Apostasy

0:37 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Corey J. Molly. And I'm still Wo. Today's Stone Choir is part four of our series on the state of the church. Today we're going to be discussing the subject of apostasy in the church and of the church. We began with the first episode where we discussed the nature of religion itself and in that we defined religion in terms of where it sources its morality, where our church is getting their right and wrong, because right and wrong moral claims are themselves the basis of a religion. And so within the Christian church, the exclusive source of such morality must necessarily be scripture. And we made the case in that first episode that much of what we in the church today describe as right and wrong is

1:26 not actually sourced from scripture. Much of it is in in effect sourced from the new global religion that's emerged really since the 60s. In the second episode, we dealt specifically with the Judaizing heresy, the fact that so much of newly invented theology in the last generation or two is fundamentally trying to make Christianity more Jewish, that somehow that would make it more authentic. And so we gave a couple examples and pointed out that this is pervasive and it's relatively new, but it's not novel because in the first century it was the very first heresy that the church battled. So the fact that it would come roaring back, not a surprise. It's entirely believable. It's another example of how the church is departing from the historic

2:15 Christian faith. Last week's episode was entirely about the Gnostic heresy, which was the second major heresy that attacked the church after Judaizing. And it went on for a couple centuries. And we made the case that there are significant portions of the underlying Gnostic religion of the first few centuries that are that are roaring back today inside churches. Like there are aspects that are clearly emerging in secular culture where it's not seen as religious, but it in fact is things like transsexualism completely Gnostic from start to finish. And yet within the church, we find those same tendencies. So we made the case in a couple hours last week that that's another heresy. It's another degree of apostatizing unbelief that has emerging in the church.

3:03 And so this last episode in this series, we're going to conclude by an extensive Bible study of all the passages, well, not all, but a selection of passages in the old and the new testament, the layout what apostasy looks like in the church. And I want to say a couple things up front to preface and to frame what we're talking about. We are specifically talking when we're talking about apostasy this week about the church bodies. We're not talking about individual apostasy. I want to point this out because one, I know that there are quite a few people who are listening who have apostatized from the faith in the past and are coming back to the faith now. And we want not to burden your conscience or to beat

3:49 up on you by using that word. In some ways the fact that when an individual apostatizes, you know, they have faith of some degree, you're baptized, you're in the church, for whatever reason you fall away, usually it's probably going to be a lukewarm church or a bad church where you finally realize there's nothing here for me. I don't believe any of this. When a man individually apostatizes, it is better than when the church does it because at least the man knows there's a before and after. He knows I used to believe in God. I just don't have faith anymore. I don't I don't believe any of this stuff anymore. So he knows that something happened. We're talking about a different type of apostasy within the church because

4:32 when the church denominations are apostatizing as they are today, there's no overt before and after. There's no one day they stand up and say we believe in God and then the next week they say we don't believe in God. Or we actually want to worship Satan or Baal or Molech or something else. What happens when a church apostatizes is it keeps on being the church, it keeps on saying we're Christian, keeps on talking about Jesus and God and love and all the Bible stuff, all the Jesus butter. What it doesn't do is continue in the faith of our fathers. It throws away scripture by bits and pieces. It throws away the confession of the historic church and replaces it wholesale, but wholesale over time, not all at once.

5:16 So it's really kind of a ship of theseist theology that occurs where they'll start with little stuff like, well, you know, Genesis, obviously like the stuff in the very beginning about six days and you know God talking and like the that stuff's not real, obviously. It's a metaphor. Something happened, but we don't know what it was, and so this is a story. It begins there, and by the time you get to the end, they're just flat out denying everything in scripture and say, My God isn't like any of this stuff. So while the wholesale replation of Christianity eventually it becomes clear to everyone as it's happening, it's usually gradual. It takes generations to occur. And so as that frog is being boiled, and we're that frog,

5:57 many of us don't even see it or feel it happening. And so the apostasy that we're speaking of today is specifically churches pretending to continue to be the true church, but adopting false demonic teachings. So in that sense, it's very different from what the individual does. So we are beating up on the denominations, all of them. We're gonna have a few specific examples of different churches. We're gonna beat up on some of you. We're beating up on ourselves too, like the Lutheran church is a key example of this sort of apostasy today. We'll give some of those examples. So just at the outset, I don't want anyone to feel like they're just getting crushed by what we're saying about individuals.

6:39 Frankly, if you are worried about apostasy or if you feel guilty that you have in the past, that's a good sign. That means that God remembered your baptism that he gave to you and he's drawing you back to him. That is the gospel. That is God saving you as he saved all of us. He calls us to himself and he gathers us and he gives us his things. That's what he does for us. It's not us doing things for him. So this is gonna be a lot of law in this episode. We're gonna hammer home the point that things are really bad. And I don't want this to be a downer episode. In some ways it's gonna be, but fundamentally this is a this is a signal beacon. This is this is sounding an alarm. This whole series of these four episodes is sounding an alarm to

7:26 say, this is actually happening today. And by the way, scripture prophesied that it would happen, Scripture tells us what God thinks about it happening, and Scripture makes clear what he has done in all the previous cases where believers ceased to be believers and did these things. And by the way, we're seeing all that today too. So this is not hypothetical. This is not just about doctrine. This is about whether or not we continue to live and have God's blessings, both as human beings, as nations, and as church bodies, with the pretense of Christian doctrine. We don't want there to be a pretense, we want there to actually be the Christian faith. And as we laid out in the first episode, but I want

8:09 to reiterate here, One of the key things that you have to hold in mind when you're tackling this subject is that it is entirely possible for a man to simultaneously have a true confession and a false confession that are at odds with each other. That absolutely happens at the same time. And we talked about in the judge not episode. We can't read a man's heart as God can. We do not know what the final disposition of a man's soul is going to be when he has a false confession and a true confession. We can only warn him this thing that you're saying that's false is false. This is damnable. You're also saying this thing is true. God's going to sort that out, but for the sake of your soul, let's get rid of the false stuff.

8:54 And so one of the first examples we're going to have is where this was absolutely the case back in the days of the kings, in the old testament, as we call it. That pattern, it's an actual pattern. It's not just the oh, there's an old story about the olden times. That was thousands of years ago, and gosh, you know, I it's too bad they didn't do a better job. Those old stories are about us too. They're not just history. They're telling us what men are vulnerable to, what we have a tendency to do, and they also tell us exactly how God responds to it. God's response to the unbelief in the Old Testament is identical to his response today. God didn't change. He doesn't hate unbelief and idolatry any less or any differently than

9:35 he did then. So when he reveals then here's what I think about this stuff and here's what I do, and then we see the doing happening today, we should know, yeah, that's makes sense. God thinks very poorly of idolatry and the sacrifice of infants and all these other things. So when we see the same consequences, it makes perfect sense. I hope by the end of the episode we'll have established the case we're trying to make that the churches are apostatizing in real time. Every single church body, I don't care what body you're in, they are apostatizing to varying degrees and in varying fashions, but they are all participating to some degree in the worship of demons. Every single one of them. Whoever's listening and shouting, you're no exception.

10:20 Yours too. We're not going to beat up on every single denomination. We want to establish that this is happening everywhere, and that's the concern. Because God has promised that He will preserve His church. He has not promised that he's going to preserve any particular denomination. The faith will persevere until the end. There will be believers until the end. And some of the passages we'll specifically get into deal with that. But it does not follow that we can just do whatever we want in our lives and in our churches and God's going to preserve us. Because God also spends a lot of time talking about faithless churches having their lampstands removed. God takes away their faith, he no longer speaks through them.

11:02 He goes elsewhere. That's a threat. That's bad news. that's both barrels of the law. And nobody wants to hear that because we don't think, oh, I I don't want that to happen to me, or that couldn't happen to me. This series is intended to demonstrate that it is in fact happening to all of us. And not that we should then whine about it or pout or like just point and shout and call names. We need to fix it. We need to obey God. We need to detect when these things are happening. And we need to do something. And again, every church has its own problems. So there's not a checklist for one church that's going to apply to another. We all have our own issues, but they're all following the same path.

11:42 So as we go through these many passages today, keep in mind that when Jesus is speaking and God is speaking throughout scripture, he's talking to us too. He's also talking to them. You know, a lot of this is typological. As we get into many of these things, they're talking about end times. And one of the problems that has come about in the church is that people think, well, that happened 2,000 years ago or 3,000 years ago, 4,000. So it can't happen again. God said it was going to happen, then it did, and that means it's over. When you understand that God works typologically, that he establishes a pattern to indicate here's the type of thing that's going on, when it happens again, that doesn't mean he was wrong the first time and

12:29 he's right the second time, he didn't skip anything. Sometimes God repeats patterns for our benefit. So some of these prophecies were certainly fulfilled in the past. That doesn't mean they can't be fulfilled again. And it's also certainly true when you look at the the black letter text, some of these prophecies have not happened yet. And the specific questions surrounding them were the end times. When and the disciples were asking Jesus point blank, when will we know when these things are happening? And he gives them signs of the end of the age. And he says, These things will happen, and not until these things happen will the end come will I return. And so as we talk about these things, I don't want people

13:07 to get the sense that we're Doom and gloom, or that we're talking about the end of the world. It's like we're right around the corner. We don't know. Everything that we do is hopeful that we will obey God. And whenever He shows up, we just want to be obeying Him. We want to believe what He said and do what He told us to do and leave the rest in his hands. And if that's tomorrow or a year from now or a thousand years from now, it shouldn't change what we do today. So a lot of times you'll see like doomsday calls. They're like, okay, the end is near. Everybody sell your stuff and go live on a hill and just look up at the sky. No. If the end is near, do exactly what you should have been doing all along.

13:44 That's what God wants for all of us. So we don't want this to seem like it's an eschatological nightmare scenario. Like the eschatology is not a nightmare, it's unless you're an unbeliever, which is part of the reason for talking about these things. If unbelief is tolerated to the end, there are a lot of warnings in these prophecies. Like, if you're asleep when I show up, you're damned. That's what Jesus warns people. So when we warn people today, it's not as some sort of like doomsday prophecy. It's just saying what God said and say, hey, take this stuff seriously. When he comes is in his time. We don't worry about that. We shouldn't worry about that. What we should worry about is that we're actually believing and obeying

14:25 him. And when we look at the church today through the lens of these passages, we find that we are not believing and obeying God. So we're gonna begin in second kings seventeen. We're gonna read three pretty long sections from 2nd kings. Frankly, they're too long for you to be able to hold in your head. So and that's kind of deliberate. All the citations that we have today are gonna be in the show notes, so you can go read all these things. Like you said, this is really a Bible study. We want people to go and read their Bible a lot after this episode. It doesn't be right away. Wait a couple days. So that what we have said is sort of faded. Go back through the verses and just read them. Just you and God, him talking and you listening, you're going to

15:06 reach the conclusions that we're presenting here. Because we're not saying anything novel. As we read these first few passages in 2 Kings, because they're so long, I want you to use this listening exercise to help you sort of frame what it is we're presenting. There are going to be numerous instances of describing the Hebrews, the Jews, the Israelites committing acts of apostasy, committing acts of idolatry and unbelief. Every time there is a mention of some act of apostasy or unbelief, I want you to imagine a bell ringing. We're not gonna have a soundboard, not gonna do any sort of silly gimmicks, but you in your head, just imagine a bell dinging every time you hear some act of falling away of disbelief or

15:50 of disobedience. And then the second category to keep in mind as we're reading these, every time God says says this is evil, don't do this, or God punishes them for doing a thing. Imagine a buzzer, like the really loud, obnoxious high school buzzer in the gymnasium. So apostasy, a ding, punishment, a buzzer. With that in mind, as you're listening to us read these things, you're gonna hear just a cacophony. It's gonna happen over and over again. And that's the reason for reading these passages because they're so dense with both that it really makes the point that this stuff happens. This is real. Here the specific examples. And the reason it's interesting we're looking at second Kings is that

16:33 these were God's people. These were the twelve tribes. At this point we're talking about the two kingdoms. So you have the northern kingdom of the ten, the southern kingdom of the two tribes, but those were descendants of Jacob. Those were the twelve tribes of Israel and yet this is what they were doing and this is how God responded because this framing of how bad things were then points directly to how bad things are today. In the twelfth year of Ahaz King of Judah, Hoshea the son of Elab began to reign in Samaria over Israel, and he reigned nine years, and he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, yet not as the kings of Israel who were before him. Again Against him came up Shalmansir, king of Assyria, and Hoshea became

17:20 his vassal and paid him tribute. But the king of Assyria found treachery in Hoshea, for he had sent messengers to so, king of Egypt, and offered no tribute to the king of Assyria as he had done year by year. Therefore the king of Assyria shut him up and bound him in prison. Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria, and for three years he besieged it. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria, and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria, and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the Rib the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. And this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land

18:04 of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh King of Egypt, and had feared other gods, and walked in the customs of the nations, whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced. And the people of Israel did secretly against the Lord, their God, things that were not right. They built for themselves high places in all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city. They set up for themselves pillars in Asherim, on every high hill, and under every green tree, and there they made offerings, on all the high places, as the nations did whom the Lord carried away before them. And they did wicked things, provoking the Lord to anger, and they

18:47 served idols, of which the Lord had said to them, You shall not do this. the Lord warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer saying, Turn from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all the law that I commanded your fathers, and that I sent to you by my servants the prophets. But they would not listen, but were stubborn, as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the Lord their God. despised his statutes and his covenant, that he made with their fathers, and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols, and became false, and they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the Lord had commanded them, that they should not do like them.

19:34 And they abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made for themselves metal images of two calves, and they made an ashera, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. And they burned their sons and their daughters as offerings, and used divination and omens, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah only. Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the customs that Israel had introduced, and the Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel, and afflicted them, and gave them into the hand of plunders, until he had cast them out of

20:19 his sight. When he had torn Israel from the house of David, they made Jeroboam the son of Nabat king, and Jeroboam drove Israel from following the Lord So Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria until this day. So as I mentioned, this is the two kingdoms, this is Israel, the Northern Kingdom, and Judah, the southern kingdom. In this moment is the end of Israel. This is the end of the northern kingdom. God destroys them. Ten tribes, ten of Jacob's sons, ten tribes have been had promises made to him. They're preserved until this day. In the northern kingdom, God destroyed them in this moment because of their unbelief. And if you were imagining dinging and buzzing, it was going off

21:20 continuously throughout that passage, because there are all these different examples of their wickedness, of their unbelief before the Lord. And as we said in past episodes, having no other gods before God, when you understand that God is omniscient, everything is before him because everything is according to his knowledge. So they were doing this right in front of God, in despising everything he had promised and told them, and so he wiped 'em out. And so the northern kingdom is gone. The ten tribes are destroyed. You know, today when you hear about the men who call themselves Jews today, there aren't twelve different versions of them. There are a few different versions. We've all heard of the Ashkenazim, you know, the Sephardim, some have

22:02 heard of the Mizrahim. Those are all different names for the places where the diaspora was sent, and they effectively misegenated with their neighbors. They were all wiped out. The Northern Kingdom was wiped out and became Samaria. These people, these Jews became the Samaritans, by mixing with their northern neighbors. It was race mixing with people who were not of God after God cast them out, he abandoned them, and then destroyed them by these means, and they vanished. They're completely gone. They cannot be reconstituted to this day. And so the modern person who calls himself a Jew can't possibly trace any lineage back to the twelve tribes because they were immolated. And the same thing happened to Judah between the days of Christ

22:49 and after the destruction of the temple. The southern kingdom had already been conquered. It was it was there was nothing left. They had no king, but they were still in Jerusalem. I think it's a little bit notable that when the modern state of Israel chose to reconstitute a name, even though they're down in Jerusalem, there were in Judah today or Judea, they chose the name of the northern tribe. They chose the name of the group that had openly and completely apostatized and been destroyed by God for their wickedness. You know, it they call themselves Jews, but they don't call it Judah or Judea. I just I think it's interesting. It's not a theological point. It's just kind of it's conspicuous when you understand the history Where

23:31 people choose to anchor themselves. And choosing to anchor themselves in terms of Israel as being some promise thing, well, here we see how the promise turned up. Was it God failing to keep his promise? No. It was a people who were so wicked and so apostate that he destroyed them. That's why we're talking about this today. This was ancient apostasy, but these had been God's people. They had been given the law and the prophets, they were sent prophets over and over again. The prophet in this day was Isaiah. It'll come up in one of the other passages and there's a parallel description in Second Chronicles and then the entire book of Isaiah all talking about this period, so it's covered extensively.

24:13 But the key point for this this particular episode and this subject is that they fell away and God destroyed them. And so today, if we make the case, if it's true that the churches today are also falling away, we should believe that God will destroy us too. And I think that when we look at the current state of the West of Christendom, which is Christendom is dead, but we're in the ashes of Christendom, when we see these very same things, these very same punishments occurring to us, to our people, to our lands, it's worth considering whether the same God who hated their unbelief and their departure from the faith would also hate our unbelief and our departure from the faith, and would maybe punish it exactly the same

24:59 way because that's how he punishes unbelief. I think it's a reasonable question to ask, but it's one that nobody wants to ask because we want to say, oh, this is this is just the old stuff, it's the old testament. Yeah, it's god that was the angry God. We got the loving God now. No. There's one God. And he views this stuff the same way today as he did then, because God doesn't change. So if it's true that the church is apostatizing that the West has apostatized, I think is pretty much inarguable. You can quibble over to what degree churches have, but the West is completely de Christianized. In fact it's almost illegal to be Christian at this point. And even in the churches now, the last vestiges of Christianity are

25:38 being hunted down. So this is a live issue. This is why we're not talking about this as a historical quibble or some minor point. This is pointing to today. If you take our argument at face value, then it's happening today. But even if you don't think that, you have to wrestle with the fact that this is how God views these things. So if they happen, we should expect they would play out very similarly. Because God's telling us, here's what I think and here's what I do. We should take that seriously. Scripture is very clear that God sets both the times and the boundaries of the nations, and we see both of those in play here. Because with the case of the Northern Kingdom, he brings their time to an end, and so takes all of their land from

26:26 them. With the case of the Southern Kingdom, they are punished differently, we will get into that shortly. But that's more of an issue of partially he takes away their land because he is dividing up, he's already divided up after the time of Solomon, the the former territory of Israel, ancient Israel, into two kingdoms, the northern and the southern kingdom. And so that's a division. That's from God. That is a punishment from God for their failure, particularly Solomon's failure, but then the failure of his sons as well after him to follow the Lord God. But I want you to pay attention particularly to one verse from that reading. Obviously you can't hold the whole thing in your mind as I was going through it.

27:13 That's why we encourage you to read it again later. But I want you to bear in mind verse eighteen Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed the Removed them out of his sight, none was left but the tribe of Judah only. That is clearly telling us that God destroyed the northern kingdom for their apostasy, for their wickedness. That's what it means to be removed out of the sight of God. Now, it is possible for God to turn his face away from you. Now there are two ways to look at God turning his face toward you in scripture. He can either turn his face toward you in judgment or he can remember you, and usually scripture uses that phrasing of God remembered. It doesn't mean that God forgot, it means that he is turning

28:01 toward that person or those people in order to aid them, in order to restore them. If God removes you out of his sight, God is omniscient, He sees all things. To remove you out of His sight means to destroy you utterly Now there are times where that may be a temporary judgment. In this case, it's not. He destroys the northern kingdom. It is gone. The punishment for their apostasy is the destruction of them as a people, as a nation. God has done that a number of times historically. We obviously see that in the pages of the Old Testament, when the Israelites come into the land and destroy some of the Canaanites, they were supposed to destroy all of the Canaanites, they failed in that endeavor, which is part of the reason they're being judged here,

28:52 of course. But God destroyed them. God destroyed all of the Antideluvians, with the exception of Noah and his family. Only eight people from the ancient world were saved. God judges peoples, God judges nations, and he sets their times and their borders, and those who are faithless will see their time drawn to an end. God is not slow as men count slowness. He does things in his perfect time. That's why he waited for the wickedness of the Canaanites to be full. He waited for them to fill full their cup of wrath before he brought in the Israelites to destroy them. But that also means that you're given a period of time to repent and turn back to God. You don't know when that will end, you don't know how long

29:41 that period will be, because God does not tell us. And so we should take that to heart, and we should turn back immediately to God. We should recognize the apostasy, the same signs we see here in Scripture, we see happening today. So I'll move on to the second reading which is from chapter twenty two, dealing now with Judah. Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty one years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Jeddah, the daughter of Adiah, of Bozkath, and he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, and walked in all the ways of David his father, and he did not turn aside to the right or to the left. In the eighteenth year of King Josiah, the king sent Shaphan, the

30:30 son of Azaliah, son of Meshulam, the secretary, to the house of the Lord, saying, Go up to Hilkiah the high priest, that he may count the money that has been brought into the house of the Lord, which the keepers of the threshold have collected from the people, and let it be given into the hand of the workmen, who have the oversight of the house of the Lord, and let them give it to the workmen, who are at the house of the Lord, repairing the house, that is, to the carpenters and to the builders and to the masons, and let them use it for buying timber and quarried stone to repair the house. But no accounting shall be asked from them for the money that is delivered into their hand, for they deal honestly.

31:11 And Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphon the secretary, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it, and Shapon the secretary came to the king, and reported to the king. servants have emptied out the money that was found in the house, and have delivered it into the hand of the workmen, Who have the oversight of the house of the Lord? Then Shapon the secretary told the king, Hilkiah the priest has given me a book, and Shapon read it before the king. When the king heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes, and the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Akmor the son of Mekiah, and

31:54 Shaphan the secretary, and Asiah the king's servant saying, Go inquire of the Lord for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that has been found, for great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us. So Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam, and Akbor and Shaphan, and Asiah went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shalum, the son of Tikfah, son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe. Now she lived in Jerusalem in the second quarter, and they talked with her, and she said to them, Thus says the Lord the God of Israel. Tell the man who sent you to me, thus says the Lord.

32:42 Behold I will bring disaster upon this place and upon its inhabitants. All the words of the book that the king of Judah has read, because they have forsaken me, and have made offerings to other gods, that they might provoke me to anger, with all the work of their hands. Therefore my wrath will be kindled against this place, and it will not be quenched, but to the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the Lord, thus shall you say to him, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, regarding the words that you have heard, because your heart was penitent, and you humbled yourself before the Lord, when you heard how I spoke against this place, and against its inhabitants, that they should become a desolation and a curse,

33:25 and you have torn your clothes and wept before me. I also I also have heard you, declares the Lord. Therefore, behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes shall not see all the disaster that I will bring upon this place. And they brought back word to the king There are a few vital points in this passage that I think speak very directly to us today. One, it's worth considering the beginning and ending of that passage where it says that Josiah did what was right in the lies of the Lord and walked in the ways of David his father. And at the end, the prophetess says to him, From God, Because your heart was penitent and you humbled yourself before the Lord when

34:10 you heard how he spoke against this, God would show mercy specifically on Josiah. So God is crediting to Josiah righteousness on account of his faith. Josiah was born he was made king at age eight. For eighteen years the things that we're gonna get to in the next and final reading from Second Kings were going on while Josiah was king. So in a minute we're gonna talk about how bad that was, but I think it's notable that Josiah was seen as a faithful king by God, which means he was, that's not speculative. And yet when Hilkiah, the high priest, brought him what the workmen had found. They found some portion of the Torah, maybe the whole thing. It doesn't say I've seen speculation on which part of it it

35:00 was. Personally it seems to me like it would have had to have been the whole thing because I don't know how much of the Torah you could remove and tolerate what is described in the next chapter. But even if it was a portion of it, his response when it was discovered was to realize that his fathers had cursed them all, that the unbelief of the prior generations, that they would forget God's word. Because remember, this was this was literally the word of God basically buried in some rubble. It was buried somewhere in the temple. Like guys were looking to clean out money and stuff, and they found these scrolls and took it to the priesthood. Hey, this looks important. No one's ever seen it, but it seems like it might have

35:42 mattered at one point. Seems like it might be valuable, because they knew how valuable scrolls were. They're incredibly expensive. When Hilkiah read it to Josiah, he tore his robes, he was filled with grief. Why? Because the word of God had literally been lost. It wasn't lost in the sense, oh no, we've misplaced the Bible. It was lost to the point that they weren't looking for it anymore. They had forgotten not only the word, but they had forgotten the existence of the word. And so some form of the faith still existed because Josiah was a faithful believer, sort of. We're gonna get into his faithlessness in the next chapter, but he was faithful in the sense that he was actually trying to serve

36:27 God. So in the eighteenth year of his reign, so when he was twenty-six, he sent workmen in, they're cleaning out the temple. Like he was trying to maintain God's temple. And that's when they found the Bible. So I highlight this passage. We want to bring this to your attention because the word of God was literally lost. And it's not like there was some other copy somewhere else. Remember, in the previous passages we've seen that the northern kingdom was already destroyed. They were already in complete unbelief. They had nothing left. In the southern kingdom, something had been preserved, but it was in such shambles that they had literally forgotten that they had the Bible. They forgot they had it.

37:08 They weren't looking for it. It was just out of mind. So there was some like there was still a temple. There was still something like temple worship. But when we get to in the next chapter, we see all the horrors that were going on. It's crucial to look at this because we would think this is unbelievable. How could scripture possibly be misplaced or forgotten? You know, and in those days, you know, they only had one or two copies, maybe the rest were lost, we don't know. This was the first time Josiah had ever been aware that this even existed. And so his response was the Christian response. He said, Lord have mercy. He fell on his knees. He was horrified to realize the faithlessness of his fathers.

37:51 Because for generations, he had thought that what he had inherited was a faithful, God-fearing kingdom. What he found was that the faithlessness had been going on for so long that no one even remembered this stuff. There were bits and pieces floating around, but when he had the law ready, he's like, I this is all new and this condemns us. That I think is pointing in some ways to what happened in the Reformation. You know, it's obviously we didn't lose the Bible, but we lost a sense of what it said. And so there was a pre and post-Reformation change, not in terms of doctrine being discovered, but being uncovered, because one of the things that the reformers did was they went back and looked, you know, five hundred and

38:38 a thousand years prior, and said, Well, when we're reading the Bible here effectively for the first time, this doesn't match church teaching, what happened. And so as they started looking at patristic investigations, what they found was that there were many, not all church fathers, but there were many church fathers who believed what the reformers held. There were disputes as there had always been disputes, as God says there will de be disputes. But what had changed was that those disputes were forgotten and only a version that ignored what the Reformation believed to be the true confession of the faith. So one of the premises that the Reformation was illegitimate was that well that would never happen.

39:20 Obviously, once God established the church, it was never going to err. This shows that this stuff happens over and over again. Different forms, you know, it's clearly not exactly the same as having the Bible or part of it lost in some dusty corner versus men simply not reading or believing it for centuries. But this recurring theme of men realizing that their fathers had been faithless is part of the Christian experience, it's part of our faith. To go along for a while, in good conscience, Josiah was acting in good conscience for eighteen years, and we get to it in this final chapter. It's horrifying. It's unbelievable how evil it was. And yet he saw these things we're gonna describe with his own

40:05 eyes and didn't see anything wrong with it. He thought he was serving God when he tolerated the most wicked forms of evil imaginable. It's a laundry list. If you're still doing the ringer and buzzer thing, you're gonna go deaf by the end of this next section because it's just a nonstop stream of terrible things. And Josiah tolerated it. The good king and the good kingdom. He looked at it and he didn't even know it was evil. And so the rediscovery of scripture and the reading of it and the sharing with his people brought it brought back the true belief in God for a generation. When he died and went away, his son became wicked and they went right back to their old ways. And so this is another warning to us.

40:45 We think, oh well, you know, my denomination is X years old and they believe this and I have this inheritance, so it's fine. Well, if the faith is not sustained by men actually believing what was transmitted to them, it will be lost. And that's not to say that the faith will die. God will preserve the faith, but He doesn't need us to do it. It's our duty to preserve the faith because it's what God has given us. And we want to transmit that to future generations. But if we fail, God will find someone else who'll do it. That's not an out for us. That's not an excuse. It's a threat. It's saying that we can be replaced. And if we want to be a part of this and we want our children to be a part of it, we must preserve

41:28 what we have. And when we discover that the word of God has been found in rubble or no one has believed it for centuries, then we do what Josiah did and we repent. And God credited that to him as righteousness. He said that he was a good king, despite the fact that he tolerated all this wickedness because he didn't know. And as soon as he found out he repented, he turned away from it. That is the response of the Christian today. If we've been taught something in our churches and we believed it with good conscience, when we realize that it was an error, when we realize that racism is a sin that was invented less than a hundred years ago, and we realize that that is not in fact Christian doctrine at all.

42:09 We must repent because that false confession was to a false God. We're gonna establish that in a bit. All these things that are being done in the church today, they're fundamentally worship of false gods. But this first example from the olden days of the olden testament demonstrate that this stuff can and will happen and how God deals with it when it does. Before we move on to the reading from chapter twenty three, I want to go ahead and pull out one verse from this chapter the same as I did for the previous reading. For great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us.

42:55 We've gone over this a number of times in a number of episodes, not least of all one of the very early episodes. But both blessings and curses are generational. And what Wo just said makes that very obvious if Because if your father fails to transmit the faith to you, that is a generational curse, and it will pass on to your children and your grandchildren until that is broken by some outside influence. Because someone else will have to come back and restore the faith, teach you the faith again. That is what we have seen happen many times throughout human history. If the faith is lost in a particular place, the only way it is coming back is if God sends someone to that place with the true faith to restore it.

43:45 And so, yes, the sins of the fathers very much can be visited and are visited on the sons. So to move on to our next reading. Then the king sent, and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem were gathered to him, and the king went up to the house of the Lord, and with him all the men of Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests and the prophets, all the people, both small and great, and he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord. And the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and to keep his commandments, and his testimonies, and his services with all his heart and all

44:30 his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book, and all the people joined in the covenant. And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priests, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the threshold, to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel, and he deposed the priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained, to make offerings in the high places, at the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem, those also who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and the moon, and the constellations, and all the hosts of the heavens.

45:13 And he brought out the Asherah from the house of the Lord, outside Jerusalem, to the brook of Kidron, and burned it at the brook of Kidron, and beat it to dust, and cast the dust of it upon the graves of the common people. And he broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes, who were in the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the Asherah, and he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places, where the priests had made offerings, from Geba to Bersheba, and he broke down the high places of the gates, that were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua, the governor of the city, which were on one's left at the gate of the city. However, the priests of the high places did not come up to

45:56 the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, but they ate unleavened bread among their brothers. And he defiled Topeth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech. And he removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, at the entrance to the house of the Lord, by the chamber of Nathan Melech, the chamberlain, which was in the precincts, and he burned the chariots of the sun with fire, and the altars on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars that Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord, he pulled down and broke in pieces, and cast the dust of them

46:38 into the brook Kidron, and the king defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem, to the south of the Mount of Corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel, had built for Ashtareth, the abomination of the Sidonians, and for Kemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites, and he broke in pieces the pillars, and cut down the Asherim, and filled their places with the bones of men. So as I mentioned, this is the good kingdom, this is the kingdom of Judah, and this is a good king, this is King Josiah. And yet this is what was going on in his good kingdom for eighteen years when he thought that he was serving God. There was literally Baal worship inside God's temple.

47:24 All of these things, everything that was just rattled off, was either in the temple or around the temple or somewhere in the city. All this was going on in every direction. It's indescribable how much evil was going on in this place. And for eighteen years, when he thought that he was serving the Lord, he saw all of these things every day. He undoubtedly participated in them. He was a king. He was certainly favorable toward them. He was paying for this stuff. And yet he did not know it was evil until scripture was read to him. When When they rediscovered the Bible and they read it again and he repented, he immediately knew all these things are idolatrous, all these things must be taken out and destroyed, and the altars of these

48:10 false prophets must be defiled. They didn't just quietly get rid of them. This was ceremonial humiliation of these false gods and of the priestesses and the priests involved in their worship. It was all destroyed, because that was faithful. And so again God credited him as righteousness, the fact that he was capable of doing this and that when it came to his attention and he finally realized that he had been participating in sin, he ended it. That's really all any man can do. He inherited something evil. He thought it was good. He thought he was worshiping God. And then when he actually read scriptures, he's like, Lord have mercy, this is all evil. There's almost nothing that we've been doing religiously that is actually for

48:56 the true God. It's all been idolatry. This was the state of the remnant that God preserved in Judah. So again, as we just wrap up this Old Testament section, just keep in mind just how bad things could get, and yet God would keep trying. God did not give up on his people. But this is how bad unbelief can make things. And so in the first three episodes of this series, when we talked about the false beliefs being brought into our churches, it's the same kind of idolatry. It takes a different form, but it's being done the same way they were doing it. They were worshiping Baal, they had Asherah, totems or whatever, inside God's temple. And they thought it was all hunky dory. They thought, well, this is just us being religious.

49:45 And as long as they're being religious, it must be okay. Because that's faithfulness. Scripture revealed, no, this is all evil except for the small tiny bit that was still being done for God. And so presumably all the rest of those things were restored as God commanded, because they weren't missing anything anymore. It is entirely believable that this could happen again, in different forms. Again, just as in the Reformation, the Bible had not been lost again, but an understanding of it was, the concept of justification that existed prior to Luther's day radically changed after the Reformation. And it wasn't that it was new doctrine in the church, it's that it was a restoration of doctrine that had been lost in

50:27 the church. And so when these things happen, whether they're cyclical or not, the question is not has someone changed something, but is the change a restoration of what God established? Is it consistent with scripture? Or is it just something completely new? And so in all the previous episodes we've done on Stone Choir talking about things like racism and feminism, things that today will get men excommunicated from so called Christian churches, where Christian churches will say you go to hell if you commit this new sin that existed for less than 200 years. That's a false confession of a false God. But they do it in the name of God, which is why this is all fundamentally about apostasy. Judah was apostate.

51:13 Now, was it one hundred percent apostate? No, because Josiah still had faith of some sort, it was weak, and God commended him when he saw and repented. But God was still very angry with Judah and promised that the rest of them were going to be punished for this stuff. So when we look at these things, we can't just think that God's gonna let us off the hook because we had good intentions. The question is, are we actually obeying what God said? And the reason that this is a very long Bible study, this is probably gonna be a longer episode than usual, but it's crucial because when you look at scripture makes certain people really nervous. If nothing else, that's a good indication that you're dealing with something

52:00 that's bad for the faith. When men start pointing to portions of scripture that have been ignored for generations and say, hey, what about this thing? It wasn't lost on a dusty shelf in the temple. It was just ignored by pastors who wanted to preach on the things that weren't gonna cause problems. And when you ignore stuff for a generation or two, it becomes normal, and suddenly no one can preach on it anymore. And if son uppity so called layman comes along and says, Hey, what do you think about this stuff in the Bible? Maybe this still matters too. Then you have a real conflict. And that is where the church is today. The men at the top, the men that are establishing what will be the doctrines that are tolerated, are by are by and large

52:43 active participants in the new global religion, regardless of denomination. The Pope says stuff, the Lutherans say things, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, everybody is saying the same sort of thing. They're variations, that's not a hundred percent unity, but when you look at where their moral compass is pointing, as we talked about in the first episode of the series, the morality is all coming from the same place, and it's coming from a place that is not in scripture. Our contention is that this is itself apostasy. By degrees, it's apostasy in the same sense that the days of Josiah were apostate until he discovered the scriptures. And then there was a restoration for a brief time. But in the very next j in in the very next chapter,

53:29 it goes to Pot again, his son became an unbeliever and they all reverted immediately to doing the wicked things. So it's only faithful preservation that makes any of this continue. If men don't fight for it. If men don't fight for this every single generation, it will be lost. God shows this. And then the passages we're going to deal with in the New Testament, in the second half of this episode, make very clear that this will continue to be a battle. So when we today say this is a problem, we're we're raising an alarm, but we're not saying anything new. We're saying the same sort of thing that's happened over and over again in the entire history of believers in God, it can happen to us too.

54:14 We're not immune. We're not better than any of these guys. In some ways, we're worse because as we said before, like we have so many Bibles in our houses and we have so much access and like we have more of the Word of God than we will ever possibly know what to do with. And we don't read enough. We don't believe it enough. We don't take it sufficiently seriously. And then when these fights come up, it's just, well, whatever I feel. I feel like racism is hurtful. And so that's that's gonna be where I'm actually gonna expend all of my energy. The stuff that's actually in the Bible, no, I'm I'm not so worried about that. Like that's old anyway. it's outdated. We have new, more important things to pursue today.

54:54 The world has different problems that require a different morality. That's the battle. That's the point of all of this. That there's no new morality without a new God. And we are seeing new gods emerge today. They're not brand new. They're the re-emergence of the old gods. There's Judaizing, there's Gnosticism, and you don't have to have a category for it. It's not like if you can name the thing, suddenly you have power over it. It's not name magic that we're talking about. What we're talking about is just admitting we can screw up. We can fall into the same trap as has happened over and over again because we're human. We're fallen sinful creatures. And Satan will recycle the same stuff over and over because it

55:35 works. He's kind of lazy sometimes, but he can be because we just keep gobbling up the old lies. And so we are in current year in all of our churches at least vulnerable to this. And the fact that we say, oh no, well, I'm Christian. Well, Josiah believed he was a believer. he was a believer. He thought that he was being faithful. And And yet after eighteen years of tolerating all that wickedness, when Hilkiah brought him the scriptures, he realized he had not been faithful. He had to repent, and he was filled with sorrow and filled with horror because he had been a faithless king, even when he thought he was being faithful. So when we talk about apostasy, that's what we're talking about. A man who thinks he's acting in the name of God is

56:21 actually getting it from somewhere else and he never even checked. Genealogy of ideas, all the little gimmicks that we've sprinkled throughout Stone Choir, it's for that purpose. Where did this stuff come from? If it didn't come from Scripture, if it came from your pagan neighbors, why are you doing it? How do you think God is going to respond when you behave that way? We don't have to guess. We don't have to guess. Scripture shows over and over what happens to a people, to a nation that does that? It's what happened there and it's what's happening to us now. That is a call to repentance. This isn't just theological. This is the life and death, both temporal and eternal, for everyone involved. This stuff has to be gotten right.

57:04 We have to take it seriously. And the first step to that is simply admitting we are not immunized against all dangers. We are not free to think whatever we think and believe whatever we believe without regard for scripture and think it's going to be hunky dory because we say I'm Christian. It's okay. That's not how the faith works. Instead of pulling out a particular verse like I did with the previous two readings. Instead I want to highlight a particular point, a recurring theme. In this passage you see a lot of the false altars and various places of worship have been set up specifically in the temple. Now not all of them. You have the high places, you have the ashram and things set up under trees, you have things out in the valley near Jerusalem,

57:49 but many of these altars and other places of worship are in the temple itself. And you may think, well, we don't really see that happening today. Sure we have that happening out in our culture because of course we have the same false gods are worshipped in a widespread fashion our culture that you see in all the ancient cultures, we still have Mammon and Moloch and Baal. It doesn't matter if you call them by those names or if you call them capitalism, abortion, and the various secret societies. It's the same God. Same God, same false idol worship that you see in the ancient world. But we do also have this in our churches. Now, some of the churches are very blatant about it, some are more subtle.

58:38 I can think of some very blatant ones, I won't necessarily name all of them. But I will give one example. If you are, for instance, Roman Catholic, many of your parishes that are supposedly Roman Catholic parishes in places like Mexico and some parts of Central America, and now also some parts of the United States, have a cult of Santa Muerta. That's a cult of death. That's paganism, I mean neopaganism if you want to call it that. But that is false worship that is literally taking place in your churches, in your church buildings in many cases. And it's also associated with various kinds of sexual degeneracy which is another problem with that cult that's literally taking place in Roman Catholic

59:28 churches. And I'm not just singling out the Roman Catholics for this. How many churches fly the six color so called rainbow flag? That's worship of a false god. It may not be an altar, but it's a symbol of a false god. How many churches have put up BLM signs or put it on their sign out in front of the church. That's a symbol of a false god. How many pastors preach against racism? Find that sin in scripture. If you call that which is not sin, and you require people to repent of it, that's worship of a false god. How many churches do that today? Good luck finding one that does not. How many churches do we have in the United States? Giving sermons on supporting the so called state of Israel, who are

1:00:15 Zionist in their orientation. That's a false god. That's dispensationalism. We went over that in a previous episode at length. That is rampant in our society. How many pastors recently or next month will give a sermon on MLK? That's worship of false God if they aren't condemning him. A pastor who condemns him make sure you shake his hand afterward. How many pastors will bring up Bonhoeffer and say that he was supposedly this paragon of virtue in Christian belief? We went over that in an episode. He denied the core tenets of the faith and he's burning in hell along with MLK. These false religions are rampant in the churches. It's not just in our society, the churches have largely imported it

1:01:05 from society, but it is now in the church itself. The exact same thing that happened here in the Old Testament, where they brought false gods into God's house and set up worship of those false gods in order to lend them some sort of legitimacy, because now they're taking place in God's house, so they must obviously also be God's. We see the same thing happening today. We have false teachers and false priests, false pastors, who are using their position of supposed authority to put a stamp on the worship of idols and false gods. And they are doing it in the name of God. Now that's terrible news for them. On the day of judgment will go very poorly for them. But it's also terrible news for the sheep who follow them, because

1:01:54 you do not get the excuse of just saying, Well, I was following the instruction of my pastor That doesn't work. It is possible for the church to apostatize, and it is possible for that false church to take the sheep with it. And that is the thing against which we are warning. Another great example would of course be: I mentioned specifically Moloch, and we have that today, worship of Moloch, that's what abortion is. And you may be thinking, well, my pastor condemns abortion because that's one issue where some pastors still preach against it, thankfully. But they don't go far enough. And the reason they don't go far enough is because hormonal birth control is abortifacient. And you may think, well my pastor doesn't know.

1:02:40 Neither did Josiah. But your pastor should know, and Josiah should have known. Now in the case of your pastor there's even less excuse because the information is out there and readily accessible. I will say it again, hormonal birth control is abortifacient. Which is to say that being on hormonal birth control or having your wife, daughter, whomever, over whom you have some sort of authority, over whom you are supposed to exercise headship, if she is on it, you are worshiping a false god That is worship of Moloch. That is the sacrifice of your children or grandchildren, or nieces and nephews, whoever it happens to be in relation to you. That is the sacrifice of children to a false god. Now it may not be that you're sacrificing it specifically to Moloch,

1:03:35 because it may be that you're sacrificing these children in order to further your career, and so really you're worshipping Mammon. It doesn't matter. You're worshiping a false god and this is rampant in our society. And I don't believe that I have ever once heard a pastor preach against it. I've seen pastors say that we should not use birth control. I've seen pastors make arguments against it, but I have never once heard a sermon against it. Now I know that some people will probably comment on this episode with links to sermons on it's rare. I'm not saying no pastor does it, but I'm saying even if your pastor condemns abortion as abortion, which he should, and that's good that he does that, he probably does not go far enough because

1:04:20 there are other forms that it takes in our society. And so we see again this very same thing happening in our society today that we see happening here in the Old Testament. The worship of false gods is being brought into the church. And there are individuals who are then worshiping those false gods, maybe they're even doing it, without their conscience really being pricked, it should be pricked somewhat. But maybe not to the degree that it would be if they knew it was false. And so yes, the harsher punishment, the harsher judgment, the stricter judgment is going to fall on those false teachers and pastors. But it also falls on the sheep, who follow them. Because we have God's word. We don't even have the excuse that Josiah had, Josiah didn't have

1:05:06 God's word because the scroll was hidden away in rubble somewhere in the temple. You have God's Word. There isn't a single person listening to this who couldn't switch to another app and read God's Word or open another window if you're listening to it on your computer, whatever it happens to be, whatever device you're using to listen to this can also read God's Word, and you probably have a Bible. And you could certainly get one for free. We have no excuse. It is all right there. All we have to do is read and believe it. And on the subject of men holding both true and false confessions, I want to get back to something that Corey had said a number of times, the point that I can finally remember it.

1:05:50 In the first chapter of Mark, after Jesus is baptized by John, John says, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus is tempted in the desert, and then he enters his earthly ministry. The first time he goes to the synagogue, this happens. Immediately there was in the synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, that is a demon, and he cried out, What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the holy one of God. I love this passage because this is the first confession in Jesus' ministry of him as the Son of God of God and it's from a demon. The very first person, John obviously confessed him when he said, Behold the Lamb of God.

1:06:37 But after Jesus' earthly ministry had begun in earnest, he emerged from the desert, a demon was the first one to say here comes the Son of God. This is what Corey says this is notitia in a census. He gave notice of the fact that it was a son of God, and he ascented to the fact that you are the Holy One of God. A demon, of course, cannot say you are my God. That was what was missing, which is why he's a demon and not an angel. He's damned. All those who share his confession are damned. What's interesting about that is that it brings into light one of the problems that we have in the church today. It's something that has kind of become an online meme to witch test someone where you say someone says something and you get

1:07:26 suspicious and you say, confess to Jesus Christ as Lord or some version of that. And it makes me really uncomfortable because I feel like it's really tending toward Towards taking the Lord's name in vain to kind of make a game out of it. That's my personal bad feeling. I'm not trying to bind anyone's consciousness with my bad feelings, but I can tell you this: the real problem with it, the unavoidable problem with that particular witch test is that this demon would have passed it. To say Jesus Christ is Lord, that's basically what he said, you're the holy one of God, what do you have to do with me? A demon can confess that. Now, part of the reason that it became a gimmick online is that it sometimes works.

1:08:06 There are absolutely many cases where you will see someone witch tested like this, where someone will challenge them and say, you know, confess Jesus Christ as Lord, and they flatly refuse to do it. They cannot and will not do it. And sometimes it's so clear by their response that it is a spiritual recoiling that they are prevented from saying that. So that's part of why it's a problem is that sometimes it works. Sometimes you witch test someone with that particular question and they fail it. And you say, aha, found one. This person was pretending to be a Christian, but they're actually not. The danger and the reason for this episode is that there are demons and they're demons inhabiting men who will not fail this test.

1:08:52 The men who have persecuted Cory and me, who have called us damned for saying what the Bible says, who called the FBI to hand us over for being murdered, who gave my name to Antifa, they confess God. They have the same confession as this Niedman. They say that Jesus is the Holy One of God, and they mean it. They did the things that they did to us in the name of God. So the notion that you can challenge someone, and if they're of another spirit, they will be unable to confess the true God in that moment. It's simply false. And it's dangerous because it sows confusion in a circumstance which where clarity is necessary. So some of the later passages we're going to get to specifically talk about fruits.

1:09:38 I don't care at this point personally. I don't care what anyone says about their belief. I don't care what their confession is. Show me where they stand on these inflection points. Because the man who will confess the creeds, who will say that Jesus is Lord, will say all the right things, he'll have the shibbolets, but what he won't have is he won't be able to confess the creator who made a man a man and a woman woman. He won't be able to confess the creator who made him white and someone else black. That is not his God. So So when I look to what people are doing and what they're confessing, saying I'm Christian, saying Jesus is God, it doesn't tell me anything. If I've said before, that's a terrible place to be.

1:10:23 I don't want to have a suspicious response when someone says I'm a Christian too. That should be a source for joy. And I want to get things back to the point where it can be, but as it stands today, most of the wicked people that are causing the greatest harm inside the church have a true confession. Just as Josiah had a true confession before he found Scripture. Because what do you do? He said, I serve God. I serve the temple. I'm gonna do all that. But he was blind to the evil that surrounded him. He was spiritually blind. So when he saw Baal worship inside God's temple, he thought, yeah, that's fine. That's good. He probably did it himself. There's no reason to believe he wouldn't have. Because if he thought it were bad, he would have prevented it.

1:11:09 It wasn't until he scripture was discovered that he realized it was a bad thing. That's where the churches are. The men who say, Lord, Lord, who will cry out with the confession of that demon in the synagogue. This is interesting, the demons just hanging out in synagogues. That was kind of funny too. The fact that they're able to get by and masquerade as believers is the premise of really this entire episode, and certainly the rest of the passages we're going to go through. Because everything in the New Testament that specifically calls out deception inside the church is on the lips of those who say they're believers. I want to read again a passage that we've cited many times. It's from 1 Timothy 4.

1:11:54 Now the Spirit, that is the Holy Spirit, expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons. We've talked about this passage many times and point out how low the threshold is for what a teaching of demons is. It's abstinence of meats and saying that some men should not marry, forbidding marriage. That's a pretty low threshold. It's not saying worship Satan. It's not saying sacrifice your infants. It's saying just don't eat meat. Scripture says that's a teaching of demons. That is from hell and leads to hell. So we we quote this passage all the time on Stone Choir because it's pivotal. I now want to focus for this episode on the first part

1:12:39 of it. Now the Holy Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith. So the devotion to the teachings of demons causes a departure from the faith. That is it causes apostasy. When we speak of apostasy, we're only talking about inside the church. The pagan who's never heard of God, who's never believed, cannot apostatize. All these passages that we're going to talk about that deal with falling away, the only way to fall away is to have been in the first place. So this is crucial because when we're looking inside the church and everyone's saying, I'm from Jesus, I love God just as much as you. Maybe I love God more than you. You're racist, you're a Nazi, you don't love God as much as

1:13:25 I do. I'm holier than thou. If that's true, great, let that be an example. If it's not true, then it becomes a question of spiritual threat. And that's the problem we have now. That inside the church, the devotion to teachings of demons is coming from those who say that they're doing it for God. And also, incidentally, this is one of many passages dealing with this. We have different passages in a bunch of different books of the Bible that all That all say that this is in later times. Again, I said at the beginning, a lot of this is going to have an eschatological tenor to it. We're not trying to make you believe the end is near. I do want you to take seriously the possibility that the end is near.

1:14:09 Not to fill you with fear, but to actually pay attention to what these passages say. Because proof texting is terrible. Chopping up books into chapters and then chapters into verses and then verses into phrases. Sometimes you can make a point, you can make an important point and still be faithful to the text. But a lot of times when you rip it out of context, you lose the rest of it. And so when we focus on you know the teachings of demons, that's the important part, but the teachings of demons come in the latter times and they come inside the church. So all those things happen at once. And you can make a different point at different times with different parts of it, but the point that God is presenting to us

1:14:49 is that this is a package deal. Near the end, inside the church, the teachings of demons are going to run rampant. And if we're not seeing that today, I don't know what it could possibly look like. I am going to highlight an aspect of this verse, this section of scripture that I know will bother some of our listeners. But it is something that is important to note. I would hope that I don't have to define the word depart, but it just means leave. What God says here in this chapter of 1 Timothy is that some will depart from the faith. Think about that for a minute, pause if you need to. But in order to depart from somewhere, you must first have been there. You cannot depart from France if you've never been in France,

1:15:43 if you are not in France. You must be in France to depart from France. You must be at home in order to depart from your home. This verse very clearly, unambiguously, is a refutation of once saved, always saved. It is possible to apostatize. One would think that we're doing an episode on apostasy. It would be obvious that we are saying saying it is possible to apostatize, but there are some who contend that it is not. Scripture throughout Scripture, from the Old Testament to the New Testament, many times in many places, warns about the danger of apostasy. Scripture is not going to warn you about something that is impossible. This is why when the issue of witchcraft comes up, we'll point out Scripture doesn't warn you about witchcraft and the worship of demons

1:16:46 and things like that because they're false in the sense of being impossible or not real, they are false in the sense of their worship of a false god. Scripture warns you about these things because they are real, because they endanger your soul. And so when it says, some will depart from the faith. It means that it is possible to leave to depart from the faith. There is no other way to interpret this. This is not telling you that, oh well there are some people who are false believers they never really believe no it says they are departing from the faith that means they were part of the faith. Apostasy is a possibility. And that is why Scripture warns about it. That's why we're doing an episode on it.

1:17:34 That is why this is such an important topic. If it weren't possible to apostatize, if it weren't possible to depart from the faith, then we wouldn't do this episode because it would be a waste of our time and a waste of your time. But the word of God is clear. It is possible to depart from the faith. And that's why these warnings exist in Scripture. That's why we are doing this episode. That is why this is such a vitally important topic for the church today. Because we see the churches departing from the faith and taking the sheep with them. And it is incumbent on those who actually believe, on those who read God's Word and believe what it says, to stem this tide, to turn things around. And you cannot do that, if you do not first and foremost,

1:18:25 with regard to this issue, accept that apostasy is possible. Because if it's not possible, then what does it matter what the churches are doing? What does it matter what any of us are doing? If apostasy is not possible, then there's no risk here, there's no danger, there's no reason to go over this topic. But that's not what God says. His word is very clear. Some will depart from the faith. Next I'm going to read from Jesus' words in Matthew twenty four, and just for the sake of brevity, just so you know, if you're go back and read later, I'm gonna omit one portion just for the sake of time, but it doesn't change anything. As Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately saying, Tell us, when will these things be and what

1:19:11 will the sign of your coming and of the end of the age. And Jesus answered them, see that no one leads you astray, for many will come in my name, saying I am the Christ, and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumours of wars, see that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet, for nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away, and betray one another, and hate one another, and many false prophets will arise and lead many

1:19:56 astray, and because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold, but the one who endures to the end will be saved. In this gospel to the kingdom we be proclaimed through the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. For then there will be a great tribulation such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now. No and never will be. And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short. Then if any one says to you, Look, here's the Christ, or there he is, do not believe it, for false Christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to

1:20:41 lead astray, if possible, even the elect. So again this is repeatedly from Jesus' own lips, not that all of Scripture isn't, but even at that, these are the red letters. God recorded Jesus specifically saying these things, and he repeatedly warns that in the end times false prophets and false teachers will arise to deceive the faithful. Because where else is Satan going to find God's people? See when we talk about pagans as those who are outside of the faith, and again, when we use that term, it's not pejorative. We're not being dismissive. It's sometimes translated as Gentiles in the New Testament. They're believers and they're unbelievers. They're Christians and they're pagans. To say unbelievers kind of begging the question, so I prefer pagan

1:21:27 because I think it's more neutral. Satan owns the pagans. He's already got them. They don't believe in God, they never did. Maybe they never will. We would like to see that change. We try to reach them with the gospel and with the law to say, hey, all the problems in your life, all the things that are causing you misery and pain. There's a reason for that. Because the life that you're leading is in opposition to the design of the creator who created the universe. That's why it hurts when you do that. Stop doing that. It's bad for you. And by the way, that's also obedience to God. Learn what else God has taught you in Scripture, and you'll be saved. Not by doing, but by receiving the faith that God gives

1:22:08 freely. Pagans need to hear the gospel. Everyone else already has. And so all these warnings about those in the church falling away, about being deceived, Satan, of course he's gonna target the church. What if if all the sheep are inside the sheep penite and there's a wolf outside the sheep pen, where does the wolf want to be? He must be in the sheep pen, because that's where the sheep are. Satan knows that if prowling like a roaring lion, you know, to mix these metaphors of God. When Satan is prowling, he's got to get where the juicy bits are. That's inside the sheepfold. That's inside the church. And of course, the best way to send the flock scattering, to send the sheep away so that they no longer have the protection

1:22:55 is for false shepherds to enter among them, or for wolves to enter among them and to devour them. That's what God is warning about, and it happens. It's happening today. I mentioned earlier the the bit about doxing and feds being called and antifa being vaulted to murder people. When you hear things like they will deliver you up for tribulation and put you to death and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake, and they many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. If that doesn't describe that sort of behavior, I don't know what does. And to be clear, I'm not saying, oh look, I found myself in the Bible. No. I find all of us in the Bible, believers and unbelievers

1:23:37 alike. But when God says in the last days these specific types of things will be happening, when they will kill you in my name and say they're doing it service to me, when when we see that actually happening inside the church, that other passage that refers to that specifically, it's talking about in the church doing that. It's talking not talking about the state killing people. It's talking about the church, about those who call themselves believers persecuting and killing unbelievers and saying that they're doing service to God. That's an end times prophecy. And I'm not saying, oh, look at us, we're in the Bible. I don't know. I not the point. The point is when I see those things and I compare notes

1:24:19 with actual current events, that makes me wonder. It's entirely permissible to wonder. And I don't have to have a conclusion. I don't care. It's not important to know yes or no, because we don't have to worry about, oh, is this prophecy fulfilled? Like it, there's no checklist here. Prophecy specifically, event times is not a checklist. It's a call to penitence. It's a call to return to the Lord and to believe him. And so that when he shows up like a thief in the night, you're not up to no good. You're not asleep. You're awake waiting for him because he said to do precisely that. That's the whole point of talking about this. But the further along humanity gets in the timeline, and the worse

1:25:01 things seem to be getting today, and the more of these prophecies seem to be getting checked off that list. We don't have to worry about a checklist. It's not about comparing notes with the newspaper. It's about saying God said that when things get really bad, you'll know that the end is near. When we see things getting really bad, we should take seriously the possibility that the end is near. As I said earlier, that's not oh no and I sell my stuff and I you know wait on a hill. No. Take care of your family, plant a garden, tell your neighbor about Jesus, help your brother out, do the good things that you should have been doing all along. And maybe at some point you forgot. Just do what God says to do so that whenever He shows

1:25:44 up, he finds Christians. That's it. The Christian anticipation of the coming of Christ, the final judgment, is not about stocking up on good work so we can make it over the finish line. It's about making sure that we stay in the faith because to fail to do these good works, to fail to care for neighbor, to fail to love your own family, to love your own race, to not lose the natural affection that God has given us. Those things will separate you from the faith that will save you in the end. That's the point. It's not about who's doing better, who's doing worse. It's about us having what God wants to give us. And he warns us over and over. Virtually all the rest of these pastures are also going to talk

1:26:31 about the end of the world. And it's it's not because we went looking for those passages. When we went looking for passages talking about apostasy, about falling away, that's how God connects it. And that's why this is so urgent today. In a four part series and next week when we talk about Galatians 3 28, it's going to be a recapitulation of this episode in the previous episode in that specific context of that one verse. When these things are happening inside the church, when men are being persecuted, when God is being damned from pulpits, as we see on Twitter and we see in press releases for major denominations, saying this God in the Bible is evil and wicked, I condemn him in the name of Christ, they're talking about a false Christ.

1:27:16 They're confessing an antichrist. And if we believe well that's impossible, that's he's a good man, he's got a big mustache and a big crucifix, he would never do anything like that. I know he loves Jesus, he told me once. If you think that there're immunized against being able to fall away, you're calling Jesus a liar, he's warning the apostles. He's telling his inner sanctum, they're gonna come after you. And he's talking to us as well. Like it's not that this passage was only for the twelve, but when it's a when he's saying directly this is a threat to every believer in all times and all places, and it's gonna get worse in the end, just believe it. Believe it and take it seriously. And then when you see the church doing things that are contrary

1:27:58 to scripture, let that be your concern. So that we end don't end up completely misplacing scripture and having it lost somewhere in the rubble or on a dusty shelf, or forgetting what it means entirely. Because the other part of the warnings about the end times is that at some point the clock runs out, and God does come back, and there's no more reboots available for Christianity to sort these things out again. At some point, God returns and it is what it is. Those who are faithful will go to heaven. Those who are faithless will go to hell. And as Christians, we should desire that all of our neighbors, that everyone we can reach, is going to be saved. We have to be faithful to be able to sell that to

1:28:42 them. Not selling in a sense of girl scout cookies, but selling in the sense that this is what God says and here's why it's important. Satan needs to interrupt all of that, and he'll interrupt it any way he can. With a big ticket item, with a small item, even if the small thing takes generations before it bears fruit, he's patient. But we don't know how much longer we have before God comes back and there's no more time to fix the mess. And that's why Corey and I have a sense of urgency around these things. Not that we think the world's gonna end tomorrow. We think that if we let these things slide for another generation, I don't believe there will be a Christian generation after that one. I don't think that there's a path from today to two generations

1:29:28 hence without the next generation being Christian. That's my chief concern. And the state of the church today pretty much guarantees that that won't happen. Now Now, God will preserve a remnant. He promises there will be someone who believes in the end days. I want it to be mine, my people. I want it to be everyone that we can share the gospel with. And that's not being racist. It's just saying, look, I can control what I can control. And if I can tell someone and help them understand this and they're going to believe it, so much the better. Everything else is in God's hand. We don't have to fix anything, but we have to be faithful. And in the end, if it looks the same way, that's because that's God's doing, it's not our doing.

1:30:10 So the pressure's not on us to succeed, but the expectation is on us to be faithful, and God will take care of the results. We did mention at the outset that this episode would be heavy on law, and that is very true. I would recommend that for at least some of you, perhaps go back and listen again, or for the first time if this is one of the first episodes to which you're listening, go back and listen to the episode on election. We will eventually in the future do an episode on perseverance, and really that'll form a Trinity, as it were, a three part series, because they're all very intricately related election, perseverance, and apostasy. But Woe just mentioned that Jesus was warning the apostles in this

1:30:59 particular passage, and I want to highlight two of the apostles because they give a great example of the possibilities as it were. All of the apostles had faith at one point. Most of them persevered. One of them did not. Judas fell away, Judas had faith. Judas fell away. He departed from the faith. And he despaired, and he is in hell. Peter is the other apostle I would like to highlight, because Peter also fell away from the faith, but Peter was restored, and so it is possible to be restored after falling away. Apostasy is not necessarily final. Just because something isn't final doesn't mean you should say, Oh well it's fine, I can repent on my deathbed. One you don't know when that will be, and so that's a

1:31:57 very dangerous proposition. But two, you should want to live your life as God tells you to live it, and also there are rewards in heaven for your good works, not because they are meritorious in and of themselves, but because being in Christ they are credited to you, and you get rewards for those in paradise. So there are reasons to be a Christian throughout your entire life, not just wait until you're like I think I'm finally decrepit enough, I'll repent now, and then hope that you die soon afterward. That's a terrible bet. That's something that atheists will sometimes argue it's absolutely insane. But the point is that Peter fell away. And what And was restored. But if you actually look at why he fell away, and I'm

1:32:44 not really trying to get into the perseverance issue, but just to give a foretaste of it here as it were. And because it does relate to apostasy, the reason he fell away if you look at it he says and yet I certainly will not when he is responding to Christ saying they would all fall away from him in that hour. He relied on himself, and that's the issue. He was taking faith, which is a free gift of God, sustained by God, wholly a matter of God, monargistic, and attempting to make it something that he did himself. No, I will believe hard enough that I will never fall away from you. And then he fell away. While standing standing in the presence practically of Christ he fell away. So bear that in mind, it is entirely possible to fall away

1:33:41 from the faith, and when you fall away, you can despair like Judas, not be restored and spend eternity in hell, or, like Peter, you can be reconverted to the faith, and be restored to the faith, and spend eternity in paradise. Our next reading is from Matthew seven. Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits, are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles. So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a disease tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

1:34:33 Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. Not every one who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. So we find here just as in the earlier passage in Matthew twenty four that not only is this inside the church, not only are these people who are calling out Lord, Lord, which directly eliminates the possibility that we're talking about pagans, but they're performing miracles.

1:35:23 They're doing signs and wonders. They're not just teachers. They're those who have some sort of power. Now we don't see that sort of power today. I don't know, not making a claim one way or another, whether that's is going to re-emerge, but we are warned specifically that the false prophets who will come in God's name, who will cry Lord, Lord, are going to seem legitimate. And so therefore, what does this Matthew seven passage say? It Says judge them by their fruit. What does it omit? Don't judge them by their confession. If you judge man by your his fruits, you're ignoring what he's saying. You're looking at the product that occurs downstream from what he says. So when we have pastors who go online and say, Let

1:36:16 me teach you about the Lutheran faith, and the fruit of that teaching is that men become Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, or they leave the faith in other ways. That is the fruit. That is the proof of the nature of the tree. If you only pay attention to the checklist evaluation of the confession, then all these teachers are gonna seem fine. All the ravenous wolves who are clothed as sheep, they're gonna seem okay because their confessions are gonna check out. Cause Satan's not dumb. He knows what he needs to do to pass. This is spiritual tranneism we're dealing with. Someone who is one thing that's masquerading as another. And the difference is that it's basically impossible for a man to

1:37:03 present as a woman in a way that's can deceive people. Although unfortunately it's getting so horrifically advanced now with the mutilation of flesh that sometimes you just can't tell what happens with these spiritual trannies that are demons that are cloaked as Christians, is that their words are gonna check out. And so God specifically says you will recognize them by their fruits. So I said, and I've said before, I honestly, don't care what someone's confession is at this point, which is not to say that a confession doesn't matter. The confession that we have is vital, but it is not the proof. The proof is what's downstream from it. Because many of the men inside the church whose confession is entirely,

1:37:54 well, it's not, but as a superficial reading of the creeds and whatever confession of your church body may hold, don't care how thick the book is, however close they're able to cue to the words of those confessions, when push comes to shove and you look at what's actually happening in their lives, in the lives of their children, in the lives of their congregations, what happens to people who have been exposed to their teaching five, ten, twenty years down the road, that's the fruit. The fruit is not gonna lie. If there's a trail of death and destruction and misery and deceit and slander and grift and avarice, if some permutation of all those things that are incidentally also marks of the absence of the Holy Spirit,

1:38:47 if you see a cloud of that surrounding someone, I saw today that apparently some internet pastor who had been stirring up stuff with false confessions saying that you know it's okay for you to bless a sodomite union, a so-called marriage. Somebody said he was worth fifteen million dollars. I don't know if that's true or not, but I can stay with absolute certainty, no Christian pastor is worth $15 million. No Christian pastor is going to accumulate that. It's not to say no Christian can, not drawing a line on where too much wealth separates you from the kingdom of God. A pastor, the only way for a pastor to get there, it's basically the same way that a congressman could get there. When they're making 180, 80,000 a year or whatever and living in

1:39:34 Washington, D.C. most of the year, the only way that they go in worth less than a million and come out worth more than 50 million is when they've been practicing corrupt and wicked things. For a pastor to accrue great wealth as a result of being pastor tells you he's a false prophet. I don't need to know a word out of his mouth. I don't need to know how sincere he is. For that to be the case, it's a fruit. that accumulation without using it to benefit others for a pastor, it can't and will not happen. So So I know this is a this is a tough thing to deal with in the Christian church because again, like we we focus a lot of other episodes saying, look, your confession must be clear and direct.

1:40:22 You have to say what's true. That we're not disputing. We're saying that in this specific case where churches are apostatizing because leaders are apostatizing, because faithless demonic shepherds, like some of the men who are listening right now, because the demons inside them compel them to listen, because hell's gonna get worse with every word that comes out of our mouths that they hate because it's from God, it's not from us. Those men are compelled to do evil because that's what they serve. Just as we are compelled to do good because we serve God. The fruits of the stone choired ministry, for lack of a better word, is that every week now people are joining churches. Every week now babies are being baptized.

1:41:09 Adults are being baptized. People are finding faithful churches. Sometimes for the first time. Those are fruits. Those are real fruits. So you can say all manner of slander about anybody, but the only thing in our wake is that people are believing God and obeying him. And that is not giving us a shred of credit. God is doing that in spite of whatever flaws we have. But we're here to try to do these things because we know that when God's word is faithfully employed, that's what's going to happen. And we have these mics and they have been blessed thus far with those fruits. So you don't need to decide if we're telling the truth or not. Even if even if all the slander about us is true, if the fruit of what we're saying is that people are becoming

1:41:58 Christian and becoming more engaged in their faith and they're doing a better job in their lives, well that proves that the slander can't be true because God would not produce those fruits. Satan will never produce good fruit. He won't permit it, maybe momentarily to deceive someone, is in the case of these signs and wonders that false prophets are permitted. But good fruit is only going to come from a good tree. Evil fruit will always come from an evil tree. When you look at these men's lives, when you look at what happens around them, they might be the most charming guy in the world on YouTube, but when you look at what happens around them, you can see that the fruit is evil. And that tells you that your ears were deceived, that the confession

1:42:39 that they had was false. It's again, this is a tough thing in Christianity because we should be able to believe everyone. But God says test the spirits. He says you'll recognize them by their fruits. That's a duty. That's not optional. That's what we are told by God we must do in these cases when anyone comes along and says, Hey, I want to teach you about God, this should always be your first instinct for anyone, especially us. And we say that. I I'm happy to tell anyone, don't believe a word we say, go read your Bible, because you're going to come back a week or a month later and say, yep, that was that was right. You don't need to have an influence to reach the outcome that scripture provides.

1:43:23 God explains this stuff. And for the most part, we just point and say, hey, look, like we're we're almost two hours in is just reading a bunch of Bible verses to say over and over again, in the end, teachings of demons, wolves are gonna come, they're going to deceive, people will fall away, churches will be targeted. If we're not there, I don't want to live long enough to see what it actually looks like. But for whatever days we're in now, we have a duty to God, to our families, to our neighbors, and to future generations to do the best we can. And that means believing God first, obeying Him. And when it turns out, the churches are falling away, the teachers are false, we have to deal with it.

1:44:06 We have to deal with it just like a fire on a ship, because that's really what it is. It's an emergency situation that threatens everyone on board. And maybe the fire can be put out on the ship. Maybe we have to get to the lifeboat. I don't know. Different situations are currently in place for different people, but there's a fire. That's indisputed. There is a fire on the ship. And And some people hear the alarm, some people smell the smoke, some people are fast asleep. We're trying to wake people up and say, look, this is happening. What God said is happening. Shouldn't be a surprise to a Christian. God keeps his promises. God can't lie. The notion, like there's as Corey said before, there's no way to

1:44:50 structure in the English language a way to suggest that God could lie that wouldn't be insane. It does not compute. What God says is true, and he said this stuff. So we just have to look out for it and then deal with it when we find it. Because if we don't deal with it, if we ignore it, if we ignore these these roaring lions and these ravenous wolves, they're gonna continue their predation. And that's what they want. It's men who will stand up and point and say that's a wolf that is disruptive. The men who do that, who say these things that were invented in the last hundred years are not sins. Every man who stands up and says that is going to be attacked. He will be persecuted. That's what these passages are saying.

1:45:34 They're gonna hate you for the sake of my name, for the sake of the name of Christ. Any man who is faithful will be hated in the last days for Christ's name. That's a promise. It's a it's a good one. it's a test. It's It's saying, you know what? It's one or the other. You can have peace for the world or you can have peace with God. And which one you choose will determine your eternity. And it can be easy now or it can be easy later, but you're only gonna get one of them As Will mentioned earlier, there are a number of witch tests out there in order to assess whether or not a teacher is true or false, or perhaps just a Christian. And as Will mentioned, they are a somewhat mixed bag. They can be used profitably.

1:46:21 They can be circumvented, as it were, by some of the wolves who are a little more cunning. I would like to distinguish between two separate things when it comes to applying witch tests. The first is doctrine, and the second is ministries. When it comes to doctrine, the witch tests are actually perhaps more useful the ones that are floating around out there, one of which I happen to have created. Because those witch tests, the ones that are actually useful, the ones that are good, are a distillation of Scripture, Scripture itself being the only witch test when it comes to doctrine, because all doctrine must be judged against Scripture. And so if a doctrine is true or false, is a matter of whether or not it agrees with or disagrees with Scripture.

1:47:16 Very simple. That's all it is. That is the one ultimate witch test, as it were, for doctrine. Some of the other ones that are good are just a distillation, a summary of scripture that is easier to apply in a given situation because perhaps just you can remember it. And you And you can ask the question more easily. When it comes to ministries, however, it's a different matter. Those more simple witch tests, as it were, do not work as well. However, we don't need to use those when it comes to a ministry, because God has given us, the perfect one, right here in Matthew. You check the fruit. Because a good ministry, a faithful ministry, will bear good fruit. So will a faithful Christian, of course, a faithful teacher, a faithful

1:48:06 pastor, they will have good fruit. Their ministry, and I don't mind using the word, but their ministry will bear good fruit. That is a promise from God, that is what Scripture says. However, a false ministry, a diseased tree, an evil tree, because that word is sapros there in the Greek. It has a wide range of meaning, but it means evil, diseased, rotten, corrupt, and so it's not just diseased, it is a stronger word than that. But this evil tree will not bear good fruit. And so if you see a ministry that is bearing rotten fruit, you know it is not of God, you know it is wicked, you know it is of Satan. It doesn't matter whether it's wearing the Jesus mask, whether it's slathered itself in Jesus butter.

1:48:59 You look to the fruit. God has given us a perfect test when it comes to teachers, priests, pastors, various others, anyone who has a ministry that is related to the Word of God, that is related to the church, that is related to Christianity, you can test them infallibly by this test given by God. And so all you have to do, again, look to the fruit. A good ministry will bear good fruit, a good ministry will produce Christians, will produce Christians who act in a Christian manner, will produce good works. It's going right back to the issue of faith versus good works, which is false. We're not supposed to set them against each other. Again, the right way to conceive of it is if you are a Christian, which is to say if you have a living faith,

1:49:53 you will you will produce good works. The same thing is true of a Christian ministry, of a good ministry. It will produce good works, because that is what the Spirit does through Christians. And the Spirit is going to do that through a Christian teacher or a Christian an actually Christian teacher, an actually Christian pastor, and actually Christian ministry, because the Spirit will be at work and he will produce these good works. On the other hand, an evil ministry, a wicked tree, is not going to produce those good works, is not going to produce good fruit, because the Spirit is not working through that person. And so we have this test from God, and this is the one that we should use. And quite frankly, it's a fairly easy one to use.

1:50:45 Because most, at least public ministries, certainly it's more difficult if it's a smaller ministry. So if you're assessing a pastor to specific church, but even just a pastor to church, many times you can tell. If you walk into a church, and this one is going to hurt to hear for some people, but it needs to be said, if you walk into a church and there are no children, that is a bad sign. You probably should not attend that church. Because children are a blessing from the Lord. And so Christians who are faithful to God, obey the things that He says, are necessarily going to have children in their congregation. It doesn't mean that every single Christian is going to have children, But God gives children as a blessing, and so Christian churches will

1:51:31 have children in them, inevitably. That is the way that it works. If you are faithful to God in your marriage, you wind up with children. That's how it works. It's very simple, straightforward. Basic biology as it were, but of course with the blessing of God, because none of this works without God's blessing. None of the cells in your body divide without God blessing it. That's how intimately and intricately involved God is in his creation. But that is one of the sure tests for whether or not a church body is faithful, is whether or not you hear crying during the service. And there are other tests, of course, but for a public ministry it's very simple. You can look at those who have been influenced by that ministry,

1:52:15 and see what has become of them, see what has happened in their lives with regard to their faith and the good works they have produced. So yes, test teachers, test the spirits, and again we are saying the exact same thing with the With regard to the two of us. When it comes to doctrine, test what we say against Scripture, because that is the ultimate test. When it comes to whether or not we are faithful in this ministry, test the fruits, what we are producing with the ministry. That is how you can tell if we are good or evil, if we are true or false. And I believe that we have amply demonstrated that we are true teachers because we are producing good fruit, and everything we say is consonant with Scripture and supported by the Word of God.

1:53:06 The next passage that I want to read from Matthew twenty five is another case where they cry out Lord, Lord. Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise, but they For when the foolish took their lamps they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, here is a bridegroom, come out to meet him. Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps, and the foolish said to the wise, give us some of your oil for our lamps are going out. But the wise answered, saying, Since there will not be enough for

1:53:45 us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves. And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterwards the other virgins came to him, saying also, Lord, Lord, open to us, but he answered truly I say to you, I do not know you. Watch therefore for you know neither the day nor the hour. So this is yet again a passage where we're not talking about unbelievers here, we're talking about those who cry out Lord, Lord, those who are expecting the return of the bridegroom. And he said, Truly I do not know you. That's a phrase that we find repeatedly in scripture. And again, as I said at the beginning, I want to reiterate,

1:54:30 when we're specifically talking about apostasy this week, we're focusing on churches. None of this stuff is intended to fill individuals with dread that oh no, maybe it's me. Am I one of the foolish virgins? To anticipate the return of God to believe in God and his promises, to do the things that he says to do, means that you are not one of the foolish virgins. And so these parables they're a warning in the sense that they're an admonition, but equally they're an exhortation to do that which is good. The warning is saying, Hey, here's the bad outcome, but it's easily avoidable. And when you're talking about people crying out Lord, Lord and Jesus saying I never knew you, what will cause that?

1:55:18 What will cause that is a false confession. It is unbelief. It's the sort of unbelief that filled Israel and that overran most of Judah. Josiah was one of the few exceptions in those days who was a faithful king. Most of them were wicked. And even the faithful king, as we said, for eighteen years tolerated Baal worship inside the temple. Thought that was hunky dory. He was one of the good ones. We will not fare any better without scripture, which is really the key lesson of that whole thing. When he found scripture he came to repentance. When we find scripture, we come to repentance. Will you hear in church, where you're in a podcast, it always has to accord with scripture. Wherever you're getting it, the Bible is the norming norm.

1:56:10 It's where everything else has to come from. There are things that can be said that can be derived from scripture, but unless it is constant with what God says, and unless it fulfills the same promises that God makes, you cannot trust it. There are good things that men can say that are not scriptural. There's plenty of wisdom in the world, but the only infallible word is from God's lips. And so That's why it's so important when we see these passages say, Lord, Lord, let us in, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy and cast out demons in your name? They thought they were serving God. Now, Josiah could have led the same life, but as an unbeliever, and when the word of God was found, he could have just

1:56:57 said, I don't recognize this. I don't want this here. Just get rid of it. Doesn't mean anything. He would not have been the man he was. He would not have been the king that God wanted him to be. But that was an entirely reasonable reaction, particularly because it was not consonant with tradition. They'd forgotten scripture. They forgot it existed. When they discovered it, they didn't know what it was. They didn't know what they found. They knew it was important. Physically, it was like obviously this thing is important. But it wasn't until it was read aloud that his heart was softened because it was convicted by the word of God. That is the test that we see today. When the word of God is spoken among these men who cry

1:57:40 out, Lord, Lord, what do they say next? Some of them say Lord have mercy. I didn't know that. They respond the way Josiah did. They were in error to whatever degree, and when they hear what God says in Scripture, they repent. Others, when they hear what Scripture says, they call the FBI. They see we condemn this in the name of Christ, and they condemn Scripture itself. They damn God. They literally damn God in press releases and from pulpits because they must necessarily do so to serve their true master. Because even while they have a public confession that checks all the boxes, when push comes to shove and you bring out scripture and say, Well, what about this? God said this. They say, I hate that.

1:58:24 That's not my God. I don't recognize any of that. I I can't even read this. What is this crap? This is wicked and we condemn it in the name of Christ. They're made are men who will condemn God in the name of the Antichrist and they will say they're confessing God. And the last day, they're being warned. Matt Harrison's gonna cry out, Lord, Lord. Some of the pastors listening right now who are filled with malice and evil will cry out, Lord, Lord, and God will say, You workers of lawlessness, I never knew you. We talk about this stuff, it's not simply that these are men who are individuals, these are men who have the authority that is perceived by the church to be speaking on behalf of God. Whether God truly gave them that authority and they betrayed it at

1:59:10 some point, or whether they were never true to begin with, have no Have no idea. Don't care. Their fruits are wicked. And that is the concern. Because it's not about one guy or two guys or ten guys or a hundred or an entire denomination or all the denominations. It's about the souls in the pews who are affected by the teaching. Because as Corey said earlier, most people just don't know. You do the best you can with the information you're given. You hopefully try not to violate your conscience and you try not to worry about it too much. Most people are just head down in their lives hoping that the Jesus guys take care of the Jesus stuff and it's sorted out and they don't need to worry about it too much.

1:59:54 That was basically my attitude most of my life. I trusted patriots in charge. I was told they're good men in control now. we won the election, we're doing well. Like, okay, good. One less thing for me to worry about. When I actually looked, I found that wasn't true. I found in fact that there was rampant evil, and that it was only by pointing to scripture that that evil could be illustrated. Because the confession was true. They were still saying Lord, Lord. They were still slathered in Jesus Bother. It's squishing between their toes. I know that's it sounds like it's something that's almost blasphemous. The reason that we say it is precisely because it is blasphemous. It is blasphemous for them to hide behind the name of God

2:00:39 for their false teachings. That's a violation of the commandment that says thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. There's no greater violation of that commandment than to lie in the name of the Lord, which is precisely what we're dealing with at the denominational level, at the church level, at the big ticket level, individuals on the ground, we're all trying to do the best we can with limited and sometimes imperfect and sometimes frankly false information, because we believed and we didn't know any better. When the When the truth comes to light, when you see the scripture actually says this, that you lost you s lost whole passages out of scripture you didn't know were there.

2:01:19 No one ever preached from them. Cause for many of the passages in Scripture to be preached from many of the pulpits in our churches would be for the pastors to indict themselves. They can't possibly speak the whole counsel of God from the pulpit without being struck dead on the spot by God's wrath. And they know it. So they just avoid those things. They they'll either paper over them or they'll acknowledge them and say, well this is you know, that was that was in that moment and it's kind of cringe. There's some stuff in here that's obviously we're better than that today. That's where the churches are. It's men who cry out, Lord, Lord, and then they torch scripture. And they do it in the name of God.

2:01:59 And so that's the point. That's the point of this four-part series is when we look at the confession, we'll see one thing in some cases. We'll see maybe something that seems Christian, or at least you can sort of gussy up to the point that it's not sub-Christian. And then when you look at the fruits, when you look at the passion that the men have for what their true religion is, for their competing confession, you'll find abject evil, not a little bit evil, not slightly wrong, but you know, it's matter of dispute. Abject wickedness. The most malevolent, sort of slanderous, murderous hatred and m malice that any man's heart can summon, you'll find it in the very men who say that they're there speaking in the name of God.

2:02:46 I don't know what else to say other than to do a Bible study like this where we point to scripture in a series like this where we say, look, here all these different things that are being imported into the church and everybody has a clean conscience, we're all just sort of sailing along, saying, Oh yeah, that sounds fine, like Yahweh, Yeshua, that's like that's that sounds legit. that seems that seems better than what we had before. And bit by bit and piece by piece, new sins are adopted, and suddenly you have you have vessels to bail inside the temple. And you know what? God's gonna leave. It won't be God's temple anymore. It's gonna be Satan's temple. Because the mixing of the sacred with the profane causes the sacred

2:03:27 to cease to be. God is still sacred, but he's elsewhere. He's not gonna be in that place He will not be mixed with wickedness. So on the ground, as we're trying to sort this stuff out, we just have to be faithful as best we can. That's why looking at scripture, reading scripture, pointing to scripture, and when someone comes along with a scriptural argument, don't resort to the Bill of Rights. Please don't do that. Don't quote Thomas Jefferson at a man who comes to you with scripture. That's a confession of their true God. We've seen that too. that's it. That that's the moment where you know I'm not dealing with a Christian. Even while they're wearing a cross, even while they have reverend in front of their name, even while they say Lord, Lord and

2:04:12 say I love Jesus, their confession when they're confronted with scripture is what do you have to do with me, holy one of God? They respond as the demon responded, acknowledging that it's God and hating it. So in the interest of not having this episode run too long, we will go over two more passages. We'll do second Peter, and then we will close out with the parable of the sower. So first from Second Peter. But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction, and many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way

2:05:02 of truth will be blasphemed, and in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell, and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness, to be kept until the judgment, if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserve Noah, a herald of righteousness with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly, if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly And if he rescued righteous lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked, for as that righteous man lived

2:05:49 among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds, that he saw and heard, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority. Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones, whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the Lord. But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction, suffering wrong as the wage for their

2:06:38 wrongdoing. They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime, they are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, while they feast with you. They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin, they entice unsteady souls, they have hearts trained in greed, accursed children, forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, they have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Baor, who loved gain from wrongdoing, but was rebuked for his own transgression. A speechless donkey spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet's madness. These are waterless springs, and mist driven by a storm. For them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved. For speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of

2:07:26 the flesh, those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved, for if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness, than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them. The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing

2:08:08 herself, returns to wallow in the mire. This passage certainly speaks to what we've been talking about. This is Second Peter again. This is not a book that we've previously referenced. And that's part of the point that we want to make. That when you acknowledge that apostasy inside the church of the church itself is possible, you will begin to find it everywhere. Like this was the entire second chapter of second Peter. And we've gone very long, this is a longer episode than usual. It just keeps going. We could have had a dozen more passages that still wouldn't have covered everything because that is the nature of God's warning to the church about the church. Again, I'm gonna repeat this ad nauseum.

2:08:55 When we talk about apostasy in the church, we're not talking about pagans. All of these passages are about Christians. Every one of these passages is about someone who either is or was Christian or is at least Christian presenting when they insinuated themselves into the church. And at some point it doesn't matter which of those was the case, because the fruits themselves are destructive. And when God warns us to judge the fruits, that's why. You don't need to know a man's heart to know if he's producing evil in his life and in the life of his family and his community and his church, wherever he is. If you can look at fruits and find evil, you know. Now there's some men, even evil men, even men that we have

2:09:41 gone after in the past, they produced some good fruits. When you understand where good fruit comes from, that makes sense. That's not an incongruity because the word of God does not return to him's void. And so all these men who are in the church who are speaking the word of God, God's word is efficacious all by itself, even when the men are idiots, even when they're blasphemers, even when some of them have a demon inside them, when those men speak the word of God, insofar as they leave it alone or don't do harm to the text, God is going to work through it. So yes, it's entirely the case that you will see sometimes men who are doing evil who also produce good fruits because God for produces the good fruits.

2:10:28 I think that's the key distinction there. Good fruit only comes from God. We don't get credit. We don't take credit. Certainly God gives us credit when we are Christians and we obey Him and we say what God says, and then it produces good fruit according to his will. We do get credit for that, but that's not why we do it. When evil produces evil fruit, it's necessarily because it didn't come from God. Evil fruits are never produced by good doctrine. And even a doctrine that is sound in a narrow application, when it's misapplied somewhere else, can become evil. I think that's another thing that's really difficult for Christians to understand because a guy will take some doctrine that he really has a

2:11:13 good handle on. You know, Protestants are extremely guilty of this post-Reformation. We fixed justification because we started confessing what Scripture said. The pre Reformation sects still get justification wrong. So when it was fixed, it wasn't Luther was some repair man, or any of the other reformers, whoever you want to place at the head of that party. It was simply the fact that they started pointing to what scripture said. That's what fixed it. It wasn't men coming up with new doctrines. It was men faithfully confessing that which God had previously revealed. The damage goes the opposite direction. Whatever damage we do, it's because we're not saying what God says. We're breaking whatever He did.

2:11:58 Which is why evil fruits will always prove that there's evil behind it. God will not produce evil fruit ever. He cannot. His tree is perfect, his fruit will always be good. What happens in between the tree and the fruit is a function of the last parable we're going to talk about the sower of the seed. Because there are times where God sends out his word and it comes among men, and for a while it bears fruit and then it stops and it withers. And that's not God's failing. It's the fact that some soil is rocky, the the parable goes over the the permutations there. When we're looking inside the church, when we're looking at our own churches and our own denominations, at our own beliefs, our own personal

2:12:44 beliefs. Again, none of this should be an assault on you personally. Think, oh no, am I apostate? No one who's apostate is gonna think that. It's similar to the sin against the Holy Spirit. No one who's committed the unforgivable sin cares. The last thing that would ever enter their mind. It cannot enter their mind because they've already closed that door. So nothing we've said should make anyone fearful, oh no, I might be apostate. It should make you cautious that I should be careful about not messing around with false doctrine in false teachers and false churches because they can lead me astray. And you can adopt more and more false beliefs. And then you end up in a place where you can't apostatize

2:13:26 unknowingly. But again, that shouldn't be a source of fear, it should be a source of vigilance. It's possible for Christians to be vigilant without being fearful. Being awake, being watchful, being sober minded, these are all described as fruits of the Spirit precisely because this is what they do. When you are all of those things and these confrontations come up, if you're grounded in scripture, you're going to be able to keep your head on straight. You're not going to be just completely blown away by the confusion of the matter. The church will have these problems. God promised it'll have these problems. It's not terrifying or scary to realize that we have these problems. It should in a way be comforting to at least know that

2:14:09 God warned us. No matter what bad thing can happen in our life, in your personal life, in the church, wherever, God foreknew the circumstance, he foreknew your particular situation. God knows everything. And he warns us, I'm gonna take care of you. He warns us, obey me. They're all warnings. They're saying, look, this is coming, don't fall away. Believe me, stay strong in the faith, hold fast to the word of God. None of that should be a source of dejection. It should be a source of joy and of mutual encouragement, which is what we hope these episodes can be. This should be mutually encouraging to all of us in all the various denominations to know that we're facing the same challenges, to know

2:14:53 that we have the same problems. Even where we have doctrinal disagreements, one of the places where we have unity is that Satan's coming after us all. That's good news because it means that there's something there from God that Satan needs to destroy. Satan would be leaving us alone if he already had everything. So the disconnect between what scripture says and what Satan is trying to do to it, that's where the fight is. And it may not be the fights that we had in previous centuries. It may be new fights. It is, in fact, today, it's often new fights. Satan's trotting out the old tricks, but with new colors. And people who are distracted by the shiny colors don't realize that it's the same old play.

2:15:35 So we're trying to give this playbook in these simple heuristics to say, well, yep, that's Judaizing. That seems like a form of Gnosticism. They're denying the body, they're doing these things. I know that that's bad. I should be on my guard. That's all it necessarily takes for us to begin to be aware in our churches that there's a problem to fix. And, you know, this series has mostly been about the bad things, the things we're getting wrong. Fixing them, you know, we haven't really talked much about it, but it's basically just believe God. if God says one thing and your church is confessing the opposite, fix the church, fix the confession, or go someplace where they get those things right.

2:16:16 And we're all in the position now where we have to do one of those things. 'Cause every church has some of these problems. And God promised they would come. Whether these little end days or not, I don't care. I don't lose a wink of sleep thinking about that. But it is important to acknowledge that in all these places where scripture says hey this stuff is going to happen, it talks about end days. Whether that's a week, a month, a year, a century, a thousand years, don't know, don't care. It's above our pay grade. What is not above our pay grade is actually believing and obeying God. We can do that right now and trust that He will take care of the rest. If you go back and read this chapter from 2nd Peter after

2:17:00 this episode, or whenever you do that in the future, and again we would recommend that you do that, I want you to bear one thing in particular in mind. When Scripture speaks of adultery, it doesn't just mean a violation of the sixth commandment. Although in this case, yes, this is a violation of the sixth commandment, but it is not just that, it is also a violation of the first commandment, because adultery is used figuratively as worship of false gods. And so bear that in mind when you're reading this, and of course, we can see that that is one of the senses meant here, since it is followed up immediately with Balaam, and you can read about that elsewhere in scripture. But just as a quick aside before we move We move on

2:17:47 to the parable of the sower to close out this episode. I want to mention here that I am going to include in the show notes a link to a poem by Rudyard Kipling. I am reminded of it because it references the last line in that reading from 2 Peter, and it's a very good poem, I think every man should certainly have read it at least once in his life, so that will be in the show notes. But to move on to our final reading for this episode, the parable of the sower from Luke, Luke Chapter 8. And when a great crowd was gathering, and people from town after town came to him he said in a parable: A sower went out to sow his seed, and as he sowed, some fell along the path, and was trampled under foot, and the birds of the

2:18:35 air devoured it. And some fell on the rock, and as it grew up, it withered away, because it had no moisture. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it, and choked it, and some fell into good soil, and grew and yielded a hundredfold. As he said these things he called out, He who has ears to hear, let him hear. And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant he said, To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand. Now the parable is this the seed is the word of God. The ones along the path are those who have heard, then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that

2:19:25 they may not believe and be saved. And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy, but these have no root, they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away. And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience one of the things that stands out in this passage is something that harkens back to an earlier one where Jesus says that the ones on the rock are those who when they hear the

2:20:15 word receive it with joy, but these have no root. They believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away. One of the earlier passages from Matthew talked about a time of tribulation. It's the same thing. This is certainly a time of tribulation, not in the capital T dispensationalist sense, but when men are losing their jobs for refusing to use a trannies pronouns because it's not Christian, because it's a lie, that is a time of tribulation. Anyone who is confronted with anything like that is undergoing hatred for the sake of Christ's name. Because to be faithful to God, to say what is true, to believe and confess what is true, even in the face of the world despising it. That is the ultimate time of testing of tribulation.

2:21:08 And God warns that there will be some who they hear the word and they believe it for a while, and then when the when the going gets tough they fall away. They leave. They're not that tough. They come and they like it when it's easy. And the second it gets hard, they apostatize, they fall away. Like nope, I'm not gonna put my butt in a sling for this stuff. I don't have a God that's gonna make my life difficult. I I don't want any sort of God that's gonna make my neighbors not like me. I wanna get along with them. It's more important for me for my me for my community to find me respectable for holding the right worldly opinions than it is for me to say what God said. Again, when we talk about falling away, when we talk about apostasy,

2:21:52 it should not be a source of terror for an individual, but it should be a source of warning. It can happen. Obviously it can happen. That's not a bolt from the blue. That's not a shock to anyone. Do you believe something when it's easy? And then when it gets hard, you're like, yeah, never mind. You never really believed it in the first place. That's not actual belief. That's LARPing. That's putting on a costume. And as soon as taking off the costume becomes advantageous, that's what we do. We see that all the time. People like, oh, nope, I you changed my mind. You know, guys wanna in times when when there wasn't continuous l war, guys would join the military for the GI Bill or whatever, but they'd never actually thought they'd fight.

2:22:34 And then when suddenly a war starts and then they're told we need to go fight now, you're gonna get blown up and die and it's gonna be terrible. Like, but I just I wanted to go to college, I didn't want that. Well, too late. You signed up for a thing that has real consequences. Christianity has real consequences. And the opting in is completely different than the military. God calls on all of us to join in his word. And when we do, we should understand that it's joining a spiritual war. I think that's something that's missing for a l from a lot of preaching today is the notion, the recognition that this is actually spiritual war. It's something online I've specifically pointed out for years.

2:23:18 I've said before that this is why I personally transitioned from talking so much about politics to talking about this stuff. Because one, I realized that the political solutions were not realistic. I I don't even know how to describe that anymore. Like it's just there's no path forward politically. And yet there are still political problems. The fixes will never need to be spiritual. And they're gonna be political too. I'm not saying like, oh, we can pray this way. No. But if we don't understand the spiritual element of the political problems, we're gonna get everything downstream wrong. God is a God of everything, and truth is always true, and lies are always lies. You know, we talked about first Timothy four with the teachings of

2:24:04 demons being abstaining from meats and from marriage, forbidding marriage. That's small ticket stuff that God says come stray from hell. There's a much more serious list of sins that exist in the modern church than those that are teachings of demons. They're teachings from outside of the faith that God gave us. A source of morality that's not from scripture is not Christian. A source of tradition of beliefs that is Judaizing is anti Christian. A source of beliefs and of ideas that is Gnostic in its essence is an assault on the creator. A belief that we are immunized from being able to fall away is denying all scripture. There are so many places where scripture is very clear that you can fall away, and here's what's going to happen.

2:24:54 And so when we see it happening in the church and then we see the consequences, we have to believe it. Like there it is. God said it over and over again, and I see with my own eyes, admit that it's actually happening. Because it's only with the admission that it's real that there's any possible hope of fixing it. You know, the fixing, we we're gonna do the best we can, and God will take care of the rest. I don't say we never say these things to say it's our problem to solve. It's our problem to confront. That's absolutely true. I hope we can solve it. I intend to solve it. I exhort others to help solve it. But God will give the growth, just as he gives the growth in this parable, just as he gives the growth to those who

2:25:39 hear Stone Choir and become Christian or become stronger Christians, who actually start taking their faith seriously. God did that. God gives the growth. Fruits that are good are God's fruits, not ours. Evil fruits. Fruits where you see nothing but grey hairs in every congregation. That's a fruit of a lampstand being removed. That's a falling away generationally. Whatever happened, maybe it happened long ago. And it may well be that there are a lot of good pastures in those positions. They're trying to undo generations of wicked teaching. As Corey said earlier, sometimes the teaching is just not condemning birth control, which is itself evil all by itself. Sometimes the errors are small, but they're teachings of demons nonetheless, because

2:26:28 what do they do? They produce evil fruit. They produce churches where there are no babies crying, where there's only hearing aids and walkers. And God bless the old for continuing in the faith. There's no mockery whatsoever there. The older generations are more closely connected to the church than the younger, but that reflects on the older as much as it does on the younger when the elderly and are still in church, but their children and their grandchildren and their great grandchildren have all apostatized, that's on them too. Josiah cried out in horror and realized that his fathers have betrayed him. He realized his fathers have betrayed Judah because they had not passed on the inheritance of the knowledge of the true God in

2:27:12 Scripture. When we as Christians today reach that point, we have to respond as Christians. We have to respond with repentance to say, I acted in good conscience and then I realized it was wrong. I have to do better. Lord help me. And we turn to scripture to do it. That's why I hope that ultimately this is a positive call to exhortation in belief, because what else are we going to do? That's it's Peter's most beautiful confession. Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. That should be on our lips all the time. What else are you gonna do? Things are bad. World War III, famine, inflation. What are you gonna do? Turn to God. Like there's there's nothing else that you can do to fix some

2:27:58 problems except trusting God. And if that's all you have left, it's enough. He'll take care of it. I want to see our churches talking like this again. I almost see our pastors talking like this and worried about these things. I must see our pastors and churches condemning the sins in the pews and not the sins in the world. It's one thing to snipe at sins that are far away, just as it's one thing to pretend to have love for those who are far away. To condemn the sins right in front of you in your own church, that's difficult. That is where you will find a true test. And there's we've said in past episodes there's a right way and a wrong way to do that, but to fail to do it at all is to fail the test.

2:28:39 And it is to say I choose to diminish and fade away and to lose this faith because I don't think it's worth fighting for. Every Christian man must recognize that he has something worth fighting for. Not only his faith, but also his nation, his family, his community. All these things are gifts from God. And they all work in concert. There's no one, there's no church mode and then separate left-hand kingdom mode with all the other stuff. It's all from God. It's all his blessings. When you start chipping away and say, no, I only care about the spiritual, not the physical, congratulations, you're a Gnostic. Churches are failing to tell people this. That's why we're talking about it. We're already turning the tide.

2:29:22 The tide has been turned in the last year by the number of people speaking in ways that three years ago, it was only the most crazy men on the internet talking about it. Today, blaspheming MLK and even Bonhoeffer is becoming normal. That's because when one man stands up and tells the truth, another man who also has courage, maybe just didn't know when he hears you like, Yep. That that's true. I buy that too. This is clearly scriptural. I'm gonna stand next to this man and support what he says. It's my confession too. It's my belief. It doesn't take too many men standing up before all the names fade away, and it's just a sea of faithful men acting in obedience to God as one. That's what the church is.

2:30:05 The hierarchy is there for our benefit. It is not there to rule us. If it is not preserving the things of God, then it will be replaced by one that does. I would again recommend to all of you that you read over the passages that we have referenced or read in this episode, and they will be in the show notes to make that easy for you. But in particular, I would give you two things here at the end of this episode. First, I would recommend meditating on this parable, and again, that's Christian meditation is on something, it is not clear your mind. We've gone over that previously at some length. I'll give you the second item after I go over something about this parable. In this parable we see three different possibilities for apostasy,

2:30:55 for unbelief. It's a combination of the two. And then of course the fourth is having a living faith that produces good works. That's what it means to be productive in this case. But the three alternatives, as it were, to not being Christian, would be the birds, the rock, and the thorns. And of course the birds are Satan and the rock is the flesh and the thorns of the world. These are the three things we always hear about that oppose us in our Christian faith would be the devil, the flesh and the world, and that is exactly what we see here in this parable and it's really a hierarchy of how long someone stays well in the first case not a Christian at all, but how long someone stays a Christian in

2:31:47 the second, the third case before falling away. In the case of the birds, in the case of Satan, the word is taken away from that person, that person never believes. That person is simply a pagan and remains a pagan. But the second, you have the word that falls on the rocks and doesn't have a root, that is the flesh. And those are the people who immediately, as soon as there is any sort of testing, fall away, they apostatize. And then the second category of those who fall away in this parable would be those who due to the concerns of the world fall away at some time, at some point. And the biggest reason that we do this podcast is we want people to have a true and living faith. We do not want people, particularly one of the reasons we're doing

2:32:39 this episode, we do not want people to fall away from the faith by importing these various false beliefs, and just slowly becoming apostate. With the Old Testament temple they surely didn't construct all of those altars to false gods in one day. Some one would have noticed that. They brought in an Asherah here, and then a side altar there, and then this symbol of this God, and that symbol of that God, and this statue to that one, it grew up over time, because that's how Satan works, because people are less likely to notice if the change is gradual. And so what Satan does, Satan, the the devil, the birds, through the world, through those concerns, through those thorns, brings into the church

2:33:31 these various things of the world. And then because the flesh is weak, because people just let it happen, men don't stand up and stop it, you wind up becoming apostate, you wind up with an apostate church body, many apostate church bodies over time. And so I just would say meditate on this parable. Think about what exactly Christ is saying here, and what we should take away from it. And we shouldn't take away despair. That's not the lesson here. And to double down on that point that the point is not despair, I would recommend that if you do not already do so, pray the Lord's Prayer, maybe stop right now or wait till the end of the episode, it's almost over. Pray the Lord's Prayer at the end of the episode.

2:34:19 Pray the Lord's Prayer to night. Pray it in the morning. Maybe form a habit of doing so. But in particular, pay attention to that third petition, because that third petition also has, in the explanation from the small catechism, that tripartite division that we see here, the devil, the flesh, and the world. And so I'll read the third petition from the small catechism to close out this episode. The third petition Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. What does this mean? Answer The good and gracious will of God is done indeed without our prayer, but we pray in this petition that it may be done among us also. How is this done? Answer. When God breaks and hinders every evil counsel and will, which

2:35:11 would not let us hallow the name of God, nor let his kingdom come, such as the will of the devil, the world in our flesh. But strengthens and keeps us steadfast in his word, and in faith unto our end. This is his gracious and good will. Amen.