8 Bible Verses about Syncretism
Most Relevant Verses
And he sprang up and began to walk about. Then the crowds, when they saw what Paul had done, shouted in the Lycaonian tongue, saying, "The gods are come down to us in human form." And they began to call Barnabas "Zeus," and Paul, since he was the principal speaker, "Hermes"; and the priest of Zeus, whose temple was at the entrance to the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates, and along with the crowds was about to offer sacrifices.
While Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred within him, when he noticed that the city was full of idols. He argued in the synagogues with the Jews and the devout proselytes, and also daily in the market-place with those that met him there. A few of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also encountered him again and again. Some were saying, "What has this beggarly fellow to say?" Others said, "He seems to be a setter forth of strange gods," because he preached Jesus and the resurrection.read more.
Then they laid hold of him and brought him up to Mars Hill, saying. "May we be told what this new teaching of yours is? "For you are bringing certain strange things to our ears. We want to know, therefore, what these things mean." (Now all the Athenians and the strangers sojourning there spent their time in nothing else, but to tell or to hear some new thing.) So Paul stood up in the center of Mars Hill, and said: "Men of Athens, I perceive that in all respects you are remarkably religious. "For as I was passing along and observing your objects of worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, 'TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.' What you are worshiping in ignorance, this I am proclaiming to you.
But there were also some strolling Jewish exorcists, who took it upon them to invoke the name of Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, "I adjure you by that Jesus whom Paul preaches." There were seven sons of one Sceva, a Jewish high priest who used to do this. But the evil spirit answered, "Jesus I know, and Paul I have heard of, but who are you?"read more.
And the man in whom the evil spirit was sprang on two of them, overpowered them and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of the house naked and wounded.
Do not allow yourselves to be swept away by various and strange teachings. For it is a beautiful thing to be established in heart by grace, and not by regulations regarding food, from which those that occupied themselves with them have derived no benefit.
You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and also the cup of demons; you cannot be partakers in the Lord's table and in the table of demons.
Now, however, when you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you are beginning to turn back to those weak and beggarly externalities, eager to be in bondage to them again? You are scrupulous, are you, in observing "days" and "months" and "seasons" and "years"?
Let no man at his will defraud you of your prize through his false humility and worship of the angels, taking his stand on the visions he has seen, and vainly puffed up by his material mind;
Now as to eating food that has been offered to idols, we know well that an idol has no real existence in the universe, and that there is no God but One. For though there be so-called "gods," celestial of terrestrial, as indeed there are gods many and lords many, yet for there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we for him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.