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Galatians chapter number one, beginning verse number one, the Bible reads, Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father who raised him from the dead, and all the brethren which are with me, unto the churches of Galatia, grace be to you, and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ. So the book of Galatians is an epistle written from the Apostle Paul unto the churches of Galatia, which is obviously a geographic location. Now he starts out by saying Paul, an apostle, and the word apostle is related to the word epistle. You can tell that they almost sound the same, and they both come from the same root word as the word that we would use for like the post office, right? Epistle or apostle, and basically an apostle is a messenger and an epistle is a message, okay? That's why it's related to like posting something to somebody. So he says, Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father who raised him from the dead. So in the first verse, he's making it real clear that he's not a messenger of man. He's not just repeating stuff that he learned from other people. He's claiming to be a messenger from God, bringing God's word, and of course there are many other places where the Apostle Paul affirms that the word that he's bringing them is the word of God. It's not just the word of a preacher and so forth. And even Peter himself sanctions the epistles of Paul as God's word in 2 Peter chapter 3 when he talks about, as our beloved brother Paul has written unto you, and he calls those the scriptures. And he talks about how the people who are struggling with them are the same people who struggle with the other scriptures and so forth. So this is Paul bringing God's word to the churches of Galatians. Now there are three things that come up in this chapter, and really these three things are the themes of the whole book of Galatians. And they all kind of are brought out in chapter 1, and in the rest of Galatians, he emphasizes these things over and over again. Number one, this thing of the fact that he's not there to please men. He's there to please God. He's bringing a message from God. He doesn't care what people think about it. That's real clear in all the chapters, all the way up to chapter 6. Number two, he strongly emphasizes that salvation is by faith alone, not by works. And then number three, he's teaching against the Judaizers. You know, basically people who are coming in and trying to bring in a lot of the Jewish customs and the Jews' religion and so forth. All of those things are dealt with in chapter 1, and they're expounded throughout the rest of the book. Now right away, just from verse number one, we see here, Paul an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead. Jump down to verse number 10. It says, For do I now persuade men or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. That's a powerful verse here saying, if you're going to go into the ministry to please men, you don't even belong in the ministry. You shouldn't even be a servant of Christ if your goal is to please people. And there are way too many preachers today that will censor the message and kind of tone things down because they're afraid of what people are going to think instead of just faithfully preaching the whole word of God and letting the chips fall where they may. And there are a lot of things in the Bible that if you preach them today in 2015 America, they're going to make people mad. But if you seek to persuade men and to please men, you shouldn't be the servant of Christ. Before you even decide to be a preacher, you have to decide that you're going to preach everything that the Bible says without regard for whether people like it or not. It's not relevant. Look what the Bible says in verse number 15. It says, But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb and called me by his grace to reveal his son in me that I might preach him among the heathen, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood. Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me, but I went into Arabia and returned again unto Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter and abode with him 15 days, but other of the apostles saw I none save James, the Lord's brother. So again, the thing that he's emphasizing in these verses here is that he's not just repeating stuff that he heard from other people, but that these are things that were directly revealed to him by God, and they were things that he got from his own personal study of the Old Testament, not just a repetition of just getting up and just repeating what he'd learned from men. That's what he keeps emphasizing with that. Now in verse number two, it says, And all the brethren which are with me, unto the churches of Galatia. You know, I just want to start by pointing out the fact that churches is plural there. And so many people today, they think that the church is this sort of ethereal institution that's made up of every person who's saved. Any believer is the church, whereas the Bible used the term churches, plural meaning that these are congregations of people. And there's not just one in Galatia, there are multiple churches in that area. So it's being addressed to the churches of Galatia. It says, So what does the Bible mean here when it says that he gave himself for our sins to deliver us from this present evil world? Well, keep your finger here and flip over to first John chapter five. The thing that popped into my mind when looking at Galatians chapter one is in Acts chapter two, when Peter is preaching at the day of Pentecost, he's speaking to all the Jews that were present there and the development from all nations. And he says to them, save yourselves from this untoward generation. Save yourselves from this untoward generation. And what's being implied there is that, you know, that generation of people were somehow trying to stop them from being saved. OK, because Peter's preaching in Acts two twenty one, you know, that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And he's preaching about how Jesus died for their sins and rose again for the days, preaching the gospel. And he's saying, save yourselves from this untoward generation. He's saying these people that are around you in this generation of the Jews were people that were trying to hinder them from being saved, which makes perfect sense when you think about how Jesus said in Matthew twenty three that the Pharisees, who were the religious leaders of the Jews at that time, that they shut up the kingdom of heaven against man. Neither did they enter in themselves, but they also stopped those from entering that would have entered in. So he's saying, save yourselves from this untoward generation. Look at first John chapter number five. It says in verse one, whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God and everyone that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him. By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not grievous for whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the son of God. So the Bible talks about the fact that we overcome the world by faith, by believing in Jesus, by believing that Jesus is the son of God. Now, why would believing that Jesus is the son of God be overcoming the world? Well, the reason why is that the world is out there to stop you from believing that Jesus is the son of God and you have to overcome that in order to believe. You know, you have to be saved from this present evil world, all their teachings, all their philosophies and all the stuff that's put into you and brainwashed into you from your youth. You know, you have to cut through all that garbage because it's designed to stop you from believing the Bible. That's the goal. I mean, if you go to the public school, the goal is to indoctrinate you in a certain way of thinking. It's not just to teach you math, teach you English, you know, teach you computer skills or things that you're actually going to use in the real world. It's partly that, but a lot of it is to indoctrinate you in a way of thinking. It truly is a religious education because they teach you the beliefs and the philosophies of atheism. That's religion. And people say, well, atheism is not a religion because they don't believe in God. Well, you know, Buddhism doesn't believe in God either, and it's still a religion. Buddhism says that there's no God, but yet I don't think that most people would argue that Buddhism is not a religion because it is a religion, because it has to do with their faith, what they believe about things that can't be proven. And that's exactly what you learn down at the public fool system. They're going to teach you their doctrine, their beliefs, their philosophies, and it's not a Christian perspective that you're getting. You're getting an atheistic perspective, whether you're in the science class, whether you're in the history class, whatever the class, they're always going to put in their indoctrination to brainwash you. And here's the thing, the people, they don't think they're being brainwashed. They think that they're thinking for themselves, but it's funny how they all think the same stupid things that don't make sense. And it's funny how it's all the same stuff that's on TV all the time. It just happens to be that everybody's, quote, common sense is just always in lockstep with what's on TV and what's being taught in school. But it's just like, well, yeah, of course we believe that. Of course, nobody believed that 50 years ago, and what you believe is in lockstep with what the media is telling you, but that's just a coincidence. I mean, it's ridiculous. I mean, a perfect example of this is I went down to the community college and I spoke to a class at the community college. I can't remember whether it was a religion class or a philosophy class, but I spoke to this class and the subject was homosexuality. That's what they wanted to talk about because they're, again, brainwashed that that's the most important thing in the world. So that's what they always want to talk about. So we're down there talking about this and basically, you know, the question was asked, how many people agree with Pastor Anderson on this subject? And like out of this class of, you know, 30 students or whatever, there were two people who said, I'm neutral. Like, maybe Pastor Anderson is right. I don't really know. And then there were basically like 28 people that were just strongly opposed to what I was saying and just, and even outraged, couldn't believe it, you know, just blown away that I would have the goal and the audacity to teach what I teach. And they were just strongly against me. And then two people that are like, I'm neutral. Translation, I agree with Pastor Anderson and I'm afraid to admit it. Okay. But, you know, be that as it may, the vast majority of the students were strongly against what I was saying. But then I started explaining it to them, showing them what the Bible said, explaining to them how the media has had this agenda and everything. And literally I was able to turn around most of the class on the subject. And one of the guys who was strongly against me, he even said, wow. And this isn't like an hour. He's like, wow, it's scary how much we've been brainwashed. It's weird. But there's a reason why, there's a reason why 50 years ago, you know, everybody thought homosexuality was gross and perverted and disgusting. And then now everybody thinks it's normal and it's wonderful. I mean, but is that just an accident? No. There's been an agenda where people with millions and billions of dollars are making all these movies and TV shows and putting out all kinds of publications and magazines, just pushing it, pushing it, pushing. And people don't even want to see it. They're like, no, I don't. But they just keep pushing it and they get used to it and they get used to it. And then a generation just grows up where that's all they've ever even known. And somebody comes along and starts preaching what the Bible says and they can't even wrap their mind around it. Why? Because the world today, and the world is a term that the Bible used over and over again, just talking about the agenda, you know, of the rulers of the darkness of this world who have an agenda to basically get you to believe everything contrary to what the Bible says. And these people think that they're these independent, young, free thinking people that they just came to the conclusion all on their own that, you know, being a homo is normal. They didn't get that on their own. They got that from just a bombardment of propaganda in the TV, the movies, school. Everybody's been training them and teaching them that. Otherwise, how do you explain it? It's different 50 years ago from now. Oh, it's progress. Yeah, you know, it's really wonderful progress to get to where we're now, you know, condoning an activity that basically spreads a horrible disease. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that a great progress? I mean, yeah, AIDS is progress. Yeah, and AIDS was spread in the early 1980s by homos that were having 500 partners each. Even a secular, worldly book will tell you that. But the problem is people don't open a book. No, they go to school, they go to the TV, they go to the movies, and they don't even learn about the fact that even today, if you go on the Center for Disease Control website, it'll tell you that if you're homosexual, you're 50 times more likely to get AIDS today. Right on the government's own website, cdc.gov. But here's the thing, people aren't visiting cdc.gov. You know what they're visiting? Netflix. You know what they're visiting? You know, they're visiting TV shows and that's where they're getting what they believe. They're not actually doing real research on these things. So they're just going to say, oh yeah, it's totally normal. I mean, they see all this stuff on TV about them getting married. Monogamy doesn't exist amongst these people. But you know what, that's what TV tells us every day, so that's what people believe. What am I saying here? You know, the word of God will save us from this evil generation and their philosophies and their lies and their agenda to get us to believe that everything came from nothing, that basically things just come to life by themselves, that there's no God, even though there's no evidence of anything ever coming to life by itself, ever. Life begets life. So what I'm saying is that, you know, in order to be saved, you've overcome the world's brainwashing. And here's the thing, today we're dealing with the brainwashing that's centered around atheism, you know, that's centered around, you know, hey, sodomy's wonderful, that's centered around, you know, all these teachings of science falsely so-called. But in Christ's day, there was an agenda too that was against the true gospel and it was Judaism. You know, it was the Pharisees, it was the Sadducees, it was their false religion. And there have always been all these teachings of the devil that would oppose the true word of God. So that's what he's saying here about being delivered from this present evil world, overcoming the world, saving ourselves from this untoward generation through the knowledge of the word of God, through the Bible. It says in verse number six, I marvel, because verses one through five are pretty much an introduction to the book. It's just kind of a greeting, telling you who it's from, who he's writing to. But it says in verse number six, I marvel that you're so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel, which is not another, but there be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. So now we get into the second major theme of the book of Galatians, which is the fact that salvation is by faith and it's not by works. It's not by the deeds of the law that were saved or justified. And this is something that he teaches very well all throughout this book in literally every chapter. And he says here that there are people out there that are perverting the gospel of Christ. Now what does it mean to pervert something? It means to twist it, to corrupt it, to change it into something else. That's why he says they're preaching another gospel. It's not another, but there's just people out there that would pervert the gospel. So he's saying it's not just a completely different gospel. No, it's a gospel that started with the true gospel and they just twist it. So the question is, what is the twisting that he's referring to? What is the other gospel? We know that the true gospel is that Jesus died for our sins, was buried and rose again, and that if we believe in him, we'll have eternal life. So what's this other gospel that he's warning about? Well, if you notice the wording that he uses there, he says in verse 7 that there be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. Well, if we go later in the book of Galatians, he actually uses that word trouble you. Go to Galatians chapter 5. Just because then you can kind of compare and see. He's saying, look, there's people that are troubling you with a false gospel. So if we find where he talks about them troubling him, you can get an idea of what the false gospel is. It says in verse number 12 of chapter 5, he says, I would, they were even cut off, which trouble you. So these are the people that we're talking about. And then he continues the thought in verse 13 for brethren, ye have been called unto Liberty. So he said, look, I wish that they were cut off that trouble you because brethren you've been called unto Liberty. And then he says this only use not Liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love, serve one another. Now let's back up to get the context. Okay. Look at verse number one, stand fast therefore in the Liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. So according to chapter five, the people that are troubling the Galatians are people that are trying to bring them back into bondage. And he's saying, look, I wish these people would be cut off because you've been called unto Liberty. So let's learn about that Liberty in the first few verses. He says, stand fast therefore in the Liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Behold, I Paul say unto you that if you be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. Now what is this bondage? What is this attack on their Liberty? What is this thing of, you know, hey, these people are troubling you with another gospel. You know what it is? It's teaching that people have to also keep the law to be saved and that believing in Christ is not enough. So he's saying, look, you know, if you believe that you have to be circumcised also, he says, Christ shall profit you nothing. And by the way, this is one of the best passages to prove that a person who's trusting faith plus works is not saved. This is one of the best ones because he flat out says, look, if you be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. Why? Because the people in Galatia are Gentiles, right? So these people didn't get circumcised as babies. They're Gentiles. So people are coming in and telling them, hey, you need to get circumcised. And these people that are coming in, we would refer to them, even though the Bible doesn't use this term, this is a good term to explain it, Judaizers. You know, basically these people who are trying to bring in, quote, the Jews religion and impose that on these Galatians. That's the third theme, as I mentioned, of the book of Galatians. And these three themes are pretty much covered in every chapter. And he really hits them from all angles. And obviously there's a lot of other good things that are taught. But here he says in verse 3, for I testify again to every man that is circumcised that he's a debtor to do the whole law. He's saying, look, if you're going to say, well, you have to believe and be circumcised to be saved, you know, you might as well say you have to believe and do everything that the Bible had commanded in the Old Testament to be saved. He's saying you're a debtor to do the whole law. Why stop there? At circumcision. He says in verse 4, Christ has become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law, ye are fallen from grace. For we through the spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. So our righteousness, our salvation is by faith. But these peoples is through the law. And he says, look, if you're justified by the law, Christ is of no effect unto you. Christ shall profit you. Nothing. Look, how could somebody be saved? And then you'd say, well, Christ profits you nothing. No, no. These are people that are not saved. I mean, if Christ profiting you nothing. If you're if he sits there and says that, you know, you're you're fallen from grace and Christ is of no effect unto you, that's pretty much saying you're not saved. It's pretty clear. And he's saying if you're trying and by the way, you could apply this to anything. You could say, you know, if you believe in salvation by faith plus getting baptized or faith plus joining the church or faith plus doing good deeds, faith plus circumcision, faith plus whatever the ritual, whatever the teaching of the law, you know, it's all going to basically stop salvation from being for by grace, because if it's of grace and it's no more works, otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be works, then is it no more grace? Otherwise works is no more works. I mean, it's just it can only be one or the other. Either it's 100% faith, it's 100% grace. Or it's not a gift anymore. It's not free anymore. You know, I mean, how much do you have to pay for a gift before it's not free? I mean, if you pay one cent, it wasn't free. And the Bible is real clear that there are no works involved in salvation. There's there's nothing that we do to earn our salvation. It's all by grace all given to us freely. We just have to believe we just have to have faith in Jesus Christ. So this is clearly the other gospel that he warned about. And just in case there's any doubt, he hammers it in every single chapter. Look at Galatians 216 quickly. Galatians 216, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law, for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. I mean, that's just saying the same thing like five different ways in one verse. I mean, how could you read that verse and walk away still thinking that you have to obey the law to be saved? Unbelievable. When he hammers it and nails it in that verse. You know, of course, chapter three confirms it. Chapter four, chapter five, we'll get into those. Chapter six, it's over and over again. But back to chapter one, because we talked about those three themes. You know, Paul makes it clear that he's really not interested in what man thinks. He's not trying to impress the other apostles. He's not trying to impress the Jews. He's not trying to, you know, get people to approve of his preaching. He's just going to preach the word of God. Secondly, he wants to affirm the true gospel of Christ and say it's by faith. It's by grace. It's not by the deeds of the law. It's not of works that any man should boast. And then thirdly, he's preaching against this Judaizing effect. He covers it all throughout the book. He talks about, for example, in chapter four. Flip over to chapter four and verse nine. This is something that he brings up. He says in verse nine of chapter four, but now after you've known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements wherein ye desire again to be in bondage. And again, he keeps using these words, liberty and bondage. He says, you observe days and months and times and years. I am afraid of you lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain. So in chapter three, he's talking about, look, we're all the children of Abraham by faith in Christ Jesus. In chapter two, he's talking about where those brethren from James are separating themselves from the Gentiles and trying to get them to live as do the Jews. He talks about in chapter four how the Israelites are Hagar today because they don't believe in Christ and that the saved Christians, whether they be Jew or the Gentile, they're Isaac. They're the chosen people. They're the Israel of God. He hammers this over and over again. He warns about them bringing in circumcision. He warns about them bringing in workspace salvation. He warns about the Jews' religion and how he excelled in it in the past, but he forsook that when he got saved, when he believed on Christ. And here he's talking about them observing days and months and times and years. This is this whole recognition of the Jewish holidays. And today we're seeing a resurgence of this in 2015. I mean, look, we've all been hearing all the hype about September of 2015. And there's all these Judaizing-type teachers, the Zionists, like, for example, John Hagee, Rabbi Jonathan Kahn, and their teachings have all been pointing toward September as like some kind of a doomsday. You know, I've heard different dates in September. Some of them had said, hey, it's September 13th, or hey, it's September 23rd. I'm hearing all these different dates from different branches of this whole Hebrew roots, Judaizing-type movement. You know, and I'll tell you this. One of the things that they keep saying is, well, there's going to be a big financial collapse. Well, you know what? Here's the thing about that. Have you ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy? A self-fulfilling prophecy is where somebody says something's going to happen, and then they go make it happen, or somebody makes it happen, or it happens because they said it was going to happen. That's called a self-fulfilling prophecy. That doesn't mean that somebody's a prophet of God. So one of two things are going to happen in September. Either number one, there really is going to be some major financial collapse, which I don't think there's going to be. I think it's all just a bunch of hype. But here's the thing. Let's say there is. Well, that shouldn't really surprise you anyway, since the Jews are the ones who control Wall Street anyway. You know, the Jews control the New York Stock Exchange and all these different things. So if they wanted to, they can make it crash whenever they want. They could sell out their stocks and do whatever they want to make it plummet and to create a crash. So the fact that these Jewish teachers are predicting this or whatever is meaningless, since they have the power to make it happen whenever they want, since they control the wealth in New York. So that's number one. But number two, the other option would be that just nothing happens in September, that September is like any other month. Which that would be my guess. It's either going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy where they bring all this stuff to pass or it's just a bunch of hype and that's what I think. But what I want to know is whether John Hagee and Jonathan Cahn are going to eat crow at the end of this month and say, hey, by the way, everything we wrote in those books was a bunch of crap. I mean, is that what they're going to say? Are they going to admit that? And you say, well, don't call it that. OK, dung. It's garbage. You know what? That's what the Apostle Paul called that Judaizing religion, that pharisaical. And we're not talking about the truths of the Old Testament. We're talking about the religion of the Pharisees, the religion of the Sadducees. It's wicked. And I wonder if these guys are going to eat crow at the end of this month or if people are just going to keep on buying their books and buying all this garbage because of the fact that there have been so many other teachers in the past who've predicted, you know, oh, Jesus is going to come back this month or that. And then it doesn't happen. And people still follow these people. And it's just mind blowing. It didn't happen. And the Bible talks about if there's somebody who who is a prophet who claims that something's going to happen and then it doesn't happen. It says they're a false prophet, you know, kind of a no brainer there. But these people are constantly making these predictions, hyping things up because they sell millions and millions of books and they make a lot of money. New York Times bestseller, you know, the Shemitah by Reverend or not Reverend Rabbi Khan and, you know, the four blood moons. You know what? When the Bible talks about the sun being turned into darkness and the moon into blood, it's not talking about an eclipse. It's not just talking about some reflecting, you know, optical illusion that makes the moon look red. You know, it's talking about cataclysmic major events that are not going to be something where you could look at a at an eclipse chart and figure out when it's going to happen. Then how could Jesus sit there and say, well, no man knoweth the day or the hour and at such a time as you think not the son of man cometh. If all you have to do is just pull out some chart that John Hagee is going to show you of when the moon turns red. You know what? The moon has been turning red for years and there have been eclipses for years. That's not what he's talking about. He's talking about something different than that, okay? He's talking about something that's worldwide, not just in certain places or whatever. So anyway, don't be deceived by this stuff and, you know, I'm just living my September as normal. You know, I'm not getting in the bunker or anything, you know what I mean, this September. I'm just going to go about my normal business. You know, I'm not really worried about it because people are, I get an email. You say, why are you writing? I get an email every day. Every day. What do you think about September? What do you think is going to happen? Have you read the blood moons? Look, why would I listen to anybody who said that Jesus did not come to earth to be the Messiah? Look, who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Messiah. He's anti-Christ that denied the father and the son. And so, you know, what do I want to hear anything that, and why would I listen to anything that a guy who calls himself rabbi says? When Jesus said, be not called rabbi. Case closed. End of story. But back in Galatians chapter 1, you know, it says here, you know, which is not another but there be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. You know, by studying the rest of the book, it's clear what that perversion is. It's bringing in the works of the law as part of salvation. Okay. Now let's keep reading. It says in verse 8, but though we are an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. These are strong words saying, even if I myself come back and teach you another gospel, he's just trying to emphasize not to listen to anybody who teaches another gospel. Okay. And what other gospel are we talking about? Works-based salvation. Now this whole thing of an angel from heaven coming and teaching another gospel, Paul warns about it in 2 Corinthians 11 when he talks about the fact that the devil himself has transformed into an angel of light. And it's no great marvel if his ministers are transformed into ministers of light. You know, there are two big religions that were started by an angel coming and preaching another gospel. Okay. One of them is a lot bigger than the other. Okay. One of them is about, oh, 700 times as big as the other. So, you know, it's almost a thousand times bigger than the other. And that would be Islam and Mormonism. Now Mormonism is sort of like Islam for white people. Okay. But it's pretty much the same thing. Basically Joseph Smith was a big admirer of Mohammed and he wanted to basically see if he could pull off the same deal that Mohammed pulled off. Okay. The difference is that, you know, Mohammed just won a lot of military victories and so he was able to take over a lot more territory and get a lot more people under his influence and kind of, you know, get off to a big booming start. And for the religion to spread like wildfire, be spread by the sword and conquest, not just through evangelism. Okay. But Joseph Smith was never really able to, you know, get that off the ground. You know, he lost some of those shootouts, you know, with the federal government and everything. So they weren't able to do it. But, I mean, you know what? Joseph Smith wanted to be the next Mohammed. Period. And you can even find quotes from some of the early Mormon prophets praising Mohammed. Okay. And there are so many similarities, it's mind-boggling. But they were both started by an angel coming to them and here's what the angel came and told him. Everybody's wrong. You know what I mean? They basically came, according to Joseph Smith, an angel appeared to him and told him that all religions are wrong. Every denomination's wrong. All churches are false and that's why he needed to start this new religion. Now, this right there is total foolishness to think that everybody in the world is wrong. Okay. And you run into people like this today and I want to say that, you know, they are like the next Joseph Smith or Mohammed when they have this idea. Everybody's wrong and I'm right. It doesn't make any sense because if you think about it, God is real. God created the world. God has manifested himself unto mankind in every generation. He's spake in time past by the mouth of the prophets. He's spoken to us in these latter days by his son. But what we believe is that there have always been people on this earth at all times who are always worshipping the true God and that always believed correctly and were always on their way to heaven and there have always been lots of people and that the gospel has been known throughout the world, throughout generations, throughout time and it's never just disappeared. I mean, think about what Jesus Christ said, upon this rock I'll build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. But Joseph Smith wants us to believe it's gone by the time he's born. Then how did the gates of hell not prevail against if it's gone and you have to re-institute it. Okay. It doesn't make any sense. And then, you know, Mohammed's teachings real similar. You know, basically an angel comes and reveals to him, oh, by the way, the Bible's all corrupt. The books of Moses are corrupt. The Psalms are corrupt. The gospels are corrupt. And it's funny because if you actually read the Quran, he says over and over again in the Quran, oh, the books of Moses are the word of God. Oh, the four gospels are the word of God. Oh, the book of Psalms is the word of God. But then when you try to point out anything in those books to a Muslim, they just say, oh, it's corrupt. So basically, Mohammed wanted to ride on the coattails of Moses, ride on the coattails of Jesus, ride on the coattails of David, but reject what they actually taught and believed in their words. So he comes up with this convenient thing of, oh, yeah, I'm going to keep name-dropping, you know, dropping the names, yeah, Moses, David, yeah, Jesus, to ride on their coattails, all the while rejecting everything they said and taught, just claiming, oh, well, we don't really have the real books of Moses. We don't really have the real Psalms. We don't really have the real gospels. It's all been corrupted. How could you change it when there's so many thousands of copies of it? What, did somebody go around and change them all? You know, all these thousands and thousands and thousands of copies, it doesn't even make sense. But that's what they claim. Oh, it's all changed. Even though in other parts, different parts of the world, it's preserved by different people, all different places, oh, it's all corrupt. You know, but just trust me and my nine-year-old wife and my other ten wives, me and this nine-year-old, trust us, forget, forget, you know, what's written by Moses, forget what's written by David, forget the four gospels of Christ, because it's all corrupt. But it's this cult-like, whenever somebody's a cult leader, this is what they teach, like, hey, everybody's wrong except me. Every church is wrong. Every religion's wrong. That's what Mohammed said. He's saying, look, all the scriptures are wrong except the Quran. Here's this new thing. Now, is that what Jesus said when he came on the scene? Did Jesus come along and say, hey, all the Old Testament's wrong. Here's something new. No, Jesus said, think not that I've come to destroy the law or the prophets. I came not to destroy but to fulfill, for verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. He said that the Old Testament was preserved. He believed it. He confirmed it. He said that what we had today in his day was the same thing that they had back in Moses' day. He didn't pull out this thing of like, oh, I'm following the footsteps of Moses, but by the way, everything that you think Moses said's wrong, trust me, to change everything. But that's how Joseph Smith was too. All creeds are corrupt. All churches are corrupt. This is why he did not get baptized in any church. He wouldn't get baptized by any denomination because he said they're all corrupt. So he baptized himself, you know, just, you know. I mean, look, when you're baptized, and look, I've talked to people that baptized themselves before. I'm like, whoa, you're trying to be another Joseph Smith here. All the churches are corrupt, so I had to baptize myself. And then later, later the Mormons changed the story because they changed their story many times about how their religion started. One of the changes is they changed it to where, well, him and his buddy baptized each other, you know, because it kind of, I guess it just seemed kind of stupid that he baptized himself. So then they, you know, it's like, okay, they baptized each other, and then they started baptizing everybody into their false religion. But the thing about that is that, you know, whenever you see that mentality, that's a scary mentality because the Bible teaches that basically God's word has always been on this earth, it's always been preserved. He said that his word would be preserved unto all generations. Isaiah, chapter 59, flip over there real quick just because this is such a great verse on preservation, and it's one that not everybody necessarily knows. Because we all know the verse, Matthew 24, heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away. It's found in Mark 13, Luke 21 as well. But in Isaiah, chapter 59, look at verse 21. It says, as for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the Lord. My spirit that is upon thee and my words which I have put in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and forever. So what's he promising? To preserve the word of God that was spoken by Isaiah. He said this will be preserved. You know, of course, Psalm 12, the words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O Lord, thou shalt preserve them from this generation and forever. Heaven and earth shall pass away, my words shall not pass away. Man did not live by bread alone, Jesus said, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. How can we live by every word if we don't have every word? But these cult leaders come along and say, we're right and everybody else is wrong. And that's not true. You know, that's not what Baptists have ever taught. Baptists have never said, you know, hey, just this church right here, we're the only ones that are going to heaven. And I'm the only one who's teaching the truth. You know what? There's not a single doctrine that I'm the only one who teaches it, period. In fact, there's not a single doctrine that only Baptists teach. You can't really point to one true biblical doctrine and say, this is only coming from Baptists. Name the belief. And even if people think, oh, some of Pastor Harris's beliefs are so radical. Yeah, but all my beliefs are shared by millions of people. Even if you name my most radical belief, you know, whatever that is for you, you know, with the thing about the reprobates. Yeah, guess what? I'm not the only one who thinks that. There are millions of people who believe that. And by the way, I just won somebody Lord this afternoon that wasn't going to accept the Gospel until I explained to them about reprobates and then they got saved. So, so much for me turning everybody away with this horrible doctrine. Because she's like, well, wait a minute, when you're saying you could lose your salvation or you could never lose your salvation and it's all by faith, she had a hang up about like pedophiles and stuff. So I explained to her they're reprobate. I showed her in the Bible, the vile affections and everything. And she's like, oh, okay. And then it made sense. And then she got saved. I've had tons of experiences like that. That's why God sends me to that door. You know what I mean? You know, this girl, you know what I mean? Because he, it's not an accident. Like God knew. Well, Pastor Anderson is going to get through to her because she has this hang up about this, you know. So God uses us all in our own way. But the bottom line is anytime anybody is teaching something that no one else is teaching, okay, that is a red flag right there. Okay. That's a cult-like teaching. And there's nothing. Now, I'm not saying if you, if you find some one little interesting verse or, oh, nobody had ever seen that verse or something, you know, and thought of it that way. But I'm talking doctrine. I'm talking like beliefs, doctrines. Look, if we all have the same Bible, if the Bible's been on the surface for thousands of years and every believer is indwelled by the same Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is said to guide us into all truth, then how could we be the only ones who are right when there's all these other people who are also indwelled by the Spirit that are reading the same Bible? That's why you'll find the same beliefs amongst all kinds of people. So, you know, this Mohammed and Joseph Smith are both saying, hey, forget everything that's been preserved. Forget the written word. Forget the tradition of the fact that there's people all over that already believe the Gospel and that are already saved. They're just basically trusting an angel over all that evidence of the preservation of God's Word, of the fact that the gates of hell would not prevail against the church, that there would be all kinds of churches and people that would pass it down, and that there are saved people in every. Look, people have been calling upon the name of the Lord since Genesis 4, and every generation has been saved, you know, the remnant. There's always been a remnant. There's always 7,000 men who haven't bowed the knee to Baal. So basically, you know, Mohammed, and it's funny because when you read the life of Mohammed, at first he wondered if it was a demon that was talking to him, and he even wondered, am I demon-possessed, because he was saying stuff and he couldn't control and everything, and then some woman that he knew told him, you're not, and he's like, okay, and then that was just it for him. Seriously, read it. So that's why I think that God put this in here. For us in Arizona, yeah, we're surrounded by Mormons, but there really aren't that many Mormons in the world. They only claim that there's 14 million, and they inflate their number, and they claim that there's 14 million. It's actually less than that, whereas Muslims, there's 1.6 billion people who claim to be Muslim. So this is mainly for the Muslims, but we'll, you know, the white Muslims also, aka the Latter-day Saints. So right here he says, look, even if an angel from heaven preached any other gospel to you, let him be a curse. Here's what blows me away, that there are even some Baptists who teach that, like, Paul preached a different gospel than Jesus taught. He's sitting here saying, if anybody preaches anything different, they're a curse. So how can you say Jesus taught a different gospel when Jesus clearly taught salvation by faith? In the book of John. 90 times it says believe in the book of John. One book of the Bible, John, which is all about the life of Christ, which has the most read letters of any of the four gospels, you know, if you have the red letter edition, and 90 times it's believe. Same gospel that Paul taught, faith, faith alone. Even as David also described it, the blessedness of the man on whom God impudeth righteousness without works, saying blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. So let's keep reading here. He says, let them be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you, then that ye have received, let me curse. Let me ask this, is the Bible teaching respect all religions? Say let these people be accursed that are teaching these lies. For do I now persuade man or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I yet please men, I should not be the servant of Christ. Back to that first theme that we talked about. Verse 11, but I certify you brethren that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God and wasted it. Now this is what people will twist where he says my gospel, the gospel which was preached of me, it's by the revelation of Jesus. He's not saying it's a different gospel though. He's just saying that he actually got things directly from God, directly from the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, directly from his face to face encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ. He's not saying, hey everybody's wrong, let me come in and start a new cult. That's not what he's saying. He says here also that in time past, watch this in verse 13, for you've heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews religion. Okay, and then in chapter 1 verse 14 it says, and profited in the Jews religion above many of my equals in my own nation be more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers. Notice what he calls it, the Jews religion. Now he's not claiming that as his own. He's contrasting the Jews religion with Christianity. Now a lot of people will say, oh you know Christianity is just a completed form of Judaism or Christianity is picking up where Judaism left off. Wrong. Christianity is picking up where the Old Testament left off and there is a massive difference between the Old Testament and Judaism. Judaism is the religion of the Pharisees. Judaism is a rotten false religion, whereas the Old Testament's the word of God. But you say, well how can you believe the Old Testament and knock Judaism? Because Judaism denies the Old Testament. Now they, in word, they say, oh yeah, we believe the Old Testament, until you start asking what they believe. Because if they believed the Old Testament, they'd believe things like, say, creation. Or they'd believe things like the flood. Or they'd believe things like, you know, the fact that Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights. You know, you'd expect them to believe that, right? They scoff at these stories. They mock at these stories. They don't believe them. And the biggest example is just, you read the first five books of the Bible and over and over again it's teaching them to do an animal sacrifice. They don't do that at all. It says that the blood is an atonement for their souls on the altar. You know, he said, when I see the blood, I'll pass over you. Here, Jesus is the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world, but they don't believe that. So why aren't they doing that? We know that Jesus is our ultimate sacrifice, but if they don't have Jesus, then that's why Jesus said, if you believe Moses, you'd believe me, for he spake me. But if you believe not his writings, how should you believe my words? So don't confuse the two. Judaism is the Jews' religion, and Paul is talking about it in a derogatory way. Christianity, on the other hand, is the religion of both Old and New Testament. The New Testament building upon the Old Testament, okay? That's the difference. So he says here that, you know, he persecuted the Church of God back when he was in the Jews' religion, and he profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in my own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the Old Testament, of the Word of God. Is that what he says? No, he says he was more exceeding zealous of the traditions of his fathers. And in Colossians, he calls those vain traditions. These are the traditions that Jesus said made void the Old Testament, made void the Word of God, okay? But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb and called me by his grace to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood. Now, what this is teaching is that Jesus, God, always had a plan of using the Apostle Paul to write the New Testament, basically. This is something that God, who knows all things, who foresaw all things, who knew the Word of God from the beginning, you know, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So this was all foreknown that Paul would be the instrument that God would use to write the New Testament. It says in verse 16, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen, heathen meaning the Gentiles, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood. Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me, but I went into Arabia and returned again unto Damascus. And after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter and abode with him fifteen days, but other of the apostles saw I none save James, the Lord's brother. Now the things which I write unto you behold, before God I lie not. Afterwards I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and was unknown by faith unto the churches of Judea which were in Christ, but they had heard only that he which persecuted us in times past, now preached the faith which once he destroyed, and they glorified God in me. So what he's saying here is that he had been spending his time in his ministry not in Judea, but rather traveling the world preaching the gospel in all of these foreign places. That's what he'd been doing. And he didn't feel that he needed to go to the former apostles in order to be able to accurately preach the Word of God. He didn't feel like he needed to confer with flesh and blood because he got direct revelation from God himself, and because he had the Old Testament scriptures himself. So he had the Word of God, he had the Spirit of God, and as an apostle he received divine inspiration, divine revelation, and so he didn't need to confer with flesh and blood to verify that somehow you know what he was saying was true. Now the reason why the apostle Paul is constantly making statements like this and talking about these things is because of the fact that there were many people who did not consider him a real apostle. They considered him to be a fraud, and he was constantly under attack, and you know of course that's what the Muslims will say. They'll say, oh well Jesus and the apostles were great, but then Paul came along and changed everything and corrupted everything and you know all this stuff. So Paul was called into question in his day of whether he really was an apostle or not, and even today with the Muslims it's still called into question, and with the Hebrew roots movement some of them will call it into question whether Paul was legit. And the reason why is that the apostle Paul was not one of the original 12 disciples. He was not following Jesus before he was crucified and buried and risen again. If you remember in Acts chapter 1 when they were choosing a replacement for Judas Iscariot, they said somebody who was with us beginning from the baptism of John onto that same day that he was taken up from us. That was the criteria that they had when they wanted to replace Judas Iscariot as one of the 12. Now flip over to the last place tonight, 1 Corinthians 15. I'll close on this, but 1 Corinthians 15, and we kind of see what the Bible teaches as the definition of an apostle and what that means. Now if you remember when the apostles were originally ordained and when that term was first used, we read about it in the four gospels where he takes the 12 that he had chosen and he says he gives them power against unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal all manner of sickness and to do all these different miracles and so forth. So he gets these 12 and he gives them special power and also then later it says he ordained 70 others also and he gives them these powers and so forth to be able to perform miracles and do all this stuff. So that was the apostles. Well, the apostle Paul obviously wasn't there so he received his commission after the death barrel and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrected Christ appeared unto him on the road to Damascus and ordained him as an apostle. So it says in chapter 15, it's talking about all the people that had seen Jesus after he rose from the dead and it says in verse 5, or look at verse 4, it says that he was buried and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures and that he was seen of Cephas, Cephas is Peter, then of the 12. After that he was seen of above 500 brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain unto this present, meaning when the book was written, but some are fallen asleep. After that he was seen of James, then of all the apostles. So notice, all the apostles saw him after he rose again, right? Then it says this, and last of all he was seen of me also as of one born out of due time, for I am the least of the apostles and am not meet to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God, but by the grace of God I am what I am and so forth. So basically Paul was the last apostle because Jesus appeared unto all the apostles and then last of all he appeared unto Paul. Okay, so the criteria biblically for being an apostle would be someone who was specifically sent out literally by Jesus in the flesh, okay, given power by Jesus, sent out literally by Jesus in the flesh and to have seen him in his resurrected form. This is true of all the apostles and it was true of the apostle Paul. However, this is not true of anyone today, but yet there are people today that call themselves an apostle, but notice what Paul said, last of all he was seen of me. So there are not apostles today. You'll find all these churches where people just self-proclaim that they're an apostle. Apostle so-and-so, you know, is just some kind of a title of, you know, that someone we should listen to, but however they've not seen the resurrected Christ. The next time anybody sees him is when every eye shall see him, you know, when he cometh with clouds. So he was as one born out of due time, so you say well Pastor Anderson and being born out of due time he's saying he's a late comer, you know, here all the other apostles ordained, he's ordained later, still, you know, very close to the events in question, you know, still very near after the resurrection of Christ, but it's a little bit later than the rest. He's the last one, okay. So you say well then Pastor Anderson, how do we know that the apostle Paul is legitimate? How do we know that he really is an apostle? Well that's one of the things that Paul brings up in a lot of his epistles and one of the things he brings up he says the signs of an apostle were done among you and the Bible talks about how in the book of Acts special miracles were performed by the hands of Paul, okay. Now the author of the book of Acts is Luke, you know, so Luke is basically sanctioning him and saying look I saw the miracles and so forth, but you say well Pastor Anderson, we didn't see the miracles, we weren't there, why should we believe that he's an apostle? And the truth of the matter is because of the power of God's word. That's the answer because look half the New Testament is penned down by Paul. So if half the New Testament is penned down by Paul, then if we were to reject Paul we'd be rejecting a hundred chapters, a hundred chapters, okay, a hundred out of 260 that are penned down by the apostle Paul and here's the chapters that we'd be rejecting, amazing powerful scriptures that we know are the word of God because of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit says we read the Bible and we don't, see here's the thing, let's say Paul were an imposter, then we'd read Matthew, we'd read Mark, we'd read Luke, we'd read John and there's so much power in God's word. Every page is powerful, right? Then we'd get to Romans and we'd be like huh, where's the power? Or get to Acts and you know because Acts is mostly about Paul. Whoa, where'd the power go? Who turned off the power? We'd get to 1 and 2 Corinthians and say wow, this is weak, but you know what, when we get to Romans, we find some of the most beloved scriptures in the whole Bible. I mean think about it, when missionaries go to bring the word of God, what are the two books they translate first into these foreign tongues? John and Romans. Why? Because of the power of the book of Romans. We find power, I mean what's one of the most famous, okay forget that, not one of the most famous, what's the most famous chapter in the New Testament? 1 Corinthians 13 written by Paul, number one most famous chapter. If he was a fraud, why does he have the outstanding chapter of the New Testament? That doesn't make any sense, does it? The power is there. However, pick up the Apocrypha, the power shuts off. Pick up the book of Mormon, the Quran, yeah, the power is off. Okay, that's how we know. Look, why do we even believe any of the Bible? Because the power of God's word, that's why. And Paul even said, he said hey, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. And it's the word of God that has power. It's quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even the dividing asunder of soul and spirit of the joints and marrow, and is a deserter of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Oh yeah, that was written by Paul. Ephesians 4, I'm sorry, Hebrews 4-12. Hebrews 4-12 is one of the most famous verses in the New Testament. All scriptures by given by inspiration of God. Paul, I mean, for all of sin it comes short of the glory of God. I mean we can go on and on, verse after verse, it's half the New Testament. So that's how we know that he's an apostle, because of the power of God's word, and because of the fact also that Peter sanctioned his works of scripture. If you throw him out, then you'd have to throw out Peter. Throw out Peter, you know, what are you left with? You know, it's crazy. So the bottom line is that the book of Galatians is a powerful book. It is the best book for proving that salvation is by faith and not of works. I mean, he runs it into the ground in this book. And it's also a very powerful book against the Judaizing element. And it's the most powerful proof that we're all God's chosen people who believe on Christ, regardless of ethnicity. Galatians 3 is the most powerful teaching that we are the children of Abraham, not the so-called Jews. Okay, but it's us as believers that have replaced the Jews as God's chosen people in the New Testament. Believers in Christ. And you know what, amongst believers, are there Jews? Sure, but they were Jews, and then they became Christians. Okay, and so that's why it's not necessary to always give that caveat. So Galatians is a powerful book in the word of God that drives in these truths. And I think it's a book that has more relevance today than ever. It's very relevant. Why? Because we're dealing with Islam today more than ever. And you know, so we need these scriptures here warning us. And we're dealing with this Hebrew roots movement and this resurgence of Judaism more than ever. And we're dealing with people bringing in work salvation. This is the book that we need to know like the back of our hand. If we're going to be able to combat this stuff, we need to know the book of Galatians. All right, let's have a word of prayer. Father, thank you so much for this book, Lord, and help us in the next few weeks to get as much as we can out of it, Lord, to understand it, and to truly hide it in our hearts, Lord, that we will not be deceived by the cunning craftiness and slight of men whereby they lie in wait to deceive, Lord. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.