Reflections on the Afghanistan Disaster and an Interview with Josh McDowell and Bob Bennett

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I'm going to give you ten reflections on the disaster in Afghanistan, and then an interview with Josh McDowell and Bob Bennett about a brand new book. It's time for The Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Michael Brown is the director of the Coalition of Conscience and president of Fire School of Ministry. Get into The Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

That's 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Actually, Josh McDowell and Ben Bennett, not Bob Bennett. Hey friends, welcome to the broadcast. This is Michael Brown, delighted to be with you. Got some important things to talk about, as always, some weighty things. You know, I always do my best to encourage, lift up, build faith. There are also times we just need to look at reality with pain, with grief, and take that to the Lord in prayer, and that's the situation in Afghanistan right now. Welcome to the broadcast, 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. So I want to take the first half of today's broadcast, talk about Afghanistan, and then if I have some time, some reflections from yesterday's broadcast as well. We talked about the church being alert and awake in the season in which we live. And then bottom of the hour, we'll be joined by Josh McDowell and Ben Bennett to talk about their new book, Free to Thrive. So on the air yesterday, I shared a little bit about Afghanistan, but I said I wanted to step back more.

I wanted to reflect more than I wanted to add what I could in a way that would be truthful and constructive. So got home from radio last night, sat down and began to write, and this is the article I'm going to refer to today. It's on AskDrBrown.org. It's on Stream.org. You can read it for yourself.

You can share it with others. Ten reflections on the Afghan disaster. So let me dive right in with number one.

And again, what I'm writing for the most part is hardly debatable. This is President Biden's darkest moment. Simply stated, when Biden is getting bashed by CNN and MSNBC, you know he has blundered terribly.

Just look at these opening paragraphs from an op-ed on MSNBC. So when you've got the left-wing media going after President Biden, you know something is terribly wrong. President Joe Biden addressed the nation about the state of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan on Monday.

Mainly it seemed to say he regretted nothing. He blamed the Taliban's rapid advances across the country on Afghan security forces failing to mount any real resistance to the Taliban. But the president had virtually nothing to say about what's on everybody's minds, how poorly prepared the US was for the Taliban's blitz and the vulnerable position he has left so many Afghans in as a result. So as I state, not even MSNBC was in a mood to give the president grace for his dreadful decision. Let's step back for a moment and think about that.

President Biden in his press conference took no questions — he did say, I'm the president, the buck stops with me — but he did blame his predecessor on some level. In particular, he blamed the Afghan people, and the army didn't have the will to fight. Now I don't know all the dimensions of things that said, hey, they were 300,000 strong and we trained them properly, et cetera.

But here's the bottom line. In the last 20 years, we have lost about 2,500. It's a little under 2,500 of our military in Afghanistan. So it's a terrible loss, of course, less than the tragic loss on 9-11. And part of our presence there was to stop another 9-11 from happening and to thwart the rise of terrorism within that country as a base for terrorism. In any case, the fact is that we lost a little under 2,500 of our servicemen in Afghanistan. And for the family members, for the friends, for those wounded by it, the wound remains to this moment. When it comes to Afghan military or police, they lost about 66,000 in these 20 years. So to blame them, or they didn't have the will to fight and we can't fight their battles for them, we weren't just there to fight their battles for them. There were other reasons why we were there. But it was utterly disastrous decision. And now, look, you have former advisors to President Obama saying this was terrible. You have military advisors saying, hey, the U.S. intelligence was warning. We're saying clearly don't do this.

If you pull out in this way, the Taliban will overrun the country overnight. So there is real, real indictment here. This is a real indictment of the Biden administration.

And it is his darkest moment. There is no question about it. There's no downplaying it.

There's no softballing it. This is dreadful. Okay. Number two.

Number two. No amount of words or excuses will remove the harrowing images from our memory. Let's quote MSNBC again. Over the weekend, people hoping to escape the country swarmed runways and sung clung to departing U.S. military aircraft during takeoff, sometimes for so long that they fell to their deaths. Images of the gut-wrenching scramble that have gone viral have been likened to the U.S.'s withdrawal from the Vietnam War. In short, friends, we'll never unsee what we saw.

Somehow, as Nancy and I were talking today, I realized that she had not seen the video, which not just shows the one of our military planes at the airport and people trying to cling to it as it takes off, but actually as it's in the air, these tiny little bodies you see as the plane is now distant falling from the plane. You think of that level of desperation, that level of wanting to get out of the country, that you're risking your life rather than stay. Those images are not going to leave our memory. This is a Saigon. This is another dreadful, humiliating moment in American history and what it means for the people of Afghanistan all the more dreadful.

Those images are not going to go away anytime soon. Number three, Biden's legacy will always be remembered in light of his statements last July. When he was justifying his plans for rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan, he was then asked by reporters about specifics and he said this, there is going to be no circumstance in which you are going to see people lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan and I trust the capacity of the Afghan military. He also said this will not be a Saigon. This will not be a Saigon. If you've ever seen those images where literally the roof of the embassy, Americans are clamoring to get on these helicopters to get out of the country. Well now it's on the tarmac and it's Afghanis and now many thousands of Americans still trapped there. These words won't go away.

Trust me, these words will haunt him for his presidency and thereafter. Number four, Afghanistan is a staunchly Muslim country. The Taliban are just much more extreme and draconian. So we fool ourselves if we think that the battle in Afghanistan was between a modernist Western democratic mindset and fundamentalist Islam.

To the contrary, the battle is between degrees of Islam. As Robert Spencer noted, Islam expert, jihadist expert, in our early years in Afghanistan, once the Taliban was toppled, we set about nation building initially with an eye toward establishing a Western style constitutional Republican Afghanistan. But State Department foreign policy experts drastically underestimated the Afghan people's attachment to Islamic law, Sharia, and disastrously discounted Sharia's political aspects and naively fueled by Islamic apologists in the US that Islam was a religion of peace that was perfectly compatible with Western secular models of governance.

Of course not. Accordingly, the Afghan constitution that Afghanistan's then president, Hamid Karzai, formally ratified on January 26, 2004, is written, quote, in the name of we the people of Afghanistan, believing firmly an almighty God relying on his divine will and adhering to the holy religion of Islam. That was the Afghan constitution, an Islamic constitution. So the problem is not that the Taliban are Muslims. The problem is that they're more extreme Muslims. They're more draconian Muslims.

They're more radical Muslims. So again, the battle within Afghanistan is a battle of degrees within Islam. Number five. Number five, something I had not thought about until a colleague texted me yesterday. Perhaps we should follow the money trail.

A colleague texted me today, yesterday, raising a point that is rarely considered. Quote, my personal issue is the number of companies and individuals who became ultra rich through defense spending at the cost of Afghan and American lives. I have a multi-decade relationship with a pastor in Arizona who happens to be a major executive at one of the largest defense contractors in the world. The stories he has told me about their lobbyists, dot, dot, dot. So according to Forbes, in the 20 years since September 11th, 2001, the United States has spent more than $2 trillion on the war in Afghanistan.

That's $300 million per day every day for two decades. In baser terms, Uncle Sam has spent more keeping the Taliban at bay than the net worths of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and the 30 richest billionaires in America combined. So the question, did everyone have altruistic motives in calling for our ongoing investment in Afghanistan? Number six, the swift victory of the Taliban will embolden Islamic terrorists worldwide. Islamic radicals, the sense of signal that America represented in the West is feeble and has no will to stand against the will of Islam. Just as the triumph of Islamic fundamentalism in Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini triggered a spike in Islamic terror worldwide in the late 1970s. Already in July, Dr. Sajjan Gohil, a security and terrorism analyst told the BBC, quote, the Biden withdrawal from Afghanistan makes the Taliban takeover inevitable and gives Al Qaeda the opportunity to rebuild its network to the point where it could once again plot attacks around the world. Number seven, atrocities are already taking place. I know the Taliban have said, hey, amnesty for all, everyone's forgiven.

Women, we want you to work in government. The reports from on the ground are dreadful. A friend posted this chilling note on Facebook from the children of Christian missionaries living in UK from the living in Kabul, excuse me, from the UK.

Just FaceTime with them. So these are the kids of Christian missionaries in Afghanistan. They are hiding, surrounded by gunfire and bombs.

This was yesterday. Everyone is hiding in their homes. The Taliban are taking women and slaughtering anyone who resists them. They will kill all foreigners and anyone who has worked with foreigners over the past 20 years.

There's a reason why people are actually clinging to American military planes leaving the airport. And just looking at this post from Louise on Facebook, my Yazidi in Iraq friends are very scared. Yeah.

I mean, ISIS decimated, committed atrocities against the Yazidis and who knows what rises up in the aftermath of this. Okay. Got a few more points, eight, nine and 10. Then want to read a devastating op-ed from the Jerusalem Post. We will be right back. Listen to the line of fire. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks, friends, for joining us today on the line of fire as I bring you my reflections on Afghanistan. You can read this article at AskDrBrown.org, Stream.org or wherever you normally read my articles. If you don't get my emails, that's where you get alerted every week to all of the articles, all of the videos, especially the resources, things that are available, your videos and other things that we post that were not on our normal list. By all means, sign up today. We're here to serve you, friends. We're here to equip you. We're here to help you.

So go to AskDrBrown.org, AskDrBrown.org and sign in there for our emails. When you do, you immediately get a free mini ebook, Seven Secrets to the Real Messiah. You'll hear more about my testimony from LSD to PhD. A bunch of other things will come your way. You'll be blessed. I know you will. And you'll also find out about ways you can stand with us. If we've been a blessing to you, if you'd like to see our voice expand to reach more and more people, if you'd like to see our outreach grow to reach more and more people, we can do it with your help.

So AskDrBrown.org, click on donate, become a monthly supporter, a one time giver and together, friends, we'll continue to make a difference. All right, number eight, my list of 10 reflections on the Afghan disaster. We cannot forget the women and girls of Afghanistan. Now I'm not going to play this video, but I reference in the article, just take 45 seconds to watch this video and never forget the tears. It's an Afghan girl crying and saying everyone's going to forget about us and we're going to suffer. And it's just tragic.

Again, to play it because she's speaking in her language and you wouldn't understand it, but take a moment, read the article, click on the link, watch it and let it settle in and impact you. While specific individuals will be targeted by the Taliban, such as those mentioned in the previous point, allies of America or Christians that are there, no one will suffer more overall than the women and girls of this country. Their hopes of a better tomorrow have for now been dashed to the ground. The idea of Taliban making major reforms and changing their treatment of women and radically updating Sharia law to coincide with Western sensitivities.

Don't hold your breath waiting. And perhaps for these women and girls, they don't look at Islam so much as the problem. Many of them are devoted Muslims. They look at the Taliban as the problem or Sharia law as the problem. And they may not agree with all the extreme forms of it, but maybe out of this, many will recognize there's a deeper issue and the Lord's grace can intervene. Number nine, we need to do some serious soul searching regarding our foreign policy philosophy.

This is number nine. It is understandable that we attack the Taliban in the aftermath of 9-11 20 years ago. After all, they were harboring Osama bin Laden. And so the friend of our enemy became our enemy as well. But with our misguided policies in Iraq leading to national instability, the genocide or exiling of hundreds of thousands of Christians and Yazidis and others, and the rise of ISIS, now with the total failure of our Afghan policies, we need to ask ourselves some hard questions. Do we really know what we're doing?

It remains to be seen whether the Trump strategy would have ended better than the current ending. And yes, Wayne, China should also be on our country's radar. And what is China's relationship to Afghanistan?

Those are the Lord's questions. Often, friends, our policies worldwide are shortsighted, that we fix problem A, which then results in problem B, which is worse than problem A. Many times our solutions are worse than the disease itself. And a lot of Islamic terror is the result of some of our policies. Hey, look, I remember when Russia invaded Afghanistan and took over the country and I heard about these freedom fighters. I understood they were radical Muslims and all that, but hey, they were better than the Russians trying to take over the world and impose their will and all of this evil and the evil Soviet Union and so on. And when I would hear these freedom fighters out in the mountains and you can't stop them and, okay, they were radical Muslims, I understood all that. Of course, I deeply differed with their ideologies, but to me, helped them get Russia out. After all, it's their own country.

I mean, just shortsighted thinking without saying, okay, so Russia gets out, Soviet Union gets out, and then America does what? It ended up helping give birth to another rise of terror. So you support the freedom fighters against Russia, and now the freedom fighters become our worst enemies. And lastly, number 10, number 10, we must not forget the sacrifices made by so many Americans and others in Afghanistan. These are the stats as reported by AP News. American service members killed in Afghanistan through April 2nd, through April, excuse me, 2,448. US contractors, 3,846. Afghan national military and police, 66,000. Other allied service members, including from other NATO member states, 1,144 Afghan civilians, 47,245 aid workers, 444, I'm sorry, got it wrong.

So it's, no, no, I've got it right here. And then journalists, 72. AP also notes that 51,191 Taliban and other opposition fighters died during the conflict. So for those who were wounded by this to this day, maybe you served there and you're still suffering from PTSD or you're the family members, your son was killed in Afghanistan. What about the cost to all these individuals and families? The only thing I can say is that somehow, some way, we must tell those who served and died that despite the dreadful outcome, they gave themselves for an important cause, wanting to better the lives of the people of Afghanistan and wanting to fight back against Islamic terror. Surely, there's nobility in the sacrifice regardless of the end result.

So here's what I've been thinking about. As I think about these individuals who lost their lives, and you think for what? And there are so many, they're widows of vets that died there.

And they're so grieved and they are so outraged. And look, almost no one wanted us to be there forever. But there is a right way to leave and a wrong way to leave. There are strategies that are doomed to fail and strategies that might have at least a slight ray of hope. So I'm thinking about this, okay, what do you say? It's done now, right?

It's done. And even if the Taliban rule for a while, then they're toppled. What was the result of our influence there? How can you think of it as being redeemed in any way?

So here's what I was thinking. Of course, those that know the Lord, everything gets redeemed in the light of eternity. But perhaps, perhaps the Afghan people saw our military there, our contractors there, our workers there, let alone our missionaries there who are obviously serving the poor, the hurting, the needy at their own great risk, the missionaries' own great risk. But perhaps they can associate some of what we did with freedom. But perhaps they can recognize that there was much that we were fighting against, which was downright evil, the terrorism of Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and Taliban and others. Perhaps there'll be some legacy.

And instead of just hating the West and death to America, perhaps there'll be seeds planted in the lives of people who will look for more, who will wonder about more, who will even see some of the inherent evils of Islam as well. And God can use that. So I'm always looking for something redemptive.

May the Lord use it. And those that fought, they fought for what they thought was right and that they fought against an enemy. And when you do that, even if the end result is not what you're hoping for, your sacrifice is still not in vain.

Your sacrifice still stands and families, the sacrifice of your loved ones still stands. I don't have time to get into this now, but I want to draw your attention to an article published in the Jerusalem Post. It's an op-ed piece by Omri Nahmias.

I'm not familiar with his writings. It came out yesterday. Afghanistan, America will pay a price for years to come, say experts. And it's got some really devastating quotes in it. I mean, one after another, after another.

It's really, really intense. And here, just one quote from one expert. President Biden seems to have seen the withdrawal as important to his political reputation, perhaps, but he has made a huge mistake for the reputation of the United States. We'll have to wait for leaks about which of his advisors suggested caution and who encouraged him. The news and images so far suggest continual damage to the moral leadership of the US in the world. The decision to withdraw after 20 years was at least explicable.

The implementation has been a disaster. That was Simon Henderson, a Baker Fellow and Director of the Bernstein Program on Gulf and Energy Policy at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank. So some devastating quotes. Look, America does have a certain role in the world.

And when we fail on this level, it sends a message. Look, this is one reason that I was deeply concerned about a Biden presidency. I felt that he would be very weak with China, very weak with Islamic terror, whereas I believed that Trump would be strong. So this is one reason Trump got my vote rather than Joe Biden.

Did I foresee this specifically? No, I wasn't really focused on Afghanistan specifically. And I didn't know how the Trump policy would end with Afghanistan. But this much is clear.

These were some of the very concerns we had about a weak president weakening America. But the tragedy is so much bigger than that. So we pray for the people of Afghanistan. We pray for Americans still trapped there.

We pray for Christians in that country. And we pray for those just smitten with grief and concern now looking at 20 years and saying, for what? With that, we transition now to our guests, Josh Mertal and Ben Bennett.

Stay with us. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get into The Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. There is so much going on in the world around us that demands our attention. I've got a new article with 10 reflections on the Afghan disaster. So much happening in America. But bottom line, people are people. Bottom line, every day people are struggling. Bottom line, young people are under tremendous pressure like never before.

And we must address real life needs on a daily basis. There's a brand new book I'm holding in my hands here, Josh McDowell and Ben Bennett. The name of the book, Free to Thrive, How Your Hurts, Struggles, and Deepest Longings Can Lead to a Fulfilling Life. Josh McDowell, one of the great apologists of our century plus. When I say century, I mean last. And this brought the gospel to tens of millions of people.

Ben Bennett, reaching particularly young people with his resolution movement. And they join me now on The Line of Fire. Ben, Josh, thanks so much for taking time to be with us today. Oh, hey, this is like dying and going to heaven. There you are. Hey, it's great to be with you.

All right, thank you. So, gentlemen, if you don't mind, and maybe Ben you can go first, how is it that the two of you hooked up to work on this project together? Oh, man, well, you know, I knew about Josh for a long time. I was involved in a crew of the campus ministry, read his book, More Than a Carpenter, and I knew he was doing phenomenal work, and I started, you know, getting involved in helping people grow and deal with mental health issues, hurts, porn addiction in their life. And it was when Josh put on this big conference for the, you know, helping the church address the issue of pornography. That's when, I think that was the second time we met, and then I had this crazy idea, what if we started working together?

And so somehow I got a hold of him, and we started talking, and he said, sure, move on down to Dallas. And then, you know, just the past four years we've been working together on so much stuff, and just saw this overwhelming need for biblically-based research-informed solutions to the devastating amount of brokenness people are experiencing all around the world. And Josh, I've heard you speak about things, and the stats are jarring, the realities are jarring. How are things different now, especially with the younger generation today, than when you started doing apologetics decades ago? Probably the biggest difference is the Internet. Before the Internet, most young people around the world hardly ever heard of the argument against Christianity, against faith in Christ, the resurrection. And so there were a few questions or anything. Well, with the introduction of the Internet, they're bombarded with everything. And so they've got more questions now, more hesitancy, more reservations, than any group of teenagers ever had. Now, I think that's good, because we should be ready to answer their questions and all, and that's how you grow in Christ. And the more questions you get answered, the more you grow.

But that's probably the biggest difference, is knowledge. And Josh, has it affected people at a younger age? In other words, maybe objections you were dealing with and encountering with college-age kids, you're dealing with much younger kids today, has that been a result of the Internet as well? Yes, because it's the younger kids that are going on the Internet, seeking out everything. And the problem is, when adults hear some of these issues, they have a certain maturity and capacity to deal with it, where young people don't have that experience, and usually don't yet have that intellectual capacity to deal with it. And yet, what you formulate as a child is normally what becomes your faith as an adult. And so this is why we try to do everything we can to reach young people with a profound but simple and easy-to-understand faith.

And then one last question, and then I want to go back to Ben and talk about seven longings that are addressed in the book Free to Thrive. Josh, what about the pervasive effect of pornography? Can you just paint a picture for us so that we get the full impact of what's actually going on? Pornography is the greatest threat in the history of the Church. It's destroying more churches, more pastors, more couples, more marriages, more young people than anything that's even come close to in history. And one of the biggest problems with it, hardly anyone will address it. In most programs, they say, we won't hear you, but please don't mention pornography.

You've got to be kidding, the number one problem. And the reason it's not addressed is probably half of your evangelical pastors are involved in pornography and internet. And so they feel guilty addressing it, and they feel they might be exposed. Same way with Christian leaders. And so pornography, we've never faced anything like that, that affects you emotionally, intellectually, and morally.

Extraordinary. Friends, did you hear what Dr. Josh Montalgia said, the greatest threat in the history of the Church? And a lot of times people don't want to talk about it or address it for some of the very reasons we were just given. So Ben, in your book Free to Thrive, you talk about the fact that we have certain longings, desires within us, as human beings, and those things can be pulled in a right direction or wrong direction. What do you mean when you refer to these seven longings? Yeah, so one of the things Josh and I discovered throughout the years as we were doing research, studying the Scriptures, meeting with therapists and brain scientists, is that there are these seven heart longings, or these seven persistent cravings, that God created humanity with. And they're all deeply relational.

We're meant to have them fulfilled by God and others. And as we were doing this research, I came across this statistic. It was a mind-blowing statistic from Harvard. They had been doing this research for, I think it was 80 years at the time. They wanted to see what would lead to the happiest and healthiest lives. And the current head of the study said, by and large, it's good relationships that keep us happier and healthier, period. I'm going, wow!

That's one of the most significant pieces of research or studies ever done. And I'm also going, that's what God created us for! In the Garden of Eden, with Him and other people, good relationships. And so these seven longings we see all throughout Scripture. The first one is acceptance. This is to be included, loved, and approved of as you are, no matter what. I think of Romans 15.7, except one another, then, just as Christ accepted you in order to bring praise to God. You know, that's the beauty of Christianity. We're accepted as we are through Jesus Christ and His work on the cross and His perfect life, His death, His resurrection. Unlike other religions, other religions say to be accepted by a higher being, you have to do this, serve the poor, and maybe one day you'll be accepted.

No, we've got something so much different and more beautiful with the truth of Christianity. Another one is appreciation, to be thanked or encouraged for what you've done. The third one is affection, to be cared for with gentle touch or emotional engagement. Access is to have the consistent emotional and physical presence of key figures. Attention, this one is powerful, it's to be known and understood with someone entering your world. I think of David when he wrote in Psalm 139, oh Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me.

That's the beauty of who our God is. He knows our thoughts, our opinions, our beliefs, and He cares. And we're supposed to have that kind of relationship, that intentional relationship with others. There's two more, affirmation of feelings, to have our feelings affirmed, validated, or confirmed by others. Romans 12, 15 says, to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn.

And then the last one is assurance of safety, to feel safe, protected, and provided for emotionally, physically, and financially. So we deeply detail all of these in the scriptures where we find them and we talk about what happens when they're fulfilled. We actually flourish, we thrive, we find satisfaction and meaning and purpose, but when they're not fulfilled, man, we have these deep hurts, these deep unmet longings, and we will seek out other things to try and fulfill them.

Friends, I'm speaking with Ben Bennett and Josh McTowell together, they've written Free to Thrive. The subtitle really says it all, how your hurts, struggles, and deepest longings can lead to a fulfilling life. Josh, the very first one of these longings that we've been created with, acceptance. Isn't it true that a lot of young people today look at, say, gay lesbian friends and say, well, why doesn't the church just accept them as they are? Why does the church have to be so mean? It kind of turns things upside down, but we often don't have a good answer for that. How do we speak to people, especially younger people, in a way that says, hey, I understand what you're feeling, but God has a better way? How much time do I have to answer that?

Well, I'll tell you what, we can start on this side of the break, take a minute or so, and then continue on the other side if you can stay with us. The biggest thing here is in my conversations with gays, whatever, I try everything I can so they understand that God accepts them for who they are right now, that I accept them. I go out of my way to let gays, transgender, others to know I love you. I care about you. And then if I really care about someone, I love someone, and I see something in their life that I believe is wrong from God's program, if I don't speak up, I'm not loving them.

I am not loving them. And I share that with them. And then I just share the biblical perspective. And you know, I've never had a problem with that.

A lot of it comes down to your attitude and how you do it. Yeah. Tell you what, we just stopped there, and then we've just got a few more minutes, and there's so much to get from this book, which means you need to get the book, Free to Thrive, Josh McDowell and Ben Bennett. We'll be right back. It's The Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution. Get into The Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. I'm speaking with Josh McDowell and Ben Bennett. They have co-authored the book Free to Thrive, How Your Hurt Struggles the Deepest Longest Can Lead to a Fulfilling Life. Okay, so I'm sitting here looking at the table of contents in the book. We get some of the questions to ask, looking at some of the practical steps and thinking, okay, we're barely scratching the surface. I've got so much to ask and talk about with these authors, we're barely scratching the surface. So let me start here. Ben, who did you write this book for and what are you hoping will be the impact of this book on those who read it?

Honestly, we wrote this book for everyone. On this side of the Garden of Eden, we all have struggles, we all have hurts, we're all hurt at times. A lot of times, I think we can believe that something happened years ago, we're over it, that all wounds heal with time.

That's not the case. If we don't deal with our stuff, other people will have to. I know in my life, I thought I left all these hurts or these unresolved issues behind, but really I buried them alive.

And they were coming out in so many different ways, whether it was just unhealthy leadership techniques or unhealthy relationships or just getting anxious about these situations and the fear of man. And so we hope that wherever someone is at, whether or not they already feel like they're thriving or they really feel like they're just barely surviving, that God will use this to help them live into who God has created them to be in the clearest possible way. And Ben, let's say I'm an 18-year-old reader or a 65-year-old reader. Will I be able to basically diagnose my problems or see them in clear relief and then know some practical steps I can take as a result of reading the book? Yes, that's how we wrote the book.

We wanted it to be very practical. That's why there's questions and self-reflection at the end of each chapter. It can also be helpful to go through it with a friend because we all have blind spots, but hopefully this book reveals some of those blind spots.

But even more so with a friend or a mentor or a spouse, they can help point out some of that stuff as well in step-by-step, how to meet the longings, how to understand where the unmet longings came from, how to understand how they're playing out through struggles in the present. We addressed all of that in the book through very practical ways. And your resolution movement, what's that about? So that's something that Josh and I launched a little over a year ago. You know, we deeply believe in the next generation, and as we were meeting with youth pastors and pastors and doing research and involved in the lives of young people, trying to figure out how to best reach them, we realized the deep amount of struggles that young people were having, unprecedented struggles with mental health and addiction, and we said, why don't we partner with churches, partner with people, reach people on the internet? And so the resolution movement is a play on words for re-solution. We're re-solutioning people with biblically based, research-informed solutions to their hurts and struggles. We do a lot of that through articles, through podcasts, through TikTok videos. We're just everywhere in the digital space. We do in-person speaking because we want to serve and help reach the next generation. Got it.

So practical. And all that info, of course, Francis, in the book. So last question for Josh. We've talked a lot about young people, but then mentioned the book being for everyone and the larger problems in the body. Josh, you've been around long enough that you've seen many, many pastors and leaders fail, fall short, burn out, get discouraged, quit, be involved in scandals. Do you honestly think that if leaders could be healthier within themselves, that a lot of this could be avoided? And will this book potentially help leaders get healthier within themselves?

Absolutely. I am convinced for the majority of leaders that I've had a chance to talk to over the years who have fallen morally, that I would say the number one reason is they're not healing from deep down hurts and longings as a young person. And they stuffed it down instead of dealing with it. And where I think this book would be, I'm convinced that probably 90% of the pastors who have fallen, if they'd read this book six months before, they wouldn't have fallen.

They would see what their problem is and they would see creative steps to heal. That's where most of them don't understand it. And so many, the thing today is that Christians shouldn't have problems. Well, that is so unbiblical and pathetic. That's great from Satan. The best witness of Christianity is not the perfect Christian. It's the Christian who's walking with Jesus and working through his problems, or her problems. That's the best testimony for Christ. And what this book does, it's helped people to see, you know, I've got these things in my life, but there is hope. And if we can give someone hope, and then some creative way to fulfill that hope, then I believe the book is exactly the book God wanted written.

Free to thrive. My friends, those are strong words, strong recommendations from someone you've known for many, many years, someone you're getting to know, two authors that have put out something very practical. I plan to dig into the contents more myself because every one of us, either for ourselves, for those close to us, there are areas where we need to grow, where we can be stronger. And again, the goal is not just to make it, but to thrive.

So the book, Josh McDowell, Ben Bennett, Free to Thrive. Gentlemen, thanks for taking time to be on the air with us today. Well, thank you for taking time to have us on the air. It's very humbling. Well, my joy. Thank you, Dr. Brown. Thanks so much. Keep up the great work, gentlemen.

Free to Thrive, Josh McDowell and Ben Bennett. Yeah, it is a problem because we get stacks of books sent to us all the time and we only do select interviews. But as I'm going through the book, some I get a chance to go through in advance or a team member will go through in advance and some not. This is one of those I didn't get to go through, but boy, is it relevant. Boy, is it relevant. Okay, I'm going to switch subjects for the last couple minutes here. So I did a show yesterday and the first half hour I talked about where we're at in society today, the shaking taking place around us, and how I deeply sense God's Spirit moving.

And I'm getting consistent reports of something I've been talking about and sensing coming for a couple years now, a rising tide of revival, people getting desperate, crying out, and the Holy Spirit being poured out in many, many different places. Now, I normally do not follow the comments on social media after the shows for a couple of reasons. One is simply time because we post on YouTube, we post on Facebook, then we have our podcasts that go out.

And so there are all kinds of people listening in all kinds of settings. And when they're making comments, I don't have the time to read them, all the articles and things like that. That's one reason. And the second reason is that's for you to interact. It's not for me to be arguing or, yes, amen, or you're wrong there.

That's for you to interact and have at it. I happen to spot this comment though. I'm not quite sure how it popped up in my feed, but I happen to spot this comment over on YouTube yesterday responding to yesterday's video, which you'll find very encouraging, very encouraging. But a fellow named Dean posted this about me, the blind guide who denies prophetic consensus and dishonors them as Trump idolaters has no clue whatsoever what is coming for the church. Dean, I pray that the Lord's grace will really work powerfully in your life and that you will recognize the extreme error of what you say. Your opinion about me is meaningless. Only concern I have is God has given me some things that could help you potentially and help others, and if you despise me and mock me, then I can't help. So that concerns me. Not personally. I get maligned, lied about, slandered by the second.

That comes with the turf. It's an honor for the gospel. But what concerns me is if I have something that could be helpful to you in your own walk with the Lord and you despise me and therefore you don't receive it. So first, the prophets who guaranteed that Trump would serve four more years were wrong. This is a fact. Even if you say the election was stolen, they told us he'd served four more years, they were wrong. They gave us specific dates by which things would happen. They were wrong. What's interesting when you talk about quote the prophetic consensus is that Bill Hammond told me and Dr. Joe Matera together on a conference call that out of the network that he oversees of about 4,000 prophetic leaders worldwide, that he only knew of one who claimed to have a thus sayeth the Lord, Trump will serve four more years. Out of 4,000, Cindy Jacobs told me out of her network of about 75 leaders, only a few felt they had a word that Trump would be reelected to serve four more years, so they didn't publish anything. So it's hardly a prophetic consensus, but in point of fact, what was said was wrong. And yes, there was rampant idolatry, and there were others whose names you might not know who got words in advance that one reason God was going to remove Trump was one, he refused to humble himself, as Jeremiah Johnson warned in January 2018, refused to humble himself, and two, many were looking to him in idolatry. The very fact that this is still coming up today and people are still saying, oh, you watch, I mean, it's supposed to happen in August, it was supposed to happen by inauguration, it was supposed to happen in March, then in April, then in August. And of course, none of it's happened.

The fact that people think only Trump can save America is yet another example of the idolatry. So Dean, I pray for you that the Lord's grace would really flood your life and that you'd be able to receive the good things God has given me. As to what's coming, we shall see if I have the mind of the Lord here or not, as I did in years past, sensing things that were going to happen in the church and the world. We shall see. We shall see.