what we actually mean. And what I find really interesting, and you'll find as we talk about New Age philosophy and what the New Age actually is, is that in a lot of cases, they don't know what New Age is. New Age people don't know what New Age is. So let's get a good look at what Gnosticism is. So Gnosticism began for Christianity as a second century religious movement claiming that salvation could be gained through a special form of knowledge. This concept of, I've got this secret, and with this secret, I can attain salvation. Clearly, that flies in the face of Christian doctrine, and what we know is partial eteriality. Paul preaches against Gnosticism. Absolutely preaches it. So, first, second, and third John were written specifically to combat this growing issue of Gnosticism in the early church. One of the things I always like to point out is a lot of people think that the concept of Gnosticism started as an offshoot of Christianity. That's actually not entirely accurate. The idea of Gnosticism has been around in many different religions throughout history. The Gnosticism we know is the offshoot that we'll talk about today. The way I look at Gnosticism in the Christianity, it's almost like a disease that gets infected where an idea comes from the outside world, it comes outside of Christian doctrine, and it infects the church, and it infects the pulpit. And that's really what the focus I want to focus on today is how it affects the pulpit. So, the term Gnosticism is derived from the Greek word gnosis, meaning to know or knowledge. This knowledge is not intellectual, but mythical, and it comes through special revelation by Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, or through his apostles. The secret knowledge reveals the key to salvation. So, in Gnosticism, how do we know, what evidences do we have that we know we can be saved? Where do we find that, as Christians? I think it's still the most bought book at Barnes & Noble. It's the most stolen. That's a fact. Next to the DSM-5, interestingly enough. It's weird. But we, as Christians, we know it's not a secret knowledge. It's a very public thing. As Christians, we know that through Christ, we are saved. Through his atoning work on the cross. We have all these great creeds that talk about it. It's very public information. In Gnosticism, especially in the second century, Gnosticism, their big thing was, only we have the knowledge. You have to come to us to get the knowledge. That's called a cult. When you have to come to me specifically to get the knowledge about how to get to heaven. No one else, no other pastors got it, no other church has it, you have to come through me. That's the first big indicator. If a pastor's telling you that, you need to run. Don't walk out of that church, you need to run, okay? Hi, how you doing? So, yeah, that's definitely a good ramble, but you're not going to catch me today. Usually I'll jump through that one. You're not going to get me today. Okay, so let's look at some of the Gnostic beliefs on just some real specific things. Dualism. You guys know what dualism is? Okay. So Gnostics believed that the world was divided into the physical and the spiritual realms. Now if I just use that sentence, that sounds fine, right? We believe that. There's a physical realm that we can touch each other and high-five each other and we know that this is a very physical place. And then there's a spiritual realm, right? We know that. Scripture tells us that. And what you're gonna find with Gnosticism and then later New Age theory is that they will sprinkle a little bit of that truth in there, and then add on. Okay, so that sentence sounds really good, but it goes even further. It says the created material world, or matter, is considered evil. Right? Everything you see, everything you can look at, touch, is evil. And therefore, in opposition to the world of the spirit, from the Old Testament to explain the creation of the world and consider Jesus Christ the Holy Spiritual God. So, to break that down, really what the Gnostics believed was, follow me on this, the world could not have been created by God because it was evil. So they would create these little demigods in the Old Testament, like Baal, or they would use little sprinklings of truth from the Old Testament and say, this is how the earth was created because the earth is evil. But God in the spiritual realm is good. Now does that present problems for us in what us real Bible geeks call soteriology or the doctrine of salvation? What problem does that present for us? If Jesus Christ was never an actual human being, what's the problem with that for us? He couldn't take the sins upon him because he wasn't a man. Right. The sacrifice is now invalid. It never happened. So almost instantly, the whole doctrine of salvation is mute at this point. It's a moot point now. So that's kind of an issue. So that's dualism inside of Gnosticism. That's how they believed the physical interacted with the spiritual. So their view on God. So Gnostic writings often describe God as an incomprehensible and unknowable being. There is no way to know anything about God. Is that true? No. How do we know that though? We have this really awesome book that says what? A lot of things about God. We know he has emotions. We know he's sad when we get sad. We know he gets angry. We know he has emotion and feeling. There's a lot of things we can know about God just from reading Genesis 1. There's a ton of things that we can know. But why would the Gnostic say that? Well the Gnostic would say that because there's no way to really know it. The only way to really get this information is you gotta come to John. Right? I'm the only guy, I'm the only show in town that's got it right. Right, that's it. Jesus didn't even have it right, I have it right. Okay? Alright. So, Gnostics also separate the inferior god of creation from the superior god of redemption. So what they're saying is there's an inferior god that created the earth, and there's a superior god that has now brought salvation to us to get us out of this mess we're in. What's another big problem with that by saying the world is evil because God made it that way? What's a big problem with that? What does that do for us as human beings? God made a mistake. God made a mistake, okay, so we've already got problem one right there for us as Christians. Makes him the author of evil. It makes him the author of evil, and it also removes all responsibility of the human being for their sin. It's God's fault. And you know the first place we see a little taste of Gnosticism? We see it in Genesis 1. Or, I'm sorry, Genesis 3. Right? What does Adam say when he gets caught? God says, what is this you have done? Does he say, I'm sorry, Lord, I made a mistake, please forgive me? No. He says, the woman that you gave me tempted me. This is not my fault. Really, this is Eve and And you know what I love to point out about the Genesis 3 account? Who's the only honest person in that whole account? The serpent. Satan is the only one in that account that says, I'm a snake. But you think what's gonna happen? So this is their idea of God. Not only do they have a dualistic view of the spiritual and the physical, similar to ours, that little sprinkling of truth, but they also have a dualism in their God, an evil side. and a good side. What's the problem with that? Well, number one, I will tell you just personally, I am not interested in worshiping a god that does evil. If I wanted to do that, I could go worship the Baal gods and do whatever I want to do. Without rule. Right? So let's talk about salvation for a second. So salvation. So Gnosticism claims this hidden knowledge, we talked about that earlier, as the basis for salvation. How you get in is you pay the fee, Right, you wear the cool hat, and we get you into salvation. Right, kind of removing Jesus and his atoning work completely out of the equation, why? Because they believe that he was never physically here. Right, and if he wasn't physically here, he didn't actually die on the cross. Right, and so there's no reason to have that in your doctrine, so they kind of push that out of the way, and exchange that for this little treat of, I have the information. So if you give all your money to me, does that sound familiar? Just give all your money to me, and we're gonna fix it, and I'm gonna send you a cute little flyer with some cloth on it, and you're just gonna pray over it, and it's gonna be all better, because if you think this stuff hasn't infected the modern church, we're gonna talk about that in a second. Okay? So it has this hidden knowledge. It's believed that the secret revelation, once I tell you the secret, it's gonna give you this divine spark, and all of a sudden you're just gonna be forgiven of your sins. Isn't that amazing? allowing the human soul to return to the divine realm of light in which it belongs. Gnostics thus divided Christians into two categories, with one group being carnal, or inferior Christians, and the other being spiritual, or superior Christians. This is why you have scripture that says there is neither male nor female, there is neither Jew nor Greek, We were all one, this is why, see it's important to know why things were written in the Bible. There's a spiritual reason and that we can apply to our lives daily, but there was a very real reason it was put in scripture at the time it was written. Because the early church fathers were heavily combating this heresy. And the problem is I think we believe in our modern fancy churches that we don't have this problem anymore. And we don't really combat it anymore. We water down our scripture and make it cute for everybody. You know, everybody's going to heaven. We'll get to that. Okay, so there's this divine spark. Gnostics divided Christians into two groups. Only the superior divinely enlightened persons could comprehend the secret teachings and obtain the true salvation. If you ever hear a preacher saying those kinds of words, run. Run. If you ever hear anybody speaking like that, that's very culty. Right, that's cultish. That's the number one, indicator of a cult is Pastor John has the only answer, no other pastor's got it right, no other church has it right, you have to be here to be saved. And that's exactly what the Gnostics were doing here. Christianity teaches that salvation is available to everyone, not just the carnal, it's actually made specifically for those of us who are inferior, amen? I'm very thankful. You can find that in Ephesians 2, 8, and 9, and it's not from study or works. And I think in the modern church we have this concept that we put the cart before the horse. We have this idea that if we do all this stuff, it's going to elicit salvation. And that's not how it works. You come to Christ, you have that inward and upward relationship with Him, which pushes outward works. It makes you want to do the things that please God. So while works are important, they are not how one is saved. It's proof that one is saved. Does that make sense? So they're both very important. James is absolutely right when he says faith without works is dead. But I think we confuse that with, that means I gotta do stuff. I gotta obtain this knowledge. And that's how the Gnostics got there. Kinda got that in for their teaching. But we don't teach that. Salvation is for everyone who would believe. The only source of truth that Christianity asserts is what? What's our source of truth? The word of God. Scripture. Not a pastor, not a person, not a thing, not a statue. The word of God. That's where our truth comes from. What did they view about Jesus Christ? Gnostics were divided on their beliefs about Jesus Christ. That's actually a little known fact about Gnosticism. They even had what they would have considered heretics inside of their own thing. One view held that he only appeared to have human form, and that he was actually a spirit only. And the way I like to explain that to modern Christians is they believe Jesus was a hologram. That he never took on a bodily form. We could see him, but we could never actually touch him. The other view could be that the divine spirit of Jesus Christ came upon a human body at baptism and departed right before crucifixion. What's the issue with that? He didn't die for us, so there's a soteriological problem. Yes? I don't want to go off the rabbit trail, but is modalism kind of gnostic? It can be, absolutely. In the way they view Christ in the different parts of the Trinity. Right? Yeah? Absolutely. And that's not too bad of a rabbit hole. I'm a rabbit hole master. I'm really good at rabbit holes. That's my congregation. So these were the two competing views of Gnosticism, that he never had a human form, he was just a hologram, or he entered at baptism and departed before crucifixion. There's another problem with that too. There's not only a soteriological problem, but there's a prophetic problem. If he entered after baptism, what does that mean? That Jesus Christ was not born of a virgin. Jesus Christ is not from the line of David. It presents a massive prophetic problem. Well, he would have been from the life of David through Mary, but not through, not legally through Matthew. Legalistically, he would not have been able to claim that because he wasn't born, he was never born, he entered afterwards. So now there's a prophetic problem and a soteriological problem. It's just a mess. Gnosticism is just, once you actually, it sounds really great on paper, and I will tell you we have a lot of churches right now that do that. We sound really great on paper, but once you start getting into the nuts and bolts, you will find these massive problems. Okay, so now we've kind of looked at Gnosticism, let's look at New Age. Okay, so I asked earlier, when I say New Age, what comes to your mind? Crystals. Crystals, incense. I like incense personally. I think, what are those, Yankee Candle Company or whatever they're named? That's the best incense ever. What do you guys think? Wicca. Crystals. Wicca, witchcraft. Wicca, witchcraft that does fall under the New Age movement. Many ways to God. What's that? Many ways to God. Many ways to God, the universalist viewpoint that's also a New Age viewpoint. I have a friend who picks and chooses from different religions to make her own little religion. Oh, I'm so glad you brought that up. Eclecticism, right? The idea that you can pick and choose and cherry pick out a different faith and kind of mold your own faith. That is very New Age. That's actually its core and it kind of spreads out into these other things. Yoga Christianity. Yoga Christianity. Now, I'm all for health. I'm not against yoga as a health thing. That's kind of where it is for me. And I'm terrible at yoga anyway. So, yeah, that too. That falls under it. The yogis from the early, the turn of the century. The yogis from India kind of figured out a way to monopolize and monetize their faith from India, and they brought it over here, and they've made a killing. They made tons of money over here. So New Age is a term applied to a wide range of religious beliefs and practices that developed in Western nations during the 1970s. Now, I have friends that are pagans, practicing pagans, and one says, I worship Thor. Okay, let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. You say you worship Thor, and Thor is older than your guy. Yeah, but you've only been worshiping in this way since about 1970. So how does that work? Because it's not, you have to understand the New Age movement, when they say, I worship Thor, or I worship someone from the Greek pantheon, or the Egyptian pantheon, their lineage only goes back to 1970. They are not actually doing what was done, because in a lot of cases, we don't know exactly what they were doing. So how could they know? So what they've done is they've grasped, and they've done this eclecticism, and taken bits and pieces, and they've created this religion for themselves. So precise scholarly definitions of New Age differ in their emphasis, largely as a result of its highly eclectic structure. So it's actually a one-up from Gnosticism now, instead of just sprinkling truth. Now we're just taking whatever we want to claim as truth and just hodgepodge it together to create one really neat religion that will satisfy what I want. and how I feel, and we'll talk about feelings in a second. They can be very dangerous. So as a form of Western esotericism, the New Age drew heavily upon a number of older esoteric traditions, taking the bits and pieces from these different faiths, the different pantheons, Wiccan, old Druidic culture from Ireland, and putting it together to kind of create this thing. And like I said earlier, most New Age people can't really tell you what New Age is. Right, because it's so eclectic. Okay, so despite its highly eclectic nature, a number of beliefs are commonly found within New Age that can kind of be identified. And I'll try to go over the ones that we covered in Gnosticism to try to give you a look at what second century Gnosticism believed and what New Age believes in these concepts. So let's look at dualism. You guys remember what dualism is? Right, we have a form of dualism, That sentence on its own is just fine, but then we start to add things, okay? So Gnostics believe that the world was divided in physical and spiritual. They believe, New Age, most of them believe in what's called channeling, right? So there's not, the two can become one if they channel, okay? The Old Testament would refer to that as a type of sorcery. So they believe that they can do that. Anybody familiar with the Halloween holiday of Samhain? Samhain is this belief, and it actually comes from ancient Ireland, that there's one day where the veil between the dualistic, the physical and the spiritual, is its weakest, and people can channel and go in between the two. So New Age has kind of grabbed that and brought it into its fold, and that's kind of how they view the physical world. that if you attain the secret knowledge, the cool password, you too can bounce in between the spiritual and physical. And how has that manifested itself? Ouija boards. Sold by Milton Bradley, by the way. That's the funniest thing I think I've ever seen in my life. It's funny faux pas, not funny ha ha. Right? Milton Bradley will sell you a Ouija board. Yeah, Google it. Don't Google it. Just leave it alone. Just the sight of those things terrify me. Because I really do, I believe in the spirit world. And I do believe in demons, right, like I do believe in these things. Those things terrify me. So, their view of God. So most New Age groups believe in an ultimate source, they'll call it the source or the ultimate source, right, from which all things originate, which is usually conflated with the divine. So various creation myths have been articulated into New Age publications, so what you'll see is it's really interesting because they will all say that there's this one universal source but as soon as you get them by themselves and ask them what's the source they may say the sun god Ra or Thor so even inside their own they're destroying themselves they're destroying their own doctrine inside so from the outside they say hey there's this ultimate source and we all love him and he's great and then you get in how does it Jesus is not one source. How does that separate that idea from what you're saying about one source? You know, I mean, it's actually a trinity. I understand that it's all one source. Yeah. How's that different from... How's that different from New Age? Yeah. So, in Christian theology, right, we have God the creator of the heavens and the earth, right? And when you, like if I were to go to a Lutheran church and say, what is God, you know, Orthodox Lutherans will tell you there's a Trinity, it's this one God, three person heads, right? If you go to this church, which is a CMA church, and you ask us, we're gonna give you the same answer. If you go to a Baptist church, you'll likely get the same answer. What you have in New Age, though, is you may go to one group, and they'll tell you that it's the sun god, Ra. In the next group, they'll tell you it's Thor. In the next group, they'll say it's the source. In the next group, they'll tell you, well, we don't really know. Or it's not even a conscious being, it's just kind of this, Well, there's an inclusivity. You know, everybody's included in all of this. Whereas Jesus says, I'm the way, the truth. He excludes everything except. Absolutely. Absolutely. Did that answer your question? Sort of. I mean, it's hard. I mean, you can believe what you want to believe. You know, you're going to be accepted. Absolutely. Absolutely. Here's the interesting thing about New Age. You can come in as a Christian and they will accept you in. You can be a Christian in the New Age movement. Have you ever heard of the Unitarian Universalist Church? They are a self-proclaimed Christian church with Christian doctrine. But they are under this movement because they believe in universality. That all roads lead to God and that Christ is one of those roads. So that's kind of their view on God. The New Age worldview emphasizes wholism and inclusivity, and this idea that everything in existence is intricately connected as part of a single whole. And that's actually something they've drawn from another world religion. Does anybody know which one that is? Buddhism. So they've actually brought that in from Buddhism. Salvation. So salvation is found in the knowledge of oneself. Does that sound familiar from a group we just recently talked about? You find it within yourself, right? It's your truth. I don't know how many times a day I've heard, you know, live your truth. Well, I'm here to tell you that's very dangerous. Salvation is found in the knowledge of yourself coming from within the spirit of the individual person's spiritual growth. So your ability to do stuff will get you to the place where you need to go. Whatever that place is inside of your new age, whatever niche you're in, right, you have to grow. What's the problem with that? With this attitude of, I need to grow. I need to do these things. You need to know the secret. But then you gotta know the secret, right? So, yeah, you can grow, but you gotta know the cool password. So, one of the biggest things that this runs into is this attitude of myself is more important than everything on the planet. I can do it without the help of others. Yeah, I don't need anyone. And worse than that is, if you try to get in my way, God is no other. Love your neighbor, that's a good one, we'll take that. I'm the way, the truth, and the light, no one comes to the Father except me, we're gonna leave that out. We'll eclectically pick and choose, just like we do with every faith group we're picking from, and that's how we'll run our faith. So New Age likes to cultivate one's own divine potential. That's one of the things that you will see. What you will see is it's all about you, it's all about me. And in the culture we're in today, this is popular because we're a me culture. Over time, at least in the last hundred years, we have shifted from a we culture to a me culture. What was good for the community? What can I do to help the community? That's where we started in the turn of the century. And now, it's all about me, baby. What can I do for me? And so, Christianity has a hard rub with that, because that's not what our faith teaches us. Thank God. It's not what our faith teaches us. However, there's this really cool alternative that you can do whatever you want, and it's all about you. You can just pick and choose. You see why it's very attractive, especially to younger people who are looking for the spiritual? It's very attractive because there's no, what is it, outback? It's like outback, no rules, just right. That's what we're doing. But we're not talking about people's stakes. We're talking about people's souls. This is very dangerous, and the point I want to make Now, as if you think this is only happening outside of the church, you're sorely mistaken. This stuff has infused itself into our churches. I think the best place to look at it, to figure out how to combat it, look no further than the playbook, right? You can go back to the Bible, first, second, and third John, right? These books were written to combat Gnosticism. Their tenants work with New Age theory. Okay, so let's do some examples. So the biblical view of dualism, so the Bible also speaks of dualism of a physical plane and a spiritual plane, however, with some serious differences between the two we've just discussed. In Christian dualism, God and creation are distinct, but interrelated through the bond of who? A creator, right? So we saw in Gnosticism, there's an evil creator, and we saw in New Age, you could just pick your creator, but in Christianity, we have a creator that not only created, but is still involved with us, still loves us, and is still interested in our Tuesday. We have a very real creator that is involved in our lives. That's what separates us dualistically. 1 John 1.5, this is the message we have heard from him and announced to you that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. Given what I told you about Gnosticism, why would John write that? Why would John have wrote that? Getting rid of the notion of a dualistic God. Right, getting rid of the idea that there's this evil creator God and there's this really nice spiritual Jesus God. He's not like duct tape, he doesn't have a light side and a dark side. That's right! That's absolutely right. I'll steal that. And I'm pretty sure you speak like a podcast, so I am going to steal that just so you know. I'm taking that from you, that's good. God is good, period. The only way by which we can tell if anything is good is by that standard, right? There is no evil in God. The very notion that somehow God is evil is heresy. I don't know how else to say that. There's no nice way to say it. That is a heretical view, okay? God is good. But you know what kills me is, and I have been to church where this biblical view is being preached from the pulpit, that somehow God is responsible for evil. And it's simply not true, right? If that is true, then the Bible is lying, or the Bible is right and we're wrong, so which one do you think it is? I'm going to hedge my bet on holy writ, vice, how I feel. Feelings are dangerous. Doesn't that drive the main question you're always going to ask is why does God allow you? And that's where that kind of drifted down. Right, and so a lot of times, especially very educated atheists will Because I used to be a very educated atheist, and you will use that point to drive home the concept of, if your God created everything, he had to have created evil. You see, and when you haven't done your homework in the Bible, that's a, I get it, I've done it, I can see why you go down that rabbit hole, because, well if your God created everything, then he created evil too. Right, it's a very easy blanket statement to make, but if you read scripture, you know it's not true. Okay? But you gotta read the book. You guys remember reading Rainbow? All right, but maybe it was just me. All right, it is in the book, I assure you. Okay, so the biblical view of salvation. So 1 John 2, 1 and 2. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he himself is the propitiation for our sins. The propitiation, I always mess that up. for our sins. Not for ours only, but for those of the entire world. Simply put, man cannot save himself. Right? There's no secret knowledge that you're going to find out there that is going to free you from the bondage of sin. Amen? You will not find, I assure you, I've looked, you will not find anything out there. But that's what Gnosticism is teaching you. It's a direct It's in direct contrast to what scripture's telling us. And this is why John wrote this this way. He was specifically combating this problem. Now that applies to the new age too. One savior. One for the forgiveness of sins. One substitutionary sacrifice. One atonement. Not Ra or this other person who we can't historically verify ever existed. But we can, if you were here last night, we can historically verify that Jesus Christ at a minimum was a real person And I think we have plenty of clear evidence for the resurrection that would make him both, which ties in hypostatic union, the concept that he's both fully God and fully man. Mere knowledge doesn't save. So this concept that knowledge will save you, Satan knows who Jesus Christ is. Would you agree? He knows who Christ is and what he did. We know this because Satan tempts him, right? And he tempts him in a way that would be appealing to someone who has these types of supernatural powers, right? So he attacks him in three ways, but please go read it yourself. I don't wanna get you caught up on that, okay? Mere knowledge doesn't save. What's sad is we teach this from, I've seen it being taught from the pulpit, right? Just study your Bible. You study your Bible, you're going to be a better Christian. Is that true? Yes. If you study the Word, you become a better Christian. But I will tell you, Dawkins studies the Bible. He reads it. I guarantee it. Is he saved? Is he a Christian? I don't know if he's saved. That's between him and God. But I can assure you his audio wouldn't match the video if he was saying he was saved. The audio don't match the video. So merely reading the Bible is not going to save you. Right? It's allowing the Bible to speak to your heart. Right? And allowing the Holy Spirit to convict you. And coming to that salvation point. All those great things that we talk about as Christians. Right? But merely having the Bible on your shelf at home saves no one. And it's probably collecting dust and wasting space. Because it is not a small book. Knowing and then surrendering. In Western Christianity, we really struggle with that second part. We know, I know, I know because I live this, I know Jesus is who he says he is, but I'm really not interested in him being on the throne in my life. Right? I'm really not interested in that. Because then, one, I don't get to do what I want, and two, I have to admit that I'm broken. Because I'm gonna look at the perfection that is Jesus Christ with my broken form, and I'm gonna realize something's wrong with me. That I can only be healed in one way. That's why New Age is so appealing to a younger generation who has not been taught scripture, who has not been taught basic stuff from our Sunday schools, from our pulpits. We're not teaching this stuff anymore. We just assume everybody knows because everybody's got Google. They can just look it up. I'm here to tell you, that's wrong. We have to teach. I'm not talking about just pastors. When you said yes to Jesus, congratulations, you've entered ministry. Right, we're all in this. Some of us just get microphones and are responsible for church budgets. Which, if I could do without that, I'd probably be a happier person. You're right, I'd find, you know what, in my broken form, I'd find something to complain about, I guarantee you. Don't you find that interesting too, that, so the normal people, you know, I think they lie to themselves thinking, well, I'm not as bad as that guy. Because the standard is never the same. You're never comparing yourself to Jesus. I'm just, well, this guy, he killed somebody. I didn't. So I'm better. Yeah, and I'll give you a primary example of that. So I was doing some counseling with a couple. Clearly, I can't say the name. None of you would know them anyway, different state. The husband was cheating on his wife. We're in marriage counseling, in a marriage counseling environment. And this was his response to me. And to me, this response says everything about new age. It says everything about, Yeah, I'm just gonna say it. The vile things we spew from the pulpit that are wrong, this is what he said. Pastor, I'm cheating on my wife, but at least I'm not gay. I mean, we're winning there, right? I mean, woo! Big relief! Counseling's over, brother, come home, be with the Lord. But do you see, although yes, It shocked me when he said it, and it's kind of funny now, but do you see the very real problem in that method of thinking? That somehow sin is on a hierarchy, and I'm on this road, I'm on this pathway of knowledge to heaven, so I'm telling you, if you don't think Gnosticism is infecting the church today, you're sorely mistaken. There are churches, I'm not here to bash any churches, but there are churches that have a hierarchy of sins written into their doctrine, right? But I'm not talking about those churches. I'm talking about vanilla Protestant churches, Reformed churches that have this concept. They may not say it in their doctrinal statement, but I guarantee you the people walking out on Sunday believe that. They're believing that. They're believing that, I mean, yeah, I stole from my brother, but I didn't kill anybody, so I'm okay. I'm a good person. Right, you see how now we're starting to get back into this, I'm a good person, it's all about me, I'm special, I can do this on my own, and we're silent from the pulpit about it. We're silent in Sunday school about it. We don't wanna talk about it because it's uncomfortable. So salvation in Jesus Christ, so 1 John 1, 1 and 4, what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the word of life, and the life was manifested And we have seen, and testify, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was from the Father, and was manifest to us. What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, that you may have fellowship with us. And indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete. Given what we now know about Gnosticism, what we've talked about, why would he write that? Why would he say things like what we've heard, what we've touched with our hand? Why would he say that? What's the massive tenet of Gnosticism? Dualism. Right. Also that Jesus was a hologram. You couldn't touch him. Right. What's he saying right here? I heard his voice. I put my fingers in his side. I touched him. I know he's real. He was physically here. We're telling you that. We're telling you as the people who walked with Jesus that we touched him. That he touched us. That he spoke to us. We've watched him bleed out. We've watched this happen. I'm a witness and I'm telling you. And why am I telling you? Why is He telling you? We are proclaiming this also so that you may have fellowship with us. Believe like us. In sound doctrine. And indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus. He's making a very clear statement here. that if you don't believe that there is a very physical, very real Jesus that you can touch, talk to, listen to, and see, that's heresy. Outside of that. There was no spirit vapor that came to save us. It was a very real, very personal Jesus Christ. Right? That took on flesh. And we know that. Right? We didn't feel that. We don't think that. These people are telling you, we know that. We watched it happen. How important was the word of a witness in the Old Testament time and even in early A.D.? How important was it? It comes up over and over again, the testimony. And notice how he writes this. Because only one person is writing this. What does he say? We, meaning more than one. I'm not telling you that just John saw this. Everybody knows John is, at a minimum, the brain behind this. There's arguments that Polycarp actually wrote it. Another radical. So, we, meaning more than one person saw this. Why do you think the witness statements are so important in the Gospels? He appeared to this person, and then he appeared to these three people, and then he appeared to 500 people. It's important, why? Why is it important to the story? Because witnesses, there were no forensics. We didn't have people studying the Shroud of Turin in AD30. We didn't have stuff like that. That's how historical truth is gathered, is from the testimony of eyewitnesses. Right. And it's still true now. Right? All the forensics in the world isn't going to beat an eyewitness account. When someone watched something happen, and then you can corroborate that with more than one person, murder cases are still solved that way. Good old detective work, right? Gnosticism teaches that Jesus was only a spirit with no actual flesh, and has massive issues with soteriology, right? We already covered that. New Age, Jesus is a great moral teacher. I don't know how many times I've heard that. Jesus is a good dude. But he wasn't God. Well, there's a problem with that because he claims divinity multiple times. So, as C.S. Lewis put it, he's either Lord, liar, or lunatic. He either actually is the son of God, He was crazy and thought he was the son of God, or he's a liar. Either way, he cannot be only a good moral teacher and not the son of God. He's either the son of God and a good moral teacher, or a horrible person. That's it. It's the only two. There's no middle ground here. But the New Age wants to, they wanna bring Jesus, because Jesus is hip, right? Especially in Western culture. We're gonna take the really neat parts of it, like feeding the hungry, and we're gonna deny that I'm the way, the truth, and the life. So, conclusions here. Although we're talking about New Age and Gnosticism, I submit to you, the biggest enemy of Christianity right now is neither of those. Neither. The biggest enemy of Christianity right now is Christians, who won't proclaim sound doctrine. That's our biggest enemy right now. Our enemy's not from without, it's from within. And it was the same problem when John wrote these three books. When he wrote these letters, it was the same problem. Bad doctrine has birthed these movements. Bad doctrine birthed Gnosticism. Bad doctrine has birthed New Age movement. You know what else has birthed them? Us. It's hard for me as a leader to accept this and own this, but when we fail to follow what Christ has called us to do, and we start going in our own ways, this is what happens. And then it gets taught to other people in this half-truth format. Which, by the way, is no such thing as a half-truth, that's called a lie. What John was talking about, and what I'm encouraging you to do today, one, we have to introspect, we have to look at ourselves. What are we doing? And then once we figure that out, then we have to look at, when you go to your home church, what are we doing? What am I doing? What are we doing? Right? And so I encourage you, now I'm not, this is not what I'm saying, I'm not saying, Go beat up your pastor tomorrow. Heretic! None of that. But, it's important to talk to your pastor and go, hey, when was the last time we had a sermon on salvation? When was the last time we had a sermon on a basic Christian doctrine? When was the last time we talked about the hypostatic union? In seminary, they did a study, they asked second year seminary students what the hypostatic union was, 30% didn't know. Those are our leaders, people. Those are the people that are gonna come preach at church. Do not understand that Christ is both fully God and fully man. That is a problem. My pastor used to say, where there's mist in the pulpit, there's fog in the pews. Ooh, that's good. As they say back in the South, that'll preach. You know, I just got a quick question. Oh, no, please. in the church on a media level. And like if we were to ask John MacArthur to list all the heretics that he knew, he really doesn't do that within the Christian realm. And so you're not seeing that from what we would consider sound biblical So if you say, OK, well, I'm going to go to my pastor and blah, blah, blah, and not even the sound renowned people of faith are calling others to the carpet, how do you gain a- How do you gain traction there? Because it's not happening. Right. And so I agree with you. It's not happening. on any level, really, we're struggling with this. And one, I'm not saying every pastor's a heretic, and they don't care, and all pastors, you know, woe is me, the church is doomed, that's not what I'm saying. I think for every pastor out there that's a little confused on their theology, I would submit there's probably three that are solid. Right? Yes. But I think whenever you have questions like that, you need to go back to the Bible, because the Bible says everything. I agree. Because I've been to a church in the past where even the pastor said stuff like, happy wife, happy life, which is totally not doctrine. I agree with you. I was actually going to make a joke, but it's not the time for a joke. No, you're absolutely right. To the crux of your question, though, It starts, and what's great is the Bible has an answer. You ever read Matthew 18? There's a way we deal with this inside the church. Let's say you're sitting there on Sunday morning, and the pastor says something, and you're like, is that real? Look at my book. Because this has actually happened to me. I've actually misquoted scripture, and I've been corrected outside. My church is really good about, you got a minute, Pastor John? That's how I know I did something wrong in the bullpen. Pastor, come here. They always do it privately, right? And that's my point, right? So there's a way to do this. Standing up on Sunday morning in front of everybody and screaming heretic is unbiblical. That's grossly inappropriate, right? The way I think we should try to do this inside our own churches is if you hear something like that, first, you need to go talk with other people who were sitting there when it was read. Because maybe you misheard it, right? Isn't that what Matthew 18 says to do? If someone does something against you, what do you do? You go to them by yourself first? Even that would be kind of dangerous, right? Because then you run the risk of spreading rumors. Because our natural tendency is to disagree and say, did you hear that? Did you hear what he said? And then you've got a problem. So I think you'd want to go to the pastor first, right? What does Matthew 18 say to do first? You go to that person first and you talk to them about it, right? And then, if that doesn't work, if you still get no satisfaction or And by satisfaction, it doesn't mean I disagree with you. Yes. It's OK. So if you go to the person and say something, and they go, well, this particular teacher that we're using as an example or reference material from or whatever had really good stuff in the past. And now they're moving. towards something else. So you're saying, well, just because they had good stuff in the past, now they're moving on to all sorts of stuff. So there's just this evolution of stuff out there that Christians are getting stuck in the mud in. Because they're saying, well, these people were all good in the past. They all taught good stuff in the past. And I would say to a person who says that, well, they had really good stuff in the past. I would use the inverse of that argument, because that's the only way I know how to argue that. John, before he met Jesus, was a nightmare. But he's good now. Right? Are we going to say what I did in the past is now somehow right? Because I did some really bad stuff in the past, so I must be a monster now. And the inverse of that is we have really good stuff in the end. Well, they're just saying we just concentrate on the good stuff. We're not going to acknowledge. Right. What does that sound like, though? We're going to acknowledge this, but we're going to pretend like this didn't happen. That's new age. That's what they do. That's a play right out of their book. Yes. Last question on it. I'm sorry. No, it's completely fine. We're called to be brains. You've got to stay at work. You gotta get into it now, and you may get, like you said, doing your bad stuff, or they may have had good in the past, but you just gotta dig in. Yeah, and I do agree. You have to go to the Word first. What I said 10 months ago and what I say now, both have to be measured by the Word. Not by what I said 10 months ago. It must be measured by the Word. So thank you guys very much for spending some time with me. This is where I serve, so if you have any questions, I'll be here all day.