Know What You Believe

Transcript

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[0:00] And so today we have kind of a different type of sermon today. Today is an overview of three different what we would call cults. And so the idea is to spot a fake. As Victoria was saying, you have to know what the original looks like. So we're going to talk about the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Mormons, and the Scientologists. And in the end, I really want to say that these are people we need to love, respect, and help because they have fallen. They are following a false messiah or a false shepherd, and so we need to love them. But their beliefs are different from ours, and we need to know what those differences are. So that's happening today. And then follow on. Hopefully this is interesting to you. Next week I'll be talking about the different kind of groups of Christians which are true Christians. Starting from the beginning, you have the Roman Catholics, the Oriental Orthodox, which is different from the Eastern Orthodox, and then the Protestants. And we'll put our place inside that family tree of the Christian faith, the Covenant Church, and talk a little bit about that. And then we'll talk about the distinctives of the Covenant Church.

[1:05] Yes, I think that's right, George. Yes, and we'll see that Scientology isn't even really a religion. It's a multi-level marketing scheme of science fiction. You'll see. You'll see. It's going to be fun. So we're going to be spotting a fake. And I want to read our reading. We're going to read our reading today because even in the Scriptures we get this sense that the writers in the New Testament were aware that there were false teachers going around peddling different understandings of what Jesus did. And so they're always trying to set the record straight. And some of them were doing it for money. And so sometimes money is a motivator when people spread false teachings. So let's go to our reading. It's 1 John 4, 1 through 3.

[1:55] Dear friends, do not believe everyone. Who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the Spirit they have comes from God. For there are many false prophets in the world. This is how we know if they have the Spirit of God. If a person claiming to be a prophet acknowledges that Jesus Christ came in a real body or in the flesh, that person has the Spirit of God. But if someone claims to be a prophet and does not acknowledge the truth about Jesus, that person is not from God. Such a person has the Spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard is coming into the world and indeed is already here.

[2:36] Let's pray. Father, thank you for this word and thank you for good teaching. And we pray that you would bless all that we learn this morning. In Jesus' name, Amen. Now you don't necessarily have to take notes because I'm going to send out a handout to you in just a minute. It's going to be distributed to where you are. And I've, in a previous church, I made a list like this. And some people actually put it on their, used a magnet, put it on their refrigerator. And when the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Mormons came, they quickly took it out and were like, oh yeah, okay, these are the quick, you know, this is how we can talk to them. But before we do that, this is going to be a really fun and hopefully very fast thing that I want to do, which is about spotting a fake. Now you guys know about the Treasury Department that makes the money, but there's also, strangely enough, as part of the Secret Service, these are the people who figure out if there's a fake. They figure out if there's counterfeit money or not. How do they know if money is counterfeit? They know what the correct version of the money actually looks like. So that's one way to spot it, plus the paper, the ink, et cetera. But if you, you know, if you create a dollar bill that's fake and it doesn't have all the features of a real dollar bill, right,

[3:42] you know it's a fake. Same thing with our teaching. So what I'm going to do, and be prepared to raise your hands, is I have here all the smaller denominations. These are all in envelopes that say Kiara's Gift on them. Okay? So you can win these. You can win this money. And when you get it, George is going to bring it to you, if you get it, you can keep it. No judgment. It's yours. Put it in your pocket. It's fine. Or if you want to run back there in the offering plate, you can drop it in there. It'll go to Kiara's Gift. And we'll see how bad of a person you actually are by keeping it. No, I'm kidding. You can keep it. It's not a gift unless you can actually keep it. So you can actually keep it, you know. And the first one's a dollar bill, and we're going all the way up to $100. Okay? And this is my money. It's okay because I was going to give it to Kiara's Gift anyways this month because this is our special monthly gift. This just makes it more fun. Right? So you can give it or not give it. Okay. So you ready, George? So come on up here and stand next to me. And he's going to run over there. But here's what we've got to do. So raise your hand and keep it raised if you know who is on the front of the dollar bill.

[4:45] Raise your hand if you know who's on the front of the dollar. Way high. Way high. We have to see. Okay. If you didn't think it was Ellen, how can you not know this? Well, then put your hand up. . Oh, no, no, no, no, no. It doesn't work that way. So everybody put your hand up. Everybody put your hand up. Just everybody. Okay. If you think it's George, if you don't think it's George, if you didn't think it's George Washington, put your hand down. Okay? Because it's George. If you didn't think George Washington, put your hand down. Okay. Everybody hands up. Okay. Very good.

[5:15] Now, what is, is there a pyramid on the back of the dollar bill? Put your hand up if you, you should have kept your hands up. Everybody, I'm sorry, you should have kept your hands up. This is how this works. I'm sorry. I didn't really explain this. Yes, there's a pyramid on the back. Okay. So. There's also the Illuminati eye. There's the Illuminati eye on there. Okay.

[5:34] Now, somebody call out, the first person to call out, what else does it say on the back of the dollar bill? God we trust. In God we trust. He said it first. So you can go run this over. But it may say pluribus unum, but I don't have time to check, Zach. But I suspect, I expect Zach to, over to, to Andres. Okay. Here's the $5 bill. Are you guys ready? Okay. Raise your hand if you think you got it. Raise your hand if you think you know who's on the front of the $5 bill. I expect Zach and Danielle to just ace this. Okay. Jenny's the only person. Who's on the front? Yes. Okay. This is for Jenny. Okay. Give that to Jenny. Okay. All right. All right. Raise your hand if you think you know who's on the front of the $10 bill.

[6:13] What? Okay. Craig. Absolutely. You're the only one. So you win that one. Okay. All right. I mean, it's going to, I thought this would get more interesting. Okay. Raise your hand if you know who's on the front. Of the $20 bill. Okay. Anyone else? Let's give everybody a chance. Danielle? Andrew Jackson. Andrew Jackson is correct. One of our worst presidents is on the $20 bill. Keep your hand raised. Okay. All right. See, what I was going to do was say ask what was on the back of the bill. Because on the back of each bill is one of the landmarks from 5, 10, 20, and on. So the, Craig, what's on the back of the 10?

[6:51] It's the Treasury building because of Alexander Hamilton. Yep. And what's on the back of the 20? The White House. The White House. Right. And then on the back of the 5, I think, was the Lincoln Memorial. Yes. Okay.

[7:06] So who's on the front of the $50 bill? Danielle and Eric and Pam, keep your hands up if you think you know. Come on. Keep your hand all the way up. Okay. If you said Grant, keep your hand up. Okay. One, two. You didn't think Grant? Okay. All right. Zach, you don't know this? Or are you just trying to be nice? Okay. What's on the, if you know what's on the back of the $50 bill? Eric, what's on the back of the $50 bill? You're the only one with your hand up.

[7:34] Yeah, I don't know. You don't know. See, this is how little you know about our currency, which is understandable because who uses cash anymore? But yes, this would have made more sense 20 years ago. Yes, Danielle. Capital. Yes, Danielle wins that one, the Capital building. Very nice picture of the Capital building. All right. This is going to be fun. Everybody should know this one. Who's on the front of the $100 bill? Keep your hands way up. Okay. This is good. All right. If you said Benjamin Franklin, keep your hand up. Good. All right. What's on the back of the $100 bill?

[8:04] Eric. Liberty Bell? Actually, it is. Wow. Independence Hall, but the Liberty Bell is right in front of it. Okay. Go send that to Eric. Okay. You win. Did anyone else feel like they should have won that one? Kaya?

[8:20] She's right. Give it to Kaya. Give it to Kaya. She was more exact. It says in Independence Hall she had the more correct answer. But did you say Franklin? Yes. Oh, she did. Okay. Kaya, that's your money unless you want to give it to Kiara's gift. And if you don't, we're going to have a big old conversation. Okay.

[8:42] Now, was that fun? I thought it went about as fast as I hoped. Okay. So that's good. So you guys don't know anything about money, which is fine. That's fine. I'm glad, actually. I'm glad. Okay. So, George, come on over here and maybe half to George. Pass out these handy charts. Adele, can I just do the handout on this side?

[9:06] All right. So, one standard of how we know Christianity. We got one from John who said, If somebody does not claim that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, they have the spirit of the Antichrist. So the idea of the incarnation is central to the Christian faith. There are cults that do not believe in the incarnation. So right away, we kind of got that one covered. But what we're going to do together is at the top of this chart that I passed out, we have the Nicene Creed. And we've already said this before together, so I'm not sure we're going to say it again. But basically, the Nicene Creed does two very important things. It examines or kind of explains the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which is great. The middle paragraph there is about Jesus, so it also goes into the incarnation and it goes into the resurrection. So if you want... Thank you, George. You want to keep one for yourself? You can go back and sit with mom if you want. Are you going to sit there? Okay, good. All right.

[10:15] So we're not going to read the Nicene Creed. But think of... Think of... Think of the absolute basics of the Christian faith. One God. God is three in one, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So we believe in the Trinity, that is both one God, but also three persons. And that the Son is both human and divine, that's the incarnation, and that the Son was raised from the dead. That's like the absolute bare minimums of the resurrection, okay? And somewhere along the line, almost every cult, and we call them cults because they're non... They claim to be Christians, but they're kind of leading people astray. Somewhere along the line, almost every cult will deny one or more of those aspects. So that's kind of easy to spot. But let's go to our chart real quick, okay?

[11:05] The... Let's see. Here we go. Take a look at the Jehovah's Witnesses. And you see with these columns, you have their false teaching or their false practice, the correct teaching that kind of corresponds to it more or less. And then the questions. The questions ask if they come to your door, okay? So if you want to think about Jehovah's Witnesses, the best way to think about them is two things I would think of is extreme monotheism to the point where they deny the Trinity actually exists. In fact, they make fun of the Trinity and call us polytheistic because they believe we worship three gods. But we don't. We worship one God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It takes more time to explain it, of course, but they opt for a simpler route and they say.

[11:49] Well, God may have a spirit, but that's not a big deal. And God had a son, but the son is distinct from the father, okay? So they deny the Trinity. Thus, they also deny the divinity of Christ. In fact, this is a very important sticking point for them. They do not believe that Jesus is God and man at the same time. They do not believe that Jesus is God in the flesh. And the way they do this, the other thing that they do is they are extremely literalistic in their reading of the Bible. So that would present a problem for them because if you read the Bible literally, you would have to come to the idea that Jesus truly is God because, for example, in John chapter 14, it says, I and the Father are one. What does that mean, right?

[12:33] Or Jesus says, before Moses was, I am, which is a way of saying I have the name of God, right? I am God. And that's how people would have understood it, in fact, the people listening to him understood that as a very black and white. They would have been blasphemous thing to say and tried to kill him right in that moment. Now what they do is they translate the scriptures incorrectly in all those important places where Jesus claims to be God. And they do that by doing just poor translation work just to prove their point. So they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. They really believe in the authority of scripture, literally, but they also have to fudge scripture in the places where it disagrees with the doctrine that had been set out by their leader. His name is Charles Taze Russell. You don't need to write that down.

[13:20] So they kind of painted themselves into a corner, and this is a difficulty for them. Another thing that they do is they're very, oh, let's see, they have multiple heavens, and they're really only 144,000 people are going to go to heaven, according to them. That number comes from the book of Revelation. Everybody else will receive a paradise on earth, but they're not really going to heaven with God. So it's kind of like first class and coach.

[13:46] There's a few people in first class. Very few. And everybody else is in coach. And there aren't too many spots left in the 144,000. They hold a few out there sort of as an incentive to people in the Jehovah's Witnesses, and they tell them, because you really want to be one of the 144,000, so if you spend all your life as Jehovah's Witness, if you go door to door every day, if you pass out tracks at the airport, if you do everything right, you might be in this group, but there's only a few spots left, so you better really be the cream of the crop. So they're all in the Jehovah's Witnesses. And they're not going to heaven unless people go to heaven and live in witch economy. There you go. Exactly. And heaven might be like... No, it's not like witch economy. So they believe in kind of multiple places for life after life, and they have repeatedly predicted the end of the world and been wrong about it, obviously, because as far as I can tell, it's still here, unless this is a simulation like they say in Silicon Valley. It's a very good one. So in 1914, they predicted the end of the world. That was their first time. And they thought Jesus was going to come back. They built a very nice house for Jesus, really big house for Jesus.

[14:58] Jesus evidently didn't come back, so Charles Taze Russell moved in to keep it nice for Jesus. This is a bit of a teasing here, but sometimes the Bible says that you kind of have to mock the... You mock a little bit in good humor.

[15:14] Even in the 70s, they predicted the end of the world. So they predicted the end of the world. And a lot of people left the church because it didn't come to be. So they've kind of given up on that. But if they come visit you, they will talk, they'll go straight to the scripture passages about Jesus predicting the blood will... The sun will turn red like blood and all these sort of things later on in the gospels about the end of times. But they kind of don't really want to talk about Jesus also saying, it'll be like a thief in the night.

[15:45] Even the sun doesn't... The sun may not even know when he comes back. Don't spend time on it. It's just going to happen. But he also says, look and watch and be awake. So they're just overly awake and hyper-focused on this aspect of the end times to an unhealthy degree. So this is the false teaching of the Jehovah's Witnesses. What is the correct teaching and practice of true Christianity? There's one God in three persons. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And Jesus is the incarnated God. We have... When we translate the Bible, we put it all out there. We make a list of everything. All the manuscripts are open for people to inspect. It's done with good scholarship. We believe in one heaven and we don't spend too much time worrying about the end of the world. Now, if they come to your door, you could ask them, how does one become a member of the 144,000? And this is not designed to shame them. But...

[16:46] The reason why we ask them questions like this is to make them hungry for the true gospel. Because the true gospel is you don't have to work for it. The grace of Jesus Christ covers all your sins. Even your good works aren't enough to get you into heaven. Only God's grace will get you there. And the heaven is big enough for everybody in the world, not just some small group of people. So you could ask them, how does one become a member of the 144,000? And you could ask them, when was the last time the church predicted that the world would end?

[17:16] And you could recommend that you recommend that you recommend that you recommend that you recommend that you recommend recommend that you recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend ! recommend transfusions and other medical types of interventions. And some people have lost the Jehovah's Witnesses because the church told them not to seek medical care for one of their children and said, instead you have to pray harder, maybe your child will survive. And if their child didn't survive, they were told, I guess you didn't believe enough or pray hard enough. And that's not something you say to somebody who's lost a child. And so they would, some people have left the church for that reason.

[18:11] They also don't celebrate any holidays. They don't celebrate birthdays. They don't celebrate national holidays. They don't say the Pledge of Allegiance, which is actually fine. You know, they don't join the army. Lots of things, yeah. They don't celebrate Christmas or Easter. Nope, they don't do those things. Yeah, and.

[18:31] You know, I don't know, but it's probably pretty static. I don't think a lot of people are joining. I don't. Five million. This is good. Maybe five million. Five million, George says. They are all around the world. You can see them. I think they're actually growing in South America. There seem to be a lot of people down there that are kind of going for it. There's structure to it. So there's something that, there's some, there's some, something about that.

[18:53] And now I lost my train of thought, but George should be up here, not just passing out things, but giving us data. But any questions from the group here about, yeah. I just make a comment. I'm here in college. I had some difficult acquaintances come to my course. I didn't include common navigating, but we used to do the Bible a lot. And I thought, oh, I'm gonna try to convert these people, because I felt like I knew a lot of the Bible at that time. I was so blown, they're so fast, like going through certain scriptures. And I had a crisis of faith for a while. I actually wondered, is everything I do wrong, because I grew up here in the church, and maybe just because I grew up here, what if I've been somewhere else anyway?

[19:40] It's like, if you think you know the Bible, like trying to go out there, recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend recommend I think more of them have actually left the church because of things like blood transfusions and false prophecies than have converted to Christianity because of our witness. They're really into it.

[20:22] They're burned out on religion, too, if they leave. So it's a tough mission field. But, you know, it's good to be prepared when they come and love them. So this is to love them and try to, you know, in your own way, try to present the true gospel, which we'll get to at the end. All right. This is great. Any other questions about Jehovah's Witnesses? Next up is Mormons or Latter-day Saints. All right.

[20:45] And if Jehovah, these two groups could not be more different. That's the funny thing about them is Jehovah's Witnesses are extreme monotheists. Mormons are extreme polytheists. They believe in millions of God because they believe that actually you can become a God yourself if you're a good Mormon all your life and a man and a man. You have to be a man, evidently. So.

[21:09] And polygamy is in their history, although they've disavowed polygamy now, and that's great. But their founder was Joseph Smith, was an avowed polygamist. And their teaching is any human can become equal to God and inhabit another planet as that planet's God. You know, this sounds like I'm making this up, doesn't it? But I'm not making this up. This is their teaching. They have multiple heavens. They've done. They've done the Jehovah's Witnesses one better. They have the celestial heaven, the highest first class. Then they have the terrestrial heaven, which is earth, which is the lowest. That's like below second class. It's like steerage. And then they had a made up word. So they're like, what do we do? They're celestial and celestial and terrestrial. Let's make up a second. Let's make up a word that's a mashup of those two. So there's a telestial heaven in between. Between the celestial and the terrestrial. Are you confused now? But anyways, there's just like a pancake or a layer cake and the telestial. And depending on your just your pecking order in the organization, you'll end up in one of these three heavens, you know. And but we don't believe that we believe in one heaven, as we've talked about. The other thing that's so opposite of the Jehovah's Witness, where there is like the whole by the Bible is only the Bible and extremely literally

[22:34] interpreted is that the Mormons have added extra scriptures to the Bible. They were authored by Joseph Smith. So you have things like the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, other books like that. And so they don't just if you're talking to a Mormon, you can't always just appeal to the scripture that, you know, because they have a bunch of scriptures that you don't know that tell them some opposite things like that. And if you want to take the time, you could read all the scriptures. I don't think it's really worth your time, but you could you know more about what they're doing. The other thing that they do is they have secret rituals in their in their temples when they get married, when they're baptized, when things happen that we're not supposed to know about. Strangely enough, a lot of these rituals resemble the Masonic rituals that are used to be secret, but they're kind of well known. And the fact that Joseph Smith was a Freemason is kind of no accident. So there's a lot of borrowing going on there. And but, you know, the Mormons. Mormons are nice people. They're very friendly, very family oriented. They tithe all the time. You know, they give 10 percent of their income.

[23:44] So they they put on a good face. OK, but they have a complete I mean, if you were to say a completely different gospel from Christianity. There's a lot of Mormons and they're probably growing. And the other part of Mormon life is that you spend two years or so when you're young and you go. On a mission. Not everybody does it, but a lot of Mormons do do it and they go on a missionary trip. So the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons are so different from each other that when one of them comes to your door and you mention the other group, they just kind of laugh. You know, like so once I mentioned the Mormons to a Jehovah Witness missionary who came to my my door and he was like, yeah, they believe the funniest thing is, don't they? You know, and the Mormons, of course, don't really love, you know, and you can imagine them kind of going around the neighborhood and they accidentally bump into each other on a corner. Like. Oh, OK.

[24:38] I know. That'd be hilarious. It would be. It would be hilarious. They'd be they'd be a fistfight outside your front door and you'd be like, what's going on out there? OK, so what do we believe? We don't believe in polygamy. We I mean, we don't believe in polygamy also, but we don't we don't believe in polytheism. We believe there's one God, not millions. OK, there's one God and three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

[25:02] We have rigorous and open Bible translation. We have translation work again. And we have one Bible, right? Not, you know, and we believe that revelation of Scripture has ended. We don't believe that people can add to the books of the Bible anymore. There's there's not you know, there's not somebody who's been specially anointed to add books beyond the Book of Revelation and make them part of our canon. We don't believe that we think it's ended.

[25:26] And our doctrine is not secret. We don't keep secrets. Hopefully everything that we know about Jesus. We proclaim. It's in our book. The book is open. We talk about it openly. There's no secret rituals. There's no secret things like that. So if they come to your door, let's see.

[25:46] Let me tell you one other thing that they may say. Actually, let's all go to their these questions. One question you could ask them is, did the fifth president, Lorenzo Snow, say, as man now is, God once was. As God now is, God was. As man now is, man may become. Do you get how that goes? That that means this is your path to divinity if you're if you're a man.

[26:10] So basically, it says you can become a god of your own planet. So you could ask them, does this reflect the teaching of the church? They'll say reluctantly, they'll say yes, because they don't like to lead with this. But I think a fair question them is, if so, why don't we hear that when missionaries visit our home? They'll never talk about this. This is their this is the part of their teaching that they're maybe they're proud of, but they know that it sounds crazy. And so they don't lead with it. But I think they should lead with it. I think they should be honest about what they're I think what they should do is they should come to your door and say, you can become a god. Are you interested? You know, instead of we're Christians, just like you were just happier and friendlier Christians, you know, they're not. They're not. I mean, they say they're Christians, but they do not believe in the same Jesus you and I believe in. So that's they're not Christians in the same way we are Christians. Okay. That sounds exclusive. It has to be. At some point, we have to draw some lines around the faith. Okay. And you could also ask them, are Adam and Jesus the same person? And that's a bit of a stumper because some of them think so and some of them don't.

[27:09] But some of their teachings says that and this has been a bit of a challenge for them. One other thing that you will hear them say, and you can ask them about this if you want to take notes, this is extra a little bonus is one of the things they will say about salvation is that God saves us after all we can do. That's kind of a formula that they have, which means we have to work. We have to do everything we can and God will do the rest, right? I'll do my best. God will do the rest. And that sounds good, but Orthodox Christianity actually says your best is zero.

[27:43] Do you guys get that? Your best is zero. Your best is important. You should do your best, but it doesn't get you any closer to heaven, right? It doesn't save you one iota. The only thing that saves you is the grace of God poured out. Okay. On the cross from Jesus Christ to save you from your sins out of his pure gift, pure gift. That's all it is. And so, uh, grace, I think when you're talking to a Mormon grace, not all these other historical things, but grace is probably the number one way to soften a Mormon's heart and say, I believe that I'm saved. Even if I do wrong, even if I don't do my best, God loves me. God forgives me. I don't have to work for my salvation. Now once I'm saved, the Holy Spirit inhabits me. And he makes me, he, he enlivens me and inspires me to do all sorts of great things. But in myself, I can't rely on myself being great. And um, you will hear some stories about Mormons suffering depression because some of them feel like they just never are good enough for their church. They never done enough. They haven't gone on enough mission trips. They haven't done enough this or that. And so I think the way to soften a Mormon's heart is to talk about the grace that we receive, not having to work for our salvation.

[28:56] Um, so. So any questions about Mormons? Kind of fun. Yeah. Ellen. Yeah. Yes. They've changed their name. Yeah. Yeah. So the, the biggest group that has descended from Joseph Smith is now called, it has always been called the latter day saints, not always. And they don't like being called Mormons and I, we should respect them and not call them Mormons. We should call them latter day saints. There are other Mormons out there who are true, still practicing polygamy. They're not going to come to your door because they're, they're living on a compound in Southern Utah somewhere. They're not going to come to your door, but LDS will come to your door and it's good to be respectful of them and say, not call them Mormon because they don't like it. Thank you. That's a good point.

[29:45] Um, yeah. And uh, there is actually, uh, a offshoot of, of the teaching of Joseph Smith called the community of Christ. And it's a reformed Mormon group that still likes some of Joseph Smith's teachings, but disavows him as a failed prophet or a fallen prophet. And they actually just recently made a deal with the LDS church and sold them some land that was very important to both groups. By the way, the interesting thing about cults is when, when something important happens, it always happens in my backyard. So Joseph Smith happened to live in upstate New York and there the angels came to upstate New York. Then they all moved to Missouri. And then the Lord was when the Lord returns, he's going to come to Missouri to Missouri. Okay. Same thing with, uh, Jesus coming back for the Jehovah's witnesses. They're going to come back and he's going to live in this house in New York. Why isn't Jesus going to come to Jerusalem? Why isn't he going to come to Ethiopia, Yuma, Arizona? Why? You know, it's always where we live, which kind of is like a tell, right? Like it's just really all about you guys. And you, you're kind of just making this up. Aren't you? Yeah, you are. We know that. Okay. So speaking of making things up.

[30:58] Yes. Yeah. We've always got to be real careful when we use the term grace. We have grace. We believe in Jesus. We're Christians. Christians, they have co-opted all our words. And so it's helpful to be, you could say, do you mean Jesus, you know, not Adam? Whatever, you know what I mean? Like you could, yeah, you have to be more specific with them. They all have a script.

[31:39] And I, you might want to just go to this idea of grace. You know, I can't, do you guys believe that you have to earn your own salvation partly? Yeah, we do. Well, we don't. That's one of the biggest differences between us.

[31:54] Yeah, it's good. It's good. Because I don't, I think it's valuable for maybe to get them to understand that you know the difference between what they're saying and what the words you're using are. Yeah. Yeah, Daniel.

[32:12] Yep. Right. What a surprise. Yeah. Yeah. Always to America. Yes. Yeah. And actually Mormonism and America, like actually Christian nationalism thinks that America has a special place in God's plan, but it's, it does, the word America doesn't show up in the Bible. You'll be not surprised to know because it didn't exist when the Bible was written. But America is very much theologically part, the idea of America is very much theologically part of the Mormon or the LDS faith. And they can't be pulled out of it because he's going to come back to Missouri. Because New York and these fallen tribes that inhabited America, which turned out, some of them turned out to be the Native Americans. It's a little messy and racist and the history is kind of weird. You don't really need to go into it with them because they'll be defensive, but it's, it's absurd. Right. And we find some absurdity in it. Yeah. And I saved the most absurd for last. Turn over the page to Scientology. This won't take too long.

[33:19] Now, the false teaching of Scientology. Is that it's not a religion. It's called the Church of Scientology, but only because they wanted a tax exempt status from the IRS. It has really, there's no worship of any kind of God whatsoever.

[33:35] But, and they even, their symbol, they have a cross, but it's kind of shaped weirdly. It's kind of like a circle in it or something or a star in the middle of the cross. And so they call themselves the Church of Scientology. They were very close to going bankrupt because they actually owed the IRS a whole lot of money. Because. They were being seen more as a business by the IRS than as a religion. Finally, they harassed the IRS enough so that the IRS caved and claimed, gave them the exemption of the religious exemption. And that saved them from bankruptcy. I think it was one of the biggest mistakes in American history, actually, because it allowed this organization, which was about to dissolve, to keep going. And, but there's, they're probably in great decline now. Everybody's kind of wise to them now. But, you know, it's just interesting is still in the world. You have a lot of very famous celebrities who are Scientologists. Yeah. Remember how that like hacking group Anonymous declared like cyber war on Scientology because Tom Cruise gave a blessing from them? Yep. Yep. Like they've been the target. Like online money or like harass the leaders or something. Yep. Scientology has, one of the tenets of Scientology is called fair game.

[34:44] The idea is anybody who criticizes the church is fair game for extreme levels of harassment in the legal system. And also people. I recommend Mormon or LDS, but not so much anymore. It used to be more, but still Scientology, if you join Scientology with your whole family and then you leave, Scientology tells your family to just cut ties with you. And that's really painful. That's really painful. They've engaged in multiple illegal efforts to investigate their enemies. That's the fair game. And they charge money to go to the church. They charge money for classes or their kind of sessions. And here's, if you get to a hundred thousand, if you've finally given them a hundred thousand dollars, this is what you get. This is their secret teaching. And they'll take it out of a vault and they'll put it in front of you. This is what I'm about to read to you. And at that point, some people leave and other people kind of swallow and go, what have I done? So their secret teaching, which costs over a hundred thousand dollars to learn is that, is this, that 80, I'm not making this up. Okay. You can read it along. 80 million years ago, the dark galactic overlord, Xenu, are you like laughing yet? Okay. You should be. The galactic overlord Xenu imprisoned the evil

[36:26] residents of the galaxy in a series of volcanoes on earth, always on earth. Where else could have been somewhere else? On earth and then detonated nuclear bombs in the volcanoes. And the souls of these creatures became Thetans floating around in the ether around the earth. And they inhabit humans and give them negative feelings and thoughts. So according to the Scientology, you're awful. They're all Thetans just, you know, and you, the Thetan inside you could have been from a planet far, far away, but he was brought here on a spaceship. As L. Ron Hubbard says, the spaceships looked a lot like DC nines. I don't know why. That's what he said. And the, Bombs were invented in some 1940s. Well, no, no. Xenu had nuclear bombs. Xenu had nuclear bombs and he blew them up. And so Scientology will take your money to help rid you of these Thetans and their negative influences on your life. They don't believe in psychology. They don't believe in some medical interventions.

[37:23] They're, they're just kind of nuts. And what's crazy is some people, a few people have gotten to this point where they've given up so much money and this document gets put in front of them and they read it.

[37:36] Luckily, somebody leaked this and then we know this, right? They've been trying to hide it. They read this and they go, man, I've already given them $100,000 and this is just a tiny science fiction story. That's the core of this belief.

[37:48] I'm just going to have to act like it's awesome because otherwise I'm going to be an idiot, you know? So that's actually, I'm going to double down on a bad bet. And other people are like, I spent $100,000 on this. This is insane. You know, and they, they complain. But if they complain, all their friends, all their community they've been will turn on them. It's expensive, you know, so they're really in a bind after all that money. All the while the church gets richer and richer and richer. The church has a lot of assets.

[38:16] So what's the correct teaching or practice? Well, where do I begin? You know, there's one God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Christian doctrine isn't secret, it's proclaimed. So we don't have a secret science fiction story at the core of our, our Christian belief.

[38:34] It's out there, it's in Scripture, it's open. And Scripture commands that we love and honor our parents and that parents love our children. If the church ever commands you to disown your family, you're in a cult. You're not in a church, okay? And the proclamation of the gospel is presented for the church. For free and without collecting money for it. And this happens over and over again. And the Apostle Paul talks about that. We don't need to get paid to preach the gospel. And he complained about some false teachers who were coming through asking for money just to hear them preach the gospel. So some of the questions that you might ask are, really?

[39:08] Really? And the other thing is they won't come to your door. The Scientologists generally don't come to your door. You might meet them here or there. They have a center. You can walk by. But it's not a secret. And if they do, I would just say, ask them if the story about Zinu is accurate and see what they say. I don't know what they'll say. Some of them will say that's copyrighted information.

[39:26] Any questions about Scientology? All of these is just the tip of the iceberg. There's a whole lot more to know. Anything else? Any questions about Scientology? Is it funny? And sad. It's ridiculous. Do you support the hackings of the non-initiative type of work and the no-number system under that? I don't know. Is that one of the good things they did? No comment. No comment. I don't know. That's a good question. We can talk about it later, maybe. Yeah. Christian science. Yeah. That's another one. Yeah. And that's also, we would consider it a cult. And it's even more like the Jehovah's Witnesses. They don't believe in medical interventions. You have to pray real hard if you're sick. And if you die or you stay sick, it means you weren't faithful enough. And there's a lot more to Christian science that's wrong. They probably... I don't remember exactly right now. Thank you. But they probably, like I said, the Trinity, the incarnation, the resurrection, the work of the Holy Spirit, all of those things, there's no doubt that Christian science probably denies one or more of those core beliefs. Okay. Yeah. That's a good question. So let me end with this, because it's good to be right and it's good to spot false teachers. It's also good to be respectful and compassionate.

[40:44] These are lost sheep. Some of them are searching for their true master. Actually, they come to your door, they may seem confident, but inside they may be searching. They may be going, why am I doing this? Why am I spending this time? They have questions about their own religion. And they're looking at some of the inconsistencies or the illogic of it or the fantasticness, the fantabulousm of it all, and they're wondering. And so then if they come to your door and present to you, then you can say, well, I want to present back to you. Do you have a minute? And just present the gospel to them in what I would say are five sentences. You need to spend your time formulating how you would say the gospel. I would do something like this. I would say, we come to this knowledge by the Holy Scriptures, which have been faithfully preserved and rigorously translated. One, that God created the world and everything in it. Two, humans fell by sinning and the world continues under the curse of sin and death. Three, God sent his Son. Fully God to rescue the world from sin and death. Number four, he does this freely, even though we don't deserve it, out of his gracious love. And five, did I say four? And then five, he sends his Holy Spirit to empower and inspire the church to continue

[41:59] to preach this good news until the Son returns. And I think that's it, actually. That was the end of it. So you need to, you know, I can give you that, no problem. But you should also know what the gospel is. You need to know what you're doing. You need to know what your dollar bill looks like. You need to know what's on the front and the back of your dollar bill. You need to know your gospel inside and out so that you can always give an answer. The Scripture says that always be ready to give an account for the hope that you have within you. And so you've, half of it is spotting a falsehood. The other half is reaching back out into this person's life who might need it right then with the true gospel and offer to them free of charge, without scorn, without one-upmanship, it's a challenge. It's not the easiest thing in the world to do. So anyways, that's the, is anyone going to put this on their refrigerator? You don't need it?

[42:54] You're going to put it in your Bible. Yeah, there you go. Okay. All right. Well, let's say a prayer and then we'll be done. Let's pray. Father, thank you that you have given us the good gift of your Scriptures and the doctrines. And we pray for our brothers and sisters in this world who have fallen under the spell of false teachers. And we pray for them. If they come to us, we pray for them. If they come to our door, Lord, we pray that we treat them well, we treat them with love and respect, and that we can teach them the gospel as it truly is. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.