Culture & Christianity: The Allen Jackson Podcast - Catholicism, Judaism, & Mormonism—What No One Wants to Say

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

In a world filled with religious noise and spiritual confusion, it’s time to understand what we believe—and why it matters. In this episode, Pastor Allen takes a biblical look at some of the most avoided and misunderstood topics in the Church today. Did the Pope go to Heaven? Why is there so much division in the Body of Christ? What sets Judaism and Mormonism apart from biblical Christianity? He’ll unpack the difference between denominations and religions, and the critical contrast between doctrine and behavior. This isn’t about condemnation—it’s about bringing clarity where there’s been silence and compromise. God is calling His people to stand firm in truth, speak boldly with grace, and live with Spirit-led discernment. __ It’s up to us to bring God’s truth back into our culture. It may feel like an impossible assignment, but there’s much we can do. Join Pastor Allen Jackson as he discusses today’s issues from a biblical perspective. Find thought-provoking insight from Pastor Allen and his guests, equipping you to lead with your faith in your home, your school, your community, and wherever God takes you. Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3JsyO6ysUVGOIV70xAjtcm?si=6805fe488cf64a6d Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/culture-christianity-the-allen-jackson-podcast/id1729435597

Welcome to culture and Christianity. As you know by now, I suspect our goal is to take our faith outside the walls of the church and try to understand what's happening in our world with a bit of a biblical perspective. A Judeo-Christian worldview, a biblical worldview, there's a few labels for that, but in essence the same thing. We want to take the truth we believe about Scripture and try to understand our world through those grids and filters. So I wanted, we have a new Pope and I want to spend some time talking about that. I stepped in a bit of a hole around that on Easter weekend.

I'll tell you about that in a minute. But a couple of things that have been a little more current that I just want to comment on before I get into this because I'm afraid I'll lose my train of thought. We continue to have this national discussion around illegal immigrants. And now the judiciary is involved and it's ultimately, I think going to get pushed to the Supreme Court. And there seems to be a lot of confusion in the Christian community about how to process this where compassion falls

and where is kindness and should we be upholding the law or should we be extending a hand of welcome? And what about what the Bible says about aliens and being kind to them? And a couple of things on that that I think, just I keep kind of revisiting this because we seem to have difficulty in holding a position or an idea.

the simple version of this is that if you entered our country without concern for due process, if you purposely avoided due process, we have a legal immigration system in place, and we've had some 20 million people enter our country choosing to bypass the due process of the legal immigration system. Well, if you come into the country with no concern for due process, then it seems to me there should, not be concerned for due process when you're asked to leave the country. That's just logic to me. In fact, these demands that these judges are making and a number of elected officials and other voices, including some within the church, that the people who came here illegally avoiding due process should be given due process before they're deported because it could be disruptive to their

lives, well, one, we're ignoring the disruption to the lives of the citizens who were here by those who avoided the system and entering the country. But it's roughly analogous to me if we robbed a bank and we were told that we needed to return the money, but the only way they would accept it is if we filled out a deposit slip. You know, if I avoided the due process in making the withdrawal, I don't think it makes any sense to think I'm going to behave by the due process in returning it. So I think, you know, and the other piece that the Christians, I guess, weigh in on

is what about our responsibility to aliens? Well, you know, those biblical mandates to treat the fore-it are amongst us with dignity, the way I understand it, was directed more on an individual basis. If you find someone amongst you that is not from your tribe, that you would treat them with a certain decorum,

a certain dignity and respect for them, even though they were different. The Bible gives a very different response to when there's an invasion, you know, some large number of people from another nation pouring into the country, typically to pillage, to take the crops, to benefit from the labor of the inhabitants of the land, when they didn't make the sacrifices themselves. The Bible does not tell us that those invading groups should be treated with that same dignity and respect. In fact, they are treated in a much more aggressive way.

So the way that biblical language has been used is really peeled out of context and I think unhelpful. The simple version on this is if you avoid due process when you come in, I don't think you should expect due process when you're asked to leave. And I think what the judges are doing, if the judges didn't get involved when 20 million people were invading the country, then I'm not really interested in their voice today. They didn't stand up for our rights as citizens when we could have used the protection. So I don't understand their concern in the way it's being expressed right now. The other issue, and I'm going to touch on this briefly. I want to come back to this. We want to do a whole session on this, but I have kind of an awareness in me.

Revelation seems too strong, but it's pretty new to me. President Trump has been in the spotlight and had a leadership voice in our nation now for about a decade. And I understand he's relatively new to this second term, but the end is in sight and a third term is not realistic. He's already acknowledged that himself. So at this point, I think we can say that President Trump is going to do what President Trump does

and we've got a lot of clarity on that. I'm grateful for that. I think he's stood up for some liberties and freedoms. He's told more truth than most of the pastors I know. He's willing to talk about marriage between a man and a woman. I mean, things that we should have been saying from the pulpits. But I can see the point where Mr. Trump is going to step off the leadership stage.

And at this point, I kind of have begun to feel that. And at that point of transition, we're going to have to accept responsibility for the outcomes. For a decade now, we've kind of stood behind this person who was leading and saying that the media was not telling us the truth. And we cringed. And lo and behold, the media wasn't telling us the truth. And he's going to step off that stage. And if we're going to maintain any of the gains that he has sacrificed for, we're going to have to make the sacrifice. He's been shot in the face. He's born enormous stress. He's been drug before judges and courts. He's been accused of everything almost imaginable. He's been impeached a couple of times. He's been broadly hated. He's been rejected by people who had been his friends. He had been welcomed into elite circles of Hollywood and the ideologues and that northeastern corridor. He was celebrated in most of those circles. And because he stood up for,

the common people and the values, those biblical values that we have supported, he's been vilified. And he is just, he will finish this term and it's going to be left to us. And the question is, are we going to be willing to make any sacrifices? Or do we imagine that President Trump is just there to make our lives better, to make eggs cheaper and gas cheaper? And perhaps he, you know, he's going to make jobs more plentiful. And we're going to return energy to America to energy dominance. manufacturing to America. Well, I'm telling you that from a Christian standpoint, from a biblical world standpoint,

if we are not willing to make sacrifices for the sake of what we believe, we will not maintain any gains that President Trump is sacrificing for today. It's up to us. You know, the story is told of Benjamin Franklin, that having completed the work on the Constitution, he stepped out of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and a woman on the streets said, Dr. Franklin, what have you given us? And his answer to her was a republic, madam, if you can keep it. And I think that would be my message today.

I think President Trump, and, you know, we're watching the cabinet that he's pulled together in Washington. It's such a dramatic contrast with the cabinet from the previous administration with President Biden. You know, we have Sean Duffy these days with the Secretary of Transportation, with all the things that are going on and the recognition that there's an enormous. need to upgrade the technology and the tools available to the people that are watching over our air travel. Well, you know, our previous Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, his focus, I don't know what his focus was upon, but it wasn't securing safety in air travel. Or our current Department of Homeland Security head, Christy Noem, you know, has actually, with the help of President, President Trump, obviously, in a matter of a few short weeks, secured our border. The previous version of that, Alejandro Mayorkas, all he told us was the border was secure and we shouldn't believe our lying eyes.

And this current cabinet that the president has put together, they're actually working on the issues of our nation for the betterment of the American people. It's a very stark contrast to what we had before. And so the question on the table, and it's not the question for today, but it's the question that's immediately in front of us. Are we going to be willing to do what's necessary to see that our children have better schools, that the school boards in our communities tell the truth, and are we going to bring physical integrity back to the cities in which we live to our homes? I mean, are we going to make the sacrifices for that biblical worldview to actually fill our culture again? And the answer doesn't have to be immediately apparent today,

but it's a question I think we have to begin to ask. And so I'm going to come back to that. We're going to work on that some more in another session or two, but it's worth some contemplation and some thought. So the Pope, I want to come back to that. We have a new Pope, Pope Leo the 14th. Felt kind of personal to us in some ways. We got Holy Week, the week of preceding Easter, Good Friday and Easter. They reached out to us from Fox Live and said they were doing a very special live broadcast.

on Easter Sunday, they were going to be in Jerusalem at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. If you don't know, that's the church, the traditional place where the crucifixion, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus took place. Constantine's mother went to Jerusalem in the 4th century and identified the location. So it's one of the oldest churches in Christendom. So they were going to go to the Easter celebration at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. And they were going to Rome to the Pope at St. Peter's with his, Easter celebration, and then they asked if they could come to our campus here in

Murfreesboro, Tennessee for Easter at World Outreach Church. And we were having service outdoors. We had an outdoor stage, put up a temporary stage. And I wasn't sure that the text I got was legitimate. I thought maybe it was just somebody messing with us. So I sent kind of a snarky answer back and said, well, they're welcome to visit our campus, but I'm afraid the Pope will be jealous of our outdoor stage. all he has is St. Peter's Basilica.

And then as you know, the Pope transitioned out of time into eternity on Easter Sunday. So I went in the house on Monday after Easter, and I said to my wife, you know, I warned him that the Pope would be overcome with jealousy, and he couldn't take the stress. So I related that story to our congregation the weekend after Easter when I was giving him an Easter update. I said that they did such a nice job. on Easter of welcoming our community that when the Pope saw the crowd at Middle Tennessee, he went to heaven. Probably shouldn't have said it. But when I came in the next morning,

somebody came to me and said, Pastor, I need your help. We have a lot of emails and they're all unhappy. And I said, oh, wow, I made fun of the Pope and the Catholics are mad at me. And they said, oh, no, they're all mad because you said the Pope went to heaven. So I said, well, that's an easy email. I can give you the answer to write to those concerned citizens. You can relieve them of the notion that you and I have the authority to decide who goes to heaven and who doesn't. And that's not up to us. It was another snarky answer. I can be given to that. But I want to take a minute and talk about our new Pope, his role, the impact I think he can have in our world, why it matters to us. Christians, we have a hard time with some of these conversations. Whoever leads to the Roman Catholic Church has a significant office. There's more than 1.4 billion Roman Catholics in the world.

A great deal of diversity within that to talk about the Catholics being homogenous that they all believe the same thing, they all practice their faith the same way, that they all act the same way, is as comical as imagining that all the Baptist are the same, or all the Methodist are the same, or all the Lutherans are the same, or all the Pentecostals are the same. There is tremendous diversity within any one of those groups that you pick up. Nevertheless, there's 1.4 billion Roman Catholics, and that's an enormous amount of influence more than most nation states have in our world. And so whoever's leading that church has a great impact on our world. My opinion, I won't spend a lot of time with data today. We can do that another time if it's helpful. And a lot of time, the people who are

selected to lead the Roman Catholic Church, their leadership emerges a bit. It's a whole new role for them. And we don't fully know who they are and what they will do and what their platforms will be and how they'll act. So I'm willing to extend some hope and to pray. I am praying that the new Pope, Leo the 14th, will lead with a fear of God and a strong biblical worldview. And he will honor the fundamental tenets of Scripture. I mean, all of those will be wonderful things. His resume would suggest he's the first American pope, significant. He has served a great deal of time in South America. Not universally, but typically we would imagine that the South American Roman Catholic Church

has been heavily influenced by liberation theology, which has a strong Marxist influence. This pope is from Chicago, first time we've had one from the United States. States. I think it's a logical conclusion at this point. I'm going to reserve the right to change my mind, but at this point, I think in many respects, perhaps a counterbalance imagined to President Trump, those that are more in favor of a globalist idea and a globalist economy that would oppose the strengthening of the United States, imagining that's going to diminish some of those pushes towards globalism, standing for American values. standing for the U.S. Constitution, thinking those things are significant.

I think the selection of Leo the 14th is a counterbalance to that. And I think we'll have to watch and see. I pray I'm wrong. I'd be happy to be wrong on this one. But I think he's imagined he'll have more influence with the American people. A lot of reasons. I think they're imagined that he could be a bit of a counteraction to that. But I want to step back.

because of that email I got and a number of conversations that have extended from that, I want to see if I can help bring a little clarity to this discussion of traditions, denominations, how we understand our faith. One, I think it's like it's easy in many evangelical circles to be angry at Catholics. And you can pick the label, pick the tradition, the denomination you belong to. On a weekend when you gather in your church building, you tend to be. rather homogenous. The people that are there tend to imagine they stand underneath that umbrella. And it's easy to have a leadership role there and stand up and rail against whoever's not a

part of your group because it unifies the audience you have. So it's easy to stand up and say you're against Catholics and point to the failures of the Roman Catholics. Or you can, if you're Baptist, you point to another group and you're unhappy with them because it unifies your audience. If you talk more about biblical values and our adherence to biblical principles like marriage is between a man and a woman, or the sanctity of human life and why abortion is a breach of our trust as Christ followers and not an acceptable option or fidelity in marriage. If you talk about those things, we all understand that the groups before us are not nearly as unified in their behavior and they're far more divisive topics. And so we would typically, and there are exceptions, but it's easier to galvanize a group being opposed to a group who wears a different label than actually grappling with the behavior and the outcomes of our lives because that's a much, much, much more difficult conversation to have because life's difficult. So I want to step back and take a couple of minutes on this whole traditions and denominations ID and see if I can bring some clarity. First, let's talk about faith or religion.

And I want to use them interchangeably. What faith are you or what religion do you practice? And those are big buckets. Those are the biggest buckets we can identify in this conversation. So, for instance, are you a Christian? Or are you Muslim? Do you practice Islam? Are you Buddhist?

Those are different religions. and some of the things I'm going to say, not everybody will agree with. I don't remember the last time everybody agreed with something I said. So this, but I'm going to put under the label of the Christian faith, the Christian religion, I think beneath that big, broad label, I'm going to place both Roman Catholics and Protestants. Those are not the only two breakdowns underneath that Christian faith. and before anybody's blood pressure goes too high, I don't imagine everybody that identifies as Roman Catholic

actually believes or has chosen Jesus is Lord of their life. Neither do I believe everybody that imagined themselves to be Protestant, whether that's Methodist or Lutheran or Episcopalian or Pentecostal. I don't imagine everybody that sits under those umbrellas has chosen Jesus of Nazareth as Lord of your life. Nevertheless, if I'm drawing the chart, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, would fit underneath the general label of Christian. There's a lot of, so that's the first. I wouldn't think of them in terms of different religions.

They both understand themselves to have the same Lord. His name is Jesus of Nazareth. Their structure are different. The hierarchies are different. I understand there are some practices of the faith that are not acceptable to others. We'll talk about those, if not in this session, in another time. And there are many ways to understand the church and the unfolding of the church, the schism that took place between the east and the west.

We can't do it all in one segment. So I'm going to defend some of the scholars, but just bear with me. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, that's another point of confusion. The Jewish faith shares a portion of our. Bible. You know, in some settings, depending on the setting, we'll refer to the Old Testament as the Hebrew Bible, because when we talk about a Judeo-Christian worldview, the values that the worldview that is held by the Christians can't be understood apart from the understanding the worldview of the Jewish community. But the Jewish question is a bit interesting because you can be Jewish and not practice the Jewish faith. You know, Jewish also describes a race of people. And you can be, belong to the, you can be a Jewish person and practice Islam. You can be a Jewish person and practice Christianity. Again, not everybody will agree with my perspectives, but I have friends

that have done all of the above. Judaism would be the practice of that Jewish faith. You can be Jewish person and be completely agnostic, be totally secular. So when we talk about faith and religions. Those are great big buckets. And if you're a Methodist and you're a Lutheran, you don't practice different faiths. You don't belong to different religions. You belong to a different denomination, a different sect, a different group under the heading of Christian and Protestant, in this case. A lot of confusion in the Christian community. Catholic simply means universal. The definition of that world means universal. We talk about the Catholic Church, which just talking about the universal church.

You need to slip Roman in there so you can talk about that church that is centered in Rome. That would be what we understand Catholic. Catholics just become the shorthand for the Roman Catholic Church. And the pope is the leader of the Roman Catholic Church and that 1.4 billion people who follow the Roman Catholic practice of worship. Within the Protestant side of this discussion, it's another subset. And it's still a big bucket. Then you get all these other groups that we're far more familiar with, the Baptist and the Methodist and the Lutheran and the Presbyterian and the Church of Christ.

And then some within those groups will start to say, well, no, wait a minute, we're not a denomination. And now we're beginning to descend into those ways that we find to separate ourselves from one another. And that's beyond the scope of what I want to do with you right now. I just want to identify the difference between a faith and a religion and a denomination. We can talk about practices within all of those subgroups that we approve of or we disapprove of and which are essential and which are non-essential. You know, you may have heard me say from time to time if you listen to some of our messaging beyond these podcasts, that if you and I can disagree on a point and we can both still go to heaven,

then I will extend to you a hand of fellowship. Christians have a habit of creating some very harsh walls, very firm boundaries, about issues that are secondary or tertiary. We will break fellowship with one another if we disagree on when to take communion, for instance. And I don't think that's helpful. So many of you send us messages, letters, emails, notes in a variety of formats saying thank you for the ministry,

for willing to speak the truth into culture in this rather tumultuous season. Well, I hear your feedback, and it's very valuable. The question I'm so often asked is, I feel like we should do more. What can we do? How do we do something? Clearly God is moving in the earth. He's raising up voices of truth. We're certainly not unique or alone in that. But there is something you could do that would help us. Join us as a monthly ministry partner. Our baseline for how we build our plans for next comes from those monthly partners. Your gift of $25 or more enables us to imagine a different future. So if God has blessed you through the ministry, I would ask you to make that simple investment in what's next. And together we will join. Join God in helping to spread the message of a biblical worldview and its significance for our families, our communities, our nation, and for the body of Christ throughout the earth. Join us in that partnership.

We'll share some unique learning opportunities with you, and together we'll move with what God is doing in the earth right now. Again, if we can disagree on a point and it doesn't exclude us from the kingdom of God, then I will stand next to you. It doesn't mean some of those issues are not important. it simply means I don't think they're sufficient to break fellowship. There are some issues we cannot disagree on and it still be Christianity. If Jesus is not the incarnate son of God, if he wasn't born of a virgin, if he didn't die on a cross physically, if he wasn't raised to life again physically, it's not Christianity.

So I can't negotiate those things away. I have no room in those things. So to disagree on those, We have to stay after the discussion and stay engaged enough until we sort that out because it will exclude one of us from the kingdom of God, as I understand it. So I would encourage you not to bring division and great anger and angst around issues that are non-exclusive. In all of those issues, we can show a great deal of love and grace and mercy. Where that rolls into contemporary culture a bit is there are some moral practices in our Bible that we're told we cannot practice. and still be a part of the kingdom of God.

We can struggle with sin. We can be challenged by sin, but we can't choose the practice of sin and still be included in the kingdom of God. There are sexual sins. You cannot practice adultery. You cannot be a habitual adulterer breaking the covenant of marriage

and do that as a matter of habit and imagine you'll be welcomed into the kingdom of God. We have to repent. Repentance means we change how we think about something. I used to think this was okay. I no longer do. I have repented. And we change our behavior.

That used to describe my practice, but I no longer practice that behavior. So if you engage in repentance, you can be forgiven. So you may have been a serial adulterer, but you can't practice adultery and participate in the kingdom of God. The Bible says the same thing about fornication. sex prior to marriage, you can't practice fornication.

And imagine you can participate in the kingdom of God. It may have been a part of your practice, but we have to repent. So there's a difference in doctrinal perspectives that we can disagree on. And behavioral perspectives, those behavioral perspectives transcend the groups we belong to. You know, all the immoral people don't belong in one denomination or tradition. And there's been so much confusion in the Christian faith. Mostly, I think, because we don't think about it that much. You know, we just go to the church that we go to.

And we like the music and the preacher's pretty good and it's convenient and the parking's not bad. And they got a good nursery. So that's where I go to church. Or maybe we just believe what our parents told us we believed or we joined some group or we, our girlfriend went to that church or whatever. And it requires a little bit more thought and a bit more person. perspective to understand. You know, we can introduce the idea of orthodox and unorthodox. Orthodox simply means that you comply with the understanding and the boundaries of traditional Christianity.

There really is a stream of thought and a belief that goes back to the first century where we can identify what has been agreed upon is the fundamental practices of the Christian faith. Now there have been variations on that. Almost in the way we have fashion that changes how we dress and present ourselves in public. There have been fashions around faith. There was a time if you didn't sing from a hymnal, you didn't think it was appropriate in a church building. That certainly doesn't describe much of corporate worship today. But there were churches before we had a printing press. So there were churches before we had hymnals.

So I'm not arguing for or against. I'm saying we have to make the distinction. between fashion and the authority of Scripture. One of the components of orthodoxy is we hold the Word of God to be our rule of faith and practice. You can't set apart, set aside portions of the Scripture and say they're non-authoritative, which is a real challenge in the contemporary church. And it's not limited to a single denomination. It's not limited to Protestant or Catholic.

There are segments of the Catholic Church that set aside the authority of Scripture. There are segments of the Protestant Church that set aside the authority of Scripture. It's not the church. I don't care what the sign says. I don't care how much tradition they bring to the table. And some of the discussions are not simple or easy. But the authority of Scripture in our lives is a fundamental component of orthodoxy. And then we walk out from there.

That gives us the guidebook, the design manual for how we know how to practice our faith. Mormonism stands, it's not a part of the Christian. religion. You know, the Book of Mormon shares some things that were taken from the Bible. They share some of the characters and some of the names, but they have readressed or redefined the role of Jesus and the assignment of Jesus and the person of Jesus. And Christianity unravels if you touch those things about Jesus, as I said earlier. One of the things that the church put in place very early, long before we had printing presses, and certainly before we had technology and social media

was creedal statements, a creed. And they were summaries of the principal tenets of the faith. Before we had all of the means of communicating that we have today, you know, the oral tradition, we passed ideas from generation to generation by word of mouth. And so a creed, like the Apostles' Creed, would be one of the older creeds. Some scholars say it could have been the baptismal creed for the church in Jerusalem.

Many of you listening, I suspect grew up in a tradition where you said the Apostles' Creed is a routine part of public or corporate worship. Some of you didn't, and you're suspect of it. I get that. But the Apostles' Creed is really just a collection of summary statements of the fundamental tenets of the Christian faith. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only son. You know, it's really a summary statement of the fundamental concepts of the Christian faith. There are other creedal statements, the Nicene Creed that came out of the first church conference where the leaders of the Christian church in the cities of the world gathered.

There were some threats against the orthodoxy of the church, and the leaders came together. To sort that out, and out of that came a creedal summary of what the church believes. You can ask Rabbi Google. He can help you get to both the apostles. Creed and the Nicene Creed pretty simply. But we will be much better suited to stand in a season of deception if we'll take just a little time to think about what we believe and how we fit into the body of Christ, how we understand truth, what establishes those truths.

You know, I often say to people, don't believe just what I believe. Get your Bible out. You've heard me, I think, many times encouraged you to read your Bible in a systematic progressive way, beginning to end. You get to know the character of God. You get to know how God deals with people. You get to know how God deals with nations. All of those things are a part of the narrative. And that helps prepare you to sort out what's true and what's false. What I can tell you that I'm certain is in front of us is increasing deception, increasing expressions of the false, asserting itself to be true. That's the nature of deception. And the best protection that you and I

have is one, knowing the word of God. Two, learning to recognize the direction or the prompting of the Holy Spirit. That doesn't make you weird. It means you can recognize the authentic spirit of God. And that cannot be determined by label or architecture or accent or style of worship. that's determined by another set of factors. So I guess, you know, if I have to put a bow around this and I'd do pretty quickly, then it would be first of all pray as we have a new Pope being installed, whatever his past may have been, that he will lead at this point in the Roman Catholic Church with the fear of God,

with the reverence for scripture, and he will lead in a biblical way. In the same way, when we have a president elected here, whether it's a party you have liked or a party you don't like, we're told to pray for those in authority. And our prayer is they will lead with the fear of God implementing an agenda that reflects a biblical worldview and biblical values. You know, some of you, I have no doubt, have been coached pretty extensively against the weaknesses of Roman Catholicism. And they have some practices that I don't think I can support biblically without any question. I'm not going to pray to the saints. They won't hear you.

You know, they have given an exalted place to Mary as the mother of Jesus that I think is stretches the boundaries of what Scripture presents to us. So I'm not trying to endorse Roman Catholicism in every aspect of their practice of faith. But I can take most of the Protestant denominations and find aspects of their practice that would give me pause as well. again, within under the Roman Catholic umbrella, I am quite confident I have had many friends who are very faithful believers in Jesus of Nazareth. And I have people who attend the church that I lead today that I'm not certain are prepared for eternity. So sitting in church doesn't mean whichever church it is that you still don't have the need for that personal relationship with Jesus. and then to begin to implement the expression of yielding your life to the authority of God.

That is the essence of what it means to be a Christ follower and then to grow up in our faith. What I can tell is there is great change taking place in our world. We have a new pope, so we've got a new voice in the Roman Catholic Church. We have President Trump who's addressing this enormous push that we've had for several decades towards globalism. We're overlaying that with this invasion in our country. own nation, from people from the nations of the world. They're not just from Mexico or even South America. They've come from the nations of the world. We're trying to sort out whether we're going to continue to assert for the United States, whether we should have the privilege

of being a sovereign nation, or we're going to outsource the things that have made us strong. I see what President Trump is doing. I support a great deal of it. But at the end of the day, if it's sustainable, it will be because the people sustain it. So here's my invitation to you. Let's take seriously that biblical mandate and pray for those in authority over us. And so he said, well, the Pope has no authority over me. Okay, he doesn't. But the Pope has a great deal of authority in the world.

You know, some people are saying President Trump's not their president. He may not be, but he has a great deal of authority in this nation. And if you're a Christ follower, you should be praying that he will lead and make decisions that reflect a fear of God and a biblical worldview. I prayed that for President Biden, and I prayed that for, I mean, I pray that for all the expressions of authority over our lives. But I would encourage you no longer just to say, identify your faith based on the group that you belong to. There's no longer enough consistency within those groups. In the community where I live, there are expressions of mainline American

evangelical denominations that are denying the authority of scripture as a part of their public expression of faith. So they can't be considered legitimate expressions of the church. You can't deny the authority of Scripture and say you're Orthodox. Those things don't go together. Not angry about it. Don't want you to be belligerent about it. I would not stay in a worshipping community of people that denied the divinity of Jesus,

the uniqueness of Jesus, the necessity of the redemptive work of Jesus, the authority of Scripture denied those moral boundaries that we're given in scripture, you can't reject those fundamental principles and then think you have peace with God. And if we're going to flourish in the season that's ahead of us, and I think there's a lot more disruptions coming, we're going to need to know we have peace with God. So this has moved beyond just my preference, or my preference of style of worship, or the kind of architecture I like, or who has the best softball team, or whatever. We need to know what we believe, why we believe it, in whom we're.

we believe and understand that he is the source of our strength, and he is the stability and the foundation of our lives. Because candidly, at the end of the day, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. And my determination for myself and my invitation to you is to be an early adopter. Let's get that established in our lives. And then let's find the people of similar commitment in the communities where we live. It may require us to make friends in some new ways. It may require us to overcome some prejudices we've carried because there was a time in American history where the fundamental fabric of the Christian faith was pretty universal. We may have differed on the kind of music we liked or our social status, but the orthodoxy

of the Christian faith was pretty much universally accepted and taught with the people that we trained to be leaders in our churches. That's not true anymore. And bring me any joy to say that. So we have to understand as individuals what we believe, why we believe it, and then begin to identify people of similar convictions. And we can understand and tolerate some diversity and expressions of our faith, but not in the fundamentals of how we practice that. And again, when I say practice, I don't mean how we worship. I mean how we live that out. If you'll do that, I believe when Jesus talked about the person who built their house on the rock. You know, he gave us this scenario of two home builders.

One builds their home. They got beachfront property. They built their house on the sand because they liked to hear the waves and see the sea. And somebody else built it in Middle Tennessee on solid limestone. And then he described the same storms attacking or coming against both homes. And the home built on the sand collapsed. And the home built on the rock survived the storms. Jesus said the one who built the house that survived the storms is the one who hears my word and practices it.

So it's not the sign on the house or the denomination that the house is committed to. It's whether or not you and I choose to both invest in knowing the word of God and then putting it into practice in our lives. None of us will do that perfectly. But if we will do it with humility and a spirit of repentance, we can walk in the strength and the grace and the mercy that Jesus has made available to us through his redemptive work, and we will overcome every expression of evil. Now that's good news in this world. We've got a new pope.

We need to pray. We've got a president who's going to complete this term, and then we have a season that is currently undefined. We need to be praying about that. We have millions and millions of people in our nation illegally that have avoided due process. I believe that has to be addressed or there will be a tremendous price exacted. And we need the courage to do that. So there are many things to put on your prayer list.

Maybe most importantly, you start to ask God to help you see the people around you where you work in your neighborhood where your kids are going to school or at the ball fields where you're sitting watching grandchildren or children play ball games. Ask God to help you begin to recognize people who are doing their best to honor Jesus and start to make some new friends. culture and Christianity. We've got to get our faith outside the walls of the church. We're going to have to think about it for a few more minutes than 60 or 90 minutes on a weekend.

It's going to have to impact how we see our world and how we understand one another. And it's going to take some real courage, candidly more courage than we've had around our faith in a long time. But God is moving in the earth and I want to move with him. And I believe you do too or you wouldn't be listened to a culture and Christianity podcast. We're going to pick some of this up. We'll talk about it some more in another session. But for today, let's take our faith outside the walls of the church.

Hey, thanks for joining me today. Before you go, please like the podcast and leave a comment so more people can hear about this topic, too. If you haven't yet, be sure to subscribe to Alan Jackson Ministries YouTube channel and follow the Culture and Christianity podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Together, let's learn how to lead with our faith and change our culture. I'll see you next time. Thank you.