164-The Battle of Worldviews Part 2

The spiritual condition of America, politics, culture, and current events, analyzed through the lens of scripture. Welcome to the Alex McFarland Show.

The Bible says in 1 John 4, believe not every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. Hi, Alex McFarland here. Welcome to the program. This is part two in a series we've been doing about worldview, because as you probably know, this program is dedicated to a biblical worldview, a belief about God, truth, morality, the human race, the purpose of life, salvation, history, eternity, from a scripturally informed perspective. And we talk about worldview because really we are in a battle for the souls of people, a battle for truth, even a battle over what constitutes human identity.

I was just on the phone earlier today with a minister who's dealing with college students going to a state university, and there is confusion over what even is a human being. And of course, raging has been the battle over gender. Is maleness or femaleness objective truth regarding states of human existence, and how many genders are there? Famously in the news, a little boy wore a t-shirt to school that said, there are only two genders.

And he was temporarily suspended from school. And when it came to censorship about saying there are only two genders, the US Supreme Court refused to hear the case. And that is a de facto endorsement of the censorship, the viewpoint discrimination, that this little boy had been subjected to. So we're definitely in a battle of worldview. Romans 12 verse 2, Paul writes this, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that by, listen to this word, testing, you may discern what is the will of God, the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Well, testing in Romans 12 verse 2, and testing the spirits in 1 John 4 verse 1, refers to having the ability and the discernment, the wherewithal to identify what is true, to steer clear of that which is false. And we get that regarding these eternal matters from God's revelation, the Holy Spirit but the written Word of God, and how important it is to know what is true. Stephen Crane, the very famous writer, an untitled poem of Stephen Crane says so much about not being misled by what is false.

Stephen Crane wrote this, quote, a learned man came to me once. He said, I know the way. Come.

And I was overjoyed at this. Together we hastened. Too soon we were where my eyes were useless, and I knew not the ways of my feet. I clung to the hand of my friend, but at last he cried, I am lost.

Now think about that. Imagine the horror of believing the wrong voices, and one day realizing that you're lost because you trusted someone who they themselves were lost. You know, I think about the people I've dialogued with and debated against, many of these people that are atheists, and they're confident that there is no God, and that the Bible is false, and Jesus is unnecessary.

And very often they'll defend their atheism, their rejection of Christianity, by referring to a PhD that they sat under in college, or, you know, regarding things like homosexuality and moral issues. I've had people say, well, nobody I know believes that way anymore. Well, maybe not, but everyone that we know is a mortal human being, subject to error and being mistaken, falsehood. And so the sure word, what 2 Peter 1, 19-21 says, the sure, definitive, trustworthy revelation of prophecy is the Word of God. Now in the first of this series on worldview, I mentioned, of course, James Sire, the famous Christian author, who defined worldview as a set of assumptions which we hold about the basic makeup of the world.

A set of assumptions which may be true, might be partially true, might be entirely false. Now, a Christian worldview says a number of things. Christian worldview says that a personal, infinite, triune God exists. God is omniscient, sovereign over this universe that he created, and he is good. God spoke the universe into existence.

The term scholars use is ex nihilo, out of nothing. He created the cosmos with a uniformity of cause and effect. There are laws, physical laws that govern the universe. There are spiritual laws that are applicable. The book of Romans talks about the law of sin and death. But then there is also the law of Christ.

And whether someone knows it or not, whether someone accepts it or not, they are accountable for the laws that govern God's creation. And eternity, there will be no sin in heaven. And so we need Christ, and we need the new birth, John chapter 3, where Jesus told Nicodemus, if a person would see the kingdom of God, they must be born again. And the word there is the Greek word anothen, born from above.

Luke, when he was writing Luke and Acts, the apostle Luke said, having had perfect understanding from above, from God. And in John 3, when Jesus told Nicodemus that you must be born anothen, from above, you must be born from God. We are physically born, because here we are.

Our parents conceived us, and we were born. But to be born again means that you have admitted your sin and put your faith in God's Son, Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead. And we have a relationship with God through Jesus, if you will put your trust in him. We have assurance of salvation. We have the knowledge of the past, the present, and the future, created by God. The fall of Genesis 3, the empty tomb, Pentecost, the church age, history, the gospel spread throughout the world. Then there was the Reformation, and colonial America began, and Christians founded this nation, and America, more than any other country, has participated in and contributed to Christ's Great Commission. And Jesus is coming again, and eternity proper will be upon us. So the biblical worldview informs past, present, and future. Now when we come back, I'm going to talk about some of the attacks on truth, and our understanding of reality itself, and we'll continue a look at the war of worldviews, and where is the oasis of truth amidst an ocean of darkness. Stay tuned.

We're back after this. Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland a religion and culture expert. Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this. Do you know what is one of the most important topics in American life?

The state of the family. Hi, Alex McFarland here. I want to invite you to our very, very special speaker series, Conversations That Matter, to be held in America's number one resort city, Myrtle Beach.

Gary Chapman, the man that wrote The Five Love Languages, one of the biggest selling Christian books of all time. Dr. Chapman will be speaking on relationships, family, marriage, oh my. It's June 15, 7 p.m. at the Greg Rolls Legacy Theater in North Myrtle Beach. Visit alexmcfarland.com for information and tickets.

That's alexmcfarland.com. June 15, hear Dr. Gary Chapman, the man who has saved more marriages than probably any other author. There will also be open mic question and answer June 15 as we hear Dr. Gary Chapman.

He's been called trusted, truthful, and timely. Welcome back to The Alex McFarland Show. Welcome back to the program. Alex McFarland here. We're talking about worldview.

And of course, C.S. Lewis very famously said, I believe in Christianity like I believe in the sun, not only because I see it, but by it, I see everything else. You know, one of the beautiful things about the Christian worldview, you know, it's like Francis Schaeffer said about God.

He is there and he is not silent. God exists and God has spoken. You know, people ask me, why do you believe in God?

Well, because he has revealed himself to the human race in a number of ways. Creation, conscience, scripture, savior. These things are best understood in terms of God existing. And the biblical worldview says human beings are created in the image of God and thus possess personality, intelligence, morality, creativity. Human beings can know both the world around them and God himself because God has built into each of us the capacity to know him.

Isn't that something? That we were created to know God, not just to live and work till we die, not just to make money and buy stuff. We were created to know God. And now humans were originally created good, but through the fall, and this is in Genesis chapter three, the fall into sin, humans were separated from God.

And, you know, Ravi Zacharias, the late apologist who I knew, he spoke for us in our conferences, he wrote a book, the title Shattered Visage. We were made in God's image, but that image of God, the Imago Deo, became defaced, though not ruined so far as to be beyond restoration. Through the work of Jesus Christ, God offers redemption to every human being and the process of restoring people from their fallen state to salvation and the Imago Deo being fully restored and in heaven in a glorified condition it one day will be. That's offered to all people, but a given person may choose to reject that offer of redemption and sadly many do. The biblical worldview says that for each person death is either the gate to life with God eternally and God's people or the gateway to eternal separation from the only thing that will ultimately fulfill all human longings and aspirations.

I mean, think about this. When you talk about heaven and hell, you know, you might think of heaven as a place of joy, which it is, hell as a place of fire and torment, which it is, I believe what the Bible says about hell and the Bible is very clear. You know, people don't like to talk about this, but the Bible describes hell as a place of burning fire and what's interesting, like if you read in Luke 16, the rich man says I'm tormented in the fire and you read in the book of Revelation the lake of fire. Some people say, oh well that's just symbolic language, but it uses the very same Greek word for in Acts 28 when Paul is bitten by a snake and the snake gets thrown into a fire, a bonfire.

The same Greek word, the word per is the word for fire. So the Bible says hell is fire. I believe it. I don't ever want to go there. Don't ever want to experience it. And thanks to Jesus Christ, we don't have to. But I think about this. When people speak longingly of heaven or fearfully of hell, let's remember that really, like Augustine said, the heart is restless till it rests in thee.

Nothing will fulfill you but a relationship with the Savior. Really. Francis Bacon said it. Blaise Pascal said it.

C.S. Lewis said it. If the heart has an infinitely big void without God, then the heart must be made for the presence of God, a relationship with God. Because the only thing that can fill an infinite void is an infinite being. And so eternity is the gateway to life with the Lord. Or hell, separation from the only one who can ultimately fulfill all human aspirations. I think one of the most fearful, terrifying prospects of hell would be eternal aloneness. We were made for relationships. In fact, in Genesis 1 and 2, and this is before the fall of Genesis 3, over and over God says it is good, it is good, it is good.

And yet there was something less than ideal, aloneness. And so history is God intervening for our salvation. And so we're in a battle of worldviews, and we're doing our best to help persuade the lost and equip the saved. Jude 1 verse 22 says, Be merciful to those who doubt. The New Living Translation says, You must show mercy to those whose faith is wavering. And so we believe Christianity is true. We believe compelling lines of evidence point to this. And we're doing our best to try to help people understand the battle of worldviews.

Let me give a little bit of backstory, really, from the past 75 years. Around 1950, the German philosopher Martin Heidegger began encouraging the destruction of truth claims. And he said, build back through one's own personal interpretations. Now this is a focal point of what is the philosophy of the Western world, which is relativism. That the denial of objective truth and everything is just one's own personal interpretation. That's why people, they email us and they'll say, well, Alex, I heard you on some show and Christianity may be your truth, they'll say, but it's not my truth. Well, the fact that Jesus proved he is the Son of God and rose from the dead, that's just objective matters of record. And while I absolutely believe it and believe in Jesus, when I say the resurrection happened, that's not my truth in the sense that I'm not assuming it's true because Alex believes it.

It's true because it's a matter of historical record that Jesus rose from the dead. And so we need to get back to not personal interpretation, deconstruction of truth claims, and build back through our own opinions, bias, attitude, or speculation. The Western world is suffering because of absolute subjectivism. Here's my subjective opinion that nothing is absolutely true. Well, we've got to take a break. We're going to come back and talk about a response to a world of worldviews.

We're just in an ocean of opinions. How desperately we need to find objective truth lest we drown in this ocean of relativism. Stay tuned more after this. Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland a religion and culture expert. Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this.

Hi, Alex McFarland here. I want to make you aware of two really important speaking engagements in July of 2025. I'll be at the Cove, the Billy Graham Training Center, July 18th through 20th, teaching the book of Job. And then July 28th through August 1st with J. Warner Wallace, a week of apologetics with myself and Jim Wallace. Go to thecove.org, thecove.org, and I hope to see you next summer.

It's been called trusted, truthful, and timely. Welcome back to The Alex McFarland Show. Welcome back to the program.

We'll continue our discussion on the battle of worldviews that we find ourselves enmeshed in. But I want to ask everybody to please pray for our families. As you hear this broadcast, I am en route to Montana for the first of our summer youth camps. We'll have teenagers in upstate New Jersey, in the Hudson River Valley, just a few miles from where Jonathan Edwards preached, and in Iowa and Colorado. And we've got a camp outside of Richmond, Virginia.

This is the first week of August. And by the way, that camp, because of donors, even though our cost is over $300 per camper, the camp in Virginia that is the first week of August, we have some slots where students can attend this worldview camp free, free of charge. If you know a young person that is in the Mid-Atlantic region, or you can get yourself to Richmond, Virginia, we can offer this camp to you because of faithful prayers and support from people like yourselves.

Like us, you believe that people need Jesus. Just email us about the Virginia camp. You can email alex at alexmcfarland.com, alex at alexmcfarland.com. Plus we have our summer speaker series, Conversations That Matter. We had an amazing time with Dinesh D'Souza. And coming up, we've got Gary Chapman who wrote The Five Love Languages. We've got Charlie Kirk. We've got Lauren Green from Fox News.

The website is alexmcfarland.com slash conversations. And so many things going on. I'm on the road every weekend. Our 21st book will be coming out this fall.

A lot of things God is doing. And you know the camp in Montana that will be starting even as you hear this broadcast. Last summer we had 36 kids get saved at this particular camp. Well over 100 young people, grades 7 through 12.

But revival came, let me tell you. And a lot of the kids are born again believers, but 36 at this one camp. So folks, would you pray for us? Would you consider being a part of this? You know, your tax-deductible financial contributions enable us and our growing staff to proclaim the Gospel, equip the Church seven days a week through events, publishing, and broadcasting. Please consider even today going online to alexmcfarland.com and making a contribution.

We'd be most grateful. Well, we are talking about the battle of world views. And it really boils down to this simple fork in the road. Either there is God or there isn't. And if God exists, then truth is absolute, not relative. I mentioned in the previous segment about the German philosopher Martin Heidegger who was really one of the people at the forefront of the denial of absolute truth. But later, the Algerian-born French philosopher Jacques Derrida, along with Michael Foucault. Heidegger died in 1976. Derrida died in 2004. Foucault died in 1984. But they argued, and this is a cornerstone of what in the last decade has really gotten a lot of press, which is critical theory. Derrida and Foucault argued that knowledge and power are intimately bound up. Now, these guys were atheists. These guys were definitely Marxists, although Derrida and Foucault did their best to deny that they were Marxists.

But they were. And by the way, this illustrates a point that everyone has a God. Even if someone denies the biblical God and claims to be blissfully secular, what becomes their God? Well, some globalist utopia that they think they can create. And Derrida and Foucault, they wrote, I won't bore you with their book titles, but it was basically the very postmodern idea that God never did exist, or if he did exist, he is somehow dead now. We make our own truth. And the meaning of life personally is sexuality, however we choose to pursue that. And then the meaning for the human race corporately, even though there is no objective goal or no standard of goodness that we really can ever reach, but the goal must be some sort of global man-made utopia. It's really the Tower of Babel of our times. And so we're living, it was called postmodernism, it was called liberalism, now it's progressivism or wokeness, but it's a rejection of God and the truth he's revealed. Now another person that has to be pointed out in a discussion of how the West lost its way is the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

He died in 1951. Wittgenstein asserted that words or language, no matter how we use them, are not at all capable of conveying any meaningful statements about God or the metaphysical world. In other words, the world beyond the physical realm.

And yes, there is a metaphysical world, the supernatural. I know that's kind of a big 85 cent word, but Wittgenstein asserted that all talk about God is quote meaningless. Well, he fails his own definition, because if talk about God is meaningless, then that would have to include his statement, which was an attempt to deny that any truth about God could be communicated. You see, words mean things, and that's undeniable, because you have to use words even in any attempt to deny the efficacy of words.

There's so much more that needs to be said, and we'll get there. We will get there, but it all boils down to the fact that God has spoken, and we can know it. Romans tells us that God's eternal nature and his attributes are known to people. But 2 Corinthians 4 verse 4 says that the God of this world, little g, that's Satan, the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, the revelation of God. It's Jesus.

And yes, the God of this world has tragically blinded so many. I'll have to close today, but think about this, you know, the microcosm of the human race that was on Mount Calvary. One thief believed, one didn't. And in between those two finite fallen humans was the Son of God nailed to a cross. Someone once wrote this, three men, three crosses, one hill. One man cursed, one man prayed, one man promised. One died condemned, one died forgiven, one died innocent. One died in sin, one died to sin, one died for sin. One was held by death, one was released by death, one conquered death. One man lost life, one man gained life, one man was life. Jesus Christ who gave his life that we might have life.

That's the true view in this battle of worldviews. Alex McFarland Ministries are made possible through the prayers and financial support of partners like you. For over 20 years, this ministry has been bringing individuals into a personal relationship with Christ and has been equipping people to stand strong for truth. Learn more and donate securely online at alexmcfarland.com. You may also reach us by calling 1-877-YES-GOD1. That's 1-877-YES-GOD1. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again on the next edition of the Alex McFarland Show.