Hope For This Present Crisis

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Earn up to $3.75 APY with a one-year guarantee and $500 minimum deposit. Visit PRCUA.org or call your local PRCUARepresentative at 336-776-7456. PRCUALife, protecting life through all its stages. Welcome to If Not For God, stories of hopelessness that turn to hope. Here is your host, Mike Zwick. If Not For God, today we have a very, very special guest, Dr. Michael Youssef. God gave Dr. Youssef a vision to reach 3.9 billion people for the gospel. In 1987, he started the Church of the Apostles. He was born in Egypt.

He lived in Lebanon and also Australia, but then his dream finally came true and he became a United States citizen. God has grown his radio ministry infinitely, and today we are actually going to talk about his new book, Hope for This Present Crisis, The 7-Step Path to Restoring a World Gone Mad. And Dr. Youssef, the mic is yours. Thank you so much. Thank you both. I really appreciate you having me on your program, and I thank you, your listeners.

I know that we go way back in our partnership in the gospel. You know, I'm going to be 73 very soon, and as I looked around and I saw the way our world is going, and I wanted to go beyond the headlines and just beyond all of the rhetoric that goes on in the media. A lady in my church who is actually theologically trained, and she leads Bible study for women, she said, I never understood those many years ago why you had to go and earn a PhD from Emory University in social anthropology, and she said, now reading this book, Hope for This Present Crisis, I know why. I told her, I am exactly in the same boat. I had no idea why I was doing that. I felt led to do it. I did it. I'm so grateful to God.

I did it when I was younger. And because that study gave me an insight that the theology and the knowledge of the Word of God is one thing, and I was trained in that, both in Australia and the United States, and I'm so thankful that I can open the scripture and expound it. But then to look at the world around us and to see from biblical eyes, from spiritual eyes, from Christian eyes, what is really going on and put it in a historical context and a sociological context and so forth.

Really, I look back now and I said, Lord, I'm thankful that you did this so I can have an insight to help the body of Christ. My biggest concern and the burden of my heart is not necessarily the culture at large, although I deal with that, but the body of Christ, the believers, because they are the ones that are getting swept off their feet by falsehoods and by the movements for the destruction of biblical truth, because that is really the very core, while in the book, Hope for this Present Crisis, I talk about seven issues, seven issues that are destroying the next generation and moving them away from the truth. But the very first and the most important is the truth. Once the truth becomes muddied, we are all in that mud together and nobody seems to be able to get us out of that. So I'm trying, as much as I know, under the guidance of the Lord and the Holy Spirit to point the way for people to realize, look, this is the lie, this is how they've been working on destroying the truth and muddying the truth so they can get you confused and really confused. You can put your hands up in the air and say, I don't know what the truth is anymore. It's like one pastor who had just departed from the Southern Baptist Convention, it's a big church. He just said, I don't know what the truth is, but I know what love is. And they departed from the Southern Baptist roots.

This is the sad day and this is happening all over, hundreds of times. And so I am pleading through the pages of this book, know the truth, because Jesus said, when he has my disciples, when he knows the truth, the truth will set you free. And we're not free now.

In fact, our freedom is threatened because of the loss of the truth. Yes, and in Mark 3.22, it says, And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, He has Beelzebub, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons. So he called them to himself and said to them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand but has an end. Recently, Dr. Yusuf, I heard you say that the devil is no longer fighting against the church. The devil has joined the church.

Amen. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And because now we've got this big movement and it's supported by some evangelical stars, evangelical leaders, that you can be gay Christian. I said, Okay, then we're going to have the adulteress Christian and the thief Christians and the robbers Christian Association, and we're going to do this now. Here's the problem. Every time somebody says, Well, I can't stop sinning. I can't stop doing this.

I said, Okay, well, we need to be loving toward you. And then we're going to lower the bar and say, Well, that's okay, then what you've seen is all right. I mean, that's really what is happening and then all across the board. And as you lower that bar, then where will it go? Every time I think we hit bottom, there's another bottom.

We reach. But I mean, I've seen and heard evangelical pastors of mega churches who are baptizing homosexual couples and have homosexual couples as members of their welcoming committee. And they're saying, Well, because they are homosexual Christians. Well, the problem is once you start identifying a sin that is acceptable, where will you stop? Is it polygamy and pedophilia? I mean, where do we stop? And so people say, you know, for example, you got the PCA convention is debating the issue this week about whether a person can just have same sex attraction and therefore, as long as he stays pure. So why don't we have people who have opposite sex attraction? Why do we focus on that one?

I'll tell you why. The culture told us that we need to focus on that one. The culture said that is important. So 2% of the population and not only controlling the media, controlling the movie industry and controlling the television entertainment industry. And now they're controlling the church's agenda.

It's one thing to say, Well, they're doing this and Hollywood and so forth. But now it's in the church. And that is the burden of my heart truth be truthful, you know, truthful. And I don't worry anymore. When I was younger, they used to bother me. I honestly weep over this.

I genuinely weep tears over what's happening to the Church of Jesus Christ. So Dr. Youssef is one that's kind of ignorant. I apologize. I'm curious. I'm not that familiar with the study of anthropology. So from your perspective, how does anthropology speak to like what you described?

You had that education to this situation? Well, social anthropology is basically the study of culture, social movements, and the dynamics of social movements, how a movement starts. And it's really every movement, whether it be Christian movement, church or a business. They're like a human being. They basically get born and they go through growing pain and then they get old and then they die unless they inject new blood in them.

And so that's why all these mainland denominations are dying, because they've never injected new blood. And they always, you know, they just kept getting older and older and older. And then, you know, basically, we say, and I'm in that generation now. So I, but you basically, you know, you lose your mind and you get hardness of the veins, hardness of the mind, and your memory goes berserk.

And then you do some foolish things unless the family tried to take you in. So this is what's happening in social movements. And I pray to God that some of these social movements and these things that are happening in the church can die premature death, because without that, they're going to cause a lot of damage and a lot of harm. And now it is, we started, in the church particularly, we started to veer away from being Christocentric, from being theocentric, God-centered, we became anthropocentric, we became man-centered. So now the preaching is not how you repent of your sin and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ so you can have eternal life.

It's how you get blessed, that the power is in your tongue, that if you have positive thoughts, good things happen to you, and you can have this and you can have that, and it's you, you, you, you. And well, now the next wave, of course, this has paved the way, so the next wave is, well you are the master of the universe, you are the king, you are in charge, you are the boss. Where does God?

Well, he's disappeared long time ago. And so this is where my understanding of the anthropos, which is the knowledge of man, and with my study in theology, it was the knowledge of God, theology. So I do see that as a help for me, at least to be able to identify and to be able to show the importance for the believers, even historically, not to fall in the trap, not to do what has been done in the past. In fact, history has several examples. One of them is when Rome fell. Now Rome fell because of immorality, homosexuality, the fiscal irresponsibility, our empires extended, and on and on and on. And so Rome fell, but what happened, the pagans turned around and started blaming the Christians.

You see, if we did not become a Christian empire by Constantine, we would not have fallen. And so Saint Augustine comes in, he was chosen of God, really brought to the kingdom for such a time, and he wrote the book, The City of God, in order to help the Christians to understand, not to be so discouraged, because some of them were so discouraged, they were hiding their faith. And he said, don't be so discouraged, because we have the City of God, we are in the City of Man, and you need to look forward to the City of God that is to come. And so historically there are situations and crises that have come, we went through the dark ages, and then God sent the Reformers, and then we went through some really dark days prior to the Wesley and Whitfield revival, and so my prayer is that God would just send us, and would have mercy on us, and send us a great awakening, it would be the third great awakening in America, in order that these pastors who are preaching falsehoods, they will repent, and turn to the Lord, and consequently lead their congregations back to the Lord.

Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that I was thinking about was that there are some people who call themselves Christians who are completely taking on non-biblical ideas, and they're celebrating them and stuff like that, but I see a greater number of Christians who, what they're doing is they're just not saying anything at all. And what I'm reminded of is Ezekiel 33, starting in verse 1, it says, The word of the Lord came to me, Son of man, speak to your people and say to them, When I bring the sword against a land, and the people of the land choose one of their men and make them him their watchman, and he sees the sword coming against the land and blows the trumpet to warn the people, then if anyone hears the trumpet but does not heed the warning, and the sword comes and takes their life, their blood will be on their own head. Since they heard the sound of the trumpet but did not heed the warning, their blood will be on their own head. If they had heeded the warning, they would have saved themselves. Here's the part, though, it says, But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people, and the sword comes and takes someone's life, that person's life will be taken because of their sin, but I will hold the watchman accountable for their blood. So when I read that, it tells me it's important that we do speak up.

Absolutely. I tell my congregation all the time, and I tell my grandchildren, because they are, to be quite honest, my greatest asset. And I say, look, I know that there will be no blood on my hands simply because I have been sounding the alarm, and of course the book Hope for this Present Crisis is not my first book of warning. I have issued warning after warning, this is my 49th book, and I've been writing and I've been speaking and I've been saying, please, wake up in time. And I'm saying to others, don't let blood be on your hands, because when that day comes, and the Lord says, why didn't you speak up?

You have no excuse. And so, you're exactly right, brother. I mean, that's just the way we need every one of us, not just me. I'm just a fading wick, because as I said, I'm looking into the middle of my three quarters of life, and I just pray that God will raise up younger generations to stand up for that truth. That's right, and you know, some of the things that I've heard people say, well, you know, gosh, if I speak up or if I say something, people might put me down, or I could get beaten up, or I could lose my job, but Matthew chapter 5, verses 10 through 12, it says, Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake.

Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so have they persecuted the prophets who are before you. Now, there was a time in America, I believe, Dr. Youssef, where we really didn't have to worry about a whole lot of persecution. It seems like that may be changing.

What do you think? I think those days are gone. I mean, they are open persecution now. People are talking about it openly, saying we should have freedom of speech for everyone except Christians. I mean, they're saying it openly, and you read it in so many websites.

I mean, literally saying, yes, freedom of speech for everyone, except for the Christians, because they have dominated for so long and need to be silenced. Well, look, here's the thing. When you think about it, we are 2,000 years after Christ. In the early church, the believers, in order to give us the Gospel and give us the Word of God, unmolested, unwatered down, uncompromised, they paid for being dipped in hot tar and lit Nero's garden. They have been sent to hungry lions. They have been sawn in two.

They have suffered. In order to just give us the truth of the Word of God so we can have it today, I'm not saying we'll probably see those days, maybe in my lifetime, but whatever little persecution we have and whatever attack we have, and like you, Michael, I mean, I get a lot of attack on the social media. My goodness gracious, they call me every name in the book.

But truly, as you read from the scripture of Matthew 5, I rejoice. I say, Lord, to your be all glory, honor measures to dominion and power, for giving me the privilege of being attacked and criticized for your name's sake. And I think that is the one thing that is going to give us the victory, give us the courage, and to be quite honest, it's going to defeat the enemy. Because once they see that we're not afraid of them, the enemy is a bully. I mean, just think of a schoolyard bully. We all have seen schoolyard bullies growing up in our schools. They're really cowards. That's why they're bullies. And Satan is a bully, and he's a coward. I mean, once they see that we are not afraid, that we are going to stand up, and no matter what counter costs, no matter what, they're going to back down.

I really believe that. And if they don't, that's fine, too. I mean, just like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they said to the king, not king, we're not afraid, because our God would deliver us.

But if he doesn't, that's fine, too. And that is the time. The time has come for God's people to rise up.

It really is. So since we have you and this opportunity to ask a theological question that actually I don't have the answer to, I would love your insight from a standpoint of culture and a standpoint of what you're discussing, anthropology. In Isaiah chapter 6, right, Isaiah's getting the cold to the lips treatment. And then God tells, you know, who's going to send? And he says, send me. And he says, tell them this. I want to make their hearts fat so they won't hear, but they won't hear. And so they'll see, but they won't see. Otherwise, they would turn and I would heal them. That's kind of a scary.

It is scary. But you have to understand, it goes all your way back to Genesis and Exodus. You read it very clearly as Moses basically debating with Pharaoh and saying, let my people go. In the beginning it says, and Pharaoh hardened his own heart. And then as the debate goes on, 10 different plagues, as it goes on, it says God hardened Pharaoh's heart.

So what is happening here? Just like in Romans 1, God gave them up. When they persist in their way, when they persist in their resistance, when they persist in the hardening of their heart toward God, God said, you know what?

I'm going to harden their hearts even more. And I'm going to use the testimony of the believers and the preaching of the gospel as evidence against them on that great and dreadful day of judgment. And so, you know, you do it, you keep witnessing, you keep preaching, you keep sharing Christ with others, because if they don't repent and they harden their heart, just like Isaiah, the word of God said to Isaiah, then that hardening of the heart, that event of rejecting you and rejecting your testimony is going to be recorded against them and be used against them in the courts of heaven as they face that dreadful day of judgment that is coming and maybe even sooner than we think. Yeah, and you know, one of the good, there is some good news with all of this, is that we've seen in the churches in China and in the church actually in Iran, where there is severe persecution, the spread of Christianity is growing really, really fast.

Absolutely. I just came back from the Middle East six weeks ago, and I preached in several countries in the Middle East. I can tell you, here's why I think, I'm not an in-time preacher. You know, there are people who are specialized in in-time preaching.

But I'm thinking now at this stage, when I'm seeing Muslim extremists, I'm talking about militant Muslims, coming to Christ at the cost of possibly their own life, and it is, some of them do die. And then I see spoiled brats in the West, in Europe and America and Australia complaining about the air conditioning in the church, or not having a good parking space, or to go even to the extreme, and so-called deconstructionists, some preachers and singers and the people who have supposedly walked with God, and they give it a nice word, deconstruction, or meaning basically they become apostates, they turn their back on Christ. And when I see that's happening in the West, and I see people on the other, and I say, God must be gathering His elect from every tribe, nation, and language, because the time is coming, we must be close to the end, because He's gathering them from every corner of the globe, and the separation between the sheep and the goats have already started.

And we are just seeing the beginning of it. Now, if that's so, and I'm not saying it is, because none of us know the hour, then I rejoice in that. But if it is not, we keep praying for an awakening, that God will send an awakening to continue to bring His elect to Himself. Because eventually, all those who belong to Christ, Jesus said, those whom the Father gives me, I lose none. None that belong to Christ, truly belong to Christ, or are saved, will be lost. And so He's gathering and strengthening His own, while those who were sunshine Christians, those who were kind of fair-weather Christians, are now falling by the wayside. Yeah, and one of the things that I heard you say is that there's a lot of bad news, there's a lot of stuff that's tough, but we don't need to worry in that there is some good news, is that right?

Absolutely. The good news of the Gospel is always the good news. You know, when Paul said, I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation.

Where is the power? Not in the preaching of Paul, not in the preachers or writers or any of us, but the power is in the Gospel itself. And when the Gospel proclaims, that's the burden of my heart, just proclaim the Gospel, like Martin Luther used to say, let the Word do it. And when the Gospel is proclaimed, the power is going to convert, the lost is going to bring those who belong to Christ to Christ. And so, yes, I mean, we need to continue to preach.

If we go home, wonderful. If God tarries, wonderful. People say, well, we're going to go through the tribulation. I don't know. Some will say we're going to go halfway, three and a half years. Others say seven years. I said, no, no, no, no, we'll be out of here before it happens. I don't know.

I'm not that bright. Either way, heads you win, tails you win. If we go through the tribulation, he's going to be with us and strengthen us, and we're going to experience his supernatural power like we have never experienced before. But if we don't and he takes us home, glory to God, I'm ready. Got my spiritual bags packed. And the book is called Hope for this Present Crisis, The Seven Step Path to Restoring a World Gone Mad by Dr. Michael Youssef. You can get it on ltw.org, Leading the Way, or Amazon, and we hope you pick up the book.

It's a very, very important book. And Dr. Youssef, what if there's somebody out there who's never said yes to Jesus? What would you say to them today? Well, I want you to know, first of all, eternity is a long, long, long time. Don't gamble with it.

And where are you going to find somebody who loved you so much like Christ who loved you all the way to the cross in order that he may carry your sin? Come to him. Come to him now. Now is the hour. Now is the time. Don't put it off. Life is so uncertain. This is the opportunity that God has.

If you're listening, then you are listening because God led you to listen. And so this is the time. Call the station. Call Michael. Call Robbie. Call Leading the Way. Call the ministry and they will minister to you, I know, and give you some literature and help you along the way. Come to Christ. The time is now. Don't put it off.

Thank you so much, Dr. Michael Youssef. And the book is Hope for This Present Crisis, The Seven-Step Path to Restoring a World Gone Mad. Please pick up the book today. If not forgot. If Not for God. Imagine having peace of mind. In these turbulent times, peace of mind may be the most valuable of all assets. Feeling secure in your financial future is worth its weight in gold and in emotion. Liberty Bankers Insurance Group can help provide you with that most precious life-affirming sense of security. We work hard to create smart and innovative life, health, and financial plans that help ensure your family of not just the stability that you deserve, but the future potential you desire. To create a generational legacy of peace of mind. Liberty Bankers Insurance Group. For life. Not all products available in all states. Visit LBIG.com for additional terms and conditions. This is the Truth Network.