How to Not Be Deceived, Bamboozled or Snookered - Part 1

It's time for another edition of Fighting for the Faith, Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013. Man, I gotta tell you, this has been a challenging week here at Pirate Christian Radio Studios. Lost a laptop, lost the soundboard yesterday.

And then our Pirate Christian Radio servers from the Live 365 radio network have been down today. They're saying another four to six hours before those will be back up. Man, thank you for tuning in. You're listening to Fighting for the Faith.

My name is Chris Roseborough. I am your servant in Jesus Christ. And this is the program that dishes up a daily dose of biblical discernment. The goal of which, help you to think biblically, help you to think critically, help you compare what people are saying in the name of God to the Word of God.

Sadly, there's no shortage of crazy things being said about God out there. And we would expect to hear the crazy things, you know, from people in other religions. Unfortunately, a lot of the crazy stuff that we're hearing nowadays is, well, coming from people who call themselves Christian, who claim to believe in the Bible.

Or in some cases, well, they hold the Bible in high respect, but they don't teach what it actually says. In other words, they're not teaching Christianity. So what we're going to do today, in fact, I'm frantically working to get this out.

Since I can't broadcast during my normal time today because, you know, we don't have the ability to broadcast at the moment. I do feel a little frazzled by the whole thing. But anyway, what we're going to do today is our light edition today.

And what I'll be doing is playing the very first lecture, the first session from my recently concluded lectures that I did in Norfolk, Virginia, as well as at Kongsvinger Lutheran Church up in Oslo, Minnesota.

And it's going to be session one, how to not be deceived, bamboozled, or snookered by religious hucksters, snake oil, conmen, or your own idolatrous notions. Now, people have been asking me, are you going to make these lectures available?

The answer is yes, I am, starting today. In fact, without any further ado, here is session number one. This particular one was recorded in Norfolk, Virginia. And, well, here I am. It's weird, basically announcing myself.

So here I go. Let's pray. Almighty and everlasting God, you would have all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. By your almighty power and unsearchable wisdom, break and hinder all counsels of those who hate your word and who by corrupt teaching would destroy it.

Enlighten them with the knowledge of your glory, that they may know the riches of your heavenly grace, and peace and righteousness serve you, the only true God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. It's not polite to, it's not polite to talk about religion and politics.

We all know this, right? Thanksgiving morning comes around, you head off to your family's house, the family gathers around the table, and inevitably somebody puts the religion elephant on the table, or the politics elephant on the table, and then the fireworks ensue.

Do they not? It's not polite to discuss religion and politics. So what we're doing today, and what I'm going to be doing, is inherently impolite. Get over it. Okay? Okay, get over it. We're not here to play at something.

This is deadly serious and deadly important stuff that we're dealing with today. So let's take it seriously, and understand that really what's at stake are people's souls. That's really what's at stake.

Now, that being said, test everything I'm about to tell you. Test everything that I'm about to tell you. Don't take my word for it. It doesn't matter if I have a popular radio program. It doesn't matter where I have my degrees from.

None of that matters. Because I'm only correct if I'm saying the same thing as what scripture says, and if I'm not saying the same thing as what scripture says, I am wrong. It doesn't matter how much you like my shiny teeth.

It doesn't matter how big my church is. It doesn't matter what kind of car I drive. It doesn't matter if I have an award-winning, popular New York Times best-selling book. If what I'm saying says something different than scripture, and I'm saying that what I'm saying has to do with Christianity, then what I'm saying is wrong.

Now, in the Greek, there's a word that we use. Actually, it's right there in the Greek. It's the word for confess. The Greek word itself is homiligeo. Homiligeo. And what it means, literally, is to say the same thing as.

Now, I'm a confessional Lutheran. The reason why I'm a Lutheran is because I believe that the Lutheran confessions say the same thing as scripture. It's because they say the same thing as scripture that I am a Lutheran.

And I gotta tell you this. I came kicking and screaming into Lutheranism. I did not want to be a Lutheran. Lutherans, they're pastors, wear dresses. Okay? They wear dresses. They sing hymns. They have old organs.

There's a lot of old people in Lutheran churches. Okay? And when Lutherans try to do contemporary worship, they stink at it. Okay? They're horrible. You know, it's just a mess. But the thing that drove me to it was my theological study.

When I went to Concordia, California, I went in as a, well, a raging evangelical. Basically Methodist in my theology because I was a Nazarene. And the thing that drove me crazy is every time I would go toe-to-toe, and I was an apologist, every time I'd go toe-to-toe with Lutherans on certain doctrines, I would get the snot kicked out of me.

But I put up a good front. I put up a good front. I wasn't about to let them see that I inside was dying. That every time I went to find those biblical passages that support this or that thing, that I would believe that those passages weren't there.

And finally, I was taking a third-year Greek readings class, and we were translating through Titus, Titus chapter 3. And there it said right there in the Greek text, washing of regeneration. It was late at night, late at night.

I threw my hands up, and I said, that's it, we're Lutherans. And I told my wife, woke up in the morning, and I said, Barb, we're Lutherans. She said, oh, no, we're not. Okay? So understand, I come to this with a particular theological position, and I'm convinced that if you take the time to study scripture, if you look at it objectively and put aside your feelings, that you're going to find the same things that I find.

Because I don't invent truth, you don't invent truth. What I find is that all of us are called to subscribe to it. Does that make sense? Okay? So we're going to talk about that. Now, coming back. Test everything.

I'm about to tell you why. Acts chapter 17. The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now, these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica.

This is a fantastic passage, by the way. You know, Paul, by the way, when he was in Thessalonica, he ended up having to leave pretty quick. Things got really out of control there. I mean, his life was in danger.

They were very upset with him, right? So he goes to Berea, and here's what it says. The Bereans were of a more noble character than those in Thessalonica. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the scripture daily to see if these things were so.

If the Apostle Paul doesn't get a pass regarding the gospel that he proclaimed, and this is a man who was an eyewitness to the resurrection, one abnormally born, because he was knocked off his horse on his way to Damascus, and he actually saw and heard Jesus Christ, our Lord.

And so he could have played the I'm the Apostle card, right? And boy, do I hate it when people do that. Okay? Anytime a religious leader tells you, how dare you question me? I'm the pastor. Touch not God's anointed.

Leave. Okay? The Apostle Paul didn't play that card. In fact, the scriptures say that the Bereans, who had the audacity to test, had a noble character. Right? Because if the Apostle Paul is telling you the truth, then he's saying the same thing as scripture.

He's not adding to it. He's not taking away. He's not monkeying with it. He's saying the same thing. So that's the idea. Test everything. And now for a trick question. If it seems a little disjointed, I apologize.

I'm working on my segues. I'm going to segue school. Why do bad things happen to good people? That's right. Answer. Bad things never happen to good people. They only happen to bad people. Okay, now I told you I was going to step on your toes.

And I'm going to put on the old spikes of the golf shoes and I'm going to start stomping up and down. Get ready. This might hurt. Right? The religious marketplace is filled with deceivers who make a lot of money selling bad theology to bad people, giving them what their wicked hearts desire and believe.

The reason why there are charlatans out there who are making a lot of money is because they figured out there's a lot of money to be made telling people what they want to hear. In other words, the issue isn't the bad teachers.

It's all the bad people in the marketplace. That's you and it's me. Okay? That's the reason why there's bamboozlers out there is because there's bad people in the marketplace looking to buy bad things.

That's the real problem. We'll flesh this out a little bit. Scripture says, For the time is coming when people will not endure sound doctrine or teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and they will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

That day is now. That day is now where we have entire mega churches that are populated by tens of thousands of people who show up Sunday after Sunday to find and discover the champion within themselves.

And let me disavow you of that. There isn't a champion inside of you. There's a sinner. There's a sinner. And you know what? We live in a day when you can't say that. And because we can't say it, that's why I'm saying it.

There's nothing good inside of us. Nothing. The reason why there's bamboozlers out there selling garbage theology is because that's what our garbage hearts want to hear. Now, this next slide is so politically incorrect, but it makes the point.

This is a quote from Erich Wegline. If you're familiar with him, Wegline not only is a fantastic, conservative political philosopher, but he was a guy who nailed it regarding the Nazis. This is a guy, after World War II, he gave lectures in Munich that were just inflammatory.

And the reason why is this. Because he wouldn't let his own people, the Germans, he was a German, off the hook. Why did Hitler come to power? The reason Hitler came to power is not because Hitler was such a charismatic dude.

Hitler was a doofus. And what he was really, really, really good at was mimicking back to people what they wanted to see and hear. He was the proverbial parrot. Good studies on this. Here's Wegline's quote.

The phenomenon in Hitler is not exhausted by his person. His success must be understood of the context of an intellectually or morally ruined society in which personalities who otherwise would be grotesque, marginal figures, can come to public power because they superbly represent the people who admire them.

Who's to blame for Hitler? Hitler? Answer, the Germans are. Hitler perfectly mirrored the German idealistic philosophy of its time and the desires of those people, which proves that early 20th century continental Europe was morally ruined.

And so are we today. Now, I want you to think about this. As I show you this next slide, ask yourself if 150 years ago, 100 years ago, men like this would have been tolerated in the Christian church. Okay?

Benny Hinn. Supreme con man, right? T .D. Jakes. Guy doesn't even believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. Serious? This is the best that Christianity has to offer? Right? How about this guy? He'll sell you a miracle.

All you have to do is send in a $1 ,000 seed offering. How about this guy? How about her? No? Robert Tilton? How about this guy? Him? 100 years ago, there isn't a Christian church that would have tolerated his shenanigans with the Bible, right?

How about this guy? Brian McLaren, right? Okay. The fact that these men, and I mean, you know, to a T, these are the most popular evangelical faces and voices right now, is objective proof that Christianity, for the most part, is completely doctrinally and morally bankrupt.

Let's be real. These men aren't popular because they're playing a game on the body of Christ. The body of Christ has made these men wealthy and popular and influential because they represent the theology of evangelicalism as a whole.

They're not responsible. We are. Let's place the blame where it belongs. The blame belongs on us, not them. If the body of Christ in mass repents and returns to sound biblical doctrine, McLaren, T .D. Jakes, Joel Osteen, and all those guys that were done, their money will dry up and they'll go away like an old tumbleweed.

Right? The fact that they are as popular as they are and growing, it's our fault. Got it? Because people will gather to themselves, teachers who will tell them what their itching ears want to hear. Now that being said, we know where the sin lies, but let's hear the gospel real quick.

For God so loved the world. Let's go back to this. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Right? Now, it's important that as I quote this passage that we also take a look at the surrounding portion.

We all know this verse, right? Okay? When I was growing up, there used to be a guy who would wear a clown wig, you know, standing, you know, he would be behind the goal posts at football games and he'd hold the sign that said John 3, 16.

Let's take a look at the surrounding portion of that, though. We'll add a little context. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Whoever believes in him is not condemned but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God and this is the judgment. Light has come into the world and the people love darkness rather than the light.

Think about the impact of what this passage is really saying. John 1, 1 begins, in arche analogos, kai halogos in proston theon, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was face to face, was God.

The very God who made us was incarnate of the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, right? The very God who in Genesis, okay, said let there be light and there was light. That same God came to us and he is the light of the world and people didn't even recognize him for who he was.

Jesus could have walked, he could walk in right now and walk out and we wouldn't even recognize him for who he was. Yet the demons knew who he was. They were constantly squawking about it and Jesus had to tell them to shut up, right?

This is a judgment against us. The God who made us can walk among us and we don't even know who he is. Why? Because we love darkness and don't sit there and say, well I used to. That's a lie. I promise you if I were to put little cameras in your home that you weren't aware of and just surveil you for 24 hours, you would be so embarrassed by what I found out about you that it would cause you to die, right?

And it's not just you, it's me, it's all of us. We don't somewhat kind of like darkness. We love it. We revel in it. We pursue it. We're like that dog who will dig up the grossest things and roll around in the muck and the mire of it, right?

So let's not flatter ourselves. Scripture doesn't give us a flattering opinion of ourselves. We are not good. We're evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his work should be exposed.

But whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. Now that we understand this about ourselves and we understand we're the ones responsible for all of this mess.

God is not responsible for this. We are. The question then when it comes to the issue of religion is who do you trust? Who should you trust? Have any of you actually had a coffee with Jesus? Has he showed up at your home?

Have you been able to go to Starbucks with him and just kind of pick his brain? I haven't. I have no clue what the man even looks like. I'm telling you. I've never seen God. Never met him. So if I were to tell you, listen, I had this incredible thing happen, man.

I was walking down the street and all of a sudden I felt this buzz. And next thing you know it's like whoa. And I had this download in my mind and I saw a vision of angels and stuff like that. And now you've got to believe everything I say about God because I'm getting these direct downloads from God.

Should you believe me? I had an experience. Darn it. You have to believe me. But see, that's pretty much all that's needed nowadays, isn't it? Somebody claims they've had an experience and next thing you know they've got a pretty large and growing following of people who will listen to what they have to say.

So should we trust subjective feelings and intuitions? Asking the question who should we trust? Now keep this in mind. We as Americans have been culturally catechized to not trust our mind. We're not supposed to trust our mind, our eyes, but we're to stretch out with our feelings.

This is what we've been taught to do. We've all seen the movies, right? There's Obi-Wan Kenobi. He's dead. He's gone. He's now become a vaporous spirit. Weird that there was no body left after Darth Vader killed him, right?

So he's now this vaporous spirit guide. And there's Luke Skywalker. I mean, it's dire. The Death Star is about to turn the planet of Yavin and then destroy the Rebel base, right? And everyone else failed.

You know why they failed? Because they were using their targeting computers. But don't worry. Don't worry. That vaporous spirit, Obi-Wan Kenobi, is to the rescue. He is now speaking directly into the mind of Luke Skywalker.

Let go, Luke. Trust your feelings. And he turns off his targeting computer and the people at the base go, you've turned off your computer? What are you doing? Trust me, I know what I'm doing, right? And now he reaches out with his feelings and lets the missiles go and the Death Star blows up!

And what do we all come away with that? We've now been catechized to not trust our minds, to not trust logic, to not trust our computers, or anything like that, anything that is objective, but instead to reach out and save the world with our feelings.

That is exactly the opposite of what Scripture tells you to do. The exact opposite. Keep this in mind. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? My favorite quip when somebody tells me the Lord laid on my heart to do this or that, I sit there and go, oh, get that away from me!

Do you know where your heart's been? Oh! You know, I wouldn't eat a steak that touched your heart. That's disgusting. Why? For out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander.

The heart is the problem. Don't sit there and say the Lord laid something on your heart. I mean, that's like telling me to basically eat filet mignon that was just sitting in the ashtray over there. There's just no way I'm touching that, eating it, or anything of the sort.

I don't trust it. I can't trust your subjective heart feelings and all that kind of stuff. Here's the other reason why. This is the other part of the unflattering picture that Scripture says. So what then?

Romans chapter 3. Are we Jews any better off? Well, no, not at all, for we've already charged that all, that may be everybody, all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written, none is righteous, no, not one.

No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. So don't sit there and say, I hope to get into heaven someday because God knows I'm a good person.

There's going to be a lot of people in hell who thought they were good people. The Scripture says no one is righteous, not one. We're all worthless. Their throat's an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive.

The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood and their paths are ruined in misery. The way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

This is true of every single human being who is a natural descendant of Adam and Eve. There's only one human being who wasn't a natural descendant of Adam and Eve and that's Jesus Christ. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.

He was like us in every regard except that he did not have a sinful nature, that he didn't inherit from Adam and Eve because he's the new Adam. Right? Now, real quick apologetic note here. How do I know I can trust the Bible?

How do you know that you can trust the Bible? Here's the simple answer. Because the one true God became a human being and proved his claim to being God by raising himself on the third day after he was crucified, which is exactly what he said he would do.

Remember, Jesus goes into the temple the first time in the Gospel of John. He clears the temple out. And the Jews at this point, they know that this man is skating on thin ice. So they challenge him. By what authority are you doing these things?

Fantastic question. Because the temple of the Lord, of Yahweh in Jerusalem, that was the place where God caused his name to dwell. You don't walk into the house or the temple of God like you own the place unless you own the place.

Because if you act like you own the place when you don't own the place, that's blasphemy. So Jesus is challenged. By what authority are you doing these things? And he says, tear down this temple and I will build it again in three days.

Three days? It's taken 46 years to build this temple and you're going to rebuild it in three days? The temple he was speaking of was the temple of his body. Now, as the Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, if Christ is not raised, our faith is in vain.

I had a conversation, I had coffee with an emergent pastrix, which is always fun. And we were talking about this. And she looked at me and she said, really Chris? If they find the bones of Jesus Christ, you're going to leave Christianity?

I said, absolutely. Because it's all garbage. It's not true. I shouldn't believe it. I got better things to do on a Sunday morning than worshiping a guy who really isn't God. And that's what the Apostle Paul basically says.

If Christ is not raised, your faith is in vain and we're found to be liars about God. And she said to me, you know Chris though, I know it says in the text that he rose bodily from the grave, but if they found his bones, then maybe the word bodily doesn't mean bodily.

I am not about to try to rescue Christianity through the means of word games. Bodily means bodily. Jesus, when he appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead, they thought they saw a ghost.

Right? He says, why do fears arise in your mind? Touch and see. A ghost does not have flesh and bone as you see that I have. Right? When Thomas doubts, he says, I'm not going to believe that he's risen from the dead because he missed the first meeting, right?

Next Sunday, notice it was the first day of the week. Next Sunday, they were in the upper room and Jesus appears. And Jesus doesn't say to him, you knucklehead, just believe it in your heart. He lives, he lives, Christ Jesus lives today.

He walks with me and talks with me along life's merry way. Right? Right? He lives, he lives, salvation too in part. You ask me how I know he lives. He lives within my heart. No. No. Jesus said, handle me, touch, see, stop doubting and believe.

And what's Thomas' response? Hakuriosmu kaihateosmu. Ultimate worship. You are my Lord and my God. And for those of you who don't understand the theological impact, calling him hakuriosmu, you are the Lord of me, he's confessing that Jesus is none other than the Yahweh of the Old Testament.

And Jesus doesn't rebuke him. He says, you have believed because you have seen. But blessed is he who has not seen and yet believes. Right? We are not playing subjective games. Christianity is not about something that happens inside of your heart.

All of the claims of Christianity occurred 2 ,000 years ago, long before your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents were born. Right? It's either true or it's not true. The grave is either empty or it's not.

And if it's not empty, Christianity is absolutely, patently false and you shouldn't believe it. In fact, I'm thinking hedonistic paganism looks really good if they find the bones of Jesus. Because you might as well eat and drink because tomorrow we're going to die.

Right? All right. I just want to get that note in there. A little bit more of the picture here. To set the mind on the flesh is death. To set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God.

It doesn't submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot. It cannot. How bad is our sin and sinful nature? It's so bad we don't even recognize God when he walks among us. It's so bad that we can't even obey God's law.

Why? Because we're totally hostile to God. It's not like we're pacifists. No one in the spiritual realm gets to say, I'm Switzerland. Okay? You don't get to do that. All of us are born on the bad guy's side.

And by nature, if we're in a room with God, give me a bazooka, I'm going to kill him. Right? That's what we are. We're hostile belligerents against God and we cannot of our own selves choose God, worship God, serve God.

We hate him. Right? Instead they go, yeah, but Gandhi was a good person. He did some good things. What about Mother Teresa and stuff like that? Yeah, you can do, quote, good things towards each other horizontally, but by nature, none of us can or will love God unless God does something to intervene.

Now, personal experiences. I'm going to give you an example here that I think is a pretty good one. Are any of you familiar with the friendship between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini? One. Okay.

Let me tell you the story. This, by the way, is a picture over here of the author of the Sherlock Holmes novel, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Here, Harry Houdini. Tragic story, by the way. They had a very good friendship until, and let me give you the history here.

They lived at the time of World War I. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle lost a son, lost a brother, and eight nephews to World War I. He was emotionally devastated by this loss. Houdini also lost some relatives, not to World War I, but to other things, old age and diseases and things like that.

Both of them had something in common. They dabbled with spiritism or spiritualism, which was a big thing back in the early part of the 20th century. Spiritualism, think mediums and spiritists. So somebody would pay money to a medium or spiritualist.

They would have a seance in order to contact the dead. Both of them sought the help out to contact their dead relatives on the other side of the veil. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, his second wife, was a spiritualist.

She recommended some people. He went and did the seances and truly believed that he had contacted his dead son. Really, truly believed it. Houdini, when he did the same, because he was a trained magician, he sought for what it was.

The spiritualists, the mediums, they were just magicians. They had physical means to create the illusion that they were contacting the dead. Now, what a lot of people don't know, you can actually read about this in Massimo Polidoro's book, The Final Seance, The Strange Friendship Between Houdini and Conan Doyle.

But Houdini, when he would travel to a town after that event, he made it a point to send a guy out ahead of him who would hunt out and find the spiritualists and the mediums and make sure that they were invited for free to attend his magic shows.

And then as part of his magic show, he would spend part of his time debunking and publicly exposing these people for the frauds that they were. This was one of Houdini's big deals. He was like the major debunker.

In fact, spiritualism really died as a result of the work of Harry Houdini. But this put him in sharp conflict with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The guy who invented Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes, he's like the epitome of deductive logic and reason, right?

Okay? He refused to believe that his experiences were false. Here's part of a letter that he wrote to Mrs. Houdini. Listen to this. This is Conan Doyle writing. He says, But you can understand it to those of us who had personal experience a hundred times over in matter.

It was annoying to be placed in the position of either being a fool or a knave by Harry Houdini, right? So far as his, Harry's work was confined to really fake mediums. We were all in sympathy. But he's got far past that.

It was a general wild attack upon all that we hold dear. But who was right? Harry Houdini was. And he had objective reasons to know that he was right. This wasn't a feeling that he had. Now, I don't want to be rude to our guests, but Mormonism, okay, I learned Mormonism from the Mormons years ago, back when I was in college.

First year, Concordia, Irvine, this is now Concordia, California, is taking Greek and apologetics, and the Mormons came knocking on my door. And I let them in, and I let them talk. And they wanted to tell me about another testament of Jesus Christ, of how Jesus had come to the Americas and things like that.

And they wanted to give me a book of Mormon. And I said, all right. And they said, well, will you read it? Okay, I'll read it. I said, but because I'm so busy, I'm going to have to, I'm going to need a few weeks to read it.

So I read it, but it took me a few weeks. I read it. And then they showed up a few weeks later at my door and invited them in. The first question out of their mouths, one of the elders who said to me, he says, so Chris, did you read the Book of Mormon?

I said, yes, I read it from cover to cover. How did it make you feel? My answer, funny that you would ask that, because every time I opened up the Book of Mormon, I felt complete evil in the room. It got really cold and kind of dark.

And it just, and when, as soon as I would shut the book, it would go away. And they literally, one guy said to me, well, you're not reading it right. Okay? And I said, well, what does it make you feel like when you read it?

And the guy, one guy said, I bear you my testimony that I have prayed to Heavenly Father to give me a testimony that the Book of Mormon is true. And I have had a burning in my bosom telling me that the Book of Mormon is true.

Now, not to be snide, when I have a burning in my bosom, I take Pepsod. Okay? So what I told them, I said, listen, your subjective experience and my subjective experience are two completely opposite things.

The only way that we're gonna be able to decide whether the Book of Mormon is truly true is by looking at objective evidence that doesn't rely on our subjective feelings. And we ended up studying with them for a good four, five months.

Okay? And what it basically came down to with them is, you know, we kind of had like a truth showdown. I had gotten hold of copies, photocopies of the original papyri of a book called the Book of Abraham.

This is kind of a little known story, but back in 1968, they had actually found papyri of the Book of Abraham that Joseph Smith had used to translate, he claimed translate, what's come to be known as the Book of Abraham.

And so I said, all right, here's the deal. I don't know what these say because I don't read Egyptian hieroglyphics. You don't know what they say because you don't read Egyptian hieroglyphics. So I found a professor at the University of California, Irvine, who is an Egyptologist, and I said, we're going to give these to him, and he's going to tell us what they say.

The translation comes back as what the Book of Abraham says, I'm a Mormon. If it doesn't come back as that, then you guys are out of Mormonism. They said, deal. We shook on it. They didn't show up the next week.

Their bishop moved them because the handwriting was on the wall. When I got the translation back from the Egyptologist at the University of California, Irvine, he said, this is from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

These are spells that Egyptians would use in the afterlife to overcome particular obstacles and things like that. Translation was even close to the Book of Abraham. It was all objective. So our subjective feelings and our experiences are not the determiners of truth.

In fact, Jesus even tells us himself. Jesus, in the Olivet Discourse, in Matthew chapter 24, says this. If anyone says to you, look, here is the Christ, or there he is, don't believe it, for false Christ and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders.

Think about that for a second. Jesus warns us that in the last times, there's gonna be false prophets and false Christ and false religionists, if you would, who are going to be miracle workers. Wait a second.

Aren't miracles supposed to prove that somebody's truly from God or not? Not according to Jesus. How do you know then if somebody's telling you the truth if what they say is the same thing as what Scripture says?

Keep this in mind. Miracles are not the proof that something is true or false. Miracles are always, always, always supporting a message from God. Does that make sense? So if somebody comes along and they can perform miracles and their message is different than Jesus, even though they're able to perform miracles, that's quite an experience, if you would.

I'm not to listen to that person. It doesn't matter if they can raise somebody from the dead or call down fire and sulfur from heaven. It doesn't matter if the whole world's going, look it, it's a miracle worker.