Carter Conlon from the historic Times Square Church in New York City. A biblical worldview determines our direction. It determines our decisions, our passions, our pursuits, and the people we hang out with. It moves us in the direction of God and God's divine purpose for each of our life.
We're so glad you could join us for the weekly program, A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon. In the book of Genesis, Noah faced mockery and humiliation for telling the people of that time that God was going to judge them for their wickedness. And in the last days, God has to do the same to this generation. But with his judgment comes mercy. And that's why you are here. You are the testimony of God's mercy, just as Noah was.
Let's join Carter for more right now. Matthew chapter 24 and 25 are an answer from the mouth of Jesus Christ Himself. When the disciples said, tell us what would be the sign of your coming and what would the end of the age look like? When the world comes to an end and you return, what will that look like? And so I would encourage you to read these two chapters at some point during this week because it is incredible.
This is true. This is a biblical worldview. No matter what anybody says about the future of the world, this is what the Son of God said. He was there in the beginning with God. He is God. All things were created by Him. He knows the future. He knows the past.
He made it all with His hands and He knows how it's all going to unfold in the end. And He says something that really should catch our attention, especially in this generation, when we are witnessing now a wholesale rebellion against the Lordship of Jesus Christ. In our society, in our culture, and not just here in America, but in many places throughout the world. The world is, in my opinion, launching its final assault against the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Final assault against the people of God, the testimony of God in the earth, succumbing to the lower nature that was planted in humanity in the Garden of Eden. Remember, Satan came into the Garden of Eden and he sowed a seed in humanity through our first parents, Adam and Eve. The seed that he sowed was the thought that we can be godly without God. And as God does, we in ourselves can begin to determine what is good and what is evil and what is true and what is false. That's the seed that was sown in humanity.
We don't need the Word of God to govern our future and somehow to arrive at a utopian end when it's all over. We can figure this out ourselves, and we can now determine what's good and what's evil. You noticed in our generation, good is becoming evil, and evil is now becoming good. And humanity is succumbing, almost like in a mass hysteria, I might put it that way, to this lower nature that Satan himself sowed into humanity that we don't need God, we can determine what is good and what is evil. So now, we're going to go to the story of Noah. God came down to the earth and he saw that the thoughts of humankind were just wicked, day to night. And there's a flashpoint with God where you just can't cross that line that has been drawn.
And the thoughts, the scripture says, of humankind were continuously evil, and God said, this world as we know it is going to come to an end. Now, before doing this, he established a testimony of mercy. That's what Noah's ark was all about. It was built in a high place, very, very visible to the populace of that time. It was built in a place where people could pass by every day and see it. It was visible, it was tangible, and the Bible says that Noah was not just a builder, but he was a preacher of righteousness.
So I can envision him in my mind. I don't know the exact scenario, but maybe every day, as the frame of the ark is being built, this huge boat that's being built of safety and provision, he's perhaps standing at the door as people take their kids on the way by to wherever it is they're going, whatever form of schooling they might have had at that time, and warning about the justice of God, and warning the society, we've crossed the line and God's about to judge the world as we know it. But so very few were willing to believe him because they had adopted an alternate worldview. Matthew 24, 37, now Jesus is talking about the end of the age and his return. As the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying, giving in marriage until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away.
So also will the coming of the Son of Man be. They didn't know. They chose not to know. They had an alternate viewpoint. There's a testimony being built. There's a word being given that this world as we know it is about to end, but they said no.
In our opinion it's going to go on forever. And so they're just planning their own futures. None of these things were evil that they were doing. They're eating and drinking and marrying, giving in marriage, all good things. What the Bible is intimating, what Jesus is saying, they're completely unaware of the day that they were living in. I hope with all my heart that you are not unaware of the day we're now living in. We are watching this incredibly rapid degeneration of not only our society but societies throughout the world. We're watching immorality on parade. We're watching good become evil and evil become good. And truth, as Isaiah once said, is being trampled in the streets. And anyone who departs from this evil makes himself a prey.
That's what Isaiah said. And anyone who tries to go back to truth becomes the laughing stock, or may I put it this way, the hater of their generation, according to this new revelation of truth that they had. We ask ourselves the question, why is a biblical worldview so important, especially today?
And the answer is simple. It's the foundation that promises us the ability to see a secure future as hopelessness and lawlessness increases all around us. God promises to be the voice that says, this is the way, walk in it. He promises to be our strength.
He promises to be our guide. And the word of God brings us into that incredible provision of God that only his word can give to us. Psalm 119 verse 130 says, the entrance of your word gives light.
It gives understanding to the simple. The entrance of your words, it banishes confusion. All of the things that want to come to cloud our minds and to cause hopelessness to come into our hearts, all of these things are dissipated by the word of God. Oh, thank God for his word. I remember when I first got saved, you know, you embrace a lot of viewpoints.
I embraced some viewpoints in college and from friends and other things. I just remember sitting, I used to work radar back when I first got saved. Now we call it radar. I don't know what you call it today, but it's a speed gun kind of thing, you know, and when it rained, it didn't work. So I would pray for rain and thank God that year it rained a lot. And when it rained, I would just have parked behind a building and I would open my Bible and I would weep on it because it was washing me. It talks in the Bible about the washing of the water of God's word. It was washing away old thoughts and old attitudes and old struggles and giving me hope for the future, even for areas in my own life where there still needed to be victories.
As I was reading the word of God, it was just washing all of these things away. The entrance of your words gives light. And when you have light, you can see farther than in the dark, can't you?
When you have light, suddenly there's a path that opens up before you start to see what God wants your life to be and start to see the power he's willing to give you to fulfill the calling that he's placed on your life. It's not just for me or a select few. It's for all. It's for you. God has a plan for your life.
Did you know that? He has something bigger than your thoughts about yourself. He wants to affect the world around you in a way that perhaps you haven't even considered yet, especially for young people. You have a plan and your plan might not be a bad one.
You know, it's eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. It might be an okay plan, but what if it's not God's plan for you? What if it falls short of the glory that God wants to reveal about himself through your life? Are you willing today or in the near future or whatever the case is to let your plan go and say, God, I want your word in my life. I want what you say about me to begin to be what I say about myself. The entrance of your word gives light.
For example, I'll give you an example. God said to Peter one time, Peter didn't want to go to the Gentiles. And the Lord said to Peter, whatever I have cleansed, you have no right to call common or unclean anymore. Now that's the word of God to you. If God has cleansed you, you don't have the right to call yourself unclean any longer. You don't have the right anymore to disagree with God.
You are not God in this area of your life. He went to the cross, shed his blood, died for you. If you've opened your heart to him, he has cleansed you. The Bible says you are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. The Bible says you are as clean as God is. You say, oh, but pastor, you don't know my struggles. Maybe I don't, but I know what the Bible says. If you have received Christ, your sins are washed away and you have a cleanness in the sight of God that has been given to you as a free gift from God when you opened your heart to Jesus Christ. See, that's what the Bible says.
The entrance of your words gives light. A biblical worldview determines our direction. It determines our decisions, our passions, our pursuits, and the people we hang out with, our associations. It actually changes the complete course of our life. It moves us in the direction of God and God's divine purpose for each one of our lives.
It determines our associations. For example, for young people that are here, the Bible says do not be unequally yoked with an unbeliever. For those who are considering getting married, consider this scripture. It's only one scripture could save your life. I'm telling you one thing.
If you don't pray before you get married, I guarantee you you'll pray after. I guarantee it. You will fast. You will cry. You will howl. You will weep.
You ask me how I know because I've had a lot of people in my office over the years howling and crying. What was I thinking? I say, well, you were thinking everything but what God's word says because if you had been thinking his word, you would have walked away or you would have waited.
At least wait. If this person is going to get saved, let them get saved before you pursue a relationship. Second Timothy chapter four verses one to four, Paul says to Timothy, I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word.
Be ready in season and out of season. Preach the word when it's popular and preach the word when it's not. Preach the word in seasons and times when people embrace it as the word of God. Preach it in times where they considered hate speech. Don't back away from the word of God. Nothing else can give life but the word of God.
Nothing else can give direction but the word of God. Convince, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and teaching for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine. But according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables. Now it doesn't mean they won't go to church, but they will not go to church to hear the word of God. They will not want to be challenged. They will not want to be deepened. They will not want their behaviors to be brought into the light. No, they, they want to go to a place where they're told stories.
The word fables is muthos in the Greek and it just means nice stories that have somewhat of a meaning and they can even move you to tears. They can move you to applaud but they can't change your life. They're not the word of God. They're just entertaining stories. That's all they are. Just entertainment in the house of God.
And so many people today in America are just gravitating to places to be entertained. Yet they turn aside but they still go to church. A glaring example of this is years ago when I was a pastor in Canada, we had a Christian school and I became aware that two of the students in our school, a brother and sister, their mom and dad were attending a church in a nearby town under the leadership of a man that I knew to be a wolf in sheep's clothing. He had a pattern. He would go into churches and he would tell everybody that it's God's will that you should be rich and happy and prosperous.
There's no trouble ever in the Christian life, no difficulty and the more you give, the more you get. If you give $1,000, you're going to get $10,000 back. That's what he would preach and then he would get everybody to give their money and then he would take the money back and take off. That was his MO.
That's what he always did. So I had them come into my office. They sat at my desk and I said to these parents, I said, listen, you've got your two kids in our school, in our high school here. And I said, you just need to know that we teach your children that what your pastor preaches on Sunday is a lie. I said, you need to understand that.
I just don't want to be putting duplicity in these young people's lives. You know, you're at liberty to attend whatever church you want, but you have to understand that there's a problem here. And they looked at me and said, no, we're okay with them coming to your Christian school and hearing what you teach. And so I took the Bible and I just opened it.
This is what got interesting. I read a passage of scripture and when I read it, they looked at me and they said, well, that's your opinion, but we believe. No, I'd never given an opinion. Then I turned to another passage of scripture and I read it and they said again, well, that's your opinion, but we believe. You see the point being they knew what the Bible said, but had chosen an alternate worldview.
It's really that simple. And the delusion was obvious. And of course their pastor, and I don't use the word, he wasn't really a pastor, he was a wolf. He did what he'd always done. He took their money and took the money back and took off. That was his pattern. It was not long after that, that their children, they took their children out of school, probably because they were broke. For real.
Because this wolf had taken everybody's money and left one more time. I can't talk about the season we're living in. I can't say it any better than an article that I came across in the full life study Bible. And the article is called the age of antichrist. In other words, when this antichrist spirit more or less takes over this world. Now it's going to lead to a world leader at some point, whether the church will be here or not be here at that point, that's not for today to discuss. But the point being that this world is going to spiral down and move its hand against Jesus Christ. That's why it's called the age of antichrist.
Let me just read it to you. Both Jesus and Paul paint a dismal picture morally, spiritually, and doctrinally as the present age closes. Paul in particular stresses that the churches will be invaded by godless elements in the last days.
This falling away within the church world will have two dimensions. Moral apostasy is the departure from and rejection of a part or all of the original teachings of Christ and the apostles. False leaders will offer salvation and cheap grace while ignoring Christ's demand for repentance, separation from immorality, and loyalty to God and his standards.
False hopes that center on human activity and goals of self-interest will become popular. Moral apostasy is the severing of one's saving relationship with Christ and returning to sin and immorality. Some leaders may proclaim right doctrine yet abandoned God's moral law and standards of righteousness and thereby corrupt the truth and loose deception.
Many churches will tolerate almost anything for the sake of numbers, money, success and honor. The gospel of the cross with its call to suffer, to radically renounce sin, and to sacrifice for God's kingdom and to deny oneself will be unpopular. Both church history and the predicted falling away at the end time warn believers not to be naive about widespread corruption of the gospel. At some point in church history, rebellion against God and his word will reach astounding proportions. The day of the Lord will bring God's wrath on those who reject his truth. The ultimate triumph of God's kingdom and his righteousness in the world therefore depends not on the gradual increase of the professing church's success but on the final intervention of God when he breaks into the world with righteous judgment. Matthew chapter 24, the people were simply unaware of the day that they were living it.
Again, I'm going to say it because they had embraced their own worldview. They were being warned. And when God's about to judge a society, when he's about to judge a country, when he's about to judge the world in the end times, as in Noah's day, he established a testimony of his willingness to show mercy. This testimony was a boat, in a sense, a huge boat that was being built in a very, very visible place by a man who had to endure significant ridicule probably for decades of his life. He was building a boat in a place where many say it had never rained.
So it would have looked ludicrous to the people. Peter the apostle said in the last days there will be scoffers will arise. And they will say, where is the promise of his coming?
All things exist just as they have for the last 2,000 years. Why should it be believed that he's coming now more than in other times? But God sent this testimony of mercy. That's why you are here in this moment in history.
That's why I am here. You are the testimony of God's mercy. You are a demonstration of this place of safety that God is building for anyone who wants to be redeemed through Jesus Christ. You are the testimony that God by his Holy Spirit will build in a very visible place. And you will have to endure the mockery of a fallen generation.
Let me just put it out to you straight. You're going to be laughed at. You're going to be mocked.
I can just see the people passing by in the morning as I said earlier with their kids on the way to school or whatever it is. And Noah is pleading with the people. God's about to judge this world. We've crossed the moral lines in this world. Our thoughts are continuously evil. Join with me and start building your own arc of safety.
It's a type of the Christian that starts calling out to this world. Folks, this world is under the judgment of God. And one day, one day, and it's going to be over. One day. And until that day comes, will you build with me? Will you join with me? Yes, you're going to have to join into the mockery in the last day. A situation like we're living in.
There's no chance now that you're going to be. When I first came to America in 1994, I was stunned. Everybody was Christian. Politicians were Christians.
Athletes. Everybody was a Christian. It was really popular it seemed to be a Christian.
I thought this is just awesome. Now in less than 30 years you're just watching it go the other way where now it's not popular to be a believer in Christ. You're now considered to be a hater. You're now a divider. You're now somebody that's unnecessary and unwanted and eventually probably rejected in totality by a backslidden society.
They didn't know. But God left a testimony of mercy. Even though the testimony was rejected, God has you exactly where you need to be. If you're pushing a broom, that's where you need to be because the other broom pushers need to know there's a merciful God. If you're at the unemployment office looking for a job, the other people there need to know that there's a purpose and a plan for their lives. You and I, we can't all be in the same place.
Do you understand? We have to be salt scattered about through society and every place we are. So instead of moaning about what we don't have, we need to start saying, God, thank you that you've called me to build a testimony of your confidence in my life right where I am. One day you're going to know an incredible anointing of the Holy Spirit's going to come upon you because the promise of scripture is that in the last day God will pour out his Spirit upon all flesh. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. That means your sons and daughters will begin to speak in unison with what God is saying.
They'll understand. They'll have a biblical worldview. The biblical worldview is not just about judgment, but it's also about mercy. It's about the cross of Jesus Christ. It's about God's willingness to forgive. It's about the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. Peter the apostle stepping out of the upper room said in the book of Acts, save yourselves from this crooked generation. What you see is the Holy Spirit of God being poured out on all people that is promised in the last days and the promises to you, the promises to your children, the promises to all that God will call until the day that he returns the promises to you. Oh, hallelujah. What a glorious day to be alive.
What an amazing time. If we are willing to come back to a biblical worldview, we begin to understand why we're here. Why are we being ridiculed? Why are we being mocked? Why is the testimony of my life suddenly standing out as such a contrast to what's going on around me?
It's because God is showing his mercy through you. Because folks, mercy always triumphs over judgment. When God told Noah he was going to judge the world, he could have done it in a day, but yet he waited decades to judge the world and send a man to build a testimony of his mercy, calling that society out of their darkness and into life that was being freely offered them through a man who had heard and embraced the word of God. They thought in Noah's day that their world could only go on forever and just get better and better.
They thought perhaps with their own plans and their own unity that they had managed to cultivate, that somehow it was going to ensure this wonderful utopian future. Proverbs 11 21 talks about it. It says, though they join forces, the wicked will not go unpunished. The original King James says, though hand join in hand, so this world is going to offer some kind of a unity that's going to bring about this incredible euphoric moment on planet earth.
But folks, it's not going to work. The Bible says when they say peace and safety, then sudden destruction will come upon them. That's a biblical worldview.
Noah bore it all. And in the midst of it all, I can hear the pleading in him. Won't you consider man? Won't you consider bringing your family into this place of safety? God gave me the pattern. God told me that this vessel will be lifted up above the destruction that's coming on the world of our time. Won't you come? You've been listening to Carter Conlon from Times Square Church in New York City. For more information and resources to help you in your walk in Christ, log on to tsc.nyc. That's tsc.nyc. And be sure to be with us next week for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon.
