I said this morning, we're going to be concentrating this week, beginning tonight, on a study of the kingdom of the cults. And in doing this, I wanted to urge you, then as I do now, to call a cultist. and invited Jehovah's Witness tomorrow night, and a Mormon the next night, and a Christian scientist, and a member of the Unity School, and a member of Mr. Armstrong's group, and spiritists, and whoever you can lay hands upon in the proper sense of the term, and to bring them here so that we might have an opportunity to contrast the teachings of the cults with that of God's Word. It will be done in a spirit, I believe, that will appeal even to them. So we hope that you'll be in prayer about this and that you'll be bringing people here when tomorrow evening we begin on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, one of the most misunderstood and confused of all biblical doctrines. And when I was teaching biblical studies at King's College, where I taught for five years as professor of biblical studies, I used to ask my students this question. When was the last time you heard a sermon on the doctrine of the Trinity? In the last five years, raise your hands. The last three years, the last two years, the last six months. And without fail, year after year after year, this was the doctrine upon which nobody ever preached. Tomorrow night we're going to be discussing Jehovah's Witnesses and the Holy Trinity, what it is and what it is not, and how we can give a reasonable answer for the faith and for the hope that lies within us. So call a cultist and come out and support this by prayer and presence as we seek to enter the kingdom of the cults together. I want you to consider yourself in the time that we have together, not so much in church as in school. I cannot hope to give in the time that we have a thorough exposition of the subject of the cults. It usually takes me a solid year in college or seminary just to cover the basic cults. So obviously the best we are going to be able to do is a reader's digest condensation of the kingdom of the cults in the time that we have together. So I hope that you will Think of this as a time that we have together to study. How many brought your Bibles with you? That's an essential thing because dealing with a cultist you have to have a Bible. Good. I'm glad you brought your Bible with you. It's very important because the average well-trained cultist can take the average Christian and with a copy of the Bible twist you into a doctrinal pretzel. I have seen it done. You can send a man through four years of college and three years of seminary and a 90-day wonder from the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society will twist him up so fast and so authoritatively that it may take him literally days to get untwisted. So you see, the kingdom of the cults is not sandlot baseball. It's big leagues. And you have to know not only what you believe, but why you believe it. So these are the things we're going to be doing as we study together this week. I'd like you to turn with me in your Bibles, if you will, to ground our study in the Word of God to Matthew chapter 7, to the words of Jesus Christ, beginning at verse 15. Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are riveting wolves. The word is savage in the Greek. You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree brings forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that brings not forth good fruit is hewn down and hurled into the fire. Wherefore, by their fruits you will know them. Not everyone that says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he that does the will of my Father which is in heaven. And many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not in thy name prophesied, in thy name expelled demons, in thy name worked miracles? And then I will profess unto them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who work iniquity." Now in the words of our Lord, I believe it's tremendously important to beware of false prophets. There apparently is such a thing as a false prophet. Otherwise, Jesus would not have warned the church. And this is obviously in the context of a warning. He describes something of the nature of the false prophet. The false prophet does not look like a false prophet. The false prophet does not sound like a false prophet. The false prophet does not act like a false prophet. The false prophet looks and acts and sounds like the genuine article. And Jesus used the perfect illustration from which we have the common expression, wolves in sheep's clothing. They look like lambs, but underneath, spiritually speaking, you are dealing with savage wolves. Now Christ said that a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit. Now there are cultists and there are people that belong to non-Christian religions who lead moral and ethical lives. Many of them can lead lives that would put many Christians to open shame. And so the world comes along and says, well then, that's good fruit. Obviously these people are producing good fruit, so the tree must be a good tree. Be careful. Remember, that it's perfectly possible to live on the surface an ethical and a moral life at the same time be at war with God, be at enmity with God, and contrary to God's teachings. How do we know? Because we have ample evidence all over the world. I have met some of the finest people who are atheists, agnostics, skeptics. I have met followers of Islam. Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, multiple forms of religion in my own observations and research over the last 20 years. And I can say without any doubt that these people in appearance would appear to be living the good life and the Christian ethic and morality. And yet every single one of them shares one common trait. They all deny that Jesus Christ is God's way of saving lost souls. So you see, the life may be on the surface acceptable, but the doctrine or the teaching is corrupt. So remember that you judge a tree not only by the kind of fruit of the life that's lived, but also by the kind of fruit of the doctrine that's taught. Put the two together, and then find out what you're dealing with. And I think it'll be eye-opening, to say the least. Now Jesus said something else of great importance. He said that the false prophets would call him Lord, verse 21. And indeed they do. For people who are involved in cultic structures often refer to Jesus Christ as Lord. But the meaning of the term has changed. Let me illustrate precisely what I mean by this. In his second epistle to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul wrote what can only be described as enigmatic words. He wrote peculiar words, and yet they had fantastic spiritual content. Paul said, I'm afraid for you, you Christians at the Church of Corinth, because if somebody comes to you and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, another spirit, and another gospel, you might go along with it. Peculiar words. Another Jesus, another spirit, and another gospel. The Apostle here reveals to us that there is such a thing as a counterfeit Christ, a counterfeit Holy Spirit, and counterfeit gospels. They look like, they sound like, and they act like the gospel of Jesus Christ, but they're not. And we are adjured by Scripture, commended by Scripture, to test all things and hold fast to that which is good. Remember that the cults have attacked the Church. The Church has not attacked the cults. It was the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Christian scientists and the Unitarians and the Spiritists who attacked Christian theology. We did not attack them. And the Church's responsibility is clearly revealed in Scripture. 1 Peter chapter 3, be always ready to give to everyone that asks of you a reason for the hope that lies within you. To give an answer to every man for that hope, for your faith in Jesus Christ. Many people ask the question, what after all is a cult? Some people look at it as if it was a dirty word. Well it isn't. It's a simple word, and it is derived from the Latin cultus, and it simply refers to a group of individuals. Why have I chosen it? Because I wish to set it off from the denominations and from that which is clearly the Church. A few years ago, the Christian Century magazine, which is not known for its overwhelming endorsement of orthodoxy, ran a series of articles on the subject of the cults. And the author of those articles was Dr. Marcus Bach, for whom I have the greatest respect. We might say he is my liberal counterpart in the field of cults, or religions which had their origin in the United States. Dr. Bach wrote on these various cults. And then a strange thing happened. The Christian century was deluged with mail. Not protesting the articles, and not endorsing the articles per se, But the people were writing in, saying that these organizations sounded like such wonderful organizations, could they please have the addresses so they could join them? That is how sympathetic it was done. And the editor, Ted Gill at the time, had to write an editorial in the Christian Century countermanding Dr. Bach, and in effect saying, It may be well and good to talk about the cults, but let's never forget, and this comes from liberalism, not from orthodoxy, we are the church and they are the cults. There's a difference. Now if the liberals can make this distinction, I think it's perfectly fair for orthodoxy to establish the distinction also. And the distinction is very clear. A cult is a group of persons gathered about somebody's interpretation of the Bible. It always claims to be in some way or another, in sympathy or harmony with Christianity, but it ends up by having one common trait. You might write this down, it may help you. Every non-Christian cultic system denies that Jesus Christ is God in human form. There isn't one single one that will fail this test. How do they do it? Well, let's look at the Jesus of the cults for a moment. We are told in 2 Corinthians chapter 11 that there is another Jesus, well and good. What does he look like? Well, the Jesus of the Jehovah's Witnesses, as we'll study tomorrow night, is really Michael the archangel, the first and greatest creation of Jehovah God, who came to earth and lived as a man, and died and rose as a spirit, who came back invisibly in 1914 when the millennium began and established his headquarters in Brooklyn. I kid you not, that is the Jesus of Jehovah's Witnesses. Now the Jesus of the Mormons is one God in a pantheon of gods, and all male Mormons are striving to become gods. This too we will study when we study the Mormons. The Jesus of the Spiritists is an advanced medium in the sixth sphere of the astral projection, wherever that may be. The Jesus of the Christian scientists is a divine idea. The Jesus of the Unitarians is an extraordinarily good man whom his mistaken followers deified. The Jesus of the cults is not the Jesus of the Bible. For the Jesus of the Bible said, if you believe not that I am the eternal God, he even applied to himself the divine name. If you believe not that I am, you will die in your sins, for where I am going, you cannot come. This is what separates Christianity from the cults. One theological term Christology, the person, nature, and work of Jesus Christ. The most singularly important question in dealing with the cults is this, what do you think of Christ? That's the question. Forget about arguing with the Jehovah's Witness about hell. Forget about arguing with the Spiritists about phenomena and extrasensory perception. Forget arguing with the Christian scientists about the existence of matter. Forget arguing with the Unitarian about the historicity of the Gospels and the Dead Sea Scrolls. And get down to the only important question that means anything. Who really is Jesus of Nazareth? For if he is the eternal God in human form, the kingdom of the cults disintegrates. because it is all based on one premise, that he is not God in human form. I'm many, many times reminded in studying the cults that the Christian Church has a responsibility, and we do. A great responsibility. A hundred and fifty years ago, there weren't a thousand cultists in America. Today, according to Dr. Bach, Conservatively estimated, we have about 20 million. I don't know how many you have in California, but we've got plenty of them in the United States. And they are growing on our major mission fields at an alarming rate. The combined missionary force of the Protestant, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic churches is less than 90,000 full and part-time workers. The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Jehovah's Witnesses has more than 361,000 full and part-time workers right now operating throughout the world. The presses of the Watchtower organization, for example, turn out more literature in more languages in six months than the combined presses of the entire Christian world in one year. In effect, They outwork, outgive per person, in time and money, and at the present moment on the mission fields are out evangelizing the efforts of evangelical Christianity. For me to say tonight that the Church of Jesus Christ is discharging faithfully her obligation in the kingdom of the cults would be one of the greatest falsehoods ever uttered. In a mission field exceeding twenty million, we do not have one dozen missionaries. We do not have ten missionaries. We do not have seven missionaries. I believe we have half a dozen. I'm one. There are five others. And it is the largest single mission field in the world, in one place. Now you people sitting here tonight may say, well, our church supports this mission agency, our church supports that mission agency, our church is in this evangelism, our church is in that evangelism, as all Christian churches are and they should be. Might I point out to you that for 150 years we have never evangelized the cults. We have put our head in the sand and thought they would go away like a bad dream, but they won't. And the longer we ignore them, the more rapidly they grow. In fact, some people seem to feel that the cults, if we simply preach the gospel and do nothing else, are bound to leave us alone. Because over 80% of the kingdom of the cults is made up of Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and the people who sat in pews in churches who are now in the kingdom of the cults. They were with us, but they left us, that it may be made clear that they are not all of us. John says they went out from us, but they were not of us. They were not committed to Jesus Christ. And why is the kingdom of the cults growing? Because the churches of America and the world are not presenting Jesus Christ's gospel with a compelling relevancy. They are not making the gospel and communicating the gospel in a sense that attacks the problems of our day and the needs of man. And the kingdom of the cults grows because of our lethargy. Peter tells us in 2 Peter 2.1 that there shall be false prophets among you, even as there was in Moses' day. Don't be disturbed by their presence. It is proof of what God has said, that we are living at the consummation of time. Now there are many questions that we could ask about the rise of the cults. How do we explain this phenomenon? Where did they come from? Well, 80% of them came from us, so that's a pretty good answer to begin with. They came from the churches where the gospel was not preached. A second question is, why do they succeed and why do they grow? What is the secret of the success of the rise of the cults? It's found in your Bible, but quite frequently we don't look to find the answer. 1 John chapter 4 gives us an answer, and I believe one that every Christian ought to be informed about. If you look at it for a moment, I think John has hit the proverbial theological nail upon the head. Speaking of those who have left the fellowship of the Church or are antagonistic to it, knowing of it, he says, they are of the world, therefore they speak of the world and the world listens to them. We are of God. He that knows God hears us. He that is not of God does not hear us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. There is such a thing as the spirit of truth. There is such a thing as the spirit of error. The Mormons cannot be right. The Christian scientists cannot be right. The Unitarians cannot be right. The Jehovah's Witnesses cannot be right. And the Church at the same time right. Somebody is wrong. And we had better be prepared very quickly to demonstrate the reasons for our faith. You see, we have been deluded for many years into believing that all we have to do to discharge our obligation as Christians is to go out into the world and tell people that Jesus loves them. Once we have done that, we have accomplished our task. This is not New Testament theology. I don't know where it developed from originally, but it did not originate with the Holy Spirit. But if you read all through the New Testament, you will find an amazing fact. You will find that almost half of it is an apologetic document. That is, the men who were speaking were speaking in defense of the faith. and they were giving reasons for their belief in Jesus Christ. When our Lord was questioned by the Pharisees, the Sadducees, by the Herodians, by the people who were constantly trying to entrap him, Jesus did not turn around and say, God loves you, the Lord bless you, depart in peace, everything's going to be alright, remember, love one another, and then preach them the Sermon on the Mount. You'll not find that theology in the New Testament. Jesus spent the time to answer their questions and he spent the time to reprove and rebuke what they said because they were distorting the truth of God. Some of the most scathing words ever found on this planet were uttered by the man who said, permit the little children to come to me and forbid them not for of such is the kingdom of heaven. And the world is always ready to have the Jesus with the Roman nose, the light beard, the long hair, the Nordic features, and the milk-sop theology. It will always welcome this Jesus, but it will never stand for the Jesus who said, Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting flames, prepared for the devil and his angels since the foundation of the ages. The world will listen to the love of God, but the world wants nothing to do with the justice of God. And it is strange that when the Christian stands up for his faith, he is accused of attacking the world. The truth of the matter is, when the Christian stands up for his faith, he is emulating his master. For that is precisely what Christ and the apostles did. There's a verse in scripture which I believe has great significance. It's found in the book of Jude. It's a simple verse, and I'm sure that you have memorized it at one time or another, or should have. It's verse 3. Jude said, when I wrote to you concerning our common salvation, it was necessary for me to urge you to contend earnestly for the faith. once delivered to the Saints." That's King James. But the Greek is a little better. The Greek says, when I wrote to you about our common salvation, it was necessary for me to urge you to put up a stiff fight for the faith once, for all time, delivered to the Saints. In other words, we do not need extra-biblical revelations. We do not need Pastor Russell and Judge Rutherford's interpretations of prophecy. We do not need Joseph Smith and Brigham Young's prophetic utterances. We do not need Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scripture. We do not need the Fillmore's and Unity. We do not need Abdu'l-Bahá and Bahá'u'lláh in Bahá'ísm. We do not need a whole host of theologians in Unitarianism. For the faith has been once for all delivered to the saints. God has said it all in Jesus Christ. And he intends to save the world, neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name given under heaven among men whereby you must be saved. He intends to save the world only by and through Jesus Christ. Now people say, this is very narrow. This is very dogmatic. You should be more loving. I really don't think that we need waste a great deal of time on this line of reasoning. Jesus Christ was incarnate love. Nobody will deny this. And yet incarnate love could say, you generation of vipers, Who warned you to flee from the damnation of hell? Incarnate love could invoke divine judgment. So can we, if we will emulate him. Incarnate love spoke of divine justice. So must we. We cannot have a schizophrenic gospel in which we talk to the world about how much God loved them and we do not tell them what it is going to cost them if they turn away from that love. Where do the cults get their zeal and their power from? Who energizes this kingdom of the cults? And where can we find an answer in Scripture? Well, Paul tells us in Romans 10 that there is such a thing as a zeal without knowledge, so we don't have to go too far. The Jews had it. All kinds of people have zeal without knowledge. So we can explain zeal, that's no problem. The problem we have to explain is power, the energy to drive these systems throughout the world. In 2 Corinthians 11, verses 14 and 15, if you turn to it in your Bibles, the Apostle Paul tells us just exactly what we want to know about the energy which is today operative in the world. Speaking of the other Jesus, the other spirit, and the other gospel, He also speaks, verse 13, of false apostles, deceitful workmen. Now look very carefully at this because this isn't Walter Martin. Don't go out of here tonight and have roast preacher when you get home and figure that I said this, Paul said this, so he's the one that should be on the dinner table. For such are false apostles, deceitful workmen, transforming themselves into or to look like, the apostles of Christ. And no marvel, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. It is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed to appear as ministers of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works. I want you to notice the progression of divine revelation in this chapter. Look at verse 4. There is another Jesus. There is another spirit. There is another gospel. Look at verse 13. There are false apostles, and the source of their power is Satan himself, transformer of that which is evil so that it appears to be good. Now you say, that's an incredible plot. Indeed it is. Look at verse 15. The Apostle anticipated this. It's no great thing. How about giving it a modern translation? So it's no big deal if Satan himself causes his ministers to look like us. Why? For the purpose of deceiving the world. And you will always find that the existence of a counterfeit predicates one unalterable fact, the existence of an original. If you have a counterfeit $10 bill, I can assure you that there is a genuine $10 bill someplace. If there is a counterfeit Rembrandt, there is a genuine Rembrandt. And the existence of the counterfeit postulates instantly the reality of the original. I was talking to a friend of mine not too long ago in the banking business, and I said to him, it must be a fascinating thing studying all of the counterfeit money that comes in. How do you manage to keep the people in your bank informed on counterfeits? He said, oh, every year we send them down to Washington for a year, the Treasury Department. I said, oh, that must be fascinating. Tell me about it. He said, well, we send them down there and they run them through a program for a week. He said, when they come back, he said, it's fantastic. I said, what do you learn in Washington? He said, well, I went down myself once. I wanted to see. What was it like? He said, well, they take us into a big room. And I said, and then they show you all kinds of counterfeit money. He said, no, whatever gave you that idea? I said, well, how in the world would you learn about it if you didn't see it? He said, all counterfeit money has a different color and a different texture to the paper. And so all we do for one week is to handle new money that comes out of the presses of the government. And as soon as we get finished handling the new money, we go back into the bank, and the first counterfeit bill that hits your fingertips, you don't even have to look down, you know that it's not real." I said, my, what a marvelous sermon illustration. The only way to detect a counterfeit is to be so familiar with the original that you can't be fooled. I do not urge that you all become authorities on the cults. I urge that you become authorities on Jesus Christ, and you will never be fooled by anybody. It's the people who are uninformed that get sucked into the cults. And don't think it doesn't happen to Christians, because it does. I have run across Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, every shade and variety, born-again people who got sucked into the cults and whom the Lord has graciously brought out again, but not without times of suffering and great spiritual anguish. 2 Corinthians 11 is true today as it was when it was written. Verse 3, I'm afraid for you. As the serpent tricked Eve through his subtlety, your mind should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. Be familiar with the original. The counterfeit will not pose any great threat. Now there are many other questions and time does not permit us to go into all of them, but we do know this. They are energized by the forces of darkness. And how is it possible for us to identify them? How can we know without a question of a doubt whether something is cultic or Christian? Ask the all-important question. What do you think of Jesus? Ask that question. And if a person says, well, I believe he's the Son of God, then ask the next question. Do you believe he is God the Son? And see what the answer is. Because you can say Son of God and mean many things. You can say Savior and mean many things. I was talking to a Christian scientist one time and I said, what do you think about Jesus? And the Christian scientist said, I believe Jesus is the Son of God. I said, do you believe that Jesus Christ is God, the Son, second person of the Holy Trinity and Savior of the world? Oh, no. By Son of God, I mean Jesus was the way shower, the one who shows us the way to God. I said, do you know what a way shower is? A way-shower is a sign. You're driving along the highway and you see a sign. And the sign has an arrow on it and it points so many miles to Fresno, so many miles to San Diego, so many miles to Lakewood or wherever else in California you may be traveling. That's a way-shower. Now tell me, what do you do to get to Fresno, to get to Lakewood, or wherever else you're going? Do you get out of your automobile and shimmy up the sign?" The Christian scientist looked at me for a moment and said, No, of course not. I'd be an idiot. I would follow the arrow that told me which road I ought to go. I said, Correct! Jesus Christ is not the way-shower. Jesus Christ is the way. You follow him and you walk after Him, and you believe only in Him and not in what you are told about Him. That is what is so important. As believers in Christ, we have a great responsibility. Our responsibility is to communicate Christ to the world. You may never meet an Alca, an Aborigine, a Zulu, or a Ubangi in your lifetime, even though your church may support missionaries all over the world. But I'm here to tell you tonight that Alcas, Aborigines, Zulus, and Ubangis proliferate the state of California. Only they are Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian scientists, Unitarians, Spiritists, whatever you want to call them, and they are just as much in darkness as any of these people scattered throughout the world. That's not a vicious thing or an unkind thing or a cruel thing to speak of this darkness. This is what God has to say, not what I have to say. Because, you see, the task of the Christian is to remember that God loved the world and sent Christ into it to save man out of it. And our task is to communicate Christ to the world and Christ's love. If we must, in telling the truth, offend, then let us remember that Jesus Christ is the greatest offense of all. The book of Hebrews tells us Then he went outside the gate, and we ought to go outside with him. He went outside the established religious structure. He went outside the power structure of politics. He went outside all of the values of his society and his culture. And he died as a common criminal. And the writer of Hebrews says, let us go with him bearing the stigmata, bearing the mark or the reproach of the cross. It's going to cost something to walk with him. It's going to cost something to tell people about him. And the world that rejects him, cultic or non-cultic, is in spiritual darkness. Paul tells us this very clearly in a passage of Scripture which I'm sure that most Christians read and seldom, if ever, stop to consider. In 2 Corinthians 4, verse 4, he wrote these words. Beginning at three, if our gospel is hid, and the Greek word for hid here is obscured. If our gospel cannot be seen by men, it is obscured to them that are lost. I didn't say it, God said it. In whom, in these people, the God of this world has blinded the minds of them which believe not. lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is God's image, should shine unto them." The kingdom of the cults is in darkness because the God of this world has blinded them. These people are not responsible for what Satan has done to them. They are responsible for not responding to the grace of God. Our task is to bring that grace into the lives of those who are bound in darkness. The Mormons today are moving upwards to 20,000 full-time missionaries. That's a tremendous number. The wealth of the Mormon Church is incalculable. Just spanning some of the cults, Time magazine estimated the wealth of the Mormons at $365 million per year gross income. That was in 1967. They are the richest and largest of all the cults and growing more rapidly than all the rest. What is being done? How are we communicating? How many of these people each year do we bring into confrontation with the person of Jesus Christ? Precious few. Now the Scripture, in great detail, tells the Christian what we must do. It tells us that their spiritual condition before God is blindness, and their destiny is eternal judgment, what then is our task? To go to them with the gospel of Christ. But the weakness of the Church is this, and you might mark this down. We know what we believe, but we don't know why we believe it. And that's a terrible thing. If I were to ask the average person in the audience tonight, what you believe, I'd get answers. But if I became a Jehovah's Witness or a Mormon or a Christian scientist and I really put the pressure on you and started to ask you why you believed it, after you ran out of John 3, 16, 524, 647, Acts 16, 31, Ephesians 2, and about 15 or 20 other texts, some sanctification texts, and a few quick arguments from Sunday school and church, We would be out of discussion time and I would be filling your ears with quotations from cultism based upon passages of the Bible for which you would have no answers. I say that having done it in colleges, seminaries, and churches all over the United States for two decades. To know what you believe is one thing, to know why you believe it is quite another. And that's why Peter says the responsibility of the Church is not just to proclaim Christ, but to every man an answer, a reason. And that's what apologetics is all about. Apologetics is not the science of saying to somebody, I'm sorry for my faith. Apologetics comes from an old Greek word, apologia, which means to defend vigorously what you believe. You don't attack somebody, you defend yourself. And Christ has commanded us to do this. How effective are you? When the world attacks the church, what do you do? Ask yourself that question. Do you mutter a few, well, that's what you believe? Do you respond angrily with some quotations from the Bible and then condemn the person to eternal judgment? Or do you have a reasoned answer for the faith that you have? That's the crux of the age in which we live. For the world today, and the kingdom of the cults always, is not buying something because I say it or because you say it. They're going to buy it because it can be demonstrated. And if we don't have the answer, to whom will they look? Our limitation imposed upon us by time does not permit us to go beyond this. We can combat the cults with sound doctrine. We can combat their teachings by contrasting truth with error. But, the Scripture says, our greatest responsibility is evangelism, to bring them to Christ. And without that as our prime motivation, we will fail. in the penetration of this kingdom. It has risen because the Church has been unfaithful to her responsibility. The rise of the cult is in direct proportion to our failure to know what we believe and why we believe it, and to take seriously the faith once for all delivered to the Saints. The rise of the cult is a living indictment that at the end of the ages what Christ said will be true. When the Son of Man comes, will he find the faith on the earth?" I want to close with this thought. I say this earnestly. I am perhaps the most ecumenical person in this building, in the proper sense. I was baptized an Episcopalian, educated a Roman Catholic, converted as an agnostic, trained under a Presbyterian, was ordained a Baptist, and pastored a Lutheran church. I think that's fairly ecumenical. I have been pastor, teacher, evangelist, lecturer, researcher, call it what you may. And this much I know, that the teaching of the Scriptures today in the Church is a dying art. And you can name the great Bible teachers who live on one hand. I know also where there is no vision, the people perish. And I know that unless we see the challenge of the cults as part of our responsibility, we have missed the mark of what missions is all about. And your task and my task will never alter, will always remain the same, to communicate in the simplest possible terms with the greatest possible force, Jesus Christ's gospel. and to defend by all lawful means that faith once for all delivered to the saints. To live as best we can by the spirit of God's help, the Christian life, but to live it in the knowledge that the next best thing to a damned soul is a sterile Christian. Somebody who has been neutralized so effectively by the devil that they are incapable of reproducing spiritually. in the kingdom of God. Our task is to be informed communicators of an ageless message, a message which the Church desperately needs in our era of the Christian world. And I'll close with an Episcopal hymn that I like very much, because it's a hymn that calls us to do something instead of just having a committee to consider it. Rise up, O men of God, have done with lesser things. Give heart and soul and strength and mind to serve the King of kings. Rise up, O men of God, the church for you doth wait, her strength unequal to her task. Rise up and make her great. He that has ears to hear, let him hear the word of the Lord. Let us pray. Our Father, bless thy word. Arrest our thought processes and all that we are that we may listen to the voice of thy spirit. Teach us our responsibility in the closing days of this era that we may acquit ourselves nobly as men and women of God, workmen who need not to blush, rightly and with great vigor interpreting the word of truth. Bless us as we seek to do this to thy glory in Jesus Christ's name. Amen.