Is there a secret plan to destroy the world? | Eric Shanburn.wav

With so much fear and uncertainty in our world, it's easy to wonder who is really in control. Discover what Scripture reveals about the forces at work in the world—and the ultimate victory of Jesus Christ.

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SPEAKER_01 0:20

Good morning. I'm so excited to speak with you, and uh this is our second week in this series, but I want to say good morning and welcome to those who are here for the first time you're visiting. Um love to get a chance to say hi to you after the service in the lobby there. Pastor Tim and I will be out there. Uh, you also get a free gift if you go to the Welcome Center, too. So, how about that? Uh, good morning to those watching online and those in First Lutheran in Alganac. Um man, this has been amazing. How many were here last week? Conspiracy theories sermon series, it's crazy. Um, but I've been so looking forward to this, and yeah, it's you know, I didn't tell Tim about it until you know he needed to know, you know. So he couldn't say no, you know. That's when I was like, um, but we covered some amazing stuff last week, and I just want to kind of review that in case you weren't here last week. You can go, of course, you can go back and watch on demand, but our conspiracy theories that we really looked at last week were uh were pretty important, and um, we were looking at these four um these four uh important thinkers from the 20th century that pretty much are the foundation of our Western society. Darwin, who else? Freud, Nietzsche, Marx, yeah, those are the four. So they're they're titled the God killers because they really had a strong criticisms against faith and religion. And we learned last week, um, as we were talking about conspiracy theory, we learned that about probably about 25% of us really like conspiracy theories. Like we like to go down that rabbit hole, right? There's a bunch of us here that we could probably hang out together and and do that together. Uh, and there's about 25% of you that find us very annoying and weird. So we learned that last week. It's probably the same this week. Last week we we looked at these statements made by these guys. Um, but what I want to want us to remember from last week was the startling stat that the very time when we send off our kids to learn these thinkers is the very time when they walk away from the faith that you raise them in. In fact, 65% of young adults who were raised in the faith disconnect from their faith in their 20s, starting in high school, really. And I think it has something to do with these four guys and what they've been what they teach and what we're taught to believe and what they say. But we ended with this statement. This is what they missed. This is what they don't talk about, this is what you won't learn in public school, this is what is not a part of their criticism, it's what they missed. I wish they knew this, but I'm and I hope we are communicating this to other people today. It's the things we need to communicate and need to know that God loves you, that the creator of the universe actually loves you and cares about you, that he's revealed himself in creation and also in the word of God, and also through his son, the word, Jesus Christ, who he sent to die for you and for your sins, to give you eternal life. And he's actually calling you in a relationship, he's knocking at the door of your heart. He's inviting you into be to have a friendship with him. It's amazing, with the creator of the universe. And so that's where we that's where we ended up last week. Um, but for those of you who weren't here, let's go back and look at the the phrase conspiracy theory, just so we're all on the same page on what this means and what I'm looking at. So a conspiracy theory is just a claim that uh that a group or an individual uh who are you know secretly working behind the scenes to accomplish some hidden purpose. That's kind of what a conspiracy is. That's what we're looking at. Um, I wanted to start with uh uh some personal stories. You like your personal stories? So um this is my sixth grade composition journal. I still have it. Um so I thought we'd read a couple entries in the sixth grade composition journal. Is that okay? Can I do that with you today? To kind of kick off today's theme. So this is uh 1981. Okay, that updates me a little bit. Um this is I'm writing in this particular one I write to the teacher. Dear Mr. Britt, if there is life on other planets, I wonder what they look like. They might they might even look like us. His response was I doubt it. Let's see, what else we got here? There's more. Oh, here's one. Uh if the whole uh dear journal, if the whole world had a nuclear war, who do you think do you think very few people would live or would everyone die? I was pretty morbid. Sixth grader. I was a weird kid. Weird kid. Um, let's see, another one here. It was a non-answer, is what it was. Dear Mr. Britton, this is 1982. I wonder if there really are such things as flying saucers with aliens in them. And his response? I doubt it. Yeah. It was 1982, you know. I don't know. So there's just a couple of, there's a lot of fun ones in there. Um, so I've been thinking about this for a long time, obviously. But looking into these questions. How many of you are fascinated with apocalyptic type movies and TV shows and books? Like apocalyptic, meaning like end-of-the-world scenarios and events, you know, whether it's a comment, whether it's a tsunami, whether it's earthquakes or aliens or whatever. A lot of you, yeah. Uh, what about dystopian type books and yeah, books and movies? You know, dystopian would be like like a tyrannical government or group, you know, responding to that world-ending event that can tries to control the world and stuff. There's a lot of movies like this out there. They have both of them together. Um, in fact, I'm gonna I'm gonna show a collage on the screen. So if you see a, if there's a movie, it's a collage of of apocalyptic dystopian movies from the last 10 years, okay, some popular ones. So if you've if there's one of these on here that you've seen, I want you to raise your hand, okay? So I just want to see where we're at today. Okay, so these are the last 10 years. If you've seen one of these, or read one of these, or know about one of these, yeah, quite a few of you, yeah, quite a few of you. It gets me excited. I mean, I've seen pretty much, I think I've seen all of them except for one. Literally. It's very exciting. Just the just the images of these make me want to go back and re-watch them, doesn't it? Okay. Uh now, so what is today's theme? What would we look at? What's the question for today? This is the question. So, is there a group or individual with hidden plans to control or destroy the world as we know it? What do you think? Yes? No? A lot of yeses. Who cares? If you're alive, you should care. Well, hold on to your seats. Are you ready? I don't think you're ready. You're not ready for this, I'm telling you right now. You're not ready, but we're gonna go anyway. Are you ready? We're gonna look at four conspiracy theories that kind of relate to some of these, this question, okay? Then we're gonna go into scripture. Number one, the New World Order conspiracy. How many have gone down this rabbit hole sometime in your life? Well, quite a few of you, yeah, this is a popular one. This has been around for a long time. And it says that there's this secret group of elite people, rich, powerful people, who get together secretly and plot out how they can take over the world. And they they use different means, you know, it could be like uh you know, financial control, maybe a one digital currency, world digital currency, military control, creating crises. Um, typically, you usually end up going down the rabbit hole of Freemasonry, for sure, that's a part of it. Um, secret meetings, secret rituals of the elite. Um, sometimes you might even go into like you look at the the if you take a bird's eye view of Washington, D.C., and you're like, why are the streets in the form of a pentagram? That's weird. You know, it's like or like the dollar bill. Like, you ever look at the dollar bill? Um, and you know I had a dollar bill. What did I do with it? Here it is. The dollar bill, what is up with this? Why is there this all-seeing eye in there and over an Egyptian pyramid? And what does all that mean? And and there's Latin under the pyramid, it says novus ordo secorum. Do you know what that means, Latin? New world order. So it's been on the dollar bill since 1935. So there's all kinds of different rabbit holes you can go down and be like, whoa, what's going on there? Is this just the eye of Providence? Is it the eye of Horus, the Egyptian god? Or if you've seen Lord of the Rings, it just looks like the eye of Sora. That's kind of creepy. Any way you look at it, an eye looking at you is creepy, okay? Why is it on the dollar bill? A lot of a lot of things you can, a lot of rabbit holes you can go down. The New World Order conspiracy.

unknown 9:58

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Okay, you ready for some more? What about this one? Some wonder, yeah, is it a conspiracy or not? You know, because clearly there have been some Islamic clerics who have literally said this is our plan, a global caliphate under Sharia law is our plan. So maybe it's not a conspiracy after all. What about this one? A depopulation conspiracy. Whoa, yeah. Right? Is there this one's scary? Is there a plan to depopulate the earth? I know. Are there engineered pandemics and resource control and sterilization programs? Is this that's that's a that's a more recent conspiracy? And then the one we're all waiting to talk about today. The alien conspiracy. The alien conspiracy. Now, let's be honest here. How many of you have looked at the United States government has released three document dumps of their UFO files? This is not, this is this is true. This is from the government, this is their files from the government that used to say they didn't exist. They're now saying, well, yeah, they do exist. And they're putting out, well, all of them we don't know, but we're putting out some of these documents. How many of you have seen something from one of these document dumps? Not many, but more than last nine o'clock. Okay, keep your hand up for a minute. I'm gonna try to get everybody's hand up. Okay, okay, now if you're if your hand's not up and you saw Stephen King's disclosure movie, add your hand to their hand. Not many. Okay, what about if you've add your hand to their hand, if you've known what this X is from? And you watch an episode of X-Files. Okay, come on now, Oxy. I see a lot more hands going up now. Uh Star Trek? They got aliens in there, right? Okay. Sigourney Weaver's alien movies. How many have seen the E.T. Phone Home? Okay. Pretty much we've all seen these, right? We'd have all our hands up, right? We've all seen these. What's the other one? Close Encounters, remember that one of the third kind? That was actually a good Stephen King one. Now, raise your hand if you can point to a Bible verse that talks about aliens. Go. It's interesting. We're all interested in the topic, but we don't know if the Bible talks about it. Well, we're gonna get to that later. Let's recap today's conspiracy theories. Basically, all of them are talking about the same kind of thing: a world-destroying or depopulating plan or event, and maybe some world domination or control by a group, right? They're all kind of about this, generally speaking. Most conspiracy theories are. That's kind of that's kind of the fun part. You're wondering if it's true or not. But what does scripture say? And this is what I always do, and this is what we should always say. We should always stop ourselves and say, okay, but what does Scripture say? What does it say? Because Scripture is our ultimate authority. That's what we believe, that's what we believe, teach, and confess here. Scripture is the ultimate authority, our ultimate source of truth. In fact, it's part of our confession statement, and that the pastors we actually commit to this. We like put our hand out and say, Yes, I will teach this. This is actually word for word from our uh one of our confessions. It's in the Book of Concord. Um, holy scripture is the only judge, rule, and norm according to which, as the only touchstone, all doctrines should and must be understood and judged as good or evil, right or wrong. Amen. Great statement there, isn't it? Great statement. That's where we stand and fall. So we're gonna submit all this to Scripture. What's interesting is that Scripture does actually talk about these topics. It might shock you, but it does. First, we're gonna jump into Revelation. Now, Revelation is a very difficult book to read, understand, and teach. Most churches avoid it altogether. Um we shouldn't, because it's a it's one of the books of the Bible. But it does talk a lot about these things. And if you read the chapter 13 of Revelation, it actually does talk about something that you probably already know because you've heard it somewhere along the line in your life. That it does talk about that at some point all the people will be made to worship a beast. Now, the not a beast is a is a title for it could be a person or maybe a government. I don't, I don't know. We're not really sure. There's a couple different beasts that are described in Revelation, but the point is you're made to worship it or you'll be killed. And it also says that unless you take the mark of this beast on your hand or forehead, you can't buy or sell anything. How many have heard that that part of the scripture in some point? Yeah. That's something we we've all heard about. This mark of the beast and and and whether or not we can buy or sell if we don't have it, and that's Revelation chapter 13, if you ever want to go back and read that. Revelation 6 talks about something, and and Revelation 9 talks about the earth being depopulated, actually. Uh the fourth seal judgment, if you go back and read in chapter 6, it will tell you that one-fourth of the global population are killed by war, famine, plague, or creatures, some kind of creatures. And later on in chapter 9, those who are left, one-third of them are killed in the sixth trumpet judgment. The Bible actually talks about this stuff. Now, this last uh verse here, Mark chapter 13, this is actually the words of Jesus. So Jesus did talk about the last days. He talked about that he would return again when the Son of Man returns. There's a few times where he talked about what it would be like in those days, toward the end of time as we know it, in this stage before Jesus returns. He says, For in those days there will be such tribulation as hath not been from the beginning of creation that God created, until now, and never will be. And if the Lord hadn't cut short those days, no one would survive. No one would be saved. But for the sake of the elect whom he chose, he shortened the days. Really fascinating. Every once in a while you'll read Jesus talking about these last days. I read these verses, and it makes me want to buy an off-grid cabin and you know get a go bag ready. Now, let's be honest, how many of you already have a go bag ready to go? Yes, I knew there'd be one or two. Last service was only one. So then we got two, and okay. So there's so I'm thinking the four of us get together, we have go bags, and we talk to Tim, and we say, Tim, we would like to market and brand these and do a shepherd's gate bug out bag. And have them available. What do you think? Think we can do that together with the four of us? Yeah, we can get to that. So it's like, you know, you put stuff in there like, you know, filter. Like it's like, you know, how are you gonna filter water? You know, what are you gonna, you know, you need some binoculars, you're gonna need some, you know, what if it gets cold, you know? You gotta have some food, you know, you gotta have you know, you gotta be ready for when everything falls apart and there's and the grid goes down. You gotta be ready for everything. Flashlight, and you gotta have a ham radio and ham sandwich in there or something. Now, I brought up aliens. I know you're all waiting. When are you gonna talk about aliens, Pastor? That's the only reason I'm here today. I just want to know about aliens. So let's ask this question. Did God create aliens? Did God create extraterrestrials? First, let's define those terms. That's important. Um, the actual term extraterrestrial literally means extraterrestrial, so not of the earth, right? That's what it means. Alien is just a term that is referring to non-human. So did God create non-human beings that are not of this earth? I mean, the Bible does say clearly, I mean, if you read the Bible, you will actually encounter non-human beings, non-human beings who are not of the earth, right? Eventually you're gonna encounter them in the Bible. In fact, when's the first chapter you encounter? Genesis chapter what? Chapter three. The third chapter of the Bible, you already encounter a being that, and those that chapter is called the serpent. There's a lot of names the Bible gives to these beings that God created that are not of the earth and they're not human. These are a number of names you'll find in the Bible. The general term typically is angels. That just means messenger. That's all it means. It's just a term that means messenger. Someone who's been sent to deliver a message. That's all it means. Now we do know uh the Bible does specifically mention an individual person with a name, individual named being, Gabriel. He's mentioned in the Old Testament and the New Testament. When do you see him in the New Testament? When is the angel Gabriel, this being, show up? Yay, Mary and Joseph, the story of Christmas, the angel Gabriel, right? He's the one that's telling everybody about Jesus being born. Uh the archangel Michael, you find him in the Bible. This is an archangel that's named, they give us his name Michael. And you find him typically, he's like fighting. He seems like, you know, picture him with a sword. He's fighting other beings. Um, sons of God is a term you find in the Bible to refer to these. Uh, watchers, heavenly host, or heavenly armies is another term you find in the Bible. Holy ones, Seraphim, cherubim, these are unique names. Um, living creatures, there might be some others. Those are the ones I off the top of my head I knew that are in the Bible. So as a kid, as a sixth grader, I had a lot of questions about these. Even before I knew it was in the Bible, I had questions, right? Maybe you've got questions. I've got questions till today. Here's the questions I've got. Maybe you've got these same questions. One, like, how many are there? Um, you know, I was thinking about this. I'm like, well, if the Bible talks about, I didn't mention this, guardian angels, right? Think about guardian angels. If there are, is it if there is a guardian angel for every human being, then there's got to be tens of billions of these. So that's just my mind doing math. Um, so how many are there? Uh how many different kinds are there? Are they all the same kind of different kinds? What do they look like? Right? I asked that in sixth grade. What does it look like? Does it look like us? Actually, interestingly, the Bible tends to describe them as looking like men. But it's kind of scary, frightening, but kind of looking like men. Although there's other times the Bible describes like the seraphim and cherubim, they don't look like men. So maybe there's different kinds. So, how many different kinds are there, God? How many are there? Where do they live? Where do they reside? Do they live in another planet or are they interdimensional? You know, they keep saying with all these document dumps, you hear about like some of our politicians will say they're from another dimension. They're from another realm. They don't say they're from another planet. So what's going on here? Are we talking about the same thing? How do they travel? Do they come through portals? Do they fly? Do they have wings? Do they have ships? I don't know. Do you know? Does the Bible say? So these are a lot of great questions. Here's a question that I can ask and I can answer 100%. Are you ready? Are they all good?

unknown 22:11

No.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Now we know that for sure. The Bible tells us that. Genesis chapter 3, we see that right off the bat. We see one that's not good right off the bat, deceiving and tempting Adam and Eve and trying to destroy God's creation, right there in Genesis chapter 3. So we know that there is other beings God created. We know that there are some of them that are not good, and that they oppose God and pursue to destroy his creation. And we know that they're led by one who has a lot of names. What are the names of this one? Satan. Lucifer, devil, beelzebub. There's all kinds of different names for them. Now, the most popular ones, devil and loose, and devil and um Satan, probably the most common. Devil is transliterated from the Greek, so the Greek word is diabolos. And so that's that's the Greek word diabolos. And it's trans transliterated, we get the word devil. Satan, it comes from the Hebrew, it's the word Satan in the Satan in Satan. In the Hebrew, they both kind of mean the same thing. They both mean like an adversary, an opposer, uh an accuser, someone who brings false, uh who lie who does a deceiver, a liar, or an enemy. Um Beazelbub, that's someone said that, um, that means actually Lord of the Flies, which is really weird. But there's a lot of names. He's also called a liar, a deceiver, a thief. Jesus actually calls him a thief. In fact, let's look at some scriptures here. This is John chapter 10, verse 10. Jesus himself says, talking about this one, this leader of the fallen ones, he says, the thief comes only to steal, kill, kill, and destroy. I've come that they might have life and have it to the full. He's comparing himself with this one, this thief, this deceiver, whose only intent is to steal and destroy to kill and destroy you and your faith and God's purposes. Peter says this: he says, uh, you guys need to be alert. Be alert and be sober, actually, because your enemy, the devil, he doesn't take a break. He's prowling around like a roaring lion, a roaring hungry lion, looking for someone to devour. So be on your guard. Like he doesn't take a break. He's always looking to devour someone. So you gotta be alert and be ready. Wow. That's frightening. And Paul actually tells us this: he says, look, Christians, your battle's not against each other. Whatever conflict you have in your family, in your friendships, and your coworker relationships, whatever wars you see on TV, whatever infighting is happening, even in churches, that's not your battle. That's not the true battle you're fighting. There's actually a battle behind that battle. That's the real battle you're fighting. He says, for our struggle is not really, it's not against flesh and blood, it's not against each other. That's not our real struggle. Our struggle, and it has been from the beginning, since Genesis chapter 3, is against the rulers, the authorities, the powers of the dark world, against the spiritual forces of evil, where? In the heavenly realms. He's talking about these beings, these fallen beings. That's what your battle is actually really against. It's pretty frightening, you think about it. Now, Paul says, look, therefore, because this is true, you need to put on the full armor of God because you're in a battle. And if you want to survive this battle, you got to have the armor of God. How many were here at the outdoor service when we talked about the armor of God? Remember? The armor of God is really interesting. It's all about Jesus. Think about it. The helmet of salvation, well, that's through Jesus. The breastplate of righteousness. That's not your righteousness, that's Jesus' righteousness that you're wearing. Well, the shield of faith, that's faith in Jesus. The sword of the Spirit, which is what? The Word of God. That's the Word. Jesus is the Word. It's all about Jesus that you're putting on it. The armor of God is Jesus. And Paul says, you got to put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes, you'll be able to stand your ground. And when you've done everything, stand. To be faithful in the end. You know, if you're if you're 15 years old and you're about to go through the 15 to 29 age range, you need the armor of God. Because you're gonna be about to go through a gauntlet of people telling you that there is no God. And that's ridiculous and weak and lame. And we gotta help our young people know how to put on the fallen armor of God. Amen? We can't lose anymore. Whatever you're going through, I mean, whatever the day of evil is, I mean, we live in a fallen world, so whatever you're facing, maybe you're facing stage four cancer right now. Maybe you're facing a divorce. Maybe you're facing maybe you're being shipped shipped off into the Iran war this week. Maybe you're just having an awful relationship struggle with someone at work. Maybe you're struggling with overcoming an addiction that you can't seem to to beat. Maybe tomorrow there's a bunch of UFOs that appear over every city in the c in the world, you know. Whatever that day of evil is that you're facing, if you want to stand, you need the armor of God. Jesus Christ. You need to put on Christ. He's the armor of God. Whatever it is, so that after you've done everything, you'll be standing in Christ alone. So should we be afraid? Are you afraid? You're not afraid? You're not afraid. Have you seen pictures of these aliens? Are you not afraid? You know, every time an angel shows up in the Bible, what happens? They're afraid, aren't they? And what's the first thing that comes out of the angel's mouth? Do not be afraid. Actually, this phrase, do not be afraid or do not fear, guess how many times you find it in the Bible? Who knew that? 365 times. That's true. That's right, 24-7, 365. Why? Because God wants you to know every day He's in control. God is in control. No matter what it looks like, no matter what it's gonna look like, God is in control. His will is gonna be accomplished. It was accomplished Christmas morning. It was accomplished Holy Week and Easter, and it's gonna be accomplished in the end. And I want us to focus on this last verse here that tells us exactly this. Ephesians chapter 1, 7 through 10. Amazing chapter of the Bible. I want to invite uh the band to come up now, too, as we finish out here. Let's focus on this verse for the last few minutes together. In Jesus we have redemption through his blood. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

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