Is the Whole World About to Explode?

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network Podcast. The Gospel maybe goes through the world, it has a powerful impact and the world gets better and better as the Gospel spreads around the world before Jesus returns. Do you expect the world to get worse before Jesus returns? That people will reject the light more and more and chaos will erupt and that's how you see the Scriptures and then the end will come. Do you see it as unclear biblically? Do you just not think about it because who knows where we are anyway in terms of the ends of the world so let's do what we can today?

What's your own take? 866-34-Truth. Now if you have a Bible or theology or political or cultural question you want to talk to me about, feel free to give me a call.

866-34-87-884. But I'm going to focus first on the state of the world today. The state of America today.

Because it can easily feel like everything's exploding. It can easily feel like we are in such chaotic times that everything's about to collapse. It could easily feel, just within America, that our nation could soon be completely divided ideologically to the point that we could be divided in terms of states seceding from the union or we're still some type of bloody civil war. God forbid that it comes to that and the last thing, let me say this clearly, the last thing I am advocating is time to get your weapons and prepare for battle, though quite the contrary. I'm telling believers let's focus on the spiritual battle. Let's focus on repentance in our own lives. Let's focus on doing what Jesus called us to do because that is the hope of America.

That is the hope of the world. That being said, we're definitely living in chaotic times and things feel as if they're spiraling out of control. I was looking yesterday on Drudge Report which is, conservative used to be pro-Trump then turned anti-Trump, but it is a collection of headlines. It's widely used, widely read, started by Matt Drudge years ago, Drudge Report. Many times you could look at that and then listen to Rush Limbaugh and see that a lot of, because he would do a lot of research before he shows things like that, but a lot of what he talked about was drawn from headlines on Drudge Report so there's a certain environment that's created, a certain mindset that's created and it's certainly given to sensationalism.

That being said, I'm looking at it fully aware of what Drudge is and it almost gets my blood boiling or heart beating. In other words, whoa, everything's crazy and things are going berserk. Is that the case? Is America about to explode? Is the world about to explode or is it just sensationalistic headlines? Is it that we're bombarded 24-7 because of social media?

What do you think? Are things as bad as they feel or is the feeling created by our access to 24-7 news and constant interaction on social media and amplifying what's happening around the world? What I want to do is take a sober look and give you my perspective as your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity and then we can draw our conclusions and then we could tie that in with scripture as we understand it. Alright, so first let's listen to some interaction with Pastor Jack Hibbs, a leading pastor in California, talking to Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and they're talking about the raid on President Trump's home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, the FBI raid backed by the Department of Justice. Here's what they have to say. But we see behind the political climate, the spiritual climate and it's that lawlessness, the spirit of lawlessness has already been released in this age. Tony, well said. That's exactly what we're looking at. People have a tendency in the flesh and the emotions to look at the person in front of them as being the problem when as believers we look at the powers behind that individual. So how do we know?

How can we tell by what is being produced? So you ask yourself with the lawlessness, with what seemingly appears to be a vast majority of our government leaders departing from the Constitution, breeding this air and atmosphere of confusion and fear. Again, Larry Tauten said it perfectly well, to stir up a situation and create a problem whereby they step in and take power. This is unconstitutional. You and I love the Constitution.

We understand its origins and how it honors God and honors the individual rights of every person. But Tony, clearly there are those who do not believe that. We have people in power today that do not believe in the Constitution.

And this has been going on for a long time now. And is it possible, Tony, that we as believers are watching the death throes, as it were, of our republic? Lincoln made it very clear that we're too strong to be destroyed from the outside, that if we're ever going to be destroyed, it would be from within.

So could we be waking up to something that has been ongoing? If true, how should the believer respond? I actually think, Tony, the only hope is for the believer to vote like they've never voted before.

All right. So obviously, Pastor Hibbs believes in the spiritual first. He believes in this battle being ultimately a spiritual battle and that the gospel is the hope of America. Yet he's saying in terms of the current political situation and where things are going in his view with one party, which is not supportive of the rule of law, the Constitution, and could do things as dastardly as raid a former president's residence without legal warrant. That would be his perspective that the only solution is to vote like you've never voted. Let's listen to Professor Victor Davis Hanson. He's on Fox News again talking about the raid on the president. I'll give you my own perspective in a moment on that.

But talking about the raid on the president's home, Hanson is a conservative, an intellectual with the Hoover Institute. Let's listen to what he had to say. We'll play a couple of clips at moments like this.

Why? Why has what we've watched over the last 24 hours taken place? Why have they targeted Donald Trump?

Well, they're afraid in the short term, but in the long term they believe they're morally superior to America and therefore any means necessary or justifiable for their morally superior ends. Right now, we don't have the rule of law in Washington. Whether you're targeted or exempt depends on your ideology. So in the past when there was a dispute over the archives or presidential papers, Barack Obama just said, I'm not going to turn them over, the freedom of information. He spent 30 million dollars resisting efforts to do that. George Bush had an executive order and said, you know what, I'm not going to do this.

And that was adjudicated. And now we go after a president and go to his house with 30 agents. In the past, when a high official was called for a congressional subpoena, Eric Holder just said, I'm not going and I'm not turning over any of this fast and furious.

The idea that you would put him in shackles or you confront him with his family and grab his phone is just ridiculous. But this is what we're doing on an ideological basis. And when you start to do that, you don't have a democracy anymore.

And I don't think we do. All right. So here's someone who is carefully spoken. You may agree with him or disagree, but the man is a scholar and an intellectual saying in America, we don't have a democracy anymore. And the way you're going to be treated by the law is based on your own ideology, where you fall in the ideological perspective perspective.

All right. One more quote from Victor Davis Hanson. The second thing is this January 6th committee will is sort of like a French Robespierre Committee on Public Safety. To be on that committee, you have to have one criteria and you have to vote to impeach Donald Trump. If you're a Republican, there was one other qualification.

You had to be politically inert with no future. And it was deductive. It started with the premise that we're going to destroy Donald Trump and then we're going to bring in witnesses and we're going to allow narratives for that end. There's going to be no cross-examination. There's going to be no disinterested counsel.

We know that when Dick Cheney himself made a commercial and he bragged about his daughter that she was the one power that could stop Donald Trump. But that's not what her job is on that committee. It's to be disinterested.

It's to be inductive. It's to find out what happened on January 6th, not start with a boast that you're going to destroy Donald Trump and make the witnesses and the testimony fit that. Yeah, so here is someone saying things have gotten completely out of control in America. And when in our lifetime have we seen something on this level? So my perspective, and we're not going to focus on this at all. I'm just using this as a touch point. My perspective at all, meaning today, my perspective on the rate of President Trump's home is it is absolutely exceptional and extraordinary and unprecedented.

I don't think anyone would argue with that in terms of our history and what has and hasn't happened if it was called for. And I don't know. I, I do not have sufficient data. I don't know the actual factual details. Are there things that that the FBI or Department of Justice knew about that others don't know about? Or as Ben Shapiro said, was this a deep sea fishing expedition? So if, in fact, it was warranted, then President Trump should suffer the consequences of his highly illegal, dangerous actions. As long as everybody's held to the same standard, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, including President Biden's son, Hunter Biden, and by implication, President Biden as well.

As long as the same standards are used for everybody, let it be done. If, in fact, this is unwarranted, then let the alarm be sounded. Let this injustice be exposed.

Let the Department of Justice and FBI help be held up to the highest level of scrutiny and accountability. Either way, it's a serious moment in our history. But right now, are things worse than they've ever been in America, in the world?

Are these the worst of times that we've ever seen? We come back, we're going to take a look at some stats that may surprise you. I'm going to do my best to put everything in perspective today and leave you, regardless of what's happening in the world around us, leave you with a sense of holy confidence. Because God remains God.

Even when the mountains are carried into the sea, he remains our place of refuge and strength. We'll be right back. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. I want to read a note, a comment that was just sent to me by a colleague. We were interacting earlier today and I told him about my latest book that we started signing moments ago, right before the show. The first 140 or so pre-orders for the political seduction of the church started signing those. We'll be sending these books out this week. You can still pre-order a signed, numbered copy of the first edition. You can always get signed copies later, but signed, numbered copy of the first edition, kind of a collector's item by going to askdrbrown.org. You'll see it right on the home page.

If you just go order elsewhere, that's great, but the books will be available September 6th to the general public. So this colleague sent me a note that he is called to influence government like a Daniel, right, so to serve as an advisor, to serve as one that can give godly counsel and receive insight from the Lord. He said, but our movement got a little misaligned. So many of us in the Pentecostal Charismatic world seeking to have a positive impact on the world around us, he said, instead of being a kingdom movement that influenced government, we became a political movement. Friends, that's exactly what has happened, that we put politics first and gospel second, that we got obsessed with politics, that we got obsessed with being for or against Trump. That, well, it goes on and on, but that's what I open up in the political seduction of the church. That's how there ended up being so many false prophecies. That's how QAnon conspiracies took root, that our hearts, even with good intention, ended up in the wrong place. And to make that mistake again is basically to forfeit our role of being salt and light. Here, when we operate as everybody else does, we cease to operate as disciples of Jesus.

We cease to use the weapons, the spiritual weapons that God has given us. Are we involved politically? Of course. Are we involved socially, culturally? Of course. But these are secondary aspects of our primary spiritual gospel-based work.

Alright, 866, 3, 4, truth. The state of America today, in some ways, it feels like things are worse than they've ever been. And we'll consider in a little while the effects of radical LGBTQ plus activism and where that's driven things. And in those ways, we are far and away, light years, far and away worse than we've ever been in America in terms of understanding issues having to do with sexuality and gender and the meaning of marriage and things like that. And for sure, things like access to porn, breakdown of the family, we're in the worst state we've ever been in in America by far.

On the other hand, if you look at segregation, during the days of segregation compared to now, light years ahead, days of slavery compared to now, multiple light years ahead. Let's look at some stats here. Let's take a look at abortion stats. So abortion, and you're going to have different figures from different organizations, Guttmacher Institute versus CDC, but Roe v. Wade, so I'm just going to use the Guttmacher stats. They've got abortion at 744,000 by 1983. So 10 years later, that number is up to 1.575 million.

So it's more than doubled. And it all say 1990, it's 1.6 million. But then since then, it's been in decline. All right, it's been a decline. It's even gotten under 900,000.

These are horribly high figures. But I just want to point out that it's almost half of what it was back in 1990. Well, that's an improvement and Roe v. Wade has been overturned. Let's take a look at marriage and children born out of wedlock.

Let's take a look at those stats. Growth of out-of-wedlock childbearing in the United States from 1929 to when the figure was maybe 3%, to 1990 when it was maybe 33%, to 2010 when it got to about 41%. So that's been a terrible spike, a horrific spike in the wrong direction, which has accounted for a lot more family breakdown and other issues over time.

So I mean, that's a shocker. So one stat, abortion, has been steadily improving, although still out of control, but steadily improving. And here another going very much in the wrong direction. What about other stats? How about violent crime? So these are going to be looked at statistically because in 1960, the American population was 179 million and today it's about 330 million. So just the population has just about doubled.

So you'd expect the totals to double. What's interesting is that overall stats for violent crime, they got much higher in the 70s into the 80s into the 90s. But the total numbers, not just percentages, total numbers are much lower now than they were 20 years ago. In terms of violent crime, now you break it down into various categories, violent crime, property, murder, rape, even murders are less now.

They're substantially less every year in America. It doesn't feel like that, does it? See, after that, a lot of the feeling we're getting is because of constant news reporting and constant stats and constant bombardment from social media.

Let's keep going. Drug use in America. We know about the epidemic with fentanyl deaths and things like that, the rise in opiates.

But check this out. The rate of overall drug use has declined by roughly 30% over the past three decades. It's from 79 to 2011. This is just an illustrative one. And since then, it has not gone up to what it was before. So drug, drug use, illegal drug use down overall.

Isn't that striking? I'm not saying that we're heading in the right direction. I'm simply saying, in different ways, statistically and other measurable ways, things were much worse in times past in America, in certain categories, than they are today. Alright, how about worldwide?

This one's going to surprise you. Because there's Russia's war with Ukraine and always the saber rattling of different nations and Iran and terrorism and Israel getting bombarded by 1100 rockets from Gaza Strip. Well, check this out. The percentage of years in which the great powers fought one another. Okay, and this is, let's see, 1500. Let me scroll down a little here to mid-2010s. So look at this, up to 2015. So you have 1600. So it's been steadily going down in terms of world conflict.

So you have World War I and you've got 30-70% of the world powers fighting each other. But it's gone way down. Those who are watching, and if you can get on later, if you're not watching, go to AskDrBrown.org and click to watch. Or just go to Ask A.

Gear Brown on YouTube to watch on our channel there. You'd see all these charts that we're putting up as I'm talking and describing them to you. But we are in an incredibly down period in terms of world war conflict right now compared to times in world history. I mean, dramatically lower. Now things could explode at any moment. I understand that even Israel has had many, many times much, much worse, especially with the major intifadas. But there's now more peace with more nations they've had in the Middle East than any time in modern Israel's history.

So things are not worse. You want to compare the world state now to during World War II or World War I? Just, for example, as bad as relations are with America and Russia, what about the height of the Cold War?

What about the Cuban Missile Crisis? All right. Now, again, on the flip side, let's look at this tweet. Ryan Anderson retweeted something from Billboard Chris. Playing with the opposite gender toys is a sign your child is transgender. That's exactly what Boston Children's Hospital says.

Ryan Anderson, Dr. Anderson, tweeted this. In two generations, we went from there's no such thing as boys toys to if you play with GI Joe, you are a boy trapped in a girl's body. That's a question I began to ask with transgender stuff. Well, he's acting like a girl. What is a girl? What does that mean? He likes pink. Does does that mean he likes girl toys? I thought you told us that that there were no gender distinctions with with children's toys, color preferences, et cetera.

And then the Babylon Bee with ripping sarcasm, but righteously so. As this story says, sarcastic satire, Christian Web site, Harvard Med School officially replaces oath do no harm with mutilate kids for money. This is really not an overstatement because Harvard Medical School is supporting transitioning minors, transitioning children.

That's replacing the medical oath of do no harm with mutilate kids for money. OK, so you have some things in America today, friends, that are worse than they've ever been off the charts. There's some other things that are much better than they were in the past.

You have some other things that are the same, others going on one trajectory, others on another trajectory. It is a a fragile time in America because of the potential for division. But overall, you can't say this is the worst things have ever been in America. It's much more complex than that, nor can you say by any stretch of the imagination, this is the worst things have been all around the world. So where do we stand? Oh, things are in a very fragile, volatile situation.

But no, the whole world is not about to explode. We'll be right back. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.