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Real faith. Real life. Hosted by Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown of Sandals Church, The Debrief Podcast goes beyond Sunday conversations—diving into the questions, stories, and struggles that shape who we are. Thoughtful. Honest. Unfiltered.
Hey, Debrief listeners. We're so glad you're joining us. Today's episode has me a little bit intimidated, but these are the kind of questions that
PastorMatt:Softball questions.
Tammy:Matt lives We are going to be talking about the difference between the Protestant Bible, the Catholic Bible, Calvinism, and different religions, and what they believe. This is the kind of episode you live for.
PastorMatt:Yeah. It's good. These are great questions. I I really appreciate you guys sending these in.
Tammy:These are these are good ones. So let's get started with this first question. It comes from Shauna from Instagram. Thank you so much. And to all our Instagram people, you can put your questions there too, and we'll get them.
Tammy:But she says, what is the difference between the Catholic Bible and the Protestant Bible, and why does that matter for Christians?
PastorMatt:Yeah. So, Shauna, this is a great question. And so, I I own a Catholic Bible, and I also have a Protestant Bible. And the reason that I have two Bibles is the Catholic Bible has seven additional books in it. A couple extra ones for history, a couple extra for wisdom, and one extra prophetic book, that is included in the Catholic Bible.
PastorMatt:And so, really, the fundamental reason is that when the church first started, most of our manuscripts were Greek. And so we inherited the Greek New Testament and the Greek Old Testament that's called the Septuagint, and that's really the book that we primarily worked from. And then as the church began to grow older, a couple hundred years into our history, we started to notice that we had some differences in our Bible with the Jewish Bible. And so what happened is Catholics kept the Greek list, they kept all of the books that they were using, and the Protestant Bible leaned towards just the list that Jews were using. And so that's basically the divide right there.
PastorMatt:It's a very, very simple explanation of that. But I've read the Catholic Bible, I've read the additional seven books. A lot of it's great. Some of it's really, really difficult, specifically the treatment of women, the role of women, some of the really harsh stuff, like if you're born out of wedlock, the word bastard, like that word, that's where that comes from. Really, really harsh.
PastorMatt:I can see how people maybe were not treated in an appropriate manner because they were born, you know, from a household where the mom was not married. So there's some really, really tough stuff in there. There's some beautiful stuff. The idea of guardian angels, the idea of soulmates come from Tobit. Great stories.
PastorMatt:But what I would say is even Catholics, like if you talk to a Catholic priest or a Catholic theologian, they would not say, and feel free if you're a Catholic priest or a Catholic theologian to correct me on this, but my understanding is they would not say that it's biblical, but what they would say is it's extra. So when they're referring to their Bible, they would refer to the 66 books that we have in our Bibles, and then they would call the additional seven the apocryphal or the hidden books. And so I think that they would say that they're informative, but not authoritative. So even a Catholic theologian would distance themselves a little bit from these books because there's some stuff in it that that's very, very difficult. The New Testament quotes this, so the book of second Maccabees, I mean, much of our understanding about the whole idea of resurrection so if you look in our our Bibles, there's not a lot about resurrection in our Hebrew Bibles.
PastorMatt:But in second Maccabees, I believe it's chapter 16, I don't have it in front of me, there's a woman who has seven sons who were murdered by the Greeks, because of their faith in Judaism, and she implores her sons to remain faithful because they will earn a better resurrection, and you literally see that in the text. And so, you see that mentioned in Hebrews 11 amongst the faithful, that there were those who long for a better resurrection. That's where that verse actually comes from. So the New Testament does quote it. But just because the New Testament quotes something doesn't mean that it becomes scripture.
PastorMatt:It just means that that specific point in it is scripture. And for example, the apostle Paul quotes a Cretian philosopher, and he says, even your own philosophers say, guys are lazy gluttons. Well, that doesn't mean that the philosopher was scripture. It just means that he's borrowing that contemporary understanding of a book, and he's placing it in scripture. So I would say that's the biggest difference.
PastorMatt:If here's what I'd say. If you've read the Protestant Bible through and through, you have a great grasp of it, you have a great understanding, I think the apocryphal is something that can deepen your faith, broaden your faith. There's a lot of great truths in there. There's beautiful sayings. There's certainly truth in it, but like I said, there's some really, really harsh stuff about the treatment of women, specifically kids born out of wedlock that I I remember the first time I read it, I was like, oh my gosh, no wonder, you know, kids were treated this way.
PastorMatt:And so ultimately, the Protestants, you know, and so if if you don't know what a Protestant is, they were Catholic priests who protested against the papal authority and the papal abuses. So the pope was very wealthy, the pope operated like a king within the Vatican, and they thought there were a lot of terrible things that were going on within the Catholic church. It had become corrupted, and it had become more about being wealthy and powerful. And so, you know, you had popes that and again, if you're Catholic, nothing that I'm saying is is not in the historical record of the Catholic church, and this is not to demean or put down Catholics at all in any way. I hope I hope and pray for revival within the Catholic church.
PastorMatt:So if you're Catholic, I love you. I want you to love Jesus, not just your tradition. But there were popes that weren't married and yet had kids running around everywhere because they live like kings, and kings tend to be immoral. And so there were some were some Catholic priests, most notably Martin Luther, who protested the indulgences and abuses of the Catholic church, and they wanted to reform the church, the Catholic church, the one church, which really wasn't one church because we had the Orthodox in the East that really Christians in the West didn't know a lot about because they were under Islam rule in Constantinople. And so they wanted to unify the church, and then ultimately it didn't work out.
PastorMatt:And so when Martin Luther and these guys sat down, they said, okay, instead of going with the Catholic Bible, we're going go with the universally accepted and understood authoritative books in the New Testament, and then we're only going to adopt in our Bible the books that were considered authoritative and scripture from the Jews. And so that's the difference. And if I just made your head spin, I'm so sorry. You're kinda looking at me like
Tammy:And if anyone is wondering, like, what Matt's TikTok feed looks like, this is it. I'm always laughing because when TikTok first came out, I thought it was just, like, how to learn silly dances, and then he's constantly on like theology Oh,
PastorMatt:I love it.
Tammy:Things. I'm like Yeah.
PastorMatt:Oh. I love it.
Tammy:That's different. He loves it. Or it's or it's your workouts.
PastorMatt:Yeah. Yeah. Well, work well, my old my how to fix my old shoulder.
Tammy:Yeah. How to fix his his shoulder and age well and theology. Yeah.
PastorMatt:The history of theology and what
Tammy:we That is quite an algorithm that you have built there. So
PastorMatt:So so here let me say this. I think it's important that we here's what Satan loves to do. He loves to get us attacking each other rather than preaching God's word and reaching people. And so what I would say is there are born again people within the Catholic church that love Jesus, are saved by grace, but appreciate the tradition, and believe that the church should be unified in one, and I wanna honor them and that process. And I pray that ultimately they went out and the gospel is just flourishing within the Catholic church.
PastorMatt:You know, and and the same way that there are Protestants that are also born again, but there's Protestants that aren't, and that are very mean and very cruel and have nothing to do with Jesus, but believe things in terms of church history more in line with what I believe. But at the bottom line, at the end of the day, you're not gonna stand in front of God on judgment day. Were you Catholic? Were you Orthodox? Were you a Sandalite?
PastorMatt:Were you Lutheran? Were you Calvary Chapel? Jesus is gonna say, I either knew you or I did not know you. I was either your Lord and Savior or I was not. And for us, one of the key distinctives between the Catholic church and Protestants is we believe our authority is the Bible and that Christian history is secondary, what the Catholic church would say is they are equal, because what they would say is the Catholic church gave you your Bible.
PastorMatt:So they would say they decided what the Bible is, therefore their tradition is equal with that, and that's why the pope can make an edict that is authoritative. And so what we would say in the Protestant church is the final authority is not what I say at Sandals as the head of our church, but what God says in his word. That is the final authority. And so that's just one of one of the subtle nuances in that. And there have been good popes, there have been bad popes, there have been evil popes, there have been saints.
PastorMatt:So, you know, it's true religions, for all organizations. You know, it's not about the system, it's about your heart, and and where is your heart in that. And so just know, I'm praying for Catholics. And again, if you know your Protestant Bible, man, I think it's great. Jump into that.
PastorMatt:But just know, there's some bumpy stuff in there where you're gonna go, oh, I don't like that. And I remember when I read it the first time, was like, I'm glad this isn't in our Bibles because this would be very difficult for us to navigate.
Tammy:So That's good. That's a great answer. And, Shauna, we hope that was helpful. Alright. This next one do you take a breath?
PastorMatt:No. I'm good.
Tammy:I know. You love this. Comes from Charlie, Riverside, California, our hometown. He says this, reading through Romans with my small group and coming across Romans nine, I'm seeing a lot of God chooses, God decides, he's selected, etcetera. The idea of Calvinism, predestination, and election seems to be clear as day throughout Paul's words.
Tammy:Is Roman nine Romans nine showcasing a narrow or broad scope of salvation? That's the first part.
PastorMatt:Yeah. If
Tammy:only a few are selected for salvation, then was the work of Jesus only accounted for those people? That's a great question and one we've heard so many times over the years. Yeah. Glad to ask.
PastorMatt:Yeah. And just so you know, Charlie, this has been an issue that has been dividing the church since the fourth century when really Calvinism really isn't Calvinism. It's really Augustine, and and he's the first one to really believe and push this idea. And I think a better word is fatalism. And so what do I mean by that?
PastorMatt:It's all fated. So it's already been decided. There's gonna be goats and sheep and people on the left and the right, people that go to heaven and people that go to hell, and it's already all been decided.
Tammy:Fate has been decided.
PastorMatt:Yeah. Your fate has been decided, there's nothing that you can do for this. And I think most Christians, as they start to study God's word like you are, Charlie, and I praise God for that, and you begin to press in the text. And so that's why during the reform movement that we just talked about, so Catholic priests divorced themselves. Well, they didn't actually divorce themselves.
PastorMatt:I mean, they wanted to reform the Catholic church, but the pope threatened them with death, and so they ultimately ended up splitting off and starting what was called the Protestant movement. One was John Calvin was a huge guy. Another guy that nobody talks about is Arthur Swingley. Another really famous guy, Martin Luther, who started Lutheranism. And Lutheranism was the most like most like Catholicism.
PastorMatt:John Calvin is really more like what you would experience in Sandals Church, and I don't mean by his theology, but kind of the way we do church, the way that it feels. Catholic church and Lutheranism is very mass centered, so the Lord's Supper is the center of everything that they do. In John Calvin's teaching and that reform movement, the sermon is the center of everything that we do, so the teaching of God's word. And so some churches do Lord's Supper every week, quarterly, monthly, whatever, but the primary way in which we interact with God is through the teaching of God's word and the preaching of God's word. So that's really the subtle differences between the two.
PastorMatt:So I think when anybody starts studying their Bible, you're going to come across this, and just know this has divided the Protestant church since the sixteenth century. So this is not going to get solved in this podcast. If you're looking for definitive clarity, just know I have friends who are Calvinists, I have friends who are Armenians. One of my favorite, not scholars, but philosophers is William Lane Craig from Talbot School of Theology. Love him, adore him.
PastorMatt:He's a mol molinist, molinist, so molinist, there we go, there's the right word, molinist. And then where I am presently is, I consider myself a provisionist. So, do you need be any of those things to be saved? No, here's what you need to do to be saved. You need to confess your sins, You need to repent of them and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
PastorMatt:So none of this is primary for us at Sandals Church. This is a secondary issue. This is an open hand issue. But when I first went to seminary, I was taught by Calvinist professors, and it made a lot of sense. We can't save ourselves, we're dead in our sins, there's nothing that you could ever do to save yourself.
PastorMatt:Aren't you glad God picked you? And that was very humbling to me, think that out of all humanity, God chose to save me despite anything that I had done. And that was really beautiful for me and very meaningful for me. And then I started to think about all the people that weren't chosen and weren't picked. And here's where I began to struggle in my Calvinist beliefs.
PastorMatt:And this is where every Calvinist, if they're honest, has to struggle. If God arbitrarily chooses who will be saved and not be saved, what it means is he handpicks some for salvation and some for an eternity in hell. And I had a hard time squaring that with Jesus, the person of Jesus, and the love of God. And so Calvinists tend to lean towards the justice of God. God is just and he must punish sin.
PastorMatt:And I think they do so at the expense of the love of God. And then as I began to read through Revelation, as I began to study the end times, God's wrath and anger made no sense to me whatsoever if people didn't have a real choice. Like for example, if I know what our kids are gonna do, we know in advance what they're gonna do, it would be ridiculous for me to react to what I already know and to be angry if I knew they couldn't control it. And so it makes no sense to me for God to judge people who never had a choice. So to me, I begin to back off.
PastorMatt:Now, are some Calvinists that don't like what I'm saying, But really, people like William Lane Craig, who are Christian philosophers, this is the problem is, how do we deal with, as Calvinists, with God judging people for what they seemingly are not responsible for? If God has created you as a sinner and foreordained you for this, how does he then judge you for that? And so I began to walk back on that. And so out of Calvinism, first comes Armenianism, which comes from Jacob Armenius, who was a reformer, probably, if we could interview him, he's dead, probably would identify as a Calvinist, but was struggling and pushing aback against this idea that somehow God is the author of evil. Because here's the thing, if you're a Calvinist and you say, God is sovereign over everything and has decreed everything and caused everything, that means he's not just decreed and caused the good things, but he's decreed and caused the bad things.
PastorMatt:And so Jacob Arminius, and many people had a problem with that because of how it makes God look. Moeliness, which is what William Leg Craig is, also struggles with that. And then provisionists, which is where I would consider myself now, struggle with that. And so what a Calvinist would say is they would say, We don't know how God is perfect, good, and true, and yet has caused or allowed evil or decreed evil in the world. And they would say, It's a mystery.
PastorMatt:So all of these arguments have to punt to mystery at some point in time, because you can't have a theology that you explain completely, because there are problems in our ability to understand the mind of God. So what I do is I say this, and this is why I'm a provisionist. Somehow God is sovereign, God has elected people, God has chosen people, and yet people have choice, and it has not overthwarted or overcome their free will, because provision starts with this idea, people are responsible for their sin. And so Tammy's responsible for her sin, I'm responsible for my sin, you are responsible for your sin. And the gospel says God has provided a way for you to be saved, and it's a real way, and you have a real opportunity to be saved.
PastorMatt:So if you're a Calvinist, and there's all kinds of different veins of this, they would say, When I give an invitation at Sandals Church, only the predestined, elected people receive the gospel. What I would say is the gospel is a real offer from God for you to repent, and human beings are not able to save themselves, but they are able to say, I cannot save myself, and offer their empty hands to God. So it's not works. It's saying, I can't do this. I cannot save myself.
PastorMatt:I need the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. And the work of the cross provides salvation for us. So I would say it's accepting salvation is not a work. You've done nothing. You've simply admitted you cannot save yourself.
PastorMatt:And so that's where I am here. Romans nine, you know, is a tough book to understand because it's the most theologically profound book in the New Testament and probably the most important book. But what we need to understand, what's happening as this book has been written, is the church in Rome initially is all Jewish. Then there's a Roman emperor who kicks all the Jews out. So imagine, we're all going to church together, we're learning about the Bible from the Jews, we're learning about their scriptures, their traditions, and the church is very Jewish in Rome.
PastorMatt:And then all of a sudden, everyone's kicked out. Now what are we? We're all Gentiles. And so we become very, very Gentile. And then we start getting persecuted by certain Jews, we're trying to understand, wait a minute, if God is sovereign, how are so many Jews rejecting this?
PastorMatt:How Jewish do we have to be? And all of these questions. And Paul is trying to explain the election of God and the process of God. And what I would encourage you to do, Charlie, is as you read through that, there's really two groups. So when you come to the verse that says Jacob I loved and Esau I hated, and that's a hard verse to hear because these are real people in the Bible, in the book of Genesis.
PastorMatt:And so the question is, so if you're a Calvinist, you read that as Jacob the person I loved and Esau the person I hated. So if you're in the position that I'm in, I read that as a national or tribal or group statement. The people of Jacob are the people the group of people that God has chosen, and Jacob is the group of people or nationals that God has rejected. And all it means is that God elected that he would sovereignly bring about the Messiah through the line of Jacob. The election is all the way through that.
PastorMatt:And then my understanding of this, Charlie, is that the elect is Jesus, which by the way, if you look in your Bible, is the word. When it says some English translations says, let's see if he is in fact the chosen one. That word means, it's the same word for elect. Is he the one? Is he the Messiah?
PastorMatt:And so we did a series on Romans, was it two years ago, three years ago, where I kind of walked through this and you can read through this. And so let me just say, let me humbly say this. A lot of good people, a lot of smart people don't agree with me, and I love them and pray for them and appreciate them. But at the end of the day, even when you read that verse, Jacob, I've hated. So go in your Bible and look at how God treated Jacob.
PastorMatt:He blessed him, he gave him a land, he gave him property. He was more blessed than Jacob. Let's be honest, Jacob
Tammy:And Esau?
PastorMatt:Sorry, I'm he sorry. He blessed blessed Esau, who ultimately became Edomites. And so where does this verse come from? It comes from the book of Malachi where the Jews are complaining. Are we really elected?
PastorMatt:Are we really chosen? God, it feels like you hated us. And Malachi the prophet says, no, no, no. Jacob I have loved, and Esau I have hated. And so the descendants of Esau became the Edomites, the descendants of Jacob became the Israelites.
PastorMatt:And so here's what happened. Both of them were conquered by foreign nations. Both of them, Babylon messed with them, and Israelites were carried off to Babylon as slaves, but now they have a country, they have a land, they're still a people. The Edomites lost their land, lost their culture, and really kind of assimilated back into Judaism and then disappeared. And what Malachi is saying is, How dare you say that God hates you, he actually loves you, and the only reason you have a country is because God has sovereignly chosen you for the purpose of election, to bring about the Messiah.
PastorMatt:So what what I think Paul is trying to say here in a very, very difficult way to understand is, look, God's not done with Israel because God gave them the prophets, God gave them the word, God God sovereignly chose them, he's not done with them. But then he also says, but not all of Israel is Israel. But he says, you've been grafted in, and so we need to have grace. But when you read through that, Charlie, read Paul's heart. If Paul believed that before the foundation of the world, some Jews were destined for hell and some were heaven, he wouldn't say, I would give up my own life if my brethren would come to Christ.
PastorMatt:He talks about, when you get into verse 10, about wanting so desperately to lead his people to Christ, and for them to come to know the Savior as he does. If he was a Calvinist, he wouldn't be wrestling with those things. He would say, God made a choice, we gotta live with it, and and let's move forward. What he talks about in verse 10, and it's where Sandals gets our our verse. Romans ten fifteen, how beautiful are the feet of those that bring good news.
PastorMatt:And when you read Romans 10, it's why you can't just park in Romans nine, you gotta go to Romans 10, and Romans 10 talks about who are the elect. The elect ultimately are all those who call upon the name of the Lord. Who is the Lord? It's Jesus. And so that's the point that Paul's trying to make, is that God is saving those who choose Jesus.
PastorMatt:And so I have no problem saying God is totally sovereign and God is totally in control. That doesn't bother me at all. God is sovereignly and freely chosen to save all who repent of their sins and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. A Calvinist would say, then I'm making that about me, I would humbly say, I just disagree. And I would also say that sovereignty, Charlie, doesn't mean in total control.
PastorMatt:It means the definition of sovereignty is to do as one chooses. So God is sovereign, and it doesn't mean that he's controlling everything. He has controlled some things. Like, example, he made me a man. I can't control that.
PastorMatt:He chose to make me American. I can't control that. So there are some things that have been predestined that I can't get out of the way from. What I would say, Charlie, is I believe God knows the future. The future is not something that he's blind to, and he's sovereignly working through a future, excuse me, sovereignly working through history to make sure the gospel survives and the gospel goes forward, because he knows who's going to be saved, who's going to follow, but him knowing doesn't mean that he forced it or caused it to happen.
PastorMatt:And so I believe that God can know things that he didn't cause. And so that's just me. Just know, I'm not a theologian, I'm not a philosopher, so I'm not William Lane Craig, I'm not, you know, I wouldn't even say I'm John Piper, you know, and John Piper's a pastor, but he's also a theologian, but he, you know, he's a Calvinist, and I love him, and I've been blessed by his works. Timothy Keller, my favorite pastor in the world, I listen to his sermons all the time. He's a Calvinist.
PastorMatt:I just humbly disagree with him on this issue. And ultimately, even Calvinists, I think, tend to lead towards giving an invitation. Mark Driscoll, whom we've had on the show years ago, kind of was part of the resurgent movement in Calvinism. Loved us, embraced us, and he called me an evangelist. I said, Absolutely, because I preach like people can make a choice.
PastorMatt:And I think a lot of great Calvinists do too. They preach the gospel because the gospel is the means by which people can be saved. And I don't know if I like that word, so don't don't tear me apart if I said that wrong theologically. The gospel God can use the gospel to bring people to salvation, and and it's he can work in that. And so let me let me state that.
PastorMatt:Whenever you use the word means, that's it gets a little dicey. So let me just say, Charlie, keep reading your Bible. Don't get divisive. Don't call people heretical. Don't push people away.
PastorMatt:Know that God's house is a big house, and there's many different people that have wrestled with this issue and come to different conclusions. And so I can listen to Timothy Keller, Calvinist, I can listen to Layton Hewitt, a provisionist, I love him, out of Texas. Layton, if you're listening, man, your podcast, Soteriology 101, love it. Just so you guys know, it's very cerebral, but I love it. Very technical.
PastorMatt:Appreciate you. William Lake Craig, love you. I'd love to have him on the show. He's a Mullenist. I don't have any friends that I know of that are Arminianists, so if you listen to this, I'm sorry, I didn't know that's what you were, but I love you, care about you, and I want you to know these are all Christians, and what Satan loves to do is divide us.
PastorMatt:So here's what I believe. God's in control, God's sovereign, he's sovereignly chosen Jesus Christ, and that anyone who believes in Jesus, God will sovereignly save. But it's a real choice, you can accept him or reject him, and you are responsible for your choice because it's a free choice. That's my opinion. Charlie, I hope that helps.
PastorMatt:But just so you know, I stumble through Romans nine, and I've read it thousands of times, but you gotta get to Romans 10. Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. So I love you. I'm glad that your group is studying that.
Tammy:That's great. Yes. We've we've I've spent many an hour in the car on long road trips to Seteriology Podcast.
PastorMatt:I love that podcast.
Tammy:He sure does.
PastorMatt:It's so good.
Tammy:He sure does.
PastorMatt:Layton, you and we love you.
Tammy:Other people like myself might need to listen to that answer a few times back on there, but that was a really great answer. Yeah. Okay. Final question for this episode. No less complicated, but such a great question.
Tammy:This is from Mitch from Riverside, another one of our hometown. He asked this, how should we interact with religions such as Mormons, Jehovah Witness, Scientologists, etcetera? I asked a Mormon recently if he was Mormon, but he said they preferred Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. If they have Jesus, are they good? Even if they believe in some wacky stuff, if they have the big picture, are they saved?
PastorMatt:Yeah. So let's unpack this. How should we interact with religion such as Mormons, Jehovah Witness, Scientologists? Okay. Etcetera.
PastorMatt:I can't answer, etcetera. So let's start with Mormons. I recently was talking to a Mormon, he said they prefer Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. So what the Mormon church is trying hard to do is sound more and more Christian. That's why they've dropped yeah.
PastorMatt:So they they basically done a rebrand, and they're trying to stop calling themselves Mormon. But you need to understand that Joseph Smith heard from the angel Moroni, and he has an entire set of scriptures and prophecies that come from this angel that are not mentioned anywhere in scripture, and the Bible specifically warns us that we do not listen to any other gospel, even if it's preached by an angel. That's actually in the word of God, which is what Joseph Smith experienced. Joseph Smith was not a good man. He was a womanizer, he was an abuser, He did terrible, terrible things, and the Mormons have tried to make him out to be a martyr, and he was just a really bad dude.
PastorMatt:You know, Brigham Young, not a whole lot better, has a great university in Utah named after him, But my favorite line by Brigham Young, and I'll quote it, I haven't read the Bible in twenty years, and I didn't understand it when I did. That's one of my favorite quotes from him. Good people, pioneers, helped built America, grateful for them. You know, Mormon wards are full of great people who I believe have been deceived, and they do not know Jesus. They worship a different Jesus, they worship a different God, they believe God is in heaven and he makes real babies and spirit.
PastorMatt:I mean, they they believe things that are just and I'm not an expert on Mormonism, but I will just tell you this, it is not Christianity. They're good people. Some of them are better than you. I mean, better neighbors than you, better people than you, but we're we're not going to heaven because we're better. We're going to heaven because we're saved by the blood of Jesus Christ.
PastorMatt:I I just don't believe Mormons believe in the same Jesus as we do, even if they use the same names. They're just it's like anything, you know, in politics or religion, we're using the same words, but we don't always mean the same thing with the words that we're meaning. And so let's go back to Jehovah's Witnesses. Jehovah's Witnesses reject the deity of Jesus, they believe that he's created. They do not believe that he is equal with God, they reject that.
PastorMatt:That is a rejection of traditional Christianity. They have their own translation of the Bible, they do not publish who those scholars are. Again, good people, I appreciate Jehovah Witnesses, I always pray for them as I walk by, I see them sitting in their chairs, giving out their magazines, they're doing what they believe is right. I believe that they are following the teachings of really a charlatan in the nineteenth century who really, really evangelized people that were illiterate and could not read their English Bibles and didn't understand Hebrew or Greek at all. He was actually taken to court, The founder of modern day Jehovah Witnesses was taken to court by a Baptist minister and proved in a court of law that he could not read Hebrew, he could not read Greek.
PastorMatt:And was basically selling this, hey, this is what the word of God really means. I think they scare a lot of people. People that come out of Jehovah witnesses have a lot of fear. It's a lot of scare tactics. And it's just, again, what is John three sixteen?
PastorMatt:For me, if you wanna know anything about God, let's start with John three sixteen, for God so loved. Doesn't say God hated. Doesn't say God was coming in judgment. The story of the bible is an act of God's love on a sinful people who rejected him, who fell away, who went their own way, and yet he has constantly worked to save us because he loves, excuse me, because he loves us. And a lot of JWs, I've never met a JW that gets that.
PastorMatt:They also reject the holy spirit, I think. And if anybody's JW or grew up JW, you can write in and clarify this. But I think when we say we're born again and we have the Holy Spirit inside us, I think they think that's a bad thing. So somebody could maybe write in and clarify that for me, but we all want the spirit of God living inside us. So Scientologists, that's even more whack a doodle.
PastorMatt:One of my favorite books ever though is Going Clear, 1,100 of the best pages I've ever read in my life. And not saying it was scripture, but just fascinating how that religion came about. Incredible, not Christian, and again, Scientologists can be great people, they can be well meaning, they can be good neighbors, they can be very successful. I love Tom Cruise movies, but it's not Christianity. And a lot of people wanna borrow the name Jesus, they wanna insert that, but then they add, I said this a couple weeks ago in sermon, Jesus plus anything is a cult.
PastorMatt:So Jesus plus what you do is a cult, Jesus plus new books is a cult, Jesus plus new things is a cult. It's literally Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. He did it all, he paid it all, he is all, and we need to really, really recognize that. And again, if you're Mormon, I love you. If you're JW, I love you.
PastorMatt:If you're Scientologist, I love you. And know this, God loves you as well, and he sent his one and only son to die for you on the cross, and you don't need to try to work your way into heaven. You need to trust Jesus to get you to heaven. And so I would just say, if they have Jesus, are they good? Yeah, if they have Jesus.
PastorMatt:And I don't know who they have, but there's people in our church that don't have Jesus. They come, they worship, they sing, they might even serve, but they've never repented of their sins and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you're not careful, what religion can do is make you feel really good about yourself, and what we need to do is not feel good about ourselves, we need to feel God. So even if they believe some wacky stuff, if they have the big picture, are they saved? Let me say this, at the end of the day, Jesus saves, not me.
PastorMatt:He's the Lord, he decides. He decides whose faith is real, he decides whose faith is not. So going back to our Calvinist question, he is sovereign on the day of judgment. He decides. We don't get to protest.
PastorMatt:We get to accept his ruling that I believe we'll all go, it was fair, that was just. I don't think people in hell are gonna like it. It's why Jesus calls hell the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. I think they're upset and the gnashing of teeth is, I think they're still angry because they're unrepentant to the very end. But just know, God loves you.
PastorMatt:He has done it all for us. Have to embrace that and accept that. And again, as you work through, whether you decide you're Calvinist, Armenianist, provisionist, or Mohanist, or Confucius, know, you don't know what you are, that was confused, not confuush. Just know this, at the end of the day, it's Jesus who saves, not us. Not us believing all the right things, knowing all the right things, and that's why I say, are they good?
PastorMatt:That's up to the Lord. My job is to teach the word of God as best I can. And while I said, Hey, the Catholic Bible, that might be some interesting stuff to read. You don't need to read the Book of Mormon. You don't need to read the Pearl of Great Price.
PastorMatt:I don't believe that stuff has anything to do with the Jesus of Nazareth. That preaches a different Jesus that came and preached to native Americans, and there's no evidence anywhere for those societies, those cultures, even I believe BYU has come out and said that the book of Mormon is not a historical book. The Bible has history in it. There's a real Jerusalem. There was a real Jesus who was really crucified.
PastorMatt:There's a real Israel. There's real cities. I mean, King David is testified to by other architectural discoveries with his name on it. These are real people. And so I don't mean to say that the Bible is just history, but I want you to know it does contain real history.
PastorMatt:And what I would say about the Book of Mormon is it contains myth, it does not contain real history. And again, if you're Mormon, I know that sounds harsh, do your own research, research who Joseph Smith was, what he did, how he treated women, how Brigham Young treated people. You know, your own relative, your great great grandfather was killed for some of the things that early Mormons did, and all religions have bad stuff that they do, but it's just really, really sad because Mormons, you know, I want everybody to be saved. I want Jehovah witnesses, I want Scientologists, I want Mormons, I want even the etceteras, whoever they are. I want everybody to be saved because I think that's in agreement with who God is, but here's how you get saved.
PastorMatt:It's Jesus. So
Tammy:Really good.
PastorMatt:Thank you.
Tammy:I love that you love this stuff because it helps the rest of us that don't know how to untangle the very complicated things. Yeah. You uncomplicate it for us. So so good. Well, thank you guys for listening and tuning in.
Tammy:And if you have friends, family, coworkers, neighbors that maybe have asked you these similar kind of questions and it's been tricky for you to find the words to articulate how to answer them, you could refer this podcast to them or this episode to them. And for everybody else, support us by lots of different ways. Send your questions in. Obviously, we need questions to answer to have the show. You can also go to sandalschurch.com/support to actually help us keep the show going and provide this so that we can be a resource so that people can understand the bible better, and just on their discipleship journey of knowing Jesus, following him, becoming more like him.
Tammy:And so thank you, Matt, for spending all of our spare time on these very complicated things. It really pays off. So until then, we'll see you next time.