Millions have turned away from religion—and not without reason. There are three major causes behind the disillusionment. Discover what they are, and how you should respond. If hypocrisy pushed you away from God, this message is for you.

<p>Millions have turned away from religion—and not without reason. There are three major causes behind the disillusionment. Discover what they are, and how you should respond. If hypocrisy pushed you away from God, this message is for you.</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>

Gems of Truth

Religion, Power, and the Future of America

Vincent Bujor

Your Church Won’t Be the Same

Pastors are Lying to You

You are listening to religion, power, and the future of America.

I'm very happy that you're all here tonight.

For those of you who are here for the first time, welcome.

You know, just not too long ago, I was working for a Christian organization with people at the very top at the organization who called themselves Christians, very devout and spiritual people.

I'll never forget I had a meeting with the team in the office where we were, and We were talking about just the business things that we had to take care of that day.

And we were talking about different subjects.

And at the end of the meeting, that was kind of the thing that we used to do, especially what the CEO would do.

He would just pray for us as we were finishing the meeting.

And so he prayed a prayer at the end of our meeting.

Now, what you have to understand is that during that time, there was a kind of like a construction worker or a handyman or someone like that, a contractor working on something on the ceiling or like in the room, he was doing certain things while we had our meeting.

And so the CEO of the company, he prayed for the team, he prayed for our project and all of that.

And then he prayed for that contractor that was in the room as well, who is not a believer, right?

At first I thought, man, it's a really nice gesture, right?

But then I kind of felt, it felt a little weird as he continued to pray for that person, because it felt almost like that he was praying at the person, not so much for the person, if you understand what I mean.

A couple days later I met the same contractor again and he had an anxious and angry look on his face.

And he said, you know, I did my best as much as I could and I tried to fix that problem, whatever the problem was.

And I didn't really understand exactly all the details that were going on there, but he said, I tried it.

And then I didn't fully finish the job that apparently what the CEO was really hoping that I could do, so he didn't pay me.

Drove a long way, spent all that time there working, trying to fix it, and for some reason, something didn't work out, and so the CEO, the Christian CEO, just decided to not pay the person.

How do you feel when you hear a story like this?

Tonight we're gonna talk about a subject that I entitled 3 Reasons to hate religion.

You have to understand I grew up in a Christian environment that where there was hypocrisy as well.

People, you know, they, I experienced abuse and morality, wickedness around me as a child and teenager.

And I, you know, I saw these people going to church on the weekend, but Monday through Friday, they were doing all sorts of things, drinking, smoking, partying, and doing crazy things, yet calling themselves Christians.

You know, out of the 8 billion people that live on this planet today, we have roughly 1 third that call themselves Christians today.

In fact, if you take the popular state of California, it's so funny every time I travel out of California, Most people that I'm telling that I'm from California, they kind of like say, oh, that's where so many people live.

But anyway, a lot of people in California, we can all agree on that, right?

And so 66 times the state of California, Imagine the size of the population here, okay?

66 times all the people that live in California.

That's the number of people that call themselves Christians today.

Many people despise the God of the Hebrew Bible that we looked at last night.

They are sick and tired of people talking about this Christ because these Christians are so unlike that Christ.

I want to share with you tonight that every argument against religion can be summed up in 3 points.

3 points and we're going to go through them together.

The first 1 I just introduced to you, that is the hypocrisy of people that are associated with a God or with religion.

Like how can you pray for someone and wish him well, but at the same time refuse to pay him?

You See, the word hypocrisy is an interesting word.

In the Greek, it means to act out, to act something.

And it's very funny because when you think about hypocrites, as we say, right, hypocrites are basically, according to the Greek root word, actors.

They put on a face, they pray nicely, they memorize the Bible maybe, they know what's in that book, but living out the principles, that's where they fail.

They say something with the lips, but do something completely different with their hands.

So hypocrisy is 1 reason why people hate religion today.

I think you can all agree with me on that, right?

There's another reason why people hate religion today, and that is that we have power hungry and greedy leaders.

Right around the time after I graduated from high school in Germany, this was pretty much exactly 12 years ago, there was a crazy story that made its way through the news.

I don't know if it arrived here in California, but let me just tell you what happened here about 12 years ago in the country of Germany.

There was a Catholic bishop, his name was Franz Peter T.

It's a very long German name, I don't know if you can remember that 1.

But anyway, he was a bishop in Germany And he wanted to renovate his residence, his place where he lived and worked.

It's totally fine, you can renovate your place if it's a little old, right?

But he just went a little bit over the budget.

You know how much he spent for his renovations?

This included a $17, 000 bathtub, a $400, 000 wardrobe, and a $2.7 million garden.

This man had a private chapel and luxury clothing that went far beyond what was expected of a bishop.

And my question that I have when I hear the story is how can you represent Jesus, who the Bible says didn't even have a place to lay his head on and yet still indulge in such a luxury.

There's another reason why people don't like religion.

And maybe you're here today and you feel the same way.

I'm sure that some of you can resonate with some of these things.

You've listened to last night's presentation, and maybe you agree at this point that there is an intelligent creator out there.

And maybe you also agree that you would agree with me to date the book of Daniel, at where the author is dating it, meaning that the Bible has predictions, so-called prophecies that tell us the future and that came true exactly the way God wrote them down for us.

But you still are not ready to commit to this religion thing because of all the hypocrisy that is in this world today.

You're not ready to go to a church because you say, all these people, they are just pretending to be holy and they dress nice, but then during the week, they do crazy things.

Maybe you grew up in 1 and you saw people fighting and arguing and 1 day you said, I just have enough of that, and you left.

My uncle, same thing that happened to him.

When he was a young adult, people were not treating him well, not at all.

And he chose to leave the church that he grew up in.

But you're gonna be surprised, friends, what the Bible has to say about this topic.

What this book right here has to say about some church people.

They don't like to hear it or admit it, but it's in there.

And Before we go there, I just want to share a third reason why people might hate religion today.

And that is because of all the violence and the abuse that has happened and is happening in the name of God.

I could share a heartbreaking story of a 14-year-old boy who grew up in a church setting and was sexually abused every single week by the Catholic priest for years.

He was a man who had a worldwide ministry, a man who had literally millions of followers, a man who was just admired by his, you know, just the skill that he put to the day and the practice and the theology, all the things that he was explaining.

He was 1 of the best in his field, admired, respected, a man who had Vice President Mike Pence speak at his funeral.

I mean, and yet, he started sending money to his massage therapist to support her financially, and then he required to sleep with her.

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Series

Religion, Power, and the Future of America

Your Church Won’t Be the Same

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

Your Church Won’t Be the Same

36m

Pastors are Lying to You

45m

Sound Doctrine