There are people out there, they're just looking for something new.
Right? They just, it's like their goal, they're searching the Bible to see if they can find
something nobody else found. And the weirder it is, the cooler it is. The more sci-fi,
wild, exotic it is, you know, so much the better. Folks, that is the wrong way to read the Bible.
You know, we should be just looking for the normal stuff, and just reading the Bible,
honest. And you know, let's find the deeper meanings, but let's not just go into just
crazy town looking for the weirdest, maybe it was Jesus who got married at that wedding, you know.
And you know, sometimes people, and I'm not necessarily making fun of anybody who brings
some of these things up to me, but sometimes people will come up to me with kind of wild
doctrines like, you know, maybe the lake of fire is the sun. Maybe the sun's the lake of fire. I'm
not making fun of you if you thought that, but I'm just saying like, where does the Bible say that?
Why would I believe that? Why would I teach that? Why would I believe that? What scriptural basis
is there for that? That the sun is the lake of fire. That just, it's just like, where's that
coming from? I mean, if that's how we're going to read the Bible, then we can just start making
up all kinds of wild things. Then pretty soon we're like Bill McGregor saying that the New
Jerusalem's on the planet Saturn. I mean, Bill McGregor said that the New Jerusalem
is hidden in the planet Saturn. Well, show me in the Bible where it's not.
You know what I mean? He said the 144,000 are in a secret base in Antarctica.
And it's like, well, show me in the Bible where they're not.
He found some verse about people being cold or something, you know,
the frost or ice or something. And it's just, he just ran with it.
Do not be carried about with divers and strange doctrines. If somebody comes at me with a wild
doctrine, they better have some concrete evidence from the, they better have some clear scripture
from the word. And sometimes there are people like, you know, I can't, I think people bring
me a doctrine and they're like, I can't explain it that well. You got to listen to the sermon.
I can't explain. Well, can you show me the Bible? No, but you got to hear this sermon.
Like the one time I heard this doctrine about how, like, when we are gone, when we're not here,
that somebody believed that like demons come to the church building and mock us and have a fake
church service while we're gone. And it's like, and it was just like, what? But they're like,
if you heard the sermon that I heard, the pastor made a real good case for this.
And it's just like, I don't need to hear that sermon. Like, I know that that's not in the Bible,
but if you heard the sermon though, here's the thing. If I have to hear some special
sermon to believe something, it's probably not worth believing. If somebody can't just
open a Bible and just show me a couple of verses, Hey, this is where this is coming from, you know,
but it's all this wild stuff. But if you heard the sermon, you got to watch this video. You know,
you got to watch this video. You know, here's the thing, you know, look, everything I believe,
I can just open my Bible and just show you some verses. And if I can't show you a clear verse
about something, I believe, you know what I'll say? I'll say, Hey, this is my opinion,
but I'm not really dogmatic about it because I don't really have a clear verse.
Anything I'm going to say, Hey, I know I'm right about this. It's because I can point you to a
clear verse and it'll take me minutes to show you a couple of clear verses. That's the standard
for doctrine. And we need to make sure that all of our beliefs are based on clear
scriptural statements so that we're not carried about with all this wild stuff.
And the Mormons are an extreme example, but even within evangelical Christianity,
I mean, you know, people can get caught up in these weird things.