6/28/25

This week, while Nick was out of town, I got to fly a bit more solo as I continued in our weekly discipleship groups as well as some unexpected ministry surprises! 

On Tuesday, I focused primarily on preparation to facilitate DMCs later in the week as well as other study-based preparations for communities that I engage with regularly. I was particularly focusing on exegeting Matthew 5:13-20 and Matthew 7:1-6, but there were other passages naturally becoming involved through contextualization. Tuesday evening, I participated in the FCF young-adults small group where we discussed Jesus' teaching in Matthew 6:24-34 as He teaches that we cannot serve both God and money. This passage, though it is often misunderstood and misapplied, is a highly offensive teaching to our culture if we understand it in its context. It seems that, due to the inserted subtitles in the Bible, this section break is often placed in verse 25; however, linguistically that doesn't make sense as this verse begins with the connecting word, "therefore". For that reason, we must begin further back in the passage and discover the fuller context of this incoming exhortation. In this particular instance, Jesus begins the section with the claim that you cannot serve both God and money. This is essential to an accurate understanding of the passage as it provides the frame for the paint to fall into. Jesus' statement that you cannot serve two masters is directly connected to His exhortation against worry and towards seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Jesus tells us that our worry reveals our service to money as our lord - and we cannot serve both God and money. Simply put, in Matthew 6:24-34 Jesus claims that when we worry about our life, we inherently switch our singular servitude away from the true God and devote ourselves to the idol of money. We cannot serve both God and money...therefore, do not... but seek first...

On Wednesday, I met with *Henry, who we met at CSUF, and we ended up primarily focusing on the topic of forgiveness - as this is something that students of Jesus necessarily learn to do. Our conversation opened with casual catch-up in which *Henry mentioned his long-overdue "pursuit of faith", and I inquired into what he thinks faith is, and what he thinks he's having faith in? *Henry accurately described faith as a trust and reliance, but he was interestingly dumbfounded when it came to what he had faith in. As we unpacked this idea, he identified that faith in Jesus was the goal of Christianity - but what does that actually look like? Can I have faith in person and not obey what they say is best? That certainly doesn't seem like you trust them very much! *Henry agreed that true faith in Jesus would have to result in obedience to what He taught, but when asked whether or not he trusted Jesus enough to obey what He says, *Henry said that he would need to know better everything that Jesus said first. This is always an interesting response as it communicates a number of things - some positive and some needing to be addressed. For example, I don't find it helpful to negate the cost of following Jesus to new and potential Christians as this sets them up to only see Jesus as their Savior and not their Lord. For this reason, I find discussing the cost of discipleship crucial. On the other hand, I am concerned when people look to decide if they can trust in Jesus based on what He said and not who He is. The danger here is that "trusting" Jesus only when He agrees with what you already believe is not actually trusting Jesus but rather trusting only yourself. If we properly understand who Jesus is, then we will have absolutely no issues trusting what He says! As our conversation continued on this topic, *Henry mentioned an offense that someone did to him that he "could not forgive". I had been heavily reading about forgiveness the day before and was blessed to have it so freshly on my mind. Ceasing the opportunity to test this "potential faith" in Jesus that *Henry is uncertain about having, I asked him if he would be willing to forgive those people if Jesus told him to? Seemingly confused by this notion, he said that he wasn't sure that it's possible. *Henry couldn't see why he would forgive them if what they did was really egregious. So, we looked at what Jesus said in Matthew 18:23 with the parable of the wicked and unmerciful servant. We discussed how this servant who was unforgiving had owed the greater debt and yet chose not to forgive another servant. We talked about this for a while, and then I left him to consider this aspect of true obedience to Jesus until we meet next. Are we willing to obey Jesus even when we don't agree with Him? Do we truly recognize who it is that we claim to follow, or do we think that we could somehow know better than Him?

Later that same day, before my time meeting with *Titus, I happened upon a pair of Mormon (LDS) missionaries talking with an older lady at the park. I sat on a nearby bench and listened to their conversation for a while before engaging with them in conversation, but I wanted to use this opportunity to share with them a few scriptures that reveal the illegitimacy of Joseph Smith as a prophet of God. It was a relatively odd and brief conversation, but I provided a very concise biblical case against Joseph Smith using Matthew 24:24, Deuteronomy 13:1-3, Isaiah 43:10, and the Lorenzo Snow couplet (derived from the King Follett Discourse). While they didn't raise any concerns against the Bible references that I used, they made a fascinating claim about the Lorenzo Snow couplet - they claim that Joseph Smith was not teaching that God was once a man and that we can become just like Him. While I'm sure this is a helpful interpretation to have of what Joseph Smith taught, there is no compelling reason to subscribe to this over the plain reading - as many LDS leaders have also clearly affirmed it to mean in the past. With that strange claim, I asked if we could meet at another time, as we all needed to go, so that they could better explain how it is more reasonable to interpret the teachings of Joseph Smith to contradict the way Mormon leaders have been interpreting it for years. They tried to claim that my lack of contextualization is the issue, but that night as I revisited the King Follett Discourse it was very clear that this is the most plausible reading of this discourse. The next evening, we were able to meet to talk, but I'm not sure that we made a whole lot of progress that time either - but I'll detail that a little later on.

Thursday morning, I went to facilitate a DMC with three Christian students that we met at CSUF. We had a wonderful time sharing with each other the 3-minute version of the Gospel that we each prepared, and we explored how Jesus described the nature of His disciples in Matthew 5:13-16. We also explored Jesus' relationship with the Law and Prophets (Old Testament) and how He wants us to relate to it as well. This is a wonderful group of Christians who really seem to be taking hold of the invitations that Jesus gives His disciples. It was humorous to me that, in responding to my inquiry, they said that the only question that they didn't feel prepared to answer after presenting the Gospel to someone was about other prophets such as Muhammed or Joseph Smith. They weren't sure how they would move the conversation forward from that point on, as they didn't think that there were any clear ways for determining a true prophet from a false one. Once again, God blessed me with having just done a fresh visit to this subject the night before in preparation to continue my conversation with my new Mormon friends, so our DMC had a bonus Bible-dialogue through a number of passages that were completely new to this group. Even the contents of Mattew 24:24 were shocking to a few of them as they didn't realize that false prophets could perform signs and wonders successfully. We had a great time exploring this topic of discerning prophets and had a wonderful time as a community being further equipped by the God-breathed scripture which readies the servant of God for every good work!

After my time with this DMC, I traveled a little further out to the Irvine Spectrum Center and engaged with some Jehovah's Witness about Who created in the beginning. This is a slightly different approach than I've taken before, but I was super curious how they would handle it. The case that I made could be summarized like this: 

1) Jehovah created all things in the beginning by Himself (Isaiah 44:24) 

2) Jesus created all things that have been created (John 1:3; Col 1:15-17)

Therefore, the JW doctrine of Jesus being the first creation of Jehovah who then worked as Jehovah's agent of creation is false, and the trinitarian view of God provides the most explanatory power with the evidence provided through these scriptures.

I feel like this was actually pretty effective with the JW that I was talking to for about an hour, but he ended up playing a really cheap card that often gets used, and he said that the overall narrative of the Bible disagrees with the divinity of Jesus, so he must reinterpret the verses which seem to clearly show Jesus as divine in an alternative way so as to create coherence. What I really don't like about this common response is that it's so close to a true concept that people don't realize the distinction in how they're applying this principle of allowing scripture to interpret itself in an improper way. There are a number of things that I could say about this, but I'm not sure how beneficial it would be yet as I'm currently working to create a thoughtful and concise response to this strange abuse of the coherence theory of truth being applied to biblical hermeneutics. I look forward to refining this distinction so I can better explain this specious rhetorical device.

Until I establish my clear response to this faulty hermeneutical method, I instead pose the question of how much biblical evidence, in support of the deity of Christ, it would take to change their mind? In other words, at what point does the overarching biblical narrative no longer support your understanding of Jesus as Michael the archangel who was Jehovah's tool in creation and switch rather to Jesus having divine nature? How much biblical evidence would it take? At this point, the JW that I was talking with provided me with no answer - possibly because he recognized the strength of the point that I was making, but probably more likely that he simply had never thought about it before. It can be very hard to address this dismissive hermeneutic that is circularly supported by their unwavering faith in the Watchtower Organization's doctrine, so I might just have to stick with my earlier approach of aiming for the illegitimacy of the Watchtower as God's authority on earth. I really enjoy finding different ways to engage with JWs that are scripturally rich and sometimes even work with the NWT, but it seems that the hermeneutical cop-out is a reoccurring issue that I need to address.

After my time at the Irvine Spectrum Center, I headed back to the Fullerton area to prepare for my follow-up with the Mormon missionaries from the day prior. I compiled a short document that I printed off to give them as a conversation guide - hoping that they could see in a more systematic form the strength of the argument. In it I gave them a syllogism form of my argument as well as multiple cited quotations from LDS leaders affirming my interpretation of Joseph Smith's teaching about exaltation to godhood. I listened to a fair amount of irrelevant information about the LDS church doctrine (whether accurate or not), but I kept returning to the simple point that I was making against the legitimacy of Jospeh Smith as a prophet from God. It is irrelevant whether or not the church still accepts these teachings as I am only addressing Joseph Smith right now. To this point, there were a handful of counters made, some more legitimate than others; however, I feel that the main issue is with their rejection of creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing). Because of this doctrinal difference, the entire metaphysic and ontology of God is overturned. This would claim that all material eternally existed and was merely compiled by God into what we see today. I brought up John 1:3 to them, as all things came into being through Jesus, but they just responded with an inaccurate analogy about an iPhone "coming into existence" in a factory. Again, this is a real rhetorical nightmare to try to detangle, especially if they don't want to change their mind. There is a clear distinction between the compiling of the iPhone parts in a factory and all things coming into being. Nothing truly came into being here, but rather only this unique combination of already being things into an iPhone. They tried to use multi-meaning words in different contexts to ignore distinct differences in scenarios. The iPhone was compiled out of preexistent material, but what material would Jesus have compiled all things out of if He truly created all things? There would yet to be any material for which He could compile all things from as "all things" is pretty definitive. Was it from "un-being" materials that Jesus compiled all being materials? That might sound like splitting hairs, but I feel that it's a necessary distinction for understanding the nature of God - and this is not irrelevant from the initial topic of discerning false prophets as you cannot trust them, regardless of their miraculous powers, if they lead you off to a god that you know not (Deut. 13:1-3). We plan to meet again soon, and I will hopefully be able to clearly express to them this deeply entangled and tedious metaphysical mess!

Please join me in prayer for those that we meet with regularly, as well as those more surprising engagements that we have with other religions and worldviews. Please pray that we would be effective conduits and co-laborers with Christ and the Holy Spirit!