Are You A Christian Gnostic?

The Danger of Christian Gnosticism

So we're talking to dr. Sandlin and we I look I titled the thing engaging Christian Gnosticism now, by the way. Those are two words that should not be together. Engaging Christian Gnosticism those don't belong together my friends and so you might be asking the question Why do I care about this brothers and sisters?

Please hear me on this. You need to care about this. Oh boy is an importance and oh man is a destructive. I think James said last week on his show He said that's a Gnosticism is the most demonic and satanic thing.

He's ever studied. Yeah. Because it knows the Bible. Yeah, and it purposefully tries to distort it. Yes, and you need to understand. Look, I'll be willing to wage or something right now. I'm not a gambling man, but let's just play a game for a second.

I'm I'm willing to bet right now that probably the vast majority of people watching right now in our feed right now live. You've got some Gnosticism in you you do. It's there and I hope not. I really I'm rooting for you, but I hope not but you need to hear it.

So we're gonna talk about that. Are we Christian Gnostics? Is that how we're approaching the world and life in the future? And so dr. Sandlin, I'm gonna hand it over to you brother. We need to know what is Gnosticism and why should I care?

What Gnosticism Is and Why It Matters

Good question. So Gnosticism is the oldest and most dangerous and most persistent heresy in the church. You even I think you mentioned this earlier Jeff even see it in some of John's statements the beginnings of it and some of John's Statements Gnosticism is basically the idea that the creation the physical world is evil.

And if we're going to say Christian Gnosticism, you're right. They shouldn't be put together. But sadly in many people's minds, they are is that Jesus Christ came to deliver us from the physical world.

Gnosticism is a profound heresy and I'll mention just quickly other different Views of Gnostic origins, but it's basically that a lower God called the Demiurge. Not the true God who's really sort of an impersonal principle.

Not the true God of the Bible this lower God was deceived and created the physical world. Which was inherently evil and that somehow another and slightly higher God Female God in many of the tellings put little souls dropped a little sort of non-material souls in Some humans and the goal is for those souls to escape from the body.

The idea basically is that the human body in this part is like a shell and the real fruit the nut we might say is on the inside and Like Plato of old the real idea of life like Socrates would have said the goal of life is to die.

Because then what happens is just very bad evil. Corrupt body that we have goes away forever and the soul inside sort of flies up into the heavenlies and it's forever liberated from the body. Now I'll tell you right now.

Whatever that is. That's not even close to Christian Gnostics also believe by the way and I neglected to mention this that the God of the Old Testament is not the God of the New Testament. Oh, by the way, is any of this sounding familiar?

Yeah, the God of the Old Testament is a God of law. He's a God of anger. He's a God of cruelty. He's a God of genocide. He's a God of oppression, but the true God Sent Jesus Christ and not in an actual body.

He was Jesus. You see actually was a deceiver. He had what looked like a body but wasn't really a body couldn't have been because then he would have been evil. But Jesus goal was basically to send to convey a special form of secret knowledge that's where we get the word Gnostic sort of a secret knowledge to a few people to understand that the material world is evil and By changing their minds and giving them the secret handshake as it were the secret knowledge.

They can eventually get rid of the body and can fly up into the heavenlies and everything else will go off Into oblivion now that in short order is what ancient Gnosticism was but it is continued it has been persistent in the history of the church and sadly there are whole theological systems today and I'm going to mention one.

Am I allowed online to mention a false? Yes, but prominent. Okay, it starts with a D and It ends with an M and it's kind of a long word Dispensationalism and there are many good people involved in it many Bible believing people involved in it many sincere some of them my friends.

Yet nonetheless there are Gnostic elements in this which says that the Old Testament is Essentially about Israel because anybody that reads the Old Testament guys can actually see if it's a very earthy book I mean a lot of earthy stuff is going on.

I mean land promises and biblical laws covering sanitation and Like we would say even today coronavirus staying away from it and so on that's the Old Testament, but the New Testament they say because Paul speaks of Sitting in the heavenlies.

They understand they misunderstand the biblical term of meaning of heaven, by the way. Which we can get to later but the point is that the New Testament is basically on a plane higher than the physical and Essentially Jesus came to get us away from the Old Testament.

Sadly there are a number of dispensationalist Basically in a it's most crass forms that tend to lean that way. They're not total Gnostics but they have Gnostic elements now the biblical view is that the physical body and the love for good food and sex within marriage and Enjoying creation is a wonderful good and holy and righteous thing.

That's right. The only problems in this world and this is really key to understand guys and all your listeners. The only problem in this world at all is a result of sin. The problem with this world is not creation.

That's amazing how some people say well if I just think if I spend too much time in creation That will lead me away from God. No again because of your sin. Yeah but the Bible said the heavens declared the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork and we see God even among the Animals and how God himself causes them to do what they do.

So if we have a right contemplation of creation It will lead us toward God toward God and not away from God. But sadly for many people They think that the goal is and this is I think Jeff you mentioned this earlier before we went on the air and I really want to bring it to this and then I'll be quiet.

Let you guys talk. Really? It comes down to a theology of godly engagement and Dominion which the Bible teaches versus and a theology of escape. And essentially the Christian life and salvation is about escape.

Our goal is basically to trust in Christ and sort of get through this life and oh I have this terrible body and this body is always leading me to lust and addiction and all these sorts of things. But thank God He's going to deliver me from the body and then I'll be pure spirit.

And I'll go up to heaven and all of those that have trusted Christ we will go up and live up in heaven and maybe we'll be floating around in the clouds and have halos and so on and We'll live forever and all of this terrible physical creation will be done with forever now.

I'm exaggerating but only a little yes, that is a theology of escape. The biblical theology is very earthy. It's one of Dominion that our responsibilities to exercise benevolent Gospel based dominion in the earth getting the gospel to the world having people trusting Christ reorienting their lives and their families.

Church every area of life including the state according to God's standards. Pushing toward that time when the entire earth will be truly liberated and that doesn't mean from the physical. The Bible says in the book of Revelation that the that God himself and heaven will be joined to earth in.

The Bible the new heavens and the new earth of the resurrected heavens and the resurrected earth. So this physical earth that you and I are standing on right now unless you're listening in an airplane.

This one is actually the same earth. It will be renovated. It'll be resurrected but this earth is the same earth that heaven will come down and join and one day we will live on it. So the that's just why the promises of the Word of God are such earthy promises.

Because we are earthy people that's not to say we're worldly people. But we're earthy people and God created us to be this way. So we have here fundamentally and I'll close on this point to fundamentally different visions one of escape and one of engagement and Dominion.

Creation, Humanity, and the Goodness of the Physical World

That's right and I think it's important for us to recognize from the bit the beginning hear this everybody from the beginning of the biblical story when You open up the book of Genesis. What you see is God creating the physical cosmos He creates the world and he people's put people's in it and he puts animals in it and all the rest.

But in what's he say about it? This is important. What's he say about this creation? He says it's good and what happens is you see this this amazing story very rudimentary story of Again a commandment from God this but not that but he's walking with He's there with his people have that you have God's presence With his people in the beginning of creation and of course as sin enters into the world.

You have now our relationship with our Creator broken. However. That doesn't make creation no longer good. That doesn't make the material world and universe no longer good. It doesn't make humanity no longer good.

Now. That's vital to get this is so critical because one thing that dr Sandlin says in that lecture and again, it'll be under here this episode later on after we post this and get it all going I'll let you guys listen to it for yourself one of the things that's critical here is to recognize that the idea of Just wanting to to shed this and escape from all this and just leave it all behind us this corrupt Creation and body and all the rest is a desire to escape your humanity.

Yes, and that is not Christian see no in fact if you'll think about it from Genesis 3 that actually is part of the the initial sin the the attempt to escape your humanity and to be as God that is at the root of The original sin.

I mean God wants us to be human and nothing but human and we will never be anything but human. It is good to be human. The problem is not our humanity. It's just our sin. I think it's wonderful to understand that a glorious truth.

Many people don't apart from human sin. You were just what God made you to be. There's a great comfort in that. You don't have to try to make yourself something else. The work of sanctification by the power of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God and the church is little by little purging sin from our lives and one day in the Resurrection will probably look much the same and guess what will be fully human though resurrected.

Will be fully human just as human as we are now though. It's you know greater properties and so on. But to be human is to be what God made us to be so we should glory in our humanity. Because it's what God wants for us.

It's his will.

Heaven and Earth, Resurrection, and the Renewal of All Things

Very much so and I think it's important for us to recognize that the biblical narrative has a perspective about Heaven and earth and the kingdom of God on earth and our involvement in the world. That is vastly different from what many Christians believe today.

We think about the heaven and earth like Gnostics. We think about this as corrupted and evil and fallen and really God really is done with it. It wants nothing to do with it. And so the better thing to do is to get out of this body escape our humanity escape this corrupt creation.

To get away to this place. That's a million miles away called heaven. Whereas that is not that is not what the Bible teaches about heaven and earth. Heaven is as one theologian calls it God's space. And earth is our space.

And in Scripture those things this is critical get this and you'll see what I'm saying in Terms of shaking the Gnosticism loose in a biblical worldview earth and heaven they are organically together. Comprehensively together in many ways.

And if you want to see just how concerned God is with physical creation the material world our physical bodies I want to point you to the climax of the biblical narrative and that's the life ministry death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

How concerned is God with the physical world and renewal and all the rest? Oh, I don't know. He just stepped into it and took on physical form and then died and then conquered. Physical death and rose again in a physical body.

I do think it's a beautiful scene when Jesus is alive from the dead and Thomas is doubting Thomas Jesus says handle me and see a spirit does not have flesh and bone as you see me have. It's physical body and and this is critical to the story if our resurrection will be like Christ's resurrection like if that resurrection of Jesus in the garden is Testimony to what God is going to do in us then we have to recognize.

Hey, guess what guys you're gonna spend eternity with Jesus Christ and other saints and believers with the triune God on. This physical earth in this cosmos renewed, of course. But this is where we get I think things wrong.

And that is that I believe that the mission of Jesus with the kingdom of God on Earth is of course to bring a restoration of all things. Romans 8 that spectacular passage in Romans 8 it talks about the creation itself.

Groaning it's groaning why it's waiting for that liberation. Right that all that decay it's listen this world is not a throwaway. Jesus says I'm making all things new. He's not making all new things.