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Good morning, brothers and sister.
It's nice to have you. Sisters, hello. Suzanne, how
are you? Thank you for coming and honoring
me with your presence here. this morning. The title is Animism,
Coming Soon to a Neighborhood Near You. I also call animism
the default religion of the world, and I think you'll understand
why as we continue. So you have a fairly detailed
handout there. And so if you have the handout,
now's the time to take the handout, read it later, and then go listen
to Will or somebody else. And I wouldn't mind at all, because
I'd love to hear that ethnology lecture by David Doran. Wouldn't that be fun to hear?
to see what he's doing, to understand the cultures that he's working
with. I think that's what it's about.
I don't know, but I assume that is. But I'll hear it on sermon
audio or wherever these presentations are uploaded. Everyone doing
well? It's been a great, great time. I praise God for the teaching
that we just had, that rescuing mission sermons from the ghetto
of missions conferences. So good. So good. Praise God. So animism, animism needs to
be on the radar of the American church for at least three reasons.
One, as America turns away from Christianity, well, let's have
a word of prayer first. Oh, Father, may your spirit and
your word transform our understanding today. May we be filled with
pity and love for people who are chained by Satan. And may we see that the gospel
sets them free. Only the gospel of our Lord Jesus
sets them free. May we become wise practitioners,
wise teachers and preachers and gospelers. In Jesus' name, amen. So, three reasons for animism
to be on the radar. One, as America turns away from
Christianity, it's going to default to our ancient religion. It's not just people from majority
world countries who have animism as part of their ancient religion.
What did my forebears in? England, and Scotland, and Ireland.
What did they worship? They worshiped demons. They sacrificed
to demons. And they did that all the way
until somebody left their comfortable homes around the Mediterranean
and went to the hinterlands, went to these islands of my Irish
and English forebears, and preached the Gospel. And it set them free.
It's just that it was an amazing thing. Now, Even as America turns
more and more secular, they're going to, at the same time, turn
more and more animist. This is a strange thing to me.
Maybe you have an idea of why this is happening. But people
who call themselves secularists, many of them like to also call
themselves very spiritual. And you're probably meeting more
and more people who describe themselves as spiritual, but
at the same time, more secular than they've ever been before.
And they're adopting a lot of animistic practices and worldviews
without even knowing it. And this is happening everywhere.
I was in Oklahoma putting gas in a borrowed RV. And a guy came
up to me. He was trembling like this. And
he said, I've got to talk to you. He said, I noticed you're
bumper sticker evangelism. It wasn't my friend's bumper
sticker. Anyway, he says, I've got a problem.
Please help me. And he told me this sordid tale
of how he got involved in an immoral relationship with these
ladies. The ladies also happened to be like witches and Wiccan
practitioners. And then they had a falling out,
and the sisterhood put a curse on him, and he was absolutely
terrified. And he was just in this parking lot, just trembling
in his car. And so we started talking. He
says, are you afraid of curses? I said, no, because I believe
in God who is trillions and trillions of times stronger than all the
demons and spirits put together. And I went on to tell him lovingly
that the curse that he really ought to be worried about is
the curse that comes when we rebelled against God and we place
ourselves under the power of Satan and demons. And how Christ
came to set us free. This is a white guy in Oklahoma.
Strange, isn't it? Two, animism needs to be on our
radar because of the blessing of immigration. And it really
is a blessing. And frankly, I don't care about what your view of
immigration policy is. Once people get here, we gotta
love them. We have to love them. You can't
look across the supermarket and see somebody and just kind of
have a negative attitude toward them because you figured they
got in here the wrong way. That's not ours. Our job is to love them and to
help them in any way we can. And so it so happens that a lot
of immigrants, probably nearly all of them, are steeped in animism
of various forms. Even those who claim to be from
a Catholic country or a Buddhist country or a Muslim country.
And for a lot of them, that's just the veneer. Deep down, they're
animists. It's like Christians in America
who go to church two or three times a year, Christians in America. Deep down, they have other gods. And that's true of a lot of people. Three, we need to become wise
about animism because we're training missionaries in our churches.
And those missionaries will likely serve in a culture significantly
influenced by animism. So if the people you're training
who are going to Brazil think that they're going to a predominantly
Catholic country, they will not be as effective. they'll be in
for a rude awakening. Because Catholicism or going
to South Sudan or Somalia, thinking they're going to a Muslim country,
sure, there's that veneer. But for most people in most countries,
at their very heart, they're animistic. And the official religion
is just on the outside. A strong case can be made that,
well, Cambodia is a case in point. It's a Buddhist country. 95%
of Cambodians call themselves Buddhists. But like most Americans,
their official religion has very little impact on their day-to-day
lives. Because Buddhism is not a day-to-day religion. Animism
is a day-to-day religion. In that sense, it's similar to
Christianity in that it impacts us every single day. Does that
make sense? So for a Cambodian, the typical
Cambodian's life, as I said, is not much affected by Buddhism.
If you really want to get something done, you go to your animistic
practitioner, and he'll tell you how to succeed in business,
or how to get a spouse, or how to make someone fall in love
with you, or how to pass an exam, or the best day to get married. the auspicious day, or to take
a curse off of you, or put a curse on somebody else, or a counter-curse.
And the person who can help you there, the person who can really
shake the unseen world that controls every aspect of their life, is
the local animistic shaman. And then he might be told by
maybe a diviner to give some sacrifice or something like that. Now, Buddha taught against super. Buddha was like the Martin Luther
of Hinduism. Hinduism is. Stick with me now. All right, Hinduism is animism
on crack. It is absolutely crazy. I mean, it's just wild. And it
made, I almost said Martin Luther, it made the Buddha sick. And he wanted to cleanse it.
He wanted to purify it. He wanted to make it just kind
of a theoretical religion instead of this gross. And it is gross. Hinduism is absolutely gross. He wanted to fix it of all those
superstitions. And it worked for about a generation. And then, whew, because Buddhism
has a power vacuum. Buddhism says this. It says,
depend on yourself for your own salvation. Talk about power vacuums.
Huh? Huh? Depend on yourself for your
own salvation? Vacuum city. I mean, it's just
like we have nothing. We have no power. And so back
into this power vacuum comes animism almost immediately within
one generation. And now Buddhism is mainly just
a shell for animism. Even the Buddhist pagodas have
god houses. I was at the most famous Buddhist
pagoda and talking to some monks that were there. We were just
sitting around yakking. And I said, hey, I got a question for you.
How come at the north, south, east, west points of this whole
complex, there are spirit houses? When Buddha taught against that.
And they kind of looked down at their shoes. Well, they didn't
have shoes. They were barefoot. Looked down at their toes. And
they said, we don't know. Weird, huh? Yeah. See? I was waiting for my car
to get fixed not too long ago. Having a great conversation with
a Khmer man, really neat Khmer person. He was asking questions
about America and asking why I was there. We talked about
religion some. He talked about his religion. I talked about
my religion, my faith. And then I said, could I please
ask you a question? He goes, sure. He said, why does
it seem? I mean, I said, every single
Buddhist has a spirit house in front of their, every single
Buddhist wears amulets. Every single Buddhist ties red,
ties amulets to their car so they don't get into accidents.
But every single car that gets into an accident has amulets.
I mean, it's just like, anyway. So I said, but not a single house
of a Christian has spirit house in front of it, or not a single
Christian wears amulets. And here's my question, why is
it that Buddhism seems to be unable to set its practitioners,
its believers free from the fear of demons and spirits? And he
said, and he thought, it was a long time. It was like 30 seconds,
which in a conversation is a long time, right? And then he said
this. He said, it's probably. And I
said, but why are Christians completely unafraid? He said,
it's probably because Christians have the creator God living inside
of them. Wow. Isn't that great? Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. So how widespread is animism? Over
2 billion, and this was 30 years ago, probably more like 3 billion
are involved in animism of one kind or another. I think it's
greater than that. And so the missionary who doesn't
understand animism is not going to be as effective. in his ministry. And as immigrants
from the majority world flood into America, we need to understand
that most of those immigrants have been affected, have an animistic
worldview, along with their official religion. So what is animism? Can you all see that? So we're going to divide this
definition. This is from Galen Van Renen,
who wrote a book that you need to read twice because it's so
good. It's called Communicating Christ
in an Animistic Context. And don't just get the book and
hand it to your missionary candidates, OK? Get the book and read it
yourself so you can understand. Get into the mind of people that
you meet who are from the majority world, or people like the guy
in Oklahoma who was shaking. So the belief that personal spiritual
beings and impersonal spiritual forces have power over human
affairs and power over every, all human affairs. It's pervasive. And consequently that human beings
must discover what beings and forces are influencing them.
What does the Bible call that? divination, divining, discovering,
in order for them to determine future actions and frequently
to manipulate that power for their own benefit. Let's unpack
that. First of all, it's a belief system. And like all belief systems,
it answers all of their questions. They're not, you know, it's not
like, so here, this ball here, or this puzzle here, stands for
animism, the animistic worldview. And the fact, they think that
it's like a complete worldview, right? It answers all the questions
that we think are important. But actually, it's missing some
significant parts, so we're just gonna take some of these off.
And so there's holes in it, see? that they don't know about. They
think that everything's fine and that it answers all their
questions. But it's a coherent system. And it's a system that assumes
that the seen world, here it is, ready? The seen world is
related to the unseen in very, very close ways. And that an
interaction exists between the divine and the human. I'm quoting
Van Rienen here. And between the sacred and profane,
the holy and the secular. Animus live in continual fear
of these powers. Imagine how afraid you would
be if you were a shop owner in Chicago and the mafia came to
your house and said something like, yeah, it's a nice little
shop you got here. It'd be a shame if something
happened to it, that kind of thing. And you'd be scared. What's
going to happen? What am I going to do? if hundreds of groups of mafia
came to your house and said the same thing. And you're just surrounded
by these enemies who are just going to hurt you. And that's
the life of a, the horrible life of an animist. It's like a negative
It's like an opposite Coram Deo. You know, Coram Deo, living always
in the presence of God. Well, for them, it's Coram Demonia,
or whatever the Latin word there is, because they're always living
under this shadow, and it's a terrible way to live your life. So because it's a complete system,
it answers all of his questions and solves all of his problems. How do I get this business deal? How can my crops be plentiful?
How can I take this curse off? How can I get well? Because all
sicknesses can be traced to demons. How can I make that person fall
in love with me? It solves all their problems. They're not really asking how
can I get to heaven or be right with God because Well, number
two, animism is a belief in personal beings and impersonal forces.
So personal beings would be what kind of beings? Have you got
any guesses? Well, it's probably on there already. Ghosts, demons,
angels, gods, little g. God, big G. Remember Balaam,
the number one shaman in the ancient Near East? He was so
famous for being a great shaman. And in his arsenal of weapons,
he also included God, big G. Isn't that interesting? It's not surprising, because
you want all the different powers you can if you're an animistic
shaman. Forces, on the other hand, are
impersonal. So the power behind voodoo or
astrology, the force of karma, which has to be an extremely
powerful force to keep track of somehow every single thing
that I do and repaying me exactly what needs to be repaid for that
particular good or bad activity. Animism, thirdly, is a belief
in power. Power over human affairs. So
in fact, the essence, quoting Galen Van Rienen, the essence
of animism is power. Power of his dead ancestor to
control those of his lineage. Power of an evil eye, so that
would be an impersonal force, to kill a newborn or to ruin
a harvest. The power of planets and stars
to affect earthly destiny, astrology. Power of the demonic to possess
a spiritist or anyone, really. Power of magic to control human
events. Power of impersonal forces to
heal a child or make a person wealthy. And so animists frenetically
seek power because they feel powerless in the face of all
these things. And you would, too, if you really
thought that your life was completely controlled. Every event in your
life was controlled by these evil spirits or ancestors or
whatever, evil eye. you would be frenetically looking
for a solution of power to help you through all this. Number
four, animism is discovering, and the biblical word there is
divining, which beings or forces are responsible for the events
in one's life. Now, because unless you know
which particular being or force is responsible for any particular
problem or event, you can't hope to do any kind of appeasing or
manipulating or, yeah, of that power for your
benefit. And so Van Rienen gives some
questions. Who has caused this affliction
to come upon me? Why has it happened to my family
at this particular time? What power is troubling me? Has
this been caused by an ancestor, by a spirit, by witchcraft, evil
eyes, stars? Who can help me discover the
cause and source of this evil? And so the animist is always
off balance, constantly off balance. It's an unstable kind of life.
We should be very sad for them and very motivated to preach
the gospel to them. Now, often a village will have
two kinds of animistic practitioners. This is common all over the world.
They'll have, and I don't know why it's separated like this,
but usually there's more of a neutral diviner, often a woman. Often she'll get possessed by
some sort of spirit, and her job is to tell you why you have
this problem in your life. But she can't solve it. She tells you how to solve it.
And so she might say, well, you've got to sacrifice a chicken to
this particular spirit, or you offended this particular ancestor,
and he demands when he died, you didn't do an animal sacrifice
to him, and he's hungry, and you've got to do it, or he's
going to come kill you. I mean, your parents are going
to come back and kill you because you didn't sacrifice a, anyway. So then, or she might refer you. You know how doctors refer patients.
She might refer you to the local shaman. She might say, there's
a curse put on you. And she'll say, I can't do anything
about it, but he can. And so you'll go to this man.
And it might be the same guy who helped someone else put a
curse on you. And you don't mind. It's not like, I'm not going
to him. Yeah, you'll go to him. Because for money, he can take
the curse off. Now, the diviner may depend on
dreams, possession by a spirit, which is usually what happens,
visitations from the dead. But I repeat myself. Trial by
ordeal, astrology, whatever. Number five, animism is manipulating
or appeasing these spirit beings and forces. So once you've discovered
the source of the problem, we need a solution, a course of
action. Pay a fine, sacrifice, whatever,
counter curse. And Van Rienen very rightly emphasizes
the stark contrast between this kind of impersonal manipulation
of the spiritual forces for your benefit to the very personal
relationship that is the goal of Christianity. So he says,
the Christian way is based on personally relating to the sovereign
God and giving Him glory and honor. The animistic way is based
on manipulating the divine to serve human needs. And often,
often it takes years for a convert to Christianity to make that
switch in his mind to stop trying to manipulate God for his own
purposes, his or her own purposes. You can just see how that would
get stuck in you, that this is the way to to relate to God. Prosperity gospel here in America
does that same kind of thing, right? And we do too, you know? Like, Lord, why did you let this
happen? I've been a Sunday school teacher
for 25 years. Oh, come on, you know? So that's
manipulation of God for your own purposes. Let's talk now
about animism and Christianity. The good news, the great news,
the great good news is that animists all over the world are much more
receptive to the gospel than those who are really devout adherents
to one of the major religions of the world. such as Buddhism,
Judaism, Islam, Marxism. And Van Rienen says, historically,
the great growth of the Christian movement, and it's been huge,
brothers and sisters, over the last 150 years. It's been amazing. Nothing like it in the history
of the world or Christianity. And he says, the great growth
has been at the expense, mainly, of animistic religions. When
Adonaim Jetson died after 37 years of labor in Burma, he left
only 100 converts from Buddhism, but 7,000 converts from the animistic
Karen. The growth rate in Cambodia is
much steeper among the animists. There is a pretty high growth
rate among Khmer as well, praise the Lord, but the growth rate
is higher among the animists. A Spanish anthropologist came
to see me one day. He was the nicest anthropologist
I have ever met. A lot of them can be really snarly
toward us Christians, missionaries. And we were talking, and he said,
have you ever wondered why tribal people all over the world are
so attracted to Christianity? And he said, yes, please tell
me. And here's what I said. One,
Christians speak the animus language. That's literally, too. We learn
their language. That's good. But I mean, we have the same
spiritual language that they do. We're familiar with spirit
beings. We believe in things like demons
and angels, right? We believe in their existence
and power. We believe in a creator God, just like they do. every single tribal group that
I've ever known, and anthropologists have said this is true all over
the world, every single one already has a name for the Creator God.
And the wise missionary will find out what that name is, and
if that name hasn't already been totally destroyed by that being
doing just terrible things like coming down and raping and pillaging
and stuff like that, if that name is still Still not poisoned. You can use
that name and say, kind of as Paul said in Athens, let me tell
you about this God that you don't know about. You're admitting
that you don't know. He's the unknown God. He's unknown to
you. And same thing with us. We'll say, well, the Tempuan
word for this creator God is bakatai, which means the God
of the skies, the God of heavens. We call God the God of heaven,
right? And so I say, well, tell me about him. And they say, oh,
we don't know anything about him. Our ancestors used to know, but we
don't know anything about it. Would you like to know about
it? Yes. Let me tell you about it. Praise
the Lord. So we have a shared vocabulary.
I've never had an animist disagree with me that there's a creator
God who created all things. Not once. I've never had a Cambodian
disagree with me about that either. Now, in these kinds of conversations,
when I, as a Christian, am talking to an animist, I'm the insider. And the secular anthropologist
who thinks he knows so much is actually the outsider. And I
said this to the Spanish guy. Because he is the outsider. He's
a materialist. He believes that the only physical
things are actually real. There's no spiritual reality.
And so they're looking in on this conversation between a missionary
and an animist and we're the insiders. Isn't that fascinating?
Take advantage of that. Number two, similarly, Christians
respect the animist beliefs. We acknowledge that basically
they're correct in most of their worldview. Their problem is the
solution to this problem of demons and ancestors and evil eye and
everything like that. There really are malevolent spirits
who want to control humans. There really is a creator god. In fact, we here in the West,
in Christian churches here in the West, Animists in Cambodia are actually
more right about spiritual realities than a lot of Christians here
who don't even think about the presence of demons and angels
and their influence in our lives. So, as Van Rienen says, the solution
to the problem, and this is where they're wrong is in the solution,
is not animistic manipulation of spirits, but loving allegiance
to the Father of spirits, made possible by the atonement of
Christ. Isn't that beautiful? That's it, there it is. Praise
God. Another anthropologist, who is
Mr. Snarley, he comes to my house
a lot. And every time he comes, he talks
about religion. And I told him once, I said,
Ian, it's just like you love talking about Christianity. I
said, maybe God's after you. He kind of is. Maybe he is. But
this was 10 years ago, and it hasn't happened. No, 15 years
ago. It hasn't happened yet. Anyway, after a cordial visit,
he's the kind of guy who's kind of in your face, and so you can
kind of be in your face back to him. You know that kind of
person? So he's getting on his motorcycle, and I said, Ian,
before you go, one question. There are probably only four
points of view about the religion of the indigenous minorities,
because he says we're destroying their culture and stuff like
that. I said, here are the four possibilities, and they split
up into two. Either you believe that you think
that what they believe is true or basically true, or you reject
it and say it's a bunch of fairy tales. But these split up in
this way. So one, you think it's, well,
let's start over here. You think it's not true, and
you want them to stop. When the Khmer Rouge took over,
Communist Khmer Rouge, they told all the minority people, that
stuff's not true. We're secularists. We're Marxists.
Quit doing that stuff. I want you to stop. So they don't
believe it's true, and they want him to stop. That was like Khmer
Rouge. I said, secondly, two, another option is you think it's
not true, but you want them to continue. And I said, that's
you, Ian. Ian, you don't believe that killing
a water buffalo, hacking it to death, first from its ankles,
and then its knees, and then hacking him to death a little
bit at a time, you don't believe that that cures malaria. But
you want them to believe it. I said, that's you. I said, another
one is you believe it's true and you want to keep on doing
it. That's the animus themselves. Because the spirit sacrifices
are a great party time. You get drunk. You eat tons of
meat. And so you want to continue. And I said, then the fourth is
you believe it's basically true, but you want them to change because
it's destroying their lives. And I said this, I said, of these
four, which is the most paternalistic? He started his motorcycle and
he said, I'll have to think about that and get back to you. He
never has. In the meantime, he wrote his
PhD dissertation and just slammed us missionaries up there for
destroying culture. So his view was the paternalistic
view. I don't think it's true, but
we want you to continue it. Crazy, isn't it? Number three,
Christianity offers freedom from fear and control of evil spirits
and powers. This is Christus Victor. Now,
we've heard bad things. I mean, some kinds of theology
have put such an emphasis on Christus Victor that the propitiatory
atonement aspect has diminished, and we don't want to do that.
But, oh, brothers and sisters, you are going to need to emphasize,
I believe, you're going to need to emphasize Christus Victor
more than we have in America in order to give hope to people
who have been plagued by fear of animistic spirits. Does that
make sense? We've got to emphasize that more.
And a wise missionary will do that, and a wise pastor will. Animus live in constant fear
of spirit beings and ancestors and fate and karma. So listen,
a faith that promises complete 100% release from that fear is
very attractive. Animus look at their neighbors
who get saved and realize that an immediate transformation is
taking place. And they're impressed. They may not like it. They might
persecute them, but they're impressed. It's just really amazing. And
since animism is so expensive, when you get sick, seriously
sick, you've got to kill a water buffalo or a cow, that'd be like
you taking a sledgehammer to your car once a year and then
having to buy another car twice a year. You couldn't sustain
that for very, it just keeps you impoverished, keeps them
impoverished. And so one of the corollary benefit
is that it has great financial benefit for them too. And a lot of them will kind of,
she used to tell me your testimony and they'll sheepishly say, well,
the first thing that attracted me to Christianity was that,
but you know, there's a huge faith element there. You don't
dare, you don't dare stop sacrificing the spirits unless you believe
that God is more powerful and that God lives in you. And then
they say, then I, you know, I heard the gospel from creation to Christ
more clearly. And I, now I understand the gospel,
but at first that was what attracted me. Number four, Christianity offers
reconciliation with the creator God whose existence they already
know about. Isn't that great? And I told you that every animistic
culture already has a name for God. They just don't know who
he is. And number five, Christianity provides real power. You want
to know power? Know God. All the powerful demonic forces
in the universe put together are less powerful than a little
ant walking across the floor here compared to me. And I use
that analogy all the time. I say, if I see an ant here on
the table, do I say, oh no, an ant. And God has never had that
attitude toward any demons or all the demons put together.
God just does this. Or it does this. And the problem is solved. So power, amazing power. And as I said, because of this
knowledge, Christians exude a humble confidence. People go to Christians
now instead of shamans to cast out, have demons cast out. Cheaper. We don't take any money. Oh, it's so impressive. And then
Christians get in on some good deals, too. So there's this piece
of property that's haunted. Someone died there or something
awful. Lightning struck it, which is a terrible sight. And so lightning
struck this house. We have to get rid of it. And
the Christian will say, well, can I take it apart and take
it to my property? Yeah, go ahead. Get rid of it.
Free lumber. It's amazing. Oh, praise the
Lord. Now, this power can be attractive,
too. Remember Simon Magus in Acts? He wanted to buy this power,
and he was impressed with power. Can I pay you to learn this power? OK, let's go to important themes
in animism. In animism, as in real estate,
the three most important words are what? Location, location,
location. Why? OK, so when an animist is
crossing the river, he's afraid of what spirit? The river spirit,
yeah, the water spirit. He crosses, and he's going up
the mountain. He forgets about the river spirit. And he's afraid
now of the mountain spirit or the forest spirit. And so this
territorial feature of animism actually has its basis in truth.
What is the truth? What is the basis of truth? Yeah. Yeah. Their gods are not
omnipresent. They can be only one place at
a time. And that's hugely important to
us. So if you've been in animistic
countries, you cross over a mountaintop, and there's 100 different god
houses right there. Because that's a tall, high place.
They want to honor the spirit of that particular place or a
huge tree. So location is very important
to them. So evil spirits really are territorial. So it should come as no surprise
that scripture tells us that demonic spirits have jurisdiction
over certain places or like to dwell in certain things or people
or idols. Remember when the Syrian King
Ben-Hadad attacked Israel and lost? What did his advisors say?
Remember? Their gods are God of the hills, and so they are
stronger than we. But let us fight them again in
the plain, and surely we will be stronger than they. First
Kings 20. Now here's the thing. If location
is truly an aspect of animism, what should be the Christian's
response? What should we emphasize? Yeah, the omniscience of our
God. Oh my, brothers, aren't you glad you don't believe in
a territorial God or deity? I'm so thankful about this. And
this is one, I think one of the meanings of, so Israel, as they
left Egypt, were a bunch of animists. There's so much in the Old Testament
against animism. Once you start seeing it, once
you get rid of your Western eyes and start seeing it through majority
world eyes, you see all over the place. So the thing about
when, talk about me when you're at your house, when you're walking.
to your farm along the way. See, when you get there, talk
about me. Because in animism, the titular
spirit of the house is the house spirit, and then the road spirit
is different, and then the farm, the garden spirit or the farm
spirit is a different spirit. You've got to deal with all those.
But you know, Christians, believers, and the true and living God,
we talk about God in the house, and we talk about God on the
way, and we get to the farm, and we say, God, this farm is
yours. You created this dirt. You created these seeds. And
isn't that, aren't you glad you're a Christian? I'm so happy. So happy. And I'm so happy that
we have good news to preach, to proclaim to people who are
terrified of these things. So location is very important. Now, don't fight animism with
animism. In the past 35 years, it's been
the fad. I'm so tired of these fads. The
fad has been, we need to spend a whole lot of time and energy
and money emphasizing the territorial nature of demons. And as I said,
there's some truth there. They are territorial. But that's
not a feature. It's a bug. It's a sign of their
weakness, not a strength. And yet these experts say that
if we're going to have any hope of victory, we need to understand
what the territories are, who the bigwig spirit is in that
territory. Otherwise, you won't have any
chance of victory. And you got to even spend a lot
of money to go to a particular place and pray there. And they call it spiritual mapping.
You guys heard spiritual mapping? There are other words for it,
too. I call it divination. I don't need to find out what
spirit is doing this or that or the other. God knows. Preach
the gospel. Satan doesn't care if you're
marching around some temple or something like that. What he
cares about, what he's scared of, is the gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ. He hates that. So don't fight animism with animism. That's what they're doing. So
it doesn't fit the pattern of Christ and the apostles. They
cared very little about the minutia of demons. And when the Lord
Jesus was, what did the Lord Jesus do? He preached the gospel.
And then there was this little, you know, this kind of demon
thing and somebody was demonized. Jesus solved the problem and
went back to what? preaching the gospel. He didn't
start Jesus Christ Deliverance Ministries or anything like that.
He just went right back to preaching the gospel. And that's where
we're at. We need to solve these problems. I mean, it's not us.
I know that. But yeah, we love people. We want to do whatever
we can to help set them free from this kind of thing. We want
to preach and teach and love and care for them. But our main
job is preaching the good news of the Lord Jesus. So we don't fight animism with
animism. What if in a war, our side found
out, our generals found out through spies that the other side, they
were out of bullets and out of everything, out of all ammunition.
But tomorrow, they were going to attack us with sticks and
stones. And so the general says, OK, all right, gather everybody
together. We need to discuss sticks and
stones. We need to do some botany. We need to do some, all right,
they might throw igneous rocks at us. They might throw sedimentary
rocks at us. They might throw, and we got
to know this stuff. No, a bullet at 100 yards will do the trick,
right? We got the bullet. We got the bullet against Satan.
So you don't need to take an expensive prayer trip to a certain
place. What did Jesus say to pray? Go
into your closet, and the God who is everywhere is going to
shake the unseen world. Amen? Praise the Lord. Height.
The second thing is height. In animism, how tall or large
something is is very important. So Old Testament animists always
chose the high places for their sacrifices. High mountains, large
rocks, huge trees. And that's why people want to
build these huge statues of Buddha that are like a gajillion feet
high. Because the bigger the statue, the more power there
is. And that's crazy. We believe
in a God who can't even be contained by the universe. Now, animism
has pervaded Christianity as well. We were in, once again,
was it Oklahoma? Texas, Amarillo, Texas, Interstate
40, big sign, Western Hemisphere's largest cross. And then the sign
assured us that there was also a gift shop, which reminds us
of another aspect of animism, which is greed. And I'm sure
it was a great disappointment for the folks in Amarillo when
the First Baptist Church of Effingham, Illinois, inspired by that cross,
built their own cross eight feet taller. Yes. Crush those Texans. Maybe their gift shop is larger,
too. I don't know. Don't fight animism with animism, brothers
and sisters. Just think about how amazing our God is. Third
thing is rank, and animism rank is important. If my spirit is
more powerful than yours, or my shaman is the number one shaman,
and you've got the number two shaman, then I'm going to win,
right? in the battle of sorcery and scripture does indeed imply
that their rankings like an arm like like like an army host with
hierarchy and divisions and this one again this this this fact
has taken on great importance and this is called strategic
level spiritual warfare don't be worried about the little demons
that are bothering people Find out what that big demon is, the
big daddy demon in your area, and do spiritual warfare against
him. And they misuse the verse about tying up the strong man.
Oh my goodness. We love people. Those pesky demons, the little
demons, they're destroying people's lives. I'm going to spend time. Solving that problem, too, not
just going after the big guy. And so it's Christian love that
causes us to see people's needs and meet those needs where they
are. And they said, this is the key
to spiritual warfare. Well, guess who forgot to tell
us about this? Jesus and the Apostles forgot to tell us about
this this key to spiritual warfare I get so tired of people saying
this is the key to this the key to this and you look in the Bible
and you just can't find it anywhere in there. It's really It's really
dishonoring to God that God would be so negligent in that way as
to keep from us the key to these things. And Matthew 12, 28 about
the strong man, we don't have to identify the strong man or
the high-ranking demon. That's what they say. We already
know who the highest-ranking demon is. Satan and the point
of the parable is the amen the Lord Jesus has come in kingdom
power and through his death and resurrection Has bound and chained
the strongest enemy of all Satan and how else could the gospel
be plundering? plundering Satan's house ever
since then up until now amen praise the Lord and Another important
feature of animism is the power of words. We find this in America
in word-faith Christianity, name-it-and-claim-it kind of Christianity. They say
the words are like little containers of power. And that's not what
the Bible says about the truth of Scripture. And that's why
there's repetition. If proclaiming that powerful
word once is great, then do it 100 times. That's even better,
right? And that's where you get faint
repetition. Okay, now that we've come to
understand better what animism is, we need to learn how to best
confront it and overcome it. So how do you fight animism?
And my belief, and you could give some other suggestions,
but my suggestion, one, a robust gospel. Not a weak gospel, a
robust gospel that starts at the beginning of the story. And
a wise use of the Word of God because once you take off your
Western glasses and put on your Asian or African glasses or South
American glasses Or immigrant glasses you begin to see all
over the Old Testament Scriptures fighting the the the besetting
sin of the Israelites was to go back into animism and So,
number one, a Christian worldview that comes from creation to Christ
evangelism. Preach and proclaim the gospel. The gospel you need to be proclaiming
must be the whole story from creation to Christ. Remember
I told you this? That here's their worldview to them. It's
intact. It's all they need. They don't see any problems with
it. And we come with our worldview. Now, here's syncretism, okay?
We come with sort of a Let's call it a Jesus film gospel. And we show the Jesus film. I knew some missionaries. They
were going to an island in the Philippines that was unreached.
On the boat, they met somebody who said, where are you going?
And they mentioned that island. He goes, no need to go there.
I've already shown the Jesus film there. OK. All right. So they watch the Jesus film. And what do they do? They go,
cool. Yeah. Wow. Jesus is really amazing. And what? They plop it right
in. And what is this called in missiology? This is syncretism. And it's
the greatest enemy of missions. And the missionary is the last
one to know that his converts have have amulets buried in the backyard
just in case, right? Just in case the Christian thing
doesn't work out. When do we stop, by the way? Okay, I've got a
few minutes. Brothers and sisters, the only
way to change one world, whole worldview, is to replace it whole
with another worldview. It's the only way to do it. You
can't do it piecemeal. It's a lot harder to do it piecemeal.
And the way to do that is to start at the beginning of the
story. and present to them a coherent worldview to replace what seems
to them to be a coherent worldview. What you have to do is you have
to get God on the other side of the creator-creature line
right here. And if you don't do that, you're
going to have syncretism. If they think that God is a little
bit stronger than Satan or something like that, you're going to get
syncretism. Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you do if God's like
this much stronger? It's like the Packers and the
Vikings. They're like this. Sometimes
Green Bay wins. Sometimes the Vikings win, Minnesota
Vikings. And it's like this. Do they play
each other? Yeah, okay, yeah, they're rivals,
aren't they? So you might hedge your bets,
right? If you had a lot of money down on one of these games, you
might kinda maybe put a little bet here and a little bet here
just in case, I don't know. And so no wonder when we preach
a non-robust gospel that we get syncretism. And so we have evidence
that Paul started at the beginning of the story when he taught pagans
in Lystra and in Athens. He didn't have to do that when
he was teaching Jews. They already they already had
the worldview They were just missing the Jesus component of
it and Paul says here. This is the key. This is the
heart of Of what you need to believe Romans wrote Romans wrote doesn't
start. Romans Road isn't the Romans
Road. Romans Road starts in Chapter 3. Paul's Gospel starts in Chapter
1, with what? Creation. Chapter 2, Law and
Conscience. And I don't know how to preach
the Gospel without those two, because they are like little
Bluetooth devices in every single human being. Every single person
I talk to, I know for a fact that they have a little Bluetooth
device that's paired, already paired, with my message about
creation. God is a creator. And already
paired with my message about God's law because they have a
conscience. I have two allies, fifth columns, in their heart
already, see? And so, you start at the beginning
of the story. Now, 50 years ago, you could do what we call propositional
evangelism, God's simple plan of salvation, and I'm not making
fun of it. A lot of people have been saved by prop, because people
already had the worldview, they were just missing the core of
it, the heart of it, right? And you remind them of that,
and they go, oh yes, I need to repent and get saved and believe
in Jesus. But not anymore, right? Not anymore, you gotta start
at the beginning of the story. Here, and I did this in, let's,
how many of you have never seen Lord of the Rings or read the
books? Okay, all right, this is your lucky day. Yeah, okay,
all right. If this works, come on, help
me out here, computer. Well, it's not gonna do it for
me. Let's try this. I'm going to
open up another one. Imagine telling the story of
the Lord of the Rings in propositions rather than actually telling
the story. And we're going to see that happen in this situation. Are you trying to play video?
Yeah. Is it on the last slide, maybe? No, it's not on the last
slide. Yeah, I don't think. It is. How did you know, dude?
You are too smart. All right. All right, I'll just
leave it up like this, OK? I'll have to narrate it for you. Oh, I see. Yeah, sure. OK, loyalty
is an essential element of friendship. Hobbits are remarkable creatures.
One must bravely receive the task that fate brings. Frodo
is the ring bearer. Aragorn is a true king. True
friends never forsake each other. Elves are good. Do you have tissues? Rangers are good. Sauron is bad. The Black Riders are bad. There is a powerful enemy determined
to destroy all that is good. Evil must be opposed. Even the
best of men can fall to the temptation of power. Sometimes you must
walk alone. All right, that was kind of cute. Now, I couldn't sell these. What's it missing? What's it
missing? Story. Every single thing there
was true according to the story. And those of you who already
knew the story, you were actually like, sometimes you must walk
alone. That was the end of the first book where Frodo has to
leave the band of brothers and walk by himself. And so it all
fits, right, if you know the story. But otherwise it's and
this is this is the way people feel those of you that this is
the first time you ever saw Lord of the Rings That's the way people
feel when you say to them or I say to someone in Cambodia
Mankind or sinners God is holy the wages of sin
is death and separation from God God sent Jesus to be the
only Savior of the world He's God's Son. He died on the cross
for our sins and rose again. See that's the gospel and propositions
And I'm not making fun of it. I love those propositions. That
truth saved my soul. But everyone looks at these propositions
through their own grid. You see what I'm saying? And
that's why a Khmer man looked at the Jesus film, and at the
end of it, he said, wow, Jesus must have committed a lot of
sins to have received that kind of punishment. He was looking
at the Jesus film through what? Through the grid of karma. He
was correctly, correctly interpreting it. It was the fault of the people
who were showing him that, which starts at the middle of the story,
not at the beginning of the story. And let us not here in America
be guilty of that. Let's create one-story churches. I have a whole lecture on how
to build a one-story church. And I mean one story, you know,
the one story of the Bible. And everybody that I minister
to in Cambodia, they come to Christ with a one-story approach,
25 hours of teaching from creation to Christ. They all come to Christ
that way. Within two or three or four months
of their coming to Christ, they're starting to teach it themselves.
And there are hundreds of people in our province who can preach
the gospel from creation to Christ in a very coherent and moving
way over a 25-hour period. and said, it's a beautiful thing,
a robust gospel. If I were a pastor in America,
every five years or so, I would do a four, five, six month series
on creation to Christ, telling the whole story. basically biblical
theology with an emphasis on salvation. And I would always
make sure that that was underlying every single thing in our church,
is this one story. And there, once, you know, I
mentioned the track God's Simple Plan of Salvation, well, Now
we've got resources. There's so many resources now.
Ever since Trevor McIlwain of New Tribes Mission sort of rescued
this approach, because from obscurity, God is the one who came up with
this approach. He started in Genesis, right?
And so Trevor McIlwain said, what are we doing in missions?
We're starting in the middle. And Firm Foundation's creation
to Christ was born. That's just one, there are so
many now. And here are tracks. This is called The Story. My
friend Jerry McCorkle wrote this. Very good creation to Christ
resource for short kind of evangelism situations. This is also one
of my favorites. Matthias Media in Australia.
Can anything good come from Australia? Yes. So two ways to live. Amazing. Amazingly effective. Although this doesn't mention
Satan or demons, so I can't use it in Asia. I wrote them and
I said, can I add a page? And I even showed them what page
that needed to be added. And they said, nah, we don't
want to mess with it. But they said, you can do your
own thing. because they said, we don't have
copyright on the Gospel. And so we did this, we made this
look all bright, you know, this is all subdued art, you know,
this is very Asian, you know, warm yellow, red, bright blue,
every page has a different color. And this is a creation to Christ
tract, it starts with Adam and Eve, look at those colors just
popping out at you, this is Asian. And it goes all the way through,
it talks about Then the coming of Christ here see this is the
this is the best-selling track in Cambodia right now hundred
thousand copies already isn't that great that God can God can
use a simple Simple people to come up with resources that are
really useful for for the majority of the world Finally and I don't
have time to talk about this but using look finding in the
scriptures a wise Finding the wise use of scriptures that counteract
air terrorism animism And for example, and you can look at
this, the story of Balaam. I read that dozens of times and
I never thought about the animistic context, but I see it now as
God knowing that they were going to be Tempted again and again
to revert to animism and and be afraid of sorcerers and sorcery.
It's terrifying brothers and sisters and he did this so he
got the most powerful sorcerer in the ancient Near East to come
all the way to well Balak had him come to curse Israel and
there's that donkey talking scene and Is it not obvious to you
that God wants to just pull the fangs out of the fear of sorcery? And so the most powerful shaman
in the ancient Near East has less spiritual discernment than
a donkey. God wants us to LOL at that point
in the biblical narrative. Laugh out loud at this man. Not
in a mocking, derisive way. Boy, be careful about telling
Satan to go suck ice or something like that. He's powerful, way
more powerful than you. But then it goes on. What's the
second point? When God blesses somebody, nobody
can curse him. Oh, people need to hear that.
The third point, he says, the person who curses Israel will
be cursed himself. That's the way it works. It's
the boomerang effect. And then the one that blows people's
minds is from Deuteronomy, when Moses was reminding them about
that incident. And he said, Balaam opened his
mouth to curse Israel, and God turned the curse into a what? Blessing and then I say words
that they've never heard anybody say before I say if I heard that
a local shaman was had cursed me I would say do it again Do
it again do it a thousand times because I want a thousand blessings
from God God is the God who turns curses into blessings. I mean,
isn't that how he saved us? Didn't he take the curse on himself
and bring us every amazing blessing that we can have? So, have you
ever thought of the story of Balaam as kind of an anti-animism
story? Probably not right. I'm gonna
end with a story, and I know I'm slightly over time But I
this is I gotta end with this story my friend Chu and his wife
and kids all became Christians in Batambang, Cambodia Many years
ago, and they lived next door to their pair His in-laws who
were Buddhists one day his father-in-law became very deathly ill and she
did what? not deathly ill, but quite ill.
And so the wife did what every good Buddhist will do, didn't
call the Buddhist priest, called the local shaman to come and
tell him what was wrong. And so he came with his retinue
of musicians, and they lit the incense. They climbed up into
the house, lit the incense, did all this stuff. Before he came,
the two daughters of my friend, who were also Christians, eight,
nine years old, 10 years old, they said, Dad, can we go watch?
And he said, sure, I don't see why not. So they went upstairs.
The shaman came, they started playing all their music, you
know, they lit the incense, waiting for the spirit to come and come
inside of him so that he could tell him what was wrong. Nothing.
So they crank up all the music again. They kind of look at each
other. Crank up all the music again and ask the spirit to come
and possess. Nothing. This happens three times. The girls get bored. Let's go
play. They leave the house immediately. The demon comes inside. And in
these kind of situations, you can ask the demon questions.
It's really weird. And so they said, well, why did
you wait so long? And in that guttural voice, he
said through the shaman, he said, he said, because Jesus was here.
Jesus was here. These little kids, little eight,
seven, eight, nine year old kids. Isn't that the promise of the
new covenant? Servant girls. Servant boys, we're all gonna
be a part of this new covenant and all be able to have some
kind of ministry of the word and gospel. Praise the Lord. And so when you go into the world
to preach the gospel, realize that you have God living inside
of you. Jesus Christ is in you and it's
an amazing thing. I hope this has encouraged you.
Let's have a short word of prayer. Father, We thank you that the
victory is ours in the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh God, we long for the
day when Satan will be thrown, Satan and his demons will be
thrown into hell, into the lake of fire forever. But we pray
God that you would rescue millions and millions and millions and
billions of people from his clutches for the glory of Jesus Christ.
Amen. Thank you.
Animism: The Default Religion of the World
Series E3 Conference 2019
| Sermon ID | 11519151385234 |
| Duration | 1:05:58 |
| Date | |
| Category | Conference |
| Language | English |
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