The Alex McFarland Show-76-The Current Cultural Climate of Our World with guest Robert Youngblood

The spiritual condition of America, politics, culture, and current events, analyzed through the lens of Scripture. Welcome to the Alex McFarland Show. We are living in unusual times, and they remind me of what I read in 1 Timothy 4. It says in verse 1, Now the Spirit speaks expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron. Well, with that Scripture, I welcome you to the program.

Alex McFarland here. We've got a very special show, and we're going to be talking about current events and the world situation, really in light of what the Scripture warns about the last days. And I've got a very special guest, but I do want to welcome you to the program. We've been talking over the last several weeks about the biblical worldview. What is the gospel? Why do we believe in God?

Why do we trust the Bible as God's revealed written revelation? We've talked in recent weeks about some competitors against Christianity, cults, really. But right now I want to piggyback on a conversation I had. I'm this week at the American Family Radio Network, the American Family Association, working on a number of things, not only radio, but publishing. And I had a really good conversation with a dear brother named Robert Youngblood. He is assistant digital media...is it editor? Editor.

Editor. And just, I've read your work, Robert, online and in print, and you and I had some fairly robust conversations. And I wanted to bring you on to talk about the Word of God and current events. But before we get into that and talk about how desperately our world needs revival, let's talk about what you do with the American Family Association. I have great joy working here. I get to use my talents as a writer and an editor to assist in the online publication of blogs. I also assist with a print publication. It's called The Stand. If you go to afa.net, the largest portion of that website will have at least three to four blogs on it, and those are written by AFA members and supporters of the ministry.

And it's a great group of people to work with always. Now The Stand was formerly known as the AFA Journal. Yes, that is correct.

It's the magazine. Until it was just changed in January of this year. But the AFA Journal started originally when, I believe, when Don Wildman started this ministry under a slightly different name, American Federation for Decency, if I'm remembering correctly. And so that has been part of AFA's history from pretty much day one.

Right, right. And by the way, folks, if you haven't visited the website, you need to go to afa.net, as in American Family Association. Just this spring, a couple months ago, they dedicated a brand-new building, and it's known as the Don Wildman Center for Cultural Transformation.

It is spectacular. And I was at that building dedication. And this ministry, I was talking with the president, Tim Wildman, this morning. I really think that this ministry, Robert, for a lot of young people and grown-ups, but it represents hope because we're watching our country kind of implode just the way we handle money, the policies, the public education that has become so woke, and critical race theory. And a lot of people are very concerned, rightly so, and I am concerned, but all across the nation, people stop me in the Dallas airport.

People stop me in the Atlanta airport. People come out in droves to our conferences, and they say, you know, we've got to save our nation. I really think what you do with your publishing, what AFR does, empowering people, influencing policy, winning Souls to Christ, underwriting and helping with what I do in events, publishing, broadcasting, I think AFA represents hope for a lot of people that are concerned. Would you agree? Absolutely. How could we not? Because who do we follow but Jesus Christ, our hope.

Yes. Jesus is our hope. And let me say, AFA has a very robust journalistic department. There's One News Now. There's you, Randall Murphree. One of the things that I haven't even told you this, but when I first started speaking on university campuses in the 90s, I remember my first college debate. I was cramming, reading, learning statistics, and guess what I was reading? I was reading Don Wahlman's newsletter. And I still to this day, I've told this story many times, but I've got files of the AFA newsletter. This was before it was a magazine, but it was just full of rich statistics, factoids, things of history. In the AFA newsletter, I learned about people like David Barton, Bill Federer, William J. Bennett, James Dobson, people like that, Chuck Colson, thinkers. I've got to ask this. How did you get into biblical worldview, Robert?

I'm not exactly sure, to be honest. I just know that when I prayed what I call my first real prayer, obtaining a biblical worldview is just a necessity to understand how if his thoughts are not our thoughts, that's one of the reasons we need to be in the Word regularly. Over time, that worldview developed. I have read books by Greg Kochel, if I'm saying his name right, and others over the years about biblical worldview, but it's just something that developed over time. As the culture begins or continues to degenerate, over time the requirement to understand a biblical worldview is, as I said, it is a requirement. Otherwise, you will not understand why you believe what you believe. I opened up by reading this 1 Timothy 4 passage that in the last days, people will depart from the faith.

It kind of reminds me of Jude 3, which says that we are to earnestly contend for the faith, not merely a faith, but the, the one and only, the faith once delivered. This biblical worldview that God exists, that God has revealed himself, that we can know God personally through Jesus Christ, and the Word of God sets down the boundaries and the moral truths for civil society, we don't revise that. We don't reinvent it. We don't deconstruct it. We believe it. We live it. We spread it. But 1 Timothy 4 talks about those in the last days that will depart from the faith, but it goes on there and it says, put the brethren in remembrance of these things. Robert, we are to put the church in remembrance of a biblical worldview, aren't we?

To spread that and sew it around. Absolutely. C.S.

Lewis wrote in his fiction work, The Screwtape Letters, that if he could cause a Christian to forget the history from which he came, then he has a great weapon to prevent their growth of their faith. Well, this is Alex McFarland here with Robert Youngblood of the American Family Association. Folks, stay tuned. We've got a break. We're going to come back and talk about some things related to this global, wired-up Internet planet and how it could be brought to its knees, how you and I need to stay aware and stay informed for the days ahead, each and every day keeping our eyes on Jesus. Stay tuned. We're back after this brief break.

Don't go away. Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland a religion and culture expert. Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this. Over the last several decades, it's been my joy to travel the world talking with children, teens, adults, people of all ages about the questions they have related to God, the Bible, Christianity, and how to know Jesus personally.

Hi, Alex McFarland. I want to make you aware of my book, The 21 Toughest Questions Your Kids Will Ask About Christianity. You know, we interviewed hundreds of children and parents and families to find out the questions that children and people of all ages are longing to find answers for. In the book, we've got practical, biblical, real-life answers that they have about how to be a Christian in this modern world.

My book, The 21 Toughest Questions Your Kids Will Ask, you can find it wherever you buy books or at resources.afa.net. He's been called trusted, truthful, and timely. Welcome back to The Alex McFarland Show. Welcome back to the program.

Alex McFarland here. By the way, you can visit the newly redesigned alexmcfarland.com. We've got a lot there, a lot of blog articles, things I've written.

Plus, my travel schedule is on the calendar there. And I want to say I appreciate all of the schools, the churches, the universities, the communities that book us, because in this thing called apologetics, we're trying to do what 1 Timothy 4.6 says to put the church in remembrance of these things. We will know the truth, our best inoculation against the wokeness and the delusions and darknesses of the hour. What is our best safeguard against falsehood? It's truth, the Word of God.

Well, somebody who's given their life to the spreading of that is Robert Youngblood, my friend and colleague from AFA. We were talking about biblical worldview, and you said you prayed your first prayer, and you are a believer. And before the break, Robert, you were talking about the necessity of having a biblical perspective on life. And that's true.

I don't know. It just seems like a given. If you're a Christian, you're going to believe the Bible and live the Bible. But that's not always the case these days, is it?

It is not. A lot of people are spiritual but not Christian. And there are some Christians who somehow believe that you can be spiritual and sort of a Christian. I got an article here that is one of these things that it would be funny if it weren't so tragic. And folks, the reason I'm bringing this up is because we often talk about a crisis of truth.

If God is not the foundation of our truth, well, we digress into human opinion. But I would say we're also living in a crisis of identity. And thus people have gender confusion and transhumanism. They don't know if they're a human or if they're an avatar. Well, there are now a segment of people who identify as furries. Are you familiar with this, Robert?

I am. Now there are subgroups called Christian furries. I've not heard of that one. Now a furry, doesn't this kind of refer to like animation characters and people identify that they live as or even think they are some kind of animation character? Animation anime, the Japanese anime.

I believe that is correct. So define, if you can, what's a furry? A furry who is, in any one, as you were talking about, a crisis of identity. Anytime we identify ourselves as something different than what God identifies us as, that is the crisis.

As I understand, a furry will adopt the behaviors and sometimes dress as if they were the anime and live as if. And that as if is where we have to be careful about truth and lies. That's true. Let me just say this, folks. Maybe if you're a person and growing up you're told that you were no good or you're stupid or you don't ever measure up and you, in your mind, you have kind of beaten yourself down because you think you don't have any value. Robert, I counsel with a lot of kids and they have trouble believing that they have value in the eyes of God. We must derive our identity from God and His Word. The Word of God tells us that we're human beings. We're made in the image of God. We have worth, value, dignity. If you're a believer, oh my goodness, your identity is in the risen Christ.

And we are secure in the palm of His hand. So the idea that there could be people who think they're an anime character, a furry, but even a Christian furry, that's just an oxymoron, isn't it? It is. And Christian, and part of this in identity goes to where do you put the word Christian? Is Christian a noun or is it an adjective? If it's an adjective, then you have lost some of the power of the identity that's been given to you by God. Elaborate on that.

So dealing with words all the time, I'll remind, because I know my own relatives, the adjective is a modifier. Like it's a submarine. Well, what kind of submarine? A yellow submarine. Exactly.

That's exactly what I'm thinking about. Okay. So the adjective is a modifier to the Christian, but what they have put in prominence there is, I am a Christian furry. So they're making the furry more important than Christ.

Right. A Christian becomes an adjective. Furry being the noun. Well, now we have a term evangelical Christian. Now, that's been around for decades, but there are Christians, but evangelical seems to connote a Bible believer, probably conservative, probably wants everybody to be a Christian. Rightly, Robert, shouldn't we just be Christians?

That is correct. We are Christians. We certainly can have adjectives before them, because some Christians, because of who we are as individuals, until we are fully sanctified at that time when we are with Christ again, you may have some Christians who are more extroverted or introverted, who are more loving. Like my wife is an extrovert. Oh, bless her. I wish I had half her people skills. I have friends who are very introverted.

I went on a trip one time with a friend who is extremely analytical and more analytical than anyone I'd ever met before and I called my wife and I said, baby, I'm sorry if I've been this way to you. It was so difficult, but he was still a Christian. Right.

Right. Well, you know, as John 13 says, they'll know we're Christians by if we have love one for another, but they also should know we're Christians by what we teach and how we live and that Jesus Christ is the one and only Savior. You know, when it comes down to issues like abortion and homosexuality and transgenderism and if someone who claims to know the true and living God and have a new life in Jesus, if they can identify as a cartoon character, oh my goodness. Listen, we know where we stand because we know where the Bible stands. Our life is hid with Christ in God. We've passed from death unto life. Our sins have been forgiven. Our name is in the book. And folks, let me just say this. On my website, we've got a free download called What Does God Say About My Relationship With Him? We've given out a well north of a quarter million of these books and it's biblical. It's not anyone's opinion, but it's God's revelation.

If you go to my website, AlexMcFarland.com, look for the little tab that says What Does God Say question mark because we want you to have your identity in Jesus, not in the world, not wondering, not trying to performance earn somebody's love, but to understand what it means, the stability, the security of having your life based in Christ. Well, stay tuned. We're going to come back.

We're going to talk about the world and the question of are we near the end of time? Stay tuned. The Alex McFarland program is back after this. Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland a religion and culture expert.

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He's been called trusted, truthful and timely. Welcome back to The Alex McFarland Show. You know, we began the program with 1 Timothy 4 and I love verse 10. It says that we trust in the living God who is the Savior of all men, those who believe.

Alex McFarland here with Robert Youngblood. Robert, we're talking about identity and making Christian a noun, not merely a modifier, because Jesus is not one trinket to accentuate our lives. Jesus Christ, if you're a believer, he is our life.

I love what I heard a speaker say years ago, all that I am, all that I have, all that I ever hope to be is rooted and wrapped up in Jesus. And you're helping people find that reality. Hey, give it again, the website where people can find the writing that you and all the journalism staff do at AFA. The main website, afa.net, and if you look across the top you'll see a button that says a stand. On afa.net you'll see blogs written below. You can click on any of those.

If you like an author, click under their picture and it'll take you to all the blogs that they've written for the stand. Well, yesterday you and I were talking and I learned a new word, or a new acronym rather. EMP, was it E-M-P? Right, E-M-P. Now, what queued up this conversation was I was talking about a friend who's in the IT business and he was talking about how Zambia, just all the far flung parts of the world are getting wired up.

It's like a global surveillance state. And I said, you know, the Lord just has to come back because the way the world is, you know, we've lost our morality and things like that. But you talked about how the grid, the grid, all the IT and the wiring of the planet could be disrupted. Speak about that if you... One of the things that we had discussed, you were talking about revival. You know, we can either have revival, ruin or rapture and the grid would fall under ruin, which could lead to a revival possibly. So EMP is an electromagnetic pulse.

There are other variations. A recent article in Forbes, 2021, was talking about how China, who has suddenly become very buddy-buddy with our presidential world, they actually have the capabilities to do a first strike on EMP. All that means is an EMP is a pulse that affects electronics. There was one that happened in the sixties that was 900 miles away from Hawaii, yet it affected Hawaii. Now, is this like when they talk about a solar flare interrupting cable TV and cell phones? A solar flare is actually one of two types. You have the natural solar flare, and then you have man-made, which are nuclear and it doesn't necessarily have to be nuclear if I'm remembering correctly. Larry Burkett wrote a fiction book about it called Solar Flare, I believe.

So did Terry Blackstock and some other Christian writers. So EMP has been known for a long time. In fact, supposedly more than five or six years ago, America could be strong enough to prevent having problems from whether man-made or natural, if they would spend approximately $5 billion to shore up all the things. But as politics tends to go, we can give, what did we just give to Ukraine recently?

What, 16 billion or something? So in a way, when you say shore up our grid, it's almost like a surge protector for the grid, isn't it? It's sort of like a surge protector.

It's more like lead that blocks radiation, except the solar flare is a type of radiation. So these things can create major problems. They're saying if it occurred in the US, that the areas that would affect it would have over 60% loss of life. Oh my word. Wow. I mean, because if you're in a big city, you have, I mean, like I don't have a garden right now.

Wish I did, but I don't. But if you're most big cities food supply, you're done in two or three days. That's it.

That is true. Oh my goodness. And look at the gas shortages. This was back about 08 or 09, but there was a gas shortage and I was living in Charlotte, North Carolina, big city of a couple of million people. And I drove 10 miles, 20 miles, 30 miles trying to find gasoline.

And by about 50 miles, and I still couldn't find gasoline and the needle was on empty. I was sweating bullets because, you know, and food supply, fuel supply, you're right. We're potentially, if there was a disruption of the supply chain, just days away from being in a crisis. Well, I like what you talk about earlier when you were talking about remembrance. It brought to my mind the stones of remembrance, the certain events that occur.

When we read the Bible and we hold a biblical worldview, we look back and we say, okay, how does my time relate to what may have happened back then or what did happen back then actually? And for instance, you know, related to the MPs, we need someone like a Joseph is like, okay, someone says, this is a problem. We need someone who will build and shore up the electrical systems.

Perhaps with, I would say almost certainly with our election system, we need someone who is like Nehemiah. He sees where the walls are broken, where the enemy can attack, where people who want to hurt America could influence things. And you shore up those walls and rebuild and protect. So that is held with integrity.

Well you know what? We could talk about these things, but I'm just thinking about elections. Look folks, we do have recourse. I don't mean to be all doom and gloom. We have prayer. Even in a time of famine, in a time of national crisis, the believer can be secure because ultimately this world is not our home. Our home is in heaven. But the recourse of prayer and evangelization, being mindful of how your kids are being educated, for goodness sakes folks care about what your kids are being taught.

And that's maybe another subject for another day. But Robert, we have another recourse called elections and voting and sending people with the right worldview to Washington, don't we? Absolutely. Do you think church is in light of this?

Because look, we want to stay a free, stable nation so that we can invest ourselves in the Great Commission. Should preachers talk about politics from the pulpit? Since politics touch every area of life, can you think of any part of life that the Bible doesn't touch? No.

Okay. So whether preachers talk about politics or not, certainly they should be talking about it. In terms of, will they preach from the pulpit? Well, I'm going to let each preacher decide that on his own. But we do have freedom of speech in America. Now, at least right now.

For the moment, yes. So anytime the Bible touches a part of life, God as the creator of life has the authority over life. And through his word, he gives us guidance. And if we're willing to listen, we can do so. If a preacher ever wanted to preach on election, certainly he should look at how Jethro spoke to Moses and the four characteristics.

And I apologize, I don't know where this is in Exodus, but I've written a couple of articles about it. But there are four characteristics that Jethro says, this is who you look for to find good leaders. And if I'm remembering them correctly, one is they have to be capable.

That was the first one. Next, they needed to fear God, which is interesting because you can be a good Christian, but if you're not capable and you take a job, you're just going to make people think poorly of what Christians are and who we are and who we serve. One is they hate lies. And then I believe the final one is they hate bribes. Yes, yes.

They can't be bought. Well, in the time that remains, what advice do you give to listeners to stay informed? Obviously, the Word of God, folks, you need to have a close walk with Christ. Prayer is you talking to God. Scripture is God speaking to you. But even beyond that, Robert, what advice do you give for those that want to stay informed about current events and just expand their knowledge of a biblical worldview?

Well, certainly all the resources that we have at AFa.net, AFN, AmericanFamilyNews.net, your website, of course, there are so many opportunities to learn. One of my favorite prayers is when you do not know what to do, it's pray for wisdom. And over the years, this has evolved into, Lord, give me the wisdom to know what to do, the courage to do it in the most loving way that honors you. Now, the reason I say it this way and it has developed is a lot of times what we do that honors God, when darkness hates the light, they don't see that as loving as all.

Yeah. And they just won't. So seeking wisdom, every time I prayed that prayer, God has provided an answer. He has never failed. I don't always like the answer, but he has provided the answer. Amen. Amen.

Well, we're out of time. Robert Youngblood of the American Family Association, I appreciate you being here. And folks, like 1 Timothy 4 says, in light of all this, there's darkness, there's unbelief, there's falsehood, but put others in remembrance of the truth. And that begins by you building your life and your soul on truth itself, who is Jesus Christ.

God bless you and thanks for listening. 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 at Alex McFarland, P.O. Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina 27404, or by calling 1-877-Yes-God-1.

That's 1-877-Yes-God-1. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again on the next edition of The Alex McFarland Show.

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