Yeah. Yeah. I know. Thank you. Come on. Do we love Jesus? Good evening. All right. We are blessed tonight to have a guest speaker with us, Dr. James White. He is an apologist, a theologian, an author. I'm going to just really not try to swell his head up too much. Most of you probably know more about him than I do, but the little that I've read has been encouraging and strengthening to my faith. And he's going to speak to us tonight about Christian worldview. And so I'm just going to go ahead and turn it over to James. Come on up, sir. Thank you very much. First of all, you have no idea whether I'm going to say anything worthwhile whatsoever. So don't even waste the instance. You didn't have to bring in Phoenix weather, just for me. I think it literally is only like a degree warmer in Phoenix, maybe actually cooler right now, than it is up here, so thank you very much for that, but you didn't need to do that. I was actually looking forward to some cool, which I understand you have up here once in a while. But just as an introduction to those of you who don't know me, and that would be very easily understood why people would not know who in the world I am, because Our ministry has always been a fairly small ministry. It began in 1983, called Alpha Omega Ministries. We were originally focused on witnessing to Mormons. We used to, every six months, go up to the General Conference, the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City, and pass out tracts. And one of my favorite memories is a radio debate that I did on KTKK Radio in Salt Lake City. See if you'd want to do this. You're in Salt Lake City, Utah. The host of the program is a Mormon attorney. You have two BYU professors versus you in the studio. And that was quite an interesting experience. The phone calls were a little bit uneven as far as that's concerned, but that's what you expect. We started off really with a strong emphasis on Mormonism, but then people started asking other questions. I was in seminary and then moving on beyond seminary to other education. And so we started expanding out what we were doing in apologetics, giving a defense of the faith. I always felt that it was very important to be very accurate in your representation of what others believe. I felt that was important if you're representing him who says he is the way, the truth and the life to be consistent. And so we've never tried to be experts on everything there is to be an expert on. I don't think you can be an expert on all things, and I could not accurately represent every religion there is on the planet. And so we've tried to be somewhat limited, but over time we ended up dealing with a wide variety of topics and issues. I ended up working as a critical consultant on the New American Standard Bible translation, and I have written books on many, many topics. One of which, my most popular book is called The King James Only Controversy, where I deal with the King James Only issue and people who would say that English translation is the only translation of the Bible you should ever use, that kind of thing like that. I've taught for years in a Southern Baptist seminary in Phoenix for many, many years, but overseas as well. I started traveling overseas in 2005. And in 2019, I flew 165,000 miles. I taught in Melbourne. I taught in Johannesburg and Durban, South Africa. I taught in Samara, Russia. And I'll probably never get to do any of that again. The world changed as we all know and as we'll be talking about this evening and so Now I'm literally on a road trip, which is why I'm dressed rather casually. I just drove here from Paradise Valley Livingston area, okay today I had driven up from Montana the day before and Denver the day before that and so I'm doing the KOA fifth wheel road trip and thing up to Moscow, Idaho. Where I'll be there over the weekend and then it's all the way back to Phoenix, Arizona. Hopefully with everything intact when I get back there. That's my big goal. I want the air conditioning units still on the top of the unit, not hanging off the side, that kind of stuff. If any of you are RVers, any wisdom you wish to provide to me, I'm figuring it out, but this is an almost 4,000 mile trip. And so what we're doing, basically, is we've just put out the word to churches and said, If you'd be interested in having us in, like on a Tuesday night, a Thursday night, things like that, as I'm tooling around the country, I don't even know how long I'll be able to get to do this, to be honest with you. And you might say, oh, we'll always be able to do that. Have you seen what's going on in Australia and Canada? You can't cross the borders between the various states in those countries right now without your PIPAs. And if you don't think that could happen here, I don't think you've been listening to Nancy Pelosi and a few other people quite closely enough. Or especially that AOC lady. That's really scary. But anyways. So as long as I get a chance to do this, we are just traveling around and trying to benefit the saints and hopefully provide you with something that will be edifying to you. Now this evening, you may Okay, so you've done a lot of debates. I think debate is a wonderful, debate used to be a normal part of a classical education. And over, since August of 1990, I've done 175 moderated public debates around the world, including in mosques in South Africa. And when people say, you've debated in mosques, Yeah, and I've never felt safer to be perfectly honest with you I've stood right right where the the Imam leads the prayers in front of what's called the Qibla in one of the largest mosques in South Africa and Unlike you who are sitting upon nice padded seats In that situation, everyone was on the floor, right about right there, right in front of me, for two and a half, three hours. And they're comfortable doing that. We are wimps. They win the ability to sit on the floor for a long, long time contest. I can assure you of that. So I do a lot of things. By the way, I've been married for almost 40 years. Next year is our 40th anniversary. I've got four grandchildren. Some of you, maybe one or two of you in here, maybe more, might know my daughter, Summer Yeager. She has a webcast called Sheologians, where she has been doing the fight against feminism and things like that for many years now. And I'll be honest with you, when a lot of the current stuff about intersectionality and CRT and everything else started flooding into our experience, she was one of the first people I turned to. You know you're getting old. when you can turn to your children and find in them a resource for yourself. Now she'll tell you that's because some of her earliest memories are sitting in the back of the car driving with dad with one of these little white boards, you know the white boards we use, the big ones, the little ones for school and stuff like that. And we would be doing Christian worldview stuff while driving around Phoenix, Arizona. So you sow the seed and there you go, you get to do that type of thing. But my areas of teaching, at least professionally, have primarily been in the areas of theology, apologetics, Greek, Greek exegesis, Hebrew, Hebrew exegesis, textual criticism, and church history. Church history is the first class that I taught, and I still love to teach church history. I've taught Christian philosophy, religion, and logic, and things like that as well. So what that means is you put all that together, having dealt with Islam and all the issues that come from that. I've been asked this evening to address something that, to be honest with you, as recently as maybe three or four years ago, would have been considered somewhat of a high-brow topic, a topic where, well, it's good to talk about these things once in a while, but it's not really central to everybody. Not everybody really needs to be concerned about this or know about this kind of thing. And so when we talked about a Christian worldview, that was considered, let's be honest, for most of us to be somewhat of an advanced topic. Sort of an elective class, if we were to put it in that fashion. And all of a sudden, here we are. And I don't care how far away you can be from a massive major city. How many, what's the population of your state? Right around a million. Right around a million. Okay, we have five times the number of people in Phoenix, just in my city, that you have in your entire state. Which does make for really lousy traffic situations. Though I'll have to admit, when I pulled into Missoula, I'm like, how do you get a traffic jam in Missoula? How does that work? But it was there. So you may think, and I have found this mindset, you may think we're too far out to have to worry too much about the very obvious cultural worldview issues that are being forced upon the majority of American citizens today. But the reality is, you know what I see when I look at my iPhone here? 5G. You know what that means? You're connected. That means you can't keep away from this stuff. That means your schools are just as subject to the influx of an absolutely foreign understanding of humanity and life that is now taking possession and has taken possession of pretty much all of the structures of our society as any place else in the United States. It's here. You can't avoid it. And we're seeing the implications, and the implications are huge. The Christian worldview Which was something we used to have seminars about, and you'd go, oh, that was very interesting. Now, all of a sudden, I'm not an ancient person. You may look at me and go, you certainly look that way. But I'm just about to start my seventh decade. It means I'm not quite 60 yet. But I'm just about there. I can tell you that one of the most changing experiences in my life was to become a grandfather. Marriage, big thing, big thing. And I am so thankful to be able to tell you, I got married at age 19, she was 18, and we didn't have a kid for four years. So we didn't, it was not a shotgun wedding as they used to describe it. And I am so thankful that we did because that means I have been able to be relatively young and healthy in the young years of my grandchildren. And I may have a shot at seeing my great-grandchildren. I think that would be an incredible experience. But getting married changes you. Everybody who has gotten married knows that all of a sudden that changes you. Then having your first kid changes you. Makes you, well that child of course, as we all know, babies are one huge, massive, selfish black hole. The world revolves around them. And they suck all of that selfishness right out of you because you have to meet their needs. When that diaper explodes at 2 a.m. in the morning, there's nobody else that's going to be there doing anything about it but you. And you grow up and you learn in the process, no question about it. But all of that graduating from college, graduating from seminary, getting your first doctorate, getting your second doctorate, publishing your first book. None of that had the kind of impact that becoming a grandfather did. Because all of a sudden, All of a sudden, that Disney song makes sense. The Circle of Life. I'm not sure if any of you have seen that one. It's an older one, but it was on constant replay on a videotape. Any of you remember videotapes? Some of you are going, wow, he really is old. Yes, VHS videotape in my household when I was younger. All of a sudden, you start seeing yourself in the entire connected history of your family and mankind. And you start thinking, you see this little child and you realize that little child is the child of your child, which means that little child is going to have a child. All of a sudden, you start seeing things that you never really gave thought to when you were so easily distracted by things as a younger person. And for me, What that means in light of what I'm seeing happening in Western culture. The complete abandonment of the fundamental foundational assumptions that gave us our system of law, education, and understanding of family. All of these things we wonder why in such rapid order these things are being abandoned and now things that only ten years ago You thought everybody agreed on, now all of a sudden if you believe things that everybody believed 10 years ago, you are a hate-filled person. You're a bigot. You may lose your job. We all know that there are companies you can work for that if you were dared to express what the President of the United States expressed only 10 years ago, You'd lose your job today. That's how rapidly things have changed. Why? And for me, what that has done is that has made me think, how do I communicate a Christian worldview that will stand the test of time to my great-grandchildren? How do I do that? In light of what's coming, in light of the difficulties and the challenges, how do I do that? And should that even be something I care about? Because there are a lot of people like, hey, you're polishing brass on a sinking ship. Well, that's where the fact that I have taught church history down to the ages, down to the ages of my life, that's where that comes in. Because I realize there have been dark, dark times in church history. If I say 1347, aside from you, does anyone know why I would even make reference to the year 1347? What is big about 1347? Anybody? 1347 is when the Black Plague hit Europe. Between 1347 and 1351, It's hard to do exact math because it's not like they had computers and things like that. But there are certain cities in Europe where 70% of the people who were alive on January 1st, 1347 were dead by the end of 1351. In other places it was 50% and get a little bit more rural and it was about 35%. But between a third and a half, and maybe a little bit more, of the entire population of the landmass of Europe died between 1347 and 1351. There were some forms of the plague that they actually theorized could be transmitted by looking at someone. Because there was a certain a certain form of it that could kill you in 12 hours. 12 hours. So the idea was, I just looked at somebody and 12 hours later, you're dead. So they actually thought that maybe there were some forms that were just literally transmitted in that way. Now at that particular point in time, if you were writing books about end times, you'd be doing well. Just think about it. I mean, there is nothing that you could not have convinced folks We are right at the end, and this is it, and this is every plague ever described in the Book of Revelation, right? It'd be pretty easy when half the people around you are dying. But think about what's happened since 1347. Think about Luther. Think about the Reformation. Think about the Puritans. Think about some of the, McShane and some of the incredible Scottish preachers and the revivals that have taken place and Edwards and the first and second great awakenings and just think about the tremendous things that have happened since 1347. So if I had looked around me in 1347, 1349, I would have come to the wrong conclusions as to what God's purposes were in this world and everything else. I would have been wrong because I would have been interpreting scripture in light of what was happening in my particular part of the world at that particular point in time. And so it's real easy for me, I'm Scottish, and Scotsmen tend to be, well, I don't think William Wallace was the most necessarily jovial type guy in the world, if you know what I mean. We tend to be realists. And so I look around and go, man, there could be some really bad stuff coming. And there might be. But the temptation I have to resist is going, yep, OK. Because I already know that people did that in the year 1,000. People did that during the plague, during Justinian's years in the sixth century. And there's been so many times during church history where people have figured this was it. I'm awful glad that they still copied books, that they still continue to sow the seed into the next generations. And that's what I want to try to do. Now, when we talk about a worldview, the reality is, I don't care whether you know that you have a worldview or not, you have one and it determines how you think and it determines the conclusions you come to, what you're going to do with information that's presented to you. Think about, right now, how people can look at the news, and of course it does depend on what news source you're looking at, but people can look at the news, and you know, you may have some folks in your family, and you all sit there and you watch a program. They start talking about it afterwards, and it's like they were watching something completely different than you were. And you're like, how did they come to those conclusions? It's because we have worldviews. And the more aware you are of the form of your worldview and its foundational principles, the more you can examine your own thinking for consistency and truthfulness. The less aware you are of the guiding presuppositions, the guiding assumptions in your thinking, the less you can examine the conclusions you come to, and hence be consistent. And I believe that as Christians, if you're listening to me as a Christian, we are made in the image of God, and we are made to think God's thoughts after Him. To think God's thoughts after Him. What do I mean by that? That's what it means to think rationally, coherently, and logically. God created this world to function in a particular fashion. When you wake up in the morning, you are thankful that gravity is not just simply something that God turns on and turns off depending on what day of the week it is. Our universe functions according to particular laws. And as such, we are invited as his creatures, the only creatures that are described as being in the image of God, to think his thoughts after. That does not mean that we can know everything that God knows or anything, or that God has revealed everything that God knows. But what it does mean is that we should be individuals, Christians especially, should be individuals who seek to think logically and consistently and truthfully about all of life. not just what we consider to be the religious aspect of life. All of life. Why all of life? Well, let's think about it this way. The Christian message is an amazingly crazy message to the world. When you read the New Testament, you know what the New Testament tells us? The New Testament tells us that the Christian message is that the creator of all things, all things, actually entered into his own creation in the person of Jesus Christ, lived in the backwaters of the Roman Empire, never wrote a book, never raised an army, never visited Rome, and yet he was the creator of all things, and died on a Roman cross. As the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, the preaching of the gospel is to them that are perishing, foolishness. We are asking people to believe something that is absolutely insane. And yet here we are, gathered in a warm room, on a Wednesday night, on the other side of the planet, from where all these things took place, speaking a language that did not exist in that day, and yet, the reason this building exists, the reason this church exists, the reason we're here, is because we believe that the events that took place that long ago, that far away, are actually relevant to our lives today. How'd that happen? When you take seriously what the New Testament teaches about Jesus, it is amazing. Jesus said some incredible things. I didn't ask for graphical illustrations in the back, but right before these two verses, what does Jesus say? He gathers his disciples to himself. He's about to ascend back to the presence of the Father. And what does he say? All authority has been given to me in heaven and earth. Do you believe that? Do you believe that? That has incredible and massive implications. And that's, see the therefore? The therefore always points back to why it's therefore. And so that's a connective right there. The reason that we are to go and make disciples of all nations is because all authority has been given to Jesus. We live in a society now where there is a massive authority question. Our founders recognized basic fundamental Christian principles. They may not have all been Christians by any stretch of the imagination. But they designed a system of government that recognized that man has a tendency toward evil. and therefore they diffused power amongst the branches of government. And basically the Constitution is how you reign in the government so that men can remain free. But the assumption was that those free men would then live in accordance with the recognition of the Law of God. John Adams specifically said The Constitution is meant for the governance of a moral and religious people and it is unable to function for any other type of people than that. If he's right, we've got a problem. The point is that our founders recognized that there was a central ordering principle in the reality of God's existence. that gives meaning to life. And that meaning is not given to life by the government. It comes from God. That's why they use that term, inalienable rights. And so, like I said, not all of them were believers, but they were deeply influenced by a worldview that goes like this. Now, let me back up just a second. What kind of worldview is being presented in our universities, and hence our colleges, and hence our high schools, and hence our elementary schools. Think with me if you, graphically in your mind, view all the various fields of human knowledge. And there are so many today. We pride ourselves. I mean, oh goodness. I'm not sure how many thousand times more powerful my phone is than the computers that guided Apollo 11 to the moon and back. But it's thousands and thousands and thousands of times faster and more powerful than the computers that they have. And so we think that because we can stick something like this in our pocket that this somehow makes us significantly smarter than the people who landed on the moon. and certainly much more than the people who went before that. We know so much today, the reality is folks, that there was a day when we considered intelligence to be measured by how broad your knowledge was, not how specialized it was. There was a day when there were people who had knowledge in pretty much all of the fields of human reading and human study. And today, we turn to people who have a deep, deep, deep slice of knowledge that's that wide, that isn't even related this far over, let alone historically or anything else like that. And people like that may be extremely intelligent indeed, but their opinions on things are probably not overly worthwhile at all. They can't connect anything to history, they can't predict them, what their actions are gonna bring about across a broad spectrum, they're actually dangerous and they're the people that we're putting in charge right now, by the way, in passing. All these fields of knowledge now, and in our public education system, how do you put them together? What's the central point? Well there's only one central point that can be had in a non-theistic system where you don't have the God who created all things. The one thing in the middle that's then connected to all the history, and religion, and science, and medicine, and ethics, and morality, and everything that goes with it, all these fields of study, what holds it all together? You. You. It's up to you to relate all of these fields of knowledge And philosophers realized a long time ago that doesn't work. None of us can do that. And yet, is that not central to what we are doing? Is that not central to this new experiment where you get to autonomously determine the very nature of reality itself? I'm old enough to remember when a man named Bruce Jenner won the Olympic decathlon. That was back when the Olympics were actually fun to watch. And, in fact, that was back before something called the Internet and cable TV and all the rest of that kind of stuff, so there wasn't much else to watch anyways. And so everybody watched it and everybody was excited about it. How many of you remember watching Bruce Jenner? Okay, there's a few of you there, alright. We live in a day where he is running for the governor of the state of California as a female. Now, how have we gotten to this point? How have we gotten to the point in a matter literally of a decade of actually thinking that what we used to believe was bigotry and hate and now it's a whole new other way. Well, because we've accepted this idea that what happens between here and here determines reality. And so we're trying to live out this worldview where man is in the center. I think that means that there is an incoming nuclear weapon right now and so I think we all need to get under the fuse and sing Blessed Assurance, because we're about to go down. Actually, I think that's the ringtone that a friend of mine has when his wife calls. So I'm sort of like, look out, whatever you're doing! This is bad timing. Anyways, every time that happens, I say, this is something Spurgeon never had to deal with. So there you go. It's always funny whatever the ringtone is. What was I talking about? So Moses is in the bulrushes. So we are trying to live out and make real the idea that we are in the center and we get to determine and to relate all of knowledge. And we're big enough to do that because of what's right here. And that's why Bruce Jenner can now be called Caitlyn Jenner. I've often wondered, does he have to give back his gold medal? Because that was the men's Olympic decathlon, right? So if he wasn't actually a man, and he was a woman, then should he get the gold for the women's decathlon from back then, and give the gold to the silver? I don't know how any of that works, because it can't work in history. It's only relevant to right now. Because he could change his mind tomorrow, and we all have to go with what he says tomorrow. That's what happens when you put man in the center. It all breaks apart. There can be no consistency from one generation to the next. These days there can't be a consistency from one week to the next. That's why things and truth changes so quickly. Now I'm wondering in light of what's going on right now. If we have to seriously, I mean you can be removed from social media, you can lose your job, there are certain states that have passed laws that you can be penalized, you can be fined because you used the wrong pronouns, which is just utter insanity. To actually change the language itself and expect you to be memorizing pronouns, unbelievable. The attack on language, by the way, very, very important to worldview issues. But I've wondered, in light of what's happening right now, can I just simply identify as a vaccinated person? If Bruce Jenner, under pain of law, has to be called Caitlyn Jenner, though we know in reality what the genetic outcome of any examination of his cells would be, why can't I just identify as a vaccinated person? I can guarantee you the Biden regime will not allow me to do that. Because there is no need for consistency. Without consistency, you cannot communicate any meaningful truth to the next generation. And any society that falls into that is doomed to its own destruction. Well, what's the alternative? The alternative is, you have all these fields of knowledge And in the center, well, put all the fields and all like this, and right down here, put yourself. You're in the midst of all these other things. And from the Christian perspective, right in the center, is the triune God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Notice I did not say simply God. Because, though I don't really have time to develop it this evening, I would argue that a bare theism, a just nebulous idea of a god of some kind, is insufficient to function here. Because what happens is, okay, I'm down here, God's in the center, here's all the fields of knowledge, as I am related properly to Him, as I see myself in light of what He has revealed I am to be, which is found in the world around us, but in specific detail, in what's called special revelation in scripture. And remember, even Adam, before the fall, was dependent upon a word from God. Before the fall, he was dependent upon God to tell him, don't eat that, go ahead and eat that. Even then. So in scripture, there is a revelation of who I am, where I stand in history, what God's purposes are, so as I'm related to Him, and of course from a Christian perspective that means in submission to His truth, having received forgiveness of my sins by faith in Jesus Christ, as I'm related to the triune God, then through the triune God I can have accurate knowledge and relationship to all the other fields of knowledge, because I see them as His creation. And He does not create anything that is purposeless. And so, I am insufficient, if I'm in the center, to put all this stuff together. It will fly apart into chaos, and the chaos we are seeing in our society right now. the chaos we are seeing, every meaningful, good relationship that God has given to us, our society is attacking. What was it last, was it last week or the week before last? When you're on the road you start losing track. It's more like miles than time. But sometime recently, the AMA, the American Medical Association, recommended the removal of any gender identification on birth certificates. Which means, I remember, anybody else remember? I actually got to be in the delivery room for both of my kids. And remember what happened when the birth takes place? What does the doctor do? It's a boy! It's a girl! I'll bet you anything probably already is true in some place like Massachusetts or California or Oregon or Washington or all those places of insanity. I bet it's already either considered wrong or is illegal for the doctor to even say that. What is it? A human offspring. Yeah, but what is it? Well, I think we should give it some time to tell us. What? That's what happens. The most basic, you can't even any longer define or celebrate fatherhood, motherhood, what it means to be a husband, what it means to be a wife. We had a presidential candidate during the Democratic primaries. He would introduce his husband. If you don't feel the utter disintegration of that which held this nation together and which holds humanity together in that, you're missing it. You're not listening. Or you've been listening to the wrong stuff. That's what this whole emphasis on intersectionality is all about. Intersectionality divides everyone from everyone. It eats away at everything that used to unite us and says that you are an absolute victimized individual and you need to maximize your victimization points, basically. And when you think what the end result of that is, it is utter collapse of any society that is infected with this as a disease, because it is a disease. What is the Christian solution? You might say, well, we already tried that. It failed, right? No. No, actually, it was quite successful in many ways. But the reality is, even most in the church came to the point where they lost a daily recognition of some of the key truths of the faith and worldliness came in and eroded the emphasis upon what we would now properly call the Christian worldview. We became embarrassed because of a man named Charles Darwin. We did, didn't we? Everybody in this room knows that if you open your mouth in our society and question the dogma of how mankind came to be mankind, you will be mocked and derided. I know because I was public school educated. In fact, as a young person, I haven't really thought about that much, but I don't have any recollection of knowing anybody in our circles, I was in a fundamentalist context, that was homeschooled. There were some Christian schools, but homeschooling? Never even heard of them. And so I was public schooled, and I was well educated. I was educated back east in Pennsylvania, up through fifth grade, and one thing I will be very, very thankful, they taught me to read. I could, when I came out to Arizona, sixth grade they gave me a test and I was reading college level. They had taught me to read. And I've always been a reader. But still, I had to fight the fight as a person who believed the Bible, all the way through public education. And so I was class valedictorian in my junior high school, class valedictorian in my high school, yeah I was that guy. I was the guy who never got a B, never got an M, I was never late for class. I'm that guy, please don't throw things. I've gotten over most of that. But as a result, I was in the advanced biology classes and things like that. And so I remember in freshman year, sophomore year of high school, I would sit with my biology teacher at lunch, eating those horrific horrific lunch burritos, how in the, was that not torture? Oh my goodness. We just had, some of you, now you're going to lose all respect for me when I say this, but I love taco time. I really do. If you have a taco time here, thank you very much. We don't have any taco times in Arizona. I would weigh 388 pounds if we had taco times in Arizona. Some of you are going, you do. No I don't. Those tacos, the burritos and tacos, oh, those are wonderful. Man, those lunch burritos. In about 1977, oh my goodness, they were horrible, but you had to eat them. And I would sit there with my biology teacher, and he would bring photocopies in from his college-level textbooks. And we were arguing neo-Darwinian genetics and the whole nine yards. So I started early. Then I went to a Christian college, and everybody's going, ah, see, they're in everything. No. I was double major, Bible and biology. Finished all my work for a BS in biology. Took a BA in Bible, unfortunately. But I was department fellow in anatomy and physiology. I was the only creationist in the biology department at my Christian college. And so the battle continued. And I can tell you that I don't think there has been any intellectual revolution that has been more important in the establishment of a secular worldview with man at the center. And since each one of us is too small at the center, you know what ends up happening. You have to get a conglomeration of men at the center called the state. And there will never be any transcendent meaning to life because there is no life after this, because there is no creator. Without a creator, you can put man in the center, but he is insufficient to hold it all together, and so it just becomes, well, we have to do what we can in this life now. That's why we see in our society one of the gravest dangers to any sense of justice in our society, is the confusion of human justice with cosmic justice. We used to believe that there was a day of judgment coming. We have this saying, innocent until proven guilty. You know where that came from, folks? The Bible. It doesn't say those specific words, but the concept is in the Christian scriptures and was given to us because God's law protects the innocent. God's law says you have to have witnesses. Well, someone might get away with something! No one's ever going to get away with anything in God's law, because there's a day of judgment coming. But they might get away with it in this life. Yes, they might. But this life is very short. And God has a long memory. And there will never be anything that anyone gets away with because the Day of Judgment is coming. Well, guess what? Darwin got rid of the Day of Judgment. Darwin got rid of the Day of Judgment. So now, we have to have justice. Now! And if that means you have to throw 20 innocent people in prison, to make sure to get the one who did something bad, then you do it. There are deep implications for abandonment of the Christian world. Deep implications. Darwin got rid of the one thing that kept human philosophy and human thought from flying out into the destructiveness of what we're seeing today. And that was the idea that life has to have a creator. There is a creator and therefore there is meaning that is assigned by the creator that we cannot change. Once you get rid of him, we get to define all the meanings ourselves. That means we get to define all the value ourselves. And that's why communism in the last century killed more than 120 million human beings because communism said there is no God. And so the state gets to determine what life is worth. And if you decide that this people group here doesn't have value, they're gone. Go ahead and kill them, go ahead and starve them. Let me ask, and again, unfair. How many of you have ever heard of the Haladomor? Haladomor. Anyone? Haladomor? The Haladomor was the about three year period of time. The 19... early 30s, I think? I should have that number. I'm going to make sure I get that memorized. Under Stalin, where Stalin purposefully starved to death around somewhere, it's hard to, between 3 and 7 million Ukrainians. Purposefully. They lived in a land filled with food, but Stalin took it all from them to prop up things elsewhere because the communist economic system doesn't actually work. Don't tell that to anybody attending a university today in the United States, they'd think it's great. But it doesn't work. He purposely killed them. He knew what he was doing. It was intentional. He hid it from the world. The Ukrainians have not forgotten, by the way. They remember. This was perfectly consistent with a secular worldview. Stalin does not have to worry about, when he dies, being judged. And those particular human beings were in the way of his greater purpose of the socialist utopia. That's what's happening in China. You have the Uyghur Muslims, you have Christians. They are in the way of the greater fulfillment. So you kill them. You disappear them. You put them in camps and you cause them to sit there and listen to the praise of the state, and if they fall asleep, you take them out and shoot them in the head. That's what's going on right now, this very moment in Chinese communist camps. By the way, they are concerned about their soldiers becoming too, not masculine enough, as are the Russians, while we are utterly decimating our military. I don't think they'll have to fire a shot. I think they already pretty much own things, but there is a reason for all of this. What's the Christian answer? It's a radical one, but it's one that we have been proclaiming for a long time. Remember I said in the center is the triune God. The God who has revealed himself in history. The God who has prophesied The coming of the Messiah. One who would be called what? Wonderful Counselor. Mighty God. Everlasting Father, or Father Returned, the one who creates all things. And what else? Prince of Peace. And on His shoulders is the government. All authority given to Him, He is actually Lord. and because of his revelation, we can have a true knowledge of who God is, who we are, and what it means to love one's neighbor. And there is a day of judgment. One of Jesus' strongest teachings was that because he is who he is, he will be the one to judge. In fact, Was I actually? No, no. I was a little over a year ago. I was driving, because again, I haven't flown since the craziness hit. I was driving back to a church that I've spoken at. This is the 20th year in a row. First weekend of December at one particular church in St. Charles, Missouri. I was listening to a lecture And I heard someone talking about a passage of scripture that I've dealt with a million times before, Acts chapter 17. Paul at the Areopagus in Athens, and his message to the Greeks. And when he used the term anastasis, which in Greek is resurrection, they shut him down, because they were dualists, and they thought that salvation was getting out of his physical body, not raising his physical body back from the dead. They found that to be utter foolishness, and so they shut him down. All of a sudden, listening to someone else talk about it, I realized something. When Paul mentioned the resurrection, he said that the resurrection was actually a proof of something else. But what? I thought everything was supposed to be a proof of the resurrection. No. He raised Jesus from the dead to demonstrate to all people that he would judge by him. The day of judgment is what is proved by the resurrection. How important is it for us Christians that there is a day of judgment? See how often it appears in the New Testament Scriptures. It's repeated over and over and over again. Jesus taught he gets to judge because he's the God-man. Who would be a better judge than one who lived in perfect obedience to the Father, and yet has knowledge of every man's heart? He will judge perfectly. And so when you have an empty tomb, out of which came the judge who will judge rightly. Now you can say to every man, woman, and child of every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, here is God's will. Here is what it means to love God. Here is what it means to love neighbor. And once you have experienced forgiveness yourself, then you can forgive others. The Christian message meets all the needs of the actual human heart. Not the human heart that has been dehumanized. Isn't it amazing? Humanism is the most dehumanizing thing man's ever come up with. When you remove from man the fact that he is made in the image of God and has transcendent value, and turn him into nothing but a fizzing bag of chemicals, that when he dies has no further value, That is the most dehumanizing thing ever. And yet that is what now we are turning to in our society. And how do you get anyone to accept all that? It's called the gospel. The power of God and the salvation. That's what changes hearts and minds. And it places in the center the one triune God who can make sense of it all. I pray that God will bring a great revival in our land because it is the only hope our land has. It is the only hope this nation and this world has, is that God would open hearts and minds to understand his truth. Now, I mentioned that even though it is very warm, that we would take a few moments if you'd like to have some questions, some interaction. We can do that, or you all may be sitting there going, finally, it's done, we can get out of here. It's up to you. So there's a few members of my family that have come out and said that they are gay. And it's been very difficult for me to share with them God's viewpoint on that because I don't want to scare them away. I don't want to make them feel like I don't have understanding. I sometimes think that the approach is to do what God has taught us to love our neighbor, to try to give them the knowledge of God, hopefully for them to Well, the first question I would have for you is do they know what the scriptures teach about the subject? Okay, second question. When you say you know what the scriptures teach, this is a whole other area. It's very much related because the LGBTQ movement is a fundamental denial of God's right to determine human sexuality, to determine who we are. It's our saying, we get to do that, not you. And so the church was caught somewhat flat-footed by this 20 years ago. I wrote a book in 2001 called The Same-Sex Controversy. I'm not sure if you've seen it, but it might be helpful to you. And one of the things we said in there was it's one thing to respond to the fact that there are literally hundreds of books out now. that will tell you that the Bible says nothing about this subject, that you're wrong, and you're thinking that it's something that should be avoided, and that it's sinful. There's a movie coming out called 1946. It's going to be all over the place. It's just filled with the most absurd linguistic errors. I've challenged the people putting it together in the debate, but they won't even respond to my emails. But there's just all sorts of stuff already in YouTube and stuff like that. Anybody who wants to disbelieve can find something to do that. It's one thing to be able to defend what the scriptures say in Leviticus 18 and 20. in Genesis 18 and 19, Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, and 1 Timothy 1. I've done extensive discussions. If you want to really dive into the original languages and the history, and I mean, we're talking, I've done five, six hour long responses to homosexual apologists and things like that going in depth. But where we were caught short was we Generally, these are subjects you didn't talk about in polite company. And so a truly biblical positive doctrine of maleness and femaleness and family and Jesus' teaching in Matthew chapter 19 that God made us male and female and that this is good and that being a husband is good and being a mother is good and wife is all these, that positive element is frequently what's missing. So in approaching family members, the first thing you do need to find out is, have they been deceived that the scriptures do not, in fact, warn them that this is a self-destructive behavior? Because their entire church is dedicated to deceiving people about that. I mean, the Metropolitan Church, the Hawaiian Yards, there's all sorts. a major quote-unquote evangelical figure just came out last week. Jonathan Merritt. Now everybody knew that Jonathan Merritt wasn't homosexual, but Big Eva had covered that over because his father was a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. And so he came out himself last week and said, well yeah, actually I am. And all sorts of people are like, yeah, alright, gift of God, etc. So there's a lot of that out there. And so you have to find out, have they been exposed to that? And if they have, then you've got to... There's a difference between being gentle and loving, and avoiding the tough conversations. And in our day, people's feelings have been turned into the most important issue. Well, it's an overused illustration, but it's a good one. If you go to the doctor and you get a blood test, and the blood test comes back clearly indicative of the presence of cancer, the doctor had better have enough guts to put up with your emotional response to being told you have cancer, because you need to know you have cancer. And the problem is, when it comes to issues like this, we invest in the blood test a far higher authority than we invest in what God has said in His Word. In the very scriptures that Jesus, who rose from the dead, said were God speaking. And so we're afraid because, well, it's just your opinion. And we've been hit with this so many times that we actually start believing it. That's just your opinion. About four or five years ago, I was on the Dr. Drew show, which doesn't exist anymore. Don't blame me. And on transgenderism. And during the course of the show, I quoted Matthew chapter 19, where Jesus said, from the beginning, the Creator made them male and female. And one of Dr. Drew's sidekicks said, well that's just one person's opinion, written in an ancient scripture. And my response to him was, the problem is, the words that I'm quoting to you, or from a man who prophesied his own death, burial, resurrection, then he died and rose from the dead. And when you can do that, then your opinion can be equal to his. So that emotional aspect, I understand it, we are told that people's emotions are the greatest standard of truth. They're not. If we love, we have to get past what our society has done to try to shut down our ability to communicate. So, if you haven't seen the same-sex controversy, I've done a number of debates on these issues. It's funny, I can't get any of the leading American evangelical promoters of homosexuality to debate any longer, but over the past About five years, I did two debates in Johannesburg, South Africa with Dr. Graham Codrington, who's a very well-known person there, a very good speaker. In fact, that's what he does globally, is he's a speaker. And you can find those on YouTube still, thankfully. And we debated those issues at that time. It might be helpful to hear both sides that way. Anyone else? Yes, sir. They were playing the seeds for years before that. But it's really catching on now. It is. And I guess my question is, when you think of the number of Christians that there are, or the far right, and then all the neutral people, whether they're atheists or agnostic or whatever, the bulk of what I would think is the average American, the Christians, the far right, the middle of the road people, that quantity of people seems to be a larger number than the extremists on the far left that are promoting these issues that are catching on like wildfire. And so I'm perplexed and frustrated that Most of America that doesn't agree with the far left is sitting back and doing nothing and letting this take over on the news and in Congress and the Senate and different political levels. And I guess I'm just as guilty as anybody else, although I'm saying something right now, is that nobody seems to be doing anything and saying this is really wrong and we're not going to tolerate it in America. people feel that there will be- from a Christian I've been trying to apply Romans chapter 1, the most insightful text on the behavior and thinking of man that's ever been written, in my opinion. I've been trying to apply Romans chapter 1 to what's going on in our land and our world, especially over the past 18 months or so. As a result, over a year ago, I was saying that this was going to be used to fundamentally change our society, that we would have vaccine passports. And I had people telling me I needed to buy a tinfoil hat, that I was crazy, I was insane. Nailed it. And it's not because I'm some prophet, I'm just simply taking Romans 1 and going, once you give people power like this, what are they going to do? And what is their goal? And the fact is, I didn't know this, but I had a friend who did know this. Starting in 2016, a friend of mine, his name is Michael O'Fallon, you can see his stuff, in fact he's been doing some really important stuff with an atheist philosopher and academic, James Lindsay, taking apart all this stuff and explaining where it came from academically and all the rest of that stuff. look him up, great discourses on YouTube and stuff. Anyway, he started telling me in 2016 that something called the Great Reset was coming. And in 2017, he specifically told me, James, they will use a medical emergency and a claim of public safety to utterly undo the Constitution of the United States. 2017. And I'm looking at him going, I just don't see it. He was right. So how did he know these things? Because people have been writing books about it and doing seminars about it since the late 2000s. And he ran an organization that did cruises for some of these groups, but he was one of the weirdos who actually sat in on the seminars and listened. So we heard him talking about it. He knew what their plans were. and they're doing it. And the very people right now in charge of coordinating Google and Facebook and taking videos down and the whole, everything we're seeing happening, he knows those people by name. He sat in the same room with them. I didn't really believe him at first. Now, why does it feel like we're all sitting around like bumps in a log? As a Christian, I feel like I'm in two different worlds. I feel like I'm in two different worlds. I feel schizophrenic. I wake up in the morning and I want to continue to do my life. I'm a cyclist. I love cycling. I do most of my study on the back of a bike. I'm not talking about a motorcycle. I'm talking about the one James Power bike. You know what I mean? So much so that I have a bike set up Ask Gene, in my fifth wheel, on a trainer. That's one of the reasons I did this. It doesn't matter what the weather is outside, I can still get on my bike and I can do my training. Even if I have to do it indoors. I don't want to give that up. I've ridden over 145,000 miles on a bike. And so I still do that. Part of it is because everybody in my family dies of heart stuff and so I figure this is the best thing I can do. And so I want to continue going to church and I want to make plans for the next year but at the same time I'm looking at what's going on and there are literally people in my country that want me thrown in a gulag because I won't join a particular experimental genetic, global genetic experiment. And the people in charge are agreeing. And so we feel like we're caught between two worlds. We see the possibilities, but you get up in the morning and there's no one breaking down your door yet, and so you just go, it's gonna be alright. And part of me has just had to think, I'm gonna, okay. I don't know if everyone here is a Christian. Listen, it's amazing to me, at the beginning I didn't just, mentioned to you and should have. I am a pastor. I've been a pastor for many, many years. I'm a pastor of Apologia Church and currently meeting in Mesa, Arizona. So I'm going to preach for a second. When God wants to destroy a nation, He makes the people content with what they have. And they just continue walking toward destruction. He did this to Israel over and over again. And it just seems to me that most people are far more concerned about the 401K than their great-grandchildren. And so it just seems to me, I see so many of my fellow Christians and fellow Americans who are so short-sighted. All they are concerned about is me, me, me, my house, my car, my retirement fund. As long as I can get out of this world in one piece, I'm not really concerned about what's going to come after me. That's not what got this nation founded. Men who are willing to give it all up, that's what got this nation founded. And so when I look at this nation and I go, we've profaned marriage, we murder unborn children in a day where we know more about the humanity of the unborn child than any generation that's ever existed before us. We have blood on our hands. The news just came out that the United States government knowingly has been using our tax money to harvest aborted fetuses for experimentation with full knowledge of the United States government, even during the Trump years. And I just go, wow, God owes an apology to Sodom and Gomorrah. And so if God wants to destroy any nation that has blood dripping off of its hands, he can do so justly. He can do so justly. And the best way to do that is just simply a stupor. When I see pictures of high-ranking military officials, men in dresses, I know we've been given over. One thing that can change that is a massive revival. A massive revival. So we can see it, but we'll never organize or do anything about it if we're still primarily focused upon our own satisfaction, our own houses, our own whatever. And I think that's where most of us are. This is my personal opinion. I take it for what it's worth. I take it for what it's worth. I don't like saying that, but there you go. Okay, just one more because it is warm in here. Yes, sir. My good old friend, Matt. Known each other since, man, you were knee-high to a grasshopper, weren't you, Matt? This is good to see you. It is. It is good. Remember that? Oh, never mind. Actually, Matt and I have never met before. We're having to put up somebody else's expense, but anyhow. We talked a little bit about Christian worldview. And one of the things that is dear to my heart is helping my children to understand these things. So we found Albert Mueller seems to have a pretty lean view. He talks a lot about Christian worldview. He does? So we use that for our own benefit. We just haven't listened to it. But I'm always a little frustrated because that's the only thing I found It's similar to that, where it's actually going through the things that... Current events within the light of the Christian world. Yeah, with a somewhat confessional... you know, understanding of things, moral law, et cetera. I just, I haven't found a whole lot. And I was wondering, there's gotta be other people doing this. So I'm wondering, who else, who else would be involved? Well, I certainly do. The problem is, the briefing is rarely more than 24 minutes long. And my dividing lines are a lot longer than that. So that's part of it. We're talking little kids. Yeah, well even you have to explain what Al is saying. He uses a fairly advanced vocabulary with the briefing, but I know Doug Wilson does the same thing with Blog and Mayblog, if you've not been listening to that. Those are two things that I listen to all the time. I catch all of those. Obviously Moeller doesn't do it all year round, but anyway. And I would suggest that Canon Press and Ezra Institute, Canon Press and Ezra Institute, both would be organizations that are definitely seeking to address those things. For example, and open disclosure here, I am a newly minted fellow in the Ezra Institute, so I'm somewhat biased there, but Dr. Joseph Boot is the head of the Ezra Institute up in Canada. Thankfully he hasn't been thrown in prison yet, but that could happen any time. He has a book coming out. I've read it. I need to get my endorsement on it as quick as possible. But he has a book coming out on the relationship of Christ and the state that's just mind-bendingly good. He goes into stuff I didn't go into tonight, like transhumanism. Anybody heard of transhumanism? Okay, he goes into a whole discussion of transhumanism and where that's going and stuff like that. And so Ezra Institute puts out books, Canepress puts out books, and Canepress puts out a lot of homeschooling stuff that would have all sorts of worldview stuff. So they would probably be able to help you out there. Okay? All right. I don't want you to feel badly back there about the red alert sound. I really don't. You look so mortified. Whenever it happens, everyone can hear it, so I might as well have some fun with it. Because people are digging through their purses, and where's the off button? Because I've had that happen to me too. I don't want you to feel bad. I appreciate you're back there. And by the way, I ran Sound. That is the most thankless job on the planet. Because if you do it right, nobody knows you even exist. You do one thing wrong and everybody knows right where to look. And I ran sound at the Southern Baptist Church at 20,000 members. We can only find 7,000 on any given Sunday. But the worship center seated between 4,500 and 5,000, 250 voice choir, full orchestra. And I had to run sound for that. Again, thankless job. Absolutely thankless job. That's the best way to drive somebody out of the Christian faith I can ever imagine. So thank you very, very much for having me. a joy to meet with you. I hope that you are encouraged. I hope you're cause to think about some of these things. And pray for us. As I mentioned, I'm going up to Moscow, Idaho, which is where Canon Press is. Gonna be recording a bunch of stuff with them on these issues, interestingly enough, starting tomorrow. I have to get up there by noon, and we start at 1.30. And so, prayers for safe travels. and protection from, there is a cadre of semi-truck drivers that secretly want to drive NASCAR. They really do and they're on the roads and I keep meeting them in construction zones. So protection from that particular group of people would be great. Thank you very very much for your attention. Thank you, James. My wife is back there frantically doing this because I spaced it. We're going to have a couple of baskets if you would like to donate tonight to James' ministry. He said give him an hour and food and he was fine. He didn't ask for it. Taco time. Taco time. And I think Gene took care of that. What a wonderful blessing it is to have somebody to come in and share with us what he did tonight and just freely. And so if you, the Lord, would enable you to give something back, I know he'd be blessed and we will pray for him as he travels. Your website is AOMIN.org. So if you'd like to stay connected with James that way. I don't know how anybody could possibly read everything you have on that front page. Because you give enough to tease you into wanting to read more, and then you click on the headline and there's more and more. By the time you finish, I don't have time to read anymore. It's all good stuff. It is good stuff. Alright, let's pray. Lord, we thank you for James White being here with us tonight. And we thank you for the way he has stirred our thinking. That you have stirred our thinking through him. Lord, help us to be people who cling tightly to your word, who are focused on the truth that you have made available to us, that we would not be distracted by the flashes and the booms and the voices of fear and doom around us but Lord we would be focused solely on the truth that you give to us because your word gives us hope as he mentioned Lord your church has been through much throughout generations and your church will be victorious through it all and so help us to hold on to that truth and to remember Lord as James mentioned there will be a day and we long Lord to be on that day to hear you say well done. So thank you again. We pray for James as he travels with his fifth wheel that you would guard him, protect him from those crazy truckers that want to be NASCAR drivers. And we're hoping to get to Moscow tomorrow in time to be effective and fruitful in his ministry there. So we give you this evening and thank you again in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay. but I have to share with you that I'm here because they found me. I can't believe it. I know.