THE KINGDOM, THE POPE, AND JESUS

It seems that the Pope is a modern-day religious pluralist, who believes that there are many routes to heaven. Responding to a list of published questions, Francis wrote:

·       “You ask me if the God of the Christians forgives those who don’t believe and who don’t seek the faith. I start by saying – and this is the fundamental thing – that God’s mercy has no limits if you go to him with a sincere and contrite heart. The issue for those who do not believe in God is to obey their conscience.

·       “Sin, even for those who have no faith, exists when people disobey their conscience.” http://www.truthandaction.org/pope-says-dont-believe-god-go-heaven/2/

However, the Pope’s words are at great variance to those of the One he is supposed to represent. Jesus’ teachings fail to extend the Pope’s glad tidings. Instead, Jesus insisted that salvation could only come through Him. When asked what deeds had to be performed in order to have eternal salvation, He answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent" (John 6:29), and not merely in their conscience. Even more to the point, He informed the leadership:

• I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins." (John 8:24)

Not very politically correct, but consistent with everything Jesus had taught! He also informed His slow-to-learn disciples that salvation could only come through Him:

• "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)

And how did Jesus regard those of other religions?

·       Therefore Jesus said again, "I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture.” (John 10:7-9)

In contrast, the Pope claims that salvation is on our own terms, according to our own heart: “God’s mercy has no limits if you go to him with a sincere and contrite heart.” How reassuring but also misleading!

THE DEATH OF MODERN SECULARISM

According to the modernist (atheism, humanism, evolutionism), the only reality or truth is physical. Spiritual or moral reality is non-existent. According to the postmodernist, all truth claims are mere human inventions. Consequently, reality is either non-existent or unknowable.

When these two came together, they produced the perfect storm of modern secularism (MS), which believes that truth and justice have no independent reality. At best, they are no more than ideas that evolve as society evolves. Consequently, justice doesn’t truly exist. It is merely a concept we need to keep society going.

If you listen closely to what people say, you will see indications of MS all around you. For example, the pastor preached that because perfect love casts out fear, as the Apostle John had written, we shouldn’t listen to the hate-mongers who warn us about Muslim refugees.

Afterwards, I asked her whether or not we should listen to those who warn about swine flu, the bubonic plague, or radiation leaks. Well, of course, that was a different matter, but why? Plagues and radiation leaks come up on the radar of the secularist, but a group victimized by the West does not. A different set of rules applies here. This reflects MS’ leftist leaning that there are groups who are worthy of preferential treatment. Just look at Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s demand that the courts give preferential treatment to people of color!

Forget the ideal of color-blind justice! And why not forget if, for MS, “justice” is no more than a social construct. It is an institution to be manipulated according to need and ideology.

To the pastor, I brought up the fact that only 1% of asylum seekers that President Obama has brought over were Christians, as opposed to 99% Muslims, most of whom, according to surveys, want to impose shariah law. Without dealing with the threatening implications of this disparity, the pastor interjected that we have to be equally concerned about all groups of people.

I didn’t bring up the obvious fact that the huge imbalance among asylum grantees did not reflect equal concern. Nor did I mention verses that require love to begin with our own households – both spiritual and biological. Instead, I objected that:

·       “Muslims refuse to integrate. The Koran even prohibits them from being friends with non-Muslims (Koran Surahs 3:27; 5:54; 60:1; 60:4), except to deceive to promote Islam.”

She fired back that it is all a matter of interpretation. I responded:

·       “Some things are so clear that they are no longer a matter of our personal interpretation. When the police pull me over for driving 50 MPH in a 25 MPH zone, I cannot claim that it’s all just a matter of interpretation. “25 MPH” means just what it says. I cannot say that I thought it was only a suggestion or a ballpark figure.”

I could have mentioned how the Muslim authorities interpret their Koran on the subject of friendship. One commentator writes (www.koranqa.com; fatwa 59879):

·       “Undoubtedly the Muslim is obliged to hate the enemies of Allaah and to disavow them, because this is the way of the Messengers and their followers.

·       “Based on this, it is not permissible for a Muslim to feel any love in his heart towards the enemies of Allaah who are in fact his enemies too…”

·       “But if a Muslim treats them with kindness and gentleness in the hope that they will become Muslim and will believe, there is nothing wrong with that, because it comes under the heading of opening their hearts to Islam. But if he despairs of them becoming Muslim, then he should treat them accordingly.”

However, the pastor continued:

·       “The Bible also includes such verses. You cannot just point the finger at Islam.”

I challenged her to provide just one such verse. She responded that Jesus claimed that He came with a sword to separate families.

I responded that this verse was a far cry from instructing us to not have non-Christian friends. Instead, Jesus had been pointing to the impact we would have on others, even friends, as His children. He was preparing us for the fact that we would be hated:

·       “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.” (John 15:18-20)

The pastor was struggling to come up with another verse, but she was rescued by the intervention an onlooker.

Why was she so ready to equate with Christianity and Islam, the Bible with the Koran – two sets of very different teachings, one highly violent, the other peaceful? She had embraced the prevailing worldview, MS, which eliminates the possibility of discerning any real differences.

In opposition to multi-culturalism, which holds that we cannot judge other cultures, wisdom requires discernment and making critical distinctions. Wisdom requires us to distinguish the victim from the victimizer and to treat them appropriately. It requires us to distinguish the student who is struggling to learn from the one who is disrupting the others. We also need the wisdom to discern real help from enablement, genocide from self-defense, and the innocent from the guilty.

However, MS is slowly eroding away the principles essential for the advancement of society. MS refuses to see and to even acknowledge the basic principles of justice – that there are truly the innocent and the guilty. How does MS do this? It denies the existence of objective moral absolutes. This relegates justice and truth to mere evolving human creations.

My next conversation made this painfully clear. She was a sensitive and caring woman. These are qualities that I greatly admire.

She admitted that she was totally comfortable with the sermon. After challenging her, she responded with passion:

·       “I don’t feel comfortable with what you are saying. You are making hateful divisions among the religions. You are pitting us against them. You are saying that you are better than they are. You are looking down on them and marginalizing them. I cannot go along with any of this.”

Of course, I wasn’t saying these things, but she accurately discerned that I was drawing out some differences between Islam and Christianity. I asked her whether we should have pitted ourselves against Hitler. She could not answer this question directly, but insisted that love could conquer all, even in the case of Hitler.

This is what justice looks like on the streets of MS. It has now become non-existent in the minds of many. It has been eliminated by an overly indulgent form of “love.”

How did this happen? First, the concept of justice has been overturned in favor of pragmatism, what works, what bring desired results, even at the expense of the innocent. This means that we cannot judge in any objective sense. Meanwhile, she was judging me!

Second, many atheists/materialists deny the existence of freewill, and if freewill doesn’t exist, then we couldn’t have acted other than the way that the forces had determined we would act. It also means that we are not deserving of punishment or even criticism.

Third, even if MS does acknowledge freewill, it is only a mere shadow of what we usually regard as freewill. Instead, we are overwhelmingly products of our upbringing, culture, and genetics – nature and nurture. Once again, we are pre-programmed to do what we do. Judging individuals and cultures is therefore regarded as unfair.

Yes, MS is self-contradictory. While it claims that judging is unfair, it is just as judgmental as most other belief systems. However, only a coherent worldview can provide a compelling vision to inspire a nation and human thriving. Meanwhile, MS has left us vulnerable to every pathogen. Oops, there I go judging again. After all, I am suggesting the forbidden – that humanity is somehow superior to the pathogens.

Nevertheless, I did grieve after these conversations – not that I had said the wrong things, but if I was going to offend, perhaps I should have allowed the centrality of the Gospel to offend. God lead me!

INTER-FAITH PRAYER: SHOULD WE PARTICIPATE?

The inter-faith prayer movement is a tsunami covering the landscape of the Church. Many want to bring the various faiths together to “discover common ground and feel connected.”

• What happens when people of different faiths pray together? According to Gandhi, prayer is a ‘longing of the soul.’ And when individual souls come together to pray—even when their languages or cultures or religions are different—they are longing for their God while also demonstrating peace, love, and unity with all of God’s children. New research has found that interfaith prayer can be a powerful, binding force that helps a diverse group of people discover common ground and feel connected. 

Those who resist this movement are regarded as narrow, divisive, and lacking in any concern for people of other religions. Consequently, world religious leaders are trying to form connections through prayer:

• In an effort to encourage peace in the Middle East, Pope Francis hosted the leaders of the Israeli and Palestinian worlds at the Vatican on Sunday, presenting an ecumenical gathering that joined professing Christians and Catholics together with Muslims, Jews and Druze.

About this, Cindy Wooden of the Catholic News wrote:

• “When leaders of different religions come together and pray for a common cause, they are not only appealing to God, they also are showing the world they believe that followers of different religions are still brothers and sisters before the one who created them,”.

Megachurch pastor Joel Osteen gave his blessings:

• “I love the fact that [the Pope has] made the Church more inclusive, not trying to make it smaller, but to try to make it larger—to take everybody in. So, that just resonates with me.” 

Certainly, it is important that Christians join hands with others. I would be glad to join with Muslim and Hindu neighbors to get potholes filled or to press for better subways.

There are many ways to bond across religious lines, but, for the Christian, inter-faith prayer is not one of them. While I would be glad to bond with my Muslim neighbor by shoveling his snow, I would not want to bond by sharing my wife or children. Besides, as Paul warned, there are also other ways that we must not bind ourselves to others:

• Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people." (2 Corinthians 6:14-16)

What does it mean to “not be yoked together with unbelievers?” Would this include interfaith worship and prayer? Evidently! The Bible gives us so many examples of God’s people justifiably refusing similar yoking.

King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon also wanted to unify his diverse kingdom. He had therefore commanded that all had to bow down before his statue and worship, warning:

• Whoever does not fall down and worship will immediately be thrown into a blazing furnace." (Daniel 3:6)

However, three Hebrew young men refused to be grateful  neighbors and to be yoked together through worship (Daniel 3:18) but were miraculously rescued from the furnace.

King Darius of the Persians and Medes had been coaxed into passing a law requiring all to pray to him. Perhaps he too conceived of this as a good way to unify his kingdom. However, Daniel would not submit and was found praying to the God of the Hebrews. Although he was thrown to the lions for his violation, he too was miraculously delivered (Daniel 6), thereby demonstrating God’s approval for his single-minded devotion.

With the Jewish Mordechai, the stakes were even higher. He refused to merely knell down before Haman, who subsequently decided to destroy the entire Jewish nation because of Mordechai refusal to honor him. Once again, God miraculously saved His people (Esther 3--).

Does this apply to interfaith prayer – a kneeling in endorsement of other religions? The Apostle Paul had warned:

• Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. I speak to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? (1 Corinthians 10:14-16)

While we must “flee from idolatry,” does this include any participation in or any positive acknowledgement of non-Christian prayer or worship? Evidently! Paul explained that whenever we participate in any form pagan worship, we participate with demons:

• No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord's table and the table of demons. Are we trying to arouse the Lord's jealousy? Are we stronger than he? (1 Corinthians 10:20-22)

Clearly, we are not allowed to acknowledge any other gods. When we participate in interfaith prayer, we acknowledge the worthiness of other gods and the prayers to them. This is a participation in something that arouses the “Lord’s jealousy.” To be a friend of the world is surely to be an enemy of God (James 4:4)

Those who participate in interfaith prayer might argue that this is okay with Christ, because they had their mind on Jesus the whole time. But would it be okay? Instead, it would be as if your wife caught you with a prostitute, and you responded, “I was thinking of you the entire time I was with her.” Surely, this would not satisfy your wife. Why should this thinking satisfy God!

When we participate in inter-faith prayer, we are likewise violating our relationship with our Savior. In a sense, our behavior is communicating the wrong message – that pagan prayers are just as valid as ours, even though they pray to false gods. It also says that Christ is not the only possible means of salvation. This represents a denial of the Gospel.

At this point, we need to make an important distinction. Praying with a non-Christian who is seeking or who is in need of a healing is entirely different. Such prayer does not represent an endorsement of another religion or a participation with other gods.

Interfaith prayer is an endorsement of other religions! However, prayer is unacceptable to our God if it is directed to other gods. Instead, prayer must be to the God of the Bible alone.

Even when we are praying to the right God our prayers might also be “detestable.” If we are not repentant, our prayers will not be acceptable:

• If anyone turns a deaf ear to the law, even his prayers are detestable. (Proverbs 28:9)

Why then should not pagan prayers also be detestable? When we fail to respond repentantly to the One true God, we should not expect our prayers to be answered:

• "But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears. They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the LORD Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the LORD Almighty was very angry. "'When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen,' says the LORD Almighty. (Zechariah 7:11-13)

When we solicit and honor the prayers of someone who refuses to believe in Jesus, we indicate that Jesus is not necessary. However, Jesus would not even respect the prayers of the Pharisees. Instead, citing Isaiah, He claimed that their worship was worthless:

• You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:  "'These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.'" (Matthew 15:7-9)

Would we call an unrepentant adulterer to the podium to pray? No! Why then would we call someone with a different god up to pray?

You might argue that interfaith prayer is okay as long as it is not brought into the church. This, of course, this is an unsustainable distinction. What will you say to your Imam friend who requests that you upon the doors of your church to an interfaith service after you have prayed with him? If you rejected such a request, you would be regarded as hypocritical.

The closest biblical example of  inter-faith prayer is found when Elijah called upon the priests of Baal to pray on Mt. Carmel with him, but this constituted a contest to see whose prayers mattered (1 Kings 18:16--). After the contest, the people concluded that only the God of Israel was worthy of worship and prayer!

Did the Israelites ever host an interfaith prayer session with the Canaanites? This would have been regarded as unthinkable and damnable!

Let’s now put aside the question of whether or not inter-faith prayer is acceptable to Jesus. There exists another problem. Many Christians will damage their faith if they participate in something that they think might be wrong. While Paul had argued that it was okay to eat food offered to idols, even at a pagan temple, he also warned:

• Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall. (1 Corinthians 8:13)

• But the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin. (Romans 14:23)

It is inevitable that if church leaders participate in inter-faith prayer, they will lead others into sin.

Once this compromise is made, the door is opened to many more. Israel had been repeatedly warned to not partake with the surrounding people. However, they did. First, they simply learned their customs, but this only led to more:

• They mingled with the nations and adopted their customs. They worshiped their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons. They shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was desecrated by their blood. They defiled themselves by what they did; by their deeds they prostituted themselves. Therefore the LORD was angry with his people and abhorred his inheritance. (Psalm 106:35-40)

Perhaps it started with inter-faith prayer. Once I take the first bite of the brownie, I can hardly stop. Once we begin to share prayer, it is inevitable we will also be invited to participate in ungodly services. How can we then say “no!”

Besides, how can we talk about the need for Christ once we engage in inter-faith prayer, thereby endorsing other religions? We can’t. We have already “preached” a different message. Once we have engaged in interfaith prayer, we have placed ourselves on the proverbial slippery-slope, where the only way to go is down.

Is the Bible always Essential to the Christian Life?

One “Christian” friend counselled me:

• The Bible is good for starters, but there comes a time to get off the training wheels. God respects us enough to allow us to pursue some independence!

According to my friend, we have to leave behind the does-and-don’ts of the Bible in favor of love, experience, and social justice type issues. But is this an either/or issue or should they all go together? Do we ever graduate from the Bible and the theology it teaches? Not according to any of the teachings of the Bible. Jesus quoted a 1500 hundred year old verse in demonstration of the fact that these words of Scripture still pertain. In fact they must:

• Jesus answered [the devil], "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" (Matthew 4:4)

Jesus was talking about Scripture, since He quoted this from Deuteronomy 8:3! Not only were these ancient words still relevant to New Testament times, they were words that Jesus had relied upon in the midst of His own temptation. Evidently, He refused to let go of His “training wheels.” Why must we!

Nor could we pick-and-choose among which words are still relevant for our day. Instead, we have to embrace “every word.”

When He sent out His disciples for the last time during His Earthly ministry, Jesus instructed them, “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age" (Matthew 28:20). No indication here (or anywhere else in Scripture) that these teachings were just to be used as training wheels.

Nevertheless, some charge that we are worshipping the Bible. Instead of idolatry, they charge us with “bibliolatry,” an idolatrous form of worship in the place of the worship of the one true God. However, Jesus exalts the Word of God above everything else:

• Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. (Matthew 24:35)

In fact, God’s Words are on par with Himself:

• I will bow down toward your holy temple and will praise your name for your love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name [God Himself] and your word. (Psalm 138:2) 

To worship God was to worship Him according to His Revelation. (We might even say that God’s truths are even a part of Him, as is His righteousness.) He insisted that our love for Him is measured by our obedience to His Word:

• “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him." (John 14:21)

God and His Word are inseparable. Consequently, when we despise and disobey His Word, it is the same thing as despising Him:

• “Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me [God] and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.” (2 Samuel 12:9-10)

When we despise the Lord’s Word, we also blaspheme the Lord:

• "But anyone who sins defiantly…blasphemes the Lord, and that person must be cut off from his people. Because he has despised the Lord's word and broken his commands, that person must surely be cut off; his guilt remains on him" (Numbers 15:30-31).

In summary, the way we respond to Scripture is the way we respond to the Lord. We, therefore, cannot say that we love the Lord while we reject His Word. To have the Lord is to also abide in His teachings:

• Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. (2 John 9)

Don’t take the training wheels off your bike anytime soon. Why not? Scripture is to inform all areas of our life – even the way we worship and pray. Jesus clearly was not a religious pluralist, believing that all religions are okay. He had warned a Samaritan woman that her religion was not adequate, since it was not of the truth, as the one given to the Jews:

• “You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the [revelation given to the] Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." (John 4:22-24)

According to Jesus, truth was the necessary ingredient, the very thing that the Samaritans lacked. God’s worshipers “must worship in spirit and in truth!”

Worship according to the truth, wasn’t an option. Even if the woman had been sincere about her religion, this still would not have been adequate.

We never graduate from the truth of the Scriptures! Instead, we are counselled to meditate on it “day and night” for our own well-being (Josh. 1:8; Psalm 1:1-3).