Polemics - Discernment - Christian Liberalism

This week we have Christian liberalism. Some would say that Christian is a misnomer. Because you'll be surprised that at the extreme of Christian liberalism, and there are shades, at the extreme of Christian liberalism, it's almost shocking what they don't believe.

So Christian liberalism actually rose to prominence in the 1800s and into the early 1900s, so 19th and 20th centuries. And it has made its way into the mainline Protestant seminaries, churches and whatnot, and similar kinds of things have crept into like, for example, the Catholic Church and that sort of thing as well. And their main thrust is their approach to interpretation of scripture and their worldview that goes along with it. They exalt the understanding gained from secular science And then measure everything in the Bible based on that. And so what we have here is, and I said the doctrinal statement of Christian liberalism. I'm not so sure. This is not an official doctrinal statement, so I kind of would put that in quotes. But nonetheless, it's what they say.

So on the Bible, they say the Bible is basically man-originated, expressing thoughts about man, the world, God, and the spiritual realm. It is not inspired by God. uh... but may in places and varying from one person to another be inspiring get the catch the difference there yeah in other words it isn't objectively inspired by god but it may be subjectively inspiring you know this is a a lofty passage or something of that sort yes so it's a subjective inspiring not objectively inspired Though the genre of the Bible may vary, its content is in the realm of myth, legend, etc., which is unenlightened by findings of modern science.

So, in response to that, however, we would say things like John 17, 17, sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth. 1 Corinthians 4, 1, let a man regard us in this manner as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. 2 Timothy 2, 15, be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. So there's something to accurately handle, not set aside, basically.

And then Hebrews 4.12, for the word of God is living and active and sharper than a two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

What could we add to this in terms of passages? And in fact, we could. Other passages that talk about the inspiration of scripture? I think it's like all scriptures convey inspiration. Yes, yeah. 2 Timothy 3, 16, 17. Yeah, all scripture is inspired by God, right? And is valuable, profitable. We could bring that up.

There are other passages that talk about the character of God's Word. And that it is the truth, and those kinds of things. So anyway, scripture itself makes claims that are widely at odds with what Christian liberalism teaches. By the way, how many of you have crossed paths with this Christian liberalism at some point or another? It's all over the place. Yeah, it's all over.

The local school that we have for it is at DU, that's Islet School of Theology. I was in there one time at a coffee shop right near the Islet School of Theology to meet Brian White. And I looked over and heard these guys talking away and they got this book. the myth of the resurrection. So anyway, and we'll see that on the next page. Another one here is the virgin birth. It is derived, should be, from the realm of myth. There is no scientific basis for such a belief. Virgin birth never happened.

Isaiah 7.14 is where that starts from. It's not where it ends, but where it starts from.

Isaiah 7.14, Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call his name Immanuel.

And you may be told that this doesn't actually mean virgin. So let's take a look on page 2. We went through this when we studied through Isaiah. And first here, behold, so this is something to really pay attention to. The next slide over, a virgin. There is a definite article indicated in the Hebrew, so not literally a virgin, but the virgin. By the way, that's something real interesting to discover over in Poland. They don't have articles. There's no the, there's no a, no articles at all. So anyway, it makes things a little different.

Anyway, so it is present in the Greek of the Old Testament and in Matthew 1.22, so the virgin, and that's how you'll see it in the New Testament. rather than a virgin. So what you have is the New King James and the NIV have the definite article and the New American Standard and the King James, which ordinarily would be pretty good translations, don't have it. But that would be proper. The next thing is the Hebrew word translated virgin, Alma, can have a broad meaning like maiden, which only implies virginity.

But in the Old Testament Alma always means an unmarried woman. So it means something in context that's more specific. Genesis 24 gives the accounting of finding Rebecca, the account of finding Rebecca, a suitable wife for Isaac. So Genesis 24, 16, no man had had relations with her. And then 24, 43, farther on down the same chapter, Rebecca is referred to as an Alma. So the word does not always mean virgin, except it is used for an unmarried woman, and even specifically just like this, in the Old Testament.

So Genesis 3.15, the Lord tells the outcome of the serpent's temptation, yet the hope for a savior. Her seed he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel. So this prophecy was for her seed, that is no human father. So the implication there is for virgin.

Now, then the question we have is, how did the Jews view it? And we get that from the Greek Old Testament. The Greek Old Testament was translated by Jews two centuries before the birth of Christ. So there was no Christian axe to grind, right? There was no Christian influence around at that point in time, and the Hebrew word Alma was there translated Parthenos, which means virgin. Then, when you get to Matthew 1, 22, and 23, it quotes Isaiah 7, 14 from the Greek Old Testament, and clearly conveys in context that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a virgin until after Jesus was born.

And then the words translated, Behold the Virgin in Matthew 1.22 and 1.23 are identical to those in the Greek Old Testament of Isaiah 7.14.

And Parthenos means virgin in Matthew 1.25 and Luke 1.34. Mary says, for example, how can this be because I'm a Parthenos? Some claim that Bethula is the Hebrew word that only means virgin. But it can be shown by several biblical contexts that Bethula doesn't only mean virgin as some claim. So you could check that out and that the claim is not true.

Finally, the word Alma in Isaiah 7.14 does not mean in context virgin.

If it does not mean virgin, then Isaiah 7.14 is no sign at all.

Right? How does it work for if we say a young woman will bear a son? Is that a sign? That's not particularly anything, is it? There's nothing extraordinary about that. Young women are bearing sons all the time. Then, therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin will be with child and bear a son. And this is the virgin's pregnancy with and the delivery of a son, not just any son, as the rest of the verse makes clear. So at any rate, it actually does point to virgin, and so from the Old Testament into Matthew and Luke, yes, the virgin birth is taught.

Okay, now on to page 3, Christ's resurrection. The resurrection of Christ is simply a myth that goes along with other ancient myths about resurrection of gods, cultural heroes, etc. This viewpoint has been expressed in books like the one shown to the left.

It's funny, in a little farm town where I went to high school, they had a Methodist church in town and sometimes the pastors that they brought in were believers and sometimes they weren't. I was at a vacation Bible school, helping teach there, and they had some people from out of town at Peninsula Bible Church, which I'll talk about later, came in to help run this vacation Bible school at this Methodist church.

Well, a new pastor was just starting that week. And he was the guy that had been trained under these liberal ideas. So this new pastor started that week and by the end of the week he became a believer. Because he believed that Christ died for his sins and was buried and rose again. Unlike what he was taught in seminary. Pacific school of religion. So Christ's resurrection, the resurrection of Christ is simply a myth that goes along with other ancient myths about the resurrection of gods, cultural heroes, etc. This viewpoint has been expressed in books like the one shown to the left.

And this is the one that I saw when I was waiting for Brian White. So see the table on the next page. What we have done here is there's a listing of all the resurrection accounts. First of all, looking at the empty tomb. So we find things in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that give various views of the empty tomb by different ones. John particularly records Peter and John coming to the grave and finding it, you know, it's open and empty. Then post-resurrection appearances.

First, you have multiple appearances on Sunday. Of course, the Jews didn't call it Sunday, did they? We have our modern names, which are really connected to pagan names, so we call it Sunday, but actually the Jews used to use numbers. First day of the week, second day of the week, etc. But nonetheless, you have Sunday, and then how long is it before you have the next set of appearances after that Sunday? How much time goes by?

A week. Isn't that amazing? So here's Thomas. No, I will not believe. And the Lord doesn't say, well, we'll fix that. He waits a week. He waits a week. And then shows up to Thomas and begins showing to others. So real interesting that there's a cluster of resurrection appearances and then the Lord waits a week to begin showing up to people again. But nonetheless you have the accounts all the way from numerous people seeing the empty tomb to numerous people seeing Christ. Now how many total saw Christ? Yeah, over 500. This is out of 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Over 500.

And something else, Jesus' brothers, he had four of them, Jesus' brothers, did they believe in Christ or not? They did not. All the way up to the last days before he went to Jerusalem, they didn't believe. In fact, they really resented him deeply. And even, as you read the account, John wanted him to get killed.

But when he resurrected, as 1 Corinthians 15 says, he appeared to James, his half-brother. And amazingly, in Acts chapter 1, you see all four brothers are now believers, gathering together with the disciples. So anyway, there's lots of evidence there. Now, is the evidence consistent? That's a good point we've got to look at. Is the evidence consistent?

Are there differences between the accounts? There's different ways. Okay. You know, he hid himself under the remains. Yes, and that's one thing. Sometimes it'll be a matter of perspective. Even when Peter and John looked into the empty tomb, did they look in that tomb from the same perspective? No, they didn't. One stood at the door and the other one's inside. So even between the two of them, you got a different perspective. Yes.

But they all died for the primary belief. Yes, and I think that's one thing, except for John, they died a martyr's death believing something that they didn't believe in or understand prior to the resurrection. They were not expecting a resurrection, right?

So anyway, we have some prior lessons, and I'll refer to those rather than, because we just can't take the time to go over it, but Lessons 21 and 22, May 31st and June 7th, address the evidence for the resurrection in more detail. Lessons 15 and 16, that's April 19 and 26, address the questions of whether the gospel narratives can or should be considered mythology. One of the things that is critical here is how long does it take a myth to be generated? And the reality is it takes a long time for a myth to be generated, because if you're too close to the actual events, you can get people to contest it.

Let me give you a silly for instance, but just a for instance. If I were to tell you that when I was a kid, I used to call George Washington up on the cell phone and talk to him all the time. What would you think of that? It doesn't sell very well, right? And give me several reasons why. He had been dead a long time ago, right? And then furthermore, you know, a lot of you have been around, you know, during the time when I was a kid and you know, hey, there were no cell phones back then, you know. Pardon?

And George Washington certainly didn't have one. Yeah, anything like it. Alexander Graham Bell had not invented it yet, right? The earliest one and what we have today is, of course, vastly more sophisticated. So yeah, there's a lot of things that just don't check out with that kind of a statement.

But many years later, when things get separated, then you can have a chance to develop myths. The myths for Homer, for example, centered around the year 1200. And things like the Trojan horse, things like that. And then Homer lived approximately the same time as Isaiah. But that's centuries later that he's writing down these myths that have developed about something that happened supposedly earlier. And so what we have now are then copies of what Homer wrote about the same time as Isaiah. But centuries went by in order to develop those myths.

And from the earliest copies of the New Testament, and by the way, we're getting earlier and earlier fragments, from the earliest copies of the New Testament, we're talking less than a century after the events. And the latest one, it's still being investigated, so I think we've got to be careful. about what we claim, but the most recent find is a fragment of the Gospel of Mark that preliminary studies say was from the 80s AD. So just a few decades after Mark was written probably. And that was found in Egypt, which means it took time to get there.

Yeah, there's not enough time to develop myths. You're talking about getting into the lifetime of the people who wrote these things. Okay, so then the next one, Christ's life and character. Christ was a good moral teacher. How does that go? But his followers took liberties as they conveyed the stories of his life, embellishing the accounts with miracles, claims to deity, and the like. So what does that tell you? Do they believe in miracles?

No. Do they believe that Christ was deity? No. He was just a man, they would say, who was a good moral teacher. And so these accounts, actually written much later and not by the apostles, became mythology rather than true historical or eyewitness accounts, but the original moral teachings can be gleaned from the New Testament writings. So it's basically Jesus said to love people.

That's about what they will abide by, and the rest of it's all just fluff, so they would say. So our response here is this. Many of the same points can be made about the Gospel accounts in general that were referenced in the response given above in the denial of the resurrection of Christ. Briefly, however, we'll point out that 1.

The Apostles were aware of myths, fables, and tales, and specifically warned against them and denied such things. Stay away from myths and fables and tales. So they had cautions about that. Paul and Peter, both. The next, the apostles were persecuted as recorded in the book of Acts and in some letters of the New Testament. So far as we have record, all died martyrs except John in proclaiming what they witnessed. Alright, so let's say that we're going to get together and we're going to have this little conspiracy and we're going to go out and claim, you know, something. that Vernon grew a full head of hair overnight, or some silly nonsense. Are you going to die for that? No. No, you're not. Pardon? I die laughing, yes. There we go. All right.

So the apostles did not expect Jesus to perform all the miracles that he did, nor did they expect that he would be crucified, buried, and resurrected. Jesus' brothers did not believe did not believe in him until after his resurrection. So that was John 7, 5 that says none of the brothers believed. And then Acts 1, 14, all four brothers are there with Mary in Acts chapter 1, as they're gathered just before the day of Pentecost.

Yet James gave his life for his belief in Christ as recorded by Josephus. Remember that Satan tempted Christ to jump from the pinnacle of the temple and the angels would, you know, keep him safe and all that. Well, it was that same pinnacle that they dumped James off of. And it actually injured him badly, didn't kill him, so they came after him with a club. But you don't do that if this is just some sort of family conspiracy. You know, you don't say, hey, I'm going to believe this to the at the very end of my life, and at the expense of my life.

We would also say that the Jewish culture of New Testament times was, in contrast to the surrounding cultures, sharply resistant to the confusion of humanity and deity. So I think that's one thing, is how does this sell? and confusing humanity and deity, the Jewish culture would not be a place where you could sell that easily. As a matter of fact, how do we know that that wouldn't sell? How did the Jews respond to Jesus' claims to deity? It's time to pick up rocks, right? Time to pick up rocks.

So, yeah, the Jewish culture was not a place where you could sell the idea that here's a human being who is God, not a place you do it all, and yet, for the first decade, that was where Christianity grew, until Peter introduced the gospel to the house of Cornelius. For about a decade before that, it was all Jews, with the exception of some Samaritans. Okay, let's take a look at page four. Four, we've got the chart that we looked at there. Five, hell and the lake of fire.

These are mythological places and not real places. So Christ did not have to die to save anyone from hell or the lake of fire. How about that? Christ doesn't have to die. All that, got to die for sin. No, none of that. He wasn't deity. He didn't need to die for sins. The whole thing was bogus and he certainly didn't resurrect. Are you impressed yet? Not so much, right?

Along the same lines, human beings are not born in sin, but just need good moral teaching like Christ actually taught. People ought to live out Christ's good moral teachings. That's just what we need is to have everybody live out Christ's good moral teachings.

So the response we would have to that is the Bible instead teaches about hell and heaven. Christ is recorded to have said more about hell, Hades, and the lake of fire than all of the apostles wrote down in their letters combined. Christ himself was the one who talked about this. For example, read Matthew 23, 29-33 and Luke 16, 19-31.

So we're going to be getting to that in our study of Luke. At that point we're going to take a look at the structure of the spiritual realm. We're going to be looking at deaths and resurrections and when those happen. So we'll take kind of a broad look because it's a good time to get an overview picture.

In a number of the liberal wing of the seminaries, and of course people go on to that, then are taking that into the churches. So, yeah, and it's gone to Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist would be some examples of where that's been brought in. I mentioned that here's this pastor comes in and by the end of the Vacation Bible School week he'd become a believer. He'd gone to Pacific School of Religion and that's what he'd learned there.

Just this stuff. This goes way back. Wasn't Thomas Jefferson one of the big Yeah, you had an earlier era of skeptics who essentially they looked at, you know, scripture has good teachings in terms of, you know, Jesus talking about loving your neighbor and those kinds of things. So scripture has good teachings, but they discounted things entirely. the story goes and clipped out of the Bible all the stuff that was a miracle and then what was left was what he consolidated and is known as the Jefferson Bible.

This stuff, the good moral teaching. So that had originated earlier, it was later in the 19th century that it started getting some momentum and in the early 20th century Does this have any tie-in to the Muslim religion? Did liberalism come from any tie-in to it? No, it didn't come from any tie-in to it. Those came from separate origins.

Nonetheless, because the Muslim religion was not terribly scientific, and here they're trying to put secular sciences, that's the top rung. And so instead of looking at the Bible as this is inspired by God, they look at the Bible instead as an ancient document that you study using secular anthropology and history. And so it strips out the miracles, it strips out claims about Christ being deity, and it boils down to what do you got left?

Well, there's some good moral teachings here and there. Yeah. But it basically took faith. out of the spiritual belief system, right? Yeah, well, the only thing you're believing is these supposed good moral teachings, and you get to decide what those are. Right, and that's similar to what happened with the law from Moses. They basically took the faith factor out of that as well.

I mean, you just follow these procedures. Yeah, here's our rules. But you don't have to believe in anything supernatural. Well, and that ultimately is what the Sadducees, that was their position, is they were anti-supernaturalists, that when you're done, you're done with this life, and that's it. You were, that's all.

What it seems to me like, is it kind of just making the Bible and religion, more commonly, generally appealing because there's no judgment, there's no... I mean, get you interested in, you know, come to church, you don't have to just hear the good stuff. You don't have to read the rules and this and that. You don't have to... So it's more generally appealing. Sure.

And, you know, you don't have to take what you don't like and, you know, so you kind of pick and choose. You know, I like this and I don't like that. There was one fellow who was teaching at this Methodist church in Boonville, and I wasn't present for this one, but he was going through and teaching out of the Bible, you know, and about halfway through he says, too bad I don't believe any of this stuff. Yeah, he's just teaching it and he says, I don't believe any of it. Yeah. So you could call it a PCV? Politically Correct Bible? Yeah. Yeah, politically and a few other ways correct, supposedly, right? And by the way, there's, yeah. Yes?

Just going back to what Dan said about the faith, they took it out. I do agree with that. I think I would shoot that they didn't take the faith out. I think they put the faith in themselves. Yeah. Notice ultimately everybody has faith. It's a question of where they put it. We oftentimes use faith and talk about faith in terms of our Bible and our Lord and that kind of thing. But truly everybody has faith, it's just a question of where they put it. Some people put their faith in science, some people put their faith in themselves, put faith in their feelings. So everybody has faith, it's just a question of where they put it. So when we use the word faith, we're often thinking of a Christian application, but reality is everybody's got faith.

You can't live life without it. Okay, so then we have the Bible's authors. Oh, this is a good one. The Bible was written by about 40 men, most of whom were Jews. In the New Testament, Dr. Luke, the author of Luke and Acts, appears to be the only Gentile author. It's possible that Job, in the Old Testament, was written by a Gentile author. Otherwise, we have Jewish authors for just about everything else. So about 40 authors written over about 1,500 years and 66 books. So that's a quick summary of what's in the Bible.

They would say most of the Bible's authors were not who they claimed to be. Daniel was not really written by this guy named Daniel during the time that it claims to have been written. Isaiah was really written by a few different people, none of whom was Isaiah. And it was compiled, and the books of Moses were not written during the time of supposedly when Moses was around, but rather centuries later, and it was a collection from different authors, compiled and pulled together. That general idea, and none of the apostles, the actual apostles, actually wrote any of the New Testament according to the claim.

Yeah? The general idea that you would say the book of John can't be written by John, but it can be written by anyone else, that's an agenda. It's like, OK. If you are going to say it can be written by anyone, except for the person that is going to be the author, that's pretty absurd.

As Wendy pointed out, the roots of this are really much earlier. The scholarship at one point in time said that the Gospel of John was actually written about 170 or 180 A.D. So well over a century after the time of Christ, almost a century and a half after the time of Christ, that was the liberal scholarship at one point in time. Then they started finding documents, which dated much earlier, and then they had, you know, make it conform with that. So as more time goes on and more and earlier documents are found, it moves the line in the direction of what I think is the biblical position. They're forced to it by the evidence. Yeah.

What's curious about this, and you've made this point before, is if Christ was not Christ, then who would care 100 years later? I mean, like, just why would you even try to shift dates or disprove it. Why bother? There's so much attention for so many thousands and thousands of years to one, it's like one key premise which is Christ died and he rose again. And quite a bit of human effort has been spent trying to say no, no, no, no, no, no. That could not have happened, which in a way, almost proves the point. It's like, why bother?

Especially in an environment where pretty soon, having scripture is going to get you killed. Are you going to make something up and hold on to this written document if having it is death penalty? Are you going to do that? Are we going to just concoct something when it's going to be a death penalty if you get caught? Yeah. Well, that's basically what Guineo said during that session of the Sanhedrin or whatever. He said that if it's a man, don't worry about it, it's going to disappear. But if it's a God, they aren't going to stop it anyway. Yeah, that's right.

We have, we have, the number is approaching 6,000 manuscripts of different, you know, everything from fragments to whole manuscripts, handwritten copies of the Greek. And if we then carry it over into Latin and, you know, the other languages, the translations, you're looking at a number approaching around 25,000 all totaled. including the Greek and the other languages. So lots and lots of handwritten manuscripts.

And that was even in spite of the fact that it was illegal to have Christian documents with death penalty. And here's the way they did it. The Roman soldiers would show up at your front door And it would say, OK, if you declare that you have scriptures and tell us what they are and where they are right now, here at the front door, we'll take the scriptures and you'll be OK. But if you don't and we find them, you'll be dead and you won't be leaving the house alive. I mean, it's just that quick. It's going to run you through. So that's the scenario. And so are you going to hold on to something that's bogus. Furthermore, you better decide what's scripture and what isn't. And that better be real clear, because you've got to know what you're going to die for.

So it was something that was amazing that we ended up with so many copies. because it was one they went around diligently trying to stamp out. And yet we have these thousands of handwritten copies instead of like everything else where it's a couple hundred or far less. So the fact that we have that many is miraculous.

But at any rate, so we have a response in Lessons 18, 19, and 20. We address the findings of archaeology regarding the Old and New Testaments. See, one of the claims, for example, that really struck me is that the Gospels were, of course, fabricated later. But the teaching was, even up to 15 years ago, the teaching was among the liberal folks that there really were no synagogues around during Jesus' time. but that they came later, and therefore the people who wrote later assumed that there were synagogues and wrote it back into the Gospels. Well, lo and behold, the synagogue at Magdala has coins in the floor from the time of Christ. Oh, I guess there are synagogues, right? And that also means that the one at Capernaum is valid. and not fake. So now it's being discovered that there were synagogues during Christ's time, and it has been demonstrated, and it isn't reading it back from a time when there were synagogues later back into the Gospels. No, they really did have synagogues.

So the story that was written later is getting less and less tentative. less and less swallowable. We covered earlier the views of Bart Ehrman. He went to Princeton. That's a liberal Presbyterian seminary. It didn't used to be, but it became liberal. So that's where Bart Ehrman, who went to Moody and went to Wheaton, lost his faith. and is now an agnostic. He basically holds the same position regarding the origin of these New Testament documents as the Christian liberals do.

Technically, that should say where he went from a professing Christian too agnostic because it's not possible to truly... Yeah, that's what he would claim, that he just doesn't know, right? Right, but this is making it sound like you can lose your personality, but that's not correct. So he never was.

Well, you know, I think the thing is, Lord knows his heart. At one point in time he claimed to be a Christian. I would have gone in there, knowing what I know, and I would have said, hey you guys, you're screwed up here, you're messed up. And point out those areas where they're messed up. But instead he just slid. And as we went through, I don't think he's on good scientific ground in what he presents.

Jewish and Christian archaeologists, historians, and scholars have rebutted the liberal and skeptical viewpoint about the origins and authorship of scripture numerous times over the decades. The evidence that surfaced in recent decades keeps moving the line of allowable interpretation of the evidence in the direction of conservative Jewish and Christian scholarship.

We went to the Ella Valley and there was David's fortress there. The Carbon 14 dating says that it was used only during the time of David. It wasn't even used during the time of Solomon. And so Garfinkel, the archaeologist, said that this was in use during the time of King David. And Garfinkel is not a believer, he's not even a Jewish believer.

He's just looking at the evidence, and he says this was in use during the time of King David. And it fits the Bible passages, and it's used during the time of David, and not otherwise. And so for that he took a lot of heat, but he said that's where the evidence leads me. And so that would be, you know, an example of the kind of thing where the evidence says this, you know, and I'm not, he says, I don't believe that the Bible's infallible or anything else, but he says, this is what the evidence says. It was used during the time of King David and King David was right here. That's, here is his palace.

Yeah. You said the carbon-14 dating showed that. Yes. Okay, but isn't it true that they say, creationists say, that the carbon-14 dating is false? Okay, a couple of things. It's more complex than that. In much of the Mediterranean, starting around 1500 BC and earlier, Carbon-14 will give dates that are a century to a century and a half too early. But during the time of King David, the numbers actually line up pretty well.

It's when you get much farther back that then carbon-14 dating becomes real questionable. Here's a for instance, and that is numerous dinosaur bones have been found to, it's supposed to be millions of years old. The oldest dinosaur, I mean the youngest dinosaur would be somewhere around 60, five million, and even a lot of molders and that according to the standard dating systems. But then they show up with carbon 14 dates that are somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 years old.

What I would suggest is, yeah, a lot of that dating system is highly in question and probably those are not correct dates. But because you're taking just numbers and plugging them into a formula, with assumptions, right? And can you go back and verify the assumptions? No, you can't.

So one of the things we have in historical times is we can take the carbon-14 dates and compare it to something else that's been dated by another method or other methods. But when you get into much older times, we don't have anything to compare to. So carbon-14 is useful, but you have to be able to verify things, and you get into much older times and no way to verify it. And it's amazing, even with Egyptian history, real solid dates for Egyptian history end after about the 7th century BC. Farther back it's Start to run into some head-scratcher questions. Okay, another one.

Christian morals and ethics. The end result is that Christian liberalism promotes a social gospel of Christian concerns for other people and society, motivated by the love and empathy with Jesus, the great moral teacher, actually taught. So it's essentially social gospel because the gospel is not Christ died for your sins and was buried and rose again and he loved and he gave and he loved and he gave. That's not the gospel according to Christian liberalism.

Yeah, Roy? Sounds like the Pharisees are basing their belief on the law. moral teaching. So you just add into it to show the appropriate way to live according to their way of living. No miracles, no Messiah. Here's Jesus and he's being asked by a Sadducee, are you the Christ? Does the Sadducee even believe in the Christ? No. So it doesn't matter what Jesus answers, it's just bogus. I don't believe. If you are, or if you claim it, then that's goofy, and if you claim you aren't, then that's goofy too, because I don't believe in the thing.

So this is Caiaphas. Let's turn to page 6. You'll have a chart that says Presbyterian Family Connections. This is abbreviated in that it starts in about the 1700s. Also, it's simplified. The actual record is more complex. So here's the Presbyterian family connections.

And so because of liberalism, what you'll see kind of in the top middle, you'll see the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Bible Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Presbyterian Church, breaking off at different points. And that break off was over the liberalism as a generalization for that portion of this chart.

As a matter of fact, at the Bible Presbyterian Church, one of the names that you'll come across who was a part of that was Francis Schaeffer. Francis Schaeffer was one who was a part of the Bible Presbyterian Church, and he did not like the shift towards liberalism. He thought that that was problematic. Louis Sperry Schaeffer, this is CH, A.F.E.R. Louis Barry Schaeffer was actually of Presbyterian background. So was John Wolverd. Presbyterian background. Obviously, you know, not going for this liberalism at all.

So they would often find themselves gravitating towards one of the more conservative groups. But this same kind of thing has happened in several different denominations. One of them that is more like the liberal Presbyterian is the United Church of Christ. There's one of those at the corner of Colorado Boulevard and Hamden. And that's another one where liberalism has come in, even to the point of having Drag Queen Sunday. Not necessarily there, but some of those churches.

So they're embracing, loving everybody, no matter what. A little video about the origins of the Church of Christ and the man and his son. I can't remember their name, I'm sorry, but they moved here from Scotland and they founded... About the Campbells? Yeah. About the Campbells, yeah.

Now, by the way, we covered the Church of Christ earlier and what's interesting is while the name sounds similar, the United Church of Christ has no connection anywhere directly, with the Church of Christ. So it's real curious. But yeah, I mean, they're a rather strange group. And we covered that, and there's a lot of difference from one to the next. But yeah, it's one of those things where the names get confusing. And like all these different Presbyterian churches, that gets real confused. And this is a simplified version. This doesn't show all the detail. There used to be a faith Presbyterian church, and now they're going just by faith church. I don't know what happened there.

A lot of churches are doing that, like the evangelical free churches. A lot of them are not going by evangelical free anymore. And one of the reasons why is because that has a historical meaning, but it doesn't mean anything to people. The evangelical free, free meant that you're not under government appointment and that sort of thing, and that you were evangelical, but both of those just kind of get lost on people anymore.

So they're usually picking some other name. The community church. Yeah, the community church. There's one Church of Christ, who's the prolific Christian author, At any rate, at his church, they've dropped the Church of Christ name altogether, like Oak Hills Church. So they've dropped the Church of Christ tag altogether. So yeah, there are lots of ways the churches are just kind of doing some some cleaning up the face, so to speak, by dropping their names. And their association is often then just kind of buried.

And you can find out about it, but they don't necessarily hold on to that as a high profile thing any longer. Churches out in our neighborhood that used to be Bear Valley Baptist and now they're Bear Valley Church. Yeah, just shifting away from the denominational labels altogether.

Yes, Dan? This all reminds me of Jesus in front of Pilate saying, what is truth? Yeah. Yeah. Ultimately, all the stuff we're studying is really addressing that question. We're talking about discernment, right? And exercising discernment and comparing things with scripture, comparing what scripture itself says versus what various claims are made. And in this case, the very bottom part of page 6, 2 Timothy 2, 1 and 2, You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses and trustees to faithful men will be able to teach others also.

What many of these traditional churches have done, and it started with the Catholic and the Orthodox churches, where they've got bishops and they've got this hierarchy, and a lot of them have gone by some kind of apostolic succession, where this guy appoints the next one, this guy appoints the next one, and they call it apostolic succession.

But the Bible doesn't teach apostolic succession. The Bible doesn't teach a bishop over multiple churches. as it happens in a lot of beliefs, the Bible teaches doctrinal succession. That verse right there. The things that you have heard from me, Timothy, with other witnesses, so it's not just you and me and that's the only connection, but other witnesses, do you turn around and teach those, not just anybody and everybody, but entrust these things to faithful men who will turn around and teach others also.

So doctrinal succession, not apostolic succession. Doctrinal succession has the word of God being carried from one generation to the next. Apostolic succession says that I've got this guy who's appointed and then typically what happens is they take traditions on top of God's Word and the traditions end up messing up God's Word. So this Christian liberalism also frequently finds itself in places where you've got apostolic succession as the theory. even though they didn't believe that the apostles originally wrote the New Testament. So, anyway, I think that's a key thing. Paul wrote to Timothy and says, look, I've taught you these things, you turn around and you teach them to others who turn around and teach those to others also, exactly as you were taught.

And not, we're going to embellish this. Let's ask what happens if I head for Hawaii, but I'm one degree off, where am I going to end up? Out in the ocean somewhere. I'd run out of gas. Yeah, you'll end up out in the ocean somewhere and one degree off is all it takes. It's all it takes. Can I get more accurate than one degree? Yeah. I can't.

And biblically it's important to keep that and to stay solid on that. I'll be talking about a guy named Ray Steadman in the next service here. He was kind of the founding pastor or the first pastor that was called at Peninsular Bible Church where I grew up. He taught a lot of good stuff and he's a really good teacher in terms of communicating with people.

But there were some things he didn't have quite square on. And so the church has, guess what? It's off by one degree, and then by the time you've gone very far, I would not recommend that you go to Peninsula Bible Church anymore. It was a pretty good place to grow up, but that slightly off turned into way off by the time you go down the road. And that almost caused a problem in Poland. Because they found, well, you went to Peninsular Bible Church, and then they went and looked at the Peninsular Bible Church website now, and not good.

So this discernment matters, and it matters not just now, but it matters for a long time to come. Because otherwise, instead of entrusting truth to faithful men who will turn to each other also, you end up losing it. And we give you thanks for those marvelous truths that you've given us because you love us and you care for us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.