YP Address—Eric James
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What else could satisfy the heart of those Jesus fled? His homemade art is taught as well. Our hearts will force you given the fortune of the first born Son to pull the light of heaven. One of my favorite favorite things in the book. So let's start with verse 2.
Oh, what up?
He owes me, owe his love, everybody.
Lovely, love to have my friends.
The Father.
And came to her to make it wrong.
That we might share with God.
Oh what the hell. Therefore, let's love.
Coins from my but some people are in effect and slow.
Throughout this time and life.
And for reform, the Father is to fill with joy.
A heart.
Nobody said.
Give me blessings.
Or double true.
OK, it's been 50 years since I've been here so I don't know a lot of your names but I know a lot of your last names. At least when you mentioned them I seem to recognize them. Although I have to also ask what your grandfathers name is because they're kind of my generation but you'll excuse me for that. But it's it's certainly wonderful to be here and appreciate the people that have made such an effort to make this possible.
I want to talk about something called Worldview tonight. I know that maybe sounds a little.
A little popular, that kind of thing. But let me tell you a little story. When I was a sophomore in high school, I first really heard that term. That's been a few years ago now, but I suspect there's a number of you here that are not too many years on either side of that age group. And I was taking a biology class in high school, and they were, of course, teaching something called evolution, I'm sure you've all heard of.
And I figured, well, you know, they must have a lot of answers and a lot of evidence.
In order to support their views of evolution. And I listened and listened, and then I came across a book. Let's take a quick look at that here in a moment. But I came across a book that explained worldview. And we're going to talk about that just a moment. Because in a nutshell, worldview is the grid through which you see the world.
And I discovered pretty quickly that people that were teaching evolution were looking through a very different worldview.
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Than the worldview I learned at meeting and that I learned from the word of God even more importantly. And that's what I want to talk about tonight. So let's go ahead.
Look at a few of these things here.
Here's a quotation.
From one of my favorite.
Devotional books, and I encourage you young people to read something devotional. This is when I happen to enjoy. It's my favorite one called One Day at a Time by a name man named Mr. William McDonald. A lot of good things in there and I appreciate some of the quotations he has. Here's something that he quoted. One of the great tragedies of our existence is to see men and women living wasted lives.
That's a good point for us to remember, isn't it? This is kind of a preface to what we're going to talk about.
But there's a danger that we live a wasted life. That's not what we were created for, certainly not what we were saved for. Is the living wasted life. So we want to talk about that today and hopefully how to avoid that. Give some hints at least.
Here's what Francis Schaeffer, a man named Francis Schaeffer, wrote about worldview. That was a real help to me at the time when I was in those biology classes. And I hope it'll be a help to you young people as well. And here's what he says about worldview. As a man thinketh, so is he. Proverbs 23 seven. That statement is really most profound.
They will live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions.
Then they themselves may realize by presuppositions we mean the basic worldview, the grid through which he sees the world. People's presuppositions lay a grid for all they bring forth into the external world. Although worldviews have many variations, there are not many basic ones. We all have a worldview, and we're going to talk about worldview today.
Look at the true worldview.
One we've heard of often and look at some false worldview, some competing worldviews that are actually corruptions of the true world view. I don't want to say one other thing, too.
You know that first quotation?
I can get the. Well I can't get this thing to.
Oops, sorry about that. A little bit technology challenged here, you'll have to excuse that, but the first statement, again, you know, my best friend when I was out of college, he was actually my best man in my wedding. He said something in his high school yearbook that I thought was helpful. We didn't go to school together, but we met later on and just thinking of that tragedy.
Of living a wasted life, he said in that yearbook.
He says I want to live a life that's worth living.
And I hope that resonates with each one of us. How can we live a life worth living? You know, Satan wants the sandbag us. He wants to rob us of what's real.
So we're going to talk about the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Of course. That's first John 4/6.
Truth. First of all, here's a quotation from Mr. Darby. The Bible and its object is a whole which presents to us God coming forth from His essential fullness to manifest all that He is, and to bring back into the enjoyment of this fullness with Himself those who, having been made partakers of His nature, have become capable.
Of comprehending and loving his counsels and himself. You know what? I underlined the word capable.
And the reason I did that was because.
Our capacity for appreciating the Lord Jesus is formed in this world.
If we waste our world, the old brother used to say, you know, when some of us get to heaven, we're only going to have a thimble full of appreciation for Christ in his work. That's pretty much a wasted life, isn't it? We are Christians, but we just got there kind of as a fire escape, and that's for all eternity. Yes, we'll get there, and yes, it'll be a happy time and a blessed time, but our capacity will be limited.
But there's others that will have a full barrel full of capacity, and that capacity was formed in the training ground of this world. So let's keep this in mind. It's not just a just a, it's not just a game. It's not just something we can take or leave, but it's something that's very serious and we need to take it seriously.
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So our capacity for eternity is being formed at this time. Yes, we'll all get there.
As Christians, we're Christians, but our capacity will vary.
So here's the truth, O taste and see that the Lord is good.
O taste and see that the Lord is good. This is a great secret, and I hope each one of us can appreciate that that the Lord is good. He wants our blessing. He wants us to be truly happy and joyful. He wants us to have the peace of God and the peace of Christ. He wants us to have a good capacity for eternity.
O taste, and see that the Lord is good unto you, therefore which believe He.
Is precious. It's the person of Christ that's the center of truth. He's the one that said I am the way, the truth and the life. We've been talking about that some of the meetings, haven't we? It's true, you know, being 70 years old has some disadvantages, Needless to say, but there's a few advantages to being a little older. One of those advantages I think is we can kind of look back.
We can think about when we were young people.
The people we knew when we were young people and we can see different pathways that people took and we can see the results of those pathways. That's what we're going to talk about a little bit tonight. What happens if you follow a certain pathway? What are the results? That's what we're going to talk about.
There's the hymn we just sang for some of the people that came in a little bit late. Here's the last stands of this beautiful hymn, one of my favorites. One, as I mentioned, oh, what a home. The Lord Jesus came from heaven, from that essential fullness because he wanted our blessing and our happiness. He wanted us to be part of his family, not only for time, but for all eternity.
I went to home, but such his love that He must bring us there, even if such tremendous cost.
To fill that home, to be with him in all his glory, Share. You know, we spoke about it at our meetings, didn't we? But the Christian has the highest privileges of all God's creatures. Just think about them. We have more privileges than angels.
An Archangel would covet what we have. We have more privileges than Jews do. We have more privileges than Abraham or Isaac or Jacob because we're Christians.
We belong to a dispensation of the highest privileges of God's creatures, and this is kind of the essence of it. He wants us to fill that home, to be with Him in all His glory, share the Father's house, the Father's heart. All that the Son is given, made ours, the objects of His love.
And he our joy in heaven.
OK, we have truth, but we have error as well. What can we say about error? Satan, because we've heard in these meetings and certainly have heard many other times, is the God and Prince of this world.
I hope that you young people can get ahold of that.
Such a profound truth to understand that Satan is the head of this religious world and also the head of this political or civil world. He's the one who has claimed that place. No, he doesn't deserve it, but he's created a world, and we're going to look at that world some, and it's formed on those principles that he's the center.
Of this world system.
He's the God and the Prince.
Well, let's look a little bit at Satan.
What is Satan? We looked at what God is. God is good. We can taste and see that God is good. But what about Satan? He's a liar. We heard about that, didn't we? There's a quotation. John 844. He is a liar. He's going to lie to you. And I have to say, I've seen that many, many times over my lifetime. Satan is a liar.
He'll lead you down the wrong pathway every time.
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He's also a thief. He wants to rob you of the blessing that your birthright as a Christian. He wants to rob us as a thief. So he's a liar. He's a thief. What's the third one?
What else is Satan?
Gets even worse.
Course Cirque du Lanes.
Murder. You know, I spoke on this once.
He's going to speak on this to the Sunday school children. Our local Sunday school, we had a number of children that were coming out at the time.
And I wanted to speak about Satan, to warn him about Satan, that he's a liar and a thief. And that night I heard that one of my nieces had taken her life. He's a murderer too, and he would love to murder young people. Two of my nieces in the last three years have taken their lives raised in Christian homes.
You know, it's an interesting fact that the Christian can be the most miserable person in the world. That sounds strange.
But I'll tell you why that's true. Because the person who's not a Christian can live in the filth of this world, and he's just living out his nature. He doesn't know anything better, or if he does, it's only distant. But a Christian has a new life. He has the Spirit of God indwelling him. He has a hope outside this world. What happens when a Christian lives like the person in the world?
He's miserable.
Because he knows better. He has a nature that's different and far higher, desires far better things. He has the Spirit of God that's striving with them to act consistently with that new nature and when he lives contrary to it.
He can be the most miserable person in the world. Just a few weeks ago, we heard in our in our home assembly one of the young brothers had Sunday school again, and he said one of his cousins lived in Oregon, had just taken his life raised in a Christian home. Again, he got into substance abuse.
And he was murdered by Satan, wasn't he? He was at a substance abuse program. He felt there was no hope, so he couldn't turn anywhere. He was a believer. I believe some people I know teach that if somebody takes their lives that they're lost. But that's not true at all, because a Christian, again, can be the most miserable person in the world because you have a new nature and the Spirit of God and a hope that teaches you so differently from the life that you're living.
So Satan is a liar, a thief, and a murderer. Several months later, I had the Sunday school again, and I asked the Sunday school children. I said, you remember what I said last time? And immediately one of the boys picked it up. He's a liar, he's a thief, and he's a murderer. Let's not forget that Satan does not have your best interest at heart.
Satan's world is not meant for us.
And so he's that liar, that thief and murderer, He wants to rob you of all that really satisfies, of all that can truly satisfy, not only for time, but for all eternity. He wants to rob you of your happiness in this world. He wants to rob you. He can't rob you of your eternal life, but he wants to rob you. And he wants you to dishonor the Lord Jesus at the same time. It's a serious, serious thing.
And how many times we've seen that? And we'll be talking about other examples as well, but let's not forget this. Satan is a liar. He's a thief, and he's a murderer.
OK, let's talk about worldview.
We know there's some principles here, there's the truth and there's error. In other words, worldview is not actually in scripture. But interestingly enough, we'll look at the 2nd chapter of Colossians briefly and we see that the word rudiment through the expression rudiments of the world is there or it could be translated elements of the world.
That's, I think, what we could call worldview in little more modern language.
What are the elements of the world? What are the foundational principles of the world? Well, that's human error because it belongs to Satans world and there's it's based on three things that in themselves are not bad, but we're going to talk about the distinction. The truth is God's revelation to us, but error can be based on our personal experience.
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Our tradition that we receive from others.
Or philosophical basis, and we're going to talk about that in a little bit more detail. Let's look.
OK, the principles.
There we go. OK, in First Corinthians 2 verses 9 and 10, you don't need to turn there, but I've just summarized it here. It says there I have not seen. That's personal experience. What has your eyes seen? What have you observed yourself nor ear heard things that you've heard. Maybe you've read in books, tradition that others have developed their cultural traditions. Not necessarily bad, but they can be perverted.
Neither entered into the heart philosophies of men.
And of course, opposed to that is the revelation of God. Neither entered into the heart The things which God hath prepared for them that love him, that's God's world. OK, Colossians 2, let's go ahead and look at Colossians 2 because I'm not going to look at a lot of passages for the sake of time. But I do want to look at Colossians 2 because I believe in that chapter.
We have really worldview.
Colossians 2 verse two it says.
That their hearts might be comforted being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding to the acknowledgement.
Of the mystery of God. Now the rest of that verse doesn't belong. The mystery of God. What is the mystery of God? We heard about that a little bit in gospel meeting last night, didn't we?
It's the secrets of the universe. The deepest truths of the universe are what's called the mystery of God. And then we have some other other.
Passages as well. We're completing him verse 10. We don't need those things of Satan as the liar offers to us because in verse 10 it tells us that we're complete in him. Ye are complete in him.
Which is the head of all principalities and power. Now let me tell you, I know you pick full somewhere taking pictures and so on. I've got a chart in the back that'll be the summary chart of all this. So you don't need to bother doing that. I've got all these these, not all the slides necessary, but I have the the final summary chart. If you're interested, you can pick that up. Whoops. I don't know what happened here. Looks like we see.
Steve Van Holstein is.
Been the omen on this and we appreciate that. There we go. I'm sure it's something I did, but.
All right. Thanks, Steve.
OK, there we go. All right, let's look then at the principles of error.
Look at verse 8 and I believe we have all three principles there. Error.
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy. We have that to the far right.
And vain deceit. I think that's probably what we might call only self observation or self occupation.
And after the tradition of men, that's the second worldview.
After the rudiments of the world, well, that's human error and not after Christ.
Well, that's explained a little bit more in this chapter. We're not going to go into it in a lot of detail, but look at verse. Let's look at verse. What is that? It's a little hard to read, isn't it? Verse 18 and 19 on experience.
This is what it says. Let no man beguile you of your reward. That's what Satan would desire to do in voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding the head. Head is capitalized. It's the Lord Jesus Christ, so you can see holding the head there in verse 19 is the antidote to the vain deceit of Satan's.
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And then next we have verses 14 and 17 on tradition, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances. That was against us. That's the Jews, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross. And having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a show of them, openly triumphing over them in it. Let no man, therefore judge you and me, or drink, or in respect of a holy day.
Or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath.
Which are shadows of things that come, but the body or the substance is of Christ. And so the traditions of men, the religious traditions of men, even for a Jew, were only shadows of that which was real. And then philosophy. It's interesting I put it in parentheses because it really doesn't speak of.
Philosophy so much. It doesn't go on a long discourse about that, but it does speak of what the antidote is to philosophy versus 9 to 13. For in him dwelleth all the fullness.
Of the Godhead bodily, and year completed him, as we read in whom also ye are circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, and putting off of the of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ buried with him in baptism. But let me talk about that just a little bit. You can see here.
The antidote for not holding the head is vain deceit or the flesh. My personal observation only.
The shadow versus the body with tradition, Baptism and circumcision. You know, a lot of times people confuse what the meaning of baptism and circumcision is. Let me just say this briefly before we move on. Baptism has to do with the fact that we're saved. Baptism is a picture of my being saved and identified with Christ. But what about circumcision?
Circumcision has to do with discipleship.
I hope we understand the difference between salvation and discipleship. Salvation is when we become Christians. But a lot of times when we become Christians, we may not be consecrated to Christ. There may be a period of time before we actually say, Lord Jesus, I want to follow you not just as Savior, but as Lord day by day.
That's true consecration, and I hope you all get a hold of that. There's a distinction between salvation and consecration.
Should there be a distinction? Well, in time, yes. But as far as reality, no, because every Christian will only be happy if they're truly a disciple. That's the secret of blessing and happiness. So there's that distinction between baptism and circumcision. All right, let's move on here. We've got plenty to cover. I want to talk here briefly. You can see the other two, top two we've already looked at. There's other names for truth.
Delivered to the States, you read that in Jude. It's a heavenly calling where strangers and pilgrims in this world. We're called to be the light of the world. That's to be a light to this Dark World, both in what we say and in what we do. There's a brother in our home assembly used to say preach Christ, use words if necessary. We talked about feet. We talked about the preparation of the gospel of peace, didn't we? The preparation of the.
Peace is a life lived for Christ. Our life, our gospel, won't have much weight if we don't have a life consistent with what we're speaking about. So light of the world, salt of the earth, little different thought or salt of the earth. The earth actually is Christendom if we look carefully at Scripture. These are from Matthew chapter 5.
And the salt of the earth is that we're preserving principle and Christendom. We don't just go along with all that's happening in Christendom, but rather the Lord has called us to be.
Overcomers. And that's the salt of the earth until he comes and takes us home. Some people say, you know well, it's all over. No use. Things aren't all in confusion. But who is it that has the right to end the dispensation? Anybody here want to raise their hand? Who has a right to end the dispensation?
Some people say it's all over. Can't live as a full Christian anymore, can't meet like our brother Tim Ruga was telling us. Who has the right to end the dispensation?
Not a hard question.
God, when's it going to happen?
Yeah, you're, you're too old. But yeah, but at the rapture, until the rapture comes, this dispensation goes on and we have the privilege and the responsibility to walk according to the truth of Scripture. That is simple principle. Some people say, Oh no, too much confusion, can't do that. That's what God asked us to do. That's what the salt of the earth is.
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And it's a tremendous privilege, tremendous responsibility. Philadelphian truth, We often speak about that. What's Philadelphian truth? I'll kept my word and not denied my name. What about dispensational truth? You know, dispensational truth has been called the Magna Carta of the recovered truth. What do I mean by dispensational truth? Very briefly, there's a difference between.
Jews, Gentile and Church of God, we need to understand those principles and that opens up the rest of Scripture.
Until we understand dispensational truth, we cannot understand the Old Testament types and figures. We cannot understand prophecy, We cannot understand the Psalms. It makes no sense until we understand dispensational truth. OK, we have to move on. How about experience in mysticism? Now I want to say something here.
Experience isn't necessarily a bad thing. We all learn to a certain extent by experience, don't we? What I'm talking about is a corruption of experience.
It's leaving God out. That's what men do in Satan's world, is we leave God out and we only occupy ourselves with our personal experience. And when that happens, what's the result? Well, it's all about me. How many times have we heard that psychology?
Same thing. It's interesting that a man named.
Dave Hunt wrote a book that I've read several times called The Seduction of Christianity. I hope that some of you will read it because he shows that psychology is actually a rival Christian religion.
Its intent, maybe not the intent of all psychologists, I don't mean that because they're often ignorant, but the intent of psychology itself is to rob us of our Christianity, Materialism. This is one of the greatest things. My brother Bob, Tony's not here, but he often reminds us of that. How many Christians we've seen that money becomes an object, Having a nice home, a fancy home, a nice job, you know, a brother.
To me, I don't want to make too much of this, but a brother, older brother sat in our living room one day and he said, have you ever noticed that whenever a person becomes a doctor, they rarely stay gathered to the Lord's name?
Not an indictment of all the doctors I know. We have a doctor here, a couple dentists. They seem to be a little better off of some of the others. But it seems that the problem is when you, the higher you get up in the world, the more dangerous there are. And that's a great danger, is materialism, immorality that destroys families.
The families destroyed. It corrupts the assembly and corrupts your Christian testimony. It raps you.
Robs us of our Christian testimony. Immorality. One of the greatest things that Satan lead, Satan lies about. Don't be fooled by a general gender corruption. We see that all the time, don't we? Only in the last 30 years or so has it become commonplace. But gender corruption, whether it's male on male, female and female.
Transgender. Whatever it happens to be, it's.
It's a challenge to the Creator himself.
Pleasure, addiction, this is what we are speaking about before. Oftentimes it starts so small, doesn't it? A little drink here, it's a little tampering with some kind of drug with this, that and the other.
It becomes if it's not judged quickly.
*********** is one of the worst addictions today, they tell me. I heard something on the radio the other day. They said they had a program on the Christian radio about *********** and they got more response from that than any other program. So, young people, be careful. Be careful that Satan's lying to rob us of our Christian privileges and Christian testimony.
And I mentioned occultism. You may say I'm not getting into occultism.
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But that's often the power behind these pleasure addictions, including ***********. When people get deep into it, they find it so strong they can't get out of it. Why? Because there's demon power involved. Same thing with many pleasure addictions. That's why some of these young people I spoke about took their lives was because they didn't see any hope, even though they were Christians, they got.
So strongly into these pleasure addictions.
And it's robbed them of their Christian testimony and even, ultimately of their lives.
Tradition that has to do with religion mainly. There's often an appeal to an earthly religion that get involved in the earth, want to make it a better place to live. That's not what we're called to. Ritualism simply has to do with outward forms without inward reality. That's attractive religion to a lot of people. Go to church and you get a lot of beautiful forms and beautiful music, and you can go out and live like the world.
That's what we mean by the danger of ritualism.
Superstition, very closely related Catholicism. We know about the Catholic system that prevailed for nearly seven or 800 years in the Western world and the corrupted men to such an extent that men like Martin Luther, you know, he was called, he was a monk, and he was called to roam, to represent his order.
And he thought, this is the holy city. I'll go there and I'll see how wonderful things are there.
And he saw it was filled with ***** ****** for the priests. He saw that complete corruption of the bishops and of the Cardinals. And he was so sickened, he went back. And that was the beginning of the Reformation. So Catholicism. I have a nephew raised in a Christian home. Now he's deep in the Catholicism. Why? Well, he took some bad steps. They usually happened little by little.
And now he thinks the ritualism Catholicism is the answer.
Covenantalism. What's that? That's the opposite of dispensational truth. It says that we belong to this world. There's really no distinction. Or it homogenizes, I might say, the the church, the Jew and the Gentile and says that maybe the church has replaced the Jew and so on. That's not true. God made certain promises to the Jew and he's going to keep them because God is good to His word. That's really why you have Romans 9.
11 The apostle Paul was writing to the Gentiles, and they might have said, you know, the gospel has has replaced to a certain extent Judaism. But how do we know that God is good to his word if Judaism failed? If so it appears, how do we know that God keeps his promises? And so the apostle Paul wrote those 33 chapters, Romans 9:1010And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; (Romans 9:10) and 11:00, and he said.
He said Christianity is really just a parenthesis in God's ways.
He's going to bring Israel back when this church dispensation is over.
The goodness, the the the.
The call of God is without repentance, and sure enough, he's going to bring it back. Ecumenism. Let me just read something on ecumenism again from this little book. It's the only book I bought besides my Bible that's devotional. But let me read something about ecumenism. You know what ecumenism is? It's the principle that all the churches are coming together.
That's basically the principle of ecumenism. How can all the churches come together? Isn't that a wonderful thing? Well, let me read something here for a man named Malcolm Muggeridge by one of our times larger ironies. Ecumenism is triumphant just when there is nothing to be ecumenical about. The various religious bodies are likely to find it easy to join together only because believing little.
They correspondingly differ.
About little.
So the churches are falling into ecumenism and they think it's a wonderful thing. It's a lie of Satan.
OK, philosophy, we could say a lot about this. Humanism, you know, the definition of humanism. There was a man about the 5th century BC, as I recall, a Greek, and he said man is the measurable things. That's the definition of humanism. So as he said before, a philosophy at a certain extent, if it has the Lord first, it can be a help. But humanism says, OK, we're going to leave God out and we're going to create.
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That is suited to us. That's humanism. Man is the measure of all things that leads to secularism or naturalism, which is actually similar to agnosticism and atheism. In other words, leave God out and then what you have left is a system of philosophy that.
Completely leaves God out of your out of your life.
Rationalism sounds good, doesn't it? You know, reason is a gift of God.
We don't debate that one bit. Reason is a gift of God, but the problem is that it's a poor master. We can't just start with rationalism, because you have to have a presupposition in order to deduce truth reasonably. And if we don't start with the principles of God's word, rationalism is going to lead us astray. That's another lie of Satan. It sounds good.
Important, doesn't it? Rationally, aren't you being reasonable? Well, depends on where you started. Did you start with the principles of God's Word, or did you start with humanism? If we started with humanism, it's going to lead us astray. And then scientism. Notice I use the word scientism because there's much about science that is simply a philosophy, not a fact.
I studied it for years and taught it for years, even at the college level.
And I know that's simply true. Scientism is a religion. Evolution, for instance, is a religion. We don't have time to go into it much, but it's.
It's what Scripture calls science, falsely so-called. It pretends to be the truth. The word itself is speaks about the study of facts or the truth. But it isn't. It's a lie of Satan.
OK, here's the whole table again. I've got a copy of it for those who are interested in the back. Let's jump on to the next thing. Does Scripture talk about these things? Like, yes, it does. I think we have these three main worldviews as opposed to scripture. And again, experience is not bad if it's if it's subject to the Lord. Tradition is not bad if it's subject to the Lord or even philosophy.
Our philosophy of life and so on is a good thing if it's subject to this principles of scripture.
The blessing that the Lord wants to give us, but if they leave God out, which is the foundation of Satan's world.
Then it becomes a corrupt worldview, and these are the three major corrupt worldviews that based on experience, based on tradition, which is religion, mainly based on philosophy. If we go back to Cain's world in Genesis chapter 4, you find that we have the formation of the first world system.
Let's do that very quickly. I know we're running short on time, but let's go very quickly back to.
Genesis chapter 4. This is Cain's world. Remember, Cain left the presence of the Lord, and he formed in his own world. That would not be.
Would not accept God's principles and God's truth. And so in Genesis chapter four, we have Cain knew his wife.
Verse 17 She conceived in bare Enoch which means teacher, and he builded a city and called the name of the city after the name of his son Enoch their self-serving and under Enoch was born Irad that means a person who lives in the city.
City is built by man, Kappa said. God made the country and so here we have the beginning of the city and Irad Bigot.
Which means grief of God. Not sure exactly what that means. The word L is God. So there was some sense of religion. You notice we're looking really at verses 17 and 18, a tradition. There was some nod to religion in the world has its own religion.
It gives some nod to religion as we mentioned things like Catholicism and so on. Ecumenism. But a grief of God. Perhaps he meant that God was a grief to him and he was going to create his own world system. And mahu JL begat Methuselah, which again has several meanings, but one is death from God.
00:45:07
He didn't want God's interference in his life. And then, interestingly enough, enthusiasm begat Lamech, which means destroyer. They didn't want anything to do with God at all. That's verses 17 and 18.
Verses 19 to 22 Lamech took also unto him two wives.
That's corruption, isn't it? The lust of the flesh, That's experience. It's all about me, just what I can get in this world, the lust of the flesh. And he married two wives. That was corruption from God's order, one man and one woman. And Ada Verjayville, he was the father of such as, well, intense. He was a businessman, a shepherd.
And that became his life, and his brother's name was Jubal.
He was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ. He was the father of the entertainment world and Zilla, she also bare two volcanoes. He was the instructor of every artificer and brass and iron. And he's the beginning of industry and technology in this world apart from God.
And two who came sister was Naima.
Well, Naomi means ornament and so are Charming. I'm sorry, Charming, seeking to have a party life. So these are all dangers that we speak about. And then in the philosophy we find that Lamech.
Was the head of philosophy of violence. He took two wives, and he says of King be shall be Avenged Sevenfold truly Lamech 70 and sevenfold. He felt he was much more justified.
In a life of violence, let's look at another scripture, Job's friends. We won't look at these specifically for the sake of time that Eli who remember was the youngest of the three friends and he speaks words from God as a mediator. Elites was the oldest of Job's three friends and he represents.
Experience, he says. As I have seen, it's his own life.
And what he has seen personally. And then we have Bildad. Bildad said, no, no, it's not just what you've seen, But he said, it's what the former ages teach us. You see that language, The former ages are tradition. And then Zofar comes along and says, oh, no, no, no, you've got to go back further than that. You have to develop some kind of a philosophy.
A broader worldview and so so far really speaks.
Of the philosopher, Let's go on to another scripture.
During the life Lord's lifetime, I think we have these same worldviews. Of course, the Lord Jesus and John the Baptist speak of the revelation.
What about the Herodians? Well, they were Jews, but they said, you know, Herod, who was, by the way, he was not even a Jew. He was an Edomite, one of the enemies of the Jews. But he was the king that the Romans had put in place. And they said, you know, we only have one life to live. I guess we need to get the best we can out of it. So we'll cozy up the Herod.
Because we only have one life to live.
That's a worldview of personal experience only. What about tradition? Well, the Pharisees had a lot of traditions, but the Lord says you're like white and sepulchers. He says you look great on the outside, but within you're full of dead men's bones. So the Pharisees had this tradition, but their lives were filthy lives.
What about the Sadducees? Well, the Sadducees were the philosophers, the rationalists of the day. They didn't believe in the unseen world, They didn't believe in angels, they didn't believe in spirits, they didn't believe in the resurrection. They said we're only going to believe what we can see and reason. And so you had those three same world views in the Lord's Day. Let's look at another example. Jude 1111Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core. (Jude 11) don't have time to go into that much, but you have the same 3.
Balaam Balaam was a an occultist, a demonic medium. He dealt with the demons, the power of demons. Cora tried to corrupt religion and that's what tradition has done apart from God. And Cain had a had a philosophy of.
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As we read, it started a whole new world system. He began a whole new world system. You can look into these on your own time.
Prophetically, what do these speak of? The Antichrist? He's a Jewish man. He claims to be the Messiah. He's the false prophet. He works closely with the political beast, the head of the revived Roman Empire. But it's all about him. He wants to be worshipped as God. What about the harlot? We read about the false church. The anti church in Revelation is the end of religious tradition. The harlot and so.
The ecumenical movement ends up in the harlots. Stay away from the ecumenical movement. It sounds attractive, doesn't it? A lot of things for young people, a lot of things for families, a lot of seminars about this, that and the other. But it's going to end up as the harlot. A harlot's not a not a good thing. It's a perversion of God's order. And that's where religion is going as a rule. And then the political beast.
You know, we see in the West now there's a certain amount of unity, but the Bible tells us that anarchy is going to come into our Western world. And we see, I think, the beginnings of that today in our economic system, our political system. People are so polarized. I just in the last year have read or browsed through several articles which speak of the end of what they call constitutional democracy in the US Used to never read articles like that.
But this is in the secular press, and people are worried that the United States is actually falling apart. And when that happens, a strongman comes in. That's what the political beast is. He's going to be the strongman that's going to going to.
Be a dictator really, in the West, in Western Europe and in probably the United States, because people can't stand anarchy very long.
OK, there's the chart pretty much that's what I've got copies of back there.
A summary of what we've talked about so far. Just a couple other things here we'll finish up. This is important, I think to understand. I know we've covered a lot of things, but certain of these world systems.
Are predominate In certain areas of this world, experience especially predominates.
In the world of entertainment, be careful of what you're entertained with. I know video games are popular. Be careful of that. They can lead you into demonism in a number of other things that's been well documented. Be very careful. Entertainment is about self. How about tradition? Well.
It predominates in the world of religion and again, there's all kinds of attractive things in various churches.
To attract us away from being the light of the world and the salt of the earth. How about philosophy? You know, I read recently that 80% of Christian young people are professing Christian young people that go to college give up Christianity because in the world system, the education system in college, they're going to teach you essentially that there's no God.
That's what they're going to teach you. You're going to have to be armed as we read.
In our in our Chapter 6 of Ephesians this week. So be forewarned because that predominates in this in the world of education.
Revelation appears to the Spirit that's the highest part of us, our God consciousness.
Are that where we have a relationship with God Himself? Experience appeals to our imagination, tradition, to our emotions. You go into some churches and they have beautiful robes and beautiful buildings and beautiful.
Colors and all kinds of things. Philosophy, of course, appeals to the intellect. We have to be careful of those things that we don't get imbalanced by those things.
National identification in scripture is interesting. National identification of truth is heaven. We belong to heaven. Experience the Orient, that is the the eastern religions. The Jew was the traditionalist philosophy came originally from Egypt and then later on Rome became the world of experience. You know the Romans, Romans didn't care.
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About religion, they took all the gods of the people they conquered and they put them in their, in their pantheon there in Rome, and they didn't care which one, which one was there. They all offset one another. Tradition, of course, Babylon speaks of corrupted Judaism. The Jews were carried away for 70 years into Babylon because they went into corrupted religion and then Greece.
Were the founders of philosophy?
Of ancient philosophy.
OK, one other thing.
We hear if you read some things about Christianity and Christian history you find that the historical identification of tradition is pre modernism. In other words, before this modern world began with modern science and the Reformation.
Essentially, or the Renaissance, there was the Catholic system that predominated. That's called pre modernism. Modernism began really with men like Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon and we have science as a result. And post modernism is what we have today where people have given up in a certain sense even.
Even of modernism, they don't want modernism so much, they just want to be made happy.
Or what they think will fulfill them. And that's called most post modernism. And that's much of what we have today is what's called post modernism. It only has to do with me and what's in it for me.
OK, there's the chart I have in the back. I know there's a lot of information there. I hope it gives you a sketch or an outline of some of the things we've been speaking about. I know we've thrown a lot of information at you, but the big thing I want you to understand, there's a difference between truth and error. Satan's world is formed on the basis of three primary.
World Systems.
And they're based on the fact that you leave God out and this is what works, or so they tell you. It's a lie, He's a liar, he's a thief, and he's a murderer. It's only the Lord Jesus Christ that has our good and blessing in view and can bring it to us. Let me just finish with one more slide.
I like the name Bethany. You know a lot of people are named Bethany. You know what it means? Are you Bethany?
Pardon.
Yeah, House of Dates, but what's the Yeah, I didn't get that separated. But you know, in the Old Testament, the reason I put that in there and the Old Testament, they didn't have a lot of confectionaries, like they didn't have a lot of desserts like we have. So a date is a pretty sweet thing, isn't it? That was their dessert. And you know, Bethany was a special place for the Lord Jesus was. Remember who lived at Bethany in Bible times when the Lord Jesus was here, who lived in Bethany?
Mary.
Throughout.
Mary, Martha Lazarus, right? It's often been said that was the closest thing to a home the Lord Jesus had during the time of his ministry there. He was loved and so.
That was the place, the House of dates. It was a very special place that the Lord Jesus.
What is the House of dates for us today? Well, here's a song we sometimes sing in the secret of His presence. How my soul delights to hide.
Oh, how precious are the lessons which I learned that Jesus side earthly cares.
Forever vexed me why thy trials lay below. But when Satan comes to Tevin, to that secret place I go, to that secret place I go. That's the secret of a happy Christian life. The secret of a life that honors the Lord Jesus. The secret of the life that develops capacity for all eternity is to walk.
Daily in the Lord's presence.