Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012
Vern Peterman · May 27, 2012
Bible Bkgds/Church History, No. 22
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49263161106

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We've been going through a series of things, but I want to take a kind of a surprise break first from our series. And that is this last week, there were several different things just in the last few days that were disclosed in the news. And this one here goes back several decades, but you'll see in a minute why I'm bringing it up. Harold Hohner, he's now home with the Lord, about three years ago, was a professor at Dallas Seminary.

He put together this book, Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ, and he talked about things like the birth of Christ and what are the factors that would lead us to a particular date, etc. And then he also looked into, based on the historical and cultural evidences, what date would we land on for the date of Christ's crucifixion. And he concluded Friday, April 3rd, 33 AD is the most likely date. Well, real interesting, since that time, a couple of different astronomical evidences. Because what are some of the things you can think about that would impact the date of the crucifixion?

Yeah? Yes, so what, you know, what would you have that would make it dark at noon, right? And so some kind of eclipse, right? So that might be one factor. Another thing is, yeah, the earthquake is one we'll bring up because that's what was released this last week.

Another one is how do they date the Passover? The Passover is the day after the first full moon after the spring equinox. That's how it's calculated. So then you look at, all right, which Passovers would have a Thursday Passover celebration Friday would be the next day when Jesus was crucified, and then the next day would be Sabbath.

So you have those kind of questions, and that leads to among the candidate dates, Friday, April 3rd, 33 AD. Now you mentioned earthquake, and that was what was released this last week, just a couple days ago. It was reported in the International Geology Review that evidence of the earthquake sets the date of Christ's crucifixion at Friday, April 3rd, 33 AD. So very interestingly, several different lines of evidence now point to that one date as the date of the crucifixion. And what the geologists did is they study the different layers of sediment as they build, and then with an earthquake, a lot of times those layers will get disturbed. And so that's how they arrived at this Friday, April 3rd, 33 AD date.

So it's interesting that several different things are pointing to that as the date of Christ's crucifixion. Something else that came up this last week was just reported. This seal found in Jerusalem contains the name Bethlehem. It has been dated to 2,700 years ago. That's about the time of Isaiah, King Hezekiah. And so is the oldest written evidence of Bethlehem outside the Bible. And that was found in Jerusalem, but refers to Bethlehem. So interesting things developing this week.

We're going to be looking at never talk about religion and politics except in the Bible, where you talk about religion and politics all the way through, right? From front to back, start to finish. This old adage, never talk about religion and politics, has, of course, several different variations on it. The Bible addresses religion and politics, frankly, from the first book to the last.

At the very least, about what most would consider religion and about moral issues and worldviews that stand against some of the political systems and political positions. People who believe in evolution but do not believe that there is a spiritual realm at all, those who hold that view, what do they think about this universe? What do they think that this universe actually had a beginning? Someone will talk about a big bang, but then the next question is how'd that get started, right? Even if you believe in it, which by the way, not all do. But yeah, you still get to the question, how did that get started?

Yeah. Yes, and it's absolutely required, right? Absolutely required. Yes. Yes. Yep, absolutely. So you have, you know, worldview positions. I mean, that's fairly radical. God isn't eternally present in the past, but material is, right? So, as a matter of fact, one person put it this way, do you believe nothing created everything? Oh, okay.

So, many have feelings about religion and politics that are intense so that emotions run high. This is one thing about religion and politics is, boy, you can get some really intense interactions and even whole, you know, wars and whatnot get started. Decisions in these two areas can have consequences that are both on Earth and beyond. And obviously what your worldview is impacts what you think beyond is going to be.

Every perspective in religion and politics is based on presuppositions that are typically not examined. And this is one thing. You ever turn on a radio and here's this talk radio where they're talking politics on the radio? And one of the things that they never do is talk about their presuppositions. They talk about the stuff on the surface. And they argue back and forth and call each other names and get all upset.

But nobody talks about underneath it, what is your worldview? What's your presupposition? Because that's really what's behind it. The reason for my showing a house here, everybody looks at it and they see the picture of the house. But the foundation that supports it is all below the surface and you don't see much of it. And that's pretty much the way it is with people as well. People frankly don't even think about their presuppositions. And it's the presuppositions that are the basis for all the intense arguing back and forth. Most people are not equipped to examine them objectively. What do I really believe? What do I really believe?

In the church history series, we will, that's in the next half of the year, study the history of the relationship between church and government and Christian foundations in the American colonies. We have on the church website, And this is in the Q&A questions and answers elective that we had a couple years back. Lessons four, five, and six address politics, political systems, economic systems, things of that sort, if you're interested in pursuing that. And that has both an MP3 to listen to and handouts that go along with it. So feel free to pursue that if you'd like.

The Bible records statements of history and fact about politics and government, but provides spiritual insights, which, frankly, we live in a world that's increasingly secular, and talking about spiritual things is getting to be a no-no. But the Bible provides spiritual insights to political things, and uniquely so.

The one thing about the Bible is it reveals things we wouldn't know if it wasn't deliberately revealed by God. Would you know, on the basis of just intuition or anything anybody talks about, would you know that you were identified with Christ's death? No. It is not evident, either by logic or by just empirical examination, it is not evident that you were identified with Christ. We know because it's revealed in scripture and no other way. Can you imagine, you know, I know what they need. They need to be identified in Christ's death. What? Nobody would think of that.

The Bible presents the spiritual truth as absolute, which of course that's increasingly something that our world is rejecting. It is based on the character of God and will ultimately allow no other views of either thought or life. The Christian and biblical worldview is exclusive. It's an exclusive worldview.

Politics and government are not seen as the ultimate solution. And this is a big, big difference. A Marxist sees their political slash economic system as, boy, that's the solution. That's what we need. The Bible does not place any answers or solutions in politics. or economics, right?

We have here the four truth questions, which again gets to presuppositions. How do I view the world? The first one is, is there absolute truth? Increasingly, our culture is giving a yes, excuse me, a no answer to that. The Christian view, the biblical view, is that the Bible does present absolute truth. revealed by a God who is the truth, capital T. Excuse me, is that truth singular is the second question. In other words, it's not your truth and my truth and his truth and somebody else's truth. Is that a singular truth? Yes, because what's behind that singular truth is a singularly truthful God.

The third question, has the truth been given? Has it been revealed? And then the fourth one, is the truth knowable? I've come across Christians who say, well, you know, you really can't know. This guy has this idea and that one has that. Who knows? Was it God's intent to reveal truth and to have us really be totally up in the air about what any of it means? Is that what God had in mind?

Let me ask you this question. We said, okay, we're going to have this elective and it's going to be at Holly Hills Bible Church on Sunday morning. It's the 27th and we're going to start at 9 o'clock. We've got a half dozen different ideas what that means. Not so much, right? There is the intent on God's part to reveal truth that is knowable. Absolute, singular, given truth that is knowable.

One of the things they discovered in 1 John 5.13. These things are written that you might know that you're in Him. What does that mean? It's written so that you might know of your identification with Christ, that you've been placed in Him spiritually. And that you know it. Not just, well, I kind of, sort of think I am. Am I? Right? Not that.

Politics in the form of government is supported as a temporary instrument. So does the Bible support the idea that the believers is to be subject to the government? Yes. even though it says it's not the ultimate answer. Ultimately, all such things will be swept aside by the government of all, by God Himself. So what we have here is an interim situation here, even in the United States. It's interim. It's not the permanent solution. Yes? Is that because God has got a corner on top of chaos and war, the spiritual world, cultural governmental system to allow it to progress.

Yeah, and ultimately Ephesians 1.10 says that all things will be summed up in Christ. Right?

So as we look at things now, I mean, we might look, boy, this country's got internal strife. Here's Syria, has internal strife. Libya, you know, went through a civil war, basically. And I understand things still aren't settled, right? So, I mean, we've got all sorts of things happening. We're thinking, what's going to happen with Iran? What's Israel going to do or not do? So there's all these question marks we have about what's happening. You know, and we go to different parts of the world and there's all these, you know, trouble spots. But what's it all headed towards?

It is all headed towards being summed up in Christ. All those human earthly systems will be swept away when Christ comes. Some generalizations about biblical cultures and politics and religion. Every native culture and scripture was non-biblical in its spiritual perspective.

Let's just take an example. Here's the Egyptians, right? 700 different gods. I don't know how you keep track of that many, but that's what they have. It was very complex. You get into the time of the Romans, and the Romans, as long as you said that the Caesar was deity, they didn't care much what else you did. Oh, and also you pay your taxes. And pay your taxes, and pay your taxes, and pay your taxes, right? And anything else you want to put together or believe in, that's fine. They don't care.

But that was essentially an embracing polytheism, which is the next step. All primary native religions in both the Old and New Testament were basically polytheistic. If they believed in one specific god, it was, this is the chief of gods. And it was a little different from one group to the next about who's the chief, who's the head of the gods. But all the primary native religions were, in some degree, polytheistic.

The Bible presents, and it's interesting, the Bible presents theistic agnosticism. We don't know about God. Acts 17, 23, skepticism about the truth. Here's the question from Pilate. What is truth? skepticism about the truth, personal atheism, Psalm 10.4 and a couple other passages there in Psalms, and human philosophy. In Acts 17 we encounter Epicureans, who by the way were not into pleasure, and Stoics, who weren't always Stoic.

At any rate, that's the human presentation. So there's a spectrum presented in scripture in terms of human perspectives. Now we have this diagram here, and think about it, the diagram works this way. The impact of personal, I'll call it spiritual belief, can be diagrammed this way.

In the middle we have no impact on personal life. Do you know anybody who believes in God but it doesn't make any difference in their life? Yeah. Do you believe in God? Oh yeah. What difference does it make in your life? I don't know. So for some people, it makes no difference. Do they believe in a God? Yes. Does it matter? Not really.

Next, where there is an impact on their personal life, but that is all. It impacts me personally. It's a private thing, but that's all. Next one impacts others lives voluntarily. That is, I might go to someone and tell them about the Lord, but they have a choice to make in terms of whether they respond to that and it impacts their life. The fourth position was one that took place sometimes in the Bible and it impacts others lives voluntarily.

That is, where religious belief, spiritual belief is enforced. That's essentially Islam, right? Where spiritual belief is enforced. So there's a spectrum of different beliefs and impacts there, and depending on one's worldview and what's allowed in the culture and in the country, You might have everything from no impact to you will all live out this way or die. We'll get back to that in a little bit. Every culture and scripture had some level of alignment between religion and the chief political leader.

One of the things we find Pharaoh, what was Pharaoh considered in the Egyptian system of religion? He was considered a deity. But we come down to Roman Emperor Augustus, and was he divine? Yes. As a matter of fact, it eventually came about you had to have a certificate saying that you'd go to the temple and do your duty to the divine emperor. They would put divine on the coins.

So, yeah, there was some kind of a connection between this leader and spiritual belief and the political system. Those were all connected in all the main biblical empires. The extent to which that religious political alignment impacted others varied in degree and character from one empire to the next. The Mosaic Law, however, made Israel into a theocracy. When Moses gave the law, did it say you'd better have a king? No. Matter of fact, a king was only added later, basically at the demand of the Israelites.

But there wasn't some big, heavy political system. No system of royalty. And so there was little human political structure instituted in the law itself. Matter of fact, they talk more about the priests and what they do than about any political system.

We've talked about the philosophy of empire regarding religion for each of the main empires and biblical times. And here, for example, Egypt had religion was for the Egyptian people. Slaves allowed their own religion, but most worked for the afterlife of the pharaoh. In other words, in the Egyptian system, the most important aspect of spiritual belief is we're going to make it good for the pharaoh. And the Pharaoh has an afterlife here on this planet and so we're going to make him a nice place to spend his afterlife. And everybody is going to do that. We're all going to work really hard and we're going to capture slaves and make them work really hard so that the Pharaoh has a good afterlife. That was the spiritual belief. You can go through similar kinds of things through each one of the empires in scripture.

In Rome, which is the one impacting the New Testament to the greatest degree, allow existing religions but require worship of the Emperor's deity except for the Jews. The Jews got an exemption from worshiping the Emperor. The Jews got an exemption from military service. Now why would the Jews get an exemption from military service?

Can you imagine what that would be like? It's Friday afternoon, the general says, we're moving. And the Jews say, no way. It's almost Sabbath. Right? So you've got these Jews hanging. No, that's not going to work. Now, it's time to pass out the food. Right? And everybody's happy with it except who? The Jews. Now, is this kosher? Kosher? What? Right? So the Jews, they just say, you're too much trouble.

They just give them an exemption. You know, you don't have to do that. So the Jews were also given an exemption. They didn't have to do the worship of the emperor's deity either. But at any rate, each of the empires had a philosophy regarding religion that they carried out rather consistently. How was Israel to address other religions? The Law of Moses did not provide a lot of direction as to how one should interface with other religions.

And I use the word interface, right? There was basically no allowance for it, right? Israel was not to adopt or adapt. Now what's the difference between adopt or adapt? Adopt means I embrace this other religion, right? Israel is supposed to embrace other religions? No. Are they supposed to tweak the law of Moses so that it matches up with any other religions? No. So not to adopt and not to adapt.

Here are all the references starting from Exodus 12, the time of the Exodus, on into Deuteronomy, right before they're to go into the promised land. All these references telling them don't adopt and don't adapt to these other religions. So there is no interface with them. There's no, hey, let's have an interface meeting or none of that, right?

So the law of Moses does not deal with converting foreigners to Judaism on the basis of believing, but rather on the basis of their outward behavior. Is it possible to convert to Judaism? Can you do that? Yeah, you can. But actually the Jews don't encourage it. they will at least mildly oppose you on it. So it's interesting. Unlike Christianity, which would go out by nature and look for people to become Christians, Judaism is not that way. Converting to Judaism is mildly discouraged. So, a real different character. Yes?

So is that because there was so much emphasis on the genetics? Yeah, if you look at it, the starting point is, you know, what tribe are you with? And, you know, okay, well, I'm not with any tribe. Hmm. So that's a problem. It's the genetics is a part of the difficulty. The other thing is they want to make sure you're real serious about this. And even so, you will not be treated and accepted as a full Jew right away anyway. So it takes time and there's sort of an adaptation process. Yeah? In this day and age, can a convert really be an open house? It is possible.

Again, what you would find is they don't go out and pursue converts and they actually will mildly discourage you from doing so. But you do have a problem, which tribe are you with, you know, was the issue. Now they've lost track of that in great part. But still, you know, you look at it, do you have any Jewish genetics? Well, no, I don't, you know. Yeah. So, but yeah, it's, what's a Jew becomes, if you water down what's a Jew too much, and especially take out the ethnic component, then that's a problem.

It assumes Israel is in the promised land and free of domination. That's the way the law was written. The law refers repeatedly to the land that they're going to and that you don't have anybody else dominating you. That's what the law assumes. And so right now you have a great many Jews outside the land And yes, other people are dominating. Even right now, we've got Iran overtly threatening, as well as other countries overtly threatening Israel as a people. Being a foreigner, excuse me, being a foreigner among the Jews meant either that the Gentile was under profound pressure to conform to the Mosaic law, or the Jews were under pressure to compromise. The law was absolute, right?

So am I going to bend the law to accommodate these Gentiles or am I going to say, look here, you're among us in our land, you're going to do this, that, and thus and so. So that's the way the law is. Somebody's got to compromise. Somebody's got to bend. And the biblical exhortation was it ought not to be the Jew who bends. In Judges, that is the Book of Judges, the judges freeing Israel often destroyed pagan images and altars. And this is to the question, how is Israel to address other religions, right? In 1 Kings 18, Elijah was merciless to the prophets of Baal.

Elijah had set up an arrangement whereby the prophets of Baal got first turn, 450 of them, and he kept taunting them. because they were supposed to have fire come down miraculously upon their sacrifice, and it wasn't happening. You guys aren't loud enough. You guys need to cut yourselves some more. He's not listening. And so Elijah would taunt them, and there would be 450 of them, and they're going nuts trying to make the sacrifice light on fire.

Nothing happens. So the interface with the, it wasn't some sort of a kind accommodating interface with the pagan religions there, with Elijah. In the records of the kings of Israel and Judah, their approval or disapproval was in great part dependent upon their intolerance of the pagan religions. Of all the kings of the northern kingdom, Israel, none good, zip, not a one.

Why? Tom? I guess you can just look at Seacoast, you can just call him one of his mice, he's one of his small negatory big men. What's that? Negatory big men. Oh yeah. Yeah, they had no good kings because they all in varying degrees embraced paganism.

The system of religion at its quote, best, was to have something sort of like what was present in Jerusalem, but it was up on the mountaintop in northern Israel, not in Jerusalem. The prophets who were sent to Israel frequently decried the acceptance of the pagan religious practices among the Jews. So here's Jeremiah, for example, regarding the worship of the Queen of Heaven. And talks, you know, in a couple of different contexts there about the Queen of Heaven and their worship of the Queen of Heaven.

The last Old Testament prophet Malachi denounced the inroads of pagan religion and culture into the culture of the Jews and neglected the law of Moses by Israel, including the priests. He said, you priests are foul. Right? So that's the last Old Testament book, and that's also the last prophet. You guys aren't listening either. So, you know, we're done here with this prophet thing. So that's the end of the Old Testament era. We don't have a prophet again for several centuries.

Who's the next prophet? John the Baptist, right? So how did Jesus address other religions? Well, first of all, we know that Jesus focused upon the Jews. So his interface with others who were not Jews was pretty minimal. However, what he did encounter and what he did address rather severely is people tweaking the law.

We're going to add to it. He says, you guys, Here's the law of Moses, it says tell the truth or else. And you guys come up with a way to swear by this and swear by that and you're exempt from telling the truth. You don't have to hold up to an oath as long as you swore by something that wasn't binding. He told them, this is Matthew chapter five, he told them, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, better than the best, unless it exceeds their righteousness, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. You know, these guys that everybody looks at as the culture heroes, the symbols of righteousness, Jesus says, it better be better than that, or it's not going to cut it.

So he spoke about not some foreign religion in the total sense, but taking the religion that was revealed by God through Moses and distorting it, tweaking it, and adding to it. He presented himself as the Messiah to the Samaritan woman. at the well and the other Samaritans in Sychar who had a religion similar to Israel's but based in Samaria and not Jerusalem.

See the Samaritans had the five books of Moses but they had some of the words changed around so that they could practice their religion there in Samaria. So here is Mount Gerizim and there you see a This is Shechem, which used to be Sychar, and there is the mountain on the left where they had their temple practices. They did it there instead of Jerusalem. And so the Law of Moses that they had was modified to allow that. So how did the Apostles address other religions? The first religion encountered, of course, was Judaism. The Apostles addressed it by meeting right in the Temple porticos, but refusing to be silenced by the Sanhedrin. We won't be quiet, right? We won't be quiet. We will talk about Jesus. Count on it.

So here's Paul the Apostle. to the Gentiles, he encountered a variety of religions. And as a matter of fact, as he'd go into different places, he'd encounter different religions. What did he do with those other religions he encountered? Did he go in and start breaking down the temples?

Is that what he did? Yes? No? Yeah? Very interesting is instead of coming into Ephesus and saying, you know, they've got the temple to Artemis and it's one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and we're just going to take it out. He didn't do that, did he? He came in and what he did is he found connecting points. In general, the apostles used features of the culture, including the religious and philosophical terminology, as a point of common communication with the unsafe.

Here we read in Ephesians 121, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named. Philippians, which is some distance away, across a body of water, For this reason also God highly exalted him, Christ, and bestowed on him the name which is above every name."

What is this deal about names? What they used to do, here is an amulet from New Testament times, what they would do is they'd go into the marketplace and they'd have amulets or documents that would list names and if you named those names you got the powers working in your favor from those names. So they would name, you know, Michael and Gabriel and they came up with other made up angel names. And that's what this is. And so you'd go down there and whenever you wanted to have something happen, you'd name Michael and you'd name Gabriel and Raphael and all the other made up names. And you'd name names in order to get those powers and influences to work with you.

So what did Paul do? He didn't say, hey, that's all a bunch of garbage. What he did is he says, Jesus is the name above every name. What names do you want to put on an amulet? What names do you want to put on your magic documents? Jesus is the name above all those names. Whatever name you got, Jesus is above that. So why not just name his name?

Right? So that's what he did. And you're right. He made a connecting point with the religion and then put Jesus in perspective to those connecting points, rather than going in and just playing demolition with their temples and whatnot. So to get them to understand.

Because imagine all these people, here are people in Ephesus, people in Philippi, they'd go around and look, I gotta get some power and influence in the universe, and the way to do that, I gotta get an amulet or a magic text that lists a bunch of names that I can name. He says, Jesus is the name above all those names. Jesus is the name above all those names that you're scrambling and desperate to get a hold of. Basically, they had certain ones that were higher power than others. Jesus, Paul said, was the name above all those things, no matter what level or rank you give to them.

The encroachments of other religions' philosophies into the churches, however, was met with written and verbal correction, as evidenced by almost all of the Apostles' letters. Some students once were given the assignment, what is the main theme of the New Testament letters? Pardon? The main theme of the New Testament letters, all the students concluded, was correcting error. Correcting error. And so what you find is in a great many of these letters, there is significant, if not the majority of the content, pointed at correcting errors.

What was the error that Paul addressed in Galatians? Yeah, they mixed up law and grace, and he said, this is a big problem, right? Because after he got done saying, hi, my name's Paul, then he came out with this really powerful statement and just blasted them. If anyone comes to you with another gospel other than the one we presented, may they be accursed. Let me say it again, okay? He's intense about it. And so, what you find as you go through the New Testament, it's there in varying degrees, but it is a common thread and a common theme, correcting error. Yes?

So, what you were talking about before, where you talked about names, is that work of the Holy Sisters in the Second Year, St. Christopher, and all these other limitations? Yes, essentially that practice continued on, but when When Constantine came in and said first, 312 AD said first Christianity is an allowable religion, no longer illegal, and then the next year it's the official religion, and then the next step after that, some years later, was it is the only religion allowed. So what they did, because only maybe 10% of the population was actually Christian, what they did was take all the different things that were out there and convert them over into some Christian equivalent. And that's how that came about.

Yeah. Correcting error would be in the category of false. I'm sorry, what? I'm sorry. Correcting error would be the same as false doctrine. Yeah. Correcting error, correcting false doctrine. Yeah. They had a pet word for that process. They said they re-baptized each practice. Yeah. Cardinal Newman was one who studied that, and he said, yeah, they all came from pagan practices. It's just being adopted by the Catholic Church makes them holy. But he still said it picked up a lot of junk. Yeah.

Here Paul spoke to the philosophers in Athens who began by taking note of the existence of the altars of the unknown God. And by the way, altars to the unknown God are spread throughout the Roman Empire. They had various ones like that, saying that the God he was introducing was the unknown God. In other words, rather than going around just trashing the thing, what he was saying is, you know, you've got an altar to an unknown God, let me introduce Him to you. Right? They would have an altar to the unknown God just to cover, you know, any that they might have missed because they don't want to offend any God, right? And Paul's saying, let me tell you who He is. Okay?

I want to introduce you to the unknown God, the one you don't know. So rather than attacking it, he used it as a connecting point. Similar to the name that is above every name. Rather than going after it, he said Christ is above all those names. Right?

So when Paul taught doctrines to Christians, at times he would use words from the pagan religions but would use them differently. Mystery is one of those words that was used in the pagan religious system. A mystery according to the pagan religious system is something that you would maybe even pay a sum of money for to learn this private truth. that nobody else was supposed to know. So it was kept very secret and private and only you and the other person that was shared with, you know, we're the ones that know and nobody else knows, right? Paul turned that around and said, we're going to tell everybody this mystery. So he used the term that was used in the pagan culture, but used it a different way. We're going to tell everyone about this mystery. It's not a secret that you're sworn to keep. but is instead something that is revealed, previously unknown.

So in Colossians 1.26 is where he defines his use of the term, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations but now has been manifested to his saints. God intentionally reveals, whereas many of the pagan gods wanted things kept secret. So here's this word mystery from the word muo, which means to shut the mouth. Let's keep quiet about this, right?

So that is a matter of reversing the pagan use of the term. So use the term, but use it differently. Grace is an example of a term that was used differently. Grace used to mean favor that you did for a friend or relative and you didn't expect anything in return. Grace in biblical terms means it's a favor not just for a friend or a relative but even an enemy and it's so big there's no possibility of returning the favor. So when you see grace used in the New Testament it was a different use than the typical pagan cultural use, right? So, continuing of how the Apostles address other religions, when the Apostle John wrote to the believers in 1 John, he gave them criteria by which to smoke out the false teaching of incipient Gnosticism. So here's 1 John 4, 2 and 3.

By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist of which you have heard that is coming and now is already in the world. Okay, we come back to this. Let's think about this inner circle. No impact on your personal life. Is it possible for Christians to believe in God, even to be a Christian and be saved, and yet have no impact on your personal life? I see some grins.

I think there are some who are not aware of it. What do you mean by that? I think that beginning Christians, when they that they may not know why their maybe conscience is a little bit stronger and why their desire to do good things instead of bad is doing things better. They may not be able to put words to it, I guess what I'm saying. There may be an influence in their lives from the Holy Spirit, but they have otherwise a great deal of ignorance and therefore not able to walk by faith because they don't have truth to walk by. Right? So that's possible.

The difference between the two, in other words, is anointing. Because when you are saved and you receive this anointing, as it says in 1 John, so that you understand spiritual things. For believers, it is a matter of learning, knowing, what the truth is, and thereby walking in faith in the truths that are revealed. Just like we talked about earlier, if it was not revealed, we would not know that we were in Christ and identified with Christ. We wouldn't know. But knowing it, there is then impact on the believer's life only because it's revealed.

How about, is it possible for a Christian to live a Christian life, but they just kind of keep it to themselves? Does that happen? Yeah, it certainly can. You can just, I'm a Christian and I don't want to talk about it. Okay? Impacts others' lives voluntarily. That is, a Christian making an appeal to others regarding the gospel and regarding the content of scripture. That's certainly doable. Now there's the next one, and that is, I put a solid red line, impacts others' lives voluntarily.

Because I'm a Christian, should I go around and tell people, you know, you shouldn't swear in front of me? Or should I even go as far as some Christians have gone and said, we need to take over the government so we can enforce Christian morality on the culture? There are Christians that Hold that position. It's called Reconstructionism.

Yes? Doesn't that have to do with your gifting to a certain extent? Explain that. Well, if you're gifted to evangelize for one, for example, then I think you would have the desire to do that when you felt the But let's ask this question, is evangelism enforcement of Christian belief? So evangelism is not. So ultimately the full biblical position is this one we have here with the red dotted line. This enforced Christianity upon others is basically similar to Islam. That's what Islam does.

You're going to do this and that's the way you're going to do it or you're going to die. One of the things it was in earlier centuries carried out by governments that Christianity was enforced right it's essentially what what the Catholic Church did and and frankly the Calvinists and the Lutherans just continued that idea and just they just had separate groups it's the idea we're going to enforce Christianity and So the Anabaptists, those who didn't believe in infant baptism, and we would fall in that group, the Anabaptists were persecuted during the Reformation. 4,000 to 5,000 Anabaptists were killed by burning, strangling, hanging, different things. 4,000 to 5,000 were killed during that time, and many of them by the Calvinists and the Lutherans, because they wanted to enforce what they believed was Christianity. on others.

Yes. So it's not only Islam that's on it, but you could also say that agnostics fall into that category as well, because you have a world today that's demanding that you can't say God. Yeah. Aggressive secularism, aggressive agnostic or atheist viewpoints is really similar.

We're going to come in, and matter of fact, I've even heard teaching Christianity to kids is child abuse. I mean, they're saying, you teach your kids Christianity, that's child abuse. Yes, that's right. You need to just kind of let them figure stuff out, but teaching them this is the truth and you must go to this or not do that, that's child abuse.

So you can have various kinds of enforced spiritual belief, right? And there were. people who were in some realm of Christendom who enforced spiritual belief through government. It's less common now, but there are Christians who would like to see that in place and think it's your duty as a Christian to go out and make the culture Christian. But you're not suggesting that those who are called to go into government, who are sitting in Congress, who are there because the Lord has put them there, are acting as a wall. But that's different from the mandate coming to you and saying, you've got to get out there, and you've got to vote this way, and you've got to influence the vote, and you've got to get into positions of government, and you've got to take control and enforce Christianity. So having a Christian influence is different from having Christian enforcement. Christians overtaking the government and then enforcing Christianity is not what we're called to do.

Right? Yeah, Dan? Yeah, you gotta be careful with that, because that's, you're almost, not a good analogy, but that would be unions. Because you get into a work situation, That's where you've got some pretty strong unions. And they aren't supposed to tell you what to do either. They're not supposed to influence you. But when you get into those situations, you find out there are people who are supposed to influence before long. Extend that to where they're forcing you to do certain things. You get on this road. Ultimately, let's look at this.

If we go into the New Testament and start looking, let's say, throughout the book of Acts, does Paul go into a city and say, I'm coming here to take over? No. As a matter of fact, he does, I would say, next to nothing to try to influence the political system or take control of it or anything of the sort. What he's interested in is essentially we see what are the connecting points with this culture, including the spiritual connecting points, and how can I then make a connecting point from there to the gospel. That's what he does. And he doesn't come in and say, I'm here to take over the government and I'm here to tear down the altars and the Temple of Artemis. He doesn't do that. and not of himself.

Yeah, that's right. And not as people. When you start doing it for yourself, you're going to get some kind of benefit out of it. Yeah. Then you get on that road, so I was talking about it before, that Paul actually not only didn't get any benefit, but he got the opposite. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Go ahead.

Speaking of Paul, do you think that's because he understood very clearly Here he is in Rome. Here's Paul in Rome. He writes to the church of Philippi. He says, you have a heavenly citizenship. He writes to the church of Ephesus and says, you're seated with Christ in the heavenlies.

Home and where I belong and the one with whom I'm identified, it's not here. It's not here. We've got to close up, and so I'll pray. Lord, we thank you as we come to this. There are some really relevant points here for us to look at. And it's important for us as believers to keep the main thing, the main thing. And that is, in fact, ultimately you're not here to make this some sort of a better place, but you indeed are here to give us a home in a different place that's not here. And it's with you personally. And we just, we thank you for the truth revealed. We thank you for the work that you've accomplished because you love us. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.