WWUTT 2370 Q&A Emmaus Walk, Conspiracy Theories, Growing Antisemitism

What is the Emmaus walk, and should we participate in such things? How should Christians think about all the JFK conspiracy theories? And why does it seem like anti-Semitism is growing? The answer is, when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When We Understand the Text is an online ministry dedicated to teaching the Word of God in context, promoting sound doctrine while exposing the faulty.

Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

Friday Proverbs and the Danger of Folly

Thank you, Becky, and greetings, everyone. I'm flying solo this week, and I apologize for this episode getting up a little bit late this time around as well, but still want to respond to some of your questions, which we'll get to in a moment.

On these Friday episodes, we've been starting with a word from Proverbs. So let me finish up Proverbs 9, starting in verse 13. The woman folly is loud. She is seductive and understands nothing. She sits at the door of her house.

She takes a seat on the highest places of the town, calling to those who pass by, who are going straight on their way. Whoever is simple, let him turn in here. And to him who lacks sense, she says, stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.

But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol. Foolishness can be pretty loud at times, and sometimes the fact that it is so loud and so many people are going along with it, it's like it's the popular opinion, that it can be really convincing.

It's seductive. It seems appeasing, but it knows it understands nothing. And the person who follows after this woman folly does not realize that the dead are there and her guests are in the depths of Sheol, as it's said elsewhere in Proverbs.

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. So let us do, as has been said the last couple of chapters in Proverbs, seeking after the wisdom of God, for it is the way of life.

And as said in Colossians chapter two, in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Be careful of those messages that are out there in the world. Turn to Christ and know his word. He has set everything out before us that we need to know according to the will of God.

Listener Questions and How to Send Them

Well again, as mentioned on the Friday edition of the broadcast, we'd like to take questions from the listeners and you can send those questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com or send us a voicemail going to www .utt .com and click on that voicemail tab on the top of the page.

You can record your message either through your smartphone or through your computer. This first question comes from Paula. She says, hello, Pastor Gabe and Becky. I'll pass your word on to her. I hope that you are doing well and thriving in this new season of life.

Yes, very busy. And that's why last couple of Friday episodes have been a little bit late and Becky's not been able to be on with me this week. My dad is in town right now though, which is great. Haven't had my dad come and visit me in Arizona yet, so he is here and going to be attending church with us on Sunday.

The Emmaus Walk and Secretive Methodist Retreats

Paula goes on, I have a question about the Emmaus walk done by the upper room. I know that this is really big within the Methodist church. We have friends who attend a Methodist church and they are encouraging us to attend a walk.

They are super enthusiastic about this ministry. I know there are many issues with the Methodist church. Our friends did leave a church that began to affirm the LGBTQ lifestyle, but I'm not sure about the upper room ministries.

My husband will be speaking with the husband of this friend and try to get a little bit more info. I did have some concerns as it seems like it can be very secretive and it seems difficult to vet anyone speaking as they don't seem to provide a list of speakers.

Anyway, I would appreciate your thoughts on this event. Thank you for all you do for the kingdom. I listen to your podcast teachings and always look forward to the Friday Q &A with Becky. Sorry, she's not with us in the very episode I'm responding to your question.

May God continue to bless you, your family and your church ministry. Thank you so much, Paula. Well, the interesting thing about the Emmaus walk, as you mentioned, it is a Methodist ministry. It comes out of the Methodist church.

But overall, in the grand scheme of things, it comes out of what's called the Curcio movement, which was started in Roman Catholicism. The Curcio movement came about in the last century, I think it was about 80 years ago or so.

But there was this idea to put together this week-long camp, so to speak, where the people are doing various things, making a pilgrimage to see different relics, landmarks and things like that within Roman Catholicism.

And this was going to heap up for them merit or that they would knock years off their purgatory sentence or something like that. It's usually something like that attached with these kinds of things. But then this started to turn into something else when it got adopted by other churches or denominations.

So it became kind of ecumenical. In fact, the Curcio movement itself in Roman Catholicism always desired to be ecumenical I guess in that sense was kind of proselytizing because they were trying to bring people in from other denominations or faiths.

So you have what's since been called the three days movement. So you may not hear Curcio attached to it. I believe the Episcopalians and the Anglicans too, maybe, will still call this Curcio. And so in an Episcopalian church, they will say that they're doing a Curcio weekend or something like that.

So they still use that name. But there are other adaptations of this, like the walk to Emmaus. There may also be something called the journey to Damascus, or there's a faith walk. Somebody might just do a faith walk over the weekend on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday or Friday, Saturday and Sunday, something like that.

If they call it a faith walk, that's probably what it is. It's from that same family of what's called the three days movement that is derived out of the Curcio movement. So in the Methodist church, as you mentioned, it's called the Emmaus walk.

And it is a little bit bizarre as far as the secrecy of it goes. You're kind of experiencing that already because you're trying to ask people questions and they won't tell you. Well, that's because at the Emmaus walk, they're probably telling the people not to tell others what it is.

There's this mysterious thing they want there to be about it so that people out of curiosity will sign up for it and want to do the three day thing. And so the less they know about it, and you're just speaking about it emotively, like, like as far as the experience goes, oh, it was so wonderful.

It was great. You got to do it. And that's as much as you get. So they're trying to woo you in with the experience of it, not with the actual substance of it. Who are the speakers? What are they teaching?

What's going on? Anything like that. I don't join. And in the past, I have encouraged my congregants not to join stuff like that because there's nothing in the Bible like that. Nothing in scripture tells us to be a part of these secret movements.

And there's nothing in scripture that even tells us that that all of this is meant to be secret. As a matter of fact, the Apostle Paul praying for the Ephesians, he says to them, I desire that you would know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

So these great blessings that God has heaped upon us, may we know them, like may we become intimately acquainted with them, that we may know the depths of God's riches of his love for us, that he's given to us in Christ Jesus.

I'm never going to invite anybody to anything in which I'm not going to tell them what I'm going to be teaching on. If we're going to get together for a three day thing, I've done stuff like this before, like a three day men's weekend or something like that.

I'm going to tell them we're going to spend three days in Colossians because when I did a three day men's thing, that's what we did. We did a deep dive into Colossians for three days. I'm going to tell them that.

You're not going to be secret about this stuff. The Bible doesn't present to us having these secret organizations and things like that. But as said in 2 Corinthians 4, 2, by the open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God.

So I wouldn't outright tell you, Paula, that you shouldn't go. I mean, I don't want to bind your conscience in any way. That's going to be between you and your husband and what you decide. But be discerning about this stuff because it is kind of weird that they do these secret things and you can't know what teachers are there and you can't vet them in any way.

That's a problem. Be polite with your friends and tell them why you can't attend. Maybe that would open them up a little bit. If I don't know what this is, I'm not going to go. And maybe that's finally going to make them go, okay, well, here's what's going to happen.

Here's the speaker. Maybe they'll finally break down their wall of silence that they've been encouraged to have because, yeah, they don't want to be open about what it is that they do. They probably don't want to have, you know, a whole vetting process done.

I don't want to turn I don't want anybody to be turned away because they didn't like the speaker. It might be something like that. Maybe there's even good intentions for why they don't tell anybody what the weekend is about.

But we still need to be discerning about these kinds of things. It's not it's not a good idea to go into anything blind like this, especially as Christians. So thank you for your question. I hope that was helpful for you.

JFK Conspiracy Theories and the Limits of Speculation

This next one comes from Julian. Hey, Pastor Gabe, Julian here. Did you get the chance to read the JFK files? Of course you didn't, because you have better things to do.

Yeah.

In case you didn't know, I guess it was in the past week or so. The Trump administration had opened up the JFK files so that we can know all of the secrets of everything that happened with the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

I don't think we're meant to know everything, but, you know, anyway, you get it. So Julian goes on. But did you see the clip of Ben Shapiro saying that his opinion about it was irrelevant? It really got me thinking, why do we get so caught up in these conspiracy theories?

Does our opinion about it even matter at all? Is our opinion about who killed JFK really going to change the outcome or that things like this will never happen again? How should Christians regard such conspiracy theories, even if it was true that someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald killed the president?

Thanks as always from Finneytown, Ohio. Well, I appreciate that, Julian. I think this is the clip that Julian was referring to where Ben Shapiro responded to the the whole release of the JFK files. Here we go.

Sort of conspiracy theorizing that's become incredibly popular on the right these days, it was popular on the left, and now it's become increasingly popular on the right, the kind of let's just ask questions, who really killed JFK?

Wink, wink, nod, nod. And then you're like, well, do you have any evidence of the thing that you are pretty well? No, I'm not. I'm not making any accusations. I just know I don't believe the story that I'm being told.

I know not to trust the authorities. Well, that's fine. But do you have like any evidence, like evidence, not just supposition as well? You're part of it, aren't you? You. Yes, you. You're part of it.

The reason that you're that you're so defensive about all this is I care to kill JFK. I mean, I do because it's really interesting. But I noticed that the calendar says 2025 and he was killed in 1963.

And so my opinion about who killed JFK has about as much relevance as who killed William McKinley, which is or James Garfield, which is to say not an enormous amount.

OK, so I think that was the clip. And that may be the first time I ever played Ben Shapiro on this podcast. But there you go.

I mean, it does.

It's worth asking the question, what really am I benefiting to this whole debate by investing my time and even my thinking into it? How should Christians regard these kinds of conspiracy theories? Now, I'm not the kind of person that's going to say we shouldn't.

We shouldn't look into conspiracy theories at all. Christians should have nothing to do with that. I can theorize with the best of them. You got conspiracy theories. I've got some, too. We can have a good conversation about stuff like that.

But you've never heard me talk about that from the pulpit because it doesn't belong there. These are like, you know, a good chitchat conversation over a sandwich and a soda or something like that. It's it's not really anything that you need to be investing much of your life in, have it consume your time, take away time that you could be spending with your kids.

Playing video games is more profitable than the amount of time that we'll spend thinking about these conspiracy theories and stuff like this. You know, I actually did do a video about this very subject, a 90 second video several years back.

Let me go ahead and play it for you. And I think this will pretty much answer the question. Is the Earth truly round? Or maybe it's a big conspiracy by NASA and every other space agency and dozens of countries hiding for some reason that the Earth is flat.

Did man really walk on the moon? Or maybe that's also a NASA conspiracy. And the moon landing was staged. Was 9 -11 a terrorist attack? Or maybe it was a government conspiracy. And the collapse of the World Trade Center was the result of controlled demolitions.

Maybe Area 51 is hiding aliens. Maybe Sandy Hook didn't happen. Maybe fluoride is a communist plot. Maybe JFK was killed by the CIA. LBJ, the KGB, maybe HAARP, Kim Trails, the Illuminati. What should we believe is true?

And what is conspiracy? Well, in Isaiah chapter eight, God was about to send the Assyrians to conquer Israel for their rebellious ways. Everyone would be sent into confusion. Who's in league with whom?

What side should we join? Should we fight or flee? To those who are faithful, God said, do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy.

Let him be your fear and your dread. Peter would later reference these words when he said, suffer for righteousness sake and you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled. But in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy.

Always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect. Do not obsess over manmade conspiracies. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

When we understand the text. Thank you again for your question, Julian, and as always, appreciate you listening to the program. This next one comes from Savannah. She says, hello, Pastor Gabe and Becky.

Always enjoy listening to the Q and A's and I am refreshed each time. I have a question regarding something on X I have noticed unfolding. Now, a reminder to everybody, it's not Twitter anymore. It's called X.

Savannah goes on. I don't engage on there much, but really just have it for Christian news as same with me, I I'm mostly on it for the news. I once had a, an X fast or a Twitter fact. It was a Twitter fast at the time where I just kind of turned it off and I was going to be off of it for a whole month, month of July, as a matter of fact.

And I realized when I shut it off, how much I was getting my news from Twitter. I didn't realize that until it wasn't in front of me anymore. I thought I was still drawing from a whole different slew of sources, which had been my habit in the past, especially when I was in radio, I had all different kinds of sources that I would rely upon for my news, but once I went on a Twitter fast, I realized I wasn't reading much news.

I don't even know what's going on. So same with me. I'll read quite a bit of news on X. I don't know if that's good or bad, but that's where I get a lot of news. So Savannah goes on. I have seen so much anti-Jewish rhetoric and many faithful pastors and influencers pushing back.

Is this a new trend or has this been going on for some time? Or is this hatred suddenly snowballing over the past several months? Why I need someone to spell it out to me. I genuinely can't really understand the points of the anti-Jew side, not sure what else to call it, is making, nor do I really even want to try.

And it just makes me sad. Truthfully, thanks to you all. Well, I appreciate you, Savannah. And same with me. All the different controversies and even the backbiting and the quarrelsome fights and all this stuff that's going on, especially on social media, especially among Christians, it is really sad.

Galatians 515 says, if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. And when our focus is not Christ, these are the kinds of squabbles that end up happening, even among Christian brethren.

We need to be very on guard about that because this is one way that it's one scheme that Satan uses to try to divide the body of Christ. So especially if you find yourself on social media getting into these controversies, well, even if it's the conspiracy theory stuff we were talking about a moment ago, your mind starts getting consumed by this.

You start getting obsessed with it. It changes and affects your mood. It affects the amount of time you're spending in the Bible or in prayer or with other people, with your church, with other Christians, if you are spending too much time getting into these conflicts and these squabbles and try to pick sides, oh, here's another conflict.

I got to decide what side I'm on with all of this. Why, why, why do you even care? A conflict that you didn't even have any involvement in whatsoever until you involved yourself in it. As Proverbs 26, 17 says, whoever medals in a quarrel, not his own is like one who takes a passing dog by the ears.

And consider also verse 20 for lack of wood, the fire goes out and where there is no whisperer quarreling ceases. So if you don't feed the fire, it won't grow and spread. Very important to consider these things when it comes to our involvement, especially on social media with complete strangers, love the people that are in your life.

Why are you caring about the opinions of strangers out there? But anyway, with regards to this growing anti-Semitism, Savannah, you called it anti-Jew. Well, it would be that. But the term that's generally used for that is anti-Semitism.

So this growth in anti-Semitism, where does this come from? Well, there are a number of different streams that are leading to this. Now there's always been some element of anti-Semitism going on all the time, but it does seem to be ramped up lately.

So where is this coming from? Here are a few different strains of thought. So remember, in 2020, we had covid. That was a pretty incredible year, as a matter of fact, for the entire world, everybody on planet Earth.

Then we find out the government lied to us about covid and we start asking, what else have they lied about going back to the JFK thing a moment ago? And then we start questioning every single narrative.

Maybe the government's lying about everything. And how far back does this go? Well, then you've got the whole World War Two and post-war consensus that's being criticized and questioned. Maybe Winston Churchill was not the good guy after all.

I don't know if you caught that debate. What was that last year, the year before even Al Moller ended up weighing in on it because there were people online that were starting to say maybe Hitler was actually the good guy and Winston Churchill was the bad guy.

And the whole World War Two thing happened. It was instigated by Churchill. So we're starting to question every narrative, trying to switch the sides. Maybe we were wrong about who was the good guy and who was the bad guy.

And so if Hitler was actually the good guy, then that means who would be the bad guys? Yeah, the Jews. The Jews were the bad guys. After all, there's a Jew that owns Pornhub right now. So now we're starting to see all the different Jews in society and what they do and what they own and the different evils that they're contributing to.

I mean, forget the fact that every tribe, tongue and nation on Earth is evil and is contributing to massive sin problems. But now this time we're focusing on the Jews and maybe all Jews are bad. So there's one strain of thought.

And that goes from COVID and kind of tracking with me here that goes that goes from COVID all the way to maybe all Jews are bad. Here's another strain of thought. So Hamas invaded Israel a year and a half ago.

That war has been going on ever since. And the United States has been funding it. Israel fights back. Well, then Israel in fighting back, they kill civilians that Hamas was using as shields. Well, then Israel gets blamed for killing civilians.

Protests erupt against Israel. You've heard about those protests, probably seen them on the news. It especially becomes popular among millennials and zoomers. This anti-Jewish sentiment in the culture begins to develop and grow.

And now you have because the millennials and the zoomers especially are online. Now you have this ramped up online narrative that's negative toward the Jews. Well, here's another I kind of hinted at this a moment ago.

Here's another possibility. The U .S. is in deep debt. We're in a huge, massive amount of debt, trillions and trillions of dollars. And then we get deeply financially involved in a conflict between the Ukraine and Russia.

Everybody's got different opinions about that. You've seen the flags on social media accounts showing their support for I stand with Ukraine, right? You see the blue and yellow flag. And then we see in this conflict that there's no end in sight.

And involvement is unsustainable. Why are we funding this? Why are we funding this fight between the Ukraine and Russia? And so what other conflicts is America funding that's unnecessary? Well, the U .S. has supported conflicts in Israel for years and years.

Maybe we shouldn't be. Israel is disliked now because they are a they're a drain on the U .S. economy. Guys like Matt Walsh, as a matter of fact. So I just played Ben Shapiro a moment ago, who's with The Daily Wire.

Matt Walsh, another guy on The Daily Wire. He has for years said that the U .S. should not be funding Israel and the ongoing conflicts that they've had with terrorists in the region. And that starts to stir up this anti-Semitism.

So this these are just a few of those different streams of thought that have led to this growing dislike for Israel. And online, especially, is where you just have this ramped up interest in conspiracy theories.

And so some of those, like with the covid narrative, becomes conspiratorial. And maybe Mossad is behind some of this stuff. Like there are a few other lines of discourse that lead to anti-Jewish sentiments.

These are just three examples that I've provided for you. But there's also like was Epstein connected with Mossad? And you have the pendulum swing away from wokeness, it goes too far the other way, and suddenly we start becoming anti-Semitic, I suppose.

So it's more than just one thing. And this is just a season to dislike the Jews, it seems like. So it's very unfortunate. It's as you said, it's wounding. It's sad to see this kind of thing going on. And we should pray for one another, encourage each other not to be wrapped up in these things that just stirs up anger.

Why? Why invest your time and space in this in these things that vie for your attention and almost demand your opinion? Pick a side. Everybody's drawing line and lines in the sand and saying that we have to be on one side or the other.

But remember the words that Paul said in Philippians four, eight, finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable.

If there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Let us have our minds trained upon things that stir our affections for Christ and his work that he is doing in us, in our churches, in our family members, in our communities, in the world that we may go out and in this work of Christ, continue to share the gospel with people.

Because we know it's only through the gospel of Jesus Christ that a person is going to be one out of the world and into the kingdom of God. It's not sharing all these different opinions on all these different conspiracy theories.

So be careful how you invest your heart, how you invest your mind, as said in Proverbs four, 23, keep your heart with all vigilance for from it flow the springs of life. If you have your heart invested in things that pollutes the well, then those springs that come forth are not going to be as sweet, as sweet as the water that we have by the Holy Spirit of God that has been poured into our hearts.

So let us meditate on Christ. Don't walk through life all grumpy and bitter and even puzzled and curious and never finding any answers with any of this stuff. We invest ourselves. And I don't think anybody's going to get it, get to the end of their lives, wishing that they had spent more time on that conspiracy theory.

Let us invest in those things that are important and give God all the glory. Amen. Jews need the gospel, too. And so we must remember to take it to them. But it's not like they're in greater need of the gospel than anyone else in the world.

As we read in Romans 3, 23, for there is no distinction. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And only the gospel of Jesus Christ forgives us our sins and brings us back into a right relationship with God.

I appreciate your question, Savannah. Let's end there with prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time that we have together. Time to be in your word, time to ask questions about stuff that's going on in the world.

Always good to ask these questions, but let us know where we find the answers. The answer is in Christ. And if there are things that on this side of heaven that we're not meant to know or understand, help us to have the soundness of mind to put those things to rest and not be not not invest ourselves in them so much.

Let us put our attention and our focus into those things that really matter, especially those things that bring glory to you and promote Christ and honor him in this world. It is in Jesus name that we pray.

Amen.

Closing Announcements and Church Fellowship

This is When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. There are lots of great Bible teaching programs on the web and we thank you for selecting ours. But this is no replacement for regular fellowship with a church family.

Find a good gospel teaching Christ-centered church to worship with this weekend and join us again Monday for more Bible study, When We Understand the Text.