Scripture and the Exclusivity of Christ

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I have been asking of the leadership what do you mean by the interfaith movement?
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Because that specific terminology, in my country anyways, that sort of roars, doesn't it?
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I'm going to have to... Oh my, it's a complicated one. Oh, there we go.
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There we go. I was starting to hear it on the microphone there. I like it.
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I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm awfully appreciative of having it. In my country, the interfaith movement would be me and my
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Presbyterian brothers getting together to oppose some social ill that is being pushed upon us by the left or something like that.
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So it would generally have a, you know, when we talk about interfaith dialogue, frequently that's what would be used to describe my encounters with Muslims, for example, or dialogue with Roman Catholics.
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So that would be sort of, not an ecumenical, but a back and forth, an honest disagreement type of a situation.
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So in asking what was being meant by this, what was communicated to me was more of a concern that especially in your context and certainly in the context of the
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United States as well, what we're facing today is a cultural...
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Well, what it is, to be honest with you, is a return to cultural paganism.
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Let me explain what I mean by that. In the days of the Roman Empire, pluralism was a good thing from their perspective.
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What's pluralism? Well, the idea that there are many paths to God. There are many ways of pleasing
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God or being accepted in his sight. And the reason for that was obvious. The Roman Empire encompassed a tremendous number of peoples with a tremendous number of religious beliefs.
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And so you received favor from the Roman Empire when you were willing to basically play nice with others.
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It was okay for you to say that you worship your God and to extol your God and sing praises to your
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God and worship your God and build temples and everything else. There was just one thing that made
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Rome nervous. And that was when you said that your
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God was actually everybody's God and that what your God said was true of everyone.
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That's a problem. When you become exclusivistic rather than inclusivistic, now you're causing an issue for others.
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Now there's going to be friction. There's going to be disagreement. And you see, in pagan
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Rome, you were allowed to worship any God you want. You were allowed to worship multiple gods.
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You were allowed to offer sacrifice to multiple gods. As long as you also made room for the genius of Caesar.
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And in fact, one of the demands on early Christians, to identify early Christians, was that the state demanded that you offer a pinch of incense upon the altar and say,
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Kaiser curios, Caesar is Lord. Now you know that in Paul's letter to the
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Corinthians, he says, no one can say, Jesus curios, Jesus is Lord, except by the
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Holy Spirit. And so all believers were individuals who had bowed the knee to the
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Lordship of Christ and therefore they could not bow the knee to the Lordship of Caesar. And so Christians were actually identified as atheists in early
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Rome, in the early days of the church, but it wasn't early Rome. But in the early days of Roman persecution, they were identified as atheists.
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Why? Not because they didn't say there was any God, but because they said that the gods did not exist.
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There was only one true and living God and one way of salvation.
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And that was considered, well, to use a modern term, politically incorrect. In fact, it was considered repulsive.
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It was considered narrow -minded, and that's exactly where we find ourselves today. That's why
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I say we're talking about the repaganization of Western culture, which had at one point recognized the necessity of objective truth and now has abandoned all of that because of a fundamental change in its worldview perspective.
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That's what we're facing. And if you proclaim a message that says there is only one way to God, you are seen as narrow, you are seen as unloving, unkind, and you are to be rejected.
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You're to be rejected because of the new cultural norm. Now, very rarely are our fellow citizens to be found guilty of having thought through what all this really means.
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That's up to us to do. You and I need to be—you need to be absolutely convinced as a believer in Jesus Christ that it is necessary for you to stand by the exclusive nature of the claims of Jesus Christ or you're going to end up as some frilly new -ager wearing 1960s tie -dye shirts and doing other strange and odd things that would probably be rather embarrassing.
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That's where you're going to end up. But have you thought through why? Is it just because, well, my religion is better than your religion?
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That's not why. And it's certainly not I'm better than you because we all know that's not a part of the
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Christian message. We're not better than anyone else. We are redeemed sinners just like everyone—that's the only way you can stand before God, is to be a redeemed sinner.
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So why then must we insist upon the exclusive nature of the
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Christian faith? Well, it has to do, as everything does, with who Jesus Christ truly was.
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Think with me for just a moment. We proclaim an amazing message.
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In fact, the Bible tells us that from the world's perspective it will be considered foolishness.
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In 1 Corinthians chapter 1, we are told the preaching of the cross is to those that are perishing—
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I think we need to take a collection up for that man's muffler. The preaching of the cross is to them that are perishing, and the term in the original language is moria, from which we get moron, foolishness.
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Foolishness. The preaching of the cross is to them that are perishing. Foolishness. But to we who are being saved, it is the power of God.
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So the message that is ours, we know the world is going to receive is foolishness.
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Why? Well, what are we saying? We are saying that the God that created this entire universe— and we know how huge this universe is now.
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Ancient man really could not even be—well, we can't conceive of the vastness of the creation around us.
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I mean, I've seen some great, great videos online. ICR has a great video,
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Created Cosmos. Have you seen Created Cosmos? Jason Lyle put it together.
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And it is mind -numbing to try to conceive of the vastness of this universe, how tiny we are in comparison to how huge this universe is.
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And yet our message is the one that created all that vastness and holds it together and created it for a purpose actually entered into his own creation on this little rock.
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And he didn't do so as some kind of king or philosopher. He didn't even write a book.
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He didn't even go to Rome. He didn't go to Athens. He went to Jerusalem.
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He went to Galilee. I mean, the cities that we call cities back then would just be little villages, really.
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And he walked around with unlearned men, and he was surrounded by people with diseases.
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And we actually tell the world that this was God in human flesh, and he came and he gave his life.
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He died in an ignoble way. Crucifixion was so culturally repulsive that there were certain
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Roman writers that would never even use the Greek word stauro, which means to crucify.
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It was beneath them. You couldn't crucify a Roman citizen.
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And so our message is foolishness to the world.
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We are actually saying God entered into his own creation, died an ignoble death, and because of that, we can have peace with God, not because of what we do or learn or accomplish, but solely because of what he does on our behalf.
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And the church never shows itself less believing. The church never shows itself more foolish than when it tries to change that message and shave off the rough edges and make it acceptable to this world and make it wise in their eyes.
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It will never be wise in the eyes of the world, never. And so we need to recognize that if all of that is true, and it's an amazing thing, if God in the person of his son gave his life on Calvary's tree, then how could there be any other way to him?
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That's a pretty extreme measure, to come in the person of your son and give your own life so that people might have peace with you, that your law might be fulfilled.
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If there were other ways of doing that, how can God be wise in having sent his son when there were other ways to do it?
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And yet, as Paul said, if there could be any other way of gaining righteousness, if righteousness could come by the law, then what?
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Christ died needlessly. Needlessly.
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Think about that. And in reality, what the world says to you and I when it says, come on,
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Christian, you're being narrow. You're being unloving to other people.
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What the world is really saying is, stop believing the exclusive nature of the work of Jesus Christ.
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Stop believing it. If you want to believe that he did that for you, great.
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But don't really believe in such a way that you would be saying that that death is relevant to every single human being who lives today and has lived since then.
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Because that would require us all to deal with Jesus, and we don't want to deal with him. We don't want to deal with his claims.
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We want to pretend to be neutral. But when you think about the Christian message, by nature it is exclusivistic.
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God didn't come in any other form. God did not come in contradictory forms.
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If Jesus was who we claim he was, then this must be the only way of having peace with him, and that is exactly what the apostles said over and over and over and over again.
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In fact, when you start thinking about the exclusive nature of the gospel, the exclusive nature of what
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God has done, the fact that it's all focused upon his glory, upon who he is, in fact, when you really realize the gospel isn't about us.
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It's about him. Then its exclusive nature becomes fully understandable and absolutely necessary.
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And when you start reading through the New Testament, it will jump out at you from almost every other verse.
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There is so much in the New Testament that doesn't even begin to make a lick of sense.
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If, in fact, there are multiple ways to God, and if, in fact, every religious understanding is to be respected, isn't that amazing?
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In our culture today, all sorts of medical theories of the quacks, the people trying to make money off other people, those aren't to be respected.
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But when it comes to religion, oh, all perspectives are equal. All perspectives are to be respected, no matter how silly or foolish they might be.
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That's what we're taught. That's what is drilled into us from the very beginning.
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Think with me for a moment on one of the passages that I love to share with my Muslim friends, but that illustrate the exclusive nature of the gospel message.
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In John chapter 8, Jesus is dialoguing with the
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Jews, and he says to them in verse 23, I said to you, you are from below.
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I am from above. You are of this world. I am not of this world. Therefore, I said to you that you will die in your sins.
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For unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.
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Now, this is just a little snippet of a lengthy chapter, very lengthy chapter, where by the end, halfway through the chapter, there are certain
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Jews who hear Jesus' arguments, and they are impressed. And it is said that they believe in him.
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The problem is, in the gospel of John, saving faith is always an ongoing faith.
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It's in the present tense. Whenever faith is used in the aorist, or point -action tense, it's never saving faith.
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So in John chapter 2, certain people believe in him because they saw the miracle, changing the water into wine.
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But it says, Jesus did not entrust himself to them. Literally, Jesus did not believe himself to them because he knew it was in the heart of man.
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And here in John chapter 8, halfway through the chapter, there are certain people who are going to believe on him.
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Point -action, not ongoing, not present tense. Point -action. And what happens? Jesus presses his claims upon them.
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And he says, If you continue in my word, then you are my disciples. Indeed, you shall know the truth. And then what does he say?
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The truth shall set you free. Now, you see, you and I, we're not offended when
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Jesus says, The truth will set you free. Because we knew of our slavery to sin.
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And we know of our need to be set free to serve Jesus Christ. But you see, there's almost nothing more offensive to a self -righteous person than to be told you need to be set free.
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To be told that you are in slavery to your sin, in slavery to your flesh. And as soon as Jesus says that, what's their response?
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What do you mean set free? We've never been enslaved to anyone. Well, there's some self -deception for you.
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Here are people living under the heel of the Roman Empire. Any Roman soldier comes along and says,
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You, pick up my pack and carry it for a mile. They have to do it. But we've never been enslaved to anybody. It's amazing how fallen man will convince himself of his own power and ability, even when the truth is right in front of him.
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But, by the end of the chapter, the men who had believed in him are doing what?
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They're picking up stones to stone him. Because he has said, Prin abraham genestai ego ami
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Before Abraham was, I am. And that very phrase,
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I am, is here in verse 24. For unless you believe,
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Hati ego ami, that I am, you will die in your sins.
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Now, obviously, there would have been people in that day who would have believed that Jesus was the
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Messiah, who would have believed that Jesus was a prophet, sent of God.
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Pretty hard to deny it when you can feed 5 ,000, raise the dead, walk on water.
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Pretty tough to deny that God's doing something special in this person's life. But that wasn't enough.
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That wasn't enough. Jesus said, for unless you believe that I am.
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Now, everybody automatically just jumps straight from I am back to Exodus chapter three and the
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I am sayings of Jesus. If you read my book, The Forgotten Trinity, I don't suggest that that is the best way of handling these texts.
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The actual connection is to be found in books like Isaiah, primarily, where the
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I am is used. It's the Hebrew anahu, but it's translated into Greek Septuagint as ego ami.
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And then from Isaiah back to Exodus three, but jumping directly back is subject to some problems, especially if you run into a really sharp
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Jehovah's Witness, they can cause you some issues. But the point is, he uses a phrase that communicates to the
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Jews what he's saying. And in the end of the chapter, he's going to say, before Abraham was,
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I am, and what happens immediately in the next verse? They pick up stones to stone him. Why?
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Because they know what he's claiming. Just as in John chapter five, when he said,
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I and my father, my father's working until now, and I am working, that he was making himself equal with the father, he was making a claim to deity.
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So here you have Jews, and Jesus says to them, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.
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You will die in your sins. Now, is that only relevant to Jews? Do Jews have a higher standard?
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Or is Jesus actually communicating here the reality of the fact that there is only one way of salvation, and you need to be saved by the true
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Jesus, and not by anybody else? I've explained this many times to my
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Mormon friends, who say, come on, we're members of the
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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. How more Christian can you get? The name of our church has the name of Jesus in it.
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And I'm like, that means nothing. What Jesus are you talking about? A Jesus who is not the
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I am cannot save you. Paul warned about false
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Jesuses. Just as he warned about false gospels. Only the true
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Jesus can save. And so, is this only for Jews?
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No. The reality is that the message that we have is that you can have peace with God, you can have eternal life, you can have forgiveness of your sins, but God is the one who sets the parameters as to how that happens, not man.
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God is the one who has chosen to redeem through the incarnation. God has chosen, the triune
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God, has chosen to glorify himself in one particular fashion through the incarnation, the outpouring of the
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Holy Spirit. Each of the divine persons has taken a different role in bringing about the gospel.
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This was chosen before eternity itself. So the Father is the fountainhead, the
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Son is the one who comes and accomplishes through his, not only his death, burial, and resurrection, but his entire perfect life.
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So incarnation all the way through to death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. The Spirit is the one who then comes and makes application.
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He brings to spiritual life. He indwells. And so the gospel is a triune gospel.
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And it's all to the glory of the triune God. It's all about him.
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And we come along and say, that's too narrow. We come along and say, well, thank you very much, that's an amazing thing you've done, but we'd like to do it a different way.
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We're not quite comfortable with how exclusive this is. We have a lot of folks that would like to have a different kind of religious experience than what you're offering us.
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There's a tremendous amount of hubris and arrogance on the part of modern man.
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And when you really think about the demands being placed upon us today, of viewing all religions as equal, all religions as equally valid, and if you don't, then you're just being hateful.
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When you think about it, there's incredible arrogance on the part of man to think that you can say to God, we get to judge the way in which you can save.
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It's arrogance. It's rebellion. It makes sense that it's showing up in the same cultures where you have men determining that they're women, or women determining that they're men, or self -identifying as this, that, or the other thing, just simply because it's what
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I want to do. It's what I've decided to do. And by the way, I didn't mention this morning, but for me, this is one of the big things.
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Bruce Jenner is a grandfather. I know
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I'm jumping topic for a second, but I forgot to mention this morning, Bruce Jenner is a grandfather. Think about what that means.
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I think about my little granddaughter. I have the cutest, by the way, I just might mention, I do have the cutest granddaughter in the world.
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It's just an amazing thing that happened. I'm not cute, but, you know. And her name's
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Clementine. Isn't that a cute name? I won't mention her middle name, but it's
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James. J -A -Y -M -E -S. I had nothing to do with it, nothing whatsoever to do with that.
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But I cannot imagine, I cannot imagine being so focused upon myself and my desires that I would do something that would have such a massive hello, testing one that would do something that would have such a massive impact upon the life of my granddaughter.
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In fact, I'm going to tell you right now, one of my real prayers, and join me in praying for me, is
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I need to pray for you. As I get older, I want to finish well.
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I want to finish well. Any of you have been Christians for any period of time at all? You're probably thinking of some folks that didn't finish well.
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They were a flash in the pan. They may have been pretty important there for a while, but then as they got into their older years, got involved with things, did things, didn't finish well.
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I just want to finish well. And I cannot imagine doing what that man did and is doing in light of the fact he's a grandfather.
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Wow. That's shocking to me. But I jumped a track there.
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I need to get back to the topic at hand. When you understand the radical nature of the gospel, that God himself is the one who saves, the idea of pluralism, the idea of many ways, is shown for the foolishness that it is, the anti -Christian foolishness that it is.
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But you have to understand that so that you can express that to someone else. And so you can recognize that what the world is saying to you is you need to be embarrassed about a gospel where God saves completely and totally by his own will and his own power to his own glory.
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That should embarrass you. That's what the world is telling you and I. That's what the world is telling you and I.
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That you and I, if we dare to say to the world that God the
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Father has joined a people to Jesus Christ not because of anything they have done, not because of any foreseen merit on their part, but totally of his free grace, he has provided fully and completely for their salvation.
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By his spirit he takes out their heart of flesh and gives them a heart, takes out the heart of star stone, gives them a heart of flesh.
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Just as the valley of dry bones, his spirit can come and raise to spiritual life. He does everything.
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He has provided everything. He does it to his own glory. He doesn't do it based upon any fulfillment of any type of conditions on our part.
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If we actually believe that, then the world says, you're hateful, you're a bigot.
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Well, what that means is the world is just simply expressing its rebellion against God and that should not be shocking to any of us in this room.
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It should not be shocking to any of us in this room. But the world wants you to be embarrassed by a
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Jesus who could ever say to anyone, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.
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The world wants you to be quiet about that. The world wants you to hesitate because you know there are many times when there is an opportunity of witness, but the door is very, very narrow.
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There's just that moment where the slightest hesitation will mean that the conversation is going to move on and you're not going to have that opportunity.
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And if the world can make you hesitant, if the world can make you not speak when you should speak, then it's succeeded.
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It's succeeded. I'm told you're under tremendous pressure and strain here in your culture to buy into the pluralistic perspective to where if you're going to be respected by the culture, you're going to have to express the
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Christian faith in sub -biblical terms and say to people, well, I've found
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Jesus to be great for me and maybe he'll be great for you, too. You want to try him?
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And a lot of people have given in to that pressure, haven't they? It just drives me insane when
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I see bumper stickers in my land, in my own country, it says, try Jesus. You know, that's like try
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Pepto -Bismol. That may not mean anything to you. Don't have Pepto -Bismol. What do you take for an upset stomach here?
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What is it? He -no? That sounds like something
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I'd go, he -no. I ain't taking that. Then again, Pepto -Bismol sounds really tasty, too, doesn't it?
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It ain't. Believe me. Try this. Try that. Try this car.
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Try this kind of clothing. That's not the call to discipleship, is it? Jesus said, unless a man is willing to deny himself, take up his cross and follow me, he's not worthy of me.
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That kind of message, very unpopular. Very unpopular. And I know the pressure upon churches.
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I understand. My church is smaller than this one. I understand that you look down the road and you see these churches and they're growing and they're big and they're huge, but you know they're compromised.
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And I know the pressure upon pastors to give in to the cultural pressure.
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If you are not convinced of the gospel, if you are not convinced that the exclusive elements of the gospel are definitional of what the gospel is, you may well give in.
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You may well give in. Folks, we are going to see a wave of apostasy. It's already breaking upon us.
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A wave of apostasy. Don't you dare, not one of you, let your faith be built upon looking to somebody else.
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I'm really concerned about the Christian superstar culture. Because when
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Christian superstars start falling, what about the people who've built their faith upon them? I appreciate when folks come up to say,
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I've watched every one of your debates and I watch The Dividing Line all the time. I appreciate that.
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But if you do, then you already know what I'm about to tell you. Don't you dare look to me.
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I am a man. I am a mortal man. I am a sinner. I will let you down.
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Don't you dare put me on a pedestal. I don't want to be there. I don't want fans.
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I'm thankful if something I've done has been useful to you and encouraged you. But folks, don't you dare give in to the superstar culture out there.
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Because you're going to see people falling left and right. And if your faith is built upon them, you're going to be in trouble.
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I was talking to a guy, I've sadly had the opportunity of having to talk to a number of people recently.
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Some of you may have heard the story about, it was about four or five years ago, a fairly well -known pastor of a
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Presbyterian church, a PCA church, contacted me. It did not take long for me to immediately know what was going on in this man's life.
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He was getting ready to swim the Tiber River, become a Roman Catholic. And his session had given him freedom to take time off and to go visit a number of leaders, well -known leaders, denominational leaders, big names, to talk about the questions that he had that were bothering him in regards to the claims of the
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Roman Catholic Church. I was one of the last people he talked to. His session paid to fly him out to Phoenix, and we sat in my office.
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All he wanted to talk about was Sola Scriptura. He had one particular argument against Sola Scriptura.
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How, five years after John's death, John the
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Apostle's death, you could identify heresy accurately. Which, of course, in the form in which he gave the argument, was a complete defeater for Roman Catholicism, too, but he didn't seem to care about that.
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And I answered as best I could. I think I answered thoroughly. Of course, he doesn't feel that I have an answer, but I wanted to talk to him about something else, and he didn't want to talk about it.
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But I forced the issue. I tend to be that way. And I said, let me understand something.
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You have stood in front of the people of God, and you have confessed that the only reason that you have peace with God is because of the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.
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You stood in front of the people of God and told the world, the reason
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I can have peace with God is because Christ has provided a perfect righteousness, a positive righteousness in his life, forgiveness of sins in his death, burial, and resurrection.
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I can have peace with God because I'm clothed in the righteousness of another. That's why
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I could get up in the morning knowing my own heart, and yet I know that I have peace with God because of what someone else has done.
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I look away from myself. I look to the empty cross and the empty tomb. That's what you've told people.
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And now you're about to embrace a religious system that denies all of that, that puts you on a treadmill of penances and sacramental forgiveness for the rest of your life, and does not give you peace because you cannot know whether you've fulfilled all the conditions which are necessary for attaining unto justification, to quote from Ludwig Ott in The Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma.
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And I looked at him, and I said, how can you do that? How can you trade the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ for that system?
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He did not want to talk about that. He did not want to talk about that.
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And sadly, I had to have the exact same conversation with a young man I've known for 20 years who's thinking about a very similar type of thing.
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Just a few weeks ago. Breaks my heart. But I cannot understand. You know where that man is today?
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Well, he converted. Just a couple months after he met with me, he converted. But he found out that the
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Roman Catholic scene is already filled with apologists and celebrity converts.
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Can't make a dime. His only degree is a degree from Westminster Seminary. His family did not convert with him.
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So it's divided, his family. They continue going to the same church he used to pastor. Ooh, that must be a difficult situation.
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And you know what he does now? You can look it up. He has a webcast.
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You know what the title is? He has a webcast. He has an old friend of his who also went apostate.
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He didn't go Roman. He became an atheist. And they have a webcast called
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Drunken Ex -Pastors where they do a webcast and they talk about cool stuff and basically get soused on the program.
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And that's supposed to be cool. Drunken Ex -Pastors. You want to know what
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Shipwreck of the Faith looks like? Go look it up. There's Shipwreck of the Faith. There are elements to the gospel that will always be a fence to the natural man, but they are absolutely definitional to what the gospel is.
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And the true gospel, the biblical gospel, rips from the heart of any redeemed person any basis for boasting.
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But the true gospel, our world is saying, that's too exclusivistic. Because if what you're saying is true, then that means every man, woman, and child must deal with Jesus Christ.
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And we will not accept that. And we will not allow you to accept that. And it's going to become more and more and more costly for you and I to believe what we believe.
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But if you and I today confess that the only reason we can have peace before God is because of that precious imputed righteousness which is ours, how much do you really love that, my friend?
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I'm speaking to every single one of you in this room that claims to be a Christian. How much do you really love the peace that you have with God because of the perfection of the work of another?
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How much will you give for it? We're going to find out. We're going to find out for every single one of us because the pressure is going to come on every single one of us to compromise, to give in.
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The gospel is exclusivistic because it's God's gospel, not man's.
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And it's absolutely unique and it's beautiful. But the only people who see its beauty are the people who've been given eyes to see and ears to hear.
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You know everything I just said to you. But sometimes putting it all in one package can be a little intimidating, a little challenging.
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But we've got to understand that's the nature of the gospel. That's the nature of what we're facing. So, Brother Rudolph, do you have any...
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There can't be any questions on this. That was as clear as can be. I haven't seen anyone looking down at their phones.
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So those of you who have been texting stuff in, I must admit you're pretty good because I can... Well, actually,
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I left my... You may have noticed I left my glasses down there. So I can still see most of you.
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It's a lot better than it used to be. I had LASIK back in 2001. For a while, I had, like, 2015 vision.
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It was awesome. Then it changed and I had to go back to glasses again. But, oh, well.
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Got some questions? All right. I don't know that I'll have answers, but we'll give it a shot.
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I've been standing a lot today. I hope you don't mind. Do you want a chair? No. I'll stand.
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Can you please comment on Islam claiming exclusivity without criticizing... Sorry, your question went away.
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Without criticism and Christianity being heavily criticized. Isn't that funny? Isn't that interesting?
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Well, what was the question? Well, look. Christianity is exclusivistic.
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Sorry about the camera here. I'm sitting down for a moment. Thank you. It's just a little more intimate this way.
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Actually, it's almost 4 o 'clock and my hip's killing me. It is amazing that the
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Quran is so very clear in claiming that it is the final revelation of God.
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Even the one time, one time the Quran says something positive about another world religion.
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Do you know that? Only one time. Guess which religion it is. It's us. It's us. But, that's nothing to sneeze at.
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But, it immediately says, after saying something positive about Christians, it seems to limit its positive words to Christians who would convert to Islam.
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But, Islam says that we are deceived. In the prayers, the first surah of the
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Quran is Surah Al -Fatiha. And, at the end, it says, lead us not into the path of those who have earned your wrath, and those who have been led astray.
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And, when Muhammad was asked in the Hadith who that meant, he always gave the same answer.
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Those who have earned your wrath are the Jews, and those who have been led astray are the Christians. So, every single day, the
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Muslim who prays is praying not to be a Christian. And, the Quran says that our belief in the deity of Christ is deception.
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It earns us hellfire. It is excess. It is lying against God.
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I mean, it's extremely straightforward. But, I never hear any secular news source quoting those texts and criticizing
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Islam for it. I just don't hear it. But, I sure hear lots of people going after Christianity for its narrow -mindedness, and its hatred, and Romans chapter 1, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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Can I explain why that is? I don't have a clue. Evidently, secularists recognize that they don't have much to fear for us, but they do have fear from radical
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Muslims. And so, they keep their mouths shut. But, Islam is just as exclusivistic.
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Now, there are westernized Muslims who try to leave a little more space, but they're all in the
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West. They're all in the West. Really, historic
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Islam is extremely exclusivistic. There's one way. There's one final prophet.
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And, if you worship Jesus as God, hellfire is yours. And, there will be no one to help them.
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Period. End of discussion. This question relates to you quoting
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John chapter 8, verse 24. When you quote, for if you believe not that I am, you shall die in your sins, this is a distortion of the biblical text as a whole, and the gospel of John in particular.
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The purpose of the gospel is clearly stated in chapter 20, 31, but these things are written that you might believe that Jesus is the
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Christ, not God, the son of God, and that by believing you might have life in his name.
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Well, if you want to try to chop John up and make him contradictory to himself, I can't stop you, but please don't pretend that you're actually dealing with the gospel of John to do that.
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You know, I don't know what religious background this person might have, but let's just take a wild guess and say you might be a
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Muslim. If I dealt with any surah of the Koran the way you just dealt with the gospel of John, you would have every reason to be extremely angry for my misrepresentation of the
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Koran. So, please don't do that to the gospel of John. What John meant in John 20, 31 is determined by what he wrote before he got to John 20, 31.
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And let's just review briefly what he wrote in the gospel of John before he got to chapter 20, verse 31.
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He started off saying, In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was
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God. And just before John 20, 31, we had had the apostle
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Thomas say, And he answered and said to Jesus, In John chapter 3, that same
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Jesus had introduced himself as the one who, through faith in his name, you can have eternal life.
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In John chapter 4, he identified himself to the woman at the well as the one through whom true worship of God must be offered.
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In chapter 5, he identified himself with the very language the Jews used of God upholding the universe on the
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Sabbath day, making himself equal with God. In John chapter 5, he also said, that he does exactly what the
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Father does, which no mere creature could do. In John chapter 8, he identified himself as the
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I Am. In John chapter 10, as the shepherd of the sheep, just as Yahweh was. And in John chapter 17, he says that before the world was created, he shared the very
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Father's glory in his presence. So if you let John be
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John, what he meant is very, very clear. Every one of those texts is exclusivistic.
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Every one of those texts demonstrates that if Jesus was who Jesus claimed to be, there is no salvation outside of dealing with him.
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That's the message of the Gospel of John. Next question is,
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What is the essential heart of the Gospel?
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Is it not love? Well, could we allow, please, the
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Bible to define what love is rather than the world? Do you want to see the love of God?
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Look at the cross. But if all you see at the cross is the love of God, you're only seeing a part of it.
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May I say to my Christian friends here, if all you see when you look at the cross is the love of God, you are not seeing what the
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Bible presents the cross as. Because if you don't see the wrath of God against sin, as the background that makes the love seen at the cross so amazing, you are not seeing the cross as it's presented in the
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Scriptures. You have to see it as it truly is. And the Bible defines love in a way that this world cannot begin to understand.
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When you say, is not the heart of the Gospel love? God's love for an undeserving people?
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Yes. That's at the very heart of the Gospel, as is
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God's holiness. And the problem is, for many people, we want to get rid of the holiness and only have the love.
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And that means you don't have all of God. You can't edit God in that way. You can't do that.
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You may want to do that, but don't call it Christianity when you do it. What's the heart of the
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Gospel? The self -glorification of the triune God. That's the heart of the
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Gospel. Now, His love and His mercy is clearly revealed in the self -giving of the
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Son, in the love of the Father, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. All those things are true. But don't become imbalanced and don't let the world define love as some kind of mushy sentimentality.
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It was not mushy sentimentality that sent Christ to the cross. That kind of love is a self -sacrificial love.
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And if I love the God who gave Himself upon the cross of Calvary, then I cannot then say that, well, every other way is just equally good as well.
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If you want to go the way of Buddhism, if you want to go the way of Hinduism, if you want to worship 330 million gods or whatever else, that's not showing love for God, that's not showing love for the
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Gospel, that's not showing love for the lost person either. That is a definition of love that is incoherent, irrational, and certainly not biblical by any stretch of the imagination.
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Please can you explain the Catholic position on the Interfaith Movement, contrasting Vatican I with Vatican II?
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Well, there is clearly, modern Roman Catholicism, especially as seen in the current
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Pope, has been deeply infected by...
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Well, it's very clear that the current Pope is what's called an inclusivist. I haven't defined inclusivism.
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I debated an inclusivist back in 2001 named John Sanders. I'm actually debating him again next week in London on open theism.
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But inclusivism is the idea that you don't have to know who Jesus was to be saved by Jesus.
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Any faith move toward God, in a nebulous form of God, is considered faith in Christ.
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So everyone will be included who has in some way moved toward God in a positive fashion.
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That's a little bit different than a universalist who believes that everyone's going to get saved one way or the other.
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I personally feel that a large portion of the Roman Magisterium, the leadership of the
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Roman Church, bishops, cardinals, so on and so forth, are already universalists. And certainly many of them are inclusivists, as Francis is.
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Is that historic Roman Catholicism? No. Is that the
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Roman Catholicism of Trent, the papal syllabus of errors from the 1850s? Vatican I?
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No. Is that Vatican II? Yeah. Yeah. Are there still old -line
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Roman Catholics who continue to hold to the old theology that was exclusivistic?
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Yeah, there are. Rome's a big tent with a lot of confusion within it.
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But there's no question that there has been a radical change in the perspective of the
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Roman Catholic system over the past 50, 60 years. And that's why you have to talk to a
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Roman Catholic, find out where they're coming from, because you just can't assume anymore. Whether they're the old -line
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Catholic or one of the more modern versions, you sort of have to find out from the individual
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Catholic. Before the Reformation in the 1500s, everyone was
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Catholic. Can we only take what is to be true after the 1500s? Everyone who's Eastern Orthodox is going, no!
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And all the Anabaptists are going, no! So no, not everyone was
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Catholic, but we will continue on anyways. Can we only take what is to be true after the 1500s?
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Can I take what? Can you only take what is to be true after the 1500s? Can you only take what is true after the 1500s?
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No, no. Look, the Reformers themselves did not believe that they were starting something new.
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The Reformers recognized their debt to those who had come in the church before them.
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They did not simply usher everybody into hell. For example, both sides during the Reformation quoted from Augustine all the time.
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And properly so. The Roman Catholics quoted from Augustine in regards to the nature of the church.
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Because the earlier controversy in Augustine's life was called the Donatist Controversy. And Augustine had come up with certain...
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Well, Augustine was really the one who formulated the sacramental system and the concept of what's called ex opera operato sacramentalism during the
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Donatist Controversy. So they could quote him for that. But then, at the end of his life, he was involved in the Pelagian Controversy.
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And so he developed a doctrine of grace, election, predestination, so on and so forth. So the Reformers could quote him in regards to the gospel.
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So the two sides would quote him back and forth against each other. The point was both sides believed that there were
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Christians prior to their days. And they believed that what the Reformers believed what they were doing was simply taking away the accretion of unbiblical traditions and going back to a biblical gospel rather than one that had been changed and altered over the years.
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But they weren't saying that everybody from, you know, right after the time of the apostles until their day were lost and going to hell or something like that.
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And so, no, we're not saying that truth itself originated in 1500 or something like that.
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We just simply celebrate the reality that in the lives of, really, people that started before Luther and Calvin and Zwingli, in the lives of people like Wycliffe and Jan Hus and people like that, that a light dawned after a real period of darkness where scriptural sufficiency had been overturned and tradition had been enshrined.
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And the gospel itself became the central focus of the proclamation of those churches at that time.
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Now, as those churches have lost that central focus, they have become less and less vital and less and less relevant.
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And in many nations where Christianity became cultural, cultural
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Christianity has only one place to go, the graveyard. And that's exactly what we're seeing in nations all around the world.
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The Christian faith is not passed on genetically. It is a matter of the heart.
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You are not born as a Christian. You're born as a rebel sinner against God and you need to be converted to Jesus Christ.
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That's just simply the reality. And when you lose that fact, the church is doomed.
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Can you comment on whether it is appropriate for different faiths to work together on addressing social issues, understanding that there is no theological agreement, of course?
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Well, yeah. I think it opens up opportunities for dialogue.
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I think it opens up opportunities to address particular issues. The only, the only, here's the problem.
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In my experience, even when people start those adventures with the right intentions, to not compromise, to not become wishy -washy, tremendous pressures develop to stop speaking the truth to the other side.
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I was involved in what's called Operation Rescue in the United States back in the late 1980s.
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And what you'd do is you'd have a whole group of people that would show up one day and surround an abortion clinic and close it down.
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And you'd be arrested and dragged away. I was arrested and dragged away. The abortion clinic, we shut down.
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Interestingly enough, the doctor, Dr. Brian Finkel, eventually was arrested and convicted of multiple counts of sexual abuse of his victims, the women that he murdered their children, and is rotting in jail right now and will never get out.
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And I'm very thankful about that because the man was one of the most vile people I've ever met in my entire life. But the point was that I was, and I remain, very opposed to the murder of unborn children.
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We've never lived in a day where we know more about the humanity of the preborn child than we live today. And what we do today in many nations, we're going to have to apologize to the
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Nazis because they didn't even dream of some of the stuff that we do, especially a group called Planned Parenthood in the
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United States. Anyway, what happened was, though, I experienced this.
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Great pressure came upon me to not say anything evangelistically to Roman Catholics because we all had to be together in this thing.
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And I eventually had to stop my association with Operation Rescue because it became very plain to me that I was being put in a position where I could not speak the gospel.
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And for me, if I'm put in a place where I cannot proclaim the gospel to somebody, that's not a place
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I need to be. And so if I can be wide open and cooperate with someone and then turn around and say, now let's talk about the gospel, let's talk about our differences, that's totally different than allowing myself to be put in a position where I can't say those things any longer.
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That, to me, is the dividing line. That, to me, is the dividing line as to where I can and cannot go.
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One more? Last one. Last one. Could you say something about the missional church?
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I'm not sure what that means. I'll be perfectly honest with you. I've heard the term being used, but I've never studied it, don't know almost anything about it, so I can't address it.
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Sorry. I'm one of those apologists that will absolutely admit, please don't ask me questions on Hinduism.
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I have actually listened to three or four graduate classes on Hinduism. I don't get it.
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Have you ever studied a subject that just simply your brain was not designed for this? Most of you are going, math.
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I didn't mean that. I didn't mean that. But, I mean, I've tried, and there are just certain subjects that just like Eastern mysticism and stuff, it just bounces off my brain like my brain is made of Teflon.
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And so I will admit there are certain subjects. I'm not one of those apologists that goes, yes,
01:01:00
I know questions. No, there are certain areas I just haven't studied or can't figure out, and that's one
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I've not studied, so I'm not even going to try because I'll probably end up making a fool of myself. So thank you very, very much for your attention.
01:01:16
You have survived all the way through to the afternoon on a Saturday. That's an amazing thing.
01:01:22
I hope you have been encouraged. I hope at least you have an idea of what some of the issues are.
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We've covered so much ground that I almost feel like I have to apologize to you because some of the issues
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I've had to deal with so quickly that I feel like I could have given better information if I had been able to give you sort of a foundation of things.
01:01:46
But I hope it's been useful to you. It's certainly encouraging to me to come all the way down here literally to the other side of the earth from where I live, and I will close with this.
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If you don't get to travel the way that I get to travel, let me just tell you this so it's an encouragement to you.
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One of the things that has just truly been a blessing to my heart as I started first going over to the
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United Kingdom and then down to Australia and then down here, and now I've spent a lot of time in Kiev, Ukraine, and taught in Zurich last year, and really starting to get around the world.
01:02:26
It looks like I'm going to Hong Kong later this year. There is a tremendous encouragement to realize that as you travel around the world, there is a spirit that binds us together.
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Christ is fulfilling his promise. He's building his church. And as many as we have difficulties and trials and tribulations,
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Christ is building his church. He is going to continue to do that.
01:02:57
We have a unity in him that the world cannot understand. It's a precious thing to me.
01:03:03
It's encouraging to me. If you don't get to travel and see that, then let me just tell you, it is an amazing thing to be on the other side of the planet, and yet we are bound together by that common commitment to Jesus Christ.
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It's a wonderful thing. I hope you're encouraged by it. Thank you very much for having me here. God bless you.