The Alex McFarland Show-80-Understanding the Events of Our Day

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

In the New Testament book of 1 Peter chapter 3, it says this, knowing this first, that there will come in the last days scoffers walking after their own lusts, saying, Where is the promise of Christ's coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. Hi, Alex McFarland here, and on this edition of the program, I want to talk about the role of will in faith.

I will talk about how faith and several things overlap, but a couple of things I want to say as we begin the program. For one, I apologize for the way I sound. Here in the southeastern US, we have this wonderful reality called pollen, and I've got allergies. I'm not sick, not contagious.

My wife is a nurse, and she assures me that I'm not contagious, but I do sound a little raspy. It's due to allergies. But the other thing that's quite a bit more significant than that is that Israel is at war. Hamas and Islamic terrorists are fighting. And I was thinking about something, and as I share some observations that are in the news, I want to read 2 Peter 3, 5. Just as 2 Peter 3 talks about people that choose to ignore the promise of Christ's return, they choose to ignore the reality of the gospel. They choose to ignore the evidence, the compelling evidence for the Christian faith. It reminds me that when truth claims go against a popular narrative or some convenient construct, very often all the evidence in the world won't convince people. Now 2 Peter 3, 5, regarding people who choose to be in unbelief by their own will, it says that they are willingly ignorant that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water, whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.

Now there's a reference here to the creation and to the judgment. And I think about nowadays, we have people that listen to our radio broadcasts, but they write me and they scoff at the fact that we believe in a literal six-day creation, as the Bible says. And frankly I believe the more compelling evidence, the more we know about our world, points to a young earth creation. But regardless of the age of the earth, people scoff at our ministry and me specifically because we believe in creation, not evolution.

Just for the record, let me say we categorically reject Darwinian evolution as an explanation for the origin of life. And so here in 2 Peter 3, 5 and 6, it says that people are willingly ignorant of God's creation and God the Creator. But they're also willingly ignorant, choosing to disregard the judgment of God, not only the judgment in times past of Noah and the flood, but the judgment to come. I've shared the gospel with people and said, you know, are you ready to meet God? And have you considered salvation and your sins being paid for by Christ? I've had atheists say to me, I don't want to think about that. Well, far better to think about it now and face your sin square on and turn to Christ in humility than to spend eternity thinking that you could have turned to Christ but didn't. Let's talk, before we talk about the overlap of faith and some other realities, let's talk about some things that are just hard to convince people of.

For instance, human-induced climate change and the nature of marriage being heterosexual monogamy, not homosexuality. And here in the war between Hamas and Israel, you know, at first Hamas was blaming Israel for bombing a hospital. And then Israel pointed out where there was a helicopter on the roof of the hospital. So the terrorists purposely put armaments on the roof of a hospital. And in other words, it was necessary to blow up a helicopter. But what the terrorists are doing is to maximize human casualty. Very sad, very wicked, and against all of the Geneva Convention and the protocols of a just war. And then on October 18, 2023, footage proved that the hospital itself was blown up by Hamas.

In other words, for the narrative and the ideology of driving the Jewish people into the sea and not recognizing Israel's right to exist, the terrorists are willing to kill their own people, children beheaded, women raped and murdered, their own men killed. Why? Because that's just and right?

Of course not. It's unjust. It's wicked. The strongest adjective I can muster to describe what the Muslims are doing.

Wickedness. And so it's well documented in the news that the terrorists are killing their own people to advance their cause. And yet you've got American journalists, academics, elected officials like the members of the squad, Ilhan Omar and Talib that say, I don't care.

No, I'm still standing with Hamas, even though they are the genocidal aggressors. Now, here's the thought that went through my mind today. I thought if God himself came down and said to people on the left, the woke world, you know, global warming is not real.

You know, we are not going to run out of oil. You do know that transgenderism is false. Let's say God himself said to the world, a man and a woman are different and a male cannot become a female. And let's say that God himself said, you know, the land belongs to Israel. And 2500 years before the existence of Islam or the birth of Mohammed, the Jews were in that land. So by historical precedent, by divine right, two and a half millennia before the existence of Islam, Israel was in their land. And when Israel regathered as a nation in May of 1948, the tribunal of nations beginning with America, all except the Muslim terrorists, the world said we recognize Israel's right to exist.

Here's my point. God himself could say these things and people would, like 2 Peter 3.5, remain, some people, not all, but they would remain willingly ignorant. All the facts in the world can't convince someone who has chosen to be willingly ignorant. Now when we come back, we're going to talk further about this because regarding Israel, morality, human sexuality, sin, salvation, creation, the nature of the environment, man's dominion mandate to be a steward, we are not to worship nature, nature is to serve us, although we are to be good stewards of it. Look, I said if God himself came and laid down the law, people wouldn't believe his word, because in fact God has already spoken to these and other issues in his word. The word of God speaks to all of the major issues today. Gender, the nature of humans, sexuality, marriage, morals, salvation, life, and how to live it. God has spoken.

And let's remember, Christ said the scripture cannot be broken. Now stay tuned. When we come back, we'll continue with this, and I'll give some facts about the things in our world today that overlap with faith. Alex McFarland, thanking you for listening.

Please don't go away, we'll be right back. Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland a religion and culture expert. Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this. Christian author and speaker Alex McFarland is an advocate for Christian apologetics. Teaching in more than 2,200 churches around the world, schools, and college campuses, Alex is driven by a desire to help people grow in relationship with God. He arms his audiences with the tools they need to defend their faith, while also empowering the unchurched to find out the truth for themselves. In the midst of a culture obsessed with relativism, Alex is a sound voice who speaks timeless truths of Christianity in a timely way. With 18 published books to his name, it's no surprise that CNN, Fox, The Wall Street Journal, and other media outlets have described Alex as a religion and culture expert. To learn more about Alex and to book him as a speaker at your next event, visit AlexMcFarland.com, or you can contact us directly by emailing booking at AlexMcFarland.com. He's been called trusted, truthful, and timely. Welcome back to The Alex McFarland Show. Welcome back to the program.

Alex McFarland here. Before the break, we were talking about the reality that people very often choose not to acknowledge irrefutable facts, and that's never more true than in spiritual matters, especially with Jesus Christ proven to be the Son of God by having risen from the dead, the most well-documented life of the ancient world. I often quote Will Durant, one of my favorite writers, who said, you know, that if you reject the gospel accounts of Jesus Christ, you have to throw out a hundred other ancient names for which we have far less documentation, but the names of whom no credible historian would dream of questioning. And Will Durant, one of the greatest historians of all time, I believe, his 50-year project, The History of Civilization, has been called one of the greatest works of history in history.

My mentor in graduate school, Norm Geisler, met and, to a degree, knew Will Durant. But anyway, Will Durant said if you reject Jesus, the most well-authenticated life of the ancient world, you're essentially saying we can't really know anything about history. So let's talk about what is faith, because I think a lot of people believe, or they assume, rather, that Christians just, you know, blindly believe things. And while faith, it really means trust, the word pisteau, p-i-s-t-e-a-u, from which we get the word epistemology, how we know what we know. Yes, it is trust, but trust is based on knowledge. Trust, at least in part, is based on knowledge. Let's say that you, somebody says they don't do things on faith.

Every person does things by faith all the time. You eat in a restaurant, let's say you know this chain, you've eaten in this restaurant brand before, and you stop on the highway and there's, you know, your favorite chain of restaurant. Well, you go in and you order and you eat the food. Did you go in the kitchen and look at all the expiration dates? No. Did you interview the cooks in the kitchen to see that they went to culinary school? How do you know they're not terrorists or people wanting to poison you with anthrax? Did you do a background check?

No. You just went in, you saw the sign, you took the menu, you ordered the entree. You see, faith is based on trust, but trust is a response to the available knowledge.

You don't interview the Uber driver, you just trust that they're not a serial killer. So when the Bible says that we're to place our faith in Jesus, look, we have Scripture, the most well authenticated book in history. We have the empty tomb, we have millions of changed lives, we have the pull of the Holy Spirit drawing us to Christ, we have archaeology, the record of history validating the claims of every page of Scripture. I mean, we have plenty of justification and legitimization to trust that the Bible says Christ is real, we need him, turn to Jesus while you have an opportunity. So Christianity is not a blind faith.

It's a reasoned, rational, justified response to the knowledge we have. And let me say the knowledge we have is really God's revelation and God's overture to us. So there's a link between faith and will. Faith is a matter of the will. 2 Peter 3.5. And I love 2 Peter, which begins in 2 Peter 1, 16-21, regarding Jesus and Scripture.

Peter says we have not followed cleverly devised fables. And it goes on and it talks about the empirical evidence. But yet, over by 2 Peter 3.5, it talks about people who reject God as Creator, reject the idea that they need to be forgiven of sin, and it says they are willingly ignorant. Just like the people who insist that in defending itself, Israel is the aggressor.

Only in a woke, 21st century transgender world would the people being attacked, fighting to save their own lives, be viewed as the aggressor. And like I said in the first segment, if God himself came down and said, that land belongs to Israel, there are liberal, progressive, woke, terrorist sympathizing Westerners that wouldn't believe it. And in fact, God already has said as much. So faith involves will.

It really does. And the question you might be struggling with is, will I respond to God's overtures? Faith is a matter of the will. Now, the link between faith and fidelity. Faith assumes obedience to something, an authority.

What? Faith assumes obedience to the revelation that I'm privileged to be getting, that I'm going to acquiesce and follow. See, God says that he loves you. God says that Christ died for you. God says, whosoever will may come. God says all manner of sin will be forgiven of men.

If you ask, he will forgive you. In Isaiah 1.18, God says, come now, let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet, you can be as white as wool, your sins can be washed away, as clean as the driven snow. But here's the thing, God also says, follow me. Be a disciple, deny yourself, take up your cross, and become Christ-like. And so salvation is an event.

Christian growth is a lifelong adventure, a journey. But faith assumes fidelity to what you've been shown. Now let me say, let's talk about the word fidelity, the Latin word fide, f-i-d-e. It does mean allegiance to something.

It means faithfulness. In the 19th century, atheists were often called, and sometimes very proudly so, they call themselves infidels. Now an infidel is a person of bad faith or no faith. An infidel doesn't keep a promise.

I would submit, those not only that reject Jesus, but reject reality itself, are infidels. Now to what have they been infidelitous? Their conscience, rationality itself. Look, you don't want to betray your conscience, that's a terrible thing to do. Whether it's to make right if you've hurt somebody, be the bigger person, apologize.

Whether it's to own up to that you told a lie and you need to go back and make it right. It's a very dangerous thing to betray your conscience. It's also a very dangerous thing to betray your rational nature. Because part of how the good Lord made you as a human being is to be a person of reason, rationality. I love animals.

I grew up on a farm, been around animals my whole life. There are limits to an animal's ability to reason. Humans are different, and this is part of the glorious gift of being a human being, but also the terrifying accountability that we have, don't betray common sense. Don't betray rationality. Look folks, you know a male cannot turn into a female. You know homosexuality is wrong. Two men were not meant to be intimate with each other.

Ditto for two females. And so it's going to be a fearful thing when people stand before God and have to give an account for the truth that they really did know. What did they do with the truth they had? Stay tuned, we're going to come back and talk about more overlap between faith and will and several other things. Please don't go away, we'll be right back. Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland a religion and culture expert.

Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this. In recent years our nation has suffered greatly and we seem to be on a rapid moral decline. We've rejected God, morality, and we've almost completely lost our sense of patriotism. It's no wonder that many are asking the question, is this the end of America? Hi, Alex McFarland here and I want to make you aware of my book, The Assault on America, How to Defend Our Nation Before It's Too Late. You know, our nation has seen politicians that are corrupted by greed and they've got a vested interest in power and many of our elected officials seem to care little about the country that they've been appointed to serve. Read my book, The Assault on America, we can stand up for our great nation and defend America before it's too late.

It's available everywhere, you can learn more on my own website, which is alexmcfarland.com. Read the book, The Assault on America, How to Defend Our Nation Before It's Too Late. He's been called trusted, truthful, and timely. Welcome back to The Alex McFarland Show. Welcome back to the program.

Alex McFarland here. I'm going to continue our look at the overlap between faith and will and several other character attributes. But I want to encourage people to keep this ministry in prayer.

This is a very exciting year. We had seven summer youth camps. Even as we record this and deliver it to the stations, we're planning for at least seven youth camps next summer. And the website for our camps is equipretreat.org. And you can look at the locations across the country, and we'll be doing biblical worldview. And our camps are different in that not only do we talk about Jesus, obviously, let's help these kids know Christ and be able to defend their faith, but we talk about America. We talk about the engines that drive the culture, and we challenge these youth that look, the home, the church, the classroom, the media, the marketplace, the judiciary, the arts, the sciences. We tell kids, look, you're going to be in one of those realms or more. The home, the church, that's every believer. But also, there's education, there's business, there's medicine, there's law, there's politics.

There are the arts, although I really think that the best way we can serve the arts these days is to create excellent art in the church. I really don't encourage kids to go to Hollywood, obviously. But here's the thing. We have these kids, and I've posted videos of this. Imagine 200, 250 youth, and they're shouting, we are the generation who will restore America. It does make me chuckle to think about how woke liberals would think, oh my goodness, here's Alex and all of his staff. They're telling these kids about creation, not evolution. They're telling these kids about traditional morality, not unbridled, militant immorality. They're telling kids about American exceptionalism, that America is great, America is different, and kids should care about this country. And then kids are shouting and chanting, we are the generation who will restore America. That's not what the woke left wants kids to experience.

But let me just say this. Teenagers soak up this teaching like thirsty people on a hot summer day. Kids do care about truth.

Kids do want to know what saith the Lord. So it's going to be a big year next year, just as it was in 2023. If you go to my own website, AlexMcFarland.com, you'll see that I'm going to be at Grace Life Church with Pastor Brian Clark, what a valued colleague he is, and elsewhere I'm traveling. And then we've got a Truth for a New Generation conference in Texas next June.

We'll tell you about that. And also Truth and Liberty, one of our television shows that we do, truthandliberty.net. We have great guests on there like Ken Ham and Eric Metaxas and so many people.

I'm one of the hosts every night, 5.30 to 7 p.m. Eastern Time, and it's a call-in show. Check out truthandliberty.net. And then finally, let me say this, and I want to resume our content. It is your prayers and financial support that enable us to preach the Gospel, to see 7,000, 7,500 people a year accept Christ. We're shipping out thousands and thousands of copies of books to people. And so whether it's people coming to Christ, people coming back to Christ, equipping churches to reach Muslims, atheists. Look, folks, your prayers allow us to do the events, publishing, and broadcasting that we're doing to call out to the North American continent and beyond.

So please help us. Your cash donations, if you mail a check, mail a check to TNG, as in Truth for a New Generation. Mail it to PO Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina, 27408.

That's PO Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina, 27408. Or you may give securely online at alexmcfarlane.com for your prayers, for your support, for standing with us. Folks, you share in the rewards, and we thank you. Well, before the break, we were talking about that there is a link between faith and will. Faith is a matter of the will. There's a link between faith and fidelity.

Faith assumes obedience to the revelation you've been given, obedience to your own conscience, obedience to your rationality, then really obedience to the God who mercifully revealed himself. But there is a link also, a link between faith and conscience. See, resistance to known truth creates inner turmoil.

Psychologists call this cognitive dissonance. I've had people confess to me, atheists, that I've debated atheists, come down off the stage, gone to the green room, and then they would pour out their heart about how they're in this inner turmoil about pushing conscience out of their mind. 2 Peter 3 says this, that these people, they know about the judgment of Noah, the flood. They know about creation. And then they know that God is going to call on them to give an account. Hebrews 9, 27, it is appointed unto man once to die, no reincarnation, one death, and then the judgment. And it says that we are not to be ignorant of this, that the Lord, he is not delaying.

He is coming back right on schedule. And it says in 2 Peter 3, 9 that God is patient, long-suffering, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. There's a link between faith and conscience, as I said. And then there's a link between faith and your personal experiences. Let me say this relates to your experience with your parents, authority figures, people very often share about painful experiences. And today maybe you're holding God at arm's length because of some painful experience in your past.

Don't do that. Look, the answer that you seek, the resolution and the healing for which you long is found in Jesus Christ. And let me just encourage you folks about your conscience. You know, Christmas is coming and Thanksgiving isn't that far away. And there may be some people you need to do some fence-mending with, and you say, well, it's just too painful.

I've tried and I've tried, and it always blows up in my face. Hey, call up that loved one, that estranged friend or that family member, and don't do it with the attitude of I'm going to straighten this person out. No, just tell them you love them. And purpose in your heart, very often, it's like Coach Tom Landry told me many years ago, you don't win the game in the heat of the contest. Super Bowls are won because of the preparation before the struggle. He told me that. And here's the thing, you've got to purpose in your mind before you make the phone call. I don't care if they curse me to my face, I'm just going to smile and share the love of Christ. You can do this because 2 Peter also says in verse 18, chapter 3 verse 18, we're to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and our lives are to give Him glory. There's a link between your experiences and your receptivity to the Holy Spirit of God. There's a link between your past and pain and your willingness to show grace to others.

But God can give you the strength to show that grace. Finally, let me say there's a link between authority figures and your view of God. Very often, our experiences with our earthly Father shape our view of the Heavenly Father. Very often, experiences, circumstances, repercussions, maybe even of our own poor decisions, cause us to hold God at arm's length. Today, God is calling you. God wants you, number one, to know Jesus and to be saved. Then God wants you to thrive and experience all of the blessings and all of the joy and all of the strength and stability that go with being a Christian. We often say this, and I close by saying this, Jesus is as close by as a prayer. And so, maybe it'll help you, like Matthew 22 37 says, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Not willfully rejecting truth, but gratefully embracing it.

Because that truth is not only the reality that God exists, but that Jesus, His Son, is truth. And if you'll ask Him, He'll be that friend who sticks closer than a brother. Turn to Him today. Don't be willfully rejecting.

But be humbly accepting of Christ, who loves you so. 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-GOD1. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again on the next edition of the Alex McFarland Show.

Do you have a desire to deepen your faith, better understand Christian apologetics, or to get a biblical perspective on current events? Well, I've tried to make it simple for you to do just that. On my website, alexmcfarland.com, there's a new section called Ask Alex Online. It's simple, it's clean, and you can read my answers to common questions about God, faith, and the Bible. So visit the website alexmcfarland.com and look for the section that says Ask Alex Online.