John Ankerberg

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha and Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341.

And now with today's topic, here is James White. And good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line, especially to all of those of you who are freezing to death back east. I keep seeing all these tweets.

Tony Bartolucci is in New York and it says it's 9 .4 degrees outside. We had it great here, but I'm going to tell you something. Whoever does the weather for Phoenix took a vacation today. They left. I don't know where they are.

Either that or they've got a really bad headache like I do and they just don't want to look outside, one of the two, I'm not sure which. But my weather prognostication software on my computer still says, still says high of 79 today, 0 chance of precipitation.

It's been raining all day and it's 62 .5. Hello, Mr. Weatherman, look outside. You missed it by a day. It's supposed to be raining for the next four days here in Phoenix, but they missed it. They just, total base plant on the prognostication thing there and doesn't seem to, they don't even seem to notice it.

It's just like, whatever, we're just going to, we're not going to worry about that. So anyhow, many of you, by the way, I found it very funny. Well, somewhat humorous. It wasn't really very funny. But did that whole thing on the Obama inauguration speech on Tuesday.

I get done with the program, go in and look at my feeds and there's a discussion of the prayer that had been offered. And I hadn't seen that. But it was sort of like, well, duh, because we know, remember the Giglio thing and he didn't get invited because he had said homosexuality was a sin 15 years ago.

I wish it had been 15 days ago, but anyway. And they found somebody else to pray. Well, you know that they vetted this guy and made sure that he was going to give an approved prayer. A prayer approved by the secular left.

And of course he did. And in the prayer, you know, asked for God to bless, you know, black and white, yellow and green, gay and straight. You know, I don't know about what it was, but gay and straight got thrown in there just to make sure it was politically correct.

And of course, he's from an Episcopalian church, which made you sort of go, eh, doesn't surprise me in the least. Because I'll just tell you a quick story. I many, many moons ago when I was very, very young, my kids were very, very young.

They were just infants at the time. I, for a while, did television camera work. I was trained to run television cameras at the church we were a part of at that time. And I not only ran the big studio ones, but I also did the handheld ones.

Well, handheld ones. These are big, humongous things in comparison to what I've got today. And they were big and heavy, and you carried them on your shoulder. And it took a lot of energy to do that. Anyway, I got pretty good at it.

I mean, it's a skill. You have to be able to pan and zoom and do things without being herky-jerky. And it actually takes some skill to do that. And so I proved myself good enough at it that the guy who did the television stuff at the church, he also had his own production company, so he needed cameramen.

So you get paid pretty good, especially back in those days, given what I was making with Alan Omega. It was like a month's worth of pay for one trip out the door. So I've run camera on a number of things.

Well, I hadn't done it for a few years, and I get a call. And they said, we really need somebody. We're just hurting here. Could you please come? And they were recording the Episcopalian National—oh, you remember this?

Yes. The Episcopalian National Assembly, Congregation, whatever it is they call it. And it was here in Phoenix. And I'm like, oh, man, really? So there's a bunch of Baptists. A bunch of Baptist guys are doing the cameras on this thing.

And I told them, whatever you do, let me be in the back on the wide shot, you know, because I haven't done this for a while. And, you know, you get rusty, and they put me right down front, right on the main thing.

And so I'm like, oh, great. So you can hear what's being said, but you've got these headsets on, and you've got a little microphone, and you've got a little thing on your belt, and so you can talk to everybody else.

And, of course, you're talking very quietly. And so they're practicing. We had to shoot the practice beforehand. And so they have this thing where they—well, first of all, it was the Episcopalians, but they come in, and they've got some shaman, some American Indian dude doing his rain dance type thing.

I don't know what he was doing, but he was doing some sort of pagan thing there. And I'm just like, oh, this is great. And then they set up microphones at the four corners of the compass, north, south, east, and west.

And they are practicing the prayer that they're going to offer. This is 19—I'd say it had to have been before 95, somewhere around there. And because this—I hadn't done it, but friends of mine had shot this in 89.

So, yeah, this was somewhere before 1995, I'm pretty sure. So it's been a while. Anyway, they're practicing their thing. And so I'm listening to their prayers. And they get to the one—and I think I had to shoot this particular person.

Shooting, by the way, just in case. Just in case, given the gun debate these days, it's a camera term. You're shooting a shot, just so you know. Anyways, I'm on this guy and—or gal, I forget what it was.

And they use the same terminology. God bless us, white and black, male and female, gay and straight. And, yeah, I want to channel almighty ISIS. Yeah, I wouldn't have been surprised by that either. These are the Episcopalians we're talking about here.

And some of you out there going, I'm an Episcopalian, you're being mean to me. Look, you know what I'm talking about. If you're listening to this, you're one of the most conservative—you're an Anglican.

You're a conservative Anglican or something like that. You're not one of those kind of people. You don't go to the national thing and have shamans doing their thing. Anyway, so, knowing that no one could hear me other than the other guys on the camera side, I reached down and clicked on my little microphone and said, Okay, guys, when the ceiling caves in, get underneath the tripod of your camera.

We might make it. And you can hear all the other guys. Because it's just like, oh, man. So I wasn't surprised. I wasn't in the least bit surprised at the prayer at the inauguration. Because they're looking for somebody like that.

And if you want to go find folks that will bless anything that society wants you to bless, you're going to find somebody. They're out there. That's just the way it is. So I wasn't surprised by that at all.

877 -753 -3341. Some of you are probably wondering, in light of what happened over the weekend, that I did not say a word on Tuesday about what I posted on Monday. And that was an open letter to Dr. John Ankerberg.

And I didn't. Mainly because I forgot about it. I was preaching for the first half hour of the program. Well, sorry, 45 minutes. And then the call we got was a challenging call and things like that. So I didn't even think about it.

And besides that, afterwards, I sort of went, well, you know, I did send a direct note to Dr. Ankerberg's assistant asking him to look at the open letter. And so, hey, maybe, you know, and I'm just being Mr. Sunshine, just being really happy and stuff, hoping positively, optimistically, that something good would come of all of this.

But, you know, I've actually been through this for a few years, actually going all the way back to the ciphered stuff back in 2004. I know how this goes. And so, of course, I haven't heard anything back.

And I wasn't really expecting to, but I like to at least hope. And so have there been any developments on that front? No. Do I expect any? No. No, I don't. What we see here is the good old boy network.

And unfortunately, Dr. Ankerberg has co-authored some little booklets with Ymir Kaner. And though Ymir Kaner knows the truth of all these things and has profited from the falsehoods that Ergen has promulgated, I do not expect that there is going to be any confession, any seeking for restoration.

It's just going to be pick up that rug a little bit higher, sweep a little bit more underneath it, and just try to ignore the big mound of stuff that's underneath the rug over there in the living room of the evangelical discernment ministries, where everybody knows about this.

I mean, you'd have to have been living under a rock not to know about this stuff. But there you go. That's just the way it's been. Evidently, there's a lot of folks that have started to listen to this program since 2010.

You listened up until the beginning of 2010, tuned it out for six months, and then picked it up. I guess that's another possibility. But I was taken aback by how many people were going, well, I'm really surprised that you're saying something to Dr. Ankerberg.

I mean, have you called him directly? Have you contacted Ergen directly? And I just started chuckling, because it's like, folks, there's a reason why we keep all the old blog articles up that go all the way back to 2004, right?

Is 2004 the beginning? Around there. I think it's 2004 when I started blogging. It was even before there was RSS. So I was just writing straight HTML code back then. But we started blogging in 2004. So we've got nine years' worth of stuff there.

And then there's a search engine. And I bet there's going to be a better search engine on the new one, huh? This could be a really fancy one, I bet. But anyway, if you want to go back, you could go all the way back to 2005 and my first encounter with Ergen Kanner, who I'd never even heard of before.

And you can read a very long PDF document. I mean, very long PDF document. That documents my going back and forth publicly with Ergen Kanner and the fact that at the beginning, he wanted to do all this secretly.

He wanted to do it privately. And I insisted that since his comments were public, guess what? Our discussions should be public. And our discussions concerning getting the debate together should be public.

And everything should be done open and above board because the gospel is at stake here. And I was the one who said that. And he was the one who started off, you know, we should do this. We should do this privately.

And I said, no. You're making these comments about the gospel publicly. You're not a member of my church. We don't have the same elders over us. And so this is a public thing. It should be done publicly, out in the open, nothing in secret, not he said, she said, and all the rest of that stuff.

This is about the gospel. This isn't about a private thing. And I cannot believe how many Christians are confused about Matthew 18, 18. Or Matthew chapter 18 as a whole, but Matthew 18 specifically. They think that when it comes to false teaching, that you should just go to false teachers quietly.

You know, just have a nice little chat with them because false teachers, they'll repent, see? And that's not what the New Testament says. That's not how it works. So anyways, you can go back and you can read this long discussion going back and forth that led to the eventual torpedoing of the debate at Liberty Seminary, Liberty University.

And then the quiet years between 2007 and 2010, basically. And then you'll discover that when I did find out that Ergin Kanner was lying about having debated Shabir Ali, lying about having debated Abdul Saleeb, I did contact him privately.

I wrote to him and I said, here's evidence that you've been claiming to debate Abdul Saleeb and Shabir Ali. And I know these are falsehoods. I've contacted Shabir Ali. And the first thing Ergin Kanner said to me when he responded to my email was, is this for public consumption or is this private?

First thing. And my response was, it's as public as your statements were. Since his statements were made on a radio station, actually, two of them. And from that point on, he didn't talk to me. So I gave him an opportunity.

I contacted him privately and I presented the information to him. And that's when he wrote his, quote unquote, apology, where he wouldn't even name Shabir Ali, but said he got the name wrong. And, of course, I immediately wrote back and said, OK, you got the name wrong.

You didn't debate Shabir Ali in Omaha. Who did you debate in Omaha? And, well, he didn't want to answer that question because we know he didn't debate anybody in Omaha. But be that as it may, since that time, there is absolutely positively not the slightest question that Dr. Ergin Kanner knows exactly what we've been saying.

Exactly what we've been saying. We were told by people at Liberty that his graduate assistants, that's what they were assigned to do, was to listen to every one of these programs and report on it and do research on how to respond to it and so on and so forth.

And they read every blog article. They know 1 ,000%. You want other real obvious evidence of this? Remember when someone walked up to Ergin Kanner at his table just last year sometime wearing a What Is Hadith 2425 t-shirt?

Ergin knew what it was. He knew what it was from across the room. These guys know. Now, I didn't know whether John Ankerberg, back in 2010, knew. I didn't know. Maybe all he had ever heard of was what the Kanners told him.

And maybe he wasn't aware. So I provided that information back then, and I've provided it again in an open letter in 2013. Now he knows. Do I expect that there's going to be any movement from there? I still hope so, but no, I don't expect that.

Because Dr. Ankerberg is in the circle of apologetics where one name, one political name reigns supreme, and that is Norman Geisler. And Norman Geisler has clout. And Norman Geisler has power. And if you want to get invited to the big things and go to the big conferences, you've got to have Norm on your side.

And Norman Geisler has absolutely sold himself in defense of Ergin Kanner. We know that. We have taken apart the excuse sheets. Well, interestingly enough, we did discover one thing anyways. I'm not sure if Turretin Fan is aware of this.

But the version of the excuse sheets that was originally written at Truett McConnell College, which is where E. Merkanner is president, and we relinked to the blog articles where we documented that. The excuse sheet has gotten smaller.

It's been edited down. Still, it's mainly just people saying nice things about Ergin and E. Merkanner. But, for example, I could not direct anybody directly to the ridiculous excuses about Hadith 2425 or Hadith 957.

I'm glad we kept that stuff, man. I'm glad I have a Kanner documentation file on my hard drive because, my, how the things disappear. My, how the things disappear. But, no, I don't expect that anything's going to come of that.

And that's sad. I enjoyed the time that I was on the program in 1995. That ain't going to ever happen again. And, once again, if you stand up and say, these guys are not telling the truth. The doors that will be slammed in your face are many.

They are many, unfortunately. And I wish it wasn't that way. But, there you go. What can I say? It's sad, and I've learned a lot about politics amongst evangelicals. And, sadly, I've learned a lot about politics amongst, quote-unquote, discernment ministries.

Where you would think, you would think that if you're going to be dealing in that area, your first and foremost concern should be consistency. We have far more information, far better information, far more modern information on the deceptions of Eric and Kanner than we could ever have for Joseph Smith, Jr.

And the very people who can handle the information about Joseph Smith and his false prophecies and things like that, when faced with this kind of information, all of a sudden they can't see it? Don't give me that.

They can see it. But it's who you're connected with, and who you're friends with, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's sad, but that's the way it is. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number if you want to get involved with the program.

And I have some more of the Wallace-Ehrman stuff queued up if we want to go that direction, but the phone lines are open if you'd like to call in and you'd like to defend Eric and Kanner. Well, okay, never mind.

You might as well throw it out there. Why not? It's sort of fun. But if you feel like I shouldn't write open letters to John Ankerberg or anything like that, feel free. I'd like to hear the reasoning.

I really would. But that rarely, rarely happens. Anyhow, let's jump on the phone lines here if we've got them queued up and ready to go, and let's talk with Matt. Hi, Matt. Hey, James. How are you doing?

Doing good.

Well, what he wants me to do is he felt like he couldn't respond with that. I didn't know if you had any advice for me. I mean, you know, and if you had any books that you'd recommend me to give him, that would just kind of be an introduction to it.

Well, obviously I'm hearing myself coming back for some reason. I guess that will help me somewhat to be able to talk, but I still have something in the background. I'll try my best to ignore that. Obviously, I would love to have the opportunity to do that kind of thing, and certainly have.

I've taken classes to mosques. But at the same time, I think you will be limited as to exactly what subjects you can get into, and unfortunately limited in the kind of topics you can get into at least until April, and you can read whatever Christians should know about the Quran, and then you'll have lots that you can talk with them about.

So maybe you'll be able to extend the conversation out in such a way as to get back with him or something like that when you've had an opportunity, because there is, you know, when we don't know someone else's faith, it hinders the clarity with which we can express our own, especially when their faith contains specific elements that are in response to our own.

And so you've already encountered the fact that your friend thinks we believe in three gods. Well, where did that come from? Well, it comes from the Quran. And the Quran is their ultimate authority. And so when the Quran says that the Trinity in Surah 5, verse 116 is Allah, Mary, and Jesus, and you say, that's not something we've ever believed, and we don't believe it now, and we didn't believe it back then, the problem is they're now faced with a contradiction between what you're saying you believe, and what their holy book says you actually believe, and that can cause some what we might call cognitive dissonance to kick in.

So if you had the opportunity, I think it would be good to ask questions, and maybe to strike up a relationship, and have an opportunity for further encounters down the road, and find out what the issues are going to be.

And clearly, what I would do, since you have such a brief period of time, and it's a huge area, I mean, I've been studying Islam now for coming up on eight years, and I am still a student of it. I mean, there is still, I recognize there are still areas, I mean, there's so much more I need to know about Shi 'ism, and I mean, you can go really, really, really in depth, obviously, and you don't necessarily have to do that to be an effective witness, but the point is, you know, there's still a wide enough basics area that, you know, it takes you some time to get that down.

But what I would do, is I would focus on Surah 4, verse 157. Surah 4, verse 157, it doesn't really matter which translation of the Qur 'an you use, though some of the translations will impact this particular usage.

But I would go to Surah 157, and I would ask him about this surah, and I'll read it to you here, I believe this is Sahih International, which, at this point, is not one of the best translations. And I'll explain why in a moment.

But, Surah 4, verse 157 says,. And for their saying, speaking of the Jews, Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, the messenger of Allah. They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him.

The literal Arabic here is,. But it was made to appear to them. Now, the Sahih International says,. But another, in brackets, was made to resemble him to them. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it, they have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption, and they did not kill him for certain.

The term is, It was made to appear to them. This is the one ayah, the one verse, in all of the Quran, that denies the crucifixion of Jesus. And what you have is really a contradiction within the Quran, because if you look at Surah 355 and 1933, they talk naturally about the death of Jesus.

So you've got this one verse, this one ayah, that says the Jews did not kill Jesus. Well, actually the Bible doesn't say the Jews killed Jesus, it says the Romans killed Jesus. But the problem is, we don't have any evidence that the writer of the Quran had any knowledge of the content of the New Testament whatsoever.

And so, the verse says that we're the ones who only have conjecture to follow, we're the ones who have uncertainty, but the reality is, Surah 417 is not mubinun, that's the Arabic word for clear or perspicuous, it's not easily understood.

And what's more is, it places the Quran directly against all of recorded history, because every recorded source that makes reference to the death of Jesus for the first hundred years after it happened, so from AD 30 to AD 130, all say the same thing, that Jesus died on a Roman cross outside of Jerusalem under Pontius Pilate.

That's what they all say, whether they're Christian sources or non-Christian sources, they all say the same thing. And so, from a historical perspective, there isn't any question about this. But, the other interesting thing to note is, that for 200 years after Muhammad, no Muslim could remember anything that Muhammad ever said about this one verse.

There's no hadith interpretation of this one verse, and so it just stands all by itself. If you've seen our video, 40 Arabic words, that's what it's about. 40 Arabic words written 700 years after the events, and by someone who had no connection with the original events, and yet on that basis we're supposed to overthrow the entirety of the Christian gospel.

And so I would ask him, what he understands that to mean, and I would ask him, and this will give you some information by the way, as to how conservative a perspective this person takes. I would ask him if he believes that that phrase, shabihallahum, the phrase, it was made to appear to them, whether that presents what's called the substitution theory.

That is, does he believe that someone else was put on the cross in Jesus' place? Normally they believe it was Judas Iscariot, sometimes they believe it's Simon the Cyrene or somebody else. But I would ask him that, because most westernized Muslims back away from that.

Muhammad Asad, in his extended translation and commentary on the Quran, which is published by CAIR, the Council on American and Islamic Relations, specifically repudiates that idea, and repudiates the idea that Jesus was taken up to heaven.

Surah 4, verse 158 says, but Allah took him up, and he repudiates that idea in his commentary. Most westernized Muslims will basically go, So, allahu 'alam, God knows, and they won't give a specific understanding of the substitutionary theory.

But, outside of westernized countries, Muslims will, by the far majority, embrace the substitution theory. And, one of the reasons that westernized Muslims don't is that there's a little bit of a problem with it.

If Allah made someone to look like Jesus, then basically he started Christianity by mistake. I mean, he did such a good job, that even the disciples go out and start preaching the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and ends up founding Christianity, and it's a real problem.

And so, they don't want to blame Allah for that, and so they go, well, alright, we'll go a different direction. So, I would just go to Surah 4, verse 127. How does that sound?

Yeah, okay. I actually listened to your debate. I think his name was Zamir, I think, on that subject. Sami Zatati? That's him. I don't know why I got Zamir. I don't know where that came from. That's okay.

Yeah, I did. I listened to your debate on that. That was very helpful. That actually came up today. He brought up his post-resurrection appearances, and I brought up that he presented to Thomas, and that's when he said, well, I don't have to come tomorrow, you can speak to my imam.

I guess, would they just simply say, well, that never happened, and that's part of the corruption of the New Testament? Yeah, basically. That's what I figured.

And that's why you might want to, at that point, if you want to write down another reference, let me ask you, do you have a Quran, and what translation is it?

I do not. He was supposed to give me one today, but he forgot to. But I do not have one. Alright, in all probability,.

If they give you a Quran, it'll be either the Yusuf Ali translation, or the Halali Khan translation. Both are usable. Neither one is the best, but both are usable. And in one way or the other, Matt, I'd get hold of a copy.

And to be honest with you, if you've got time between now and then, what I'd suggest doing is drop by your Barnes Noble and pick yourself up a copy. And for one simple reason. Put yourself in their shoes.

If you came in, if someone was coming to you, and you wanted to talk to them, and they went out the night beforehand, and bought a New Testament, or bought a Bible, to bring it with them, it would probably communicate to them, you're serious, you're showing them respect, and you really want to talk with them.

So, you know, they're not expensive. There'll be probably a couple of different translations available to you at a place like that. If they've got Malduti, that would be a good one. Shakir is a good one.

You know, there's different types, but I'd grab one so that I could at least have looked at Surahs 147 and 158. And then the other thing I would suggest as a possibility that you might want to consider is marking Surah 5, Ayahs 44 -48.

Because if you get into a conversation, and we've covered this many, many times, you can go back and listen to my reviews of the debate between if I recall, no, it wasn't Samuel Green, it was the Roman Catholic representative down there in Sydney, and Abdullah Kunda.

I spent a fair amount of time going over Surah 5 in depth. And it is the Islamic Dilemma section where, in essence, and I'll be brief on this, but you could read it for yourself, what I view as the Islamic Dilemma is that Surah 5, 47 says that the people of the Gospel, the Al-Anjil, the people of the Gospel, that's Christians specifically, judged by what Allah has revealed therein, and whoever does not judge by what Allah has revealed, that is those who are the defiantly disobedient.

And the issue is those words had to have meaning when they were given. Which means the Christians of Muhammad's day possessed the Anjil. They possessed the Gospel. And we know what the Gospel looked like at that time.

We have entire copies of the New Testament from that time and beforehand. So, and they all contain, for example, the Gospel of John, which contained the section you were just talking about with Thomas and the print of the nails in his hands and all the rest of that stuff.

The Gospel that they contained that they would have had, that the people that Muhammad was speaking to would have possessed, we know what that was. And it's the same thing we have today. And so if we're to judge by that, then we have to judge that Jesus did die upon the cross and that Muhammad didn't understand that.

And therefore we have to reject Muhammad. And so either the words didn't have any meaning and therefore the Quran doesn't have any meaning and therefore the Quran is not the word of God. Or if we do what the Quran says, we still have to reject the Quran.

So it's the dilemma that I don't think there's really an answer for that you might want to be familiar with there in Surah 5.

Verses 44 through 48. Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Let me know how it goes. And my hope is.

If you have the opportunity and this is a general exhortation to everybody who is involved in any kind of witnessing situation whether it's Muslim, Jehovah's Witness, Mormon, whatever, especially in a situation that Matt's in right now, my hope would be that the conversation could be respectful and that by not pushing for a conclusion right now, in other words by leaving things open, say, hey, could you look at that and get back with me on that?

Or I'll look into what you're saying because I haven't studied that and I'll get back with you. You leave the door open for further conversation, further interaction and my hope is that you meet a man and you realize wow, here is someone I really want to have an opportunity to pray for, get this individual's name and maybe not get together immediately but have time to pray and to really prepare your heart to be a loving witness for Christ to this person.

That's what you really want to try to look for down the road. So Matt, let us know how it goes. Alright, thank you so much. Thanks, God bless. 877 -753 get my cursor backward. When you've got four screens, it takes a while to get the cursor back where it needs to be to operate things because my Koran is on the left-hand screen.

The phones are on the complete right-hand screen and there is I don't know how many pixels to get across to get there. 877 -753 -3341. Let's go to Jake. Hi, Jake. Hi, Dr. White. How are you doing today?

Doing good. This is extremely blessed by it, so thank you. Good, thank you, sir. I was calling up in regards to the debacle as of late with him. I wanted to kind of get a gauge from. I've been noticing it seems like within Christianity, if you're being if you're calling this notion and you're just being harsh and you're responding to people who just, I mean, they have to clear up a couple other different things.

Right.

Oh, yeah. Well, the problem Jake, what you're up against is our church today, churchianity in the United States. When a person walks into a Christian fellowship and we present the gospel to them and let's say God is gracious and the Holy Spirit reveals the Savior to them and they bow the knee in repentance and faith to Jesus Christ.

What we need to realize is that person is still very, very deeply steeped in a non-Christian worldview. And simply sitting in a Bible study class or in a worship service if the people in charge of that and if you're going to be in charge of Bible study classes and worship services then this is something you can do for your sheep.

But it's a challenge and it's going to cause you problems in some ways until the Lord grants maturity to the congregation to whom you're ministering. But in many churches the whole idea is do not make anyone uncomfortable.

Make everyone feel as warm and comfy as possible. Well there's a problem and that is one of your callings as a minister of the gospel is to challenge this person to be conformed to the image of Christ.

And to be conformed to the image of Christ to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ is to learn how deeply impacted by a non-Christian worldview you have been and in fact you have to develop you have to actually work at developing a Christian worldview so that you can have the mind of Christ.

So that you can respond as Christ would respond. So that you can respond properly to the word of God. That when the word of God brings admonition, exhortation and yes even rebuke that you will accept that graciously and with thanksgiving.

And that is not easy to do. And we are seeing the results of the fact that most evangelical churches don't even try anymore in the responses that people give to so much of the cultural attack upon the Christian faith today.

Why is it that so many sectors of churchianity are collapsing in front of this and just going I think that homosexuality thing I just want to be loving so I think I'll go ahead and think that's a great thing.

This abortion thing we don't need to be all worried about that type of thing. This law of God stuff just makes people uncomfortable. Why is that happening? It's because we have people in our churches who literally have a secular worldview with a religious frosting on top of it.

And that doesn't work. It just doesn't work. And if God places in your heart Jake, a fire for his truth and a love for his sheep, you will not let his sheep go running off with the wolves each day. You will warn them as to who the wolves are.

And unfortunately, that may not make you overly popular. And unfortunately, that might mean that you're going to be in a very small church. I'm okay with that. Well, make sure the wife's okay with that.

It's a partner system there. It really, really, really is. That's a huge, huge challenge in ministry today. But the point is that Ephesians 5 .11 says, Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.

Is that unloving? Was Paul being unloving, possibly? When you point these things out to people, you can even go to the key text on the Scriptures and say, All Scripture is breathed out by God. It is profitable for what?

For teaching? For reproof? For correction? For training? Reproof? That sounds like calling somebody out. Yeah, that's exactly right. And so, really, you just have to wonder what New Testament these folks are reading, or are they reading the New Testament at all?

Because I can show them so many places. I mean, the Apostle Paul in the Book of Galatians talking about the Judaizers who were seeking to circumcise people, he said literally, quote, I hope they let the knife slip.