welcome to this episode of real Christianity my name is Dale Partridge reach week I offer 15 to 20-minute answers to tough the illogical and pastoral question this is 100% listener supported audio Ministry of relearn. Org and for those who don't know our mission a tree learn.org is to educate and equip ordinary Christians to plant biblical confessional and missional house churches for more information just visit relearn. Org forward slash house
 welcome to this episode of real Christianity my name is Dale Partridge retweet I offer 15 to 20-minute answers to tough theological and pastoral questions this show is 100% listener supported audio Ministry of relearn. Org and for those who don't know our mission a tree learn.org is to bring the church back to the Bible for bold daily encouragement join the over 500,000 Christian to follow us on social media by searching relearn. Org on any platform okay good topic today unfortunately as many of you know the vast majority of Christians in the west know very little about what they say they believe they say things like Jesus is my theology or I don't need doctor and I just need the Bible or my only Creed is Christ I've heard these things said before we have a big issue with me my Bible and I Theology and it
 to this we also have several other groups out there who call themselves Christian but their definition of the Bible God Christ and the church are out of step with historic biblical Evangelical Christianity so the truth is if someone calls themselves a Christian today that needs to be qualified but how do we do how do we discern genuine Believers from deceived religious groups from cultic movements and from Heretics that's the question that we really answering today before we dive in it's going to make one quick announcement and guys were getting to a close on these announcements about donations but I wanted to roll over this just one more time and as I told you several times already in the past episodes for the month of December our goal is to raise $20,000 this month to support our ministry efforts coming into the new year it's now to see
 23rd and we've raised actually $18,200 of that $20,000 so we're still in need of eighteen hundred bucks that's that's that's all we need to really hit those financial needs for the first quarter of 2021 this is again also and in addition to all of her other donors that have supported us but this is going to specific projects especially with Reformation Seminary our church planting our house church planting training program but again thank you guys for everyone who donated last week your faithfulness again will make a significant difference in our ability to continue preaching the gospel training pastors for how strictly Ministry but we still do need a few more donors to join and if your regular listen to the show we just asked you to prayerfully consider making either a one-time donation or a monthly donation really helps our ministry because when it does that gives us stability
 allows us to go okay well we have some people that are contributing $25 a month or $50 a month with several people that do $100 a month that really gives us the ability or we go okay we can count all we can actually hire this person because we have several you know several hundred donors that are on a monthly donation that give us a consistent reliable income that's really helpful to a Ministry like ours who were very small we leave a few people on staff and so just consider that as your as you're looking at your finances and if you feel led to support our ministry again this is a tax-deductible donations you get a tax write-off and we promise to be wise stewards of your gifts you can make a donation at relearn. Org forward slash donate again that's relearn. Org forward slash donate okay today's question is from Jake from Columbia in South Carolina Columbia South Carolina
 the question Pastor deal I mean youth pastor and in recent years we've had more people join our church from Bethel Hillsong or one of these other megachurches who promote a health and wealth like gospel additionally we have also had people join from several fundamentalist Baptist Churches here in the South essentially I'm realizing that many of these new people at our church are unaware that they hold a variety of heretical ideas about the gospel the church and the Bible how can I bring our church or help bring our church as a whole to an orthodox view of Christian doctrine okay this is a really good question and it's actually something that I'm going to try to talk to you as a pastor Jake but also I think it's very helpful for the average Christian and so let's just let's just all dive in together on this and I can assure you Jake that this is a problem for all pastors
 basically for all times always having people come in from different walks of life and different experiences in different historical church you know standards and and statements of Faith so that this is a very common thing we live in a generation where many people I mean many many people in the church are The Walking Dead and by that I mean that they're physically alive but they're spiritually dead and in this is because we again peddled Christianity from the pulpit and we've told people if they pray the sinner's prayer and they get baptized at their saved this is very different from the historical biblical Christianity that we see down the down the annals of church history biblical Christianity preaches the gospel and they do it repetitively and boldly there was no altar calls or Sinners prayers to initiate conversion
 there are extra biblical fact is that I believe have no place in the church people don't need to come forward at church to come to Christ OK this idea of calling people forward if you look at it through when it started coming into church practice I really believe that it's a man's way of measuring the success of his own evangelism people come to Christ through this podcast thing never came forward and said the sinner's prayer the sinner's prayer doesn't save people God Saves people by opening their ears and their eyes to the gospel granting them repentance and faith and and bringing them through regeneration and into the fold of God's people people need to hear the raw beautiful gospel and then we need to wait for the Lord to burst these people into his kingdom and you know I want to to preach and to Proclaim not trying to enter
 Ashley persuade people when I preached I'm trying to penetrate the heart that's my aim is to penetrate the heart and I can't break through with the lawyer that's got to do it but I am going to preach the gospel Faithfully directed at the heart and the gospel we have to believe guys is a knife it's sharper than any two-edged sword and if we need to let it do the piercing and the wounding and allow people's Brokenness and and crumbling self-reliance to drive them to repentance and belief but again unfortunately that's not what we have today at least we have so many decades of recent history of that's not what happened and for that reason we have thousands of cultural Christians is Bible Belt kind of Americana Christian Conservative Republican Christians religious Morales Christians who are deceived they're misinformed and many of them are actually on their way
 hell and they have no idea and so I'm just going to be very bold there and Jake I'm going to break down my response into pieces first we just need to First commit to a constant re preaching of gospel Basics I'm talking over and over and over and over and over and over again every Sunday gospel Basics over and over because you don't know when the Lord might break through the heart of somebody oh my goodness I can't believe that way what that's what the gospel means like the breakthroughs are just amazing when they come but it's just faithful preaching of the biblical gospel integrated into your sermon integrated into your discussions integrated into your announcements whatever you possibly can get that gospel basic Doctrine out there
 an American churchianity you really need to pry people's dead hands from their Church camp testimony where someone ask them at 12 years old if they don't want to go to hell and if if that was the case they should come forward and accept Jesus I mean you got to send me these people are white-knuckled on to that testimony and I'm not saying that every Church camp convert is false you know many people are safe to these Ministries but many are also deceived through these moments are they believe that they're actually saved when in reality they're actually not there just in a religious State against dr. Steve Lawson says this could I say it all the time I'm going to having you guys memorize this quote he says the only thing worse
 the not having the Assurance of Salvation is having the false Assurance of Salvation now I don't want anybody here to just start doubting their salvation because I'm saying this but I do want all of us to self-examine and to look at our comprehension of the Gospel against biblical Christian historic Evangelical Christian and look at and go do we believe what the Bible says we're supposed to believe is that the view too because Farrah Seattle living is a real thing it's a real thing and we need to be aware that John Wesley George Whitefield Charles Wesley you know Jonathan Edwards Martin Luther John Calvin I mean these are people who were in the church for years in Ministry for years some of them had doctorates in master's degree in theology before they actually were
 now God has unique stories for this man and I don't want to project those stories upon you but what I'm saying is
 they were deceived by the Catholic church and today we have all types of deceiving things that are out there and we didn't get very clear on what Biblical Christianity is and make sure that we are in step or in alignment with that so. That's my little preach session right there
 it's okay secondly that was the first thing we got to preach the gospel Basics over and over again not assume that people are actually that everybody in your church has saved actually I'm going to go on a tangent just for a second we have to remember that Revival historically when we think of the word Revival okay this is not historically defined as a group of people who are a bunch of atheists that came to Christ the Great Awakening in the 1700's and the Second Great Awakening and these are these are great Awakenings of people who call themselves Christian these are people in the churches who didn't know they were dead coming alive because someone started preaching the biblical gospel I mean if you read the accounts of people who were listening to Jonathan Edwards sinners in the hands of an Angry God this is a sermon he delivered and there's a counts of people that are like wallowing
 just wailing screaming out asking for forgiveness crying at the foot of the cross like wild stories of repentance because Jonathan Edwards preached the biblical raw gospel Paul Washer talks about this same thing as well that he was preaching once and all the sudden he started seeing me without an invitation to come for people are coming and they're they're like wailing and crying and laying themselves on the front of the steps before him and they're they're just quiet and he's just continues preaching and preaching and more people start coming for. This is this is what I'm trying to say here is it when we preach the biblical gospel you just are the Midwife of God's work he is he is bursting out these people faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God preach the word of God preached that God
 an inlet people just come to Faith and on their own you need to invite them for you need to have them say printers print preach that gospel and let the Lord do the rest second
 and you get to the more direct issue at this episode has your church members to get present to them biblical historic Evangelical Christianity and let them against examine that very clear definition written down against what they believe and as you stated in your question you have people from all types of Jesus related religious backgrounds but when someone says I'm a Christian today what does that even mean right we have to determine what that means cuz of Jehovah's Witnesses call themselves Christians the Mormons call themselves Christians the grave sucking Christian tarot card reading extreme Bethel Church people call themselves Christians the Amish call themselves Christians right there all these people I had to call themselves Christians but there was only one gospel and every single one of these group
 disagrees with the other about what it is
 okay so this is the value of confessionalism cake confessionalism like our ministry at Reformation Seminary were planting biblical house churches our ministry is a confessional Church movement doesn't mean that we elevated about scriptures and what I'm saying is that we have clear confessions about what we believe our little House Church confession books a hundred pages long and it talks about what we believe and we're always clarifying that in clarifying that to get more clear and so we need confessions in the church was a very helpful tool for a church and I'm not talking about again shallow easily misinterpreted three-paragraph statement of faith on your Church website that makes the entire world feel accepted either I'm not talking about that I'm talking about churches to either adhere to or you know or
 adopter of historic statement of faith I'm thinking about like the 1689 Baptist confession of faith of the Westminster statement of faith John MacArthur citing several months maybe even several years writing that the Grace Community Church Constitution and the Beast need to be like an ultra clear thorough well-documented explained biblically backed robust statements of faith on Christ the Trinity scripture the church the gospel write some confessional churches have even gone as far to confess openly their beliefs on marriage and children and sexuality and gender and divorced and bottom line we we live in an information-age that's riddled with relativism and self-determining truth I can't we have a low intellect in allo I mean meaning that my
 desire for intellectual assent is low with very low understanding of logic very low understanding of philosophy or religion we have a low value for mental psychological discipline low respect and Trust for experts like pastors who have been trained we have high emotions with high desires for pleasure yourself Centric I were autonomous and independent by Nature I mean guys we are a generation that every ingredient for creating and adopting bad theology okay this is this is why the church is a mess right now the founding president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary he wrote a really cool little two-paragraph piece short paragraphs I'm going to read them to you just can't explain
 I hear about confessionalism he says a church with a little Creed is a church with a little with a little life the more Divine doctrines a church can agree on the greater its power and The Wider its usefulness the fewer its articles of Faith the fewer its bonds of union and compactness the modern Cry of less Creed and more Liberty is a degeneration from the vertebrate to the jellyfish and means less unity and less morality and it means more heresy definitive truth does not create heresy it only exposes it and corrects it shut off the Creed and the Christian church or the Christian work would fill up with heresy unsuspected and uncorrected but none the less deadly this is just exactly what I'm talking about here we need to
 clear and so I'll talk more about that in a second but I would take Jake take your church or if you're listen to take your family through a robust confession of faith for example I'm holding right now in my hands the 1689 Baptist confession of faith in Modern English it's produced by Founders Ministries friend of mine Tom ascol actually just had him I did an interview with him and it'll be coming out of the podcast in the future founders.org you can actually pick up a copy of that and read about 60 pages long now these confessions are again supersede the scriptures they're Simply Organized and succinctly identify the grand teaching of The Narrative of the scriptures and I like these older confessions because they stood the test of time and scrutiny and additionally I like them because
 they're developed by hundreds of pastors and theologians and not just a small a small team of men and to get really practical there are against several queuing a catechisms that can help Christians grasp what they believe and these I use with my children I think it's something we can use in the church small groups this is a great tool for example if you're a Believer and you've been a Believer for many years and you can't answer questions like what is the Trinity or why does Jesus need to be fully man and fully God or what is the chief end of man or how were godly people saved before the coming of Christ or what does communion represent or what is the purpose of the church or how does Christ resurrected a resurrection benefit us or how many sacraments did Christ Institute in the New Testament that you need to have the answers within those questions that I just listed off those
 come from the catechism for children between the ages of eight and 10 okay that this is basic stuff that we need to really take hold of in our churches in our families so that we understand what we believe is ultimately a confessional church is a place of informed and unified members who are more equipped to guard against heresies and false teachings can we need to be informed which and then we can be unified around these ideas and we're more equipped when we know the truth to notice a lie
 okay Christians need to be clear about what Christianity is and when you have a church that's filled with people who hold very views on critical issues one this this is just grounds for a church to explode and divide and turn into a mess but the only way to deal with that in my opinion if this is what's going on in your church a bunch of people who are unclear A bunch of people who don't like it they didn't even know they have a statement of faith on the church's website this is this is not good because this is a breeding ground for deception and the only way to get past this as I said is preaching the biblical Doctrine in the gospel truth over and over again and then again offering systematic training and reading of historic statement of faith
 that are robust deep and then grasping those fundamentals through catechism through question-and-answer catechism these are wonderful tools that have proven to be very fruitful throughout church history so I'll give you guys a few resources on this episode and hopefully it'll be helpful for you guys as we closed out but a few things that I'm going to say just kind of do you can just Google around and find is the Apostles Creed is a good one just it's essential basic Christian fundamentals it's something that a lot of churches would recite on a regular basis or many Christians have memorized but I would look at the Apostles Creed I would look at the athanasian Creed and this is a trinitarian defense against arianism early I believe it I think it's the 4th century is when that happened but the athanasian Creed is a great Creed to understand the complexity of explaining
 representing the Trinity Faithfully when people ask about it and got so many issues come I mean the Jehovah's Witnesses in the Mormons and I mean the way they view Trinity I mean it's very very different than how we view Trinity the Nicene Creed same thing kind of a reaction to the Aryan view from the the I guess it would be mid to late fourth Century in this is again another trinitarian view but it also talks about the hypostatic union got Jesus being fully man and fully God so there's some great things there these are just basic Creed's what are different than statements of Faith the 1689 Baptist confession of faith is great it's a reformed view of reformed theology on a reformed view of the Christian faith and it's it's it's robust not overwhelming but robust the Westminster Confession of faith can be a little overwhelming but it's a fantastic read getting through it especially if you can find a virgin into Modern English
 Banner of Truth produce a version of that I believe I don't know if it's in Modern English or not but it's worth having on your bookshelf for sure another great resource is the Heidelberg Catechism I like that catechism actually the most because instead of talking about like in a third-person perspective it's it's talking in a first-person perspective very pointed at you and that your heart and it's just a really great catechism is actually it's a it's comes from a presbyterian background but there's actually a baptist version of the Heidelberg Catechism so you can look those up as well Kevin DeYoung wrote a book called the good news we almost forgot rediscovering the gospel and a sixteenth-century catechism and it's just goes basically question my question bring explanation to that catechism it's a really great book is published by Moody and then over at Founders again Tom ascol and his crew I've been doing this little catechism with
 my children is called Truth and Grace and their stage one stage 2 and stage 3 and they go for like young kid little kids to like you know you Note 8 to 10 year olds and up for like 18 kids and they're actually really good for you when you're reading through our through them to your kids you can while I know the answers to these things now my daughter is about to be 7 and she knows I think about 100 q and A's at this point all the way through the first book and she's getting ready to go into the second book and so I just a great little resource there are there cheap to I think you're like 5-10 bucks each and just go to founders.org I'm not making any money on it so just go over there and support their Ministry and what they're doing in those are called the truth in Grace memory books 1 2 and 3 I will put some of those links on the the post page for this episode of might not be up for a day or two but it'll be up there soon
 you guys could have your regular listener please leave a review on the podcast just tap the podcast app tap the Stars you don't need to write anything but if you do I will read it and I've read several of them just this week we have almost almost $6,000 but you know I think almost 6,000 reviews and guys they really do help the exposure the show also would you tell somebody about the show I feel like so many people have been introduced to our show and we've heard the testimonies would you just got just share the show with somebody maybe share a specific episode with somebody that's how this podcast bro that's how our ministry a gross as well if you don't already follow us on Instagram you can follow us at relearn on on Instagram or to search relearning you'll find us return. Org we are there you can also follow me on Twitter posting out there pretty regularly about just about every day at deal Partridge and hopefully would just offer you guys an edifying truths for your Christian Journey hopefully
 episode was good for you was helpful for you was useful for you and then I brought you closer to Christ we will see you guys next week
 thank you for listening to this episode of real Christianity if your regular listener to the show would you prefer we consider making a donation to support our ministry effort simply visit relearn. Org forward slash donate again that's relearn. Org forward slash donate and for those looking to explore the idea of joining or planting a church in your home you can download our free pdf ebook titled the basics of biblical House Church by visiting relearn. Org forward slash house last week do you have a theological question you would like answered on the show submit your question at relearn. Org forward slash question thanks for joining us on this episode of real Christianity we will see you next Wednesday