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Welcome to the Daily Blade. The word of God is described as the sword of the spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

The Church’s Discernment Crisis

Do All Religions’ Worship Count

Jesus’ Exclusive Claim In John 14

Why Truth Claims Exclude Opposites

1 John On Denying The Son

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All right, good to have you all back today. This week on the Daily Blade, we're diving into what may be one of the greatest crises facing the church today, and that's a crisis of discernment. So we're pulling from the State of Theology 2025 survey by League in Ear and Lifeway to examine what self-described evangelicals actually believe, and then holding those beliefs up against Scripture to see how they measure up. So yesterday we took on the belief by many evangelicals that marriage was not created by God to be between one man and one woman and dismantled that. Today we're turning our attention to worship, specifically the worship offered by different world religions. Now, there are actually a lot of sayings that you've likely heard before. You know, there are many paths up the mountain, but they all lead to the same peak. You know, same God, different names. You know, God doesn't care about the label on the bottle, just the contents of the heart. You know, religion is just the language. It's the language we use to talk to God. And, you know, spirituality is the water, religion is the cup. I mean, you've probably heard a lot of these things before. And there's a popular old Indian parable that I'm sure some of you have heard that goes like this. We are all like blind men touching different parts of the elephant. So the meaning of this is that we're all essentially experiencing the same thing, but just from different perspectives, right? So it's essentially standpoint epistemology, which is just a fancy way of saying your truth is defined by your lived experience, right? So these are all colloquialisms that communicate the same thing. Inclusivity. Inclusivity. Essentially, it really doesn't matter what you believe and how you worship, God understands, and he will just take it however he can get it. And guess what? A lot of so-called evangelicals believe this too. So here's a statement from the 2025 State of Theology survey. God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Now, this should be stunning to you. Forty-seven percent of self-described evangelicals agree with this statement. Almost half of evangelicals agree with the statement that God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. So, what does the Word of God have to say about that? So we're going to look at a couple of passages from the Apostle John. So in John 14, verses 5 through 7, he says this. How can we know the way? Jesus said to him, I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. So, guys, right there, plain as day. So we have the definitive article, and that's what really tells us everything we need to know, because in the original Greek, the definitive article is intentional and emphatic. I am the way, the truth, and the life. He did not say that he is a way, a truth, and a life. So Jesus is claiming direct and exclusive ownership over the road that leads to God. Okay, so there is absolutely zero ambiguity here. And then when he says that no one comes to the Father except through me, you have to ask the obvious question, what does he mean by no one? Well, the phrase is an absolute one. It admits no exceptions whatsoever. There's no wiggle room. So it would follow that no other world religion provides a road that arrives to the Father. So Jesus owned the He owns the road, right? And thus his road is the only one that goes to the Father. And when Jesus says, I am the truth, you have to reckon with that statement. What does that mean? Jesus goes further than just claiming the pathway to God. He says that he is the truth. And here's the key exclusivity. Exclusivity. I mean, that is in stark contrast to the inclusivity that we talked about earlier. You know, every religion that includes a truth claim of any kind has to do so in an exclusionary fashion towards all other truth claims, right? I mean, by definition, for something to be true, it has to exclude everything that is false. And there are a lot of world religions that don't make the same truth claims that Jesus does. So if another religion, any other religion other than biblical Christianity, makes the truth claim that their religion leads to the Father, we have to deem that statement either entirely true or entirely false. And the Apostle John wrote this in 1 John 2 23. So, guys, if any other world religion, to include Judaism and Islam, denies that Jesus is the Messiah and the pathway to the Father, they are simultaneously affirming that they do not have the Father. So, no, God does not accept the worship of all religions. God created the road to himself, and he gets to define how someone can gain access to that road and thus access to him. And to all of the self-described evangelicals that don't believe that, I guess you're gonna have to take that up with Jesus. All right, we'll pick this back up tomorrow morning.

Wrap Up And Share The Show

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