WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.520 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:40.720 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:41.600 Mahler. 00:00:41.600 --> 00:00:44.080 And I'm still Wo. 00:00:45.280 --> 00:00:48.960 In today's Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing the state of 00:00:48.960 --> 00:00:50.240 the church again. 00:00:50.240 --> 00:00:53.600 We've done a few episodes in the last five months or so 00:00:53.600 --> 00:00:56.080 where we talked kind of about the church in general. 00:00:56.080 --> 00:00:59.840 We did a recent episode we talked about apostasy as kind of 00:00:59.840 --> 00:01:02.720 the tail end of some of the heresies that slipped into the 00:01:02.720 --> 00:01:06.720 church. This is gonna be another episode where we're talking about the 00:01:06.720 --> 00:01:11.680 answers that Christians have to a series of questions been asked by 00:01:11.680 --> 00:01:14.400 two different polling organizations. 00:01:14.400 --> 00:01:16.640 The first set of data that we're going to be using is 00:01:16.640 --> 00:01:21.680 the Pew Longitudinal Survey from 2014, and the second is going to 00:01:21.680 --> 00:01:26.160 be a survey conducted most recently in 2022 by Ling and your 00:01:26.320 --> 00:01:30.800 Ministries. Both the surveys were in the United States. 00:01:30.800 --> 00:01:34.240 They talked to people both who were Christians and non-Christians. 00:01:34.240 --> 00:01:37.840 We are principally going to be focusing on the data from inside 00:01:37.840 --> 00:01:38.960 the church. 00:01:38.960 --> 00:01:42.560 And the reason that we're doing this episode today is that There 00:01:42.560 --> 00:01:44.960 have been numerous times in the past where we will talk about 00:01:44.960 --> 00:01:46.800 things like teachings of demons. 00:01:46.800 --> 00:01:50.480 We'll say that there are certain things that are very clearly heresies. 00:01:50.480 --> 00:01:54.240 We will sometimes say very specifically that if you believe this sort 00:01:54.240 --> 00:01:55.920 of thing, you can't be saved. 00:01:55.920 --> 00:01:59.840 And those And those are all scriptural approaches, but as we said 00:01:59.840 --> 00:02:04.080 in the judge not episode or the episode on judgment, we dealt 00:02:04.080 --> 00:02:09.920 with the fact that while we as Christians living today are not 00:02:09.920 --> 00:02:14.000 only called but equipped to act as jurists in the matter of 00:02:14.240 --> 00:02:17.120 is a statement that a man makes true or false. 00:02:17.120 --> 00:02:20.240 That is not the same as judging the final disposition of that 00:02:20.240 --> 00:02:21.360 man's soul. 00:02:21.360 --> 00:02:26.000 So So for example, in the episodes on Bonhoeffer and MLK, we 00:02:26.000 --> 00:02:29.360 stated with absolute certainty those men are in hell right now. 00:02:29.360 --> 00:02:33.280 Because there was nothing remotely Christian about their confessions. 00:02:33.280 --> 00:02:37.760 Their confessions were explicitly anti-Christian. 00:02:37.840 --> 00:02:40.400 Most of the things that we deal with, we're dealing with inside 00:02:40.400 --> 00:02:40.880 the church. 00:02:40.880 --> 00:02:44.800 Those men were completely outside the faith entirely, demonstrably. 00:02:44.800 --> 00:02:47.680 When we do episodes on things like baptism and communion and some 00:02:47.680 --> 00:02:51.360 of the other things like election, where there are disagreements among various 00:02:51.360 --> 00:02:56.320 Christian denominations, we obviously make the case from scripture that we believe 00:02:56.320 --> 00:02:58.320 to be true about what those things are. 00:02:58.320 --> 00:03:02.000 And that God says one thing, scriptures says one thing, and then 00:03:02.000 --> 00:03:05.920 the churches have disagreed in some cases only recently, in some cases 00:03:05.920 --> 00:03:09.840 for a very long time, about which of those statements is true, 00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:12.400 which of those is in accord with scripture. 00:03:12.400 --> 00:03:15.520 And obviously we care a great deal about that. 00:03:15.520 --> 00:03:19.040 But at the same time we don't say if you get baptism 00:03:19.040 --> 00:03:22.800 wrong, according to us, in our book based on what scripture says, 00:03:22.800 --> 00:03:25.600 we don't believe that means that someone who gets baptism wrong is 00:03:25.600 --> 00:03:26.640 going to go to hell. 00:03:26.640 --> 00:03:29.680 Do we believe that they are saying something that's contrary to scripture? 00:03:29.680 --> 00:03:31.600 Yes. Do we believe that's a sin? 00:03:31.600 --> 00:03:35.840 Absolutely. God forgives the sins of Christians, even the ones where we're 00:03:35.840 --> 00:03:38.800 stupid and we get things wrong because we ignore or we've never 00:03:38.800 --> 00:03:39.840 been taught properly. 00:03:39.840 --> 00:03:43.600 There are all sorts of reasons why someone who's been baptized, who's 00:03:43.520 --> 00:03:48.720 a Christian, who's confessing the Christian faith, is still going to misunderstand 00:03:48.720 --> 00:03:50.240 things, get things wrong. 00:03:50.240 --> 00:03:55.200 And it's important to separate errors, things where just no one's ever 00:03:55.200 --> 00:03:58.320 been taught the specific thing that scripture says. 00:03:58.320 --> 00:04:00.320 That's the case in a lot of our churches. 00:04:00.400 --> 00:04:04.080 As we just recently did the episodes on inheritance and on tithing 00:04:04.080 --> 00:04:05.040 and a few other things, you know. 00:04:05.120 --> 00:04:08.640 You know, not huge issues, but a number of guys have said, 00:04:08.640 --> 00:04:09.840 thank you for doing that. 00:04:09.840 --> 00:04:11.760 You know, jealousy is another one. 00:04:11.760 --> 00:04:15.520 Guys who had never heard things put in those ways, in a 00:04:15.520 --> 00:04:18.640 number of cases, have started doing things differently in their own lives. 00:04:18.800 --> 00:04:22.240 Like, oh, I never heard anyone explain that teaching that way. 00:04:22.240 --> 00:04:23.280 That makes sense. 00:04:23.280 --> 00:04:25.360 I'm gonna treat my neighbor better now. 00:04:25.360 --> 00:04:28.320 I'm gonna do something that I wouldn't have done before because I 00:04:28.320 --> 00:04:29.760 didn't even think about it. 00:04:29.760 --> 00:04:32.640 And now that you explain that and you explain scripture, I want 00:04:32.640 --> 00:04:33.760 to do something good. 00:04:33.760 --> 00:04:35.680 And no one thinks they're saving themselves. 00:04:35.680 --> 00:04:37.840 It's just, hey, it's in the Bible. 00:04:37.840 --> 00:04:39.920 Somebody reminded me with this in the Bible. 00:04:39.920 --> 00:04:41.360 I believe what's in the Bible. 00:04:41.360 --> 00:04:43.040 I should go do what it says. 00:04:43.040 --> 00:04:44.080 That's it. 00:04:44.080 --> 00:04:47.920 And so no one's saving himself by doing stuff. 00:04:47.920 --> 00:04:50.720 We are saved because God gives us the gift of faith. 00:04:50.720 --> 00:04:55.040 And so as we work through these specific questions today, this is 00:04:55.040 --> 00:04:57.040 a grab bag of all sorts of things, and some of them 00:04:57.040 --> 00:05:01.040 are very clearly separating men from either being Christian or not Christian, 00:05:01.040 --> 00:05:06.640 even within the survey data where we're specifically focusing on what self-identified 00:05:06.640 --> 00:05:07.600 Christians say. 00:05:07.600 --> 00:05:12.000 Many of their answers are very, very, very clearly not Christian, not 00:05:12.160 --> 00:05:13.920 by a million miles. 00:05:13.920 --> 00:05:18.320 I want to reaffirm that when we point to these things, the 00:05:18.320 --> 00:05:21.440 most that we can say, in the case of someone who's alive 00:05:21.520 --> 00:05:24.320 and we don't know what else is going on, we can say 00:05:24.320 --> 00:05:27.360 that such a person has no promise of salvation. 00:05:27.360 --> 00:05:28.800 That doesn't mean that they're damned. 00:05:28.800 --> 00:05:29.920 I we can't judge that. 00:05:29.920 --> 00:05:31.040 I don't know. 00:05:31.040 --> 00:05:34.400 Because there are things that you can get wrong and God will 00:05:34.400 --> 00:05:35.200 forgive it. 00:05:35.200 --> 00:05:37.920 And we don't have a list of here's all the stuff you 00:05:37.920 --> 00:05:40.080 can get wrong, and God is still going to say you're a 00:05:40.080 --> 00:05:43.600 Christian. One of the things that we hope to get across as 00:05:43.600 --> 00:05:47.680 we're just discussing all these errors that exist inside numerous churches, is 00:05:47.680 --> 00:05:53.920 that Rather than us continuously pursuing the definition of the minimum viable 00:05:53.920 --> 00:05:57.600 Christianity, how about we focus on getting as much as we can 00:05:57.600 --> 00:05:58.480 from Scripture? 00:05:58.480 --> 00:05:59.200 That's our goal. 00:05:59.200 --> 00:06:00.800 That's the goal of Stone Choir. 00:06:00.800 --> 00:06:04.400 If God says all these things about all these different subjects, we 00:06:04.400 --> 00:06:06.160 should believe them all. 00:06:06.160 --> 00:06:09.520 As a Christian, even if you've never read the whole Bible, which 00:06:09.520 --> 00:06:12.960 frankly most people haven't, you can still as a Christian say, I 00:06:12.960 --> 00:06:14.560 believe everything in the Bible. 00:06:14.560 --> 00:06:18.320 Because like any other book that has ever been compiled, if you 00:06:18.320 --> 00:06:22.640 confess that God is God and you confess that Scripture is God's 00:06:22.640 --> 00:06:26.720 word, then it naturally flows that your confession is that I believe 00:06:26.720 --> 00:06:30.000 every word of scripture, even if you haven't read it, because you 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:34.000 know as a Christian with faith, it's not your intellectual ascent, it's 00:06:33.920 --> 00:06:36.880 not that I've reviewed all of these things and I've marked it 00:06:36.880 --> 00:06:39.120 up and I didn't find any errors, so then I can say 00:06:39.200 --> 00:06:40.480 yeah I agree with that. 00:06:40.480 --> 00:06:42.320 If you confess that God is God and that this is his 00:06:42.400 --> 00:06:42.560 word, 00:06:43.600 --> 00:06:46.800 you're naturally going to confess, I believe everything in there. 00:06:46.800 --> 00:06:51.600 And that is the framework that Christians have for approaching everything else. 00:06:51.600 --> 00:06:54.240 And then we have some of these disputes and discussions, and some 00:06:54.240 --> 00:06:55.360 things are really hard. 00:06:55.360 --> 00:06:57.600 Some questions are tricky and they're tough. 00:06:57.600 --> 00:07:00.400 And some things, you know, a lot of people just get wrong. 00:07:00.400 --> 00:07:04.320 This happens in every other discipline in the universe, in the entire 00:07:04.320 --> 00:07:05.440 history of humanity. 00:07:05.440 --> 00:07:07.280 Guys get a lot of things wrong. 00:07:07.280 --> 00:07:10.960 Somebody gets it right, and hopefully eventually the right answer catches on. 00:07:10.960 --> 00:07:12.400 But it doesn't always. 00:07:12.400 --> 00:07:14.320 You know, look at things like nutrition. 00:07:14.320 --> 00:07:18.800 There's constantly a battle in the nutrition space where people keep discovering 00:07:18.800 --> 00:07:22.000 new things and forgetting old things and coming up with all these 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:26.080 new scams and fads and it's almost impossible for most people to 00:07:26.080 --> 00:07:30.640 distinguish what should I be eating from what's killing me slowly or 00:07:30.640 --> 00:07:33.680 what's, you know, giving me cancer, some terrible thing. 00:07:33.680 --> 00:07:36.240 If we can't even get that stuff right, it shouldn't be a 00:07:36.240 --> 00:07:39.920 surprise that we have trouble with Christian doctrine. 00:07:39.920 --> 00:07:43.280 And we see this beginning in the pages of scripture itself in 00:07:43.280 --> 00:07:49.520 the New Testament, Paul and Jesus and Peter and Stephen and Timothy, 00:07:49.520 --> 00:07:54.960 they're all dealing with errors among believers, where God says one thing 00:07:54.960 --> 00:07:58.640 in Scripture, the teacher, who's the faithful teacher, is saying what's in 00:07:58.640 --> 00:08:01.760 Scripture. And then when you look at what the people are responding 00:08:01.760 --> 00:08:03.120 with, they're getting things wrong. 00:08:03.120 --> 00:08:04.400 This it's always going to happen. 00:08:04.400 --> 00:08:09.120 We're humans, we're fallible, we're sinful, we're going to make mistakes. 00:08:09.120 --> 00:08:14.160 And so today's episode as we go through these individual line items, 00:08:14.160 --> 00:08:16.960 some of them are very clearly you cannot be Christian if you 00:08:16.960 --> 00:08:18.720 believe this, and we'll highlight those. 00:08:18.720 --> 00:08:21.200 And a lot of the others are well, there's clearly a right 00:08:21.200 --> 00:08:22.160 answer here. 00:08:22.160 --> 00:08:24.640 And I hope to God that the people who get the answer 00:08:24.640 --> 00:08:29.360 wrong, that they're forgiven for that, and that God still accepts that 00:08:29.360 --> 00:08:33.040 they have a Christian faith, that He's given them again, because it's 00:08:33.040 --> 00:08:34.960 not us trying to get a high score. 00:08:34.960 --> 00:08:38.240 A quote that I've used number of times from a Lutheran pastor: 00:08:38.240 --> 00:08:42.480 sound doctrine is not about getting a high score or about winning 00:08:42.480 --> 00:08:44.560 arguments on the internet or anywhere else. 00:08:44.560 --> 00:08:47.520 It's about having more of the gifts that God has given us. 00:08:47.520 --> 00:08:52.160 And so when we have concerns about sound doctrine, it's not flexing 00:08:52.160 --> 00:08:54.720 of one denomination over another. 00:08:54.720 --> 00:08:56.560 That's not remotely the point. 00:08:56.560 --> 00:08:59.840 The point is if God has revealed these things, we should want 00:08:59.840 --> 00:09:01.440 as much of that as possible. 00:09:01.440 --> 00:09:05.200 We shouldn't be concerned with can I get the least possible amount 00:09:05.200 --> 00:09:08.800 of Christianity out of the Bible and still get to heaven in 00:09:08.800 --> 00:09:12.800 the worst possible station in heaven because you're rewarded for what good 00:09:12.800 --> 00:09:14.800 you do and how faithful you are. 00:09:14.800 --> 00:09:18.160 You don't get there that way, but scripture's clear that there are 00:09:18.320 --> 00:09:19.680 rewards in heaven. 00:09:19.680 --> 00:09:24.160 And so you know if if you want to be jealous of 00:09:25.040 --> 00:09:28.480 greater glory, I don't not even sure if that's a good way 00:09:28.480 --> 00:09:31.760 to look at it, but if you do the right things, God 00:09:31.760 --> 00:09:32.880 will reward it. 00:09:32.880 --> 00:09:36.160 Now, is your purpose of doing the right things and believing the 00:09:36.160 --> 00:09:37.760 right things to get more rewards? 00:09:37.760 --> 00:09:39.360 I don't I I don't think it should be. 00:09:39.360 --> 00:09:41.040 I think it should be focused on God. 00:09:41.280 --> 00:09:42.880 Like it he's God. 00:09:42.880 --> 00:09:44.320 He's the creator of the universe. 00:09:44.320 --> 00:09:46.480 Let's just listen and believe him. 00:09:46.480 --> 00:09:49.760 And I think one of the things is missing when we're talking 00:09:49.760 --> 00:09:53.840 about discussions of doctrine and what's in scripture is that 00:09:54.720 --> 00:09:58.160 We're very casual when we're sitting here reading the Bible and reading 00:09:58.160 --> 00:10:01.760 through verses and passages with the idea of saying, Well, I don't 00:10:01.680 --> 00:10:03.760 really believe that. 00:10:03.760 --> 00:10:09.360 Consider the fact that you're effectively doing that directly to Jesus' face. 00:10:09.360 --> 00:10:14.240 Because when he was physically present on earth, walking in a human 00:10:14.240 --> 00:10:19.040 body, his body, an eternal body now, he was talking face to 00:10:19.040 --> 00:10:21.440 face to men, and he was telling him things. 00:10:21.440 --> 00:10:25.680 And And the response that many of us have today is effectively 00:10:25.680 --> 00:10:27.600 the response of the rich young man. 00:10:27.600 --> 00:10:30.080 He came up and he was keeping the entire law. 00:10:30.080 --> 00:10:31.520 He so he thought. 00:10:31.520 --> 00:10:33.120 And Jesus played along with that. 00:10:33.280 --> 00:10:35.520 It was obviously false, because as he said in the Sermon on 00:10:35.520 --> 00:10:39.280 the Mount, no one can keep the law perfectly, because if whatever's 00:10:39.200 --> 00:10:42.400 in your heart is what makes you guilty of the sin, and 00:10:42.400 --> 00:10:44.880 whether or not you commit the sin, you've committed the sin in 00:10:44.880 --> 00:10:45.520 your heart. 00:10:45.520 --> 00:10:48.320 So there's no such thing as man keeping the law perfectly, but 00:10:48.320 --> 00:10:49.600 Jesus didn't. 00:10:49.600 --> 00:10:52.720 Jesus didn't argue with the rich man and say, Well actually you 00:10:52.880 --> 00:10:54.240 that's not possible. 00:10:54.240 --> 00:10:59.200 He said in effect, okay, sell your belongings and come with me. 00:10:59.200 --> 00:11:03.200 Because he knew that in that man's heart, his wealth was his 00:11:03.200 --> 00:11:07.600 idol. And then whatever else he was getting right, he was unwilling 00:11:07.600 --> 00:11:10.160 to listen to God, to listen to Jesus. 00:11:10.160 --> 00:11:13.040 And so that man wandered off, you know, probably in disgust or 00:11:13.040 --> 00:11:14.800 disillusionment or disappointment. 00:11:14.800 --> 00:11:15.840 He wandered off. 00:11:15.840 --> 00:11:19.440 He turned about face from Jesus and he walked away. 00:11:19.440 --> 00:11:22.800 That's effectively what we are doing when we read scripture and say, 00:11:22.800 --> 00:11:24.480 Well, I don't believe this. 00:11:24.480 --> 00:11:26.160 That's really what you're doing to God. 00:11:26.160 --> 00:11:28.880 God is speaking to you in the words of scripture and you're 00:11:28.880 --> 00:11:32.400 turning around saying, Yeah, I'm not into that. 00:11:32.400 --> 00:11:35.280 This is where our concern is when we're talking about whether or 00:11:35.280 --> 00:11:37.600 not someone has a promise of salvation. 00:11:37.600 --> 00:11:42.160 Because the man who cries out Lord, Lord, you know, you know 00:11:42.160 --> 00:11:44.400 how that passage ends. 00:11:44.400 --> 00:11:48.160 Jesus said to some of them, I never knew you, even though 00:11:48.160 --> 00:11:51.440 they were casting out demons or performing miracles in his name, even 00:11:51.440 --> 00:11:55.360 though they had the right words, their confession was false because they 00:11:55.360 --> 00:11:57.440 did not believe in the true God. 00:11:57.440 --> 00:12:00.640 And rather than again worrying about what is the least amount of 00:12:00.640 --> 00:12:03.840 what God says that I can believe and still be saved, we 00:12:03.840 --> 00:12:05.040 should be greedy. 00:12:05.040 --> 00:12:07.920 We should be zealous for the word of God and say, I 00:12:07.920 --> 00:12:11.360 want as much of this as I can stuff in my face. 00:12:11.360 --> 00:12:13.360 Lord, just give it all to me. 00:12:13.360 --> 00:12:14.480 I want more. 00:12:14.480 --> 00:12:15.840 That should be our approach. 00:12:15.840 --> 00:12:19.600 And with that approach, even if you get things wrong, you're still 00:12:19.600 --> 00:12:21.520 going to be in so much better shape. 00:12:21.520 --> 00:12:26.320 And again, like we don't know among these various church bodies who's 00:12:26.320 --> 00:12:27.920 going to heaven, who's going to hell. 00:12:27.920 --> 00:12:29.680 In some cases, it's clear. 00:12:29.680 --> 00:12:33.600 The people who flat out deny that Jesus is God, definitionally those 00:12:33.600 --> 00:12:35.600 people are not Christian. 00:12:35.600 --> 00:12:38.240 But then you look at some of the other answers given to 00:12:38.240 --> 00:12:41.920 very similar questions and they contradict themselves. 00:12:41.920 --> 00:12:45.520 And And that's the reason that God alone can judge a man's 00:12:45.520 --> 00:12:47.120 heart and judge those situations. 00:12:47.120 --> 00:12:47.840 We can't. 00:12:47.840 --> 00:12:48.880 And so we're not. 00:12:48.880 --> 00:12:52.000 We're not here to say that X, Y, and Z denominations are 00:12:52.000 --> 00:12:52.960 all going to hell. 00:12:52.960 --> 00:12:54.560 Because it's not true. 00:12:54.560 --> 00:12:57.440 There's always going to be Christians wherever the Word of God is 00:12:57.440 --> 00:12:58.800 preached among them. 00:12:58.800 --> 00:13:02.640 We've said before one of the miraculous things about the Constitution of 00:13:02.640 --> 00:13:06.560 Stone Choir's audience is that many of you are from very different 00:13:06.560 --> 00:13:10.240 backgrounds than Lutheranism, and yet you're agreeing with a lot of the 00:13:10.240 --> 00:13:12.960 same things that we're saying that are in the Bible. 00:13:12.960 --> 00:13:17.200 And while generally we take a Lutheran approach overtly to these things, 00:13:17.200 --> 00:13:19.040 it's all rooted in scripture. 00:13:19.040 --> 00:13:23.440 It's not rooted in some particular version of Christianity. 00:13:24.160 --> 00:13:25.920 It's just what does God say? 00:13:25.920 --> 00:13:27.120 Let's believe it. 00:13:27.120 --> 00:13:27.680 That's it. 00:13:27.680 --> 00:13:28.880 It's a two-step process. 00:13:28.880 --> 00:13:29.680 Did God say it? 00:13:29.680 --> 00:13:30.800 Okay, I believe it. 00:13:30.800 --> 00:13:34.320 Anyone who agrees with that is usually going to land on the 00:13:34.320 --> 00:13:35.360 same page. 00:13:35.360 --> 00:13:38.320 And so as we work through these things, just keep in mind 00:13:38.320 --> 00:13:41.600 that we're not damning anyone, but we are going to damn some 00:13:41.600 --> 00:13:44.000 of the answers, and they'll be pretty clear to you just how 00:13:44.000 --> 00:13:45.520 bad they are. 00:13:45.520 --> 00:13:49.520 And that's the other purpose of this episode is that when people 00:13:49.840 --> 00:13:54.400 say that they're Christians, when they self-identify, it's almost meaningless. 00:13:54.560 --> 00:13:57.040 I hate to say that, but we've said before it's true. 00:13:57.040 --> 00:14:00.960 This data is going to demonstrate why we hold that contention. 00:14:00.960 --> 00:14:02.320 We're not being mean. 00:14:02.320 --> 00:14:04.320 We're not trying to name-call people. 00:14:04.320 --> 00:14:08.640 It's literally these things are contrary to the Christian faith and they're 00:14:08.640 --> 00:14:10.800 on the lips of people who say they're Christians. 00:14:10.800 --> 00:14:12.560 Only God can sort that out. 00:14:12.560 --> 00:14:16.160 But we as believers and we as neighbors of these people who 00:14:16.160 --> 00:14:19.360 think they're believers should care very deeply about that. 00:14:19.360 --> 00:14:24.560 Because if someone says I'm a Christian, the best thing I think 00:14:24.560 --> 00:14:26.400 we can do in a lot of cases is to agree and 00:14:26.400 --> 00:14:28.640 amplify. Say, okay, you're a Christian, great. 00:14:28.640 --> 00:14:30.720 Let's talk about what the Bible says. 00:14:30.720 --> 00:14:33.120 And if they don't want to do that, you know what kind 00:14:33.120 --> 00:14:34.160 of Christian they are. 00:14:34.160 --> 00:14:35.760 They're not a Christian at all. 00:14:35.760 --> 00:14:39.760 If they have no appetite for God's word, okay, so it goes. 00:14:39.760 --> 00:14:42.320 But even where someone is in error where they get some of 00:14:42.320 --> 00:14:45.680 these things wrong, in a lot of cases, if they say, I 00:14:45.680 --> 00:14:49.920 believe God, I believe in Jesus, I believe in the Bible, they've 00:14:49.920 --> 00:14:52.960 never read it, they've never heard it explained correctly. 00:14:52.960 --> 00:14:56.320 And when that happens to them face to face with someone talking 00:14:56.320 --> 00:14:58.960 to them, in a lot of cases they'll like, okay, that's what 00:14:58.960 --> 00:15:00.320 I believe. 00:15:00.320 --> 00:15:04.080 That is the essence of evangelism and it needs to happen inside 00:15:04.080 --> 00:15:05.120 our churches too. 00:15:05.120 --> 00:15:09.280 It needs to happen among our churches because some church bodies are 00:15:09.280 --> 00:15:11.360 in far worse shape than others. 00:15:11.360 --> 00:15:14.800 And as we wrap up this episode, that's really gonna be where 00:15:14.800 --> 00:15:18.000 we pivot to that when we're talking about oh, I want to 00:15:18.000 --> 00:15:20.000 spread the word of God and I want as many people many 00:15:20.000 --> 00:15:21.840 people as possible to believe in God. 00:15:21.840 --> 00:15:22.800 Yes. Amen. 00:15:22.800 --> 00:15:25.120 Absolutely. Where do we find them? 00:15:25.120 --> 00:15:27.520 You don't find them six thousand miles away. 00:15:27.520 --> 00:15:29.600 You don't even find them a thousand miles away. 00:15:29.600 --> 00:15:32.080 You're gonna find them in your own town in some of the 00:15:32.080 --> 00:15:36.160 churches where people are showing up and they're not believing what's in 00:15:36.160 --> 00:15:37.360 the word of God. 00:15:37.360 --> 00:15:39.360 Those people, some of them are lost. 00:15:39.360 --> 00:15:41.840 Some of them say they're Christians and they're damned. 00:15:41.840 --> 00:15:46.160 And we all know if you believe the Bible, that's perfectly in 00:15:46.160 --> 00:15:48.560 accord with what God says happens. 00:15:48.560 --> 00:15:51.520 It's true that there are some people who say they are sons 00:15:51.520 --> 00:15:52.960 of God who are not. 00:15:52.960 --> 00:15:54.880 The same thing happened with the Jews. 00:15:54.880 --> 00:15:57.520 They said, you know, we're sons of Abraham, and God said that's 00:15:57.440 --> 00:15:58.640 not what that even means. 00:15:58.720 --> 00:16:01.280 Like it was the faith of Abraham that was credited to him 00:16:01.520 --> 00:16:06.960 as righteousness, not his lineage, not even God's promise, but the promise 00:16:06.960 --> 00:16:10.400 was a promise of faith, and he kept that faith. 00:16:10.400 --> 00:16:15.520 And that is his righteousness, not his correct answers. 00:16:15.520 --> 00:16:19.280 So we're principally going to focus on two main groups and then 00:16:19.280 --> 00:16:20.240 a third group. 00:16:20.240 --> 00:16:25.520 The first will be evangelicals, mainline denominations, and then the Roman Catholic 00:16:25.520 --> 00:16:30.480 Church. I think we all know pretty much what evangelical means in 00:16:30.480 --> 00:16:31.360 the American context. 00:16:31.360 --> 00:16:36.160 If you don't know, basically it just means Bible-believing, more conservative. 00:16:36.160 --> 00:16:40.720 And then mainline is pretty much the churches that have rainbow flags. 00:16:40.720 --> 00:16:45.520 So in most cases, most of the mainline denominations A are dumpster 00:16:45.520 --> 00:16:48.640 fires and a lot of cases are overtly not Christian. 00:16:48.640 --> 00:16:51.840 Nevertheless, there are some Christians among them, because people just stay with 00:16:51.840 --> 00:16:53.920 their denomination for inertia. 00:16:53.920 --> 00:16:58.080 It's a problem, it's one we need to work through, but it 00:16:58.080 --> 00:17:02.640 happens. And so the fact that a place like Elka for Lutherans 00:17:02.720 --> 00:17:08.880 or Pacusa for Presbyterians is a complete heretical dumpster fire, doesn't mean 00:17:08.880 --> 00:17:10.960 that there's zero Christians among them. 00:17:10.960 --> 00:17:14.800 But it means that almost all their answers are absolutely horrific. 00:17:14.800 --> 00:17:19.280 And so the contrast between those mainline denominations and the evangelicals will 00:17:19.280 --> 00:17:20.400 be the principal one. 00:17:20.400 --> 00:17:22.480 And then in some of these answers, we're also going to refer 00:17:22.480 --> 00:17:25.600 to the Roman Catholic answers simply to demonstrate, not to pick on 00:17:25.600 --> 00:17:30.400 Roman Catholics in particular, but to illustrate when you look outside of 00:17:30.400 --> 00:17:37.440 the very rad-trad, very conservative culture, at least, diocese 00:17:37.440 --> 00:17:42.320 and parishes in Roman Catholicism, what you find is that Rome in 00:17:42.320 --> 00:17:47.520 this country is a mainline denomination in almost every case where Rome's 00:17:47.520 --> 00:17:52.000 answers differ from the mainline, from Elka and Pacoza and the Methodists 00:17:52.080 --> 00:17:56.720 and the other rainbow flag churches, where Rome doesn't agree with them, 00:17:56.720 --> 00:17:57.680 they're even worse. 00:17:57.680 --> 00:17:58.560 They're not better. 00:17:58.560 --> 00:18:02.000 They're not nearly as good in terms of what's provably the correct 00:18:02.000 --> 00:18:04.080 answer as the evangelicals. 00:18:04.080 --> 00:18:06.640 So we'll highlight that in some places, but for the most part 00:18:06.720 --> 00:18:10.720 when you hear mainline, really we'll probably just highlight when Rome is 00:18:10.720 --> 00:18:13.200 differing from them because it's gonna be the same. 00:18:13.200 --> 00:18:15.520 And again, we're not just picking on those guys, it's just that 00:18:15.520 --> 00:18:19.600 that's one of the major separate groups that's outside of these other 00:18:19.600 --> 00:18:22.320 two big bodies of Protestantism. 00:18:23.040 --> 00:18:25.360 These answers are going to tell you what's going on in those 00:18:25.360 --> 00:18:29.120 churches. Regardless of what they have on their websites, regardless what you 00:18:29.120 --> 00:18:33.680 read on Twitter or anywhere else, this is the fruit downstream from 00:18:33.680 --> 00:18:37.040 the preaching in all of these places. 00:18:37.120 --> 00:18:37.360 To 00:18:37.360 --> 00:18:42.400 further couch this episode, I want to point out three Latin words 00:18:42.400 --> 00:18:46.560 that I suspect you probably already know by now, and those are 00:18:46.560 --> 00:18:50.640 notitia, ascensus, and fiducia, Notice, ascent, and trust. 00:18:50.640 --> 00:18:55.840 We are essentially speaking about the first two in this episode. 00:18:55.840 --> 00:19:00.080 And the reason I want to emphasize that is because everyone always 00:19:00.080 --> 00:19:05.040 wants to focus on a couple of core issues in the Christian 00:19:05.040 --> 00:19:07.760 faith. Do you believe in the crucifixion? 00:19:07.760 --> 00:19:11.040 Do you believe in justification? 00:19:11.760 --> 00:19:15.200 That's not the fullness of the Christian faith. 00:19:15.200 --> 00:19:19.680 You cannot narrow down the Christian faith to just one or two 00:19:19.680 --> 00:19:21.600 things. Look at the creeds. 00:19:21.600 --> 00:19:24.640 The creeds state far more than one or two things. 00:19:24.640 --> 00:19:28.560 And so what we're dealing with primarily in this episode would be 00:19:28.560 --> 00:19:34.800 those first two issues, which is the notice essentially means what is 00:19:34.800 --> 00:19:37.280 the content of the Christian faith. 00:19:37.280 --> 00:19:38.160 What are the tenets? 00:19:38.160 --> 00:19:42.000 What are the beliefs that constitute the actual Christian faith? 00:19:42.000 --> 00:19:45.760 And then there is the ascent to that, the conviction that those 00:19:45.760 --> 00:19:47.760 things are true. 00:19:47.760 --> 00:19:52.960 And so in focusing on those, we can compare Across denominations to 00:19:52.960 --> 00:19:57.600 some degree, but more generally, as Woe was saying, we can focus 00:19:57.600 --> 00:20:01.360 on the state of the churches primarily in the US, although this 00:20:01.360 --> 00:20:04.240 is also true for many other parts of the world, it's even 00:20:04.240 --> 00:20:06.720 worse than most of the rest of the world. 00:20:06.720 --> 00:20:10.960 But this shows the reality on the ground of what people who 00:20:10.960 --> 00:20:14.720 claim to be Christian believe, and in some cases those who claim 00:20:14.720 --> 00:20:21.520 to be the more conservative Supposedly traditional Bible-believing Christians, and you will 00:20:21.520 --> 00:20:26.320 see that does not always correlate with right belief, even on issues 00:20:26.320 --> 00:20:28.960 that are abundantly clear in scripture. 00:20:28.960 --> 00:20:31.920 And so as Woe was saying, and as we'll emphasize later in 00:20:31.920 --> 00:20:38.560 the episode, looking at these data, looking at this information, should help 00:20:38.560 --> 00:20:42.560 to guide us in determining what we need to do as Christians, 00:20:42.560 --> 00:20:46.000 where we should be expending our efforts, to whom we should be 00:20:46.000 --> 00:20:50.800 reaching out, and sharing the Christian faith, because in some cases, the 00:20:50.800 --> 00:20:54.240 man who needs evangelized may be the one who is claiming to 00:20:54.240 --> 00:20:57.840 be Christian But if you scratch a little deeper than the surface, 00:20:57.840 --> 00:21:00.960 you'll realize he's not a Christian at all. 00:21:00.960 --> 00:21:03.120 Because he doesn't have any of these. 00:21:03.120 --> 00:21:07.040 He doesn't even know what the content of the Christian faith is. 00:21:07.040 --> 00:21:11.360 He just says that he's Christian, and maybe even attends a church, 00:21:11.360 --> 00:21:14.720 we can debate whether or not it's an actual church. 00:21:14.720 --> 00:21:19.840 But just because someone says, I am a Christian, and even if 00:21:19.840 --> 00:21:23.760 he also attends church, that's That does not necessarily mean that he 00:21:23.760 --> 00:21:26.560 is actually a Christian. 00:21:26.560 --> 00:21:30.960 The distinction there, and this is one of those issues that is 00:21:30.960 --> 00:21:34.880 often raised by atheists and others, particularly on social media, they try 00:21:34.880 --> 00:21:38.400 to say it's the no true Scotsman fallacy. 00:21:38.400 --> 00:21:43.440 The problem with that is if you are Scottish, you're Scottish biologically, 00:21:43.440 --> 00:21:44.720 you're Scottish by blood. 00:21:44.720 --> 00:21:47.680 That's not a matter of believing certain things. 00:21:47.680 --> 00:21:50.080 You are or you are not. 00:21:50.080 --> 00:21:52.640 The same is true if you pick a species. 00:21:52.640 --> 00:21:55.360 You either are a dog or you are not a dog. 00:21:55.360 --> 00:21:56.960 It's not a matter of belief. 00:21:56.960 --> 00:22:00.880 It's a matter of essence, it's a matter of being that thing. 00:22:00.880 --> 00:22:04.960 When it comes to something like Christianity, it is a matter of 00:22:04.960 --> 00:22:11.360 believing the tenets of Christianity, the tenets of the ideology. 00:22:11.360 --> 00:22:15.120 And so, for instance, you can't say that you are a libertarian 00:22:16.240 --> 00:22:18.720 if you believe none of the things, although in the case of 00:22:18.720 --> 00:22:21.600 libertarians none of them agree, but you can't say that you're a 00:22:21.600 --> 00:22:25.680 libertarian if you disagree with absolutely every tenet of what that ideology 00:22:26.880 --> 00:22:31.040 advances. The same is true for Christianity. 00:22:31.040 --> 00:22:33.360 There is a content to the faith. 00:22:33.360 --> 00:22:38.080 And in order to be a Christian, there is some minimum somewhere. 00:22:38.080 --> 00:22:41.200 We're not going to find that minimum today, and we would actually 00:22:41.200 --> 00:22:44.320 say you shouldn't even attempt to find that minimum. 00:22:44.320 --> 00:22:48.000 Because the goal should never be to be minimally Christian. 00:22:48.000 --> 00:22:51.840 The goal is not to just barely squeak over the finish line 00:22:51.920 --> 00:22:53.280 as it were. 00:22:53.280 --> 00:22:57.280 I've used the example before the illustration of a cliff. 00:22:57.280 --> 00:23:00.160 The goal is not to come as close to the cliff as 00:23:00.160 --> 00:23:04.320 possible, which would be to believe as few things as possible about 00:23:04.320 --> 00:23:08.720 the about the Christian faith without believing one too few and falling 00:23:08.720 --> 00:23:12.160 over. The goal is to avoid the cliff, to stay away from 00:23:12.160 --> 00:23:14.640 the cliff, to be a faithful Christian. 00:23:14.640 --> 00:23:17.600 And so all of these issues we are going to discuss today 00:23:17.600 --> 00:23:21.600 matter. Are they all absolutely essential to salvation? 00:23:21.600 --> 00:23:24.480 The answer is no. 00:23:24.480 --> 00:23:27.840 But we cannot give you a number where, oh, you have to 00:23:27.840 --> 00:23:31.680 believe X out of Y in order to be saved, or you 00:23:31.680 --> 00:23:32.480 can't believe 00:23:33.360 --> 00:23:35.600 all of these and none of these. 00:23:35.600 --> 00:23:37.760 There are ones where that's very easy. 00:23:37.760 --> 00:23:41.440 There are some questions where it is a simple matter of if 00:23:41.440 --> 00:23:45.120 you believe this, you're damned, or if you don't believe this, you're 00:23:45.120 --> 00:23:50.480 damned. But for many of these, that is not the case. 00:23:50.480 --> 00:23:55.200 What we are saying with regard to that is do not have 00:23:55.200 --> 00:23:56.720 that mindset. 00:23:56.720 --> 00:24:00.480 Do not look for where the little line is where, well if 00:24:00.480 --> 00:24:04.160 I get as close as possible, that's exactly wrong. 00:24:04.160 --> 00:24:07.360 And quite frankly, it's sinful to be looking for that line. 00:24:07.360 --> 00:24:08.880 You want to avoid that. 00:24:08.880 --> 00:24:11.520 You want to have the fullness of the Christian faith, so you 00:24:11.520 --> 00:24:15.280 want to get all of these correct, not because it is absolutely 00:24:15.280 --> 00:24:20.320 essential, but because one, it is your duty as a Christian, and 00:24:20.320 --> 00:24:23.600 two, there are blessings from God From God. 00:24:23.600 --> 00:24:27.040 And yes, there are blessings for getting things correct as well. 00:24:27.040 --> 00:24:30.960 It's not just doing the right things in life. 00:24:30.960 --> 00:24:35.520 God does reward those who believe correctly about Him. 00:24:35.520 --> 00:24:38.800 That is again part of your duty as a Christian. 00:24:38.800 --> 00:24:43.600 And so these are important questions, some more important than others. 00:24:43.600 --> 00:24:48.880 But that tendency to want to find the line, that line drawing 00:24:48.880 --> 00:24:53.440 obsession that can be particularly pronounced sometimes in our circles on the 00:24:53.440 --> 00:24:55.200 political right. 00:24:55.200 --> 00:24:57.600 It should not have a place here. 00:24:57.600 --> 00:25:00.560 That's not what we are discussing, that's not the point of the 00:25:00.560 --> 00:25:04.240 episode, it's not the point of the Christian life. 00:25:04.240 --> 00:25:09.760 What God has said is true, and we should believe it. 00:25:09.760 --> 00:25:13.520 And so there are correct answers to all of these questions. 00:25:13.520 --> 00:25:15.760 We should want to get all of them right, and we should 00:25:15.760 --> 00:25:18.640 want to help our neighbor get all of them right. 00:25:18.640 --> 00:25:23.200 We should want to go out and evangelize those in our communities 00:25:23.440 --> 00:25:27.680 who get these questions wrong, who've maybe even not been taught the 00:25:27.680 --> 00:25:30.480 correct answers, because as we'll see with some of these questions, 00:25:31.440 --> 00:25:36.480 the respondents probably didn't even understand what was being asked in a 00:25:36.480 --> 00:25:39.200 full sense of the term. 00:25:39.200 --> 00:25:40.160 That's a problem 00:25:41.200 --> 00:25:44.000 That's not just a problem with the state of our churches, it's 00:25:44.000 --> 00:25:46.880 a problem with the state of our teachers in our churches and 00:25:46.880 --> 00:25:51.680 outside our churches, and the fact that many Christians are clearly not 00:25:51.840 --> 00:25:53.760 reading scripture. 00:25:53.760 --> 00:25:57.440 Because some of these, if you read scripture, you are not going 00:25:57.440 --> 00:25:59.040 to get them wrong. 00:26:00.240 --> 00:26:00.400 So 00:26:00.480 --> 00:26:03.440 this is an episode about a bunch of data, as I mentioned. 00:26:03.440 --> 00:26:04.720 These are from two studies. 00:26:04.720 --> 00:26:05.840 The links will be in the show notes. 00:26:06.160 --> 00:26:10.400 I highly encourage anyone who's interested to go click through and dig 00:26:10.400 --> 00:26:11.040 around yourself. 00:26:11.040 --> 00:26:12.960 We're just scratching the surface on the data. 00:26:12.960 --> 00:26:17.840 We've cherry-picked some questions and go directly to our thesis, which is 00:26:17.840 --> 00:26:20.720 that most of the people who say they're Christians are not Christians 00:26:20.720 --> 00:26:22.320 in the United States. 00:26:22.320 --> 00:26:23.520 And that's a big deal. 00:26:23.520 --> 00:26:26.320 And that will matter in in future episodes, but you know, as 00:26:26.480 --> 00:26:29.920 we made the case in the apostate episode, obviously it can happen. 00:26:29.920 --> 00:26:32.560 Here's where we're seeing it on the ground. 00:26:32.560 --> 00:26:36.240 So So we're gonna try as much as possible not to give 00:26:36.240 --> 00:26:38.560 raw numbers because it's a podcast. 00:26:38.560 --> 00:26:40.560 You can't see charts and graphs and trying to keep a bunch 00:26:40.480 --> 00:26:41.920 of numbers in your head is crazy. 00:26:41.920 --> 00:26:44.960 So visualization, it's entirely on the web. 00:26:44.960 --> 00:26:46.080 It's self-serve. 00:26:46.080 --> 00:26:47.440 Go have a ball. 00:26:47.440 --> 00:26:48.560 It's really interesting data. 00:26:48.560 --> 00:26:51.440 Like I said, there's there's a lot more there than we have 00:26:51.440 --> 00:26:55.200 any interest in covering here that will raise a whole bunch of 00:26:55.200 --> 00:26:57.840 different questions that are not on the table today. 00:26:57.840 --> 00:27:01.440 You will be shocked and horrified at how bad some of these 00:27:01.440 --> 00:27:03.280 things are. 00:27:03.280 --> 00:27:07.360 The first question that we're gonna tackle is this is the this 00:27:07.360 --> 00:27:09.840 first set is all gonna be from the Pew data from twenty 00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:13.040 fourteen. First question is belief in God. 00:27:13.040 --> 00:27:17.600 And the answers are absolutely believe, fairly certain God exists, not certain 00:27:17.760 --> 00:27:19.680 God exists. 00:27:19.680 --> 00:27:23.040 Evangelicals, about ninety percent, absolutely certain. 00:27:23.040 --> 00:27:24.880 About ten percent fairly certain. 00:27:24.880 --> 00:27:29.360 So virtually no evangelicals deny that God is real. 00:27:29.360 --> 00:27:30.400 Good news. 00:27:30.400 --> 00:27:35.280 Mainline drops to two-thirds are absolutely certain, and a quarter are fairly 00:27:35.280 --> 00:27:39.200 certain, and about four or five percent, not certain at all. 00:27:39.200 --> 00:27:43.040 So already there's a huge gap between ninety percent and two thirds 00:27:43.200 --> 00:27:47.920 just between the evangelicals and those who are, you know, the mainline, 00:27:47.920 --> 00:27:49.360 the rainbow Christians. 00:27:49.360 --> 00:27:52.960 Probably use that term here just for the sake of clarity. 00:27:52.960 --> 00:27:56.400 And then Rome, sixty-four percent also two-thirds. 00:27:56.400 --> 00:27:59.680 So the absolute only only two thirds of Roman Catholics and main 00:27:59.840 --> 00:28:02.800 lines believe that God exists. 00:28:04.080 --> 00:28:07.040 And then another quarter of them are fairly certain. 00:28:07.040 --> 00:28:09.200 That by itself is catastrophic. 00:28:09.200 --> 00:28:10.800 That's right off the top. 00:28:10.800 --> 00:28:15.280 If you can't say you're absolutely certain that God exists, as I 00:28:15.280 --> 00:28:18.080 said, I don't see how you can possibly have any promise of 00:28:18.080 --> 00:28:21.360 salvation if you doubt that God exists. 00:28:21.360 --> 00:28:24.800 Because that doubt, everything else that could possibly, every other question that 00:28:24.800 --> 00:28:30.720 could possibly arise in the Christian context is necessarily downstream from you 00:28:30.720 --> 00:28:32.160 having a creator. 00:28:32.160 --> 00:28:35.840 A man who doubts that can't get anything else right. 00:28:35.840 --> 00:28:40.640 So th this is the first of every case where the evangelicals 00:28:40.640 --> 00:28:43.440 are gonna be as close to Christianity as possible. 00:28:43.440 --> 00:28:46.480 The main lines are going to be some flavor of dumpster fire. 00:28:46.480 --> 00:28:49.120 And then Rome is going to be either in the same dumpster 00:28:49.120 --> 00:28:50.720 or in an adjacent one. 00:28:51.120 --> 00:28:55.280 And you even have two percent with each of the mainline Protestants 00:28:55.360 --> 00:28:59.520 and the Roman Catholics who say they do not believe in God. 00:28:59.520 --> 00:29:03.200 Not just that they aren't certain, not just that they don't have 00:29:03.200 --> 00:29:04.880 a fairly certain belief. 00:29:04.880 --> 00:29:10.240 They literally answered they do not believe in God One in fifty 00:29:10.560 --> 00:29:16.240 mainline Protestants and one in fifty Roman Catholics in the United States 00:29:16.720 --> 00:29:20.160 does not even believe in God. 00:29:20.160 --> 00:29:22.160 That's absolutely insane. 00:29:22.880 --> 00:29:27.760 The idea that you would even claim to be a Christian and 00:29:27.760 --> 00:29:31.200 then deny a belief in God. 00:29:31.200 --> 00:29:34.720 But that's the state of affairs today with regard to the to 00:29:34.720 --> 00:29:39.680 the mainline churches and the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. 00:29:39.680 --> 00:29:43.280 And that's not even including the percentages that say they don't know, 00:29:43.280 --> 00:29:46.720 which is as bad as saying you don't believe in God, if 00:29:46.720 --> 00:29:51.040 you say I don't know if there's a God. 00:29:51.040 --> 00:29:54.720 Everything else, as well said, is downstream from that. 00:29:54.720 --> 00:29:58.480 If you don't believe in God, how does any of the rest 00:29:58.480 --> 00:30:04.880 of this make any coherent sense whatsoever, why would you believe anything 00:30:04.880 --> 00:30:07.520 in the Bible if there's no God? 00:30:07.520 --> 00:30:10.400 If there's no God, if the Bible is not written by God, 00:30:10.400 --> 00:30:14.160 then you may as well believe the menu from your local Thai 00:30:14.160 --> 00:30:18.880 restaurant, or a random science fiction book, it's just as compelling if 00:30:18.880 --> 00:30:20.800 there's no God. 00:30:20.800 --> 00:30:24.240 The reason we believe in the Word of God is because it's 00:30:24.240 --> 00:30:25.680 the Word of God. 00:30:25.680 --> 00:30:30.080 So fundamentally you have to start with a belief in God. 00:30:30.080 --> 00:30:35.840 And notably for the evangelicals, it is zero percent for anything below 00:30:36.160 --> 00:30:37.520 not too certain. 00:30:37.520 --> 00:30:41.920 Which isn't great, that's one percent there, but there are no respondents 00:30:41.920 --> 00:30:46.160 who say they do not believe in God or they don't know. 00:30:46.320 --> 00:30:50.240 And the absence of that data is important because a church should 00:30:50.240 --> 00:30:52.400 be unwelcoming to someone who denies God. 00:30:52.800 --> 00:30:57.120 Not in the sense of being actively hostile, but they should feel 00:30:57.120 --> 00:31:01.040 like they don't belong there in the sense that I don't believe 00:31:01.040 --> 00:31:01.920 anything that's here. 00:31:01.920 --> 00:31:03.200 I don't believe in God. 00:31:03.200 --> 00:31:06.000 How can someone who doesn't believe in God go to a church? 00:31:06.000 --> 00:31:08.640 They can only go to a church where it's perfectly alright not 00:31:08.640 --> 00:31:13.200 to believe in God and where they're hearing things that are consistent 00:31:13.200 --> 00:31:14.320 with that. 00:31:14.320 --> 00:31:17.600 The next few questions are kind of about the Christian life, not 00:31:17.600 --> 00:31:19.680 so much about belief. 00:31:19.680 --> 00:31:24.080 But they're useful because they're an indication of even the possibility of 00:31:24.080 --> 00:31:25.280 spiritual health. 00:31:25.280 --> 00:31:27.040 And so the first one is attendance. 00:31:27.040 --> 00:31:29.120 How often do you attend church? 00:31:29.120 --> 00:31:33.200 The evangelicals once a week is about sixty percent, once or twice 00:31:33.200 --> 00:31:36.400 a month or a few times a year is about thirty percent. 00:31:36.400 --> 00:31:40.880 It's like a two to one ratio of all the time, sporadically 00:31:40.960 --> 00:31:44.480 or somewhat often, and only about one in ten said seldom or 00:31:44.480 --> 00:31:48.640 never. Contrast that with mainline, where instead of sixty percent, it was 00:31:48.640 --> 00:31:50.720 one third at ten once a week. 00:31:50.720 --> 00:31:53.200 That's a huge difference statistically. 00:31:53.200 --> 00:31:56.720 That's basically virtually a two to one ratio of going once a 00:31:56.720 --> 00:31:59.360 week evangelicals versus mainline. 00:31:59.360 --> 00:32:02.960 And then the once or twice a month goes up from thirty 00:32:03.120 --> 00:32:07.840 percent for the evangelicals to over forty percent from the mainlines. 00:32:07.840 --> 00:32:11.360 And then a a quarter of the main lines seldom or never 00:32:11.360 --> 00:32:13.040 attend church at all. 00:32:13.040 --> 00:32:14.720 And Rome is right there with them. 00:32:14.720 --> 00:32:16.720 They're 40, 40, 20. 00:32:16.800 --> 00:32:19.920 20% of Roman Catholics never attend church. 00:32:19.920 --> 00:32:23.680 And when you understand some of the specifics of their doctrines, that 00:32:23.680 --> 00:32:26.720 makes sense because they're Roman Catholic. 00:32:26.720 --> 00:32:31.040 If you are already in the club actually going to mass, some 00:32:31.040 --> 00:32:33.760 of them come to the conclusion that they don't need to do 00:32:33.760 --> 00:32:38.640 that. So it's a significant difference from the evangelicals. 00:32:38.640 --> 00:32:41.200 No, these are again, these are all churches that are teaching all 00:32:41.200 --> 00:32:41.840 these various things. 00:32:41.840 --> 00:32:45.680 And these are very coarse groups because I said in the intro, 00:32:45.680 --> 00:32:52.320 evangelical, like Pew correctly separates LCMS and Wells from ELCA. 00:32:52.320 --> 00:32:56.880 They correctly separate OPC and PCA from 00:32:57.840 --> 00:33:00.000 Pacusa, PC USA. 00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:03.360 So when the main lines they put the libs in the mainline 00:33:03.440 --> 00:33:07.120 bucket and they put the conservatives in the evangelical bucket. 00:33:07.120 --> 00:33:12.000 And even with the evangelicals, not even two thirds actually attend church 00:33:12.000 --> 00:33:12.640 every week. 00:33:12.640 --> 00:33:14.400 I think that's kind of wild. 00:33:14.400 --> 00:33:17.680 The The next one has to do with group prayer and group 00:33:17.680 --> 00:33:21.840 study. So it's basically you know in the either on Sunday or 00:33:21.840 --> 00:33:25.280 during the week, apart from just attending the church service, how often 00:33:25.280 --> 00:33:27.440 do you get together with other Christians? 00:33:27.440 --> 00:33:30.720 Now most cases it's probably gonna be something like Bible class on 00:33:30.720 --> 00:33:31.680 Sunday morning. 00:33:31.680 --> 00:33:34.560 Not necessarily, maybe it's something in the midweek. 00:33:34.560 --> 00:33:38.320 Evangelicals, nearly half do it once a week. 00:33:38.320 --> 00:33:41.680 Uh over twenty percent do it once or twice a month, and 00:33:41.680 --> 00:33:43.840 about a third never do it. 00:33:43.840 --> 00:33:47.200 That kind of jives with my observation over time. 00:33:47.200 --> 00:33:50.000 There's some people just will never come to any of those things. 00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:52.880 Some people show up occasionally and usually about half of people get 00:33:52.960 --> 00:33:56.960 to church show up, you know, pretty regularly, almost every Sunday or 00:33:56.960 --> 00:33:58.160 every Sunday. 00:33:58.160 --> 00:34:04.080 Mainlines goes from almost half to less than 20% do it once 00:34:04.080 --> 00:34:04.800 a week. 00:34:04.800 --> 00:34:09.040 Another one-fifth, another twenty percent, once or twice a month. 00:34:09.040 --> 00:34:13.280 Sixty percent of mainlines never do any other study or group prayer 00:34:13.280 --> 00:34:15.440 or anything like that with others. 00:34:15.440 --> 00:34:18.160 That's a huge difference in the Christian life. 00:34:18.160 --> 00:34:22.080 The idea of gathering together with other believers, apart from the church 00:34:22.080 --> 00:34:26.640 service proper, which is vital, but getting together with other Christians where 00:34:26.640 --> 00:34:30.080 you're being taught, where you're discussing, where you're praying, any sort of 00:34:30.080 --> 00:34:32.480 engagement with your faith community. 00:34:33.280 --> 00:34:34.960 That like that's a thing. 00:34:34.960 --> 00:34:38.720 Your brothers in Christ should be there with you and for you. 00:34:38.720 --> 00:34:43.280 And talking these things through is the mutual consolation of the brethren. 00:34:43.280 --> 00:34:45.280 It's how we reinforce good teaching. 00:34:45.280 --> 00:34:49.040 And it's the opportunity for good and faithful teachers to reinforce many 00:34:49.040 --> 00:34:51.680 of the things that will simply never come up in a Sunday 00:34:51.680 --> 00:34:52.960 morning sermon. 00:34:52.960 --> 00:34:55.920 Because the sermon is not nearly as long as a class is 00:34:55.920 --> 00:34:59.360 going to be in most cases at something that some denominations still 00:34:59.360 --> 00:35:00.080 stick to. 00:35:00.080 --> 00:35:02.960 They used to be that you know Lutheran sermons were an hour, 00:35:02.960 --> 00:35:04.400 two hours in some cases. 00:35:04.400 --> 00:35:08.320 Now if a pastor goes beyond fifteen minutes, people start tapping their 00:35:08.320 --> 00:35:12.400 watches. It's very conspicuous for some people coming into Lutheran churches if 00:35:12.720 --> 00:35:16.000 they've experienced longer sermons elsewhere. 00:35:16.000 --> 00:35:18.240 I think we're on the wrong end of that stick. 00:35:18.240 --> 00:35:21.040 I don't think an hour-long sermon necessarily makes sense, but you know 00:35:21.120 --> 00:35:23.040 what? That's an audiophra. 00:35:23.040 --> 00:35:25.760 There's not a prescribed amount of time. 00:35:25.760 --> 00:35:30.240 However, the investment that the individual Christian has and I want more 00:35:30.640 --> 00:35:33.520 is absolutely a fruit of their spirit and is going to be 00:35:33.520 --> 00:35:35.760 a fruit of the teaching in a congregation. 00:35:36.080 --> 00:35:36.240 And 00:35:36.240 --> 00:35:42.720 even for the evangelicals, that one-third who never or seldom participate in 00:35:42.720 --> 00:35:45.120 these things, that's abysmal. 00:35:45.120 --> 00:35:50.640 But for the Roman Catholics, it's two-thirds. 00:35:50.640 --> 00:35:53.360 And part of that, of course, is going to be some of 00:35:53.360 --> 00:35:55.600 the doctrinal and structural differences. 00:35:55.600 --> 00:36:00.000 There are fewer classes in the Roman Catholic churches than certainly some 00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:04.000 of the evangelical churches. 00:36:04.000 --> 00:36:10.080 But But two-thirds of Christians, Roman Catholics in this case, never engaging 00:36:10.080 --> 00:36:14.560 in prayer or scripture study or religious education, which are the the 00:36:14.560 --> 00:36:20.560 three categories under this question, that really does bring into question the 00:36:20.560 --> 00:36:23.120 seriousness of that faith. 00:36:23.120 --> 00:36:27.280 Because if you are a Christian, there are certain things that are 00:36:27.280 --> 00:36:30.000 going to flow from that living faith. 00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:33.840 You are going to want to read the Word of God. 00:36:33.840 --> 00:36:37.760 You are going to want to pray, not just because you're commanded 00:36:37.760 --> 00:36:41.680 to pray, but because you're given the opportunity to pray. 00:36:41.680 --> 00:36:44.560 God tells you that He hears your prayers and He will answer 00:36:44.560 --> 00:36:46.240 your prayers. 00:36:46.240 --> 00:36:51.280 And if you believe that, you're going to pray, and we see 00:36:51.280 --> 00:36:54.800 similar things with the frequency of prayer. 00:36:54.800 --> 00:36:59.920 Now, the frequency of prayer thankfully is higher than this participation and 00:36:59.920 --> 00:37:06.320 scripture study, with 60% of Catholics actually praying at least daily. 00:37:06.320 --> 00:37:10.080 I imagine part of that is the ritual of the rosary and 00:37:10.080 --> 00:37:13.760 the prayers like that, which I'm not saying that it's bad to 00:37:13.760 --> 00:37:17.200 have a ritual when it comes to prayer, because obviously that's going 00:37:17.200 --> 00:37:19.680 to increase the frequency with which one prays. 00:37:19.680 --> 00:37:24.160 That's an important part of establishing that habit, which prayer should indeed 00:37:24.160 --> 00:37:25.120 be a habit. 00:37:25.120 --> 00:37:27.840 I would disagree with some of the content, of course, but that 00:37:27.840 --> 00:37:30.160 is a tangential topic. 00:37:30.160 --> 00:37:32.640 But for evangelicals it's eighty percent. 00:37:32.640 --> 00:37:34.400 Pray at least daily. 00:37:34.400 --> 00:37:36.560 It should be one hundred percent. 00:37:36.560 --> 00:37:40.240 If you call yourself an evangelical Christian, if you say you're a 00:37:40.240 --> 00:37:44.240 Bible believing traditional Christian, you should pray every day. 00:37:44.240 --> 00:37:47.040 It doesn't mean that every single day you will 00:37:48.160 --> 00:37:51.200 pray all of the daily offices as it were. 00:37:51.200 --> 00:37:55.840 You're not going to necessarily do your morning prayers and afternoon and 00:37:55.840 --> 00:38:00.400 evening. But at some point during the day, you should say a 00:38:00.400 --> 00:38:03.760 prayer. Even if it's just the Lord's prayer, it's a good place 00:38:03.760 --> 00:38:04.560 to start. 00:38:04.560 --> 00:38:08.240 So perhaps some of those who are listening have had problems in 00:38:08.240 --> 00:38:11.120 their prayer life or establishing that habit. 00:38:11.120 --> 00:38:15.520 As we have recommended before, say the Lord's Prayer before every meal. 00:38:15.520 --> 00:38:17.680 It's an easy place to start. 00:38:17.680 --> 00:38:20.960 It takes barely any time to say it. 00:38:20.960 --> 00:38:22.640 You probably already know the prayer. 00:38:22.640 --> 00:38:25.360 If you don't, it takes minutes to memorize. 00:38:26.560 --> 00:38:31.040 Prayer should be a part of your Christian life. 00:38:31.040 --> 00:38:36.480 And we see in these data that it's really not for a 00:38:36.480 --> 00:38:40.080 very large percentage of Christians. 00:38:40.480 --> 00:38:45.200 For the main line it's about half, say they pray daily, and 00:38:45.200 --> 00:38:47.280 then it tapers off from there. 00:38:48.960 --> 00:38:53.040 Again, this should be 100% for those who claim to be Christian, 00:38:53.040 --> 00:38:56.800 for those who are Christian, it should be one hundred percent. 00:38:56.800 --> 00:38:59.360 Prayer is part of the Christian life. 00:38:59.360 --> 00:39:02.640 And again, it's not because we're saying that oh works save you, 00:39:02.640 --> 00:39:04.240 and prayer is a work. 00:39:04.240 --> 00:39:08.800 No. These things flow from a living faith. 00:39:08.800 --> 00:39:12.480 And so when you see this sort of behavior, when you see 00:39:12.480 --> 00:39:18.160 this lack of response, you start to question whether or not the 00:39:18.160 --> 00:39:19.760 faith is living. 00:39:20.240 --> 00:39:24.000 You look to all of the warnings in scripture about a living 00:39:24.000 --> 00:39:27.440 faith versus a dead faith, or what is a good tree? 00:39:27.440 --> 00:39:31.440 Well, a living faith is a good tree, it's going to produce 00:39:31.440 --> 00:39:35.040 fruit. The fruit it produces is good works. 00:39:35.040 --> 00:39:38.640 Well, one of the things it produces is prayer. 00:39:38.640 --> 00:39:41.040 So this is a very good metric. 00:39:41.040 --> 00:39:45.680 For how seriously these groups take their faith. 00:39:45.680 --> 00:39:50.640 And when it comes to the mainline Protestants, about half don't really 00:39:50.640 --> 00:39:53.360 take it very seriously at all. 00:39:53.360 --> 00:39:58.000 It's a little better, again for the Roman Catholic sixty percent. 00:39:58.000 --> 00:40:00.000 That's still not very good. 00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:02.640 These are not the numbers that we want to see 00:40:03.600 --> 00:40:07.440 among our Christian brothers, those who claim to be Christian at least 00:40:09.200 --> 00:40:13.680 We should want to see the actual fruits of a living faith 00:40:13.840 --> 00:40:17.440 in those who are saying they are Christian. 00:40:17.440 --> 00:40:21.680 And so when we see, as we've mentioned before, these calls to 00:40:21.680 --> 00:40:25.840 go overseas and send money all these various places and you know, 00:40:25.840 --> 00:40:28.480 oh we can go and build wells in Africa, whatever it happens 00:40:28.480 --> 00:40:29.760 to be. 00:40:29.760 --> 00:40:34.960 We have millions of our own people right next door who are 00:40:34.960 --> 00:40:40.000 claiming to be Christian, but in reality probably are not. 00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:42.160 Those are the men we need to be evangelizing. 00:40:42.160 --> 00:40:45.360 We need to be reaching out to those God has placed in 00:40:45.360 --> 00:40:48.640 our lives, our literal neighbors. 00:40:48.640 --> 00:40:54.400 Because again, just because someone says he's Christian, dig a little deeper. 00:40:54.400 --> 00:40:58.960 See what he actually believes, see what he actually does in response 00:40:58.960 --> 00:41:02.160 to that claim of being a Christian. 00:41:02.560 --> 00:41:06.080 The next question in the pew study we want to highlight is 00:41:06.080 --> 00:41:09.840 the source of right and wrong in a person's life. 00:41:09.840 --> 00:41:14.560 And they broke it into categories of religion or philosophy and reason, 00:41:14.560 --> 00:41:16.160 common sense and science. 00:41:16.160 --> 00:41:20.960 I'm just gonna lump everything in either religion or philosophy, common sense 00:41:21.040 --> 00:41:22.480 science as one. 00:41:22.480 --> 00:41:26.240 Because it's really either philosophy or it's man-made. 00:41:26.240 --> 00:41:30.400 That's really those all those are saying this is a human creation. 00:41:30.400 --> 00:41:31.760 We did it. 00:41:31.760 --> 00:41:35.200 Which is a big problem when you're talking about morality. 00:41:35.200 --> 00:41:38.400 Because if your source of right and wrong is a man instead 00:41:38.400 --> 00:41:42.800 of an eternal God, well, that's the next question about absolute right 00:41:42.800 --> 00:41:43.680 and wrong. 00:41:43.680 --> 00:41:47.680 When is something always wrong versus And you know, it could go 00:41:47.680 --> 00:41:48.880 either way. 00:41:48.880 --> 00:41:53.520 and you know there's an ambiguity to that question because maybe there's 00:41:53.600 --> 00:41:59.040 situations where it's simply not clear, but that's usually where people are 00:41:59.040 --> 00:42:02.000 gonna go scurrying to paper over their sins. 00:42:02.000 --> 00:42:06.240 I think one of the best examples of that is abortion, infanticide, 00:42:06.240 --> 00:42:08.240 murdering infants in the womb. 00:42:08.240 --> 00:42:12.240 People want to say, well, it's usually wrong, but sometimes you just 00:42:12.240 --> 00:42:13.440 gotta kill that baby. 00:42:13.440 --> 00:42:15.200 Now he was coming right at me. 00:42:15.200 --> 00:42:18.160 No. Anytime you kill a baby, you're a murderer. 00:42:18.160 --> 00:42:20.800 You're the worst type of murderer imaginable. 00:42:20.800 --> 00:42:23.680 It's a sacrifice to Satan when that's done. 00:42:23.680 --> 00:42:27.120 And the idea that, oh well, there's some extenuating circumstance where it's 00:42:27.280 --> 00:42:31.440 okay. No, this isn't we're not talking about the medical case where 00:42:31.440 --> 00:42:34.560 the mother The mother and the child are both going to die, 00:42:34.560 --> 00:42:37.680 and the only thing the doctor can do is save the mother's 00:42:37.680 --> 00:42:42.640 life. Those edge cases do not inform the moral question. 00:42:42.640 --> 00:42:44.640 So in the question of where do you get your right and 00:42:44.640 --> 00:42:49.600 wrong, among evangelicals, sixty percent say the right and wrong comes from 00:42:49.600 --> 00:42:52.320 religion, which would obviously be Christianity. 00:42:52.320 --> 00:42:55.920 And mainline Romanists say thirty percent. 00:42:55.920 --> 00:43:00.880 Everything else, the other forty percent for evangelicals say man made, and 00:43:01.040 --> 00:43:05.360 seventy percent for the main lines for the Rainbow Coalition says it's 00:43:05.360 --> 00:43:06.080 for man. 00:43:06.080 --> 00:43:07.200 That's wild. 00:43:07.200 --> 00:43:12.160 If only thirty percent of these non-evangelicals Believe that right and wrong 00:43:12.160 --> 00:43:13.840 comes from God. 00:43:13.840 --> 00:43:17.200 It really kind of explains everything else downstream, doesn't it? 00:43:17.200 --> 00:43:18.320 That's crazy. 00:43:18.320 --> 00:43:22.400 The idea, the morality, the right and wrong are something that is 00:43:22.560 --> 00:43:26.240 it's a philosophical question or a scientific question. 00:43:26.240 --> 00:43:29.840 As soon as you crack that door open, there's no limit to 00:43:29.840 --> 00:43:33.600 the man-made wickedness that is going to enter into people's lives. 00:43:33.600 --> 00:43:37.760 And the in the case of the absolute morality, it's fifty-fifty for 00:43:37.760 --> 00:43:42.240 evangelicals and one third to two thirds for the others, or one 00:43:42.320 --> 00:43:45.920 third. Say it's very clearly right and wrong. 00:43:45.920 --> 00:43:48.080 Evangelicals fifty-fifty. 00:43:48.080 --> 00:43:51.760 The rest of it is situational or could it be either? 00:43:51.760 --> 00:43:52.960 That's crazy. 00:43:52.960 --> 00:43:55.840 Only half of the evangelicals, you know, the the good guys, the 00:43:55.840 --> 00:44:02.080 conservatives, only half of them believe that morality is always absolute and 00:44:02.320 --> 00:44:07.520 fully fully two thirds of the mainline rainbow papists think that that's 00:44:07.520 --> 00:44:09.040 fine. It's whatever, man. 00:44:09.040 --> 00:44:10.080 It's situational. 00:44:10.080 --> 00:44:13.360 You don't you don't have to get bogged down in right and 00:44:13.360 --> 00:44:16.560 wrong all the time if you need it for you know for 00:44:16.560 --> 00:44:21.520 flexibility. Once you understand that these are the answers in the hearts 00:44:21.520 --> 00:44:25.440 of people who self-identify as Christian, a lot of other things start 00:44:25.440 --> 00:44:26.800 to make sense. 00:44:27.200 --> 00:44:31.760 Just the sheer fact that amongst the mainline Protestants and the Roman 00:44:31.760 --> 00:44:36.880 Catholics, 50% say that common sense is their guidance for right and 00:44:36.880 --> 00:44:40.880 wrong is insane. 00:44:40.880 --> 00:44:45.280 On one level, it doesn't mean anything. 00:44:45.280 --> 00:44:50.000 How is it that common sense can possibly guide your moral decisions? 00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:51.840 What is the source of that common sense? 00:44:51.840 --> 00:44:53.840 On what are you grounding this? 00:44:53.840 --> 00:44:57.680 Because bear in mind, religion is one of the options here, so 00:44:57.680 --> 00:45:01.280 if they say common sense instead of religion, they're choosing common sense 00:45:01.280 --> 00:45:05.840 to the exclusion of religion with regard to their source for moral 00:45:05.840 --> 00:45:07.040 guidance. 00:45:08.080 --> 00:45:11.680 It's an absolutely absurd statement, and yet fully fully fifty percent for 00:45:11.680 --> 00:45:15.840 the mainline Protestants and the Roman Catholics say no common sense is 00:45:16.000 --> 00:45:17.680 my source of morality. 00:45:17.680 --> 00:45:21.760 It's my guidance on what's right and wrong, not religion, not Christianity, 00:45:21.760 --> 00:45:26.240 not this faith I supposedly profess, no just common sense, what I 00:45:26.240 --> 00:45:27.440 happen to think. 00:45:27.440 --> 00:45:31.360 And a full ten per cent, surprisingly, perhaps more of the Roman 00:45:31.360 --> 00:45:36.160 Catholics than the mainline Protestants, a full 10% say science is my 00:45:36.160 --> 00:45:38.240 source of morality. 00:45:38.240 --> 00:45:42.240 As if science has anything to say with regard to morality. 00:45:42.240 --> 00:45:45.840 Science is, at best, amoral. 00:45:45.840 --> 00:45:49.840 It provides no guidance whatsoever for right and wrong. 00:45:49.840 --> 00:45:50.800 It can inform 00:45:51.680 --> 00:45:57.040 the ultimate decision on what is right and wrong, insofar as, for 00:45:57.040 --> 00:46:02.880 instance, it can help you determine ethical issues with regard to medical 00:46:02.880 --> 00:46:08.880 treatment. But ultimately, the decision is a religious one, because ultimately it 00:46:09.040 --> 00:46:12.720 is Christianity that guides what is right or wrong. 00:46:12.720 --> 00:46:17.760 You can gain information from the others, but the decision rests with 00:46:17.760 --> 00:46:22.560 religion. And so the fact that you have two thirds saying that 00:46:22.560 --> 00:46:28.800 other things are the source of morality instead of the Christian faith. 00:46:28.800 --> 00:46:33.680 It really tells you the dire situation of both the mainline Protestant 00:46:33.680 --> 00:46:37.360 churches and the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. 00:46:37.840 --> 00:46:41.760 The next question is how frequently are you engaged in scripture, how 00:46:41.760 --> 00:46:43.760 often are you reading the Bible? 00:46:43.840 --> 00:46:48.560 Evangelicals, two thirds say at least weekly, and about twenty percent say 00:46:48.560 --> 00:46:51.760 once in a while and twenty percent say never, which is by 00:46:51.760 --> 00:46:52.800 itself awful. 00:46:52.800 --> 00:46:57.600 Like that's for twenty percent of people who are the conservative Christians 00:46:57.760 --> 00:47:00.400 to never open their Bible as just bonkers. 00:47:00.400 --> 00:47:03.120 And again, does that mean they're going to hell? 00:47:03.120 --> 00:47:05.760 No. Does it mean that their faith is at best on life 00:47:05.760 --> 00:47:07.600 support? Absolutely. 00:47:07.600 --> 00:47:13.120 What are you doing with your life if you never touch scripture? 00:47:13.120 --> 00:47:14.720 And so that's just the evangelicals. 00:47:14.880 --> 00:47:17.280 When you look at the main lines, instead of being two thirds 00:47:17.360 --> 00:47:22.720 at least weekly mainline three and ten thirty percent and romanists are 00:47:22.720 --> 00:47:26.640 a quarter one and four so it's like I said the only 00:47:26.640 --> 00:47:29.920 time the Romanists differ from the main lines from the the rainbow 00:47:29.920 --> 00:47:32.000 coalition is when they're even worse. 00:47:32.000 --> 00:47:36.240 It's particularly understandable in the case of scripture because when you understand 00:47:36.400 --> 00:47:41.760 Romanist doctrine, it is the magisterium and tradition and then scripture. 00:47:41.760 --> 00:47:44.480 And so as long as they have some of the other things, 00:47:44.480 --> 00:47:47.280 scripture is less important to them definitionally. 00:47:47.280 --> 00:47:49.440 Now it's not to say that it's less important in the lives 00:47:49.440 --> 00:47:50.560 of certain individuals. 00:47:50.560 --> 00:47:54.240 Clearly, twenty five percent of Roman Catholics are reading their Bible at 00:47:54.240 --> 00:47:55.120 least weekly. 00:47:55.120 --> 00:47:57.520 Great. That's a good thing. 00:47:57.520 --> 00:47:59.120 I hope that they understand it. 00:47:59.120 --> 00:48:02.000 I I hope it's in English and not in Latin, unlike their 00:48:02.240 --> 00:48:06.080 mass. And then when you look in, you know, once the the 00:48:06.160 --> 00:48:11.680 so the evangelicals occasionally or never are basically 20% each main lines, 00:48:11.680 --> 00:48:15.360 a quarter once in a while will read their Bibles, and nearly 00:48:15.360 --> 00:48:17.280 half never read their Bibles. 00:48:17.280 --> 00:48:18.160 That's huge. 00:48:18.160 --> 00:48:20.240 That's more than double the evangelicals. 00:48:20.240 --> 00:48:22.640 The main lines just never crack their Bible open. 00:48:22.640 --> 00:48:25.120 So it's make makes perfect sense while you see the rainbow flags 00:48:25.120 --> 00:48:27.680 and all the other crap, because what do they care? 00:48:27.680 --> 00:48:29.440 Their source of morality is common sense. 00:48:29.440 --> 00:48:32.880 And common sense says the rainbow flags are better for my tax 00:48:32.880 --> 00:48:39.920 deductibility. And then Romanus once in a while, 20%, never over 50%. 00:48:39.920 --> 00:48:42.400 So again, you know, they don't need the Bible because they have 00:48:42.400 --> 00:48:46.320 their magisterium, they have their tradition, the Bible, like whatever. 00:48:46.320 --> 00:48:47.920 Someone else can explain that to them. 00:48:47.920 --> 00:48:50.080 Not a good place to be for any Christian. 00:48:50.080 --> 00:48:52.560 And yet it's kind of the historical norm for them. 00:48:52.560 --> 00:48:56.480 It's one of the things that the Protestant Reformation was fought over. 00:48:56.480 --> 00:48:59.600 The Reformation was not intended to be a battle, but it became 00:48:59.680 --> 00:49:03.680 a battle because Rome for centuries had been murdering men who tried 00:49:03.680 --> 00:49:04.800 to read their Bibles. 00:49:04.800 --> 00:49:07.920 It was illegal to for you to possess one in the vernacular. 00:49:07.920 --> 00:49:09.840 Men were executed for that stuff. 00:49:09.840 --> 00:49:15.760 So that hangover from five, six, seven centuries ago is still with 00:49:15.760 --> 00:49:16.800 them today. 00:49:16.800 --> 00:49:20.960 These errors that creep into churches, they'll stick around for a long 00:49:20.960 --> 00:49:24.960 time after anyone remembers the history, because the pattern of life, once 00:49:24.960 --> 00:49:27.440 it's established, it just sticks with you. 00:49:27.440 --> 00:49:30.560 And it's just what everybody does, and it becomes common sense. 00:49:30.560 --> 00:49:33.600 And when that happens, why would you go looking for anything else? 00:49:33.600 --> 00:49:34.960 I already have everything figured out. 00:49:34.960 --> 00:49:37.200 Why would I open my Bible? 00:49:37.600 --> 00:49:37.840 And 00:49:37.840 --> 00:49:42.560 you still see some of the more obnoxious apologists for the papacy, 00:49:42.560 --> 00:49:47.920 particularly on social media, defending not reading the Bible, which undoubtedly plays 00:49:47.920 --> 00:49:51.520 into this, because as Woe said, there is the idea that will 00:49:51.600 --> 00:49:54.960 no, I need someone to interpret this for me. 00:49:54.960 --> 00:49:58.480 I would encourage those who believe that to take a step back 00:49:58.480 --> 00:50:01.920 and look at the logic of what is being said there. 00:50:01.920 --> 00:50:05.840 If someone else needs to interpret scripture for you, and I'm not 00:50:05.840 --> 00:50:09.360 saying that Saying that teachers are unnecessary because of course teachers are 00:50:09.360 --> 00:50:09.760 a good thing. 00:50:09.760 --> 00:50:12.320 That's what we're doing here, we're teaching. 00:50:12.320 --> 00:50:17.840 However, what a teacher says, you still have to understand. 00:50:17.840 --> 00:50:22.320 So when you say that scripture needs to be interpreted, what you 00:50:22.320 --> 00:50:27.040 are really asserting is that God is less clear in His communication 00:50:27.040 --> 00:50:30.720 with man than is man. 00:50:30.720 --> 00:50:34.320 God gave us His word so that we can understand it. 00:50:34.320 --> 00:50:37.920 He gave us his word because it contains things he wants us 00:50:37.920 --> 00:50:40.880 to know, things he wants us to do, things he wants us 00:50:40.880 --> 00:50:42.080 not to do. 00:50:42.080 --> 00:50:46.320 God is capable of communicating in such a way that we humans 00:50:46.320 --> 00:50:49.200 can understand what He communicated. 00:50:49.200 --> 00:50:53.120 And so it is vitally important for Christians to read Scripture. 00:50:53.120 --> 00:50:57.520 More than half of any group claiming to be Christian, not reading 00:50:57.520 --> 00:51:01.680 scripture at all, is unconscionable. 00:51:01.680 --> 00:51:05.040 It's simply anti Christian. 00:51:05.040 --> 00:51:08.480 Yes, you still need teachers, yes, it's important to still attend those 00:51:08.480 --> 00:51:15.600 services and to attend classes or otherwise study the scripture, but you 00:51:15.600 --> 00:51:17.440 need that foundation. 00:51:17.440 --> 00:51:21.360 You have to have actually read the scriptures yourself. 00:51:21.360 --> 00:51:23.040 That's part of this. 00:51:23.040 --> 00:51:27.840 If you were going to discuss any book at a book club, 00:51:27.840 --> 00:51:30.160 you would probably read it first. 00:51:31.680 --> 00:51:35.920 You should most certainly read the Bible, if you are a Christian. 00:51:36.960 --> 00:51:38.800 God gave us a book. 00:51:38.800 --> 00:51:42.960 God wrote a book for us, transmitted it through a number of 00:51:42.960 --> 00:51:46.320 men down through the centuries, but He gave us a book containing 00:51:46.320 --> 00:51:49.600 the things again that He wants us to know, do not do 00:51:51.200 --> 00:51:54.480 Why would we not read that? 00:51:54.480 --> 00:52:00.000 The idea that anyone should avoid reading the Bible is crazy. 00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:02.800 What does Scripture say about Scripture? 00:52:03.120 --> 00:52:05.920 Scripture says that it's necessary. 00:52:05.920 --> 00:52:10.720 Scripture says that it prepares us for various things. 00:52:10.720 --> 00:52:14.480 Basically most things in life, particularly being a Christian, it is the 00:52:15.200 --> 00:52:20.080 content of the Christian faith, and all of these questions we're discussing 00:52:20.080 --> 00:52:23.520 today, perhaps the numbers would be better on a lot of them 00:52:23.760 --> 00:52:27.280 if this particular number weren't so bad. 00:52:27.280 --> 00:52:31.840 If men were actually reading the scripture as they should be. 00:52:31.840 --> 00:52:37.440 Because even for the evangelical Protestants, even for the group that is 00:52:37.440 --> 00:52:41.600 the best at this, as Woe said, 20%, seldom or never read 00:52:41.600 --> 00:52:46.720 the scriptures, and seven percent is several times a year 00:52:48.320 --> 00:52:52.880 which maybe we can doubt the memory of those who say, Well, 00:52:52.880 --> 00:52:57.040 I read it a couple times last year. 00:52:57.040 --> 00:53:01.600 So it's basically a quarter who virtually never read the scripture, even 00:53:01.600 --> 00:53:05.280 amongst the most Christian group in the United States. 00:53:06.160 --> 00:53:09.520 That's simply unacceptable. 00:53:09.520 --> 00:53:13.360 This is an enormous problem in all of our churches. 00:53:13.360 --> 00:53:17.280 This is not just a problem in the mainline Protestants or the 00:53:17.280 --> 00:53:18.560 Roman Catholics. 00:53:18.560 --> 00:53:22.000 Because those numbers that I just gave, that we've gone over a 00:53:22.000 --> 00:53:25.920 couple times now, are the best numbers. 00:53:25.920 --> 00:53:30.960 These are the most Christian among Christians, who still are barely reading 00:53:30.960 --> 00:53:33.120 their Bible in many cases. 00:53:34.320 --> 00:53:39.840 And these individuals in this particular group don't even have the argument 00:53:39.840 --> 00:53:42.960 that some of the Roman Catholics have that the Magisterium told me 00:53:43.040 --> 00:53:46.080 don't read it, or they said they'll interpret it for me. 00:53:46.080 --> 00:53:48.640 That's not the case for evangelicals. 00:53:48.640 --> 00:53:53.520 One of the core beliefs amongst evangelical Christians, as Wo said in 00:53:53.520 --> 00:53:57.760 the introduction, is believing the Bible. 00:53:57.760 --> 00:54:00.320 If you believe the Bible you should probably read it so you 00:54:00.320 --> 00:54:01.840 know what's in it. 00:54:01.840 --> 00:54:04.640 You don't read it so that you can believe it. 00:54:04.640 --> 00:54:07.840 You believe it, therefore you should read it, and you believe it 00:54:07.840 --> 00:54:09.840 because it's the word of God. 00:54:09.840 --> 00:54:12.480 So the fact that we have a quarter of those who most 00:54:13.440 --> 00:54:18.880 firmly affirm, who most firmly believe, that the Bible is the Word 00:54:18.880 --> 00:54:24.480 of God, are not reading it, is an insane state of affairs. 00:54:24.480 --> 00:54:29.440 And yet we still have these individuals claiming to be staunch Christians, 00:54:29.440 --> 00:54:33.200 but not doing any of the things that Christians are supposed to 00:54:33.200 --> 00:54:33.840 do. 00:54:34.800 --> 00:54:39.200 This next question answers where some of that gap comes from, And 00:54:39.200 --> 00:54:42.800 that is the question of interpreting scripture. 00:54:42.800 --> 00:54:46.640 The first category of answers is scripture is the word of God, 00:54:46.640 --> 00:54:49.600 literally. The second is the word of God, but not all of 00:54:49.600 --> 00:54:52.240 it. And the third is it's not the word of God at 00:54:52.240 --> 00:54:58.880 all. And so evangelicals, the superstars of Christianity, only 55% say it's 00:54:58.880 --> 00:55:00.400 literally the Word of God. 00:55:00.400 --> 00:55:03.280 Another third say it's the Word of God, but not all of 00:55:03.280 --> 00:55:06.480 it. And twelve percent deny that Scripture is the Word of God. 00:55:06.480 --> 00:55:09.040 So that's going to be the bulk of those who don't read 00:55:09.040 --> 00:55:10.080 it all the time. 00:55:10.080 --> 00:55:10.880 Why would they? 00:55:11.040 --> 00:55:14.160 If scripture's not breathed out by God, yeah, why would you waste 00:55:14.160 --> 00:55:14.640 your time? 00:55:14.640 --> 00:55:18.160 Maybe there are books like you enjoy Cosmo or something more. 00:55:18.160 --> 00:55:20.320 You don't why would you waste your time with your Bible? 00:55:20.320 --> 00:55:21.440 That's what we're talking about there. 00:55:21.680 --> 00:55:25.200 So like this is in evangelical churches. 00:55:25.200 --> 00:55:28.960 These are the these are the hardcore conservative Christian bodies, not the 00:55:28.960 --> 00:55:32.560 conservative Christians among them, but again, that's the problem. 00:55:32.560 --> 00:55:37.840 When you're looking at the numbers game, I'm not gamifying salvation, but 00:55:37.840 --> 00:55:38.960 that's the term for it. 00:55:38.960 --> 00:55:42.560 When you're just looking at raw numbers, this is what we see. 00:55:42.560 --> 00:55:47.920 The most conservative bodies, one and eight, don't believe scripture is the 00:55:47.920 --> 00:55:48.480 word of God. 00:55:48.480 --> 00:55:49.840 They don't believe it's scripture. 00:55:49.840 --> 00:55:50.880 They think it's the Bible. 00:55:50.880 --> 00:55:55.120 They think it's a collection of books written by men, and maybe 00:55:55.120 --> 00:55:58.800 there's wisdom and stuff, but it's not breathed out by God. 00:55:58.800 --> 00:56:02.960 And so contrasting the evangelicals, the top out of fifty-five percent believing 00:56:02.960 --> 00:56:06.160 it's literal, mainlines, less than a quarter. 00:56:06.160 --> 00:56:10.320 And Rome, also right at a quarter, believing it's literally the word 00:56:10.400 --> 00:56:10.960 of God. 00:56:10.960 --> 00:56:15.920 Twenty-five percent of mainlines and Roman Catholics believe scripture is breathed out 00:56:16.080 --> 00:56:17.120 by God. 00:56:17.120 --> 00:56:19.040 That's completely catastrophic. 00:56:19.040 --> 00:56:23.600 And everything downstream from that, elsewhere in their lives is a function 00:56:23.600 --> 00:56:26.160 of that denial of scripture. 00:56:26.160 --> 00:56:29.040 Now Rome has a get out of jail free card that they 00:56:29.040 --> 00:56:31.040 got the Pope and other stuff, so they need to worry about 00:56:31.040 --> 00:56:35.200 it. The main lives, they don't like God is he's a wax 00:56:35.200 --> 00:56:38.160 nose. God is whatever they need him to be to feel good 00:56:38.160 --> 00:56:39.520 about themselves. 00:56:39.520 --> 00:56:42.240 And so, you know, for the main lines, a quarter believe it's 00:56:42.160 --> 00:56:45.600 literal. 40% believe it's the word of God, but not all of 00:56:45.600 --> 00:56:47.280 it. Rome is it the same. 00:56:47.280 --> 00:56:50.640 And then over two-thirds of both deny that Scripture is the word 00:56:50.800 --> 00:56:51.280 of God. 00:56:51.280 --> 00:56:56.560 Over two thirds of mainline, over two-thirds of Roman Catholics expressly deny 00:56:56.560 --> 00:56:59.760 Scripture. They say this is not breathed out by God. 00:56:59.760 --> 00:57:01.280 That is apostasy. 00:57:01.280 --> 00:57:05.680 To deny that Scripture is from God is to deny the Christian 00:57:05.680 --> 00:57:09.760 faith. That is to say that more than one-third of those in 00:57:09.760 --> 00:57:14.240 Rome and mainline denominations, just by this one question, have no promise 00:57:14.240 --> 00:57:15.520 of salvation. 00:57:15.520 --> 00:57:16.720 Are they all damned? 00:57:16.720 --> 00:57:17.360 I don't know. 00:57:17.360 --> 00:57:18.640 I hope not. 00:57:18.640 --> 00:57:20.960 But where do they go from there? 00:57:20.960 --> 00:57:24.880 If they deny scripture, where are they getting anything? 00:57:24.880 --> 00:57:27.280 And so And so this starts to make sense of the the 00:57:27.360 --> 00:57:28.800 answer about morality. 00:57:28.800 --> 00:57:31.440 Well of course they need to get their morality from TV, from 00:57:31.440 --> 00:57:32.800 common sense, from science. 00:57:32.800 --> 00:57:34.960 They can't get it from scripture 'cause it's just made up by 00:57:34.960 --> 00:57:37.600 God. Or it's it's made up by man, it's not from God 00:57:37.600 --> 00:57:38.480 at all. 00:57:38.480 --> 00:57:42.000 That's all this stuff all these things are interlocking pieces, which is 00:57:42.000 --> 00:57:44.640 why we're going through a number of these different questions, because by 00:57:44.640 --> 00:57:47.840 itself, one question doesn't illuminate everything. 00:57:47.840 --> 00:57:51.440 It certainly doesn't tell you in most cases if someone's saved. 00:57:51.440 --> 00:57:55.040 But when you start to see the questions shining lights back at 00:57:55.040 --> 00:57:57.520 each other, suddenly the whole picture becomes clear. 00:57:57.520 --> 00:58:00.880 It's like, well, yeah, of course they don't believe this because they 00:58:00.880 --> 00:58:02.160 deny this. 00:58:02.160 --> 00:58:05.440 And that is when it becomes clear that we're not just talking 00:58:05.440 --> 00:58:09.600 about a few errors, but we're talking about a significant portion of 00:58:09.600 --> 00:58:14.880 many major church bodies in the United States that simply aren't Christian. 00:58:15.040 --> 00:58:17.200 Again, we're not declaring damnation. 00:58:17.200 --> 00:58:20.960 We're just saying if there's Christianity here, there's no evidence for it. 00:58:20.960 --> 00:58:23.120 It's like pointing a telescope at the moon. 00:58:23.120 --> 00:58:24.720 You don't see anything moving. 00:58:24.720 --> 00:58:26.480 There are no heat signatures. 00:58:26.480 --> 00:58:29.120 You can state there's no life there. 00:58:29.120 --> 00:58:31.120 And then you go and you look and like, yep, there's nothing 00:58:31.120 --> 00:58:34.880 here. If there are no signs of life, that is itself proof 00:58:34.880 --> 00:58:36.480 of the absence of life. 00:58:36.480 --> 00:58:41.680 Now, spiritual life is slightly different in that only God can actually 00:58:41.680 --> 00:58:45.200 see it and discern it, but you can detect it. 00:58:45.200 --> 00:58:47.840 I don't need to judge your heart to know if you're lying 00:58:47.840 --> 00:58:48.640 about God. 00:58:48.640 --> 00:58:51.120 I don't need to judge your heart to know that you're living 00:58:51.120 --> 00:58:53.440 a life that's profligate and wicked. 00:58:53.440 --> 00:58:56.400 And some of the other questions we'll get into get into some 00:58:56.400 --> 00:59:00.160 of those specifics where these people that deny scripture, of course, they're 00:59:00.400 --> 00:59:04.240 gonna deny that morality is fixed, that it's absolute. 00:59:04.240 --> 00:59:05.840 That is license. 00:59:05.840 --> 00:59:09.040 Once you've done that, that's your permission slip from whom? 00:59:09.040 --> 00:59:11.040 Not from God, because there's basically no God. 00:59:11.040 --> 00:59:14.720 You have a permission slip from yourself and from reason and from 00:59:14.720 --> 00:59:19.440 Neil deGrasse Tyson, that you can do whatever doesn't hurt anybody else. 00:59:19.440 --> 00:59:21.040 Do as thou wilt. 00:59:21.040 --> 00:59:23.120 That's kind of where we see a lot of people in our 00:59:23.120 --> 00:59:24.000 churches today. 00:59:24.000 --> 00:59:27.440 Not necessarily our churches, probably most people listening to Stone Choir are 00:59:28.000 --> 00:59:30.240 members of these bad congregations. 00:59:30.240 --> 00:59:35.120 And they're bad congregations, even in the most conservative evangelical bodies, there 00:59:35.120 --> 00:59:41.280 are horrible, wildly left wing congregations that are openly enemies of God. 00:59:41.280 --> 00:59:44.160 There's no no one gets a clean bill of health here. 00:59:44.160 --> 00:59:47.040 So when we call out specifics, it's just like this is an 00:59:47.040 --> 00:59:48.640 example we should all flee from. 00:59:48.640 --> 00:59:51.520 And when you f when you flee to another church body and 00:59:51.520 --> 00:59:54.560 you find the same crap in smaller numbers, you gotta put out 00:59:54.560 --> 00:59:57.120 that fire because it's going to take people to hell with 00:59:57.120 --> 00:59:58.320 it. 00:59:58.320 --> 01:00:00.800 As Will mentioned in a recent episode 01:00:01.920 --> 01:00:08.080 Being a Christian, if you don't believe it's true, is an absolutely 01:00:08.080 --> 01:00:10.960 insane choice. 01:00:10.960 --> 01:00:14.640 If you don't believe that Scripture is the Word of God, why 01:00:14.640 --> 01:00:17.200 on earth would you be a Christian? 01:00:17.200 --> 01:00:22.080 It isn't going to make your life easier, in virtually all cases. 01:00:22.080 --> 01:00:26.400 It is going to make your life more difficult, significantly more difficult, 01:00:26.400 --> 01:00:28.240 in some cases. 01:00:28.240 --> 01:00:31.520 It's going to prevent you from doing some of the things the 01:00:31.520 --> 01:00:34.160 flesh tells you it would like to do. 01:00:34.160 --> 01:00:38.720 And well if there's no God, as we showed many believe, and 01:00:38.720 --> 01:00:42.000 if the Bible isn't the word of God, then why not just 01:00:42.000 --> 01:00:42.880 go do those things? 01:00:43.760 --> 01:00:48.560 Hedonism makes a lot more sense, insofar as there's any sense whatsoever 01:00:48.640 --> 01:00:52.400 in a meaningless universe, if that's what you happen to believe. 01:00:52.400 --> 01:00:56.880 Why would you be a Christian if you don't believe any of 01:00:56.880 --> 01:01:02.240 the things Christianity teaches, any of the tenets of the religion, it 01:01:02.240 --> 01:01:04.800 doesn't make any sense. 01:01:04.800 --> 01:01:09.440 Yes, there's that force of inertia, particularly when it comes to some 01:01:09.440 --> 01:01:12.560 of the mainline churches, but particularly in the case of the Roman 01:01:12.560 --> 01:01:16.160 Catholics. You'll get those who will say, Well, my family has been 01:01:16.160 --> 01:01:20.560 Roman Catholic for fifteen generations or twenty or however long it happens 01:01:20.560 --> 01:01:24.160 to be, as far back as you can trace. 01:01:24.160 --> 01:01:28.720 But if you don't believe any of the things that Christianity actually 01:01:28.720 --> 01:01:32.240 teaches, why on earth are you still going to church? 01:01:32.720 --> 01:01:37.120 Why are you saying that you're a Christian? 01:01:37.120 --> 01:01:38.800 There's no point. 01:01:38.800 --> 01:01:42.080 It doesn't make anything better for you. 01:01:42.080 --> 01:01:45.600 In fact, the only thing it can potentially do is if you're 01:01:45.600 --> 01:01:49.440 wrong, it's going to make things worse for you. 01:01:49.440 --> 01:01:54.160 Because falsely claiming that you are a Christian is worse than just 01:01:54.160 --> 01:01:56.640 not being one. 01:01:56.640 --> 01:02:00.160 Just as it is worse to commit an evil act with full 01:02:00.160 --> 01:02:04.400 knowledge than it is to commit it in ignorance. 01:02:04.400 --> 01:02:07.920 And so if you don't believe that Scripture is the Word of 01:02:07.920 --> 01:02:12.080 God, if you don't believe there even is a God, why would 01:02:12.320 --> 01:02:13.920 you claim to be a Christian? 01:02:13.920 --> 01:02:18.800 Yet that's exactly what we see a significant percentage of those, particularly 01:02:18.800 --> 01:02:22.880 in the mainline Protestant and the Roman Catholic Church, doing. 01:02:23.120 --> 01:02:25.280 It's an absolutely insane state of affairs. 01:02:25.280 --> 01:02:28.560 Yes, it's terrible at the same time. 01:02:28.560 --> 01:02:33.040 Because we have those who are ostensibly brothers and sisters in Christ 01:02:33.120 --> 01:02:37.440 who don't believe any of the things that the Christian faith teaches 01:02:37.760 --> 01:02:40.080 any of the things you have to believe to actually be a 01:02:40.080 --> 01:02:46.080 Christian. But it's also just wildly illogical. 01:02:46.080 --> 01:02:50.240 There's no reason to be a Christian if it isn't true. 01:02:50.880 --> 01:02:55.200 The reason that we are Christians, the reason we do the podcasts, 01:02:55.200 --> 01:02:59.200 the reason we cover these topics is because we believe these things. 01:02:59.200 --> 01:03:03.440 If we didn't believe them, what we're doing, what we're saying, all 01:03:03.440 --> 01:03:07.680 of this would be insane. 01:03:07.680 --> 01:03:11.360 What is the benefit of sticking out your neck? 01:03:11.440 --> 01:03:15.440 Because that's really what you're doing, if it isn't for the truth? 01:03:15.440 --> 01:03:17.280 There isn't one. 01:03:17.280 --> 01:03:20.800 It is behavior that is worthy of being committed to a mental 01:03:20.800 --> 01:03:25.600 institution. And yet that's what we see with a significant percentage of 01:03:25.600 --> 01:03:28.880 those in our churches. 01:03:28.880 --> 01:03:30.320 This is an abject failure 01:03:31.280 --> 01:03:33.120 of teaching. 01:03:33.120 --> 01:03:35.840 We have pastors who are not doing their duties. 01:03:35.840 --> 01:03:38.880 We have teachers who are not doing their duty. 01:03:38.880 --> 01:03:43.360 Apparently, teaching is just not a thing in many churches 01:03:44.400 --> 01:03:49.840 in the United States, because these are issues that should be addressed 01:03:49.840 --> 01:03:54.480 in the first class for a new member, or the first Bible 01:03:54.480 --> 01:03:56.880 study the person attends? 01:03:56.880 --> 01:04:01.520 How can you possibly attend a church that is supposedly faithful 01:04:02.800 --> 01:04:05.920 and not believe that the Bible is the Word of God? 01:04:05.920 --> 01:04:10.720 How can you arrive at that conclusion? 01:04:10.720 --> 01:04:16.720 We have a great deal of faithless pastors and faithless teachers in 01:04:16.720 --> 01:04:20.560 our churches, and they need to be removed. 01:04:20.640 --> 01:04:25.440 Because they are the reason that this sort of thing is happening. 01:04:25.440 --> 01:04:29.680 These numbers are the result of wolves in sheep's clothing. 01:04:30.560 --> 01:04:33.360 And yes, there are souls on the line here. 01:04:33.360 --> 01:04:38.400 Those who are taught incorrectly, or maliciously in some cases, and wind 01:04:38.400 --> 01:04:43.760 up believing these lies as Wo said, they have no promise of 01:04:43.760 --> 01:04:49.680 salvation. It doesn't mean they're necessarily damned. 01:04:49.680 --> 01:04:52.560 But is that the standard you want? 01:04:52.800 --> 01:04:56.880 Is that the sort of comfort you want to give? 01:04:56.880 --> 01:04:59.120 Is that the position in which you want to find yourself or 01:04:59.600 --> 01:05:04.080 others? Well you aren't necessarily damned? 01:05:04.080 --> 01:05:08.400 I think we would probably hope for something a little more comforting 01:05:08.400 --> 01:05:09.520 than that. 01:05:09.520 --> 01:05:11.600 And if you don't believe the Bible is the word of God 01:05:11.600 --> 01:05:15.760 The word of God, and if you don't believe God even exists, 01:05:15.760 --> 01:05:18.640 you don't have a promise of salvation. 01:05:20.080 --> 01:05:23.040 The next two questions go directly to 01:05:24.000 --> 01:05:25.520 the context of salvation. 01:05:25.520 --> 01:05:28.000 The first one is do you believe in heaven and do you 01:05:28.000 --> 01:05:29.840 believe in hell? 01:05:29.840 --> 01:05:33.680 And hilariously the numbers aren't the same in both cases. 01:05:33.680 --> 01:05:36.560 I'm just gonna give the don't believes 'cause it's a very simple 01:05:36.880 --> 01:05:39.920 question and it's either do you believe or you don't believe or 01:05:39.920 --> 01:05:40.640 you don't know. 01:05:40.640 --> 01:05:42.720 And if you don't know, that's the same as saying you don't 01:05:42.640 --> 01:05:44.960 believe. So it's the same thing. 01:05:44.960 --> 01:05:50.880 Among evangelicals, ten percent, slightly over ten percent, don't believe in heaven. 01:05:50.880 --> 01:05:52.240 None of them are going to heaven. 01:05:52.400 --> 01:05:54.640 If you don't believe in heaven, you're not saved. 01:05:54.640 --> 01:05:58.160 These are both in the creeds, these are both in the definition 01:05:58.480 --> 01:06:04.240 of Christianity that every Christian must accept because it's straight from scripture. 01:06:04.240 --> 01:06:07.360 If you don't believe that there's a heaven, you're going to go 01:06:07.360 --> 01:06:08.480 to hell. 01:06:08.480 --> 01:06:12.880 So ten percent of evangelicals don't believe in heaven, twenty percent of 01:06:12.880 --> 01:06:17.120 the main lines don't believe in heaven, fifteen percent of Roman Catholics 01:06:17.120 --> 01:06:18.640 don't believe in heaven. 01:06:18.640 --> 01:06:19.200 Seriously? 01:06:20.080 --> 01:06:21.520 Again, how is that even possible? 01:06:21.520 --> 01:06:26.000 As Corey just said, they're being eaten and devoured by wolves in 01:06:26.000 --> 01:06:27.600 their churches. 01:06:27.600 --> 01:06:32.800 No Christian can possibly go to a church and believe this if 01:06:32.800 --> 01:06:34.240 it's a Christian church. 01:06:34.240 --> 01:06:37.440 Any Christian church is going to make it unavoidable that there's a 01:06:37.440 --> 01:06:42.000 heaven and that there's a hell, also in the creeds, also in 01:06:42.000 --> 01:06:46.800 scripture. And so evangelical denial of hell is 20%. 01:06:46.800 --> 01:06:50.160 Mainline denial of hell doubles 40%. 01:06:50.320 --> 01:06:53.920 40% of the rainbow people say there's no hell. 01:06:53.920 --> 01:06:57.360 Bad news for them on judgment day, 100% of them are gonna 01:06:57.360 --> 01:06:58.240 end up in it. 01:06:58.240 --> 01:07:00.880 This is a do not pass go question. 01:07:00.880 --> 01:07:03.360 You can't say that there's no hell and have any promise of 01:07:03.360 --> 01:07:05.440 salvation. It's not gonna happen. 01:07:05.440 --> 01:07:07.520 And Rome is right behind him at 30 seven percent. 01:07:07.520 --> 01:07:10.960 It's basically four.% for both main lines and for Rome. 01:07:10.960 --> 01:07:15.200 And then obviously the believe is the flip side of that. 01:07:15.200 --> 01:07:19.360 On one hand, it's bonkers that you have eighty to ninety percent 01:07:19.360 --> 01:07:22.960 saying that heaven does exist, and yet only sixty to eighty percent 01:07:23.600 --> 01:07:25.280 saying that hell exists. 01:07:25.280 --> 01:07:29.680 That clearly shows that a lot of people hold a mercenary faith. 01:07:29.680 --> 01:07:33.600 They're Christian because they want to go to heaven, but they don't 01:07:33.520 --> 01:07:34.720 believe in that hell stuff. 01:07:34.720 --> 01:07:35.520 That's not their God. 01:07:35.760 --> 01:07:36.880 Their God doesn't do hell. 01:07:36.880 --> 01:07:38.160 He doesn't do damnation. 01:07:38.160 --> 01:07:40.320 There's no judgment from their God. 01:07:40.320 --> 01:07:41.840 Bad news from them. 01:07:41.840 --> 01:07:45.920 Because on judgment day, on the judgment throne is the judge of 01:07:45.920 --> 01:07:46.800 the world. 01:07:46.800 --> 01:07:48.240 That's Jesus Christ. 01:07:48.400 --> 01:07:50.800 He's sitting there judging us. 01:07:50.800 --> 01:07:54.320 And that's good news for Christians because we know that our robes 01:07:54.320 --> 01:07:58.480 are washed white in his blood that was sacrificed on the cross. 01:07:58.480 --> 01:08:00.880 Everyone else doesn't have white robes. 01:08:00.880 --> 01:08:04.240 They have robes that are stained filthy with the sins that we 01:08:04.240 --> 01:08:09.360 all accumulate throughout our entire lives, beginning the moment we're conceived. 01:08:09.360 --> 01:08:14.480 Without Christ's sacrifice, you don't get heaven and you do get hell 01:08:14.640 --> 01:08:17.680 because those are the only two options. 01:08:17.680 --> 01:08:20.080 This also excludes annihilationism. 01:08:20.080 --> 01:08:21.920 There's some folks that try to split the difference. 01:08:21.920 --> 01:08:24.720 They decide to say, well, yeah, if you're good or if you're 01:08:24.720 --> 01:08:26.320 Christian, you go to heaven. 01:08:26.320 --> 01:08:29.840 If you were bad, if you weren't a Christian, well, you just 01:08:29.840 --> 01:08:32.960 vanish. You just disappear from the universe. 01:08:32.960 --> 01:08:35.440 Scripture is very clear that that is not true. 01:08:35.440 --> 01:08:38.480 It is a definition of the Christian faith that there is a 01:08:38.480 --> 01:08:41.600 hell that was prepared for Satan and the goats are going to 01:08:41.600 --> 01:08:42.800 be thrown in with him. 01:08:42.800 --> 01:08:45.360 It's what God says, it's what he promises. 01:08:45.360 --> 01:08:47.360 If you believe in God, you have to believe that. 01:08:47.520 --> 01:08:48.960 Like this isn't bad news. 01:08:48.960 --> 01:08:52.480 This like when Christians say these things, people like, oh wow, it's 01:08:52.400 --> 01:08:53.440 fire and brimstone. 01:08:53.680 --> 01:08:55.680 It's literally just in the Bible. 01:08:55.680 --> 01:08:58.080 Is it fire and brimstone if you're on the wrong side of 01:08:58.080 --> 01:08:59.280 it? Well, yeah. 01:08:59.280 --> 01:09:02.560 So the solution is get on the right side of it. 01:09:02.560 --> 01:09:04.880 Accept Christ's sacrifice for you. 01:09:04.880 --> 01:09:06.480 Receive the gift of faith. 01:09:06.480 --> 01:09:08.960 God wants everyone to have faith. 01:09:08.960 --> 01:09:10.400 God offers it to everyone. 01:09:10.400 --> 01:09:14.080 We have to reject him continuously for our entire lives. 01:09:14.080 --> 01:09:16.400 And a lot of people are clearly pulling it off. 01:09:16.400 --> 01:09:20.720 And they're pulling it off even inside churches that call themselves Christian. 01:09:20.720 --> 01:09:20.960 This 01:09:20.960 --> 01:09:26.800 is a good point to emphasize something Wo just mentioned in passing. 01:09:26.800 --> 01:09:28.480 The Creeds. 01:09:28.480 --> 01:09:33.200 We've gone over the importance of the Creeds before, but perhaps in 01:09:33.200 --> 01:09:38.320 this episode more than any other, the vital importance of the creeds 01:09:38.320 --> 01:09:43.360 is demonstrated with almost every question. 01:09:43.360 --> 01:09:48.640 Because the creeds address most of these issues If you recite the 01:09:48.640 --> 01:09:54.400 creeds and if your pastor properly teaches the creeds, because that should 01:09:54.400 --> 01:09:57.040 certainly be part of it, you shouldn't just recite the creeds and 01:09:57.040 --> 01:10:00.000 then oh I'm good, I'm done. 01:10:00.000 --> 01:10:04.080 There should be teaching about what exactly each part of the creeds 01:10:04.080 --> 01:10:07.200 means, references to scripture, and we have that information. 01:10:07.200 --> 01:10:11.200 We can add that in the show notes. 01:10:11.200 --> 01:10:15.680 But the creeds are a vital part of Christianity because they teach 01:10:15.680 --> 01:10:17.840 the basics of the faith. 01:10:17.840 --> 01:10:21.840 And when you recite the creeds every week, you are reciting that 01:10:21.840 --> 01:10:26.960 faith, you are reinforcing your belief in that faith, you are stating 01:10:26.960 --> 01:10:30.240 what it is to be a Christian, what is the content of 01:10:30.240 --> 01:10:31.840 the Christian faith. 01:10:31.840 --> 01:10:35.600 And so some of these errors, it would be very difficult to 01:10:35.600 --> 01:10:40.240 continue believing these, to persist in these particular errors, if you are 01:10:40.240 --> 01:10:41.680 reciting the creeds. 01:10:41.680 --> 01:10:45.760 And that's why it's such a problem that certain churches have abandoned 01:10:45.760 --> 01:10:47.520 the creeds. 01:10:47.520 --> 01:10:51.600 In some of the more egregious cases, some churches have altered the 01:10:51.600 --> 01:10:56.640 creeds. I know some of the mainline churches, the more demonic, quite 01:10:56.640 --> 01:11:02.160 frankly, ones, have changed it in order to fit their ideology. 01:11:01.920 --> 01:11:06.400 If your church does not use the creeds, you should probably consider 01:11:06.400 --> 01:11:10.160 asking your pastor why. 01:11:10.160 --> 01:11:14.880 With what statement in the creeds do you disagree? 01:11:14.880 --> 01:11:17.520 And if he has an answer to that, and if he gives 01:11:17.520 --> 01:11:20.240 you a part of the creed with which he disagrees, you need 01:11:20.240 --> 01:11:22.400 to find a new church. 01:11:22.400 --> 01:11:27.680 Because every single thing in the creeds is from Scripture. 01:11:27.680 --> 01:11:34.400 They are simply creedal forms of what is taught in Scripture. 01:11:34.400 --> 01:11:39.280 They are formulated as a creed, so they can be memorized, so 01:11:39.280 --> 01:11:43.120 they can be recited in the service. 01:11:43.120 --> 01:11:48.880 They're not new doctrine, they're not reformulations, they are simply a statement 01:11:48.880 --> 01:11:53.280 of what is in Scripture, and so a Christian cannot disagree with 01:11:53.280 --> 01:11:54.720 the creeds. 01:11:54.720 --> 01:11:59.520 And we can see the consequence in certain denominations of abandoning the 01:11:59.520 --> 01:12:03.600 creeds. There are errors that creep in that are explicitly addressed in 01:12:03.600 --> 01:12:07.920 the Creeds, that would not creep in if the creeds were still 01:12:07.920 --> 01:12:09.680 used. 01:12:10.400 --> 01:12:14.560 The last few questions from the Pew survey have to do with 01:12:15.360 --> 01:12:19.360 moral questions in secular life. 01:12:19.360 --> 01:12:21.120 Uh the first is on abortion. 01:12:21.120 --> 01:12:22.880 I don't think there's a lot to say about this, just give 01:12:22.880 --> 01:12:24.560 you the raw numbers. 01:12:24.560 --> 01:12:28.800 Evangelicals, one third believe that abortion, the murder of infants in the 01:12:28.800 --> 01:12:30.320 womb, should be legal. 01:12:30.320 --> 01:12:32.000 One third say, yeah, go for it. 01:12:32.000 --> 01:12:33.280 Kill that baby. 01:12:33.280 --> 01:12:35.840 Mainline, it's nearly two thirds. 01:12:35.840 --> 01:12:40.080 In Rome, it's fifty fifty. 01:12:40.240 --> 01:12:45.280 Does someone who wants sacrificing babies to Satan have a promise of 01:12:45.280 --> 01:12:46.560 salvation? 01:12:47.520 --> 01:12:49.360 No. no, they don't. 01:12:49.360 --> 01:12:52.080 That's not even table stakes for Christianity. 01:12:52.080 --> 01:12:55.200 And it's not that we need to add abortion to the creeds. 01:12:55.200 --> 01:13:00.320 It's that even the pagans know better than this. 01:13:00.320 --> 01:13:05.600 Even pagans have to have gone very far down the path of 01:13:05.600 --> 01:13:10.880 absolute satanic abject depravity before they're gonna start killing their babies. 01:13:10.880 --> 01:13:14.240 And today it's been normalized in our society, the point that among 01:13:14.240 --> 01:13:19.200 evangelicals, among the conservatives, forget what the church bodies teach. 01:13:19.200 --> 01:13:22.880 The individuals sitting in the pews or not in the pews, depending, 01:13:22.880 --> 01:13:26.640 those who identify as Christians, one third of evangelicals say kill the 01:13:26.640 --> 01:13:29.680 baby, two thirds of the mainline say kill the baby, half of 01:13:29.680 --> 01:13:32.160 Roman Catholics say kill the baby. 01:13:32.160 --> 01:13:38.240 Even though you know Rome is is putatively anti-abortion and thank God 01:13:38.240 --> 01:13:43.520 for it because at least that dicta from Rome is enough to 01:13:43.520 --> 01:13:45.040 keep some people in line. 01:13:45.040 --> 01:13:47.680 You know even at that half of them are like yeah kill 01:13:47.680 --> 01:13:50.240 the baby. 01:13:50.480 --> 01:13:52.880 The next one is sodomy. 01:13:52.880 --> 01:13:54.720 Should it be accepted? 01:13:54.720 --> 01:13:56.160 Should it be discouraged? 01:13:56.160 --> 01:13:57.520 Should we not care? 01:13:57.520 --> 01:14:00.800 A third of evangelical, say accept it, that's great. 01:14:00.800 --> 01:14:04.160 Over half, so they should be discouraged, and about ten percent are 01:14:04.160 --> 01:14:05.680 just totally indifferent. 01:14:05.680 --> 01:14:08.240 Mainline, two thirds accept it. 01:14:08.240 --> 01:14:12.320 So again, you see the same ratio with abortion as with this 01:14:12.480 --> 01:14:14.720 other wicked depravity. 01:14:14.720 --> 01:14:17.600 One third of evangelicals say, yep, it's fine. 01:14:17.760 --> 01:14:20.160 Two thirds of mainline say, yeah, it's fine. 01:14:20.160 --> 01:14:21.680 And Rome is even worse. 01:14:21.680 --> 01:14:25.360 When it comes to sodomy, seventy percent of Roman Catholics say go 01:14:25.360 --> 01:14:26.240 for it. 01:14:26.240 --> 01:14:28.560 And only a quarter say discourage it. 01:14:28.560 --> 01:14:29.760 The rest are indifferent. 01:14:30.000 --> 01:14:34.400 That's absolute moral catastrophe. 01:14:34.400 --> 01:14:36.880 And then when you look at the side of my unions, I'm 01:14:36.800 --> 01:14:39.600 not even going to call it marriage because that's it's obscene. 01:14:39.600 --> 01:14:42.240 That's not a marriage at all. 01:14:43.280 --> 01:14:47.600 Over a quarter of evangelicals say yeah there's we should have gay 01:14:47.600 --> 01:14:51.440 marriage. And only two-thirds are against it. 01:14:51.440 --> 01:14:55.440 Mainline, it's nearly sixty percent are for and a third against. 01:14:55.440 --> 01:14:57.280 Rome identical. 01:14:57.280 --> 01:15:04.000 Again, these are self-identified Christians overwhelmingly in support of something that Obama, 01:15:04.000 --> 01:15:07.280 when he campaigned in 2008, was against. 01:15:07.440 --> 01:15:10.400 This is something that's missing from a lot of the moral conversations 01:15:10.400 --> 01:15:11.760 we have in our churches today. 01:15:12.080 --> 01:15:18.400 Just how quickly the world slid into complete wickedness and the church 01:15:18.400 --> 01:15:20.080 was in lockstep. 01:15:20.080 --> 01:15:21.280 These are Christians. 01:15:22.240 --> 01:15:24.080 We're in 2024 today. 01:15:24.080 --> 01:15:28.880 In 2008, a presidential candidate, the most liberal candidate probably who'd ever 01:15:28.880 --> 01:15:32.880 run, when you look at like the things that he viewed, he 01:15:32.880 --> 01:15:34.480 was publicly against it. 01:15:34.560 --> 01:15:36.960 Now in private, of course, he was for it because he himself 01:15:36.960 --> 01:15:37.680 is not. 01:15:37.680 --> 01:15:38.880 He's the 01:15:40.560 --> 01:15:44.960 public acceptable view for the Democratic Party in 2008 was we had 01:15:44.960 --> 01:15:47.200 to condemn sodomite marriage. 01:15:47.600 --> 01:15:53.440 And today, overwhelmingly, in among Christians in America, it's seen as something 01:15:53.440 --> 01:15:56.080 we should accept and be for. 01:15:56.080 --> 01:15:58.240 This is not Christianity. 01:15:58.240 --> 01:16:01.600 When Corey and I talk about the new global religion, this is 01:16:01.600 --> 01:16:03.040 what we're talking about. 01:16:03.040 --> 01:16:05.120 Because this is a moral question. 01:16:05.120 --> 01:16:08.560 Do you permit abortion and sodomy and sodomite marriage? 01:16:08.560 --> 01:16:09.920 Or do you forbid it? 01:16:09.920 --> 01:16:13.440 Do you punish it to the full extent of the law. 01:16:13.440 --> 01:16:14.880 The Bible says one thing. 01:16:14.880 --> 01:16:18.720 Christians have always said the same thing as the Bible until, in 01:16:18.720 --> 01:16:22.160 some cases, the last 50 or 60 years, in some cases the 01:16:22.160 --> 01:16:26.880 last 16 years, where something that was so radical that a Democrat 01:16:26.880 --> 01:16:29.520 couldn't run for it in two thousand eight. 01:16:29.520 --> 01:16:32.960 Today, the majority of people in churches in this country say, yeah, 01:16:32.960 --> 01:16:34.160 go for it. 01:16:34.160 --> 01:16:36.800 That is apostasy. 01:16:36.800 --> 01:16:38.960 That is the complete abandonment of God. 01:16:38.960 --> 01:16:41.280 And no, these things aren't in the creeds, they don't need to 01:16:41.280 --> 01:16:44.960 be, because they're written on our hearts, and they're everywhere in scripture, 01:16:44.960 --> 01:16:48.080 condemned in the strongest imaginable terms. 01:16:48.080 --> 01:16:50.800 God could not have been any more clear when he condemns these 01:16:50.800 --> 01:16:54.720 things. And Christians have always known it, and Christians still know it 01:16:54.720 --> 01:16:55.520 to this day. 01:16:55.520 --> 01:16:59.360 Those who do not know it show themselves not to be Christian, 01:16:59.360 --> 01:17:02.160 whatever else they confess with their lips. 01:17:02.800 --> 01:17:08.320 And the abortion numbers don't even capture how bad the reality actually 01:17:08.320 --> 01:17:15.200 is. Because that question is about abortion specifically as a procedure. 01:17:15.200 --> 01:17:21.120 It does not cover abortion as in its totality, which would include 01:17:21.120 --> 01:17:23.840 hormonal birth control. 01:17:23.840 --> 01:17:27.920 Because one of the ways that works is as an abortive facient. 01:17:27.920 --> 01:17:30.080 That is one of the outcomes. 01:17:30.080 --> 01:17:35.440 And what you morally risk, you are morally guilty of it. 01:17:35.440 --> 01:17:37.840 And so the use of hormonal birth control 01:17:38.720 --> 01:17:41.280 is the sin of abortion. 01:17:41.280 --> 01:17:44.240 That is what you are risking, and so that is what you 01:17:44.240 --> 01:17:44.560 have morally 01:17:45.520 --> 01:17:51.680 done. And the percentages of supposed Christians who are going to support 01:17:51.680 --> 01:17:55.040 that, I guarantee you they are higher than those who say they 01:17:55.040 --> 01:17:59.280 support abortion, when you use that word. 01:17:59.280 --> 01:18:02.560 And just for the record, for those who think that this is 01:18:02.560 --> 01:18:07.760 a relatively modern issue, the church has always opposed abortion. 01:18:07.760 --> 01:18:10.560 You can go back to sermons of the church fathers and they 01:18:10.560 --> 01:18:11.680 talk about abortion. 01:18:11.680 --> 01:18:16.400 John Chrysostom condemns abortion in some of his sermons. 01:18:16.400 --> 01:18:17.520 This is not a new issue. 01:18:17.520 --> 01:18:20.960 The church has not changed positions on it. 01:18:20.960 --> 01:18:23.600 This has always been the stance of the church that it is 01:18:23.600 --> 01:18:28.480 murder, that it is impermissible, that it is high-handed sin. 01:18:28.480 --> 01:18:32.080 It is a violation of the fifth commandment. 01:18:32.080 --> 01:18:36.560 And it is subject to the penalty in Genesis 9.6 01:18:38.880 --> 01:18:39.040 The 01:18:39.040 --> 01:18:43.280 last question we wanted to mention from Pew is about evolution. 01:18:43.280 --> 01:18:47.360 We did the entire six thousand years in counting episode dealing with 01:18:47.680 --> 01:18:52.880 the fact that the only possible Christian view is that the earth 01:18:52.880 --> 01:18:55.360 is less than 10,000 years old. 01:18:55.360 --> 01:19:00.320 Whatever timeline you pick, it cannot possibly be any older than that. 01:19:00.800 --> 01:19:07.040 To say otherwise is to directly and literally deny scripture. 01:19:07.040 --> 01:19:10.160 Because as we point out very simply in that episode, could have 01:19:10.240 --> 01:19:12.320 been a three-sentence episode. 01:19:12.320 --> 01:19:15.200 The only way evolution works is death. 01:19:15.200 --> 01:19:19.040 Death Death entered the world with Adam's sin. 01:19:19.040 --> 01:19:25.680 Therefore, evolution and Adam's sin cannot both exist on the same timeline. 01:19:25.680 --> 01:19:28.960 You either believe the Bible or you believe in evolution. 01:19:28.960 --> 01:19:31.520 And so what we find in this question, they broke it down 01:19:31.520 --> 01:19:34.480 by natural evolution versus designed evolution. 01:19:34.480 --> 01:19:35.680 I don't know. 01:19:35.680 --> 01:19:38.240 Or man always existed, or I just don't know anything. 01:19:38.240 --> 01:19:39.680 They're two different don't knows. 01:19:39.680 --> 01:19:40.000 That's how 01:19:40.960 --> 01:19:44.080 that's how messed up the survey data was. 01:19:44.080 --> 01:19:46.720 I'm just going to give you the always exist because that's the 01:19:46.720 --> 01:19:49.520 only Christian answer in the in the list. 01:19:49.520 --> 01:19:55.200 Evangelicals, the conservative Christians, fifty-seven percent say the man has always existed 01:19:55.360 --> 01:19:56.720 in the current state. 01:19:56.720 --> 01:20:01.840 That's fifty seven percent believe that Adam was the first man created 01:20:01.840 --> 01:20:03.600 in the perfect image of God. 01:20:03.600 --> 01:20:05.120 Fifty-seven percent. 01:20:05.120 --> 01:20:08.880 Just barely squeaking past half. 01:20:08.880 --> 01:20:11.680 Mainlines, the Rainbow Guys, thirty percent. 01:20:11.680 --> 01:20:13.680 Rome, twenty-nine percent. 01:20:13.680 --> 01:20:19.200 Less than a third of the Rainbow Papist Coalition believe that Adam 01:20:19.200 --> 01:20:22.400 existed. Now you tell me who can be a Christian in that 01:20:22.400 --> 01:20:27.280 state. Seriously, how many times has Adam come up in the Bible? 01:20:27.280 --> 01:20:32.080 It's like Adam vanishes after the genealogy talking about what happened in 01:20:32.080 --> 01:20:34.240 the garden In the garden. 01:20:34.240 --> 01:20:39.200 Adam is central as a character in the Bible, not because he's 01:20:39.120 --> 01:20:43.760 a fictional character, because he's our father, because we inherit his sin, 01:20:43.760 --> 01:20:46.960 a specific real sin that happened on a certain day of the 01:20:46.960 --> 01:20:49.840 week, six, seven thousand years ago. 01:20:49.840 --> 01:20:53.840 When it happened, the universe fell, we fall because of it. 01:20:53.840 --> 01:20:56.080 Every Christian must believe that. 01:20:56.080 --> 01:21:00.800 Now, as we send that episode, we're not saying you're going to 01:21:00.800 --> 01:21:04.800 go to hell if you disagree with us or even with scripture, 01:21:04.800 --> 01:21:06.800 because like we're pointing at scripture, it's got nothing to do with 01:21:06.880 --> 01:21:09.200 some podcast or things. 01:21:09.200 --> 01:21:11.520 The only way that someone can have those beliefs 01:21:12.400 --> 01:21:14.560 is to deny scripture. 01:21:14.560 --> 01:21:18.080 As I said in the intro, if you deny scripture, you're basically 01:21:18.080 --> 01:21:20.880 standing face to face with God and calling him a liar. 01:21:20.880 --> 01:21:22.400 You're saying, this is crap. 01:21:22.400 --> 01:21:24.960 You're just making up stories, I don't believe any of this. 01:21:24.960 --> 01:21:28.960 I have scientific evidence that tells me that you're wrong, that we 01:21:28.960 --> 01:21:31.680 evolved. Obviously, that stuff is stupid. 01:21:31.680 --> 01:21:33.120 I'm not a rube. 01:21:33.120 --> 01:21:36.480 I know better. 01:21:36.480 --> 01:21:39.040 That's when this becomes a matter of salvation. 01:21:39.040 --> 01:21:41.040 And men can't answer the question. 01:21:41.040 --> 01:21:43.840 All we can do in point is say, dude, you're calling God 01:21:43.840 --> 01:21:44.560 a liar. 01:21:44.560 --> 01:21:48.400 You're taking the Lord's name in vain by saying I'm a Christian, 01:21:48.400 --> 01:21:50.160 but I don't believe God. 01:21:50.160 --> 01:21:52.640 That's the worst possible thing you can do. 01:21:52.640 --> 01:21:54.960 At least just be an open enemy of God and not be 01:21:54.960 --> 01:21:56.720 a hypocrite on top of it. 01:21:56.720 --> 01:22:00.000 But to take his name on you as a Christian and then 01:22:00.000 --> 01:22:02.960 to call him a liar when he tells you what he did, 01:22:02.960 --> 01:22:07.280 how he created you, it's as bad as it could possibly be. 01:22:07.280 --> 01:22:08.400 Will he forgive it? 01:22:08.400 --> 01:22:09.120 I hope so. 01:22:09.120 --> 01:22:12.240 Like, I we're not declaring damnation in these things. 01:22:12.240 --> 01:22:17.600 It's just scripture says one thing, and 70% of Roman Catholics and 01:22:17.920 --> 01:22:21.360 mainlines deny what's plainly in the Bible. 01:22:21.360 --> 01:22:23.920 They deny that Adam ever existed. 01:22:23.920 --> 01:22:26.640 That's a do not pass-go situation. 01:22:28.160 --> 01:22:32.960 So moving on now from the Pew data to the ligoner data, 01:22:32.960 --> 01:22:39.440 the first question in those survey data was God is a perfect 01:22:39.440 --> 01:22:43.280 being. And this is not formulated as a question, the first statement, 01:22:43.280 --> 01:22:50.160 and you agree, disagree, either strongly or just plainly, God is a 01:22:50.160 --> 01:22:54.800 perfect being and cannot make a mistake. 01:22:54.800 --> 01:22:59.280 Obviously, as Christians, we have to strongly agree. 01:22:59.280 --> 01:23:03.360 Because God is perfect. 01:23:03.360 --> 01:23:07.040 This is just essentially the definition of what God is. 01:23:07.600 --> 01:23:12.000 The idea that God could make a mistake is so wrong it's 01:23:12.000 --> 01:23:14.080 practically incoherent. 01:23:14.080 --> 01:23:15.680 And yet, even 01:23:16.640 --> 01:23:23.040 for evangelicals, you get eight percent who disagree with that statement, three 01:23:23.040 --> 01:23:26.080 percent who weren't sure, which isn't a great state of affairs either, 01:23:26.080 --> 01:23:28.560 but this is a freebie. 01:23:28.560 --> 01:23:32.080 This one should not be difficult for anyone to answer. 01:23:32.080 --> 01:23:36.080 Anyone who claims to be Christian, this should be trivially easy. 01:23:36.080 --> 01:23:40.000 And yet if you look at the totality of this survey data, 01:23:40.000 --> 01:23:45.520 which includes all of the claimed Christians who responded to these questions, 01:23:45.520 --> 01:23:50.880 to these statements, you have a full quarter who disagree with that 01:23:50.880 --> 01:23:51.840 statement. 01:23:53.680 --> 01:23:58.240 One in four are saying, no, God's not perfect. 01:23:58.240 --> 01:24:00.400 God can make a mistake. 01:24:01.040 --> 01:24:03.600 That isn't God. 01:24:03.600 --> 01:24:09.040 You cannot believe that God makes mistakes and be a Christian. 01:24:09.040 --> 01:24:11.680 Because that's not God. 01:24:11.680 --> 01:24:14.960 The thing in which you have a belief is no longer God 01:24:14.960 --> 01:24:19.920 if you believe that thing makes mistakes, because God does not make 01:24:19.920 --> 01:24:21.280 mistakes. 01:24:22.720 --> 01:24:25.840 The second statement, we won't go through all of the statements, but 01:24:25.840 --> 01:24:28.080 we'll go through some of the key ones. 01:24:28.080 --> 01:24:31.920 There is one true God in three persons God the Father, God 01:24:31.920 --> 01:24:35.120 the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. 01:24:35.120 --> 01:24:39.920 This again should probably bring to mind the creeds, since if you 01:24:39.920 --> 01:24:42.800 recite the creeds, this is again a freebie. 01:24:42.800 --> 01:24:47.840 This is one all Christians should be able to get trivially easily, 01:24:47.840 --> 01:24:52.240 and just for the sake of both brevity and because the data 01:24:52.240 --> 01:24:55.440 is displayed in kind of a funky way, we're going to focus 01:24:55.440 --> 01:24:57.680 on the evangelicals. 01:24:57.680 --> 01:25:03.120 Because focusing on the evangelicals gives us sort of the cream of 01:25:03.120 --> 01:25:07.040 the crop when it comes to the Christians who give the right 01:25:07.200 --> 01:25:14.400 answers. And so, thankfully, with this one, ninety-six percent do agree 01:25:14.400 --> 01:25:16.400 with this statement. 01:25:16.400 --> 01:25:20.640 But that means 4% do not strongly agree with a statement that 01:25:20.640 --> 01:25:22.800 is a freebie. 01:25:22.800 --> 01:25:25.760 This is just one that any Christian should be able to say, 01:25:25.760 --> 01:25:27.600 of course, yes. 01:25:27.600 --> 01:25:30.880 This is just basic Christian doctrine. 01:25:30.880 --> 01:25:35.840 And yet we have four percent of the best of the best 01:25:35.840 --> 01:25:40.960 Christians, as it were, the ones most likely to know Christian doctrine 01:25:40.960 --> 01:25:44.960 and give a correct response, four percent still get this one wrong. 01:25:46.160 --> 01:25:46.240 And 01:25:46.400 --> 01:25:51.440 I strongly suspect that when Lingonir was doing this survey in cooperation 01:25:51.440 --> 01:25:55.920 with the company that they hired, the their set of evangelicals was 01:25:55.920 --> 01:26:01.120 probably closer to actual Orthodox Christian beliefs than would be found in 01:26:01.120 --> 01:26:02.320 the Pew data. 01:26:02.320 --> 01:26:07.120 The list of denominations in the Pew data for evangelical was pretty 01:26:07.120 --> 01:26:11.040 broad. So these data sets are not directly comparable, but as Corey 01:26:11.040 --> 01:26:13.040 just said, like this is the very best case. 01:26:13.040 --> 01:26:17.120 This is the steel man for the super conservative Christian. 01:26:17.120 --> 01:26:19.680 And as we get into in a few more of these down 01:26:19.680 --> 01:26:22.000 the road, the answers go off the rails. 01:26:22.000 --> 01:26:23.920 The statements themselves. 01:26:23.920 --> 01:26:27.840 Only an Orthodox Christian can have a single answer, and yet we 01:26:27.840 --> 01:26:29.200 see some really bad data. 01:26:29.200 --> 01:26:31.600 So question two was the Trinity. 01:26:31.600 --> 01:26:34.880 And thankfully ninety-six percent agree with the Trinity. 01:26:34.880 --> 01:26:37.280 Good. Table stakes for Christianity. 01:26:37.280 --> 01:26:41.680 Yet the very next question, true or false, God accepts the worship 01:26:41.680 --> 01:26:46.080 of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. 01:26:46.080 --> 01:26:53.200 Only thirty two percent, only one-third of evangelicals disagree with that statement. 01:26:53.200 --> 01:26:57.200 Only one-third of evangelicals are not universalists. 01:26:57.200 --> 01:27:00.080 So look, you have one question that says, Do you deny the 01:27:00.080 --> 01:27:02.800 Trinity? No, almost everyone gets that right. 01:27:02.800 --> 01:27:05.680 Do you deny that the Trinity is necessary for salvation? 01:27:05.680 --> 01:27:07.680 Two thirds get it wrong. 01:27:07.680 --> 01:27:09.200 So that's what we're talking about. 01:27:09.200 --> 01:27:12.240 Like even in this very best case, when we're steel manning the 01:27:12.240 --> 01:27:16.880 cream of the crop of North American Evangelical Christianity. 01:27:16.880 --> 01:27:21.040 Two-thirds of them give an answer that is functionally universalism. 01:27:21.040 --> 01:27:25.760 God accept the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. 01:27:25.760 --> 01:27:26.560 That's inclusive. 01:27:26.560 --> 01:27:32.160 Buddhism, Shintoism, you name it, Pakamama, they're all there feeding at the 01:27:32.160 --> 01:27:33.040 same trough. 01:27:33.040 --> 01:27:37.200 This is a universalist answer, and two-thirds like, yeah, that's me. 01:27:37.200 --> 01:27:39.680 My Christianity is a universalist Christianity. 01:27:39.680 --> 01:27:40.560 It's unconscious. 01:27:41.680 --> 01:27:46.400 And this goes back to Corey's earlier comment about teaching, about teachers 01:27:46.400 --> 01:27:52.400 versus wolves, about how this sort of confusion can exist inside congregations. 01:27:52.400 --> 01:27:54.720 Now, if the only God that you ever hear about a church 01:27:55.120 --> 01:27:57.760 is a loving God, yeah, that would make sense. 01:27:57.760 --> 01:28:00.400 I uh if all I know is a God of love who 01:28:00.400 --> 01:28:03.120 loves everyone and he loves us so much and loves all the 01:28:03.120 --> 01:28:04.640 time, every day, enough of them. 01:28:04.800 --> 01:28:05.600 love, love. 01:28:05.600 --> 01:28:08.320 When someone says, does God accept their worship of other people if 01:28:08.320 --> 01:28:08.960 they're trying? 01:28:09.120 --> 01:28:10.400 Like, sure, of course. 01:28:10.400 --> 01:28:11.520 He's a loving God. 01:28:11.520 --> 01:28:13.440 Why would he reject the Muslims? 01:28:13.440 --> 01:28:16.080 You know, they try to behave except when they're dealing with Christians. 01:28:16.080 --> 01:28:17.520 They don't, you know, they don't cheat. 01:28:17.520 --> 01:28:19.040 They don't drink, except when they do. 01:28:19.040 --> 01:28:22.400 Like you can make all sorts of excuses as soon as you 01:28:22.400 --> 01:28:25.840 delete the Trinity in the basics of the Christian faith. 01:28:25.840 --> 01:28:28.000 And so that's that's why we're drilling down on us on this 01:28:28.080 --> 01:28:31.120 day is that when you look at the details, it it swings 01:28:31.120 --> 01:28:35.120 wildly. In one moment, these guys are saying that the Trinity is 01:28:35.120 --> 01:28:37.760 God, and the very next two thirds of them deny that the 01:28:37.760 --> 01:28:39.680 Trinity is salvific. 01:28:40.400 --> 01:28:43.520 Moving on to statement five. 01:28:43.520 --> 01:28:46.880 This is again one that is a freebie. 01:28:46.880 --> 01:28:53.200 Biblical accounts of the physical, bodily, resurrection of Jesus are completely accurate. 01:28:53.200 --> 01:28:56.880 This event actually occurred. 01:28:56.880 --> 01:29:00.240 For those playing along Playing along at home, this is kind of 01:29:00.240 --> 01:29:03.040 the core of the Christian faith. 01:29:03.040 --> 01:29:06.560 And again, the creeds do include this. 01:29:06.560 --> 01:29:08.320 Thankfully, if you 01:29:09.280 --> 01:29:15.200 limit the data to those who are evangelical in their affiliation and 01:29:15.200 --> 01:29:20.400 evangelical in their beliefs, 96% agree. 01:29:20.400 --> 01:29:23.280 That's still four percent who aren't really sure. 01:29:23.360 --> 01:29:28.640 3% percent somewhat agree, and one percent they're just not sure. 01:29:28.640 --> 01:29:31.120 This again is the core of the Christian faith. 01:29:31.120 --> 01:29:35.840 You can't possibly not believe this and still be a Christian. 01:29:35.840 --> 01:29:39.600 This is literally if someone asks you what the gospel is and 01:29:39.600 --> 01:29:42.800 you want to give the shortest form of it, it's Christ crucified 01:29:42.800 --> 01:29:48.000 for sinners, and they're denying the import of that. 01:29:48.400 --> 01:29:52.240 When you unfilter from just evangelicals and look at all of the 01:29:52.240 --> 01:29:58.560 Christian respondents, including evangelicals, you get only two-thirds, less than two-thirds, strongly 01:29:58.560 --> 01:30:01.120 agree. That's completely insane. 01:30:01.120 --> 01:30:02.000 That's one-third. 01:30:02.000 --> 01:30:05.840 They cannot affirm over one third, almost forty percent, it's closer to 01:30:05.840 --> 01:30:11.520 forty percent, cannot affirm that the bodily resurrection of Jesus happened. 01:30:11.520 --> 01:30:12.400 It's real. 01:30:12.400 --> 01:30:15.680 It's a fact in history. 01:30:15.680 --> 01:30:16.960 There's no Christians there. 01:30:17.120 --> 01:30:19.040 Now again, this that wasn't evangelicals. 01:30:19.040 --> 01:30:22.240 That was every respondent who said I'm any sort of Christian. 01:30:22.240 --> 01:30:24.480 But that's what's happening in our churches. 01:30:24.480 --> 01:30:28.240 When we talk about being concerned about the fruits of the teaching 01:30:28.240 --> 01:30:30.320 that we're seeing in various places. 01:30:30.320 --> 01:30:33.920 This is why I frequently say if you tell me you're Krishna, 01:30:33.920 --> 01:30:35.120 it doesn't tell me anything. 01:30:35.120 --> 01:30:35.920 This is why. 01:30:35.920 --> 01:30:38.880 I've had this we've known about this data for years. 01:30:38.880 --> 01:30:41.200 You know, a lot of times Corey and I will say things 01:30:41.200 --> 01:30:44.000 that seem to be off the cuff and they seem to be 01:30:44.000 --> 01:30:49.360 these these darts, these very narrow, very hostile things that can't possibly 01:30:49.360 --> 01:30:51.840 be substantiated. 01:30:52.160 --> 01:30:54.960 We are two of the only men you're likely to ever encounter 01:30:54.960 --> 01:30:56.800 that don't just run our mouths. 01:30:56.800 --> 01:30:59.440 When we say something, we can back it up. 01:30:59.440 --> 01:31:02.720 If you ask me the same question ten times to try to 01:31:02.720 --> 01:31:05.280 get me to reveal what I'm thinking, I can give you ten 01:31:05.440 --> 01:31:06.400 different answers. 01:31:06.400 --> 01:31:09.760 Not because Not because I'm changing my position, but because if I 01:31:09.760 --> 01:31:12.960 think you can handle going deeper into it, I will give you 01:31:12.960 --> 01:31:14.400 more of what's going on. 01:31:14.400 --> 01:31:18.160 And the deeper that you dig into why I said something bad 01:31:18.320 --> 01:31:21.280 to prove to you that it's really bad, the worse you're gonna 01:31:21.680 --> 01:31:24.400 feel. It's why I treat it as a progressive thing. 01:31:24.400 --> 01:31:27.600 I'm not gonna just unload on you because it would just completely 01:31:27.600 --> 01:31:29.360 blow people away. 01:31:29.360 --> 01:31:32.080 Yet at the same time it's entirely permissible for a man who 01:31:32.080 --> 01:31:35.520 knows for a fact most people who say they're Christian, even the 01:31:35.520 --> 01:31:40.160 evangelicals and they accept the Trinity, they'd then confess universalism. 01:31:40.160 --> 01:31:42.400 We're in bad shape as a church. 01:31:42.400 --> 01:31:47.440 The church, capital C, all believers, also has in the church, the 01:31:47.600 --> 01:31:51.360 denominations, a whole bunch of people who claim to be sheep, but 01:31:51.360 --> 01:31:52.800 they're actually goats. 01:31:52.800 --> 01:31:55.200 And that's the immediate concern that we have here. 01:31:55.200 --> 01:31:57.200 Because some of those goats are in our pulpits. 01:31:57.200 --> 01:31:59.440 Some of our goats are in seminaries. 01:31:59.440 --> 01:32:03.360 They're teaching men to go out and lie and deceive others. 01:32:03.360 --> 01:32:07.200 And so when we make these seemingly flippant, harsh comments about most 01:32:07.200 --> 01:32:10.400 of these people aren't even Christians, well, here's the data backing it 01:32:10.400 --> 01:32:11.840 up. I wish we were wrong. 01:32:11.840 --> 01:32:13.280 Like I wish we were just jerks. 01:32:13.280 --> 01:32:15.360 I would be I would be a much happier person if I 01:32:15.360 --> 01:32:19.840 were just mean and ornary and didn't like anybody than if I 01:32:19.840 --> 01:32:21.360 was right about reality. 01:32:21.360 --> 01:32:22.720 I wish that were the case. 01:32:22.720 --> 01:32:24.640 Unfortunately it's not. 01:32:24.640 --> 01:32:29.120 The next question is Corey and I kind of disagree about how 01:32:29.280 --> 01:32:33.040 bad the question is, but I want you to just listen to 01:32:33.040 --> 01:32:34.720 this. This is a true or false. 01:32:34.720 --> 01:32:41.200 Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God. 01:32:41.200 --> 01:32:44.800 Now when you filter by just evangelicals, the cream of the crop 01:32:44.880 --> 01:32:50.160 of the most conservatives, seventy percent strongly agree with that. 01:32:50.160 --> 01:32:54.880 Less than one in five strongly disagree with this. 01:32:54.880 --> 01:32:58.960 Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God, is literally 01:32:58.960 --> 01:33:00.800 the Aryan heresy. 01:33:00.800 --> 01:33:04.160 And less than one in five, less than twenty percent of the 01:33:04.160 --> 01:33:08.400 very best Christians in the United States are not Aryan heretics. 01:33:08.400 --> 01:33:11.520 Now Corey can give you his impression about how this is worded, 01:33:11.520 --> 01:33:15.600 but I think the table stakes there for me is that to 01:33:15.600 --> 01:33:18.640 say that anything is created by God is necessarily to say it's 01:33:18.560 --> 01:33:20.080 not God. 01:33:20.160 --> 01:33:23.840 At the end of the episode that we did on Eastern Orthodoxy, 01:33:23.840 --> 01:33:27.920 we talked about the uncreated light and the the weird stuff that 01:33:27.920 --> 01:33:32.240 they get into that's completely pagan, completely non-Christian. 01:33:32.240 --> 01:33:37.120 There's no such thing as a creature that is God. 01:33:37.120 --> 01:33:39.440 Jesus is eternal. 01:33:39.440 --> 01:33:44.160 His body was something that was in creation, but the second person 01:33:44.160 --> 01:33:48.800 of the Trinity is eternal and is co-eternal and co-equal with God 01:33:48.960 --> 01:33:49.920 the Father. 01:33:49.920 --> 01:33:53.120 And so to say that Jesus was created by God, the problem, 01:33:53.120 --> 01:33:56.800 apart from the Arian heresy from the third, fourth century A.D. 01:33:56.960 --> 01:34:00.480 is that Bonhoeffer and MLK could accede to this too. 01:34:00.480 --> 01:34:04.320 This was MLK's teaching, that Jesus was the greatest being created by 01:34:04.320 --> 01:34:07.440 God. You know, first you might have had to wiggle around a 01:34:07.440 --> 01:34:09.280 little bit, but greatest certainly. 01:34:09.280 --> 01:34:11.920 That was MLK and Bonhoeffer's teaching. 01:34:11.920 --> 01:34:13.120 What wasn't it? 01:34:13.120 --> 01:34:14.240 It wasn't Christian. 01:34:14.240 --> 01:34:15.760 Because they thought he was just a great teacher. 01:34:15.760 --> 01:34:16.720 He was a great man. 01:34:16.960 --> 01:34:21.680 he became one with God with his divine teaching. 01:34:21.680 --> 01:34:25.200 When you start trying to make something that's not true sound really 01:34:25.200 --> 01:34:27.120 Christian, you can trick people. 01:34:27.120 --> 01:34:31.120 Over 80% of evangelicals confess the Arian heresy. 01:34:31.120 --> 01:34:32.240 That's my read on it. 01:34:32.240 --> 01:34:34.000 It's really bad no matter how you slice 01:34:34.000 --> 01:34:37.760 it. Aaron Powell I think that this question, perhaps more so than 01:34:37.760 --> 01:34:44.880 any other in these data, reveals the fundamental problem we have 01:34:45.840 --> 01:34:50.640 with teachers and pastors, which is to say that we have mostly 01:34:50.640 --> 01:34:52.320 inept ones. 01:34:52.320 --> 01:34:56.800 Because this is something that immediately any Christian should recognize, oh, Arian 01:34:56.880 --> 01:34:59.360 heresy. You should know that immediately. 01:34:59.360 --> 01:35:02.480 There should be no doubt in your mind that that is exactly 01:35:02.480 --> 01:35:04.240 what this question means. 01:35:04.240 --> 01:35:07.040 That is what is being asked here. 01:35:07.040 --> 01:35:08.880 Because of the word created. 01:35:08.880 --> 01:35:11.760 But I think when you take this statement together with the next 01:35:11.760 --> 01:35:16.720 one, statement seven, it reveals the major failure here is a failure 01:35:16.720 --> 01:35:18.240 of teaching. 01:35:18.240 --> 01:35:21.440 Because the questions are related, six and seven. 01:35:21.440 --> 01:35:25.360 They more or less ask the same thing, approaching it from different 01:35:25.360 --> 01:35:32.560 angles. But more Christians who responded to this survey get seven 01:35:32.560 --> 01:35:35.200 correct than get six correct. 01:35:35.200 --> 01:35:38.320 And so it seems like some don't understand the import of the 01:35:38.320 --> 01:35:40.720 word created. 01:35:40.720 --> 01:35:45.040 That is a major problem with regard to teaching. 01:35:45.040 --> 01:35:48.800 We confess in the creeds that we believe in God the Father 01:35:48.800 --> 01:35:53.200 Almighty, maker or creator of heaven and earth. 01:35:53.680 --> 01:35:58.240 It is kind of incumbent on us to understand what created means 01:35:58.400 --> 01:36:02.000 if we are confessing a belief in the Creator. 01:36:02.000 --> 01:36:06.000 And yet it seems like many Christians responding to this don't know 01:36:06.000 --> 01:36:08.640 what it means to create. 01:36:08.640 --> 01:36:12.400 And to contrast this we can see with statement seven, Jesus was 01:36:12.400 --> 01:36:15.440 a great teacher, but he was not God. 01:36:15.440 --> 01:36:20.160 A significant percentage strong not a hundred percent, which is a problem, 01:36:20.160 --> 01:36:23.280 but a significant percentage strongly disagree. 01:36:23.280 --> 01:36:25.840 The numbers shift from the last question. 01:36:25.840 --> 01:36:29.600 About sixty percent strongly disagree with that if you're limiting it to 01:36:29.600 --> 01:36:31.520 the evangelicals again. 01:36:31.520 --> 01:36:34.160 This should be a hundred percent. 01:36:34.160 --> 01:36:38.000 We confess that Jesus Christ is God. 01:36:38.000 --> 01:36:42.160 We also confess he's a great teacher, but we can clearly answer 01:36:42.160 --> 01:36:43.520 this. This is a freebie. 01:36:43.520 --> 01:36:45.760 If it says he was not God, well that's wrong. 01:36:45.760 --> 01:36:50.320 That's very clearly against the core of the Christian faith. 01:36:50.320 --> 01:36:56.800 And yet the best of the best of Christians, the most serious 01:36:56.800 --> 01:37:02.080 of Christians, the Bible believing Christians, still get this wrong by more 01:37:02.080 --> 01:37:04.320 than a third. 01:37:04.320 --> 01:37:10.080 So it's better than the last statement, certainly, but it's still abysmal. 01:37:10.080 --> 01:37:10.960 This This 01:37:11.920 --> 01:37:17.200 really highlights just how bad the state of teaching is in our 01:37:17.200 --> 01:37:21.520 churches. These are basics of the Christian faith. 01:37:21.520 --> 01:37:23.840 These aren't even difficult questions. 01:37:23.840 --> 01:37:25.120 These aren't things you need to attend 01:37:26.000 --> 01:37:30.720 a class or a seminar or something advanced in order to understand. 01:37:30.720 --> 01:37:35.040 This is something you should know just from attending the service. 01:37:35.040 --> 01:37:37.280 And yet a significant percentage of Christians 01:37:38.560 --> 01:37:41.600 get these wrong. 01:37:41.600 --> 01:37:45.840 We have some very real problems when it comes to teaching in 01:37:45.840 --> 01:37:49.120 our churches, when it comes to what those who are claiming to 01:37:49.120 --> 01:37:52.640 be Christian actually know about the faith. 01:37:52.640 --> 01:37:57.600 Because as we've stated before, part of the Christian faith is knowledge. 01:37:57.600 --> 01:38:01.120 Yes, it's faith, but faith in what? 01:38:01.120 --> 01:38:05.200 You have to know the thing the knowledge, the information, the facts 01:38:05.280 --> 01:38:08.800 in which you have that faith. 01:38:08.800 --> 01:38:09.920 And many Christians 01:38:09.920 --> 01:38:12.320 clearly don't. 01:38:12.560 --> 01:38:17.040 Statement eleven is The Holy Spirit can tell me to do something 01:38:17.040 --> 01:38:20.080 which is forbidden in the Bible. 01:38:20.080 --> 01:38:23.360 Now I think the the way they phrase some of these questions 01:38:23.360 --> 01:38:27.840 was good and it was maybe clever, but maybe in some cases 01:38:28.000 --> 01:38:33.360 too clever by half because while they're clearly right and wrong answers, 01:38:33.360 --> 01:38:35.760 it's hard to tell which side of the horse the people who 01:38:35.760 --> 01:38:37.840 got the wrong answer fell off of. 01:38:37.840 --> 01:38:40.640 So the Holy Spirit can tell me to do something the Bible 01:38:40.640 --> 01:38:44.800 says I can't do Two-thirds of evangelicals strongly disagree with that. 01:38:44.800 --> 01:38:46.320 Two-thirds got it right. 01:38:46.320 --> 01:38:48.400 But one-third strongly agree. 01:38:48.400 --> 01:38:50.560 And there's almost no middle ground. 01:38:50.560 --> 01:38:54.000 And honestly, I think what might have happened here is that the 01:38:54.160 --> 01:38:57.600 the twenty-five percent who said that the Holy Spirit can tell me 01:38:57.600 --> 01:39:01.280 to do something forbidden in the Bible, maybe they're thinking that there's 01:39:01.360 --> 01:39:04.160 like this is me being charitable, this is me trying to sugarcoat 01:39:04.160 --> 01:39:07.600 and and make to baptize this as a Christian answer. 01:39:07.600 --> 01:39:10.880 I think maybe they thought I know that the Holy Ghost is 01:39:10.880 --> 01:39:13.440 God. If the Holy Ghost tells me to do something, I have 01:39:13.440 --> 01:39:18.080 to do it because I'm obeying God, which correctly confesses the nature 01:39:18.080 --> 01:39:21.440 of the Holy Ghost, but it fails to confess the nature of 01:39:21.440 --> 01:39:25.680 Scripture because Scripture is breathed out by the Holy Ghost, is breathed 01:39:25.680 --> 01:39:26.560 out by God. 01:39:26.560 --> 01:39:29.520 And so God does not contradict Himself. 01:39:29.520 --> 01:39:34.880 So the Holy Ghost can't, not because God can't do something, because 01:39:34.880 --> 01:39:39.040 God's omnipotent, it's because God does not disagree with Himself. 01:39:39.040 --> 01:39:42.000 God is not a house divided against itself. 01:39:42.000 --> 01:39:44.240 The Trinity is not a war. 01:39:44.240 --> 01:39:48.560 When we try to describe the three persons of the Trinity, it 01:39:48.560 --> 01:39:51.200 exceeds the limits of human reason. 01:39:51.200 --> 01:39:54.320 And so I hope that in some cases when the folks, the 01:39:54.400 --> 01:39:57.440 25%, the quarter who said the Holy Spirit can tell me to 01:39:57.440 --> 01:39:59.200 do something that is forbidden in the Bible. 01:40:00.000 --> 01:40:03.600 I hope that they were trying to obey God and just misconstruing 01:40:03.840 --> 01:40:05.200 what scripture is. 01:40:05.520 --> 01:40:06.960 that's the nice version. 01:40:06.960 --> 01:40:11.360 The bad version is that over a third of people think that 01:40:11.360 --> 01:40:12.960 somehow God is set against himself. 01:40:13.600 --> 01:40:17.040 It's scary no matter what, but the best case is it's what 01:40:17.040 --> 01:40:18.960 Corey was just saying about teaching. 01:40:18.960 --> 01:40:22.240 The worst case is that some people are in a really horrible 01:40:22.240 --> 01:40:24.160 state, in a state of confusion. 01:40:24.160 --> 01:40:27.200 Because like it's a question that you could sort of puzzle a 01:40:27.200 --> 01:40:31.520 little bit, but the error is going to reveal which like if 01:40:31.520 --> 01:40:34.080 you get it wrong, you're gonna still be committing one of a 01:40:34.080 --> 01:40:35.200 couple possible errors. 01:40:35.200 --> 01:40:37.520 And that's what we don't see in the answers. 01:40:37.600 --> 01:40:41.120 I would actually like to examine the thinking of some of the 01:40:41.120 --> 01:40:46.480 respondents with regard to this statement, statement eleven and statement nine, because 01:40:46.480 --> 01:40:49.920 fully a third of evangelicals said that the Holy Spirit is not 01:40:49.920 --> 01:40:52.560 a person. 01:40:52.560 --> 01:40:57.200 So I don't know how this possibly reconciles in the mind of 01:40:57.200 --> 01:41:00.960 those who get really either one of these wrong or both of 01:41:00.960 --> 01:41:02.640 them wrong. 01:41:02.640 --> 01:41:06.720 But the incorrect answers with regard to statement nine almost 01:41:07.760 --> 01:41:11.520 makes one want to say we should recite the Athanasian Creed every 01:41:11.520 --> 01:41:14.320 single Sunday until that number drops to zero. 01:41:14.320 --> 01:41:16.400 Yeah. Well I think it's because of the way it was phrased. 01:41:16.400 --> 01:41:19.440 The Holy Spirit is a force but not a personal being. 01:41:19.440 --> 01:41:21.280 And people don't know what persons are. 01:41:21.280 --> 01:41:22.320 It's teaching again. 01:41:22.320 --> 01:41:23.760 Yeah, it's a technical term. 01:41:23.760 --> 01:41:27.440 It's a term of art that is not typically used in modern 01:41:27.440 --> 01:41:30.480 discourse. People don't talk to each other this way. 01:41:30.480 --> 01:41:32.720 I think the Holy Spirit is a force but not a personal 01:41:32.720 --> 01:41:35.920 being. There's clearly a right answer, but I think it probably just 01:41:35.920 --> 01:41:39.280 confused me because like you said, like they've never heard the Athanasian 01:41:39.360 --> 01:41:41.680 Creed, they didn't recite it often. 01:41:41.680 --> 01:41:43.040 They've never been taught. 01:41:43.040 --> 01:41:45.920 Like, here are the limits of what people can say about the 01:41:45.920 --> 01:41:47.360 inner workings of God. 01:41:47.360 --> 01:41:48.640 They're very narrow. 01:41:48.640 --> 01:41:49.600 It's God. 01:41:49.600 --> 01:41:52.560 It's God revealing Himself, bits and pieces of Himself. 01:41:52.640 --> 01:41:55.760 When I say pieces, I mean that God is can be subdivided, 01:41:55.760 --> 01:41:58.880 but like when God tells us something and then he tells us 01:41:58.880 --> 01:42:03.520 something else a both about himself, even when they're contradictory, we have 01:42:03.520 --> 01:42:06.080 to confess them all and just say, Okay, you're God, I can't 01:42:06.080 --> 01:42:08.560 make any sense of it and that makes sense 'cause I'm a 01:42:08.560 --> 01:42:12.800 creature. I'm a I'm a hairless mostly hairless mammal. 01:42:12.800 --> 01:42:15.840 You've made me to worship you, and I'm just gonna do the 01:42:15.840 --> 01:42:19.600 best I can and fall on your mercy if I screw something 01:42:19.600 --> 01:42:24.560 up. I think that's the generous constructive case for when we get 01:42:24.560 --> 01:42:25.360 these things wrong. 01:42:25.360 --> 01:42:26.560 And God is a loving God. 01:42:26.560 --> 01:42:29.120 When I said that earlier it wasn't clearly it was a mockery 01:42:29.120 --> 01:42:33.120 we've did an entire episode on specifically the errors that are lurking 01:42:33.120 --> 01:42:37.280 there. But it's important because when you get these sorts of things 01:42:37.280 --> 01:42:40.960 wrong, when you can't defend the faith as it's revealed in scripture, 01:42:40.960 --> 01:42:44.480 in these kind of seemingly fiddly details, other stuff is going to 01:42:44.480 --> 01:42:46.640 happen downstream, other errors are going to creep in. 01:42:46.640 --> 01:42:49.200 Why? Because all error comes from Satan. 01:42:49.280 --> 01:42:53.440 Satan uses the smallest error to sneak in and then he builds 01:42:53.440 --> 01:42:53.920 on it. 01:42:53.920 --> 01:42:57.120 It's like if you get water in a foundation in your house, 01:42:57.120 --> 01:42:58.640 like water, a little bit of water. 01:42:58.640 --> 01:42:59.520 What's the big deal? 01:42:59.520 --> 01:43:04.960 Well, water with a freeze thaw cycle, suddenly, after a few seasons, 01:43:04.960 --> 01:43:07.040 your foundation is split apart. 01:43:07.040 --> 01:43:11.680 A few drops of water that comes seeping in can fracture concrete. 01:43:11.680 --> 01:43:13.600 Satan does the same thing with air. 01:43:13.600 --> 01:43:14.400 He's very good at this. 01:43:14.400 --> 01:43:16.160 He's been doing it from the beginning. 01:43:16.160 --> 01:43:19.680 Look at the air he crept into the garden with Adam and 01:43:19.680 --> 01:43:21.600 Eve. He'll do it to us. 01:43:21.600 --> 01:43:24.240 And when we have these things about the inner workings of the 01:43:24.240 --> 01:43:29.600 Trinity, that the most intelligent man can only confess, he can't understand. 01:43:29.600 --> 01:43:32.560 It's not like if you get smart enough you can fit God 01:43:32.560 --> 01:43:33.520 in your head. 01:43:33.520 --> 01:43:35.680 To do that would make you God, which would mean you're no 01:43:35.680 --> 01:43:38.400 longer a creature going back to the earlier question. 01:43:38.480 --> 01:43:43.840 Statements twelve and thirteen are more or less the same question. 01:43:43.840 --> 01:43:47.280 They're very closely related, and the percentages are almost identical, so I 01:43:47.280 --> 01:43:50.800 will read both and then we can go over them together. 01:43:50.800 --> 01:43:56.480 Everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature. 01:43:56.480 --> 01:44:02.560 Even the smallest sin deserves eternal damnation. 01:44:02.560 --> 01:44:08.800 About forty percent disagree. 01:44:08.800 --> 01:44:13.440 Again, this is a core part of the Christian faith. 01:44:13.440 --> 01:44:16.800 This is asking about original sin. 01:44:16.800 --> 01:44:17.600 In In 01:44:18.720 --> 01:44:22.160 the case of statement twelve, most people are good by nature, it's 01:44:22.080 --> 01:44:26.000 sort of tangentially getting at it there, but even the smallest sin 01:44:26.000 --> 01:44:28.800 deserves eternal damnation. 01:44:28.800 --> 01:44:34.000 This is basic teaching about the nature of sin. 01:44:34.000 --> 01:44:37.760 Any sin incurs an infinite debt. 01:44:37.760 --> 01:44:41.680 And that is why, of course, the death of Christ, which is 01:44:41.680 --> 01:44:45.920 of infinite value, was necessary to pay for sin. 01:44:45.920 --> 01:44:50.240 It covers all sins, because of course, infinite value. 01:44:50.240 --> 01:44:56.960 But any sin creates an infinite divide between man and creator. 01:44:56.960 --> 01:45:01.360 This is basic teaching of the Christian faith, and forty percent 01:45:02.880 --> 01:45:05.600 disagree. Six percent aren't sure. 01:45:05.600 --> 01:45:09.120 Not great either. 01:45:09.120 --> 01:45:13.120 This is a condemnation of the state of teaching in our churches 01:45:13.360 --> 01:45:18.080 that basics of the faith like this are more or less a 01:45:18.080 --> 01:45:19.120 coin toss. 01:45:19.120 --> 01:45:20.800 Basically 50-50. 01:45:20.800 --> 01:45:24.560 Maybe they'll get it right, maybe they won't You would practically get 01:45:24.560 --> 01:45:28.960 the same response if people were guessing. 01:45:28.960 --> 01:45:31.920 And these are the again, the best of the best. 01:45:31.920 --> 01:45:35.200 These are the Christians who are the most serious about their faith, 01:45:35.200 --> 01:45:37.600 the most serious about the Bible. 01:45:38.000 --> 01:45:44.720 The numbers are much worse if you look at the total response. 01:45:45.120 --> 01:45:49.200 Statement fifteen continues on on the subject of they don't directly say 01:45:49.280 --> 01:45:50.480 but original sin. 01:45:50.480 --> 01:45:54.160 The statement is everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God. 01:45:54.160 --> 01:45:57.840 And here two thirds of the cream of the crop of conservative 01:45:57.840 --> 01:45:59.920 Christians deny original sin. 01:45:59.920 --> 01:46:04.160 Two thirds agree that everyone is born innocent in the eyes of 01:46:04.160 --> 01:46:06.160 God. They deny original sin. 01:46:06.160 --> 01:46:08.400 They deny that we inherit Adam's sin. 01:46:08.400 --> 01:46:11.440 That is a foundational, absolutely 01:46:12.400 --> 01:46:16.080 crucial part of the Christian faith. 01:46:16.080 --> 01:46:18.160 And it's one that's missing from a lot of churches. 01:46:18.160 --> 01:46:20.800 I remember a couple of years ago, Tucker laughed. 01:46:20.800 --> 01:46:23.120 He was disgusted by the idea of original sin. 01:46:23.120 --> 01:46:25.360 Somehow it came up and like he he was just he was 01:46:25.360 --> 01:46:29.360 really offended that someone had said something about babies being evil. 01:46:29.360 --> 01:46:31.920 Because you look at a baby and it seems cute and poopy 01:46:31.920 --> 01:46:33.840 and crying and not hurting anybody. 01:46:33.840 --> 01:46:35.360 How can that be sinning? 01:46:35.360 --> 01:46:39.680 Well, if if you just look, if you use your reason, if 01:46:39.680 --> 01:46:42.560 you use your common sense, yeah, common sense says the babies aren't 01:46:42.480 --> 01:46:45.120 sinful, at least not for a while. 01:46:45.120 --> 01:46:47.600 But scripture says otherwise. 01:46:47.600 --> 01:46:50.160 And that's why all the questions that had to do with the 01:46:50.160 --> 01:46:53.760 nature of Scripture and whether it's the Word of God and all 01:46:53.760 --> 01:46:56.320 these are a moving machinery. 01:46:56.320 --> 01:46:58.000 They're the machinery of faith. 01:46:58.000 --> 01:46:59.680 They're interlocking parts. 01:46:59.680 --> 01:47:03.040 And when we set one aside or we break it, we bend 01:47:03.040 --> 01:47:05.760 it somehow, it's going to cause all these other things to break 01:47:05.760 --> 01:47:09.120 downstream, which is how you get people just flat out, two-thirds of 01:47:09.120 --> 01:47:12.320 evangelicals denying original sin. 01:47:12.320 --> 01:47:15.520 And the next one I think probably kind of explains some of 01:47:15.520 --> 01:47:19.680 that. Statement 16, the Bible, like all sacred writings, which 01:47:20.720 --> 01:47:23.360 yeah, b by itself I would had to strongly disagree. 01:47:23.360 --> 01:47:25.680 Maybe that's why some people strongly disagree. 01:47:25.680 --> 01:47:28.880 As someone who is actually literate, I would have disagreed on the 01:47:28.880 --> 01:47:31.040 basis of the Bible, like all sacred writings. 01:47:31.040 --> 01:47:32.720 Right there I can't agree. 01:47:32.720 --> 01:47:38.000 Contains helpful account of ancient myths, but is not literally true. 01:47:38.000 --> 01:47:42.000 A quarter of the respondents, a quarter of the evangelicals agree that 01:47:42.000 --> 01:47:43.600 the Bible's not literally true. 01:47:43.600 --> 01:47:46.640 And that's consistent with the pew data that we had earlier. 01:47:47.600 --> 01:47:51.280 What's hilarious when you get to statement 17, the Bible is 100% 01:47:51.440 --> 01:47:53.760 accurate in all that it teaches. 01:47:53.920 --> 01:47:56.400 90% agree with that. 01:47:57.760 --> 01:48:00.560 How can a quarter of people say it's not literally true and 01:48:00.560 --> 01:48:03.520 then ninety cent percent of those same people say it's a hundred 01:48:03.600 --> 01:48:04.960 percent accurate? 01:48:04.960 --> 01:48:09.120 I think maybe that gets into the middle ground of the notion 01:48:09.120 --> 01:48:11.680 of human reason and common sense. 01:48:11.680 --> 01:48:15.600 Even if scripture isn't inspired by God, if it's a lot of 01:48:15.600 --> 01:48:19.600 really wise teachings that have been passed down by really wise men, 01:48:19.600 --> 01:48:23.760 and we've you know we've edited it and we've winnowed it down 01:48:23.840 --> 01:48:25.920 and it's been improved on over time. 01:48:25.920 --> 01:48:28.480 Maybe it can be human or originated wisdom. 01:48:28.480 --> 01:48:31.840 I think that's the only possible conclusion when a quarter of people 01:48:31.840 --> 01:48:34.000 deny that scripture is scripture. 01:48:34.400 --> 01:48:37.440 Some of these answers are extremely schizophrenic 01:48:38.320 --> 01:48:43.520 and statement eighteen continues that trend in a particularly noteworthy way. 01:48:43.520 --> 01:48:46.080 Modern science disproves the Bible. 01:48:46.080 --> 01:48:49.440 And so we have those who say that it's accurate 01:48:50.480 --> 01:48:55.200 and that it's true, but it's not, but science disproves it, and 01:48:56.160 --> 01:49:04.000 a full 30% of evangelicals say that modern science disproves the Bible. 01:49:04.080 --> 01:49:07.120 Seven percent Well they're not sure. 01:49:07.120 --> 01:49:12.480 Again, this is approaching coin toss territory on something that is an 01:49:12.480 --> 01:49:16.160 easy answer for any Christian. 01:49:16.160 --> 01:49:18.240 Can science disprove the Bible? 01:49:18.240 --> 01:49:22.000 No. And so obviously science does not disprove the Bible. 01:49:22.000 --> 01:49:24.960 The Bible is true. 01:49:24.960 --> 01:49:30.320 Again, as Woe mentioned earlier, we do not believe the Bible because 01:49:30.320 --> 01:49:33.680 we go through it with a red pen or a highlighter or 01:49:33.680 --> 01:49:36.400 whatever, and we mark up all the little bits and pieces, and 01:49:36.400 --> 01:49:39.280 we make sure that they all agree perfectly with everything we know 01:49:39.280 --> 01:49:40.080 about the world. 01:49:40.080 --> 01:49:42.400 Some of you have already noticed the problem. 01:49:42.640 --> 01:49:46.880 We believe the Bible because it's the Word of God. 01:49:46.880 --> 01:49:50.080 So everything it says is true. 01:49:50.080 --> 01:49:54.160 If we think that some part is in error, we are the 01:49:54.160 --> 01:49:55.760 ones in error. 01:49:56.000 --> 01:50:00.480 In fact, that has happened a number of times, particularly with regard 01:50:00.480 --> 01:50:02.400 to archaeology. 01:50:02.400 --> 01:50:05.360 Because historically, there would be those who claim, oh, there was no 01:50:05.360 --> 01:50:08.480 battle that happened here or that place didn't exist, and then we 01:50:08.480 --> 01:50:09.760 found it. 01:50:09.760 --> 01:50:13.760 There were archaeologists who claimed that certain Egyptian cities didn't exist, and 01:50:13.760 --> 01:50:15.760 then we found them. 01:50:15.760 --> 01:50:19.840 The Bible is true with regard to everything it says, because it 01:50:19.840 --> 01:50:21.440 is the Word of God. 01:50:21.440 --> 01:50:24.640 That is an easy answer for any Christian. 01:50:24.640 --> 01:50:28.480 It is something that every teacher of the Christian faith should be 01:50:28.480 --> 01:50:31.360 teaching in unambiguous terms. 01:50:31.360 --> 01:50:36.000 And yet we have 30% of evangelical Christians responding 01:50:37.120 --> 01:50:39.200 that science can disprove the Bible. 01:50:39.200 --> 01:50:40.640 And has disproved the Bible. 01:50:40.640 --> 01:50:44.160 Not even that it just can, it has disproved the Bible. 01:50:45.280 --> 01:50:49.440 Another particularly wild example of the schizophrenic nature of some of these 01:50:49.440 --> 01:50:52.960 answers is that an earlier statement that we skipped past was but 01:50:53.040 --> 01:50:55.120 we skipped it because it was spot on. 01:50:55.120 --> 01:50:57.520 The question was God created male and female. 01:50:57.840 --> 01:51:00.320 It was like ninety eight percent said, Yeah, absolutely, that's correct. 01:51:00.320 --> 01:51:01.760 It's quoting the Bible. 01:51:01.760 --> 01:51:06.480 And yet, statement twenty-seven, gender identity is a matter of choice. 01:51:06.480 --> 01:51:09.840 A third of the people who said male and female he created 01:51:09.840 --> 01:51:12.480 them affirm the gender identity is a matter of choice. 01:51:13.040 --> 01:51:15.440 They deny male and female he created them. 01:51:15.440 --> 01:51:18.480 Now, is it gender that confused them versus sex? 01:51:18.480 --> 01:51:21.200 Is it identity versus reality? 01:51:21.200 --> 01:51:23.520 Whatever it is, it's blasphemous. 01:51:23.520 --> 01:51:26.800 They're straight up denying how God created them. 01:51:26.800 --> 01:51:30.480 And this is again, this is the very most conservative Christians pretty 01:51:30.480 --> 01:51:31.600 much on the planet. 01:51:31.600 --> 01:51:34.800 You're not going to find more conservative Christians than you find in 01:51:34.800 --> 01:51:37.360 the conservative church bodies in the United States. 01:51:37.360 --> 01:51:38.000 Maybe equal. 01:51:38.240 --> 01:51:41.520 I'm not saying we are superlative, but I don't think that our 01:51:41.520 --> 01:51:44.320 best is beaten by anyone because it's just Christianity. 01:51:44.320 --> 01:51:46.400 Like there's not it's not like you can level up. 01:51:46.400 --> 01:51:48.800 It's just how much of the Bible do you believe? 01:51:48.800 --> 01:51:51.600 These people who say they believe the whole Bible, a third of 01:51:51.600 --> 01:51:54.320 them say that gender identity is a matter of choice. 01:51:54.320 --> 01:51:56.080 That's catastrophic. 01:51:56.160 --> 01:51:56.320 And 01:51:56.320 --> 01:51:57.520 then they go on from there. 01:51:57.520 --> 01:51:58.480 Statement 28. 01:51:58.480 --> 01:52:03.440 The Bible's condemnation of homosexual behavior doesn't apply today. 01:52:03.680 --> 01:52:04.640 Twenty eight percent 01:52:05.840 --> 01:52:11.040 agree. Which is the wrong answer. 01:52:11.040 --> 01:52:15.360 Of course we know why so many disagree with this, which is 01:52:15.360 --> 01:52:19.200 to say, disagree with what the Bible teaches on homosexuality, teaches about 01:52:19.200 --> 01:52:23.760 sodomy. Because you have so many false teachers, so many wolves out 01:52:23.760 --> 01:52:26.960 there, attempting to explain away those verses, oh no no no, it's 01:52:26.960 --> 01:52:27.760 fine today. 01:52:27.760 --> 01:52:30.000 We can legalize this and decriminalize this. 01:52:31.360 --> 01:52:33.680 Scripture is abundantly clear. 01:52:33.680 --> 01:52:37.600 There is no ambiguity in any of those narratives, in any of 01:52:37.600 --> 01:52:41.520 those prohibitions, and they are not just in one place or two 01:52:41.520 --> 01:52:44.160 places, they are throughout Scripture. 01:52:44.960 --> 01:52:49.840 Homosexuality, sodomy is condemned in the strongest of terms. 01:52:49.840 --> 01:52:51.440 It is an abomination. 01:52:51.440 --> 01:52:56.560 It is condemned in the strongest of terms in scripture. 01:52:56.560 --> 01:53:00.640 And yet, the best of the best when it comes to Christians, 01:53:00.640 --> 01:53:06.240 twenty eight percent, think that those prohibitions they don't apply today, because 01:53:06.240 --> 01:53:08.160 we're so enlightened today. 01:53:08.160 --> 01:53:11.680 We've moved beyond these things. 01:53:11.680 --> 01:53:18.720 The same Christians who will affirm that they believe Scripture then 01:53:18.720 --> 01:53:20.720 deny that it applies. 01:53:21.680 --> 01:53:21.840 On 01:53:21.840 --> 01:53:25.920 the subject of affirming Scripture, the statement thirty, the Bible has the 01:53:25.920 --> 01:53:28.800 authority to tell us what we must do. 01:53:28.800 --> 01:53:30.800 Eighty five percent strongly agree. 01:53:30.800 --> 01:53:34.000 Okay, that's pretty good, but it should be honored. 01:53:34.000 --> 01:53:38.400 Up here where we're talking about the evangelical vanguard, how is it 01:53:38.400 --> 01:53:39.200 not a hundred? 01:53:39.200 --> 01:53:41.760 The Bible has the authority to tell us what we must do. 01:53:41.760 --> 01:53:44.400 Well, when you look in the next question, it becomes a little 01:53:44.400 --> 01:53:46.880 more clear or more confusing. 01:53:46.880 --> 01:53:51.200 Statement thirty-one says religious belief is a matter of personal opinion. 01:53:51.200 --> 01:53:54.320 It is not about objective truth. 01:53:54.320 --> 01:53:54.640 And 01:53:55.920 --> 01:54:00.400 just over half disagree with that. 01:54:01.040 --> 01:54:01.680 Just over half 01:54:02.560 --> 01:54:06.240 disagree their religion is not objective. 01:54:06.240 --> 01:54:10.400 So yeah, it makes sense that 85 only 85% would say the 01:54:10.400 --> 01:54:12.240 Bible has the authority to tell us what to do. 01:54:12.240 --> 01:54:15.440 Like the numbers don't add up, but it's it's confusing as you're 01:54:15.360 --> 01:54:18.800 listening. It's no less confusing when you're looking at the data and 01:54:18.800 --> 01:54:20.240 looking at these charts. 01:54:20.240 --> 01:54:24.640 It's it goes from almost everyone saying that the Bible tells us 01:54:24.640 --> 01:54:28.560 what we must do to almost a coin toss about whether or 01:54:28.560 --> 01:54:31.200 not the religion is objectively true. 01:54:34.160 --> 01:54:34.320 So 01:54:34.320 --> 01:54:39.920 we'll close out with statement 32 from these survey data. 01:54:39.920 --> 01:54:43.840 The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe. 01:54:43.840 --> 01:54:47.680 Among evangelicals, one hundred percent agree. 01:54:47.680 --> 01:54:51.440 Now it's only ninety-nine percent who strongly agree. 01:54:51.440 --> 01:54:54.720 One percent they just agree. 01:54:54.720 --> 01:54:56.320 But that's still good. 01:54:56.320 --> 01:54:58.960 Because we have a hundred percent who agree the Bible is the 01:54:58.960 --> 01:55:04.480 highest authority for what they believe, which is exactly what Christians should 01:55:04.480 --> 01:55:09.440 say. The Bible is not the only authority. 01:55:09.440 --> 01:55:12.880 We've never said that, we never will say that. 01:55:12.880 --> 01:55:16.960 Because God does reveal truth in other ways. 01:55:16.960 --> 01:55:22.160 There is truth in nature, because God is the God of nature. 01:55:22.160 --> 01:55:27.680 But when the Bible speaks, on those topics on which Scripture has 01:55:27.680 --> 01:55:30.720 something to say, it is final. 01:55:31.040 --> 01:55:34.800 There is nothing in nature, there is nothing in science, there is 01:55:34.800 --> 01:55:39.760 nothing in philosophy, there is nothing true upon which the mind of 01:55:39.760 --> 01:55:45.520 man can alight, can grasp, can discern, can divine, that will disagree 01:55:46.720 --> 01:55:48.560 with Scripture. 01:55:48.560 --> 01:55:53.280 Because Scripture, when and where it speaks, is absolutely true. 01:55:53.280 --> 01:55:57.120 And so yes, it is the highest authority for what we should 01:55:57.120 --> 01:55:57.760 believe. 01:55:59.200 --> 01:56:05.120 And so thankfully, this one is a hundred percent. 01:56:05.120 --> 01:56:08.800 But very obviously we have some work to do. 01:56:08.800 --> 01:56:13.600 When looking at the actual questions with regard to the teachings of 01:56:13.600 --> 01:56:17.920 Scripture, it is very clear that many of those who claim to 01:56:17.920 --> 01:56:21.200 be Christian do not agree with Scripture. 01:56:21.200 --> 01:56:24.640 They say that the Bible is the highest authority for what they 01:56:24.640 --> 01:56:28.560 believe, and then they don't believe what the Bible teaches. 01:56:28.560 --> 01:56:33.760 In many cases, undoubtedly, this is the result of false teachers, of 01:56:33.760 --> 01:56:37.280 wolves, in some cases just of particularly inept teachers. 01:56:37.280 --> 01:56:38.400 There are also those. 01:56:38.400 --> 01:56:39.760 It's not always malice. 01:56:39.760 --> 01:56:42.000 Sometimes it's just stupidity. 01:56:42.000 --> 01:56:46.320 Although if you're a stupid teacher, you're sinning by being in that 01:56:46.320 --> 01:56:48.320 position and you need to resign. 01:56:49.440 --> 01:56:52.560 But obviously there is a lot of work to be done. 01:56:52.560 --> 01:56:56.240 We have a lot of our fellows, a lot of our neighbors, 01:56:56.240 --> 01:56:59.280 a lot of our brothers and sisters in Christ, who may be 01:56:59.280 --> 01:57:03.120 sitting next to us in the pews, who do not know what 01:57:03.120 --> 01:57:05.840 it actually means to be a Christian. 01:57:05.840 --> 01:57:09.760 They don't know the content of the Christian faith. 01:57:09.760 --> 01:57:12.240 They know Jesus. 01:57:12.240 --> 01:57:15.600 They know the cross to some degree, although some of the questions 01:57:16.080 --> 01:57:19.520 Raise some issues with the understanding of what the cross means, what 01:57:19.520 --> 01:57:23.760 it represents, why it is important. 01:57:23.760 --> 01:57:27.520 They know some things, they have this nebulous understanding of what it 01:57:27.520 --> 01:57:31.440 means to be a Christian, but they do not know the concrete 01:57:31.440 --> 01:57:32.400 aspects of it. 01:57:32.400 --> 01:57:35.120 They do not know the facts, as it were. 01:57:35.120 --> 01:57:38.800 They don't know the truth of the Christian faith, the content of 01:57:38.800 --> 01:57:44.000 scripture. And that is what we need to be teaching. 01:57:44.000 --> 01:57:44.720 We need more 01:57:45.680 --> 01:57:50.480 good Christian men in our congregations teaching these truths. 01:57:50.480 --> 01:57:54.000 We need men in their homes teaching these things to their wives 01:57:54.000 --> 01:57:55.520 and children. 01:57:55.520 --> 01:57:58.880 Headship comes with responsibilities. 01:57:58.880 --> 01:58:02.640 If you are a father, if you are a husband, you are 01:58:02.640 --> 01:58:06.000 in a position of headship, and it is incumbent on you to 01:58:06.000 --> 01:58:10.880 see that these things are taught correctly in your house. 01:58:10.880 --> 01:58:14.240 If you hold a position of authority in your church, it is 01:58:14.240 --> 01:58:18.160 incumbent on you to see that these things are taught correctly in 01:58:18.160 --> 01:58:23.120 your church, and that includes, for those men in the congregations who 01:58:23.120 --> 01:58:26.720 have positions of authority, it is incumbent on you to ensure that 01:58:26.720 --> 01:58:31.840 your pastor teaches correctly, and to remove him if he does not. 01:58:32.720 --> 01:58:35.680 If of course he does not respond to correction. 01:58:35.680 --> 01:58:38.960 You should attempt to correct him first. 01:58:38.960 --> 01:58:44.480 That is one of the duties of Christian men. 01:58:44.480 --> 01:58:46.400 These numbers are bad. 01:58:46.400 --> 01:58:49.360 We've made that point repeatedly. 01:58:49.360 --> 01:58:51.280 We aren't going to sugarcoat it. 01:58:51.280 --> 01:58:54.240 We aren't going to say, well, it could be worse. 01:58:54.240 --> 01:58:56.640 No, these numbers are catastrophic. 01:58:56.640 --> 01:58:59.040 These numbers are awful. 01:58:59.040 --> 01:59:03.040 Basics of the Christian faith are coming down to effectively a coin 01:59:03.040 --> 01:59:06.880 toss as to whether or not someone gets it right. 01:59:06.880 --> 01:59:10.720 That should not be the state of affairs in any church. 01:59:10.720 --> 01:59:13.840 It should most certainly not be the state of affairs in the 01:59:13.840 --> 01:59:19.680 most conservative, traditional, Bible believing churches, at least as they claim. 01:59:19.680 --> 01:59:24.000 One hundred percent say the Bible is the highest authority. 01:59:24.000 --> 01:59:26.800 There is a lot of work to be done, and I'll say 01:59:26.800 --> 01:59:28.480 that another time. 01:59:28.480 --> 01:59:32.480 There is a lot of work to be done. 01:59:32.480 --> 01:59:37.040 We shouldn't take that as cause for despair. 01:59:37.040 --> 01:59:38.880 We should view that as an opportunity. 01:59:39.920 --> 01:59:45.760 God has given us the opportunity to correct these things. 01:59:45.760 --> 01:59:50.000 If you have the talents to teach, you should use those talents 01:59:50.000 --> 01:59:51.360 to teach. 01:59:51.440 --> 01:59:54.640 If you have the position, of course, of headship, it is incumbent 01:59:54.640 --> 01:59:56.880 on you to do so, and so you don't really have a 01:59:56.880 --> 01:59:57.760 choice, then. 01:59:57.760 --> 02:00:00.080 You can enlist the help of others. 02:00:00.080 --> 02:00:05.280 God has put talented men in positions where they can exercise those 02:00:05.280 --> 02:00:10.000 talents, where they can use those talents to teach the faith. 02:00:10.000 --> 02:00:15.040 Part of this undoubtedly is going to be removing false teachers, removing 02:00:15.040 --> 02:00:21.520 wolves. Because we have many of them in our churches, and unfortunately, 02:00:21.520 --> 02:00:25.440 we have many of them in our pulpits. 02:00:25.440 --> 02:00:27.600 If we are going to restore 02:00:28.480 --> 02:00:36.080 actual Christianity, which includes, of course, foundationally right belief in 02:00:36.080 --> 02:00:40.000 the basics of the Christian faith. 02:00:40.000 --> 02:00:42.800 We are going to need more faithful men, and we are going 02:00:42.800 --> 02:00:45.280 to need to remove the faithless ones. 02:00:45.520 --> 02:00:50.000 As mentioned earlier and a number of times, one of the ways 02:00:50.000 --> 02:00:54.720 that you can start to work on addressing these problems in hopefully 02:00:54.880 --> 02:00:58.000 not in your home, but perhaps in your home, perhaps in your 02:00:58.000 --> 02:01:02.080 congregation. Use the creeds. 02:01:02.080 --> 02:01:06.640 They are a gift from God to the church, because they are 02:01:06.640 --> 02:01:10.160 just restatements of what Scripture says. 02:01:10.160 --> 02:01:14.640 They address ancient heresies, which some of these questions were just ancient 02:01:14.640 --> 02:01:20.320 heresies rephrased, and they address many of the problems with regard to 02:01:20.320 --> 02:01:23.680 knowledge of the Christian faith. 02:01:23.680 --> 02:01:29.200 If every individual responding to this survey knew and believed just what 02:01:29.200 --> 02:01:34.720 the creeds say, this would have been a fundamentally different podcast episode. 02:01:34.720 --> 02:01:39.120 Because these would be fundamentally different survey data. 02:01:39.120 --> 02:01:43.760 Virtually every one of these is addressed in the Creeds. 02:01:43.760 --> 02:01:46.400 Yes, some of the social issues so called or not. 02:01:46.400 --> 02:01:48.560 The Creeds don't address abortion. 02:01:48.560 --> 02:01:51.120 But the fifth commandment certainly does. 02:01:51.120 --> 02:01:55.280 If you actually teach the reality of what abortion is, including birth 02:01:55.280 --> 02:02:00.240 control, hormonal birth control, chemical birth control. 02:02:00.240 --> 02:02:02.560 And so as Christians, we need to look at the state of 02:02:02.560 --> 02:02:03.520 the churches. 02:02:04.160 --> 02:02:07.600 We need to look at the state of our fellow believers, some 02:02:07.600 --> 02:02:10.080 of whom are in name only. 02:02:10.080 --> 02:02:12.240 And we need to care for them. 02:02:12.240 --> 02:02:13.920 We need to care for the churches. 02:02:13.920 --> 02:02:17.360 We need to care for our neighbor. 02:02:17.360 --> 02:02:20.400 These are not issues that we can just sweep under the rug 02:02:20.400 --> 02:02:21.600 and ignore. 02:02:21.600 --> 02:02:24.480 These are matters of salvation. 02:02:24.480 --> 02:02:28.400 In many cases, not every one of these, as we've said, is 02:02:28.400 --> 02:02:31.040 going to damn you if you get it wrong, but some of 02:02:31.040 --> 02:02:32.400 them will. 02:02:32.400 --> 02:02:36.320 And the goal isn't to find that line and just barely squeak 02:02:36.320 --> 02:02:39.120 by, just barely not fall off the cliff. 02:02:39.040 --> 02:02:41.120 That's not what we want for ourselves. 02:02:41.120 --> 02:02:43.440 It's certainly not what we want for our families. 02:02:43.440 --> 02:02:46.080 It is not what we should want for those sitting in the 02:02:46.080 --> 02:02:48.160 pews next to us. 02:02:48.160 --> 02:02:51.600 And so we need to ensure that the basics of the Christian 02:02:51.600 --> 02:02:53.600 faith are taught. 02:02:53.680 --> 02:02:57.120 How can you move on to the more advanced parts of the 02:02:57.120 --> 02:03:00.800 faith? How can you move on to the difficult questions if you 02:03:00.800 --> 02:03:03.920 can't even stomach spiritual milk? 02:03:04.480 --> 02:03:10.000 If you can't even answer that the Holy Spirit is a person, 02:03:10.000 --> 02:03:11.600 that God is triune 02:03:12.720 --> 02:03:16.560 If you can't answer the very most basic parts of the Christian 02:03:16.560 --> 02:03:21.200 faith, how can you expect not only to move on and understand 02:03:21.440 --> 02:03:25.680 the more complex parts of the Christian faith, perhaps the more subtle 02:03:25.680 --> 02:03:27.120 parts of the Christian faith? 02:03:27.120 --> 02:03:29.600 Those are a gift from God to understand those things. 02:03:29.600 --> 02:03:32.320 It's the fullness of the faith, and you want to mature Sure, 02:03:32.320 --> 02:03:34.480 you want to move from milk to meat. 02:03:34.480 --> 02:03:37.920 But if you can't even digest the milk, if you can't understand 02:03:37.920 --> 02:03:43.280 the basics, not only are you limiting yourself and those under your 02:03:43.280 --> 02:03:46.240 care, but how are you going to share the faith? 02:03:47.040 --> 02:03:48.880 How will you respond to questions? 02:03:48.880 --> 02:03:52.080 If you can't even state the basics of what it means to 02:03:52.080 --> 02:03:56.880 be a Christian, of the content of the Christian faith, you can't 02:03:56.880 --> 02:04:01.760 respond to questions from those who are wondering about the Christian faith, 02:04:01.760 --> 02:04:05.280 who perhaps have an interest in the Christian faith, or those attacking 02:04:05.280 --> 02:04:10.160 the Christian faith, or if your children come to you with a 02:04:10.160 --> 02:04:18.080 question, or someone else in your congregation, these are not trivial matters. 02:04:18.080 --> 02:04:22.080 These are matters of the utmost importance. 02:04:22.080 --> 02:04:24.960 Because again it is that tripartite division. 02:04:24.960 --> 02:04:28.640 It is notitia, ascensus, and fiducia. 02:04:28.640 --> 02:04:31.440 Fiducia is what saves you. 02:04:31.440 --> 02:04:35.440 But you can't have that without the foundation. 02:04:35.440 --> 02:04:40.400 Because you can't believe in that which you don't know is true. 02:04:40.400 --> 02:04:45.040 And you can't you certainly can't believe that something is true if 02:04:45.040 --> 02:04:47.360 you don't even know what it is. 02:04:47.360 --> 02:04:50.480 And so if you don't know the content of the Christian faith, 02:04:50.480 --> 02:04:54.880 notitia, you can't assent to the fact that it is true, ascensus, 02:04:54.880 --> 02:04:58.960 and so then you can't have faith in that fiducia. 02:04:58.960 --> 02:05:03.280 Yes, faith is a gift from God, but it is faith in 02:05:03.280 --> 02:05:07.200 something, and he has given us his word in order to teach 02:05:07.200 --> 02:05:09.600 the truth of the Christian faith. 02:05:09.600 --> 02:05:13.280 And so if we're going to say, as it seems like, the 02:05:13.280 --> 02:05:18.000 evangelical respondents do, the Bible is the highest authority for what I 02:05:18.000 --> 02:05:22.320 believe. We need to know what the Bible actually teaches. 02:05:22.320 --> 02:05:27.120 Because just holding up a book and saying, I believe this doesn't 02:05:27.040 --> 02:05:32.000 mean anything if you've never opened it, if you've opened it once, 02:05:32.000 --> 02:05:34.480 if you don't read it, if you don't know what it contains, 02:05:34.480 --> 02:05:36.880 if you don't know what it teaches. 02:05:36.880 --> 02:05:41.360 And so we need to know what the Christian faith is, what 02:05:41.360 --> 02:05:45.680 the tenets of the Christian faith are, what the contents of Scripture 02:05:45.680 --> 02:05:49.280 are. It's the Word of God. 02:05:49.280 --> 02:05:52.800 As has been said many times in the past by many Christians, 02:05:52.800 --> 02:05:55.360 prayer is us talking to God. 02:05:55.360 --> 02:05:58.800 Scripture is God talking to us. 02:05:58.800 --> 02:06:01.200 We should take that seriously. 02:06:01.200 --> 02:06:06.320 God wrote us an entire book via the hands of many men 02:06:06.320 --> 02:06:11.600 over many centuries, in order to tell us what he has done, 02:06:11.600 --> 02:06:15.200 what he is going to do, what he wants from us, what 02:06:15.200 --> 02:06:18.400 he wants us to do, what he wants us not to do. 02:06:18.400 --> 02:06:21.840 So much is contained in the pages of Scripture. 02:06:21.840 --> 02:06:26.320 And yet it seems like many of our fellows, and again many 02:06:26.320 --> 02:06:30.880 teachers and pastors, are ignoring this treasure. 02:06:30.880 --> 02:06:32.480 That needs to change 02:06:42.800 --> 02:06:44.000 the bigger.