What is a Christian to Think? - Developing a Biblical Worldview - Part 1

Welcome to God First with Brian C. Thomas, a program committed to encouraging you to put God first while viewing life through the window of the Bible. Now, in honor of the one and only true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, let's join Brian C. Thomas for today's message.

And it is always a joy and honor and a privilege to join you each week on the God First program. Well, folks, today we are in for a very special message. I have a guest who is going to speak with us about the things that we see going on in our world and in our nation here in the United States of America. And unless you've been living in a cave somewhere, you know that our nation has a problem and we're looking at it as really a crisis.

There's a cultural crisis that has taken place. And so we're going to speak about it. And when I think about this guest, the first words that come to my mind are wisdom and discernment. He's definitely a wise man and we are always honored to have him. He's a blessing to the ministry. His name is Dr. Bruce Logan. He is a teacher, conference speaker and Bible college instructor.

He is the founder of Dr. Bruce Logan Ministries. So, Dr. Logan, I want to thank you for coming on again to the God First program. Well, thank you for having me. It's a great honor. Amen.

It is always a blessing to have you. And as I stated, we have here in our nation, there is definitely a crisis taking place. And you wrote a very great series that is titled What is a Christian to Think Developing a Biblical Worldview. And so I wanted to have you come on to talk with us today about it, because, again, it's so much great wisdom and discernment that you've just laid out so beautifully.

And we want to share that with our audience. So I want to begin by asking you the question again. This series is titled What is a Christian to Think Developing a Biblical Worldview? And so in part one of the series you wrote, how should believers make sense of America's cultural crisis? So can you speak to that question for us?

Yes, sir. Well, first of all, I think I just need to back up just a little bit, give you a little bit of background on this series because it actually ties in to the topic overall. The original title for this series was going to be Religion, Politics, and a Biblical Worldview.

That's the title that I started out with. And so I tried to, I posted that on my website and then I tried to post it on my Facebook page and then I tried to do a booth. Well, Facebook rejected it and made me, wanted me to do it over and wanted me to change some wording. And I kind of fought with them for like, this actually went on for like six weeks and they wanted me to fill out some paperwork. So I jumped through all of their hoops.

And after I finished jumping through all of their hoops, I tried to boost it again. They still rejected it, which kind of puts us into exactly what we're talking about, the cultural crisis, because actually what that revealed to me is just how expansive this cultural crisis really is. So finally I just kind of gave in because the content was so strongly about. And so basically I changed the title to the series to What is a Christian to Think?

Developing a Biblical Worldview. And then they accepted it. But all the content stayed the same. So I thought that was kind of ironic.

Wow. But nevertheless, it started out with what the world is really going on and what should we as believers make sense of America's cultural crisis. And of course, that's a topic that we could probably spend a whole hour on just on that topic alone.

But just kind of give you the short version. As believers, I'm a strong believer that we have to have a different mindset than what the world has. The world has a mindset that says that everything that's happening in America from a cultural standpoint has to do with race, or they make it about black versus white, or Republican versus Democrat, or Biden versus Trump.

They try to make it basically a secular type of problem. But in reality, from a biblical worldview standpoint, we as believers, we need to understand that there's a lot more happening behind the scenes than just what we've been told by the media or the world's narrative. There's much more happening behind the scenes than just Republican versus Democrat, black versus white, male versus female. There's a lot more happening. There's a literal spiritual war that's taking place in the unseen realm. And not only there's a spiritual war, but there is a specific, clearly defined agenda that the satanic forces are actually having. In fact, it ties in a lot to when we were going with you before when we were talking about the Great Reset.

And the Great Reset was a concept, just to kind of review real quick, the Great Reset was a concept that world leaders around the world were using COVID-19 along with climate change to basically initiate a one-world economic system. And so that's kind of telling you that there's so much more happening in the culture behind the scenes than what the media is kind of letting us know. So, for example, we learn from Paul in Ephesians 6, verses 12, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, and against spiritual wickedness in high places. Now, you oftentimes hear that verse quoted in churches, but oftentimes you hear it, but I wonder how much understanding do people actually have of what that verse means. Because for me, it literally is verbatim what it means, that there is unseen forces that are at work with a specific agenda that we as believers have to understand. And to follow that up, we have to be able to not only understand that there are spiritual forces at work with a specific agenda, but we also have to understand that it's automatically a problem when we as believers embrace the same apologetic as the world. So, in other words, if we try to explain to a congregation or just a one-on-one conversation about just different topics about what's going on in the world, and basically there's no distinguishable difference between what a believer says and what they say on CNN, then that's kind of a problem. That's kind of something that we need to take a step back and re-evaluate. Right, right.

Absolutely. And as you were talking, the thing that came into my mind is, you're exactly right in how the culture is trying to have these agendas that are going on, things that are not being told to us. But what's so interesting to me is that the so-called elites, they push these things, and for them, they push it in a way as if it is advancement, as though society is advancing. We are learning more, we are progressing, right? But from a Christian standpoint, we look at it as, no, this is a moral decline. Things are going in a bad direction. But so that is why there's this thing to silence the Christian, because we are holding them back from what they believe is progressing forward.

But we see the wickedness in it because, as you said, it is really a spiritual battle that has taken place. Right. And they call it, like you said, they call it progressive, but what it actually is is actually regressive. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

And that's exactly what's happening. But I've always stated that the fact that the church is not wholesale on top of what's really happening is probably the greatest problem that we face in our culture. Because at the end of the day, God has placed the church to be the light, to be the influencers. You know, we are to be the ones who are influencing the culture and not being influenced by the culture. And we're going to talk about that a little bit more further on down in the interview.

But that's a very serious problem because there's such a lack of a biblical worldview in the church. So because, for example, when you look at the various issues, you know, we had race riots that's happening all last year. I mean, last year, unless you were living under a rock, like you said at the introduction, you know that the last year or I want to say the past, you know, 14 months or so has been like unprecedented. Of course, we had the COVID-19 where, you know, in America, we have 30 to 40 million new unemployment claims in one year.

That's right behind. We had record economic growth, record job growth. We were energy independent. And we went from that and less than a year to going into a recession, I'm sorry, inflation, having gas shortages, 30 to 40 million people unemployed.

And this is not all, this just happened by accident. So we have to understand, like, for example, that the media, for example, would want to make it as though it was all Trump's fault or, you know, it was all Republicans' fault or, you know, it's all the fault of racism or the fault of the rich. But in reality, there's a spiritual battle that's behind it that we as believers have to come to grips with and to understand. The title of the series is Was a Christian to Think? Developing a Biblical Worldview.

On the other side of this short break, we will be back with more with Dr. Bruce Logan. Please don't go away. You were tuned into the God First program. You are listening to Brian C. Thomas on God First. For more of Brian's teachings, please visit Godfirst.org to browse our extensive library of material. There you will find devotionals, blogs, articles, and audio messages available as MP3 downloads on various topics such as salvation, Bible prophecy, marriage, and the significance of Lesson Israel, just to name a few.

You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter and visit our web store. So please visit us at Godfirst.org. Now, let's return to the conclusion of today's message. Welcome back to the program.

My name is Brian Thomas being joined today by Dr. Bruce Logan. If you are just now joining us and would like to hear the message in its entirety, please visit our website, Godfirst.org. That's G-O-D, the number one S-T dot O-R-G. Also, we would love for you to write to us. You can do so at God First Bible Fellowship, P.O.

Box 266, Knightdale, North Carolina, 27545. So as you said, there's a spiritual problem going on there where there is a spiritual battle that is going on. And that is how we should make sense of what is taking place. And so in part two of the series and folks, the series is on Dr. Logan's website and we'll share with you at the end of the program how you can get to it. It is a wealth of information.

So we're only scratching the surface here. But in part two of the series, why worldview matters, you wrote your worldview affects everything. Can you speak to that?

Yes, sir. First of all, I'll just start by saying that everyone who's born unless you unless you like mentally incapacitated has a worldview. Most of us never really think about it because worldview is kind of like air, kind of like breathing.

We don't really think about breathing, you know, but we can't really exist if we stop breathing. And the worldview is the same. Oftentimes we don't really think about what our worldview is or even the subject of worldview. But we all have a worldview. It's the basis for everything. It's the basis for who we are, why we believe the way we believe, why we vote the way that we vote, the way how do we view what's happening around the world, what's happening in the culture.

We were talking earlier about the cultural crisis. So our perspective on the cultural crisis, our outlook on the cultural crisis is all predicated on our worldview. The worldview is how we see the world, what we think of the world, the decisions we make, our behaviors, our responses are all predicated on our worldview. Now, it's important I maybe throw this quick, brief definition because it's an extensive study, but just very briefly, the term worldview just simply means the lens or the set of glasses or the filter that you look through in order to bring what is happening in the world into mental focus. It is the mental or ideological framework which shapes a person's view of reality, the overall perspective in which one sees and interprets the world and events. To kind of give you an example is that I have some friends, for example, who heavily embrace liberation theology.

I'm sure you're familiar with that. So basically, everything that's happening in the culture, they see through a liberation theology lens. I mean, everything is racist. Everything is sexist.

Everything is a strong advocate for socialist solutions and that's because everything that they consume is centered around the black liberation ideology. So it completely shapes what they believe and what they think. For an example, the scripture says in Luke 645, out of the heart, the mouse speaks.

And in Proverbs 23 and 7, it says, as the man thinketh in his heart, so is he. So that is exactly what worldview is. It's how we think. It's our ideological perspective on the world. It's how we see the world. It's how we view the world.

It's the lens. It's our perspective. It's the lens that we look through to understand what's happening in the world. And to kind of like add to that is that when we talk about worldview, there is basically two competing worldviews that's happening in the culture.

Again, that's impacting the culture. There's a secularist world. Now, of course, I'm summarizing what these are, but there are tenets to various worldviews. But just to summarize, we have what's called a secularist worldview and then, of course, we have a biblical worldview. Now, what is a secularist worldview? A secularist worldview is essentially a system of ideas and philosophies that disregard or undermines, rejects, outright any form of religious faith or biblical teaching of influence.

In other words, the primary agenda of those who advocate for a secularist America is the total elimination of all religious elements from society. So basically what's happening, again, we've talked earlier about there's an agenda that's happening behind the scenes that we as believers need to be able to discern. And that what's happening, for an example, with lots happening with the culture, with the LGBT movement, that's a direct assault on biblical worldview.

That's a direct assault on Christianity. This whole idea, and this is something else that people kind of miss or lose sight of, is that all of this talk about climate change that has gone on for probably the past 50 years. You know, it's interesting because for 50 years, they've been telling us we only have 10 years. You know, it's kind of ironic.

But the fact of the matter is, what that really is, is that that's another example of how the secularist world is contradicting God's word. Because we have the end of the story. You and I have read the end of the book. We know how the story is going to end. And there's nothing about, I haven't read anything about how the world is going to end because we're going to have a vanishing climate.

Okay, it doesn't tell us that. Matter of fact, it's interesting because I often tell, I use this example quite a bit, when God created the heavens and the earth on two different occasions, he said, this is good. God looked around at his creation and said this was good.

And then on the second occasion, he said, not only is it good, he said it was very good. And it's interesting because if you just do a real quick study on the original creation before the fall, the Bible said that there was a firmament around the earth. The firmament, if you do a study, it was basically like a film of water or moisture that was surrounded the earth that prevented a lot of harmful rays from the sun to penetrate the atmosphere. And he created around the earth what was referred to, what we will refer to in today's science as a greenhouse effect. Now, God said that the greenhouse effect was very good, but man is saying that the greenhouse effect is very bad.

So as the song goes, whose report are we going to believe? Okay, so in other words, everything that's happening in the world, and that was just one of many examples that I could use, but everything that's happening in the world as a part of a secularist agenda or another term that I like to use is the spirit of the age agenda. And the spirit of the age agenda is to try to de-Christianize America in particular. Because America was a country, contrary to a lot of the anti-American rhetoric that's going around now, America was a country that was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. It was founded by a group of individuals that got on a rickety boat and left to come over to this country, I mean over to this new land, and to be able to worship God without any encumbrances from government. And so contrary to all the different movements that say America was racist, America was built on slavery, it's just kind of a slap in the face that everything that's happening, or from a biblical worldview's perspective.

And again, let me just touch on that here real quick, because this is something else that I get often from some of my Christian friends. And I ask the question, well how is it that America became so prosperous and the greatest nation economically and militarily in just less than 200 years? They said, well because we had slaves. And my response is, name me any culture or society in the history of the world since the fall that didn't practice slavery.

Okay then there's silence, you hear crickets. Okay, alright, because the problem is not, because number one, the problem that we have in the world and in America is not skin, but it's because of sin, it's because of the fall. And it's where a biblical worldview comes in versus the secular worldview.

The secular worldview wants us to believe that it's all because of race and gender and so forth. Matter of fact, I don't know if you heard this, but I started hearing it quite a bit last week because we just had Mother's Day. And I started hearing this term, I don't know if you heard it, maybe you did, maybe you haven't, but they were calling it Birthing People's Day. Oh yeah. You heard that?

Yes, I have. And I thought, I'm like, okay, first of all, what does that mean? Of course I knew what it meant, but I'm asking, do they really know what that means? But again, that was another example of a discrediting of God's word, because the Bible says from a biblical worldview perspective that God made male and female. Right, right. He made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

I mean, that's just the reality. So whose report are we going to believe? Are we going to believe the word of God?

Are we going to believe what the secular movement is trying to get us convinced to believe? So basically, in a summary, we can look at the biblical worldview as answering three questions. The Bible has the answer to these three questions, and of course, this is just kind of summary. Well, why are we the way that we are?

Why is the world the way that it is, and what can be done about it? Well, of course, the questions one and two are kind of tied together, because we are the way that we are. A, because we're created after the image of God, but two, we are the product or the result of the Adamic phone that happened in Genesis chapter three. And the curse that was subsequently placed on the earth that happened there in Genesis three. So everything that we are facing in the world is not because of race, not because of slavery, but it's because of sin, because of the curse that was placed on mankind in the garden, which is what can be done about it by accepting Jesus as our Savior to be redeemed, who God sent to redeem mankind from our sin. And that same Jesus will one day come back in the same way that the disciples saw him go up into heaven.

He's going to come back like a thief in the night, and he's going to come back and establish his kingdom, and as the Bible says, make all things new. So basically, in a nutshell, that's kind of the premise of a biblical worldview, and every other thing that we talk about in terms of what's happening in the culture can be plugged into that basic outline. Yeah, yeah.

And to our listeners, if you're hearing Dr. Logan for the very first time, you see why now I said wisdom and discernment are the words that come to mind when I think of this, man, because you laid that out so beautifully. And I was thinking, too, as you were talking also about the whole push down for not calling women mothers, but they called them birthing people. There's also this thing now of chest feeding. So they don't want to say breastfeeding.

They want to say chest feeding. And, you know, you're saying this is insanity. I mean, this is totally insane. But that is that's why biblical worldview matters so much. And with our ministry, with when we do our intro for our show, we want to make a point to say that what we hear, what we are encouraging people to do is to view life through the window of the Bible, because if you do not look at things through the lens of the Bible, you're going to get it wrong every time.

You're going to get it all out of whack. And we see that happening so much in our society. And as you talked about, also liberation theology, it made me think about the Louis Farrakhan faction of the Nation of Islam, because there is so much overlap there. And I have a friend of mine that I was speaking with not too long ago. And he's really struggling. He's he's a black man also.

And he's he's really struggling with these racial issues in the country. And I told him that I think it has a stronghold on him. But he's now a professing Christian. But at one time, many years ago, he was involved in the Nation of Islam.

And I told him, I think that stuff is still influencing your your world view, because you're you're looking at things through what Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam taught, as opposed to looking at it through the Bible. And so again, Dr. Logan, you just you laid that out so beautifully. Well, we will press the pause button as we are all out of time. I want to thank you for tuning in with us this week. Please come back and join us next time for part two of what is a Christian to think developing a biblical worldview with our guest, Dr. Bruce Logan. You can follow Dr. Logan by visiting his Web site, Dr. Bruce Logan dot com.

That's Dr. Bruce Logan dot com. Again, folks, we welcome you to join us next week as we continue to encourage you to put God first while viewing life through the window of the Bible. Until then, remember to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Bless God's great nation of Israel. And to the only wise God be glory through Jesus Christ forever.

Amen. You've been listening to the Bible teacher, Brian C. Thomas, founder and president of God First. Brian and God first reserve all copyright protection under applicable law. Our copyright policy is available at our Web site, God first dot org. Until next time, remember to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Bless God's great nation of Israel and seek first the kingdom of God.