Letters to the Churches Part 14

And let's pray and then we will get started. Lord Jesus, as we open your word again, we ask through your Holy Spirit that you would help us to rightly understand what you have revealed in your word so that we might rightly believe, that we might rightly confess, that we might rightly defend and walk and do according to what you have revealed.

We pray that we, like those who have acted wickedly, would not cast your words behind our backs, but instead be diligent and meditate upon them, and that through your Spirit, that you would bear the fruit of the Spirit in our lives.

We ask in the name of Jesus, amen. All right, I'm gonna check the chat real quick because I'm looking at the chat thing and it says there's like 29.

29.

So I kind of thought that today's sermon might provoke questions, like one or two. And so let's take a look and see what's going on. We used to be able to hear the congregation sing louder than the organ, but for some reason that's been reversed.

Elizabeth. So Kongsvinger right now is on a skeleton crew because we had COVID run through our ranks. And so I hate to break it to you, but today at Kongsvinger, I think it was physically the lowest attendance day that I've had since I've been here.

And so we had a total of myself and three others. And so the congregation, I tried to whip them up into a frenzy before the service to get them. But the thing is, is that not one of them are Pentecostals.

So, you know, so in the days ahead, as we get more people here at church, that problem will begin to disappear is the best way I can put it.

All right.

Just follow along. Yeah, that's right. Just follow along as best as you can. Let's see here. Elizabeth, do y 'all remember the bouncing ball when following a hymn?

No, we're not doing that.

Okay, let's see here. I'd like to know who's playing the organ. What was me? You know, that's actually, it's recorded. So, but I do press the buttons for that. So just so you know.

Okay.

Okay, we could ask pastor when he returns. Well, actually I'm doing the services now. I have returned. And so let's see here. Any of the ladies want to Zoom later?

Say three to four.

Oh, we got ladies at this point who wanted to just chat with each other. You go right ahead. Yeah, that's awesome stuff. All right, let's see here. So we got that kind of stuff going on. No one wants to see that.

Indy has a cold, good. All right, it doesn't look like I've missed any questions at the moment. And I'm tempted to kind of build off of this just a little bit, but I think it would behoove us if we went back to Revelation 14 and kept working our way through there.

If you remember last week, we had a wonderful question come up as it relates to the mark written on people's foreheads. And I made it clear that this is a reference back to our baptism. And so we did a little work last week working out what the biblical texts say regarding baptism.

And the fun thing is, and I pointed this out last week, is that we Lutherans do not have an elegant, sexy doctrine of baptism. We just very crudely believe what the scriptures say. It's really what it comes down to.

And that's what confession is. Hama legeo, the word confess in Greek, means to say the same thing. So when people are saying things that are different than scripture, Lutherans have like really, really overreactive knee jerks.

You know, like this. It's kind of fun to watch. All right, so coming back to the book of Revelation. And let's take a look at Revelation 14 again. And remember, we went back and looked at the ceiling of the 144 ,000.

The 144 ,000 is the church militant. And then they become the church triumphant upon their death or the return of Christ. So then I looked and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb and with him 144 ,000 who had his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads.

All right, again, reference back to baptism. We showed that last week. So I heard a voice from heaven like the roar of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder. The voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps and they were singing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders.

No one could learn that song except for the 144 ,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. It is these who have not defiled themselves with women for they are virgins. And so we're gonna note here, the 144 ,000, again, it's a symbolic number.

It's not a literal number. They're not literally from those different tribes and they're not literally virgins. And so, but virginity is oftentimes a picture of purity. That's the idea of not having been defiled.

And so in this particular sense, that's what's going on. And these are male virgins. I pointed that out last week. It is these who follow the lamb wherever he goes. These have been redeemed from mankind as first fruits for God and the lamb.

And in their mouth, no lie was found for they are blameless. And then I saw another angel flying directly overhead with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on the earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people.

And he said with a loud voice, fear God and give him glory. Because the hour of his judgment has come and worship him who has made heaven and earth and the sea and the springs of water. And then, you know, everybody responded, but, but, but, but Darwin.

Yeah. I remember a couple of years ago now when, do you guys remember when we were allowed to travel?

Do you guys remember that?

It seems like ancient history now. But one of the lectures I gave at the Pirate Christian Media Conference in Swansea in the UK, the title of the lecture is why is Darwin buried at Westminster Abbey? You know, have you ever thought about that?

That doesn't make any sense. Okay, so you'll note here, this angel is telling us, fear the one who made everything. Okay, yeah, he made it. All right, so then another angel, a second followed saying, fallen, fallen is Babylon the great.

She who has made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality. Now this then in the book of Revelation will really become the first time where we're starting to see at least imagery that is invoking something from the Old Testament in relation to Babylon.

And so in this, in this regard then, remember the unholy trinity that is at work. So you have the beast, which is this tyrannical governmental system that the devil has given all of his authority to, that same authority that he promised to give Jesus if Jesus would just worship him.

And so the beast is this tyrannical governmental authority that is like the super mega weapon designed to war with the saints, you know, and that's us. And then as, of course, you've got the dragon who's in charge of all of this stuff, and then you've got the false prophet that's working, and then that imagery of the false prophet will give way, you'll see in the chapters ahead, give way to the imagery of the whore of Babylon, you know, the great prostitute who drinks the blood of the saints.

And it's this wild picture of what's going on here. So Babylon now, which is the place that the children, that the tribe of Judah was sent into exile and spent 70 years in exile. 70 years, that's kind of an interesting number, just saying, you know, but 70 years in exile.

And of course, you know, pagans all get out. So here we've got Babylon, and in contradistinction to the virgin 144 ,000, Babylon the Great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality, which is again a picture here of just rank apostasy, rebellion, you know, sinful passions and stuff like this.

And so along with this, you're gonna kind of see the themes of sexual immorality, of the worship of money and commerce, and then false religion, false prophecy, false religion, all this kind of stuff.

So fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great. You can see here that with these angels proclaiming these judgments, that things are winding down again. It's like we're heading towards the end of the world again.

How many times has the world ended now in Revelation? Two or three times? Yeah, I've lost count of how many times the world has ended. But you can see we're getting ready to land the plane again. The world's about to end again.

Yeah, and that's kind of the point. So another angel, a third followed them, saying with a loud voice, if anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.

And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image. And I would, again, argue that its icon is kind of more like its logo.

It's the seal of that particular system. And whoever receives the mark, the keregma, yeah, that's kind of that, again, it's like a seal, a logo of its name. So this is a reference then, and you'll note that when you take a look at how these things work symbolically, we then as Christians, along with the church historically, have pointed out that people have taken the mark of the beast for millennia, all right?

And they say, well, how could they take the mark of the beast? That was long before they had UPC codes, you know, and RFID chips. You see, this is not referring to, you know, something very specific in that sense.

You're either marked with the name of God, like the 144 ,000, and you're declared by God to be a virgin, or you belong to the dominion of darkness, and you engage in the worship of the beast to one degree or another.

Now, was it Karl Marx, or was it Lenin? I forget now. But you'll note that Marxists don't like Christians, and one of the reasons they don't is because Christians refuse to believe that an earthly government is the final authority to which they must give an account.

Christians recognize that Christ is king of kings and lord of lords, and that whatever governmental system there is on earth, there's always a higher system. But in communist China, and in the ancient USSR, you know, and all these communist regimes, they really believe that, you know, the highest authority is them.

And the Christian says, no, that's not how that works, okay? So Diane says, is it okay, so it's okay to get the vaccine?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The vaccine isn't the mark of the beast, okay? If the vaccine's the mark of the beast, then my wife is, the smoke of her torment is gonna go up before the lamb forever and ever, because my wife has been vaccinated.

But she got the first vaccine, and then the day after, she started showing signs of COVID for real. So this is really bad timing, you know, on her part. But too bad, my wife now gets to burn in hell forever.

So, of course it's okay to take the vaccine. You know, it's like, oh, yi, yi. What does scripture say? Conspiracy, conspiracy. Do not say, you know, that everything is conspiracy. It's the Roseboro Paraphrase.

I know you're joking, Diane. I get it, I know. I saw the tongue in your cheek, and I saw the winky emoji. So, all right, all right. Now, it's this, then, we need to consider this. And in our day, does anyone remember Love Wins?

Rob Bell, okay? And so Rob Bell isn't as popular as he used to be, but wow, he was, for a long time, the darling of evangelicalism. Absolutely the darling of him. And it was Bill Heibel's church, Willow Creek, that really launched his career.

You know, he was intentionally launched by Willow Creek as this person who was one who can communicate Christianity to people who have a postmodern mindset. And the problem is the postmodern philosophical worldview is incompatible with biblical Christianity.

And out of the shoot, Rob Bell was always a problem. And so I remember my son, Josh, he was, when he was in high school, one of his youth groups was watching Rob Bell NUMA videos, and he was describing to me what was going on, and it's like, what?

Okay, I'll give you a couple examples of kind of the awfulness of Rob Bell. We're on a little bit of a bunny trail, but it's important because there's still people who think that he's the bee's knees.

But the nice thing is is that he's a little long in the tooth now. He doesn't quite look as hip and relevant as he used to. He hasn't aged very well, and I'm always thankful for when somebody hip and relevant doesn't age well because it takes away like one of their superpowers.

But in his case, one of the first books he came out with was a book called Velvet Elvis. And Velvet Elvis, he had a very interesting metaphor that he used for what the Bible teaches and how doctrines work.

He said, and this is his metaphor, he claimed that his children liked playing on a trampoline, okay? Which, you know, that's a popular thing. Now, Barb and I would never let our kids have a trampoline because neck injuries.

In our case, that's legitimately, all of our kids would be paralyzed at this point if we had a trampoline. Not one of them, all of them, okay? And it would happen to all at the same time in some spectacular disaster.

Because that's how things happen in my family. But what ended up happening is that, so he's talking about how he would like to go out with his kids and bounce on the trampoline, and it was just a joy.

It was something that was a lot of fun. And he says Christianity is just like bouncing on a trampoline. And then he said that the doctrines that people believe in are like the springs on a trampoline.

And then he says, and if we take out the spring that says the virgin birth, we can still bounce on the trampoline and have a good time. And you sit there, you go, wow, that's demonic, man. And so my friend at the time, Ken Silva, he wrote a blog post called Trampolinianity.

And which I thought was a funny phrase where he really took this concept to task. And if you look in the old archives of Team Pyro, I don't know if you remember, there was a blog that was run in part by Phil Johnson.

There was three fellows, Phil Johnson and two others, who ran a website called Pyromaniacs. And Phil Johnson was one of these guys who was going after him. And we were all warning the church like, this guy is toxic, you can't trust this guy.

You get rid of the virgin birth, you ain't got Christianity anymore. Because if Jesus is the product of Mary and Fred, then he's a sinner like you and I, and we are dead in trespasses and sins. He's not our savior.

This is a non-negotiable, but Rob Bell claimed that you can do this. But Rob Bell was really famous for coming up with these interesting slogans. And for many years, he had the slogan that love wins.

And then he wrote a book called Love Wins. And everybody who had been warning people, listen, this guy, he's a liberal, he's a universalist. He came right out in this book, Love Wins, and basically comes up with the idea that because love wins, that that means that hell is going to be empty.

Okay?

And this was an interesting step because in visible evangelicalism, there has been a thread in some departments of conditionalism or annihilationism. I don't know if you're familiar with this particular view.

The view is that people are repulsed by the idea that God would send human beings to hell for eternity. And so I think of John Stott. John Stott was an evangelical biblical scholar who was really repulsed by the thought and entertained the possibility of what's called conditionalism or annihilationism.

And the idea then is that however much you sinned, you face the wrath of God for that amount of time in hell. And at the end of that, then you're annihilated and you cease to exist. But then this text just says, no, that's not how that works.

Okay?

And so it's important for us to recognize that this text is one of the texts that explicitly points out that eternal damnation is eternal and it truly is torment. And for some people, this is a very hard pill to swallow.

And I'll tell you oftentimes where human beings are tempted to abandon the doctrine of hell. The temptation comes for many people if they have a child who's left the faith or they have a child who's come out of the closet.

All right?

And what happens is, is that our love for our children oftentimes can cloud our fidelity to what God has revealed in his word. And I understand the pain and the agony that a parent goes through when a child wanders away from the faith, has gone prodigal.

But that doesn't, you'll note that as long as they're still breathing, that chapter is still, the book hasn't been finished. But even if they die apart from the faith, we do not abandon the truth of scripture.

And so what I found is, is that in evangelicalism, because of their inability to rightly handle law and gospel and always seem to err in favor of some kind of self-righteousness, that this will oftentimes drive people away from the faith and legitimately so, because they're not believing the faith.

And you'll note that when children rebel against legalism like this, they have a tendency to go way off the other, in the other direction, and to be quite angry at what they experience. That's normal.

But in a situation like that, we've got to come to grips with the reality that scripture is clear, that hell is for real, it is torment, and the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever without end.

And I'll give you another text as a cross-reference to this. And let me pull this up and then we'll take a look at questions, because I see that some questions are coming in. In the gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, I won't read the entire parable.

I preached on this in the fall. But in chapter 25, you have the parable of the sheep and the goats. And so here's what it says, starting at verse 31. We'll just get a little bit of the context so you can see what's going on.

When the Son of Man comes in His glory and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne and before Him will be gathered all the nations. He will separate one from another as a sheep separates the sheep from the goats.

I always like to point out that at this point, the judgment has already taken place. You are judged by what you are, what you are, okay? And so we know how the story then unfolds about Christ commending the sheep and the sheep scratching their head, going, huh, when did we do that?

And then condemning the goats and the goats saying, when did we see you hungry and not feed you and all that kind of stuff? But it's this last part that we need to pay attention here in the very last verse, because there's, in Greek, in grammar, there's a binding pair here.

And talking about the goats, it says that these, so hutoi eis koloson aioneon, and so koloson is punishment and aioneon is eternal, without end, okay? So it literally says of the goats that they will go into eternal punishment.

And this is telling us the length of their punishment. It is eternal. It is without end. But the binding pair then here is hoidei diakioi eis zoein aioneon. Here we see very clearly that the sheep go into eis zoein aioneon, into life eternal.

And so there's no way to get away from this fact, that our eternal life, and who among you thinks that eternal life only lasts for 1 ,000 years? How many of you think that eternal life lasts for 10 ,000 years?

How does the hymn go, Amazing Grace? And when we've been there 10 ,000 years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun, right? That's a beautiful poetic way of describing it.

Each and every one of us knows full well that eternal life is eternal. But you're gonna note then the punishment for those who persist in sin and unbelief, who remain under the dominion of darkness, their punishment lasts eternally.

And then our cross-reference here then is what we just read. And then it says this, that they will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and they will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.

Now this does create some confusion because we recognize that eternal damnation is a form of separation from God. But the reality is this, there's no place that you can go where God isn't, all right? So we recognize that God's omnipresence still is in place, but you're gonna note that this lake of fire that they are cast into, this lake of fire that they are cast into is in the very near presence of God and visibly within sight.

And so the idea here is that they will, so they will be in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they will have no rest day or night.

These worshipers of the beast and its image and whoever receives the mark of its name. And this is a sobering fact because each and every one of us has earned this punishment from God because of our own sin and our own rebellion that we have on our own volition participated in against God.

And so this is what we are being saved from. And guys like Rob Bell, they totally reject this concept. In fact, Rob Bell, in the last part of the book of Revelation, it talks about the New Jerusalem come out of heaven, and it describes the fact that the New Jerusalem has like 12 gates, and each of the gates has a portal, a door made out of pearl, right?

And it notes that the doors are always open, that those pearly gates are never closed. And so what Rob Bell did in the book Love Wins is he argued that because they're always open, that was an invitation for those who wanted to stay away from God, that they're always welcome to come in.

And you just roll your eyes and you go, wow. That's what we call eisegesis, like of an extreme type. So note then the scriptures are very clear and that we do not at all try to take this doctrine and dilute it, hide it, somehow find a way to say, yeah, but, there is no yeah, but to this one.

This is legitimately how this goes, all right? So, and then, you know, this is, and let me kind of show you where Christ sends them in Matthew 25. He says to those ghosts, depart from me, you cursed into the eternal fire.

It's a fire that is eternal, prepare for the devil and his angels, all right? This is what we've all earned. Yeah, Jen says, churches in my area don't like to talk about hell. I don't like to talk about it.

It's not a fun doctrine. And I would note this, that in all of scripture, the person who speaks the most and the clearest regarding the doctrine of hell is Jesus Christ. Before the gospels, we did not have clarity regarding hell like we have it after the gospels.

Christ is the one who preaches the most about it, and it's on his authority that we then, we say that this is absolutely the truth. And so, I'm not about to contradict Christ. Now, let me show you, hang on a second here.

I'm gonna pull up my web browser. My apologies, I was doing research. That guy who, he looks like a Mormon prophet. That was a prophetic look at 2021 with Jonathan Cahn. May show up in a future episode of Fighting for the Faith, but I'm constantly researching.

Hang on.

What I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna look for Irenaeus.

Irenaeus.

And then I want the rule of faith, okay? In Irenaeus' work, contra heresies, or against heresies, and this is kind of an important thing. Those of you in the catechism class, this will be a little bit of review, but Irenaeus was one of the first Christian apologists who took on false forms of Christianity, and he was an apologist who wrote voluminously, is the best way to put it, against what was called Valentinian Gnosticism.

And if you've ever read contra heresies, it's in the public domain. It's part of the writings of the church fathers that you could actually read online. In contra heresies, Irenaeus lays out what he calls the rule of faith, and he was taught it by the man who discipled him, and he was discipled by the fellow by the name of Polycarp.

If you're familiar with Polycarp, Polycarp, in his 80s, was martyred for his faith in Christ, and Polycarp, he was baptized as an infant by the apostle John, and he was catechized and instructed in the Christian faith by the apostle John during the time when John had come to the city of Ephesus and was in charge of the congregations of the city of Ephesus, and he even brought Mary, the mother of Jesus, with him, which explains why her tomb is not that far from the city of Ephesus.

We know exactly where it is. They found it like 12 years ago, so just so you know. But anyway, all that being the case, consider then that the Nicene Creed has not been written, but Christians had creeds, and so what Irenaeus did is he wrote and said, if somebody doesn't abide by these doctrines, he doesn't bring this faith to you, and it's defined by the rule of faith, then they are bringing to you a false theology, a false Christianity, and let me see.

I'm gonna have to open up a couple of these because I always forget which one is the easiest to read.

Hang on.

This one actually might work. Hold on a second here. All right, so this website, let's see here. Yeah, let's go ahead and read this, and you're gonna note that this sounds just a lot like a rough draft copy of the Nicene Creed.

Oh yeah, in fact, this is an even easier one. Okay, and watch what it says regarding hell. So Irenaeus' rule of faith, and again, he was taught this by Polycarp. Polycarp was taught this by John, so this is the pedigree on this, and here's how, this is one of the first creeds of the Christian church.

The church, though dispersed through the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith. She, the church, believes in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and the sea and all things that are in them, and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation, and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus our Lord.

And the Holy Spirit proclaimed his future manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father to gather all things in one, and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race in order that to Christ Jesus our Lord and God and Savior and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, every knee should bow of things in heaven and things on earth and under the earth and that every tongue should confess to him that he should execute just judgment towards all so that he may send spiritual wickedness and the angels who transgressed and became apostates together with the ungodly, and the unrighteous, and the wicked, and the profane among men into everlasting fire, but may in the exercise of his grace confer immortality, and righteousness, and holy those who have kept his commandments and have preserved in his love some from the beginning of their Christian course and others from the date of their repentance, and may surround them with everlasting glory.

So you'll note, I mean, somebody like Irenaeus who has like an impeccable pedigree, you know, very early on the Christian church confessed what? That those who persist in sin and unbelief will be cast into everlasting fire.

And the point that the fire is everlasting is due to the fact that they spend a conscious eternity there. Now here's the important bit that we've got to remember. When Jesus returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, how, what percentage of humanity will be resurrected?

The whole bit of it. Will we be resurrected with mortal or immortal bodies? Immortal, including the wicked. So yeah, keep that in mind. They cannot, so this is why hell itself and the lake of fire is described as the second death.

But this is a death that you are conscious the whole time. So keep that in mind. The scriptures are very, very clear in this regard. And the church has always confessed these things to be true. That being the case, let me take a look at some of the questions or comments.

The COVID vaccine is what I got. Got it since I'm a nurse. Oh, good, Elizabeth. Glad you can say the pandemic's over for you now. Some got the regular flu vaccine and got sick with COVID.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

So Melody says they're snowed in in Virginia. Oh, all right, so it's like a Minnesota day for you. All right, cool, yeah. We're having serendipity. I don't envy you because I don't like having to shovel, but we've been getting like, we've been getting like half an inch here, three quarters of an inch there.

It's just annoying. So if you're getting snowed in and you're getting inches and inches or a foot of snow,.

Okay, that's cool.

If it's gonna snow, I want it to snow.

I mean.

All right, let's see here. Elizabeth says, Rob Bell kinda has fallen away. Don't hear anything about him much. Sad man. Here's the thing, he hasn't really disappeared. He's become one of the religious superstars on Oprah's network, okay, which should kind of give you an idea of, if Oprah loves your theology, that's a bad thing, okay.

Oprah is one who has openly admitted that she has rejected Christianity. She was offended by the fact that God is jealous when people worship false gods. She thought, well, God is jealous, that's petty.

And so she refused to believe in that God. So, and so she, there's, you can still find him online. She's interviewed Rob Bell on several occasions and good night, the woman looks like she's fawning all over him.

Oh, he's the best thing ever. This is the biggest truth in the whole world, wow.

You know, if Oprah's mind is going,.

And she's sitting here, woo.

Yeah, that's a bad thing. So yeah, but since writing the book and publishing the book, Love Wins, let's just say that Rob Bell has, he's lost a lot of his appeal.

That's a good way to put it.

He's lost a lot of his appeal since doing that. All right, so here. Jen says, we are separated from God relationally forever. In hell, you're not separated from God judicially. Yeah, that's a good distinction, okay.

They do not have a face-to-face relationship with God. They don't get to see his face. They kind of get to see his backside while they're judicially, and here's the thing, actively experiencing his anger and his wrath, all right.

Phil and Indy says, our family experienced this earlier this year. My 20-year-old niece died suddenly in her sleep. That's horrifying. And she was in a same-sex relationship and she was raised as a Mormon.

They believe that they can ask for forgiveness after death to avoid hell, which is a myth, by the way. Her mother was very upset with me that I said that I don't believe that that is biblical. She said, are you condemning my child to hell?

By the way, the answer to that is no. We don't, we're not the judge, okay. We're not the judge. Christ is the judge. We're not. We can just tell you ahead of time, based on what Christ has revealed, that it don't look good for what the judge is gonna say.

But none of us is gonna be able to point a bony finger at Jesus and say, Jesus, you're unjust. Not a single one of us. But yeah, you're right, though. I said no because I have no idea what she believed in her last breath.

Yeah, yeah, bad doctrine does that. And so, and you know, that as painful as it can be, that when we have someone that we love or who is close to us, this is part of the reason why Christ makes it clear that those who love father or mother or child more than him are not worthy of the kingdom.

The idea, then, is that tendency to take these relationships, which are gifts given to us by God, and to idolize them to the point where we will refuse to believe God's words when it shows that the consequences of somebody that we love and we have such dear feelings towards is in rebellion against God.

The reality is that this temptation needs to be seen for what it is. And we hold to the word of God and we continue to pray for our children. And at the end of the day, we know that God will be just. And we'll have to take comfort in that thought here.

Okay, so let's see here. Let's see. All right, is this specific text about a specific sin? No, I don't know which one we were talking about. Louise says, we're getting 10 to 12 inches tomorrow. Want us to send you some?

Yeah, just email some over to me, would ya? Yeah, you can fax it over to Josh's fax machine. I think he wants some snow in his yard. All right, Ophrah also says she can't believe that there's only one way to heaven.

So, Louise, I have kind of a clever way of addressing something like that. So, as somebody who's been doing apologetics for a long time, this is a common thing that comes up. And usually, it's either in the form of the, I refuse to believe that there's only one way to heaven, or they'll say it in a more specific way, there's only one way to God.

They'll talk this way. Scripture's very clear that there is salvation in no one else than Christ. This is the preaching of the Apostle Peter in Acts chapter four. It's explicitly clear. And when you hear that, you're gonna note then that when you preach the exclusivity of Christ, people immediately know that all the other options are off the table, okay?

So, sometimes what you can basically say to somebody is that, listen, it is true that all roads lead to God. This is most certainly true. But it leads to God and his judgment seat. And the question is, after that, where are you gonna be sorted out, okay?