Welcome to the Plenteous Redemption podcast, where the cross and the culture are on a collision course for discussion. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign Now, here's your host, Thomas Ervin. Well, continue to pray for Miss Anita, Miss Pat, Miss Pookie, and her husband, which I don't know that Miss Pookie has COVID, but her husband does. COVID's so weird that she may get it or may not get it or may have it and not know it or who knows. It's so weird. Something I forgot to mention this morning, the pastor who's going to come install our toilets, who's bringing those, the new toilets, He got in contact with Victory Baptist Press in Milton, Florida, and it's a ministry of Victory Baptist Church, and Pastor Tim Fillore is an excellent preacher and pastor and all that good stuff. They operate a ministry called Victory Baptist Press, and they print Bibles and tracts and books, and all sorts of things. Well, they're running a project right now, I guess you'd call it a project, a ministry, I don't know, whatever you want to call it, where churches who need materials printed and mailed out on their behalf, such as the gospel or, what are these called? Invitations, there you go, that's the word. They do it for you. They do all of it. They print it all, they package it all, and then they send it to the post office and send it out to your zip code, every door direct mail. And they just did that for him and sent out just over 5,000. They made this tract. There's a popular tract that's out right now called The Bridge, and it's basically a cross going over the top of hell, and people who go to heaven, they cross that bridge, which is the cross to get to hell, and then everybody else falling off the cliff into hell. It's kind of an imagery of Either you go to hell or you go to heaven, you know, that kind of thing. But then they put the American flag on it, and they put the gospel on the back, and they'll put your church information on it. So apparently that's available to any church that needs it, and so I sent them an email on Friday or Saturday and gave them all of our information and all the zip codes related to George County or Losedale. And so they haven't replied back to me yet, so I don't know for sure that it's available to us. But from what I understand, it should be. So there's a good chance that they will end up mailing that out for us to every residential home in the 39452 zip code, which is 12,000. Now, I don't know if they can do all 12,000 or will do all 12,000 or if they'll only do so. I don't know what the stipulations are or all that type stuff. So anyways, I sent them the information and I'm waiting to hear back from them. Lord willing, if it works out, they can do some or all, that'd be great. This is a ministry that in the future, when our church is a little more stable financially, I would really like to support and be a part of and to help. So we'll see how that goes. So pray about that. Also, these are on the back table. Take some home, but These cost money. Don't take them home and let them sit in your house. Pass them out. Give them to people. Spread it around. Tell people to come to church along with the gospels that are still sitting back there on the table that need to be passed out. So let's get those out. Tell people about Jesus. Tell people about the church. Invite them and see how it goes. Amen. Well, Sometimes, and I don't know if they do it on purpose, sometimes song leaders really set people up. Now, if you paid attention to what you were singing and what you said to God, take up thy cross and follow me, I heard my master say. I gave my life to ransom thee. Surrender your all today. I mean, that's, That's a pretty big start. But then it says, he drew me closer to his side. I sought his will to know, and in that will, I now abide. Wherever he leads, I'll go. You know, a lot of Christians sing this and wouldn't get off the couch and cross the living room for Jesus Christ. It may be through the shadows dim. Yeah, right. If the electricity went off, you would feel like you were in the midst of persecution. So, yeah, so Brother Nathan set everybody up. I hope you meant it when you sang it, because God might come knocking on your door and say, remember that song you sang to me? I just wanted to find out, is that, is that, did you mean that? Because I need you to go somewhere. Yeah, it's one of those songs that you just want to stand with your hand over your mouth and let other people sing it. All right, we will start in 1 Corinthians 11 tonight. We're going to do something interesting tonight. First, let me tell you a story that will set some context. And it's a personal story. And then I hope it helps you the way it helped me. When I first got saved, as I mentioned sometime this morning, I was in Saudi Arabia. I was very close to becoming a professional fighter. I was in Saudi Arabia training foreign militaries, how to work weapon systems on fighter jets. After I got saved, I just wanted to come home. I came home, but my next training camp, next fighting Endeavor was going to be out of Long Island, New York So I moved up to Long Island to begin training and getting ready for my next fight And I ended up in a church there that was in many ways very good to me taught me a lot of great things They also taught me some not so great things. I didn't know that at the time And so I it took a while for me to figure it out but with my stereotypically curious and anti-the-crowd mindset, I ended up asking a lot of questions to the point the pastor would be like, great, he's coming back again asking the same questions. But I asked the same questions because I was not seeing the connection. I'm reading the Bible and it says one thing, and my pastor's preaching and saying a different thing, and I thought I was the problem. As I trusted him, I trusted the Bible, I'm like, surely the reason I'm not getting this is because something's wrong with me. And so I kept going back and asking the same questions over and over, and it just, I was not resolving the issue. And it got to a point, by the time I made it to Egypt, I nearly had a breakdown. I thought I was not saved. God said, you would learn the Bible if you trusted in Jesus Christ. He'll teach you the Word of God, and I'm not figuring this out. Something must be wrong with me. Well, then I put I got a CD on the way to Egypt. I put that CD in and it was my pastor down in Florida. It was his Bible school class called a how to study and teach the Bible and it completely altered my Christian life. It changed everything. He taught me how to study the Bible, how to approach the Bible, how to let the Bible define the Bible, and let the Bible explain the Bible, and let the Bible illustrate the Bible. And then everybody gets so much more Bible. And so it ends up being a tremendous help. And so while I was listening to that, his CD, I listened to it over and over and over and over and over. I mean, I must listen to it a thousand times. And I was like, well, let me see who this guy is. So I looked him up on the Internet and he had sermons on the Internet. And I was like, oh, I'm going to listen to his sermons on the Internet. Well, the church that I came from in Long Island was a staunch. Now, they wouldn't admit to this. They would disagree with this characterization. But the reality is they were a staunch Baptist bride church. I didn't know that. I didn't know what that was. I didn't have a clue that even existed. In fact, I was so into what they taught me, I'm in Egypt. I'm in Ismailia, Egypt, which is just off the Suez Canal, right across from the Sinai Peninsula. I mean, I'm out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the desert, in Muslim Brotherhood territory with people who will never likely hear the Gospel. And instead of preaching the Gospel to them, I'm sitting down with them and showing them how John the Baptist started the church. which is not true in the Bible whatsoever. But that's what Baptist bride churches believe, and that's what this man, that was the emphasis of this church. So rather than preaching the death, burial, and resurrection to these people, I'm showing them how that John the Baptist, you got to be able to prove your baptismals back. I mean, I was sold out. And as I began to study the Bible more, and I began to learn how to approach the Bible, I began to see the problems, and I began to learn that I'm making a big mistake. And so, but I was deeply ingrained in that doctrine. I was attached to it. I loved that pastor. I still love that pastor. I disagree on certain things that he teaches, though I agree with him on numerous other things that he teaches very well, and were a great help to me. But in those areas, I latched on to it, and so it was very hard for me to hear something that might be contrary to that. So I go and I download these sermons. I'm in Egypt, and it takes me eight hours to download one sermon. And the first sermon was, is the church universal only or local only? And I was like, oh, no, I don't want to listen to this, because I've been taught from my pastor, who is the man of God, who traces his baptisms back to John the Baptist. I mean, we are the elite. The churches are always and only local only. There cannot be anything else. And so I'm listening to this sermon. Brother James, the first thing he says is, is the church local only or universal only? Yes. I stopped the sermon and deleted it. It took me eight hours to download this sermon. I was like, no, I can't do that. I can't listen to this. That's heresy. That's ungodly. You can't have that. And so I continued to struggle. I couldn't figure this out. I couldn't make sense of it. So I downloaded it again. It took me another eight hours to download it again. And I said, I'm going to sit down, and I'm going to listen to this. And it helped so much, because it wasn't just someone saying things. He showed me word for word, verse for verse in the Bible, and it was so refreshing, and it sets you free from an oppressive Baptist bondage that shouldn't exist, but it does. Something else that was a huge help to me that he did, and what we're going to do tonight, I'm going to somewhat reproduce in my own way. He went through a list of common unbiblical teachings that the church often has to confront and deal with. And that's what we're going to look at tonight. We're going to look at a list of a couple of things that are common in this area, in the world, I guess, anywhere there's a church, because they always seem to show up. There's a few other things I could add to this list and may just mention in passing. But the first few, I want to go through them, we want to look at them, introduce you to them. What that will help us to do is to enlighten you as to the fact that there are people out there who want to come into your church and want to spread false doctrine. Or they want to spread their version of a doctrine. And all through the Bible, all through the New Testament, that's unacceptable. You don't get to do that. You have to be very careful about what you allow to be taught to a congregation of people, especially as a pastor when you're the one responsible to make sure that people learn the Word of God and are applying it to their lives as best as possible. It needs to be delivered in a clear and biblical manner. It needs to be demonstrated from the Bible. I can't stand up here and just say things. which is what a lot of pastors do. And because it's been followed for so long in a traditional fashion, people just assume that what he's saying is right. Then they find out later that it might be contrary to the Word of God, and they have a crisis moment because they don't know what to do. Do I follow the tradition and stick with that, or do I follow the Word of God? But if I follow the Word of God, the men who follow the tradition are going to be mad at me. And so, at the risk of causing people to be mad at me, which I don't want anybody to be mad at me, but I also don't care. If the Bible is right, then we're going to stick by that. Now, men who, you're going to see as I teach this, Most of these people are not our enemies. We don't want to fight with them. We don't want problems with them. We're going to talk about the Pentecostal Church, Charismatic Churches, Calvinism, Baptist Briders. Most of these people, if not all of them, preach the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. They are not people that we want to fight with or have some sort of beef with or to cause harm to. we just wouldn't let them come preach in this pulpit. And it's not likely they would have me come preach in theirs. But if you've trusted in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, you are my brother in Christ. We might have some differences and make it hard for us to fellowship on a regular basis, but you're not my enemy, and I don't want to fight with you. I don't want to cause problems for you. I don't want you to cause problems for us. Just go do your thing and we'll go do ours and, you know, see you at the foot of the throne when we die and go to heaven. Let's look at these and get through as many of these as we can tonight. Throughout the history of the church, one needful area of trouble is that of heretics. This evening, we will provide a brief introduction to a few of the heresies or false teachings a Bible-believing church might encounter. It is our responsibility to confront heresy when it enters our doors, and to be prepared to deal with these issues, we are to either convince the gainsayers or remove them. Those are your options. A heretic, as we're going to see this evening, you give them one or two admonitions, and if they continue, Here's the door. Don't come back. Not until you want to get that right. You want to get that right? And here's the thing, and we'll demonstrate this from the Bible. The problem is not that you disagree with the pastor or the doctrine of the church. That is not the problem. We're never going to fully agree on everything that gets taught from this pulpit or that we talk about personally or whatever. It's not going to happen. But somebody has to set the direction for the church and establish what will be the doctrine for the church. That person is the pastor, according to the Bible. Now, that doesn't mean that you have to agree with it. What it does mean is you don't get to teach contrary to it. You can come tell me until you're blue in the face. I disagree with that. No problem. Let's talk about it. That is not a bad thing. There is nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is when you start going back behind people's, behind the pastor's back and saying, you know, that pastor, what he taught was wrong. I need to show you the truth. Well, now you've got a problem. Now you're deliberately teaching contrary to the established doctrine. as set by the church and the pastor. And now you have made yourself a heretic. And the problem with a heretic is that it's not even that they're wrong. They might be correct in what they're teaching, but the way they go about it is wrong. Heresy does not necessarily mean that that you're teaching false doctrine. That's not that's how people approach it. That's not necessarily true. What it means is that we're going to establish a set of doctrines here as a church. All right, once those doctrines are set and people begin to fellowship here based on those set doctrines, then you become wrong when you go against them. Not because you're teaching wrong. Maybe we accidentally said a bad doctrine here, but as a church, it's what we're doing. And then you come in and say, no, here's the way it's supposed to be, and you're all doing it wrong, and you start going behind the pastor's back and teaching privately something contrary to what's been established. That's what a heretic is. You might be 100% right, but in coming in and approaching it that way, you make yourself wrong, and you don't want to be that person. What should happen if you've identified something that the church has wrong is you should go to the church leadership and say, hey, can I talk to you about something? Can I show this to you? And what that does is demonstrates to the church leadership that you're an honest, open, genuine person with a valid concern that we need to take a look at. But when you start sneaking around and talking behind people's back, well, now we've got a whole different problem, and it has to be dealt with according to the Bible. All right, everybody understand what I'm saying? That's what a heretic actually is. And so we either convince them or remove them. To be clear, you're not required to agree with everything we teach in order to fellowship here or even be a member. But you are not permitted to teach contrary to established doctrinal foundation. You can disagree or have a different perspective, but you will not quietly and secretly push that perspective. That's where the issue comes in, when you start going around and sneaking around and trying to teach contrary to it. Now, if you want to talk to me about it, my door is always open to anybody that has a question or disagreement or doesn't like something. We can always talk about it. Doesn't mean it's going to go well, but we can always talk about it. I am not above being questioned or asked something or if you need me to further explain something, whatever. It'd be best to come and talk to me about it. Heretics don't come to the pastor. They secretly meet with members of the church and try to push their ideas, thereby causing divisions in the church. They try and steal away their own personal disciples, and they think they're doing a good thing, but they are not. They are causing a lot of problems. Look at 1 Corinthians 11, verses 17 through 19. Now in this that I declare unto you, I praise you not, that ye come together, not for the better, but for the worse. For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you, and I partly believe it. For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you. All right, so the Lord says they're going to happen. You're going to have divisions. You're going to have heresies. And your handling of those will help to demonstrate to you who in the church is approved and who is not. If you have people that get torn away and follow after some either false teaching or heretical teaching, then you know that those people, you didn't need them here in the first place. It just made manifest. They are people you should probably just let them go. You can't make somebody stay that disagrees with you. And I know people who have done it. Our church down in Florida, there are men in that church who disagreed with the established doctrines of the pastor and the church, and they stayed in the church and never caused a problem. And it's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's good and it's healthy for a church. That means that man, that person, is a mature individual who can agree to disagree and still fellowship in a church and not have to tear the whole thing apart. It says a lot about that person. Now, you don't have to agree with everything, but if you're going to, if you have a contrary idea, it's the pastor you should approach about it, or men in leadership of the church you should approach about it, not not take it in unto yourselves. Look at Galatians chapter 5, Galatians 5, and look at verses 19 and 20. Verse 19, now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies. How's that word in that list? All right, so God doesn't think very highly of someone being a heretic and bringing heresies into the church. Look at 2 Peter 2. 2nd Peter 2 verses 1 and 2, 2nd Peter 2, 1 and 2. But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you who privily, and see that's the key, privately, quietly, secretly, privily, shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them. and bring upon themselves swift destruction, and many shall follow their pernicious ways, by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of." All right, so that's... Look at Titus chapter 3. Let's look at one more. Titus chapter 3, all about heresies and heretics coming into the church. Titus 3, verses 9 through 11, verses 9 through 11, verse 9. knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself." That's what a heretic does. It's a secret thing. It's a private thing. They're going to sneak in, and it's going to cause divisions in the church. That's their point. I want this taught, and I think I should have a say. And if you don't give me a say, then I'm going to steal away disciples unto myself or cause divisions in the church. And next thing you know, when the pastor finally finds out, half the church has been persuaded, and you end up having a split, and the church falls apart over something that never should have been allowed to spread in the first place. All right, now, one of the first of these that we're going to encounter, I have no doubt, over the years, as the Lord allows us to be here, is the wonderful gift of tongues. I have no doubt that somebody's going to come in here and try to speak in tongues. It's going to happen. One time at our home church in Florida, there was a person sitting on the front row, and our pastor was preaching, and this guy jumps up and starts going, and starts jibber-jabbering uncontrollably. Everybody just stopped and looked at him. And once he realized nobody was following him, he starts looking around and he's like, y'all don't do this here? And our pastor said, can you guarantee me you did not just blaspheme God? And the guy said, well, no. He said, then sit down and shut up. And the guy sat down and shut up. But it's going to happen. And this idea is typically found amongst charismatic churches, the Church of Christ, the Church of God, and the Pentecostal church. Now what's frustrating about that is they have the best names. The Church of God, that's a biblical name. The Church of Christ, that's a biblical name. They just don't do anything biblical in the church. They tend to be out of control. It's a flesh fest. And primarily, if you study the history of the Pentecostal church and charismatic churches, they were led by, sorry, ladies, women. And it's an emotionally driven type of church. And so what ends up happening is it becomes very emotionally charged, and you're supposed to let your emotions get out of control until you start jibber-jabbering, which is what wives do, right? Amen. All right. I guess I'm alone on that one. My wife doesn't. She's the only exception. All right, let's move on. If a person comes here and pretends to speak in tongues, and pretend is the word, there's nothing real about it. It's not spirit-led or any of that. It's just someone lost control of themselves, and they're having a moment, if you will. If they pretend to speak in tongues, as long as he does it at home, Then no one cares. I don't care. You do that at home in your closet. That's between you and the Lord. You want to come to church here? You sit down, and you do no ah-sha-na-na-na-na-na-na here. None of that stuff. I had a friend, his son, I was teaching his son how to speak in tongues. His son was like two or three, and I would tell him, I would say, say, ah-sha-na-na-na-na-na, and he would walk around the house going, ah-sha-na-na-na-na-na, and doing all this stuff. His mom, her family lives in New York, so they went to visit, and he's walking around the house going, and they look at his mom and say, what's he doing? She said, oh, Brother Thomas taught him to speak in tongues. I was like, great. So that's not speaking in tongues. That's just a bunch of jibber-jabber. You lost control of yourself. You got caught up in a religious moment, and you're out of control. Now, if you want to attend here, and you believe you have the gift of speaking in tongues, well, bless your heart. Praise the Lord. You can be here as long as you want, as long as you don't walk around this room doing that. Don't walk around the parking lot doing that. If you want to go home and do it, go home and do it. Have at it. I mean, just speak in tongues to your heart's content at home. But don't do it here, because we don't. They always ask you, well, don't you believe in the gifts of tongues? That's a stupid question. Yes, I do. I don't believe in what you're doing. I don't know what you're doing. There's no relationship to the gift of tongues and what you're doing. They're two completely different things. And so that's a dumb question. So if he or she comes here attempting that, then they're going to have to be, they'll be asked to stop. And if they don't stop, they'll be asked to leave. All right. So that's, we're just, we're not doing that here. You can do that at home. Enjoy it. Video it. Put it on YouTube. You'll get lots of views. Just don't do it here. And don't tell people on YouTube you go here. It's bad enough we got one scratch in the back of a pig. But he's not doing it in a religious nature, so it's okay, you know. Look at 1 Corinthians 14. And some of these people, I mean, it gets pretty wild. We talk to them on the street, and they start, oh, no, no, no, no, no. Man, you know, they make medicine for that. You got spiritual Tourette's or something. I don't know what's going on with you. 1 Corinthians 14, verse 22. Wherefore, tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe." Okay, question. If tongues are for a sign and for a sign not to them that believe, why would you do it in church? Who's sitting in church for the most part? Believers, people who have trusted in Jesus. There might be one or two people occasionally in a church who haven't trusted, but generally, it's a room full of believers. Why would you come here and do that when God said the reason for speaking in tongues, it's a sign to unbelievers? Now it gets more specific, let's finish this verse, back to verse 22. Alright, so here's the idea. Prophesying, what I'm doing right now, what this chapter describes or defines as prophesying is teaching in this manner. It benefits them that believe. So when we come together as a church, someone stands in the pulpit and prophesies. They teach the Bible, right? If I stood up here and started going for an hour, what would you get out of that? Yeah, you'd go home thinking, man, what a blessing. Yeah, what a blessing to be out of there. All right, so you don't do that in a church. Now look at 1 Corinthians 22, chapter 1. 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 22. All right, so what we've learned so far is tongues are for a sign, right? For those that don't believe. But specifically to who? Or to whom? I don't know what's the right word there. 1 Corinthians 1, verse 22. For the Jews require a sign and the Greeks seek after wisdom. All right. So you put all you compare scripture with scripture and you put it all together. Who is speaking tongues for it was a sign to unbelieving Jews. That's it. And if we had the time and it's not our purpose, our purpose tonight is just to briefly look at some of these and move on. But what we would do is we would go back and I would show you how it was an apostolic sign given to the apostles who were going to start the New Testament Church in Jerusalem, a city full of unbelieving Jews. Well, that makes perfect sense, that you would give them that ability to demonstrate that sign to those people, because if you show up in Jerusalem and you say, don't go to the temple anymore, just come trust in Jesus, you better have a sign from God, because you're about to be taken outside the camp and stoned to death. You can't just show up in Jerusalem and say, I got this new religion, you should try it out. Yeah, we're going to try you out, and they're going to take you out of town, and they're going to stone you, and you're going to die. But if you can demonstrate a sign to the Jews, then they'll step back and say, wait a minute. We need to reconsider this. That's a sign from God. And so that's how that went. That's what it was for. And so tongues were one of many sign gifts, many sign gifts. given to the apostles to help them establish New Testament Christianity. And you know that this is the one they like to abuse because it's the one they can fake the most and get away with. You can't fake healing. A few of them do, but it takes a big, it takes a big, you know, a Hollywood set that you got to travel with to trick people into thinking that you can heal people. And you notice they never go to a hospital and say, I'm going to empty this hospital today. Why is that? Of course they can't do it. COVID came about. Where were all the faith healers? We could have ended the pandemic in the name of Jesus. They were at home with COVID. That's where they were. So, it's a bunch of garbage. So, they stick with tongues because you can't tell them that they're not speaking in tongues because, you know, that's the game that they play. Well, once you get a biblical definition of tongues, I can look at you and say, what you're doing, There's no relationship. You can call it what you want, but they don't go together, so don't try and pretend that they are one and the same or have some sort of relationship. So that's tongues. I guarantee you, we're going to have a charismatic, a Pentecostal, Church of Christ, Church of God. Somebody's going to come in here, and they're going to note, do you have, as my pastor always says, the hologos? The Holy Ghost. It's not the Holy Ghost. They have to run it all together. They get all excited. You got to have the Holy Ghost. And so when they come in here and start asking you, do you believe in tongues? Or do you believe in the Holy Ghost? Then you automatically know, yeah, we're not doing that here. No, we don't believe in the Holy Ghost. We believe in the Holy Ghost. We believe in him. All right, so we're not doing that. Don't bring that in here. You're welcome to stay. Just sit quietly. Don't dance. Don't bark like a dog. Don't fall on the ground and roll around. Don't heal anybody. Just sit for a year and listen. A friend of mine was a pastor in Ardmore, Alabama, and he had a guy come in, and the guy said, I talk to devils. And he said, well, you talk to who you want to talk to. Just sit back there, be quiet, sit for a year, listen to preaching, and then we'll talk about this again in a year from now. I was like, well, I don't even know what to tell you. You talk to devils. Just sit down, shut up, and listen for a year, and we'll figure it out. So that's what a lot of people need. Just sit quietly. I have questions. Yeah, I know. Write them down. Keep them. Just sit quietly for a year, and then we'll go back to your questions and see if they still exist. And that would really help a lot of people. All right, number two is Calvinism. Calvinism, Calvinism. Calvinism is taking over. The Southern Baptist Church Convention used to be anti-Calvinism. Now it's about 80-90% Calvinistic. Adrian Rogers was probably the last man in the Southern Baptist Convention to stand against Calvinism. There may be a few left, but most of them are abandoning ship, because it's either wholly contemporary or it's wholly Calvinistic. It's one of the two. If it's conservative, they're Reformed theology or Calvinistic. If it's liberal and progressive and all that garbage, then it's the other. And so that's basically all you're going to get if you go into a Southern Baptist church these days. And Calvinism, Adrian Rogers was preaching in a conference In the same conference, he and John MacArthur were preaching in the same conference, and John MacArthur had this long illustration about how he's a ship on the sea, and he can only go where God blows the wind, because John MacArthur is a staunch Calvinist, and he has no control over where his boat goes. You know, wherever God blows the wind, that's where I go. You know, it's predestination, predetermined, all that garbage. And then Adrian Rogers gets up to preach after him and said, I praise God he taught me how to trim my sails. So I just kind of ruined the whole illustration. But you will never become a Calvinist by reading your Bible. It's not going to happen. Now, you can find some verses in the Bible that almost seem like there's some Calvinistic ideas there. But when you put them in their context, it destroys that possibility. You become a Calvinist by reading books written by Calvinists. By the way, that's how you become a Baptist Bride or also. In fact, I can show you verses against Calvinism. There are almost no verses against the Baptist Bride because there are no verses for the Baptist Bride. It doesn't exist. It's a ripoff of Roman Catholicism. They literally just stole the ideas of Roman Catholicism and made it their own, but it's more low-budget, small-scale Baptists rather than, you know, the Catholic Pope. Instead of the Pope, you have John the Baptist. Anyway, so Calvinism, you become a Calvinist by reading the books of other men. Now, this is difficult because over the years, the best Bible commentators, the best writers, were all Calvinist. And so a lot of Baptist churches have been influenced by Calvinism because they don't know that the commentaries they're reading are Calvinist. The Prince of Preachers, Charles Spurgeon, great, great material. You should study it all. But he's a Calvinist. That's the foundation of his doctrine. So you have to be careful with many of the things he says. Now, Charles Spurgeon is a little different in his Calvinism. He said one time, Lord, bring in all thine elect and then elect some more. That's something that that Charles Spurgeon quoted in some of his writings. And so, you know, all the all these guys throughout history, almost all the great Bible commentators and writers were all Calvinist that came out of England and Scotland. And and during what we call the Philadelphia Church Age, all of that, they were they were all Calvinist. And so Baptist churches have been influenced by Calvinism and don't even know it. You read a doctrinal statement by a Baptist church and it says, we believe in the total depravity of man. Well, where would you find that in the Bible? It's not there. You got that from Calvinism. You didn't get that from the Bible. And the total depravity of man means man is so totally depraved that he cannot choose to trust in Jesus Christ. That's what it means. So when you put that in your doctrinal statement, you are ignorantly saying that you are so depraved, you can't even make a decision to trust in Jesus Christ. Well, that's a problem because if there's one requirement on man to be saved, it's to make that decision. And so you put yourself in a weird spot. So today, like I said, many churches are heavily influenced by Calvinism, and they don't even know it. They're heavily influenced by the Baptist Bride Doctrine, and they don't know it. If you ask them, are you a landmark church or a Baptist Bride Church, they'll say, oh, no, no, not us. Okay, it's a church local only. Oh, yes, only and always. It's visible and local. That's Baptist Bride Doctrine. It came straight out of their books. And so that's where it came from. It didn't come from the Bible. And so that's the only place you can get it. Calvinism is a philosophy. It was named after John Calvin, a Roman Catholic priest, who abandoned the Catholic Church to create his own form of Catholicism in Geneva, Switzerland. He basically became his own pope. He didn't like the Pope. He didn't like the direction of the Catholic Church. And it's his time frame and what he did is considered part of the Reformation, but it really has little relationship to the Reformation. He abandoned the Catholic Church, but he would burn you at the stake if you disagreed with him. That doesn't give me very Christian-y vibes. That's not really a Christ-like thing to do. All right, so you don't want to do that. His doctrine was stolen from the Catholic priests that preceded him, and they stole it from Greek philosophers. Calvinism was originally fatalism. That's the origin. It's a Greek philosophy called fatalism. And so they took that. Fatalism taught that everything in the world was predetermined by Mother Nature. That sound familiar? That's Calvinism. Except what Calvin did was instead of saying that Mother Nature or the planet or whatever predetermined everything that's going to happen, Jesus predetermined everything that's going to happen. So they stole the doctrine, stole the philosophy, stole the idea, put Jesus' name on it, and now it's one of the most prevailing and pervasive false doctrines in the church today. It appeals to intellectuals because of its philosophical background and nature. This pastor called me one time, had me come talk to him. He had a church member. She had been there 20 plus years. And he's like, she's leaving. She's going to some Calvinistic church. I've tried to talk to her. I don't know what to do. He said, would you talk to her? So I went and I was talking to her. And I was trying to get, I asked her, so what about this other church appeals to you? And she said, when I listen to that pastor, I'm learning things I've never learned before. I said, well, do you know why that is? She said, why? I said, because here you're only taught the Bible. She was like, well, I disagree. And well, that's the difference. You're learning a philosophy there. Here, you're learning the Bible. And that's a big difference. And so you're excited about the new philosophy you're learning, but you're not learning Bible. And so she still left and didn't stay, which was a sad day for that pastor. So it was originally fatalism. Catholic priests eventually took it and began to shape it and make it, you know, into what it is today in the name of Jesus. And then John Calvin taught that God predetermined everything. So he eventually kind of put his stamp of approval on it, and he had the pulpit to be able to push it to large scales or large numbers of people. Now, of course, if you disagree with John Calvin regarding his doctrine, he would have you burned at the stake. He was a really great guy, really was. Now, this doctrine was highly adopted by the Presbyterian Church. That is the staple of their doctrine. That's primarily what used to be taught. by the Presbytery in the Presbyterian Church. Now it's completely off the rails. Now it's gone the way of Methodist churches. They just, they don't believe anything anymore. This doctrine turns God into an evil monster. That child who was molested, that woman who was raped, and that man who was murdered, it was all foreordained and predetermined by God, according to this doctrine. There's no other way to put it. If God predetermined everything, then that's what you're saying. That sheriff who was shot down the road a couple months ago, God did that. It's God's fault. The sin that gets you in trouble and it's going to have you cast into hell, I mean, it's not your fault. God predetermined that you're going to do that. So, I mean, why should you be held accountable? And that's what this doctrine does. It turns God into a monster. Now, one staple doctrine in Calvinism is unconditional election. If we were to sum this up in its simplest form, it'd be this. Before the foundation of the world, God chose some people to go to heaven, and God chose others to go to hell. Well, praise the Lord. Hope you got chose to go to heaven. Because if you didn't, you can't switch over, you can't cross lines, you were just, you were born to go to hell. That's your only purpose in life is to be here, and you're an example of someone God just predetermined he was going to send to hell. What kind of God is that? And then, let's make it even more confusing. So, God predetermined you're going to go to hell, but then he told a group of people, I want you to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every single person that exists. So you go to a person who's predetermined to go to hell and say, Christ died for your sins. He was buried and rose again the third day. Sorry, God chose me. I'm one of the few, I'm one of the people who were chosen to go to hell. I can't believe that. It's not an option for me to believe that. It makes no sense whatsoever. Christ died for the sins of the world. Well, not the whole world, right? Yeah, the whole world. We saw that this morning very clearly. It was very clear. And so I know that Jesus said to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, but only the elect will be saved. It makes no sense. Another damnable idea produced by Calvin is that of the limited atonement. They teach that Jesus only died for the elect. That's R.C. Sproul, that's John MacArthur, that's John Piper, and then the list could go on and on and on. Look at Hebrews chapter 2. Let's see if this holds true. John Calvin said that Jesus only died for a limited number of people. Hebrews chapter 2, verse 9. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that he, by the grace of God, should taste death for the elect. For every man. It literally says, for every man. Now, if you're a Calvinist, what do you do with that? Well, you do what I said earlier. In the Greek, every man means whatever we need it to mean so that our doctrine can continue to look appealing, because it's not true in the Word of God. Next is the irresistible grace. Look at Acts 7. Irresistible grace means that God's grace is so irresistible you are not capable of saying no to God. Well, that's interesting. Why are we in this trouble? Why did Christ have to come and die? Because men said no to God. They sinned against God. They went against his word. Acts chapter 2, or excuse me, Acts chapter 7. Look at verse 51. This is, again, real hard if you're a Calvinist. Verse 51, ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost. As your fathers did, so do ye. Now you know what's so interesting about that verse? Is that verse is in context talking about a group of people who have been resisting God for thousands of years. Repeatedly. He said, you do all, just like your fathers and their fathers and their fathers, all you do is resist God. Well, that doesn't bode well for irresistible grace. That's a bit of a problem. And so here you have those people. Now, there's a number of other doctrines in Calvinism. And one day, we'll study Calvinism in depth together. But that's enough for now. Next is the Baptist bride, one that I can't seem to get away from. seem to run into these people, find these people, talk to these people, and I love these people. They are a dedicated group. They're just dedicated to a false doctrine, an incorrect doctrine. And so with Calvinism, I can show you verses that, if taken out of context, could give you the impression that Calvinism might possibly exist. But then, when you put it in context, it no longer looks that way. The Baptist Bride, local church only, closed communion, trace your baptisms back to John the Baptist idea, doesn't even falsely exist in the Bible. It just doesn't exist. It's not there. It's hard to even show you verses against it because there are no verses for it. There's no possible sources of contention. There's nothing to misconstrue and accidentally think this is true. And yet it's a foundational doctrine in many churches. It started west of the Mississippi, and it's made its way across into this area. It started back in the 70s over there, made its way this way, went all the way up to Kentucky, and now they are diehard. And so it's here. It's another doctrine that is picked up through books. The Trail of Blood, America in Crimson Red, and The Church That Jesus Built are three favorites of this group. The Trail of Blood is one of the worst books I've ever read in my life. It's one of the most dishonest renditions of history, of church history you will ever find. It's completely biased to the point that it's basically lying. What they do is they look throughout history in order to prove to you that the church is local only, which I don't even know why you would want to prove that or what sense that makes. But in fact, when you say the church, you're talking about it in a broader context. When you say the church, are you talking about one local building? What are you talking about? So when you say the church, you're automatically speaking in terms of a universal entity. So you have to say which local assembly you're talking about to break it down to a local visible church. All right, so it can be really frustrating. The Trail of Blood, what they do is they go throughout history and they look at the Donatist, the Paulicians, the Waldensians, they look at these different church, these different denominations that existed throughout history, and they say, because we agree with them on water baptism, they are Baptist. And that's it. The Roman Catholic Church killed these people over water baptism, which back then, it was a serious matter. If you didn't teach what the Catholic Church taught about baptism, they were going to murder you, and it was going to be a brutal, nasty death. All right, so back then, water baptism had this stigma to it that needed to be fought. Today, who's going to kill you for believing in baptism by immersion? Or if you don't sprinkle babies. Nobody. It's not going to happen. So we don't fight over baptism. We have water. We'll dunk you in the water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. But that's not even important. If you haven't trusted in Jesus Christ, you're going to hell. We can dunk you every day till the day you die. You're still going to die and go to hell. You can be as part of this local assembly as you want. If you haven't trusted in Jesus, you're going to die and go to hell. You need to shift your perspective. You're fighting over whether the church is local or not, and people are dying and go to hell. What is your problem? You've got an inordinate affection attached to something that you shouldn't be attached to. Just fighting with the brethren, fighting with other churches over something silly that doesn't even exist in the Bible. It's not there. The Trail of Blood is, again, one of the most dishonest books, if we move on from that. So the Baptist Bride, or Landmark, what men will say is, well, I'm not a Baptist Bride, or I do believe in Landmarkism. Well, any time you add an ism to your Christianity, you just basically said, I'm a reprobate. I'm a false teacher. Why can't you just believe the Bible? Well, I do believe the Bible, but I do also think Landmarkism. How could you, in your mind, adopt an idea called an ism, which is often what the Bible teaches against. You're compounding the problems that should not exist. So they call themselves either landmarkers, or landmarkism, or Baptist briders, or whatever. The teaching begins with the premise that John the Baptist started the church. John the Baptist had nothing to do with the church, or the bride of Christ, or the body of Christ, the building that's fitly framed together. John the Baptist had nothing to do with that. He introduced the bridegroom. He introduced the Messiah. And then he died before the church ever started. John the Baptist has nothing to do with the church. So if you're in the church that John the Baptist was in, you're in trouble, because he wasn't in a church. In fact, John the Baptist is the one who sent to Jesus and said, are you really the Messiah? That's as bad as the Catholic Church saying, well, Peter is our pope. That's the guy you chose? The one who denied Jesus three times? All right, so our head, the start of the church, the head of the church is who? Jesus Christ. Without question, without fail, it's impossible to come to any other conclusion. It's not John, and it's not your pastor. Your pastor's not the under-shepherd who's taking care of you on behalf of Jesus, and you need to submit to his. It's a bunch of, I wish I had the authority of the Catholic Church garbage. I wish I had a funny hat and the rings and all that stuff. Get over it. That's not how God set things up for the church. The church that John started is local and visible only based on what these men teach. And anyone who teaches the church is universal is basically a Catholic in disguise. That's the idea. That's the premise. We're not a universal church. Well, that phrase, that term is basically a straw man that doesn't exist. It's a boogeyman that doesn't exist. Every now and then, when they need it, it jumps out from under the bed and scares the person they're trying to argue with and hopefully tricks them into not using that term. And then they put it back under the bed when they don't need it anymore. There's no such thing as the universal church that they are talking about. The church is universal, the body of Christ, the church of Christ, the bride of Christ. That's every believer. The way you become part of that is you trust in Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit puts you in that, that bigger, larger entity. Now, if you don't like the term universal, I don't either. It's not a great term for what we're talking about. It's the bride. It's the body. It's the church. But then, the body meets in different places. All right, 1 Corinthians talks about the whole church coming together. Wouldn't that be something? If every believer was coming, and one day that will happen in heaven, and it's going to be a multitude of people coming together. But right now, the church at Lousdale, the church at Corinth, the church at Rome, that's where members of the body of Christ, the church, who live in Lousdale meet here. Does that make sense? That's the universal church, I know that's the bad word, meeting in a local assembly so that we can worship God together and carry out the task that God has asked a local assembly to carry out. Alright, so that's the Baptist pride. These men teach the only way to become a member of the body of Christ, here's where it really gets damning. which is only a local visible church, is through water baptism by a pastor who can trace his baptisms back to John the Baptist. And that's what they believe. That's what the church in New York taught me. And this is what, they believe this 100%. If you are not water baptized by one of their ministers, one of their pastors, who can prove their baptisms back to John the Baptist, then they believe it's possible you're saved. We're not going to take your salvation away from you, which is nice of them. I appreciate that. But according to them, you're not in the bride of Christ. Now that means John Wesley, Charles Wesley, George Whitfield, those men are not in the Bride of Christ according to Baptist Briders. I guarantee you none of those men want to stand next to those three men on Judgment Day. They will be ashamed of themselves. They do not measure up to those men. Those men were great. Baptist Briders are our brothers. I love them. I do. They just make my collar hot. And so they literally teach that John Wesley, Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield will be serving food to them at the marriage supper of the Lamb. They literally believe that and teach that. Now you say, well, where would they get that from in the Bible? Oh, yeah. Well, that's your problem. The reason you're not a Baptist bride is because you've been reading your Bible, not Baptist bride books. and go into their meetings and all that, and allowing this garbage to influence you. And so what churches do, you know, a lot of churches will say, well, we're not Calvinist, but we believe in the total depravity of man. Well, that's Calvinism. So you don't know that you've been influenced by Calvinism. We're not Baptist briders, but we, the church, is local, visible only. Well, that's a Baptist bride doctrine. You just don't know that you've been influenced by it. And so it gets pushed to an extent and churches adopt parts of it or all of it and it becomes kind of a hodgepodge of different issues. So through their baptism, which is the true baptismal authority, you not only become part of the church, which is only local and only visible, but you also become part of the body and bride of Christ. Both John Calvin and whoever started the Baptist Bride Doctrine, it was all taken from Catholicism. That's where it came from. They took parts in their efforts to fight against Catholicism, they adopted Catholic doctrine and teaching. The idea is they're fighting against the universal church. That's a term commonly used by Roman Catholics. And the Catholic use of that term is indeed wrong and ungodly. And we don't adhere to it and want nothing to do with it. And we'll fight against it every chance we get. But the church universally spoken of I mean that term in fact Baptist pastors used to use the word Catholic referring to the body and bride of Christ for centuries because all it means is universal. What they're saying is I'm not talking about the local assembly. I'm talking about the church as a whole. And that's all it means. But what Baptist Briders have done is taken this term and turned it into this secret monster that you can't agree with. And that's not the case. That's not right. So the Catholic Church or the Catholic doctrine, the Catholic Church's use of the word universal church is wrong. We don't adhere to that. We don't abide by that. We have nothing to do with that. And also, the way that Baptist briders and people who have adopted some form of their doctrine is also wrong, and we don't adhere to that. It amazes me that Baptist churches claim to fight against Catholicism, and yet, Merry Christmas and Happy Easter. Both Catholic, the Christ mass. What you're saying is I'm going to kill, I'm going to mass murder Christ, for on his birthday. Happy birthday, Jesus. It's amazing. Anyway, that's a whole other topic. You don't want me to get into that. That already, everybody's face just turned sour on me. So we'll move on. Just be consistent. You're going to fight against Catholicism and kick out all the Catholic teaching and all the Catholic religions or holidays. But that's not what they do. So happy winter solstice. You look that up and you'll see what I'm talking about, and then that'll open a whole other door of questions for you. It's another form of bondage. It's religious and oppressive. The Baptist bride adherents make the denomination more important than the Savior. They force the word water before the word baptism or the word local before the word church everywhere it is seen in the Bible. It has to be there. They require it. and it's not right. All right, next is hyper-dispensationalism. I'll just tell you about these next few for sake of time. Hyper-dispensationalism. My approach to Bible teaching, I am dispensational in my approach to Bible study and Bible teaching and Bible preaching. What that means is, in a nutshell, is you try and carefully, rightly divide the verse, the chapter, the book, everything that you're studying before you preach it so that you don't misapply a verse that belongs to Israel to the church or that belongs to the church to Israel. We talk a lot about the kingdom of heaven versus the kingdom of God. That's a proper division in the Bible. The Old Testament versus the New Testament. That's a proper division in the Bible. So you have to be careful to note these divisions as you're studying so that when you teach the Bible, you can teach it properly in context. A lot of things get taught as Bible doctrine that have nothing to do with the New Testament church. And so you want to be careful with that or you end up confusing people and causing more problems than not. Well, then there are people who took a good thing and just ran it in a ditch. They took dispensationalism, and when you add the word hyper in front of it, it just became a very negative thing. And now some people have a sour taste in their mouth for dispensational teaching because they conflate it or confuse it with hyper-dispensational teaching. And hyper-dispensational teaching, when people want to get into weird stuff, that's where they go. They jump in that ditch, and it gets weird. They believe that the way you get married, that they believe the Bible teaches the way you get married is through the physical act of, you know, what men and women do. So if you've ever had a physical relationship with a man or a woman, then according to them, you got married. Which is weird because Jesus went to a marriage in Cana of Galilee. I don't know what was going on, but that's really weird if that's what it means, which of course is not what it means. They believe that you're supposed to be Paul only. You only read the writings and teachings of Paul. There's nobody else that you read. So the four Gospels, not for you. Anything from Philemon to Revelation, not for you. You only read what Paul wrote in the New Testament epistles. Nothing else matters. They teach all sorts of, they believe that Paul had his own special gospel and that that particular gospel is preached to the Gentiles. And then Peter had a different gospel. Well, it's interesting because Paul said, I have, Paul said, I thank my God. So did Paul also have his own God? So if you're going to be consistent, you're going to have problems. Not only that, they believe you should read Paul only. We've looked at this before, but look at Romans 16 real fast. Romans 16. So their contention is you only read the writings of Paul, right? Romans 16, look at verse 22. I, Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord." Well, there goes the book of Romans. You can throw that out because Paul didn't write it. Not with his hand. So what do you mean? Did Paul receive the revelation? Is that acceptable? Or did Paul have to write it with his own hand? It just gets silly. Anyways, they have a number of doctrine. If somebody starts coming in here and telling you that there is no more water baptism, or if they start asking you, have you read the writings of Bullinger and Stam? Then you automatically know you're dealing with someone who's about to try and introduce some weird stuff in your church. Now, here's the problem. Whatever they believe, they know it very well. and they are able to come into a church, and they're going to secretly start meeting with people, and they're going to convince you because they can show it to you, and they can show it to you in a convincing manner. Now, it's not right. It's out of context. It's misapplied, misused, but they know how to come in and convince people, and their great and even desire to tear your church apart. They don't want it. They just want to come in and be exalted, seen as right, and then they move on and go tear apart another church. All right, so somebody comes in here and says, have you read the writings of Bullinger? Yeah, you and I are going to have to sit down and have a long conversation. Once again, you're welcome. You can be here. You're not teaching that garbage here. All right, so that's hyper-dispensationalism. Next is Old Testament salvation. There's another group of people who will come into churches and they will tear your church apart over Old Testament salvation. They require you to agree with them on Old Testament salvation. And if you disagree with them, then they're going to bite and devour and tear your church apart. And again, they know their Bible really well. They know how to convince you of what they think they believe. And if you don't agree with them or you disagree with them, then they're going to cause problems for you. And so what they believe is that in the Old Testament, people were saved, that is, received salvation of some form by keeping the law. Yeah, big problem, because multiple times, all through the New Testament, God said repeatedly, nobody ever kept the law. So that means that nobody was ever saved. until Jesus came and died on the cross. Nobody ever received any form of salvation whatsoever until Jesus came, if keeping the law was the requirement. And so the Bible says repeatedly, Galatians 2, 16 says, by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. That's not what it's for. Romans 3, 20, by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified. That's not it, right? Keeping the law did not give you salvation. Now, who's read Hebrews 11? Anybody? What is that chapter often called? And who does it list? Old Testament people who were saved by faith, not keeping the law. Everybody understand? All right, now we'll get into all that. We'll learn more of that, especially in Romans. It's going to be dealt with. We'll get deeper into it. But nobody was saved by keeping the law. You either had faith in what God said to you at that time, or you did not. That's the requirement. Now that faith, as we've talked about repeatedly, should produce some actions and some work. But the works it produces is just evidence of the existence of a lively faith. It is not evidence of someone trying to work their way into heaven or to paradise or whatever it is, depending on the time frame. And then the last few, there's a group in Arizona, they teach replacement theology. They are certain that the church replaced Israel. And all the promises given to Israel now belong to the church. And so basically the church is Israel. It's complete garbage. They also know their Bible very well. The problem with these last three groups Baptist briders don't tend to go into churches and try to tear them up. They just won't fellowship with you if you don't agree with them. Calvinists don't tend to go into churches and try to tear them up. That's typically not their MO, motive. But hyper dispensationalists and Old Testament salvation, those guys, And also the replacement theology people, they're going to come in your church wearing a shirt and tie. They're going to sing your hymns. They're going to be very conservative. Their wives are going to dress well. Their children are going to behave well. They're going to look like they fit in here. And the whole while, they're wolves in sheep's clothing, hoping to get an opportunity to devour the rest of the sheep. And so you just have to be very careful and pay attention to these little cues as people come in. That's why when people come in, I know we get excited and we're just like, you should join tomorrow. No, no, no, no. They need to sit. They need to listen. I need to get to know them. I need to find out where they're coming from. I don't care about letters or any of that garbage. I want to talk to them. I want to hear what you believe. And they're going to say things that are going to stand out to me. And then I can determine, I'm getting a hint of this or a hint of that. I need to dig deeper. Or this is just somebody looking for a church. Why don't you sit around for a couple months? If you still like it, then we'll talk to you about joining. That's what needs to happen. We don't need to encourage them. We don't need to push them, because these people a wolf in sheep's clothing. They're going to come in, they're going to sit down, and we're going to be so excited because their families are going to be so great, only to find out in a few months that they've devoured half the congregation. And so you've got to be careful. You have to be ready to pick up on those things and to deal with those things when they come in. It's not just up to the pastor, but in a congregation this small, it is going to fall on my shoulders for the most part. But the men of the church should be well-founded in the Bible and ready to handle those things when people come in and want to cause those types of problems. The last view, the all-seeing government. The government knows everything. They hear everything you say, watch everything you do, know everything you do. One time a pastor was talking about this. He was joking and he was saying, the government doesn't know everything you're doing. If they did, then why would there be missing people reports? And I said, well, what if the government is the one who made those reports? And he was like, shut up. See, it's a trick. All right, so listen, our government, look, I praise the Lord for the country we live in, but our government, if you haven't noticed, is fairly retarded. They're not very good at things. There are a few things they're okay at, but most things they're pretty bad at. So they're not watching you. They might want to. They may desire that kind of power. And I think we're moving in that direction with social media and phones and computers and all that and cameras. And so they can watch you more than they used to, but there's still a lot of stuff they don't know. And so we're not going to concern ourselves with those things. And by the way, the Bible expects you to be a good citizen. That's in the Bible. You're supposed to obey the laws of the land as long as those laws don't require you to violate the Word of God. The only time you're supposed to break the law is in order to keep God's Word. That's the only time we're permitted to do that. And by the way, you don't do it with a gun in a militia. You don't join the local militia. You don't get caught up in all those things. See, none of this appeals to me because I think most conspiracy theories are a joke. I am not a conspiracy theory type of guy. I need to see some facts. And I have a friend who's telling me this story about how the Clinton Foundation has a secret submarine. Did you think about what you just said? They have a secret submarine, but you know about it. And it goes from here to Haiti. What is it doing? And why do I care? How does it impact me? Well, I just, we should, you know, they need to be investigated. Well, you go investigate it. Jump on it. Go for it. And so I just, you know, Dr. Fauci, he's trying to kill everybody. No, I think he's just a moron who got caught up in something and got caught. I think something he was toying with got out of control. If his great-grandfather Biden doesn't win the next election, he's probably going to end up in a lot of trouble. There's a decent chance. We'll see. A lot of people get away with a lot of things in our government. It is true that our government is more corrupt now than it has ever been. We are definitely at a breaking point. But you shouldn't be scared of the government. We're not going to come in here and be anti-government, fight the government, hide from the government. We're just not doing that. That's not biblical. And also, the people doing that tend to be really weird. And so we don't want to be really weird. That'd be good, too. Next is anti-doctor. This is another idea that gets pushed in churches. Every doctor in the world is trying to kill you, is what these people believe, except their brother, who's a doctor. That's the only one who's not trying to kill. He's the only one that really knows. It's always that way. They believe that, are you sick? Eat these five weeds and drink a bucket of Gatorade and it'll save you. They have all these, you know, take these spices, take these oils, mix them all together, drink that, and your cancer will be gone. Look, if you believe that, no problem. Have at it. But don't come in here and convince somebody who has cancer to go drink these oils and not see a doctor. Jesus said, they which are sick need a physician. Now, we've talked about this before. In the same chapter that he said that was a woman that had an issue of blood 12 years, had seen many doctors and they couldn't heal her. So the Lord didn't say the doctor is going to have the ability to fix it, but if you need, if you're sick and you need a chance for it to be healed, you need to go to a doctor. That's what Jesus said, right? I like to follow what Jesus said. I like for you to follow what Jesus said. Now, we rarely ever go to a doctor. We also don't really do the natural remedy thing. People tell us stuff all the time, like, yeah, well, you show me some studies that that worked. Well, I have a friend, my cousin's third uncle, he tried it once. Yeah, that's not going to cut it. Bring me some documentation. I'm not believing that conspiracy theory, just like I don't believe Hillary Clinton jumped on a submarine and rode to Haiti. Show me something that is proof that I can believe and then we'll experiment with your... I always tell my wife, you keep that midget root snot stuff away from me. I don't want anything to do with it. But she's not really into that stuff at all. Her mom does the essential oils thing and makes natural soap and all that. I want soap with the chemicals that's going to get the dirt off. I want the medicine that has 55 other side effects because it'll fix the problem. It's so strong and potent that it works. I don't want the natural remedy that is so soft and tender that it doesn't do anything. It doesn't even fix the problem that it's reported to fix anyway. So be careful giving people medical advice. A lot of people are quick to do that but you don't know underlying conditions. You only know what that person has revealed to you and you might give them some advice and they might follow it and it might cause some serious harm and you could be liable. Have you seen a doctor? Now, this is what I do. I have studied diets and other things. I have stomach problems and all these things that doctors couldn't fix. And so I had to find some ways to help it or ease it. And so I will tell people what worked for me. Everybody hear that? It worked for me. If you want to try it, that's up to you. I'm not a doctor. I'm not telling you to do it. I'm not telling you to try it. I don't have some diehard regiment that I stick to. There are some general principles that I try and stick to and often don't even do that properly half the time. So I'm definitely not going to tell you, well, you need to eat like this. You need to take this. You need to drink that and do that. Don't do that. Don't be that person. Another thing is homeschooling. Oh, if you don't homeschool, then your child is going to end up being the devil or a child of the Antichrist. I don't know, something like that. Now, I don't think you should send your children to a public school today. But if you do, that's up to you. You take that chance. That's up to you. I think it's a bad idea, but it's up to you. Lord willing, as long as I can keep my children out of it, they will not be involved in those things. They'll be taught at home. They have a loving mother who knows what's best for them. They have a loving father who knows what's best for them. We will teach them. We're not sending them some stranger to tell them that they're confused about their gender, and then they come home with green hair and holes in their face, and they look like some gender-neutral creature, and we can't figure out what they are. So that's not happening. My son is a boy. He's all boy. And you know what? We never taught him that. It just happened that way. My daughter is so prissy and dramatic, it drives me insane. And we didn't teach her to be that way. That's who she is. She's given the liberty to be who she is within reason, within bounds. When my son picks up a girl doll, we take it and bash him over the head with it and tell him, stop picking that up. He picks up my daughter's bear, and we pick it up, and we throw it right in his face and tell him, stop playing with that. That's not for you. And then he wants to play with it more because he thinks it's funny. He knocks him down and flips him over, and then he goes and gets it and brings it back, and we do it again. But he knows he's a boy. He has guns and tractors and stuff like that. All right? Look, that stuff's going to come. This is all part of foundational doctrine to a church. Those people are going to come. God bless them. I hope they'll stay and we can help them. Otherwise, we will very kindly escort them out the door. Thank you. Please try the church down the road. They love that type of stuff. You should go there. All right, brother, would you pray for us? We hope you enjoyed this podcast. You can learn more about our ministry by visiting www.plenteusredemption.com. You can hear more Plenteous Redemption podcast audio at www.plenteusredemption.media. Please comment below if this podcast has been a help to you. Also, inform us of future topics that would interest you. 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