Salvation From Christ Alone // SO8E03
“I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Jesus could not have said it clearer. There is one way to Heaven, and one way only. Only by His wonderful grace do we receive the free gift of salvation. In todays episode we dive into a discussion of several false teachings that have infiltrated the church, telling people that salvation comes through something other than only Christ. However, while it is important to be aware of these heresies, it is even more important to fill ourselves with the Word, so that if or when we encounter these doctrines, we can respond with Biblical truth.
Verses from The Only Way to Heaven:
John 14:6, 1 John 4:12-13, Ephesians 5:11, Colossians 2:8, Jude 1:18-19, Romans 1:22-23, 2 Timothy 4:3-4, Philippians 1:6,
Jude 1:24-25
Quotes from The Only Way to Heaven:
“God is love. Not love is God. And you know, imma quote myself here because what I thought of when I, when I heard this… ‘changing the sentence structure isn’t esoteric interpretation that allows the founder of the metaphysical, mind science, Eastern and new age teachers and sex to argue that God is an impersonal principle rather than a personal being.'”
Shea Watson, The Pantry Podcast, The Only Way to Heaven
“The more you learn the word of God, the more you’ll be able to tell those very little differences between what is truthful and what grieves God.”
Michelle Watson, The Pantry Podcast, The Only Way to Heaven
Annotated transcript:
Shea: You’re listening to the pantry podcast, part of the spark podcast network. Now playing on the Edify app. Hey, I’m Shea
Michelle: I’m Michelle, and this is the pantry podcast. Season eight road to Revelation.
Shea: We’re here to help you crave a healthier spiritual diet by teaching you to ask the right questions, seek the right answers in the right place. God’s word and break free. The junk food. The world wants to shove down your throat.
Michelle: We live in a broken world. We can fall down in despair or rise up for our wedding day. This season, we’re looking at what it really means to be the bride of Christ in the end times. And the many things we can learn from the book of Revelation that will guide us today, tomorrow, and to the end of time.
Shea: Join us and fellow listeners in 47 states and 66 countries. As we marinate on the word of God, clear the junk from our pantries and feast on real everlasting food.
Michelle: Support the show by sharing this episode with two friends that need a godly snack and becoming a partner at patreon.com/the pantry Podcast for as low as $5 a month.
Shea: And now let’s dig into the meal.
Shea: Whoo. Let’s light this fire. What’s up! Coming out with that TikTok stuff. Anyways. Hey, what’s up pantry fam, man it is good to be here. Hey, we got a new listener.
Michelle: Yes, we do.
Shea: A new country.
Michelle: Yes, country. 67
Shea: Lebanon. Y’all. That is awesome. So, Hey Lebanon, if you’re listening. What’s up!
Michelle: Our pastor is, well, his family is Lebanese, so that’s really cool. When I saw that, I was like, that’s cool.
Shea: So what are you gonna talk about tonight?
Michelle: Tonight we’re talking about the only way to heaven. And happy new year’s Eve to anyone listening on new year’s Eve. Happy new year to everyone listening at the beginning of 2022, I wrote tons of notes for this episode. So Shea is like, “so you’re gonna kind of roll with some thoughts” and I knew he’d have thoughts. He better.
Shea: I just feel God about one o’clock in the morning. He said, Hey, I got some thoughts. Why does he always… seriously? Always y’all, one to three a.m….. It always hits me. It’s like, I don’t know if it’s subconscious and all that, but I’ll say the verse comes in. It’s like, and you know, if y’all didn’t know, I have like memory stuff. So if I don’t get up and just put that thing down. So I sat there for a few minutes, spent some time with the Lord and then roll.
Michelle: Yup. Yup. So I’m excited to see everything that’s going to come out, but yeah. So the only way to have it now, of course, we’re going to share what the only way is. But then the other point of this episode is to help just reinforce the importance of discernment and also some ways to improve your discernment. Both like biblically based. Well, it’s all Biblically based, but also some very culturally relevant to today’s standards kind of stuff, derived from the word. And also from some of the things you need to watch out for themselves. So, yeah.
Shea: Hey, so of course I like to come in with a verse. That’s just how I am, but so we’re talking about the only way to heaven, right? So of course John 14:6 says, Jesus said to him, I’m the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the father except through me. Then you jump over to the first John 5:13. It says, these things have written to you who believe in the name of the son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life and that you may continue to believe in the name of the son of God. And if you jump back to 12, I liked jumping back to 12, right? He who has the son, has life. He who does not have the son of God does not have life. So I’m thinking about this and I’m like, wow, you know, that’s, it’s just very black and white. Either you got the son or you don’t have the son. And then we started thinking about this episode, I’m like, huh, let’s see. So what does Colossians 2:8 says, it says, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ. And if you take that back to the Ephesians 5:11. Y’all, take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. You know, I was thinking about Lot, and why he experienced all of the trouble that he experienced. Wow see Lot was under the covering of Abraham’s blessing, which is kind of cool. And then anybody always was attracted to like what the world had to say. Right? He was always attracted to the being in the clique and the now. And so it got him in trouble. A couple of times, one time was when Abraham, Abraham had to go save him. Of course he gets taken away, his wife and everybody. So Abraham goes and saves him. Of course, we’re not going to get into this Melchizedek, we’ll leave that alone for right now. But then again, you know, when it was Sodom and Gomorrah, you just see this pattern that he keeps falling into these worldly ideologies and it takes God to get them out of it. See, we as believers have the opportunity to not fall into those same patterns that we see continually through the Bible. We see, I mean, I could name, come on, look how many people in the whole Bible and I could, I could sit there and probably pick most of them out of there and show you a portion where they were like, I’m going to go after the world right now. But you know, the cool thing is you have Jesus or you don’t have Jesus, but if you have Jesus, why are we still corrupting our minds and taking our minds into areas where we really shouldn’t be
Michelle: In the End times, which is the whole point of this season. it’s like, there’s going to be a lot more noise. There’s going to, everything’s increasing. There’s nothing new under the sun, but, one of the quotes, cause there’s a few quotes that I have and also tons of Bible verses. But CS Lewis’ Screwtape letters in there. There’s a brilliant quote, says: “old error in new dress is ever error nonetheless.” And so even though there’s nothing new under the sun, it doesn’t mean that we, even though we have the Holy spirit, which offers us discernment, that doesn’t mean that we are absolutely immune. So there’s things that we all would look at and say, especially when we read the word of God, we’d say I would never fall for that. How come they fell for it? And yet that’s the old dress and things have been updated to trip us up. And especially as believers, you might not fall for things as blatantly obvious as another religion, right? Because it’s labeled clear as day as another religion. But what about the things that borrow the Bible? And one of the most fascinating things that I came up with in my research for this episode was that the vast majority of cults worldwide use the Bible as their starting point.
Shea: I think it’s, I think it’s important too, to just point something out here. When we look at Matthew 24, it tells us these things. When you look at these end time prophecies, it tells you these things. It says that many will be deceived, there’ll be false prophets. And so just as we’re going into this, God has already said, this he’s warned us all. We’re doing repeating what he’s already said,
Michelle: Right? And I think you might say, oh, well, you know the false prophets there, they’re the ones out there that are just so blatantly obvious, but there’s a lot of things that are coming out and being derived straight out of our word. And in Romans 1:22-23, it says professing themselves to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds and four footed beasts and creeping things. This is not just talking about pagan religions. This is also talking about any time the doctrine turns God into an inconsistent, contradictory human like God, that is a huge component. Because if you look at all the other systems of gods, they are like us, because we made them humanity made them up. So they’re flawed like us, they’re double crossing like us. They’re wicked like us. They just have super powers and we have to grovel at their feet and try really hard to impress them. They’re just like us. God is different. God only has favorable qualities and he never contradicts himself. He’s always very clear if there’s ever a time in a verse that you see that he’s saying something or doing something that seems contradictory. If you believe the entire Bible, it’s your job to reconcile things that look outright like contradictions. It’s your job to see how those two can kind of engage with one another. And when you have a God, like they say in Romans 1, that people are turning into a corruptible man, a corruptible god, that means that what he says about grace. No, that’s not true anymore. You gotta go back to works. That’s that’s many different examples that we can spend all day on, but I’m going to jump into Jude.
This is cool. Jude is the book right before Revelation. And in a little bit, I’m going to tell you what the last two verses of Jude are because they’re also very applicable. But right now we’re going to do 18 and 19. They told you that in the last times there would be scoffers, whose purpose in life is to satisfy their ungodly desires. And I’m going to stop there for a second ungodly desires. Isn’t just lust. It. Isn’t just dishonesty. It’s also our ungodly desire to feel better than other people by building up works for ourself. And then judging someone else’s works and saying, you’re not good enough. It’s a lot of this stuff that tends to make us want instant justice right now in the way we define it, that then disqualifies more and more people from the gospel and starts isolating and cutting it around. Now, we’re going to continue. These people are the ones who are creating divisions among you. They follow their natural instincts because they do not have God’s spirit in them is there’s one type of acceptable divisiveness, righteousness from unrighteousness.
Shea: You know, I was, I was thinking about a post as you’re saying this, because it really kind of like shows the difference between correct and incorrect. Now you can sit here and fight all day long. You can sit there and say, well, you know, grammatically, and that stuff, but it’s like the post was actually said, God is love. Not love is God. And you know, imma quote myself here because what I thought of when I, when I heard this, it’s like, but you know, changing the sentence structure isn’t esoteric interpretation that allows the founder of the metaphysical, mind science, Eastern and new age teachers and sex to argue that God is an impersonal principle rather than a personal being. See, just by flipping those two things. It’s like, but that’s the little changes it’s like, oh no love is God. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. God is love. And no matter how you look at that, you can sit there. And well, you’re just being, you being picky towards, you know, wherever there, cause in this post, there were people saying, well, you know, but even in the Greek though, you can’t, you don’t flip those around. It doesn’t work sentence structure wise. But it really does bring in that thing where it becomes impersonal principle rather than a personal being. And we need to always be sure that we’re on the definition of God, you know where God is defining himself.
Michelle: I love that you said that. When there’s something that is not, I would say critical to the gospel, even prophetic interpretations to some degree, like there’s a lot of stuff that does not denote if you’re saved or unsaved, it just means you’re still trying to work this out and figure it out. So what is the root, key takeaway? We’re going to go ahead and we’re going to go ahead and give it to you right now. Well, this I’m going to tell you through an analogy. There’s a documentary about counterfeit money and with the counterfeit money, there’s a two week course that bank tellers can take. And it’s all about how to figure out what money is real and what money is fake so that you aren’t, you know, messing with the accounting books when you’re accepting deposits. What do you think they did for two straight weeks in order to figure out what is counterfeit and what is real? Option A, they had tons of money brought in from all of these closed cases about counterfeit money. And they all had to like study and look at them. They looked at PowerPoint slides. They looked at all the things that are wrong, whatever. Or option B, they played with real money for two weeks.
Shea: Uh, B
Michelle: Yes, B! Right. I think a lot of people have this conception that like, I’m going to go minister on the street. I need to be familiar with the main things that people believe. Well, let me tell you, you can predict main things people believe. But when you get on the street. It’s going to be different for every single person, because it’s very hard, even in the Christian world to find people that agree completely. And so let alone out in the world where they’re making it up off their favorite song, lyric and their favorite, this and that.
Shea: The guys that I evangelize to that, oh my gosh. It’s like, well, I take a little bit of Buddha and a little bit of Christianity, a little bit Shinto or zoo. And I’m like, whew. And yeah, but see, there’s one thing I walk into these conversations with. I know truth. I don’t have to know everything on everything. I have the holy spirit,.
Michelle: Right. The holy spirit will help you in those moments because what does the holy spirit do, When you don’t know what to say? He knows what to say, right? A lot of times you might know what to say. You got in there, you’re saying something different, but it’s, it’s true or than true and better than what you had. And so that’s the key. That’s the takeaway. Dive into the word a ton. Get in there, read it. Even if you’re like, I don’t know how to read. Just pick a place, pick Jude. It’s one chapter, pick Jude, spend a week in Jude. You can read Jude a lot in a week. You can focus verse by verse. You can focus clump by clump. You can read commentaries about it, but for just a week camp out in one spot, there is so much that you can glean in that one spot alone. But the key is to be familiar and handle the word of God more than all of the other vain philosophies out there. Because these bank tellers at the end of the week, after handling money, just in their hands for two weeks, at the end of it, they have a test where they touch other things and instantly they can tell what’s real money and what’s not. And that’s what all of this is about. You don’t have to freak out that you’re going to be deceived. Just the more you learn the word of God, the more you’ll be able to tell those very little differences between what is truthful and what grieves God.
So we are going to cover, I’m going to say, five bullet points. I could get into these so much deeper because guess what? I’m one of those people who digs into them. That’s why I’m telling you. You don’t have to, because all my knowledge, I’ll tell you this on the street, all my knowledge about these things rarely comes into play. You know, what comes into play more knowing the word of God, because what I see more often on the street is people misinterpreting. It doesn’t matter what they believe. They come into the conversation with Bible verses that they’ve heard that they’ve had misused on them, that they have misinterpreted themselves. And so that ends up being where the conversation sits in the text, I believe. But here are the, I would say the five things that come to mind as like the different groups that most of what you’re going to hear is going to stem from. So the first one: deconstruction, and I’m going to add my own thing in, unto destruction. Now with deconstruction, it’s trending wow it’s happening a lot. You may or may not have any idea what I’m talking about, but deconstruction is pretty much when you start to question everything about what you believe and you start to dissect it all. And one of two things can happen. You can start really looking at the church and saying, okay, what in church culture actually doesn’t align with the Bible that can give you a more fruitful relationship with Christ. The other way is deconstruction unto destruction, where you just unravel everything. And there’s nothing left because you went down rabbit holes, and now you don’t know what to believe in. Nothing is true. And what is truth? And you just fall apart.
Shea: I think we all in some way or another do it. it’s just a matter of like, okay, the sermon again, you know, you said at the beginning, discernment. recognize that hole, right? Like if you start questioning certain founding doctrine, like solid stuff. Not pre-trib, post-trib, mid-trib imagery, all the other stuff. Okay, whatever. But I’m saying like, you start getting into like salvation, no salvation? Get back in the word of God and start listening to all of them, them commentaries.
Michelle: I have seen so many rabbit holes that, that end with like Jesus Christ is an antichrist actually. Or, you know, Paul is actually like the very first Wolf in sheep’s clothing. He was allowed in the Bible on purpose to throw us all off and like all these crazy things. Where, what can you say to these people? Cling to the Lord, your God for dear life, because he will see you through. Come ready to listen and ask questions and really think about the questions that they’re bringing. Don’t just be ready to fire off answers
Shea: And I think two sides to that deconstruction or destruction or deconstruction… deconstruction unto destruction is, if you see it being really religious, like you start seeing this drift into religion, we have to start checking off these caution. Or if you go the other direction where it’s just like super smooth, then you gotta be careful. Like Charles Spurgeon. Actually. I mean, now this one sits on the harder side, but he says, “who think you, are the more honest men, those who tell you plainly what the scripture say concerning this wrath of God or those who smooth it over or deny it altogether.” And I mean like you might sit there right now and say, that’s a hard statement, grace, but there’s a wrath of God it’s coming against man. I didn’t say against believers. I said against man. And we have to, we have to sit in that truth and we have to understand that truth. And we have to really dig in and study it.
Michelle: And that leads perfectly into the next one, which is: progressivism unto depravity. Now I will throw. I always throw people bones, because I really don’t like to be here or there, except when it comes to the Lord, I would say a lot of people on the progressive side they’ve seen or felt genuine hurt in people that a lot of people tend to brush over and use platitudes, whether they’re biblical or not to kind of brush it over, like, just get over it. Like, yes, technically you can distill it down to just get over it, except there’s a lot in what it takes to get over. It. There’s a lot of relationship with Christ, whereas he helps you get over it. Right. But just saying that doesn’t display the love of God to most people, unless that’s exactly what they need to hear. You know what I mean? But progressivism that leads people down a path where everything the Bible says that is wrong, is now put into question. Did he really say it’s wrong? Is it really still wrong? Uh, what about the mixed clothing? What about the mixed seeds in the field? Those are situations where context and a familiarity with the entirety of scripture is lacking because it’s very clear, when you read the old and the new, why some things from the old carry and why some things stay behind. And he’s very clear. He doesn’t leave that up to interpretation when you are studying the complete word. And so again, this is something where sin becomes celebrated and sin becomes something that you are required to accept and celebrate in a person in order for love to be present. And that is a false doctrine that is glorifying what God says is not glorious at all
Shea: Right. Now I sit on two sides of this case. It’s like, when you look up the definition in a religious or a political environment for progressivism, it leans over towards liberalism. But I’m gonna also say this, Christian nationalism. I mean, legit Christian nationalism, or patriotism. However you want to define that where your country oversteps God. Then that’s wrong too. Yeah. I mean, I’m not just throwing it out. That was one that’s not in there, but I’m like, everyone talks about progressive. We got to talk about the other side because we need to. I’m a black and white guy and there isn’t either side to me, it just has, it has their own sets of things that I’m like, well, that’s not necessarily godly. So yeah.
Michelle: What, I’m glad you said that because I would actually define traditionalism when it’s traditions of men. I would file that under progressivism. Anyone can be guilty of that. I don’t want you to instantly think of the left, the liberals. I want you to think of any time, the word must be improved upon to accommodate people’s preferences today because that’s the idea like, oh, we must progress right now. There’s progress in the sense of sanctification is progress. Right. But then there’s worldly progress where it’s like, well, I think this is good. And so I’m going to impose it into the word of God,
Shea: But let’s define that those sanctification has its elements of, you know, growing in it, there’s also, you know, cause the different positions, you know, positional versus experiential and so forth and so on. But yeah, no I’m glad we’re defining these things right. Because I think it’s important that we’re not coming against necessarily people who want change. Right. Because I mean I just watched, or listened to the rise and fall of Marcio. And let me tell y’all something, the church, horrible leadership. And, and I’ll say that. Yeah. But then also I would say also that the narrative of the story has its own issues as well. And so it’s kind of like, sometimes we don’t know how to sit in this middle and say, okay, well, yeah, it’s wrong, but Hey, but this is still like, but this ideology, those skewed, though really messed up, though really abused in a lot of instances. It’s like, hold on a second. There’s things that we’re right in the theology. But it was implemented horribly, you know, it’s kind of like, and so to beat that up, you know, and, and, and there was some somebody I’m just saying, we have to make sure that, that we, oh boy, it’s like, it’s like, I think people ask me all the time. It’s like, well, are you a Republican or a Democrat? She knows me. I’m like the most unpolitical tooth there is because it makes
Michelle: Which makes you very political actually. Cause you trigger everybody.
Shea: I do trigger everybody. But you know, and we’ve said it in last episode. So I’m not gonna sit here to repeat it again, 1 Samuel 8, but just read it because you know, really what we’re looking at is trying, especially progressivism. And then we’ll move on, because we don’t wanna keep you here like nine hours talking about this stuff. But in progressivism, you know, it’s trying to get through the oppressed system and God has already promised us, 1 Samuel 8 that we, if we chase Kings then we will be oppressed.
Michelle: You’re like, I’m not going to bring it up, but I’m going to tell you exactly what it says,
Shea: Read it, talk to me.
Michelle: That Is Shea’s spot. Like he’s going to talk about it and I have no problem with it. So then, the next one is one that might flip people out for a second because I’m using a word that like is so hot right now. Judaizing. You might also hear it as Torah observant Christianity. And at first it sounds like, well, they’re really hardcore, but really what it is at the root is the oldest heresy in Christianity, which is that to be a good Christian, you must adopt everything that the Jewish did. And that is addressed repeatedly. That let you know, that is countered. That is like clarified not to be the case over and over in the epistles, in Acts and in Romans. Now does that mean that we’re throwing out the commandments, the 10 commandments? No. That’s another thing that starts to get people really worked up. Does that mean that if you celebrate a holiday that the Israelites celebrated that you’re doing it wrong? Not necessarily, right? But if you feel obligated to maintain a Jewish cultural lifestyle and maintain the laws within the Old Testament, the mosaic laws at large, you’re going to find a lot of times, it’s an inconsistent following that certain things are magnified and others are not never even mentioned, which goes against what law following actually was. It’s not that you cannot glean from what God told them, but he makes it very clear that Christianity is different. That those things, circumcision, not required following all of those laws, not required. He goes into the holidays and which days people hold in esteem, he goes, I mean, I don’t have to go much further, but it’s the oldest heresy. It’s the first one we hear what the apostles are bringing forth is being countered by fresh converts from Judaism, demanding of the Gentile new believers that they start doing things the way the Jews did.
Shea: Well, I’m going to break it down. I’m going to give you some words because the apostle Paul actually addresses Peter on this issue in Galatians 2:14 where it says, but when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, if you, the way Jew live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like a Jew? And that’s, I mean, come on. This has been addressed since biblical time. It’s like, hold up, hold up. Okay. Look, I’m not saying, okay. I know that I have Christian friends celebrate Hanukkah. Right. Look, do it. But that becomes a check mark to salvation. Well, thats wrong.
Michelle: Yeah. That’s a huge thing. Like, okay, if you don’t want to eat pork or shellfish, go for it. They’re honestly not the healthiest things for you, but it’s not something that is salvation. So when it comes to holidays, when it comes to food, when it comes to, you know, watching this or watching that we can get really divisive really quick. If we start pointing to all these things and saying, you’re not a real quick Christian, if you do that.
Shea: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. As Christians, to be truly right with God… To be truly right with God. We do not have to follow the mosaic law. And here’s the study material Acts 15 addresses. All right.
Michelle: That’s perfect. So we’ve gone through three. That might be like, whoa, that’s, that’s a lot. That’s enough. So I’m going to give you the two easy ones. And what’s funny about the two easy ones that we all, when you just hear the title of them, you’re like, duh. They are equally insidious in the church. Okay. So the next one new age mysticism. We’re actually going to have an episode on this, this season because of just how convoluted it has gotten and how many people are just known to vigorously defend new age mysticism in the church because they don’t see it as mysticism. And it still helps them. So when it comes down to things of the occult, when it comes to witchcraft, when it comes to astrology, when it comes to tarot cards, when it comes to all of these things, we need to just have a line in the sand. They are harmful. They are incredibly dangerous. They are gateways to many things and they will confuse because they are literally of the devil they’re the first, like one of the very first ways he offered people to pull away from God, by offering knowledge, occult knowledge that God did not directly give Adam and Eve. And so we need to be discerning in this area
Shea: Colossians 2:8, like I read at the beginning, right? Philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition.
Michelle: I will say one thing that I found very interesting. There’s a guy, Franz, Anton Mesmer. He’s actually where the word mesmerize comes from because he is, I’ll leave a plot twist for the end. He was the father of psychotherapy. Now as a psych major, you have to be very discerning because, oh, it’s science, except a lot of esoteric, occult things are intertwined with psychology. And so you need to be discerning and not just say, oh, it’s a science. It’s all good. But he’s the father of psychotherapy. He discovered hypnosis. He promoted telepathy and communicating with the dead. Now, straight out of the word of God, we’re not supposed to commune with the dead. Guess what else? He was a founder of? Christian science. But I will say this, Christian science we don’t mean the fact that Christians were some of the very first people to do the scientific method. We are talking about beliefs, a belief trajectory called the Christian science. You might’ve heard the Christian science reading room, et cetera, et cetera. He’s one of the founders. And you’re like, oh, Christian science has the word, Christian. Cool. No. Hypnosis, telepathy, communicating with the dead, red flags. Y’all there’s things that we have to just be discerning about, which leads us perfect segway into the final bullet point, which is group reliant cults. Now, why didn’t I just say cults? Because I wanted to give you a new phrase. You haven’t heard that helps you remember one of the main things about cults that just gives them away as cults. They’re group reliant, which means that if you are in that group, you are saved. You are good to go, or you might be saved, but you’re definitely not saved if you’re out of the group. So that means that there are certain groups. And we go back to the beginning, we were talking about the Bible being rooted in the Bible. All these cults that, that get their inspiration from the Bible. They say they read the Bible, but then they add to it, all that stuff. These groups, one of the clearest ways to tell is they consider themselves a denomination, maybe of Christianity, or maybe they say, they’re the only true Christianity. If you’re outside of them, regardless of if they’re Christian or they call themselves something else, like if you’re outside of them, you’re done. Which makes it group reliance salvation. They’re not just saying Christ is the, is the way, the only way to heaven is Christ through them, which makes them as required. As Christ says in 2 Timothy 4:3-4, says for a time is coming. When people will no longer listen to sound doctrine and wholesome teaching, they will follow their own sires and we’ll look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear. They will reject the truth and chase after myths. When we think of myths, I think some of us think of Hercules and you know, maybe the Norse gods, things like that. Myths can also be people who claim that they have had extra biblical revelation that you must read to be saved. So if they say it’s the Bible, plus this lady’s revelation in a book, or this man’s extra book, or if this is the only guy, thanks to some angels that showed up that understands the word. And only the people he has talked to and taught intimately can help you understand the word. You can’t understand it without our help. That is not what the Bible itself teaches.
Shea: That’s kind of amazing that most of our doctrines, that drift, they had a special visitor that brought them the information. And I find that hard to believe
Michelle: I don’t, but I would say… its a demon
Shea: No, no. When I say hard to believe that you hear in truth, from that demon, I guess I should define that, that you hear in truth from that demon, because I agree with you. I believe that everybody that comes in there and most of those and you said them in a way that you guys go study it, just listen to the wording. You’ll get to every thing that we’re talking about here. We don’t have to call them out. We don’t have to say nothing, but the idea behind this is that we have to be cautious. Cause we could fall in as Christians. We could fall into cultish, by your definition group reliant cults. Because we find a bunch of people who think the way we think, and we joined together like, oh, this whole arms locked arms together and it’s not biblical. And it’s sometimes even as the biblical ones, they get into those group reliant cults. Cause you said it, no other doctrines good except ours. Well, that’s false too. and so I think that’s where all the divisions amongst, uh, this is how the cults started. That’s how the division started. And that’s how the church is so broken right now. And I’m going to say that I don’t care. What’d you say? I’m not saying my church is broken. I say we had some things that, you know, aren’t perfect, but I’m just saying there’s a lot of breaking in the church. I’m talking the global and it’s, and it’s just amazing when you start breaking them down like this and hearing what creates these ideologies and these thoughts. It’s like, I heard, I heard, I heard, I heard a voice or an angel came to me or, or they spoke to me and said, this is the only way. And it’s like, no, really the only way is Jesus a true life and the way, you know, it’s like, okay, well, and so you have to be very careful. That’s all we’re when we’re talking about these things, that’s what we want you to do. We’re trying to broaden people’s thoughts. For discernment. I like to say it this way, if you don’t quite understand discernment, then critical thinking, really put it to the test, take a step back. I’ve really been in that season right now of taking this step back and it’s really opened my eyes up to a lot of the confusion that’s going on at which creates this kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, I could easily jumped on Mars hill if I had a one minded thought, like what a jerk, because I love your brother and I, and I’m praying for you, but I’m just saying really it’s if I sit there in that one thought, okay, anger or, or “he wronged people” and I don’t listen to everything else around it. Then I’m narrowing my focus and it might, and I might miss something. That’s important. That would say a lot more to me than just that one point.
Michelle: Right. And I’ve actually been in an elevator with someone who was like, well, isn’t Christianity, just another cult? Like how can Christian sit and call other people cults? And I get it to a degree, cause from the outside looking in, or even if you are on the inside, but you haven’t really sat and thought about why you personally are a part of this, right? The body of Christ. You can quickly kind of fall down any of these paths because a lot of them only exist because they have a degree of reasonableness, right? When the discernment isn’t completely open, you know? And I think that some of the other things that come cause, I mean, group reliant, cult means that specific cult with all that it entails is the only way. Whereas God has said that the only way to heaven is Jesus Christ. And that means that you might be in a church that disagrees about what I’ll say is a secondary issue. And the big thing is if you decide to leave this church and go to another one, you might leave on good or bad terms. It might be very practical to go. It might be not the wisest decision, but well, they be more concerned about your relationship with Christ. When you go or more concerned that you’ve left this building and the teachings of this building and thus you are in utter danger. That’s very telling. Now some of the other things that are not healthy and this might happen in an individual’s local church body. It might happen when you’re talking to someone on the street and you learn kind of what they believe or you’re reading something online. It’s very easy to Google Christian questions online and end up on a cult website. That’s discrediting people that are actually very Bible based, but they’re discrediting them because they actually don’t agree with the Bible, the person writing the blog. So some of the other things is they’re always seeking new mystical, spiritual experiences, right? They’re always pursuing, adding other ways to like access this thing. And they’re very reliant on it. They will deny essential teachings. Now listen, what I said, essential teachings of God’s word, the things that save you, they’re going to deny some of those things. The who, the who God is, they’re going to deny or discredit some of those things. Demands strict control over anyone’s life, adds new voices, discredits voices in the biblical Canon, redefining terms. And also have linguistic barriers. Like, oh, if you can’t speak Hebrew and Greek, you don’t really know what’s being said. Or if you don’t read this version of the Bible, you’re completely wrong. You’re you’re you might as well be going to hell till you read this version of the Bible. Putting people’s salvation into being part of a very specific group or doing highly specific things aside from just accepting Christ and then also welcoming Christianity as a part of a puzzle rather than the whole pie. So there’s some places that they’re like, you know, there’s something, something church, but then they, you go in and they pretty much have pulled in from everywhere. It’s totally cool. Not just to come in with different beliefs and you’re welcome, but they’re not going to affirm those beliefs. No, they’ll accept literally anything anybody believes in that space, Jesus is just one way while he says himself, he’s the only way. If anyone says there’s more than one way, then that’s not wisdom. That’s not biblical. So here is the really cool, cool part. I’m going to start in Philippians 1:6, and I am certain that God who began the good work within you will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns, we don’t have to fret about getting it a hundred percent, right this minute, we just have to be willing to let him correct us through his word. And then the last two verses of Jude. And then right after that is the book of Revelation. This is how Jude ends, it’s so perfect. Now all glory to God who is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into his glorious presence without a single fault, all glory to him who alone is God, our savior through Jesus Christ, our Lord, all glory, majesty power and authority are his before all time and in the present and beyond all time. Amen. That is where the unity comes from. That is why there’s no four walls that hold in all of the opportunity for salvation. It’s the word of God. It is Christ. He is the only way. So even if a lot of this, you were like, that was way too much. I feel you. Listen again, You know, read the show notes. It’s all right there. But that’s what we want you to glean. We wanna kinda exhibit there’s so much, we didn’t even cover. And yet we covered so much, but the key is the only way is Jesus. So cling to him, not get lost in the confusion.
Shea: So beloved don’t believe every spirit, let’s just say it right. But test all the spirits, Lot did not test the spirits he did not. And he found himself in the positions. So, you know, on the believers side, when we start to speak these things to others, the non-believer side, we can walk them into a position where they don’t know who Christ is. So we gotta be careful on both because I mean, at the end of the day, our walk with Christ is what gets us through our days. And there’ll be Lot. I was Lot for a long time and chasing down everything. And let me tell you something. God carried me through. God carried me through, but there’s consequences to that carry. He was there always, but it was my, it was my doing, not his doing, that created the consequences and that and Lot is a beautiful example to that. Even after they save him from the city, he still doesn’t want it still doesn’t wanna listen, it’s still, and then you get the Midianites and the Cannanites. But anyways, it’s like, let’s just not be Lot. Let’s not be Lot. Let’s test everything. Test every spirit, make sure that the path that we’re walking has got in it, those beautiful verses you ended with gives us the comfort that knows we’re going to screw up sometimes it’s just what it is. But you know what? It’s like the false money, right? If we sit there and we apply it and we get into it, he’s going to take us through it. Amen?
Michelle: Amen. Thank you for sticking around for this crazy detailed episode of the pantry podcast, you can go to the pantrypodcast.com to read the show notes because they’re definitely full of verses and details this time. And remember that if you go to the pantry podcast.com/100, you can get the links and info on how we’re going to be celebrating our 100th episode that comes up in January. So until next time.
Shea: Bye
Michelle: Bye.
Shea: Thanks for listening to the Pantry Podcast. Subscribe to the show, wherever you listen and check out other great shows on Edify app and Eternity Ready Radio.
