(20) Western Religions

All three major world religions claim a descendancy from Abraham. We'll take a look at that here in a second. First of all, what do we mean by religion? When you think of religion, what kind of things come to mind? Worship of something. Okay? It tends to be a worship of something. What else comes to mind when you think of religion? Do something. Worship. Do. Okay. Alright. What else? Personal involvement. Okay. All right. Anything else come to mind when you think of religion, when that word hits your ears? Wow. Oh yeah. Believing. Okay. All right.

Interestingly, that's a fairly, how do I say it? That's actually not a universal thing as we'll see here. Real interesting. I'm glad you brought that up though. because it is something that we become accustomed to, but it isn't necessarily a universal. So that's an important distinction. Thanks for bringing that up. Let's take a look here. We've got this definition in the first section.

It's a personal or institutional set or system of beliefs and practices that is rooted in a view of human life and the physical world and its relationship to the spiritual realm or a denial thereof. What do I mean by that? It's what people practice and believe about themselves and the world around them, okay, that's rooted in the idea that there is a spiritual realm with which we have to deal with, or even a denial of a spiritual realm.

One of the reasons why we would say a denial of a spiritual realm is, can you think of a religion that denies the spiritual realm? Atheism. Yeah, and it's actually a court case just weeks ago determined that it is officially a religion. Because it may seem like it's an absence of, but the reality is it is a system of beliefs about things that are spiritual. And it's an absolute denial of it, but it is a system of beliefs about things that are spiritual. So it's been in a court case officially declared a religion, and that was so that prisoners and folks of that ilk can have their religion, with religious rights. Yeah, Jack? Well, here's what's really odd.

I mean, they basically ate atheos, okay, that means no God, and the word actually shows up in Ephesians 2. without God, Otheos, is in Ephesians 2 and that's verses 11 through 13 in that section. And essentially it denies that there is a God. Typically what goes along with it is that there isn't even a spiritual realm. Most atheists would consider themselves to be also materialists, but there are some who actually believe in a spiritual realm. Yes, Ah, now you've got this no-man's land. Here's what's interesting.

Atheism is more of a system of belief because it makes an absolute statement without total knowledge. Does the atheist know everything? Does the atheist have all knowledge of all the universe at all times? No. So the atheist is making a statement of faith based on a very limited set of facts. Right? So the atheist has immense faith in order to be able to extrapolate and make absolute statements about God's non-existence when all he knows is the time and the space that he's been in.

It's a very religious point of view. Agnosticism, to address the question, stands somewhere in between and is less religious in the sense that it says, I don't know. We made the distinction before. There's two kinds of agnostics. One is the agnostic that says, I don't know, and I'm not sure if you can.

The aggressive agnostic says, because you can't know, which that gets in the direction of atheism because how does he know you can't know? Does he know everything? See, it's the same problem that the atheist has. To make an absolute statement, there is no God, or you cannot know that there is a God, It means that person has absolute and total knowledge of everything. That's pretty tough to do without it being religious. It depends on a great deal of faith. Okay. Now, Western and Eastern religions. There are some basic differences, and the way we'll handle that is we'll go here.

The materialist, and this is where a lot of the atheists would fall, history is meaningless and random or mechanical and meaningless, either way. Mix it up however you want. The universe is a chemical, physical machine. That's the secular atheist, and you would put some agnostics in that realm. They basically, if there's anything else, we don't know. Eastern religion is rooted in reincarnation, so history is cyclical. We'll get into this next week.

In Hindu religion, you have to die and reincarnate 8.4 million times before you become a human being. That's a lot of times. I don't know, and they did it even before calculators, so I have no idea. But that's the number they came up with, 8.4 million reincarnations before you become a human being, and then there's different levels of human beings. And then what you're reincarnated as, and you may go from a human backwards, so it can get complicated.

So, the Eastern view is cyclical. You're going to continue to go back around and around and around and around. In the Western view, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, history is linear. You live once. After that, there is a judgment. Your eternal destiny is determined. In the Western view, history is aimed towards a purpose, whereas in the Eastern view, It's all just kind of meaningless.

I'll talk more about it next week. I had very extended conversations with Dr. Bhanu Dave, who is a professor of religion over in India that came to the United States. And the way he looks at it, in the Eastern view, what we are calling in our life that we see and live now is a dream of God, which will one day be over. Okay?

And so for the Eastern view, it's just a matter of going around and around and around and around in circles until it ends. For the Western view, we're going somewhere. This has some direction. It has a purpose. And you're on here on this planet once. So there's the big distinction between the Eastern and the Western view right there. We'll stop at that. Now, the next thing.

We want to point out, I have the title there, old time religion. And we tend to think of some, you know, sort of a culturally historic Christianity. But I mean to use that in a different sense. In earlier centuries, religion was strongly associated with the leadership of the government. So you think about it, for example, Pharaoh. Okay, he was the political leader, right? He was a military leader, right? He was also a deity and he was, you know, involved with religion. As a matter of fact, all those pyramids and temples and everything else was really all about Pharaoh and Pharaoh's court and household and family and all that.

Slaves, you know, they had the Israeli slaves working making bricks. They had other slaves from other parts of like Nubians from Africa, all kinds of slaves and they really didn't care what happened to those slaves. because it was all about what happened to Pharaoh. The slaves could live, die, they didn't care. And they didn't care if the slaves believed their religion or not. There was no sense of, boy, that slave needs to be saved. Who cares about him? It's make it nice for Pharaoh. The whole country was focused on that.

So the sense we have that there is a separation between government and religion in an official sense, is fairly recent. And the statement in our Constitution, which is really only there by amendment, that allows for freedom of religion, and it doesn't say that there shall be no public expression of religion, contrary to what a lot of people say, but that there should be no establishment of a specific religion. Different thing. That is a recent development. So it's important just when you think of religion, remember that what we have in terms of our freedom of religion, in terms of the government and religion not being aligned, is a recent thing.

It was even recent for the Romans to say, you can go ahead and have whatever religion you want as long as you also kind of tip the hat, give a sort of a cursory worship to the emperor as well. Then you can do whatever you want. That was really liberal by a lot of ancient standards.

All right, now the bottom of page one there, Father Abraham had many sons. I won't sing that song and do the hand motions if you're accustomed to what that means. But here we have these three major world religions or Western religions. They all claim to have some root in Abraham. This is the slide that I showed previously. Some root in Abraham. And so let's take a look at the chart that you have on the lower left-hand side of that page one.

Where's the connection to Abraham for Islam? Ishmael. Where have we heard of that guy? Where have we heard of Ishmael? The son of the handmaiden, Hagar, right? in the book of Genesis. So we get that description. And so there is the connection for Islam. Now, how about the Jews? Where is the connection for the Jews?

Isaac and then Jacob, through that line. And notice that you're right, it's through Isaac, but it's not Esau. So it is through Isaac, it's not Esau, it's Jacob. So there's a particular connection there, and then Jacob's 12 sons are the tribes. And that number 12 gets a little complicated. But the point being, you've got that now.

How about Christians? What's our connection to Abraham? Jesus Christ, and we are... Paul says we're sons of Abraham, Galatians 3, 7. By what? Do we have a genetic connection? If you look at the genealogy, can I trace it back? What's the connection? Spiritual connection. So isn't it interesting, basically the three major Western religions are connected to this guy Abraham. Isn't that amazing? I want to tell you a quick story that you might find interesting. There is a Jewish legend, this is not in the Bible, so don't look for it. There is a Jewish legend that goes like this.

Abraham was raised in Ur of the Chaldees, which is, you know, when the guys went into Kuwait this last time around. One of the first things they did when they crossed the border into Iraq is they went to Ur of the Chaldees, where Abraham was. Anyway, that's where Abraham was raised.

And his father, Terah, according to the Jewish legend, was an idol salesman. And he had an idol shop with all kinds of idols. You could pick whatever ones you want. So one day, Terah, Abraham's father, had to take off, and so he left Abraham in charge. Well, what Abraham did, according to this legend, is he took a hammer and he smashed all the idols except for one. And he took the hammer and put it in the hand of the biggest idol.

Terah came back and, of course, was aghast at this disaster that his shop had turned into because everything was ruined. And he says, what happened? And according to the account, Abraham said, well, this biggest one here smashed all the others, you know? And Terah said, that can't possibly be. And so Abraham says, see, now you yourself have said the idols can't do anything. Anyway, that's the Jewish legend. Lots of fun. Alright, page two. Let's look at, we've got a side-by-side here, which is kind of an interesting thing to take a look at.

If we look at Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, look at their time of founding. We've got Christianity, first century AD, and of course you could very reasonably argue that it was founded much more early than that. Certainly we could go back and say, wait a minute, God promised Abraham the root of it. Yeah, it wasn't their statement in Genesis chapter 3 that it's the seed of the woman, the offspring of the woman, would crush the serpent's head. Certainly, yeah.

But in terms of looking at Christ coming and historically speaking, 1st century AD. Judaism, 5th century, 15th century BC, Now, we could also argue for earlier than that because we could also go back to Abraham, right? But generally taken as the 15th century, why do we pick that 15th century? What happened about that time?

Yeah, Moses. Yeah, you're right. But Moses was the one during the 15th century BC who brought the Jews out of Egypt and was instrumental in giving them the law. 613 laws, 365 of them don't do it. The rest of them do it. So here's Moses, 15th century, and then 7th century AD, Islam. And who's responsible for that? Muhammad, right? So, real interesting, how much later is Islam than, or let's put it personally, How much later is Muhammad than Moses? What's that?

Yeah, if you look at it, here's say 14, 15 centuries, add another six centuries onto that, easily about 2,000 years. Which one is closer to the historical record of Abraham? Judaism, right? So here's 2,000 years later, the Muslims come around and say, we've got the right record. Something doesn't sound right.

Okay, but that's their claim. Founder put here is Jesus Christ for Christianity, Moses for Judaism, and Muhammad for Islam. Saved by faith, and I make that statement with qualification because if we take the broad umbrella of Christianity, I call Christendom, there are those who would add words to that. Okay, but basically the biblical position. What's that? Yeah, the biblical position is by faith alone. This is exactly what Paul spelled out. By faith are you saved, not of works. And then Judaism, is there any question? You are saved by works, according to Judaism.

And how about Islam? Works. Here's the interesting thing, we'll go into this shortly, but it comes up to the question that was brought up earlier, about what is characteristic of religion, belief. What is interesting, if you look very carefully at Judaism, and especially at Islam, there is more of a focus on doing than believing. Now, Paul draws on passages out of the Old Testament in order to demonstrate that salvation is by faith, but the religions themselves have taken that forward both Judaism and Islam, and said, it's doing that matters. The rabbi that I spoke to said, it isn't true unless you do it. How about that? Okay? Very interesting. I was, about every other sentence he said, I was stunned.

Anyway, how about heaven? There is one heaven in Christianity, plus crowns and rewards. In Judaism, it is rather vague, but they actually have three. And it's funny, we've got this TV show that's been on for years that's ending, Seventh Heaven, and it's what, a family of a Christian pastor? Seventh Heaven is an Islamic idea. We're talking about Seventh Heaven, that's the highest heaven in Islam. It has nothing to do with Christianity. So anyway, confused as it is.

Purgatory. No purgatory except in Roman Catholicism. The Protestant groups, and by the way I don't consider myself Protestant, but the Protestant groups don't hold to that and neither do the Orthodox. By that I mean Russian, Greek, you know, Serbian, you know, all those. They don't hold to purgatory either. No. It was something specifically developed in the Roman Catholic Church. It has roots in Egyptian religion. And so it's not a teaching in most of Christendom except for the Roman Catholics. Judaism, no purgatory. And in Islam, yes, their name for it is Barzakh. So yes, you've got purgatory in Islam.

Here's an interesting one. Man's nature in Christianity, sinful until saved, right? Judaism, good and bad. There's good people and there's bad people. Here's really odd. Islam says that man is basically good. Basically good. Isn't that strange? The problem, and Islam will get into this, the problem that Islam says is not that you are sinful. You just have to submit. You are not alienated from God in Islam. You just need to do the right things. However, if you don't do them, you deserve to be dead. Yes? Yes, that's right. It keeps you on the hook, doesn't it? Yeah, the hopes and the works. Yep. In our works. In our works. Yeah. Good point. Messiah. Oh, excuse me. I had one other thing.

Double predestination. Some are chosen for heaven, some for hell. No, except in Calvinism. Some Calvinists hold a double predestination, where God not only chooses some for heaven, but chooses some for hell. I don't think that's biblical, but that's the belief. Judaism says people are not chosen for heaven and hell. There's an exception to that. The Essenes, who were around during the time of Christ and before, believed in double predestination, that some are chosen for hell, some for heaven.

And then in Islam, definitely. Allah chooses. You're going to hell, you're going to heaven, you know. Well, what happens is He's choosing who's going to heaven and who's going to go to hell, and it depends on, you know, how your works turn out. But He knows ahead of time how that's going to turn out. That's their view of it. Great, huh? Okay, a Messiah to come. Christianity says yes, a second coming.

There are exceptions and variations on that. The full Preterists do not believe Christ is coming again. I call it the Thessalonian heresy because it's basically denial of Christ's coming again. And Paul wrote two letters to the Thessalonians to try to correct it. So it's strange to me that they would turn around and start teaching it.

But anyway, by and large, Christianity teaches second coming of Christ. In Judaism, they say, yes, he's coming, but it's the first time. One of the Jewish leaders came over to visit the United States, and a discussion came up, and they said, when the Messiah comes, the first question we're going to ask him is, are you here the first time or the second time? And then in the Islamic religion, Issa is the name for Jesus, and they say, yes, he will come again for 40 days to defeat the Antichrist, to bow to Muhammad, and then die. That's Jesus' second coming.

Basically, Muhammad is the big kahuna in that picture. Now, I need to qualify that a little bit, and we'll clarify it, hopefully we'll have time. I need to qualify it a little bit, and the degree I need to qualify it is the two largest sects of Islam teach that.

The more recent development in Islam is there are sects that have been developed that don't believe that Jesus will come again at all, period. That Muhammad is the last. They are extremely alienated from the others that say, yes, Jesus is coming again, but he's going to bow to Muhammad. So anyway, they kill each other.

All right. And then finally, the scriptures. Sixty-six books of the Old and New Testament, plus the Apocrypha among some, okay? That's basically revered among the Roman Catholic Church and to some extent among the Orthodox. Judaism, they have the Tanakh, which we'll talk about in a little bit, and primarily the Torah and written traditions. And then in Islam, we hear a lot about the Quran, which you'll also see spelled with a Q, Q-U. But there's also the Hadith, and the Hadith is another book that's somehow much lesser known, but just equally of value among those in Islam. So they've each got their sacred text. Something different, you know, we'll have copies of the Bible and things of that sort. For us, we look at it, the meaning is inspired. In Islam, the very pages and words are inspired. So you don't hold it like I just did with your left hand. Left hand is bad. You hold it with your right hand. So, very different thing. What's that? I don't know. Beats me.

But you hold it with your right hand because the left hand is disgracing the book. which is also like, you know, you can imagine these guys in the prisons where we've got some of them, and here's an American soldier who goes and tosses them a Koran. You know, and they'll toss it with their left hand if they're left-handed, you know. The thought is just absolutely disgraceful.

Anyway. All right. Let's take a look at some of the slides here. We look at these views of history. This is the Jewish Tanakh. That's their word for the Old Testament. They have basically the same books, the same content. They divide up some of the chapters and verses a little differently. So if you give a verse reference, it may not be exactly the same. They come up with this, the word Tanakh is actually just an acronym. We've got various acronyms in our culture, like in the federal government, we have the EPA, right? Tanakh is an acronym.

And you have the three major groups, they've divided these into the earlier and later prophets, but you've got the Torah, there's the T, and then the Nebi'im, which is the prophets, and the Ketubim, which is the writings. And so those three groups, they just take the consonants, put them together, and put some A's between them, and it's Tanakh. You'll see it spelled a little variably, but the same idea. Here is the idea, you've got the Jewish Bible, the Torah, the prophets, the Nebi'im, and the Ketubim in the writings.

So that's their Tanakh, or that is their Bible. If they use the word Bible, that's what they mean, the Tanakh. They consider the Torah, all the books are holy, but the Torah is especially of value, and that's really the core, and they'll focus upon that.

My experience talking to this rabbi is that any of the other books they will, in certain circumstances, actually avoid talking about them if they are problematic. But the Torah, you can't avoid. They don't like to read Isaiah or Daniel, because Christians do things with that. But the Torah, you can't step around it.

In addition to that, they have the Mishnah, and the Midrash, and the Talmud, and the Code of Jewish Law, and all that. Here's what the rabbis have said. For example, you may not do work on the Sabbath. Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. So you may not do work on the Sabbath. Now, that's fine. That's what Moses said. Now we have to define what work is. So they define what work is.

And so you can't do this, you can't do that. You're not supposed to push the buttons on the elevator. Yeah, the toilet paper separating the pieces, that's not allowed, not on the Sabbath. So what you have to do is have the pieces pulled apart already in preparation for the Sabbath. Heaven help you if you have some sort of intestinal problem. I don't know. But you get the idea. So what the rest of this oral law does is define what all these things mean. What's a Sabbath day's journey? How far is that? They defined it as from the temple out to the top of the Mount of Olives. So that's the Sabbath day's journey.

Yeah, Randy? Yes, you're correct. Yes. Well, what's interesting is the, this is one of the things the rabbis kick things back and forth and you get them debating. You may have heard Arnold Fruchtenbaum tell this joke. He says that the people were discussing something with quite a bit of heat and passion and finally the rabbi walked in and they had two different positions that the group was orienting towards. And one group says, well, we think it's this, you know, And the rabbi says, that's not the tradition. And then the other group says, we think it's this. And the rabbi says, that's not the tradition either. Then they got into a big uproar. And the rabbi says, that's the tradition.

Yes. Yeah. Right. It's a little bit like our government at this point saying, well, the people can't really take care of their own retirement. They can't really take care of their own health issues. And so we have to tell them how to do it. That's right. In other words, it's a matter of sitting there defining everything. And a lot of, you know, the rabbis defined it this way. So that's the way we do it and all that kind of thing.

Why didn't or don't the Jews accept Jesus as the Messiah? Basically, they were looking for the Messiah that we see as the second coming. So, for example, Isaiah 53, we'll be looking at that in more detail as we get our study of Isaiah. Here it describes Christ on the cross and Christ in his burial and Christ in his resurrection in Isaiah 53.

They look at that as that describes Israel's troubles. But that's only been in the last thousand years. Before that, they saw it as the Messiah. But they changed it because that got them in too much trouble with the Christians. But the idea in great part was they were looking for the Savior Messiah that would get them to have their national sovereignty and would lead the world, and that's the Messiah they're looking for. So you talk to various Jews, and it's interesting, Nancy and I keep finding ourselves telling Jews what they believe. Because we encounter Jews of various kinds and sorts, and a great many of them have no idea what they believe. Yeah. I know, I'm joking. Yeah, what the religion teaches, or even their history. Yeah, things like that. It's fascinating. Many of them don't know it.

The rabbi that I spoke to a couple months back now, he said his job, he says, I'm glad to spend some time to talk with you. You're happy to do that. We're not talking to Gentiles here, we're trying to get the Jews to understand. Because he says, he works over at DU, he says there's about 800 Jews over there. He says most of them don't understand what we're trying to get across. He says that's my target. The vast majority of them have no comprehension of what it means to be a Jew. And that's probably what you've found is the case in many instances. One other thing, Judaism. Let's see if we get there. Next thing. Then there's the math, the dividing and the addition.

Christianity, we've got the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant groups. The Orthodox is 21 different churches, Greek, Russian, Serbian, Antiochian. There's a whole bunch of different Orthodox churches, the Coptic Orthodox, So there's a bunch of Orthodox churches.

They broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, initially started in around the 5th or 6th century, and believe it or not, the division there was arguing over was the Holy Spirit sent by the Father or by the Father and the Son. That was the argument. And they made a decision without asking the people in the Eastern churches, so they got mad and that started the separation. And then the full separation came in 1054, when the Orthodox leadership excommunicated the Catholics, and the Catholics excommunicated the Orthodox, and so then they really got separated.

Okay. Protestant group, I said earlier, I don't consider myself a Protestant. Here's why. Protestantism came because you had guys like Martin Luther who were really Catholic. What their intent was to do was not start anything new. They wanted to reform Catholicism. But because the Roman Catholic Church rejected the Reformation, they ended up by default starting something new.

But people who believe like you and I do, they killed them. Okay? And so they killed thousands of people who say, the Bible is the Word of God, and I don't believe that I, you know, this baptism that I had when I couldn't even say yes or no, or do I believe this, I don't believe that's effective. And so the people would be baptized again. Anabaptists, re-baptizers.

And basically since 413, that was when the Roman Empire made it a capital offense for you to re-baptize or to deny baptism for your kid. Since that time, up until the time of the Reformation, people who didn't hold to infant baptism, and regarded were basically killed. And they were killed by the Catholics and the Protestants during the Reformation. Martin Luther spoke foul language about those who were baptized again, and John Calvin voted repeatedly to have them killed. Those are the Protestants. So anyway, that's why I don't consider myself a Protestant.

All right, Judaism. Orthodox, conservative, and reformed. Up until about the 1600s, all Jews were Orthodox. There wasn't anything else. Then they started coming up with conservative and reformed. The conservative was a group that said, the reform is going too far. Some of the reformed are actually atheists.

And the Judaism is simply a tradition. It's a cultural tradition, not necessarily even a religious belief. The rabbi told me that the conservative Jews in the Denver area, uniquely, are almost as conservative as the Orthodox. But most places around the country says that's not true.

So we have those three main branches. Now, in Islam, I have down here Sunni and Shiite. I need to make a distinction there because in truth, And I'm going to hit this real quick. To become a Muslim, one must simply have to submit to the laws of God as stated in the Koran. This appeals much to a man's intellect and desire to do something for salvation. So notice that. Is there a belief in there? No. Obviously there's some sense of, I believe this in order for you to do it, but they don't ask, do you believe it? Are you doing it? That's the question in Islam. Do you do it?

The Koran says God, who is Allah, is transcendent and unknowable. What did Paul write about Jesus Christ? That I may know Him. How about Allah? Can you know Him? No. Allah is unknowable. There is nothing like unto Him. Holy Other. Allah reveals His will, but not Himself. That's one thing that's different in the Scripture. What Christ has done is revealed Himself. Jesus Christ is the one who is the personal revelation God, right? Not so with Allah. He does not reveal Himself, only His will. Man isn't separated from God as a problem to be resolved.

Your only problem is you're not doing the right things. So do the right things and then the problem is solved. Reconciliation, not the issue. Submission, obedience, you've got to do it. That's what matters. Are you doing it? If you say, I believe in Islam, it doesn't do any bit of good to them. You've got to do it. Are you doing it? No new nature, just better works obedience. You've got to pull it off. That's all that counts.

Notice you've got the dark green and the light green. Well, that's a little hard to read here. Yeah, okay. You have the Sunni, is the light green there? A little bird. The Sunni is the light green. Notice the vast area that that covers. The Shiite is the dark green. And there's a couple things to note that we are currently dealing with right now. Look in Iraq. The dark green is where? In the southern part of Iraq. but not all of it. The rest of it, you got light green.

And they just love each other, right? No. What's interesting is it's not like just two different denominations and they just got different offices and don't talk to each other. I mean, it's just like, you know, you're what? And you're ready to kill each other. And that's part of the problem. They've been having this last week. You know, they've had curfews in order to keep these people from killing each other. Last figure I heard, 140 dead. killing each other. And that's with suppressing it and trying to stop it. So one of the problems in creating a country like Iraq is the British just went in there and drew lines. Says that's Iraq.

What you do, you mix these people that absolutely hate each other. And you know what's the difference between the Sunnis and the Shiites? How'd that get started? Muhammad died in its different parts of his family. That's what it is. That's the difference. You've got an uncle who said this and a cousin who said that.

So there's the division and ever since then they just hate each other's guts. Family feud going on for centuries. Yes, there is doctrinal division, but the doctrinal division was created because of the different parts of the family. Pardon? I've got both of you saying something.

Muhammad died 632 AD. He had extended family members, uncles, cousins, things of that sort, who grouped themselves into two different groups and went different directions. That's the origin of the Sunni and the Shiite. And so then, you notice where most of the rest of the green is?

Iran. So this is another interesting thing you'll have. Iran is now becoming a problem politically for us, and they have a very different background than the rest of the Islamic world. Now, they all hate Israel, they all hate us, but they all hate each other. Now, here's the breakdown, you've got Muhammad, over on this side here you have the Sunnis, and then about the 1700s they had the Wahhabi Reforms, so that's that group below there. Next one over is the Shiites, and notice all the subgroups under the Shiites. Lots of different groups. Sufism is mystical Islam. It's a very mystical, almost like Eastern religions kind of thing. Not that they believe differently, but mysticism is the answer to them. This one here, the Amadis, late 1800s. These are the ones who said Jesus isn't coming back and the other ones go, you know, and so that's one of their big differences. They say, Muhammad is the last prophet. There is no other. Jesus isn't coming back. And so the rest of the Islamic folks get really ticked. So they won't let them pray in their mosques or anything else. Then you've got the Nation of Islam started in the 1930s, which is a black concoction that started out of Detroit and currently has four different sects in the United States, depending on which city you're from, basically. Largest is Louis Farrakhan. It leads the largest group of the four.

You have down here Baha'i. Anybody heard of Baha'i? You run into that? It's basically an Islamic sect. I know our daughter Becky used to babysit for some people that were of Baha'i background. And Freemasonry comes out of this group of the Shiites. So the Masons. Anybody have any Masonic family background? Yeah, Nancy raised her hand. Her dad was in it. My dad's dad was 33rd degree Mason, you know, for whatever that's worth. Lots of, lots of background, but ultimately comes out of the Shiite group. Okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they do. It's, Bob, the one thing you got to look at is it doesn't mean that these groups are all orthodox.

In other words, if you were to take somebody who has one of those, you know, funny red hats, and you take them over and put them in the middle of Iran, I don't think they'd hold up very well. And neither would these guys that call themselves the Nation of Islam had it, Farrakhan and those guys. The bottom line is that you might put them under the umbrella of Islam, but it doesn't mean they get along. And a lot of the folks out of the Masonic background, yes, they'll quote a lot of scripture, And you can find plagiarism of the Bible in the Koran.

Yes? Yeah, and some of them even meet in Christian churches. Yeah, you're correct. You're correct. Okay, you've also got here on this some other miscellaneous ones. Zoroastrianism. There are Zoroastrian groups still in Iran. There is a Zoroastrian church that meets in Los Angeles. Check into that. Neopaganism, earth religions, including Wicca.

Anybody know anybody who's been involved with that or is involved with that? Yeah. Nancy and I went to college with a gal who had been involved with Wicca and had become a Christian. She said, I had to accept the spirit of witchcraft into my heart to become a Wiccan witch.

Animism, voodoo, it's also known as Madun, Sevillois, Santeria and the tribal religions, so there's lots of other western religions there. Rastafarianism. Atheism and humanism are religions as well. Scientology, which is a nice Western concoction. Satanism. By the way, Satanism is not the same as this Wicca and Voodooism. It may have the same source, but they would object to the identification. And then East Egyptian religion is also something that's present.

Nancy and I, ran into a church of ISIS that met in Virginia City, not too far from where we live. Yeah, pretty strange. Now the key is, what do you say to these people? You know, you can get involved going around in circles with people arguing about all sorts of odd things. And really a lot of, some of, you know, you can get in discussions, very heated, detailed discussions about will do no good at all.

Ultimately what they need to come to recognize is that Jesus Christ is God's living word and that the Bible is God's written word. God has revealed himself in those things, in the person of Jesus Christ and in God's word, okay? If we look at what the Scriptures lay out here in Acts 4.12, and there is salvation in no one else. What? Not Muhammad? Not in the works that I do? There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.

So if you look at these passages here, the Gospel is really Basically simple. I would encourage you, if you get in a discussion with somebody that's of these various other backgrounds, you know, there's lots of interesting things to talk about, but what they need to know is pretty basic. And it has to do with what's the gospel? Do they understand it?

One Mohammedan fellow that I spoke to said, you know, that guy who died on the cross, that wasn't Jesus. until he comes to a point of recognizing, first of all, that there's a sin issue. It's not just, you didn't do the right things, you know, just start doing the right things and that'll fix it. But there is a sin issue. There's an alienation between God and man. And the death of Jesus Christ is the only way to deal with that alienation. They have to understand that. And there is no, you know, tap dancing or stepping around it. Okay, now we've covered a lot of ground and talked about millions of people all in less than an hour.

Any questions? Yeah, Art. What is the basis of the temple in the Masonic order? What's the origin of that? Well, it's interesting. They have various connections. They talk about Hiram and they talk about the Temple of Solomon and they go back in, and I think it's a bit of a a cooked up history, but they essentially go back to a lot of ancient traditions, supposedly, and they have rituals, and they have things that you say, and things that you do, and that sort of thing. It's very confused, because it does have Islamic background, it does have some background that appears to be from Judaism, They'll talk about God, although they tend not to get real specific about God's character, which is easier to accommodate with Islam and their Islamic background. That's a quick answer. Obviously, being the Masons, historically, they're interested in making a lot of connection to the building of things and that sort of thing.

Gail? And the reason for that is the way this chart was done is counted under Christianity. And that's one reason we'll continue to look at this, but I prefer to use the term when you're looking at this kind of figure, Christendom, because it is a real confusion. And you bring up a good point that you have things that are grouped under Christianity. And a lot of those people, their number may be on the list, saved.

You know, the gospel that they teach in under that church isn't saved. So that's why. Yeah. Other questions? Sue. Oh, I'm sorry. She said there's no don't have Mormonism listed. And of course, there's a number of different breakdowns. You don't have Christian science listed. You don't have, you know, Seventh-day Adventists. Basically, they put that all under Christianity and this list. This was this was done as sort of a a sociological study and not as a who's saved and who's not kind of thing. Other questions? Puzzlements? Plural bafflings?

Yeah, Randy. if they say that Jesus is a prophet, a prophet must clearly and accurately portray truth. Jesus said he was the only way. So either Jesus is a prophet of God as we believe him, and Muhammad's wrong, or Jesus is wrong because he says he's the only way, and Muhammad's wrong. So logically, Islam, by accepting Christ as a prophet, falsifies himself.

Yeah, here's how they approach that. They say that the authors of the New Testament erred in their record. That's their answer to that. The Koran's right, therefore the New Testament's wrong. They call, by the way, the Jews and the Christians are called the people of the book in the Koran. And so we're called the people of the book and ultimately, you know, the most mild thing that ultimately is to happen with Christians and Jews on earth is that they put us under subjection, have us pay a heavy tax for being so stupid. Or ultimately then, you know, the fundamental Islamic belief is that Christians and Jews should all be killed. Yeah, but that's sort of the way of handling it. They'll see things that are written in there.

Jesus died on the cross? No, it wasn't Him. Jesus said that? No, He didn't say it. The official teaching of the imam in Jerusalem is that the Jews have never had a temple there. That's the official teaching. Wild, huh? Okay, we're done. We're way out of time.

Let's pray. Lord, as we think of these people, we would ask in a couple directions. We pray for wisdom in the times that we might encounter those who are of these other backgrounds or faiths. and for discernment and distinction at those times. And we also would just pray for your conviction of heart, conviction of sin, especially as we see those in Islam who don't even acknowledge sin, and especially not the sin nature. And so we look at that, look at their understanding, and we pray that the eyes of their hearts would be opened. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.