The Alex McFarland Show-134-Four Truths About Christianity

The spiritual condition of America, politics, culture, and current events, analyzed through the lens of scripture.

Welcome to the Alex McFarland Show. Behold, I show you a mystery, says 1 Corinthians 15, 51-53. Paul writes this of the believers. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trump. For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall all be changed.

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. Hi, Alex McFarland here. So honored to have you with us on this edition of our program. And what I want to talk about is not only God's truth, but the effect that it's having in the lives of people, as I believe our nation is entering a time of great spiritual revival. The Holy Spirit is moving. I believe there's an awakening coming.

I believe that the wheels are turning. And, you know, as I record this program, it's just a day or so after October 31. The world calls it Halloween. Sometimes it's referred to as All Hallows' Eve.

But for many around the world, October 31 is Reformation Day, because it was on this day in 1517, on October 31, that Luther famously nailed his 95 theses or grievances to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. More about that in a moment. But this is also now, at this point, only hours away from the 2024 election. Now, if you followed our ministry over this last, really, year and a half, we've put out voter guides for first-time voters, maybe those that haven't voted for years. We've urged people to vote. We've prayed. We've organized prayer rallies. I just was on a 19-day speaking tour in half a dozen states. I had the privilege of speaking. And gathered on courthouse steps to pray. Gathered in churches. Fielded a fair amount of emails from ministers who say to me, oh, Alex, our home is in heaven. Why are you so immersed in this election? Don't you know our home is in heaven?

It is. We'll come back to that. You know, as I've quoted endless numbers of times, you know, Augustine said 1600 years ago that of the church, until we are in the city of God, we have an obligation to the city of man. And as an American citizen, our vote really is a stewardship issue. You can vote. You've got a voice. And it is in, as you know, John Jay, the first Supreme Court justice of the, he was Chief Justice of SCOTUS, John Jay said it is in the best interest of Americans to select and prefer Christians for their leaders. And we can do that.

And it's not about the personalities, whether you think one is polite and one is abrasive and rude. Look, it's about our Constitution defends the life of all human beings. That includes the life of the unborn. We are to secure the border. Great thinkers that I've spent all year quoting have talked about that the first duty of a just government is to advocate for the rights and welfare of the citizens. And here in my own home state of western North Carolina, FEMA doesn't have the money to adequately help those that are American citizens, taxpayers, left indigent by that flood.

We got two years' worth of rain in a little over three days in western North Carolina. And why does FEMA not have tax revenue to help people in a moment of disaster? Because the Biden-Harris administration has squandered the vast majority of their resources on illegals that are being allowed in here and brought in here to vote.

And then in the election, if you, in case you haven't yet voted, of the nearly 20 million people here that are illegally, over 650,000, the population of Boston, Massachusetts, are known to be felons and or terrorists. So really, for a rational person, it's not a hard decision to make, I don't think. But I do, I want to talk about some good news and then I want to really unpack 1 Corinthians 15.

I think the wheels are turning. You know, this past summer, we were in front of more than 1,200 teenagers, and they skew more conservatively, although the vast majority would not even know that label, but they want there to be moral guardrails for the culture. They want justice and right to be upheld. Kids are telling me how they someday see themselves as a business owner, and they make revenue that they can invest in Christ's great commission. They believe in heaven and hell. You know, we do apologetics and we talk about the evidence for the Bible, but so many young people, they'll say, Mr. McFarland, I do believe the Bible.

I believe the Bible is the Word of God. And so it's very exciting to really perceive how grounded so many young people really do appear to be. I really do think that there's a great revival beginning. Now, very often if you look at church history, some of the great moves of God take years, decades, sometimes even a couple of centuries to come about.

R.C. Sproul, Chuck Colson, they've said that ideas have consequences, but the wheels of culture very often respond to ideas, philosophies, world views, slowly. And that can be for good or for ill. I mean, really, Christian America and the Christian West has for about the last 160 years been turned very dark, very dangerous, very deadly because of the world view of godless Darwinianism. And with the belief that the stranglehold that evolution has had on academia, there's been morals, belief in God, human accountability, really human personhood, being jettisoned.

Great thinkers like Francis Schaeffer talked about with the death of God has come the death of man, meaning if we don't believe that we're created in God's image, if we don't believe that human life has intrinsic value, then life becomes expendable. And I fully believe, folks, I fully believe that the COVID pandemic quarantines, that was really a dress rehearsal for a global police state. You know, Bill Gates and others, the Georgia Guidestones, if you don't know what that is, good, but the Georgia Guidestones that were recently smashed, thank God, talked about population control. And I think that the pandemic was an attempt to thin out the human population because the radical environmentalists believe that the earth is fragile, the evolution of life was just this very unlikely accident. Look, we know God created, but on a good note, the truth of the gospel, like that 1 Corinthians passage I read a moment ago, is growing. And people, because we're still humans, are hungry for truth. Now when we come back, I'm going to talk about some unique truths, how history can be changed, though incrementally, perhaps, but history can be changed by your faith and obedience.

Please stay tuned. Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland a religion and culture expert. Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this. You know, I praise God for an amazing year, hands down the most fruitful year in the history of our ministry in terms of people coming to Christ, Christians getting equipped to defend the faith. And as this year winds down, let me ask you to please partner with us with a financial gift you can give securely online at alexmcfarland.com or mail a check to Alex McFarland Ministries P.O.

Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina 27404. 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 the Gospel, the biblical worldview, especially as it results to the culture and the change it makes in the lives of people. You know, it's often assumed, wrongly so. In fact, it's one of the ironies of our times that many Christians are just simpletons. I mean, many in the, you know, secular world, they assume that biblical faith, faith in the God of the Bible is irrational. But in reality, in reality, as one colleague recently said to me, Christianity is the thinking man's religion.

Now we know it's not religion, it's a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. But, you know, in terms of like the Reformation and, you know, we mentioned that October 31, many call it Reformation Day, look, it was careful thought and examination of the texts of Scripture. And the evidence, compelling lines of evidence that, you know, really brought the Reformers to where they were, Western Civ as we really know it, and ultimately the seeds of human rights, and ultimately America itself were part of the ripple effect of the Protestant Reformation. Now the seeds of Luther's Reformation were actually sown in the beginnings back in the 1200s. Now what historians would later call the Renaissance, and I know we think of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment as a moving away from truth, and without morality as a foundation, people generally do fall away from God, but actually the Renaissance partially began as interest in Aristotelian logic grew. In other words, rational, careful, logical thought.

Why? Why in the 1200s did Aristotle and the basic foundational truths of logic spread? They're called first principles, like the law of non-contradiction, that A is not non-A, and the law of identity, that A is A. How did logical thought become so influential in the 1200s? Well, largely almost exclusively due to the apologetics and biblical worldview voice of Thomas Aquinas, who lived 1225 to 1274.

Aquinas' huge output of scholarship, his voluminous work, promoted critical thinking skills, resulting ultimately by the 1500s in a questioning of the authority of the church, and the ultimate result was the Reformation circa October 31, 1517, and here we are today. Salvation by faith, not works. Now there are many people that just assume Christianity is false, and Christians, on the news they'll say, the people of faith, or do you ever hear this, they'll say, the faithful. And I think there's this assumption that Christians are just people who believe stuff.

Well, we believe in Jesus and the Bible, and there's great evidence for that, but let's go back and talk about the incremental way history is very often changed. Picture a man painfully heading up a long marble staircase on his knees. As he moves up one step after another, he profusely kisses each stair tread. The 28 steps are scalloped and worn from thousands of previous pilgrim's feet and hands and facial touches. And supposedly these are 28 marble steps that Jesus Christ actually walked up as he faced Pilate during the week leading up to crucifixion.

Now these steps were transported to Rome, they were called the scala sancta, the holy steps. And pilgrims would grovel their way up these, and supposedly the more painful and arduous a pilgrim's retracing of Jesus's steps was, the closer they might get to God from having had the experience. Now one man who went on these steps on his knees did get closer to God, climbing the scala sancta, and it was the German monk Martin Luther. And he got to the top one day in 1510, and he thought, how does anybody know that this is true? That grace is conveyed by groveling your way up these steps.

And the thing is, going up these steps, you know, feeling the pain of climbing a large staircase, you know, on your knees and bending down and kissing the steps. He was thinking about Habakkuk 2 in Romans 1.17, and these words just kept reverberating through his mind as he went, the just shall live by faith. In other words, we are justified in the sight of God by faith, faith in Jesus, who he was and what he did. And by trusting the promises of Scripture, Luther became convinced that being made right in the sight of God was not through works or merit or flagellating oneself or pain, you know, all those means of worship and gratitude to God. They might be expressions that people engage in, but salvation by faith in Jesus, not human works, was what Luther preached. And he was used by God as the primary bold voice of what came to be known as the Protestant Reformation. Now on October 31, 1517, Luther famously nailed his 95 Theses, or Grievances, to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. And the world is still benefiting from the faith, courage, and obedience of Martin Luther. And I know he, late in his life, he said some very tragic anti-Semitic things. I'm not saying Luther was perfect, but God did really work through him to preach the Gospel. And obviously I and those of us at this ministry vehemently disagree with some of the just ignorant, horrible things he said late in life.

But, you know, you don't throw out the hole because of one or two bad parts. Luther is someone to whom we're all indebted. And the seeds of the Reformation that came to really full flower by the mid-1500s were a couple of centuries in the germinating.

They really were. And so as October 31 comes around every year, and the date is so closely associated with ghouls and ghosts and goblins, I love to remember the rediscovery of the Gospel by the church so many centuries ago that October 31 is not a day of death, but it's all about the pathway of life, which is faith in Jesus. You know, I mentioned Aquinas, and we're going to come back and I'm going to wrap up with four unique truths about Christianity from that passage I read, 1 Corinthians 15. But Aquinas, who was used by God in a great way with biblical worldview and apologetics, think about this quote. Aquinas said, quote, no sorrow marrs the delight that consists in the contemplation of truth. No sorrow marrs the delight that consists in the contemplation of truth.

If you're stressed, if you're feeling just anxiety over the world and life and so many things, remember our purpose is to know Jesus, to worship and experience Jesus, and to grow in the Lord, and contemplating that which can't be lost, that which can't be taken away, truth, God exists, the triune, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, eternally, Jesus, your advocate, your friend that sticketh closer than a brother, God's Word, and in all of its 1169 chapters, contemplate truth, and as you do, it will change your life and ultimately changed lives, change the world. Stay tuned. We're back in just a moment. 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 18-20, teaching the book of Job, and then July 28-August 1 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. 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 going to wrap up and talk about some unique truths about Christianity and really about life's biggest questions. But I want to thank all those who have given us just a banner year of ministry impact through your prayers and financial support. And you can give securely online at alexmcfarland.com. You can mail a tax-deductible contribution.

Your gift in any amount truly does help us. And if you would mail your check, you can just write on the check TNG, as in Truth for a New Generation. That's what we call our conferences. TNG, although it goes to support the ministry overall, events, publishing, and broadcasting, mail that, if you would, to P.O.

Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina, 27404. We've had an incredible year. I've talked about our camps, our conferences. I just myself got off of a 19-day speaking tour, and we saw people come to the Lord.

We saw prayer rallies in public buildings. And our culture needs the Gospel so much. Also our television show, which was nominated Best New Show on the NRB Television Network, the Alex McFarland Show. And sometimes it's listed in TV schedules as Truth for a New Generation with Alex McFarland.

So look for it if you would. We are also in talks right now to go on to additional television networks. So God is doing great things, the best thing of all. People are getting saved. People are coming back to church. We have next year three area-wide crusades that are being organized. One in Berry, Alabama. One in Mississippi.

Another in Indiana. And so I would just encourage you to please pray and give as generously as you can. We've got a book on Proverbs, God's book of wisdom. It's of any of the books that the Lord has allowed me to write.

One that I'm so grateful for, and I give God the glory. But it's the book on Proverbs. I love the book of Proverbs. And if you would send a gift of at least $25 within the next 30 days, and please be as generous and invest in the gospel to the greatest degree that you can, we're going to send you as a thank you the Proverbs book, Seeking God's Wisdom. And I go through the 31 chapters of Proverbs and talk about what that means. Proverbs 1 7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Now as you hear this program, many people are about to vote.

Maybe by the time this airs in your area, it will be almost election day. And I do hope that you're praying for America like Luther. You know, it took a lot of courage to be nearly a single lone voice against the predominant culture and religious hierarchy.

And my goodness, priests pronounced anathemas over Luther, and you know, he lost a lot of friends and family. And yet the truth compelled him. You know, the truth compels us today.

You know, if we don't cry out for what is right. And I began the program by reading from 1 Corinthians 15. I love 1 Corinthians 15, very famously the resurrection chapter, just like 1 Corinthians 13 is often known as the love chapter. But Paul says in verse 51, Behold I show you a mystery. And that literally means a hidden truth that we shall not all sleep. Now that's a euphemism for being dead. Christians die. They go to be with Jesus. One day all Christians will get a glorified body and they'll be changed. Paul says we will all, this is speaking of believers, we shall all be changed.

When? In a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trump, there's going to be a trumpet sound. Now will that be the seventh trumpet near the middle to end of the seven year tribulation? Or will it be the sound of a trumpet before the tribulation?

I tend to be pre-trib. But here's the thing. I definitely believe in that catching away of the bride of Christ called the rapture. And Paul says, and this is a unique teaching of the Christian faith, no other belief system has any promise like this. Certainly no promise that's backed up by undeniable evidence, the empty tomb and much more. But Paul says, for this corruptible, in other words this body that is under the law of entropy and aging, decay, disease, death, this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality.

And the word must means it's a guarantee. Listen, if you're a born again believer, you're going to get a glorified body one day. No more pain, no more arthritis, no more degenerative joint disorder, no more sickness or pain or tears. You'll put on an incorruptible glorified body. You're mortal body. We all die. The Bible says in Romans 6 23 that the result of our sin and fallenness is death.

But there'll be no more death because you'll be immortal. So what does Christianity say? Christianity has unique promises about life. Really only in the Christian faith do we adequately understand what it means to be a human being, a fully orbed perspective on what it means to be a person, body, soul and spirit. Isn't that something? And then not only unique truths about life, unique revelation about the afterlife. It's not just sitting on a cloud plucking on a harp.

That sounds boring frankly. But it's going to be an exciting world and as C.S. Lewis said, the realist of the real world making this world look unreal by comparison. And we only know about eternity and how to be ready because of the revelation of God through Jesus Christ. And there are not only unique truths about the afterlife, unique truths, unique revelation about salvation. I mentioned how Luther rediscovered that we are justified through faith, not works. The word faith or belief means trust. Have you trusted in Jesus? You can do that and be saved on our website on alexmcfarland.com. There's a tab, What Does God Say About My Relationship With Him.

I would encourage you to tap on that tab if you haven't done so already and you can know. And as we always say, Jesus is as close by as a prayer. Then of course unique facts and realities about Christ himself. Not merely a good man, but the God-man. Jesus didn't just speak for the Lord. He spoke as God.

The Lord is moving. There's an awakening coming. I hope you're a part of it.

I hope you're praying for it. Hey, you know, they talk about being on fire for God. You know, it's not hard to figure out when something's on fire, because when something's on fire, it ignites the other material around it.

And any fire that doesn't spread eventually flickers out. Now, a church that's not on fire might take a while, but it's going to burn out or dwindle away. If you don't have evangelism going on in your church, that's just a contradiction really.

Just as a fire that doesn't burn is a contradiction. A church that is not healthy, reaching the lost, growing, that's a contradiction. If you need help rediscovering how to evangelize, how to win souls and equip the believers, reach out to us. Send us an email. We can help you.

Not only learn how to evangelize and disciple people, learn how to defend the faith confidently in any situation. We've got a lot going on. I'm sure you do as well. But may God bless you. Stay bold.

Stand strong. And for Christ, who's coming soon, invest your life in the gospel and making a difference. 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.