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Welcome to Grace in Focus radio. Bob Wilkin and Sam Marr are talking about a recent debate with Steve Gregg about losing salvation. Is believing the same as abiding? Is staying in fellowship with God the key to not losing salvation? Bob and Sam will offer some clarity on some issues of this “once saved, always saved” debate.
Join us in this engaging episode where Jim Daly and Tim Geglein dive into the essence of having respectful and trustworthy conversations amidst the polarization we see today. Tim, a seasoned expert in government and public relations, shares his insights from his new book 'Stumbling Toward Utopia', touching on creating 'heaven on earth' from a human perspective. Together, they unravel the significance of remaining anchored in faith while nurturing dialogue across different belief systems, whether on college campuses or within the bustling heart of Washington D.C. You'll get an inside look at how great conversations ignite change and reflect on the power of God's presence in the most unexpected places. Faith and family take center stage in this discussion as Jim and Tim revisit the lessons from history and how they apply to today's society. With anecdotes about Abraham Lincoln's deep-seated reliance on scripture and the important role of families in shaping culture, they make a compelling case for returning to spiritual roots as a solution to current societal divides. This episode celebrates the strong foundations laid by families and explores the need for sociological recognition of the same values. By highlighting the harmonious interplay of faith and politics, they invite us to reflect on what truly drives progress in our nation.
SPEAKER 03 :
But I have found that if you can earn trust, and I think it's quite possible to do so, that then you can have an authentic, real conversation after you've absorbed and heard what they actually believe and why, and then begin to share why it is we believe what we believe. And I think that healthy conversation and discussion is possible, and it's the way forward. It is the only negation of the polarization that we find ourselves in.
SPEAKER 05 :
That's my good friend Tim Geglein and my colleague here at Focus on the Family encouraging us to engage in respectful discussions while defending the Christian faith. Tim has often modeled that well on college campuses, interacting with students who don't share our conservative Christian views. He has a new book called Stumbling Toward Utopia, which examines the idea of trying to create heaven on earth from a human perspective. And we know as believers that we can never create paradise through man's efforts. Only God can do that. Welcome to Refocus with Jim Daly, a podcast production from Focus on the Family. And by the way, this is the 50th episode for us. And I want to say thank you for listening and supporting us. And I'd like to ask you to do me a favor. Take a moment to give the podcast a rating, like it, and share it with others. Remember, we're listener-supported, so please make a gift to help refocus, continue more great conversations to help you grow in your Christian faith and reach others for Christ. That's what we're about. Tim is always great to visit with, and we work closely together. He always has his finger on the pulse of the country. He's the Vice President of External and Government Relations for Focus on the Family and is officed in D.C. And in this conversation, he'll be offering some reflections on this moment in our country, the need for civil dialogue, and most importantly, remaining anchored in our faith if we want to have a hopeful future. Let's get right into it. Here's my recent visit with Tim Gagline on Refocus with Jim Daly. Tim, it's great to have you joining me again for Refocus. It's great to be here. Yeah, it's wonderful. You know, we often talk on the phone and certainly we have meetings in DC. And so this is kind of letting people peer into that kind of conversation we might have. We have had many great journeys, haven't we? Totally. I mean, it's been a wonderful experience.
SPEAKER 03 :
How long have you been with Focus now? I've been with Focus 16 years, which is really hard to believe. And I will have been in Washington, D.C., 38 years in 2025. It's hard to believe. That's even more hard to believe, actually. It's 10 years.
SPEAKER 05 :
38 years.
SPEAKER 03 :
Wow. 10 years in the U.S. Senate with Dan Coats of Indiana. Good Dan Coats. Eight years at the White House with George W. Bush. Another good man. And 16 years with Jim Daley and focus on the family.
SPEAKER 05 :
There we go. It's been a fun run. And, you know, one of the things as we've engaged over the years and you have probably one of the best Rolodexes in town in D.C., which is nice. And it's, you know, the good thing, too, just to paint that picture, it's both Republican and Democrat. And You mentioned to me several times just how the staff, you know, the staff of either Democrats or Republicans tend to have to interact together and be known to each other, et cetera, working through details of legislation and other things that are being negotiated.
SPEAKER 03 :
Absolutely.
SPEAKER 05 :
It's not like the principals sit down at a table in a restaurant and work this out.
SPEAKER 03 :
That's right.
SPEAKER 05 :
Although that sometimes happens. But it's usually the staff that is engaging, and you've been part of that with Dan Coats and the White House over years.
SPEAKER 03 :
the years you know it's one of the little known things and i'm glad you raise it but washington dc very often is run by a group of really talented 20 and 30 years old yeah it's amazing really in all three branches of government we don't often read about them we don't you know see them or meet them but it's an army of remarkably talented people it's probably a good place to go a confession that's always drawn people in confess so i remember coming into dc for one of our you know meetings
SPEAKER 05 :
And I just had a bad attitude. Lord, I don't want to be in this city. This city is just dirty with power. And, you know, I was just having this conversation with the Lord about how much better every other place is than D.C. And then we went to the State Department. This was back when Mike Pompeo was the Secretary of State. And, you know, I carried that attitude right in there because that building – Those people that inhabit that building aren't big fans of Focus on the Family. They are not. Generally speaking. But I remember when we were waiting, this wonderful assistant came in. She's probably 28, I would think. Ruth was her name. I remember. And she came right up to me and said, oh, Mr. Daly, I love Adventures in Odyssey. And there's a handful of us here at State Department that listen. And it's great to meet you. And I'm so grateful that you guys do Adventures in Odyssey here. It was like the Lord just going, come on, I got people everywhere.
SPEAKER 03 :
I remember in behalf of Focus on the Family speaking at Bolt Hall, which is the Berkeley Law School. This is about as left wing and progressive as you can get. And after I spoke, I had limitless numbers of young first and second year law students come up to share with me the impact that Focus on the Family had on their lives. And the broadcast and Adventures in Odyssey, I mean, it's just everybody had had that common experience.
SPEAKER 05 :
It's so much fun in that regard because we can get kind of disgruntled and feel like we're not moving the needle and things aren't moving our direction. And what I say are, it's like a biblical direction when it comes to life and marriage. you know, what the political class has done to those things. And you go in very low expectations, and then the Lord hits you with this phenomenal response of people that are trying to work their jobs there in D.C.
SPEAKER 03 :
or wherever. It is amazing how Providence works in American history, Jim. You know, the year is 1809. Thomas Jefferson is the president. And lo and behold, who is born in a place called Hodginville, Kentucky, but Abraham Lincoln. It's a short wingspan, American history is. The former president, the author of the Declaration of Independence, the founder of the University of Virginia, one of the greatest Americans, twice elected president, a slaveholder. And here comes Abraham Lincoln, the exact opposite of the Virginia Regency, and this is the man who God would use to stand strong in the Civil War. Never spent a day in a school of any kind, and yet Abraham Lincoln, named for Abraham, one of the senior leaders in world history.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know what I so appreciate about Abraham Lincoln is the way he wove scripture into speeches. And people will say, you know, well, that was cultural for the time. I think it meant a lot to him, actually. And when you read the meaningfulness of his words... He was, you know, he was a lawyer. He chose his words wisely. And I think his reliance upon scripture is replete in most of the things he wrote about. And he did seem to find, you know, you could arguably one of the most pressurized administrations ever during the Civil War and hundreds of thousands of Americans dying. I mean, it did seem to bring him to the end of his human capacity. Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
Lincoln wrote the following, the will of God prevails. You know, there's a great debate about Lincoln's faith early in his life and even into the presidency. But by the close of his presidency, murdered, of course, by a Confederate radical on Good Friday in Washington, D.C. At that point, and I think historically we have to say, Providence was in Lincoln and Lincoln was in Providence. Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
And what a time in the history of the United States as well. We're past the inauguration now, and this transfer of power that occurs in the U.S. has happened. What are some of the reactions regarding the election, and what kind of change do you see happening in the fair city of D.C.?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I feel certain of two big things, Jim. The first thing is that we have just come through one of the most important realignments in American history— I don't think even people who are betting men and women would have ever predicted or guessed that in 2015 coming down an elevator in New York City would be a man elected to the presidency who had never been elected to anything else ever. Not even the school board. That's correct. And frankly, not since the presidency of Grover Cleveland have we had a president elected, defeated, and reelected. So the first thing is the sheer historical nature of what we've all just lived through. I think the more profound answer, I pray, is that the 1960s and the 1970s foisted upon the United States a moral and social revolution unlike anything in our history. And I believe that we are still living with that radicalization. And I think in large measure, Jim, it has given to us the greatest polarization in our nation since the era of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. And so I think the second thing to say is that whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, a liberal, a conservative, a progressive, a traditionalist, whatever it is, the internalization of the moment that our country finds itself in in this first part of the 21st century, ultimately I think has to be seeded or understood in light of that radical revolution and what that revolution foisted upon our political life.
SPEAKER 05 :
I think in that context, the takeaway from the election, and I want to get in, and this will be probably a little far from your book, Stumbling Toward Utopia, but it's in the context of what you've written here in this great book. You bet. But it's this consistent thing when we're talking about, as Christians, conservative Christians, as we're talking about those policies that we want to fight for. Yes. This is a republic, so we have a right to vote and voice our opinion and speak our mind.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, it's important for us to do that as citizens. And in that context, no, it's not our God. We're not replacing our faith in Christ for political salvation. I think some on the other side actually have seen it that way. In fact, you use that term secular salvation, which I have repeated over and over again, by the way, because I think it does capture salvation. their perspective. But I want to get away from the D and the R a little bit because so often we're each side kind of classifying one another, stereotyping one another with that letter. And I consistently am trying to say to journalists who try to pin me down on the perspective I might have on life, on traditional marriage, which is what we believe here at Focus on the Family, They tried to somehow shame us for those positions or to ridicule us for only being Republican or conservative. And I'm telling them every time. I say, you know what? If Democrats supported life and if Democrats supported marriage, traditional marriage, biblical marriage, you'd find far more conservative Christians in that camp too. So it's not about the letter. They seem not to understand that.
SPEAKER 03 :
It truly is the policies that matter most. I could not agree more. And one of the things I think that defines Focus on the Family is that we would rather strike a match than curse the darkness. And I remember being on a panel discussion two weeks before the election at a major university. And the question from our interlocutor was, what is the major issue facing the United States? And my opponent in this kind of quasi debate was certain that the major issue was the economy with the border and immigration or some mix of that. and i acknowledge that these are major issues in public policy but i said before politics comes culture and before culture comes the things of the spirit and that we at focus on the family believe that the biggest issue facing the united states is a spiritual crisis of the first order it's another kind of recession we hear about the words recession and deficit and we think economics But in the era that we're in, we are living in a spiritual recession. It's real. And the implications for marriage, family, and parenting are enormous. I'm an inveterate optimist, and I know you are too. And there are good things happening. I think a lot of seeds have been planted toward restoration. Pray God we'll see their germination. And I think we're already seeing several of them.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, one of the things that I've been delighted about is kind of the academic class coming around to this amazing concept that children actually do best in a two-parent home. Now, we've been saying that for 45 years here at Focus on the Family because it's so self-evident. It's a spiritual element to what you're saying. It's upstream from everything. It's an institution that God created, the family, and I think he created it with all the right ingredients, you know, that men and women bring different things to the parenting role. The child benefits from those differences, not trying to be the same. Dad has a certain perspective and sway in the family. Mom does too. And those benefits really trickle down into the children. And that's how you have healthy culture. Some have said the measure of a strong culture is the measure of each family. And I find it, again, refreshing and optimistic that even the intelligentsia of this country are now recognizing that a two-parent home, loving two-parent home, is where the best outcome happens for children.
SPEAKER 03 :
I could not agree more. And I think that in the last 24 months, we have to acknowledge that two of the most important American sociologists, one an MIT-trained economist who is a woman of the left, and another a quite center-center-right sociologist at the University of Virginia, have written two of the most important books, I think, frankly, of the last 50 years, in which they have looked at all of the empirical data. They have measured the empirical data against the outcomes for young children. And they have both, a person who is conservative, a person who is progressive. They have undoubtedly, Jim, landed exactly where Focus on the Family landed the first day we opened our doors and have been saying consistently that there's a timeless reality. And that is that the natural nuclear family is the best incubator for good outcomes, not only for children, but also for moms and dads. And it's good for community. It's good for states. In other words, there's an applicability to public policy. And I think that that's the catalyzing a connection for Focus on the Family in the public square. We are fully engaged, we're in the public square, and we are fully engaged with people who have a progressive view of life and people who have a conservative view of life because this message matters for everybody.
SPEAKER 05 :
It does, and again, it's good that people of the left are beginning to recognize this. That person is Melissa Carney. I actually did an interview with her.
SPEAKER 03 :
I know you did.
SPEAKER 05 :
People can listen to that. Yes. And I thought it was really very strong. And she's taken a lot of heat because she's stepping outside of the kind of the liberal lane to say, wait a minute, the data is irrefutable. And of course, Dr. Brad Wilcox, I'd say a right center man, is saying the same thing in his book, Get Married. And we talked to him about that too. So people can go and listen to those interviews. We've put those links for you right there in the show notes.
SPEAKER 03 :
And Jim, may I mention just one thing very quickly, because I think this is so important. In 1960, this is only 1960, of all children birth to 18, 73% of those children were living in married homes. that number by 1980 was down to 51% and that number by 2015 was barely above 40%.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, I mean it's, you know, when Elon Musk raises the issue about being childless, that we need children. It's the next generation. He's perhaps not biblically, but he is pointing to something that we all understand from a biblical perspective, that children are a blessing, not a curse. And it's as if both marriage and child rearing have become curses. That is so opposite of the truth. Is it easy? No. Of course not. Does it take work? Of course it does. But the benefits, I mean, as so many of us say, you know, who's going to be around your deathbed when you're saying goodbye to this world? It's going to be your family. That's correct.
SPEAKER 03 :
And if you have no family, it's lonely. You know, we have in recorded American history the lowest marriage rates and the lowest fertility rates. But we also have something else, Jim, and I think this is really maybe more important than both of those statistics. We have actually a national conversation going on about this. And I think that that is all to the good. I meet with regularly members of the House and Senate. I'm in the think tanks, the public policy centers. I'm on the campuses. I'm interacting with a lot of, and I say this with great humility, but I'm interacting regularly in behalf of Focus on the Family with not just the powerful, but with also the people who influence things for a living. I promise, as sure as I am having this conversation with you, This discussion that we are having is first and foremost being discussed in think tanks and influential circles of the left and influential circles of the right. And it's for that reason that I think we are moving toward a national consensus on big issues. That's exciting, actually.
SPEAKER 05 :
In that context, let's dive into some of the book content. This is our typical conversation. People are kind of listening into our phone call here, although we're together. But this is the kind of phone call we'll have every week together and say, okay, what's clicking and what's happening? Where can we provide influence to help? And that's something that I think the donor community expects of us and we continue to do and have done since 1977 when Dr. Dobson started Focus on the Family. Let's go to that polarization a little more deeply. You know, you've said in the book that we're probably as polarized as we were during the Civil War. Those are two scary statements, in my opinion. Just being polarized is a problem, but to compare it to the polarization of the Civil War, that was where brothers were shooting brothers and things like that. Yes. I think A, the question is why, and then B, how do we close that gap? How do we narrow that gap? And what role do the Christians have to be the influence, be the example to do it?
SPEAKER 03 :
The question in my time of travel for Focus on the Family, which is about a quarter to a third of my professional time, I speak to left-wing audiences, right-wing, and no ideology. Jim, with pinpoint predictability, with one of the first two or three questions is the following. How did we get into this mess? And you know, in other parts of American history, if you were the speaker, you'd say, tell me more about what you mean. But presently, we know what we mean. We're in a mess. Where did it come from? And after hearing this recurring question for three years, I decided to do my best to answer it. And I found that the reason we're in this mess is because of the radicalization of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. So just a rolling of that movement. Absolutely right. And the 60s do not begin in the 60s. The bad ideas begin at the turn of the 20th century. President Woodrow Wilson, he said the Constitution was outdated. He said the Declaration of Independence was outdated. He said he was uncomfortable with citizen sovereignty and that we ought to have experts run the country. And he wanted to change politics. The founder of the ACLU, Roger Baldwin, he said the legal services in the United States, they're not serving our country well. Too much religion, too much faith. Let's change the definition of justice. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, an abortion fanatic, a racialist, a eugenicist, very influential. And she wanted to foist on the country a new sexual revolution. People like John Dewey. Let's change American education. It should not always be about what's right and wrong because moral relativism really ought to replace this idea.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, in that context, let me just go back to the framers, the writers of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. They generally, it's argued they were not all Christians, but I would say they definitely had a deep appreciation for religious faith and certainly the Christian faith primarily. But in that context, they talk about how this form of government is not going to be able to extend itself without moral and religious people. that those are the people that will make this country go because we need honesty in the system.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 05 :
It seems like right now there's dishonesty every direction. Do we have a chance at surviving?
SPEAKER 03 :
Absolutely. The answer is yes. And I believe very strongly the best days for our country are ahead of us. We are no longer at 1968. We're no longer in the Woodstock generation. People, I think increasingly to your point, are saying, if we really value our freedom and our liberty, what do we need to do? And our founders said, if you want freedom and liberty over time, You have to cultivate virtue. You have to cultivate moral excellence, and especially in the rising generation of young people. And look where we're at, Jim. We're having a national conversation and success on school choice, charter schools. By the way, there was a moment at the Olympics, which I think was defining, which is it's one thing to be in an academic lounge and to discuss about whether boys ought to be in girls sports or men ought to be in women's sports. But at the Olympics, we saw a woman boxed in the face. And of a sudden, it was no longer possible just to have a theoretical view of this. And I think overwhelmingly, people of goodwill, left and right, are saying, we ought not have boys playing in girls' sports. We ought not have men in women's sports. So people are coming together increasingly around the centrality of issues that focus on the family has championed for a very long time.
SPEAKER 05 :
No, it's very true. And I think in that context, when you look at those issues, again, put the parties aside, you are seeing what I read in the election, something much bigger than the man. This is much bigger than President Trump. Definitely. It was a rejection of some of that DEI woke-ism that's been expressed in the culture. right at the school board level, right up to the White House. Yes. People seemingly are fed up with having to tell a line that it makes no sense. It's illogical. And they're saying, no, we're not going to pretend anymore.
SPEAKER 03 :
Of all the meetings that you and I have had, I think one of the most important was with the governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. uh governor youngkin great guy uh you know because uh he was in a debate with a former governor of virginia who wanted to be re-elected and the issue of education came up uh and the former governor of virginia terry mccullough essentially said when it comes to education parents ought to butt out uh we ought to just have the we ought to just have the the administrators and the teachers run the system And the man who wanted to be governor, Governor Youngkin, said just the opposite, that parental rights were central, that moms and dads mattered, that school boards at the local level mattered. And I think, Jim, that was a catalyzing focus on the family moment. Drain it of politics, left or right, it was at that moment about moms and dads raising of kids. And that catalyzed a national conversation far beyond the Commonwealth of Virginia. And that is bigger than President Trump or any other president.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, and some of that banner language that's come out, which makes sense now when you look at what's been happening, is common sense. You know, that's become kind of the mantra now of those that want to get back to some orientation that is sane and does protect all of those previously probably assumed influences that parents should have at the school that were beginning to wane. Aside from politics, let me turn a corner on that. What are some of the other things that are occurring in the culture that are bringing us down that kind of is outside of the political arena?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I think that Hollywood... broadly defined, is at the moment in a tailspin. I really believe that. Despite the glittery nature of stars and the Oscars and all of that, I think, Jim, we are seeing something else happening in film. We're seeing films about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. We are seeing a trilogy based on The Lord of the Rings. We are having cultural figures held up that previously would not have been considered in the Hollywood matrix. And I think this is good. I think that we're Americans. We love going to the movies. We're Americans. We love listening to music. It's not always going to be the American songbook and jazz. So there's great music that's being composed again. I think that we are redefining... much of the popular culture for a new era. And I think that that is encouraging. I think the old gatekeepers are realizing that their models are broken because they have been drained of things of the spirit. And of a sudden, we're seeing good television again. You know, it may not be... Kind of common sense themes. Absolutely right. There is, for instance, a pending series on the greatness of David. I mean, who would have thought that this would be possible even 15 years ago because of the former gatekeepers in popular culture? My favorite podcast is Focus on the Family. But look at the explosion of podcasts, the choices that people have. And people are making remarkable choices. They want to go back to the first principles, and they want to celebrate and believe in the permanent things.
SPEAKER 05 :
An example of that is Scorsese doing this thing on Fox Nation, which is really the saints of the faith.
SPEAKER 03 :
Absolutely right.
SPEAKER 05 :
The Christian faith. Yes. Scorsese. And I'm sitting here going, okay, what epiphany has this guy had?
SPEAKER 03 :
But that's part of what you're talking about. One of the remarkable currents in culture, Jim, is that we're seeing an explosion in the number of Bibles being sold to young people. That's exciting. Who have never darkened the doorstep of a church, but of a sudden have realized that much of the culture is so hollow because of the moral relativism and nihilism that's been foisted on us, and they want something better.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, and we're weaving cultural data into this, but one of the things that is a little discouraging in that regard is the low level of patriotism that exists. Now, again, people both right and left should not excoriate me for saying, well, where does patriotism play? It's not number one, but it is a close two or three. Your family, the Lord, and then our country and its well-being and health. so that our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will have a wonderful place to grow up and live and hopefully flourish. Speak to the theme of that, the idea that patriotism plays a role. And I've traveled around the world. I did the international effort for Focus for many years, probably 70 countries. I was so grateful that the Lord chose to put my spirit in this body, well, the body part maybe not as much, but in this country. We should appreciate the blessings that we've been given in the United States and cherish them and nurture them for later generations, not denigrate them, because that's why people are trying to flood in here. This is a great nation.
SPEAKER 03 :
Not many people are trying to flood into China. It's a remarkable and extraordinary nation, and I can't wait to share this. We are coming up in 2026 to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And Jim, I think that this is a near perfect opportunity to revisit the question about why patriotism is important. What was the meaning of the Declaration of Independence? It's a stellar document. It'll be an important document 2,000 years from now. And so I think we have an opportunity as a country, a culture and civilization not to commemorate the Declaration of Independence, but to celebrate it. And then above all, to focus like a laser beam on the rising generation of young Americans and to begin to make it new, to restate the obvious. And we have to restate the obvious by talking about the first principles of the Declaration and the Constitution of the United States, because they are They are consonant with our faith.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. You know, companies pay big money for futurists, as they're called, not in a spiritual context, but just in a business context, to define each generation. So that's where you get authenticity as a definer of a certain generation. And the things that I'm reading right now, a lot of these predictors of core convictions of different generations, when they look at the Gen Zers, which my two boys and your boys are part of. Yes, indeed. In their 20s. Yes. They're saying that generation is more like the builder generation, the World War II generation, that they – have solid convictions. They're generally fairly quiet. They want to live it out. There's actually a lot of positive news in that for we Christians. And it's just a matter of that generation then being more exposed to spiritual truth. But they seem to be very fair-minded in their development right now about what they believe, fairly black and white, kind of core values-oriented people, tired of the kind of... you know, the hogwash of what's going on. Are you seeing that and hearing that when you speak at college campuses?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. And in fact, I find, Jim, that the people who are most critical of the rising generation of young Americans are almost always people who spend no time with them. They sort of believe these cartoon accounts. But you have to go to the campuses. You have to go be with these young people. And the thing that I find is that they are impatient for all the right things. They have lived through enormous amounts of brokenness. They have lived through Wokistan. They have lived through erasure culture, cancel culture, DEI. It's like a grocery list of bad ideas that have impacted them. And yet they have come through and they're soulful and they want to be married and they want to have children. But a lot of them don't know this idea of a natural nuclear family with a mother and father who work hard at it and who want to be together to do life together and to come through in a way that is so good for everybody. And I think young people are hungry for this. So I think we have an immeasurable number of opportunities. And I think it's the reason that focus on the family is more important today than the day that we first opened our doors, because the culture has had so much brokenness since then.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, so true. You know, in that context, somebody I did an interview with, and I thought it would be a great interview, Heather Holloman, who's an adjunct professor, I think, at Penn State. And she wrote a book on communication. It's called, I believe, The Six Questions or The Six Conversations. Yes. But people could look that up, Heather Holloman, or contact us at Focus on the Family. We have the books here. You can get them directly through us. But in there, you know, Jean, my wife, started reading that. And I remember sitting as we normally do, having devotions in the morning. And she said, this is one of the best one or two books I've ever read. I was like, well, tell me more about that. And she said, it really equips you to simply ask good questions, which is disarming to somebody who opposes you. So rather than attack the person and try to go toe-to-toe in a debate style, I win, you lose, zero-sum game. Her recommendation, like the Lord, is to get at the root of where they're coming from, which opens their heart up to your input. So why do you have such a conviction about this, whatever it is, fill in the blank, gay marriage or whatever it might be, and just begin to solicit response about where did this come from? How did it develop? Where did you formulate your thoughts from? And it's a very disarming way. It has to be sincere, obviously. Yes. But it's kind of like what Jesus did, right? He would say to the woman at the well, you know, basically, tell me more about your situation, even though I know everything about you. Or the woman caught in adultery asking the question, well, he who is without sin, let him cast the first stone at this woman caught in adultery. And they dropped the rocks and walked away. Yeah. Speak to that technique, which I would say is a godly approach to opening the human heart. How do you do that on a campus with these blistering students that are so liberal they're in your face?
SPEAKER 03 :
I have learned from nearly 40 years in Washington and from limitless numbers of campus visits in behalf of Focus on the Family, a gym, that the season of silence is very often more important than the season of speech. It's very difficult, often, to sit down in a coffee clutch and just spend that time merely listening to people who have a fundamentally different worldview than we do. But I have found that if you can earn trust, and I think it's quite possible to do so, that then you can have an authentic, real conversation after you've absorbed and heard what they actually believe and why. and then begin to share why it is we believe what we believe. And I think that healthy conversation and discussion is possible and it's the way forward. It is the only negation of the polarization that we find ourselves in.
SPEAKER 05 :
Tim, you've had a couple of experiences where students have really kind of gotten in your face, one around the issue of abortion, another one, I think, around the LGBT issues.
SPEAKER 03 :
But speak to both of those or one of them. I'd be pleased to. The first one was at a major public university that I'm sure everybody listening would know, and I shall leave unnamed. And I gave a set of remarks in my role as vice president of Focus on the Family. And she was the first one up in the Q&A. And that's fine. We had never met. And she spent an inordinate amount of time letting me and others know what a terrible viewpoint it was to be pro-life. And she was very categorical about this. And she wanted to make a strong case for no exceptions. And she felt that this was the most important civil rights issue of her life and of our time. And I listened to her. I wanted to hear every argument she had to make. It turns out that she was one of the leaders of the reproductive rights group on her campus. And what I began to do is I began to ask her, may I ask you a few questions? And she said, of course. And I said, I'd like to begin by asking you, you're very zealous in your position of no exceptions. I'd like to ask you, do you know the number of abortions in America just since 1973 when Roe versus Wade happened? was foisted on the country by the United States Supreme Court. There was a bit of a silence. And I said, do you know what this number is? And I finally said, after she didn't know, I said, this number is approaching 70 million. I said, this number is as high as every citizen of the United States of America who lives west of the Mississippi River and several countries in Europe. And it left Jim a blanket of silence across that auditorium. That's kind of a core data point for both sides. I mean, that's breathtaking. She didn't know the number. And my goal was in no wise to embarrass her. I listened to everything that she had to say. but I felt that she was so zealous in the advocacy in opposition to the innocent pre-born. And obviously on her campus had a measurable amount of influence that I thought maybe a number like this would help refocus the way that she thought about it. And I think it clearly did. Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
I mean, and again, in that context, the pro-abortion leadership and communicators have been You know, unfortunately, very successful at separating a woman from the life that's inside her. Absolutely. I mean, emotionally, that it's just a blob of cells. No, that's a human being. Separate DNA. You can make all the arguments, but it's only an issue of nurture. And, you know, hopefully more and more people will come to that conclusion over time. But it's a long fight.
SPEAKER 03 :
This is like ending slavery. No, it absolutely is. And, of course, the abortion debate in most of the places where this is discussed in public policy, people who are most zealous for abortion very often never use the word abortion. They have been trained to use a language that is rooted in social justice. Yeah, fetus, which means offspring. And you get reproductive freedom, and you get all of the issues except for what it is. And may I say similarly, on a small elite Northeastern campus, I was invited to speak, and it was a very well-attended event. And I was told by the director of student services that there was an agreement on that campus that whether you were a speaker of the left or the speaker of the right, that every student was obliged to be seated while you were speaking to wait until the end of your speech. And then, you know, certainly a fulsome Q&A and conversation. I said I was quite comfortable with that because I knew where I was going was not commodious to the focus on the family worldview, which is mostly why I wanted to be there. And just a few minutes before I began to speak, a person walked in to the hall, the lecture hall, and stood up and stood next to me for the- At the lectern. Yes, for my entire- That's a little intimidating. For my entire set of remarks. And I decided that I was not going to make an object of this person. And just as I was finishing, this person unraveled himself from a particular set of symbols and and masking taped them to the wall of the lecture hall and walked out. And the director of student services was there during my entire remarks and did nothing. And I wasn't then or now angry, frustrated, or bitter, but I thought to myself, And as I responded to this after this person left, I said, I think we now need to have a fulsome discussion about the meaning in this part of American history of free speech, free expression, but also civility, magnanimity, the kind of give and take that gives us the kind of constitutional republic that is worthy of the founding fathers and mothers and the ideal that they wanted for our country. So I think these kind of things that in and of themselves can seem to be negative and seem to be impactful in that way. I think that if we as Christians will take a deep breath and see it for what it is, and I pray with civility and magnanimity and goodwill, I think if we try to then speak to the higher ideal and the better angels of our nature, I believe we can genuinely engage and change the debate.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, it's interesting. You mentioned the ACLU earlier and the founder of that. It's kind of oxymoronic, really, because I remember in the 70s when I was in high school and 80s in college, you know, the ACLU was known for free speech. And that's what they fought for was the First Amendment rights of so many people, particularly minority groups. And that was its brand. And now it's the oxymoronic application is this person who's long been dead, the founder of the ACLU, they've actually now began to fill what I see as their original mission which is actually controlling speech. And Alan Dershowitz I think who used to be very sympathetic toward the ACLU I think even worked with them as an attorney. is now saying those very same things, that they're fighting the very core thing that they fought for in decades past.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, I write about this in Stumbling Toward Utopia, the irony that you're raising. And I use the ACLU as example number one, because the founders designed the First Amendment particularly to defend people's religious liberty and rights of conscience. That was the entire point of amending the United States Constitution. It's the first amendment in our 10 Amendment Bill of Rights. But Jim, what a terrible irony. that the First Amendment has now been weaponized against people of faith. It has been weaponized against the sovereignty of human conscience. This was exactly the opposite of why we fought and won the American Revolution and ultimately had the United States Constitution ratified.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. I mean, the whole separation of church and state, it was to protect the church from the state, not to protect the state from the church.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 05 :
That's such a fallacy. And even, you know, Thomas Jefferson, I always laugh at this because he used to have a Bible study at the Capitol. Yes. Thomas Jefferson. Yes. And he used to invite the Marine band to come and play at his Bible study as part of his duty.
SPEAKER 03 :
And you know, in Stumbling Toward Utopia, I write at length about Saul Alinsky, the writer of the most influential book of all of the 1960s and 70s. rules for radicals. And you know, Jim, you and I, and all of our Focus colleagues, and I'm sure limitless numbers of people who are listening to us have had at least one conversation when people say something like, isn't it terrible we're so polarized? I mean, isn't it terrible that we've come to this moment? But as I demonstrate in Stumbling Toward Utopia, in Rules for Radicals, rule number 13, Saul Alinsky said, let's celebrate polarization. You have to target your adversary. You have to make an example of your adversary, and then you have to polarize the arguments. This is exactly the opposite of what our first president, George Washington, warned of in his famous farewell address, which is that we needed to foster harmony. We needed to foster unity. We had to look for those areas, as he says in the farewell address, where we're united as a people because it's good for the country.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, you think about that, Galatians 5, which is the listing of the fruit of the Spirit, you know, those things of joy, love, peace, goodness, kindness, mercy. And then the other fruit. Satan's fruit is also listed in Galatians 5.19. It's divisiveness. I mean, there's sexual stuff mentioned in there, but disunity, division, lying. And you start looking at those spiritual applications of those two kingdoms, you might say. And once again, when you're celebrating division, you're celebrating an attribute of the fruit of Satan's not the fruit of the Spirit, which is unity and love and goodness and goodwill toward others. And that is God's character. Exactly right. Tim, we have a few minutes left. Let me drive into a couple of thoughts here. One is the church. There's so many great quotes about our inability, Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones being one, our inability to affect the outsider, we can do much better work holding each other accountable within the church, making sure we're doing the right job. And by doing so, you're influencing those outside the church because we're living, hopefully, the faith so well, people are attracted to it, which was the first, second, third century in Rome. The Christians of the Roman Empire were so different, caring about others, saving babies thrown at the dumps for infanticide. Abortion existed then, and being able to adopt these children as their own. That was the work of the early church, along with so many other things. Where are we at in the church today? You see this great division on core issues like life where people are justifying the fact that God doesn't really care about the preborn child. It's not a baby until they take their first breath. All these excuses, I would say, for murder. And then on the thing of gender, you know, that God creates this male and female. Jesus himself said, you know, a man and a woman shall come together. The two shall become one flesh in marriage. So he's recognizing two genders. So speak to this division in the church, the watering down of the gospel, the watering down of scriptural truth. and what price is being paid by various churches for those decisions.
SPEAKER 03 :
In Stumbling Toward Utopia, I write this in an entire chapter. I showed that the United States of America was founded by dissenting, believing Protestants. And these dissenting, believing Protestants were tolerant enough to welcome other faith traditions into our nation. But what I show in the book, Jim, is that what we used to call the Protestant mainline, beginning much earlier than the 60s, but culminating in the 60s, was they removed biblical orthodoxy from the Protestant mainline, the very things that had given the church vitality, the very things that had armed the church to be such an influencer in culture and in the public square. And in and by the 1960s and 70s, overwhelmingly, the Protestant mainline had been hollowed out. They had removed biblical orthodoxy as the center of their faith life and their community, and they substituted it with a political progressivism, which became their faith. And as I demonstrate in Stumbling Toward Utopia, I actually share the numbers. I share the numbers of where these denominations, synods, faith traditions were. They were booming as the 1960s opened, and Jim, and it didn't take very long, but by the 80s and 90s, they were complete shells of themselves. Yeah, losing 40, 50, 60%. Exactly right. And so as you drive around America, especially in our urban core, you see limitless numbers of Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopal churches. Some of them are doing quite well. And the ones that are doing very well are almost overwhelmingly the ones that retained biblical orthodoxy. But for the majority of what we used to call the Protestant mainline, the church, they have completely fallen and there's nobody there.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, it's so sad, too, because here at Focus on the Family with the life issue again, you know, the ebb and flow of that. This current administration, we didn't say it earlier, but there doesn't seem to be an indication that they're going to be very concerned about the life issue. Now, maybe that will emerge in a different way. And we certainly appreciated the overturning of Roe v. Wade. That was quite an accomplishment. But even then, I said, this turns a federal national battle into a 50-state battle. And that's what's happened. And, you know, thank the Lord for Governor DeSantis in Florida and beating back that aggressive, progressive, as they say, legislation to kind of put into the state constitution of Florida kind of. unfettered abortion, no matter what period of the gestation is or anything like that. My point being, we continue to be Orthodox Christian means we stand in the face of this cultural wind. We don't bend to it. We stay steady. We repeat what we believe to be scripturally accurate and true, that God cares about every one of us in the womb, outside the womb, To the grave. Yes. And this is his domain, not ours to take life. That's it. You can beat me. You can burn me at the stake. You can do whatever you want. I'm not going to give up on that. And the culture will ebb and flow. But our goal is to be the beacon of light to draw consciousness toward this issue, especially with those that don't embrace that. You are killing human beings. Period. End of statement. And we're going to continue to say that until remedy occurs.
SPEAKER 03 :
Mm-hmm. In all of the developed world, abortion is no longer an issue. If you go to all of Western Europe, if you go to Canada, to most of the places that you and I would say are the first world economies, abortion is not really an issue. It's lost. But it's gutting the church. That's the point and connection. It's gutting the church's spine. Right. except for the United States. Because in the United States, Christianity remains alive, well, and engaged. And in fact, it would be impossible to understand the most important social achievements of American history apart from the role of the church. If you want the abolition of the slave trades, you have to look to the church. If you want to look to the achievements of the civil rights movement, you have to look to the church. And ultimately, the pro-life battle will be won in large measure because the church remains fully engaged. And that means we have to be extremely comfortable with setbacks. You know, when the United States of America was founded, we were a population of two million. That's amazing. 1.5 million American residents and citizens and 500,000 enslaved. It takes a long time. It's a long way from 1776 to the Civil Rights Bill and the Voting Rights Bill of the 1960s. There's a lot of setbacks. You know, if you look at the abolition movement, it takes a long time. It's going to take a long time in the pro-life movement, but actually we're winning.
SPEAKER 05 :
And that, again, connecting that to the church, we need to be that voice steady over the arc of time, whether that's 50 years in the case of Roe v. Wade, 100 years at the state level.
SPEAKER 03 :
We need to stand steady. I think it's a great question Jim to ask why was Roe versus Wade? Actually overturned and it's typical to say well because of the Supreme Court That's actually not the answer The reason that Roe versus Wade was overturned is because people like us were in the streets for 50 years 50 50 years 50 years gets us to Dobbs and you know, and the overturning of Roe. But 50 years does not get us to the abolition of abortion in America. We have a lot of work to do. But you know what? Setbacks or no, we're going to be there tomorrow morning.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, in that context, Tim, this idea of biblical principle coming to life. My prediction is these states that are allowing restrictions on abortion, I think we're over 100,000 babies born now that most likely would have been aborted. Correct. Just looking at the sheer numbers. So you start looking at these states where there's a promotion of life. I think that will kind of seep into other areas of biblical principle. So do I. Where you will have flourishing over death. Spiritually, it's shalom, God's peace. And I'm really curious as we progress in this new 50-state battle approach to life, how that in predominantly red states where life is being embraced – what the outcome of that will be compared to what I'll call death states, your deep blue states, California and others, where you can have an abortion for any reason. And people always go to the, you know, the exception list of rape, incest, health of the mother. That's less than 2%, 3%, 4% of the abortions. Over 90%, 95% of abortions are selective. You know, I just don't feel like I could do that right now. And we get that hardship. We don't want to diminish it. But it's not for the reasons that they trot out, which are the emotional strings. And that's what we're talking about, man.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. I love this remarkable moment in the life of Abraham Lincoln, who did not begin as an abolitionist, but he certainly closed as one. And he was asked, why are you now an abolitionist? What is it? And I love Lincoln's response, Jim, because it's so fleet and it's so applicable to the pro-life movement. He said, it's unjust and it's immoral. And he also said, as a pragmatist, it's bad policy. And I think there's a lot to learn from Lincoln as it applies to the pro-life movement in the 21st century. That's the common sense.
SPEAKER 05 :
Let's end here with the revolutions. You talk about three revolutions. The obvious one is the revolution of 1776. But describe that context of revolution. And are we seeing the potential for another revolution? And what does it look like?
SPEAKER 03 :
I think the American Revolution was mostly not a radical revolution. I think it was actually a conservative revolution. It was a concretization of what became the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Declaration. And I think it was all to the good. But America did experience a French-style, Bolshevik-style revolution in the 1960s. That was the lowest point, the nadir for the United States of America. It was really a frontal assault on all of the things that we hold dear. On traditional values. Yes, and it was frankly a takeover of our most important national institutions. And I think that that was the profound revolution. But I think we are now moving into contested ground. And I actually am quite hopeful about the next chapter of American history. We're not gonna look like 1776 or 1876, and pray God, not like, you know, 1976. It's gonna look different. But I believe very strongly that it's not about what does the majority think at any given time, it's how committed is a remnant to the first principles, how committed is that remnant to remaking it. And I think that good days, very good days are ahead. And I actually think that we will begin to see a shift and a tick upward in fertility and in marriage. Because I think there are millions of people who share our worldview, broadly defined, and want something new and they want something better for the next chapter of our beloved country.
SPEAKER 05 :
And a crazy end point here, our good friend, Dr. Brad Wilcox from the University of Virginia, and his research in his fairly new book called Get Married, because all the positive outcomes that come from that. His point, ironically, is with the elites of this country, they tend to marry and stay married and raise their children. So his comment, his breathtaking comment is do as they do, not as they say. The exact opposite of the parental... You know, the perennial parental comment.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, I'll close on a great up note. I was speaking at Georgetown University in Washington to a very large group of undergraduates. And at the very end of my remarks, I said the following. Please remember this. Marriage is a really good thing. Being a parent is really a good thing. I said, I remember looking into the eyes of my sons, Tim and Paul, for the first time. I was there when they were born, right? What a magical, extraordinary moment.
SPEAKER 05 :
Scared to death, love it experience.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. And I said, in all my years at the White House, I said I was having dinner with my two sons as this came to a close. And I said, what was most memorable to you in these years? And my oldest son said, oh, that was the day that we had the big snowstorm and you decided to stay home. and we went sledding and we had a snowball fight. And I thought to myself, that was the most memorable. But you see, there's something in our DNA. We're made for relationships. We're made for each other. And marriage, family, and parenting is a kind of daily miracle. And I think we have to rediscover in the next generation in America, what is that miracle all about? And I feel confident that though it's tough, it's the best way forward. Well, that's well said.
SPEAKER 05 :
The third revolution, I think, is underway. May it be. May it be, and may the Lord prevail. Amen. Amen. Your great book, Stumbling Toward Utopia. What a great read. It's not a heavy lift. So for people to get a good tutorial on what's been happening, this is a great resource. Thank you, Tim, for being with us on Refocus. Such a pleasure. God bless. Well, it was so good to have Tim on the podcast again. I admire his optimism for America, and I hope you've been inspired today. I think one of the things that I'm most encouraged by is a movement of young people who are hungry for biblical truth. They're looking for authenticity from people in the faith, not political theology. Several of my guests on Refocus have talked about revival that's happening among today's youth on college campuses. If we stay true to God's word and keep sharing the message of the gospel, that's the way to reverse the terrible damage of the 60s revolution that continues today. But to have a spiritual revolution, it's going to require major engagement on the part of believers. We need to act now for the We need strong families, strong male role models. We need to teach our children well and represent Christ in our communities well. 2 Chronicles 7.14 says, "...if my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land." shouldn't that be all of our prayers refocus is here to help equip you to engage the world with god's grace and truth and one way you can help support the podcast is by asking for tim's great book stumbling toward utopia and with the gift of any amount to the podcast we'll send you a copy as our way of saying thank you details are right there in the show notes All right, for the inbox segment today, here's a voicemail from Noah.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hi, Jim. I know there's no such thing as a perfect world, but I have progressive friends who are highly invested in trying to make it a better place through social causes. Yet, they're not plugged into the Christian faith. How can I help them understand that Christian principles work best?
SPEAKER 05 :
Noah, I love your heart. And there are some resources here at Focus that have helped Jean and I. One is Heather Holman's discussion that we had with Focus on the Family. I'd direct you that way. She talked about six key conversations that you have to have. And the essence of what she's saying is be interested in those you're talking to, be sincere, and then ask really good questions to better understand where they're coming from and acknowledge those things, and then begin to present a perspective that could be different from them. And the way you do that is be really knowledgeable about the Word of God. You've got to know the Word. Also be up on current events. We've got a great team of incredible people who analyze major policy issues in the culture that affect your life. It's called Daily Citizen, and you can sign up to get that daily email at and read up on what's happening in the culture. It's brief. They just select 10 items every day, and they will send it to you free. It's just something we like to do to build into your ability to speak to someone like this. Thanks for the question, Noah. And since I answered it here on the podcast, I'm going to send you a copy of my book, Refocus, Living a Life That Reflects God's Heart. Now, if you have a question for me, please send me a voicemail by clicking on the link in the show notes. I'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening to Refocus with Jim Daly. You can help us inspire and equip more people by telling your friends. Also, like, listen, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Next time on Refocus, Brad Formsma, founder of ilikegiving.com, will help you to see the eternal impact you can have for Christ by being generous with others.
SPEAKER 02 :
I also pray this prayer. Lord, would you be so pleased to have people ask me why I'm happy or why I did that for them? You know, it's because I realized that Jesus did something special for me and he's a friend and he loves you.
SPEAKER 05 :
That's coming up on Monday, February 10th on the next Refocus with Jim Daly.
SPEAKER 01 :
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Join us on today's episode of The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg as we delve into the biblical practice of anointing with oil and its implications for modern Christians. With insights from historical traditions and scripture, we discuss the nuances of this ritual and how it applies to the faithful today. Additionally, we explore the phenomenon of apostolic martyrdom, unraveling the truths and myths surrounding the early disciples' commitment and courage.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 08 :
Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour, as we usually are on weekdays, taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, we'd love to talk to you. You can call me at this number, 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. And, boy, I don't think I have anything to announce today, so we can just go directly to our callers. Oh, I should mention, yeah, there is something that should be mentioned. A major part of our ministry is our website. It's been up for many years, and it has lots and lots of resources. I give the website out every day on the air so you can go and get those resources, or you can even donate from there. But the website's been down. We don't understand the technology, but we think somebody does. We have a webmaster in Connecticut who I think he feels everything's under control. Something is being copied or something is being done. Whenever something goes wrong with the web, I'm totally at a loss. I have no idea how technology works. But I will say this, that there's a lot of people who kind of are used to going to the website all the time. And it's been down for several days. We're not sure exactly when it'll be back up, hopefully very soon. But in the meantime, although you can't donate from this site, there is a backup site that has all of our stuff on it, or not all of it, but all the audio, all the lectures, the shows, archives, and so forth. And it's working well. That's called Theos, that's T-H-E-O-S, theos.org slash media. So if you go to theos.org. slash media. You can't donate from there, but you can certainly access the resources. So if you become kind of addicted to listening to those and they're not now at the moment available, I don't even think they're on our app because I think our app depends on the website. So this is a kind of a crippling thing, but we have backup. There's another website that has at least the things you can listen to that you want to, the radio shows and the Bible studies and so forth are all at www.theos.org slash media. So you can go there for the time being. Hopefully I will announce when the website's back up. Okay. Having said that, we're going to talk to Benjamin from Greenville, Ohio. Benjamin, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 03 :
Good afternoon, brother. Thank you. I have a question on trying to get your insight on Anointing with oil, for instance, our homes or a sick person. And I guess my questions would be the actual procedure of doing it and the frequency that we should be doing something like that. And I can take the answer offline.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right. All right. Thank you for your call, Benjamin. Well, the Bible doesn't actually advocate the anointing of oil except in the case of a sick person. calling on the elders of the church. In James chapter five, it says, is any of you sick or is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. In the prayer of faith, she'll save the sick and the Lord shall raise him up. And if he's committed sins, they'll be forgiven him. Now, many people think that this is simply what the Roman Catholics call the extreme unction, that when somebody's dying, they're sick and dying, that they should call for the the priests or the leaders of the church, and have them, as it were, kind of baptize them, although it says oil, not water. So it's questionable whether that's what it means. But that's, for example, how Catholics understand it. Most evangelicals, especially charismatic people, believe that anointing with oil is simply a procedure to accompany the prayer for healing. Now, because there's so little said about it, and there's little or no explanation about it, you know, there's some questions as to what its effectiveness is. Some people think it's merely a point of contact for faith. That is that, you know, a person, if you just say, well, just believe, well, that's kind of, for some people, it's a little nebulous. Okay, I kind of believe. Do I believe now? Do I believe enough? You know, when am I supposed to believe? When is something supposed to happen? And there are people who say that, excuse me, sorry, that such procedures as laying on of hands for healing or anointing with oil, that these really only function as a point of contact for faith. So that if a person kind of has a vague idea that God's going to heal them at some point that you, you can, their expectations will be raised that that point will be when hands are laid on them or when oil is put on them. And it becomes sort of a symbolic gesture, uh, Usually the oil is thought to represent the Holy Spirit, but I'm not sure that that's even an essential part of the whole thing. The point is that we're not told why anointing of oil is of use. Now, there are some teachers who have simply said anointing with oil is what is done to a wounded person. You know, in the Good Samaritan parable, the man who fell among thieves, when he was found by the Good Samaritan and ministered to, the man poured wine and oil into his wounds, wine probably to disinfect them and oil to promote healing. And use of oil medicinally, topically, was an ancient medical procedure for certain conditions. And so some say, well, James is envisaging a situation where somebody who's sick has got wounds or festering sores or whatever, and that the elders should come and administer medical procedures with oil. Now, I don't personally think that's what it's saying, but I've heard it said. I'm just trying to tell you there's a lot of different opinions about that. And the reason there's so many opinions is the Bible says nothing to explain it. It just says do this. And so many people will just do it out of obedience to the scriptures without having any particular or precise understanding of what it's supposed to accomplish. But apart from that one passage in James 5, we are not really told to anoint anything with oil. Now in the Old Testament, the priests and the kings, when they were installed into office, had oil poured over their heads, and even a prophet might in some cases. But the point there is simply it's an installation service, probably represented the Holy Spirit coming on them, the oil representing that. But this was not a situational thing where someone's sick or you're trying to accomplish something in particular through it. It's just part of the ceremony of installment. And that's just an Old Testament thing with kings and priests and others who were installed into divine office. But in the New Testament, we only have that one usage of it mentioned. Now, I'm aware of people anointing their houses, their cars, the windows of their houses. And I think the implication they have in mind is they're kind of putting protection upon their house or their car against, I'm not sure what, maybe demons coming in or something. This... I mean, I don't mean to be critical of people who do it. There's simply no biblical grounds for it. It strikes me as superstitious. But on the other hand, one might say, well, it's no more superstitious than anointing a sick person to get well. Well, the one exception to that is that anointing a sick person to get well is a scriptural, you know, a scriptural suggestion where to start anointing all kinds of things for oil for nebulous reasons, you know, seeking undefined results, it just begins to be sort of a, it can be superstitious. Now, I'm not saying God can't honor it if your faith is in him. And somehow, you know, you're just thinking, hey, God, this place I'm putting the oil, I want you to please, you know, protect it there. I don't do that kind of thing. I've been with people who did that kind of thing. I even at the time, I thought it was a little superstitious, but I didn't want to be critical. I mean. It's just not a biblical practice, okay? And I, generally speaking, do not like to include in my Christian practice anything that the Bible does not command and which I cannot see having any obvious value, you know? And therefore, I don't practice it. If you're wondering how often should this be done and so forth, yeah, there's nothing in the Bible that says it should be done at all. So, you know, I personally don't do those kinds of things. And, you know, if someone could come up with a biblical rationale for it, I would certainly relook at my thoughts about that. But I don't know of any. All right. Let's talk to Ryan from Spartanburg, South Carolina. Hi, Ryan. Welcome.
SPEAKER 06 :
Casey, thank you. I had heard it said that all of the disciples of Christ had died as martyrs because they refused to basically admit, or I'm sorry, they refused to affirm that they did not actually see Jesus risen from the dead, and as such, because of their conviction, they were martyred, except for John, I believe. And it was always used as a very powerful argument rationale for the fact that Jesus actually did resurrect from the dead, because the disciples had nothing to gain by lying in that sense and dying for something that they didn't actually believe to be true. And I always thought that that was a very powerful argument, and so then I went in to check what kind of external sources we have if someone was to say to me, well, what evidence is there that they were all martyred in the various ways? And as far as I could find, there was only James, the son of Zebedee, James, the son of Joseph, Peter, and Paul, who we have external sources for that they were martyred. I think the rest, as far as I know, is only church history or church tradition that teaches that they were martyred.
SPEAKER 08 :
Is that correct? Well, all of them are church tradition, with the exception of James, the son of Zebedee. We have the record of his death given to us in Acts chapter 12. We don't actually have the record of the death of any of the other apostles in the Bible, but what we do have is early traditions that And since these early traditions, you know, are, you know, they're not all alike for each apostle, even John. I mean, the tradition is that John wasn't killed as a martyr. So we can figure out that, you know, the church didn't decide to make up martyr stories for all the apostles or else they would have done so for John too. I mean, my impression is the church fathers were interested in preserving accurate memories of what happened to these founders of the church as apostles. I know if I were them, I'd want to. I think some people think the church was led by con artists, and therefore they made up stories promiscuously that they thought would be edifying or convincing to people. But I think these men are themselves, many of them, martyrs. I mean, the sources, Christians were being martyred, and especially the leaders of the churches were hunted down and martyred for the first three centuries. And it's from men living at that time that we have the stories about the martyrdom of the apostles and of other Christians like Polycarp and such and James, the brother of Jesus. There's really no reason I can think of why these stories would be fake. Now, uh, you've heard this, the martyrdom of the apostles used as a, uh, an apologetic for the truthfulness of their testimony that they'd seen Jesus after he rose from the dead. Um, And I use it that way, too. I mean, I'll just say I do use it that way. But sometimes the way it's presented is just simply, well, these people could have not been martyred if they'd simply admitted that Jesus was not risen from the dead. And you might get the impression that every one of them stood with, as it were, a gun to his head saying, confess that Jesus didn't rise from the dead or I'll kill you. And each one of them stood with that testimony. that's not exactly how it happened. Many of them were martyred because simply they were church leaders. Some of them were martyred because they wouldn't burn incense to the Caesar. Some of them were martyred just for going against paganism. And so it's not really the case that each one of them was put on a trial where they had a specific question asked to them. And the wrong answer they die for and the right answer they would, you know, be granted freedom for. And that question is, did Jesus really rise from the dead? OK, that's not how it happened. What is true, though, is that they they went into situations facing deliberate danger and martyrdom. because they believe that Jesus rose from the dead. The point is, if they were not persuaded that Jesus rose from the dead, they wouldn't be risking their lives. Paul himself said that in 1 Corinthians 15. He says, if Jesus isn't risen from the dead, why am I facing these wild beasts and risking my life every hour? So it's not so much that they literally died on the spot for saying Jesus is risen from the dead on an occasion when someone would have said, we'll spare you if you say he didn't. But the point is that their whole careers faced death, faced danger, faced hardship, faced imprisonment and beatings. I mean, the apostles had all that. And the only reason they were motivated to do it is because they believed Jesus was risen from the dead. If they hadn't believed it, they would have gone somewhere else and done something else with their lives and avoided all that danger. So when someone says, well, they all died confessing that Jesus is risen from the dead, And therefore he did. Well, that's true. I mean, that was their confession. That is what they believed. But it's not always the case that somebody would have let them off the hook if they had said, OK, he didn't. I mean, because sometimes people just want to kill their mobs. You know, Nero didn't like Christians in general and killed Paul and Peter and others. So, you know, if what you heard, and you could easily have heard it because I've said things very similar myself, is that, you know, if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, these guys wouldn't have risked their lives like this. They all died confessing that Jesus had risen from the dead. And that was, they did. They believed that and they said that right up until the time they died. But it wasn't always that one statement of theirs that was, you know, what got their heads cut off or got them fed to the lions. Sometimes it was more of a the general embrace of Christianity in a hostile world that got them killed.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right. The place that I read that James, the son of Zebedee, the son of Joseph, Peter, and Paul were martyred, or at least the external evidence was in Clement, I believe, 1 Clement 5. I'm not too familiar, however, with that book. Is that a church father?
SPEAKER 08 :
Clement of Rome was a bishop in Rome in the generation after the apostles, but not long after the apostles. He was like before the end of the first century. I'm not sure. I think the Catholic Church places him as like the third bishop of Rome or something like that. But Paul, in writing to Rome... mentions Clement, and many people think that's the same Clement that wrote the book Clement of Rome. It's an epistle to the Corinthians that Clement wrote, or that somebody wrote. So we don't know if he's the same Clement that Paul mentioned, but he was certainly a man of the first century church who would be in a prime position to know how Peter and Paul had died and so forth. Now, we don't have any one church father telling us everything about it, but there is, like in Fox's Book of Martyrs, I'm pretty sure he's got most of the apostles named in there, right in the opening chapters of Fox's Book of Martyrs. Sometimes it's not very much detail, but... I don't think there's very many of the apostles that aren't mentioned there. And I don't know what all of his sources were, but, you know, Fox was a historian and would have looked at all the sources available.
SPEAKER 06 :
Thank you so much. You've all checked that out. Thank you for your time.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, Ryan. Good talking to you, brother. Thanks for your call. Bye now. All right. See, Jacob in Orange County, California. Welcome.
SPEAKER 05 :
Good afternoon, Steve. Thank you for this ministry. My question is, would you be willing to give a brief hypothetical defense of dispensational eschatology? I'm familiar with some of their teaching points, but I'm curious to hear someone with a gift for teaching as yourself describe their position, and I'll listen to your answer up there. Thank you, Steve.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, sure. Thank you. Well, dispensational theology basically was introduced by a very intelligent man. John Nelson Darby, he's sometimes seen as kind of a villain in the minds of anti-dispensationalists. And there were things about him that were not very savory. He could be very divisive in his personality. In fact, he actually excommunicated one of my favorite people, George Mueller. George Mueller and he were acquainted, and both of them were in the Plymouth Brethren movement. And Darby excommunicated Mueller because he didn't agree with Darby about everything. And so, I mean, the guy was a little divisive. Let's just say quite divisive. And so I don't like Darby much, but there's still... The truth, he's a very brilliant man, and he made a complete translation of the Bible, the Darby Translation, which is still available, usually online. And he wrote lots of books. I think he wrote like over 50 books of theology. And they're not lightweight stuff. So, I mean, he was very persuasive in his own generation in certain evangelical circles. He He was Anglican, and he came out of that and became part of the Plymouth Brethren movement. But his theory was that Christians had been inconsistent throughout history in spiritualizing many Old Testament prophecies. The prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the minor prophets often are spiritualized by all the church fathers, all the medieval church, all the reformers, and in modern times by people like myself, who see many of the prophecies that mention Israel in the Old Testament are in some cases spiritualized, that is interpreted to refer to the spiritual Israel. And that's called spiritualizing. At least that's what people who don't like the practice call it. And so he said, that's not right. If it says Israel, it should be natural Israel. I mean, why do we take Genesis literally and the Gospels literally, but we don't take these prophecies literally when they say Israel and Jerusalem? And so he felt... the church was inconsistent and needed to consistently take things literally, including these Old Testament prophets. And in doing so, of course, he came up with an entirely different theology about Israel than the church had ever held before. And of course, he's living around 1830-ish when this was done. So for the first 1800 years, the church taught a certain theology about Israel and the church And Darby challenged it and said he actually felt he was rediscovering truths that only the apostles had taught. He knew he was going against the whole church for 1,800 years before him. And his view was that there are promises that God made to Israel and Jerusalem that simply have not occurred. That the Messiah was supposed to come and sit on David's throne in Jerusalem and restore Jerusalem to its former glory and glory. And Jesus didn't do that, so that still has to happen. He thought when Jesus comes back, that's got to happen. And so his argument was you find all these prophecies about the Messiah reigning over a restored Israel and Jerusalem and all the nations bringing gifts to him and him ruling the world with a rod of iron and so forth. And since Jesus didn't do that, now Darby's idea was Jesus would have done that. Jesus actually came intending to do that, but couldn't because the Jews rejected him as the Messiah. Now, I'm not sure why God would come and make his program so vulnerable to the Jews' disapproval. I mean, the Jews had rejected all the prophets before. Why would anyone think they'd accept Jesus? You know, I mean, so it's like Jesus comes and says, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is drawn near. And yet it's not going to come because God knows very well that the Jews are going to respond to him exactly as they responded to the prophets before him. So in other words, it wasn't near. It was a mistake or it was, you know, I don't know, conditional or something. But Jesus didn't say the coming of the kingdom was conditional. He didn't say it depended on the Jews accepting him. But Darby said, well, because the Jews didn't accept him, Jesus did not bring the kingdom that he said he was going to bring. It was postponed. Jesus went back to heaven, took with him the kingdom that he had in mind. And he'll bring it back when he comes back. And he'll set up the millennial kingdom and set up the temple in Jerusalem. And he'll reign from Jerusalem, from David's throne, for a thousand years. That's the dispensational idea. And Darby also believed that the church and Israel should never be confused with each other. He felt like that was a big problem the church had done for 1800 years is take these prophecies about Israel and apply them to the church. He said, no, no, no, no, no. The church in Israel, different things. He said the church was an institution that was not even anticipated in the Old Testament. It was a mystery that only was revealed to Paul and the apostles, and therefore it didn't even exist in the Old Testament. It wasn't even anticipated. The church is, he said, a parenthesis because the Jews who God came to bring the kingdom to had rejected christ and caused the kingdom to be postponed there was now this parenthetical phenomenon of god going to the gentiles and creating the body of christ and you know doing what he's doing now until he's done doing that and when he's done doing that he'll rapture the church out of the world But then he'll keep working in the world on the Jews, and the tribulation will be his way of disciplining and bringing the Jews to himself. And then they will come to him, and then Jesus will come and set up the millennium. That's Darby's ideas. Now, there are, I guess you wanted me to give an exegetical polemic in favor of dispensationalism. I used to think I could do that, but it really wasn't exegetical. It was more or less just assumption. It was the assumption that my teachers had told the truth about these things and that interpreting the Bible the way my teachers did is the only honest and faithful way of handling Scripture. And it took me years of my own study of Scripture to realize that that's not the best way to interpret Scripture. I didn't know what dispensationalism was. I was dispensational. I never heard the term before. I just thought dispensationalism, or I should say, I thought what they were teaching me was what the Bible teaches. They didn't tell me. My teachers never told me. This is a view called dispensationalism. I had to discover that the hard way over years after teaching dispensationalism without knowing that it was that. But I found out that the early church actually had been more accurate in the way that they handled scriptures. That the apostles in the New Testament, when they quoted Old Testament scriptures, the very ones that Darby said should be taken literally about the literal Israel and Jerusalem, whenever the apostles quoted those scriptures, they didn't take them literally. They applied them to the church. And that's why the whole church understood them that way. They thought the apostles were right. And that Jesus was right because he did the same thing. When they quoted... Old Testament passages, which Darby thinks we should apply to Israel and Jerusalem, and which dispensationalists say we should, the apostles and Jesus didn't take them that way. They took them in a spiritual sense and thought that Jesus actually came to fulfill the prophets and that he did not fail to do so. At the end of his life, Jesus prayed and he said, Father, I have finished the work you gave me to do. He didn't say, hey, I tried, but the Jews wouldn't let it happen, so sorry, God, I couldn't do it. No, he said, I finished it. And this is what the church has always believed, that Jesus did not fail. He succeeded. And I don't think there's a good exegetical case for dispensationalism, but there's just a grid you can read the Bible through in order to think about it that way. Hey, I'm out of time for this segment. I'll be back in about 30 seconds or so. Please stay tuned.
SPEAKER 09 :
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SPEAKER 08 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we're live for another half hour, taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or about the Christian faith, feel free to give me a call. The number is 844-825-8000. 484-5737. And you're always welcome to call if you disagree with me about something too. Again, our website has been down for a few days. Hopefully it'll be up. I don't know. It could be up today, tomorrow. I'm not sure. It might be down for a while. If you're used to, you know, listening to things from our website, we've got thousands of things there to listen to on a regular basis. And you're kind of going through withdrawal because the site's down. Go to this alternative website, It's called theos, T-H-E-O-S, theos.org slash media. It at least has all, I think, has the archives of the radio show and it's got the lectures there. And that's mostly what people want when they go to our website. Our website has some other things, too, that aren't there. But essentially, you know, if you're listening to the lectures or the archives, you can get them there, too. All right, at least last I checked. I haven't been there for a long time myself, but I hope it's up and running too. Technology is not always our friend, but it certainly has been convenient sometimes. Okay, let's talk next to Roberto from Kansas City, Missouri. Hi, Roberto.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hi, Steve, Greg. Thank you for taking my call. I would like to ask you, Well, I watch you on YouTube. That's mainly where I get your program and everything. How can we pray in a godly manner for our president not to be set up the way he was today? All we can pray is that, you know, God's will be done. That's all I've been praying for lately is God's will be done. We learned the hard way over the last, like, you know, to elections. And, um, he was set up today to go to this, uh, church service where the, uh, pastor, if you will, uh, was begging him for mercy on, um, on the homosexual community, gay rights and, uh, migrants. Um, how can we pray, uh, for his spiritual direction and leadership? Because he has apparently surrounded himself with the same crowd like, um, Paula White was a prosperity gospel person.
SPEAKER 08 :
Is she still in the picture there? I didn't know she was still in the picture. I thought he'd moved on to someone like Jack Hibbs.
SPEAKER 07 :
I thought she was out of the picture, but I pulled up a video that was just done two months ago. by Forbes, which is, you know, a liberal source. But two months ago, she was praying over him with that type of crowd. So I didn't know that either.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, let me jump in. Let me jump in here. I hadn't heard about what happened today. So I don't know anything about that. But as far as being set up, I'm not sure how you mean that. I mean, the president is going to be challenged about lots of things throughout his term and should be. Presidents always should be. And I didn't obviously hear how he responded. So I can't tell. But all I can say, if your question is how shall we pray for him? I mean, if that's not just a way of you making some statements, but you're really wondering how should we pray for him, I think we should pray for him to be wise and for him to be committed to justice. And, of course, we should pray for him and everybody that they be converted to Christ. Now, I don't know. I'm not going to say he's not a Christian. He doesn't. If he's a Christian, I don't think he's a very mature Christian, and I don't think he's been discipled very thoroughly, obviously. So we could pray either that he'll get converted, or if he has been converted, that he'll be properly discipled, that he'll have better Christian influences around him, hopefully, than Paula White, and that he'll be a wise ruler. Yeah. I also pray for his protection since there's, I don't think we've had a more hated president. Although, I mean, some people obviously almost idolize him, which is bad too. We don't want to idolize him, but he's a very polarizing figure. In my opinion, I don't think he did anything to encourage that polarization, but it's just the fact. I think he's following his conscience, if I'm not mistaken. I don't know him, so he might be worse than I think. I've heard him give speeches. I've watched how he governed before. He was a president before, after all. and you know i've actually seen how he conducted himself in the years he was not president since then so my impression is that he's he's got some convictions and he's he's trying to put them forward and fortunately they are agreeable with the constitution and you know if he had constant if he had convictions that were unconstitutional i'd be very concerned because he kind of moves moves like a bulldozer uh you know forward with his programs um But it seems to me, as far as I can tell, the main controversial features of his plans are quite in keeping with the Constitution, which is what the president's supposed to be. Now, some people, but he doesn't follow the Bible. Well, I don't know what he does in terms of following the Bible, but the job description of the president is not about following the Bible. I think everybody should follow the Bible, including the president. I don't know if we have any national leaders around the world who do follow the Bible, and I don't know that Trump does either. But the special job description of the president is to uphold the Constitution. which is something our previous president had no interest in doing. In fact, he allegedly added an amendment to the Constitution just as he was walking out the door, which, of course, a president can't do. That's unconstitutional itself. So, I mean, we've had a president for four years who had no interest in the Constitution, just his own agendas. Now, Trump has agendas, too. No question about that. But as near as I can tell, his main agenda is to restore Congress. a constitutional integrity to the government. He might have other agendas too, but as long as he does restore constitutional integrity, that's a positive. It'll be a net positive that he became president in that case. But we should pray that he will be able to do what's good and that he will fail if he has any plans that are evil, and that he'll be converted, and that he'll be kept safe from assassins, I would say. You know, I didn't specifically pray that for many presidents before, but But this one's had a couple of attempts on his life, and I don't think his assassins or would-be assassins have gone anywhere. I don't think they've gone away. So those are the ways I would pray for him. And, you know, inherent in the prayer that he would have wisdom is that he would know how to address situations like the one you described today. And, of course, presidents have to face those all the time. They face challenges, and they should be able to. I think he's up to it. But on the other hand... He doesn't always know the truth. He's not omniscient. So we should pray that God will give him wisdom in those situations. Thank you for your call. All right, we're going to talk next to Oscar in Napa, California. Oscar, welcome.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hey, Steve. Enjoy your ministry. I learned a lot from it. A lot of Hebrews. about Melchizedek. I heard some people say, I don't know if it's true or not, but some say he wasn't a human being. Was he a real man? Because they say he had no descendants, no mother or father. And I was just curious. Can you answer that for me?
SPEAKER 08 :
I think I can, but not everyone would agree with me. Melchizedek, appeared very briefly at the end of Genesis 14 and met with Abraham. And there's a very brief description of the transaction between them. And it's mysterious because he kind of appears out of nowhere. He's described as a priest of the Most High God and the King of Salem, which most scholars think refers to Jerusalem at the time. Now, remember, Jerusalem in Abraham's day, it was not a Jewish city. There were no Jews. Jerusalem was a pagan city, a Canaanite city in those days. So If he was the king of Jerusalem, he was ruling a pagan Canaanite people. Now, Jewish tradition holds that he was Shem, the last surviving son of Noah. And it is true that Shem, if you follow the chronology, Shem would still be alive at that time. So that would explain why Abraham died. would show such deference to Melchizedek if he was Shem, because Abram was descended from Shem. He is a Shemite or a Semite himself, as Jewish people today understand themselves to be also. So, you know, the Jews think he was Shem. Now, the author of Hebrews did not think that was a satisfying answer. He thought there were things about Melchizedek that would not apply to Shem. And I have to agree. I mean, it does say in Hebrews, he had no father, no mother, no beginning of days, nor end of life. Now, this would suggest he wasn't an ordinary man, that he was a divine being, almost like when an angel comes to earth, although I think it was more a theophany. You remember when Jacob wrestled with a man all night? The man just kind of showed up, wrestled all night, and then went away. The man presumably was God, at least that's how Jacob understood it, God in a human-type appearance to interact with Jacob. And I kind of think Melchizedek is like that, that he just kind of showed up that he is God. We might even say Christ, the Word, in his pre-incarnate state, coming in a human form to meet with Abraham and to bless him and to allow Abraham to interact with him face-to-face as if he was a human. Now, when God does that, and he does it several times in the Old Testament, although the Bible doesn't tell us in the Old Testament that Melchizedek is an example of this phenomenon, but there are other examples of that phenomenon in the Old Testament. I think Melchizedek probably is. because that would be the only case in which he's without father and without mother. and no beginning of days or end of life. Now, those who don't take this view, who think he's maybe Shem, or maybe that he's just some other guy who was a king of Salem at the time, and many commentators don't believe he's Christ, or don't believe he's God, they would say, well, when it says he had no father or mother, it just means his father and mother were not recorded. And when it says he had no beginning of days or end of life, it means his birth and death were not recorded. Well, that's hardly worth mentioning. Most of the people in the Bible who are named, their births and deaths are not recorded. In many cases, their parents are not recorded. But if it was Shem, his parentage is known. He's the son of Noah and Noah's wife. So we don't know the exact birthday to celebrate of his birth, but we do have record of his birth. Noah had three sons, it says. That means they were born. Shem, Ham, and Japheth. So If he was actually Shem, as the Jews believe, the writer of Hebrews wasn't buying it. Because even if he was saying he has no recorded parentage, well, that wouldn't be true of Shem. I don't believe he's saying there's no recorded parentage. He could have said that if he wanted to. And by the way, if it was Shem, I'm not sure why Moses, when he was writing Genesis, wouldn't just mention it was Shem. After all, Moses had recorded that Shem had been one of the sons of Noah who came out of the ark and that Shem was an ancestor of Abraham. That's all recorded in the Genesis. Why would he not refer to him as Shem? Why would he refer to him by a term that means king of righteousness? So I don't think we can easily get away from the fact that the writer of Hebrews was identifying Melchizedek as Christ himself. And I have a whole discussion about that. If you go to my lectures on Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 7, I go into this in great detail. And normally I could say you'd find that at our website, thenarrowpath.com. But as I said earlier, our website's kind of down for the moment, but you can go to theos.org. dot org slash medium and find those lectures and i do go in depth both in my lecture on genesis 14 and in my lecture on hebrews 7. i go into that in much more detail i appreciate your call brother all right thanks thanks for joining us all right we're going to talk next to james from fresno california james welcome
SPEAKER 04 :
Hey, Steve, thanks for taking my call. Just real quick, in regards to the website, I was just on there. I'm on an iPhone. Is it working? It was working, but I had to bypass the warning that Safari gave me saying that somebody was trying to impersonate the website. So I just click on Go Ahead and View Anyway and take the risk. And that way I was able to finish your book today, which was phenomenal, by the way.
SPEAKER 08 :
Which one is that, The Empire of the Rising Sun?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, I just finished both books, and I've got to say, I've been waiting to read that for years. I just didn't know it was out there. I came across it recently, and man, I'm so impressed. I feel so blessed that I was able to read that. You explain things in a way that, like I said, I've just been waiting to hear for a long time. You did it in a way that you just take out all all the biased theology, all the denominationalism, and I really appreciate your honesty and your integrity in writing that. Thank you. In fact, I just finished it a couple hours ago, like I said, and I really just wanted to call and thank you. But I did have one question that's been bugging me for a long time, and I was hoping you could elaborate a little more. In the book, you said that the disciples prayed to the Father, and that we as disciples... should pray to the Father also. And I was just wondering if you could maybe get a little more in-depth on what's the difference in our prayer life when we pray to the Father, pray to Jesus, and how we include the Holy Spirit in that. And one more thing I just want to know, do you have any kind of curriculum about discipleship that I can share with my church, and maybe I might be able to lead, I might be able to borrow from you?
SPEAKER 08 :
I haven't prepared any curriculum, but the second book of the Empire of the Risen Sun, you know, book two?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 08 :
I intended that to be, you know, at least functional as a curriculum for discipleship. It definitely is. It's all about discipleship, and I think it's quite practical and goes into the weeds, even about, you know, application and so forth. So I I don't have it laid out as sort of a curriculum with lead questions and workbooks or anything like that. But I could see, and I'd certainly welcome anybody taking that material and developing it into a curriculum. You know, I would think that, you know, if someone wanted to, or I mean, they could, like I said, they could make a curriculum out of it. But if they didn't want to go to that trouble, they could just have a study group where they'd each read it. You know, they'd read a chapter of it each week and get together and discuss it and look up the scriptures in it and talk about it. You know, there's 40 chapters in those two books. So it'd make almost close to a year's curriculum. But I don't have anything prepared in the form of a curriculum. No, I'm sorry to say.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay. Well, I'm so thankful that you have the book, at least. And I'll definitely use that.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, brother.
SPEAKER 04 :
All right. Thank you, brother.
SPEAKER 08 :
Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 08 :
I'll talk about the prayer. Thank you. Yeah. Jesus said that we should pray to the Father in his name. That is in Jesus' name. Now, the Bible also talks about us praying in the Holy Spirit. And praying in the Holy Spirit, I believe, means directed by the Holy Spirit and, you know, through empowered by the Holy Spirit. So, I mean, the Holy Spirit is living inside of us, so he's active in our prayers, at least he should be. We need to count on that to be so, that the Holy Spirit will be guiding us and directing us in our prayers, energizing our prayers, convicting us about what we need to pray about, and so forth. But our prayers, of course, are the actual utterances, the actual petitions we present. to God, external to us. The Holy Spirit is in us, but we're addressing God who's out there, just like Jesus did. Obviously the Father was in Christ, but Jesus spoke to the Father as someone external also. So praying to the Father is simply what Jesus taught us to do. He said, when you pray, say, Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Or Paul said, I bow my knee to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. in, I guess it's Ephesians chapter 3, you know, the apostles, when they prayed in Acts... chapter 4, when they addressed their prayer, they said, Lord, which could be Jesus or could be the Father, but as you read on what they said, they go on and speak to the Lord and say, for truly against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. So they refer to Jesus as the holy servant of the one they're speaking to, which of course would be the Father. So we find, you know, prayers to the Father just as Jesus instructed us to pray to the Father. Now, prayer in Jesus' name, many people don't understand what that means, but that simply means praying to the Father with the authorization and access that Christ's name grants us. You know, it's like if there's a, you know, a card slot to enter into the throne room, and you've got Christ's access card, you know, you're authorized, as long as you got it legitimately. You know, you've got authorization to come in. And that's what the name of Jesus is. Jesus is our authorization to come before the Father as if we were him. And, of course, with that authorization comes the obligation to pray in his interest for In other words, Jesus doesn't just give us an Aladdin's lamp and says, listen, say Jesus, and that's like rubbing the lamp, and then whatever comes out, your wish is our command, God's command. No, when you act in someone else's name, you're acting on their behalf. You're acting as their agent. You're doing what they would do. And with their authorization to do it. So praying is that way, too. When you pray in Jesus' name, you're going to the Father, authorized by Christ, to go as if you were him. And to pray such prayers as he would be inclined to pray, according to his will. And that's what prayer in Jesus' name means. But it's the Father we're praying to. Now, some people say, well, is it okay if I pray to Jesus or pray to the Holy Spirit? Well, I'll just tell you. Prayer, technically, is presenting petitions to God. And Jesus said, present your petitions to the Father. That doesn't mean you can't speak to Jesus or even to the Holy Spirit. But I think we've tended to use the word prayer to be kind of an umbrella term for every time we say anything to God, that's part of our prayer life. Well, prayer is part of our relationship with God. But there are other parts of our relationship with God, too. are thanksgiving, worship, praise. Those aren't exactly the same thing as prayer, but they are presented to God just as petitions are. So prayer and praise and thanksgiving are all parts of our relationship with God. Now, Jesus made it very clear when we present our petitions, we should present them to the Father. And that's what the apostles did when they prayed. They put presented petitions to the Father. That doesn't mean you can't praise Jesus or that you can't even just, as far as I'm concerned, converse with him. I find it very natural to converse both with Jesus and with God and, you know, in my life. So there's nothing wrong, I think, at least the Bible doesn't say there's anything wrong with speaking to Jesus or even to the Holy Spirit, though I don't know of any case of that being done. The thing is, It's not wrong. I mean, we have a relationship with God. We have with the Father and with the Son and with the Holy Spirit. It's just that the Father is the one that Jesus tells us to bring our requests to. Because it's the Father who will grant them. And he'll grant them because we're praying as agents of Christ, authorized by Christ, presenting the prayers that Christ himself would approve of being prayed and that he himself would pray. So that's what it means to pray to the Father in Jesus' name. I appreciate you asking. Let's talk to Tim from Marietta, Georgia. Tim, welcome.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hi. Good afternoon, Steve Gregg. I hope you're doing well. So I had a quick question. I have a grandfather who's about in his late 80s and his son or my uncle who is in his late 50s. you could say converted maybe a decade ago to Islam, even though my grandfather raised all of his kids in a Christian upbringing, but maybe he was not faithfully secure. But recently, my uncle, when he visits my grandfather, he would bring his mat and demand to pray, or choose to pray in my grandfather's house, and in one of the rooms, not like within the presence of my grandfather, but in a room within his house. And I was just wondering if, you know, what steps, whether that's, whether my grandfather has the ability to communicate to him that he's not able to pray in the house, or what steps he should take as a Christian man. Because I know in Deuteronomy 7, they talk about not worshiping or not encouraging the worship of idols, but I'm wondering if that's a plus to that situation.
SPEAKER 08 :
Right. Well, first of all, your grandfather has every right to forbid any activity in his house that he doesn't want happening there. It is his domain. It's just like he could forbid someone from bringing their girlfriend over and sleeping with them when they're a guest in his house. It's his home. He can maintain it and its sanctity however he sees fit. Different people have had different opinions. Different Christians have had different opinions exactly about the identity of Allah. I personally would not feel comfortable having anyone praying to Allah in my house because I don't believe that that's necessarily acceptable to God. Some people have seen things a bit differently than that. But I think that if your grandfather has objection to it as a Christian, He should just tell, is it your cousin I think you're talking about? You should tell him that he, you know, he can't do that there. I mean, if he wants to pray outside on the lawn, you know, or out in the car or whatever, he could do that. But he doesn't want that happening under his roof. Now, some might feel it's unkind or unfair, but once again, A person has to go by their own convictions. You know, I mean, some people would not allow statues in their home, even if they're not in any sense being worshipped. But they might say, well, this is this, you know, we got this from, you know, some African tribe or something. We don't know. They might have worshipped it. So I don't want it in my home. I mean, a person would have every right to do that. Although, I mean, I also think that'd be up to them because I'm not so sure that a statue, you know, is itself an idol unless someone's worshipping it. So anyway, that'd be simply a matter of conviction. I think your grandfather's convictions about that should be honored by anyone who comes into his home. I'm not saying what his conviction should necessarily be about it, simply because I'm aware of more than one Christian way to look at this whole issue of Allah. You know, the Athenians were worshipping a god they didn't know. They had an altar to the unknown god. And when Paul saw it, he said, I saw a lot of false gods, a lot of idols in your city, but there was also an idol to one you call the unknown God. And I'm here to tell you about him, this one that you worship ignorantly. I'm here to tell you who he is. In other words, he considered that the Athenians may well have been worshiping the true God, but didn't know him and needed to know him. And so it's possible that some Muslims are worshiping the true God, but they don't know him properly. They don't have accurate knowledge of him. So, I mean, that's one way that some have understood it. I'm not pushing one way or the other of seeing this. But, yeah, I'd just say your grandfather should make his own decision according to his conscience about that. Oh, I'm sorry, we're out of time. I'd like to tell you, you can donate at the website, but I'm not sure you can get there. So if you wish to donate to help us stay on the air, you can write to The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. And our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. Let's talk tomorrow.
Join us as we unravel the profound yet often misunderstood concept of the 'old man' in Christian theology. By examining Paul’s teachings in Romans, we uncover the distinction between our natural humanity and the spiritual life offered through faith in Christ. This episode challenges common misconceptions and emphasizes the freedom and common sense that comes with understanding the sacrifice of Jesus as our divine representative.
SPEAKER 01 :
So here we are in Romans chapter 6, and we're at verse 6, where Paul says, Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin. Now, this is very interesting. It's strange as well. And, you know, I'm not sure how I can explain it to you, but I see the book of Romans in a very different way now from how I saw it when I first started teaching this book decades ago. I still saw the gospel in it decades ago, but I see it with a difference now. You see, I thought Paul was simply talking atomistically, shall I say, and that is his own personal experience. And he was simply talking about his having been, let's see, how does it say, that his old man had been crucified with Christ. What I didn't understand then, and I do now, I think, is that Paul is talking about the whole of humanity. Paul is talking about humanity in a personal way so that we get it personally, but it applies to all humanity. Well, let's go on, and then we'll perhaps see that more. Knowing this... What do we know? That's what you and I have to ask ourselves as Christians. Because, you see, we live in a fallen world, and we are part of that fallen world. We have a broken-down human nature, a sinful human nature. a nature that is corrupted. And so the inclination of our hearts and our minds is downward. It's towards sin. It's towards misery. It's towards evil, towards other people and to ourselves and before God, because we are in a state of suppression, as Paul says in chapter 1 of Romans verse 18. But now we've seen Jesus Christ. Christ has revealed himself to us. God sent his Son to reveal himself to the world and to reveal the Father to the world through his Son. And so something has happened to some of us, not all of us at this point. You see, Paul is talking with two voices. He is reminding us that as one man brought sin and death into the world, Adam, so one man brings righteousness and life to the world, Christ. As one man brings about death to everyone, so one man brings life to everyone. That's the good news that we're looking at here, you see. So, in general terms, he's talking about all the world, but then he gets specific about himself and about Christians who know something. What is it we know? That our old man was crucified with him. Now, what is this old man? Well, it's our human nature. It's the whole of us. It is this humanity that is all broken down, that goes in the wrong direction when we want it to go in another direction. This humanity... that would not naturally lift its heart up to God, but naturally go down into the ways of Satan, that humanity of ours, that's what we are, was crucified with him. Well, you say, that sounds weird, ridiculous. I wasn't there even. We're talking about 2,000 years ago at the cross. How could I be crucified with him? And this is where you have to understand the background that Paul is talking about Jesus as a representative for the whole of humanity. Now look, we have recently seen, or today, we have seen the inauguration of a new president. That president represents now the country. Whether we like him or not, that's not the issue. I'm not being political here. I'm simply saying that a person represents the whole. Many, many times we know this. You may have a favorite football team, and you say, we won. And you say, we? Well, we weren't on the football field, were we? But we won because our team represented us. This is what it means when we talk about Jesus as being the representative. What Jesus did for the world was to take the judgment of the world upon himself. And that means that you and I, by faith, are no longer under that judgment. It's as if our natural humanity had already been executed. You see, Jesus' death was not simply the death of a natural death. Obviously it wasn't. It was a crucifixion. But it was an execution. It was an execution for crime. We are the criminals. We are the ones who have suppressed the image of God in us, and we have gone our own way and followed idols, and ultimately that means the dehumanization of every human being. That's what our problem is, and that's what our old man is. That old man then is now counted as if it had been executed because Jesus, the representative of the human race, the sort of spiritual president of all humanity, was executed on our behalf. Now there are some people who turn this into insanity, because what they do is to say, oh well, there's an old man and there's a new man in me, and the old man now is crucified. Well, it's supposed to be anyway, they say, but I haven't succeeded in crucifying it yet, but if I keep working at it, I'll be able to finally kill it off. and they go into all kinds of spiritual insanity. This is what I call religious neurosis. And they try to kill off their old man. And they go on fasts, and they go into rituals, and they go into extensive meditation. And what they're trying to do is eliminate that old man that exists in them. You can see, can't you, how absolutely erroneous that is. Paul is not talking about an old man in us, like a part of us, while we have the new man also in us, that other part. He's not talking about a divided humanity. The old man is our human nature, our humanity. and it is crucified, but not in itself. It is crucified in Christ who represents us before the Father. So this, you see, is Paul identifying by faith with Jesus Christ. This is one of the most amazing and intimate verses you will find anywhere in the Bible. Because this is Paul feeling or knowing that he is so close to Jesus, rather more accurately, Jesus is so close to him that Jesus is identifying with Paul. Now look, you and I need to say, Jesus is identifying with me. I'm not simply identifying with Jesus, because that would be an eternity's work, and I may not be able to do it in this world totally, and I certainly will not be able to do it to identify totally with him. There are people who try to do this. There are crazy people in the Philippines, for instance, I mentioned this the other day, who actually get on a cross and nail themselves to it during the Easter season. It's insanity. It is utterly false religion. They try to identify with Jesus. The faith life is that Jesus identifies with me. You say, well, Colin, how could he identify with me? I'm a sinner. But that's precisely the point. That's why he died. He died a sinner. And this gives you and me the courage to go forward. We are faced every day with our utter corruption. Well, if you're in reality, you're faced with your corruption. If you're in delusion, you think you're an angel about to go to heaven if you don't overshoot. But the truth is, that Jesus has said, I know how messed up you are, Colin, and I am going to identify with you and take all the judgment that you deserve, and I'm going to take it upon myself. And that is how and why Jesus died on the cross. So you and I, on a daily basis, lift up our heart before God and we say, Jesus, thank you so much for identifying with me to the extent that you took my judgment. Thank you that I'm free from judgment, even though I'm a sinner still. You see then, that your old man that is crucified with him, that's not a psychological reality, because if you think it is that, then you're going to go into this religious neurosis where you're trying to spiritually kill yourself. and it is absolutely sick. Don't try it. But when you, by faith, lift up your heart, and you say, oh Jesus, thank you so much, that the burden of guilt, the sense of judgment that I feel I should take, is not upon me anymore. You took it. And as you speak this way to God, you begin to experience a freedom in your spirit that enables you to move forward with some common sense. You understand what I mean by common sense. Common sense only comes to people of faith because men and women without faith are ridden with guilt and shame. And if you're ridden with guilt and shame, you can never think in a common sense way. You're always evaluating the world and how you look before people and how other people look before you with loads of guilt and shame. You're thinking, how do I look? What do they think of me? Whatever will they think of me if they knew what I do? Or you are evaluating them. They're no good. They're stupid. They're useless. And you're contemptuous of other people because guilt and shame are floating around in your mind and heart, and you're evaluating yourself that way, and so you have no common sense at all. But when it comes to faith, we then can look at ourselves and say, I know I'm a sinner, but my Savior Jesus has taken my judgment. And so my old man, the natural humanity that I am in, is finished. It's condemned, and it has been executed. Now, you notice that Paul uses the word old man. Don't use the word old in the sense of time. Well, that was my old man a year ago when I was converted, but now I no longer have an old man because I'm converted. No, the old man is simply your natural humanity in one way of looking at it, in one sphere of existence. But you are now resurrected with Christ. And so you have a new humanity. And that humanity is the way you look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ. So don't get bowled over by false teaching about, I was this years ago, but now I'm this now. Rather, I'm in myself, an old man, but that's not reckoned against me anymore because I'm crucified in him. And now I'm in Christ, and I have a new humanity. Thanks for listening today. Colin Cook here. You can hear this program on your smartphone any time of the day or night. Simply download a free app, soundcloud.com or podbean.com and key in how it happens with Colin Cook when you get there. Thanks so much for all your support and I'll see you next time. Cheerio and God bless.
Join us on a reflective journey through Job chapters 25 and 26 where Bildad questions the righteousness of man before the divine presence of God. Witness Job's magnificent recognition of God's unsearchable majesty. Delve into personal insights from years of Bible reading, exploring the timeless questions of purity and the humility in understanding God's omnipotence.
Welcome to Add Bible, an audio daily devotion from the Ezra Project. Alan J. Huth shares a Bible passage with comments from over 35 years of his personal Bible reading journals and applies the Word of God to our daily lives.
Today we come upon Job chapter 25 and 26. We haven't heard from Bildad in a while, so he has something to say about Job concerning righteousness. Then Job gives us his reply that God's majesty is unsearchable. So let's listen to Bildad in chapter 25 and Job in chapter 26. Job 25
Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said, "'Dominion and fear are with God.
He makes peace in His high heaven. Is there any number to His armies? Upon whom does His light not arise? How then can man be in the right before God? How can he who was born of woman be pure?' Behold, even the moon is not bright, and the stars are not pure in his eyes. How much less man who is a maggot, and the son of man who is a worm!
Job 26 Then Job answered and said, How you have helped him who has no power!
How you have saved the arm that has no strength! How you have counseled him who has no wisdom, and plentifully declared sound knowledge! With whose help have you uttered words, and with whose breath has come out from you? The dead tremble under the waters and their inhabitants. Sheol is naked before God, and Abaddon has no covering. He stretches out the north over the void, and hangs the earth on nothing. He binds up the waters in his thick clouds, and the cloud is not split open under them. He covers the face of the full moon and spreads over it his cloud. He has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness. The pillars of heaven tremble and are astounded at his rebuke. By his power he stilled the sea. By his understanding he shattered Rahab. By his wind the heavens were made fair. His hand pierced the fleeing serpent. Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him. But the thunder of his power, who can understand?
In 1984, I read Job chapters 24 through 28 on the same day. And concerning chapter 25, I wrote, How can a man be right before God? In 1997, I read Job 22 through 28 on the same day, and part of my journal entry is, Man cannot figure out God or His ways, yet we try in our limited wisdom to do so. And in 2015, I read Job 24 and 25 on one day, and 26 and 27 on the next day. Concerning chapter 25, I wrote, Bildad reminds us that none are pure before God. True. True. None righteous. No, not one. Concerning chapter 26, I wrote, Though his friends speak, Job is unsure they are hearing from God. And I was referencing verse 4 of chapter 26. Job offers some amazing science as he credits God with hanging the earth on nothing. 26, verse 7. He credits God with so much that his majesty is not understandable by men.
26, 14.
Let's take a look at Job 25 and 26. In chapter 25, Bildad speaks. Verse 4 is the key to this short chapter. He says, "...how then can man be in the right before God? How can he who is born of woman be pure?" I'd like to refer to my English Standard Version Study Bible footnote concerning this question. My footnote says this question is repeated several times throughout the dialogue between Job and his friends in slightly different forms. It is asked originally by Eliphaz, recast and used by Job in his second speech, repeated and reinforced by Eliphaz, and returned to again here by Bildad in the final speech of the friends. So let's go back and see where this question has already appeared in our study of the book of Job. It was first raised in chapter 4, verse 17 by Eliphaz. That time it was phrased this way. Can mortal man be in the right before God? Can a man be pure before his maker? Next, Job refers to this thought in chapter 9, verse 2. He says it this way, Truly I know that it is so, but how can a man be in the right before God? Eliphaz again repeats this thought in chapter 15, verse 14. He says it this way, What is man that he can be pure, or he who is born of a woman that he can be righteous? And that brings us here to chapter 25, where Bildad states it this way, How then can man be in the right before God? How can he who is born of a woman be pure? However the question is cast, the answer is the same. Man cannot be righteous before God. We have a sinful nature. God is holy. That is the great divide bridged by the cross of Jesus. If you expect to stand before God in your purity or your righteousness, you will fail. Good is not good enough before a holy God. These questions in their various forms remind us of this. But praise God, there is an answer. It's in the New Testament. Jesus bridges the gap between sinful people and a holy God. My prayer as we go through Ad Bible is that you understand this concept. It is vital to your eternity. Jesus says in John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. That's not religion. That's not theology. That's the words of Jesus himself. I pray you've made such a decision to accept Jesus as your Savior, allowing him to bridge the gap between your sinful nature and the holiness of our Almighty God. Now let's look at chapter 26, where Job declares the majesty of this Almighty God. let's begin with verse seven he stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing he binds up the waters in his thick clouds and the cloud is not split open under them he covers the face of the full moon and spreads over it his cloud he has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness The pillars of heaven tremble and are astounded at his rebuke. By his power he stilled the sea, by his understanding he shattered Rahab. By his wind the heavens were made fair, his hand pierced the fleeing serpent. Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him, but the thunder of his power, who can understand? Yes, God's majesty is unsearchable. That's why man cannot stand before a God like this. Father, we thank you that in our humanity, we try to understand you, but we cannot. Your majesty is unsearchable. It is unfathomable to the human mind. So often we are guilty of putting you in a small box. It's our attempt to somehow grasp who you are, to understand your attributes. Forgive us, Lord. Thanks for reminding us in Job chapter 26. that you are majestic, you are glorious, you are holy. Thank you for reaching down from your heavenly throne and providing Jesus, your Son, to bridge the gap between sinful humanity and you, a holy, majestic God. What a gift. We accept it. In Jesus' name, amen. Thanks for listening to AdBible today. You know, sometimes we need a plumb line, a true north, a solid basis of truth to live life. We're not going to find it in the media or in social media or Google or your friends, but it is available right at your fingertips. Pilate asked Jesus in John 18, 38, what is truth? The chapter before, Jesus had answered the question in his prayer to God for his disciples. In the 17th verse, Jesus pleads with the Father, Sanctify them in the truth. Thy word is truth. So what would it be like if everyone, everywhere, read the Bible every day? Wow, it might be heaven on earth. What would it be like if every Christian read the Bible every day? Would we be better ambassadors for Christ? What would it be like if everyone in your community read the Bible every day? Would we have greater impact in our communities? And what would it be like if you personally read the Bible every day? Could you use a closer walk with Jesus? Could you use a light unto your path and a lamp unto your feet to walk through this life? Could you use a spiritual power surge in your life? Matthew 22, 29, Jesus speaking to the Sadducees said, You are mistaken not understanding the scriptures or the power of God. Yes, the scriptures can give us power to live this life. So I'm going to give you three easy action steps to make the Bible worth your time each and every day. Number one, commit to daily Bible reading. Commit to seek God and His Word daily, every day. And if you miss a day, start again the next day. Change your belief about God's Word to behavior in God's Word. Use any of our Ezra Project resources to help you. Visit EzraProject.net to get an Ezra Project Bible reading journal or one of our day-by-day through the Bible books. Commit today and visit EzraProject.net for easy-to-use resources for your daily time in God's Word. Number two, be intentional. Decide what you want out of your Bible reading. I got to visit the headquarters of Back to the Bible once in Lincoln, Nebraska, and in one hallway down one side, they had scribbled all the reasons people say they don't read the Bible. On the other side were all the reasons people do read the Bible. And I want to give you some of those to encourage you. On that wall, it said, God wants me to. Yes, God wants you to read the Bible. Do you want to meet with Him daily? Because He'll meet with you every day through His Word. Number two, it changes me. Where could you be in one year with more Bible reading in your life? Number three, it improves my outlook on life. Yeah, turn out the bad news and saturate yourself with good news from the Word of God. Number four, it keeps me grounded. Yes, when the storms of life come, and they will, can you stand? Yes, you'll stand better and more solid because you're in the Word of God. Next, it keeps my heart soft. Yeah, Nehemiah 8, when people heard the Word, they wept and they worshipped. You will do the same as the Word softens your heart. Lastly, on the wall, it said, it keeps my daily focus on God. Yeah, that's a great reason to read the Bible. You'll gain the spiritual power to live life in our secular world. And then thirdly and lastly, feed your soul. Let God minister to your soul. Hebrews 4.12 says the Word of God pierces between your soul and your spirit, between joints and marrow, and is the discerner of the thoughts and intents of your heart. Nothing else goes that deep. I don't know where the place is between my soul and my spirit, but I want to put the Word of God there each and every day of my life. I hope you do too. God bless you as you spend time in God's Word.
