Idolatry and Idols Part 2: full transcript and answers

▶ 0:01 Well, what do you mean, to sacrifice to the devils? Well, it’s Old Testament stuff, basic. People know this that read their Bible. They sacrificed to devils, not to God, to gods whom they knew not. To knew God, they created their own religion. And when you create your own religion, you’re going the way of Satan. See, he loves for you to alter the one true God and the Bible that tells us how to get there. He’s just quoting Old Testament Scripture, Leviticus 17:7: “They shall no more offer their sacrifices unto” what? Devils. To idols, their own.

▶ 0:55 Religion isn’t that good. Hallelujah. Verse 21, still in 1 Corinthians chapter 10:21: “You can’t drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils, nor be partakers of the Lord’s table and of the table of devils.” They’re not compatible. “Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He?” Because you got some human understanding that an idol is nothing and the meat sacrificed to the idol is nothing, do you use that understanding to violate the direct commandments of God and provoke God to jealousy? Are you stronger than God? Have you become a God? And when we do our own religious ways, come up with our own way of serving God--

▶ 1:51 We are saying we are God. You don’t come out and say it, you just do it with your beliefs, from your human thinking. Do you get it? He approached the human thinking way of justifying doing something against Scripture, and then he comes in with the spiritual allegory, the spiritual illustration, very powerful. “All things are lawful for me.” Yeah, you can eat the food, yeah, you can do it because of your human understanding of it, “but all things are not profitable.” What’s the profit in you doing it? There’s no profit there at all. In fact, you keep doing it, it’s going to be unprofitable, because you’re going to start what? Taking on the nature, as we read earlier, of the religion that you’re embracing. You’re going to take on the nature. You’re going to have eyes that see not, ears that hear not, a mouth that can’t speak--

▶ 3:06 Anymore. Isn’t that right? “All things are lawful for me, but all things” what? “Edify not.” It doesn’t build up. How? What does me, my liberty going into a pagan temple, how does that build me up, and how does that build the church up, when I’m directly violating the Ten Commandments and other commandments? How does that edify the church? It just what? Doesn’t. Isn’t this argument good? And folks, that’s what we’re doing in America: we’re making our own religions, we’re coming up with our own way, and we just throw Jesus into it, and it’s not profitable and it’s not edifying. Can I hear an--

▶ 4:04 Amen. Conclusion of this approach, the spiritual approach, the spiritual illustration: do not partake of idols nor food sacrificed to idols. His conclusion was the same in both approaches. I like this guy, Paul. You can’t build a healthy church and violate God’s Word. You can’t build a healthy church, you’ve been using human understanding. You must have the mind of the Spirit. You cannot build a healthy church using your own opinions and your own beliefs. It must be Jesus, His truth, His words, and the apostles’ doctrine, who got their doctrine straight from Jesus.

▶ 5:03 So Calvin, Wesley, and all the rest down through, or Roberts, Billy Graham, have nothing to do with anything. I must build my Christianity on Jesus Christ, His words, His truths. Amen. Being a Baptist has nothing to do with anything. Being a Catholic has nothing to do with anything. Verse 25 of chapter 10, 1 Corinthians 10:25: now here’s the practical solution. And why is he bringing out the practical? Because Christians get weird. You know, we read in the Bible, uh, to be modest. Well, then we decide, well, I can’t wear short-sleeve shirts, I can’t wear shorts, I can’t wear jewelry, or, and the Bible says don’t, women, don’t decorate yourself with your hair, don’t fix your hair up, and, and, and outward adorning of makeup and jewelry and all this stuff. So we don’t wear jew-- it doesn’t say jewelry there, but then we don’t wear jewelry, and we look like death warmed over, and we want to get a handsome man.

▶ 6:19 And see, we go to extremes. You know, Pentecostalism, I grew up in Pentecost churches, and they had spirit writing, “Holy Ghost, come home,” and they’d write something and it made no sense, and all kinds of goony stuff. Today it’s a prophecy: “I got a prophecy, I got a word from God for you.” Well, why do I need to keep getting words of God from people when I have the Bible, which the Bible says is a more sure word of prophecy? I mean, what’s the problem here? Is it so you can--we--you can feed your ego by feeling like you know you’re in touch with God and I’m not? And I can go on and on. The Catholics and their holy water and their images, come on.

▶ 7:22 Church, we got to approach God His way, and so we can’t get extreme. And so he’s going to give a practical thing: don’t get weird in this stuff whatsoever. “Sold in the marketplace,” the meat market, “ask no questions for conscience’ sake.” Just buy the meat, because you already know it means nothing. You know, don’t be one of these weird Christians: “Is it got the stamp? Is it culture? Is it got the Christian approval on it?” Don’t get--don’t investigate, just buy the stuff and go eat it. Doesn’t that make sense? But oh no, us-than-thou people, us witch hunters, we got to--we got to dissect and [unclear] everything, we don’t want any, and we--we create a miserable life for ourselves. “Ask no questions for the conscience’ sake. If any believer bid you to a feast, and you go, whatsoever is set before you”--any unbeliever, now they’re going to an unbeliever’s house, they’re throwing a festival, and it’s probably around their idol, because that’s what they did--“just what is set before you, eat, asking no questions for conscience’ sake.”

▶ 8:39 “Whose conscience? If any say it’s offered in sacrifice to idols, don’t eat it, for whose conscience’ sake?” His, the one who told you. See, now the cat’s out of the bag, you know, to obey the Scriptures. So you go, you know, “I’ll--I’ll just eat the potatoes and beans today.” Why? Because you don’t want to offend the conscience of the other one, even the idolater who knows you shouldn’t be eating meat sacrificed to his god. That’s why he brought it up. Then you can say, “Well, I didn’t know. I--I won’t have any of that, thank you. Just give me the mashed potatoes and the gravy and the beans, and everything will be fine.” Are you there?

▶ 9:30 Is this good or what? Oh, this is--see, back in my day you couldn’t even have a deck of cards in your house. Back in my day, my teenage, you could not play billiards, pool. That was sin. Why? Because all the pool tables were in the bars or a pool hall where all the hoods and everybody hung out. So instead of saying the atmosphere was wrong, we--they just said playing pool, “that’s the devil’s game, man, that’s a sin.” And how many, you know, there’s nothing wrong with playing pool. How many, you know, I got a pool table in my garage. See, we got extreme, but now we’re going to the other thing: everything’s okay, now there is no restraints.

▶ 10:29 But isn’t this good? Isn’t this practical? You know, the Bible says in Ecclesiastes, “do not be extreme in anything.” Okay, and so we need to watch out with being extreme. We need to be practical. Now, the apostles, the elders, and the members of the church in Jerusalem unanimously made it clear--unanimously means they were not divided, which was the first topic that he talked about for four chapters, went to division--this church is in unity, and they make it very clear, Acts 15:29: “Abstain, abstain from meats offered to idols.” Is that clear? The apostles, the elders of the church, and the members, 100% unanimously voted yes, this is what we’re to follow.

▶ 11:30 And these people, with their human thinking, were violating what they had already come up with. Can I hear an amen? Are you there? Through their human thinking. And he says, “from blood and things strangled.” Now, why do you think they said, don’t partake of blood and don’t eat of meat strangled? Because it’s related to Christ’s blood sacrifice for us. The blood had to be shed. You know, you can drink blood and you won’t die from it. You know, blood is a food, and unless it has germs and bacteria and disease in it, you’re not going to catch anything. Okay, a lot of nations and cultures eat blood, blood of cows and so forth. They will cut the vein in the neck of a cow--

▶ 12:30 Let the blood come out, just shoots out, fill up their cup, then they put pressure on the wound, and in just a few seconds the blood stops flowing. They drink their blood. See, it’s a food, but we don’t do it because of what Christ shed His blood, and so we only eat of His blood in the communion table, and we only partake of the thing that was shedding blood, not strangled, because the shedding of blood was imperative for the forgiveness of sins in the Bible from the beginning. Are you with me? It had nothing to do with being bad. Yes, the shedding of blood in Genesis--

▶ 13:26 Three, God sacrificed the first animal. Okay. And “from fornication”: sexual immorality. What was the second topic? Sexual immorality. Just thought I’d pass that on. Now, what about the Catholic idols? Well, obviously, according to Paul, they’re wrong. According to the Scriptures, they’re wrong. Can I hear an amen? They’re using human knowledge to clear their conscience of having something and having people partake in something that they should not be doing. Now, whether you like it or not, and whether your family’s Catholic or not, I’m sorry, when you’re wrong, you’re just what? Wrong.

▶ 14:19 But using Paul’s wisdom, before you condemn them to hell, let’s take a little further look. Acts 21:20: Paul had come down to Jerusalem to, uh, sacrifice at the temple and preach the gospel down there in Jerusalem, and the apostles come to him and the leaders, and they say, “You see, Paul, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe.” See, there were thousands of Jews that came to the temple for the same feast of Israel, and this guy, these people, say, the leaders say, there are thousands of Jews which what? Believe. Are they believers? Are they believers? Yeah, it plainly says what they’re--

▶ 15:17 Believers, “but they are all zealous of the law.” They’re still offering animal sacrifices, they’re still burning incense, they’re still wearing certain clothes, they’re still doing the shadow laws that Christ fulfilled and have nothing to do now with anything in the shadow. We are now participators of the truth of those laws. Hello, church. I see, I had to work through this, because in the circles I was in, the Catholics were the [unclear] on the hill. In Revelation. They were the beast. You know, they were the church of, you know, man, man, you know, you’re a Catholic, boom, you’re dead, you’re gone, you’re, you’re hopeless.

▶ 16:14 And it took God opening my understanding to things, that people can actually be a believer in Christ and be doing things in an erroneous way and still be a believer, because they haven’t learned or come to the place yet where they can let go of the rituals and just embrace the truth. Now, folks, that is good stuff. So before you condemn them, you better start looking at yourself and at the Bible. Okay. Now, what about Protestant idols? Oh, Protestants don’t have idols. Oh, they don’t? You didn’t know Protestants had idols?

▶ 17:07 Well, they wouldn’t have an image. No Protestant church would have an image. I told you at the beginning that America wasn’t into images, they’re into things. They worship things that they should not worship. Well, show me a Protestant idol. Okay, glad you asked. First Colossians, that shouldn’t be First Colossians, I put that one in there to--never mind. Colossians 3:5: “Mortify, put to death, therefore, your members which are upon the earth”: sexual immorality, that’s one of the topics he talked about, “impurity, lust, evil desires.” That was the source of division. “I want it my way, I want it my way, and if you don’t go my way, I can’t go anywhere with you.” Division, and “greed, which is” what? “Idolatry.”

▶ 18:23 Oh, greed is idolatry. Ew. Kenyon, Oral Roberts, A. A. Allen, T. L. Osborn, Kenneth Hagin, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Robert Tilton, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar, Eddie Long, Joyce Meyer, Paula White are just the few in the Protestant--

▶ 19:03 Arena that promote prosperity is what God wants for everyone. The prosperity message is promoted by all of these big men, and who? It’s a Ponzi scheme. You give to Kenneth Copeland, God will bless you; you give the dollar, God will bless you. The Ponzi scheme is: the ones on the top get what? The money, they get the benefit, and the ones down here get nothing. And I watched this as a young Christian in the church world. I watched these ministers talk senior citizens into giving their whole Social Security check, and I knew these senior citizens, I knew they just barely survived and barely lived.

▶ 20:01 I even went up to them and I says, “You know, that old lady over there sitting beside me dropped in her whole paycheck, her whole Social Security. You know, you--aren’t you going to give that back?” “No way, man.” They had their Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow sitting out there, they had $500 suits. “Nothing is too good for the man of God.” I had to work through this stuff. See, you’re lucky, I’m telling you the truth. You don’t have to figure this stuff out. Greed is what? Idolatry. Now, does it mean because a person is rich that they’re greedy? No, the Bible doesn’t back up that at all. If a person goes to college, learns a good job skill, and they make good money of being a lawyer or doctor or whatever, that’s just the good old capitalistic system, and the system that the Bible--

▶ 21:04 Promotes. And the sad thing is, these ministers just keep finding new suckers to support them, because they promise some miracles and they promise them, you know, “God’s going to, it’s going to be amazing, people just come, come along and give you money that you wouldn’t even know about,” and it doesn’t happen. Are you there? Now, the Catholic church, I can’t find any of this taught in the Catholic church. It’s Protestant. Hallelujah. Okay, what about individual idols? Individual idols, not Protestant, not Catholic. Well, according to Paul, they’re wrong, although they use human knowledge to clear their conscience. Galatians 5:19: “The works of the flesh are evident.” They’re very clear, they’re very plain. Okay, the bottom line: the works of the flesh will not inherit what? The kingdom of God. So what are the works of the flesh? Well, “adultery, fornication,” what Paul--

▶ 22:15 Addressed in his seminar on church growth, “uncleanness, envy, lewdness, idolatry,” what Paul is addressing now. Idolatry is a what? Work of the flesh. So if idolatry is in there, then any work of the flesh is what? Idolatry. “Spiritual adultery, sorcery, witchcraft, hatred”: you don’t like a certain race, you don’t like women because they’re women, or men because they’re men, or rich because they’re rich. “Hatred, wrath, contention, selfish ambitions, and dissensions”: quarreling, selfish ambition--do you want it your way?--and division are all in the topic of division that Paul covered. Are you there? It’s a work of what? The flesh. In fact, that’s what Paul said, it’s a work of the flesh. You’re carnal, you’re babies when you do this. “Jealousies, heresies, murders, drunkenness”--

▶ 23:19 Intoxication. A big thing now is Christians getting drunk. We can get tattoos, no problem, our body is a, uh, what do they call the artist [unclear]? Yeah, and so I’m putting “Jesus saves” on my arm, hallelujah. Man, when the Bible prohibits it. And every what the public puts pressure on us to do, in every generation the church warms up to it in America and accepts it, and everybody’s okay, when it’s really idolatry. “Partying, and those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” So what about you? You go, “Well, these preachers are horrible, doing that, that’s just wrong.” Okay, are you getting--

▶ 24:14 Intoxicated? Do you hate someone? Look down on them? Are you jealous of someone? Are you committing adultery? Premarital sex that Oprah says is okay? Okay. See, are you in the witchcraft? Do you read the horoscope every day? See, you see, that’s an idol, and you’re wrong. Before we start straightening everybody else out, we need to what? Straighten ourselves out. Now, let’s get down to this statement of my faith. Say the words, “my faith.” My faith, say it with substance, my faith. This is what Santorum--

▶ 25:07 [Unclear], Romney all say, and Ron, all say in their debates: “my faith.” They say it like we can have a choice to believe what we want to. Romney says “my faith,” and what he means is he’s a Mormon, and, you know, they’re the only church going to heaven. He’s not going to say that, but that’s what they say. And they can have sacred marriage. And see, “my faith,” and then, you know, [unclear] comes along and he just got saved, he got, you know, probably got saved so he could get elected by the Christians. That’s the way politicians do. I--I don’t know that’s the case, but, you know, it could be. You know, and he’s got the Catholic faith, and then you got [unclear], “my faith.” They’re all saying “my faith.” Well, where does the Bible say “my faith”?

▶ 26:04 It’s only mentioned twice in the Bible. Are you getting my drift? See, when I say “my faith,” what I’m saying is what I believe, and my opinions, they’re okay. Mr. Barnes’s faith can be different than mine, and so, and we got to accept everybody’s faith. That isn’t what the Bible says. Are you there? We don’t have a right to say “my faith,” and when you say “my faith,” you’re wrong. First place it’s used, James chapter 2:18: “Some say, you have faith, and I have works. Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you what”--my faith--how? By my works. See, what I do is going to show you what I’m persuaded in. How I live my life is going to show you what I really believe and I trust.

▶ 27:06 “You believe there is one God. Wow, you’re as good as the demons.” They believe there’s one God, and they tremble, because they know that God is going to put them in the lake of fire forever. Wow, you’re equal to the demons. You’re really doing good, man. Whoopee. Are you there? “Oh foolish man, faith without” what? Works “is dead.” Don’t say “my faith.” I will know your faith by how you act, how you speak, what you speak, what you do. That’s the first place that’s used.

▶ 28:01 Second place, before you condemn them to hell, my little thing: in Revelation 2:12, to the church of Pergamos, “I know your works.” Faith without works is dead. “You have not denied My faith.” Whose faith? Who’s speaking there? Jesus Christ. Only used two times. The first one is, my faith must be accompanied with works that Jesus said for me to do, or it’s dead. Here Jesus plainly says it is “My faith” that you should--

▶ 28:56 Have. What was Jesus persuaded in? Jesus was persuaded that He was God, that He was the Son of God, that He was the Savior of the world, that no man could get eternal life but through Him. Jesus was persuaded in the Bible faith, God’s faith. He was persuaded that He would do nothing without the will of the Father. Are you there, church? That’s the faith of Jesus Christ. Did Jesus sin? No. He said, “Yeah, well, He’s God.” Yes, but we should be pursuing the goal, shouldn’t we? Hallelujah. Even to martyrdom they would keep the faith of Christ, even if it cost them their life. If they were in a bad marriage, they wouldn’t give in to the bad spouse; they would keep the faith of Christ even if that spouse left them. If they had a rebellious son or daughter that wanted to do something else, they would keep the faith of Christ no matter what that child--

▶ 30:17 Did. So the real statement should not be “my faith,” but “the Bible.” If we believe the Bible, it says, yes, we should say, “Yes, I’m a Christian and I follow Jesus and His Word.” Why is it important to use the name of Jesus? Because today “God” is a general word that can fit into anywhere, but they hate Jesus. Even though He’s God, they don’t want Jesus, because of what Jesus stood for. They want the freedom to go to heaven and have eternal life without a lifestyle that represents Jesus Christ.

▶ 31:21 Amen. “What does it profit,” James 2:14, “if someone says he has faith but does not have works?” What’s the profit? He says, you believe that you can go into the idol’s temple because idols are nothing, but what’s the profit? See, your works destroy your life. You get his argument. “Can faith save him?” And Paul is asking this question, and why? Because in America faith is all you need. The Baptist faith is all you need, you can live any way you want, but if you believe in Jesus, you’re going to heaven.

▶ 32:13 That’s the truth. In many Spirit-filled circles, if you believe in Christ, boy, and especially you [unclear] and speaking tongues, man, you are, you are in. Everything is focused on faith. The Catholics, if you believe in the Catholic church, you’re saved. The Mormons, if you believe in the Mormon church, you’re saved. And Paul, or James, is saying, can that faith save him? Can faith without works save anyone? That’s what James is saying. Am I talking to the right people? And these preachers in Protestant arenas that preach prosperity back it up with faith. Faith and prosperity is their message. And when you have faith in your faith, or faith in a church, or faith in a minister--

▶ 33:15 You don’t have the right faith. Now, I think this is liberating stuff. You’re looking at me like, “Man, this is deep.” Do you know how many people I know that have faith in their faith, and the Bible never says to have faith in your faith? We’re to have the faith that Jesus had, faith in God, faith in God’s Word, and be living and believing what He says. I may not be there yet, but I’m working on it. See, there’s a difference. One says, “I don’t see nothing wrong with this,” the other one says, “You know, I’m working on this. I’m working on--I haven’t got through this one yet, but I’m working on it, and God promised me that I will get through it, and I’ll get to another arena, and there’ll be another one.”

▶ 34:15 Amen. Atheists, evolutionists, humanists, homosexuals, the freethinkers, pro-choice, the liberals, Democrats, the Socialist Party, all have faith in what they believe. It’s totally faith. The evolutionists have no evidence; it’s totally faith. The socialists have evidence that socialism has not worked, and they still believe socialism will work. That’s a fact, and it’s never--

▶ 35:10 Worked. Pro-choice women could care the least about the baby; they just don’t want any strings attached to their loose lifestyle, and if they get pregnant they want to get rid of it so they can keep living loosely. That’s their faith. See, it doesn’t edify, it doesn’t profit anybody else. And all of these are 501(c)(3), just like our religious exemption. They say they’re nonprofit corporations, they’re religions, they’re a belief system. The Supreme Court declared atheism a religion because they have a belief system. They believe there’s no God, and they have no evidence there is--that there isn’t one. That is faith, that is belief.