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.