Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012

Today we're going through the topic, History of Doctrines of Salvation, and this might have some surprises for you. One of the things we said there is, as simple as it seems, that the Bible says that only believing in Christ can one be saved, There have been all sorts of miscellaneous teachings and doctrines over the centuries.

Jude, Jesus' half-brother, said contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints, and the reality is all sorts of different faiths got introduced. and fairly early. What we find is a widespread and fairly rapid drifting into teachings originating from the secular culture and human thinking and traditions of what religion ought to be like. The pattern of scripture is that the Apostles taught that salvation is through faith in Christ alone by the grace of God alone.

That's abundantly clear. John 20, 31, these things are written so that you might believe, and that believing you might have life through His name. And it continues on there through the rest of Scripture. It is by grace through faith. And that Scripture is made clear.

Any attempt to add to the simple message of the Gospel was met with corrective teaching. The Apostle Paul, when he encountered in the churches of Galatia the teaching that, boy, you need to do the law in order to really be saved, boy, he countered that quickly and sharply. If there's any other gospel than the one we presented, may that person be condemned. One of the things that happened is baptism got distorted in terms of what it accomplishes.

Water baptism in the New Testament is presented as a picture. It is a symbol, a picture, an illustration of the believer's identification with Christ and his death, burial and resurrection. It pictures physically what has already taken place and is completed spiritually. In practice, water baptism was often done immediately after one became a believer. As a matter of fact, there seems to have been a priority on that point. There is no directive that it must be done immediately after one believes. In practice, that's what we see.

The other practice that Scripture makes clear is what we call the Lord's Table, sometimes called communion. When Christ established the Lord's Table, it was in the context of Israel's observation of the Passover. Here at what's called the Last Supper, Jesus is sitting with the disciples, right? And so far as the disciples know, they're just having a Passover. There were traditionally four cups of wine diluted, and at the third cup is where Christ goes and institutes what we call the Lord's Table. And I imagine the disciples at first were a bit puzzled.

Do this in remembrance of me. And it's one other thing, not only is it looking back, it's looking forward until he comes. Until he comes. So the Lord's Table is a remembrance and it's also an anticipation. It is not in scripture counted as something that accomplishes anything spiritually. But as we're going to see, that became the teaching. One of the other things the scripture makes abundantly clear, Christ was offered as a sacrifice once. Once.

Hebrews multiple times makes that point, and we have the listing here, everything from Hebrews 7.27, Hebrews 9.12, 9.26, 9.28, and it goes on. It is emphatic that it is a one-time offering.

Christ was on the cross and He said, it is finished, right? Tetelestai actually means, it's an accounting term, means it's all paid, and he gave it in the perfect tense, a completed past action with ongoing results in the future. So there is every emphasis upon it being a one-time sacrifice. The Roman Catholic Catechism, and we give the paragraphs here, says it's a continuing sacrifice, completely contrary to Scripture.

Okay, let's look at page 2 there. What ended up happening, now here are the paragraphs here in Roman Catholic Catechism. It represents, excuse me, so the history of the episcopy is what you have there on the first slide on page two. By placing the bishops and priests between God and the believers, that made another human mediator between God and man.

What does scripture say in 1 Timothy 2.5? There is one mediator between God and man. Right? One. And so by having, essentially by about 170 AD, priests replaced pastors. So you ended up having another mediator between God and man. In the church, who are the priests? Every single believer is a priest, right?

That's the teaching from Peter, who was, by the way, not the first Pope. So then we have next there, what are the ideas regarding what Christ did on the cross? And Irenaeus did not present the biblical gospel. Instead, there was this idea that Adam was the first man, he broke the law and lost eternal life for man, and that Christ, the second man, obeyed the law and regained for man what Adam lost.

Is there truth in that? Sort of, but it doesn't go far enough. It doesn't talk about payment for sin and for sins And so in that, it's lacking. Irenaeus' concept of salvation, we have that in the third slide here on page 2, from 140 to 202 AD. He didn't seem to understand that Christ didn't give his life on the cross to simply make us Adam again. Here's a question, and I think it's an important one.

Why are we not just made to be Adam again? What are we being made to be? In Christ, right? And we're being conformed and transformed his image. So we're not going back to being Adam. We're not trying to get back into the garden. God has, in fact, intended and designed that we be made into Christ's image, not Adam's image. See the difference there? Into Christ's image, not Adam's image. So there is not retrogression and going back to Adam and back to the garden. There is progress in being made into Christ's image. And in fact, those processes are intended by God to be happening now.

Being conformed, Romans 8.28.29, and transformed into his image, 2 Corinthians 3.18.

Origen, who overlapped the time of Irenaeus, lived in Alexandria, had the ransom to Satan view of the atonement. Does Satan need to be paid off? Did the cross somehow settle a deal with Satan? No. What's interesting is that the book, and subsequently the movie, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe essentially presents that view in symbolism. But it's not in fact reality. Hebrews chapter 2, around verse 14 and 15, talks about Satan actually being put offline by Christ's death on the cross. So it is not only a mistaken view, it is a false view.

So Origen's idea here had some basis in 1 Corinthians 6.20 and 7.23, but it wasn't to satisfy Satan. Christ's death on the cross was not to make Satan happy, or to satisfy any deal with Satan. Satan lost out at the cross. That's the picture. Stan? So did he believe that Satan was not a created being and that God didn't have sovereignty?

You know, I think the thing is that I'm not so sure that he believed that. However, it's giving too much credit and too much position to Satan. We have as a danger, even as Christians now, we have as a danger that we give Satan too much credit. That we give him too much position.

Even with Job, what did Satan have to do in order to impact Job's life? He could not do anything without God's permission. He couldn't touch Job. So to give Satan some position of, I've got to be paid off, and Christ has to die to pay off Satan, that's out of whack. Satan is already in a subservient position. Satan doesn't get the opportunity to pull things off without God's permission.

Okay, so, page 3, Baptism in the Early Church. This is a strange one. It was about 220 AD, It was about 220 A.D. when there was the earliest references to infant baptism, and that baptism accomplishes something spiritually. It was also, by the time of Augustine, the idea of infant baptism was used as an argument for dealing with original sin and dealing with Pelagius. So here about 220 is the first start of the idea that baptism accomplishes and does something spiritually. That it's not just symbolic. Where did that idea come from? Did it come out of scripture? No, it came out of tradition in men's ideas, not scripture. Okay, take a look at page four there.

Here's something else that's rather strange, and that is that the church had established a three-year process prior to adult being baptized as saved members of the church. Strangely enough, they had rules that they developed completely on their own, that said that you had to be in the church a certain amount of time before you could stay for the sermon. Yeah. Isn't that strange? Really bizarre. But that ultimately you had to be in the church for a while before you got baptized. That was the rules. And then that got entrenched as a tradition.

Then, the Lord's Supper. This is moving on to page five. The Lord's Supper, again, about 220. The idea that the Lord's Supper, the Lord's Table, communion as it's sometimes called, actually accomplishes something. and that you gain merit by taking this in.

That was 220 AD. The Apostle John had been dead about 125 years by this point in time. By 250 AD, each church had a priest and an altar and a sacrifice, all of which the book of Hebrews says have been set aside. A priest, an altar, and a sacrifice. Very interesting. I met some years ago with an Orthodox rabbi and talked to him. Very interesting discussion. But he laughed. He says the interesting thing about what the church did is they set aside all the Jewish rituals and positions and everything and then recreated the whole thing with priests and altars and sacrifices.

So, okay, page six. And this you don't have a slide for, but it's re-instituting or re-presenting what we had presented before, and that is Christianity was declared legal in the Roman Empire in 312, and then the official religion by the next year, 313. So that ended up making a real difference. It was the only legal religion allowed in the western part of the Roman Empire by 324.

There was a fellow by the name of Pelagius. He was a monk who presented the idea that sin does not corrupt man's mind, emotion, and will. That man is spiritually alive as he is born. And so this English monk said that people are not born sinful, but that they become sinful or can become sinful over time. They are born spiritually alive, which of course contradicts both the Old and New Testament. And so Augustine, who argued against him, said that sin corrupts man's mind, emotion, and will, and that man is spiritually dead. The idea of total depravity began to be introduced with Augustine.

There is a problem, however, with how death is presented. Is death a matter of ability and inability, or what is it? Death is separation. That is a huge problem. Because the issue began to be around ability instead of inability, that problem has plagued Christianity up to this day. And Calvinism, which is taught in a number of different churches, has a problem with that teaching to this day. Because it is a mistaken understanding of what death is. Death is not inability. Death is separation from God. That's the teaching of scripture. And we're seeing that as we go through Romans. Yes? What is the word? Plenary means throughout. So all are unable. Throughout and entirely unable.

So we have this chart here comparing Pelagius and Augustine. Pelagius, for example, says at the top, Adam would have died whether he sinned or not, that death was not connected to sin. sin brought death into the world was Augustine's teaching. There is some truth to Augustine's teaching, don't get me wrong, but some of the assumptions, and particularly about death being inability, are not biblical. Not biblical. There is then the chart at the lower left hand corner that compares Augustine and Pelagius. this sin and grace controversy here.

Basically in the church, Pelagius in great part lost out, but what happened is the church ended up significantly compromising on this issue. We have there a slide that says the big shift, so let's go through that. In a process that began when the church was still under Roman persecution, the gospel presented by the church shifted. from simple faith in a saving Christ, Acts 16.31.

Here is the jailer at Philippi, comes to Paul, says, what must I do to be saved? And Paul's answer is, well, you've got to get baptized, you've got to take the Lord's table. Is that what he says? No. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. That one that we've been singing about into the night. from that to a saving church and salvation not as something that's done and accomplished for the one who believes, but rather salvation was presented as something that happens and then you have to keep it up. And it's salvation is through the church instead of through the Savior.

What Scripture presents is that those who are saved, and they are eternally saved, are then, as a work of the Holy Spirit, 1 Corinthians 12.13, placed into the Church. The Church is the body of those saved, not the means of salvation. That's the biblical teaching. From one mediator between God and man, and to the Church as the mediator.

And we've got the priests and ultimately a hierarchy of priests and bishops and archbishops. And then by about 927 AD, the College of Cardinals and then the Pope. So you've got this hierarchy, none of which is biblical. In effect, the priests are not biblical. The bishops are not biblical. The College of Cardinals is not biblical. The Pope is not biblical. Not one position in the hierarchy is biblical. Yes. What did you say was in error under Augustine? Augustine's error was to say that the definition of being spiritually dead is inability. He failed to recognize the definition of being dead is being separated from God.

And that can be true in our position eternally. The unbeliever is eternally separated from God unless he believes. And it can be true even for us as believers, we can walk separate from God. And that is, for us, experiential spiritual death. We can, as believers, be paid the wages of sin.

If you want death, you're going to have to work for it. If you want life, that's free. and priests being mediators between God and man. Don't they, wouldn't you also say that if they pray through Mary or dead saints that they also introduce a mediator? Yes, yeah.

Rather than what scripture presents is that by Christ we have an introduction to the throne of God, Ephesians chapter 2. We have direct access to God the Father. Why do I need to get somebody else in the middle? Why do I need to appeal to somebody else? That's not biblical.

From salvation by faith alone through grace alone, Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, to salvation by faith and earned merit through the church's sacraments. So not only do you have to get initially saved by baptism, But you have to earn merit by continuing to take the re-sacrificed Christ, where scripture says he was sacrificed once for all, repeatedly. From salvation symbolized by baptism in the Lord's table to salvation gained by them. That was the transition. So these are not minimal issues. These are major. It was a huge distortion. OK, let's take a look at page seven.

This is one we've presented previously, but what this shows is over time, starting with the year 600, some of the other things that were introduced over time and what you mentioned here, About 600 AD is prayers directed to Mary, dead saints, and angels. That had already begun, but it was officially instituted by Gregory I here around the year 600. Kissing the Pope's feet began with Pope Constantine, 709 and on down the list. Cardinal Newman wrote that these things were taken, in fact, from pagan practices. but that they were made holy by the churches adopting them. Are you impressed? Not so much. Okay.

1545, it had already been done in practice for centuries, but it was stated officially, tradition claimed equal in authority with the Bible. Council of Trent. What happens if you have a conflict between the Bible and tradition then? I think they go by tradition. Yeah, in other words, if you have a conflict, what this says is tradition trumps. Right? It's the rock, paper, scissors game. And tradition trumps. Yes. So in other words, that's being politically correct. Sort of. Yeah, that'd be one way to put it. Yeah. And as a matter of fact, politically correct is, was in some jurisdictions, yes, politically correct or you're going to die.

They continued, and matter of fact, this stops here at the 1500s, they continued to add more things on into recent times. I remember when I was younger, what language was the Catholic Church ritual carried out in? It was carried out in Latin. And it's only in recent decades that that was changed. And by the way, some Catholics don't like that. So at any rate, the traditions continue to be added and amended on top of what you see listed here.

So this goes from 600 about the time of Gregory I until the time right in the middle of the Reformation in the Council of Trent. What's included in the Apocryphal Books? Is that the lost books or what? The apocryphal books were books that were written from about 200 BC to about 100 AD, and they're the Roman Catholics list of apocryphal books. Interestingly, the Orthodox Church has a different list, but that isn't The other books that were written later, like the Gospel of Thomas, that's not included. A round number rule of thumb that we said earlier was by the year 800, there were about 800 fake New Testament books, or Old Testament books.

Now, what you have on page 8 is some different presentations of what Christ accomplished on the cross. And interestingly, this one by Anselm, about a thousand years after the New Testament was completed, was actually the real gospel. It is, after the New Testament, it is the first written statement of the true gospel that Christ died in our place. So a thousand years passed before we have any, at least written, record that Christ died in our place. But, that being the case, people still continued to present other ideas about what Christ did on the cross. Peter Abelard, about the same time, presented the idea that Christ's death on the cross was morally encouraging. Are you encouraged? Okay. That has been taken up by liberal and humanistic religious groups. Morally encouraging.

Peter Lombard, again around roughly the same time, had the seven sacraments as a means of grace. And so the cross was associated with these things. The seven sacraments are the ones that the church ended up adopting. Actually, there are several other presentations, other lists, some of which were longer. And this one says baptism and then confirmation and then taking the Eucharist, penance, unction orders, and matrimony. Those are all the seven sacraments.

The history of the doctrine of the Lord's Supper. There we go. History of the doctrine of the Lord's Supper. had undergone some evolution. And one of the things we said is around the year 220 was when the Lord's Supper was looked upon as effective. By around 1100, a sacrifice that is sacrificial, praise, and meritorious. Taking the Lord's Supper gains merit.

Now, here comes the fun part. This chart. Here's the Roman Catholic plan of salvation presented in flowchart format. You're going to love it. The top part of the chart is spiritually alive. The bottom part of the chart is spiritually dead. So how do you get from being spiritually dead to being spiritually alive? Now, you're presenting the biblical position. I'm talking about the chart.

Yeah, what's the first thing that happens? The starting point is baptism. That's how you get baptized. As an infant, you get baptized from being spiritually dead and then made spiritually alive by that baptism. as preferably an infant, but could be done at any age and stage. And then you have the First Confession and First Communion, and that starts to accumulate merit. And then you start seeing this part of the chart, which we have, look here, this part of the chart up in the upper left-hand corner, that's the circle that Catholics are supposed to be in, in order to continue to accumulate merit.

The more merit that you accumulate, the less time you will spend in purgatory. Some, like Mother Teresa, have an excess of merit and don't need to spend time in purgatory. An excess of merit. Then, if a person sins, according to this system, If a person sins, the question is, is it a venial sin, a sin that does not lose your salvation, which needs to be dealt with by confession and regaining merit? Or is it a mortal sin where you become spiritually dead again, and then have to be resaved and accumulate merit again? So that's the system, in summary. What basis is there for this in scripture? It's not. It's from tradition. It's from tradition. And it's looked upon as the church, as the saving church, rather than Christ as the saving savior.

Who did the categorization? of the menial sins and the minor sins. I was always curious about that. Essentially what happened is over time, we have that chart of here's the different things and over time, traditions put those in there and at times there were variations on those and then the church ended up adopting and settling on this is the one that we list this way or that way. One of the things you'll see on that chart is even the idea of confessing, you know, confessing to the priest and all that.

That was something that wasn't there originally, but was centuries later added in and adopted by the church. So what's mortal and what's venial? It's tradition. And it was something that was developed over centuries of time. Okay, so that's page 9, page 10.

So during the Reformation, the cry was salvation by faith alone through grace alone. The Reformers at least had that right, even if they retained much of the rest of what was passed along to them. This is an important point. With the Reformation, it isn't like they corrected everything. What they did was whatever they saw that was correct, they embraced. But whatever they didn't see, they continued to retain much of the Catholic system. The Catholics had Revelation as allegorical, instead of seeing it literally. And the Reformers, in great part, just simply embraced the Catholic interpretation of the Book of Revelation.

The Roman Catholic Church said that when you take that wafer, that becomes the body of Christ. Whereas the Lutheran said, it doesn't become the body of Christ, but Christ is spiritually present in that wafer. Still not quite biblical yet, is it? So a distinction there. Rather than saying, do this in remembrance of me. It is a remembrance, a picture, an illustration, not something that is spiritually effective on its own, not something even in which Christ is present in the wafer. Where is Christ present right now? In us. You in Christ and Christ in you. That's the biblical teaching. Christ is not present in the wafer and I don't take in Christ when I eat the cracker.

The Reformers often retain many of the practices of the Roman Catholic Church and some of the teachings as well, even if they change the meaning of many of those practices. An exception to the above were the Anabaptists. They said, wait a minute, the Bible doesn't say that I get saved by baptism. So what you find is the Lutheran Church, Reformed Church, Presbyterian Church retain the infant baptism practice in great part. Whereas the Anabaptists said, nope. If I was baptized as an infant, I set that aside because it's adult baptism or at least the baptism of a believer that is recognized.

And one of the points we make here is that the Anabaptists and the Baptists are actually two separate lines. They're not the same group. The Anabaptists were a group that actually had been started before, but they were never allowed to form a group, per se, because the Roman Catholic Church exterminated them. But during the Reformation period, they broke off and were their own group.

And the Baptists, and I realize the term can be confusing, the Baptists were actually a separate development. both of them recognizing, wait a minute, baptism is for the believer. Baptism is for the believer. Now, what I have here is a senseless Protestant doctrinal divide.

There was Calvinism, represented by the tulip, and the T in tulip is total depravity, which is looked upon as inability, taken from Augustine. And then the Arminian makes man's free will primary. Calvinism looks at God's sovereignty as primary. Arminianism looks at man's free will as primary.

It allows for loss of salvation. The scripture does not teach. This was confronted in the Council of Dortmund, the Netherlands, and at that council ended up deciding in favor of the Calvinists. We would say both of those are wrong. Scripture is very clear that salvation is forever.

We have here some of the basic errors in this controversy. Not seeing spiritual death as separation, that was an error in the Calvinist assumptions. One, not understanding the identification truths. Not understanding the identification truths. The identification truths stand against both Calvinism and Arminianism. Let me explain briefly.

The Calvinist says that death is inability. But death is not inability, it's what? Separation. The Calvinist says that after Since you've been elected and chosen by God, and you were dead, so unable, in order to be able to believe, you are then regenerated. In the identification truths, what's the first thing that happens to you? You get crucified, not regenerated.

Regenerated doesn't happen until the third thing. Right? But they're all at the same time, right? Well, essentially it's a sequence, right? Because you were first identified with him in his death, and then his burial, and then his resurrection. So the sequence matters. The sequence matters. But in Calvinism, they got the sequence wrong. The first thing that happens is not that you get regenerated, but that you're crucified. In Arminianism, you have the potential to lose your salvation. Where is it in scripture that you get uncrucified with Christ? Where is it that you get unidentified in His resurrection? Where is it that you're unseated with Christ?

It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. So salvation, can one lose it by willful intent or negligence? We brought up the identification truths at one point. There are those groups that hold that once one is saved, one can be lost. One cannot be lost. And we would say John 10.28 is not the only passage by any means, but a principal passage that says that you cannot lose your salvation of your own doing.

John 10.28, Jesus says, and it's often translated, they shall never perish. That is middle voice, they shall never perish of their own doing. And secondly, that never perish is ume. There is not the slightest chance that they will ever perish of their own doing.

With that exception of their own doing, what's the next step? The next step, they can't perish of their own doing, and Jesus says, and no one can take them out of my hand, and my Father who gave them to me, no one can take them out of his hand either. So I can't lose my salvation of my own doing, and nobody else can do it either. There's no way. It is not a saving church, it is a saving Savior.

Yes. You said it was sometimes interpreted in a middle voice? It is a middle voice. That's the nature of the grammar. It's middle voice. It is, I cannot lose my salvation. There's not the slightest chance I can lose my salvation of my own doing. It is not even remotely possible that I can lose my salvation of my own doing. And no one outside of me can do it either, can take me out of his hand. or out of the Father's hand. We're in His grip. We're in His grip. I can't blow it, which is really good. Because if it was up to me, I would. I could blow it. Cult groups typically hold the loss of salvation since salvation is typically by works. Why would cult groups hold the loss of salvation?

Very good. They want control. And so what do they do? Loss of salvation is important to the cult groups because it's important that they threaten people with loss of salvation in order to maintain control. You've got to stay in our system and go door to door and go two at a time and hand out our literature or else you're going to lose it. You've got to keep it up. And that's how they maintain control.

And basically all cult groups, as a good and general statement, all cult groups teach loss of salvation in order to maintain control. In addition, denominations which hold the loss of salvation include the Methodist, Nazarene, which is a break off from the Methodist, Pentecostal and Holiness churches, and some churches ascending from the Anabaptists and some Baptist churches.

I've never heard that. It's a Methodist church for 20 years. Yeah, yeah. I know when I was in high school I went to a Methodist church, but it is a traditional statement, and you'll find also certain exceptions. individually, you know, individual churches. But it is traditionally, that's a teaching from them. Because the Methodist Church broke off from which group? The Anglican, which is a break off from the Catholic Church, which teaches loss and salvation.

Yes. The reality is that there are a great many, well, well over a hundred different Methodist and Wesleyan groups. And individually you'll find all sorts of variations and exceptions. So when I make that statement, it's historically realizing that individually you might find exceptions.

And then the teaching of salvation by identification. the teachings of John Darby, the identification of the believer with Christ as a means of salvation was introduced, impacting the understanding of salvation and of spiritual growth. So we'll get into that, the history of spiritual growth teachings, next week. Each of the individual passages had been taught earlier. The significance of these passages as a body of truth had been overlooked in prior centuries. When we say salvation by identification, I had at one point in time somebody say, wait a minute, that's wrong.

But, I take them back to Ephesians chapter 2, and it's right in the middle of that passage where it's talking about identification that Paul says, for by grace are you saved. For by grace are you saved. Which he repeats twice. And by the way, saved is in the perfect tense. A completed past action with ongoing results into the future, implying permanence.

Thoughts, questions, comments, inspirations, exasperations? Yeah? So, taking the third item up there, somebody's functioning with the conviction that if they mess up in their lives somehow, then they're going to lose their salvation as a believer. Yes.

One of the things that is a distinction that we try to emphasize here is position and condition. And failing to recognize position and condition, that is easily a place where people will slip into loss of salvation, rather than recognizing, I as a believer, who am eternally saved, can be in a place of being out of fellowship with the Lord. And that's one of the things we're seeing here in this passage we've been going through in Romans. It is possible for me as a Christian to be used as a military asset by the sin nature.

James 4.4, I can be an enemy of God as a believer. Positionally, I'm still saved. I'm going to walk through heaven's gate. But in my daily condition, I can be in a sad state of being out of fellowship with the Lord, and being used as an instrument of the sin nature, and actually an enemy of God, even though saved.

So it's the difference between position and condition that is not understood among a great many in Christendom. I think it's not that you can be an enemy, it's that you can act as an enemy. Yes, yes, that's a good way to put it. It is the action and the condition is opposed to God, even though a person is in Christ and Christ is in them. Yeah, that's a good distinction, thank you. Yeah, Stan?

Well, and also what I've seen in a few people that I know that are in cults, they seldom come out once they go in. And that's because their focus is not on Christ, but it's on the organization and the, well, it's not a church, but the cult itself. And I mean, they seem to It's almost like the Roman Catholics that I've seen, that if you leave, you're going to lose your salvation. And what they miss is that your salvation is in Christ and not in the organization. Ultimately, this idea that the Catholic Church ended up instituting where the Church is the means of salvation. is carried on by various cult groups where, you know, boy, we've got the system and we've got the right leaders or, you know, something of that sort. And it ends up being a means of control and rather than focusing on Christ, well, they'll talk about Christ, but rather than focusing upon Christ, there's some other focus that really is, you know, front and center. And that's one thing, here we are, we teach grace, we have no means of control. We don't have a means of controlling people or threatening people.

So in a sense, Islam, which is mediated by the, what do you call them, the mullahs or whatever they are. Yeah, imams and what not. So in other words, what you're saying, in a lot of what we said today, that's actually being practiced and carried out in that particular, you'd have to call it a cult. Because they have a false prophet according to what they believe. Sure. They're certainly not a Christian cult. No. But it has the elements of control and threat, right?

So it operates under a similar system. Whereas in Christianity we say belief is the issue, in Islam works are the issue. It doesn't matter what you believe, it's what you do. And that's what counts in Islam. And so it has the elements of a cult in that it is a matter of control of people. And your salvation, if you will, is not by belief, but by what you do.

Plus all the intermediaries that they have. You have people who dictate things. in Islam, which is similar to what even the so-called Christian cults will do. People dictating things. So if you extrapolate all this to the book of Revelations, then the one world religion almost has to have a mediator who divvies out all these different proper ways to believe in sacraments and all these other things, right?

Right. So is that going to be the Antichrist that's going to be doing that? Well, you've got a satanic trio. You've got the Antichrist and you've got the false prophet. So you end up having a wicked system that tends toward trying to replace Christ. being a substitute for Christ or the anti. See, anti doesn't necessarily mean just against. It can mean in place of. In place of.

Other comments, questions? Yes? No? Okay. Let's pray. Lord, as we look at these things, we thank you that you have made it clear what Salvation is. The person who believes in Christ, that Christ died for our sins, was buried and rose again, that Christ the Son of God did these things, that person is safe. It's that simple. And it is entirely by your doing, and those who believe that are by your doing again placed into the Church, the Body of Christ. And we thank you for the clear presentation of the Gospel and of the truth. And we pray that our understanding would be just as clear as that. And we pray also that we would be drawn to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.