Evangelizing the Western Mindset - Part 3

We're going to use Matthew 11 today as a departure place to look at three major ways that people in the West think. I used this some years ago here in England when I was asked to do a two-day series in Cambridge University, and in Cambridge, kick you, Collegiate, Cambridge Interlegiate College Union, I think it is, they assign you your subjects. You haven't got a chance to let the Holy Spirit lead you.

You're told what you'll speak on. You have to, within that parameter, ask the Holy Spirit to help you. So you're given, I was given two subjects as part of an ongoing teaching series that other men would come in each week and do this.

One was a Saturday night thing, which was basically a Bible study from an assigned topic, and that was basically for Christians, but non-Christians were invited that night to see if it was worth coming the night after that, which would be the evangelistic one. And I was assigned the topic of Romans 5, which is probably one of the hardest and hairiest areas of exposition in the whole of the New Testament, if not Romans 7. And, you know, that just, through that, I mean, that was a fun one to do with two days to do it. And then the second thing, the following day, there was no music, no singing, no prayer, nothing.

There was an announcement of a lecture in the church that had a pulpit a story and a half high and was about as skinny as this thing there, and you have to give a one-hour lecture, basically to a non-Christian audience. And that lecture was on, the title was given, God. Was it called powerless, careless, powerless or dead? That was not much of an option that was, but in that thing you're supposed to answer some fundamental questions.

Is there a God? You know, can we know Him? What about suffering? You know, all these hairy questions. So in praying about that, the night before, I had to do it and I got my library on the road and it's not very big. I said to the Lord, how in the fat can I do something on these two hairy areas? And you know what Cambridge is like.

That's where all the big debates are and that Cambridge debating hall. That's where you get the cream of the crop there too. I thought, dear Lord, what in the fat can I talk about on these things? And He directed my attention in the second part of this to Matthew 11.

And so I want to give you this again. I think it's one of the neatest little summaries of the way people think in the Western world. I was thrilled at the end of this.

Remember there's no music, no singing, no Christian thing. It's a lecture. And at the end if people want to be saved, they have to come up and line up and tell you, I want to become a Christian.

I mean, no invitations, nothing man. Just as I am is down the tubes. It's just up front, you know.

And it was a thrill. It was just my wife and me and the guy invited us there. It was a thrill afterwards to just see a line of people just line up.

And the first girl came up. She said, I'm a biology major. She said, I am not a Christian.

I need to become a Christian tonight. How do I become a Christian? It was a thrill to see. I believe the Word of God really meets needs.

And I want to give you this. First of all, the background of this story is found in Matthew 11. And in it, John is now in prison.

He is actually awaiting execution. I don't know if he knows that or not, but at this point, that's what he's doing. He realizes, I think, in the spirit that it's just about time for the curtains of his life to close down.

And I believe this. The major philosophical questions are not asked in universities. They are asked when you face the reality of things like death and suffering.

That's where the real heavy questions are. Some people who wouldn't give a fig of any of the philosophical questions in the world, they don't think about God or life after death or suffering or anything like that. When you go through it, when you suffer, when you have somebody close to you die, or when your life itself is on the line, that's when the major questions in life are really asked.

And a great deal of the... I was reading Tony Campola's book just before I came down here, and he had a little discussion group in the university once and asked people if they'd thought much about death and how they would face it. And they all were talking about how they would face death and eat, drink and be merry sort of thing. And one middle-aged lady who was there in the circle, she said, you don't know anything at all about death.

You don't even... She said, I've thought about it a lot. She said, and she talked about being in a concert one time. An organ was in this musical concert and one note on the organ got stuck and you could just hear it in the back.

She said, for a while, with all the other stuff going on, it didn't matter. But she said, as the night went on and this one stuck note just kept going, it just totally ruined the whole thing. And she said, it was like that for me.

When I began to realize I'm going to die, they're going to put me in a hole and shovel dirt over my face. It was like a stuck note on an organ. The rest of my concert has been spoiled by that one thing.

Now here is John and he is facing death. And so all his crowds are gone. And the question probably came to his mind, was I really part of some significant thing in history? I mean, here he is, there were crowds, the whole of the cities had turned out to hear this man.

He had spoken like a man from another world and now all those crowds are gone. There's just a few of his disciples there ministering to him when he's in prison and everything's about to shut down. So it's a very good question.

Is what I'm doing worthwhile? Is what I've been involved in something that is actually part of a great change that would take place in history? Or is this just part of some passing fad? Society's been caught up in some temporary religious movement and now it's all gone. And that's a real question. What's he doing now? Is it just part of a religious fad that some people are into those things in those kind of days and the pressures of society and culture have just conditioned you in that particular way? Or are you actually part of the changing of history? So John sends out his disciples to ask this question.

Are you he that should come? Or do we look for another? Is this just a passing religious fad? Or is the person that I introduced to the world the one who was promised? And I am actually part of a great sweep of history. And Jesus answers in a simple and beautiful way. He doesn't say now what I want you to do is to go back to John and tell him something of the prophecies of the past.

I want you first to make a list of all of the various prophecies of the past and then show him how in many, many ways that I fulfill those prophecies. He just says go and show John. Tell him what you've seen.

And then refers directly to the miraculous. He says the blind see and the lame walk and the poor have the gospel preached to them and blessed is he that is not offended in me. And that again the power of the practical thing.

See what is happening. So we could say there's any philosophy in life and this is a Mickey Mouse analysis but it'll do for the start. Any philosophy can be tested by a three-fold test.

And the first one is very, very simple. Does it work? Does it work? We call that, it's a pragmatic test. Does it work? Does it really do what it claims to do? You could put that third if you like but I'll put it at the start because Jesus' appeal was simply show John what's happening.

That there is really a fulfillment of prophecy and he's not doing it in a theoretical way, it's actually happening. The other two tests would be does it conform to reality? Does it actually match what we know about reality? And then another one would be is it logically consistent within its premises? And you understand I suppose after the Wimber Seminar what a premise is. He calls a mindset.

He's a little bit wider than a premise. A premise is a pair of glasses that you wear. See if I use a pair of sunglasses here and these ones are, they're colored.

If I put those on, see the whole world looks the color of these things. Now if I wore those all my life I could forget that I had them on until somebody punches me in the eye and they break. But if you put on nice pink ones the whole world looks pink to you.

And the premise is the mindset that you approach the world through. It is the way you look at life. It is the glasses through which you analyze everything.

And all of us have glasses on. There's not one of us here who has no glasses. We all have our own set of glasses.

That's why there's no really objective reporting. People say he's an objective reporter. There is no such thing as an objective reporter.

As a matter of fact, that's why, and we were talking about this earlier, why it is so hard for people to agree on the Scriptures. Because once you take something out of the Scriptures you are the one who selects it. What Johnny Ortiz calls the Gospel of Saint Evangelical is the verses that you have underlined in your Bible.

And he says you need to have a good hard look at the ones you haven't underlined. We all pick out from that which we see that which happens to minister to us. And there's nothing really wrong with that except that it's important to understand that when we look at anything in life we look at it through a set of glasses.

It is the task of God to make our glasses as clear as possible to actually fit the kind of glasses on us that help us see reality as it is and not distort it. You wear glasses. Have you ever picked up somebody else's and swapped glasses in that weird, you know, and you're going cross-eyed and how can you see with these things? And that's the same with yours because your glasses are supposed to correct the deficiencies in your vision so you see the world as it really is.

If you understand those glasses it'll help you see this. To be logically consistent within a premise is to start with the glasses that you're wearing or that statement that you assume up the back of your head here. Does it make sense from where it starts to where it ends? Does it start starting from where it assumes, and there's always assumptions in every philosophy, does it make sense from where it starts to where it ends? Now let me give an example of a problem in that.

For instance, here is two things that look alike. Here is a fish and here's a submarine, okay? Now we're going to make an assumption about these two things. The assumption is, oh, first we'll make some facts about it.

Here is the facts. The facts are that there is similarity. You notice how these things are similar.

See that? I mean they've both got fins, they're both underwater, they both have a little light gathering apparati up here, okay? There's similarities there, isn't there? Right? Okay. Now I'm going to make an assumption. The assumption, this is my premise now, these are the glasses I'm going to wear.

Were these facts, which are undeniable, similarities here? We could list a whole bunch of these. Now I'm going to assume that similarity equals common ancestry. Now with great erudition and scholarship, I'm going to demonstrate to you that this is actually a miniaturized organic great-grandchild of this original one, which was quite an incredible accident, but it's wonderful how it turned out.

Actually what we had is a punctuated equilibrium bringing us these things. Now I could give you a great number of evidences to show that this must be true. And you can see that if you have a false premise, with all the right facts, you can come to the wrong conclusion for all the right reasons.

And that is the danger of simply approaching things from, does it make sense? The point is, many things make sense within their premises, but they may not actually match reality and they may not actually be true to what is, and they may not work. I believe that God has designed His universe and you like a well-made lock and key, and within the reality of what He describes, everything fits. The lock and the key fits in, turns all the way around.

Now you can make other keys that almost fit. Some of them haven't got a hope of fitting. Some of them get in a little way and turn.

Some of them almost seem to answer it. And the closer you get to the real key, the more likely it is to look like the real thing. My base is simply this, that what God says is true.

It matches reality, that if you begin with what God tells you to begin with, you can follow it through completely consistently, and not only will it make sense within what it is, it'll also match external reality and it'll work. That Christianity, if you want to look at it as a philosophy, meets these tests. Now what does God require of a man to assume, or a woman to assume? What does He actually require? What is the fundamental prerequisites of faith? What does God want first of all? What must you assume? There are some things you're going to assume, whether you're a Christian or Buddhist or anything else.

What are you going to assume? Here's what God asks. He that comes to God, Scripture says, must believe. These are assumptions.

One, that He is. We could put this another way. Reality exists, and that is an assumption.

And because it is an assumption, I cannot prove to you that He exists. I can't even prove that you exist, or that I exist. Matter of fact, I can't prove without assuming that, that anything exists.

Do you see that? If I'm going to find out if anything's out there, I've got to first of all assume that maybe there is something out there to be found. If I assume that there's nothing out there and you can't find it anywhere, you don't even look. So you can't even deny that without assuming it.

You say there is no such thing as reality. You assume that what you're saying is real, namely that there is no such thing as reality. So it's a fair enough assumption.

God isn't unfair. He only asks you to assume that which you're going to do for anything. I was a chemist.

If I wanted to find out something about the world, I had to assume first of all maybe it was out there. And that's what starts the look. So first that He is, and then two, He will reward those who diligently seek Him.

In other words, that reality can be recognized by the evidence of your senses or some other way. And of course when you have an experience with God, it's going to be a lot more than your senses. It's going to be a profound level, spirit, soul, body, and everything else.

But that reality can be recognized either in science of course. If I'm looking for something and I keep tracking it down. If I'm trying to find some new kind of particle in physics or I design ways in which I can... there it is! That's that little quack that we were looking for.

I found it, you know that. So you're looking for something. Now the assumption is that it exists and that you can recognize it.

That's the only two assumptions you make. That's all God requires. If you're going to find Him, He that comes to God must believe that He is and that He will reward those who earnestly seek Him.

Those are two assumptions which cannot be proved. I cannot prove to you that He exists and I cannot prove to you will recognize Him. You must assume those before the search begins.

Now this is assuming that a person is completely hungry for truth and we've already said 99.9% of the people aren't interested in that at all. I'm just throwing this out for fun. There are your three tests then of a philosophy and there are two fundamental assumptions.

What if I change my assumption here? What if I say similarity equals common design? Same facts. See we're not changing anything about the facts. All we do is change our premise.

If I say now similarity equals common design then I'll come to a totally different conclusion. Namely that these two things were both designed to work underwater. One by man and one by the creator of man himself and the designer of all forms and systems that fit particular things best.

So with the same facts we'll come to a totally different conclusion if our assumption changes. So the real battles go on in the world views that we have, the visions, the assumptions. It is those there that the task of apologetics is to correct those world views, to bring our weird ideas into confrontation with biblical reality so that all of these things will begin to match.

We cannot live consistently without those three things being true about where we live. That's why a person who's rejected biblical truth will constantly be on a search. There'll be a hunger there that will never be met to try and put in more studies to find out more reasons and to keep trying to match up that which doesn't fit.

If our life philosophy is exposed to reality and you know we could believe like Peter Pan we can fly. We can fly and you can go to the top of a 20-story building and jump out and yay verily if thou hast not a hang glider thou will find that thy philosophy is up for grabs. They will be able to say to you there is my boy all over because that's where you'll be.

Does it work? Does it actually work when you put it to the test? All right, you know what? So we're saying here that the power of the Christian message is threefold. First it makes sense from what God says to the assumptions you make and of course that's the basis of what they call presuppositional apologetics. A big word you do not have to learn to get to heaven which is fortunate.

But basically presuppositional apologetics starts on the premise. If we believe that the world was the way God said then does it fit? In other words if God is the way the Bible says He is and the world is the way He says it is, does that actually match what we know about the world? So with that presupposition you just say to the secular man look let's just think for the time being that what God says is true. Doesn't this make sense? Doesn't this match up with what you know? So we take the test of pragmatic and the test of matching reality.

We just give them the presupposition. God is real. Jesus Christ.

You don't bother proving those things. You just state them. That's presuppositional apologetics.

Some classical apologetics people go you got to prove every one of those things otherwise forget it. But it is a valid way to push. In other words by starting with the way God says things fit.

They do fit. They fit better than anything else. Francis Schaeffer of course is the most popularly known guy who presents presuppositional apologetics.

His illustration is a big rubbish tin or garbage can for Americans here. He says if you put a man in a rubbish tin with his head first his legs will stick out. If you put him in head first you know his legs will fit in but his head will stick out.

If you sit him in sideways everything will hang out. If you try to fit a non-christian idea into a biblical universe there will always be bits that stick out that don't answer the questions. And that only in God is there a proper fit.

Though we're not really going to put anybody into a garbage can in the christian life. This is where the illustration breaks down. All right now back to our story.

Everybody really loves asking questions of God. We would love to ask questions of God. If there is a God I have some questions I'd like to ask.

Well what gets embarrassing is when God asks you questions. And I know this simple answer Jesus gave. Go show John.

It's one of the most powerful evidences of the reality of Jesus. I have a friend who is now an artist for David Wilkerson. He says he does all his artwork and stuff.

His name is Paul Annan. Paul was sitting once in a meeting of young people. We had about 80 kids jammed into a room and what they did is they had a hot seat.

I don't know if you've ever seen a hot seat. It's a chair that's put in the middle of the room and any kid who's got a problem or any kinds of need they sit on the chair and they share that need with the body of Christians there and then whoever feels lead comes up and prays for them. So sometimes you get a whole bunch of kids around praying and this was going on all night.

This was Saturday night, 11 at night. Kids were all praying and it was a neat thing. Anyway Paul had heard about this thing and he was a bitter... I saw the last picture he painted before he was a non-christian.

Well he's still a non-christian. He had this gambler who was a gambler that had just been discovered gambling. He was still painting in the gun and he said the faces of the men around the table, he said I used to look in the mirror and then draw the faces.

He was getting a thousand dollars a painting at 16 years old doing these paintings and he sat there bitter, arms folded, just mad at the world and everything else and not wondering how in the fat he got in with a bunch of these religious kids and and there was a girl there who had been born with a twisted crippled foot and her foot was like this and she... there'd been some teaching on forgiveness and she sat in the chair finally and she began to weep. She said I have a confession to make and I want... she said I need to apologize to my parents for the lousy way I've treated them. I have blamed them for this crippled foot of mine and I've thought because I got this I'll never have a boyfriend, I'll never have marriage and you know and she said here I am I'm 16 years old I've held this grudge against my parents all these years and she said I want you to pray for me that God will give me the courage to apologize to my parents for my whole lifelong rotten attitude.

She was crying and then as the kids moved forward to pray for her she said it's even worse than that. She said I want you to pray for me I'll have the courage to apologize to God she said because I blamed him for this and I thought it's your fault you could have done something different and you didn't. And so it looked like every kid in the room came around the hot seat.

Well Paul's sitting there watching this thing and this girl starts to weep and the kids lay hands on her to pray that God will give the courage to apologize and as they do her foot just goes and straightens out like that and Paul just goes breaks down and gets saved. So you know it's a it is an apologetic of its kind. Jesus turns to the crowd now having told them go and show John what you see and then he asks them three questions and these three questions I believe are statements of the majority of people you will run into.

You'll find them whatever you meet you'll find one form of one of three things and here is the first thing he says I'll read it blessed is he verse six whosoever shall not be offended in me and as I departed Jesus began to say to the multitudes concerning John what did you go out into the wilderness to see I read shaken by the wind but what went you out for to see a man clothed in soft raiment behold those that wear soft clothes are in king's houses what went you out for to see prophet yeah I say unto you more than a prophet well this is he whom it is written behold I send my messenger before your face which shall prepare thy way before thee now Jesus asks the crowd when you went out to see John what glasses were you wearing and put it that way what were your presuppositions about this

person and here are the three things he said a reed shaken by the wind a man dressed in soft clothes or a prophet what I want to pick up first tonight is this first thing and we'll call it the reed what is he talking about when he's talking about a reed you ever stood on top of a hillside and watched a field of grass or wheat blown by the wind it's a kind of very pretty effect it's like waves running through the thing but here's what a reed is it's it's a thin piece of grass dried or otherwise and whichever the way the wind blows that's the way the reed moves like that I believe this is a description of a huge chunk of people that you or me if you ask them what their philosophy of life is they haven't got one it's whatever is going down they are basically slaves of the culture in which

they live they find out whatever's in and that's what they want to do too if hula hoops are in they want to do those if barbed wire hula hoops are in then they will use those whatever is in that's what they're into now the reason why this has become so popular in our day is because we have lost in our time absolutes we don't believe in moral absolutes anymore especially in the western world so we could say the reed philosophy and there's another name for that it's there's a word the eclectic that means somebody who just picks and uh picks a little bit i'll have a little bit of that i'll sample a bit of that a little buddhism and i'll have a little bit of this and smudging of this and a side salad of hinduism and we put the whole thing together and what you got is a smorgasbord that keeps

changing and to ask this person well what particular philosophy you it's ridiculous because they don't know what you know they're just into whatever punk is in and you dye your hair purple and if it isn't then you do something else you see it's whatever is going and because the culture shifts and changes in its opinion so much huge chunks of people don't have any commitment to anything their basic job in life is to fill the the hours when they're not working or eating with as much entertainment as they possibly can so they don't have to think about things like philosophies and life after death and suffering and all those things huge chunks of people are like this so the idea behind the eclectic is that truth keeps changing there's no such thing as absolute truth in this philosophy truth

changes what is true in one generation is not true in others what may be true for you is not necessarily true for me and you've all seen the old illustration of the the blind man and the elephant here is the elephant and the three blind men were taken by the blind man taker to a zoo to meet the animals and the one they really liked most when they got home and all compared notes not written notes of course but verbal notes what did you like most the blind man said oh we we like the elephant most and in talking with each other they asked what did you like about the elephant they said well when he got his ears said well he was such a weird creature he was sort of thin and flat like a huge leaf the other one said thin and flat you're crazy i could scarcely put my other it's so thick and huge

and the one who got his tail said you you you mustn't have got an elephant i got the elephant i got it it was thin and wiggly something like a snake and then they argued for the rest of their lives um and see the idea comes like this in the eclectic philosophy it goes like this well you know nobody can see the whole elephant so what's true for you it is true i mean if you think it's a snake well it's fine because you probably got the tail and somebody else thinks it's something else and it's fine for them too because they got the foot and and others now what we're saying in the christian life is this there may be presbyterian ears and baptist tails and pentecostal feet but an elephant is an elephant and an alligator is something else and if you go putting your hand in an alligator's mouth

you will notice there's a difference in your tangible contact with reality so uh we could get philosophical in this and we could say that the way for many many years people realized this and east realized it realized it a lot earlier than the west did is that you cannot really know the whole thing nobody can that's why i said atheism is really an indefensible position unless you restate it to say categorically there is no god is a dumb position so most cool atheists say we don't think the question's relevant that's a cooler way to say it to say there is no god is an omniscient statement and the simple fact is nobody can see the whole elephant nobody sees the whole universe nobody knows what it's like so the east is always recognized that if you want to know truth it has to be revealed to

you it must come from the infinite down to the finite now christians don't have a problem with that that's the way we work we believe in revelation the east has always seen that you cannot comprehend truth just by logical progression alone because the finite can never see the infinite for instance say i am drawing here a picture of a man okay and i'm going to put a eye on the man that's the eye now if i was an ant crawling on this board and i came across that dot and i'm having a good look at it now what is the significance of that dot now for me as an ant to really know the significance that dot i have to get back here and say oh i see it's actually a face you see and that's an eye there and then i got to understand what faces are which is another thing again and then i've got to not

only see this face on the board i've got to see this board in the context of this classroom and i got to see this classroom in the context of london and london in the context of england and england the context of europe and europe in the context of the world and earth in the context of the galaxies and the galaxies in context of the universe and the universe in context to all other possible universes and then i might be able to say the significance of that dot you see that in other words to really know whether that's a worthwhile thing or not to even talk about its position its value anything else in the universe you have to see the whole thing and and people realize that after a while they think well who knows nobody knows everything man so you know it how do you know what's true

everything could be true nothing could be true so the ways that people respond to that is multiple people you know some of them go fine everything's true and you know yes beautiful have you ever heard that thing i'm not in this world to measure up to your expectations and you're not in this world to measure up to mine and if by chance we should meet everything will be beautiful do you know that that's good old eclectic thought now aristotle and philosophers thousands of years ago understood that thing you cannot understand the significance of anything unless it is seen in the context of the infinite so early the east recognized by logic alone you're not going to know what is ultimately true so the east taught what you have to do is truth must be revealed to you so here is a guru in a

lotus position and he realized that the way to see truth is to have it it's got to be revealed it's got to come by revelation so we could put it like this east taught truth comes by revelation now eastern means of getting that revelation are multiple the various forms of yoga for instance most of you know about hatha yoga which is the physical you know with people and leotards on television showing you various ways to bend your neck and stuff like this and now we will assume this thing you see now that that's just a physical series of exercises to prepare you spiritually for revelation but yoga in its real sense like the krishna people when they're chanting with the you know with the tambourines and the stuff that's another form of yoga that's a praise to link oneself with the infinite

the east then has come up with all kinds of techniques and ways on which you can contact supposed realities for instance meditation transcendental meditation was offered in the early 60s remember the maharishi with the beard and the flowers and the beetles and that whole thing yeah he he believed that what you done you'd be given a mantra mantra comes from two sanskrit words man the mind and try to deliver so it was to deliver you from the the limitations of your own finite mind and what they do is they give you a uh a word a meaningful word for you and was actually the name of a deity of a hindu deity and you chanted this word and what it would do is tune out this logical little lock you had and like a bubble arising from the floor of the ocean as it gets bigger as it goes up so your

head and this is not to apply that you're bubble headed that your consciousness would expand as you learn to do this and in the early days the maharishi's claim was that you could actually reach god consciousness you could know all things i think he gave a year or something which is from the beetles asked him what we're going to be doing in the future and he said i don't know that which bothered them a lot and some of them left shortly after that and because he pinched me a farrell's bottom which did not seem to them to be conducive to holiness and they wrote sexy sadie on the white album was uh for uh for the maharishi however there are other means uh do you remember guru maharaji uh guru maharaji's thing was to give you the divine nectar and you tasted your post nasal drip and and other

things but it was a laying on of hands way to to to get you the christian people and their and their devotional yoga uh we could call them hindu charismatics basically they uh they believe that by worship one establishes this link with the infant but can you see the whole key thing is that the mind is a problem the mind is limited the mind is finite and you can only find truth by revelation now the christian believes that but there's a big problem with eastern thought and it goes like this how do you know that the revelation you have is not demonic there you are you've laid aside the limitations of your mind you were chanting and doing other things and suddenly comes this flash or this light how do you know that the light you have is not demonic and the answer is you do not know because

you're not allowed to use the mind it's already been laid aside now the west big thing see this east the west big thing is well we need to test everything we need to check it out think but unfortunately the west doesn't believe in revelation so there's the jam and christian positions is actually this we believe in revelation which can be tested objectively you see that that's a real difference from most religious positions in the world the other one you accept it if for instance you were going to study under a guru in the east you're not going to ask him excuse me why should i study now why are you real what qualifications do you have if you have to ask a question you shouldn't be there you are assuming that you don't you don't question you just do see that grasshopper when you do not

understand then you will know i used to love watching cain you know they carried him did such a good job of that thing you know i watched this one thing where there was a bible belt uh guy you could tell by the way he was wearing his hat sideways and then looked really dumb and there is cain who has strung a bow that nobody else can even bend and he's shooting arrows into a tree about a thousand yards away in the darkness for meditative purposes completely peaceful reasons of course and he's firing this thing and this christian looking guy comes and he goes how do you do that and cain says to him it is not done and the guy looks and he goes i don't understand and then cain goes when you do not understand then you will know now if a preacher said that in the church people would fall out of

their chairs you know they'd drop their teeth but he was such a good actor people went isn't that a heavy man when you don't understand then you will know and really came through with great but see the danger is how do you know that what you got is not demonic and the answer is you don't know so the eclectic is a major you can't even really define it because it keeps shifting all the time there's how many things could we put underneath this it's a sampler of everything that's going down it's your basic smorgasbord philosophy it's whatever people are into this moment trouble is it keeps shifting and it keeps on changing how many minutes have we got left 10 15 20 about 10 okay good let's say this no permanent absolute values in the universe it promises to be a major mindset of the 20th

century now got to give you one other thing and this has to do we'll see this later in another major philosophy and it has to do with why people don't believe in absolutes anymore in the old days when there were absolutes and say with absolutes when you have absolutes in the universe there are opposites real opposites say for instance is a real right well there's an opposite to that and it's a real wrong now if there's no absolutes there is no difference between rights and wrongs see that you take absolutes away you've got no real opposites so let me show you if i can watch these fingers watch the bouncing ball on the end of my fingers this is the way people used to think within an absolute framework there's real rights and real wrongs here comes something this is right here comes the

opposite of it this is wrong and then i'll go like that see one would eat up the other in the new one there are no absolutes so there are no real opposites and instead of what we go like this here let's call this one thesis and we call this one antithesis or antithesis here it comes when they meet they kiss and they join we have synthesis see that and that keeps shifting all the time in other words if i say something this exact opposite of you is not really an opposite when we meet together the truth will go this is called the dialectic and it becomes very important when we study marxism later but that's the way people think they think dialectically today they don't think in terms of rights and wrongs and opposites they think instead of synthesis of your side of the elephant and my side

of the elephant we put it together we get a better picture of the elephant you believe jesus is the only way to go that's so beautiful i actually believe that i am the best way to god and if we get together it's jesus and i and that is more like the truth than what we had before do you see that and the and the point about this whole thing is if you're preaching the gospel today you have got to bring people into repentance as well as faith otherwise faith will be taken as synthesis let me explain that in the 60s some friends of mine led this guy to the lord who was in the christian consciousness they were going door to door and they opened the door and there was a guy with his christian records on and he was meditating on the floor and he was worshiping and doing everything so they talked

to him about jesus he was most entranced with jesus this is wonderful i've heard about master jesus so they said would you like to accept jesus he said sure you know he was into whatever so they said hey we prayed with him the guy became a christian well they came back a week later and the guy had his bible out his christian records and he was worshiping and chanting and you know what he did see they thought oh terrific he's become a christian so he will turn away from christian consciousness but that's not what he did what he did is just added the idea of jesus to what he was already doing that's the smorgasbord philosophy that's the reed shake wall wind coming neat then blows the other way let's go that way too that means that when you preach and this is a practical apologetics course

not a theoretical one it means this you not only must preach faith you must also preach repentance you must tell people that to turn to jesus is to turn away from something you don't have to explain all of this it's just important that you understand it because if you don't do that you'll find people syncretizing they put we know this in missions we know that admissions if you go out into new guinea or something you got to tell people you've got to give your idols up if you're going to follow jesus we tell people that all the time the point is the western world has its own idols let me give you a classic example one of the major ways we fail today in the western world is we tell people to repent of bad things don't we here's somebody and here's here's this guy he's a pimp he's a drug

addict he's a murderer and he's and he lies as well so we tell him you know you ought but he's and he's a great musician so we tell him give up your pimping and stop using drugs and don't murder anybody anymore and sometimes we even tell him turn himself in though very rarely don't murder anymore and quit lying he goes oh okay i'll try it's really going to be hard it's a lot of people i'd like to murder and then we tell him and what do you do praise god you mean you are bruce springsteen's bass guitarist glory to god we need some good bass guitarists in the church today so we tell them consecrate you good things what we do is take a good thing and make that all right but anything that takes the place of jesus is not all right and maybe he's into drugs and all the other things he's into

because of his whole life has been built around his music and maybe this god that we've called good he's actually the problem that if he doesn't give up his good thing and die to that he is not going to be able to break with these bad things you see that in other words in preaching the gospel when i say repent i'm not just talking about giving up things that look bad i'm talking about anything that gets in the way of truth and that could be a good thing hey i didn't i was not a drug addict i made drugs it never occurred to me you could eat them i was not a hell's angel if i had a chain around my neck i couldn't have got off my motorbike i was not a fornicator i was too scared of girls to ask them out i i didn't ask out one girl in primary school she was a polio cripple i really liked her

and i went up and said would you go out with me and she beat me over the head with a crutch it so shocked me that it put me off asking girls out for a good 10 years i took refuge in chemistry and uh i don't have a bunch of those bad things i was just a normal selfish dude see my god the thing that my whole life centered around was a good thing was chemistry i could do that better than any kid i knew i got chemist dictionaries that thick for my eighth birthday i got i was working on micro analysis when kids were learning what acids and bases were that was my god and when i got saved you never guessed what jesus asked me to give up certainly wasn't fornication and drugs and being a hell's angel he put his finger not on a bad thing but in a good thing so remember this we'll pick this up in

the next block of session we do but you are living in a world in which people believe that truth constantly changes that there's no real rights and wrongs and you're going to tell them to become a christian means to forsake your own idols whether they be good or whether they be bad so let's uh let's close this down now and then we'll take a little bit of time for questions i'm going to amplify this a little bit more before we go on to the next deal but got some questions yes could you comment for a minute on your thoughts the relationship to this morning when you were talking about more illumination more truth and not obedience yes in respect to the world how does that really apply in the church today where there is actually an information uh outpouring in the church with television he

wanted three four hours of christian tv a day how many millions of audio cassettes have been produced since 1984 that's right and the radio and the seminars and conferences and so much information is being published and yet people may not be responding how does that fit into the christian circle that's in concept a great deal of what we get is illumination and not not revelation for a start very very little of what you actually hear is revelation and uh you know the difference between the two there is that which shocks you in the heart you go boy that god really spoke to me that thing and the other thing is what is the latest tape wow i'm into that too we become these oh yes i'm into whatever you know so um the the but that is a very good point that is why i believe the west out of all of

the worlds third world communist world and western world we're the most backslidden we're the ones who have the biggest problems of in revival and if we define revival at least the human side of it the way charles fenny did revival is nothing more or less than a new beginning of obedience to god to actually do that which god has said then we can see why the west has such big problems with with revival we are used to being informed having the facts getting them down understanding them and assuming that because we understand the facts we have the experience of it if we can define it we possess it but it's not true it is quite possible to define it to categorize it to have it nice you know to do it on a word process so it's all there and not actually do it so the outpouring of information

which our technology has given us in the western world is not a help it is not a help unless it's obeyed and very few people have a chance to obey anything that's why johnny and tease used to talk about how in latin america they went to the one sermon for six months thing you know the guy would go husbands love your wife that is the sermon for today now we're going to study how do you and then say do you love your wife and the guy goes well yeah i suppose so and then say how do you love well you know i buy things for her i like her and you know i guess so but do you do the dishes for you know this and uh well no i'm not into that what we're going to ask your wife whether you really love her you know and at the end of six months we're going to the next part why you know wives be see that

see this is really fun it makes sermons easy you know you don't have to do a lot of we do we do a complete exposition on the greek and hebrew words for love and their relationship to the early new testament church and the cultural customs and we write it all down and we don't love our wives or we don't love the husbands or we do the do you see we are very good at defining things and that you know that's why we have seminars and that's why we have conferences and that's why we make videos like we're doing now and and uh and all of these things but none of these things matter of fact media or media whether it's written or um or or uh visual or audio has has a two-dimensionality about it it makes it difficult by its very nature it tends to make us hearers and not doers of the word so it's

possibly exposed to an awful lot of information and not actually become doers that's why television ministries for instance must have some kind of feedback thing that's why 700 club runs um you know a number of counselor call and things why when i preach the gospel i want to give an imitation i don't want kids to just sit there and go wow that was a far out message i want them to do something i want to commit themselves and that is why i don't mind taping teaching sessions but i do not normally allow my evangelistic sessions to be videoed and distributed for the simple reason is i know that many times kids will watch them and not be given a chance to obey and unless there is a chance to obey unless i have a crack at that i don't want it done and uh and to me they're two different things

so that when the christian uh rejects more light then it leads his life to a more oh yes oh yeah yes exactly and the danger of the christian for instance we could say this about the light thing um the more light the more guilt i've said to people you know would you rather be a heathen in africa that's funny because there's less even in africa than there are in england and america probably put together in what was in the 1900s it was one in six thousand now it's one in every three and probably by the end of the century i think half of africa will have given their lives to jesus see we haven't got that in england that's 75 of this country doesn't even go to church about 13 of the remainder only go two or three times a year when it's christmas in the eastern you got a new hat so would you

rather be a heathen in quote unquote africa someplace or a heathen in seminary if we could say uh under whom much is committed of him shall much be required then it is a scary thing to learn a lot and not obey it's much better leave the school now if you're not intending to get right with god because it's going to be the pits for you at the end um that's why the scripture says brethren be not many masters for you receive greater condemnation and what it means is don't take on yourself the task of being a teacher because if you blow it you're going to be held a lot more responsible god tends to deal much more hardly with people who are the leaders who are supposed to be look at moses moses just struck the writers that are talking to him he never made it in the promised land because of that

whereas the others complained and griped and moaned all the time he just sent a few snakes and things with moses it was it boy and you gotta you cannot it is a dangerous thing to learn without obedience and it's a constant temptation you're going to be in position of teaching people and informing what did george mcdonald say as i become a truth talker and not a truth liver you make your gods not of wood but words anyway you're saying that one of the basic functions of repentance is to bring people to a true worldview yes the biblical world view yeah it has to it has to shock their thinking into that's what the word actually means metanoia those two words that beyond or above annoy in the mind it actually is to go beyond i'd say the mindset the repentance is a whole change of consciousness

as well a change of understanding a change of perception as well as a change of morality it's to think in a new way about the world i don't know about you the day i got saved and i was a teenager i got saved one night in the following morning when i got up was a new world i remember looking out and saying wow look at that it's green you know and there's trees out there look at those things that's far out it i i think we haven't made enough of that the east is very strong into that you know the east is very strong into perception and change of that's what it means to be holy in the east it's wise man doesn't mean to be good 330 million hindu deities at least half of them are rotten you know and i've got serious reservations about the other but to be wise is is salvation see to understand

to perceive in the west to be holy is to be good to be saved is to be a good person but in the bible to be holy is both wise and good and we'll see that later i want to do this in a movie we're talking to some of the the crew here on i want to do this in a movie form by shooting the first whole third of a movie which is a secular man's life before he becomes a christian in a shrunk screen but we're shooting in a 70 millimeter extra wide lens format but all the colors would be washed down they'll be shot through screens everything looked very great and small and single sound source even though it's a 360 degree sound theater see so i want to shoot the whole front third of this thing looking out through his eyes in that kind of world and then when he gets saved i want to first black out the

whole theater and then switch on the full sound systems that comes up all the way around and then the color comes up like that and you'd get an idea that something radical has changed in the way he sees the world and everything else not just that he becomes a nicer person but that he actually has a change of perception that's conversion you think all kinds of crazy thoughts before you get saved