Good morning, everybody. First thing is I promised Kirby I would not steal his thunder, because we are going to take a passage from 2 Corinthians, but I'm not going to go into heavy exegesis in it. I don't want to take away his thunder. Today we're going to depart from that a little bit. We're going to do something perhaps a little bit different. I believe there are a lot of issues in our society that Christians need to be aware of. I think a lot of Christians are either naive, they don't care, they're ill-taught. And so things go on in society that we're not fully aware of. So I have an intriguing title for my lesson today. It's The Two-Headed Monster That's Stalking America. The Two-Headed Monster That's Stalking America. What do I mean by that? Well, I believe there are two philosophies, one on one end of the spectrum and one on the other end of the spectrum, that seemingly are pervading our society. On one hand, we have Marxism and secularism, and I put those two together. They fit like a hand in glove, believe me. And on the other hand, we have other extreme, we have mysticism, which is a little more subtle. The Marxism that we're experiencing in American culture now is sort of more in your face. We see it in our society. But the mysticism is there, and it's a little more subtle. I don't think people pick up on it. But these are two vying philosophies, if you will, and they're both terribly unbiblical. And a lot of this has sort of found its way into the church, which concerns me. And I see a lot of Christians not being aware of what either one is. A lot of people have stereotype thinking about what Marxism is or what mysticism is. So I hope in this short time, time is a cruel master, we can explore some of these. But turn with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 10. And I just want to read a passage there. But I want to pull out from that passage one particular verse that we're going to focus on. 2 Corinthians 10, I'll read that for you. I, Paul, myself entreat you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ, I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away, I beg of you that when I am present I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some who suspect us of walking according to the flesh. For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. And here's the verse I want you to focus on. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments, and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete." Now, the apostle here is defending, making a defense of his ministry. The accusation was, well, you're pretty stringent and strong when you write, but when you show physically, well, you're not that impressive. But he's defending his ministry. But within that context, He says this, we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive. That's a very important verse for the Christian. That's our job. Now, what does he mean by arguments? Well, first of all, the early Christian fathers felt that that was clearly the Jewish opposition to the gospel, the arguments from scripture that were opposed to Christ. And that's a pretty good position. I would think that was accurate. He also mentions lofty opinions. Now these are man-centered opinions, and it doesn't necessarily have to be a unconverted person. At the turn of the 20th century, late 19th century, we had the higher criticism of scripture, German higher criticism that sort of diminished the authority of scripture. And it gave birth to a lot of liberal denominations. So don't think in terms of only unsaved people or the world. This is within the church itself, too. But the first thing I want you to see is this is an unequivocal statement. There is no bargaining chip with Paul. He doesn't say, well, there's an instance where we have to sort of retreat and pull back and change what we believe. He says everything to the contrary. We should not have a little coexist sticker on the back of our Volvo, you know, with all the different symbols. We certainly want to be charitable to other people who believe things, but our goal really is conversion, not assimilation. Our goal as Christians is to convert people, not to assimilate into what they believe. So Paul, you hear, uses military terms. He talks about a tower or a stronghold. If you were in battle in a desert and you saw a tower, it would be pretty imposing, it'd be high. And Paul says, this is what opposes the gospel. And then he talks about anything that raises itself above the gospel. In our society we live today, we have a lot of people who raise themselves above the gospel. They either say, I don't care what you're talking about, it's irrelevant to me, or I understand what you're saying, but I don't care. And so that's what we're confronted with. That's the high tower we're confronted with. And Paul says that we are to not just be neutral, we're to take these thoughts and to wrestle them down to the ground and to bring them captive to Christ. That's our job as Christians. We can't just be bystanders. So in the society we have today, we're just soaked with secularism. Our society is completely soaked in secularism. There was a time when people shared common beliefs. excuse me, even unbelievers, they sort of knew, had a sense of right and wrong, and that's gone by the wayside in our society. Now, when Paul says, take every thought captive, it's important to know that he's not particularly saying our personal thoughts, like he does in a lot of the other writings. He's not saying you have to discipline your mind. He did address that, but that's not what I believe he's talking about here. He's talking about philosophical thoughts that may impact society or impact people's thinking in general. And we are to wrestle them to the ground. That's why he's using this military illusions. We have to wrestle those thoughts to the ground and not accept them. So we have to grasp that, and most Christians don't, they say they do, they pay lip service to this, that when we have our Bibles, this is the only thing that we have that's absolute truth. It's not relative truth, it's absolute truth. And you shouldn't think, once again, that it's only for non-Christians that attack the Bible. There are movements in the Christian church. I could point to the turn of the 20th century, the Neo-Orthodox movement. We say this is the truth. The Neo-Orthodox movement said it contains the truth. Now, that sounds good, but that's a big difference. In other words, what they were teaching was When the Bible speaks of salvific things, about salvation, it's true. When it speaks of things like six-day creation, historical battles, and so forth, well, let's not take it too seriously. So that diminished the church also, the authority of the Bible. So that is a background. All right, let me see if you remember your junior high school history. The Industrial Revolution, right? Remember the Industrial Revolution? We all learned about this, we all had the timelines in junior high school. About 1760 to 1770 it started, started in England, spread through Europe. Great things were happening, now instead of doing everything by hand, machines were taking over, manufacturing, all kinds of goods and services were being spread, people were being employed. A lot of good things were happening, but also a lot of bad things were happening. There were children, you know, 11, 12-year-old children working 16 hours a day. The factories were filthy. They were very dangerous. The wages were not very good. So in this era, toward the end of this era, out came the Communist Manifesto. Its author Karl Marx was a philosopher. Marx was trained in philosophy, not so much economics, but he he sort of segued more into economics and history than what his training was. Now, a lot of people caricature Marxism by everybody gets the same thing, wears the same coat. It's a little more complicated than that. It's a little more subtle than that. People also think that Marxism, the only thing that the Marxists have is the Communist Manifesto. Marx and his co-author, who was also his benefactor, Engels, wrote volumes. I mean, I could fill up this room. Everything from the family to the arts, you name it, volumes. I mean, Das Kapital, his work on economics, is three gigantic volumes. So it's not just the Communist Manifesto. It's a more subtle, advanced philosophy. But Marx's philosophy was that there is alienation in society. If you wanted to sum up Marxism in one word, it would be economics. Marx reduced everything to economics. Who you are as a person, your identity, where you get things from, et cetera, all comes down to economics. There is a tension, he said, between the factory owner and the factory worker, your landlord and the renter, et cetera, et cetera. And this creates an alienation in society. Now, he borrowed a lot from the philosopher Hegel. Now, Hegel was another complicated philosopher, can't go into all the things that he taught. However, the thing I want you to know, one thing I want you to know is that the main philosophical thing that Marx took from Hegel was this concept of thesis, antithesis, and then synthesis. He felt that that's how society moves along. You have a thesis, then you have an opposing view, they come together and they form something new. Now right away, from a biblical perspective, we have to say, wait a minute, that should send up a red flag. We don't take the word of God, we don't stick our finger up in the air and see which way the wind is blowing, put it together with scripture, and then we come up with something new over here. But if you follow what's going on in the Christian church in America, that Marxist view of thesis, antithesis, synthesis is working in the church. You just have to go and see how some churches worship, what they're teaching, what they're allowing in the church, and so forth. So the church, unfortunately, it's not only the Marxism out there in society, but suddenly making its way into the church. Now, Hegel also talked about something called the world spirit. It's another one of those complicated philosophical things. But basically, it's human consciousness As it evolves, and it evolves to a point where you have this world spirit, you can call it his definition of God. Well, Marx liked that, but he did something that turned everything on its ear. He took the concept of this ultimate world spirit, he eviscerated God from it, and he injected man. So now man is the center of all things. Man can solve his own problems. Man doesn't need religion. Man can do all these things without God. You've heard the expression, pie in the sky. That's a Marxist expression. It's you want now, but you have to wait in some future world. Marx said forget about it. You have to worry about that now. Religion just takes people's mind off what they need to do, which is to transform society. It's pie in the sky. So it's the opiate of the masses, you've heard that too. He wanted to get rid of religion. Marx's view was that if you work in a factory or something and you produce for all the workers to get paid, everything above that goes into the pocket of the factory owner. He thought that was terrible. You shouldn't have one person absorbing that much money. It should be distributed in society. Again, once again, very complicated view of economics. But this is why it's invaded our society. This is why Christian ethics have gone out the window in the last 50 years. Our society has moved more and more and more secular. And perhaps you've heard the term the nuns, N-O-N-E-S. These are people who have no religion. A lot of them are young. It's not that they're anti-religion, they just don't care. They have no religion in particular. So this concept of oppression that comes out of Marxism has invaded different demographic groups. It's no longer just the worker against the factory owner. Now it's oppression. Everybody's oppressed. Whether you're a man, a woman, whether you are an indigenous person, a person of color, you're miserable because you're oppressed. And that's why we have a society that's going around us emotionally wounded, unable to cope, and unable to produce. I'm unhappy, people are declaring, because I'm oppressed. And I would venture to say that there's a lot of people, especially on college campuses, I'd say the under-30 crowd, who are walking around in this very hyper-sensitive mode, thinking that their life is coming to an end because somehow they're oppressed by society. And I submit to you this is a a Western belief, because if you went to somebody in the third world digging a hole to look for water to keep his family alive for one more day, and you went up with a microphone, you got your CNN reporter going up and saying, are your emotional needs being met? Now the person would say, what? It's very Western, his thinking. Certainly we want to be equitable and fair in our dealings with people, but economics is not the sole end of man. Romans 3.23, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Man's problem is sin. Man's problem is a separation from God. And while economics is important, that's not man's initial problem. It's a separation from God. So we don't back off from what Scripture teaches, and unfortunately, again, in the American church we have backed off, and there's even some things going on in the PCA, but the American church is now, you hear things like same-sex attraction is okay, and women preachers, and acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle, et cetera, has found its way into the church. So this is all coming out of the Marxist concept of oppression. It's sort of a perversion of it, because Marx really wanted, you know, it was based on economics and it filtered down and so forth, but this is where it comes from. We have Marxism and secular humanism working on this. I hope you see from the little outline I gave you how this is pervading our society and infesting the church. So that's one side of the equation. We have Marxism and secularism. The other side is mysticism. Now this is a little bit more subtle, but it's in the church. It's out there in society. It's a little more subtle, but it's there. Within mysticism and within mystical religions or things of that nature, there's this concept of oneness. All is one. God is one with everything. He's in the rocks, the trees, the birds, and the bees. He's in with his creation. He's part of his creation. He's together with his creation. Now, Islam is a little bit different. That's in a different category. That's really a perversion of the excuse me, the biblical story. It says that Christ didn't finish the work, so Muhammad had to come and finish the true work of God, et cetera. We know that's false and completely unbiblical, but it's not really mystic in a sense. There are mystical elements of Islam, there are, but it's a bit different than the mysticism that we see in our society. Secondly is this concept of, for lack of a better term, absorption. You see, Christianity is an exclusive religion. We believe there's one way to salvation. It's Christ. It's Christ and Christ alone. But mysticism absorbs religions. It says, there's truth in what you're saying, so I'm going to absorb some of that. I'm going to absorb some of that. If you went into a Hindu's house, you may find a little statue of Christ there. Why? Because they're just absorbing Christ as one of the many gods of their pantheon. So, that is pervasive in our society. And the thing that we have to get clear, and this is very important, I think, for the Christian to understand, and I think many don't, is God's relationship to his creation. How does God relate to his creation? If we get that wrong, we are opening ourselves up to mysticism. I'll read this to you, we'll go to Genesis chapter one, right to the beginning. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light, and there was light. And God saw that light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning the first day. What do we learn from these opening verses of scripture? Well, we learn that God is separate from his creation. God is the architect who creates the world. He's not in there with the rocks and the trees and the birds and the bees. He's the architect outside the world that's creating. An analogy would be, if you look at a painting, when you look at a beautiful painting, you're not seeing the artist. you're seeing what the artist has created. And that's very similar to the creation story. We're not looking at God per se. We're looking at his handiwork. But God is not in his creation. All mystical religions, especially Hinduism and Buddhism, believe that God is within the creation itself. So there are two words that mean to make or to create in Hebrew and you're very familiar with them I'm sure. One is asah, that's the most common. If I want to build a building and you put lumber here and roofing here and insulation here and I made it, I'm making it from materials that are there. That's asah. Barah, which the Bible uses in the creation narrative is creating from nothing. Now there is Asa being used within the creation narrative, and this is why you have a lot of theistic evolutionists saying, well God started the process, but because Asa is in there, it means that we could have evolved. But that's a misnomer, because if you read the text, Clearly, God creates from nothing. So it may sound like a very basic, obvious, and silly thing, but the physical world is real. The physical world is real. And I say that because a lot of mystical religions will say the physical world is not real. The Hindus call the physical world Maya. It's an illusion. The real world is out there somewhere. But clearly, God has created a physical world. All these religions are all works-oriented. As mystical as they are, they're works-oriented. You have to meditate. You have to get off the wheel of reincarnation. It's like, you know, Groundhog Day. You just keep doing it and doing it until you get it right. But because of man's sin, we can never get it right under our own power. I have a close... childhood friend who's a Buddhist, claims to be a Buddhist. And I always ask him, Bill, how do you deal with sin? And he has no answer for it, because he probably doesn't believe in sin. These are mistakes, or these are errors, things that you can straighten out. But man can't do that. It's all man-centered. So while they're seeking to get off this wheel of reincarnation, they're doing all these works that are anti-biblical and are mystical in their application. Meditation really took off in this country in the 60s. And I have to say, I have to admit, it pains me to say this, but the Beatles are responsible for a lot of it. George Harrison, you know, Christian Consciousness, Transcendental Meditation, and things of that nature, they're not harmless. because there are even Christians that practice these things, and I'm kind of astounded that they would, knowing what the Bible says. But these are things that have infested the church. So you see you have Marxism on one side, affecting thinking of oppression, and on the other side you have this mystical interpretation, which is sort of fluid. They can't deal with absolute truth, and we've said that the Bible is absolute truth. So, if you're a into meditation, meditation tells you to empty your mind, okay? Now, I don't watch much TV, but if you see, if you just notice, every other commercial has somebody sitting in the lotus position. When they talk about relaxation, the person is sitting in a lotus position. I can tell you as somebody who practiced yoga for many years, it's not harmless. That is worship. That person is in a form of worship. They are worshiping a non-entity or they're worshiping Satan. So, it's not harmless, but you'll see it commercialized. So, as Christians, we have to be aware of these things. This concept of emptying our minds is very dangerous. I just want to read, you don't have to turn there, I'll read it for you. Philippians 4, 4, this is what Paul says, Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be made known to everyone, the Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God, and the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Notice, our hearts and our minds have to be what? They have to be guarded. Yeah, we don't empty our minds out. That's a very dangerous thing to put on the playing field. The Bible says something other than that. It continues in verse 8, Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things. where you have learned and received and heard and seen and may practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you." Now, we don't, as Christians, empty our minds. We fill our minds. We fill our minds with the Word of God. That's our only—that's our combat against worldly thinking and against satanic influences. You can see, if you step back and you look at our society, you can see these two things working in our society, and even infiltrating the church, and it's really, I think, a very serious issue that Christians should be aware of. Okay, now I'm going to take off a little bit more on that and say something that's very controversial, which it shouldn't be. Many Christians practice, I know Christians who practice yoga. As I said, I practiced yoga for many years, thinking that it's harmless, it's just an exercise. But it's not an exercise. Christians should really not be practicing yoga or anything of the sort for a number of reasons. I know they mean well, but having practiced yoga, I know that every move, every position in yoga is a form of worship. The word itself means to yoke. Yoga means to yoke. What are you yoking to? You're yoking to eternal Brahma. That's Satan to you and I. They may not put it that way, but you're practicing this toward a false god. So you're yoking yourself to this false god. Within yoga is this concept of the chakra. This is the force in your spine that you want to make go up your spine into your head for enlightenment. Now another word for chakra is the coiled serpent. That should be a tip-off right there. The coil or simply the serpent. There it is. And Christians should really not be involved in it. Let me give you an analogy. If I went to the Catholic church down the block, and I went before the monstrance. As you know, Catholics believe that God is in that wafer. When he's in that altar, he's in that wafer. And I started genuflecting and crossing myself. What are you doing, Joe? I'm working out my legs. I give my legs a workout. Would you buy that? No, that's a form of worship. Well, yoga is a form of worship. That's why no Christian should be practicing yoga. So the point is, we have these two things competing, and one is very subtle, and one is very in your face, and one is, they're both pervasive in society, and unfortunately they found their way into the church. And it's very basic, but the first commandment, I am the Lord your God, you shall not have strange gods before me. It doesn't have to be Brahma, it could be economics. It could be wealth, money, or anything of that nature, or the very philosophy of, you know, this alienation and feeling that you're oppressed. It's become sort of a quasi-religion in our country, that people are oppressed, and they're, you know, I'm a person of color, or I'm, you know, Lithuanian, or I'm a woman or a man who is oppressed, and so forth. It's pervasive in society, but it violates everything that scripture says. Our identity is in Christ, You're not owned by your boss or the landlord. We're not to clear our minds. If we live in this society, we're to fill our minds with scripture, okay? And the first commandment makes it very clear. A strange God could be a lot of different things, okay? So let me just see if I can summarize all of this. We have many concerns in life. We go through life and we have many concerns. We are We have economic concerns, we have concerns for our children, we have concerns, I think it's legitimate to be concerned with what's going on in the Middle East, in our government, but the core of man's need is to have a right relationship with God. And these things divert us away from it. And that's why Marx wanted to do away with religion. Religion is the opening up the masses. It takes their mind off revolution and changing things and puts it on this, what he thought was a pie-in-the-sky concept. But it's not pie-in-the-sky. In fact, that's our firm reality. So we have that. It's not salvific. Anything that we focus on in life that is not salvific, is not something that we should put all our heart into. Our job is to preach the gospel. And that's why, if you go out in society, your neighbor, your co-worker, a relative, they may be involved in one of these things, in either some kind of Marxist thinking or some kind of mystical thinking, and you're wondering, How come they're so pliable when I ask, when I confront them with the gospel, or why are they so vehemently against the gospel? It's one of these two philosophies that they might not even know that they're imbibing in, because it's so saturated in our society. So I think that's a good tool when you're evangelizing. You know, you're talking to somebody and you're evangelizing them. One way or the other they're being influenced by one of these, in my view, one of these philosophies. This is particularly American, but it does invade some European thinking also. We have to remember 1st Timothy 2.5, where there is one God and there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at a proper time. We have one mediator. We're supposed to fill our minds with his teaching, not empty our minds and live our lives accordingly. And so we have to be, I think, more aware as, excuse me, Bible-believing Christians about what's seeping into the Church. And as I go back to what I said before about thesis and antithesis, that's alive and well in the Church, and that's alive and well in our society. Marxism isn't some is not relegated to the 19th century. It's alive and well. Somebody said Marxism isn't dead, it just smells funny. But it's alive and well in our society. And the other issue is, of course, mysticism. God is not distant from his creation. He's everywhere in his creation, but he's not part of that creation. He's not within that creation. And also, we're not to empty our minds, but to fill our minds. And I think Christians, we have to have good time management. And I'm guilty of this, too. I'm distracted by a lot of things going on in my life. I don't spend enough time in scripture. And usually, when we get to a point where we're getting nervous or we feel overwhelmed, it probably leads back to the fact we're not spending enough time in prayer and in supplication before God. As Martin Luther said, I'm so busy today, I have to pray for three hours. So that's what we need to do, and to supply ourselves with the word of God. But these are some things I wanted you to be aware of. I think there's a lot of Christians that are simply in a mode where they just sort of Cadillac through life, and they just don't really understand what's going on in society. And you cannot really, in my view, analyze society unless you're familiar with these two different competing philosophies, but they're both unbiblical. One's pulling from one side, one's pulling from the other side. And we see we're on the cusp of Reformation Day. But of course, a lot of people are going to celebrate Halloween and all the things that go with it. And I said to my wife the other day, you would think, with all the carnage going on in the Middle East, that people wouldn't put up, like, skeletons and macabre faces on their lawn. But they do. I guess they just don't care, or they're just not knowledgeable. They think it's fun. But these things are not really harmless. They're not harmless. And we have to be aware of these things as Christians. So in the mix of all the things that you learn in the Bible, you have to learn also what's going on in your society. And these are things, having been in both this camp over here and this camp over there, I could tell you are pervasive in our society. I hope this has been somewhat helpful, give you a little insight into what I see is going on and maybe help you in your walk and have a better understanding when you're watching the news, which you have to filter. because you're not getting the real deal all the time, even from so-called conservative outlets, that you can filter it and say, well, that doesn't sound right to me. And usually it's one of these two philosophies pulling one side or the other and trying to convince you that to stand with Christ and to stand with the Bible is somehow you're a weirdo or something. Years ago I was listening to a This is back in the 60s when I was a kid, I had my radio on, I heard this, I used to get, I'm going across the dial and I get, I'm up in New York, and I get WWVA, Wheeling, West Virginia, which was a gospel station, 50,000 watts, and somehow I got it up in New York. And I heard this Fundamentals preacher saying, you want to be a weirdo today? This is the 60s, where everybody had long hair and the music. He said, you get yourself a crew cut, a three-piece suit, a big Bible, and you walk down the street, and you'll be considered a weirdo. And at that time, he was right. But now, we're considered weirdos because we stick to the Word of God, which people think is like Marx when they say, pie in the sky, or a lot of it is myth. It doesn't just exist that way. This is a philosophy that's vying for your mind. And that's why we have to fill our minds with the Word of God. Well, anyhow, I hope this has been somewhat helpful to you. Let's close in prayer before we go into worship. Father God, again, we thank you for your Word. Please, Lord, help us to be aware of these things. There are many things out there that are vying for our attention, actually, Lord, vying for our hearts. And help us, Lord, to spend more time with you and your word, to be aware, to be able to filter information that comes into our minds, whether from the media or from people that we know, and to stand for the word, to fill our minds, not to empty our minds, but to fill our minds with the word of God and give you honor. And so we ask you this, even as we go into worship, that our hearts would be open to receive the Word that you have for us this day. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.