Here's Dr. Michael Youssef with tough words as he begins this episode of Leading the Way Audio. Thank you for joining Dr. Michael Youssef for Leading the Way. Recently, Dr. Youssef had the opportunity to speak to a group of pastors and church leaders in Brooklyn, New York. Men and women right there on the front lines of gospel ministry, reaching their lost communities with the love and the grace of Jesus. Dr. Youssef challenged them to contend for the faith, and it's a message that's relevant for all.
So be encouraged and be challenged by this message from pastor and author Dr. Michael Youssef on this episode of Leading the Way Audio. Whenever Bible-believing believers, Christian leaders abandon biblical truth, there is a vacuum that is created. And when that vacuum is created, there are two powerful forces that are more ready to fill that vacuum, militant secularism and militant Islam.
And they are on the rise in Europe, in Canada and the United States. And with those Middle Eastern eyes, I am seeing history repeating itself. The hidden enemy is a professing Christian who denied the authority of the Scripture, who refused to preach the authority of the Word of God. Those who find it very trendy to say, God, it's too big to have just one way for salvation. I'm aware of the fact that each generation, each generation of Bible-believing Christians have to face different challenges and different battles, literally for the survival of the truth. Today, as I said, the fiercest battle in the church that we are facing in the church is universalism and a denial of the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Statistics after statistics have shown that universalism has leaped from the mainline denominations and have gone into many of the evangelical denominations. Now, I am not completely wedded to statistics, but when you are continuously seeing that study after study after study after study showing that between 50 to 60% of so-called evangelicals no longer believe that Jesus is the only way to salvation, that Jesus is the only way to the Father. When you see that continuously, we as faithful pastors and in the ministry, we need not only weep like Jeremiah wept, but we need to go weeping on our knees on behalf of the church. Not only that we must daily commit ourselves and recommit ourselves to the Lord and to the calling and to the calling of proclamation of the truth, but to each other. We must contend for the faith even at the cost of our lives. Brothers and sisters, I want to tell you the devil has convinced many of us, many of us in the churches, by what Dr. J.I.
Packer, a friend of mine, a professor of theology in Vancouver, calls hot tub Christianity. The devil has sold us a bill of goods which allowed us to think that our comfort, our leisure, our popularity, our acceptance, our security, our pension for maybe larger and larger crowds basically come ahead of proclamation of the truth. Satan has convinced us slowly but surely to stop standing for the truth and be tolerant of sin.
Not we talk about tolerance, but they talk about tolerance of sin. We have removed the battle language of the Bible into a hot tub Christianity. So much so the churches are now filled with the unsaved and the uncommitted and the unconverted.
And we wonder why, we wonder why our country is in the mess it's in. My fellow servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are in a mess we're in because many of us in the pulpits have seized the thunder from that place of privilege and say, Thus says the Lord. Thus says the Lord. We have turned our pulpits into stages and turned our churches into theaters and we have turned our congregation into audience.
As Vance Hadner used to say, We come singing just as I am and we leave just as we came. My fellow servants of the living God, unless we repent and turn back to the Lord and cry to him for mercy, for supernatural power and for strength, we will continue in this downward spiral. And I'm here to encourage you.
I'm here to lift you up. Jude the half-brother of the Lord Jesus exhorts us, it's only one chapter epistle, one chapter epistle. He says, Contend for the faith that once and for all entrusted to the saints. Contend for the faith.
If there is a call on your life and mine, it is to contend for the faith. That means that we don't water it down. We don't sugarcoat it. We don't delude its strength. We don't modify its power. We don't break the sting.
We don't smooth it over or under the guise of relevance, take away its demands. What is that faith which we are to contend for that was entrusted to us that we earnestly must stand for and die for? It is the act of believing and experience has power of transformation. It is the totality of the truth. It's the unfolding of God's revelation. It is the preaching truthfully, what is found in the book of God. It is the proclamation of God's provision of only one way for salvation.
Not too many ways, only one way. History teaches us that whenever misguided Christians, professing Christians try to keep that book open, maybe for a new revelation of some sort, and will be equally with authority as those who aspire of the Holy Spirit to write it. When that happens, that culture is annihilated.
Not just weakened, annihilated. I'm going to give you examples from history. I'm an amateur historian. You know when the gospel was preached in the early days of the church and spread so fast, a country of my birth like Egypt, my ancestors, they were sun worshippers, the god Ra. They were polytheistic, worshipping many gods. But when the Jews from Alexandria, who were in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, and they heard the gospel and they brought it back to Alexandria and they began to preach it.
Then followed by the apostle Mark who came and began to preach in Alexandria and he was actually dragged to death. Within a matter of less than 100 years, 85% of the population became Christian. Not only that, but the gospel spread throughout North Africa.
I'm talking about Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Algiers. 90% of that population were all Christians. There was estimates, in fact, Saint Augustine comes from Algeria, whether we know this or not, but there was estimates that there were 5,000 dioceses in one stage.
That is not 5,000 churches, that's hundreds of thousands of churches throughout that region. And then came a movement called the mountainous movement in the church. This was a second century heresy, but then was popularized by a woman in North Africa by the name of Marcella. Basically the bottom line of this heresy says, among other things, the Bible is an open book. It's not closed canon, it is open that God can speak with the same authority today through others as he did back then through Paul and Peter and John and James and those who inspired the Holy Spirit to write the book of God.
It is not a closed book. So I want you to imagine with me, in the middle of the 600s and the 700s, when the hordes of Muslim invaders came blustering from Arabian desert into North Africa proclaiming Allah, they found a warm bosom in the church of North Africa. They said, let's see what God is telling us.
He may be bringing us a new revelation. And thus within a matter of few years, these tens of thousands of churches turned into mosques. That is history, my beloved friends. You cannot tell me that history is not repeating itself, it's repeating itself now. In the United Kingdom alone, and I have an office there and I have a ministry there and I love the people of the United Kingdom and I just hurt for them, but in the last 20 years there were 500 churches that closed down.
At the same period of time, 427 mosques were built at the same period of time. Can't tell me history does not repeat itself. It is time for us to be forewarned because that's happening, not just in Europe and Canada, in the United States. And that is why today, more than ever, we must refuse to be intimidated by the enemies of the cross. We must lovingly say, the truth is the truth is the truth. Let them call us what they will. Let them call us intolerant. Let them call us bigots. Let them call us narrow-minded. Let them call us unloving.
Let them call us what they want to call us. But we must say with the apostle Paul in Galatians chapter 1 verse 8, Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one that was preached to you, let him be eternally condemned. Amen. Today we have preachers who wave big black Bibles, but they never tell you what's inside that book. You and I must heed the exhortation of Jude to contend for the faith. Contend for the faith. Contend for the faith. Jude is telling us that this faith that is entrusted to us, we had better be good and faithful trustees. We had better be good and faithful custodians of it.
We must hand it to the next generation, unmolested, unmodified, and unmessed up with. Don't ever forget our Christian bearers were accused by Rome for being intolerant. Let me tell you a little bit of history there.
I know that too. Remember Rome tolerated all kinds of gods. The more gods the merrier. Men of these Christians said, hey, we found this God named Jesus. Oh, wonderful.
Add him to the list. But the one thing they could not tolerate, those pesky Christians who insisted there's only one God. And this one true God came from heaven. And he died on a cross to pay for the wages of sin of everyone who believe in him. And more importantly, he rose again in the power of his omnipotence. Physically, bodily rose from the dead on the third day from the grave. And that one day the clouds are going to roll back like a scroll.
And he's coming back to judge the living and the dead. Because of their intolerance, these Christians were fed the hungry lions. They were dipped in boiling oil. They were lit up as candles to light up Nero's garden palace.
Why? Because they wanted to deliver to us that faith that once delivered. They were contending for the faith.
And my beloved friends, universalism and the denial of divinity of Jesus Christ and the denial of the authority of the scripture is the battle cry of our generation. We had better not lose that battle. I know we're not going to lose it because I read the last chapter and it says we win.
We win. But we do not lose it. We do not allow anything that comes in the way and gets in the way to entice us. We do not allow the praise of men to deceive us. We allow not the flattery of those who are in the media to buy us off. We do not allow the longing for acceptance by society and by the culture to make us sell our birthright. Nothing should make us sell our souls, certainly not for a pot of soup. The reason we do not contend for the faith once delivered to all the saints is because we have ceased to love the word of God. We really have. We have ceased to trust in God's promises.
We have placed our confidence in what Dr. Smell Fungus says or what Ms. Superduck says than in the word of God. I hear it all the time. So and so says, I don't care what they say. What does the word of God say?
That's really what matters. I know the arguments. I know the arguments. I know them all.
I know them too well. Christians are being accused of being angry all the time. Christians are being accused that they're always against some things and not for anything. Christians are accused of being negative. Christians are accused of being hateful.
Now I'm not denying that there are some people who give Christianity a bad name. I know that. I know that. But listen to me. You and I are for the truth. The truth is this. Love is our only weapon. Compassion is our armor. And the word of God is our sword. Desiring eternal salvation for others is the only motive that we have for living and serving. Amen. You know, I'm telling you about loving the word of God and spending time with God. But I've got to come clean with you. When I started the church, I was so busy.
The church was growing fast. And I was so busy running around, running around, running around. I mean I go for breakfast, lunch and dinner and appointments in between. And I, man I thought I was the best thing since sliced bread. I was busy. I was serving. I wasn't doing anything wrong. And then I got hit with double pneumonia. I couldn't move for two weeks. They want to hospitalize me.
I said no. I know what God is doing. He wants to get my attention. And he did. And I cried hot tears. And God says, listen to me, now that I got your attention, I can do all of this without you. I can do even more without you. How can you minister to anyone without ministering to me first every day? And I sat there and I wept and I wept and I wept. I said, Lord, how can I minister to you? Here's the first decision I made. Not one single morning appointment.
If somebody said I can only meet you, I said I'm sorry, I'm meeting your boss at that time. The tithe of the day belongs to the Lord. In praise, worship, adoration, studying of his word. And then God blessed in ways I couldn't even expect.
In ways I could never think about. Imagine, about 25 years ago, right after I had this experience with the Lord and the Lord was blessing. And the Lord says, I want you to preach the truth and I don't want you to worry about numbers. And so I was preaching my heart out one Sunday. And unbeknown to me, there was a young pastor in the church, younger than me, who was very successful.
Extremely successful. And a few weeks later he wanted to meet with me. And he wanted to help this poor immigrant preacher, you know, just want to help him out. And he said, Michael, I want to tell you right now.
In your face preaching will not build your great church. And I thought about this long and high. He said, you need to stay positive. Get away from the negative things about sin and repentance. I understood exactly what he's trying to say and I would be lying to if I didn't say I was thinking about it. Just for a little bit.
Just for a little bit. But then I sensed the Lord speaking to me in one of those mornings. He said, I would rather you show up in heaven with a handful of people who come to know me through the saving power of my son Jesus, than tens of thousands of people who would come to be entertained. And then curse you from hell.
I said, Lord, I am sorry. And that became another turning point in my life. And yes, our church grew.
And it grew. Thousands of people come and I tell them every Sunday, you're glutton for punishment. Because they're only going to get an in your face preaching. They know that I'm only going to preach the uncompromised word of God. And I know many of you here know exactly what I'm talking about.
You know exactly what you're talking about. Some of you might be discouraged because of that. Maybe you've been criticized because you're preaching the truth of the word of God. I'll never forget in Dallas, Texas, a pastor came and held my hand, both hands. He said I was up all night struggling because the pressure on me to kind of soften the message was so great. And I was preaching similar message, not this one, but similar message about the importance of preaching the truth. And he said, all night I was up and praying. I said, Lord, he said, give me a word, give me a word, give me a word.
And he comes and he said, I wasn't going to come to this lunch. But he shows up and he said, God gave me a word. He said, I'm going to preach it till I die. I hugged him.
I hugged him. I said, God bless you and he will bless you. Many of you have been faithful preachers of the gospel.
Many of you, because of that faithfulness, you are discouraged. And you're criticized. You're attacked.
But I want you to think this morning with me. You can close your eyes if you want to. Think of the audience of one. You know what I mean by the audience of one? Every one of us are going to have the audience of one.
One day when you have that audience of one with Jesus, think about hearing from his precious lips. Well done. Well done. Well done.
God and faith for certain. Verse 4 of Jude. I'm getting close to the end. Don't let me lose you. Don't let me lose you. Now if you get through before I do, raise your hand.
Okay. But in Jude, there's one chapter, verse 4. He said, certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slept among us. And the word Jude uses here is those who sneak into the church. In fact, the word can mean stealthily or smoothly or under cover.
It's a word that's used of an alligator who lies still at the riverbank, perfectly still, and without causing as much as a ripple, slips into the water. These people appear to be kind and gentle and oh they're so sweet. They're sweet. But inwardly they're full of deception. Outwardly they are gifted and articulate, but inwardly they desire self-worship. Outwardly they appear compassionate. Inwardly they are self-serving. Outwardly they appear oh so relevant to the culture, but in reality they have perverted the grace of God.
And they turned it into a license. Remember this, grace is not a license to sin. Grace puts us on our faces and our knees in gratitude to God for his grace. Grace humbles us beyond measure. Grace causes us to hate sin, particularly sin in our lives.
I hate sin in my life now that I'm older than I've ever hated sin before. Grace causes us to hate what God hates. Grace causes us to blush when we sin, not explain it away.
Grace leads us into purity, not perversion of the truth of the gospel. And so my fellow beloved pastors and teachers and ministry colleagues, contend for the faith that is once delivered. Contend for the faith. Contend for the faith. Say it with me. Contend with the faith. Let's say it again.
Contend for the faith. Because soon, and it may be sooner than any of us might think, we're going to hear from the lips of the master those magnificent words, well done. You notice he did not say much done? Hello. Ah yes.
Because we judge everything on that page. He didn't say much done, he said well done. Well done, good and faithful servant.
Good and faithful servants. And may that be said of every one of you. Thank you for listening today to Leading the Way Audio and Dr. Michael Youssef's pointed challenge to contend for the faith. We pray that when you have an audience of one, you'll hear, well done. Well, maybe you'd like to listen to this message again, or maybe you want to share this one with your pastor or your small group.
We've made that easy. Just click on the Listen link when you go to ltw.org and then look for the Contend for the Faith. Look for that title as you're scrolling. Hey, you can also subscribe to the podcast, or you can listen with the Leading the Way app. You know, Dr. Youssef has joined me now in the studio for a moment because we're excited to talk about his new book, God's Final Call. So, Dr. Youssef, what is the central message that you really hope your readers will take away from God's Final Call? I wrote this book, God's Final Call, for a very important reason. So many people think the book of Revelation is for the future. But I'm going to show you here, when you read this book, you will say we're living in those days. We are living in those days. And you will be blessed as you read the messages of Jesus come straight out of His holy mouth to the church and to our church of today. Get more details about God's Final Call and ways to get your hands on a copy when you call 866-626-4356 or visit our website, ltw.org.
