Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012

The origin of Hanukkah, the feast of dedication, and Hanukkah means to dedicate or dedication, as recorded in 1st and 2nd Maccabees, that's a book that's in what's called the Apocrypha, the Jews regarded it as an historical document, but not as a part of their Old Testament canon. So it records things that are considered historically of significance, but it's to make it scripture. The Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, adopted it as one of the books in their Apocrypha.

So here you have about, it's 165 BC, the Jews had defeated, after some couple of years of battle, the Greek-Syrian king Antiochus IV. Antiochus had come in and made it illegal for the Jews to practice their religion, even to the point of making it illegal for them to study their Scrolls. They were not allowed to study the Old Testament.

And so one of the ways that they would do that is they would have these, you'll see these dreidels, these little tops, okay, with Hebrew letters on it. One of the ways they would do that is use those tops as a way of studying and if they were ever, you know, inspected or checked upon, well, they're just playing games, right? So anyway, in rededicating the temple 165 BC, they could only find enough purified oil, because they couldn't just burn any oil, purified oil to light a lamp for one day. It was written, but miraculously that oil lasted for eight days. So that's the basis for Hanukkah.

This event between the Old and New Testaments is recorded in 1st and 2nd Maccabees. Here is the coin of Antiochus IV. You can see some of the things that would bother the Jews. Basileus, and that word there has to do with being king, right? Antiochus, God manifest. Of course, that's a problem, right? For the Jews. And bearer of victory.

Jesus was in Jerusalem for Hanukkah, and this is recorded in John 10, 22 and 23. At that time of the Feast of Dedication took place in Jerusalem and it was winter and Jesus was walking in the temple in the portico of Solomon. The time of Hanukkah lands anywhere, because it's based on the Hebrew calendar, anywhere from the end of November, our calendar, towards the end of December. So anywhere in there. It's the 25th of Kislev, the Hebrew month.

Okay, one other subject I need to bring up with you is I have told you this class was first taught roughly 10 years ago, and I've told you that Anselm was the first that we know of to write about Christ dying in our place. Since the last time we taught this class, there's been some contention of that point, and I just wanted to bring that to your attention. This fellow here, Mike Vlach, has written kind of contesting the idea that substitution was never brought up.

That's still back and forth debated. There's not everybody sold on it. It's not like, OK, he's brought up the truth, and now we all believe something different. But I just wanted to bring that up, so in case you hear something different, that's why. And he's only brought it up fairly recently. There are still debates, and an awful lot of people are not convinced that he's made his case.

OK, now, the birth of ancient heresies and modern cults. We're going to be looking at essentially four major 19th century American cults and their origins actually from times right after the time of the New Testament or even in the New Testament times. So we'll be taking a look at that. So the birth of ancient heresies and modern cults. You might ask the question, what's a cult?

Because a lot of times people will use different definitions of the word and kind of subjectively define it. teachings outside of scripture such as to be denying the means of salvation by faith alone in Jesus Christ alone through grace alone. So that's part one. And this focus is primarily on salvation as the issue. So that's part one.

Part two of a cult is one doctrine authority conveyed worldview and defined relationships and motivations that maintain unbiblical levels of control over the followers of the cult. Unbiblical levels of control over the followers of a cult. This is key. Does it mean that the churches should be out of control? No. As a matter of fact, things do need to be orderly and there needs to be that there. But unbiblical levels of control. What would that include? What would you say would be unbiblical levels of control? Yeah, where you live, what you eat. Okay.

Nancy and I years ago, 35 plus years ago, were at a church that had a split off after we were there and the group that split off, the elders told everybody they need to move within this block of houses and we're going to be reviewing your checkbook records. Unbiblical levels of control.

And I have some pictures of different cult members. These are some of the Mormon Jehovah's Witness type appearance. This Jim Jones guy, some of you know I have close contact in the history with him. I remember sitting across from him at PTA meetings.

Yes? their particular teaching or their particular environment to be somewhere else. Yes, that's right. The scriptures teach the truth and they don't lock you into any particular group or world system. Yes, and I think you're onto a good point. In other words, their control also keeps you locked into just them. If you leave us, boy, you're going to go to hell. There's no question about it. So it's like, we've got control, you can't leave us, you can't think differently, or you're just in deep trouble.

Jim Jones, what did he do in order to really control people, was take them all down to Guyana. So I had the high school friends that died there, because they went down with them to Guyana. Sun Myung Moon had a 600 acre training camp an indoctrination camp in the same town where I went to high school where Jim Jones was a teacher. That ended up coming apart at the seams, but I recall my brother telling me he stayed at a house nearby this training camp and he couldn't sleep all night because of all the screaming and yelling that was going on.

So anyway, crazy stuff goes on and it's all about control. It's all about control. I remember one time going by the front gate of that training camp Two people were running at the training camp. They climbed over the gate. We stopped and picked them up and drove off as fast as we could and lost the tail and were able to get them out of that area. But that's the kind of control that we're talking about. It's in varying degrees. In this case, it was a high level of control.

Now, are all false teachings cultic? It's possible for an individual church organization to teach things that are contrary to scripture, but not such as to mislead regarding salvation or to be over-controlling. In other words, someone might give the true gospel, someone might have other teachings that are off the mark. someone might teach things that aren't quite correct and yet still not aim at controlling people. So it's possible to have somebody that's kind of off the mark but not cultic in the sense of the doctrine of salvation being off and control.

Those are the two primary elements. The New Testament epistles deal with both those issues that are cultish in nature as well as things that are false teachings impacting a believer's spiritual growth or with church function. Paul writes to the believers at Colossae and he says, don't let anybody get this kind of control over you. The Apostle John in his letters writes about a guy who loves to be first and loves to call the shots. So there were instances of cultic teaching and activity, even during New Testament times, while the apostles were around.

And they wrestled with it. Okay, now, stepping into our church history timeline, 33 to 96 A.D., some of the false teachings that the apostles dealt with, legalists imposing the Mosaic Law on believers. Now, nobody does that today, right? Not so much. Legalists of various kinds.

Early Gnosticism proposing asceticism or amoral lifestyle. Gnosticism was this curious thing. On the one hand, it might say, well, you've got to go and deny your body, you know, all these different things and that's holy. Or the other thing is, well, you know, the body is evil and it just doesn't matter what you do. So you have this odd kind of polarization where on the one hand you've got to go and constrain your body because it's evil, or on the other hand it really doesn't matter because the body is just evil to the core and you're not going to fix it so it doesn't matter what you do. So there would be these extremes and both of those came out of Gnosticism. Earthly philosophy and wisdom, various things that looked upon the earth and things here as the basis for spirituality.

Pagan religions, the Roman Emperor's deity. There were plenty of pagan religions. There was not only the Roman and the Greek pantheon, but they borrowed things from the Egyptians, even like Philippi had temples to the Egyptian deities. So there was lots of mixtures of pagan deities. We mentioned last week the term Pontifex Maximus. That term, which was used for the Roman Emperor and ultimately for the Pope, came from the Babylonian pantheon.

So, mixtures of various kinds of pagan religions. Angel worship was another one, and one of the things that you'll see reflected in the New Testament, you will read about, like the Apostle Paul will write about, Christ is the name above every name. The pattern was to go around naming special angels and spirits in order to gain power by them, and Paul says you don't need to do that because Jesus is the name above all those names. So anyway, those were things that they dealt with in their own time. Stepping into the time right after the Apostles, you had Gnosticism becoming more full-blown in that time after the New Testament era.

Gnostics taught that God was good, but matter was evil. God was good, but matter is evil, so you've got this body, so what is it? evil. This body is evil because matter is evil, and that's just the way it is. So that's why some of them would say, well, you need to go and deny the body, and others would say it doesn't matter, the body is just evil and you're not going to fix it. So then they would say it doesn't matter what you do in the body. Since the body was evil, Gnostic teachings were either ascetic, deny the body, or amoral, whatever is done, the body doesn't matter, it doesn't make a difference. Is the body just evil?

Applied to Christ, the concept that a good God could come in real human flesh was not acceptable. See, so the idea that Christ would come as deity and indwell a body, that just didn't work, right? So the Gnostics would do what? They would deny Christ's connection to a body.

They'd say, well, it really wasn't a physical body, it was some sort of a simulated body, or he didn't really come in the flesh, or some statement like that, because having matter be evil and Christ actually having a body was something contrary to their teaching. So they taught that Christ could not come in the flesh, so that's why you have 1 John in more than one place correcting that teaching.

Then stepping into 312, when Christianity was made legal, into 590, when the year Gregory the Great came to power as a Pope, you have in that time the teaching of modalism. That is, instead of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit being three persons, three persons, you instead have the idea that God, as one person, expresses himself in these three different modes of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that they're actually the same person, but just different expressions or modes of expression. See the difference there? Now, modalism was present in the early centuries.

It's sometimes called Sabellianism. The doctrine today is maintained by the United Pentecostal Church. Anybody hear of P.D. Jakes? He's of that background. Yes? So, modalism, does that mean that one person is omnipresent? Yeah, in other words, you really only have one person, and he expresses himself in three different modes, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit at different times and places. but that in fact there's just one person, one God. So, interestingly, T.D. Jakes is out of this background, and so since promise keepers had him as a speaker, when they would sing Holy, Holy, Holy, where it says Blessed Trinity, that got changed. It's Blessed Deity, not Blessed Trinity, and not God in three persons. And, curiously, we sing the song, Love Was When. That was written by John Walvoord's son, who was also John Walvoord, but not John Walvoord II, different middle name. He went to work for T.D. Jakes. So, it's curious how these things are connected.

It is not an irrelevant doctrine, even though it was first taught right after the New Testament era. Arianism is another one. Arius taught that Christ was not deity, but rather the first created being. Christ is not deity, but the first created being.

He was a man. Though he and his teachings were officially condemned, he and others continued to teach these doctrines and to convey them with melodically appealing songs, that is, catchy tunes. Now, the teaching was this, God the Father is God, Jesus Christ is the first created being, a man, and the Holy Spirit is a force. That is exactly what is taught in the Jehovah's Witness cult. Oh, one more thing.

Arianism, they had catchy tunes and so they would go around, even though they were condemned officially by the church, they'd go around singing these catchy tunes And then those who were opposed to their teaching would go around having alternate singing groups to battle it out. And so that was the first battle of the bands among Christians. OK. OK.

Now, next one, 590 to 1517, almost 1,000 year period of time, from the time when Gregory the Great, 590, becomes Pope, Gregory I, up to 1517 when Luther first begins the Reformation with his declaration. almost a thousand years. You have cults during this period of time.

The Roman Catholic control included military enforcement of doctrine, and I'm not talking about mild enforcement, I'm talking about mass slaughter. All outside religious groups are subject to persecution at times even to the point of outright extermination. If one of these One of these groups came in, and the Catholic Church did not agree with them, and they were in a particular city. The Catholic policy was often kill everyone in the city. Kill every last person in the city, if there's known to be some of these cult groups in the city.

So, some of these groups we would likely define as cultic would be the Paulicians, they were Gnostic. By the way, Gnostic, aside from the definitions I've given you, also means special revelation, special knowledge. Another one was the Bogomils, also Gnostic. And thirdly, the Kthari, believed in reincarnation and asceticism. So those would be some examples of groups that were battled against. Basically, they come in with knights and just slaughter them and wipe them out.

No, essentially what we've talked about is you had Roman Catholic control that was almost absolute during the time between 590 and 1517 here. Then there was battle between them essentially up until the middle 1600s. because by then you had the Calvinists and the Lutherans in there battling with them. The end of the Thirty Years' War, 1648, which drove a lot of people to America, would end up being kind of a pivotal point for, hey, we're going to quit fighting about this. There was still internal enforcement within countries, however. So France, for instance, was a country that was strongly Catholic, and so those who were the French Calvinists in France would either be slaughtered or pushed out. And in fact, I have some family history from the Huguenots, the French Calvinists.

Yes? So that, I can't think of his first name, but the author, his last name was Brown, the books that John Hanks was in, Angels and Demons, Yes, yes, yes. Is he a Gnostic? I mean, isn't that kind of Gnosticism, like modern day Gnosticism sort of thing?

Yes, in some degree, in some degree. That guy's also a coot, but... But they were so popular, I mean everybody... Oh yes, oh yeah, yeah, and you've got movies and books and, you know, so, yeah. And Gnosticism has not gone away. Essentially, a lot of the charismatic movement is Gnostic. That is, I have special knowledge. I have special knowledge and revelation. That's Gnostic.

Now, next, 1517-1648, this is the period of time of the Reformation into the end of the Thirty Years' War, the Treaty of Westphalia. So given an environment in which new ideas were being expressed, new groups of varying kinds were being formed, many only for short periods of time. There were certain groups that got formed that you hear of like, you know, whoever heard of this?

Some of them endured and some of them did not. Even the Lutheran and Reform groups who declared salvation by faith alone and Christ alone through grace alone relied upon unbiblical civic and military control of practice and doctrine. People like ourselves who do not believe in infant baptism or practice it were persecuted, sometimes just tortured, sometimes put to death. Between four and five thousand, during this period of time, between four and five thousand of those who, like ourselves, don't practice infant baptism were killed by Lutherans, by reformed, by Roman Catholics. Then, from 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia, the Peace of Westphalia, to the present. You have this on pages two and three of your handout.

We'll be kind of stepping through this and focusing on the four major 19th century American cults. What interestingly happened is not that no cults ever got generated elsewhere, but significant American cults got generated during the environment of the 19th century. There was one, freedom to do so, and two, a particular social environment that stimulated this kind of thing. America's era of religious utopian communities, this is now on page four, These proliferated from the mid-1700s into the mid-1800s.

These groups would center around one person often, some degree of isolation, and some were either celibate or had communal marriages. So extremes where you would have, on the one hand, this group is celibate, and then you'd have the other where they'd have various kinds of polygamy going on. The order of the solitary.

Ever heard of that? Never heard of them before, right? Shakers, which you probably have heard of, mostly because of the furniture, right? Society of the Public Universal Friend. Huh? You ever heard of that? Yeah, probably not. Harmony Society, Man in Church Society, and the Oneida Community. Now I have little asterisks. Why?

Shakers, where do you still hear about them? You hear about it from the furniture, right? And how about Amana? Where do you hear that? Yeah, we hear it in appliances. That's where the name has continued, interestingly. And how about Oneida? Pardon? Silverware, yes. So interestingly, that's the origin of those particular things, products, product lines of different kinds that have continued. And if it wasn't for those, we'd never hear of them, just like the others that you never hear of. The reason that we hear about them is because of the product line that they started.

The Northeast US was the starting place of most utopian communities in the major cults, including Mormonism. Mormonism we think of as associating with Utah, but that's where it ended up, not where it started. Interestingly, that particular area was where a lot of these things began. You had Mormonism starting around 1830 with the first publication of the Book of Mormon. and continuing into the present.

Mormonism, while it's famous there in Salt Lake City, actually has a number of different splinter groups, about seven of them that I've been able to keep track of, and there's probably more. There's the LDS, you know, Latter-day Saints group there in Salt Lake City. There's also the Reorganized Church of Latter-day Saints. and they don't get along. There's also the Bickertonites, the Cutlerites, and different groups like that.

The last battle between any Mormon group and the United States Cavalry was about the World War I era. There were still battles going on because the end of the military activity of the Mormon Church that we're familiar with was much earlier in order to accommodate the state of Utah becoming part of the United States and stopping the ongoing battles. But other Mormon splinter groups continued those battles.

So then there's Seventh-day Adventism. It started off actually with William Miller, a Baptist preacher, who came up with this idea that Christ was going to return and here I've got the date and the day. And after that didn't work out, he came up with a couple others until finally people said that's enough. But there are still groups like the Seventh-day Baptists. And we even had a phone message just last week on the machine. Somebody said, you know, I won't come to your church because you don't worship on the right day. Anyway, the Jehovah's Witnesses are a split off of the Seventh-day Adventists. Split off of that. And the Jehovah's Witnesses have their origin around 1880, around 1880. And then in a similar time frame, Christian Science.

So those are the four major 19th century American cult groups that we'll be looking at here. Are there other cult groups that you're aware of? Yeah. There's one called Church of Christ. You're right, and so you've got that group that is very controlling. Essentially, and we won't really be covering it here, back when Joseph Smith was starting out, there were debates between him and some of the founders of the Church of Christ, the Disciples of Christ, Christian Church, called the Campbell brothers, or Campbells, and there's actually a father and son in the picture too. But they were looking at who is actually restoring the church, and so they debated among themselves and eventually went different geographical directions. But there was a connection there. Another group, Christadelphians, you ever hear of them? Christadelphians is another one. I cross paths with them a few different times. Another one that I cross paths with a couple of people down in Texas is the two-by-twos. The two-by-twos.

They go out two-by-two and they're very controlling. One of the things they control is you're not supposed to watch television or movies or anything like that. And so when you get somebody who's wanting to rebel from the group or deviate and whatnot, they'll go out and rent a television and rent a bunch of movies and then watch it and close all the drapes and not answer the door and things like that. Anyway, so you've got two by twos. There are various other cult groups that have been around. Some of them have come and gone. Jim Jones is an example.

Do you consider Scientology and Mile High Church of Religious Science as cult or do you consider them as not? Actually, they are in one sense, but these have some claim to be Christian. Scientology doesn't claim to be Christian. So, they would have... Religious science doesn't claim to be Christian, more or less. Yeah, if there's some claim to it, then you could also call that a Christian cult group. It's within Christendom. Scientology is not within Christendom. So you do have other groups, but it's possible for other people to go in and get real controlling and have it nothing to do with Christianity or the Bible. Actually, I think psychology probably is closer to Christian science because it's a method of...

It's a mind game. When you talk about being clear so in other words you get rid of all your... You get to different levels as you progress. And so when you get to the very top, I don't remember, but it was actually science fiction when it started off.

What about Mennonites and Amish? The thing is, with those groups, certainly those are identifiable groups and they still exist. I would say that what you have with them is that they tend to hold on to their own group but not be quite so evangelistic about it as part one. There is less an element of control among them. I would say that it's questionable in some cases whether they have a sound salvation doctrine. Some of you know Chris Smucker, Smuck, who has been here, and I went back last year, June of last year, Nancy and I went back to do a wedding. A lot of Mennonite influence in that area, and as you move to the east of there, Amish connections.

Okay, so here's Joseph Smith. They claim he translated the Book of Mormon from golden plates using the Urim and Thummim, which are a couple of things out of the Old Testament there in the law. To this was added the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price. Those are all three sets of books that they claim as being authoritative. So then you had, among the Seventh-day Adventists, William Miller led thousands to anticipate the Lord's coming once in 1843 and twice in 1844.

After a while, it's kind of like, you know, okay, enough. So he didn't really have any more success convincing people after that some of the followers of this great Disappointment continue to look for ways to make the system of prophecy interpretation work You know we just haven't figured this out quite yet Oh, what actually happened on those dates was something happened up in the you know in heaven instead of here, and we just got the it was the right date, but the wrong event and And of course, then you put it outside of anything that's verifiable, right? So it was actually something happened in heaven instead of something happening on earth, and the date was right, but the event was wrong.

And so they would explain it like that. Yeah, there we go. There's another one. Date setting. Date setting has been a problem throughout church history, just like we had the Y2K fiasco, and there was a Y1K fiasco. them that people were not knowing their scriptures.

And they also said the Bereans were correct in the fact that they went home and justified things through the scriptures. So the fact that they are going to the scriptures at least is a step in the right direction. which is salvage in most cases, because they want to come out ahead of everybody else and know something, which is almost Nazism in a way. Yeah, and here's another problem with it, because you had the Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses, they all keep doing the same thing. But other mainline Christians have done the same thing too, going on set dates.

Martin Luther set dates, you know. It's a problem. It's been a problem throughout church history of going and setting dates. When Jesus goes and says things like, no one will know the day or the hour, things like that, and it's like, don't you believe him? You know? Yeah. Only the Father knows.

Ellen G. White in her books on Adventism, and this is only some of the books that she wrote. By the way, some of those are plagiarized, but nonetheless. Steps to Christ, Patriarchs and Prophets, Prophets and Kings, Desire of Ages. I've got electronic copies of all these. I don't care. I've spent too much time on them.

Anyway, she wrote other things as well, but the Seventh-day Adventists look at her writings as significantly authoritative. Charles Taze Russell, one of the early leaders in the Jehovah's Witnesses, had been an assistant editor of an early Adventist publication focusing substantially on prophetic subjects. So here's one of the splits here when he takes off. Charles Taze Russell broke off from the early Adventist to form what would become the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Watchtower, Bible, and Tract Society.

Now, we're coming upon Christmas time, right? Are Jehovah's Witnesses allowed to observe Christmas? No, they are not. However, that wasn't true originally. I've got all the early, in electronic format, I've got all the early Jehovah's Witness publications, all of them, and they have advertisements for Christmas cards to raise money. I've got a picture of a 1920s celebration of the leadership It was three Jehovah's Witness Presidents, not all at once, but three Jehovah's Witness Presidents in the picture celebrating Christmas. They early on had a cross and a crown as their symbol. It is even on the gravestone of Charles Taze Russell, the cross and the crown.

However, they deny the cross now and say that Jesus was impaled on a pole like this. They have changed their translation of the New Testament to reflect their doctrines, not what the Greek says, but just what their doctrines say. By the way, they haven't done a perfect job of it. Here's another one.

Christian Science, Mary Baker, lover of Patterson, Eddie, several different husbands there, wrote Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, providing a mental framework for Christian Science. And what she wrote in Science and Key to the Scriptures is an approach to interpretation. An approach to interpretation. Because the question is this in Christian science. Is there such a thing as sin? No. Christian science says no. It says no. And is there such a thing as disease? No. It's all in your head. Which is why I have a great aunt who died of a goiter that she didn't have. I used to have a great accent. Split that. Here's page two and three on the cults here. We're going to focus on extra-biblical sources of authority.

Each of these four cult groups, Mormonism, the Adventist Christian Science, and Jehovah's Witnesses, each of them has their own different basis of authority from the Word of God. And they do it in different ways. The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, they will acknowledge the Bible as being a basis of authority, but they interpret it in view of their other documents. What's interesting is I've gone through the Book of Mormon in a fair amount of detail, and I sat down with a couple of different pairs of Mormon missionaries, and I told them, I said, I don't believe the Book of Mormon, I don't believe what your church teaches, but there are things that are taught here in the Book of Mormon that I'll believe over what your church teaches. And a number of doctrines are properly stated in the Book of Mormon, but contrary to what the Mormon Church teaches. Very odd.

The writings of Ellen G. White, and a continuing gift of prophecy within the Church. The Mormons also have continuing prophecies, which is why they can continue to change the Book of Mormon. 3,900, approximately, changes in the Book of Mormon since the original 1830 printing. And the latest one was made in 1981. That was how they changed the document so that they would allow blacks to be entered into the priesthood.

Science and Health and Key to Scriptures is an interpretive grid for looking at the Bible. What happened when Christ died on the cross, biblically? What happened when Christ died on the cross? He died for our sins, but Christian science teaches that there is no such thing. So if Christ died for your, oh well, okay.

And then, so do they have a saving gospel? No, they do not, yes. And along with that, they deny hell? Yeah. They deny punishment of any sort? So with that key to the scriptures, what it is, it's an interpretive grid that makes the Bible not say what it says. Here, sin is a big issue from one end to the other in the Bible, right? Then they say, well, there isn't any such thing. Yes. Well, do they even acknowledge the Bible then? Yes, they do.

That's what the science and health and key to the scriptures. But there's so much contradiction. Yeah, it's an interpretive grid that overrides the obvious meaning of scriptures. I'm sorry, the evil in the world? It's wrong thinking. It's wrong thinking. As a matter of fact, even thinking that there's such a thing as sin is wrong thinking. And disease is just wrong thinking. Yeah. And you could also say that they don't believe in evil. Yeah. Not really. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. The problem is wrong thinking, not that there's really anything called sin or evil or anything of that sort.

The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures produced by the Jehovah's Witnesses. Initially they used the King James Bible as their scriptures and then they came up with the New World Translation. For example, we would read the book of 1 Corinthians, we preach Christ and Christ is crucified. Their version says we preach Christ and Christ impaled. One nail overhead. So, Christ impaled.

They go and insert Jehovah in places in the New Testament where that's not in the text. By the way, Jehovah is not exactly the proper way to spell out, you know, what the Hebrew says either. It should be Yahweh or something closer to that. Yes? difference between the cross and the pole, I don't get that. It's a weird, strange thing that they changed after several decades of their history of the organization.

And now Christ was not crucified, he was impaled. A really big deal on that. However, they didn't correct everything entirely because, remember where Thomas says, I won't believe? nails, plural, in his hands. They didn't completely clean it up. So their translation still acknowledges that there were nails in his hands. Plural. It should be, if they were correct, a nail in his hands. One nail over the top. So they didn't do that completely. I listened on the radio last week, I forget his name, but He was saying that the word cross in the Bible is a word for stake.

Well, that's the same idea. And that's not correct. That's not correct. But that's the idea. Ever heard of Vines? We use it as a study tool. That contains that error. And that's one of the things that they base it on. W.E. Vine made that mistake in his publication. Yes. So they believe that Christ carried his pole? Carried his pole, not the cross piece. And it's not pick up your cross daily, pick up your stake daily.

Anyway, now here's the Mormon scriptures, Book of Mormon, first printed in 1830. I say I've got an electronic version of it. revised numerous times, most recently in 1981, 3,913 specific revisions from 1830 to 1981. And I was just checking last night to see if there were any subsequent revisions, and not officially. I'm sure they're looking at things, and the next publication date may show some more revisions. But 1981 was the last. 1981 reflects the change in 1978, where the people who are black can now be accepted into the priesthood.

Though its contents are more fantasy than the historical reality, Doctrinaly agrees with the Bible more than with Mormonism itself. It says, for example, that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God. It says that there is God and no God formed afterwards. which is not what the Mormon Church itself teaches.

So it's very contradictory. Seventh Adventist Scriptures. We believe the revelation and inspiration of both the Bible and Ellen White's writings to be of equal quality. The superintendence of the Holy Spirit was just as careful and thorough in one case as in the other. So this is what they hold to. Here's Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. It's a means of seeing scripture. It's a means of interpretation that is a grid that overrides what scripture itself actually says.

The perspective on the content of scripture is not based upon observations of language, history, and culture. In other words, it's not drawing the meaning out of scripture, which is what we seek to We want to draw the meaning out of scripture as that's inspired. What this does instead is it says sin, but it doesn't really mean that. And somebody came with a disease, well that's just wrong thinking. So that's I think a key perspective. It is an interpretive grid for scripture.

It's beyond allegory because it'll essentially, I mean, if you take, okay, here's the word sin. Well, there isn't such thing. Christ died for our sins, that would, we would say that's a part of the gospel. They wouldn't say Christ died for, and then, can't say that he died for our sins. So therefore, you can't have a saving gospel.

Here's the Jehovah's Witness scriptures. I say initially they used the King James Bible and then they came up with this New World Translation. They claim authority to be able to interpret scripture. They say you can't do that. Now you mentioned the word allegory. One of the things that the Jehovah's Witnesses do is they allegorize wherever it suits them.

One of the things they've said is how much room is there for people in heaven? How many people? 144,000. Where did they get that number? They get that number out of Revelation chapter 7, right? Even though Revelation chapter 7 says it's Israel and it gives the names of each of the tribes, 12,000 from each tribe of Israel, and it's during the tribulation period.

Of course, what do they do? They allegorize all that and that's 144,000 of the generation that was alive in 1914. Those are going to go to heaven. All the rest of us who are saved, and of course that only includes those within the Jehovah's Witness Church, all the rest that are saved are going to be on earth, not in heaven. So if you ask them, do you know if you're going to heaven? Well, of course I'm not. Because I'm not a part of that, you know, 1914 generation of 144,000.

So they adapt prophecies and doctrines from time to time as needed to comply with reality. I held on to this 1975 watchtower. At one point in time, that was it. You're going to start the millennium. Here's 1914, the generation will not pass away. That's the 144,000 that are saved, you know, go to heaven from that generation. But they have to keep changing that and kind of pushing this underneath the pile and put other things as things fall through.

Allegorical interpretation. Most cults lean towards some degree of allegorical interpretation of the Bible. This approach allows the cult leader or cult organization to control the interpretation. It's one of the problems with allegorical interpretation is that you have no way of knowing whether you got the right interpretation.

So, also out of the book of Revelation, remember there's one description in Revelation of these beasts that come out, they're scorpion-like, and they have hair like women, and they come out for five months and sting people, right? The Jehovah's Witnesses see those scorpion-like creatures as themselves, and they see us as the ones being stung. So they come out of the abyss? Yes, they say, because I have one of their revelation commentaries, so what they say is that they are these little scorpion creatures and they are coming and stinging us, the Christians teaching the false teaching.

So, anyway, yeah. So anyway, and so that's their allegorical interpretation. Now why that's been going on for more than five months, which is what the passage says, real hard to explain. So the allegorical approach to interpretation is shared with most of the Reformed, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist, Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox churches. However, what it's done in these various cult groups is they will allegorize, particularly Mormons, Seventh-day Adventists, particularly those groups, but others as well, Jehovah's Witnesses, they will allegorize as they see fit, because then you can control the interpretation, make it say whatever you want.

What's the difference between Reformed and Presbyterian? Presbyterian is a subgroup under Reformed. Here's the deal. John Calvin, who was the founder of Reformed, right? John Calvin was there in Geneva. John Knox went and visited John Calvin and then went back to Scotland and established the Presbyterian Church. So it's a group in large part in agreement with the Reformed Calvinist larger group.

Now, you've got another one, the Doctrine of God. Essentially, Mormonism teaches polytheism. God was once man, man becomes God, and God has a body. By the way, that's contrary to the Book of Mormon, because it was invented later, after the Book of Mormon was already printed. The Adventist on the doctrine of God is fairly orthodox, fairly biblical on the doctrine of God himself. The Christian science teaches pantheism. All is God. Matter does not exist. All is God. Matter does not exist. Just like sin doesn't exist. Got that? Is that clear? Okay. Just so we know.

And then, the Jehovah's Witnesses teach monotheism. Doctrine of the Trinity is denied. So they would teach in their doctrine of God, significantly what we mentioned earlier, God the Father is God, Christ is the first created being, and the Holy Spirit is a force. So that's their doctrine of God, which comes back from Arianism, the ancient. When did they say Jesus was created? He was the first created being. So before the creation of the world? Before Adam? Yeah, it would be even before Adam. Christ was created, yes.

I would presume that they probably get that from the fact that the first David was the light. And Jesus is always referred to as the light. So my thought would be that he was created then and became a created being. What they would take it from is Colossians. He was the firstborn of all creation, which is not talking about the sequence in which he was born, but that he had primacy. just as the firstborn in the families would have primacy. So it's pointing at primacy. They would say he was the first one created. So that's kind of their source for that. So you have this doctrine of God pattern here. The person of Christ.

Christ is divine, according to Mormonism, but not unique. Christ is divine, but not unique. Why would Christ be divine, but not unique? Because is it possible for you to be divine? in Mormonism. In Mormonism, is it possible for you to be divine? Yes, you could become a god, and that is in fact the hope of so-called righteous Mormons, is that, yes, I will be a god like God is.

The Godmakers is one that points that out. So Christ is divine but not unique in the sense that you too could be like Christ. Then you have, in Adventism, the person of Christ is generally looked upon in what we would say is orthodox. Then, the next one over Christian science, distinguishing between Jesus, a man, and Christ, a divine idea. See that? Jesus is the man. Christ is a divine idea. It's the thought. It's the thought that counts.

You see the distinction there? So it's Gnostic because it tries to get rid of this matter that doesn't really exist anyway. This matter is just sort of an ethereal, it's an appearance to us of matter, but it really doesn't exist. Thought is what really exists. Thought is what matters.

Finally, the person of Christ and Arianism, which is the same as Jehovah's Witness, Christ is unique but not divine, identified with Michael the Archangel, the first created being. Both Both Seventh-day Adventism and Jehovah's Witnesses teach that Jesus is Michael the Archangel. And why do they both teach that? Because they originated from the same group, Jehovah's Witnesses of Splinter. So they both teach that same doctrine, Jesus is Michael the Archangel. And then the Jehovah's Witnesses would say that Jesus is the first created being who happens to be Michael the Archangel.

Yeah. Scripture says in every case that a man tries to bow down to an angel, they say no. Yeah, don't do that, right? Yeah, don't bow down to an angel. Yeah. Okay, let's pray. Lord, we thank you that you have made things clear. We thank you that though there certainly are these false teachings and these cults and there is control in the end, what you have in mind for us is that we walk in fellowship with you, we put our trust and confidence in you, that we not play any mind games or add to the Word of God that you have revealed to us because you love us so much. And we're just thankful that we can take confidence in what you've revealed. We pray in Jesus' name.