How Charles Finney's 1836 Warning Still Speaks to Us Today

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. It was 1836 when Finney gave this warning. It's relevant to this day. Did Charles Finney predict the Civil War? Did he foresee a wave of blood coming across the nation? Did he foresee a way to avoid that wave of blood almost 30 years before it happened? We're going to talk about that today and we're going to look at the warnings Finney gave in terms of their relevance for us today here in America.

Michael Brown, welcome to the Line of Fire. Here's the number to call. You can join in on this subject. You can join in on anything we were talking about yesterday or the ongoing COVID-related discussions. Anything you want to talk to me about, 866-3-4-Truth, 866-348-7884.

Phone lines are wide open for your calls. Now, I've often thought about these words from Finney, which I had read many, many years ago in an annotated autobiography, getting into great depth, lots of other information, constant footnotes expanding on things. So a very, very helpful addition of the Finney autobiography I'd read years ago.

And I was trying to track down the specific page in the book. I remember in an end note reading this correspondence with Finney to Theodore Weld, found it and then found it online as well. So I want to talk about this, where Finney put his emphasis when he was dealing with abolitionists because he was a strong abolitionist leader. Remember, he was president of Oberlin College and Oberlin served as an escape route on the so-called Underground Railroad for slaves fleeing from their slave owners in Ohio. And when Finney has stood in New York City, if you were involved in the slave trade in any way, he would not give you communion. He was a very strong, passionately strong abolitionist and said one of the reasons for the backslidden spiritual state of so much of the church in America is apathy to the slave trade. At the same time, he said the emphasis must be put first and foremost on revival, on converting people involved in this, in changing hearts and minds.

We're going to come to that in a moment. But Finney came to my mind again in the last few days because a colleague of mine sent me an article posted by Michael Horton. So Dr. Michael Horton, well-known theologian, Christian author, radio host for many years, we met, I believe once during the days of the Brownsboro revival, he came and visited.

I believe that's the one early time that we met. So I so appreciate so much of what he does in the stance that he takes. Like other Calvinists, he has a very, very negative view of Charles Finney. And here's what he said in his article about Finney.

Perhaps he and I can have a dialogue about this on the air one day if he'd want to do this. He said, no single man is more responsible for the distortion of Christian truth in our age than Charles Grandison Finney. His quote, new measures created the framework for modern decision theology and evangelical revivalism. In his excellent article, Dr. Mike Horton explains how Charles Finney distorted the important doctrine of salvation.

So of course, I disagree with this very strongly. But my goal is not to defend Finney. If Finney was wrong somewhere, then I stand with the word. And it's not a matter of, say, Dr. Horton saying, well, I'm going to defend Calvin. It would be a matter of fealty to the word.

And we would both believe that in loyalty to the word, we come to our different convictions. So he notices Dr. Horton that Jerry Falwell calls him one of my heroes and a hero to many evangelicals, including Billy Graham. He says the New York revivalist was the oft-quoted and celebrated champion of the Christian center, Keith Green, and youth with a mission organization. He's particularly esteemed when the leaders of the Christian right and the Christian left. So Jerry Falwell and Jim Wallace.

I've even seen J.I. Packer, great Calvinist theologian, praise Charles Finney. And here's what Michael Horton says. That is because Finney's moralistic impulse, so speaking about why Jerry Falwell and Jim Wallace could both appreciate Charles Finney, even though they're on very different sides of the evangelical divide. That is because Finney's moralistic impulse envisioned a church that was in large measure an agency of personal and social reform rather than the institution in which the means of grace, word, and sacrament are made available to believers who then take the gospel to the Lord. Now I absolutely differ with that statement. Aside from the word and sacrament having a very specific meaning, I absolutely differ with this idea that Finney's emphasis was on social reform rather than the gospel first.

It's quite the opposite. He said, Dr. Horton said, in the 19th century, the evangelical movement became increasingly identified with political causes from abolition of slavery and child labor legislation to women's rights and the prohibition of alcohol. In a desperate attempt at regaining this institutional power in the glory of Christian America, a vision that is always powerful in the imagination, but after the disintegration appeared in New England elusive, the turn of the century Protestant establishment launched moral campaigns to Americanize immigrants and force moral instruction and character education. Evangelists pitched their American gospel in terms of its practical usefulness to the individual and the nation.

This is why Finney is so popular. He is the tallest marker in the shift from reformation orthodoxy evident in the great awakening under Edwards and Whitfield, in other words Calvinism, to Arminian, even indeed Pelagian, revivalism evident from the second great awakening to the present. To demonstrate the dead of modern evangelicalism to Finney, we must first notice his theological departures. From these departures, Finney became the father of the antecedents to some of today's greatest challenges within evangelical churches, namely the church growth movement, Pentecostalism, and political revivalism.

Of course, let me step back from his article for a moment. Pentecostalism, or the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the 20th and 21st century, is the greatest single move of God on the planet in church history in terms of numbers of people coming to faith in a certain period of time. I mean, presently on the earth there are about 600 million charismatic Pentecostals worldwide. And when you add in all of those over the course of the last century, plus it is the greatest harvest in world history. And as missiologists and others would recognize that every continent on the planet, the fastest growing religion is not Islam or some other group or sect or false religion, it is biblically based, Holy Spirit filled Christianity around the world.

This has been for decades. So of course, in Dr. Horton's perception, Pentecostalism being a bad thing and Finney being somehow connected to that, that makes Finney the author of the bad stuff. I look at it totally differently. And where Dr. Horton and I would absolutely agree on the superficiality in the church and the all about me gospel and the bypassing of the cross and the lack of emphasis on the glory of God and the lordship of Jesus, and things like that, where we would be step for step in agreement, I would absolutely say it's by departing for what Finney preached. It's by losing sight of what he preached, of the intensity with which he preached the guilt of human sin, the intensity with which he preached the glory of God and the need for human beings to repent and cry out for mercy and find absolutely no hope whatsoever in themselves. That few people who walk the planet preached a message in recorded church history, in other words, to our knowledge that brought deeper conviction of sin on more people and more radical and lasting conversions. And Finney was also reacting against what had become a very extreme Calvinism in his day, one that basically said there's no reason to even pray for lost sinners because God will save him, he wants to save.

That's how far some people went with it. So let's see what Finney actually said, all right? And again, perhaps Dr. Horton would want to have a dialogue with me about this one time on the air. I'm sure it'd be a fruitful discussion as Before the Lord, as respectful leaders, we would share our differences and our common concerns. So here's an article in Christian History, christianhistoryinstitute.org.

You can see it online. It's about the abolitionists. And here's the section on Finney, Foreseeing Blood. Let me give the background before I get into this article. There was a call for immediacy. Abolition now, free the slaves now, take action now. And Finney pressed things as much as you could press them in a righteous way, but said, listen, first and foremost, the emphasis always must be on conversion of sinners, changing of hearts and minds of those in the slave trade. Yes, these Africans are suffering terribly. It is a judgment on America in terms of the ugliness of our treatment towards these people and their oppression.

We need to do whatever we can to free them, liberate them as soon as possible. However, if you push people to act in a certain way now, it is going to have disastrous results. Now, Finney is probably most famous to this day for his lectures on the revival of religion or revival lectures. They greatly impacted me.

They have impacted many revivalists and revival leaders over the many years since they were published. What's the background to that series of sermons? Finney was pastoring in New York City and became run down. His health was failing. So it was recommended that he go out to sea for a number of weeks. This was something that was not uncommonly prescribed in the sea air.

So you get out on a ship and you're out for weeks at a time, wherever it's sailing with, across the ocean or wherever. And Finney gave instructions because there was a newspaper that went out from his church, taking the sermons each week, basically putting them in print form and distributing them, among other things. And Finney left the man in charge with explicit instructions. Put revival first. Put preaching the gospel to the lost first. Put social reform.

Put abolition second. Well, while Finney was away over those weeks, the guy did the reverse. And when Finney came back, the subscriptions were dropping off. The health of the congregation was not where it needed to be. But when Finney was on that sea voyage, regaining his health, and he lived from 1792 to 1875, that he became overwhelmingly burdened, travailing in prayer for revival. He came back, learned what had happened, and said, we've got to regain our focus. Let us get back to preaching revival first, which meant repentance in the church and repentance in the world. The return of the church from its backslide is in the conversion of sinners, in Finney's words. So he would preach these messages. Someone would transcribe them longhand, writing as fast as they could when Finney preached, then present it to Finney afterwards. And he was amazed at the quality of what was produced and what they had written out. He would then give edit, and then that was posted in the newspaper, and this series of lectures became lectures on the revival of religion. And that's what continues to have a great impact, a convicting impact to this day.

But that's the origin of it. That was something said, and we'll get to some of his quotes from that in a moment. So we come back. I want to dig into this warning that Finney gave in a letter to that Finney gave in a letter to Theodore Weld, who was a convert under Finney's ministry, abolitionist, but then went to such extremes that he even departed from some of his fundamental faith. We'll look at this warning and hear more about what Finney had to say, and then ask, what is it saying to us today?

What does this matter today? We'll be right back. Thanks, friends, for joining us on the Line of Fire. What I'm about to talk about is really relevant, really important, really urgent. So it means a lot to me that you take time out of your day to listen to the radio broadcast, watch online, listen to a podcast after the show. I value that.

I honor that. I don't want to waste a second of your time. But this is especially urgent. Therefore, as you're listening, I'm asking you to give me your best dear, even better than normal.

Fair enough? 866-34-TRUTH. So Charles Finney writes to Theodore Weld, who is pressing immediacy. The slaves must be freed now. We must take action now. And Finney was saying, it's urgent, but take whatever action we can.

But the concentration needs to be in a certain place. So look at this. This is Christian History Institute online. And it's the article on the abolitionists in the section Finney Foreseeing Blood.

So it says this. As time went on, abolitionist optimism withered. The rancor of the debate led Charles Finney, now president of thoroughly abolitionist Oberlin College, to urge Weld, Theodore Weld and his followers, to pull back from abolitionism.

Finney wrote in the summer of 1836, nearly 25 years before his words would be fulfilled, Brother Weld, is it not true, at least do you not fear it is, that we are in our present course going fast into a civil war? Will not our present movements and abolition result in that? How can we save our country and affect the speedy abolition of slavery?

Thus, this is my answer. If abolition can be made an appendage of a general revival of religion, all is well. I fear no other form of carrying this question will save our country or the liberty or soul of the slave. Abolitionism has drunk up the spirit of some of the most efficient moral men and is fast doing so to the rest. And many of our abolition brethren seem satisfied with nothing less than this. This I have been trying to resist from the beginning, as I have all along foreseen, that should that take place, the church and the world, ecclesiastical and state leaders, will become embroiled in one common infernal squabble that will roll a wave of blood over the land.

He wrote this in 1836. The causes now operating are, in my view, as certain to lead to this result as a cause is to produce its effect unless the public mind can be engrossed with the subject of salvation and make abolition an appendage. Are you grasping, friends, the significance of these words and as they apply to us today? I have read increasing calls in the last year from Christian leaders saying, look, a civil war is coming to America and it's going to be a bloody civil war, not just metaphorically, not just spiritually, not just not just socially, but actually a war. They're talking about it and they're saying, look, the left is going to try to take away our weapons, so we better get stocked up now. We better be stocked with weapons. We better be stocked with ammo. We better be ready. We better be prepared because the war is coming now. By all means, let us contend for our Second Amendment rights.

By all means, let us recognize the potential dangers of a government disarming the populace. We are aware of those dangers, but it is very different than hearing Christians talking about the coming civil war. And look, we're so divided over abortion, we're so divided over gay activism, we're so divided over other issues that it's going to come to that. Well, there's no way under the sun it should come to that if the church simply acts like the church. In other words, if we would put our emphasis where it needs to be, repentance of sin in our own lives, earnestly imploring God for his mercy and prayer with absolute desperation, taking the gospel to the lost, serving the hurting and the needy, and that's our number one focus. And then number two, the urgent social causes, be it the terrible sin of abortion, be it the plague of human trafficking, be it the direction of LGBTQ activism, be it any of those things, be it the assault on religious freedoms. As that, in finished words, becomes the appendage to the larger revival and awakening, then we can see real change come. Otherwise, if we say, well, we're at the breaking point now, it has to happen, we're going to be the ones provoking it.

In other words, how can I say this? We have only done a fraction of what we need to do as the church to bring about change. Here, I mean no insult.

Please hear me. I mean no personal insult on anyone. I'm not telling you what God's will is for your life, but answer this question honestly. If you believe abortion is a great evil in America, as I do, if you believe that saving the lives of unborn babies is something of great importance in God's sight, may I ask you what you actually do on a regular basis about that? In other words, how much time you spend working with pro-life groups, how much of your money you give to pro-life groups, how much of your time you give to pregnancy centers, or to pregnancy crisis centers, or to sharing the gospel in front of abortion clinics, or to lobbying senators and things like that. In other words, most of us get really worked up about it and talk about it a lot, but do almost nothing the rest of the time. And then every four years, we vote for the president. It's a big issue, Supreme Court justices and all this, but for the most part, we're not addressing this. And for the most part, if I said, okay, are we really at the point of revival or are we done?

That's my book coming out in October, title of the book. Are we really at that point of absolute desperation? And we cried out the way we need to cry it out. We sought God the way we need to.

For the most part, again, I mean no insult, but 98% of us, the answer would be no. So we've got no business talking about the other radical means and taking the law into our own hands when we have not done what we can do in all these other ways. And that's what concerns me about some of the rhetoric about coming to civil war or take up arms.

It's like, wait a second, there are so many other possibilities that must be exhausted before we even think of that, before that's even a figment of a possibility in our minds. And to be honest, some of the folks talking about civil war and taking up arms now, I've heard them talk about civil war for years. I always took it to mean spiritual. I always understood them to be talking about the spiritual separation and the spiritual division and the spiritual warfare we engage in.

I never took it in the physical sense. Now I'm actually hearing some of them say it, it's startling, it's disturbing. And I'm totally with Finney on this. All of this can be avoided if we will do what we're supposed to do first. Now look at this article. I wrote it February 4th, 2019 about Charles Finney, either awakening or civil war in America over abortion. And I go back to this warning of his that he predicted the spiritual awakening did not come first, the battle over slavery would end with a bloody war. So look at this in his sermon, hindrances to revival. Finney said, revivals are hindered when ministers and churches take wrong ground in regard to any question involving human rights.

Take the subject of slavery, for instance. When was he preached in the 1830s? He acknowledged that there were true Christians involved in slavery, but he said it was because the sinfulness of it was not apparent to their minds. So ministers and churches to a great extent through the land have held their peace and borne no testimony against this abominable abomination existing in the church and in the nation.

He said, but that can continue no more. He explained light is now shed upon the subject as it has been upon the cause of temperance, so various reformation of morals movements. Facts are exhibited and principles established and light thrown in upon the minds of men and this monster is dragged from this horrid den and exhibited before the church and it is demanded of them is this sin.

And he said it is impossible that their testimony should not be given on one side or the other. Their silence, meaning about slavery, Christians, can no longer be accounted for upon the principle of ignorance and that they have never had their attention turned to the subject. Consequently, the silence of Christians upon the subjects is virtually saying that they do not consider slavery as a sin.

The truth is it is a subject upon which they cannot be silent without guilt. The time has come and the providence of God when every southern breeze is loaded down with the cries of lamentation, mourning, and woe. Two millions of degraded heathen in our own land stretch their hands, all shackled and bleeding, and send forth to the church of God the agonizing cry for help. And shall the church in her efforts to reclaim and save the world deafen her ears to this voice of agony and despair?

God forbid. The church cannot turn away from this question. It is a question for the church and for the nation to decide and God will push it to a decision. He said it is doubtless true that one of the reasons for the low state of religion at the present time is that many churches have taken the wrong side on the subject of slavery, have suffered prejudice to prevail over principle, and have feared to call this abomination by its true name. Still, in all of this friends, as strongly as Finney was giving these warnings, as we step back from this article, as strongly as he was giving these warnings, his whole emphasis was revival first, spiritual renewal first, and then right behind that, not neglecting it, right behind that, abolition. Revival in the church, conversion of sinners, and right along with that. So he's taking action the whole time, part of the Underground Railroad, part of taking action against slave owners in his churches, not giving them communion, part of speaking out, acting.

So he was doing what he knew how to do, but saying to really see the change come without a massive wave of blood, to this day our costliest war in terms of casualties, horrifically so in the Civil War, even as family members fighting each other north and south, that the only way to avoid that is with getting things spiritually in place first. Friends, it's relevant for us again today. It really is so relevant for us today. We'll be right back. Spiritual Revolution.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks, friends, for joining us on the Line of Fire. You know, we often get attracted to different Christian teachers, leaders, some from the past, some from today, and we're really blessed by what they have to say, and then someone says, oh, did you know they also taught this, or did you know they also believe this? And then we're shocked, and we look into it.

Is it accurate or not? And we're having some discussion about the teachings of Charles Finney, and was he not just Arminian, as I am, but Pelagian, which would be considered outright heretical. Now, of course, some Arminians consider Calvinist heretics, and some Calvinists consider Arminian heretics. We're not going there today.

God must look down sometimes and just sigh like, my children. Anyway, there are things that do cross lines that go too far, so I want to dig a little deeper into some of the teaching of Charles Finney, but phone lines are open. Any question you want to ask me on any subject, I'll take some random calls as well today. 866-342-866-3487, 884. All of our friends in the DFW area, I'll be doing a number of private events, but Saturday night, God willing, I'll be speaking at the Malia House of Prayer. That'll be an open meeting. And then Sunday, three services at Mercy Culture in Fort Worth.

I think the first service starts at 830, and the last service a few hours later. So if you're anywhere in that area, by all means, come and join them. I'm going to be able to greet you personally, but hopefully you'll be blessed and ministered to. So one of the common accusations against Charles Finney is that he denied original sin, that he denied that human beings were born sinful, but rather that they all sinned and therefore became sinful. And I can and I can understand why this would be raised against his teaching. What I would simply say is, it's better to understand what he was actually saying. For example, he says it is up to the sinner to get a new heart, but that God gives a new heart.

You say, well, how does that work? Well, he's just taking the text seriously, like in Ezekiel 18, where God says to the prophet, get yourselves a new heart. He's saying that we play a role in that. But of course we can't save ourselves because we're hopeless sinners in rebellion against God, only God can save us, but we have a decision to make.

There is something that we do. In other words, all he's saying is, I'm just following what the text says. I'm just going with what scripture says. So he may end up saying something different. In other words, if I asked a Calvinist, well, what does it mean when God says get yourself a new heart? God's telling the children of Israel to do something. What are they to do? You might say, well, they're to say, God, I can't do it.

Well, even by saying I can't do it, aren't they doing something? So you could kind of go around and around with this, but finish just trying to say, this is what the text says. God does it, sinner does it, that everyone's involved, but salvation is from the Lord alone. And again, I don't know of any preacher in recorded history whose messages brought more intense conviction of sin and a sense of lostness and a sense of horror, of guilt than the preaching of Finney over a period of many years, to the point that people for days would be weeping and wailing and crying out under conviction, asking God for mercy to save them. And as opposed to this being just some prayer prayer to come forward, it was pray through until you know, if you're under conviction, come to the meeting tomorrow or come back later today and seek God. It was not just come forward and pray a prayer. That's an abuse of things that we've gotten into today. But I want to share a little bit with you, Charles Finney in his lecture on moral depravity.

This is part two, and it was, let's see, 1862, 1862, published in the Oberlin Evangelist. And he's quoting from Romans 8-7, because the carnal mind is enmity against God. It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be. So here's what he's saying about human nature. The carnal mind is a state of, is, is in a state of mortal enmity against God. By this I mean that the human mind is so firmly entrenched against God and so utterly opposed to him that sooner than be governed by him it would take his life if this were possible.

Rebellion against any government always implies this. Again, the crucifixion of Christ demonstrated this fact so far as it is possible for human beings to make such demonstration. Christ was God manifest in the flesh. They slew his human nature and no doubt they would have slain his divine if they could.

It does not answer this to say that it was only the Jews highly prejudiced against him that slew him, nor is it any answer to say that if the Jews had known that he was God they would not have crucified him, for we see now on every side that those who acknowledge Jesus to be God yet reject his authority and give the most unmistakable evidence that they would oppose him to the death sooner than be governed by him. So in other words, this is the universal condition of human beings. He then says the carnal mind is a state, ah, I'm sorry, when I said the carnal mind is in a state, I was inserting a word, the carnal mind is a state of mortal enemy against God. So this is a state of mind he's speaking of. The carnal mind is a state of supreme opposition to God, that it is it is more deeply set in opposition to God than any other being in the universe. God is infinite, holy, and the carnal mind is in a state of entire sinfulness.

These two things are infinitely opposed, the one to the other. There is nothing in the universe to which the sinner is so much opposed as real holiness, there is nothing in heaven to which he is so much opposed, God, excuse me, nothing in heaven to which he the sinner is so much opposed as to infinite holiness. So he's saying the sinner, because every human being, is dead set against God.

This is not a compromise this is not a compromise view of sin, this is not a compromise view of human guilt, this is not a compromise view of moral depravity. Now Finney's issue was, his argument was, that human beings are born with appetites, that because of the fall we are born with appetites, and when we act on those appetites we are now guilty of sin. That was his point, and that all human beings by nature will act on those desires. So his point was to have a desire for strong drink and to have had that as long as you remember in itself is not sin, the acting on it is sin, but we always act on sinful desires because we are fallen human beings. So to say that he had a different view of human nature etc., to him he's simply being true to scripture and recognizing that in the Bible children are not held accountable the way adults are.

There are several verses that speak to this directly, that before children knew the difference between good and evil, speak like that for example in Deuteronomy 139 or in Isaiah 7 15 to 17 or the beginning of the eighth chapter, that there are there are times before the child learns to distinguish between good and evil, and it's a reason that Jesus tells us to become like little children because of the innocence thereof. So what he says, I'm going to skip down to his remarks, the human mind is manifestly in a physically diseased state. So that was his point, we are we are born with a fallen human nature and we become guilty of sin when we act on that nature.

By this I mean that sin has deranged its developments, doesn't that give you the indication that in Finney's mind sin had an effect on every human being and we were born in that fallen state? In so much he says that there are various tendencies in the constitution that result in selfishness. But let it be remembered, this is a physical and not a moral depravity.

Why? Because it's moral when you act on it, that's the distinction he's making. To illustrate this, many persons come into being with depraved appetites, a strong natural appetite safe for strong drink or some other sensual enjoyment. Now these appetites, although in a diseased state, yet being constitutional, part of our human constitution, are not in themselves sinful. It is only their unlawful indulgence that is sinful. In fact, no appetite of man can be sinful that is strictly constitutional normal nor can it become in itself sinful by being in an unhealthy or depraved condition. The sin must consist in its unlawful indulgence. Adam and Eve had constitutional appetites for knowledge and for food. These were not sinful, not even when strongly excited by the temptation to indulgence. It was only the consent of the mind to indulge them in a prohibited manner that constituted their sin. But because we are born in what Finney would refer to a physically depraved state, we will all act on act on it and sin.

It is the only direction we can go which is why everyone needs a redeemer. You could read it a certain way to make him into a Pelagian heretic or you could read what he's saying and look at the rest of his preaching and recognize he's just coming at this from a different angle of the effects of the fall on every human being. In any case, in any case, read through, if you've never read through his lectures on the revival of religion, revival lectures, they're available all over online for free or from us nothing in a downloadable form or still get the physical book. Read through and see if God doesn't stir your heart afresh. Read through, see if he doesn't convict you. Read through, see if it doesn't increase your desire for God in your own life and bring you to a heightened recognition of the need for holiness and the importance of repentance and the desire to reach out to a lost and dying world.

All right, 866-34-TRUTH, let us go to Charles in Chicago, Illinois. Welcome to The Line of Fire. Dr. Brown, thank you very much. It's great to be here. First and foremost, I really appreciate your program and have followed your teachings for many years and I appreciate you.

Thank you, appreciate that. One of my favorite Charles Finney quotes, which I think really brings the point home, and what you're emphasizing today, he said, if the presence of God is in the Church, the Church will draw the world in. If the presence of God is not in the Church, the world will draw the Church out. And that really convicted me, because for a while, during all the election and the political nonsense and all the noise out there, not only in the world, but now creeping into the Church, the division between us, you know, between denominations, worldly theories like CRT creeping into the Church, and monopolizing time, YouTube channels, debates, you know, all of the noise. I realized I was getting a little bit too involved into that, and it was leaving me very bitter.

Not only very bitter, he was occupying my time. And the conviction, certainly from that quote, and what came to me was, wait a minute, it's the Gospel first. It's the Gospel first. We've got to get back to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Right, everything has to flow out of that exactly so, and while you were speaking, I just typed in the words, if the presence of God, and then Finney, and the quote comes right up.

So, yeah, I'm going to repost that. Thank you for the reminder. For each of us individually.

Charles, you're exactly right. For each of us individually. Start with the presence of God. Out of that, let everything flow. Appreciate the call. 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. Thanks friends for joining us on The Line of Fire. 866-34-TRUTH is the number to call. Let's go over to Deborah in Maple Grove, Minnesota. Thanks for calling The Line of Fire.

Hi, Dr. Brown. I am so grateful for what you were saying about Finney. I hadn't heard those things before about him saying to put the Gospel first, and then these other things second, and just the warning, how it applies to us now. When you spoke about him saying, you know, you were hearing the cries and were silent, and I can't help but think about Afghanistan. I've been fasting and praying today, I've been just weeping and interceding for the Church, because I'm thinking, how many pastors didn't call their congregations to pray? I'm not saying that in condemnation, I'm praying in intercession. Like you said, the Church needs to be revived. Why aren't we praying?

Why aren't we on our faces fasting and praying for our own people, let alone those other Afghans who don't know the Gospel, who could be butchered today? You know, Deborah, I can actually answer the question. There are to me two reasons. One is many of us are complacent and just caught up with our own lives and the things of this world.

That's one. The other is we're bombarded with a thousand urgent requests a day that everywhere we turn on social media, pray for this one, they're dying, pray for this one, they just lost a loved one. I just posted an article about a 16-year-old pastor in India that some of my friends are helping to support local radicals in his city, told them to stop holding prayer meetings in his home.

He refused to do it, so when he was out selling vegetables, they burned him with acid, over 85% of his body. So our friends are trying to pay his medical bills, and even where he is, the care he's getting is probably very primitive. And so we're overwhelmed with needs. So what I'd encourage you to do, Deborah, is carry that burden as if you owned it. You know what I'm saying? Carry the burden to pray for Americans left in Afghanistan, for Christians in Afghanistan, for the people.

Pray as if God entrusted it to you, and then pray that God would raise it more prayer support, because just on a daily basis, we are overwhelmed. You know, friends in Louisiana, how are they doing after the hurricane? You've got that in mind. And getting reports of one crisis after another in many different parts of the world. So some of us, you're right, Deborah, we're indifferent. We're just insensitive. We don't really care. And because of that, we go on in our worlds, and that's what Finney was addressing. You know, where's our cry over the criminal acts of abortion, criminal to the baby, these horrible acts?

Where's our heart for that cry? And on and on. But then others, we're burdened in one direction, and we're focused there. And it's just overwhelming these days. We get hit with so much.

And just my social media feeds on Facebook, just with algorithms change, when I just open it up, I'm either getting all these video reels, like, where's that coming from? Or an endless stream of just personal things, be it someone's birthday, or someone's death. And it's a flood, but often a flood of bad news and problems, and we get overwhelmed. So maybe not get numb, but Deborah, take this burden as if the Lord came and said, hey, I'm entrusting this to you. I'm entrusting this to you. All right, thank you for the call, and maybe others will be spurred by your call.

Let us go to Cassie in Ankeny, Iowa. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Hi there. Hey. I wanted to ask you a question. Thank you for, you know, all that you say and all that you do. I listen to you all the time, anytime.

I'm in the car and you're on. I listen to you. I have a question I wanted to ask you. In the Bible, it talks about how we are asleep in the grave. And I've heard conversation about, you know, where, when people die, they don't immediately go to heaven. They're asleep in the grave. And in the Bible, it talks about how those in Christ that are dead will rise first.

What are your feelings with regards to that? Right, so my understanding is that when a believer dies, they immediately go into the presence of God in heaven, and yet it's an intermediate state because we are awaiting the resurrection of our bodies. That being said, there is a debate over that among believers. So, for example, you have verses in the Old Testament, the dead know nothing, the dead cannot praise the Lord. You have it in the Psalms.

You have it in Ecclesiastes. Is that just metaphorical speech for the fact that, in other words, that person is dead? So maybe there was a notorious gang leader in your community, stirred up all kinds of trouble for years, and now that person has been shot and killed in a confrontation with the police, and you say, well, he's never going to kill anybody anymore.

He's not going to hurt anybody anymore. He's dead. Meaning, in this world, his activity is over. But you're not commenting on whether he is conscious in hell at that moment after. You're simply saying, in this world.

That's one way of reading the texts, that it's simply talking about life in this world. You're done. You can't praise God. You can't do anything.

You can't do good or evil. You're gone. It's over as far as life in this world. At the very least, it's saying that. The question is, is it also saying that when someone dies, they close their eyes, and when they next open them, they are either being resurrected to be with the Lord forever or being resurrected to judgment? So, either way, you close your eyes, and when you wake up, you are either with the Lord or separated from him.

The effect in that regard would be the same. The argument for those who believe as I do is that the term falling asleep is a euphemism because it's only spoken with reference to believers, not to the lost, but to believers. That's how it's described in the New Testament. We have Jesus telling the thief on the cross in Luke 23, truly I say to you, today you'll be with me in paradise. So, he's speaking to him about immediately after their death on the cross, they're going to be together in another world. And then Paul, in Philippians 1, talking about that he may be martyred, said, I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better, but right now it's needful that I stay, so I'm going to stick around for a while longer. But otherwise, he understood if he left, he would depart and be with Jesus. And then Revelation 6, even though this is a visionary text, it still speaks of the souls of those who are beheaded, and they're under the throne of God saying, how long?

How long before you avenge our blood? So, here they are existing and alive. And then you have Luke 16 with Lazarus and the rich man, that Lazarus goes upon death to Abraham's bosom, a place of comfort and safety, and the rich man goes to Hades, a place of judgment and torment, and this is immediately after death. And certainly, that was the Pharisaical belief at that time. So, I believe the best case you can make for this, in harmony with 2 Corinthians 5, is that you're absent from the body, present with the Lord at death, but still awaiting the resurrection, awaiting the final resurrection. That's our absolute state of wholeness.

However, within the the body, this can be debated. In other words, this is not a heretical issue to say that we believe that we believe in soul sleep. I don't, but there are Christians through history who have believed in that.

So, I say this last thing, Cassie. When it comes to the effect on the believer, in a sense, it's the same. You close your eyes in death. When you're next to open your eyes, so your next moment of consciousness, you're in the presence of the Lord.

Either way, that's how it comes out. But the difference is the perception of those that are here on earth. In other words, when we say, hey, he's with the Lord now, she's with the Lord now, they're in a better place. There's a sense of comfort that we get over that, but I believe it's a truthful one. The mystery is what does it mean to exist in God's presence, but without our physical bodies?

How does that work? Because Paul said what we're longing for is not to be unclothed, but to be clothed, meaning with our resurrected bodies. Hey, Cassie, thank you for the call. I do appreciate it.

All right, I'm out of time, but out of time to take calls, but not quite out of time to share a word of encouragement with you. Friends, are you living your life in the light of eternity? Are you living your life in such a way that you realize what you do in this world will have implications forever and ever? If you could leave this body and go into the presence of God and see the glories of eternity and see the glories of the world to come and the horrors of judgment for those who don't know him, do you think you'd live the same way you're living now? Would I live the same way I'm living now? Would we be as consumed with the things around us as we are? Would we have a different perspective?

Would that perspective give us an even greater focus on the things that we do in this world? The old quote of C.T. Studd, missionary to Africa, are the things you're living for. Excuse me, that's Leonard Ravenhill, are the things you're living for worth Christ dying for?

C.T. Studd, only when life will soon be passed, only what's done for Christ will last. May our lives make sense in the light of eternity. All right, we've got a special guest that'll be joining us tomorrow. A whole lot more to cover. Don't miss a moment of it right here. Visit our website, askdrbrown.org, A-S-K-D-R brown.org. If you haven't signed up for our emails, be sure to do that. Another program powered by the Truth Network.