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THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT

The Rise of Dispensationalism

February 28, 1999

Ben Young

What is dispensational premillennialism? What do those who adhere to this view believe about the end times, about the tribulation, the anti-Christ, and the thousand year reign of Christ? Why has this view gained such prominence and how has it helped Christians follow Christ more closely in the past 100 years? Join Ben as he tackles this popular and pervasive Eschatological view.

A few minutes ago, I flipped on CNN to catch up on the world news. If you have not seen a TV in the last thirty-five minutes or so, the reports that I saw from around the world were literally mind-boggling, catastrophic. In the last hour, some forty-three airliners in the US alone have crashed.  They’re reporting in Hong Kong, China, Mexico City and other places in the world that there have been thousands and thousands of automobile accidents happening nearly simultaneously. In Texas, California, and Florida authorities are estimating that nearly twenty-five thousand inmates have escaped – they’ve suddenly disappeared. In Korea, one CNN International correspondent said they’re estimating that over 1.2 million Koreans have all of a sudden vanished off the planet.

Fortunately, the news reports I just gave you have not happened yet. They are not true. But if it were true, that would mean the rest of us would have been left behind. It would mean that Christ came to the earth secretly and raptured up the true believers in Him. Those remaining on earth would be here to endure what would probably be the most gruesome outpouring of the wrath of God upon mankind that we have ever known. The great outpouring of God’s judgment is called the Great Tribulation. This incredible end times scenario asks the question, are you rapture ready?

In this lesson, we will take an up close and Biblical look at the most popular eschatological end times view in this century, dispensational premillennialism. In our last lesson we kicked off the series, It’s the End of the World As We Know It. We looked at many practical reasons as to why it is important to be engaged in the study of the end times. If you have not read the previous lesson in this series, I would encourage you to go back and read it first. It gives an overview of what we’re going to talk about in this series.

I am going to let you know that you have to put on your thinking cap for the lesson ahead. If you left your brain in front of the television or at the park while you were jogging or working out – run go get it, because you’re going to need to be fully engaged. We are going to cruise through this incredible eschatological view.

In this lesson, I want to seek to answer three questions. The first question, what is dispensational premillennialism?

The second, why is this the most popular, the most dominant view in the Christian culture today? And the third question, how has this view helped Christians follow Christ more closely in this age?

First of all, what is dispensational premillennialism? It’s hard enough to say, much less unpack in order to understand what it is all about. I loved my grandfather. My grandfather, my mom’s dad, was a godly, godly, godly man. I didn’t know my dad’s father too well; he passed away when I was about, five years of age. But I knew my mom’s dad, and we called him “Buddy.” That was his nickname. He was a football coach, he was a teacher, and he was a student of the Word of God. In his house in Laurel, Mississippi, he had a lazy-boy chair. He had a debilitating stroke which left him paralyzed and confined to a wheel chair most of my life. But he would sit in this lazy-boy chair and to the left of his chair was this TV tray. On the TV tray there were always magazines, but standing out prominently was this black leather Scofield Reference Bible, King James Version. And nothing went on top of my grandfather’s Scofield Bible. The TV guide did not even go on top of that Bible.

My grandfather became so associated with this Bible that my dad and my uncle would call him Sco or Scofield. The notes in that Bible were by a man named Dr. C. I. Scofield. Dr. Scofield was a lawyer who was converted in the 19^th century under the ministry of D. L. Moody, the evangelist and founder of Moody Bible College in Chicago, Illinois. Scofield was a brilliant man and he took the writings of the father of modern dispensationalism, John Nelson Darby (who we’ll talk about later), and popularized them through his study Bible known as the Scofield Study Bible. My grandfather would get out that study Bible and he would show the different eras, the different dispensations. He would show the different ways God was working in this era and this era and this era. My mom told me recently that he would bore her to tears with all the charts on the dispensations. He was impassioned by this system of interpreting and understanding the Scripture that is known as dispensationalism.

So, what is a dispensation? Some of the top dispensational scholars even debate on how to define it. But let’s look at a few definitions. Let’s look at Dr. Ryrie’s definition. My grandfather was raised on Scofield; I was raised on the Ryrie Study Bible. For years I didn’t realize that the notes were not inspired. I just thought that whatever Ryrie and Scofield said was the gospel. According to Ryrie, a dispensation is a distinguishable economy and an outworking of God’s purpose. Let me kind of explain what he is trying to say here for us.

Dispensationalism is a system, a Bible interpretation, which emphasizes different ways that God interacts with people in different periods. It is a perspective to see Scripture divided into distinct epics of God’s dealings with people.

God dealt with His people in different ways during different time periods in the history of Israel and the history of the church. Classic dispensationalists would break the Bible down, really break history down into seven distinct dispensations. The first dispensation is the dispensation of innocence, Genesis 1 through Genesis 3. That is Adam and Eve, the world pre-fall, and the Garden of Eden.

The second dispensation is the dispensation of conscience, Genesis 3-8. That is after the fall, Cain and Abel, and all the way up to the flood.

The third dispensation is the dispensation of civil government, Genesis 8-11. Here you have God’s covenant with Noah and Noah’s descendants and the Tower of Babel.

Then you go from Genesis 11 to Exodus 18 which is the fourth dispensation, the dispensation of patriarchal rule. This involves Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and the twelve sons which become the twelve tribes of Israel. You also have Moses and the exodus from Egypt.

The fifth dispensation is a long era; it covers Exodus 19 to John 14:30. It is the dispensation of the Mosaic Law. It involves God giving Moses the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. All kinds of players are involved in this era – Moses, Joshua, David, Isaiah, the return from the exile, the divided kingdom and you have, of course, the coming of Jesus Christ.

The sixth dispensation according to this theological system is the dispensation of grace, or the church age. We are still in that dispensation today. This dispensation began at Pentecost in Acts 2:1. There are the twelve apostles, Paul’s conversion, his ministry to the Gentiles, and you have all of church history encompassed in the time period known as the dispensation of grace or dispensation of the church.

Finally, you have the rapture that I talked about at the beginning of our message tonight. The rapture is the end of church history. It’s over. After the rapture you have the seven years of tribulation, the second coming of Christ, the thousand year millennial rule, the earthly physical rule of Jesus Christ, Satan’s final judgment, and the new heavens and the new earth in the final state.  Those are the seven dispensations, as classic dispensationalists would define them.

Speaking of millennium, that is what we are talking about in these lessons, what is the millennium?  The word millennium means one thousand years. We know what a dispensationalist is, someone who divides the Bible into different epics or time periods. So, what is a dispensational premillennialist? Turn to Revelation 20:4; the debate in evangelical circles is over this passage,  “And I saw thrones and they sat upon them, and judgment was given to them, and I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of the testimony of Jesus and because of the Word of God, and those who had not worshipped the beast or his image, and not received the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand; and they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.”

The term premillennial means that Christ will come and rapture the church before the millennium.  Premillennialists believe that Christ will reign on this earth, that He will have a physical kingdom, that He will restore and take the kingdom of Israel to a whole new level, and that He will fulfill all of His promises He made to Abraham and David in this earthly millennium. Dispensational premillennialists believe this and so do historic premillennialists, which is the oldest eschatological view in the church.

Someone may ask you if you are you a postmillennialist. What does that mean? Postmillennialism means you believe that Christ is coming back after the thousand year reign. So, He is coming back probably after the tribulation and after the millennium. A postmillennialist (we’ll study that next week) sees the church age melting into the millennial kingdom of God. A postmillennialist also believes things will get better and better through the advance of the gospel and Christians will evangelize the world and that evangelism will usher in the millennium in which Christ will come and the judgment will be at the end of that time.

An amillennialist believes that the thousand years mentioned in Revelation 20 may be figurative. It can refer to an extended time period where Christ is ruling and reigning now in heaven or Christ is ruling and reigning through your life. They believe that the rapture and the Second Coming happen in one event.

The millennium is the thousand-year reign of Christ and some people believe it is an earthly reign of Christ. It is a physical reign in which He would be king of the entire world and He would physically rule the planet. That is what some millennialists hold to. Others say the millennium is a spiritual millennium, that Christ is reigning now, that the millennium, so to speak, is here, or they will merge into the millennium.

Let’s look at some distinctive elements of dispensational premillennialism. The first doctrinal distinctive is so important, everything rests upon it. It is hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is the science of interpretation. The dispensational hermeneutic seeks to employ a literal principle of interpretation of Scripture if at all possible. This element is important because it will lead into the second distinction which is a separation or a clear delineation between the nation of Israel and the church.

Why the delineation? If you read the prophecies in the Old Testament and the book of Revelation and you take those numbers literally, then you believe that God through Jesus Christ will literally fulfill the promises. The physical and material blessings He promised to the Israelites in the Abrahamic and Davidic covenant, and the Messianic covenant. You believe He is going to literally fulfill those in the millennial reign of Christ.

In this view God has two programs. He has a program for Israel, which we see in the Old Testament and in Revelation, and He has a program for the church. The church is a parenthesis in prophetic history according to the dispensational view. That leads us into the third distinctive, which is the pre-tribulation rapture. Please reference the glossary for further understanding. It will equip you to be ready to tackle any end times questions when you we are finished with this series.

Let’s look at this pre-tribulation rapture. If you are a dispensationalist it makes sense to believe in a pre-tribulation rapture. God had His program and plan for Israel. Jesus the Messiah comes and Israel, the Jews, reject Him as the Messiah as a whole.

Since Israel rejects Jesus as the Messiah God puts them on hold and goes to the church age. Then God will renew His plan for Israel during the tribulation and church history will be over.

God has a plan for national Israel; He had a plan and a covenant for Abraham. Jesus Christ comes on the scene. Israel rejects the Messiah. Then what happened? Christ goes to the cross, Christ is resurrected, He appears to over 500 people in the flesh, He sends them out to preach the gospel to everyone – Jews and Gentiles alike – and He has sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. At Pentecost you have the beginning of the church age.

When Israel rejected Jesus as the Messiah the prophetic clock stopped. Since they rejected this earthly kingdom that Christ was bringing to them, the church age, which we are a part of now, was ushered in. The church age, according to this end times view, can end at any time.

If you believe in this, then the news report I gave you at the beginning of the lesson could happen at any time.  Christ could come at any time. Think about all the people around you being rapture up. All of the Christians that live on the planet, the true believers, will be raptured up and meet Christ in the air.  Christians who are dead will be resurrected, raised to life, and they will go on to be with Jesus Christ in heaven.

When they get to heaven, what do they have? They have the judgment seat of Christ. That means judgment will come based upon the basis of our works, what we have done with the gifts and talents God has given us. That is the way we will get our rewards or lack of rewards. It has nothing to do with heaven and hell. It has to do with our rewards. So, Christians after the rapture will go before the judgment seat of Christ and will then experience the wedding feast of the Lamb. This is happening in heaven, in this seven year time period.

Meanwhile, back here on planet earth – what is going on? Well, all of a sudden this charismatic figure arrives onto the scene known as the antichrist. He presents a one-world government and begins persecuting all of the Jews and anyone who would turn to Christ. He is ravaging the planet.  It is just an ugly scenario during the middle of the tribulation period on planet earth. In the middle of the tribulation period 144,000 Jews get saved and come to know Jesus as the Messiah. These Jews are like evangelists on steroids and they go bazooka sharing Christ and the gospel. While this is going on, in Palestine there is a huge “let’s get ready to rumble event.” It is the ultimate world war, Armageddon.

At Armageddon it looks like the antichrist and his forces are going to just knock the stew out of Israel and these 144,000 Jews. It is the last round and they are wobbling for the punch, but the second coming of Christ happens. Christ comes with His church in the resurrected body. They come and wreak havoc on the antichrist and his forces. National Israel goes through not trusting Messiah yet, and then they trust in Jesus as the Messiah. Satan is bound and thrown into a bottomless pit for a thousand years. That inaugurates the millennial reign of Christ.

In the millennial reign, it is not about the church. The tribulation is not about the church, it is about the nation of Israel. God uses those seven years to deal with His earthly people, Israel. The heavenly people are experiencing the wedding feast of the Lamb, while earthly people are experiencing the tribulation. He uses this time to prepare national Israel to trust Christ as the Messiah. God ends Armageddon, they trust Christ as the Messiah, his people are victorious, and then He fulfills all the promises in the covenants of the Old Testament.

He fulfills all of the material blessings and the Spiritual blessings are endowed upon Israel. Jesus Christ sets up power in Jerusalem and rules and reigns over the planet for a thousand years.

Towards the end of this millennium, Satan is released from the bottomless pit. His still has a little punch in him even though he is looking pretty bad. He organizes and deceives some countries; they strike again and try a counter revolution. Fire rains down from heaven, then you have the great white throne judgment, unbelievers are resurrected from the dead, and the sheep are separated from the goats. Some go into eternal hell and some go into eternal life. Then you have the end of the millennium, the end of the seven dispensations. You enter into the eternal state, the heavens, and the new earth.

That is a quick and brief explanation of the dispensational premillennial end times view.  Remember that the distinctions rest on the literal hermeneutic. I am going to interpret the Bible if at all possible, literally, when I can. Because of that, you have to interpret God’s promises to national Israel in a real physical sense. The tribulation, the millennium is about God fulfilling His promises that He gave to His people in the Old Testament era. So in other words, you have two programs.  You have God’s earthly people, which would be national Israel, and you have God’s heavenly people which would be the church, which would be us, people from nations all around the world.  So, you have a clear delineation, at least, in classical dispensationalism between the church and Israel.

How has this view gained such prominence in this century? Even though church history has been going on for many centuries now, no one had ever heard of a pre-tribulation rapture 150 years ago.  I remember the first time I heard about another Christian who didn’t believe in the rapture. I didn’t think he was a Christian! I didn’t know that there was any other view besides dispensational premillennialism. You probably didn’t know that either. The Late Great Planet Earth sold 35 million copies. In just one paragraph the author, Hal Lindsey, writes off all the other millennial views as if they had no significance in church history.

This whole century has been dominated by people who have held to the dispensational premillennial view. I was always petrified about the rapture because what if the rapture occurred and my room wasn’t clean? That was my big concern and I always wondered if I would be judged and go to hell for that. Or what if, I was in the movie theater and the trumpet sounded and Christ came to rapture. I was afraid I would be left here and have to go through the tribulation. Clearly, I lived fearfully in expectation of the rapture.

Let me tell you how this particular end times view gained such prominence in our culture today.  After the Civil War, there was an intoxicating sense of optimism in our country, especially in the North. They won the war and slavery was stamped out. The Great Awakening was occurring and people were coming to know Christ. All these ambitious agencies began to spring out of nowhere and they spread the gospel to the four corners of the world. People and groups were active in attacking the social problems. The Temperance Union was working to abolish alcohol and the Sunday school movement began to flourish during this time period.

The church, post Civil War, for a while was extremely optimistic. Things were getting better and better. Many of the preachers and the evangelical leaders said that things were getting so good, that after we preach the gospel, we are going to usher in the kingdom of God and the millennium.  The predominant end times view during that time was postmillennialism. We will talk about that in our next lesson.

Prior to the Civil War, the book On the Origin of Species was published by an unknown man named Charles Darwin. When that book came out, university professors started gobbling it up, they started sopping up the information like biscuits in gravy. It was incredible. Darwin’s theory of evolution was now another grand story. It was another way to explain our existence and the creation story without the God of the Bible.

The academic world, during this time, was beginning to receive this. At the end of that century, combined with the rise in evolution, German liberal scholars (called demythologizers) took all the supernatural things out of the Bible.

Both of these movements were happening in Europe and bleeding over into America. These movements were attacking the authority of God’s Word by taking away the supernatural elements, by taking away the truth, and by providing another story for all of mankind that would explain our existence outside of the creator God. These two forces were rising together and seeking to invalidate the Bible message and to silence Christians.

The postmillennial view was easily liberalized into a social gospel because so much of it was dependent upon the world getting better and better. Through the preaching of the gospel, moral reform, temperance, and morality the world would get better and better and better. You can see how they could take postmillennialism and just melt it into liberalism, which was called back then modernism.

The amillennial view took the thousand year reign of Christ figuratively. Try to take other passages in the Scripture figuratively so you can see how those who had an amillennial view, just melted in with the crowd and into the liberalism and the modernism that was prevalent in the day.

All of a sudden, the optimism towards the end of the 19^th century was beginning to fade. The optimism was fading because all the major universities, some of which used to be Christian universities – Yale, Harvard, and Princeton, were punting the Biblical foundation and the purpose of their university and they were breaking into a liberalism, modernism, and evolutionistic system.  The divinity schools were filled with people who were demythologizers who were taking the supernatural out of the Bible, who were undermining the message of God’s Word. So, you saw entire universities, colleges, parochial schools, and whole denominations falling off the face of the earth as far as their understanding of the Bible. They were embracing and trying to somehow reconcile Darwin’s evolution with the Bible. They ended up losing the power of the Word of God, because they no longer believed the Bible was God’s Word, and God’s final answer to man’s problems.

Around the 1850’s, a former Anglican clergyman named John Nelson Darby began to develop a system known as dispensationalism. He was later affiliated with the Plymouth Brethren Union.  Towards the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th century when his followers came over here, what did they have? They had a literal interpretation of Scripture. They believed that the Bible was the inerrant Word of God. Darby began teaching the new theology about the seven dispensations, the way God reveals Himself in different kinds of works through different people, and how they respond to Him. This teaching was a saving grace for the church! Because conservatives didn’t feel like they had anywhere to go, they ran and embraced Darby’s teachings at the end of the century. At this time, dispensational theology moved from an unorthodox movement to an orthodox mainline evangelicalism. These evangelicals united under those who believed that the Bible was the inspired Word of God. And FYI, in case you are wondering what the controversy was about in the Southern Baptist Convention some twenty years ago – it was about that. It wasn’t about politics; it was about the Word of God.

Dispensational premillennialists came onto the scene, which validated the inerrancy of Scripture. They had a literal interpretation rather than a figurative interpretation of the Bible and they did not see the Bible as myth or fable. D. L. Moody, the evangelist, got wind of this worldview and he became the first person to popularize it.

At the beginning of the 20^th century things socially were getting rather bleak. There was the sinking of the Titanic, World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, Stalin, Hitler, the Holocaust, Vietnam, Watergate, environmental problems, and the AIDS epidemic. You can see that the mood of our entire culture, especially the western culture, had changed radically from one of optimism in the early 19^th century to one of great pessimism which had the world getting worse and worse. It looked like the end of time and during that time period people prayed that God would rapture them out of the world.

You can see in this type of cultural environment why a doctrinal system and why an end times view like dispensational premillennialism would fly. As you look and study church history, you will see that many times the church was guilty of doing what we do today – holding the Bible in one hand and The New York Times in the other. They would see what The New York Times said and they would look to see what the Bible said in Revelation and Daniel. We can clearly see there are sociological factors and cultural factors, along with the moods of the country and the western world that often affect which particular end times view we grasp onto at a certain time.

That is why this particular view has become “the” view. Dispensational premillennialism is the air that we breathe in our evangelical environment. It is assumed. The books in the Left Behind series, written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, are based upon a dispensational premillennialism perspective of the end of times. It is simply assumed in our culture.

Another reason there was a huge boom to dispensational premillennialism, was that in 1948 Israel became a nation. This was a huge, huge, huge chip in the prophetic theme of dispensational premillennialism – Israel becoming a nation.

How has this particular end of times view helped Christians and believers through the ages? First of all, it has helped because it was people from this mindset that carried the torch of evangelical Christianity in this century. And trust me; there was a time in this most recent century where it looked like someone was going to just snuff out the evangelical light. Godly preachers and great scholars like C. I. Scofield, Robert Lowery, Chuck Swindoll, John MacArthur, Harry Ironside, and Donald G. Barnhouse are the ones who stood firm against the onslaught of liberalism and modernism. Billy Graham and D.L. Moody are others who, as people were attacking the Bible, stood strong for the Word of God, for the gospel, and the good news of Christ.

They were faithful to pass the gospel and the rich heritage on to us. George Muller and Howard Hendricks were also incredible men of God, who passed on the faith to millions around the world because they desired to properly understand God.

Second of all, these men and women desired earnestly to properly understand the Bible. They did not want to take some willy-nilly Dionne Warwick hotline approach to the Bible that said, “God, speak to me through this verse right now.” They believed in a God of order, holiness, and grace.  They saw Him revealing Himself in these epics and through these pages. And I’m grateful for that.  I have personally profited from that. My grandfather being a godly, godly man passed on his heritage of faith in the Word of God to his children, who passed it on to me, and I’m passing it on to my children.

The third way, I believe, this view has helped Christians in this century, is the emphasis on the imminence of Jesus Christ. This view emphasizes the fact that we don’t know the hour of His return, Jesus Christ could return at any time and at any place. He could come tonight and rapture His church out. We need to be ready for the rapture, or ready – depending on your view – for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

And I like that because at this church, we need to be ready as individuals, we need to be rapture ready. A lot of times we put off the idea that Christ is coming again. Do we live our lives in light of His coming? Are we ready for the coming of Jesus Christ?

WORLD RELIGIONS 101

When Mohammed Meets Jesus

Ben Young

May 18, 2003

We continue the series called When Buddha meets Jesus, and we’re not just talking about Buddha and Buddhism, but we are looking at some of the major religions of the world.  The goal of this series, which is to teach all of us how to discern the religious and philosophic perspective of any person you may encounter.

I was talking to someone at a coffee bar a while back, and somehow this person said, “Well, I’m not religious.”  That is simply not true; everyone is religious—whether atheist or agnostic, Muslim, Hindu, or a Shintoiste.  We are all religious in that we all have a basic worldview.  We have answered certain questions about ultimate reality, who that is, and how we are to live our lives.  And we live our lives according to that particular worldview/religious perspective.  Now, someone may not have consciously decided, “This is my philosophy,” or “This is the religion I am following.”  They may not have a name for it, but everyone has a worldview.  So how can you and I detect the worldview of anyone we encounter?  We do that by asking what I call, the Big Four Questions.

Last week we said that the ultimate standard of truth is the Christian faith, the Christian worldview.  We answered the Four Questions according to God’s Word.  Last week we looked at question number one: What is ultimate reality?  Ultimate reality is the ontological Trinity, that is, the pre-existent Christ—God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.  That is the ultimate starting point.

The second question we looked at is: How do you know?  We know primarily through revelation.  God has spoken.  He has revealed Himself to us in His authoritative self-attesting word.  Now, there are many ways we can know things.  We can know things through reason—being rational, logical; we know things empirically, through sense observation; we know things pragmatically through experiencing them.  But primarily, our ultimate standard and starting point is the Word of God.  It is revelational.

The third big question is: What happens at death?  God’s Word tells us in Hebrews that when we die there is judgment, and we either spend an eternity in heaven with God or an eternity in hell, separated from Him. When you ask the question, “What happens at death?” that tells you where a person is coming from, as far as what they perceive the problem of mankind to be and the solution.  The problem with all of us is that we are separated from God because we are born sinners, and we choose to sin.  The solution is that God has provided a solution for us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Question number four: How should you live your life?  We live, Galatians 5 says, by keeping in step with God’s Spirit.  When you come to know God in Jesus Christ—it’s amazing—He forgives you, He cleanses you of all your sins, He credits to your account (get this) the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.  Isn’t that great?!  He not only forgives you but He also says you are perfectly accepted because of Christ’s righteousness.  And He places His Holy Spirit, a deposit of His Spirit, inside of your life and inside my life so that we begin the process of conforming our life and conforming who we are to Jesus.  That’s great.  Those are the answers to the Big Four Questions.

In this message, we ask those Big Four questions of the religion known as Islam. It is the second largest religion in the world, just behind the Christian faith.  To talk about Islam, in the providence of God, we have had somebody on our campus this weekend, talking to our students in a very effective manner; his name is Afshin Ziafat.  Afshin is a graduate of Stratford High School in Houston and went to college at UT (University of Texas). He speaks throughout the country at college campuses and churches on what God has done and what God is doing in his life.  Afshin has taken time out of his schedule to be with us to talk about the religion of Islam. Afshin, welcome.

Afshin – Thank you.  Thanks for having me.

Ben – Afshin, the first thing I notice about you here tonight is that you are wearing bowling shoes, and I like that.  Kind of hold your shoes up there, and let’s get a camera.  Those are cool.  I’m not that cool yet.  I think I may be too old for that.

Afshin – Yeah, you are, I think.

Ben – I am too old?

Afshin – Yeah.  I speak on college campuses, like you said.  I have to stay younger.

Ben – Okay, I appreciate that.  That’s a great way, right off the bat, to kind of offend the person you are meeting with, but that’s great.  It’s all part of it (joking here).  Afshin, for those of us here who do not know you and know your story, tell us a bit about yourself.  I know you were born in Houston…what happened after that?  (Laughter)

Afshin – All right, from the beginning.  Well, I was born in Houston, and when I was 2 years old my family moved back to Iran where my parents and my family are from.  We moved back to the capital in Tehran.  Some of you older folks may remember that in the late 70’s an Islamic revolution hit that country, and my family was there in the midst of all that fighting.  My dad decided he’d worked way too hard to become a doctor to see everything go down the drain if a bullet were to hit one of us, so we got out of there and moved back to Houston when I was in the middle of the first grade. You want me to keep going?

Ben – Sure, go.

Afshin – We moved back to the states.  God was working in my life way before I became a Christian.  He provided for me an amazing Christian lady who would become my tutor. This lady taught me the English language by reading me books every day.  One day in the second grade, she gave me a small New Testament Bible.  She said, “Afshin, you are not going to understand this book, but this is the most important book you will ever read in your life. Hold onto it, and read it later in your life.” She planted a seed in my life in the second grade that wouldn’t ultimately come to fruition until 10 years later.

I grew up a Muslim.  I followed the teaching of Islam—that is all I was taught.  My senior year in high school I saw a TV show about Jesus—just a secular, historical documentary.  I was intrigued by the person of Jesus, and I went upstairs looking for the Bible that I was given in the second grade.  I found it in the bottom of my closet after all these years, and I opened it up to the first book of the New Testament—Matthew.  It starts off saying, “A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, Son of David,” and it just drew me in, and I read the whole book of Matthew in one sitting.  I didn’t understand it all, but God just developed a hunger in my heart to keep reading and reading until I finally understood the truth of Jesus.  And it was shortly after that, that I came to know Christ.

Ben – That’s awesome.  So you just had this book, the Bible, tucked away in your closet for years and years, and that show just triggered that memory.

Afshin – There was a guy who I played basketball with in high school, and one day I said, “Jesus,” and he said, “Man, that’s my God.”  I said, “No, it’s not; it’s your prophet.”  And he goes, “No, He’s my God,” and I said, “No, you’re mistaken.”  See, I had no idea that Christians believed that Jesus was God in human form.  This TV show talked about how some worship Jesus as God.  So I said, “Man, I’ve got to find out about this” I was intrigued because Islam, in my opinion, says God is a very impersonal God.  So I was intrigued about this Jesus who wanted a personal relationship that is why I went and found the book and started reading.

Ben – Now, when you came to know Christ in high school, you were actually debating with a guy at school and you were actually debating on the side of Islam yet you were secretly doing something else when you went home.

Afshin – Yeah, secretly I am reading through the Bible at home. Reading more and more and hiding my reading from my father and the rest of my family, all the while debating on the side of Islam.  I got to Romans where I started reading about a righteousness that comes apart from the law, apart from being good and it says that there is none righteous not even one. It then says that this righteousness of God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe and that nailed me. Because I thought I was born a Muslim, I was stamped a Muslim and I would always be a Muslim. But that verse said that Jesus came for anyone who believes and that righteousness, a right standing with God, can only come through faith in Him. That’s when my eyes just opened up to what the gospel truly is.

Ben – Great story…that is a similar experience, of course he wasn’t coming from a Muslim background, as Martin Luther. That verse in Romans 1:16-17, just totally melted his heart once God showed Him what that meant.

Let’s stop there. Let’s take a time out because I want to talk to everyone here tonight about Islam because we hear a lot about the Islamic faith today in the news.  Most of our knowledge of Islam is simply what people are telling them on CNN or Fox, or perhaps they watch Oprah as she brings in different people who say they are Muslim, or Christian or a Jew but they are really a relativist.  I want to talk briefly about some of the basic tenets of Islam and really see how Mohammed or the Koran if you would, answers those big four questions that I talked about earlier and you are going to educate us on that.

Afshin – Ok, I’ll try.

Ben – The first question, the first big question we are learning to ask is, What is Ultimate Reality?

Afshin –  By the way, I always say this when I do this, I am not a scholar of Islam. However, I have studied it and I was raised and taught it and I do have the perspective of experience.  Ultimate reality in Islam is basically Allah, their name for God. Allah, who Muslims ultimately believe Islam is the only real true monotheistic religion. And Islam if you get to the heart of it is basically summed up with the unity and the oneness of God. That is the foundation of Islam and nothing is like and unto him. In fact there is a creed, the Shahada, that Muslims have to recite throughout their life. Basically this creed is, “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is the Prophet of Allah.” That is why it is so hard for a Muslim to understand the concept of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ as being God in human form. Because to equate a human with God is really to commit the most grievous sin in Islam which is “shirk”- to associate anything with God. So it is very monotheistic, one God who is transcendent over all his creation and we ultimately can’t really know him in a personal way the way we know Jesus – how we know God through Jesus, a personal relationship.  But ultimately they can know his will, his attributes and how to obey him. And so it is not a personal relationship.

Ben – Yes and we have to realize too that as you look at the religion of Islam, it is dated to 622 AD which is approximately 600 years after the inception of Christianity around 32 or 33 AD. So when Mohammed was writing the Koran, he wrote much of it, including parts of the Old and New Testaments and mentioning many favorable things to Jews and Christians because he kind of wanted to gain their support early on.

Afshin – That’s right. Do you want to get to the Koran now?

Ben – Let’s go to question number two now, that is the Koran, How do you know from an Islamic perspective?

Afshin – First, Muslims believe Mohammed was born in 570 AD, then at the age of 40 in one of his times of seclusion – you have to know that Mecca was a cultural hub where idol worship was going on. So Mohammed was one of the ones that had an aversion to all these different gods and that is where the strict monotheism comes from. And in one of his seclusions, he claims the angel Gabriel came and pressed on him and basically said, “Read.”  In fact, the word Koran literally means reading or recital. And so, he pressed on him to read, he (Mohammed) said, “Read what?” and he just kept saying, “Read.”

Ultimately what Muslims believe is that Mohammed read the word of God literally. Actually Mohammed did not write it himself because he was illiterate. So Mohammed would dictate what he read in his moments of seclusion and he would dictate it to scribes who would write it on parchment, on scraps of leather, on leaves. Ultimately these men would memorize it. As some wars broke out – people were getting killed off that had memorized these writings.  So they decided to get all of these writings and bring them together to a book. I must say this now. Muslims believe that the Koran is not made from a human, that literally there is a template, the mother of the book in heaven that this was basically read from, and what we have today is a copy of that template.

The Koran is very revered in Islam. One of the greatest miracles is the miracle of the Koran and by the way, let me say this; one Muslim scholar equates the Koran to Jesus in Christianity. He says, “Jesus is the divine expression of God, God’s will and that is what the Koran is. They compare Mohammed to Mary because Mohammed was the vehicle by which the divine will of God came.  Obviously that is a wrong understanding of Jesus.

Ben – Is it true that when he was first having these visions and dreams, he didn’t know if they were demonic or not in nature? Wasn’t it his wife who encouraged him to go with this vision and dreams?

Afshin – Yes. At first he didn’t know, and his wife was older, you said it, that’s exactly right, she encouraged him and it took off from there.

Ben – And the Koran, they do mention there are other revelations of Allah, independent from the first five books of the Old Testament also in the Gospel of Jesus. So they do refer to Moses, David, and Jesus as Prophets. They basically say, just like in the Mormon religion that you need the Koran or you need the Pearl of Great Price to get a correct interpretation of the scripture.

Afshin – Basically, Muslims believe that all the prophets came to point to a certain people, to point them back to Allah, but then the people corrupted the word. And then ultimately, God sent the last prophet, who is Mohammed, and they believe that he completed, that he is the seal of the prophets.

Ben – I think the weakness with that is, when you look at Scripture, really that claim is refuted. Because any claim that came after the Revelation, it says in Scripture that it should be matched up to that standard. There are groups like Islam that started some 600 years after the Christian faith. Or like the LDS (Latter Day Saints) in the 1820’s that contradict the standard. When they contradict the standard, they are automatically casting that revelation totally aside and starting a new thing, a knock-off if you would.

Afshin – Actually, some Muslims claim that Jesus prophesied about Mohammed. Do you know where?

Ben – Yeah, sure, in John, predicting the Holy Spirit, they reinterpret that to be Mohammed.

Afshin – Yeah and sometimes they say that He (Jesus) did prophesy about Mohammed but not at that Scripture, but we won’t go there.

Ben – Number three. This third big question, again, is so important because it kind of sets up from anybody’s perspective what they perceive to be the problem and solution of mankind. What happens at death? And this is where really my heart as an evangelist really starts to pump and that is these next two questions. Islam basically, if I may start at this point, believes that man is born sinless. They don’t believe in the fallen nature of man from Adam and Eve’s sin. They just believe that that just proves man’s weakness and frailty but not that man, his nature was tainted and that he needed to be redeemed. So, if you believe that you are sinless, you don’t need a savior. If I may chase this rabbit for just a second…

There was this scholar that I read once and he said, “The idea of Jesus is like, the notion of Jesus is like I am sitting on a dock … by the bay. (laughter) The idea of Jesus and me sitting on a dock and a man running by and declaring his love for me and throwing himself in the water to prove his love for me is ridiculous, it is absurd.” When I read that, I said, man there it is.  See, a Muslim thinks he is on the dock, he’s fine. But a Christian, he understands, he is in the water, he is drowning and he needs a savior. See that is a fundamental difference when you believe you’re sinless and when the word of God teaches we are born in sin.

So you are born sinless and all throughout your life, there is an angel that sits on either shoulder that records your good and evil deeds. This is what Muslims are taught. At the end of life, at the Day of Judgment, your good deeds and bad deeds are placed on a scale and whichever one outweighs the other, will determine your destiny. If you have more good deeds in your life, then you are going to heaven. If you have more bad deeds in your life, you are going to hell. All of your life you are accruing good and bad and you never ultimately know where you stand and you just hope that you are good enough. If your good outweighs the bad then you literally cross over a bridge, over hell, and if your balance is found wanting in the area of good – then you will fall in. Otherwise you will pass over into heaven.

Ben – Let’s talk about this thing that is called paradise in the Koran, seems like a good deal for the guys and a bad deal for the ladies.

Afshin – Yeah, it really does.  There are some scriptures in the Koran that say, the men will all be sitting in the thrones and they will all have female companions.

Ben – And they will serve us for all eternity.

Afshin – Yeah, pretty much. Next subject.

Ben – It’s interesting to me because their worldview, their religion, in a sense is very earthly and their very concept of heaven is very earthly. And there is a power in that, especially in recruiting men adherents to your religion. But, you see the same in Mormonism.

In Mormonism, one of the powers in their lie or deception, if you would, about the Christian faith is, Oh, when you get to heaven you are going to be with your family. You are going to have so many virgins, (and this of course that appeals to our sexual nature).  It is contrary to reality and contrary to how God has revealed Himself to us in Scripture.

Afshin – Yep.

Ben – Let’s move on to number four, which is, in light of those first three questions which are: What is ultimate reality? How do you know? What happens at death?

Number four, How should you live your life? You get down to the five core teachings of Islam.

Afshin – Yeah. Let me hit those and first I am going to come back to a general thing. Basically, Christianity is a relationship with Jesus Christ. The ultimate goal of that relationship is to be conformed to the character of God.  Islam on the other hand is rather a religion, it is just an understanding of what God’s will is and the outcome for that is just obedience. That is how he is to live his life, it is not to know God, it is not to conform to God, but ultimately to obey. Islam literally means submission. Muslim means “one who submits.”  And so they view, Allah, as a task master and a slave. It is totally different from our concept of a Father and His children. It is again not a knowing thing, it is a doing thing. So throughout their life they are doing these five pillars of faith.

The first one is the Shahada, the creed that I have already talked about. Basically, they recite this, “There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet.”

Secondly, there are the prayers that they pray five times a day. They pray. There is a set prayer in Arabic they go through and they face Mecca, a holy site and they pray five times a day.

Thirdly, they give alms, about 1/30 about 2.5 % of their income to the poor.

Fourthly, there is the month of Ramadan were they fast from sun up to sun down. They don’t drink water, eat, no sexual relations- nothing of the physical pleasure at all.

And the fifth one is pilgrimage, ”haj”- which means once in their lifetime, they have to go to Mecca. Here’s the little comma, “if they have the means.” See, that is really subjective, when your salvation is in the balance. What is that, 40K a year? Or I don’t know. Basically, all their life, they are trying to do this. Do you want to jump in for a moment or try to say something?

Ben – No, go ahead.

Afshin – I tell Muslims that Christianity teaches something totally different than the scale idea. Christianity teaches that no man can ever earn salvation on his own. By the way, Muslims believe that Jesus Christ lived a perfect sinless life. But they don’t understand why. So I share with them that He lived a perfect sinless life as God in human form and died on the cross and shed his blood.  I explain further that if you receive Him, God doesn’t look at your good and bad deeds on a scale he looks at you and sees Christ’s blood covering you. He sees you white as snow and accepts you because of what Jesus already did in your life. Now, if that is the truth then how do you live your life?  How does a Muslim live his life and how does a Christian live his life? A Muslim will look at me when I say that and say, “That doesn’t make any sense. You’re telling me that you receive grace on the front end. You say a prayer and you can just go sin and do whatever you want, you can go murder or you can sleep with whoever you want?”

Paul answers this question in Romans 6, “Shall we go on sinning now that we are no longer under the law, under the rules system? But now that we are under grace. Certainly not. Though formerly you were slaves to sin.”  It is not about being a slave to God. Formerly before you were a Christian, you were slaves to sin. You had to – and it had the power over you to sin. It says, “Though you were formerly slaves to sin you have now become slaves to righteousness.” Meaning the Christian does good works also, he must produce righteousness. However, his good works are not a means to his salvation; rather, his good works are a proof of his salvation:  a proof that he was saved in the first place.

Now here is the big point, don’t miss this. The motivation to live for God is different. In Islam, what’s the motive? The motive is fear. And not a holy, righteous fear of God like we read about in the Bible, a reverence of God. But a fear, that if I’m not good enough, ok, then I am going to get cast to hell. So my motive for living and obeying is fear. For Christianity, we have a totally different motive. Because if it is already done, Jesus said, “It is finished,” then what’s my motive to live? The motive is the greatest motive in all of life… love. The motive is love.

The motive is love. And the verse I love is 2 Corinthians 5 which says, “For the love of Christ compels us, it pushes us forward. Because we judge thus, for if one died then all die. That those who live in Him, live no longer for themselves but for Him who died and rose again.” You know what, we live our life, and we do good works because of love. That is such a greater motivator in life than fear. Here’s the deal, we live this life because we have been loved so much. Let me tell you, Muslims say that Allah is loving and that true love cannot be earned. That is not what love is. If you love your wife or husband because of the things they do for you then you truly don’t love them, you love what they do for you. A true love is best demonstrated when it is given freely. That is why, one of my favorite Scriptures coming from a Muslim background, is Romans 5:8, “For God demonstrates His love in this, while we were yet sinners, before we did anything to earn it, Christ died for us.” That is the kind of love I want to be a part of.

Ben – That’s awesome. You already answered my next question. I was going to say, “Why didn’t the five pillars of Islam do it for you?” I mean you grew up, born and raised in a Muslim home. Obviously, it didn’t do it for you. Let’s go back and talk about what happened after you received Christ into your life. That is probably not a thing you want to share over a family dinner afterwards. Guess what mom and dad? What happened after that?  And what has God been doing in your life over the past several years?

Afshin – After I started reading that Bible, I was at football practice, and a guy came up to me and invited me to free pizza and I said man, “That sounds good.” I went for free pizza on September 28, 1989 and I heard the gospel and I received Christ as my Lord and Savior. After I did that, my first thought was, “What in the world did I just do?” My dad is a very prominent man, I don’t know what kind of father you have, but my dad is the best father any man could ever hope for. He loved his wife, my mom in a way that I have always wanted to be a husband like him, he loved us and he devoted himself to us.  I was in fear of what would happen if he knew I became a Christian. I hid my faith from my dad for about a year and a half by hiding my Bible, by intercepting mail from the church I was attending before my parents could get to it. And by putting my church clothes in my car on Saturday night and going and changing at Jo Jo’s on Wilcrest before I went to church so my parents wouldn’t see me dressed up. Until finally my dad found out.

And I want to share this so you can see God and His faithfulness.  My dad sits me down and says, “Son, what’s going on?” I basically tell him, “Dad I am a Christian.” He said, “No you are not, you are a Muslim, you will always be a Muslim.“ I said, “No Dad, the Bible says if I believe in Jesus and I do then I am a Christian.” He said, “Then if you are going to be a Christian, then you can no longer be my son.” Everything in me wanted to say, “Forget it I’m a Muslim” That is why I was shocked when these words came out of my mouth, “Dad if I have to choose between you and Jesus then I am choosing Jesus. If I have to choose between my earthly father and my Heavenly Father, then I choose my Heavenly Father.” And then my dad said, “You are no longer my son.” He disowned me. I walked upstairs to my room. Fell on my face and started weeping. I couldn’t believe that God would let that happen. I was very young in my faith and I actually became bitter with God and God humbled me. I said, “Jesus how could you do this if you are real? How could you take my dad away?” And I dare you to speak that openly and bluntly with God because He will answer you. He led me to a passage of Scripture in Matthew 10 where I read these words of Jesus that changed my life. Right after this happened, with my dad, I read these words. Jesus said, “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown. Don’t suppose I came to bring peace, but a sword.  I came to turn man against his father.” I was like, that just happened. “A daughter against her mother. A man’s enemies will be members of his own household. Whoever loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” It was at that point I understood the cost of following Jesus. But I can tell you, as I followed Him my relationship with my dad has gone through a little bit of a roller coaster. Because then he accepted me back in but he wanted me to be a Doctor.  And I wanted to be a minister. I wrestled with that until finally I gave my life to God’s will and I followed Him. But, God has been faithful. I wish I could tell you my whole story. But we are not going to do it now but He has provided for me every step of the way. A place to live for free, a ministry out of Dallas paid for my whole education at Seminary and I have been able to travel all over and preach the gospel.  He is faithful and He is restoring my relationship with my dad again.

I can tell you this; God is worthy to be trusted for salvation. He definitely is. Because He is the only one who literally did the thing that you and I could never do. He paid the price for us. For us to say – don’t misunderstand this – for us to say to God… see God will not share His glory with anyone and He has provided the only way through Jesus Christ His Son. That is His Sacrifice, and for you and me to say that we can earn it is to share God’s glory. By the way many people who go to church say, not in those words, but say man, I’ll be in Heaven because I’ve been a good person, or I’ve done this or that. But for us to talk about what we’ve done, or for a Muslim to talk about the things he’s done, is to share God’s glory. He will not share it.  He will not. And that’s why I love Galatians that says, “If righteousness, a right standing with God, could be attained through the law, then Christ died in vain.” That means you will be literally slapping God in the face and saying, “Your perfect plan- I don’t need it.”  And that is scary ground. He is worthy to be trusted because He paid the price.

Secondly, He is worthy to be trusted with your life, every day – here on earth- not just for heaven.  He has done it for me in my life.

[Ben leads in an invitation prayer.]

OVERCOMING TOUGH TIMES

Moving Out of the Land of Regret

April 5, 2009

Ben Young

In a world of pain, suffering, and chaos it is easy to get stuck in the land of regret. How do we move forward when the wound, the loss, and the guilt have us trapped? Join Ben Young in the fourth message of this series, as he takes a look at how Job moved out of the land of regret and into the light of redemption.

How many of you remember the name of your first grade teacher? Raise your hand if you remember. That’s amazing! I see those hands. That is probably 80% of us. The name of my first grade teacher was Miss Blaskowitz. I didn’t really like school, but I tended to like my teachers. I gained a lot of wisdom from “Miss B” as we called her. Then I remember other teachers I had. I had a Bible study teacher, here at the church actually, who used to be in the Moonies. If you are over 40, do you remember the cult called “The Moonies”, the so-called Unification Church? He was in the Moonies, but he got out of the Moonies and became a cult napper! Parents would pay him money to get their kids out of a cult. He had a big influence on my life.

I remember a professor I had in college who was a phenomenal influence. He was an incredible communicator. Even when I was in graduate school and would come back into town, I would try to sneak in his class just to hear this guy lecture. He would say things like, “What you don’t know will kill you!” I liked and remembered that. He said, “T.V. is a vast waste land of garbage!” I like that too!

Anyway, as I look back on my life; teachers had an incredible impact and influence. If you’re a teacher of any shape, size or form, let me tell you something: What you do is extremely important. I know you’re tired, and I know it’s tough, but it has an incredible impact on people for the rest of their lives. Even in first grade, you see 80% remembered the name of their first grade teacher.

It’s interesting though, if you look at our education system; you can go through elementary school, junior high and high school, college and graduate school, even getting a Ph.D. and never have to take a course on these three things. You never have to take a course on how to handle male-female relationships, which usually becomes a pretty important skill sometime down the road. You never had to take a course on how to handle money, which is as we are discovering, painful on a macro-micro level when you don’t handle money properly. Then third of all, you can go through all that school but never have to take a course on how to handle suffering; how to handle trials in your life.

Fortunately, if you’ve been here for the last several weeks; we have been in a series, and have been listening, really, to two teachers who have taught us how to navigate suffering. They’ve been teaching us not by saying, “All right! Open your textbooks to page 248 and blah, blah, blah!” No, no, no! They’ve been teaching us how to handle suffering by living through it.

Hopefully as we’ve been looking at a story of a guy named Job; you’ve been entering into that story with him. Job, remember, had it all! The guy was rolling! His house was on MTV Cribs. He was on the front cover of Fortune. He was on the front cover of Christianity Today. He had faith, family, fortune, fame—the guy had it all, until all of a sudden, smash! His life was shattered into a million pieces! He lost his job; he lost his company; he lost his fame; he lost his fortune; he lost his ten kids in a tragic accident, and his wife said, “Job, you’re an idiot for believing in this God! Why don’t you curse God and die!” He had all these boils all over his body that were so bad, they were oozing pus. He had a little piece of broken pottery and was scraping himself with it. Then he had these yo-yo friends come up to him and give him some really horrific comforting advice. “Yeah Job, you’re in sin! That’s why you are getting punished by God! Good people don’t have this kind of catastrophic thing just happen out of the blue! You had to have done something!”

So Job is one of the primary teachers. Look at one of the ways Job handled suffering. Let’s look at Job 19:7 and following. If you want to know how to find the Book of Job, it’s pretty easy. Just take your Bible out and open to the middle. You should run into Psalms. Hang a left, and you’ll run into the oldest book in the Bible, the book of Job. If you’re going through a trial right now; if you’re going through a time of suffering and pain, or loss; it’s comforting to me to know that the oldest Book in the Bible is a Book that deals with pain and suffering in a very real and very raw way. Listen to what Job says, verse 7, chapter 19. “Though I cry, ‘I’ve been wronged!’ I get no response; though I call for help, there is no justice. He (talking about God) has blocked my way so I cannot pass; He has shrouded my paths in darkness. He has stripped me of my honor and removed the crown from my head. He tears me down on every side until I’m gone; He uproots my hope like a tree.”

After Hurricane Ike, we saw all those huge trees that had been uprooted. Job said his hope had been uprooted like a tree. He went on to say he felt alienated, estranged and forgotten. Then in verse 17, he said, “My breath is offensive to my wife.” to add insult to injury, right? He said, “My best friends detest me. I am nothing but skin and bones; I have escaped with only the skin of my teeth.”

I think one of the things we can learn about suffering and pain from Job as well as from King David in the book of Psalms, is that you’ve got to let your emotions out at some point. Weather you write it down or journal it, but you’ve got to get real, and you’ve got to get raw with God! Job did that. Job still believed in God. Job still believed that He had a plan for his life. Job somehow believed that God was involved in the shattering of his life, and that God allowed that to happen for some reason, and Job just held on to that. But while he was holding on to that, at other times, he was holding on to what? Regret, anger, and he was expressing that to God.

Another teacher who has helped us and me in this series is a guy I’ve introduced you to, a professor from the Pacific Northwest by the name of Dr. Jerry Sittser. Jerry Sittser was in an automobile accident some 10 plus years ago. He was in a mini-van, and a drunk driver hit him. It killed his mother, his wife, and his 4-year old daughter. He ended up having to raise his three surviving children alone. Dr. Sittser wrote about his struggles, and he talks about the danger of getting stuck in the land of regret when we’re going through a time of loss, a time of suffering and trial. What happens to us? We take something that happened to us, maybe last week, last year, or maybe when we were a little child, and we play it over, and over, and over, and over again in our minds. When we do that, we re-live the emotion. We re-live the pain, and there is no movement in our life. Regret. It’s easy to get stuck in the land of regret. We get bewildered, because our life is not the way it used to be. It’s not the same. Things are different now. Something has been broken. There has been a sense of loss, and we’re wondering how in the world we can move forward to the next chapter of our lives?

Let me say this about regret: It is normal and is a natural part of life. It’s what it means to be human. We live in a broken, fallen world, which we talked about last week. We live in a broken, fallen world with broken, fallen people. Because of this, we are going to have brokenness, and we are going to have regret. It’s natural; it’s a part of being human. But the temptation is to live in regret land! The temptation is, instead of moving from regret to a different place; we stay there and dig some foundations. We build a house and decorate it, and we live with the memories of these past wounds; the photographs, and the movies, and we play it over and over again in our minds. We just sit there in our little house, in our little hovel, stuck in the mud in the land of regret!

Regret is regressive because we don’t move forward. We just play back, and we get stuck in the wound, in the loss, and in the guilt. We live in the land of “if onlys.” Have you ever done that? “If only I hadn’t worked so hard… If only I had spent more time with the kids… If only, if only…. If only. If only I had taken a left instead of a right. If only I had stopped at that stop light a minute later.

If only I had changed a few things, then that wouldn’t have happened. If only I had watched my diet! If only I had stopped smoking. If only I hadn’t run away…” We live in the land of regret by living on the “if onlys.” In a world of pain, suffering and chaos; it’s easy to get stuck in the land of regret.

Can we move out? Is it possible to move out of that land into a different place?

Job, to look at it from a human perspective, had a good reason to live in the land of regret. He could live there! His life was in shambles. No one seemed to like him; everyone seemed to hate him. He lost his business; he lost his money; he lost his family; he lost everything! He could live in the land of regret, but let’s see what Job did. What did he do? Look at chapter 19 again at verses 25 and 26. Job was looking for something, or maybe he was looking for someone. It says: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God!” Job is crying out! He desires to have a go-between, a mediator who is going to plead his case before God.

The good news for you and me here today is that what Job desired; we can experience. What Job desired, a Redeemer who lives, we can experience because we know that God has entered into time, space and history. Ultimate reality has entered into temporal reality to relate to us and know us, and then to die in our place as a go-between, and to rise again on the third day alive so that we could be accepted; so that we could be forgiven and redeemed. Is it possible? Can we move from regret to redemption? Can we move from a place of regret, to a place of redemption?

I believe God does not want us to live and stay stuck in regret land! I’m not saying suffering and loss will forever change you. Suffering will shape you, but it does not have to define you. It doesn’t have to define you, because I believe God has not called you and I to live stuck in the land of regret. He wants us to live in the light of redemption. You live in the light of redemption when you let go of the loss and embrace the new opportunities that pain can bring into your life.

There are corny sayings that come out of weight training. Perhaps you’ve heard them: “No pain, no gain.” There are some other ones too—“No weights, no dates; no curls, no girls!” But that is a whole other sermon! Sometimes I work out with the Master Blaster himself, Shawn Kelley, and another trainer by the name of Pete. When we’re working out, these guys are just muscled up! When we’re in the weight room, we’re pushing each other! Why do we do that? Why do you work out? You say “I work out so I can get pumped up and get big!”

No, no. When you work out, what happens? Your muscles are torn down. When you are working out, you are tearing down your muscles, and through and rest and eating, it will build strength into your life.

By the way, here is a little free vignette for guys over 40 that has nothing to do with the message: Weight training is just as important as cardio! Anyway…

It’s important to work out, but in working out, I know if I’m going to grow and get stronger and get into shape, whether it’s cardio or weight training; I’ve got to push myself! I’ve got to enter into a degree of pain and push myself farther than I can go to get results. Whether we like it or not, pain and suffering is a reality in our lives. You can’t escape it! As Buddha said, “Life is suffering!” That’s one paradigm to look at life. So what are you going to do with the suffering? What are you going to do with the injustice? What are you going to do with the loss? Are you going to stay in regret land, or are you going to say, “God, I want you to redeem my pain and suffering and turn something that was evil and bad into something that is good.” God can do it!

I love again what Jerry Sittser says. Here is a quote! “I must let go of my regrets over what could have been and pursue what can be.” I have to let go of playing this movie over and over again in my life, living in this hovel, stuck in the land of regret and focus on what can be. My life, my context is different now, but I’ve got to focus on what God has for me today. Redemption…

Paul said this in Philippians: “This one thing I do. Forget what lies behind! I press on to the upper call of God in Christ Jesus. One thing I do, I forget regret, what lies behind, and I press on to what God has for me today, even in the midst of my suffering and the midst of my pain.” Paul many times in the midst of being locked in prison says, “I press on… I’ve got to forget the regret and move on.”

Paul had a lot to regret if you know the story. Paul used to persecute and throw Christians, like some of you, into jail. He had them killed. Then God said, “Hey Paul, while you’re doing your business deal as a tent maker; I want you to become a missionary and a pastor.” “Who me, Lord? I used to kill Christians!” “Yes, you, Paul! And Paul, on the side I want you to write some of the Bible for Me.” “But God, I was a murderer of Christians!” “I don’t care, Paul. I’m calling you to do that!” Paul could have lived in regret land all of his life, couldn’t he? “Oh, I’m not worthy! I can’t do it! I killed Christians! I murdered them; I put them in jail, I…” When God tells you to move out of regret land, you move! You move into the land of redemption! That’s what Paul did!

Thank goodness he did that, or the New Testament would be pretty small! All of us here would be wearing Yamakas instead of a couple of us.

Live in the light of redemption! That’s what the Cross is about, isn’t it? Remember last week, for those of you who were here, Bruce Lee, Enter the Dragon. Remember? Kung Fu, God’s Kung Fu at the Cross? He takes the negativity of evil and unjust death at the Cross and turns it into what? An instrument of life, love, and forgiveness. He takes a symbol of torture and pain and turns it into a symbol of love, mercy, and grace. God can take evil and redeem it, and recycle it into something great and good!

Now, the scars still remain. I was thinking about that earlier. The scars still remain; but the redemption has been accomplished. I’m accepted because Christ was forsaken, right? He was condemned; I am accepted. He died as a sacrifice in my place to redeem my soul, yes! To forgive me, yes, and somehow by His Spirit to even redeem the things that are happening in my life and in your life right now.

Christianity is a beggar’s religion. It’s one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread. Ultimately, it’s about mercy, grace, and about what God has done for you and for me in Christ. You’ve got to love it! Got to love God! If you don’t believe that God can take people out of regret land into the light of redemption; then you need to read the Old Testament. One of the biggest problems we have is that we don’t read the Old Testament. The people in the Old Testament for the most part were cuckoo-for-Cocoa Puffs, quack-a-doodle-doo! I mean these men and women were in some really good, powerful sinning! You think you’re good? Read the Old Testament! These cats could go! They rebelled and ran against God, and did all kinds of stupid and crazy things! Yet, God would call them, and they would respond, and He would take them out of this land of regret into a land of redemption. He would take their suffering and pain that was inflicted upon them and use it as something transformative in their lives. There are so many stories…

I love what Frederick Buechner says: “Even the saddest things can become, once we have made peace with them, a source of wisdom and strength for the journey.”

We have a choice. You and I have a choice to make. We can live in a land of regret, or we can live in the light of His redemption. Day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year as we surrender to Him, we watch Him start to redeem the things of our lives.

You say, “What does that look like in real life?” That’s a good question. Let me introduce you to some friends of mine, a couple in our church. Their names are Charlie and Shelley Hayden. Check out their story.

Video:

(Shelley): “When we’d been married 8 years, our daughter, Sarah was born. Then two years later, Hamilton came along. Then two years after him, Hannah, our youngest daughter was born.”

(Charlie): “They were all very playful personalities. They interacted a lot together, especially when we went on vacations. We had a good time. I think we consider ourselves a very normal family. Our son actually joined Second Baptist first before us. We started going because he asked us to go with him. We did…”

(Shelley): “Hamilton was a very strong Christian who loved the Lord. He served the Lord. That was his focus in life…”

(Charlie): “It was fortuitous to us. We lived next-door to the pastor, Ed Young, for a number of years. One day I was in the back yard, and he called over the fence and said, ‘Can I talk to you?’ I said, ‘Sure!’ I could tell that he was genuinely concerned about my faith, about my life, my spiritual life and my salvation. He prayed with me, and that night when Shelley came home, I said ‘Well, you wouldn’t believe what happened today.’ I explained to her… She didn’t (believe it). I said ‘I got the feeling that something’s going to happen, either to me or our family…’”

(Shelley): “As in Hamilton’s case, he had a mental illness—depression.”

(Charlie): “He had good episodes and bad episodes. He was experiencing some psychological problems and depression, and so we thought it best to bring him home, and we did. He seemed to be very normal. He was getting counseling and went to the Menninger Clinic for about a month. He was seeing a psychiatrist that was highly recommended to us, twice a week, and he was getting these very good reports. We thought everything was pretty much on a smooth kaleidoscope; so it was very unexpected when we were flying back from Washington, D.C.—we went up to see family. We received a phone call that alarmed us, and we started making calls. Hamilton was not responding. We found out within 30 minutes or so, while we were in transit to the airport, that he had shot himself in our home.”

(Charlie—continues): You’re shrouded in a fog of confusion, unspeakable sorrow and grief, and you really detach yourself from the rest of the world. Everything seems removed from you. You have times; intermittent times when you wake up and you think you’re going to find Hamilton in the house. You have a sense of denial that his death even occurred; so it was a real struggle for both of us.”

(Shelley): “I especially really struggled with it, knowing how strong a believer he was. Something the pastor told me—‘Don’t try to figure it out. You’re never going to figure it out. You’re going to have to let it go.’ I was like ‘Wow! How do you do that?’ I’ve heard people say they held on to God. I think we got to such a low point that God held on to us. We couldn’t even hold on to Him.”

(Charlie): “You can’t do it yourself. You can’t get there alone. Had we not been in the kind of environment that Second Baptist provided to us, I don’t know how we would have pulled out of what we were in; how far down we were in the shadow of death. We just couldn’t have gotten there without the Lord’s unconditional love, grace and redemption.”

(Shelley): “We will never recover, ever; but we’ve learned how to take that sadness and integrate it into our lives. I think the Lord can resurrect your life any time, and I feel like that’s what He’s done for us. He has given us a new life! His suffering redeemed us, and I believe the suffering He allows in our lives heals us. He has a purpose for suffering. Is this how I would have wanted it? No. Never… Is this how I envisioned it? No. But He has brought very much good from it.”

(Ben): Dear Father, I thank You that You’re a God who brings good from suffering. I thank You that You’re a God, Lord, who has come to give us life. You’ve come to give us life, and as we’re following You in our journeys God that we go through many times tunnels of darkness and chaos. We go through times of regrets, times of pain, times of doubt, and times of questioning. Just like Shelley said, even when we’re faithless so many times and we can’t hold on to You that You hold on to us! You tell us “Keep holding on! I have more for you! I have more for you…

WORLD RELIGIONS 101

When Krishna Meets Jesus

Ben Young

May 25, 2003

Imagine you are a sincere believer. Many of you don’t have to imagine that, because you are. You’re a follower of Christ, you read your Bible, you pray, you attend church, you tithe, and you seek to follow after Jesus with all of your heart. Now, you know people who are also very devout and religious. You may have a friend who follows Mohammed with all their heart, soul and might. And they read the Koran as their guide. You may have a friend who is a Buddhist. And he is following the teachings of Buddha with all of his heart, soul and mind.

So someone from the outside may look at you and say, “What’s the difference? You follow Jesus, he follows Buddha, she follows Mohammed. How can you know which religion is true? How can I know which God is the right God?” That is what a skeptic may say to you. That is what we’ve been doing in this series. The first week we looked at Buddhism and how Buddhism related to the claims of Jesus Christ. Last week we talked to Afshin Ziafat, and we looked at Islam and some of the central doctrines of that particular religion.

Tonight we are going to look at Hinduism, a religion that began centuries ago in the country known today as India. It is important before we talk about Hinduism to realize that if you look at Christianity’s religious competition, they basically fall into three categories.

The first group of religions that compete with Christianity is what I call mystical religions. Some may call this, religions of transcendent mysticism. Hinduism is a religion like that. It is not based primarily on a book or books. But it is based on a mystical experience with a power force or what someone calls the divine or gods. In the second group are moralistic religions. Buddhism is basically a moralistic religion, Confucianism is also a moralistic religion— you follow a certain moral path or code. They are much more concerned about the here and now than they are about the life after. The third group is what I call counterfeit religions, these are Christian knockoffs. Let’s say if you want a bling bling but you don’t have the money, you can go to Harwin and buy a Gucci purse— but it is really not a Gucci, it just looks like a Gucci. You can get knock off name brands right down the street from our church. Well, these particular religions are what I call Christian knock offs, they are borrowing a lot of capital, a lot of concepts, a lot of their doctrines from the Christian faith. There are three different types of counterfeits out there. You can group them under these three rubrics. Number one, you have polytheistic counterfeits. Next week we will talk about one of those, Mormonism. It is a polytheistic counterfeit of Christianity. Also, you have Unitarian counterfeits. Islam is a Unitarian counterfeit of Christianity. Also, you have Neo Messianic Counterfeits; these are the groups like the Moonies, the Unification church, someone who claims to be the Messiah in the flesh. Someone like David Koresh and the Branch Dravidians could be a type of the Neo Messianic counterfeits to the Christian faith. So as you are looking and studying different world religions and dialoguing with people from different faiths you will see that they will more than likely fall under one of those three categories of mystical religions, moral religions or counterfeit religions.

So, this series is all about one primary thing, we talked about it the first Sunday night. Remember the big four questions. That is what we are looking at, remember these big four questions will help you and me determine the religious or philosophic perspective of any person you meet. They may be atheist or agnostic, Buddhist, a Sikh, a Muslim. Whatever they are, if you understand and ask these four questions, you will get insight into their lives, their hearts and find out what makes that person tick. Some people are conscious that they have answers to these big four questions, other people don’t have answers to them, they just subconsciously live them out. They don’t know that they have a worldview or a particular religious perspective. But make no bones about it, everyone has one.

Let’s review the big four questions. The first question- What is ultimate reality? Another way to ask this is – what is the stuff behind the stuff? You know all the things we see in the material world and the cosmos. Is there anything beyond the natural material world? The correct answer is- yes there is. The Triune God of Scripture. He was in the beginning. He has always existed as one in essence and three in persons; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. That is the ultimate starting point. He is ultimate reality.

The second question is – How do you know? How do you have knowledge? Our primary source of knowledge is revelational in character. God has revealed Himself. He has spoken to us in His Word, the Bible. Yes we do know through reason, we do know through our senses, we do know pragmatically- how things work out. But primarily, when it gets down to it, we know through revelation. That God has spoken to us in the Bible.

Third big question: What happens at death? And we ask this question for several reasons, first of all, death is a very real experience and death is a great clarifier. Death will clarify what a person believes to be the problem and the solution with mankind. God tells us our problem is that we are separated from Him. We need to be reconciled, brought back together with Him. So what happens at death? God’s Word tells us, which is our standard that we will have to give an account for our lives, every person who has ever lived will have to stand before God in judgment. And you will either spend an eternity with God in heaven or eternity in hell separated from Him. There is no middle ground. There is no “do over.” How we decide on God and Christ in this world will determine where we are going in the after world. Everyone is going to live forever. Everyone has a soul that is eternal.

Fourth big question: How should you live? How should you live your life? We should live our lives, primarily by keeping in step with what God’s Spirit is doing in our life. Another way of saying this is that we should live our lives utterly dependent upon God and Jesus for our acceptance now and forever and utterly dependent upon the Spirit to work His life through us. Now this doesn’t mean we’ve entered into this kind of Christian passivism – “I’m just going to let go and let God.” I hear that a lot with dating – “I’m not going to go out and date, ask someone out, be a part of a singles group. I am going to let go and let God and if God wants to bring someone into my life, He’s going to have to bring him/her to my doorstep.” Now if you are waiting on that, then you are going to marry the mailman or a Jehovah’s Witness because those are the only people coming to your doorstep. A more appropriate motto than let go and let God, should be – trust God and get going. Trust that God is working in your life. Step out in faith and believe that God’s Spirit is going to empower you to accomplish His will in this world. That is how we should live our lives. These are the four big questions.

 

Now, let’s ask these four questions to the religion known as Hinduism. The first big question is, What is ultimate reality? Hindus say Brahman is ultimate reality. Brahman is the unknowable, impersonal, neutral absolute—the basis and cause of all existence.

Now if you are wondering, what is that? Most of you saw a great example of Brahman when you were growing up as a kid. My little brother saw this great example, I don’t’ know, probably 15 or 20 times in the movie Star Wars. Star Wars presents a Hinduistic concept of God. Remember… “Luke, use the Force.” Remember, you have Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader- remember how Vader would breathe and talk at the same time? That was amazing! Unreal. Forget the fact that George Lucas totally plagiarizes a Christian, JRR Tolkien, to get his whole concept of Star Wars- forget that fact for a moment. And think about the force in Star Wars. The force in Star Wars is like Brahman, a neutral, it is impersonal. If you are evil or good – you can tap into this impersonal force. It really helps when you have one of those very cool light sabers. Anyway, that may help you understand what the Hindu concept of God is all about. Brahman, ultimate reality.

Now, the hard thing about Hinduism is that it is very malleable. It is like water, you put it into a container and it changes into different forms. Hinduism embraces both pantheism, (“pan” meaning everything and “theism” meaning God) which is the belief that all is God; and polytheism – the belief in multiple gods. So really to understand Hinduism, you have to understand this basic phrase. All is one. That describes a Hindu’s concept of ultimate reality and where everything is going. There are really no personal distinctions between matter and people and animals – all is one. So, you may have many gods. Hinduism has millions of gods, but basically the gods are all representative of the one impersonal force, Brahman.

Years ago I was at the LA House of Blues. The House of Blues is a really cool music venue. Interesting note, on the wall above the stage they have the symbols of the seven great religions of the world. Then in the middle of the wall, the words All Are One and a picture of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.  The slogan “All is one” is a very Hinduistic concept of ultimate reality. That is how they answer the first question.

Now the second big question, answered from a Hindu perspective is … How do you know? Again, Hinduism is one of those religions of transcendent mysticism. So the primary way you KNOW in this particular faith is through meditation. What is real in this world or outside of this world cannot be determined by sensory experience. Hinduism provides no basis for the scientific endeavor because they aren’t testing things that are real, they are simply an illusion.

Now, they call this Maya.  Maya is the idea that things are an illusion, there is no distinction between anything that we can see touch or feel. That is the second big question.

Now if you just tuned into the series, the reason we are asking these big questions is to get inside the heart or the perspective of people we are trying to talk with. So we can know where they are coming from and they can know where we are coming from. The way you answer these four big questions, reveals your worldview, serving as lenses, if you would. Now imagine that I have on sunglasses, (my lenses) and these sunglasses are cemented to my face.

So what I believe, whether I know it or not, about ultimate reality, about how I know what I know, about what happens at death, how I should live my life – these beliefs are the lenses that I see and interpret the world through. So I have these glasses, these lenses that are cemented to my face and I can’t even see them, but they affect how I see life. Everyone has these sunglasses, these worldviews cemented to their face. When we are sharing Jesus Christ with people, we are entering into a clash of worldviews. It would be as if my lenses are blue and yours are red, we will see and interpret things differently. More on that later. Let’s look at the third question.

 

The third question is, What happens at death? This tells us what they believe to be the problem and the solution with mankind. Here’s what they say happens at death. Hindus believe first of all that your body is left behind but your soul is reincarnated. Remember, Buddhism taught reincarnation but Buddhism denied the existence of the soul. The soul in Hinduism is known as atman. Atman is ultimately Brahman. They are ultimately one. So the soul is reincarnated. Now, reincarnation is described in their religion as samsara. Samsara is that cycle of reincarnation, of rebirths. This samsara occurs because we have bad karma.

Now, many of you are old enough to remember when the Beatles were hot back in the 60’s- they broke up in the 70’s – I think their last album was Let it Be. Now during the 60’s they brought this whole type of eastern philosophy into the pop culture into the mainstream. And after they split off, John Lennon, one of the Beatles, I think he wrote a song called “Instant Karma.” And George Harrison, I think was the only Beatle to continue to follow Hinduism until he was stricken by cancer and died a few years ago. Anyway, The Beatles brought these teachings into vogue. Bad karma is simply deeds that you do. It is kind of like in Galatians 6 when Paul says you will reap what you sow. If you sow bad karma, then you will be reincarnated into a lower life form. For the Hindu, the problem is the need for higher knowledge. We need a higher knowledge to realize that everything we see is Maya, it is an illusion. We need a higher knowledge to realize that there is really no distinction between you and me and anything we see. All is one. As they said in the song, “I am the Walrus, I am he as you are he and you are me and we are all together– koo koo ka cho – there you go.”

I had that record, by the way. I think “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” was on one side and “I am the Walrus” – a little Capital Record – a little yellow vinyl. Can you imagine what that would be worth today? Anyway … that is just a thought. Personal thought, a personal confession.

So that is what happens at death. At death you are either reincarnated or if you experience enlightenment and you can break free of samsara, that is known as moksha. Moksha is release from the cycle or the wheel of samsara. That is when you realize that all is one – and you are transported into Nirvana and Nirvana is to be absorbed into Brahman, which is the universal oneness. It is like a drop of water- when you die and you really get it- your enlightened through this higher knowledge, it is like a drop of water that falls into this endless sea of non-being.

Muslims believe that when you die, if you get it right, by following the five pillars of Islam that somehow your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds and all the men get to go to heaven and have all the women serve them and have sex with them. That is their concept of paradise. Hindu’s turn away from the sensory experience and believe you become a drop of water into the ocean of non-being. Think about that for a while.

Fourth big question is this: How should you live? They would say you should live by striving to build good karma. Good karma is deeds. There are three ways to build good karma. One is the way of knowledge- that is the path that Siddhartha Gautama took- remember he is The Buddha. He took the path of an ascetic Hindu monk. And very few people take the way of knowledge, you have to go through 4 different stages and that last stage, you become an ascetic monk and through that you experience hopefully, moksha (release) and you experience Nirvana, at-one-ment with Brahman.

Two, the second way to build good karma is the way of activity. That is when you offer sacrifices and offerings to gods and goddesses or spirits. You can do that in the temple or you can do that in your home.

Third way to build good karma is the way of devotion. And that is devotion to a particular god like Vishnu or Sheva (the destroyer god) or perhaps an incarnation of Vishnu or Shiva, like Krishna.

 

That is the title of this particular message, When Krishna Meets Jesus. Now Krishna is believed to be an incarnation of one of the Hindu gods, Vishnu. Years ago you may have seen Krishna’s at airports. And one of the things they would do is chant, “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna.” They believed by chanting Hare Krishna, that Krishna gives them help to overcome bad karma and to be free from the cycle of rebirths. Again, Hinduism made its first in road into popular culture with the Beatles; you can also see Shirley McClain and her teachings on New Age- her teachings on New Age combines a lot of Hinduistic thought.

Right down the street from this church, there is a church called the Unity Church of Christianity. Trust me, that church has very little of anything to do with Christianity. They will take Hinduism, Christianity, and Buddhism and merge them into some type of New Age – East meets West philosophy. We see the in roads of Hinduism all throughout our culture today. Whether it is directly with temples being built through the Krishna movement or through the New Age movement – which we do not have time to get into tonight.

Let’s look at some of the differences in Christianity and Hinduism. When Jesus meets Krishna. Again, a skeptic is going to say, “Who can know? Who can be sure? You have your God and the Hindu’s have their god or many gods. You have your book the Bible, they have their book the Bhagavad Gītā. They are all the same thing, right?”

Wrong. That is simply not true. Christianity says— there is a personal God. This God created everything we see, there is a distinction between the Creator and the creation. This God sovereignly governs and controls what is happening in this earth through providence, through His Spirit. This God has revealed Himself in a book, the Word of God and we can know in language. This God has also revealed Himself in a person, Jesus Christ. And God sent His Son Jesus Christ to bring us back to Him, to reconcile us to Him. Now, the Christian story it may be true or it may be false, but at least the story holds together. It supports itself. When you look at any other religion of the world or philosophy, you will see contradictions, you will see arbitrariness. This is true in Hinduism. You may say, well… they are the same. No, they are not.

Hindu’s do not believe that god is personal. Therefore their book Bhagavad Gītā is not a personal revelation, it cannot be a personal revelation from god. Suppose you enter into a dialogue with someone from this particular faith and you are talking to them and you say, “What’s the goal of your particular religion?”

I had someone of a particular religion come to my door a while back and I asked him, “What do I need to do to become part of your particular religion?” So, ask a Hindu, “What do I need to do to become a Hindu?” And they will basically say you need to experience enlightenment, you need to experience moksha which is release from the cycle of reincarnation, to realize the great truth that all is one, and we will all be dissolved into Brahman. So you say, “What you are saying is that I just don’t have the knowledge that all is one.” That’s right. “And everything is the same, the trees, the ocean, the sea, the sky, the sun, me, this candle, you and me…we are all basically one – part of this same one, impersonal, universal force.” They would say, well, yeah… that’s right. And then you could say, “Well, that’s great, I’m in man. I’m already experiencing Nirvana right now, I already believe that all is one. All is one!”

They would say, “No no no, you can’t experience Nirvana because you’re in Maya, you’re an illusion, you’re alive, you can’t experience that until a different time.” Then you can say, “Wait a minute, time out. Time out. You just made a distinction between Maya, this world, and Nirvana, a different world and there shouldn’t be any distinction because the core of your religious faith is the belief that all is one. So you are guilty of a contradiction.” Let me give you a common question that you want to keep asking people when you are discussing worldviews. This may be the guy with the Budweiser hat and a big dip, a Redman chew in his mouth. It may be a lady with 10 PhD’s after her name, it doesn’t matter. When you are talking to someone about ultimate issues and you really want to get down to the bottom line and cut through the crud. Keep asking this one question over and over again, “How do you know that?” Just keep asking that question.

 

I was flying to Chicago recently to speak at a conference. On the plane there was a girl sitting over by the window, a college student. And there was a seat in between us and we just started talking. She was about to graduate from college. We started talking about religious things. And I just kept asking her that question and she was telling me what she believed about God, and life. I just kept saying, well… how do you know that? Now, how do you know that? How do you know that? Basically, it just got down to intuition. She knew everything about her life, about her worldview through intuition. This is a very flimsy way of knowing which I very gently picked apart.

But in Hinduism, if you ask, how do you know that? How do you know that all is one? He will say, “Well, it is in the book.” Who said it? “Well… Brahman.” Well, Brahman said it? How can Brahman say anything, you’ve made a personal statement about someone who has revealed himself as impersonal? So… How can that happen? Again, that doesn’t comport. And this person will say, “Well, that is the reason why you can’t understand Hinduism because you are using western logic. We’re not into logic.” Then all you have to say to them is, “I believe your religion does use logic.” If they say that’s stupid. They can’t contradict you. Then go ahead and say, “Your religion is logical.” Again, their starting point is arbitrary, it is relativism. They basically have no place to stand. Now, I’m not saying that Hindu’s are not ethical people. There are many Hindu’s that are very moral. I had a friend of mine who was Hindu in college. They are very bright and very moral people for the most part, but again, when you look at their worldview and ask a few questions, they can’t account for their ethics or for their morality. Given their perspective that all is one, that all is an illusion, how can you account for good and for evil?

Again, you don’t have the starting point or the basis to account for that so it ends up destroying itself. Now, perhaps you are a Christian pragmatist. You may be saying, “Why are we studying all this stuff? Why is this stuff important? Why do we need to study other religions of the world, other perspectives?”

Three reasons. First reason is, religious pluralism is a reality in our culture today. That means that you may work by someone in one cubicle who is a Buddhist and someone in another cubicle who is a Muslim and your boss is agnostic. We don’t speak the same language anymore- so it is imperative that we understand where people are coming from. We need to learn to ask these four questions and understand how the Christian faith answers them. It prepares you to enter into a much more intelligent and compassionate dialogue with people from different religious perspectives.

Second of all, the Bible says we must be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks. 1 Peter 3:15 says “But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord and always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have.” Did you catch that? Always, Boy scouts motto, always be prepared to give a reason to everyone who asks you, the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with- what’s our manner? With gentleness and respect.

 

Now, to do this it doesn’t mean we have to go out and earn a PhD in philosophy or theology. Again, if we could understand how Christians answer these four basic questions, then this will help us to dialogue, to have a clash of worldviews with anybody from any different religious perspective. And that is ultimately what you are doing when you are talking to someone about ultimate issues. You are entering into a clash of worldviews. As I have studied the various religions of the world and philosophic perspectives, I see that the Christian faith holds together and provides the basis for understanding what is real in this world and beyond. The Christian foundation and worldview provides a basis for things like science and logic and mathematics to exist and operate. The Christian worldview is consistent because God has revealed Himself to us in this way. So when someone says, “What makes Christianity right and others wrong?” Just listen to the different religions on their own terms. The staggering claim of the Christian faith is that ultimate reality, the Creator, Sovereign God of the Universe has become a man in Jesus Christ. If that is true and it is true, then Christ is the starting point of all knowledge and all wisdom. Because He is God in the flesh. Amazing claim.

Third reason is, one of the biggest lies in our society is summed up in this statement, “All religions are the same.” We hear it all the time. And most of the people who make this claim, write this down in your notes, don’t know “jack taco” about world religions. They may know a little about Christianity, but I guarantee they don’t know anything about Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam or other religious perspectives in our society today. That is just a convenient way to avoid God in their life. People who say, “All religions are the same,” and “God is on top of a mountain and there are many paths to get to God,” simply have not studied the religions of the world. If you’ve been here since the first Sunday we started this series, you see that Buddhism and Christianity are radically different. You see that Islam is radically different. Hinduism and Christianity are radically different. If you are here next week, you will see that Mormonism and Christianity are radically different. Now in saying that, are we saying – there is no truth in Hinduism, no truth in Buddhism? NO! There is some truth in those religions. There are different areas I can find common ground with a Buddhist, with a Hindu, with a Muslim. We agree on certain moral principles, but the essence, the key doctrines of our faith are radically different.

The main reason we are studying these perspectives is so that when someone opens his pie hole at lunch or over coffee and says, “All religions are the same.” You can simply say, “Well that is not true. Hindu’s believe this, Muslims believe this, Buddhists believe this, and Christians believe that. So, it is not true that all religions are the same. You can talk to them, answer their questions and clear that confusion up in their mind.

So, if you are here tonight and you are someone who is asking questions – you’re a skeptic. I want to challenge you to consider the claims of Christ on His own terms. Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one goes to the Father, to Heaven except through Me.” Jesus said in Matthew 7 if you don’t follow my words then you will experience judgment at the end of eternity. Jesus also said in John 10:10 that I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly. I want to challenge you here if you are a tire kicker, a skeptic, a doubter to really look at, examine the claims of Jesus Christ. He is either God in the Flesh or He is not. Look at the alternative. Jesus Christ is either a super nut or supernatural. Put Him in the ha ha house with a straight jacket on Him – let Him burn with David Koresh and Charles Manson – do something with Him. He is either a kook, a nut case or He is God revealed in human flesh. There is no middle ground. But if you are considering the Christian faith, if you are looking at it, consider it on its own terms.

[Ben leads in a closing prayer.]