Overcoming A-B-C-D with R-S-T-U-V

Overcoming ABCD with R.S.T.U.V. Well that's a topic we're going to discuss today right here on the Christian Real View Radio Program where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to share the good news of Jesus Christ.

I'm David Wheaton, the host, and our website is thechristianrealview.org. Well, thanks for joining us today in the program as we discuss some acronyms here, ABCD, overcoming that with R.S.T.U.V. We'll explain what that means in a minute. Now, while it's natural to be over-impacted by our present experience, it seems like we are living in a transformative moment in world history. While there have been clear signs for decades of spiritual compromise in the church and moral decay in the country, and while Christians know what the end of the book says about the coming godless globalism, events of the past year seem to have made great strides toward that particular destination, whether it's the government consolidation of power over COVID-19, whether it's the false accusations of systemic racism for anyone who opposes the mainstream perspective that America is a horrible country and its core racist, whether it's a potentially stolen presidential election, or a new administration imposing everything against God in traditional America, many Christians are suffering from a case of the ABCDs, as in anxiety or anger about what is taking place in our country, B, bitterness over what has become of our country, C, confusion over what the truth is about something like election fraud or COVID-19, and D, discouragement or despair about the future of our nation. So let's answer the first question.

Why is there so much ABCD, anxiety or anger, bitterness, confusion, and discouragement? Well, I think the answer to that is pretty clear. Those who believe in traditional America with its Christian-based worldview versus what we're being sold now today, or has become very prominent today with multiculturalism, that means no way is particularly better than the other, secularism, that's a way from Christian-based thinking, and also relativism, there's no objective truth, so that we've gone away from the Christian-based fabric and morality. Those who believe in individual liberties enshrined in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights with freedom of religion and speech and freedom to assemble, the right to bear arms, those who believe in American exceptionalism, that we need to be a nation, not part of a global community, that we need to protect our borders, that we need to focus on prioritizing this country and our people first, those who believe in equal opportunity versus what we hear today called equity, which is equal outcomes. Those who believe in that traditional America love the country as it was founded, and as it once was, and millions of people in this country shed their blood, they sacrificed their lives for the values of that traditional America. Yes, slavery and racism was a blight on the history of this country, as it has been in most every country around the world, but it has been overcome here in America, and it doesn't at all compare to the Holocaust, the literal Holocaust of abortion that's taken place in this country, over 60 million babies aborted in their mothers' wombs, so people have loved this country as it was, and traditional Americans include biblical Christians, not leftist Christians, but biblical Christians. It also includes political conservatives, some libertarians, more the rural people in this country rather than urban. It's the working class more than the investing class.

All of those groups, I think, are in various states of A, B, C, D, anxiety, bitterness, confusion, and discouragement about what is taking place in our country right now. I think there's a similar dynamic to Old Testament Israel. I was recently reading in the book of 1 Kings, as we see in that book how Israel goes through, there's a division in the country between Judah in the south and Israel in the north, the country's divided, and then the success of kings. Israel demands a king, and they get a king, and the kings don't work out well. It starts with Saul and goes to David. David's a good king, mostly. He goes to Solomon.

He turns away from the Lord. Then all the kings after that, it just goes into a spiral downward as the king, and then the people turn away from the true king, with a capital K, God Himself. And it says in 1 Corinthians 16, just gives an example of this, it says, In the thirty-eighth year of Asa king of Judah, Ahab son of Amri became king of Israel.

That's the northern kingdom. And he reigned in Samaria over Israel twenty-two years. Ahab son of Amri did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him. He not only considered it trivial to commit the sins of Jeroboam, who was the first king of Israel in the north, but he also married Jezebel, daughter of Ethbel, king of the Sidonians, and began to serve Baal and worship him.

He, Ahab, set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal that he built in Samaria. Ahab also made an Asherah pole and did more to arouse the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, than did all the kings of Israel before him. That's from 1 Kings 16.

Now, this is a repeating theme here. It's like one king comes and he does evil, and the next king comes and he does more evil. And there is an increasing wickedness of the rulers back in Old Testament Israel and of the people as well who follow them.

There's the occasional good king, but it's rare. And then eventually there's this division of the kingdom that had occurred, and then finally the enslavement of the nation, where they come and get taken over by a— God uses a foreign, ungodly power, actually, to come and take them over. It's like Romans 1. God gives them over.

God gives them over, as it repeats in Romans 1. So there's this increasing wickedness, and I think this is the case in America. With each succeeding presidency—I remember during the presidency of Obama, Christians were just shocked at the fact that he was able to change the definition of marriage, not to be just one man and one woman, but now it's, you know, two men can get married, two women can get married, just going against what God established in the early part of Genesis.

I mean, even that one thing just completely redefined the family. Now we are at another administration here, the Biden administration, that's going to be increasingly, as it was back in the Old Testament time, increasingly wicked and increasingly putting out things that are against God and His Word. We're going to get into some of those things today. So you look back on the last year, let's say the past 12 months, and you look at some examples, whether it's COVID-19, as I mentioned earlier, this has been a pretense for government consolidating, taking power, making arbitrary decisions on what they deem essential versus what's not. So Home Depot, of course, is essential, but churches are not, so Christians can't meet in churches. It's been the ruination of small businesses.

The big businesses in this country, Google and Facebook and Amazon, have done incredibly well during this COVID lockdown, but small businesses and restaurants and so forth, they aren't even able to be open to have customers. You have the accusations of systemic racism, and anyone who disagrees with that is actually called a racist. You have massive allegations of election fraud that really haven't been fully investigated.

People are frustrated over that. Then you have this new Biden administration that in just the first week or so is dismantling everything that's godly and good for America. One of his first executive orders was to mandate that those who are transgender, in other words, let's say a boy who thinks he's a girl, mandating that they should be able to use the restroom of their choice. So boys, biological boys, can use the girls' restrooms.

Biological boys who think their girls can compete in girls' or women's sports, thereby defeating them easily because of the physiological differences, girls and sports. And by the way, if you don't agree with that, they'll enshrine it in law, so you'll be persecuted and prosecuted if you don't go along with it. There's been a silencing of opposing views, abortions being expanded. Of course, that's the great sacrament of the left.

Just this week, New Mexico had a Senate committee approved abortion up to the date of birth in a five to three vote. It's truly just, again, another step forward of increasing wickedness. And just also this week, the President Biden committed to study the Supreme Court. Remember, we talked about packing the Supreme Court with more people to get it more bent to the liberal side.

Well, he's already committed to a study of that. So it's like America is like a walled city, back again in the time of the Old Testament, that has been breached. The enemy is surrounding it. They've come up, they've broken down the wall. And not only that, but you have leaders on the inside who are aiding the enemy on the outside.

And it's all a pretty difficult, challenging situation. The amount of God rejection, truth denialism, it's infiltrated every major institution in this nation. And things are now falling very quickly before our eyes, whether it's the political world through big tech, internet, Google, Facebook conspiring together to not allow any dissent of leftist thought. Corporations are on board with this. Of course, the educational system is so ungodly.

The media, of course, is complicit in all this entertainment industry. Even the false religion establishment in this country is all on board in this headlong rush of rejecting God and rejecting His truth to transform America. You take all of this, and for those who are biblical Christians, they see what's going on. And like Old Testament prophets lamented. You read the Old Testament prophets, and you see how they lament, and there's an outcry against the spiritual condition of Israel.

So biblical Christians today are doing the same. They in some ways have the ABCDs, the anxiety, the bitterness, the confusion, the despair, the discouragement about what is happening to the country they've loved, and also to the church to a degree as well. And it's worse than ever because our nation seems more hopeless than ever now. And now, not only that, it appears that we have lost our ability to change the future through the loss of free and fair elections. This was really the Freudian slip of all Freudian slips made by then-candidate Joe Biden. We're in a situation where we have put together, and you guys did it for our administration, the President Obama's administration before this, we have put together, I think, the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.

Now, I have no idea what he was trying to say there. Obviously, he wasn't trying to say that, but to say we had put together the most extensive voter fraud program in the history of U.S. politics, wow, well, that was pretty clairvoyant because it sounds like, it seems like, that's exactly how it has turned out to be in this particular last election. Now, we received quite a few emails after our last couple of programs where we brought up the topic of election fraud, and there's been a lot of ABCD, anxiety, bitterness, confusion, and despair, over this past election.

I brought up some questions that I think need to be answered from this past election. We've seen all the evidence. We've heard about the eyewitnesses.

It's extensive. President Trump went over it in his speech. The rally that day on January 6, there's reports done on it. Lots of conservative outlets have made very extensive investigations of it. So the question is, well, if that's the case and there's been so much widespread fraud, why aren't there arrests of the criminals who pulled off this fraud? Why have there been no legal victories that prove that fraud changed the outcome of the presidential election? Why are there so many hundreds, if not over a thousand sworn affidavits from individuals, why aren't those compelling enough to hold court cases? Why aren't Republicans conducting investigations in their own states or in the U.S. Congress? Well, apparently they have in certain areas.

A sharp listener told me that there have been some of those in various states, but apparently they haven't been able to gain much traction from those hearings. Why are the president's main supporters in the media not continuing to pound the drum on election fraud? We had another listener email us to say that people like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson at Fox have been told not to keep on pushing those narratives of election fraud because the higher ups, those who run the company aren't conservative and they don't want those things continually let out.

I don't know if that's true or not. Why did Vice President Mike Pence, who was a great supporter of Donald Trump, a professing evangelical Christian, why did he certify the electors on January 6th in the Senate if he believed there was really widespread fraud? So those are the questions that I brought up last week and we had many emails as a result of them and it's hard to get to the truth on this.

The allegations are there, they're compelling, they seem very credible, so why isn't there the truth? The Christian Worldview with David Wheaton returns in just a moment. David Wheaton here, host of The Christian Worldview. For over 15 years, our mission has been to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. We pursue that mission on air through radio programs, in person hosting events, and online through audio, video, and print resources. We are an all-volunteer ministry but have monthly operating expenses, the most significant being the cost of air time on the station, website, or app on which you hear the radio program. We are looking for monthly partners so that each station or website is supported by its own listeners.

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Welcome back to The Christian Worldview. Now, here's David Wheaton. Well, I heard a sound bite this week, an interview this week with Sidney Powell. You probably remember her. She was one of the attorneys for President Trump's team along with Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, and others that was working on investigating these claims of election fraud. And she gave an interview with a news outlet called Skyline News where she was asked these questions.

We're going to play two back-to-back sound bites from Sidney Powell, which I think gives an update and some insight as to where things stand. And we've got a website called defendingtherepublic.org that's undergoing a bit of work right now, but posted on it and hopefully fully operational by tomorrow again will be all the pleadings that we've filed in a number of cases challenging on constitutional and factual grounds the results of the election, including hundreds of pages of documents and affidavits and other evidence that shows that the election was indeed fraudulent. President Trump won. I mean, he had about 80 million votes, and Biden had much less than that, aside from the fact that hundreds of thousands of Biden votes were fraudulent from the get-go. I mean, there were hundreds of thousands of fraudulent ballots.

There were flipped votes by algorithms run in the multiple machines and not just the ones from Dominion, but others as well. It seems we're still collecting evidence on all of that. And even though we've had to drop two of at least of our lawsuits that were pending in front of the Supreme Court because the court did not act in sufficient time to keep them viable, they became what's called moot in the legal parlance, meaning that the relief we requested was no longer viable because the electors had already been seated and Biden has been inaugurated and all of that.

We are still looking at other options for litigation because there are substantial issues that still need to be raised. And my principle has always been that the American people are entitled to the truth, whichever way that falls. And given the huge plight that has been mounted against getting to the truth, that alone tells me that we're on the right track and over the target. Again, that was Sidney Powell, a very highly respected attorney for President Trump. I don't think she's working for him now, but was and is really trying to delve into proving the election fraud.

And by the way, it's not good enough for her. She's an attorney. She knows that these allegations have to be proved, these criminal allegations have to be proved in court.

They can't just be passed between people on the Internet and Facebook and so forth. There needs to be proof in court for there to be any lasting change. I don't think it's going to be able to affect this past election. President Biden is now the president.

I don't think we're going to go back on that. But for there to be any meaningful truth on this past election and then changing election laws going forward so that never happens again. She knows that has to be the case. And so some of the court cases, she said, had timed out, of course, since Biden's inaugurated, they aren't hearing him. Well, then the interviewer from Skyline News brings up the question that I've heard from many listeners is that, well, with so much evidence, why aren't the courts taking these cases? Why haven't there been victories in the courts if the evidence is so obvious?

What is going on here? What's the matter with these courts? Why won't they hear these cases that you guys have? A lot of people just don't understand that. What do you think their problem is? I don't understand it either.

I don't understand it either. I think we've experienced, I mean, I've seen our court system deteriorate for the last 20 years. I self-published in 2014 a book called License to Lie Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice. And it's only gotten worse since then. And that was based on conduct I saw beginning in the year 2001. So our system has done nothing but deteriorate. And when the Republicans have had power, they've done nothing to clean it up.

That's right. It's all gotten worse. What she just said there is a very distressing scenario that the court system has deteriorated so much that she didn't seem too confident that they're going to be able to get fair hearings. I'm not going to take the time right now, but we have this article linked on our website by Mark Alexander. He's the editor of the Patriot Post. They wrote an excellent conservative publication online, and he wrote a column titled The Left's Bulk Mail Ballot Fraud Strategy.

And I sent this to a couple of listeners this week who had who had responded to the program last week. I think it goes a long way toward explaining what happened, what probably likely happened with the fact, because of COVID-19, there was a whole new system of voting put into effect this year that the Democratic Party took advantage of. All the early mail-in ballots ballots were sent out by the literally by the millions. And they organized together to have these millions of bulk mail votes filled out, turned back in. And it really made a lot of room for people who had never voted before be able to vote or who wouldn't vote vote or to actually take these ballots and fraudulently use them.

And it's very, very difficult to try to untangle that after the fact. I'll just read one paragraph from the column. This is the year that Democrats figured out how to rig elections universally, taking their cue from Barack Obama and his former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who declared, you don't ever want a good crisis to go to waste.

It's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before. Leftists have masterfully used the Chinese virus crisis as national justification for their mail vote ground game. The objective in 2020 was to register millions of new victims and group identity constituents who aren't politically informed or engaged.

In many states, registrations require only the loosest criteria for identification. So he goes on and this is a good article. You should read it. The bottom line here is there's really only three options about election fraud and all say something very ominous about where we are.

They give us the ABCDs. Again, anxiety, bitterness, confusion and disillusionment or discouragement or despair. You fill in your own D. Number one, first option is Biden won by voting fraud. And it's going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to prove and will likely be repeated in the future. And as we did a program and that's the end of our constitutional republic, we've now become a banana republic where we can't trust our elections. We don't have the will of the people anymore. That's one option. The second option is that these courts who won't hear these cases, even though there's credible and massive evidence, as Sidney Powell was saying, that the court situation has deteriorated so much. Well, that's a really bad, ominous situation option as well, too. It's like the end of the republic again. You don't have the rule of law where credible crimes, there's no ability to to litigate them.

That's a bad option. Well, the third option is, well, perhaps actually, Joe Biden didn't did win fairly. All those ballots that went out, they were filled out fairly. And now we have a people problem because enough people in this country, a majority of the electorate actually believes that the worldview of Joe Biden is going to be good for this country. This is the the Romans one scenario that God gave them over to to delusion meant, basically, that their ungodly policies of this this administration not only stick their finger into the eyes of God, but there are some are going to help our country in the process. Now, I want to transition from why there's so much ABCD, anxiety, bitterness, confusion and despair or discouragement right now. How to overcome that with another series of letters, RSTUV.

I'm going to get to what those letters mean in a second. But the wrong way, the wrong solution to overcome the ABCD is to have some sort of false optimism. You hear this a lot. Well, this is America after all. The pendulum will swing back. Democracy eventually gets it right. It's the will of the people. This is not the correct way to think about this.

There's no guarantee in any of those things, those common refrains that you'll hear. Pastor John MacArthur gave a message or a sermon last week at his church talking about democracy. And going back into Scripture and finding out what Scripture actually says about democracies. Well, the hint here is it says nothing about it.

Now, I may shock you. The Bible doesn't advocate democracy. The Bible doesn't mention democracy. The Bible doesn't comment on democracy. The Bible doesn't define democracy. There is no place in all of the Bible where you even find democracy. There is no country revealed in Scripture where it existed. It is never affirmed by God.

That was John MacArthur again. So let's get the idea of somehow democracies are sacrosanct. And the American democracy, it's been around for 200 and some years and it's going to be around forever. There's the power to the people and things are going to work themselves out.

He's exactly right. There's nothing about democracy in Scripture as the perfect form of government. There's only one perfect form of government. That's the theocratic monarchy. When Christ rules over this world during the time of the millennium, that will be the perfect government of mankind. All other types of government, they all eventually fail because of the sinfulness of man. It's just that democracy is a very good form of government or our constitutional republic, because again, it separates power more, it puts more power to the people.

And so it takes longer to fail because it takes more people to reject God. We've all heard the quote by John Adams. He said, Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.

It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. So even democracies is what he's saying is once the people get corrupted, and once they're immoral and they're irreligious, it doesn't work anymore, because all of a sudden they start to vote themselves in a direction away from God. Now, Dennis Prager, I bring him up once in a while on the program, and he's not a Christian. He's actually an Orthodox Jew, he's a universalist, he believes there's many ways to God. He talked about the fact that there's a rub between the human nature of man and how a constitutional republic can keep going.

Here's what he said the problem is. The country was founded, the only country in the history of the world to be founded on the belief that we should have limited government. There were kings, there were princes, there were dictatorships, there were theocracies, and then America came and said, no, the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen. So let's make a small government and a big citizen.

The left is like the rest of the world. Let's keep the government bigger and bigger. And that's what we are seeing, and the reason, Judge, the reason that Americans accept this is something I have understood my whole life. People do not yearn to be free, they yearn to be taken care of.

Yeah, and that's a very important point, and I think a truthful point he just made. People yearn to be, not to be free, but to be taken care of. In other words, people will embrace a guarantee in life rather than opportunity or incentive to go above and beyond and do a little better. If you promise them, we're going to give you free education, we're going to give you a place to live, we are going to give you free internet, government will pay for your healthcare, we're also going to give you childcare for free, guarantee you a job or a minimum wage, all these different things that government is going to give you in return for, you're going to lose some opportunity to improve, you'll be guaranteed things, but you won't have opportunities on the upside or incentive to really do well beyond what government guarantees you. People will generally accept that, even if it means a loss of personal choice and freedom. This goes to that point, the old point about when people discover that they can, in a democracy, when they can vote others in power that will support them financially, that's where things go awry, and that's what the Democratic Party knows today.

They try to get as many identity groups, as many people dependent on government as possible, so they get a perpetual voting block forever. And there's the fly in the ointment of democracies, that human nature of wanting to be taken care of, rather than wanting to be free and have individual liberties, that gets in the way. So it's this corruption, this sin inside man that can lead to even a democracy becoming corrupt and not working. Way back at the beginning of time, in Genesis chapter 6, it says, Now the earth was corrupt. That means people were corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for humanity had corrupted its way upon the earth.

And it's because of the sin nature and the corruption inside all of us, that no form of government actually works for the long run. And even when things go badly and things aren't working, man still doesn't return to God. And so in that message that John MacArthur was giving, he talked about this. He talked about the fact that here Israel, the nation of Israel, chosen by God, God himself was their king, and in time they looked at the nations around them, and they had some judges for a time and so forth, and eventually, instead of turning to God in repentance and faith and obedience, and following the true king with the capital K, God himself, their creator, the one who had chosen them, the one who led them out of Egypt, miraculously through the ten plagues and the Passover and parted the Red Sea, and they escaped from Pharaoh and his whole army was destroyed, and they went through the wilderness for 40 years. He was leading them in a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, and gave them manna and water from the rock and the Ten Commandments, and they cross the Jordan River and they come into the Promised Land, and the walls of Jericho fall down, and they start to displace all the nations in the Promised Land and they take it over, and then what do they do? They demanded a human king, just as the nation of Israel, the religious leaders during the time of Christ, when they had a choice between their Messiah Jesus and Barabbas.

Who do they choose? They choose the criminal, the insurrectionist Barabbas instead of the Son of God. John MacArthur talks about this in that sermon and how sin makes us stupid. Sin makes you stupid, and it makes you make stupid choices about leadership.

Who trades in the eternal God for a tall, dark, handsome, stupid donkey finder who wants to hide in the baggage? He was referring to the first king of Israel there, King Saul, who was cowering, didn't want to be introduced before he was inaugurated king. So why did God allow this as a judgment?

If you understand that as a judgment. If you want a king, I'll give you a king. I'll give you the king that will show you how foolish you are to turn from God. Saul is the anti-king. He's the illustration of the worst kind of ruler. That's God's whole point. Saul was a complete disaster. And he was.

So whenever we put our trust in democracy or the next president, this is the wrong response to the ABCDs, is to put our hope, our trust in some human leader or just people, democracy in general. The Christian Worldview with David Wheaton returns in just a moment. Here's a voicemail from Jerry that she left for Dr. Mark Wheaton at Lakeside Sports and Pain Clinic. This is Jerry and this message is for Dr. Wheaton. I saw him yesterday and I just wanted him to know how very grateful I am that I found him and that he has really given me hope that my concussion, my head, everything will be back to normal one day very soon. I felt fantastic today.

And I didn't want to wait a whole month to let him know that. So thank you for all you do to help people be healthy. Another grateful patient for relief from chronic pain, to get relief from your pain, call Dr. Wheaton's clinic at 952-593-0500 or go to drmarkwheaton.com. That's 952-593-0500 or drmarkwheaton.com. There's an abundance of Christian resources available, but the reality is that many of them, even some of the most popular, do not lead to a sound and strong faith. While there's only one perfect book, a key aim of the Christian worldview is to identify and offer resources that are biblically faithful and deepen your walk with God. In our online store, we have a wide range of resources for all ages, adult and children's books and DVDs, Bibles and devotionals, unique gifts, and more. So browse our store at thechristianworldview.org and find enriching resources for yourself, family, friends, small group, or church. You can also order by calling toll-free 1-888-646-2233.

That's 1-888-646-2233. Visit thechristianworldview.org. Welcome back to The Christian Worldview.

Now, here's David Wheaton. We know and we want political leadership to turn things around. And while that can help to a certain point, you can see the difference between the Trump administration and the Biden administration night and day, really only when people individually repent of their sin, they put their trust, their faith in Jesus Christ, or even if they don't do that, at least if they have a reverence and respect for God as there was much more in the earlier days of America, that's when there'll be peace and stability and blessing in a country. And John MacArthur went on to say that when you have leadership who mocks God, as those Old Testament kings of Israel did, they rebelled against God, they worshiped false idols, they led the people into immorality, they had wicked policies. That's what causes God to give them over.

It's a form of judgment. And this is what he said about Joe Biden, with the policies, the wicked policies he promotes, the ones he signed in executive orders right away, transgenderism and all the rest that are coming our way, don't put your hand in the Bible and then mock God. Verse 6, when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out toward the ark of God, took hold of it for the oxen nearly upset it, started to topple off the ark, so Uzzah reached out to steady it. Look at verse 7, the anger of the Lord burned against Uzzah and God struck him down there for his irreverence and he died by the ark of God. Let me say something. You better be careful when you put your hand on God. I thought of that in that inauguration. You can say whatever you want to say, but when you touch the ark, when you place your hand on the throne of God, because God is enthroned in His Word, and you place your hand on the Word of God and pledge to do the very things that blaspheme His name.

You talk about a high-risk action? All Uzzah did was what he thought was showing some respect. God doesn't want your respect, He wants your obedience. Don't tell me that you advocate the slaughter of babies in the womb. Don't tell me you want to destroy masculinity, femininity, marriage. Don't tell me you want to fill the world with LGBTQ people in leadership.

You want to justify transgender activity. Don't tell me you want to invite more Muslims in who represent a religion from hell and then put your hand on the throne of God. You can make any pledge you want. Don't mock God. Very strong words from Pastor John MacArthur and very truthful words as well.

So that's the wrong solution we talked about to the ABCDs. To have a false optimism, to trust in democracy, to get a human king to think that changed leadership is going to help. The right solution, according to God's Word, is R-S-T-U-V. And that stands for regeneration, sanctification, trust, and then number four, I put two words together, an unquestionable victory based on the fact of who God is, the sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, infallible king of the universe who promises he will have the victory in the end. Now let's go back to the first one, regeneration. The difference between being saved and unsaved is all the difference in the world and in eternity. Regeneration means being born again. As Jesus told Nicodemus in John chapter 3 that you must be born again. It's regeneration, it's spiritual birth going from an unbeliever or non-believer to a believer in Christ through putting your faith in the person and work of Christ. That's when you're born again or regenerated.

We all have a physical birthday, but only those who put their faith in Christ have a spiritual birthday. And I took some passages from Romans chapter 8 and just watched how one fits into the other. So it starts out with regeneration because once you're regenerated, that's going to give you the ability to overcome the anxiety, the bitterness, the confusion, the discouragement, because when you're saved, you receive, the Bible says, the Holy Spirit who gives you, gives the believer discernment, gives the believer wisdom, and gives the believer a hope beyond this world. It says in Romans chapter 8, For those who are according to the flesh, unbelievers, they set their minds on the things of the flesh. But those who are according to the Spirit, believers or the regenerate, they think about the things of the Spirit. For the mind set in the flesh is death, but the mind set in the Spirit is life and peace. See the difference?

Huge difference. Because the mind set in the flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so. And those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

See the difference there? Those who are in the flesh, those who are unregenerate, they're going to look at our current world situation in America and have ABCDs, anxiety, bitterness, confusion, and despair. As believers, we should not. It goes on in verse 9, it says, However, you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him. So regeneration is that first step into having a new heart, a new mind that's being transformed by the indwelling Holy Spirit of God.

There's the R. Let's move on to the S, which is sanctification. Once you're saved, once you're born again, the call for the believer is to live a holy life for God's glory, even in the midst of evil days. Again, back in Romans 8, just continuing on in that passage, Romans 8, verse 12. So then, brethren, so then, now what, brethren?

Now that you're saved, now what? We are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. You don't go back to your old way of living, for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die. But if by the Holy Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

If you're living a sanctified life, a life set apart for God's service, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God, we just talked about that, for you have not received a spirit of slavery, leading to fear again. You should have no fear of going back into slavery to sin, but you have received a new spirit of adoption. You've been adopted into God's family, and as sons, by which we cry out, Abba, Father.

We go from being alienated from God to being one of God's children, where we call him, basically, I think Abba means Daddy. There's a close relationship there, and we live a holy life. Be holy, for I am holy, even in the midst of dark days. That is still the focus. Which brings us to point three, R, regeneration, S, sanctification, and now T, trust.

This is a big one. You can be saved, and you can be striving with God's help to be sanctified, but you also still need to live by faith or trust, day by day, trusting that God is sovereign in not only your own life, but also the affairs of life, the affairs of mankind. Moving forward, in Romans chapter 8, it says, And we know, this is a well-known verse in Scripture, and we know, believers know, that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. So no matter how bleak things look here in America, or maybe in your church, or the current situation, and who's occupying the power in this country, we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. This is not outside God's purview. This is not outside God's plan. In fact, God is orchestrating what is going on for his purposes. He is leading, even though people think they're rejecting and pushing away from him, we're getting our own way, they're actually getting their own way in bringing about what God is going to bring about in the end. That's how sovereign and unbelievable God is. He even takes the sinfulness of mankind and turns things together to good to work for his good and his plan.

That's amazing. Which brings us to the fourth one, where I combine the U and the V, and I tell this one, Unquestionable Victory. And this is the hope that all believers can have. And this comes from Romans toward the end of that chapter 8.

It says, Paul concludes by a summary. What shall we say to all these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own son, but deliver him over for us all, how will he not also with him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns?

Christ Jesus is he who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword, and I'll add a couple more, will the Biden administration, will the wicked policies of the left?

And the answer is no. Just as it is written, it says in verse 36, Romans 8, For your sake we are being put to death all day long. We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.

What a bleak outlook, right? Verse 37, But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through him, through God who loved us. And then Paul concludes this way, which is what gives us victory, will help us overcome the ABCDs, the anxiety, the bitterness, the confusion, the despair. He says, For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. That pretty much summarizes anything. Anything that comes our way, that causes us to have those ABCDs, all of it is overcome.

Nothing. We are unquestionably victorious through Jesus Christ our Lord. That is the footing, the war footing. That is how we stand firm in knowing that we have great hope, even in the midst of watching around us what we are seeing falling apart in a country that, yes, we do love, and in a place that we don't want to see the direction go that it is going. But we know that God will cause all things to work together for good, and we do have unquestioning victory through Jesus Christ our Lord. And by the way, all of this that's taking place has no impact on the success of the Church. Christ will build His Church no matter what is going on in the world, and that's also what John MacArthur said in that sermon. You say, well, doesn't the Church need freedom of religion to move forward?

No. In no way does any political law aid or hinder the Church of Jesus Christ. We are a separate kingdom. Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight. We would fight if the kingdom were of the world to make sure we got our space in the world. But this is not a kingdom that is part of this world.

This is a kingdom of another world. The Church does not need help from Washington or any other government. When Jesus said, I will build my church in the gates of Hades, the gates of hell will not prevail against it. He assured all the forces of evil that would be relentlessly against the church, the gates of hell, would never be able to thwart His purpose. In fact, nothing will be able to thwart the purpose of God.

So I get it. It's easy to fall into those ABCDs, the anger, the anxiety, the bitterness, the confusion, the despair and discouragement about what is taking place in our country. And that doesn't mean we shouldn't be sad or lament or even have some righteous anger watching our leadership shake their fists in the face of God. You need to be very careful with that one, though, that it doesn't turn into self-righteousness. You need to remember what we were before you came to saving faith. We were dead in our trespasses and sins. We lived according to our flesh.

So we really shouldn't be too surprised when the unregenerate act like the unregenerate. But above all, we need to focus on that R-S-T-U-V. First, regeneration. If you have been born again as Christ commands us, we have been forgiven. We have been given eternal life. We've been given hope, even in the midst of a fallen world.

If you haven't been regenerated or born again, I would just encourage you to go to our website, thechristianworldview.org, and read our most visited page on the site, What Must I Do to Be Saved. That explains how you can enter into a right relationship with God. Then there's the S. Believers need to focus on sanctification, striving to live for God's glory, striving to live more like Christ, even in the midst of evil days. The T, the trusting God in His sovereignty for everything that's going on. He's not wringing His hands in heaven, worrying about what the Biden administration is going to do.

No, He's using it to move history toward His end. And finally, the unquestionable hope, the unquestionable victory, I should say, that we have through Jesus Christ our Lord. Your life, my life, and our well-being, our peace in life, does not need to be dependent, should not need to be dependent on what is going on in our fallen sinful world. But we should know that, like it says in Romans 8, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let's have that as our mentality. Let's stand firm based on that. And in the midst of it, let's try not just to circle the wagons around ourselves, but to pray for and look for and take opportunities to communicate God's Gospel and His truth in love to a world that desperately needs it. Because we do live in a changing and darkening America. But take courage and take hope, Christian.

There is one thing we can always trust in and count on, especially when those A, B, C, Ds get us down. The Bible says, Jesus Christ and His word are the same yesterday, today, and forever. Thanks for joining us on The Christian Worldview. And until next time, think biblically and live accordingly. The Christian Worldview is a listener-supported ministry and furnished by the Overcomer Foundation, a nonprofit organization. You can find out more, order resources, make a donation, become a monthly partner, and contact us by visiting theChristianworldview.org, calling toll-free 1-888-646-2233, or writing to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. That's Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Thanks for listening to The Christian Worldview. See you next time.