The Magnetism of Cults

Okay, let's pray, and then we will get started.

O Holy and Most Merciful God, you have taught us the way of your commandments.

We implore you to pour out your grace into our hearts, cause it to bear fruit in us, that being ever mindful

of your mercies and your laws, we may always be directed to your will and daily increase in love

towards you and one another.

Enable us to resist all evil and to live a godly life.

Help us to follow the example of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and to walk in his steps until we shall possess

his kingdom that has been prepared for us in heaven through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Amen.

Okay, as is our practice, were there any questions that came up as a result of the sermon today?

Hopefully it wasn't too convoluted.

Okay, no questions.

Cool, so we've got the church triumphant sorted out.

I'll just add that, you know, this past week at the pastor's conference, we had a divine service every

evening.

Every evening.

And on the last evening on Wednesday, you know, was, there were

parts of the service I had never seen or experienced before, and that's they had miniature chalices.

Okay, yeah.

And they were pretty, they were tiny, but they were, you know, weight, so I don't know if they were

actual silver or not, but, and then the pastor had a larger chalice, there's

probably a real Latin name for it, with a little poor spout on it.

Huh, okay.

And then, so at the altar, he would fill your chalice as he went by, and then you would go from there.

Interesting, I have not seen that practice, but I'm familiar with the individual chalices.

Every time I see them, the only thing I can see in my mind are dollar signs.

Yeah, yeah, I can imagine, but I thought that was an interesting experience.

Okay, very good.

And you had the Lord's Supper how many times this week?

Four or five, five or six, you know.

Some of us need it more than others.

Yeah, I, and talking about frequency, this is kind of an interesting thing, is

that when it comes to the frequency of the Lord's Supper, the church historically has had it every

single divine service.

That's normal for the church.

And something came along with pietism, this kind of this bizarre idea, that in order to keep it special,

we need to have it less often.

And that's kind of silly.

You know, there are some really good arguments against that way of thinking.

So it depends on if you're talking to a husband or a wife.

You know, with a wife,.

You would say something to the effect of, well, how would you feel if your husband only told you, you know, once a month that

he loved you in order to keep it special?

Yeah, that wouldn't go over too well.

Now with the husband, you can say something like this.

How would you like it if your wife decided that she was only gonna be intimate with you once a month in order to keep it special?

How would that go over, right?

And so this is really bad thinking.

It's really bad thinking.

And I understand that what they're trying to get away from is this kind of

automaton way of approaching the sacraments.

But what cures that is good catechesis.

And so I will tell you, as the pastor of Kongsvinger, I don't know how I would survive if I wasn't

able to have the Lord's Supper every week.

Because the promises in the Lord's Supper are so vital for us.

In fact, those promises are, you know, it makes it so that our

faith has something to cling on to tangibly.

And so the idea then is that in deference to our weaker brothers, we may

want to consider, you know, having the frequency of the Lord's Supper, you're not required to

have it.

No one's required to have it.

But the idea then is that for those who feel as if this would be something that, you know,

as often as they can have it, it would help their faith, it would help their struggle against their sin and things like that, as

the gift it is.

Because you hear the words that I say when I come around the altar.

Take, eat, this is the body of Christ given unto death for the forgiveness of

your sins.

And the bread and the wine and the body and the blood, they go into your mouth, not somebody else's.

They go into your mouth.

And so I remember, you know, just in all of the struggles I've had

as just a sinful human being walking out my faith, you know, to have the Lord's Supper

every week has been for me the thing that, you know, as far as I'm concerned, keeps me sane and strengthens my

faith, you know.

And so, you know, that's...

Because all the promises are there, you know.

But I'm not calling for a vote or anything like that.

I just, you know, to consider it.

Didache, yeah.

It's a first century document.

Every single Sunday.

Yeah, the Didache talks about that.

And that was a practice established by the apostles themselves.

It was every single Lord's Day.

Yeah.

Yeah, our professor who teaches us Greek is doing his doctoral

dissertation on that book.

In fact, he has a fascinating thesis.

His thesis is he thinks that Matthew wrote it.

He thinks that Matthew wrote the Didache.

It's kind of fascinating.

He can't prove it.

At least I haven't seen him be able to prove it.

But, you know, I've talked to him a couple of times about his thesis on it.

And the Didache is a very fascinating book.

It also says that if somebody comes and they're an itinerant preacher or a prophet and they

stay longer for three days, they're a false prophet.

And if they ask for money, they're definitely a false prophet.

If they ask for money.

That's just hilarious.

You know, and he's an interesting character all on his own.

You know, his lifetime study.

Yes.

Yeah, now if I can just convince the seminary that we need a Hebrew prophet.

Are you volunteering?

Oh, no.

Okay.

Talk to me later.

Loko kaktov.

Ugh.

Anyway.

Okay.

That all being said, the idea is that God's word is a gift to us.

The forgiveness of our sins, that's all a gift.

These are the things that our faith hangs onto.

We're going to get back into Torah as we continue our march through the book of Leviticus.

We've picked up the pace over the past couple of weeks.

But don't count on the pace staying the same.

We never know what's going to happen here.

So in Leviticus chapter 23, we've

been talking about the different convocation days.

These are the different feast days.

And now we get up to one that is very important, the Day of Atonement.

So the Lord spoke to Moses and said, now on the tenth day of the seventh month is the Day of Atonement.

Yom Kippur.

Yom being day, Kippur being atonement.

It shall be for you a time of holy convocation.

You shall afflict yourselves and present a food offering to the Lord.

Now, when you read this in the ESV, you shall afflict yourself, ana.

What do you think that that's referring to?

How does one afflict oneself in preparation for the Day of Atonement?

Forget to do your hair?

What do you do?

Deny yourself.

In what way?

Fasting.

And that's exactly the phrase.

This is the phrase that's referring to fasting.

So the affliction of yourself, fasting, is a vital part and

it's one of the commandments of the Mosaic Covenant.

So the Day of Atonement is way late in the year for people who are Jews.

And it's a type and shadow, then, of what?

The Day of Atonement is a type and shadow of the

crucifixion.

It's gonna start doing some dancing here.

Yeah, well, yeah.

I need to work on my dancing skills.

Oh, let's not.

You don't want me to do a chancel dance?

You ever see those girls that have those ribbons?

You know, they do the intro dance.

It's like, praise the Lord.

They do that in the church I used to attend to.

I used to attend and I would just want to find the door and it's like, ah.

It was so pretty.

Anyway, okay, so the Day of Atonement, the Day of Atonement is a type and shadow

of the Day of Atonement and the Day of Atonement is Good Friday.

That's the Day of Atonement.

So we know that our sins were atoned for on a Friday

afternoon.

The crucifixion begins at nine in the morning.

Noon, the sun goes dark.

Then, three in the afternoon, the time of the evening sacrifice, also the time when the

Passover lambs are killed, Christ yells out to Telestai, it is finished into your hands, I

commit my spirit and he dies.

So that's the Day of Atonement.

Now, afflicting yourself then was part of the preparation for the Day of Atonement in

the Mosaic Covenant.

How then historically has the church prepared itself for the Day of Atonement

for Good Friday every year?

What's the way it has done it historically?

So we have a whole season in the church year.

It's the 40 days of purple, right?

Lent.

And what is Lent supposed to do?

It's a penitential season, an established penitential season and fasting is part of

it.

In fact, it's a highly recommended part of it unless you have a

physical condition that would jeopardize your life if you didn't eat.

And so during the 40 days of Lent, historically what happens then in the

liturgy is all of the happy songs, they disappear and all

of the alleluias go missing.

And so we will be able to do this in the coming year, in 2020, during Lent.

As we're working our way through the liturgy then, we will stop singing any of the praise songs that have

alleluia in it.

We will not sing the Gloria in Excelsis.

We definitely will not sing This is the Feast.

And in fact, we will not sing the triple alleluia when the gospel comes up.

Because what do we do right now when right before the gospel, alleluia, notice there's three alleluias in that.

That's the triple alleluia.

And so that's all going to disappear.

In fact, during Lent, for the gospel, we stand and we sing,

I forget off the top of my head.

Let me pull up my hymnal.

Hold on a second here.

Because the Lenten one is actually kind of interesting.

Return to the Lord your God.

For he is gracious and merciful.

Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

And abounding in steadfast love.

That's sung instead of the alleluia.

Return to the Lord your God.

And so everything takes on a somber note.

And you're going to note there's two seasons of the year when the church has established them for penitential

seasons.

Times when we reflect on our lives in light of the commandments.

And we are intentionally considering those things that we should repent of and then

trusting in Christ and his mercy for the forgiveness of our sins.

That's Advent and Lent.

And I should say this up front.

And that is that Advent is also another one of those seasons when it is strongly encouraged

that you engage in fasting.

Now a lot of people think Advent is like pre -Christmas.

Because everybody here knows the Christmas season begins at 5 o 'clock in the evening

on Thanksgiving Day.

November 1st in my house.

Huh?

November 1st in my house.

November 1st. You're on it already.

No men are out.

Okay, got it.

And out come the Christmas carols and all this kind of stuff.

But the church historically, Advent is a penitential season leading

to the celebration of Christmas.

How many days long is Christmas celebrated historically?

Twelve.

Twelve.

Christmas is not a one -day affair.

And so the idea then is that the hymns that are sung during Advent

historically, they're in a minor key.

They're a little bit more somber and reflective.

It's one of my absolute favorite Advent hymns of all time.

We all know this one.

O come, O come, Emmanuel.

And ransom captive Israel.

I mean, tell me that's not a haunting tune, right?

It is.

But it's not meant to be, you know, On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me.

No, it's not like that at all.

It's not happy clappy.

Sorry, I didn't have enough coffee this morning.

Yes, Mark.

When we were traveling last year down south, we spent some time in the Palm Springs area.

And every Thursday they have like a street fair.

Every Thursday evening.

So we went to one of them.

People were setting up booths.

They could sell things.

Just talk to people at these booths.

Well, there was one booth called Ask the Rabbi.

So I went up to it and I asked them about Isaiah 53.

If you're going to ask a rabbi anything, that's the text to go to.

And I said, who is this suffering servant?

I knew he would say Israel.

He said Israel.

And I said, well, Isaiah 53 implies that the suffering servant is

sinless.

Is Israel sinless?

And he actually said, yes, Israel is sinless.

And I go, well, if that's so, then why do you have a day of atonement?

Yeah.

Oh, man.

That is so non -Norwegian.

Wow.

Well, there's other people here.

I need to talk to them too.

Move along.

Move along.

Thanks for playing.

We have some lovely parting gifts.

One of our pastors somewhere, Phoenix or Arizona or wherever he is, kind of does the same thing.

He puts out a table like once a week or something and it just says the pastor is in five

cents.

Interesting.

When people stop by the talk, he gives them a nickel and I think a prayer card or something, but

actually talks with them.

I think it would be fun to like one of the local fairs, set up a booth and in the front of it, the words would be,

you're a sinner in need of a savior, try to prove me wrong.

Change my mind.

Change my mind.

Change my mind.

Yeah, that's the meme.

But yeah.

Mark's got it.

Yeah.

He's got it.

Yep.

And this is why it's vital that not only in church but also

individually that we apply ourselves to understanding the word of God.

So Barb and I, we went to a Christian high school.

I mean, we had memory verses that we had every week.

Now, Barb can vouch for this, okay?

I cheated.

I had a photographic memory.

Okay.

So every Thursday when we would have our Bible verse quiz, during

lunch there would be Barb and her friend Jill and they were quizzing each other.

And Barb would go, aren't you going to study, Chris?

No.

I'm just going to look at the page right before we sit down in the class and I'll do fine.

And I'd ace it every time because I have a photographic memory.

I can do this.

And she goes, I hate you.

I hate you.

Okay.

But here's the thing.

Having gone to a Christian high school, how prepared were we for?

We weren't prepared at all.

Holy guacamole.

We went right into a cult.

Yeah, we went right into a cult like straight out of high school because that's great.

If you haven't done it, you should try it sometime.

Yeah.

And yeah.

And

I've lost control of the classroom.

Did I ever have control?

No, probably not.

So to kind of give you the idea and build off what you said there, Don.

So we came out of a Christian high school.

We had four years of Bible class and we still really didn't know our Bible well at

all.

Everything we learned was just kind of flitting along the surface.

And it was all kind of law.

There was no gospel.

And so we got out of high school and Barb,

we ended up getting yanked out of our Nazarene church by this nefarious

couple that came to the church we were attending.

And we found ourselves in a full -blown, over -the -top charismatic cult.

And we went for it like hook, line, and sinker.

And one of the things about cults is that they do engage in brainwashing.

And in order to brainwash you, they have to literally stress you out where your mind has no

ability to do any reflective thinking.

So, I mean, we were busy seven days a week with everything concerning this church.

So we were either at Bible study, we were doing deliverance and inner healing, we were doing all this stuff, and

we never had a moment to ourselves.

I mean, it was just nuts.

And, of course, the church we were in, there was a woman

prophetess who was the head over it.

And she would be saying, the Lord told her this and the Lord told her that, and the Lord told her that I need to give her my

entire paycheck and then she'll give us back what we need to survive on.

And it was always less than what I was making.

The Lord told her that, you know.

And then into the midst of all of that, I mean, you know, they were telling us we were going to have five

kids and that we were going to shake the world and all this nonsense.

And one of the ladies at the church that we were snatched out of, she just

had a deep concern for us.

And so she did the unthinkable.

Her name was Jerry Omley.

And Jerry Omley, she, in order to rescue us, she decided to attend

the church that we were going to.

She shows up one Sunday morning and she's sitting, you know, at the end of one of the rows of

chairs.

They didn't have pews.

And she was there taking copious notes.

Seemed like she was interested.

And, you know, didn't say anything.

Came back the next week.

Sat through the service.

Seemed like she was interested.

Took copious notes.

She did that for four or five weeks.

And we were always so glad that she was there because finally, you know, she can now see how God is moving and really, you know,

and all this kind of stuff.

And like about week six she says, hey, you know, I was thinking maybe you and Barb can come over to my

place for lunch next Sunday after church.

Come to my place.

Sure, we'd be happy to do that.

Totally non -threatening at all.

So we go to her house and I just remember about her house, you know,

this is the late 80s, just before the 90s.

And so, you know how the mauves and the weird colors?

Her house was totally that color.

You know, those weird taupe colors and stuff.

But she sits, you know, we have lunch and she sits us down after lunch and she says, you know, I'm a little concerned about you guys.

You are?

What are you concerned about?

Well, you know, so I've been attending this church we've been going to, you know, for the past, you know, month.

And do you remember when the prophetess said this?

And she quoted verbatim.

So, oh yeah, I remember when she said that.

Well, have you considered that this biblical text totally contradicts that?

And she'd read out the text.

She read out the text and goes, and she goes, so how do you resolve the contradiction?

And then she just zipped it.

I mean, straight to my face, how do you resolve the contradiction?

You know, I couldn't.

I tried.

The first one I tried and it just, I sounded stupid.

And she goes, okay, well, how about, do you remember when she said this?

Oh yeah, I remember when she said that.

Well, this biblical text says the exact opposite of that.

How do you reconcile the contradiction?

You know, and now I've forgotten how to talk.

All right.

And Barb's looking at me like, this is really awkward.

So she does it again.

You know, cause I didn't even give an answer for the second one.

Third time she says, and do you remember when she said, yeah, I remember when she said that too.

Well, the Bible says this, how do you reconcile the contradiction?

And I went, oh my gosh, we're in a cult.

We're in a cult.

And the light goes on, ding.

And it was really kind of, it was just like that.

It's like, immediately it's like, you know, the curtain is lifted.

You can see the guy pulling the levers and it's like, you know, and you realize, oh my

goodness, how can we have been so deceived?

And coming out of that, you know, so we were done with that cult that day.

So coming out of it, Barb's all, I feel so betrayed.

I don't feel like I can trust anybody.

How do we move forward after being betrayed so terribly in this way?

And the thing I told her at the time was, I said, well, I'm pretty sure that the Bible

is true, but I don't think we have any clue as to what it actually says and what it means.

I just, that's what I told her.

I said, I think we can trust the word of God, but I really don't think we understand it properly because

it was used, it was used and twisted and manipulated in order to deceive us and to really control us and

to completely take advantage of us.

And so coming out of that then, you know, Barb and I were really,

really super cautious.

Like, what do we do now?

What do we do now?

Because we don't know the word.

And then I will just say a series of what seemed to me like

appointments planned by God that were not put on my calendar ahead of time started happening.

So Barb and I, when we were first married, we lived on Capitol Hill in Seattle.

If anybody knows where Capitol Hill is, let's just say it's a very artsy neighborhood in Seattle.

And so she was, she was in college at Seattle Pacific University.

I was working in downtown Seattle at Pacific Northwest Bank at 1111 3rd Avenue and right

across the street from the Washington Mutual building, which is my favorite building in the whole world.

That's a whole other story.

But so I would ride the bus.

I had a bus pass.

I would ride the bus into the city every morning to go to work.

And when I got on the bus one morning, and this was shortly after we'd been, had our eyes open,

there was a gal who was sitting a few seats up from me who I recognized as a regular customer of the bank that I

worked at.

And she was reading the Watchtower magazine.

Now when we were in high school, we were introduced to the Jehovah's Witnesses cult, at

least kind of cursory.

And the only thing I remembered is Jehovah's Witnesses equal bad.

Okay, that was pretty much it.

JWs equal bad.

I don't know why.

Couldn't tell you what they believed, but I just knew it was bad.

And so when we got off the bus, she got off the same stop I did.

I sashayed up next to her.

I said, hey, I see you're reading the Watchtower.

She goes, yeah, I'm studying to become a Jehovah's Witness.

Ah.

So you're not a JW yet.

Nope.

And I said, I've heard they're a cult.

You have?

Yeah.

Well, we should get together for lunch sometime and you can maybe tell me what you know.

I said, I'd be happy to do that.

And then she went her way and I went, I don't know anything.

What on earth am I going to say to this woman?

And so on my lunch, I, no joke, so two and a half blocks

down from where I worked is the Seattle Public Library.

And so on my lunch, it's like, huh, huh, huh, yeah, get to the library quick because I only got like 30 minutes, right?

And so this is before they had computers.

I had to pull out the carb file, okay?

No kidding, no kidding.

There's these things, there's these cards, you know, and they use this thing called the Dewey Decimal System.

Are you familiar with this thing?

Okay.

So I found in the carb file, there was a few resources available to

teach you about the Jehovah's Witnesses.

And they were both resources written by a fellow by the name of Walter Martin, all right?

So Walter Martin.

And so one was called Jehovah the Watchtower, the other was the Kingdom of the Cults.

So I went and sure enough, they were on the shelf, checked them out.

And then that night I began applying myself to figure out what on earth did the JWs believe and

why would they not be a good place for somebody to go to?

And as I started to read, that was my first exposure to sound

exegesis of the Bible used against false teachers who twist the word of God.

That was the first time I'd ever been exposed to it.

And it was, it was like, I don't know how to explain it.

It would be like if Einstein had first discovered physics or something like that, it turned his crank.

It's like, it was something like, I took to it like a fish to water.

But the thing is, is I still didn't know my Bible and this was my first exposure to it.

So I decided here's what I was gonna do.

Practical, practical story.

So I decided what I would do is I would study at night and then I would go and

try out what I was studying on the Jehovah's Witnesses who were, they're there

every morning in Seattle.

They get there early and they stand on the street corners and they'll hold up their Awake magazine and

their Watchtower magazine and they're required to actually fill out a time card because if they want

to survive the Battle of Armageddon, they have to actually put in enough work to earn the right to survive the Battle of Armageddon, at least this

is what they're told.

And so they're very diligent in going out and witnessing on the street corners of Seattle.

So I went and talked with a fellow that was set up and he was holding out the Watchtower magazine and

engaged him in a conversation and it took him all of maybe four seconds to just

completely bend me into a pretzel and go flick and I was done.

You know, like when your kid brother fights you, you know, you hold his head and he's going like this, you

know, didn't land a single punch.

This was very embarrassing.

So, dusted myself off, went back home after work, studied some more,

tried it again.

And I lost again.

And the next day, I lost again.

And the next day, I lost again.

And thankfully, the gal I was going to talk to, she came into the bank and said, I'm working on a big case.

She was a paralegal and she says, I'm probably not going to be able to have lunch with you for about a month.

I said, no problem.

Thank you, Lord.

So I kept applying myself and then one morning, something happened and that is

that as I was studying, I could begin to see how the scriptures worked and how they pulled together.

And I understood that the Jehovah's Witnesses in denying the deity of Christ, that this is what made them to

be heretics, but there are ways to defend the deity of Christ or Christ's vicarious atonement,

that you can engage them, but you have to know what they believe, you have to know how they

argue, and you have to be really grounded in the word.

And the thing I found out, the most important study was not reading Walter Martin.

The most important study was looking at how Walter Martin exegeted the text

and learned to do that yourself.

And once that light went on, then one morning, I actually was able to go toe -to -toe with the Jehovah's Witness for the first

time and he wasn't able to bend me into a pretzel.

I was able to use the word of God to counter his arguments and to push back.

And the next day when he saw me coming after that, he literally packed up his bags and fled the street

corner when he saw me coming.

Now at the time, you have to understand, I was a little enthusiastic and I mean that theologically.

When I saw that fellow leave, I literally ran to the corner where he had vacated and I says, I claim this corner in the name of

Jesus!

You know, I was a little exuberant.

But anyway, that's where I

first began to see how this is done.

But Jerry Omley did that exact same thing.

And so the idea here is this, is that as Christians we are called to

be in the word of God, to study the word of God, to rightly know what it says.

And furthermore, I would say you as a congregation, notice I'm speaking as a pastor here, you as a congregation

are obligated to not permit your pastor to preach false doctrine.

You're obligated.

In fact, if your pastor preaches false doctrine, scripture requires that you rebuke him.

It's also in the church constitution.

Yeah.

Thankfully, that's a biblical thing within the church constitution, don't you know?

So, right?

Yeah, sure.

My worst ever Dwayne impersonation.

Okay.

I'll help you work on that.

Yeah, yeah.

Thanks.

Okay.

Yes.

But you listen.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

And then they joined the church in Fargo.

Yeah, Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God.

Yeah.

Very similar to the Jehovah's Witnesses in their denial of the doctrine of the Trinity and the denial of the deity of Christ.

Well, they were so involved in that church, they couldn't eat pork, they couldn't eat

this.

Christmas time, they couldn't accept a present that was Christmas wrapped because that was out.

And when they finally decided to leave that church, they were told

somebody in the family would be dying because they were leaving.

What?

My mother died and my aunt ended up in the hospital because she thought it was her fault.

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.

And when their daughter was going to have their baby, the baby, she had to go way into South

Dakota somewhere to have that baby and get home the next day.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Walter Martin wrote extensively against Armstrong and the Worldwide Church of God.

And, yeah.

It was bad with him.

Yeah.

And you're going to note this, that cults, one of the things that they have in common, aside from

you being totally consumed, all of your free time is spent related to

the leader or whatever like that.

But the leader claims to have special insight into the scripture or they have

interpretations that only they've ever seen.

Everything's kind of brand new.

Whereas everybody else, they're totally in the dark.

But you are in the light because you're listening to so -and -so.

Yeah.

That usually goes that way.

They hardly had any money.

Yeah.

They didn't even...

Yeah.

That's the other part of this is that money tactics like that are very common

within the cults, very common to the point where, and you talked about even though they were poor, they still had to give.

This is a common denominator.

And they're ruthless in this regard.

If you are not giving this amount, then you probably can't even be saved.

All of the perks of membership within the cult are reserved only for the people

who are diligently giving, not just the tithes but offerings on top of it.

And you can't expect God to act on your behalf unless, of course, you're giving and giving to the point

where it hurts.

I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've talked with people who've come out of churches and cults like this

that they'll say, I was a single mother.

I couldn't feed my kids.

And if I had failed to tithe to my church, there were elders showing up at my door

saying, where's the check?

Yeah.

And you know who gets lost in the mix in all these things?

Christ, the gospel.

There's no gospel in these cults.

It's all law.

And a lot of times it's goofy, made -up law.

For instance, you talked about the fact they couldn't celebrate Christmas.

Armstrong had a lot in common with the JWs.

I forget how long ago he died now.

But the Worldwide Church of God, after his death, they repudiated a lot of his doctrines and they're trying to

mainstream themselves into normal evangelicalism.

But in the JWs cult, you're not allowed to celebrate birthdays.

You're not allowed to celebrate Christmas.

You're definitely not allowed to celebrate Easter.

And it's really funny how it works out.

So I went on and actually kind of specialized at first in doing counter -cult ministry

with Mormons and the JWs.

And it was Walter Martin himself who told me that I should go to Christ College Irvine.

So I actually called Walter Martin and talked to him one afternoon.

And I said, listen, this whole counter -cult apologetics

kind of thing, I really like this.

I can see myself doing this.

And he says, well, you've got to pack up everything and you've got to move back down to Southern California and you need to go to Christ College Irvine and study

apologetics under Rod Rosenblatt.

Okay, whatever.

But that's a whole other story.

But what ended up happening with the Jehovah's Witnesses, and here's their argument, and you can kind of see how this works.

So the way the Jehovah's Witnesses will argue, in the Bible, there are two

stories, two, two stories of people celebrating birthdays.

Do you know what they are?

Do you know?

All right, well, let's go Old Testament first.

Pharaoh celebrated his birthday.

Remember those two guys, the baker and the cupbearer who were into the

prison, okay, where Joseph was, right?

Remember those two guys, right?

Well, you know, they had dreams and then they were eventually brought back out.

Well, it was Pharaoh's birthday, and on Pharaoh's birthday, the Pharaoh himself ordered

that the baker, that his head be taken off of him.

Just literally just cut him down.

Murdered him on Pharaoh's birthday.

All right, second story of a birthday.

Do you know what that would be?

King Herod, right?

And you know what happened at King Herod's birthday party, right?

Yeah, well, yeah.

So what ended up happening was Herodias' daughter, she did some pretty

interesting dancing, okay, and it resulted in John the Baptist being killed.

And so what can we learn from this?

You see, don't have a birthday.

If you're a ruler.

You can't have a, birthdays are bad.

Don't be a dictator.

You're missing the point.

Okay, so that's literally their argument.

Okay, now the question I would have immediately for you is, given their argument, let me just throw it at you guys.

What would you do, how would you argue biblically against such a concept?

So if you celebrate a birthday, you're sinning against Jehovah, and that's bad.

So nobody who's truly a believer in Jehovah would ever celebrate a birthday because we have two accounts where people

died as a result of it.

Not on Jesus Christ's birthday.

You're twisting the word.

You're twisting the word.

It wasn't his birthday.

That was the visit of the magi, and it wasn't on his birthday.

He was already a couple years old.

You failed.

Well, they did, didn't they?

You can point that out.

You say, well, listen, the angels did celebrate the birth of Christ.

By the way, I mean, on a similar note, every single

year when I say anything favorable about Christmas on my social media,

okay, this is the problem when you have, like, tens of thousands of people following

you on social media, and that is that there's always these wingnut wackerdoodles out there.

And so, you know, so I'll say something positive about Christmas, right?

And, oh, my goodness, you can't celebrate Christmas.

Christmas is a pagan holiday, and da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da.

It's the Saturnalia.

You're worshiping demons when you're doing this.

Okay?

And this same kind of argumentation, and now it's not even based on Scripture.

So I always come back to, well, here's what we're going to do at my church that I serve,

and, like, when you're actually posted ahead of time, the order of service that we're going to have.

Here's what we're going to do.

We're going to start off with this hymn.

We're going to then have these biblical texts read regarding the birth of Christ.

We're going to sing some more hymns.

And I said, now, point to me the part where I'm worshiping Saturn, okay, in our thing.

Okay?

Show that to me.

Yeah.

If angels can celebrate the birth of Christ, so can I.

And so you show me where I can.

Now, there is a biblical text that a lot of people do not know about that I'll show you that will help here.

But Mark, you had?

I was going to say, as far as the birthday and here and all that, it's because of sin that he

did that, not because of the day.

Uh -huh.

That would be the reason.

I would say it's not because it's his birthday.

It's because he could have done that any day.

Yeah, it could have been any day.

Okay.

I'm all for banning Thursdays.

I really am.

Uh -huh.

Yes.

No.

That does seem a little bit.

Yeah.

I'm looking for a text real quick here.

Sin.

I think it's in Romans 10, but I may be wrong.

Hold on a second.

And I want to find this in the epistles.

I think it's Romans 7.

Hold on a second here.

Now, I'm zooming in on it.

I want to show you a text that will help you in this regard.

Okay.

And this is one that will help us out in a lot of different ways in which people twist the scripture.

Sorry, Romans 4.

Romans 4.

There we go.

Romans 4 .15.

All right.

Here's our text.

Romans 4.

All right.

Listen to what this text says.

I'll start at verse 13.

The promise to Abraham and to his offspring that he would be the heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.

For if the adherents of the law are to be heirs, faith is null and the promise is void.

For the law brings wrath.

And then listen to the second part of the sentence.

But where there is no law, there is no transgression.

Where there is no law, there is no transgression.

So somebody sits there and says to you, if you're really a Christian, then you would

never listen to Van Halen.

Okay?

So if you're really a Christian, you would never listen to Fleetwood Mac.

Now I'm really showing my age.

Led Zeppelin.

You would never listen.

This is what I was told.

So what they're saying is that there's an implicit command.

It's not explicitly stated.

It's kind of tacitly implied that says, thou shalt not listen to secular music.

Thou shalt not smoke.

Thou shalt not drink.

Thou shalt not dance.

Thou shalt not chew.

Thou shalt not celebrate birthdays.

Thou shalt not celebrate Christmas.

Are those commands in Scripture?

No.

Where there is no law, there is no transgression.

You are under freedom at that point and use your freedom responsibly.

That's the idea.

Now I know Norwegians don't dance, but nowhere in

Scripture are we commanded not to dance.

Ever.

Right?

And your status as a Christian is not in jeopardy if you decide that

you're going to do the Macarena or if you're going to really celebrate it Gangnam style.

Yes, of course.

I'm speaking from...

There's photos and videos to this effect.

Okay?

Right?

From celebrating

birthdays.

Correct.

Freedom.

Yeah.

Where there is no law, there's no sin.

Yeah. Right.

Now do you have freedom to steal?

No.

No.

No freedom whatsoever.

So bank robber is not a valid Christian vocation.

Just saying.

Yeah, despite what TVN would say.

Right?

Yes.

Yeah.

And then they stopped.

They changed it.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I don't know.

And that's the other thing.

Scripture describes, by the way, Scripture describes the false teachers.

It describes false teachers as wandering stars in the book of Jude.

And that's a very important bit, because you said that they used to allow birthdays to be celebrated, and then in 51 they changed.

So when Scripture talks about false teachers, it says that they are wandering stars.

Can you navigate by a wandering star?

No.

You have to navigate by a fixed point, which is why you always use the North Star in the Northern Hemisphere

if you're navigating, because that's a fixed point.

It's not going to move.

In fact, if you do some long exposure photography and get the star trails going, that

thing just has a tiny little circle that it makes.

But you can't navigate by Jupiter.

You can't navigate by anything except for a fixed point in the horizon.

And so that's the thing about false teachers.

They go from bad to worse, and they're not grounded in the Scriptures.

They're just making stuff up, making stuff up.

I mean, this past week on one of my YouTube videos, we actually

took a look at a fellow by the name of Ron Carpenter, who, no joke,

he says that Jesus is different than the Christ

and that when Jesus the man ascended into heaven, the Christ stayed on earth

and looked for a new body to work in.

Okay?

Now, as goofy as that might sound, I want to point something out here.

1 John 4.

And this is the epistle of 1 John.

If you really want to study and really understand this letter in the New Testament, this is

written against a heresy known as Gnosticism.

Gnosticism.

And Gnostics denied that matter

is good.

They basically said that matter is evil, matter is a mistake, the only thing that is good is the spiritual.

In fact, in the narrative that Gnostics would tell, the creation of the world and everything that you can

smell, taste, and touch was an accident.

And as a result of it, Gnostics denied that Jesus is the same as the

Christ.

They said the Christ is the spiritual and that Jesus was not physically

incarnate and so much so, he just looked like he was and so Jesus really didn't

die on the cross for your sins.

And when Jesus walked on land, he never left any footprints because he was pure spirit.

No joke.

But listen to 1 John 4.

Beloved, don't believe every spirit.

Test the spirits to see whether they are from God.

For many false prophets have gone into the world.

By this you know the spirit of God.

Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.

And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.

This is the spirit of Antichrist, which you heard was coming and is now in the world already.

And so the Ron Carpenter video, when he claims that the Christ is

different than Jesus and that when Jesus ascended into heaven, the Christ stayed, he's denying that

Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.

He's actually promoting the exact doctrine that 1 John 4 says is the doctrine of

the Antichrist.

And the most important and interesting aspect of this is that he proclaimed this doctrine

at T .D. Jakes' potter's house in Dallas.

T .D. Jakes is one of the most well -liked

televangelists on the planet and not a single person in his congregation

identified the false doctrine for what it was.

And instead, when he made that statement, they stood to their feet and applauded him.

It's really dangerous when you don't know your Bible.

Really dangerous.

Gnosticism is the philosophy.

Yes, it really is.

Yep.

All right, we're going to end there.

We'll pick this up next week.