We Can’t Sleep Our Way Through Another Revolution

Friends, we cannot afford to sleep our way through another revolution. Today is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome, friends, to the line of fire.

This is Michael Brown, absolutely delighted to be with you. I'm not taking calls today, but I am going to give you a special number that you can call, just you won't be live on the radio. So I won't be taking live calls today. I have prerecorded this broadcast to coincide with time to get away and seek the face of God.

So this entire week, all the broadcasts Monday through Friday are not live, but they are, I believe, especially relevant, especially important. And they have been prerecorded to give me this time away, seeking the face of God, really spending time with Him as we come to the end of this tumultuous year and get ready for 2021. So sit back, take this in. If you're listening, if you're watching, I believe your hearts will be stirred. Now, if our ministry has been a blessing to you this year or over the years, if you'd like to share a short testimony, it's always great for our team to hear that. It's great for others to know.

It's encouraging for me as well. But if the ministry has been a real blessing to you, maybe a godsend at a key time in your life, here's a number to call, 1-800-618-8480. And this is not to leave questions. This is not a question line, okay? But if you have a testimony, maybe two minutes, three minutes max, go ahead and leave that. Or if you want to challenge me on something, quite the opposite of a testimony, if you differ with me, if you want to give me a piece of your mind, maybe you're one of those that attacks us on social media, by all means, go ahead and leave me a piece of your mind. Again, 1-800-618-8480, not the line to leave questions.

If you have questions, you can call in any day that we're live, or you can write to us via the website, AskDrBrown, askdrbrown.org. All right, I'm going to be sharing some contents from the new edition of my book, Revolution, an Urgent Call to a Holy Uprising. Whenever I use the word revolution, which you hear day in, day out on this radio broadcast, is I am introduced as your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. I always want to qualify when I talk about it, teach it, that we're not talking about earthy revolution, violent revolution, physical revolution. We're not talking about guns, and bombs, and knives. We're not talking about protests, marches down city blocks, and setting buildings on fire.

All right? We're not talking about any of that. We're talking about a spiritual revolution that becomes a cultural revolution because it's a moral revolution. We're talking about overcoming evil with good. We're talking about overcoming hatred with love.

We're talking about overcoming lies with truth. We're talking about overcoming the power of the world by the power of the spirit. It's the revolution Jesus talked about when he taught us to pray for God's kingdom to come and God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. That's what we're ultimately contending for and looking for the day to usher in the return of Jesus, where he sets up his glorious kingdom here on the earth. Right now, our calling is to go and advance that kingdom through the gospel, and then Jesus will return and establish his kingdom. And at that time, we will have a theocracy with King Jesus, King Yeshua ruling and reigning out of Jerusalem.

That's when that will happen. We are not looking to take over the world. We are looking to go and make disciples.

We are looking to go in the authority Yeshua gave us and to go and make disciples and set captives free. Hey, every revolutionary movement is a movement of liberation. And say the communist revolution had the theme workers of all nations unite. We have nothing to lose but our chains. So we're in bondage to the upper class. We're in bondage to this capitalistic system. We're in bondage to this destructive way of life that takes our earnings and other people use them and we're being exploited. We need our freedom.

That's the mentality. And of course, communist revolution brought massive suffering and bloodshed with it. You know, the whole counterculture revolution of the 60s, man, we want to be free, cast off the shackles of the older generation, cast off the expectations of the older generation, cast off the flesh in terms of limitations. Just do whatever we want to do.

Break the laws. And of course, it brought bondage. It claimed liberty, but it brought bondage. The revolution that Jesus brought to the earth brings liberty, sets captives free, delivers people from bondage. And that's a theme he brings right at the beginning of his ministry, his first public message in Nazareth in Luke, the fourth chapter. What's he preaching? That the Spirit's on him and he's been anointed to preach freedom and liberty to the captives, to set them free, to bring good news. So this is fundamental to our message that it's a revolutionary message that sets people free from the bondage of sin and now aligns them with a different kingdom and a different Lord, which is why the gospel brings so much upheaval. When you go into a city or town and the gospel is preached, whether it's a Hindu city or a Muslim city or an atheist stronghold or a drug cartel base, the gospel is going to be disruptive because it turns people's hearts away from the earthly kingdom to the kingdom of God.

And there's a loyalty change. And that's why in Acts 17, the early disciples were accused of turning the world upside down. They were not troublemakers.

They were peacemakers. And yet their message was a direct threat to the kings of this age. What happens in Acts 19? There's a riot in this city. There are protests because through the ministry of Paul, the gospel is going forth with such power and people are being delivered from demons and people are being saved and healed. Well, now the populace is not as interested in buying idols.

And the idol business takes a hit. When the kingdom of God advances, good business for the kingdom of God is bad business for the kingdom of Satan. That's the revolution I'm talking about, friends. That's the change I'm talking about. That's the transformation that I'm emphasizing here. And Jesus gives us these radical principles like bless those who curse you.

Pray for those who despitefully use you. He turns things upside down. It's not the violent and the strong that take the earth, but the meek that inherit the earth. Things get turned upside down with the kingdom of God. The message of Jesus is a revolutionary message, but friends, there are revolutions that take place in our culture.

And if we are not alert to them, if we if we let them happen on our watch, the changes will be so profound that the freedoms that we enjoy or the standards that we're used to will not be there for the next generation. I want to read a little bit to you from my book, Revolution, an Urgent Call to a Holy Uprising. And I'm going to be reading from Chapter three.

All right. If you're watching, we'll put some of the text up and then I'll be commenting on it as well. Chapter three of the new edition of Revolution is entitled We Cannot Afford to Sleep Our Way Through Another Revolution. And I start with some opening quotes.

The first one is from July 1967. William Ward Eyre preaching to combat the present revolution in the journal Bibliotheca Sacra. And he says, If the Lord tarries young men now preparing for the ministry will be preaching for at least 20 years in the most complex revolutionary period that has been seen in modern times. This revolution is not like the many political upsets of Europe and South America. Today's arising is world revolution. He recognized in 1967 the revolutionary times in which we were living and in which this next generation would be living. Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, in his book Revolution Now 1969.

Look at what he said. We live in the most revolutionary period of human history. Social band-aids and reform antiseptics give little hope for a cure or even an improvement. A revolution is needed. You can experience this revolution.

In fact, you can help bring it to pass. 1969. And for him, of course, that was being born again, giving your life to the Lord and being used in a revolutionary way. And then Tom Skinner, Evangelist Tom Skinner, in his book Words of Revolution, 1970. He said, I'm convinced America is at her crisis hour. Revolution is inevitable. It's just a matter of which faction is going to prove strongest and will win in the end. He said, I believe most Americans look at this 1970.

I believe most Americans are so apathetic that they will just sit back and go to whoever wins the struggle. A couple more opening quotes from the beginning of this chapter. First Chronicles, chapter 12, beginning in verse 22, and then we'll read verses 22, 23, and then verse 32. Day after day, men came to help David until he had a great army, like the army of God. These are the numbers of the men armed for battle who came to David at Hebron to turn Saul's kingdom over to him, as the Lord had said. It lists one after another, warriors and well-armed and skilled in battle. But then look at this, from Issachar, men who understood the times and knew what Israel should do, to enter chiefs with all their relatives under their command.

So in the heart of David's army, all right, men, not just mighty warriors, soldiers, well-trained people, well-armed, but also, also men who understood the times and knew what Israel should do. You're getting the theme here, understanding the times, recognizing the day in which we live. Then look at this, the Russian sociologist and Harvard professor, Paterium Surikhan, in his book, The American Sex Revolution, 1956, 1956. He said, what used to be considered morally reprehensible is now recommended as a positive value. What was once called demoralization is now styled moral progress and a new freedom, 1956. And then Allen Ginsberg, who was one of the hippie leaders, highly influential in terms of being a beat poet and, you know, the beat, we read a beat poet and then into Buddhism and Hinduism and flagrantly openly gay. So quite a radical in the sixties. In 1958, he was dialoguing with a conservative leader and they were going back and forth. And at the end, he said, angrily, as I understand, stood up as he was leaving and said, we'll get you through your children. Nineteen fifty eight.

All right. I'm going to get more into that chapter in a moment, but let's step back and consider this. You have shifts already taking place in the fifties, but they're more subtle. You have a thought radical like Allen Ginsberg, 1958, representing a very, very small minority of kind of these West Coast radicals or New York radicals or and he's already seeing we're going to get you through your children.

We're we're we're going to undermine your values by reaching your children. And then it begins to grow in the 60s. It begins to explode in the late 60s.

Before you know it, we are in the midst of a full blown counterculture revolution. I lived through it. I was I was part of it, although on the younger end, born in fifty five by Mitzvahed in sixty eight at the age of 13. That's when I saw my first rock concert, Jimi Hendrix and concert.

And then after that, Janis Joplin and just the whole rock scene and want to be part of that, got my blood, became a heavy drug user for a couple of years before I get radically saved. But there was something sweeping the culture. There was something happening, a radical cultural shift.

And for the most part, for the most part, friends, the church slept its way through a massive counterculture revolution. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome back, friends, to a very special broadcast here on the line of fire.

As I share my heart with urgency and passion, saying we can't afford to sleep our way through another revolution. Psychologist David Myers pointed this out about 20 years ago. I've quoted it many times. He said if you fell asleep in the year 1960 and you woke up in the year 2000, you'd wake up to the divorce rate doubled. Teen suicide would be up three times. Reported violent crime of four times. Prison population up five times. Children born out of wedlock up six times.

People living together out of wedlock up seven times. Other things, you know, soaring rates of depression and other major, major shifts in our society. And much of it, much of the change came in the 60s and then accelerated and expanded through the 70s. And before you know it, everything was different. I have taught on revolution as a theme in our ministry school for years. Now our school is completely online.

If you want to find out more, go to fireschoolofministry.com. But as I taught in revolution over the years and we talk about what happened in the culture through history, then talking about the revolutionary message of Jesus and how the gospel could bring about radical cultural change as we're changed and we impact the culture around us. I'll go through the 60s. I'll go through the stats. I'll go through the information. I'll go through the assassinations and the Vietnam war and the civil rights movement and the positives and the negatives, but mainly the negatives because there weren't that many positives that happened in terms of national change. I'll go through all of that and then teaching a class and your students are listening, mainly college age, taking this in. And I said, now let me illustrate it for you.

And I'll begin showing the Beatles in 64 on Ed Sullivan's show. They seem so innocent, you know, the jacket and tie and their hair. I mean, it was long then. We thought it's like, what? This sounds hokey.

And then just go a progression. A few years later, Monterey Pop and The Who smashing their equipment there and Jimi Hendrix setting his guitar on fire. And then, you know, two years after that and you've got Woodstock and think, what is five years? And so for just three years, just dramatic, dramatic shift in the culture. How did it happen?

How did it happen so quickly? And I'll tell the students sometimes they're broken and in tears as they watch this and see how a culture shifted kind of on a dime. I'll say, you know, the the girls with the funny hairdos and the dresses and the big glasses that were screaming as the Beatles were playing, you know, screaming the Beatles, you know, they're in the audience of Ed Sullivan. I said, they're the ones five years later with, you know, totally different hairdos and high and sleeping around in Woodstock, the same people.

It's not like another generation came. I remember I had I had not been to see my dentist, the dentist I went to as a boy. I had not been to see him for some time. And so it was the time when my hair was growing on. So, again, this is between the ages of 14 and 16.

So I had not been there. Now I'm playing drums. I'm cool. I'm this drug user. I'm even selling drugs, man.

I'm really cool. You know, this whole bit to see deeply deceived. And I walk into the dentist's office and the receptionist there hadn't seen me in like a couple of years. And she burst out laughing because suddenly here's this kid that looks like an ugly woman, you know, ugly young woman. That's what Nancy saw.

Picture me years later. I was laughing at it. I said, you're laughing because I look like a woman. She said, I'm laughing because you look like an ugly woman. This lady hadn't seen me. And I walk in. So they realize, oh, maybe I don't look that cool to everybody, but I really am cool.

And I use drugs. You know, it's just how did this shift happen so quickly? It's just something was in the air. And we're, of course, one hundred percent responsible for evil deeds. But the bottom line is that for the most part, the church didn't recognize what was happening as it was happening. The church recognized rebellion and the evil that was taking place in the sexual revolution and the radical movements that were being birthed and the interest in the Eastern religion. But the church didn't realize, number one, behind a lot of that was a spiritual search, a spiritual looking for more, looking for God on the one hand.

And on the other hand, people just saying, hey, we're out of here any minute. Jesus is coming soon. This is the final apostasy. It's over. I remember hearing that when I got saved. That's what everyone was saying.

Yeah, this is the proof. It's over. Look at this is the final rebellion and final apostasy scripture speaks about and the last days and and so on. The prophecies have all lined up. So the church basically missed the revolution.

All right. Let me let me share some of what I wrote in my book, Revolution, an Urgent Call to a Holy Uprising. And I want to read some excerpts from Chapter three of the book, which is entitled We Cannot Afford to Sleep Our Way Through Another Revolution. America experienced a cultural revolution in the 1960s, and the effects of that revolution have been felt until this day. Now, 2020, we're in the midst of yet another nation shaping cultural revolution. I warn you, change can happen quickly. The country you enjoyed last year may not exist next year.

Just ask anyone who saw it happen before. As Roger Kimball observed, the age of Aquarius did not end when the last electric guitar was unplugged at Woodstock. It lives on in our values and habits and our tastes, pleasures and aspirations. It lives on, especially in our educational, cultural institutions and in the degraded pop culture that permeates our lives like a corrosive fog. Although sometimes tempting to ignore it, we are living in the aftermath of a momentous social and moral assault. Friends, he wrote this over 20 years ago. And his point was that the radical elements of the 60s now became the establishment, became the professors and the media leaders and the political leaders and so on. So to buttress his position, Kimball called upon several other authors to testify to the great changes that took place in our nation from the 1960s on into the 1970s. According to David Frum, we are the heirs of the most total social transformation that the United States has lived through since the coming of industrialism, a transformation, a revolution that is not ending yet.

All these writers wrote this over 20 years ago. Philosopher Paul Oscar Kristeller writing in 1991 stated, we have witnessed what amounts to a cultural revolution comparable to the one in China, if not worse. And whereas the Chinese have to some extent overcome their cultural revolution, I see many signs that ours is getting worse all the time.

1991, he wrote this. And no indication that it will be overcome in the foreseeable future. And then Judge Robert Bork and his important work slouching towards Gomorrah, he claimed that, quote, the 60s may be seen in the universities as a mini French revolution that seemed to fail, but did not. The radicals were not defeated by conservative or traditionally liberal opposition, but by their own graduation from the universities.

And theirs was merely a temporary, excuse me, a temporary defeat. They and their ideology are all around us now. So these authors are saying the radical elements of public revolutionary stuff and the demonstrations that may be past, but the folks just went on to other areas of life now and are having a more profound impact on the society. So what this means in practical terms, this is what I wrote in the year 2000. 2000 is that our public school teachers can hand out condoms, but not gospel tracts. I wrote this in 2000, friends. That homosexuals have more right to freedom of expression in the classroom than do evangelical Christians.

The churches have to encourage believing teenagers to remain virgins until marriage. That by the mid 1990s, the majority of women giving birth to their first born children conceive those children out of wedlock. That's by the mid 1990s, friends. That we have moved from Leave It to Beaver to Melrose Place and from Mike Douglas remembers daily TV talk show, the TV to Jerry Springer.

That's just the tip of the iceberg and friends. Again, I wrote this 20 years ago. I've conducted impromptu surveys while speaking throughout America asking all those 50 years old or more to stand up and respond to two questions today in 2020, I'd ask the question of people at least 65 years old. First, when you were in high school, did you know of anyone your age who either tried to commit suicide or actually committed suicide? Invariably, just a few hands go up. In some cases, not one hand is raised.

Second, when you were in high school, did you know of any girls your age who either had a child out of wedlock or had an abortion? In this case, a few more hands go up, but it's still a small portion of those standing. I then repeat this with young people between the ages of 15 and 19. Without fail, when I put the same questions to them, almost every hand is raised in response.

Many times, every single hand is raised. And many of these kids are church kids, educated in Christian schools or even homeschool. What a different world they're being raised in and what a changed society that confronts them at every turn in life.

Yet this is the only society they've ever known. And what makes my unofficial survey all the more striking is that the few in the older crowd who raised their hands did so because they knew of one person in their entire school who fit the description, whereas many of the teens know of numerous people who fit the description. A revolution did make an impact on our society over 50 years ago, and the results of it are undeniable. The year 1968 in particular was a turning point, not only in America, but also around the globe.

It was in 1968 that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. Hippie and Yippie activists rocked Chicago during the Democratic Convention. Bloody riots broke out in inner cities and student protests erupted on college campuses, often producing dramatic change. In fact, at the beginning of 1968, some secular universities had curfews and dress codes.

By the end of the year, those rules were gone, a thing of the past, almost unthinkable in today's society. One of my friends living in Israel today, a Jewish believer saved in the early 1970s, told me that when he first attended college in the fall of 1967, almost all the young men were in fraternities and hardly any of them had long hair or took drugs. One year later, in the fall of 1968, things had changed dramatically. Everywhere he looked, young men were growing their hair long, doing drugs, and dropping out of fraternities. What a change one year had wrought. A pastor who grew up in small town America told me that he and his teenage friends used to hang out together and get drunk. Then he said, it seemed as if over the course of one week in 1969, because it took a little longer for the cultural changes to hit small towns, all his friends stopped getting drunk and started getting high.

As Bob Dylan sang, the times, they are changing. In France, the revolution of May 1968 began on college campuses and spread to 12 million workers throughout the nation, almost toppling the government to Charles de Gaulle. Similar tremors rocked the rest of Europe, so much so that the generation in Germany shaped by those events is called the 1968 generation. Mexico, 1968 Olympics, remember the defiant black power gesture by some of our athletes. College campuses erupted and protested, and on and on. 1968 was a year when the world was shaking. But did the Church recognize the moment?

For the most part, no. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome, friends, to The Line of Fire. I'm not taking any calls today or commenting on breaking news around us, but I believe your hearts will be stirred as we talk about how the Church cannot afford to sleep its way through another revolution, by which I mean a cultural revolution. Look, when I put out the first edition of my book, Revolution, in the year 2000, there's a whole miraculous story with that. We've shared the story, how God provided funds to give away over 70,000 copies of the book the day it was released.

It's an extraordinary series of events. I was doing my best at that time to convince readers that we were living in times of upheaval in our culture, and that a cultural revolution was coming one way or another. As I said in the book, it's going to be hell-bent or heaven-sent. It's going to be one or the other. It's going to be a matter of which group is able to lead the way in the culture. We're not talking about a forceful takeover. We're talking about an ideological change, a conceptual change, a moral change based on a spiritual change.

Which direction was going to go? It was hard to get people to believe that we were in times that were so revolutionary. But if we just look at one area of activity, LGBT activism, from 2000 until today, you can't even recognize the world in which we live. If I got up in the year 2000 and said, by the way, by the year 2020, this, this, this, this will happen, nobody would have believed me. I'd be laughed out of church, laughed out of TV appearances.

Just publishers would laugh at me. Crazy. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. It happened on our watch, friends. So, changes have come. But now, as we put out the new edition of Revolution, An Urgent Call to a Holy Uprising, I don't have to convince people we're living in revolutionary times. We have people marching down our streets saying, this is revolution. Burning down our city saying, this is revolution. Coming into our schools and saying, this is revolution. Coming to the political world saying, this is revolution.

There's no hiding of the intent and the radical change that they want to bring about and bring to pass. These people aren't our enemies. Satan's our enemy. We pray for those that oppose the gospel or oppose biblical values.

We pray for them, recognizing how God had mercy on us and how ignorant that we were, some of us in our rebellion and unbelief. But right now, we're in radically revolutionary times. We can't afford to sleep our way through this revolution like much of the church did in the counterculture revolution of the 60s. We can't. If we do, it will mean a fundamentally different America and one in which our kids and grandkids will raise their kids in a very, very different world.

You say, well, this is surely a sign Jesus will be here any minute. That's what I heard 50 years ago. Exactly what I heard 50 years ago and still has not returned. By the way, you can get Revolution on our website. If you want to buy it in bulk and give it out to others, you can get Revolution on our website, AskDirectorBrown.org, or just go to your favorite online book dealer, whether it's Christian Book or Amazon or Barnes & Noble, and you can get paperback or ebook or an audio book. Let me let me read to you from chapter three of We Cannot Afford to Sleep Our Way Through a Revolution. And I've been focusing on the year 1968.

All right. And I'm going to share some content from the book if you have the book on page 40, if you'd like to read along. Yet the 1960s and early 1970s were years of tremendous excuse me. Yes, the 1960s and early 1970s were years of tremendous upheaval and change, years of shaking and disruption, years of moral and cultural revolution. Yet, for the most part, the church slept her way through the revolution.

The devil sees the moment while God's people miss the opportunity of a century. What on earth were we doing? Speaking of the sexual revolution, a 1982 article in Esquire magazine observed the revolution enjoyed one swift victory after another. Filmed in printed erotica that would have shocked in 1965 elicited yawns in 1975. Within less than a decade, the sexual experiments of West Coast college students and hippies became the step of everyday life for blue collar workers in Des Moines and Texarkana. Perhaps never before had such a radical shift in mores, soon our values mores, occurred in such and so short a time. In light of this fleshly onslaught, Randy Alcorn, author of the probing book Christians in the Wake of the Sexual Revolution, could only ask, where was the church when all this was happening? What did it do to counter the country's moral decline?

This carefully documented answer is a painful pill to swallow. For the most part, we American Christians did not counter the country's moral decline. We contributed to it. We participated in it.

The darkness made the light dimmer rather than the light exposing and brightening the darkness. What an indictment. Another indictment is even more painful to recognize. And this one breaks my heart to this day. The church missed one of the greatest potential spiritual harvests in modern history. Since the 1960s were a time of seeking and questioning, a time when the very meaning of life was up for grabs, when the gods of materialism and greed were renounced and the power of dead traditionalism was cast off. What a golden opportunity for the people of God to rise up and say, we have the answer. We have the real thing. But we missed the moment. To this hour, the thought of it causes me pain.

How many lives were needlessly destroyed? It seems that even Mad Magazine had more spiritual insight into those critical years than did many Christian leaders. Satirizing the late 1960s is a time of great spiritual hunger, especially among young people. The April 1968 edition of Mad featured Alfred E. Newman on the cover, pictured as a hippie, and surrounded by the words, turn on, tune in, drop dead. True to form, this particular issue contained a mock new periodical called Hippie, the magazine that turns you on. Hippie was acutely aware of the signs of the times.

All right, I'm going to take a break from reading this text for a moment. And just to give you some personal background, when God started to stir my heart in the late 1990s with the theme of revolution, and I realized that so many gospel truths could be gathered together around that theme. Believe everything for the cause.

Give your life for the cause. A conflict in kingdoms overthrowing the status quo, but not through worldly means, not through hatred and violence and intimidation and anger, but through gospel means. I realized, I realized that I had lived through the counterculture revolution of the 60s without understanding how deeply ideological it was. In other words, as I was researching and buying books on revolution, trying to understand Islamic revolution, communist revolution, the American revolution, just different revolutionary movements, how did they happen?

How do societies get transformed for better or for worse? Trying to understand the mindset, I kept seeing books about the counterculture revolution, the counterculture revolution. I'm thinking, okay, the 60s, I associate it, you know, that's when I started getting high and that's when I started playing in a rock band and you know, the whole sex, drugs, rock and roll. That's what I thought about the 60s. Yeah, protests against Vietnam war and other things, but because I was so young during it, again, born in 55, first rock concert at the age of 13, 1968. So, you know, I'm 14 years old when I start getting high, get saved at 16, that's 1971.

All right. But I'm still relatively young in terms of I'm part of the anti-war protests. You know, I'm against the war in Vietnam, not because I know what the conflict is about, not because of what I understand the issues are, but because my generation is against it and we're against the older generation. In other words, I had not carefully and philosophically thought through the issues to really understand what was at stake and what was going on. I was young and just in it more for the party scene than anything and the rebellion of the culture I just took on.

Therefore, I espouse these causes. But there are folks a little bit older, you know, college age and a little bit past that. And they had a larger ideological objection to the society. They rejected the American dream. They rejected the materialism. They rejected the standards of the older generation. So, I tried to go back to the sixties and I thought, okay, what did the world look like to me growing up?

How did I understand the cultural changes and to what degree were they not just flesh driven in terms of gratifying the sinful desires of the flesh, but also ideologically driven and yes, by a spirit of rebellion, which of course is flesh. So, as a boy, I had a subscription to Mad Magazine, the famous satirical magazine that I understand over the years got raunchier and less readable. But it was tremendously clever. No doubt had a lot of Jewish writers for it. And Alfred E. Newman was the face of Mad Magazine. Some of you are familiar with his smiling face. In fact, President Trump mocked one of the Democrat candidates as looking like Alfred E. Newman. That's how the name may have come up more in the last year.

So, I got online and I found that there was a compilation called Mad About the Sixties, a compilation of the best articles, satires from Mad Magazine through the 1960s, all in one volume. So, this was going to enable me to go back and read some of this and remember, yeah, that's how it looked. That's how I saw the world.

That's what was happening around me. Try to understand this better. And sure enough, there was a special section in one of the editions from 1968, and it was the hippie magazine in Mad and satirizing the entire hippie movement and painting Alfred E. Newman as a hippie. So, let me read to you a little bit more from this as I share about Mad Magazine. So, I said that it seems that even Mad had more spiritual insight into those critical years than did many Christian leaders.

And I mentioned this 1968 hippie edition within Mad. Among the headline articles was What to Do About God After You're Finally Finding Him. This is Mad Magazine, recognizing that there's a deep spiritual search taking place in the midst of the whole sex, drugs, rock and roll hippie movement. Mad Magazine had more insights than many of the preachers. Among the headline articles in this 1968 special hippie edition, What to Do About God After You're Finally Finding Him. While hippies classified ads included, young male hippie, even for India to find God, desires young female traveling companion in case I don't connect. And looking for God, I'll tell you where to find him. No kidding. I know where he's at and who he is.

One dollar gets this information, your money back in seven days if you're not completely satisfied with him. Other ads pointed to Eastern spirituality, including mountains for both meditation and sexual adventures and cures for hernias by sitting in the lotus position. How accurately this parodied the spiritual journey so many young people were on. Mad even had the insight to recognize how many Jewish seekers populated that 1968 generation, creating hippie names such as Mohammed Tishman, Zen Rappaport, and Sha Burnbaum, and featuring a counseling column by Abba Ben Adam, which is Hebrew for father, son of man, Mad Magazine. And he was identified as a mystic, a seer, a prophet, a poet, a freethinker, and an aluminum storm door salesman.

The latter, of course, to provide an income. One of the questions posed him came from rattled living in Chicago. Dear Abba, I'm approaching 30 and I still haven't found God. Man, I'm getting uptight over it. How and where can I find him? Abba replied, Dear rattled, don't lose your cool.

I'll tell him you're looking for him the next time I see him. This is Mad Magazine, friends. This is Mad recognizing we're in the midst of a deep spiritual search as a culture.

1968. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. I do hope that your heart's being stirred as mine was stirred in writing Revolution. Again, I'm reading some excerpts from the new edition, Revolution, an Urgent Call to a Holy Uprising. It's available in paperback, e-book, or audiobook. Wherever fine books are sold.

Well, maybe some folks don't want this book out there. It is talking about radical change, but through the gospel, through the gospel, let me say that if we've been a blessing to you as we come to the end of this year and have great, great vision for 2021, if you feel our voice is important to get out to more people, then stand with us. Want to prayerfully consider being a monthly support or a torchbearer. If you listen for years, you know I don't talk about money much at all.

You may wonder where it comes from. Faithful people give. As I've gone out and spoken, we raise money that comes in that supports us to be on the air and doing what we're doing and putting out the materials we do.

But as folks like you, we don't have these mega rich donors that underwrite us or these national sponsors. So thank you. Every torchbearer, every monthly supporter, every Patreon supporter, everyone that's given one time, thank you from our entire team. Thank you. And on behalf of the millions that you've helped us reach, thank you.

I really mean that. And I assure you, you have treasure in heaven. I can't guarantee you a big financial return if you give now that you'll have, you know, like three Ferraris by tomorrow. But I can guarantee you as you honor the Lord, that a smile will be on your life. Hey, he may bless you financially as well, but his smile will be on your life. That's the biggest thing. And, and you'll have treasure in heaven with all the folks that we reach together.

That's going to be amazing, amazing beyond words. If you want to stand with us with a year end gift, just go to our website, askdrbrown.org, or to become a torchbearer, just click on donate and then monthly support. And you'll see a list of all the different ways we sew back into it. Really. It's it, it blesses me that we sew back into in so, so many ways with so many free resources every month for a dollar a day or more. And if you join us on our Israel trip, you get 10% off the cost of it, which is actually more than you would give in an entire year. Yeah. So join us, let's partner together and let's really make an amazing impact for Jesus in the year 2021.

All right. So what I saw when I came to faith in 71, and then began to learn some of the theology of our church, these precious people prayed me into the kingdom. These precious people put up with my foolishness and my, especially in my early weeks and months in the Lord.

And many of them said great examples of loving Jesus and living devoted lives and being people of the word and prayer and faithful to their convictions. But I, I, as I learned this theology more that was being taught, it was a particular understanding of the end times and pre-trib rapture that basically said everything will go downhill before Jesus returns. And we're living in the last generation now. So everything is only going to get worse before Jesus returns. So it's, it's kind of like you believe that you're, you're 30 years old, but somehow you believe that your health is only going to deteriorate from here on. So everything that starts to go wrong with your health, the slightest thing, rather than thinking, okay, we've got to fix this.

Got to go to the doctor, find out what's going on or adjust my lifestyle or do what I need to do. It's like, it's only going to go downhill from here. How can we live like that? Picture your kids go through rebellion as teenagers, but you believe it's only going to get worse from here instead of saying, okay, we're just going through a phase. We're going to come out of this on the other side. We're going to help them through it.

No, there's a defeatist mentality. Well, we have that on a societal level to this day, friends, to this day, if I talk about something terrible happening in the news, a regular response that I get a regular response that I get is the end days. It's the last days. It's the end times.

It's over. Jesus coming any minute. And look, I want to see him in my lifetime. The great goal, the number one goal I would have aside from pleasing the Lord and hearing well done, good and faithful servant is to see him come in my lifetime. I think we all long for that, right?

We love his appearing. Love to see the suffering and pain of this world end and see our Lord face to face, not even pass through death. Wow.

Think of that. Talk about a hope. Talk about a blessed hope, right? The glorious appearing of our Lord. But regardless of your end time theology, you need to have the mentality of an overcomer. And here we are now, and maybe Jesus doesn't come for 50 years. Maybe we have the greatest awakening in America's history and then a collapse, or maybe a collapse and a great awakening leading to his return.

Or maybe, as I understand it, parallel extremes, that the darkness will get darker and the light will get brighter as God's moving in different ways in different locations. But let me share a little bit why this concerns me so much. And I'm reading excerpts from my revolution book, the second edition, the chapter, Why We Cannot Afford to Sleep Our Way Through Another Revolution. So I'm talking about this theology of defeat.

And I say this tragically. This theology of defeat produces a mentality of retreat. And this is exactly what happened in the 1960s. For one reason or another, God's people missed a massive opportunity to provide reality to confused and disillusioned generation.

Others, however, were not asleep. Speaking of the turning point in modern homosexual history, the Stonewall Riots in New York City in 1969, gay activist Mark Rubin asked, how did that singular event in June 1969 become the fountainhead for so many of the changes that have made the world so different for queers 30 years later? This is what he's writing, reflecting back on 1969 and wrote this 30 years ago, something like that. His answer, it spawned the gay liberation movement. So the Stonewall Riots in June of 69 spawned the gay liberation movement. This is what Mark Rubin says, gay activist. First, there was the Gay Liberation Front proclaiming loudly, clearly and brilliantly the truth that gay is good and that queers had embodied within them all the genius of humanity and owned all privileges of that status.

He said, GLF, the Gay Liberation Front, was conceived as being part of the entire liberation movement, one segment of a worldwide struggle against oppression. He said the Gay Activist Alliance stood for writing the revolution into law. In other words, what this gay activist is saying looking back is, we're going to change the culture.

Church is saying, we're out of here any minute. Gay activists saying, we're going to change the culture. Although individual members would align themselves with causes not directly related to the oppression of homosexuals, the organization's single issue focus enabled it to direct all of its energies towards working intensively in, on, with and against, quote, the establishment and issues affecting lesbians and gay men. So they're going to transform the culture and they're going to do it boldly, openly. It said, the Gay Liberation Movement said, according to Mark Rubin, we demand our liberation from repression and to the point where repressive laws are removed from the books and our rights are written into the documents that protect the rights of all people. Without that writing, there can be no guarantees of protection from the larger society. He said the means to achieving these ends included street actions, famously designed as zaps, marches, picket lines, political lobbying, education, active promotion of the need for lesbians and gay men to come out of their closets and a constant in your face presentation of the fact that gay is good.

Its goals were revolutionary in that it sought through these means to restructure society. Little did Mark Rubin know that the year 2015, the Supreme Court would redefine marriage and the White House would be lit up in rainbow colors in celebration. Little could they have imagined what was going to come. But while the church is saying, we're out of here any minute, these are the last days, gay activists are saying, we're going to restructure society.

And they did. So I write in revolution, the gay activists were not only unashamed, they pursued an agenda to change society and they succeeded today. There's even a gay pride month in Israel. God's people missed their opportunity, but gay and lesbian activists did not miss theirs. And while we were trying to overcome our shame and convince ourselves to stand up and be counted, groups like Star, the street transvestite activist revolution made themselves heard. I'm talking about in the sixties. Yeah, groups like Star, the street transvestite activist revolution, they're on a shame march in the streets that we're ashamed to take the gospel to the streets.

For this, we should feel ashamed. Without a Bible to guide them, without a Holy Spirit to lead them, without eternal life to encourage them, gay activists birthed and carried forth an ambitious agenda that changed an entire generation. What ever became of our agenda? Of course, there were Christian voices in the late 1960s recognizing the nature of the hour and proclaiming Jesus as the greatest revolutionary ever.

These voices were few and far between. And while in some cases they adequately diagnosed the gravity of the situation, most of them failed to prescribe an equally serious solution. We failed to fight fire with fire. We failed to realize that the best answer to a sexual revolution is a spiritual revolution. That the best answer to homosexual activism is Holy Spirit activism. That the best answer to women's liberation is liberation into the fullness of womanhood through the gospel. And we failed to realize that where revolution was needed most was within the church itself.

Another fact painfully illustrated in those turbulent years when God rose up and began to move in what has become known as the Jesus people movement or the Jesus revolution. Okay, that's all I have time to read from the book. Of course, I urge you to get it.

I wrote it with passion. If I could push a button and download the material into your heart, I would. But if you can get the book, get it for your friends. Give them out by the truckload.

That's what we did the first time. Gave out over 70,000 copies shipped on two 18-wheelers to D.C. when the book in its first edition was published. Get them out.

Boatload, carload, truckload, plane load, whatever. Get them out to your friends and contact our ministry, AskDrBrown, AskDrBrown.org to get them in bulk. When you do, we'll give you cases.

You buy these in bulk, we'll give you cases of the first edition free as well to give out. Yeah, we want to help get this message out. But you see what happened now, late 60s, early 70s, the Jesus people movement, hippies, radicals, rebels get saved from all around the world joining these churches. And most of the churches weren't ready for us. Most of the churches didn't know what was happening, slept their way through the counterculture revolution, slept through the Jesus revolution, missed the great harvest.

And so many weren't properly discipled and fell away. Friends, with all my heart, please hear me. We cannot afford to sleep our way through another revolution. So right now, let's pray, God, give us eyes to see.

Pastors, leaders, people on the front lines, moms, dads, educators, single. God, give us eyes to see. Give us a heart to understand. Help us to be like the sons of Issachar, understanding the times, knowing what is real. God bless you.