Do All Religions Worship the Same God?

In this episode of Call Him Father, Micah and Pastor Taylor tackle a wide range of questions about faith, spirituality, and following Jesus in a modern world.

They talk about nostalgia and whether constantly looking back can keep you from being grateful for what God is doing right now. Taylor also shares about a mission trip to El Salvador, how God opened the door for a Bible training facility, and the vision to equip and send church planters throughout Central and South America.

Then they answer listener questions about suffering, morality, world religions, angel numbers, and finding a healthy church. Do all religions worship the same God? Is Christianity just one path among many? Are angel numbers harmless, or are they connected to occult spirituality? What should you actually look for when choosing a church?

Call Him Father is a podcast tackling hard questions about faith, life, and following Jesus in a modern world.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, what's up, guys? Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Call Him Father podcast. Some questions that we get at together in this episode are angel numbers. What do we do with angel numbers? Is it good? Is it godly? Is it demonic? What's going on with these things? Is God actually communicating with us or is something else going on? Do all religions worship the same God? Don't all religions ultimately just teach the same thing? And if so, why be a Christian or why be a Buddhist or why be a Muslim or why be a Jew? Why does it really matter if they all just are teaching the same thing? And what to look for in a church that you're considering joining? And probably some other stuff in here as well. Stay tuned, it's gonna be a good one.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

So nostalgia. Do you think nostalgia is a sin?

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Let's do some work on definitions here because I want to know specifically what you mean by nostalgia. When you ask that question, like, what give me give me some examples and and maybe define the term a little bit as far as what's in your head.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

So looking back to like the good old days and being like, back then, I wish I could have enjoyed it more, or I wish I was back to then because that I was happier then. Um but I feel like nostalgia can kind of lie to you because it you feel like you're just thinking about the good things and then you're not remembering like if you were actually going through something really hard.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

You know what I mean? And what would be like the negative the negative outcome for somebody on that?

SPEAKER_01 1:23

That you're not grateful for where you're at right now. Maybe like a lack of gratitude or uh hoping for the greener grass on the other side.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Yeah, I gotcha. So, okay, well, I think that we can break this up in a couple different ways. Let's go to one extreme first, which would be you know, like you just always live in the past, and there's no like present in the presence and vision of the future, which is bad. That can be paralyzing, like you're talking about. It's just always reaching back to man, when I was a quarterback in high school in one state, like those guys are out there, they're 40, 50, 60 years old, and like they have not had a greater achievement than throwing the winning pass in their 1A state football game. Like, that's a rough, that's a rough way to live life, dude. And and it prevents people from being able to live in the present, get a vision for the future because you're always reaching back to the good old days, like you're talking about. That's obviously not good because God is in the now and he's also leading you into a glorious future of some really great stuff. And if you're always looking back in the rear view mirror, I've told people before Christianity doesn't work in reverse, and it doesn't work by you focusing on the rear view mirror all the time. Sometimes we need to go back, focus on stuff, actually, oftentimes get people healed up from like trauma, past experiences. Um, that's good. There's a place for that. But when you and I just live in the rear view mirror all the time, we don't ever like put our focus on what's ahead of us. We miss some amazing things that God wants to do. So I'd be concerned about that. And then there's also the person that would I think actually transgress a biblical command to remember. See that all over the Bible. God is constantly telling his people to remember. Yeah, they don't ever remember, they don't ever go back, they don't ever think of the sweetness of life, they don't go back to those precious memories that they have because they're so future-oriented that they they forget all that God has done. And so it leads to a lack of gratitude. They've got a lot of drive, but they tend to not be very grateful people because they're continuing to reach for, you know, a higher level of achievement and success that they haven't gone to, which can be a good motivation if it's moving in the right direction. But it when it's at the expense of like remembering all that God has done in your life and redemptive history, remembering Jesus, remembering how God has healed you, delivered you, saved you, all of those sort of things, that can be really bad. So there's actually a biblical command to remember.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Um, and what you were what you were hitting on is like when we tie ourselves off to the past at the expense of being able to move forward with joy to a future that's glorious that God has for us. I think that that is a really unwise way to live. So there I think there's kind of a ditch that you can fall on, uh, fall into on either sides of this question. Um, I want to have a vision of God in the now, that he's here with me. He's doing something in my life right now. Right. He's the God of my future. So there's things that I haven't done yet that God's leading me into. Um, I just got back from Central America, went to El Salvador this weekend where we're helping get a Bible training facility off the ground. It's gonna be amazing. We're gonna basically equip and launch church planners all over Central and South America. It's gonna be awesome. So if I'm just living in the past, I'm not gonna have eyes to see that opportunity and hear God calling me into that. This thing where we've got the property purchased, we haven't built it yet. We're working on getting our permitting submitted, all that sort of stuff. But that's all future stuff at this point. So if I'm just living back here, I'm not gonna have the ability to discern what God is calling me to do in the now and in the future um concerning you know that one aspect of of my life.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

But it's not a sin to look back and be like, oh, I enjoyed the starting.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

No, I don't think so, man. And I think that that can actually be really healthy. I think that the problem in our culture, Micah, tell me what you think about this, dude. I see the problem more as like when it comes to time and our relationship to it. What I'm maybe more concerned about is the focus on the now. Like I think that I think that like we don't ever go really visit the past and sit with it and thank God for it and be grateful for the great experiences that He's allowed us to have in life. Um I I I I guess what I might see more of from people is just everything in our lives is bringing you to the moment that you're in right now, and it's all screaming this message of selfishness and self-centeredness that it's all about you and your pleasure and your distraction and whatever. I think that's what happens every time we scroll on social media, is it's just you're hearing the same message over and over again. It's about you, it's about here, it's about right now. Yeah. At the expense of getting quiet with the spirit, you know, reflecting on remembering what he's done in your life, also being open and positioned to get a vision for what he might want to do in your future. Yeah, that might be almost what I'm more concerned about with people. But you're obviously kind of thinking of some negative experiences where people get stuck in the past.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Not specifically, I just feel like it's easy for me to think back at times and be like, I wish I was back in those circumstances, but then it feels like I'm not being grateful for what I have now. Yeah. Um but and I'm grateful to even have times like that, you know, that there were times that I look back so fondly at. Um but I think the unfair part of that is like you're not really taking into account like the pain you were necessarily feeling at that time or like the hard stuff you were going through. Because I feel like you just think about the the good stuff.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

I d that just reminded me of this office quote. Have you guys watched The Office, by the way?

SPEAKER_01 7:34

I have, okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

My wife and I are hardcore. We've we've watched the like full thing like seven times, full series. But there's this moment where somebody, I don't remember the cast member, somebody said something to the effect of like, I wish maybe it was Andy Bernard, I don't know. Fact check me. I wish that we knew that we were in the good old days when we were in them. Yeah. You know, and that's kind of the that's that's the idea. So that's where I think it could be it could be a negative thing to like if you're always looking back at the good old days, you're totally right, dude. I think that we lose gratitude for the present. And we live, we lose the ability to recognize, like, hey man, you might actually say that about the season that you're in now five or ten years down the road. Yeah, for sure. So if we don't have that posture of openness and gratitude for where we are, like, dude, this season of life that I'm in right now is just so sweet with my kids. Yeah. It's just, I mean, you know, I've got eight, six, two in about five months, and it's just like this is the absolute greatest season of life right now, and it's so intense, and kids are a lot, but they're so wonderful. And I I'm sure I know for a fact that, like, especially as I talk to parents who have had kids that grow up and launch in life, that everybody always reaches back to this season that I'm in right now, and it can be difficult to like really be present in it and enjoy it for all that it has to offer just because it's so insane. Yeah. Um, but I've been grateful for those voices in my life because they've they've they've helped me really slow down and realize like, no, no, no, you're you're gonna remember the season that you're in for the rest of your life, and you're just really constantly gonna be reaching back to it. And then also on the other end of that, I hope when I get to that season of life where my kids do launch and differentiate and get feet underneath them and go do everything that God has called them to do in life, that I don't end up a depressed, hopeless mess because I'm not raising kids anymore, because God's gonna have something unique for Mercenai in that season as well. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Yeah. You mentioned the El Salvador stuff. So how did you get connected with that? Like, how did that come to be?

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Oh man. Okay. How long do you want to spend on this? Up to you. Okay. Um I mean, it's a God thing for sure, like how the whole thing went. We can I'll I'll give you kind of a history overview. So when I was uh I was probably about 20 years old. Um, probably been saved for about a year or so, and I was just absolutely I mean, God radically saved me, man. It was like I went from sketchy back alley drug deals downtown Bellingham to reading my Bible for eight hours a day with some buddies of mine in Woods Coffee in Linden. I mean, like just total, total night and day life transformation that was really radical, really quickly. And I just got filled with this desperate hunger for God. Like, I've always been a really passionate person, so I don't want to do anything if I can't really like fully give myself to it. And then when I met Jesus, I met the I met the place where that was meant to go my entire life. And so I got I got after it praying for hours and hours and hours a day, searching the scriptures, ripping it apart. I realized, like, dude, if like I gotta figure out what I think about this God stuff. Is Jesus God? Is the tomb empty? What does that mean for my life? And the scripture says that we'll find him when we seek him with all of our hearts. And so that was that season for me. Just went after it. Um, and I had several really profound spiritual encounters that have marked me to this day. This is gonna be um, I I don't know, I I don't want to pitch the wrong idea of me as someone special with when I talk about these encounters, which is why I don't really do it a lot. But also I think it's helpful because it gives people some faith to expect that God's gonna do something cool in your life. Because this all was happening way before anybody called me pastor, dude. Way before. And I was just really desperate for God. And I realized that, like, dude, God, you use teenagers when Jesus was here to flip the world upside down. That's where I'm at. I'm like a 20-year-old kid. Use me to do something, I'll go anywhere, I'll do anything. And uh was just crying out for God to use me. And I remember this one night, dude, I had this encounter with God where I heard his audible voice. This has only happened to me one time. And how I would describe it was like internal audible. Have I told you this story before?

SPEAKER_01 11:56

I I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Okay, so which we see it in the Bible all over the place: God speaking audibly to Moses, God speaking audibly to the apostles, speaking audibly to people, speaking audibly to Jesus. Like you you see, God speaking, He's a speaking God, Genesis 1. He's speaking audibly to Adam and Eve. Yeah, he's a speaking God. And um, I had this voice like erupt on the inside of me. The only way that I know how to is describe it is I heard it in my brain and I heard it in my feet. It was like just thundering through my body. And God spoke to me the name of an indigenous people group off of the coast of Panama, which is the southernmost country in Central America. And uh, I had no idea what to do with that. I'd never heard the name of the people group before in my entire life, and it was just like boom, here it is. And so I've carried that with me for probably 13 years at this point, and wrestled through like, what the heck is gonna happen? God, what do you do? Am I being a good steward of this? You know, I've thought about learning Spanish before and haven't done that, and now I'm regretting it, and now I'm trying to learn because we're in Central America now. Uh, but yeah, so I've carried that in my heart for 13 years. My our board here at New Song is aware of it. And so a year or so ago, it just seemed like the Holy Spirit resurfaced that call to Central America on my life and therefore our church here because of the position that I'm in, um, strategically as a leader within this community. And uh so we just started praying into that. And hey, God, if this is you, open up the door. This is last summer. Fast forward to January. I got connected with a local uh Hispanic pastor named Ivan, who's like literally the modern-day apostle John, dude. The guy's absolutely crazy. He's so amazing. I'd love for you to meet him someday. Awesome guy. And uh, I was just hearing stories from him about like, you know, it congregants that he had has had that have they came here illegally and they got basically deported for being here illegally. And it's just heartbreaking talking to the guy about this because he's like, dude, they're they're here illegally, and yeah, I want everybody to honor the law of the country, and um, and they've got wives and kids, and they fled gang activity in El Salvador. The gangs were really bad there in Central America. Like, you couldn't walk, you would never see we got families walking the streets downtown Bellingham all throughout the day, all throughout the night. Yeah, no issues really at all. I mean, there's some crazy people for sure, but generally pretty safe. There, dude, you wouldn't have a mom walking her kids in broad daylight because she could get robbed and shot on the spot, and like kids are snatched up and just awful, horrible conditions. And uh, so people are fleeing that. I would do the same thing, bro. I would straight up do the same thing if my family was in that position. And so he's got families getting deported, and he's like, Man, my priority for these guys is we gotta get them saved. Right, we got to get them saved, and and we got to get them out of here to their home countries in a healthy, safe way. Um, really awesome perspective on stuff. I really appreciate it. And anyways, he basically in January he got a vision for like we got to do something about this um as far as all of these deportations that are happening, and uh and also what would it look like to leverage this as an opportunity to build a Bible training facility that basically equips and sends church planters all over the place because he's trained a lot of these people as church planters and pastors, and so now the idea is like, well, we don't want them to just go back to like freaking construction. Let's see if we can give an opportunity for them to further the good news of Jesus in Central and South America to their home countries. And so it was just an immediate witness between me and him and his vision there and our board brought our board in right away, and uh so we just we committed to going down. I went down for a trip three months ago in March, and we actually helped purchase a property, so the property's paid off, and uh, we've got about I think probably four hundred thousand dollars in the bank. The Underground Church in China is involved, they're helping fund it, which is crazy. Uh, we've got different ministries and business leaders interested in helping fund this thing. I think the total is gonna be right around 5.1 million, which um dude, it's gonna be it's gonna literally this is gonna reach Central and South America. Like we're gonna we're gonna equip and send hundreds, if not thousands, of church planners. So uh we got the property paid for, which is really great. Gonna continue to work on getting the whole thing built. And just a life-changing experience, dude. It's a I would I would highly encourage everybody, if opportunity allows, to go and experience a mission type trip like that. It I I got my life changed the last time I went, our team, the guys that I brought down um with me this time, just amazing life transformation. There's just something about being with people that don't have anything. I mean, dude, the pastor's house that we stayed at, the pastor's church that we stay at doesn't have a roof, dude. Like only two-thirds of the church is actually covered by a roof. The pulpit is totally exposed. So like the congregation's covered with rain. They're in their rainy season now. But if it rains during church service, he's getting just dumped on in the pulpit. And uh, I mean, the music is like so bad. You've got the kid on the keys who's like 12 that knows two chords clunking around, and then the worship leaders are singing off key, like he's playing in G, and we're singing and flipping A or whatever, like it's all over the place. And they don't have anything, they live in extreme poverty. I was telling you guys before the pod, the average the median family income in El Salvador is $457-ish per month. Yeah. Average family lives off $450. Yeah. Which is so crazy when you think about like average household income in in the US. I think what what is what is that? Like $60,000, $67,000? Probably around there. Ish. And uh um, anyways, it's just it's really eye-opening, dude. Like the and they're so happy. They don't have anything, and yet they're so happy and they love God so much, and they're so sold out for the kingdom of God. I mean, the people that are a part of this thing, dude, they're just like they're they're giving their entire lives to see this, yeah, this thing built. Um to see missionaries sent out into Central and South America. Yeah. What's really I mean, there's so much we could say, dude. That what's really cool strategically about the property is it's 250 yards from the main highway that connects all of Central America. So you can literally hop on the highway that's right outside the front door of the property and go to the U.S. border or go to the tip of Panama. So that's how it all got started. It was 10, 13 years ago for me. I had a powerful supernatural experience with God that I've been carrying. Uh, got sovereignly lined up with Pastor Ivan. When we were on the trip, there was a guy on the trip that's gonna really help with the construction side of things.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

And uh come to find out he had this experience 20 years ago. He wasn't even a Christian yet, dude. And he had this recurring dream of being on an airplane with like architectural plans flying somewhere, yeah. And uh he met Jesus and he would go back to that dream like, man, is that like what God is calling me to do with my life? Yeah, am I missing something? Why hasn't this happened yet? And uh that was in his mind the whole trip, and so we talked about it at the end of the trip because that literally happened. He was literally on an airplane flying out of country with plans to go and get this flipping Bible facility built, dude, where we're gonna send church planners all over all over the place. So, really cool convergence of some long history that I've had with Jesus, that this guy had, that um Ivan's had, and and several other people that are involved. So I'm I'm really excited for it. It's been great. So hoping to get you and your lady down there sometime. I think it'd be real good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

We're gonna move into some questions from our Instagram. If you're not following us already there on Instagram, go to at call himfather. DM us any questions you have for future episodes, and we'll get them answered. So, first one is if God is real, why do bad things happen to good people?

SPEAKER_00 20:35

So the truth is, bro, that we live in a fallen broken world with fallen broken people, and God has given humanity agency to decide what we do. So when somebody is abused, when they're exploited, when there's theft, when people are taken advantage of, this is humanity acting in rebellion against God, and he's not ultimately responsible for it because we're created in his image and after his likeness with the ability to decide what we're doing with our lives. The thing about Christianity that I find so appealing is um also when we think about this question, we also have to think about it, dude, through the lens of what we know the answer can't be to this great question that everybody has. And we know the answer to the problem of suffering that it can't be that God doesn't care. I've had some really hard days in life, you've had some really hard days in life. And that's always the question that people have is like, well, God, if I'm going through this, this thing that's so awful and so difficult, you that how how do I how do I maintain a vision of the fact that you care about me? Because, you know, if I had all the power, I would rescue my kids from the suffering and the difficulty and the trial of life. And when we get to the person and the work of Jesus Christ, we see that God has incarnated himself and he has entered all the way into. Human suffering, dude, and let that thing have its way with him. He was betrayed. He was abandoned. His family turned their backs on him. He was lied against. He was falsely accused. He was dependent condemned, crucified, murdered in cold blood, and his body was laid lifeless in a tomb. But the story doesn't end there. He punched a hole through death, resurrected to new life again. He'll never die again. And the story of the Bible culminates when Jesus Christ comes back again and God wipes away every tear from our eyes. And so the story of Christianity says God is not responsible for sin. God is not responsible for the suffering that you and I experience. We live in a fallen, broken world with fallen, broken people. And the story of Jesus is about the story of the undoing of all suffering, sickness, and death in the end.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

Yeah, that's good. Is morality learned or naturally acquired?

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Yes. I think it's both. So let's talk about naturally acquired morality for a second. The scripture is going to say that God has given us special revelations. So we have creation, we have conscience, we have Christ. We have the scripture. God has revealed Himself to us in creation, right? You look up at the stars and it's like, oh man, God has to exist. How do we get here? I'm so small, the universe is so big. You have revelation given through Christ. This is God incarnate. And you have revelation through conscience. Everybody gets revelation of conscious, conscience, and of creation, regardless of if you could be a tribe's person in the middle of Africa and never heard the name of Jesus or never held a Bible. But God did give you a conscience and He has created this beautiful universe that you live in. And there's something that every single human being has as a common experience where our conscience seems to uh convict us of right and wrong, that we all have this bent towards morality. So for example, what's really interesting, dude, is sharks. I don't know if you know this, how sharks reproduce is we call it forcibly copulating. So basically, sharp shark, the dude shark rapes the lady shark. That's how sharks propagate their species. But we don't call it rape, we call it forcibly copulating because we understand that there is a difference between a shark and a human being created in the image and after the likeness of God. So our conscience assaults us to say, well, when when a human does it to a human, it's objectively wrong. And pretty much across cultures, dude, you're going to find that to be the case. And everybody agrees, murder's wrong. You get extreme outliers like Nazi Germany, Stalin, communism, et cetera. But I would argue that that worldview tends to happen and be created outside of a godless one where we kick God out and we actually allow the government and humanity to become God in his place. So our conscience seems to assault us to say there is right and there is wrong. And when we do wrong, we know that we're doing wrong. And the reason why that's there is because God put that there. Whereas the animal kingdom, you don't have that. Um and if we operated the same way as animals, really, like, I mean, there's what's more natural, dude, than the strong eating the weak. Like you can't, if you can't appeal to God and you appeal to nature and you just say this is why it's wrong to murder, well, there murder happens quote unquote all the time in the animal kingdom, but we don't call it that. And yet we know that it when it is done to humans, it's ethically, morally, absolutely wrong. And we're right to say that because that's the thumbprint of God on the on the conscience. So, yes, there is a nature component to this that God has given us as his image bearers, um, an ethical framework that he's literally stitched into us, stitched into us as human beings. And it is learned. So it's really interesting is if you look at studies as far as like, you know, if you grow up in a Christian home, you're this likely to be, you're way more likely to become a Christian as an adult than anybody else. If you grow up in a Muslim home, you're way more likely to remain a Muslim for the rest of your life. Atheist, same thing, Jew, same thing. So we do know that morality is shaped, it's learned, which we're about to celebrate Father's Day here, which is why the role of mom and dad is really important to agree that the scripture is the ethical framework of human flourishing. This is God's will for humanity. And we got to get in the book and figure out what it says about how to live rightly because God has given us our children as very impressionable, little beautiful people that we can screw up really bad, dude. So if you, you know, you look at not to get political and controversial here, but if you look at like the LGBTQ plus phenomena over the last however many years, uh, there is 100% undoubtedly a social contagion dynamic happening here where our education system, our government, our culture is assaulting our children, I would say, with bad demonic ideas and ethical moral frameworks to say, you know what, what it really looks like to flourish as a person, what's really good is for you to realize if you're a boy, you can be a girl and you should live and act like one, which is a total contradiction to the wisdom of scripture. Um, so we have the ability to really mess kids up. We need to take that seriously, and uh because there are there's power in our words that we say to uh what when we ascribe value to certain ethical moral frameworks, it it really does stuff in the world and it affects people's lives.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

For sure. Are all religions really just worshiping the same God?

SPEAKER_00 27:59

No. The the problem is, dude, when you talk to all of the religions, they disagree with each other about like literally everything. So we could take Jesus as an example here. Everybody disagrees about Jesus, which if you talk to a Christian, we say he's the God man. He has been around forever, he'll be around forever. This is God incarnating himself as a second person of the Trinity in Jesus Christ to live the perfect life we couldn't die, substitutionary death in our place, resurrect to new life again, ascend to heaven, and return again one day to judge the living and the dead as the God man. The theological category for this is the hypostatic union, the the unity of God's humanity and his divinity in the person and the work of Jesus. If you go to a Jew and you ask them, what do you think about Jesus? They would completely disagree with the Christian, of course. That's why they're not Christian. He's the false Messiah, he's a false Christ, he really existed, but we killed him because he wasn't the Messiah. You go to a Buddhist and they would say, Well, Jesus is uh he was an enlightened teacher. Um if you go to if you go to like the Baha'i religion, they're gonna say this is a manifestation of God, uh, this is a prophet, but we also see a manifestation of God's uh, you know, wisdom in other historical figures like the Buddha. Like it would be at the same level. If you go to the Hindu, a different answer to the question of Jesus. If you go to the Christian cults, dude, and you talk about we got an episode forthcoming where we're gonna talk about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, LDS, Mormons. You look at Jehovah's Witness, uh, they have a completely different vision of Jesus than we would. The Mormon is gonna say that Jesus is not eternally God, that he was a man who became God, who was exalted to Godhood, God's status, uh, but he wasn't eternity eternally God since eternity passed. You go to the Jehovah's Witness, and they're gonna totally just amend what John says in John 1 about Jesus being God, and they change their Bible to say what John 1 doesn't actually say. Say when John says that the word was with God and the word was God, speaking of Jesus Christ. They actually changed that language. So the Jehovah's Witnesses disagree. Yeah, so that's just one example, bro. The the world religions disagree about everything. Uh, everybody wants a Jesus, but the question is what Jesus do you want? Yeah. Um, I want the real Jesus, and I believe the real Jesus has been revealed through the New Testament writings. Real good evidence and reason to uh believe that's the case. And when it comes to him, we got to get the right Jesus. Yeah. We live in an age. Here's one thing I was thinking about. We live in a day in an age of authenticity, right? Everybody's like, hey, you know, be your authentic self. Like this is the highest aim and the highest good in life. And any parent or any institution or any church or anybody that is gonna tell you that you can't be who you truly are, they're the enemy, and you need to push them out of your life. And what I want to say, dude, is let's let Jesus, let's give him the same graces, let's give him the same opportunity and take him at his word. And uh, we're gonna find out really quick as we sit with his teachings and the gospels in particular, that he is very different than we would have thought. Um, in addition, one more illustration on this is like let me piece this together for a second. Um I am Taylor Simpson. That's my name. Um I am a specific person living in a specific time, specific place, certain relationships. Um if somebody's talking about Taylor Simpson, it would be right to ask the question which one? Because there are a lot of so like if you go online, dude, and you search Taylor Simpson, you're gonna find Oh, let's let's do this really quick, actually. Let's see. You're gonna find I did this recently, and you're gonna find like this like D1 freaking volleyball chick who's like a really great athlete. Taylor Simpson 2025 volleyball roster. Taylor Simpson IMDB was in Monsters Ball or something. There's an Instagram account here, there's like a black dude that shows up. So the question is what Taylor Simpson are we actually talking about? And it's the same thing with the world religions when it comes to Jesus as an example here, everybody's gonna have a different answer. So they they don't agree. No, we're not worshiping the same God.

SPEAKER_01 32:48

Yeah, right. So then what do you say to the person who thinks that all religions are just a bunch of made-up stories but pointing towards the same God that we're all experiencing?

SPEAKER_00 32:59

I would say that in particular with Christianity, if somebody's saying that they're spending way too much time scrolling dumb videos on TikTok and social media instead of actually looking into the evidence and the data that's out there. What's awesome about Christianity, dude, is it it's not an invitation to turn your brain off. Right. In fact, the exact thing, opposite thing needs to happen for people, you gotta turn your brain on. And you you you gotta actually like the story of the resurrection of Jesus. What happened? Peter ran to the tomb and he looked in for himself, yeah, and he saw that it was empty, and he began to marvel. That that's what you have to do is you have to actually be willing to say, you know what, um, the algorithm's jacked, and uh there is a tremendous amount of false information that is just pummeling my prefrontal cortex all the time, and maybe it's not totally accurate, and and we in fact know that, and yet that's where we continue to go for all of our like visions of all of our what am I trying to say? Information. Yeah, thank you. This is where we go for all of our information, and what a dumb thing to go to Instagram to answer the most important question in human existence, dude, which is the question of God. Yeah. So there's so many great resources, there's so many great reasons to um actually have a faith not detached or disinformed by the evidence, but informed by the evidence that Christianity is true. You look at the ancient world, antiquity, it was common for maybe one, maybe two if you're really important portraits to be written down of somebody's life. So, for example, Caesar Augustus, we have maybe, I think it's either one or two biographies of his life. When it comes to the person of Jesus, we have four Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Um, you look at ancient manuscripts, historians, they're looking at how close was it written to the actual events it's talking about? How many manuscripts do we have? Um, and how many times was it passed through different situations and circumstances where it could have been distorted? The Bible, the New Testament scripture, stands in a class completely unique to itself. If you shut down the reliability of the claims of the New Testament from a historical perspective, you have to discredit everything that we know about the ancient world because the evidence that we have for the truthfulness of the claims of the New Testament is just in a category completely unique to itself. You look at the testimony of the early Christians, you look at Peter and the disciples going from cowards to create courageous and dying a martyr's death, dude. You don't do that for a lie. You might take a lie pretty far, but when you have the Roman Colosseum in front of you, or Roman crucifixion in front of you, at that point you're probably going to throw your hands up and say, Da.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:05

Just kidding, guys. But they didn't do that. They went to their graves with this claim that Jesus Christ is the Messiah. We saw him alive from the dead. Paul the Apostle, 1 Corinthians 15. Jesus appeared to upwards of 500 people at the same time. Why he's writing to Corinth and saying that is because he's saying, look, don't take my word for it. Go test this thing. Yeah. Like go, go, go to Jerusalem, find this person, find this person, ask them if they saw Jesus, ask them their experience. Because Christianity isn't a fame faith that uh asks you to believe it without evidence informing it. Sure. God has entered into human history, and there are very good reasons to believe that that's the case.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

Get off your phone, mess around, and find out. Start reading the Bible, start talking to people about it.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

Do it. Go find a church that loves Jesus and preaches the Bible with a pastor, hopefully, that's read a couple books, and ask for some help to navigate those waters of figuring Jesus out.

SPEAKER_01 37:18

As a Christian, should I be paying attention to angel numbers or is it just a bunch of jargon?

SPEAKER_00 37:25

Angel numbers, Micah Moeller, are Tarot nostrology rebranded. It's just it's the same stuff. It's occult practice. It's I'm seeing, you know, 111, so it means intuition or change, or I'm seeing 777, so I'm coming into a season of good life. It's literally a Chinese freaking fortune cookie rebranded. Like this is occult stuff. People should not be making life decisions from this. It's not that God can't speak to us through numerology, God can't speak to us through circumstances in life. But when somebody thinks that they're hearing something from God that doesn't point them to the scriptures, I get really concerned. Right. So if somebody's seeing a number pop up all of the time and they have this weird arbitrary definition that they just made up with Claude as far as like what it means, and they're basing life decisions on that, I'm really concerned, and I think that you're probably messing around with demons at that point, and you need to be very careful. You can call something an angel number and euphemise the term a little bit, make it sound not bad, and you're actually talking to demons.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

Interesting. What should I look for when trying to find a church?

SPEAKER_00 38:41

You want to find a church that preaches the Bible, number one. I don't want to hear a preacher say, I think, or I feel, I don't care what you think, I don't care how you feel, I care what the Bible actually says. As a personal preference, man, what I prefer for what that looks like is a church that preaches through books of the Bible, a verse at a time. It's really hard to misrepresent God if that's gonna be kind of the main course dish that the preacher is serving the Christian community in the weekend services. Second thing I want people to pay attention to is the leadership structure. Uh, do we have biblically qualified elders, pastors, servant ministry leaders, leaders that are empowering the saints to do the work of the ministry? Most important is that in that list is gonna be the elders and pastors. Are are they biblically qualified? Like, do they have character? Is there moral failure that's happening here? A really great way to figure that out is well, what's his marriage look like and what's his family look like, and what's his kids look like? And is this a person of character or of compromise? Because that is absolutely gonna affect the trajectory of your spirituality. Putting yourself in a bad environment with bad leaders is a recipe for chaos. So you want good leadership, godly character, present, leading in a posture of servant humility for the church. I want people to find a church where they have an emphasis on Christian community. The early church was really focused on Christian community. These uh look like home groups meeting throughout the week, strong emphasis on prayer. That's really great because that also uh is proving that the church is convinced that we're not gonna be cool enough to reach the culture. We need God to actually do some stuff that we can't do. The early church was marked by prayer. Want to see an emphasis on Christian mission. Um, like, hey, Jesus came seeking and saving the lost, Luke's gospel tells us. And so we want to join him on the mission of telling the world around us about people that don't know Jesus and inviting them into a relationship with him that is transformational. Um, you don't want to end up in a church that's inward focused, that doesn't have a sense of missional zeal and urgency, that's gonna be a dead church. Yeah, as a bonus, I would say here if the church is flying the pride flag, you need to run away as fast as you can and never go there ever again. Yeah. Um, and that speaks to the type of the type of church being one that's not going to capitulate to the cultural pressures, but it's gonna stand firm on the truth of the scripture and uh not be willing to offend the culture when needed because of our Christian convictions.