False Paths to Eternity | Dr. John Ewart

Hey everybody, this is Pastor John Ewart from Inglewood

Baptist Church in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina.

Thank you so much for tuning into our podcast.

You're going to hear from God today as we share from his word

about important issues facing your life that can guide you

according to the Bible. All right, well, thank you so

much for joining me here. And for those who are listening

online, thank you for joining this session that we're in.

I hope that you'll go back and listen to the last session of

this series. If you missed it, as we talked

about the eternality of God, we will dive into heaven starting

in the next session very specifically.

But I did feel like we needed to spend one more session and kind

of introductory work to talk about some of the alternatives

to what we're going to teach over the next several sessions

as we talk about heaven and hell and the hereafter.

There are a lot of, lot of views out there.

Now for some, this is this is a review.

Maybe I mentioned some of these things briefly in our evangelism

series and also our theology series and in the previous year,

if you go back and listen to all those, but we're going to dive

much more deeply into several of these in this session.

So thanks for joining, joining us for this.

So be a lot of scripture too. So, so get your Bibles ready or

or get your get your app ready. Because in our world today,

there are many, many perceived paths to life, and that includes

eternal life that we live in a very pluralistic, and we'll talk

more about that in a moment, very pluralistic society.

And some of these, some of these options, these false options

have existed for centuries. Some of them are as old as many

parts of Scripture. And so from the very beginning,

there were heretical and false teachings that plagued the

church. In fact, much of the New

Testament is actually written in a response to that false

teaching, especially when you think about the writings of

John, for example. And so others are being created

day by day. There'll be a new one tomorrow,

there'll be a new one the next day, there'll be a new one after

that. And so we need to kind of

categorize some of these things and, and put our minds in the

right spot as we move forward. Because once we move forward

from this session, I'm going to assume we believe the Bible.

I'm going to assume that what the Bible says is our authority

and that we're going to guide the rest of our conversation

based upon that. But it felt like we needed to

touch base on this because Satan does use these things.

He uses the opposition to God's truth.

He uses the twisting of God's truth, the distortion of that

truth, and the distortion of God's word to tempt many to

believe in a whole variety of unbiblical teachings.

He did that in Eden and he also tried to do it with Jesus in the

wilderness. Is that really what God said?

You know, there's a whole lot of that in Satan's lair.

Is that really what God said? Didn't God really say this?

And so some of these twists are are Christian like, while others

are very, very distant, distant from any Christianity connection

whatsoever. And we'll talk about both of

those kinds of categories. But just to remind everybody, if

you, especially if you're a guest, but also to remind us

that here at Inglewood, we we adopt and we believe is our

statement of faith, what we call the Baptist faith in message

2000. This is a summary.

It's not it's it's it's not necessarily dictatorial, but

it's a summary of what Southern Baptists believe.

And it actually started years ago.

This is a few versions later, but it started years ago when

the press could not understand what Baptist believed.

And they they were thinking a lot of the Catholic Church or

hierarchical type denominations and you have this conglomeration

of independent churches. What do you people believe?

And so they needed to write some summary documents to help

explain to the outside world. This is what most Baptists

believe. That's how the Baptist faith the

message started. Now, this is a, an official

adoption that we we adhere to and it says we affirm the Holy

Bible as the inspired and infallible inerrant word of God

and as the only basis for our beliefs, which is represented by

the 66 canonical books of the Old and New Testament.

In other words, we believe in the Bible.

We believe the Bible is perfect and we believe that it's

actually God's word. It doesn't just contain God's

word, it is God's word. That's a view that I've

mentioned to you before twice called human constructivism to

where people believe that men wrote the Bible, that God

inspired them, that men wrote and and men wrote in their own

way. And so the Bible's full of

errors and the Bible contains the word of God, but it is not

the word of God. We believe in full inspiration

to where the Bible is the word of God perfectly inherently.

So we also believe in what we would call absolute sufficiency.

That's a, that's a doctrinal term.

Don't worry, we're not going to be doctrinal all night.

But the absolute sufficiency basically means that everything

we need to know, we get to know that God has revealed to us what

we must know and what we need to know in order to live for him,

to know him and to live for him, to live the Christian life.

The Bible is sufficient as a guide for life and a guide for

our knowledge of God. That doesn't mean we probably

know every single thing about God like we talked about last

time, but we'll learn more about him as we walk with him.

And then later on in eternity, we'll learn a whole lot more.

So our true path to eternity needs to be found in the

authority of the Word of God, which is where we'll be from now

on in the sessions to come. But this world is fragile.

That's a nice word. This world is fragile and this

world is fleeting. This world is flaky.

See, if I can think of other words, this world is wishy

washy. This world believes one thing

one day and another thing the next.

Martin Luther described the world as a drunk man on a on a

donkey. You know, he totters to one side

and when you straighten him up, he just falls over on the other.

And so the world is constantly trying to figure this all out.

You need to be here Sunday morning in the sermon series

that I'm preaching when this is being recorded.

I'm in the book of Romans. I'm going to be in Romans

Romans 1 · chapter mention

chapter 1. We're going to be talking about

not only God's wrath, but also how man looks at the creation

instead of the creator and how he's, he's all over the place

because of that. And so we need to, we need to

recognize, we need stability. We need moorings, we need

something to hang on to. So the Word of God gives us that

because the Word of God is not fragile.

And so to fully understand the biblical truth about heaven,

hell, and hereafter, we do really need to maybe clear the

path a little bit. This is not what we're talking

about. This is not what we're talking

about. This is not what we're talking

about, which is what we'll do here in a moment.

So let's let's take a look at some of these now.

Again, this may be a bit of a review for some of you, and some

of you would already know all of these.

You may not know every one of these, you'll know many of

these, but but we're going to, we're going to dissect them a

little bit. So maybe it'll be a little

deeper than what you've normally taken a look at, because false

teachings about what takes place after death are really quite

old. And whenever humanity is faced

with this question, this big time question of truth and of

life and death, rest assured, somebody's going to come up with

a false answer. It's inevitable that somebody's

going to come up with their own idea of what of what to believe.

We live in a world of my truth versus your truth.

And people live off of that stuff.

So let's just talk through these.

There's probably about 11 of them.

And so the first one, and again, we've mentioned some of these

before, and some of these will be quicker and easier than

others. Some of these we're going to,

you know, rest in pretty hard for a while.

And so the first one is just the false path of atheism, because

we might as well start where there is no God and there is no

eternity. And so this is not only a false

path to eternity, it's a no path to eternity.

There is no such thing. When you die, you cease.

When you die, you're simply food for the worms.

And so every bit of life is the life you live here biologically

on this planet. And when it's over, you're over,

and there is no more. I do want to always encourage

you because this statistic holds true for decades.

Frankly, the Pew Research Group, which is a very, very stable,

very trustworthy research group, will share with us that only 5%

of US adults identify as atheists.

And many people will say, well, I know more than that.

I'm like, well, maybe the closer you are to a college campus, the

higher that percentage gets, unfortunately.

But the percentage has almost never gone above 5% of the total

population. And so they get a lot of press,

they get a lot of attention there, sometimes get a lot of

noise. But atheists are really not very

popular. And atheism in the United States

of America has never been very popular, frankly.

But I this next part is what I thought was interesting because

it's not necessarily how many are in the Midwest or in the

Northeast, but I wanted you to see where the highest percentage

of atheist lived. They're right here.

And so the there is a myth, and I'm going to take a few minutes

on this myth and blow it out of the water.

People still use the term the Bible Belt.

They use it in vernacular. They also use it in news.

And that's a real misnomer. If you think the South is the

Bible Belt, you need to go to Atlanta.

You need to go to some big urban areas, and you'll find that that

the belief systems in the world views of these southern States

and these southern cities are not biblically oriented at all.

The only thing Bible Beltish about the southeastern part of

the United States is the number of church buildings per capita,

not necessarily the number of Christians, not necessarily the

number of worldview people holders.

It's the number of church buildings.

And so, but it's still used, it's still thought that way.

People think everybody here goes to church and everybody else

goes to church. And I've thought, how many times

do I get to tell you over 70% of the people within 10 miles of

where you are right now don't go to church?

And that holds true across most of the state of North Carolina.

I've seen 7172, et cetera. It's pretty common in the state

of North Carolina. And so the the, the Bible Belt

has a lot of empty church buildings.

Studies have been done on what do you do with an empty church

building. The number one use is a bar and

a restaurant and so many churches.

In fact, this week there will be somewhere between 72 and 100

churches shutting their doors for the final time in the United

States of America right now. And so we have to plant new

churches just to keep up with the closures.

So if you think there's a church on every corner, there might be

a building, there might be a few people in those buildings, but

most of these churches are unhealthy.

Out of 400,000 churches in the United States of America,

360,000 of them would be unhealthy.

And so a healthy church is a rare find.

So if you happen to be in one or you think you're in one, get a

little sticker and put on your car window.

This is Englewood Baptist Church, we're going to restock

some new some new, some new logo wear in the bookstore for you

too, so you can proudly wear it to Lowe's and and Walmart so

that when I'm at the store, I won't just have former members

of Englewood come to me. You can identify yourself as a

proud active member of Englewood or hide one of the two,

whichever you got to do Psalm 141A verse you know, you may not

know it's Psalm 14. One, it says, the full says in

his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt, they do

abominable deeds, There is none who does good.

And so we're going to look at some theological assumptions

that are common throughout these false paths here in a little bit

and talk about that false path. 1.2 I noticed I didn't quite

give it #2 yet is called humanism.

And often times humanism and atheism are lumped together and,

and rightly so, because sometimes it's kind of the same

thing. But in humanism, there is a God,

it's just us. And it's often recognized as

that. In other words, there, there are

actually proactive statements and true humanism that would

talk about the rational scientific ability of man to

accomplish everything he wants to accomplish.

And so it's not necessarily the same as just general atheism

where there's no belief really whatsoever.

And so again, there's no eternity here.

Man is supreme, we, we are the God.

But it is a very right. I'll just read this definition.

A rationalistic outlook or system of thought attaching

prime importance that means #1 importance to human rather than

divine matters. Humanism affirms our ability and

our responsibility to lead ethical lives.

And so, in other words, it's all up to us.

We can achieve whatever we want to achieve.

If man puts his mind to it, he can achieve anything.

And you pay attention to your television set, you pay

attention to TV commercials, whether it's about tennis shoes

or sports or makeup. And you pay attention as to how

much you deserve and how much you ought to get, whatever you

want and how you're really in control of everything.

And, and see what's going on in that message that's out there.

We're in charge and we are capable.

And one of the problems that mankind has is we send the sin

of ability. We believe that we are able in

and of ourselves. When we are not, we are enable

and we were never created to be able.

It wasn't the design of our lives.

We were meant to be depended upon God.

So Deuteronomy 432 says for ask now of the days that are past,

which were before you, since the day that God created man on the

earth and asked from one end of heaven to the other whether such

a great thing as this has ever happened or was ever heard of.

So we have a beginning. We have a Creator, we have a

Lord, we have a God. He's in control and He is

capable, and we need to be dependent upon Him, obviously.

But false, false path #2 is weird.

And it's very, very common. This is an extremely common

belief system in our culture in the United States of America.

Far more common than atheism is agnosticism.

They might not refer to themselves as agnostics.

There are agnostics in churches. There are probably agnostics at

Inglewood. There are maybe agnostics in

this room right now who really don't know for sure and don't

believe we can know for sure. I encounter people all the time

who are either, and we'll get to deism in a minute, who are

deists or agnostics who believe in something, but we're not sure

what it is and I don't think we can really know what it is.

And agnosticism is is who knows. So it's the belief that the

existence of God is unknowable. In other words, we can't know if

he's real or not. It's in another definition is

that human reason is incapable of providing sufficient rational

grounds to justify either the belief that God exists or the

belief that God does not exist. So to know or not to know is

beyond this and it cannot be determined.

And this is a very popular belief system with people.

In my travels I used to meet people, we'd have this

conversation all the time and what would throw them off was me

and my certainty. In fact, that's happened here at

Inglewood with people who have visited who proclaimed the fact

that that, you know, your guy knows and believes what he's

really talking about. The people I know don't.

And, and we have these conversations and the fact that

assurance and certainty are powerful testimonies in a world

that does not know and maybe does not believe they can know.

But the fact that I can say to people that I know beyond any

shadow of a doubt that if I were to drop dead right here, right

now, that I would be immediately with the Lord.

And I know that beyond anything, and I do not fear death is

something that startles people. It rattles people.

Sometimes people who are in this boat, but also people in works

righteousness that we're going to talk about later are in that

same boat to where they can't know for sure or they don't

think they can know for sure or they just don't know for sure.

And so this is a belief system that relies too much.

Now, true agnosticism isn't just the the ignorance, it's just not

whether I can know or not. And I mean that word in the

right use of it. It's the fact that it it it

relies completely on human ability and reason to know it.

It has no room for leaves no room for faith.

And if you're using your facts to prove the existence of God

instead of allowing faith to filter your facts and help you

to believe in God, you're always going to be a you're going to be

down a hard road. And so to think through what

this means. And so Hebrews 11/1 is that

verse that many of you would have memorized that now faith is

the assurance of things, what hoped for in the conviction,

conviction of things not seen. I can't see this.

I can't hold this, I can't dissect this.

And that's enough for some to say, well, then you can't know.

And so we work through the arguments for the ontological

arguments for the existence of God and some of the things that

we've talked about in the past. I'm very likely, I just don't

know when I've been struggling with what's after Romans a lot.

Frankly, for those who would have no idea how any of this

works, I actually do try to plot out the whole year.

It helps our worship team, it helps pastors, it helps

everybody to know here's what's going to be coming up at certain

times of the year. Source preaching is concerned

and Wednesday night and I was I was going to do the epistles of

John at some point. I'm wondering if I don't want to

walk with John through all of his writings.

I would really like to do a gospel with you all.

And so I've wondered about doing the Gospel of John and the

Epistles of John and then the Book of Revelation do everything

that John ever wrote, but that that would take more than a

year. So we're anyway praying about

that. Thank you.

Thank you for the encouragement. Not asking for a vote, but I

appreciate it. If you start putting things on

your cars, that's the Inglewood Baptist Church, you can vote.

So no, I don't know. I don't promise.

I don't promise. I was behind somebody who had

one on their car and I was kind of wishing they didn't.

I won't tell that story because you're probably here.

So first John 5, first John 5 says this, and I just want you

to know the Word. I'll emphasize it every time in

these few verses. I write these things to you who

believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that

you have eternal life. And this is the confidence that

we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His

will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us

and whatever we ask, we know that we have the request that we

have asked of Him. And if you skip to verse 18, we

know that everyone who's been born of God does not keep on

sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil 1

does not touch him. We know that we are from God and

the whole world lies in the power of the evil. 1 and we know

that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so

that we may know him who is true and we are in him who is true in

his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal

life. One of the things you got to

understand is John uses the word know 39 times in first John, the

whole purpose of this book was to fight a false teaching called

Gnosticism where they felt like they had their own secret

knowledge of God. It was a knowledge base, very

Greek oriented type false teaching.

So John is trying to nail down what knowledge really is.

And if you notice in this one verse, I know you don't have it,

but it says we we know that the son of a God has come and I'll

listen to this next phrase and has given us understanding so

that we might know him say we need the Holy Spirit.

We need, we need God to help us to have faith.

We need God to help us to be able to believe our own mind,

our own facts, our own physical evidentiary procedures are not

enough. We need something supernatural,

miraculous to help us to know him.

And so the word for no is gonosco, which literally means

to come to know. But it's not just a head

knowledge, it's experiential. And so the word gonosco and the

root word of that carries a strong sense of experiential

knowledge. Not just some intellectual

understanding, but something that I've learned through

personal experience, something that I learned through personal

relationship. This is an interactive

knowledge. And so this isn't just something

I dream up in my head or that I've read enough facts to prove

to me what this says. This is an experience I'm having

with God who helps me to understand I need the indwelling

Holy Spirit to really help me get all this.

And so it can mean to understand it means you get it.

That's what it means. And the poor agnostic just

doesn't get it. And so we pray for him.

Sort of related, but totally different.

How's that is false path #3 and that's deism.

We don't use that word, but I mentioned this to you that when

we talked about this before, this is also one of the most

prevailing religions of America and deism.

Many of you would think of the Founding Fathers because you

know that some of them were deist or deist deistically

oriented. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas

Jefferson, James Madison were leading deists of their day, for

example. Some would accuse Abraham

Lincoln of being a deist as well.

And so when we, when we look back in history, we think of

that. We don't necessarily use this

word today, but this, this is a very common belief system in our

world today. And this is where there's a God,

but he's distant and he's impersonal.

And so he created everything, but he doesn't have anything to

do with anything. It's the the classic

illustration of the watchmaker or the clockmaker.

He made the watch or the clock wounded up, put it on the shelf.

They'll never look at it. They'll never touch.

It has nothing to do with it again.

So he's very non interactive. And so depending upon where you

fall in deism, and there's a whole continuum of deists, they

have different beliefs about the immortality of the soul and

about eternity. So this is the first group we

see that might believe in eternity.

But again, they're not going to be sure about eternity because

of the distance between them and God.

So they're not agnostic, but they're still not knowing for

sure at all because of their belief system.

So they have no assurance. But Deus would also have trouble

with the gospel most of the time.

Because God would never lower himself to come be a person.

The incarnation would never happen.

God would never lower himself to become man.

God would never submit himself to the cross.

God would never allow himself to be punished.

This is why I argue out loud, even though this would be not

not pleasing to somebody who falls into this religious

system. But Islam has a lot of deist

tendencies to it. A law is a very deistic God.

He is not interactive in the same way Yahweh or Jehovah.

So if you ever hear anybody say, well you know, same path, two

different lights, that's not true at all.

A law and Yahweh are not anywhere near the same character

or nature or action or feeling. And so this is a very distant

fatalistic experience at times. So some of the great world

religions hover around this, although they don't, they don't

use this word, but they'll hover around this belief that you

might know about God, but you really don't get to have the

ability to know God himself. You have no personal

relationship with him. You're you're trying to maybe

please him in some distant way, in a works righteousness kind of

way, which we'll talk more about in a minute.

So the Bible obviously portrays a very different relationship of

intimacy that we that God wants us to have.

The reason we created in the 1st place, why we're here, why you

breathe, why you exist is for this Romans 815 is one place we

could look at many, but it says for you did not receive the

spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you've received

the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry ABBA Father, an

intimate term, a family term, a relational term that I can have

with God. Galatians 46 And because your

son's God has sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying

ABBA Father, we need the spirit of the Son in our hearts so that

we can understand him, so we can know him, so that we can believe

in him. False path #4 If you're familiar

one to you, I'm getting into some more unfamiliar in a minute

universalism. Everybody's in the pool,

everybody get on board. But you really got to understand

there's also a continuing universalism.

You have moralistic universalism to where there are limits.

So in other words, the really, really bad people didn't make

it, they just cease to exist. And so there's some line there.

Hitler didn't make it, for example, or somebody like that.

But it's always a relatively A relative line that's totally

subjective of who gets to decide good, who gets to decide bad.

Pure universalism. It's 100% across the board.

And of course, some of this is based on a very poor

understanding of the nature of God, which I'm going to talk

about on Sunday morning. Again, I'm going to talk about,

I mean, this passage starts off with God's wrath and the fact

that people struggle with that, even that concept of a wrathful

God. It's just the Bible.

I'm just preaching through a book.

So it assumes also this right to define things themselves.

But again, most simply just going to preach everybody to

heaven. God's too loving to do anything

else. God's too loving to send anybody

to hell. God's too loving to punish

anybody. We're going to really deal with

that in the book of Romans. And so, so because of this,

there's an emotional affinity to universalism.

If I'm a universalist, I don't have to deal with the weight of

lostness. I don't have to worry about

anybody. I don't have to be evangelistic.

I don't have to be missional, I don't have to worry about

whether somebody's lost or not, whether they heard the gospel or

not. I don't have to worry about any

of that. So it just takes the whole

emotional weight of burden off of me to where I don't have to

can be concerned about my neighbor.

But they also could not or would not teach about the full nature

of God or all the Scripture because the nature of God that

they they're obviously, and we're going to see more of this

later. They're obviously going to cling

to the fact that God is love, which is incredibly true, but

it's actually in that love nature that also makes God holy

and in His Holiness. A holy God, a God is not going

to allow those that he loves to be corrupted and to be

destroyed. And so he steps in against sin

and hates sin. He abhors it is what the Word

will say. We'll see that again when we get

to Romans one later. But anyway, the Bible makes it

very clear, very different truth.

Matthew 7 And not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will

enter the Kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my

Father, who is in heaven on that day.

Many. And notice that word, many, not

just a few, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not

prophesied in your name? Cast out demons in your name, do

mighty works in your name? And then I would declare to

them, I never knew you depart from me, you workers of

lawlessness. And then Revelation 20, if

anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he

was thrown into the lake of fire.

And we're going to come back to those passages.

And when we actually talk about hell and we really look, we're

going to look honestly in future sessions, what does the Bible

really say about heaven and hell?

Not what does Hollywood portray, not where, you know, TV shows

portray. What does the Bible really say

about these things? What really happens the moment

that you die? And what happens between now

and, and the second coming? We're going to talk what about

Old Testament people who died? We're going to talk about all

that stuff in the, in the future sessions.

False path #5 pluralism is this. This is probably the number one

religion of our country. Many roads lead to home.

According to pluralists. Your truth and light are yours

and mine are mine. And you go your way and I'll go

my way. And we're all going to end up

kumbaya. And together around the bonfire

at the end might be a hotter bonfire than some people know.

But here's the thing that these next couple of things you need

to grab a hold of. This also plagues the

evangelical church. I would be shocked if there were

not pluralists who attend Inglewood Baptist Church every

single Sunday when I LED a doctoral program at Southeastern

Seminary. And by the way, Scott Pace was

elected the new president of Southeastern.

Many of you know Doctor Pace, Doctor Aiken also had a major

health scare at his They were honoring him and he actually

passed out and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance.

He's doing fine. Teresa has been talking to

Charlotte, so just pray for Doctor Aiken.

He's doing fine. Dehydrated doesn't.

Anyway, the stinker doesn't eat breakfast.

And I hope, I hope he hears this one day because I've travelled

with him all around the world and the one thing I have to have

a backpack full of her diet Cokes for his breakfast.

And so anyway, well, I'll leave him alone.

He doesn't feel well. Poor little feller.

But when I was the doctoral, when I LED that doctoral program

we used to have, I've said this to some of you before, we would

have our students do theological surveys of their churches.

Most of them are pastors. And we stopped doing it because

it was too depressing. They had universalists, they had

pluralists, they had synchronous, they had all kinds

of people. These were Baptist churches,

traditional Baptist churches, but this is just a testimony to

how little theology is being taught sometimes in our

churches. And so it's also a testimony to

the fact that those of you who listen to this online, there are

a lot of people in this room who want to come and learn.

And I appreciate you all being here.

I do. Midweek has been a phenomenon to

me, and I appreciate you being here.

So this is widely accepted in our culture by people who

identify as Christians. And so it becomes interesting.

It's, it's again, it's an easy way, like, it's like a, or like

universalism. It's an easy way to deal with

the weight of lostness. I don't have to have a burden if

everybody, you know, everybody just kind of believes in

something, we're all going to end up there together.

And so I don't have to worry as much about that faithful

Buddhist. I don't have to worry about that

faithful Muslim. I don't have to worry about that

faithful Hindu because they're faithful, they're going to make

it. And that's what pluralism is

going to teach. Now, various levels, again,

there's a continuum in all these categories.

Some are going to say that only those who are faithful or good

within their faith system make it, while others are more wide

open, even to the point of almost universalism.

They believe in something. And so if you're really good at

worshiping the rock and that's what you worship and you're

really true in your worship of the rock, you're just fine.

Everything will be OK. You'll find your way there and

so this can be this can be related to both universalism and

pluralism. Unfortunately for them, the

Bible does not teach this. The Bible is very exclusive and

it and so John 14 six most of you could say it out loud.

Jesus himself said I am the way the truth and the life and no

one comes to the Father except through me.

He's the only doorway, he says in a sermon on the Mount or at

toward the end, he says in Matthew 7.

He says enter by the narrow gate.

For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to

destruction. And those who enter it by enter

by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the

way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

And I'm going to come to some other verses in this next

section because to be honest with you, false path 5.2 is just

a version of either universalism or pluralism, but it goes by a

different name. It's more specific, and it's far

more dangerous. This is one of the most

dangerous false teachings that is making a push right now in

the Christian Church, not in our culture, but within the

Christian Church. It's called inclusivism.

That sounds like a great word, and many times that is a great

word. We want to be inclusive.

We want people from all backgrounds with the gospel is

inclusive. It's for everybody.

And so we like that word. But inclusivism is actually a

very specific theological viewpoint about salvation that

is simply not biblical yet they're going to use Scripture.

This is very complicated and it's growing rapidly.

Unfortunately, many, there's several folks I know, friends of

mine from Southern Seminary in Kentucky who actually write

books about this against it. It believes in the opportunity.

Here's the nutshell. It believes in the opportunity

to trust in Christ after you die.

And so, so mainly, usually normally most inclusivist would

say it again, it's for the faithful from other religious

perspectives. So you were faithful in whatever

your belief system was. You're going to get to heaven.

And when you get to heaven, there's going to be this great

reveal. And suddenly you're going to be

aware that the reason you were able to have faith in your

Islamic path or your animistic Pagan path is because of what

Jesus did on the cross. So it's all about Jesus.

And you got to watch this tricky language.

So they'll use John 14-6. Jesus is the way, the truth and

the life. And no one can come to the

Father except it's Jesus the whole time.

But it's, you know, in this throne room scene, you're going

to see Jesus or meet Jesus or have this awareness of Jesus and

suddenly it's going to click and you're going to have the

opportunity. All the main whole reason I was

a faithful Buddhist was because of Jesus.

See, And so it's complicated, but it uses common evangelical

language. In Scripture, John 1232, they

would use this verse. And I, when I am lifted up from

the earth, will draw all people to myself.

So everybody who believes Philippians 2 So that at the

name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and

under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ

is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

You're just going to get to do that after you die.

You'll kneel there on the steps. Muhammad will be right there

kneeling next to you. The Buddha will be there

kneeling with you, and everybody will be kneeling before Jesus

because he's the reason that the light exists and it's very many

paths and facets and angles. See first Timothy 24.

God desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge

of the truth. Or even Acts 4, which is a very

specific passage that could be used for exclusivism.

You know, we would use this to say that Jesus is the only way.

Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel,

that by the name of Jesus, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you

crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by him this man is

standing before you. Well, this Jesus is the stone

that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the

cornerstone, and there is salvation and no one else.

For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which

we must be saved. You just get to do it after you

die. Now most inclusive, this would

say you had to be a person of faith before you die, not

Christian faith. That didn't matter.

Again, you could be you could be a Wiccan and a really good

Wiccan, but you believe in your Wiccan.

You're Wicca to the point of you know that light that you had all

comes from him. And when you get there, you see

him in this grand display and you recognize and you're

convicted. The problem with this is the

Bible doesn't teach this. So the Bible teaches clearly

that we must be saved before we die, while we still have the

conscious ability to believe in Jesus Christ while we're still

here and accept his free gift of grace.

Salvation has to happen this side of death.

The shortest, clearest verse I could think about was Hebrews

927. And just as it appointed for man

to die once, and after that comes judgement, we have to

believe or think about things like this.

Second Corinthians 510 For we must all appear before the

judgement seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what

is due for what He has done in the body, whether good or evil.

In other words, while you were here physically here, part of

your judgement is going to come from that or Revelation 20

again. Then I saw a great white throne,

and him who seated on it, from his presence earth and sky fled

away, and no place was found for them.

And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the

throne, and the books were opened.

Then another book was opened, which is the Book of life, And

the dead were judged by what was written in the books according

to what they had done, done here, done in life.

And the sea gave up the dead who were in it.

Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were

judged each one according to what they had done.

Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.

This is the second death, the lake of fire or Jesus talking in

Matthew 13. Let both grow together until the

harvest. And at harvest time, I'll tell

the reapers, gather the weeds 1st and bind them in bundles to

be burned, but gather the weed into my barn.

So it will be at the end of the age.

The angels will come out and separate the evil from the

righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace.

In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The other side of this is, is that nowhere in Scripture?

Nowhere in scripture, not anywhere in Scripture.

Is there any evidence or any suggestion whatsoever that you

have the ability to make that decision after death?

And so that's the way it really worked.

It would be in here. All right, let's go a different

direction for a few minutes. False path number six,

pantheism. This is a word that you probably

don't use very much, but this is actually at the root of some of

the New Age movement and other and other movements that you'll

find this one and the next one, God is in everything.

The word pantheism actually comes from Greek words that mean

pan or all or everything and the theos, which is God or deity.

And so all God, everything God, everything's God, all of reality

is God. And so when we die, we simply

become part of the whole because we're all part of the whole.

Another word for this would be monotheism to where we're all

one, we're all part of the one. This is kind of like this is

kind of like the force in Star Wars, you know, to where we're

all part of it together. When we die, we just become all

things in the world are one and one is in all is All in all

things. What is All in all things is

God, eternal and immense, neither born nor ever to perish.

So God did not just create things, He is those things.

So God is in the tree, God is in the rock.

God is the rock, God is the water, God is the cloud, God is

everything. Well, the Bible says in Genesis

11, in the beginning, Elohim Barad, God created the heaven,

heavens and the earth and the earth was without form and void

and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of

God was hovering over the face of the waters.

And so we see that God transcends the creation.

He's not one with it. He, he, he indwells us.

God does not indwell inanimate objects.

That's not in the Bible. He endwells living things, He

endwells us. And so this often leads to 6.2

because they're kind of related to one another.

It often leads to what we would call animism.

Animism is often thought of as a a crude or or old fashioned

indigenous native type religion. This is where you would worship,

you'd have a rock idol or you'd worship the fire or you might

worship a volcano. So that so that.

So that's often called animism. And in many of our colonial

missions terms, we would use those words for it.

But it's also more than that. And it's actually far more

popular today than you might know, their entire organizations

based on animism today in the United States of America.

The idea here is anima is a Latin word for breath and, and

it's the belief that places, objects and creatures all

possess spiritual essence. So it's very much a subset or

maybe pantheism to the said side of it.

They're related to one another. It's nature worship, it's

inanimate object worship, right? So they're worshiping the

creation instead of the creator. You need to be here to hear

Romans 1. It's exactly what he's talking

about in Romans 1. So animism is not the same as

pantheism. Although they're often confused,

there are some differences. The main difference is that

animus believe everything to be spiritual in nature, but they do

not necessarily see the spiritual nature of everything

as being united. Pantheists see this whole unity.

There's a unity behind everything.

We're all part of a great one, whereas animus would see

individual things. So I know you wanted to know

that, but but, but in other words, animus, animus put more,

put more uniqueness on each individual soul there, whereas

pantheism, everything shares the same.

So in many of these worldviews, human beings in both of these,

we're basically just animals. We're basically equal with other

animals. We're equal with plants for that

matter and and natural forces. We're not higher in any way in

the created order. We're simply one of we're just a

more sophisticated primate. We're just a smarter ape in

these kinds of belief systems. And so paganism are some aspects

of Wiccan, which you would probably use the word witchcraft

are very much tied into these types of things.

The difference between a, say, Christianity or religion versus

witchcraft, a witch, the whole purpose, well, it's more

complicated. A great design of witchcraft is

that I can manipulate these forces.

I can manipulate these natural forces to either bless me or

curse you. And so I have the ability to get

in touch with this and manipulate this to where I can

use it in my spells or my curses or it's under my power to be

able to manipulate that. I'll be honest with you, that's

also what the prosperity gospel almost teaches, that somehow I

can manipulate God, It's magic. I can manipulate God and make

him do whatever I want him to do.

And I can claim things and, and make him provide those things

for me. And so don't miss the connection

to some of these pieces. Again, this is where a lot of

new age movement is. It's also, I'm, if you were out

in Arizona, where we were for years, we had people in Sedona.

Some of you probably been to Sedona on vacation.

You have people who go to Sedona to get in touch with the vortex

of the red rocks, and they're going to go out there and lay

and listen to the vibrations and the rhythms of the rocks.

He'll speak to them and talk to them.

They'll worship trees, they'll worship nature.

They do all kinds of things like that.

And so you also get some mix in this with Eastern religions.

There is some animism and even pantheism in some of the Eastern

religions. Let me just whet your appetite

with Romans One, we're going to break this down in great detail

in the sermon series on Sunday mornings.

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God

has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes,

namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly

perceived ever since the creation of the world, in the

things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

She's talking about general revelation to nature and

history. For although they knew God, they

did not honor Him as God or give thanks to him.

But they became futile in their thinking and their foolish

hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became

fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images

resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

In other words, the idolatry that surround especially these

Gentile background believers in Rome.

Therefore God gave them up in the lust of their hearts and

purity to this honoring of their bodies among themselves, because

they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and

served the creature rather than Creator who is blessed forever.

Amen. Then we got a couple more.

We need to hit here some path #7 works righteousness.

This is almost everybody, many of the above, and just about

every world religion. Well, every world religion

except, except biblical Christianity, but even including

variants of Christianity. Live and die by works

righteousness. It's the holy scale and the

ladder somehow achieving, sometimes somehow earning my way

to heaven. It's very fatalistic, often fear

based. I can't know for sure.

I hope so. I think I can.

I think I can. I hope I can.

If I can just get to the next step, if I can just climb one

more rung, if I can just please the divine, maybe, just maybe,

just maybe I can get in. And so there's a lot of problems

with works, righteousness, very familiar passage that you would

know. And you ought to know if you

don't know as Ephesians 28 and 9.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not

your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a

result of works so that no one may boast.

So we recognize that I can't, I can't work my way up.

And but this, the Christianity, biblical Christianity is the

only, the only faith system that teaches grace.

It's the only faith system that teaches that while we were yet

sinners, Christ died for us, that God actually sacrificed

himself for us and now gives us the ability to believe in Him

and to know him and to trust in him because he came down to us.

It's the only faith system to teach everything else.

You got to work your way up to him, make your way up to the

Golden Tower somehow to please the God.

But this isn't just old world paganistic religions.

This is also variants of Christianity.

You'll see this in people who knock on your door.

Some of you will have a background in this in the church

you grew up in. Listen, those who don't believe

in works righteousness, it's a fairly sin getting to be a thin

slice of humanity, frankly. And so you need to embrace

grace, false path #8 annihilation ISM.

Other people who knock on your door believe this.

They may not come, they may not start with this, but this is

something they believe. Jehovah's Witnesses are

annihilationist, for example. This is the belief that that

heaven is normally forever, but hell is not.

And so you go to hell, you burn up, you're gone forever.

The the eternality of punishment, I wrote an entire

huge thing on this one time. The eternality of punishment is

just too severe for the crime of sin.

It's too much to burn forever in hell.

That's too much that there's no way that can be true.

It's too much. Well, you need to come back to

future sessions. Don't listen to me.

Listen to the word of God that I'll share with you about what

hell really is and why hell really is and who's there and

who's going to go there and how to avoid it.

See, the problem is we misjudge sin again in Romans.

Just listen to what he's going to say next.

We misjudge sin and we misjudge God's view of sin.

We also misjudge our own choices about sin.

And so we take it flippantly and we've reduced God into somebody

who really doesn't care that much.

He's going to let us slip by who who really won't punish us

because that's how we want life to be.

We don't want accountability. We don't want to be held

accountable. We don't want rules.

We don't want, we don't want barriers, we don't want lines

drawn. We want to be able to do

whatever we want to do the way we want to do it, whenever we

want to do it. And I'm looking for dew.

Dew to the free, looking for war.

That's what we want. And every message I get feeds

me. Every message says I deserve it.

I deserve my burger the way I want it.

I deserve the car I ought to have.

I deserve the house I should have.

I deserve the job that I should have.

I deserve everything. I deserve it all.

I should have everything all right.

And it's a problem. Sometimes we misjudge God's

nature. Matthew 25 And these will go

away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal

life. I onion.

I onion is the word for everlasting without end.

Jesus calls heaven I I onion. It's harder to say in English.

Jesus says heaven is I onion and hell is I on the on.

You can't have one without the other.

Biblically, linguistically, theologically doesn't work.

You don't get to take that word out.

You don't get to change what you want out of that false path #9

purgatory. Speaking of works, righteousness

systems, purgatory is the the Catechism of the Holy Church.

The Catholic Church, let me just read it, defines purgatory as a

purification so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter

the joy of heaven, which is experienced by those who die in

God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified.

And so it notes that the final purification of the elect is

entirely different from the punishment of the damned.

And so this isn't hell, so to speak.

It's something else. And so the purification is

necessary because the Bible says in Revelation 2127 that nothing

unclean will enter the presence of God in heaven.

So everything has to be purified, everything has to be

made clean before you can go on to heaven.

And that we might die with with our mortal sins forgiven.

And I don't have time to go into the different levels of sin in

the system, but some of our sins might be forgiven, but we still

have impurities and other sins that are not forgiven.

And so we still need the temporal punishment due to due

to the sins that aren't forgiven yet.

Revelation 2127 says but nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor

anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only

those who are written in the Lamb's book of life.

Here's the problem is that it's assuming in complete grace.

It's it's assuming that the forgiveness by Christ alone is

not enough. You could make the same

arguments for inclusivism or for a works righteousness as a

whole. It's incorrect from the

beginning. Scriptural support for this is

used out of context, and then the rest of the scriptural

support is found in the Apocrypha and 2nd Maccabees,

which was a book that the church council's determined was not

divinely inspired, nor did it belong in the final Canon.

And so you might say, well, where's this in the Bible where

you're not going to find it in your Bible?

And so Christ's work here, here's the truth is that

Christ's work was complete. You got to understand that in

this system, and I know some of you were raised in a Catholic

system, and I don't want to be totally disrespectful to you.

I have relatives who are Catholics.

I have a sister who's a charismatic Catholic, which is a

reformer within the Catholic Church who actually believes

salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone.

And she and I have those conversations.

She likes the trappings and the formality of the ritual of the

church. So she doesn't want to leave it.

She's like Martin Luther a little bit.

But but the problem is, is that when the Church controls grace,

and you can only get grace through the sacraments, through

the church, and not recognizing that Christ is the source, then

you're going through man and not God.

And so you're starting at the wrong spot.

So scriptural support is that Christ's work here is complete.

No other sacrifice is needed if you've trusted in Jesus Christ

as your Lord and Savior. He forgives you, and He

completely forgives you, and He completely cleanses you.

I don't need to be further cleansed.

I might need to confess my sin as I'm walking through life

first, John 19 would say. But that has nothing to do with

my salvation anymore. That's not how salvation works.

His grace and His forgiveness are sufficient.

John 17 four I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the

work that you gave me to do or Hebrews one which you would know

is he's the radiance of the glory of God and the exact

imprint of his nature and he upholds the universe by the word

of his power. After making purification for

sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high

because he was done to tell us die.

He said on the cross it is finished literally.

The debt is paid. The debt is marked cancelled,

literally. I've paid for it.

You don't need someone else. You don't.

When we die, we will be with Jesus.

We don't need to go some intermediary place.

And we will come back to this idea over and over again in the

weeks to come. We're going to talk about soul

sleep. We're going to talk about the

state that we're in the moment we die.

We're going to talk about resurrected bodies.

We're going to do all that. But just remember Second

Corinthians 58. Yes, we are of good courage and

we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord,

because that's where we'll be. It's false path #10 is

reincarnation, or another word for that is transmigration.

You might hear the word transmigration sometimes being

slipped in by people who don't really want you to know you're

talking about reincarnation. And so the wheel goes round and

round and round. Obviously reincarnation is a

central tenet of many East Asian and South Asian religions, such

as Hinduism and Buddhism and Sikhism and Taoism.

Some forms again of Wiccan, of paganism and animism would also

be involved in reincarnation ideas.

But again, Hebrews 927 says, and just as is a point for a man to

die once and after that comes judgment, or again, Second

Corinthians 58, we're going to be away from the body.

We're going to be with the Lord. There's 0 indication that we're

coming back. You're not a cardinal in the

garden. Thank you for those who know

what I just said. False path #11 I saved this one

for last for a reason. Syncretism.

Not a word you'd use often, but this, along with pluralism are

probably the leading edge of the sword in our culture today.

Basically, syncretism means I can take what I want out of all

these other pieces and make up whatever I want.

Historically in missions life, for example, there were classic

examples of syncretism, often tied to Roman Catholicism and

missions in places like South America or Africa where they

would take their native and a Mystic belief system, mix it

with Roman Catholicism and come up with something else.

That's where voodoo comes from, by the way.

It's an African work that comes to the islands from Africa, and

it's a mixture. It's a syncretic belief system

to where they would mix pieces of each.

So you mix well, you can mix individually or you can mix as a

group. And that's the problem today.

It takes the parts you like, you leave out the rest of that one

and you add more of what you like from something else and you

come up with your own. So my truth is my truth and it,

and it's almost like it's a, it's a holy bubble that you

can't enter. There's and there's no way that

can be pierced by you. Your truth is your truth.

You do whatever you do. I'm going to do what I do.

My truth is my truth. And it has become almost an

impenetrable shield in our culture today.

You hear it everywhere. You hear it on on TV, you hear

it in movies, you hear it in sports, you hear it from

celebrities, you hear it from preachers, frankly.

So this takes us back to our introduction again.

To some degree, the Bible warns about syncretism.

The Bible proactively advocates for a pure and exclusive

relationship and devotion to God, and it spells out exactly

the way that's supposed to happen.

We are called to resist the temptation to conform to the

surrounding culture and to maintain the integrity of our

faith, the biblical faith. We have to have an authority.

And if you don't have the rock solid mooring of the Word of God

in your life, then you're going to slide all over the place.

So ask God to help you believe in His Word, because the Bible's

message is clear. Syncretism undermind undermines

the foundation of that relationship of true worship, so

to speak. So it's essential for followers

to adhere to these teaching, the teaching of Scripture, and avoid

blending their faith with with conflicting theologies.

That's what was going on in the early church.

That's that's much of what Paul had to write about and John had

to write about because people were taking Judaism and mixing

it with Christianity, pressing it upon Gentiles or vice versa,

or the Greek world view or the Roman world view was coming in

because these people were coming from such diversity and they

didn't have this like we do. So it's, yeah, I can be hard on

them, but sometimes I get it. They didn't, they didn't have

all this yet. So they needed somebody to come

and help them. But we have this now.

So we are further with that excuse.

That'll be part of Romans 2. The more access you have, the

more responsibility you have. So I'm going to share a couple

of stories with you that you'll remember. 1 is Deuteronomy 12.

It's only a couple verses, but there, there are a couple of

verses. So they feared the Lord, but

also served their own gods. How's that for an opening?

That describes it well, perhaps after the manner of the nation's

from among whom they had been carried away.

To this day they do according to the former manner.

They do not fear the Lord, and they do not follow the statutes

or the rules of the law, or the commandment that the Lord

commanded the children of Jacob, whom He named Israel.

The Lord met a covenant with them and commanded them.

You shall not fear other gods, or bow yourselves to them, or

serve them, or sacrifice to them, but you shall fear the

Lord, for who brought you out of the land of Egypt with great

power and with an outstretched arm.

You shall bow yourselves to Him, and to Him you shall sacrifice,

and the statutes and the rules and the law of the commandments

that he wrote for you. You shall always be careful to

do. You shall not fear other gods

or. I was reminded the story of

Solomon. Actually, because of a devotion

that was shared by one of our staff members, I had the

opportunity and privilege of helping to write a Co write a

book for Lifeway a few years ago about Old Testament prayers.

And I used the prayer of Solomon, the dedication of the

temple. And he was referring to that

this morning. And it made me think of the

other aspect of Solomon, the not so wise part of Solomon.

First Kings 11. Now King Solomon loved many

foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh.

Or, or a better pronunciation would be Pharaoh, the son of the

the son of the son of the son, a God himself.

Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, all these other termites and

Cydonians from the nations concerning which the Lord had

said to the people of Israel, You shall not enter into

marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely

they will turn away your heart after their gods.

Solomon clung to these in love. I'm sorry, ladies, but he had

700 wives who were princesses and 300 concubines.

And his wives turned away his heart.

For when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart

after other gods. And his heart was not wholly

true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father.

For Solomon went after Ashtereth, the goddess of the

Sadonians, and after Milkham the abomination of the Ammonites.

So Solomon did what was evil in the side of the Lord, and did

not wholly follow the Lord, as David his father had done.

The abomination of Moab and for Moloch, who they used to

sacrifice children to by the way, and the abomination of the

Ammonites on the mountain east of Jerusalem.

And so he did for all his foreign wives, who made

offerings and sacrifice to their gods.

So his house is just all mixed up, and it leads to major

problems. New Testament Colossians 2 See

to it that no, that no one takes you captive by philosophy and

empty deceit according to human tradition.

You chew on that one. According to the elementary.

Spirit elemental spirits of the world, and not according to

Christ, our Peter writes. Since you've been born.

Again. Not of perishable.

Seed, but of imperishable through the living and.

Abiding. Word of God.

So what do you believe and do you even know why?

Part of what I want to. Do on midweeks and then these.

Sessions is I want us to be as clear as we can about what the

Bible teaches about things later this year, to be honest with

you, I'm going to do an apologetic series with you on

Wednesday nights where we talk about some basic apologetics.

We've got to know how to encounter people from these

different backgrounds and, and what to say to them, how to pray

for them, how to engage them in an honest, authentic,

intelligent conversation so that we know and understand what we

believe and how to stand firm on it.

So next session, you won't want to miss it.

We're going to talk about home. We're going to talk about home.

And what that's really? Like, and who all's going to be

there? Who's?

There already and how we're going to get there and who won't

be there as well. So you'll want to come back for

that as we continue this series together.

We've cleared the path. We understand that's not the

road to take. Those are 11 of them not to

take. So we'll be on the narrow way

and follow the true path. Father, thank you.

Thank you for your love and your.

Grace, Thank you, Father, for the way.

That you guide us with truth. I I'm just Father.

I just. Appreciate the fact that I.

Don't have to think of up. Everything you know, Lord, I

don't have to create truth. I don't have to.

I don't have to figure out you tell us.

I just have to trust in you. And so thank you, Father, that

the faith. Of a little child.

That's like the Kingdom of heaven.

Honest, open, trusting, depending.

Just cradled in your arms, Father.

Help us to rest there in your word.

And help us to live a life that shows that.

Help us to not be afraid. Help us to not be intimidated.

Help us, Father, to not shy away from opportunities.

Help us, father, to pursue you, and then to pursue others who

need to know you. We thank you for that privilege

in Christ's name, Amen. Thank you so much for listening

today. And I also hope that you'll go

to our. [email protected] as

well as our app and find many other resources that will bless

you and your families. Thank you once again.