Evangelicals Participating in Interfaith Services - My Reaction

Hello, and thank you for listening to the Testing the Spirits podcast. In this episode, we're going to be talking about whether or not

Christians—pastors, Bible -believing churches—should they participate in interfaith worship, interfaith services.

Now, I know what someone's thinking. Why would you even need to do a podcast on this? Obviously, Bible -believing pastors,

Bible -believing churches should not participate in interfaith worship services, obviously, but it's not obvious.

So let me just tell you the reason why I'm doing this podcast and why this podcast even exists because over the past couple years, things have happened locally, nationally, but just the

Christian reaction to issues, things that come up, you know, sometimes it's so far off base that you need to address it, and you can't just assume that everybody knows the right answer or the correct thing to do, and in fact, a lot of people are doing the opposite.

They're doing the wrong thing, and this is why a podcast like this is necessary. You would be shocked at the heresy, and I've talked about it before, but you'd be shocked at the heresy

I've heard defended, even promoted by evangelicals. Anyways, I'm doing this podcast for that reason, and also this specific issue because somebody called me up yesterday, or they reached out to me, and they saw something online, and they communicated that, well, thank you, first of all, they said thank you for not participating in this interfaith service, and my initial response, this was just in my mind.

I thought, well, why are they thanking me? Obviously, I'm not going to take part in an interfaith service.

It's like saying, thank you for not committing some violent crime today. It's like, why would you even think I would? But anyways, no,

I appreciated the person who reached out, but I thought, well, why are they reaching out?

How did you even know about this interfaith service, which I was invited to, a member of a certain alphabet community, if you want to put it that way, so -called alphabet community.

I won't say it for the sake of the algorithm here. Someone reached out to me, and they invited me to an interfaith service with the

Muslims and the Buddhists and everybody else, the Unitarians and the pro -rainbow churches and all the rest, and I politely declined.

So it turns out, long story short, a local Bible -believing church from the area, they said yes, and they are participating in an interfaith service, which when this person thanked me, long story short,

I looked it up. I looked up the service on Facebook, and I read the article, the write -up, and I thought, there's no way this is real.

There's no way, because I know this church, what they have professed to believe for a long time.

I thought to myself, there is no way what I'm reading in this article, that they are part of an interfaith community, and they're really like -minded and are united together in one purpose and promoting peace and love with the

Muslims and Buddhists, the interfaith community, blah, blah, blah, the way the thing was written up, I'm like, there's no way this local

Bible -believing church that I know fairly well, there's no way that they're involved in this.

So I'm like, this has to be a mistake. So thinking it was a mistake, or at least that they are being misrepresented,

I called the church. I wanted to get ahold of the pastor and let him know that this was out on the internet.

And the person who posted it to Facebook said they sent it around through the internet system.

There's like a town internet chain email. I don't know exactly what it is. But basically, most of the residents in town would have received this write -up.

So it's like, this is being spread around everywhere. I need to let the pastor know that this is being said about him and his church.

So I couldn't get ahold of the pastor. And the reason why I'm telling you this is because I don't want to have to have this conversation with 25 different people.

If I just do a podcast, then people can listen to it and I don't have to keep having the same conversation because people are going to be asking about it.

Tons of people saw this. They're going to ask. So I'd rather just do this podcast and say, hey, you can listen to this and okay.

But anyways, I called up the pastor, couldn't get ahold of him, called the church, nobody picked up.

So I had one of their elders in my phone. So I called him up and I'm like, hey, you know, how are you doing?

This is Mike from Morris Corner Church. By the way, I saw this online that it's saying that you guys are involved in this interfaith service and blah, blah, blah, and I'm just letting you know.

He instantly responded, oh no, yeah, that's true. Oh yeah, that's all true.

Yeah, we're doing that. All the elders, myself, the pastor, all the elders agree. This is the right thing to do.

And I was, I was shocked. I honestly, my, my head, my mind was, was swimming.

I, I was so struck with confusion. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

Now, let me say this because some people are already thinking no

Bible believing church. And a few people did respond this way online. They said no

Bible believing church can ever participate in such like this is terrible.

This is horrible. And that was kind of my initial response. Like I can't believe this.

This is shocking. This is terrible. Let me say this. It's sort of like Alistair Begg.

I view it as somewhat similar Alistair Begg's advice for Christians to attend the gay weddings, right?

Quote unquote gay weddings. Whoops. I already said that and messed up the algorithm, but anyways.

I see this as similar. The grandmother who is told to go to the quote unquote gay wedding, she was going to go to be a gospel witness.

And how was that? Well, she was giving the couple a gift and the gift was a Bible. So that's how some people defended that.

Well, obviously the majority of evangelicals thought that that was ungodly, unbiblical advice.

Alistair Begg got canceled from hundreds of Christian radio stations.

Clearly he was at a step with the average Bible believing Christian. Okay. Now if that grandmother, if Alistair Begg told that, because obviously

Bible believers don't think that Christians should attend those types of ceremonies because they are a celebration of sin.

But if Alistair Begg had told the grandmother, hey, you can go on one condition, you know, when the minister, and they probably don't even do this anymore, but when the minister says, if anyone objects to the joining together of this woman and woman or what, you know, at that moment,

Alistair Begg tells the grandma at that moment, stand up and preach the gospel and call all of these people to repentance.

Tell them they are committing grave sin and tell them they need to repent.

And like at that moment, stand up and call them to repentance. I think that would have been a totally different situation.

Alistair Begg didn't tell her to do that. He said, go buy the couple a gift. She chose to give them a

Bible, but Alistair Begg said, no, just go buy the couple a gift. Because if you don't go, it's just going to reinforce the idea that you're

Christians are just these homophobic, you know, terrible bigots, right? So just, so go to the gay wedding, quote unquote.

So Alistair Begg, obviously that advice was rejected and Alistair Begg is no longer on these

Christian radio stations. So what I'm getting at is I do not think

Bible believing Christians should participate in interfaith worship services.

Obviously they shouldn't. However, there is one other guy who does YouTube videos.

He commented on this and I appreciate him. He said, you know what, I might go just so I can stand up and preach the gospel to them, you know, and create, you know,

I would be creating a scene. They would, they would probably tell me to leave, but basically if I stood up and I preached the gospel and called everyone to repentance and handed out gospel tracts to every person and told them they need to repent because they're promoting, you know, abominations and they're leading people, you know, this pastor, he's a false prophet.

He's leading people to hell. So if, if, if the church, if the Christian went and they made it clear, you people are on the road to perdition and you need to repent and then preach the gospel.

Okay. You know, that I guess would be an exception. Still I don't think, I wouldn't even say it's an,

I still don't think you should do it. I don't think Christians should attend interfaith worship services.

Obviously I don't think that, but if somebody went and they made it clear, I disagree with everything that's happening here and called everyone to repentance.

Okay. That I could at least understand, but that's, I would be surprised if that's what happened.

And so this, long story short, this local church accepted, I, me and my church, we rejected the offer.

We're not going to participate in an interfaith worship service with Muslims and Buddhists and Universalists and rainbow churches that promote all that stuff.

We're not going to do it. This church said we are going to do it and we're going to represent, we're going to go to represent the truth.

So, here's the problem. And they said, but the reason why we're doing it, this is like, this is just like Paul at the

Areopagus. And four different people have told me that, oh no, no, this is just like Paul at the

Areopagus, which would tell me that this is the messaging and people heard this excuse and they're just repeating it.

I highly doubt four individuals all thought this up on their own because it's nothing like Paul at the

Areopagus for the following reason. Paul at the Areopagus was coming into town and he was just preaching to crowds, whoever would listen.

Paul was not accepting an invitation to participate in an interfaith worship service.

So it's not close. It's not even close to being the same thing. Also, Paul was preaching to people who had never heard of Christ.

This interfaith worship service is being held at a UCC, Congregational Church with a rainbow out front.

These people know. It's not like they don't know. It's not like they've never heard the truth.

They know the truth. They've rejected it. Instead, they're following this perversion, this perverted, you know, quote unquote, interpretation, this new, different, universalistic interpretation.

So the difference is Paul was preaching to unbelievers who had never heard at this interfaith service with, we're going to represent the gospel.

These people have heard the truth. They reject it and they are perverting it and the pastor, who is a false teacher, is perverting it.

And so it's not even close to being the same thing. You want some Bible? Here's some

Bible. 2 Corinthians 6. Read 2 Corinthians 6. Clearly Christians are to practice separation.

Do not be unequally yoked. If you attend a worship service being led by a false teacher, in a sense, you are, you are not practicing biblical separation.

I do not know because the local, we're in New England, so these churches, my church, these other churches have been around for hundreds of years.

Our church has been around for 125 years, give or take. Some of these other churches have been around for like 200 years or more.

In the history of our churches, they've never, our churches have never participated in an interfaith worship service.

And we haven't done it for a reason, because it's not the biblical thing to do. So to start doing it sets a dangerous precedent.

Worst case scenario, there could be an elder or two who is leaning towards universalism.

I've dealt with this before. There was a church in the area 10 years ago.

They were drifting to be pro -gay marriage, quote -unquote. Notice I say quote -unquote because gay marriage isn't a real thing.

But there's a church in the area, Baptist Church, the largest Baptist Church in the area.

They posted something on the internet, again, on Facebook. It was clear to me that this was compromising on that issue.

But it was five or six, and I told people, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Everything's fine.

Everything's fine. You totally misunderstand. Mike, you don't know what you're talking about. Well, yeah,

I do, actually, because it took five years before the pastor came right out, dropped the name

Baptist, and came right out and affirmed that he was pro -LGBT, right?

So it took five years before he finally admitted it. But when somebody is drifting, when somebody is compromising, a pastor, an elder, a

Christian, they don't deconstruct, they don't commit apostasy overnight. They start drifting.

And if it's not corrected, it might take years. But that's a worst -case scenario that this actually is compromise because somebody is inclined to go in that direction.

I don't know. I mean, that remains to be seen. But I know that this is a problem. And I've seen that with that Baptist Church years ago.

I saw that with a local guy, former pastor in the area. He was a false teacher, and I warned people, and they said, no, no, no,

Mike, no, no, no. That's not true. He's a brother. Actually, the same church, by the way, that is participating in this interfaith service, that same church, their pastor told me that this

Matt guy who is a false teacher, that no, no, no, no, he's a brother in Christ. He's just a little off -base.

No, no, no. You got nothing to worry about. Everything's fine. It's not fine.

So it happened there. It's happened again and again and again. And basically what

I'm asking to the people, especially locally who listen to this podcast, all

I'm asking is for you to consider what I'm saying. Please don't dismiss it out of hand.

One of the elders I talked to, I felt like he just totally dismissed what I said out of hand. And he's like, well, but you're on a radio station that airs people that you don't agree with.

So how are you any different? Like, yeah, that's, that's not helpful.

This is not a productive conversation, but here's another verse. So we got 2

Corinthians 6, do not be unequally yoked. Come out from among them and be separate.

Okay. So for a couple hundred years, our churches knew what that meant. And they never, never did anything like this because we practice some degree of separation.

So it's a pretty basic, that's a pretty low bar. Don't attend interfaith services.

That's that separation. That's the doctrine of separation, 2 Corinthians 6. Pretty low bar.

Okay. Here's another verse. 2 Timothy chapter 3, 2

Timothy 3, it says, the apostle Paul says in the latter times, of course,

Paul and 2 Thessalonians talked about the great falling away. I believe other matters

I've talked about on my podcast, I believe we are living in the great falling away. So apostasy is becoming more common.

We all know it's true. We hear about new things every day. This is the great falling away.

I believe that. But in 2 Timothy 3, Paul says, in the last days, he says, know this, that in the last days, perilous times will come.

Men will be lovers of their own selves. And then he talks about there'll be lovers of pleasures, more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof from such turn away.

In other words, the people that you're going to go and rub elbows at this interfaith service, they claim, many of them are going to claim to be

Christians. They have a form of godliness. I mean, they have a quote unquote church building, they're singing the same hymns, and they say they're

Christian. They have a form of godliness. They might even have the Bible open up front. They have a form of godliness, but they deny the power.

They deny the power of a changed life because they embrace sodomy and lesbianism and trans surgeries for kids and every other wicked thing.

This is why you need to be separate from such people. What does Paul say? Accept their invitation, spend time with them, and listen, go out into the community and preach the gospel.

That's what Paul did in the book of Acts. You want to talk about the Areopagus? Yes, go out and preach the gospel in the community, amen, but you don't attend a joint interfaith service, we're told, from such people who know the truth and reject it.

From such people, turn away. That's separation. Paul writes to the

Thessalonians, chapter 5, verse 22, avoid all appearances of evil.

What's going to be a common reaction? Someone will say, hey, I think he was just reading from the King James Version.

Was this guy some sort of legalist? Listen, that's the only response some people have.

They try to turn things around on you and call you names. I don't know, this guy's just kind of like a

Pharisee. Judge not, man, judge not. Don't be a legalist, don't be a

Pharisee. People who say that cannot have a normal Biblical conversation and have a thoughtful interaction where we actually open the

Bible and look at what Scripture says and test all things and hold fast to that which is good.

They're incapable of doing that. They just shoot. It's like the Democratic Party, you know, if you disagree with them, if you disagree with their policies, they just call you a racist.

Well, this is the Christian version. You know, you try to admonish somebody because the

Bible does say all Scripture is profitable for what? Reproof. So you try to reprove somebody and they just call you names.

That says something. But I don't want to just go on and on here. I just want to communicate

Christians, Bible -believing Christians cannot have anything to do with joint services with Muslims and pagans and universalists and rainbow churches and all the rest.

Can't do it. Now, again, if somebody goes and they call them to repentance, you say, well,

I'm going to go and I'm going to preach the gospel. Here's why that's not going to work. The Bible says, turn away.

You're casting your pearls before a swine. But here's why if you just tell them about, hey,

I believe in Jesus and Jesus died on the cross and rose again, and I urge you to place your faith in him and believe the gospel of grace and Jesus will forgive you of your sin.

And then you sit down and you feel good because you just preached the gospel to these people. Here's why that's not going to work.

That will not even register with these people, because again, this interfaith service is happening in a church.

They've heard that before. They have either rejected that message or, which is even more dangerous, they think they believe, you know, some semblance of that.

They think they believe that. Oh, we believe in Jesus. I talked locally to some people like that.

And I talked about the Bible and Christianity and their responses. Oh, yeah, we believe that. Oh, we're

Christians. Oh, we believe the Bible. Now they have a total misinterpretation of all of it.

So here's the point. If you just tell them the facts, even if you do preach, quote unquote, the gospel, which yes,

Christ, his death, burial and resurrection, the gospel of grace, that is the gospel.

Don't misunderstand me. But if you just communicate those facts, that won't even register with these people, because some of them think that they believe that.

Or they'll think, well, that's this guy, that's his path to God. I have my own path.

Because this is the way universalists think. Oh, that's his path. We all have our own path. So he believes Jesus died and rose again.

No, that's fine. See, here's why it's not going to register, because that's the way universalists think.

It will not register. You will have no impact. Even if you preach the truth of the gospel, sometimes it's not about what you say.

It's about what you don't say. The only way, and this is for that pastor who is going to attend the interfaith service.

I don't know if he's going to listen to this or not. But I tried to tell him this, and I'll try to tell him and his elders again, if they listen to this.

The only way you will have an impact is if you make it clear to every...

I still don't think you should go. But the only way you can salvage this is if you go and you make it clear to all these people, you are on the road to perdition and you all need to repent or else.

If that message is not clearly communicated, then, yes, again, it's not even going to in their mind.

Now, if you go in there and you say that and you're like that rainbow out front and the stuff you teach is an abomination, you need to repent.

I would be shocked if they did that. I've, this isn't, this is not an insult. I've heard the preaching.

Some preachers are confrontational. Some are more mild mannered.

This is, this guy's a little more mild mannered. I'd be shocked if he did it. I'd love to be able to eat my words, but man, you got, you need to really tell these people you need to preach repentance.

And by the way, that's what Paul did at the Areopagus at Mars Hill. Paul did talk about the judgment.

God has ordained a day where he will judge the world. Like you need to preach repentance and the judgment and wrath of God.

That's what Paul did at the Areopagus. So unless that happens, it's not going to register with these people.

And if you do do that, they're going to want to drag you out of there.

You know, those stories in the Bible where they want to stone the apostle Paul, or they do stone, they beat the apostles and they want to kill them.

That's what these people are going to want to do to you if you do that. So I, I think you're casting your pearls before swine.

I do not think any Bible -believing church, any Bible -believing pastor, I do not believe they should ever attend an interfaith service.

So these are my thoughts and thanks for listening. Please pray for everyone involved.

And if somebody's mad at me for bringing this up, notice I didn't bring up the church's name. I mean, it's not a secret.

It's all over the internet and I'm not the one who spread it around the internet. Someone else did the person in town who the pastor admits this church did get sort of misrepresented.

So I, you know, I think they've been unfairly misrepresented, but by going, you're just, this is a bad idea guys.

And I'm not, I'm not your enemy. I'm on your side. As the apostle Paul said, um, have

I become your enemy by telling you the truth? Like I'm not against you, but this is a really, really, really bad idea.

It has nothing to do. It's not even close to Paul at Mars Hill. So please consider what

I'm saying. And please, if you don't know what I'm talking about, but like, well,

I've listened this far. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this, but just please pray, pray that God's will would be done.