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We’re going to ask the question, has God changed His mind? Does God change according to our circumstances? Should we change the world, change the message? Or should we actually contend for the faith once delivered to the saints and put our Faith in a God who doesn’t change.

#change #changetheworld #churchleadership #faith #Israel #jesus #Messiah #salvation #SignsOfTheTimes

https://lightforthelastdays.co.uk/articles/bible-teachings/what-does-our-society-mean-by-change/

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00:00I'm not actually going to speak about Israel this morning, but we're going to ask the question,
00:05has God changed his mind?
00:08Does God change according to our circumstances?
00:12Should we change the world, change the message, or should we actually contend for the faith
00:17once delivered to the saints, faith in a God who doesn't change?
00:23A couple of scriptures from the book of Malachi.
00:26It says, I am the Lord, I do not change, therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob.
00:34And in the New Testament, in the book of Hebrews, Jesus Christ, Yeshua HaMashiach, is the same
00:41yesterday, today, and forever.
00:44So we're living in a time of change.
00:47Things are happening, causing change on many levels in society, whether to do with race
00:52relations, immigration, cost of living crisis, salt on traditional moral values, meaning
01:00of life.
01:01All things are shifting and changing.
01:04For many people, in politics, change is a good thing.
01:07Let's change what is a rotten system into a better system.
01:10Let's have a better world.
01:12Let's create a new world in which things function better.
01:15Others say, no, we need to conserve what is good in our society, and resist some of the
01:20changes which are actually making things go from bad to worse.
01:24From a Christian point of view, the big change that God wants to see is a change in us.
01:30The word repent and believe the gospel.
01:35Interestingly, the word for repent in Greek is metanoia, which means change your mind, change
01:41your thinking, change the way you're going.
01:43The word in Hebrew is teshuva, which means change your direction.
01:48You're going one way, change and go the other way.
01:51And God's calling us actually to change our direction, where we're going, and to change
01:54our minds, change our minds about him, and about God, and about salvation.
02:01But there are a lot of people saying we need to change the world.
02:04You may have heard the famous quotation from Karl Marx, said the philosophers have only interpreted
02:10the world.
02:11The point, however, is to change it.
02:13The point is to change it.
02:172008 President-elect Obama gave a victory speech in which he said, change has come to
02:21America.
02:23He called for the nation to summon a fresh spirit for a new dawn of American leadership.
02:29And change is also the theme of the manifesto published by the Labour Party last year, which
02:36they said, at this election we can change Britain, we can stop the chaos, turn the page and start
02:42to rebuild our society.
02:44Change the world.
02:46Well, how's it going?
02:47The desire for change may be genuine and needed, because there are some things that do need
02:54to be changed in our society.
02:56But a lot of the track record of people who are trying to change the world is not terribly
02:59good.
03:00I used to be influenced by Marxism in my youth, even joined the Communist Party for a while.
03:07But then I saw that the change which they brought about was not that great.
03:12Communist revolution came out of Marx saying change the world, change the corrupt czarist
03:18regime into an even more corrupt and despicable, actually, Soviet communist regime.
03:24And Stalin killed about 13 million people in the process of changing Russian society.
03:31Well, Obama did bring some changes to America.
03:34A lot of the changes came with the influence of kind of woke ideology and pushing that kind
03:42of way of thinking.
03:44Also, greater openness to Islam and pushing Islam, which had the reaction which you now
03:50got with Trump, with MAGA, and the reaction against it.
03:53And a kind of bigger conflict between right and left, and polarisation in society.
04:00And we've got something similar happening in our society as well.
04:04Change between the right and the left.
04:07At the Labour Party conference, Starmer was attacking Nigel Farage.
04:12Also, people went on the recent Unite the Kingdom march as being divisive and racist and right
04:19wing and all that kind of stuff.
04:20Some of them said they were just going because they were concerned about the collapse of moral
04:26and spiritual values in our country and anti-Christ forces taking over.
04:32Other point of view.
04:34Starmer actually said they were against British values which are based on tolerance and society.
04:40Tolerance and diversity.
04:41I was thinking about that and I thought, actually, values of this country were not based on tolerance
04:48and diversity.
04:49If you look back at the institutions of this country, they were based on Christianity.
04:54If you look through all of our institutions, there's a Christian base behind them.
04:58Obviously, the Church of England, the monarchy, where the king or the queen is said to be the
05:03defender of the faith.
05:04And that came to mean the Reformed Protestant faith.
05:09You have the government which had a general influence of Christianity.
05:13Our laws which were based on Christian principles, many of them.
05:17Education system which was based on Christian principles.
05:21I remember when I was at school, we used to have hymns every morning and prayers in the
05:25assembly.
05:26Christian assemblies and Christian teaching was what you assumed it was going to happen.
05:30I remember looking at one of the old ladies who used to come to Bridge Lane, who's now
05:36passed away, Mrs. Libbetter, one of the two of you might remember her.
05:40She showed me the GCSE, or not the O-level RE paper, which she had passed when she was
05:46in the, I think it must have been in the 1930s, a religious studies paper.
05:52It was all about Christianity, not a mention of any other religion.
05:55It was questions about how you interpret the Gospels and all that kind of stuff.
05:58So it was assumed that things were going to be Christian.
06:02And Christianity is tolerant of people.
06:06We accept the diversity of all people, all races, love all people.
06:09But it's not tolerant of certain ideas and philosophies and practices.
06:14It's not tolerant of the LGBT agenda.
06:16We say that's wrong.
06:17It's against God's agenda.
06:19And it's also not tolerant of the multi-faith agenda.
06:23Because the multi-faith agenda means you put all religions alongside each other, and you
06:27say that they're all equal.
06:29The Bible says they're not all equal.
06:31There's one God, and one mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ.
06:36And you can't put Jesus Christ on the same level as Muhammad and Buddha and all those people,
06:40because as far as the Bible is concerned, they're following false prophets and idols and things
06:45which would take you away from God.
06:46So we have a huge problem that diversity and tolerance actually means a lot of tolerance
06:51of things which the Bible calls evil, and diversity which means that everything has
06:56to be expanded into this mishmash of religions, which goes against what the Bible says, which
07:01is that there's one God, and one way to God, through Jesus Christ.
07:06And this affects everything.
07:11And we see that even one of the institutions which pushes this most of all is the BBC.
07:17And interesting, the BBC has a plaque in its centre down there near Rocksworth Circus,
07:25which has these words in it.
07:28Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just,
07:32whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are a good report,
07:36if there's any virtue, if there's anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things.
07:41That's there in the BBC building.
07:43Unfortunately, it's in Latin, so I guess most people don't.
07:46It's written there in Latin in the BBC building, so probably most people don't even read it or look at it.
07:51But it kind of says that there was a foundation that was supposed to be promoting something from the Bible,
07:57from Christianity.
07:58What do you see today?
07:59Anything but Christianity being pushed there.
08:04And you see forces which want to replace Christianity as the base of society with a multi-faith,
08:10all gods are equal idea, alternative moral values affirming sexual immorality, homosexuality,
08:15transsexuality and all that stuff being pushed upon our children even in schools.
08:21And religions which the Bible calls false being put alongside the true faith in Jesus as equal.
08:28Now, I'll be bad enough if that was just in society, but it's also in the church, the official, the professing church.
08:37And you see that the church has joined in the campaign for change.
08:41The late Archbishop Welby, he said publicly on BBC that he and the bishops of the Church of England
08:46have come to a majority position that all sexual activity should be written,
08:51should be within a committed relationship, whether it's straight or gay.
08:54Do you get the drift of what that's saying?
08:59All sexual activity should be within a committed relationship, whether it's straight or gay.
09:04It doesn't say you're in a married relationship, and it doesn't say solely a relationship between a man and a woman.
09:10In other words, he's saying that secular intimacy is no longer limited to marriage.
09:15As long as you are committed to each other, God will bless your relationships, whatever they are.
09:19Does that agree with the Bible? No.
09:24Does it agree with church teaching? No.
09:27The church teaches that marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman.
09:30It's there in the 39 articles of the Church of England.
09:34If you look at the 39 articles of the Church of England, they're actually basically biblical.
09:38You can go along with almost all of them.
09:40What about the Roman Catholic Church?
09:46Pope Francis released a video in which he clearly expresses his belief that all major religions are different paths to the same God.
09:53It says that people from various global faiths may be seeking God or meeting God in different ways.
09:58It's important to keep in mind that we're all children of God.
10:02There's only one God, and each of us has a language to arrive at God.
10:06Some are Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian.
10:08They're different paths to God.
10:10Do you get the drift of that?
10:12Saying that all roads lead to God.
10:14It doesn't matter whether you're a Christian or a Hindu or a Buddhist.
10:19You can still come to God because that's your path to reach to God.
10:23That's the head of the largest denomination of the Christian Church.
10:27Or he was. He's gone to his place now.
10:31I won't say which place, but he's said in motion something which is anti the words of the Bible.
10:40And now we've got Archbishop of Canterbury, elect Sarah Mullally.
10:50Change not just from male only priests to women bishops and archbishops.
10:55She's described as a moderniser.
10:58She described the moment of eventual decision to finally allow priests to bless same-sex marriages in 2023 as a moment of hope for the church.
11:08GAFCON, which is a group of conservative Anglican churches, criticised Bishop Sarah's appointment, saying it showed the English arm of the church had relinquished its authority to lead.
11:21Bishop Sarah has expressed liberal views on controversial issues such as abortion and same-sex relationships.
11:28She has repeatedly promoted unbiblical and revisionist teachings regarding marriage and sexual morality.
11:35They took issue with a woman.
11:37GAFCON took issue with a woman being appointed to the role.
11:40Though there are some who welcome the decision to appoint Bishop Mullally as the first female Archbishop of Canterbury,
11:45the majority of the Anglican Communion still believes that the Bible requires a male-only episcopacy.
11:50Bishop Rick Lettuce.
11:51Therefore, her appointment will make it impossible for the Archbishop of Canterbury to serve as a focus of unity within the communion.
11:59Which is true.
12:01And basically what you're seeing is the church is changing Bible teaching to fit in with modern practice.
12:08I wrote a book, this is about ten years ago, called Countdown to Calamity or Hope for the Future.
12:16And I found a chapter in it which deals with this subject.
12:21It's called Christianity Without the Cross.
12:26Many people are saying, this is what I wrote,
12:29many people are saying that we need to move away from the Bible as the basis for Christian faith
12:33in order to make it fit in with the modern world.
12:36This was the aim of the Rethink Conference, a conference of supposed Christians rethinking Christianity.
12:43Author Roger Oakland, who attended as a critic of the movement, gave this comment on what he saw taking place there.
12:48Roger Oakland wrote,
12:51For nearly 2,000 years, most professing Christians have seen the Bible as the foundation for the Christian faith.
12:57The overall view of the Rethink Conference, however, is that Christianity as we've known it has run its course and must be replaced.
13:05Speakers insisted that Christianity must be rethought and reinvented if the name of Jesus Christ is going to survive here on the planet Earth.
13:12Emerging church leader Brian McLaren said, you see, if we have a new world, we'll need a new church.
13:21The idea is that in order to reach the so-called post-modern world, we need to revise and update Christianity.
13:28He says this will involve a new set of answers, a different way of being Christians.
13:33Do you get the point of that?
13:34What he's saying is that the world's changing.
13:37We have what they call a post-modern world, so we've got to adapt the church and adapt the church's teaching to fit in with it.
13:43The problem is that we can't reinvent God or the salvation we've received through the Lord Jesus Christ.
13:50The so-called post-modern world has exactly the same problems as the pre-modern world had.
13:56Sin, death, and the activity of the devil.
13:59The only answer to that is faith, repentance and faith, in the faith which was once delivered to the apostles and recorded in the Bible.
14:09In other words, believe the gospel.
14:11The gospel doesn't change, the problem of the human race doesn't change, therefore the message of the church doesn't change either.
14:18It's not ours to rethink or to make it acceptable to the world.
14:22If we do, we'll end up like the pagans, making a God in our own image, who's no God at all.
14:27In the book of Isaiah, it speaks about a God who cannot save, and people praying to a God who cannot save.
14:35If you make up your own God, that's what you're doing.
14:37You're praying to a God who cannot save.
14:38It may give you some intellectual or emotional or spiritual happiness, but if it doesn't give you salvation, you're wasting your time.
14:47Because the only point, really, in praying to God is he's going to save you, forgive your sins, and give you eternal life.
14:54Go on what it says here.
14:55For some, the reinvention of Christianity leads to mysticism and incorporation of ideas and practices which are anti-Christian,
15:01as Roger Oakland shows in his book, Faith Undone.
15:05Roger shows how Christians are accepting all manner of unbiblical and even pagan practices to awaken some kind of spiritual experiences.
15:11In a chapter on contemplative spirituality, Roger shows how evangelicals have been influenced by Richard Foster's best-selling book,
15:21Celebration of Discipline, which opens a way to accepting teachings which contradict biblical Christianity.
15:27Foster comments the writings of Thomas Merton on how to find interior silence which will bring us to God.
15:33Merton was a Trappist monk who acknowledged his debt to Zen Buddhism and Sufi Islam, as well as Catholic mysticism.
15:39He wrote,
15:41If only people could see themselves as they really are, I suppose the big problems would be that we would fall down and worship each other.
15:47But the center of our being is a point of nothingness, which is untouched by sin and by illusions, a point of pure truth.
15:54This little point is the pure glory of God in us.
15:57It is in everybody.
15:59Do you get the point of that?
16:01What he's saying is that God is in you and you have to discover the God who's already within you
16:05by meditation, by yoga, by all kinds of practices which will give you to find out that you really are God within you.
16:13And there are lots of people, I would say even millions of people, certainly millions of people in the world who have that idea
16:24and a great number of people in the Western world who have that idea, who practice yoga to try and find the God within them.
16:31What does the Bible tell us about what is within us?
16:34According to the Bible, all human beings are dead in trespasses and sins.
16:39In our flesh there dwells no good thing.
16:42Therefore we must be born again through repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,
16:47who died for our sins as a sacrifice and rose again from the dead.
16:52The idea that we have God within us is totally opposed to the idea of the Bible.
16:58And yet you have people who are saying that they are Christians or in the church or in some kind of meditation
17:02which is moving them in that direction.
17:05See, they're changing the goalposts in order to fit in with what's happening in the world.
17:10Rebellion them.
17:11We will try to weigh into their goals.
17:13Amen.
17:14If you look at that sameimo moment, we will try to overcome five.
17:17We will try to repeat it, both guys.
17:18And remember what's happening in a podcast.
17:19Hosting chairs in order to fitow with the Bible,
17:23then we will try to okay to entertain the same guest in the Bible.
17:24That's all you think, can understand.
17:25I would like to meditate on your own sentence.
17:27Then we can understand this mayor also goes down multiple places.
17:29You can understand the other key.
17:31You can understand the picture of the Bible here.
17:32Actually, give the scripture.
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