All right, it's 7 o'clock, so I think we're going to get going. My brother's not here tonight. He wasn't feeling particularly well, but he's big on starting right on time and ending right on time. So he was the one who was up front here last time going. There we go. All right, what are we going to talk about tonight? Well, the first couple of weeks we talked, the first week was, what? Slow down. The first couple of times. I listen quick, so I assume everybody listens quickly. Anyways, the first couple of weeks, the first week we talked about just the general signs that Jesus said would mark the end of the age. And I pointed out that some of the things that he gave were particular to the end, but they were things that would be happening all the way up. So when he talks about there's going to be wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes and famines in various places, you look at any century and you can find that. But I argued that when he says that it's just the beginning of the birth pangs, what he's talking about is that as we get closer to the end, these type of things will become more intense and more frequent. And then last week, we looked at just the whole idea of history and beliefs about history. And I mentioned that pagans don't believe that history has meaning. It just goes around and around like a big circle. And so for Hinduism, they just simply, you know, whatever comes around goes around. It's really the Christian idea that history has meaning and purpose because it starts with creation and it ends with a consummation with the new heavens and the new earth. I also pointed out, though, that there's secular views of history. I pointed to Marx and Hegel and their idea that history works its way out in a preordained pattern, but it has nothing to do with God. It's just built into the cosmos. So they want to believe that there's purpose and meaning. And that's why you get communists who would give their lives for what they consider to be a greater cause. And I pointed out that even progressives in the United States still hold that same type of view. And that's why you get the language like this. They say, hey, look, you know what? You're on the wrong side of history. But that presupposes history is going someplace, and it has a right side and a wrong side. But that makes sense from our worldview. But it doesn't make sense from their worldview. Because if history is just one thing happening after another, then there's no significance to what happens. You know, and so what we want to talk about this week, though, is apostasy. And I suppose the first thing we're going to have to do is show where the scripture talks about this, and then I want to define the term. So this comes from 2 Thessalonians 2, 1 to 4. It says this, Paul's writing, he says, Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him, that you not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. And he tells us, let no one deceive you in any way for it cannot come or will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness, who we know as the Antichrist, is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called God or object of worship so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God. Jesus echoed this type of language as well when he said this, They will deliver you up. This is in Matthew 24 that we saw last week. They will deliver you up to tribulation and they will kill you. And you will be hated by all nations because of my name. At that time, many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another. Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many. Because lawlessness is increased, most people's love will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end he will be saved. I think the first thing we have to do, though, is we're going to have to define the term apostasy. Apostasy is defined as a defection from or repudiation of a formerly held religion. So people can apostatize from any religion. For instance, Salman Rushdie. Do you hear that name? You remember that one? Salman Rushdie was raised in a home in India as a Muslim. But somewhere along the line, he wrote a book called The Satanic Verses. It was a novel, but it was critical of Islam. And as a result of it, Ayatollah Khomeini put out a fatwa, an edict against him, calling for all Muslims to kill him if they get the opportunity to. And he gave some sort of apology. It was very careful and crafted, but that wasn't good enough. There's been a fatwa on him for the last, what, 35 years? 40 years or whatever? Because this was done in the very early 80s. I don't have a picture of him, but if you see him now, he's got a patch on one eye. The reason is because one of the times when he was speaking, somebody went up and stabbed him 10 times, one time in the eye, and he lost his eye. So he's a hunted man. In Islam, they talk about, oh, it's the fastest growing religion. Part of that is because Muslims and Arabs have lots of kids. In Islam, you cannot convert out of the religion. If you do, you're considered an apostate and you are liable to be put to death. I mean, it's a very, very different culture that they live in. There's one, Massab Hassan Yusuf. His father was one of the founders of Hamas. But a number of years ago, probably about 10 years ago now, he ended up becoming a Christian. Well, that makes him a marked man. His father hates him and repudiates him and has put out an order to kill him as well. Now, think about it. You've got a religion that encourages you to kill your own children. That's very strange. Do you know what an honor killing is? And honor killing in Muslim culture, Arab culture in particular, if you dishonor somebody, they have to get their honor back. So if you have a daughter who ends up going out with a Christian boy or something like that, and you find out about it, you either beat her or you kill her. And there was one in New York City where it was a Turkish mom and a dad who brought their daughter into the bathroom and slit her throat. This happens in Pakistan a lot, and usually the parents are let go because in the court understanding, the idea of honor is a big thing. Matter of fact, I read an account with a guy who worked in Jordan for a long time. And while he was working there, he was working for a company, and there was a guy who was an Arab guy who owned the company. And he really liked the guy, so he decided he would take him out to eat. So he announced in front of the other coworkers, he said, I'd like to take you and your wife and your family out to eat. It would be my treat. And he got so angry and stormed off, slammed the door. And the guy was like, what did I do? He asked the daughter, he said, what did I do? She said, don't you realize what you've done? You've dishonored him in front of everybody. You've suggested that he doesn't have the resources to pay for the meal. I said, well, that wasn't my intent. He said, it doesn't matter. That's the way my father took it. That's the way any Arab man would take it. He said, well, what should I do? He said, don't do anything. He's going to call you sometime tonight, and he's going to offer to take you and your family out to eat. Make sure you accept that offer. Now, you think about that, the idea of honor and stuff like that. That goes on in Islam all the time. And that's why they have to have retaliation, because you cannot be dishonored. And before you think that's just a completely foreign idea to our culture, what about dueling in the United States, in the early part of our country? Sir, you besmirch my honor. I will see you on the dueling field. Who was the famous guy who got shot? What's the most famous duel? Who? What's that? No, not Jackson. No, it wasn't Alan Jackson, the singer. Alexander Hamilton. And who was he shot by? Aaron Burr, who was what, the grandson of Jonathan Edwards. Isn't that a weird thing? And Vice President at the time. He had an affair with the granddaughter of Jonathan Edwards. OK, close enough. I guess they're almost related. By the way, this type of culture is still in the black community, the inter-city black community. Man, he disrespected me. I worked with a guy. Actually, I worked with him, and he came to church for a while. His name was Pear. And he had a friend of his who was black and another friend who was white. And one time, they were at a party, partying together. And his white friend called his black friend a name, a name that you're not supposed to call black people. And the guy said, don't call me that. And he said, I'll call you that if I want to. He said, don't call me that. He said, I'll call you that if I want to. The black guy went out to his car, took a pistol out of a glove compartment, came back, and shot him dead. Even though he was a friend of his, he said, nobody talks to me like that. He bled to death in that friend of mine in his arms. So that idea of culture and honor and all that. By the way, if you understand the idea of shame and honor, you can see that all over in the scripture as well. How many times do you hear David praying, Oh Lord, don't let me be ashamed. Don't let my enemies triumph over me. But there also have been apostates in Christianity. Which would be the most famous apostate? Do you know? he would be an emperor named Julian. Julian was raised, he was a nephew of Constantine the Great. He was raised in a quasi-Christian home, but as he got older, he got into pagan religion and also pagan philosophy, and he repudiated Christianity, and he spent his time. He didn't openly persecute the Christians as much as he made it really hard for them, because he realized that the Christians who were put to death earlier ended up becoming martyrs, and it caused it to grow. He was in power for about five years, tried to rebuild the pagan temples, but by this time, people were pretty much tired with paganism. So an apostate is not just somebody who walks away from their faith, it's somebody who repudiates the faith and as a result of it, no longer holds to it. It's interesting because Jesus told us we're going to have that problem, don't we? He talked about the parable of the tares and the wheat. The story goes that a man plants wheat in his field. And while he's sleeping at night, an enemy comes in and plants tares. It would be the Darnell plant, which looks very similar to wheat, but it was poisonous. The Romans actually had laws against doing this. And it says that when it started to grow, his men saw it and said, hey, didn't we plant wheat? What's this? He said, you want us to tear it all out? He says, no, if you tear it out, you're going to wreck the wheat as well. Just let it grow together, and afterwards, I'll send out the harvesters, and they'll separate the wheat from the tares, and they'll bundle up the tares, and put them in the fire, and bundle up the wheat, and bring it into my barn. And then Jesus explained what the parable was about. I mean, you know, they say, oh, parables only have one point, but Jesus gave a point for each thing. He said, look, the man who plants the good seed is me, the son of man. The one who plants the bad seed in the field is the devil. The good seed are the children of the kingdom. The bad seed are the false believers that are planted among them. And just like in the story, at the end of the age, the angels will go forth and they will pull out the false ones among the true ones and throw them into hell. And so, and by the way, when he says don't tear them up, I have to deal with this as a pastor. There's times I have people in church who are non-Christians, who they know they're non-Christians. They don't usually cause me problems. But it was my 30 years of pastoring, the people who tend to cause you problems are professed Christians that you have a serious doubt they really know the Lord. Kind of like the Pharisees in Jesus' days caused them all the trouble, right? And I've had people come to me and say, well, do you think they're a Christian? I said, Boy, I doubt it. Well, shouldn't you get rid of them out of the church? Okay, what happens if I do? First of all, I can't read his heart. But what happens if I say, you know, I'm convinced you're a non-Christian, we're going to kick you out of the church. Who goes with him? His wife, his three kids, maybe two of whom are Christians, maybe his wife's a Christian. So Jesus said, just let them grow. Now, if you have open sin where somebody's doing something, then you have to deal with church discipline. But otherwise, he said, just let them grow together because God knows who the real ones are and who the ones are not real. By the way, Jesus warned people about this. He said, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name cast out demons and in your name perform many miracles? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. What do you think is the most scary word in that whole thing? You could say what? Depart from me? Maybe that? What's that? I never knew you? You know what I think the scariest word is in this? By the way, it's not like I have some expertise on that. I think the scariest word is many. Jesus didn't say there's a few people on that day. Because notice, they think they're believers, right? Because they say, Lord, Lord. They're addressing his Lord. This is not Buddhists from the other side of the world. These are professed Christians who claim to be followers of Jesus who are shocked to find out that he doesn't acknowledge them. Now what's interesting to me about it is notice they claim that they did miracles and cast out demons. He doesn't say, no you didn't, you're lying about that. Did Judas do miracles? Probably. He went out with the other 12 and did miracles. Evidently he was never a believer. Jesus said he knew from the beginning he wasn't a believer and who it was who would betray him. You know, the apostles constantly warned against and had to deal with false teachers in the church who lead people astray. Who's that guy on the right there? Thank you, thank you. I had the confirmation kids. We've been doing it at school here after they're done with the school. And I put up a whole bunch of pictures and asked them to guess who these people are if they knew. So John Wayne. It was actually hard because I can think of people I would know, but they probably wouldn't know because of their age. And then I had to try to think of somebody they would know that I wouldn't necessarily know. But when it came to Fred Flintstone, no. None of them knew him. That's sad you have kids growing up not knowing Fred Flintstone. I think that shows our cultural rot, don't you? And in the letter to the Ephesians, Paul said this, he said, keep watch over yourself and over your flock, which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. He's talking to pastors. He said, be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And even from among your own numbers, men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on guard. Remember that for a period of three years, I never stopped warning you, each night and day with tears. So the Bible suggests that there's going to be spiritual saboteurs within the church, and that we're supposed to be looking out for them. Now, you think about the people who are coming in, illegal immigrants from the southern border. A lot of them are Mexican. Obviously, they're looking for a better life. A lot of them are coming from Venezuela. Their country's a mess. But you know, there's ones coming from China and Turkmenistan and Iran. Why would they be coming through the Mexican border? And what age are they generally? Young men. And do they generally have their wives with them? No. Gee, is there a problem there? We might find out years from now, or months from now, that wow, one of these guys who came in was a physical saboteur of the United States. I mean, the number one responsibility of a government is to protect their citizens from foreign invaders, and that's not really happening. Of course, when they come, they don't come as You know, here's another one. It says this. It says in Jude, Now notice they sneak in. They slither in. You don't know that they're coming in until they're in there. And by the way, I have a theory. Most false teachers have a better head of hair than I do. Because they're good looking guys, you know what I mean? They got that nice cuffed hair, and they're smooth, and they talk nice, and they're wonderful people. I don't think I could be a cult leader because I don't have the personality for it. I'm just not nice enough. Here's another one. Peter said this, but false prophets arose among the people, he means in the Old Testament, just as there will also be false teachers among you who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them, the way of truth will be maligned. And in their greed, they will exploit you with false words. Their judgment is from long ago. It's not idle. And their destruction is not asleep. Well, why is that? It's because Satan hates the truth. And he does everything he can to oppose it, distort it, and to subvert it. It says in 2 Corinthians 11, 13 to 15, it says, For such men, these people that Paul was dealing with in his day, are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore, it's not surprising if his servants disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds. What was the first question ever asked in the Bible? What's that? Did God really say? It was asked by the serpent, right? He was calling God's word into question. And as a result of it, they ended up falling into sin. By the way, all the cults, all the false religions attack the Bible as being trustworthy and true. In times of apostasy, hypocrites in the church, that passage we just read said, many will follow their sensuality, and because of them, the way of truth will be maligned. Have you had friends or relatives say, oh, those people in church, they're all hypocrites. I'd never join them because they're all hypocrites. Well, there's some truth to that. It's not true of all people in church, but it's true of enough. And how many people do you have to have who's a hypocrite before you're soured on it? Not many. And so the devil uses something like that. And by the way, this is an apologetic thing for you when you're witnessing to people and this comes up to them. I always ask them this question, and it's usually pretty effective. I say, let me ask you a question. Let's assume you were the devil. And I said, OK, maybe that's not so hard to assume. But let's assume you were the devil, right? Would you do most of your work inside the church or outside the church? And they'll usually think for a second, they'll say, inside. And I'll say, why? Well, because that way you could discredit it from the inside. I mean, you mean so that people like you would make comments about hypocrites and you won't believe it? I said, if every person who followed Jesus was a hypocrite, would that mean that he didn't come out of the tomb on Sunday morning? Would that mean his claims are wrong? Now, by the way, we are supposed to live lives that we don't become stumbling blocks to other people. But the truth of the gospel is not dependent on the followers of Jesus. Hypocrites, some of these you'll know. Who's that couple on the left there? Jim and Tammy Baker. When were they popular? Yeah, 80s. Isn't it weird to say 80s and that was like 40 years ago? By the way, do you do this too? You talk about somebody mentions a, I don't know, some politician or more likely a movie star, and they're like, oh yeah, they died just two years ago. And now someone's always got their phone and they look it up and say, no, that was actually 24 years ago. We're all getting older. Jim and Tammy Baker had a program called PTL. It's called Stood for Praise the Lord, Some Said Pass the Lute. They got into trouble with the IRS because they were running a timeshare, a big, big, huge Disneyland area. And they were overselling the timeshares, knowing that they were doing so. And so they got arrested for it. Do you know that they went to school, both of them, down in St. Paul? Yeah, that's where they met. He was put in prison. I don't think she was ever put in prison, was she? I don't think she was. However, she ended up dying of cancer, but a couple of years before that, she became a big supporter of gay rights and stuff like that. Jim came out of prison, wrote a book entitled, I Was Wrong. I don't know what he's doing now. Who's the guy on the right or left? Your right, what? Jimmy Swaggart. Do you want to hear a little trivia piece on it? Did you know that Jimmy Swaggart is first cousins with Jerry Lee Lewis and Gilly? Who's the guy? You know who I'm talking about? What's that? Yeah, Mickey Gilly. All three of them are first cousins. Just in case you wanted to know that. So he had a program on for many years. He'd get out there, play the piano, and sing, and all that kind of stuff. What happened in his scandal, do you remember? He turned in a guy named Gorman, who was also an Assembly of God pastor for some kind of sexual thing he was in, and he was going to turn him in. And Gorman warned him, you do that and I'll get you back. Well, he turned him in anyways. And then Gorman had his son-in-law film Jimmy Swagger coming out of a hotel room with a prostitute. So after he got caught with that, it was a big scandal, and then he went before his congregation. That's him there. He wept. You remember what his famous words were? I have sinned, my Lord, I have sinned. Now, by the way, I want to be fair to him. If he were really repentant, then good. However, it happened again a couple of years later. And the next time when it happened, he said, the Lord flat out told me it's none of your business. You think that's true? The Lord came to him and said, Jimmy. I don't know, does the Lord talk like Elvis? Jimmy, Jimmy. I said, just tell him it's none of their business. Now, my point is, I was never big fans of either of these two. I have to tell you, this is one little side note though. With Jimmy Swaggart, I was at the Pine City Family Pathways store, you know, the thrift store there, and I saw a couple of Bibles. They were Jimmy Swaggart study Bibles. And I'm always buying used Bibles. And I picked these up, and they had really nice leather covers on them. And I thought, OK. So I bought two of them, $1.50 each, $3. I bring them home. I look online. How much can you sell these for? $75 used. I'm thinking, I want to make $150. So I start paging through there. And you know a red-letter edition Bible. You know what that is, right? You've got the black, and then Jesus' words in red. This had red letters, too, but they were all Jimmy Swaggart's words. And they weren't at the bottom of the page. They were interspersed with the entire text. And I thought to myself, I can't in good conscience sell these. What do you do? So they sat on my shelf for two years. And then I cut the bindings off of them. I put them on a couple other old Bibles and threw their other ones away. So thanks, Jimmy. How about this guy? Any familiar with him? This is a more recent one. This is in the last few years. You know who that is? Had a real popular program on called Walk in the Word. Used to be on the radio station down in the Twin Cities. He was on a thousand radio stations. In 2012 and also again in 2016, the program received the Billy Graham Award for Excellence in Christian Communication from the National Religious Broadcasters. But on February 13th, McDonald was fired from Harvest Chapel, the big megachurch he was at, by the elders after allegedly recording him make some inappropriate comments. In the recording, McDonald joked about orchestrating a plot to blackmail Harold Smith, the CEO of Christianity Today, by planting illegal child pornography on his computer. McDonald also reportedly used church funds to purchase Harley Davidson motorcycles for people inside and outside of the church. He also bought a 1971 Volkswagen Bug for $17,000 with church funds. On May 20, 2019, there's a man who claimed in the church, claimed that McDonald had on two different occasions in 2018 asked Mueller, this is the guy's name, if he knew a hit man for hire. Similarly, former Harvest bodyguard, Emanuel Brucer, stated that McDonald had asked him in 2015 to kill McDonald's former son-in-law. Now, I don't think you have to be considered judgmental to think that a person who's going to plant child porn on somebody else's computer and somebody who's hiring someone to kill their former son-in-law is probably not a Christian. Could we start with that? Is it a good likelihood? The faith may not be genuine. But here's my point, until all this came out, and then he was finally arrested just last March or the March before for allegedly assaulting a 59-year-old woman in the parking lot. Not sexually assaulting, but smacking her. That's not a good sign. That's not a good sign at all. But here's my point, this guy wasn't some old whack job, he was someone who was respected in the Christian community. End times apostasy. Revelation, Jesus addresses the churches with praise and rebuke. Now here's one that you always hear. You know, why aren't you Christians, why aren't you tolerant like Jesus? Jesus was tolerant. Jesus never judged anyone. Jesus never criticized anyone. He loved and cared for all people. You know what's interesting? Because you've all seen the tolerance bumper sticker, right? Okay, yeah. But there's only two places in the entire Bible that the word tolerance is used in Jesus' mouth. Here's one of them in Revelation 2, 2-3 where it says this, And you put to test those who call themselves apostles and are not, and you have found them to be false, and you have persevered and have endurance for my name's sake, and have not grown weary." So here Jesus is praising them for what they don't tolerate, which is false teaching. On the other hand, How about this one? To another church, he said this, I know your deeds, and your love, and your faith in your servants, and your perseverance, and that your deeds of late are greater than at first. So he acknowledges them as a true church. But I have this against you, that you, what? Tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads my bondservants astray, so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. So Jesus' one church, he's praising them for their intolerance, and to the next church, he's condemning them for their tolerance. Do not misunderstand what I'm saying. We should love all people. But you're not doing a person a favor by buying into their lies. So, for instance, there's something that goes around in Christian circles now called pronoun hospitality. Have you heard that phrase before? Pronoun hospitality is if you have a person who's transgender, you call them by their preferred pronouns because that would be the Christian thing to do. Think about that. Is that loving? No. You're entering into their deception. There was one lady I saw. She was transgender. It's a she. And she ended up, she took a lot of hormones, testosterone and stuff. And they showed the picture of her. She did look like a guy. She got a job at a church helping with the youth. And as she was working with them for a while, all of a sudden, the pastor came up to him and said, I got to ask you something. is it true that you were born a woman? She didn't really know what to say and they dismissed her right away. But she got into another church and same thing happened. She was working with the kids. Someone heard something, the pastor came up to her and said, is it true that you're born, are you a woman? God had been working in her heart already and she looked at him and said, no, I'm a woman pretending to be a man. And as a result of that, she ended up getting saved. So she identifies now as a woman, which is what she is. However, she's got all kinds of stuff she has to deal with, just the physical parts of it as well. The end times apostasy. Even now we see much evidence of the beginning of widespread apostasy. There's churches you can find down in the cities. You might even be able to find them around here where you have a cross and you'll have a pride flag out in front of the church. It says, we welcome everybody. Yeah, we welcome everybody in our church if they want to hear the gospel. Because this came up in one of our Bible studies because there was a friend of somebody's who dresses as a woman. It's a guy who lives in the area. And I asked the question, how should we handle this? Because I told him, I said, invite him to a Bible study. He needs the gospel. And so I asked the question, so how should we handle it if he shows up in this? And we talked about this a lot. I think we talked about it in Sunday school as well. If he showed up to my house at the Bible study dressed as a woman, I wouldn't say much the first few times. I really wouldn't. Because everybody in there would know that we don't accept that. That's fine. If he showed up at church, though, I would say something. Why would it be different at church as opposed to a Bible study? What's that? Public forum. If you showed up at church and there was nothing said about it, the other people visiting that day would assume this church affirms this, right? can't do that. So I'm not saying that these things are easy to deal with, but they're important that we deal with them. Even in the early 20s, there was what was known as the fundamentalist modernist controversy. That's when the mainline churches all started to abandon supernatural Christianity, as they would have called it. And they said, we have to modernize the Christian faith. We have to make it more palatable to the modern mind. The only problem is it wasn't very modern. It was pretty ancient heresies, and it wasn't much mind. It was a lot of nonsense. But that's when you saw a lot of the mainline churches being gutted. Mainline churches, what's been the attendance pattern over the last 50 years? Down dramatically. They've lost like 40. They're not mainline. They're sideline churches. Now, when I remember when I heard that, I thought, oh, good. Let them go. I mean, these are churches where they don't believe the gospel anyways. Right? So I thought, let them go. How did I know that I didn't know that evangelical churches would kind of fill the void? There's a lot of evangelical churches that are embracing things that were basically what the liberals embraced years ago. The LGBTQ stuff, right? These are all three of these are pictures from churches where they had drag queens in the service. This guy used to go to our church. His wife, the church that her parents went to, hired a guy who was transgender to be their youth pastor and saw no problem with it. Now, our whole culture has changed. If I would have told my great-aunt before she died when she was 90 these type of things, as a matter of fact, I couldn't talk to her about them. She would have been too embarrassed by it. And yet, you look at the massive shift we've had on the issue of gay marriage. You guys know that, what is it, 2010, California passed a constitutional amendment to make marriage between one man and one woman only. California did that. Do you think you could get that passed in almost any state in the United States today? Probably not. And a lot of the people, even where the conservatives, they said, you know, OK, that battle's done. They won that battle. Let's go on to the next thing. How can you be conservative if you don't want to even conserve marriage? There's nothing left to conserve. You have this stuff going on in the libraries and all that as well. You've got prominent evangelical leaders who've bought into this. Are you familiar with the name Tony Campolo? Yeah, he was an evangelical sociologist, really well-known in the evangelical world, and he started to shift a little at a time. His wife, you know, she kind of embraced LGBTQ rights, and he said it was all right to be in a relationship, two men, as long as they just cuddled and didn't actually have sex. I don't know, I'm not allowed to cuddle with other people's wives. But then, just a few years ago, he came out fully in favor of LGBTQ rights. Max Locato, are you familiar with him? Yes, one of the most prolific Christian authors over the last 25 years. What was it, about two years ago, he came out and apologized to the LGBTQ community for the fact that he had preached a sermon, what, seven, eight years before that, where he called homosexuality a sin. This guy's an evangelical. This guy would have been at conferences with other people that you like and respect. How about a more recent one? Alistair Begg. Now there's a guy who's on the very conservative side who'd be in the reformed. I listened to him for a number of years. He was on a call-in program. He's hosting it. And someone called in and he mentioned that he had gotten a call from a woman who said, my granddaughter or grandson, whatever it is, is marrying a transgender person. And I want to know, should I go to the wedding? And he said, now this may upset a few people, but I would say yes. said, does your grandson or granddaughter, whoever it was, know that you think this is wrong? Yes. Well, then go and bring a present. As long as they already know your position, this will show that you love and support them. Now, that sounds good on the surface, but I want you to put this somewhere else. My neighbor is going to sacrifice their child next Tuesday at 10 o'clock. Should I go? Well, do they know that you don't believe in child sacrifice? Yeah. OK, well, then go and bring them a present just to show your support for them. It's absurd. Now, this guy's no dummy. He's been in ministry for 50 years. He's been someone I've benefited from. Okay, people can make stupid mistakes, but what happens when you're corrected? Because he had other people, evangelical leaders, say, no, no, no, that's not a biblical position at all. He said, I'm not backing down on this. Well, he just resigned, I think, last week. And, you know, what am I supposed to make of a person like that? 50 years of ministry? There was one that happened just last week. Steve Lawson, another well-known person, friends and works with people like John MacArthur, people who are really solid. And it just came out that he was involved in a five-year adulterous relationship with a 29-year-old woman. Five years. That's not falling into sin. Tony Evans, that happened what, about a couple of months ago, same thing. These are not the crazy people that we don't listen to. These are people that we think are solid. Or how about the whole issue of the social justice movement? What's that? Well, back in 2018, they had the MLK50 conference. It was a conference, it was held by the Gospel Coalition and the Southern Baptist Church, which we're members of. They held this in a city and they brought in all these speakers and they were celebrating the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. Now, I want to be careful that you understand what I'm saying here. I think it's proper to celebrate the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. as a social activist and reformer. But this was done in a Christian context. Martin Luther King, Jr. denied the resurrection. He denied that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. He denied the incarnation of Jesus. Should we do a conference celebrating what Julian the Apostate did because he did some good reform? I would even go to a conference where they're celebrating what he did for other reasons, but not in the context of a Christian thing. And the problem is you had people who are well-known evangelicals, David Platt, Matt Chandler, John Piper. I give fairness to John Piper. He at least suggests that it may not have been the case that Martin Luther King Jr. was a believer. But all the others were saying, oh no, he's one of the... One guy actually said this, I'm more convinced that Martin Luther King Jr. was a believer than Jonathan Edwards, because Jonathan Edwards owned slaves. A guy who denies the incarnation, denies Jesus died on a cross for our sins, denies that Jesus rose from the dead? Paul says, if Christ hasn't risen from the dead, We're of all men most to be pitied, and our religion is worthless. You can't deny it. There's certain things that you have to believe in order to be Christian. And it doesn't matter how nice you are and what you accomplish other than that. So there's a number of people. Russell Moore has bought into this, a number of other people. Beth Moore has bought into this. Beth Moore eventually, she's a well-known teacher for many years. She dropped out of the Southern Baptist, and now she's an Episcopal priestess. So there you go. One of the books that was written that really kind of started this movement was called The Woke Church by Eric Mason. And David Platt used to be my daughter's pastor down in Birmingham, Alabama. They closed down their churches because of COVID, but they all marched for Black Lives Matter. There's a problem there. So you've got all these issues going on. Church attendance in the United States. 20% of Americans attend church every week. That's not very many. 41% of Americans are in a monthly church attendance or more. 57% of Americans seldom or never go to religious services. Regular church attendance has steadily declined from the turn of the century. These two guys, I think I mentioned them in the first week. The guy on the left is Dave Rubin. The guy on the right is Brett Weinstein. Dave Rubin and Brett Weinstein were both born and raised Jewish. Both of them are atheists. Dave Rubin is a homosexual who's married to a man. Both of them were on the political left, but they've moved to the right over the last few years because of a lot of the nonsense that they see going on. But they had a meeting, interview that they did together where they were talking about, you know, the future and their concerns for where the culture is going and whether we can even survive as a nation. And Brett Weinstein, the guy on the right, was arguing, we can't. He said, unless there's a religious basis to our existence, we're not going to be able to make it. Now, I think it's interesting because both these guys were atheists saying that you have to have some kind of a religious basis for a culture to restrain evil. And they both argued that we thought that atheism, once we were freed from Christianity, atheism would work out fine. He said, it doesn't. And we're heading in a direction. So even secular people, even atheists are acknowledging that. Who's this guy? Richard Dawkins. Richard Dawkins. I got to tell you a quick story about Richard Dawkins. Maybe I told this. I tell the stories over and over again. By the way, someone pointed out last week, said, Doug, you started a story about Ceausescu in Romania and you never finished it. I said, oh, I get going. I forget what I'm talking about. I said, well, here's the thing. I had to record it at home because last week I recorded it here, but I hit the button wrong and it didn't record. So I put it in there, and then I had to edit it myself. That took all day. But I noticed that I didn't edit it right. So in two different places, it tells the story of Ceausescu. So I made up for the one that I didn't tell there. So it's online if you want to listen to it. But Richard Dawkins, he wrote The God Delusion. He's been, for the last 35, 40 years, railing against Christianity. But now he's kind of changing his tune. He calls himself a cultural Christian. He said, I don't think I would like to see Christianity disappear from England. Why not? Because he knows what's coming afterward is Islam, and he's afraid of it. By the way, Richard Dawkins, I'll tell you a story about him. My son, my daughter's boyfriend one time, went down to see the movie, what was the movie that Ben Stein did? expelled. It's about how you get kicked out of the academy if you believe in creation, that type of stuff. And in that movie, Ben Stein had interviewed Richard Dawkins, and he asked him whether he believed that the universe could have been designed. Well, it could have been designed, possibly, but not by a god. It could have been designed by some intelligence from another part of the galaxy. Okay, well, even if that's true, then how did it develop there? It doesn't answer the question, right? But my daughter's boyfriend's sitting there, and there's an older guy standing behind him, and he's just... He's saying, I'm mad about this, right? And then when they had the question and answer, he stood up and he said, I think I was completely misquoted in that. It was Richard Dawkins sitting right behind him. Yay! But here's what he's saying. We may not be able to survive without a Christian culture. And what we're seeing now is Christianity is starting to wane. We're starting to find out, wow, Christianity had much more influence on our culture than we thought. Because now as it's disappearing and everyone's being basically dishonest, you've got some problems. This is one from Jonathan Van Muren. It's kind of long, but I want you to listen to it. Without the Christian underpinnings of a society, it will be up to us, meaning the citizens, to decide what is right and what is wrong. And as our current culture wars clearly illustrate, our civilization will tear itself apart before it regains a consensus. Many optimistic atheists recently believed that once God was dethroned and banished, we could finally live as adults and get on with the utopian project of creating a society based on faith in ourselves. These skeptics were unfortunately skeptical about everything except for the goodness of humanity, despite the fact that there's no metaphysical or even a Darwinian basis for this easily disprovable assumption that people are basically good. Jordan Peterson's phenomenal popularity is partially based on his recognition that people are not generally good, and that in the past centuries have proved this out with the blood of millions. It says in the book of Judges in several places, in those days, there was no king, and so everyone did what was right in your own eyes. I remember when they legalized gay marriage, I was talking to a couple of my coworkers at the dairy when I was working there, and I was telling them it was wrong, and they looked at me like I had a hole in my head. And I remember one saying, what gives you the right to judge people? And I said, look, I want to explain this to you. I have no right to judge people in the sense of deciding what's right and wrong for other people. I said, because here's the thing. If it's just my opinion, why should my opinion carry any more weight than anyone else's? I said, but if there is a God who's revealed himself, and there's a moral law over all of us to which we're all accountable, and I'm pointing out that law, these people are living outside of reality, and they're bringing us and themselves to judgment. Well, she just shrugged her shoulder, walked away, and said, well, you just narrow-minded. My favorite is when they say, you're so judgmental. And I judge that you shouldn't judge people and be judgmental. That's actually nonsense. Everyone has to be judgmental. We all make moral judgments. As a matter of fact, I mean, think about it. Something as simple as, hey, get out of that chair. I was there first. Or I shared part of my apple with you last time. You should share your orange with me this time. Anytime a person talks that way, aren't they assuming that there's a moral law above all of us that we're all accountable to and that I should recognize that? They're not just saying, hey, that's the way it goes, and that's the way I like it. The end times apostasy is Americans and the Bible. Here's some things I found out. This was from a survey from Gallup. It says, while biblical literalism has long been held as the most dominant method of interpreting the scripture among evangelicals, results of a new poll released by Gallup show that fewer than half of evangelicals, this is not in mainline churches, this is not whatever, these are evangelicals and born-again Christians believe the Bible should be taken literally. Now we have to be careful we define it. Because what we mean by literally is when the Bible says that the trees will clap their hands, I don't believe that the trees are going to grow hands and clap them. We use poetic language. The Bible uses poetic language. But what they mean by biblical literalism holds that except for in places where the text is obviously allegorical, poetic, or figurative, it should be taken literally as God's Word, according to God Questions Ministry, which holds this view of the Bible. Here's what they said. The poll conducted through telephone interviews from May, should say 20 to 22. No, it is 2 to 22. 2022. There's a lot of twos there. With a random sample of 1,007 adults found that just 40% of respondents who identify as evangelicals or born again view the Bible as the actual word of God. Well, 51% see the Bible as inspired word of God, meaning that men were inspired by God to write the collection of books now referred to as the Bible. Now we have to be careful because I believe the Bible teaches that men were inspired, but what it means is they were inspired in the same sense that Beethoven was inspired to write a symphony. Not that these words are the words that God intended them ultimately to write. Strong majorities also errantly believe that all religious faiths are equal value, and people are basically good, and that people can use acts of goodness to earn their way to heaven. That's a repudiation of Christianity. By the way, the Pope, he's come out in the last couple of weeks, remember? He was quoted as saying that basically all religions lead to to heaven? And of course, then the people at the Vatican had to scramble, say, oh, no, it was a misunderstanding of the Italian. I saw another guy who said, I speak Italian. That's exactly what he said. You know, there's that old joke, is the Pope Catholic? No, not really, because this isn't even Catholic teaching. But the idea that all religions, everything leads to heaven, it's all fine. Now, compare that to what Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. So either the Pope's wrong or Jesus is wrong. I'm going to go with Jesus on this one. I've got to go back because I didn't finish reading that. Further studies show that majorities don't believe in moral absolutes. Consider feelings, experience, or the input of friends and family as their most trusted source of moral guidance, and saying that having faith matters more than which faith you pursue. That's crazy. You know, I heard one guy put it this way. They said, talking about the generation that's rising up, they said, how do you reach generation? I want you to think carefully what he said. How do you reach a generation that thinks with its feelings and listens with its eyes? Thinks with its feelings and listens with its eyes. What he means by listens with its eyes is that most of the information comes. When Bill Clinton went on Arsenio Hall and played the saxophone with the shades and his hat on, I knew he was going to win the election. How did I know that? Because he looked cool. And a lot of people voted for him because he looks cool. Well, what does it mean to think with their feelings? Most people, it's just what they feel about it. You try to take them through a logical argument, I just know what I feel. You know who Dick Cheney is? Dick Cheney would have been considered a conservative. He was on the issue of homosexual rights and homosexual marriage until his daughter came out as a lesbian and then he changed his view. Now here's the question, did he send a letter to heaven and tell God he has to change his view now because Dick Cheney did? And by the way, he's on the conservative side. So if you hear me railing on Democrats, wait, I'm going to rail on Republicans and conservatives just as well. Here's what it says. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains will do so until he's taken away. Then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will slay with the breath of his mouth and bring to an end his appearance. That is, the one whose coming is in accordance with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive a love of the truth so as to be saved. For this reason, God will send upon them a deluding influence, so that they will believe what's false, in order that they may all be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness." Now, notice why they don't believe the truth. Because they enjoy wickedness. But notice, because they wouldn't receive the truth, they wouldn't accept the truth when it came, God allows deception to come to them instead. So this is frustrating. There's been other times of apostasy in the church, but it seems like it's coming at a greater clip now. What should our response be? What should your response be if you're a church person, or even if you're not a church person? Well, I think, first of all, there's a charge to pastors. Paul, when he came to the end of his life, wrote to Timothy, the last thing he wrote was this, Meaning, whether people want to hear it or not. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires. They will turn their ears away from the truth and will turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardships, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry." He told Timothy earlier, he said this, he said, pay close attention to yourself and your teaching, your doctrine. He said, in so doing, you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for your listeners. In other words, Timothy, you get this wrong, people are going to die and go to hell. Timothy, you get this wrong, you're going to die and go to hell. Remember what Paul said to the same elders a few paragraphs before that? He said, I'm free from the blood of any man, for I've never failed to declare the whole counsel of God. So there's a story that's told, took place in the Early 1900s, there was a train track, and there was a guy who was a signalman, right? His job was to wave lanterns, the green lantern, red lantern, you know, so you know whether you can go through or not. And on one of the nights that he was there, there was a train crash, and a number of people died, and so he was on trial for neglect, neglectful homicide. And so his lawyer got him on the stand, and he said, the night that you, that crash, that fatal crash, did you wave the lantern? And he said, yes, I did. He said, I'm going to ask you again the night of that fatal crash. Did you wave the lantern? And he said, yeah, I did. He said, I'm going to ask you one more time so everyone can hear you on the night that you waved that lantern, or on the night of the crash. Did you wave the lantern? He said, yeah, I did. Well, he was found innocent. They didn't convict him. But his lawyer was bugged by this. And he went to him afterwards. He said, you know, you can't be tried again, but I want to know the truth. Did you wave that lantern? And he said, yeah, but I had never lit it. Now, I want you to listen very carefully. There's a lot of pastors that are waving lanterns that aren't lit. They don't warn the people that if you don't trust in Jesus, you're going to hell. They don't tell them that their biggest problem is their self-centeredness and their rebellion against God. They promise them their best life now, right? My brother goes to a big megachurch. And in this church, they went and took the cross and shoved it off to the side, kind of back in the corner. And then they put in all these strobe lights and whatnot. That was so highly symbolic. They moved the cross off to the side. It's interesting because they had an Iwana program, right? It was a big church. They had 200 children coming to the Iwana program. Two-thirds of them were not from their church. They had to cancel it because they couldn't find anybody to staff it. The church has a thousand people. They couldn't find anyone to staff it? You know what I would conclude from it? It's because they weren't saved. The same church, my sister-in-law, she was in a small group Bible study or whatever, and one of the ladies in the Bible study got cancer. And so my sister-in-law called around to the others and said, why don't we put together some meals for her? Because she's going to be going through some tough stuff and whatnot. And she couldn't get one other person to do it. They're like, no, we got stuff going on. We're busy. John said in his epistle, if anyone sees his brother in need and closes his heart to him, how can the love of God abide in him? What he's saying is you're not saved. When a person is saved, there's a transformation in their life. There's ups and downs, there's forwards and backwards. So the first responsibility is for the pastors to preach and teach the Word of God. And so if you're in a church where it's not being taught, you need to encourage your pastor, you need to ask your pastor, you need to pray for your pastor, and if he blows you off, you need to find a different church. Because Jesus said, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. So if you have a pastor who's preaching the word of God, encourage him and thank him. Say, hey, we thank you that you get up there every week. And by the way, if they're telling you all nice things about you, you know that's not true. I know it's not true. We should be encouraged, but we should also be warned. But I think there's also a responsibility on the part of, I have to say this, I'll put another story in here. The guy that I mentioned, his name was Pear, he died now, but his mother died a number of years ago. She had visited church a few times. I don't think she was a Christian when she died, which was really sad, but I had witnessed her, gone out and talked to her a few times. As a matter of fact, she was in a Sunday school class one time, and I asked as an opening question for the Sunday school class, I said, who would you be most surprised with if they became a Christian? And she said, well, me? She said, I'd be stunned if I became a Christian. But when she died, the son asked me to do her funeral. And it was way down in Egan at a Lutheran church, a mainline Lutheran church that would have been very liberal. A beautiful church. And the brothers didn't want me to do it, because they had heard me preach once before, and they didn't like me. But he was a pushy guy. And he said, no, that's what we're going to get my brother to do. OK, so I go down there. And they say, well, can you do the liturgy? And I said, well, I've never done a Lutheran service, but if you give it to me, as long as there's nothing heretical, yeah, I'll do it. So I did the liturgy and stuff like that. And then, of course, I preached the gospel. You know, because I thought, I don't know who these people are. I don't know what they believe or don't believe, so I'm going to preach the gospel. And I did. I laid out the gospel that Jesus died for your sins. If you trust in him, he'd forgive it as a free gift, the whole thing, right? Your baptism can't save you. These things can't save you. The only thing that can save you is trusting in Christ alone. OK, I get all done. A guy comes up who's been a member of that church for almost his whole life. He shakes my hand vigorously and says, thank you. We haven't heard the gospel here for 20 years. My heart sunk. I thought, what are you doing here then? 20 years you haven't heard the gospel? I think the guy was probably really saved because it rang true in his heart again. But 20 years without the gospel? I don't remember what the church was. It should have been called Ichabod Lutheran because Ichabod means the glory of God has departed. It's not right. The last thing though I think we have to say though is, Whoever your pastor is, whether you think he's doing a good job, bad job, whatever it is, you have a responsibility yourself to know the Scripture. Remember when Paul was preaching in the city of Berea? It says, now the Bereans were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica. Because when Paul preached, they searched the Scripture daily to see if these things were true. The Holy Spirit thought to commend the believers in Berea because they checked what the Apostle Paul said against the Scripture. If you have a pastor who leads you to hell, he's going to be in big trouble. But you're going to bear it for your own because you didn't know enough to search the scripture to find out whether what he was teaching was true. One of the things you should be praying for is that God would raise up pastors all over who preach the word of God. You know, when I came here 30 years ago, one of the things I prayed for was that God would raise up more pastors in our area who are actually preaching the word of God, and he's answered that. There's a number of pastors in here. 30 years ago when I was here, there was only a couple pastors who were preaching the word of God, and now there's a number of them, and I've been very encouraged by that. I'm going to leave a little bit of time for questions, but we've only got a couple minutes. Do you have any questions? What I should have done is have you guys write out questions ahead of time. If you don't have questions, I'm hoping that this seminar is good. If you're not a church person, you're like, I don't understand why this is a big deal. But it is a big deal because one of the things that guy was saying is even if you're not a Christian, you're seeing the effect of the Christian church. being kind of washed away in its significance, because our culture is based on Christianity, at least loosely. And in order for it to turn around, you can't just simply say, well, why don't we all start living by Christian values? What you have to have is actually people who are converted, who have enough influence as salt and light that it overflows and affects the culture around them. So what's needed is for a real revival to take place. And that would require that people are actually getting saved. And so you should be praying for that, praying that God would raise up pastors who preach and teach the word of God, and that he would bring revival to our land, because if not, we're going to perish. We're not going to last as a country. And it may be too late, but even if it is, let me be faithful until the end, right? Jeremiah never had any converts. But he was faithful to preach and teach the word of God. I think that's right at time, so let's close with a word of prayer. Our Father God, I do want to pray and thank you for the grace and the mercy that you give us. Thank you for your word. It speaks to every generation, and every generation can look around and see the rot in the culture. But there are some generations that are more wicked than others, and we see it in our culture today, Lord. And what makes it even more tragic is that we do have a heritage of a Christian faith in this country and much influence of Christianity. But you know, Lord, when it gets dark, it's not the darkness, it's the lights that have gone out. And we pray that we would shine brighter and that we would be salt to keep the culture from rotting. Help us to know how to speak to the generation that's rising up, but also how to proclaim the truth and not back down. And Father, even for some of these people that I've mentioned who have gone by the wayside, if they really belong to you, I pray that you'd bring them back and they would repent. So give us grace. Give us what we need. We're asking in Jesus' name. Amen. Next week, we're going to be in Revelation chapter 4 and 5, which talks about the scene from heaven, Jesus on the throne, and when he takes the scroll out of the right hand of God the Father, and all that kind of stuff. You'll find that interesting. So come on back, and invite people if you know them, if you don't know them. Look at that. I finished two minutes early. Jeff would be proud of me.