This is part of a series looking at what the Fundemental Beleifs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and the Bible are. Showing why they are important and relevent for our day. As well as showing there root is in the Bible. This is a 30 Part series.

<p>This is part of a series looking at what the Fundemental Beleifs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and the Bible are. Showing why they are important and relevent for our day. As well as showing there root is in the Bible. This is a 30 Part series.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Freedom Health Ministries

How to Talk to People Who Believe Lies

Gabriel Arruda

How to Talk to People Who Believe Lies Part 1

The title of the sermon is, How to Talk to People Who Believe Lies.

And I think we all recognize that in society there's lots and lots of arguing.

We have this denomination versus this denomination.

I mean that's just the tip of the iceberg right?

We have lots and lots of people arguing about a lot of different things and you simply cannot avoid it.

We have to learn how are we going to navigate in a world where people have different views of us and people may have views that you think are totally and completely wrong.

Do you know anyone, perhaps you have someone in your life, someone you actually really deeply care about, and you think that they believe total lies.

Does anyone have anyone like that in their life?

You have someone who you deeply love and as you just see their belief system you're like, man that person just believes total lies.

Maybe it's a doctrinal point of view, maybe it's a political point of view.

You know, no matter how many facts, No matter how much evidence you put before them, they simply refuse to see it.

I think if we're all honest, we all have had an experience like this.

I'm going to share about why that happens and how to talk to people who are in this category, as well as how to not become in that category yourself.

Not too long ago, I was in a Bible study, and in the Bible study there was a group of young adults, and there were 2 Mormon missionaries there.

And I asked the Mormon missionaries, they were presenting a topic, I asked them, can you please tell me what is your view of the Bible versus the Book of Mormon?

And they quoted to me their fundamental belief number 8, which states that the Bible is the Word of God, quote, as it's correctly interpreted.

Why do you have that as it's correctly interpreted clause there?

And they kind of beat around the bush a little bit, but then pretty much after, you know, some discussion came down to this is really the the blunt truth here.

The Bible has been corrupted according to them and the Book of Mormon is here to clear it up.

That is, if you just want to know exactly what they believe, that's it.

A lot of times it won't be that direct with you, but that is what they believe.

And so I said, you know, can I share with you a Bible passage that is very meaningful to me?

And I quoted Psalms chapter 12 verse 6, which says, the words of the Lord are pure words as silver, tried in a furnace of earth, purified 7 times.

Listen to this, thou will keep them O Lord, thou will preserve them from this generation and forever.

So I said God has actually promised to preserve His Word and you're saying that it's been corrupted.

So I see a dichotomy there and also I shared with them a very interesting piece of history.

I shared with them the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

You know prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls which happened in about 1947, the earliest manuscripts we had were about 800 years after the time of Christ and so this was a field day for atheists and skeptics.

They said 800 years from the time the Apostles wrote these things to the earliest manuscript, who knows what garbage got put into those manuscripts, what personal opinions and points of view, so on so forth, and you know the Christians really didn't have a lot of answer for that, they just said well we believe it's the Word of God and it's led me to Christ and led me to salvation.

But in 1947 God gave a fantastic answer to that.

They found the Dead Sea Scrolls, long story short, when they went through these scrolls they realized what they had were the earliest manuscripts of the Bible that had ever been discovered to that point.

Some of the manuscripts, 2 of the oldest ones, were the books of Isaiah and the books of Daniel, which went back 200 years before Jesus, and very early manuscripts of many New Testament fragments and so forth.

And as they compared this discovery, the Dead Sea Scrolls, with the Bible that we have had for, you know, 2, 000 years, you know what they found?

There were thousands of what they call textual variants, but what those are, are commas that are in different places, punctuation in different places, and misspellings, slight misspellings of somebody's name or of a certain town.

But in every single variant, and there are thousands of them, they found it did not change 1 bit the core message.

And what the Dead Sea Scrolls proved is the Bible that you have in your lap today is the exact same Bible that Jesus quoted from the Old Testament and the Bible that the Apostles had and were writing.

And I shared this with them and you know what their response was?

This is the response I got it in my memory almost verbatim.

They said, yeah that's cool I just think it's awesome that God inspired Joseph Smith to give us another testament of his word.

Did you just hear what I shared with you?

I just proved that your point is utterly false.

You told me that the God gave us the Book of Mormon because the Bible's been corrupted.

I just shared with you that the Bible has not been corrupted so that the Book of Mormon is essentially useless and you come back with, yeah, the Book of Mormon is true.

Why do such bright people give such a foolish response?

There's a very good reason why people can't see truth.

And here's the danger when you're talking and dealing with people like this.

The danger on our end is to get frustrated.

To get very frustrated when there's plain evidence, clear as day, how could you deny it?

What is the matter with your mind, with your eyes?

And it's tempting to get very frustrated with these people.

And I have made lots of mistakes in Bible studies in the past.

I used to, I lost it with a few of my Bible students in the past and God has helped me reform from that.

But I also want to make an important distinction.

What a lot of Christians think is that it's about winning arguments.

Friends, it is not about winning arguments.

There's a difference between winning arguments and winning people.

Those are 2 different things and they're 2 different roads to travel depending on what you want to do.

So you have to determine what is the goal.

Do you want to win an argument or do you want to win a person?

Have any of you ever won an argument against your spouse?

You won the privilege of sleeping on the couch that night, didn't you?

You know, just because we win an argument, we could lose the war.

And so what I'm going to share with you is how to, not win arguments, how to win people.

But I also wanna share with you, not everybody can be 1.

And what I wanna share with you is that we waste a lot of time, I think, arguing with people about their theology and even their philosophy, because there's something under that.

You know, I actually wanted to have a whiteboard up here, but I couldn't get a hold of 1 by the time I the preaching this message.

There's a tier system here What we have at the top is people's behavior What they do but below behavior what we have is people's theology.

Your theology dictates what you do, what you think is right, what you think is wrong.

But below theology, there is something else.

Below theology is philosophy, their philosophy.

And what philosophy is, is your beliefs, your belief system.

And a lot of people think that theology drives philosophy sometimes, but more often than not, philosophy, underlying core values, core beliefs drives people's theology, what they choose to see from Scripture, what they choose to believe about the Bible.

How to Talk to People Who Believe Lies Part 2

So the title of this message is how to talk to people who believe lies part 2.

I did part 1 oh about 6 7 weeks ago so I don't expect you to remember you know everything from it but we have we're pretty much discussing why can't people see truth when it is so clear it is so evident.

Do you have someone in your life who cannot see the truth no matter how clear it is, no matter how much data there is, no matter how much evidence, they just cannot for some strange reason see the truth.

We all have people like that in our lives.

And maybe we've been that person, maybe we are that person in some area.

And what we discovered is that there is a tier system.

And at the top of the tier system what we see is people's behavior but the behavior that people have is dictated by their theology what they believe about God and what they believe about others in the world but we normally stop there but we found that there were 2 other levels below that.

Under theology is people's philosophy or their beliefs.

We would like to think that our theology dictates our beliefs and sometimes it does, but a lot of times it's the other way around.

People's theology is dictated by their philosophy, their belief system that they have adopted.

The final level was experience, experience.

And what we found is we typically are arguing with people at which levels?

The behavior and theology that's where we are arguing But there are 2 other levels below that that really are dictating why people do what they do and we're wasting a lot of time when we are arguing theology and behavior with people we should be speaking to their philosophy, their beliefs, and their experience.

And we have a lot more success when we do that.

It's the very same thing with the Pharisees.

And the point that we ended with is you have to help people want the truth.

It's not just enough to tell people the truth.

So you have to help people want the truth.

In this talk, we're gonna take a deeper dive into the psychology and the thought process of why people refuse to believe truth.

How to speak to people of other denominations and other faiths.

How to speak to your kids who have left the church.

And how to speak to your kids to prevent them from leaving the church.

These are the 3 main things that we're going to touch on right here.

And we're going to deal with the first 2 at the same time, because how you talk to people of different faiths, and how you talk to your kids who have left church, they're so similar.

There's so much overlap that we're just going to deal with them at the same time.

And in the last sermon, part 1, I don't know if you remember, I shared a story about the experience I had with 2 Mormon missionary girls, and how they shared with me, I was able to eventually get out of them that the reason why they have the Book of Mormon is because they believe the Bible has been corrupted.

And the Book of Mormon is here to fix the corruptions that are in Scripture.

And perhaps you remember how I shared with them how in God's Word there are several promises where God promised that He would not allow it to be corrupted.

And then I shared the history of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which proves that the Bible has not been corrupted.

It's the same scriptures that we are reading in this Bible is almost identical to what the early church Christians had.

The Dead Sea Scrolls absolutely, 100% prove that.

And why aren't these Mormon girls bugging me to find more truth?

About 6 months ago, I got a knock on my door, and it was 2 Jehovah's Witness women, and Vanessa and Sue.

And Vanessa has been a Jehovah's Witness for a while, but Sue is a recent convert.

Sue actually used to teach Sunday Bible School at the Presbyterian Church here in Lake Tahoe, and the Jehovah's Witness knocked on her door.

She studied with them for 6 years and about 09:10 months ago was baptized as a Jehovah's Witness and now there she is going door-to-door with her leader Vanessa.

And so I asked them about their belief on the 144, 000 because I've heard things about what they believe about that, but I wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth.

So they shared with me their belief and then I proceeded to go to Revelation chapter 7, Revelation 14, the 2 passages that talk about the 144, 000.

And I shared, we went over the passage where it talks about that they are virgins, that these have not been defiled with women.

And I asked them, ladies in the book of Revelation, Is there a woman that defiles?

Revelation 17, the harlot of Revelation 17.

And I said, you know what identity that power represents?

And that woman has in her hand a cup full of abominations, which are the teachings of that system.

And it's a what those teachings are, it's a combination of paganism with Christianity.

And this is historically validated And there are many teachings that come out of that cup.

And I shared with them, you know, it's 1 of those main teachings is Sunday worship.

And I shared with them how there's no 1 scripture where that validates worship Sunday as a holy day.

That's Sabbath is the seventh day the Bible says and it's really funny because the Jehovah's Witness are like really anti-pagan They don't do birthdays.

Because that's pagan But I said, but here you guys are every single week keeping the most pagan holiday Sunday And they stood there just looking at me with big eyes, and 1 of them said, you've obviously studied.

And it was a friendly conversation, it was a good conversation.

They keep coming back, but not to learn more truth from me, but to teach me their truth.

Why aren't these women seeking to learn more truth from me when I show them in just a few minutes that there's already some cracks in their system?

There's many reasons, and it's also the same reason why a lot of our young people grow up in church, hear the gospel, and leave.

And we're gonna look at a story that brings us out very clearly.

Grab your Bible and let's go to Luke chapter 15.

We're gonna look at the story of the prodigal son.

Luke chapter 15 and we will start in verse 11.

It says, And he said, Jesus, a certain man had 2 sons, and the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of the goods that falls to me.

And not many days after, the younger son gathered together all he had, and he took a journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living." We'll pause right there.

Give me my portion of the inheritance, I'm out of here.

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How to Talk to People Who Believe Lies

How to Talk to People Who Believe Lies Part 1

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How to Talk to People Who Believe Lies Part 1

40m

How to Talk to People Who Believe Lies Part 2

32m

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