard on
them, but sometimes I get it. They didn't, they didn't have
all this yet. So they needed somebody to come
and help them. But we have this now.
So we are further with that excuse.
That'll be part of Romans 2. The more access you have, the
more responsibility you have. So I'm going to share a couple
of stories with you that you'll remember. 1 is Deuteronomy 12.
It's only a couple verses, but there, there are a couple of
verses. So they feared the Lord, but
also served their own gods. How's that for an opening?
That describes it well, perhaps after the manner of the nation's
from among whom they had been carried away.
To this day they do according to the former manner.
They do not fear the Lord, and they do not follow the statutes
or the rules of the law, or the commandment that the Lord
commanded the children of Jacob, whom He named Israel.
The Lord met a covenant with them and commanded them.
You shall not fear other gods, or bow yourselves to them, or
serve them, or sacrifice to them, but you shall fear the
Lord, for who brought you out of the land of Egypt with great
power and with an outstretched arm.
You shall bow yourselves to Him, and to Him you shall sacrifice,
and the statutes and the rules and the law of the commandments
that he wrote for you. You shall always be careful to
do. You shall not fear other gods
or. I was reminded the story of
Solomon. Actually, because of a devotion
that was shared by one of our staff members, I had the
opportunity and privilege of helping to write a Co write a
book for Lifeway a few years ago about Old Testament prayers.
And I used the prayer of Solomon, the dedication of the
temple. And he was referring to that
this morning. And it made me think of the
other aspect of Solomon, the not so wise part of Solomon.
First Kings 11. Now King Solomon loved many
foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh.
Or, or a better pronunciation would be Pharaoh, the son of the
the son of the son of the son, a God himself.
Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, all these other termites and
Cydonians from the nations concerning which the Lord had
said to the people of Israel, You shall not enter into
marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely
they will turn away your heart after their gods.
Solomon clung to these in love. I'm sorry, ladies, but he had
700 wives who were princesses and 300 concubines.
And his wives turned away his heart.
For when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart
after other gods. And his heart was not wholly
true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father.
For Solomon went after Ashtereth, the goddess of the
Sadonians, and after Milkham the abomination of the Ammonites.
So Solomon did what was evil in the side of the Lord, and did
not wholly follow the Lord, as David his father had done.
The abomination of Moab and for Moloch, who they used to
sacrifice children to by the way, and the abomination of the
Ammonites on the mountain east of Jerusalem.
And so he did for all his foreign wives, who made
offerings and sacrifice to their gods.
So his house is just all mixed up, and it leads to major
problems. New Testament Colossians 2 See
to it that no, that no one takes you captive by philosophy and
empty deceit according to human tradition.
You chew on that one. According to the elementary.
Spirit elemental spirits of the world, and not according to
Christ, our Peter writes. Since you've been born.
Again. Not of perishable.
Seed, but of imperishable through the living and.
Abiding. Word of God.
So what do you believe and do you even know why?
Part of what I want to. Do on midweeks and then these.
Sessions is I want us to be as clear as we can about what the
Bible teaches about things later this year, to be honest with
you, I'm going to do an apologetic series with you on
Wednesday nights where we talk about some basic apologetics.
We've got to know how to encounter people from these
different backgrounds and, and what to say to them, how to pray
for them, how to engage them in an honest, authentic,
intelligent conversation so that we know and understand what we
believe and how to stand firm on it.
So next session, you won't want to miss it.
We're going to talk about home. We're going to talk about home.
And what that's really? Like, and who all's going to be
there? Who's?
There already and how we're going to get there and who won't
be there as well. So you'll want to come back for
that as we continue this series together.
We've cleared the path. We understand that's not the
road to take. Those are 11 of them not to
take. So we'll be on the narrow way
and follow the true path. Father, thank you.
Thank you for your love and your.
Grace, Thank you, Father, for the way.
That you guide us with truth. I I'm just Father.
I just. Appreciate the fact that I.
Don't have to think of up. Everything you know, Lord, I
don't have to create truth. I don't have to.
I don't have to figure out you tell us.
I just have to trust in you. And so thank you, Father, that
the faith. Of a little child.
That's like the Kingdom of heaven.
Honest, open, trusting, depending.
Just cradled in your arms, Father.
Help us to rest there in your word.
And help us to live a life that shows that.
Help us to not be afraid. Help us to not be intimidated.
Help us, Father, to not shy away from opportunities.
Help us, father, to pursue you, and then to pursue others who
need to know you. We thank you for that privilege
in Christ's name, Amen. Thank you so much for listening
today. And I also hope that you'll go
to our. Website@englewoodbaptist.com as
well as our app and find many other resources that will bless
you and your families. Thank you once again.