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The Peril of Misguided Zeal (Matthew 23:15) · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to reform thinking. You know how our modern culture
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treats sincerity. We elevate it above like almost
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every other human trait. Oh absolutely, it is the gold
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standard today. Society dictates that the
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substance of your belief matters very little as long as you are
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highly sincere and zealous about it.
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You know sincerity has become this golden calf.
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Yeah, if someone means well, if they're earnest, we tend to
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excuse almost anything. We really do.
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But our mission today is to look at why immense religious zeal,
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when pointed in the wrong direction, is viewed by the
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biblical text as a catastrophic danger.
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A literal danger. Yeah, right.
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We are taking a rigorous look at Matthew 23.15, where Jesus
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condemns the religious elite for crossing oceans to make converts
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who, well, who end up worse off than before.
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Much worse off. And to do this, we have a
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massive stack of sources. Today we're looking at
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historical commentaries on 1st century Judaism, sociological
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data analyzing high control religious organizations, and
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some heavy theological texts, specifically looking at the
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Westminster Confession of Faith. It is wild when you really look
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at it. The text absolutely shatters the
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modern idol of sincerity. Completely shatters it.
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Yeah, the sources we are working from argue forcefully that
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religious zeal when the divorce from the true gospel does not
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earn you points for trying hard. Right, there is no participation
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trophy. Exactly.
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Precisely. Instead, it operates as an
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express train to divine judgment.
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What we see in this passage is that sincerity does not mitigate
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judgment, it accelerates it. When you build a religious
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system on human merit rather than divine grace, your zeal is
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actually manufacturing spiritual ruin.
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OK, let's unpack this because to grasp the weight of what Jesus
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is saying, we need to know precisely where and when this is
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happening. So set the stage for us, where
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are we in the timeline? Well, we are in the final days
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of Christ's earthly ministry. The chronological setting is
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Passion Week and Jesus is standing in the temple precincts
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in 1st century Jerusalem, which. Is a highly charged.
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Environment Oh incredibly charged.
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This is his final public discourse before he is betrayed,
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arrested and crucified. So the shadow of the cross falls
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heavily over this entire moment. And from the theological
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framework presented in our source, specifically a
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dispensational framework, this is a massive redemptive
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historical turning point. We are witnessing the dramatic
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sunset of the Old Covenant era. The Lord is speaking directly to
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the nation, specifically to its apostate religious leadership,
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and He is issuing a final indictment.
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So the clock is stopping. Right, the prophetic clock is
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about to pause to make way for the Church age before resuming
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his dealings with national Israel in a future premillennial
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Kingdom. Hold on, Premillennial Kingdom
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and Dispensational Framework are heavy seminary terms for those
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listening who do not have a theology degree.
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What is the prophetic clock pausing for and what does this
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future Kingdom actually look like on the ground?
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Like explain that to me like I am 5.
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I can do that. Think of God's redemptive plan
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as a massive stage play with different acts.
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OK, I like that. In the dispensational view, God
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made specific, literal promises to the physical nation of Israel
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back in the Old Testament, promises about land, a king, and
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a global Kingdom. Right when Jesus arrived, he
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offered that Kingdom, but the leadership of Israel rejected
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him. So the the clock of those
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specific national promises hits pause.
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The curtain comes down on that act.
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Yes, and the play shifts to a new act, which is the Church
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Age. This is the area you and I live
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in right now, where God is saving people from every tribe
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and nation, both Jew and Gentile, and forming the church.
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OK, so where does the premillennial part come in?
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The premillennial Kingdom is the belief that after the Church age
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concludes, Christ will physically return to earth and
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unpause that clock. Oh, I see.
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He will establish A literal physical Kingdom on Earth for
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1000 years, reigning from Jerusalem, and that fulfills all
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those original promises to national Israel before the final
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eternal state begins. I see.
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So Jesus is not just having a casual theological debate at a
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local synagogue. He is the true King of Israel,
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standing in the center of Israel's worship, officially
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declaring that the current shepherds of the nation have
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completely corrupted the vineyard.
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Precisely. It is an official public
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repudiation of the leadership. I have to push back a little
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here though. Sure.
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How can you call this a disastrous theological outcome
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if these Pharisees were genuinely cleaning up people's
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lives? I mean, a gentile who stops
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going to Pagan temples, stops engaging in horrific immorality
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and starts tithing and obeying the moral law, is that not a net
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positive for society? You would think so, right?
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Yeah, why is Jesus so furious about moral improvement?
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Weren't the Pharisees considered the good guys by the common
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people? That is the crucial tension of
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this entire passage. To understand why Jesus is
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furious, you have to understand the factions of 1st century
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Israel and what the Pharisees actually represented.
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Break those factions down for us.
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Well, you had the Sadducees who held the temple power.
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They were the aristocrats, the wealthy elite who often
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compromised with Rome to maintain their status and
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comfort. Basically, the political
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insiders. Right then you had the zealots
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who wanted a violent political revolution against Rome, and you
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had the Essenes, who were so disgusted by the corruption of
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the city that they pursued total isolation out in the desert
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caves at Qumran. Right, they just withdrew from
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society completely. Yes, they tapped out.
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But the Pharisees were different.
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They were the respected lay leaders.
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They were the men of the people. The local guys.
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Exactly. They interpreted the law, they
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guarded the traditions, and they fiercely defended Jewish
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identity against the gross immorality of Greco Roman
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paganism. They were the ones running the
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local synagogues, right? Yeah, they ran the local
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synagogues and taught the common folk.
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They prized purity, tithing, fasting, and careful obedience.
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If you asked an average Jewish citizen who the holiest men
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alive were, they would point to the Pharisees.
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OK, so. To address my pushback.
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Right to address your pushback. Yes, the outward moral
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improvement looked great to society, but Jesus is furious
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because moral improvement without the grace of God
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produces a deadly self righteousness.
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Oh, I see where this is going. It convinces a person they do
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not need a savior because their behavior is so clean.
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So because they were so highly regarded, Jesus standing in the
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temple and publicly labeling them as manufacturers of
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damnation was a paradigm shattering statement.
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He was completely dismantling the religious establishment in
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front of everyone. It was a verbal earthquake.
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I mean it would have paralyzed the original audience with
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shock. Jesus is taking the most
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esteemed, dedicated missionaries of the God of Abraham and
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telling them they are agents of spiritual death.
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We also have to look at the literary placement of this
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moment. Matthew chapter 23 does not
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exist in a vacuum. No, the placement is highly
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intentional. In chapters 21 and 22, Jesus
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faces a barrage of hostile questions from these leaders.
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Right, they're trying to corner him.
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Yeah, they try to trap him regarding paying taxes to
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Caesar, the resurrection of the dead and the greatest
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commandment. They are aggressively trying to
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discredit him in front of the Passover crowds.
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So chapter 23 is his response. It is the climactic covenant
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lawsuit. Jesus shifts from answering
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their questions to pronouncing a series of seven woes upon them.
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Verse 15, the text we are analyzing today, is the second
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of those 7 woes. To grasp the specific crime he
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is charging them with, we need to look at the specific words
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Jesus uses to describe their theatrical religion.
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He begins with a specific word in the Greek Why, translated as
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woe. Yes, way.
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A frequency analysis of the New Testament shows this is not a
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common word. It is highly concentrated in the
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Gospels and the Book of Revelation.
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So it is not a light term. Not at all.
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This is not a casual exclamation.
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It is not Jesus expressing frustration or offering a gentle
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suggestion to do better. In the Old Testament prophets, a
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woe was a prophetic covenant lawsuit, a declaration of divine
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displeasure. But Jesus uses.
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It differently. Well, when Jesus uses it, he is
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not speaking on behalf of God the way Isaiah or Jeremiah did.
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He is speaking as the omniscient judge decreeing A judicial
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verdict. He is the Incarnate Lord,
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actively condemning their system.
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That's it's a terrifying tone. He speaks as the judge and he
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identifies the actors in this tragedy.
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He calls them hypocrite. Hypocrites.
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In our modern context, a hypocrite is just someone who
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says one thing and does another. But in Greco Roman culture, the
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term had a very specific visual meaning.
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It did. Research into extra biblical
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usage confirms that hypocrite originally referred to stage
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actors. Like in a theatre.
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Right, in ancient amphitheaters, actors held large, exaggerated
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masks in front of their faces to project a specific character to
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the audience. They had a tragedy mask, a
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comedy mask, a hero mask. So Jesus is calling them actors.
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Jesus is applying this theater term to the religious elite.
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He is declaring that the entire Pharisaic system is a theatrical
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performance. They are playing the part of
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holy men. They have all the props.
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Exactly. They have the outward trappings
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of piety, the long prayers on the street corners, the visible
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fasting where they disfigure their faces, the meticulous
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tithing of tiny garden herbs. But their spiritual reality is
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utter decay. The mask of holiness conceals a
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heart of rebellion. They are actors wearing masks,
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but they are incredibly hard working actors.
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Jesus says they compass sea and land.
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We touched on their zeal, but I want to dig into the sheer
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effort here. The phrase is Amerism.
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Yes, Amerism is a figure of speech that uses 2 contrasting
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parts to denote a whole. Like saying I searched high and
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low to mean you searched absolutely everywhere.
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Right? Sea and land denotes exhaustive
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continuous effort in every possible direction.
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The Greek verb used here, periojet, denotes relentless
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continuous motion. They were just constantly on the
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move. They were traversing the known
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world, crossing treacherous waters, walking hostile
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territories, all driven by a burning ambition to recruit
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people to their specific. To make this tangible for us
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today, the sources provide some staggering statistics to
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illustrate what misguided zeal looks like right now.
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The sources specifically categorize certain modern groups
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as operating in this same Pharisaic pattern.
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The numbers are unbelievable. For instance, Jehovah's
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Witnesses reported spending 1,791,490,713 hours in field
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service in a single year, and that resulted in 269,517
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baptisms. The math on that is staggering
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when you break it down. That requires over 6600 hours of
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tireless, exhausting labor to secure just one single convert.
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Over 6000 hours and the sources point out the 68,000 full time
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Mormon missionaries deployed around the globe at any given.
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Time. It is massive.
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They're encompassing sea and land with a zeal that honestly
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puts many Orthodox believers to shame.
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The physical energy is undeniable, but let's dig into
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the psychology of that for a second.
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Why do these organizations demand 6600 hours of work?
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That level of effort has to do something to the human brain.
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You are hitting on the sump cost fallacy, which is a massive
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psychological component of workspace religion.
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OK, explain how that works here. Well, when an organization
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demands you spend thousands of hours walking neighborhoods,
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facing rejection, memorizing pitch scripts, and isolating
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yourself from non believers, you become deeply invested in the
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system. Because you have given so much
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of your life to it. Right.
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Your brain cannot easily process the idea that you spent 6600
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hours on a lie. The sheer effort required
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becomes the glue that binds the person to the false gospel.
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Yeah, that's so sad. The sources argue that because
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their message relies on a gospel of human merit and texts outside
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the biblical Canon, their converts are pulled into a
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workspace system. The visible effort is
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astronomical, but the theological outcome is
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disastrous. It really proves the zeal,
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sacrifice and visible seriousness are not sufficient
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proofs of fidelity to truth. No energy is morally ambiguous
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until its truthfulness is examined.
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So they are crossing oceans and exhausting themselves, but to
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what end? Makes me think of an analogy.
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Imagine a massive construction project.
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You spend billions of dollars. You employ thousands of workers.
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You pour concrete for decades engineering most magnificent
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suspension bridge the world has ever seen.
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The cables are flawless, the asphalt is smooth.
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But then you realize the bridge does not span the Canyon.
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It leads directly into a bottomless abyss.
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What good is the bridge? All that effort, all that
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sacrifice, and the destination is destruction.
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If the bridge goes nowhere, What exactly is at the end of the
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road for these Gentile converts? That is the dynamic Jesus is
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exposing. The Pharisees built a
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magnificent, highly disciplined religious structure, but because
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it rejected the grace of God and relied on human performance, it
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LED directly to the pit. Here's where it gets really
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interesting. We have to look at the specific
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vocabulary the text uses to describe the person they
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convert. Right, the Holy Spirit inspiring
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Matthew's account does not use the common Greek word for
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disciple. Which is methode right?
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Yes, methode is a methode is implies A learner who enters
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into an intimate life changing relationship with a master.
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That is the word used for followers of Jesus.
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Instead, the text uses the word Priscillitin proselyte.
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And that is a rare word. Very rare.
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It appears only four times in the entire New Testament.
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A proselyte carried very specific historical baggage.
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We were talking about gentile converts.
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The Hellenistic world was filled with gross polytheism.
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The Roman cities had temples dedicated to chaotic gods,
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normalized temple prostitution, and extreme moral decay.
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It was very dark time culturally.
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Right. Many Gentiles were disgusted by
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it, so they naturally gravitated toward the local Jewish
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synagogues in these Roman cities.
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They became what were known as God Fears.
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They attended, they listened, they worshipped the one true
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God, but they had not taken on the full weight of the Jewish
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ceremonial law. The Pharisees, however, were not
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satisfied with Gentiles merely being God fearers.
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They wanted full institutional recruits.
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They wanted full proselytes. So what did that require?
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This meant compelling these Gentiles to submit to physical
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circumcision, strict ceremonial washings, and the crushing,
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impossible yoke of the Talmudic oral tradition.
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The Pharisees were not making disciples of the living God,
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they were making institutional converts to their legalistic
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sect. They wanted numbers for their
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team. Exactly.
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They viewed every proselyte as a trophy, a validation of their
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own theological superiority. A source gives us a vivid
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analogy for this that is just chilling.
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Imagine a man lost at sea, drowning in the dark,
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tempestuous ocean. A ship spots him.
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A sailor on the deck, filled with immense zeal and a sincere
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desire to help, hurls a life preserver into the water.
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Such a powerful image. But the life preserver is made
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of solid lead. The sailor's aim was true.
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His veal was incredibly high. His motives might have even felt
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pure to him. But his instrument was deadly.
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The moment the drowning man grabs hold of that lead
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preserver, he is dragged to the bottom of the ocean faster than
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if he had been left entirely alone.
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It is a devastating picture, but it captures the Pharisee, a
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Commission, perfectly. They were throwing the heavy
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anvils of the law to drowning men.
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The Gentiles were already lost in paganism, drowning in the
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sea. And they offered them help that
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killed them. The Pharisees offered them
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religion, but it was a religion of rules, traditions and self
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justification. It was a lead weight.
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That brings us to a terrifying equation.
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What happens to the person who catches that lead preserver?
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We reached the chilling climax of the verse.
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Jesus says you make him twofold more the child of hell than
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yourselves. Let us breakdown that specific
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terminology because it is weighty.
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The Greek phrase is hue in genus child of hell.
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This operates on a Hebraic clause syntax.
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OK, let's pause Hebraic clause syntax.
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Explain that for the listener who is just trying to understand
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their Bible on a Tuesday morning.
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Sure, sure. In ancient Hebrew thought and
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language they did not use adjectives the way we do in
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English. Instead of saying someone was a
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peaceful man, they would say he was a son of peace.
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OK, that makes sense. To call someone a son of or
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child of something means their character, identity, and
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ultimate destiny are entirely bound to that subsequent noun.
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The noun defines their total existence.
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So to be a child of hell means to be inextricably destined for
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it, completely shaped by its nature.
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The word Gehenna itself has a very dark history.
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It does. It traces back to the Valley of
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Hinnom, located just outside the walls of Jerusalem.
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Centuries earlier, during times of gross national apostasy under
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wicked kings, Israelites actually offered their own
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children as burnt sacrifices to the false God Molech in that
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valley. Unimaginable.
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It was a place of horrific idolatry, screaming and death.
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Later, the righteous king Josiah desecrated the valley to stop
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the sacrifices. He turned it into a burning
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refuse dump for the city. Fires burned there constantly to
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consume the garbage, the dead animals and the filth of the
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city. So it was a literal wasteland.
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The smell of sulfur and rotting waste was permanent by the time
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of the 1st century, Gehenna stood as the ultimate
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theological metaphor for final punishment for internal
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conscious torment. The sources point out a
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staggering frequency regarding this word.
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Gehenna appears 12 times in the New Testament, and eleven of
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those times it is spoken directly by Jesus Christ.
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That statistic is vital because it utterly shatters the modern
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liberal conception of a non judge mental deity who only
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speaks of affirmation. Right, he didn't shy away from
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it. The Jesus of the Bible spoke
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more about final judgement than anyone else.
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He names the disease because he refuses to leave souls under a
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fatal illusion. But I have to ask about the math
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here. Why exponential?
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Why twofold? The Greek word is diplochron
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twofold or double. How does a student get worse
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than the teacher? Why wouldn't the convert just be
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equally as lost as the Pharisee who trained them?
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This gets into the fascinating psychology of a convert.
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When someone converts to a false religion, it compounds their
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guilt and hardens their heart. How so?
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Think about a native born Pharisee.
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They grew up in the system. They have cultural ties, family
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relationships, and a historical understanding of their faith.
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They often know how to moderate themselves because it is just
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the water they swim in. They know the unspoken rules.
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Yeah, they might cheat the system slightly here and there
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because they are comfortable in it, but a convert, a convert has
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left everything behind. They have abandoned their past,
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alienated their Pagan family, and changed their entire
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lifestyle to join this new faction.
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They have something to prove to the group.
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Precisely, they have invested their entire identity into this
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new system. Therefore, they adopt the
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fanaticism of the new system without any of the historical or
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cultural restraints possessed by the native born teacher.
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So they go overboard. They become fiercely rigid.
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They overcompensate to prove their loyalty to the people who
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recruited them. They become blinded by self
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righteousness, and as a result they become totally inoculated
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against grace. They mistake their rigid bondage
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for spiritual maturity. A Pagan in darkness is lost, but
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a Pagan who converts to a workspaced religion becomes
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doubly hardened to the true Gospel because they now believe
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their outward performance makes them holy.
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That makes perfect sense. The zeal of the newly converted
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is a known phenomenon across all cultures.
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When that intense fresh zeal is applied to a system of rules and
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self justification, it creates a monster of pride.
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A literal monster, yes. So if human effort applied to
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religion only manufacturers deeper condemnation, if crossing
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oceans and keeping rules only makes us twofold children of
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hell, how does anyone escape? If we connect this to the bigger
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picture, the sources highlight a massive Christological contrast.
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This passage forces us to look away from the false missionaries
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and look at the true missionary. Let us draw that geographic
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contrast because it is stunning. The Pharisees traverse the
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finite geography of the Mediterranean.
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They crossed the sea and dry land to drag men into judgment.
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But what did Christ do? Christ crossed the infinite
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cosmos. He left the infinite,
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incalculable glory of the heavenly throne room to wrap
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himself in frail human flesh in the dust of Bethlehem.
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That is beautiful. The Pharisees travelled
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horizontally to bring death. Christ travelled vertically to
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bring life. His method was entirely
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different. He did not come to hand us a
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list of impossible rules. He did not throw us a lead life
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preserver. No, he did not.
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To understand this, we have to grasp the difference between
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active and passive obedience, which is a core theological
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distinction in our. OK, walk us through that.
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The Pharisees demanded that their proselytes achieve their
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own obedience. Christ knew we could not, so He
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came to perform both active and passive obedience on behalf of
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His people. Let me see if I can synthesize
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this. So if I am understanding active
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and passive obedience, right? Active is Jesus taking the test
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and getting an A+ on our behalf, and passive is him taking the
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detention we earned. Is that how these sources frame
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it? That is a spot on way to look at
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it. Active obedience refers to
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Christ living a perfect life. He perfectly fulfilled the law
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of God. Everything we failed.
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Every command, every requirement, every moral
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absolute, He obeyed it. Florida State and thought word
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and deed. Where Adam failed, where Israel
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failed, where we failed, daily Christ succeeded.
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He earned the perfect score. That is his act of obedience.
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And His passive obedience refers to Him bearing the curse of the
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law on the cross. He passively submitted to the
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wrath of God. He absorbed the penalty for our
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brokenness, our hypocrisy or sin.
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He took the attention the Pharisees sought to make men
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sons of the synagogue. Christ bled and died to redeem
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children of wrath and make them adopted sons of the living God.
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Yes, beautifully said. This brings us to a massive
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doctrinal anchor. The sources cite the Westminster
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Confession of Faith, specifically Chapter 11, to
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argue that human beings cannot achieve righteousness through
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their own effort. A proselyte of the Pharisees
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stood before God, clothed in what the prophets call filthy
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rags, the rags of ceremonies, outward washings, and
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self-righteous pride. But a true believer is clothed
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in something entirely different. They are clothed in the spotless
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alien righteousness of Christ. That term, alien righteousness
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is vital for anyone listening to understand it means a
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righteousness that comes from outside of yourself, just
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foreign to you. Completely.
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Foreign. It is not generated by your own
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effort. It is credited or imputed to
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your account by faith alone. You stop trying to build your
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own bridge to heaven, and you rest entirely on the finished
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work of the Savior. Amen to that.
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The Pharisees zeal led to death, but Christ's zeal for the glory
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of His Father led to resurrection and eternal life.
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That is the core of the gospel right there.
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So what does this whole mean for the Church today?
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Because the sources do not just leave this text in the 1st
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century locked away in an ancient history lesson.
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They aim the sharp edge of this passage directly at modern
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religious practices. They absolutely do.
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Let us start with the corporate application.
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The sources offer a fierce rebuke of what they call the
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pragmatic seeker sensitive mega church movement.
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How does that connect to the Pharisees?
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I mean modern mega churches look nothing like 1st century
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synagogues. They look different externally,
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but the underlying machinery can be strikingly similar.
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The sources argue that today entire religious institutions
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compass sea and land using modern methods like what?
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Like smoke machines, concert style lighting, worldly
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entertainment and psychological marketing to draw massive
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crowds. They exhaust immense resources
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to secure attendees, but the critique is that they neglect
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the hard biblical truths. They leave out the tough stuff.
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Yes, they refuse to preach about human depravity and about the
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holy wrath of God or the absolute necessity of broken
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hearted repentance. Because those topics do not pull
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well, they do not fill the seats on a Sunday morning.
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Precisely, and by softening the message to make it palatable,
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the sources argue, these churches are manufacturing
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unregenerate proselytes to a cultural club.
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They fill buildings with people who believe they are safe
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because they had an emotional experience or prayed a quick
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prayer, but their hearts remain completely unchanged by the true
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Gospel. So it is just a modern mask.
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It is a modern form of throwing a lead life preserver just
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painted in neon colors to look appealing.
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It's worth pausing here for you listening.
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Our sources take a pretty sharp turn into modern politics and
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culture at this point. Just to be clear, we are not
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here to endorse these specific political views or pick sides,
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but we want to show you how these authors take this ancient
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text and aim it at modern movements.
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Right, we are just looking at their arguments.
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Exactly. They explicitly point the finger
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at liberal theology, the prosperity gospel, critical race
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theory, and woke ideology. They view these frameworks as
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modern equivalents of Pharisaic zeal.
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The through line in that critique is the concept of a
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works based system. Whether the rules are the
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Talmudic traditions of the 1st century or the shifting
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sociological vocabularies of the 21st century, the mechanism is
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the same. Demanding.
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Compliant. Demanding outward performance,
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correct language, and visible compliance to achieve a status
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of righteousness while ignoring the inward need for a Savior.
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The Source argue that anytime you replace the finished work of
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Christ with a system of human achievement or social moralism,
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you are encompassing sea and land to make proselytes to a
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false religion. You are substituting human
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traditions and cultural ideologies for divine
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revelation. It is a heavy critique, but the
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application does not just stay at the macro level of mega
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churches and societal ideologies.
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If you are listening to this and thinking well I don't knock on
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doors or run a mega church so this doesn't apply to me.
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The sources actually scaled this right down to how you raise your
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kids. They do.
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They bring it right into family discipleship.
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This might be the most penetrating application of all.
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Parents are always making disciples.
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The question is, what kind of disciples are they making?
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That is a tough question. If a home focuses entirely on
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moral expectations, outward compliance, correct religious
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language and strict rule keeping, but lacks a central
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focus on grace, confession, and the mercy of Christ, it risks
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producing disaster. The sources refer to this as
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producing little Pharisees. Yes, children who are trained in
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self-righteous performance rather than humble belief.
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They learn how to play the game. They learn how to hold up the
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theatrical mask to please their parents.
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Just acting the part. But inwardly they are either
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crushed by anxiety because they know they cannot keep the rules
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perfectly, or they become arrogant because they think they
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actually are keeping them. Either way, they are missing the
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Gospel family. Discipleship must point children
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to their need for Jesus US, not just train them in behavior
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modification. Evaluating our own fruit is the
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only way to ensure we are not wearing the hypocrites mask.
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We have to ask ourselves, is our influence bringing people to a
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genuine understanding of their need for grace or are we just
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recruiting them into our own rigid factions?
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That is it. Do we want them to look like
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Jesus, or do we secretly just want them to look?
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Like us, that is the diagnostic question of this entire text.
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False religion is centripetal. It draws people into human
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control and party identity. True faith reconciles sinners to
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the Father. The Pharisees wanted clones.
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Christ when it's redeemed children.
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Let us synthesize what we have covered today, because we have
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moved through a massive amount of historical and theological
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ground. We started with the idol of
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sincerity and we have seen that sincerity is simply not enough.
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No, it is not. Sincerity in a lie is still a
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lie. Zeal without truth is a vehicle
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accelerating toward judgment. Jesus stood in the temple and
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dismantled the most respected religious leaders of his day
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because they're exhaustive, globetrotting effort was pulling
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Gentiles into a legalistic labyrinth that doubled their
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condemnation. A lead life preserver.
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The text demands that we strip away our own external masks and
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realize that no amount of human effort can bridge the gap to a
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holy God. We desperately need the true
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missionary, the one who crossed the cosmos to provide an alien
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righteousness we could never earn.
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The take away is a call to intense self examination.
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We must flee from hypocritical religion, flee from self-made
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righteousness, and cast ourselves entirely on the
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Savior. He is the true Teacher who
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speaks without deceit, the true shepherd who gathers rather than
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scatters. Before we wrap up, I want to
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leave you with a final thought to ponder.
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We have talked a lot about physical geography today.
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The Pharisees compassing sea and land, walking across desert,
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sailing the Mediterranean, risking shipwrecks to make a
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single convert. It was physically exhausting,
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like there really was. But think about our world today.
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Think about the digital ocean. Today, algorithms allow anyone
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to compass the digital sea and land without ever leaving their
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couch. Oh, that is a fascinating point.
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We can make proselytes to endless echo chambers and hyper
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legalistic online factions with a single viral post.
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The barriers to entry are gone. Could the frictionless ease of
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digital conversion be manufacturing modern children of
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hell at a scale and speed that those 1st century Pharisees
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could not even begin to fathom? It is entirely possible.
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It is something to seriously weigh as we evaluate where we
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spend our own zeal. Thank you for joining the
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conversation today. We will leave you to ponder your
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own zeal, and we look forward to having you with us next time for
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another deep dive on reformed thinking.