 Today we take a deep dive into the dark world of progressive Christianity. Hey what's up guys as always it's Isaac David and this is The Daily Disciple where I help you find Jesus and follow him daily. If you're new to the channel subscribe because I'm putting out new videos every single day. How do you do that? You may ask why? It's a lot of work. But we do it because of the people on Patreon. It's because of your guys support that I'm able to continue to do this stuff that I love and help people follow Jesus daily. So thank you to you guys. And if you want to help support what I'm doing head to the link in my bio patreon.com slash daily underscore disciple. So as I mentioned today we're taking a look at the dark world of progressive Christianity. Why is it such a dark world? You may ask. Well you're asking a lot of things today a lot of questions to one too many questions if you ask me. No it's okay. Why is it so dark? Well because it is a lie. It's a lie about who God is and what he has done in the gospel and it gets so many things wrong. And it is so sad to see so many people go down this direction thinking that they can still identify themselves as oh I'm still a Christian I still follow Jesus and yet pretty much disregard everything that he says. So today we're reacting and responding to a video of a progressive pastor that I've seen online. What I hope we get from this video is a greater understanding of God and his gospel, his character and what true biblical Christianity looks like and how to be able to identify the lies that are so common in our world nowadays. But as Reverend Pearson began to grow spiritually as he began to grow in spiritual understanding he came to realize that if God is pure unconditional love then there can be no hell. Notice how he just made that up right he just said God is pure unconditional love. Well we know that God is love from a lot of passages in the Bible but we also understand that he is justice, that he is truth, that he has wrath and we can't minimize these other aspects of God's character because they make us feel bad. When we try to say that God is only one characteristic, that he is only loving, we actually miss out on the other aspects of his character as well. Also we misunderstand the ramifications of that love. Okay if God is loving what does that mean? What does that mean for people that are doing evil things? Does that mean he just lets those people go and there's no justice to be had? It's like no, well justice is the outflowing of true goodness and true love and hell exists because God is just. He is good so he has to be just and that's why hell exists. This man's God is an incompetent and powerless God who simply keeps to himself because he's all about love. The love needs to act and act in terms of justice and that is exactly what God does. And he began to preach that people didn't need salvation, they didn't need to be saved. I don't remember that verse because God already loved them. I definitely don't remember that verse. Hey, you're good as you are, don't need saving, you know God already loves you no matter what. There's a problem with a lot of the styles of evangelism where it just kind of includes going up to people and saying God loves you. It's like that's nice but you need to help them understand the bad news before they can truly understand the good news. If we think, oh yeah God loves me, well we already have a high opinion of ourselves so that God is basically just affirming that opinion of ourselves. It's like of course God loves me, I'm so awesome right? It's like we're not actually bringing light to the fact that we are in desperate need of saving because of our sin. And Reverend Pearson has written a really excellent book with a long but a glorious title. It's called God is not a Christian nor a Jew, Hindu or Muslim. And the subtitle is God dwells with us, within us, among us, and as us. I thought that title couldn't get any worse. It's a very long and very, it's equally as long as it is bad. This idea that God is not a part of any, like basically all religions are the same, it's all pointed at the same thing, it's Oprah theology, right? It doesn't matter if you call it Jesus or God along the way or not. Or it just matters that we're all kind of moving towards oneness and self-actualization and all religions are basically the same and you know it's just about being a good person and just becoming fully who you are. It's like no Christianity is so different than that. It says that we cannot be good on our own, it's that we are destined for God's wrath and judgment because of our sin. But God in His mercy came down to this earth in the person of Jesus Christ to live the sinless life that we could not live to die on the cross, the death we deserve to die for our sins against God. God died for His people to reconcile us with Him to Himself, right? And He rose again on the third day, defeating sin and death. Like that is such an amazing story, a much more powerful story than simply be a good person. All religions teach the same thing. It's like no Christianity is so different. Gospel for this morning is all about salvation and being born again in order to be saved. Good. All of us do not understand what that means. The term born again Christian is a fairly new one. It was only coined in the late 1970s. Okay, let's put this into context here. The reason that people started calling themselves born again Christians was because there is so much cultural Christianity and everybody and their mom would call themselves a Christian. Calling yourself a born again Christian was simply to identify, hey look, I take what the Bible says seriously when Jesus said you must be born again and I take that seriously. So that's why I call myself a born again Christian. Every real Christian is a born again Christian because you have to be born again. But that was just kind of a distinction because we were so sick and people were so sick of saying, oh, everyone calls themselves a Christian even though it's just cultural Christianity. There's really no transformation that's happening. They're not really a new creation because they haven't put their faith in Jesus. And so, yeah, you don't need to call yourself a born again Christian. You do need to be born again though. But it was only then that this movement began in the evangelical church where people said that one must accept Jesus Christ as the personal Lord and Savior in order to experience salvation and anyone who didn't even somebody like Gandhi or the Dalai Lama, they were going to perish in eternal damnation. Now, OK, that's not it's not a new message, right? The language might have shifted a little bit. I prefer to use language like repentance and faith, language that actually comes from the Bible as opposed to, you know, make Jesus your personal Lord and Savior or ask Jesus into your heart. I think the ask, you know, make Jesus your personal Lord and Savior is a little bit is better, better definitely than ask Jesus into your heart. That that one just doesn't make a lot of sense, especially to somebody that's new to Christianity, but the idea, the fundamentals of putting your faith in Jesus to save you from your sin is not new. Like I'm confused on why this guy thinks this, if he's that illiterate in church history, but you really got to be reaching in order to come to a different conclusion than that of historic Christianity, meaning that we, you know, are dead in our trespasses and sins that for all of sin and fallen short of the glory of God, that we can do nothing righteous and no one is righteous. No, not one. No one seeks for God. No one does right as what is right. And Jesus is that holy sacrificial lamb in our place. You can't really get around that in a biblical context. The thing is this, this fellow decides to follow his own ideologies and presuppositions about how the world works as opposed to looking with the perspective of a biblical worldview, a Christian worldview. He would rather look with a secular worldview. And in that worldview, he sees this, this disconnect of why would these nice guys that I really appreciate the Dalai Lama and Gandhi go to hell? Well, he doesn't understand the fundamentals of the bad news is that they've sinned too, that they need a substitute for their own sin. That regardless of how many wonderful sayings and things they did, that doesn't make up for their sins. Most people who define themselves as born-again Christians also take the Bible literally. No, I simply read the Bible plainly. I'm not concerned with the, you know, having my own presuppositions. Oh, evolution must be true. Therefore this must be all messed up here. And this isn't didn't actually happen. It's like, no, I don't go. I just read the Bible plainly, right? And I'm not saying there there aren't, you know, contentious things and needing to dig into commentaries and sorts of things like that. Of course there is. But the baseline is we recognize there's tons of analogies and Jesus calls himself the living water. It's like, do we really think he's like water? It's like, no, OK, we understand that's a metaphor there. So we don't take things literally per se. We read the Bible plainly. Because in this gospel story, the story about being born again, it's the gospel story where Jesus says, don't take my words so literally being born again meant to die to the false self. I don't remember that verse. To the ego self, to the worldly self and to give birth to the true self, the divine self. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Anybody that tells you you're a little God or you are you have a divine you have divineness within you that just needs to break out into, you know, the beauty that it is in Jesus real work is kind of helping you get out of your own head so you can be that divine little God that you were created to be. That's not biblical. That's not true. That is a lie that seeks to puff you up to tell you that you're your own God. I don't know if you guys saw my video on Satanism or if that's even coming out yet. I think it has come out. But those folks believe that they are God. This guy is preaching the exact same thing. Can you believe that somebody that identifies himself as a Christian preaches the same thing as Satanist? Very interesting how that works out. But you're not a little God. You are not divine. You were created in the image of God, but you were designed always to submit to God and his holiness and his love and his justice and everything that he is. He is so much grander than we are. And when we get puffed up thinking that we're we're the stuff like we're that we're the best, we're off base, the self that God created you to be. And when we do that, we experience a life of peace, joy and love. And that's what we mean by salvation. No, no, that's not what we mean by salvation. That's the prosperity gospel. This idea that Jesus came to to make you have peace, joy and love and happiness and stuff and fulfilling life. It's like some of those things can be kind of outflowings of a Christian life. Sometimes right, like joy, yeah, OK, happiness sometimes. But that's not a guarantee that you're going to be happy all the time stuff. It's like, no, no, no, not at all. The Bible actually says that we will will be persecuted if we seek to live godly lives. So actually, the Bible promises us not not the stuff that we would. Oh, this is such a good life here and now it's like, no, this is going to be tough. You're going to go through trials and tribulation, tribulations, but yet God is going to be with you in this. And so, no, Jesus did not come to provide us with joy, love, happiness, peace and fulfillment and all these things. It's like, well, you know, what happens when you don't experience those things on in this life? You know, feelings are fickle things. And so God didn't promise to make us feel good all the time. He gave us something more substantive than that himself. The knowledge that that he is our savior, he is our God. And we are his child, regardless of how we feel, even when we're going through some of the toughest days of our lives, because God has bought us back from the darkness into the light. So regardless of what we go through, God's power and his presence is going to be with us. And that is good news. Christians today, people who have stood up on stage and have declared Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. They're still in the dark. They still are misinterpreting the message of Jesus, and they're still misunderstanding his words. And this gospel passage, we always hear from it, John three, 16, right? This is the one that is the most misunderstood. And it has caused so much damage and so much division in our nation and in our world. Jesus never spoke of hell. He was not saying that you were going to be damned after your life to live underneath the earth in a burning fire pit and forever live eternal damnation. OK, let's talk about Jesus, number one, Matthew 10, 28, and do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell. Jesus did speak about hell, and even if he didn't, we need to come at this from a Trinitarian understanding. Right? We don't just throw out the stuff in the Old Testament and Paul's writings simply because, you know, what Jesus didn't say. Well, number one, the Bible is inspired by God. So regardless of oh, Jesus said this or God, the Father said this. It's like, no, well, God said it, they're all parts of the Godhead. Now, Paul, he's not a part of the Godhead, but his writings and the other authors in the Bible, their writings were inspired by God. And so we understand, look, hey, Jesus may say some stuff and talk about different topics and the Old Testament may have, you know, touch on certain topics, but we're not going to come at it like we're only red letter Christians, only what Jesus says goes because he affirmed the Old Testament. He said, I have not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill the law. So we shouldn't throw out the Old Testament or any of the other parts of the Bible that Jesus isn't specifically talking because God is part because Jesus is part of the Trinity, the Godhead. And the Bible is inspired by God. So we should be taking everything in the Bible seriously. God is all love. God loves you. There's nothing you can do or not do today to make God love you more or less than God loves you in this moment. OK, I think there's an important clarification here for the Christian. I think this is true. I, you know, when we are sealed by Jesus through his death on the cross and his atonement, we have the imputed righteousness of Jesus. So it's not like one day Jesus, you know, God looks at us and he's like, oh, you know, you're not doing so hot today. I kind of hate you now. I'm not like it. It's like, no, because we have the imputed righteousness of Jesus. We are his child. God approves of us. He delights in us. But for the unbeliever, the Bible says that God hates the works of evil doers that those who shed innocent blood, God, God hates them, right? And so it's not like this God, just this lovey, lovey-dovey guy who just really doesn't even care about those who who do evil things. It's like, no, God really does take it seriously. He doesn't just hate the sin. He hates the sinner sometimes. And so how does that all work itself out? I'm not smart enough to really come up with that. You know, there's some sense that God loves people, especially shown through his common grace that people experience good things, even though they don't deserve them. And yet those who do evil, God, you know, but verses that say God hates those people that commit evil, right? And do evil things and shed innocent blood. And so we need to come to terms with that as well. So this blanket statement that says God loves you, regardless of what you do, unconditionally, all like, you know, even if you murder somebody, even God doesn't care. So that's not a biblical statement. But to clarify for the believer, it's not like, you know, God is judging you on a day to day basis that he's saying, you didn't do so hot yesterday. I'm kind of angry with you. I'm going to smite you. It's like, no, no, no, because of Jesus, because of his grace. We are forgiven, past, present and future. And now we can approach the throne room of grace with confidence and confess our sins to him, not because, oh, man, we're, you know, we're falling off the leaderboard of good things. It's like, no, because we love God so much and he saved us. So he, you know, we want to be honest and really reconcile ourselves back to God and have nothing between us, no wall of sin or shame between us. Even life after death. But I don't think it's got a thing to do with reward and punishment. Religion is always in the control business. And that's something people don't really understand. It's in a guilt producing control business. And if you have heaven as a place of reward, where you're rewarded for your goodness and hell is a place where you're punished for your evil, then you sort of have control of the population. OK, interesting. There have been a lot of religious leaders that have utilized, you know, religious organizations and structures in order to gain power. And people have misused that and inserted all sorts of laws into to just like the people that are following this, this religion or this belief system and extra biblical things. You've got to do this. You've got to do this. You've got to do this. Well, the thing about Christianity is it's not this kind of traditional religion, as we may think about it, usually religions are this idea of how man can work their way to God. Well, Christianity kind of puts forward this something different, something very different. And I kind of alluded to it earlier. So the idea that you can't do anything to gain your way to God, that we need to be in humble submission to him or a pen to put our faith in Jesus, because on our own, we're not good, that we're not enough. Jesus is inviting us today to have a relationship with him. That is something that is so freeing and wonderful and exciting. And it's not based on our own merit, but rather his grace. That is totally the opposite of what so many religious systems teach. It's not about declaring Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and savior. Christianity is not about the divine becoming human. Christianity is about the human becoming divine. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That would be a no for me. No, and there's something so beautiful about that, that creation, creator distinction, God is transcendent. He is above us and yet he is imminent. And he showed that in Jesus coming to this earth, right? He is with us and he shows that in dwelling us with the Holy Spirit. So he's transcendent. He's above us. He's holier than us. He's he's greater than us and yet he is with us. And that is so much grace, so much love, something we do not deserve. Friends, I hope you got something from this video. If you enjoyed it, I hope you subscribe and give a like down below. If you want to help me continue to make these videos, I'd ask you to help support what I'm doing on Patreon, link in bio to help support. You can follow me on other social media platforms at its Isaac David. And I'd love to see you over there. Thank you again for watching, guys, and I will see you guys next time. God bless.