Election Preview – We Don’t Know the Future, But We Know WHO Holds It

Election Preview. We don't know the future, but we know who holds the future. That is a topic we'll discuss today right here on the Christian Worldview Radio Program, where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. I'm David Wheaton, the host. The Christian Worldview is a listener-supported radio program. Our website is thechristianworldview.org, and the rest of our contact information will be given throughout today's program. The Lord has established His throne in the heavens, and His sovereignty rules over all.

That's Psalm 103, verse 19. God's supreme power and authority is what Christians need to be trusting in now and always, for He controls the past, present, and future, moving people to accomplish His purposes. On Tuesday, November 5th, the people of our nation will be moved to elect a presidential leader and other representatives whose policies on the economy, energy, education, national borders, crime and justice, marriage, morality, preborn life, Israel, and a host of other issues will impact everyone's lives.

No one except God Himself knows what's ahead. Pastor Travis Allen of Grace Church in Greeley, Colorado joins us today on the Christian Worldview to discuss various aspects of this election, culminating with how Christians can be at peace no matter what occurs. Later in the program, Washington Times columnist Robert Knight will tell us some key things to watch for. But first, let's get to the interview with Pastor Travis Allen. Travis, always grateful when you take the time to come on the Christian Worldview radio program. Before we get into our topic, previewing this upcoming election, I wanted to first ask you about your perspective on the situation with Steve Lawson and his disqualification from ministry.

It's now been six weeks, and there's been no response or statement from him. What are your thoughts on that and also how you think this has been handled by his local church and the other ministries with which he was associated, like Grace Community Church, the Master's Seminary, Ligonier, and others? David, just let me say thanks for having me back on. It's always a joy to reconnect with you, and you and Brody have been such good friends to us and appreciate you and your ministry, all you're doing at the Christian Worldview. To your question, you know, as a pastor, I'm talking with Christians all the time in our church and other churches as well, and this situation with Steve Lawson really hit pretty hard. It was such a blow because so many people were helped by his preaching, his books, and in as much as he was faithful to Reformed theology and expository preaching and things like that, he was used of the Lord, I think, for helping a lot of people.

And so it's been hard. It's been sad for me to see the ripple effect of that kind of a fall, that level of a scandal. I recognize it's the prerogative of the local church to handle its own discipline issues, according to 1 Timothy 5, 19 to 25. We're not to accept a charge except on the testimony of two or three witnesses, but when there's an elder who sins and continues in that sin, you rebuke him publicly before all. So that's for Steve Lawson, that's Trinity Bible Church in Dallas, that's his local church. I don't know what the elders have or haven't done in that church to investigate, confront this issue, expose the sins of its lead preacher, and that is between those men in their congregation and between that congregation and the Lord.

I want to trust that you're doing what's right before the Lord, but that's really between them and the Lord to have that accountability before him. But it seems to me a man like Steve Lawson, who is quite prominent, who was platformed by several sound parachurch organizations, he was a featured speaker at conferences, he was a trusted expositor, trainer of men for ministry, a man who, you know, because of that credibility kind of conferred on him by many of these organizations and churches, he was welcomed into a lot of pulpits and sought after. So it seems to me that his prominence was far larger than his local church, so it seems to me that with that level of honor comes a higher degree of responsibility, of scrutiny, of accountability.

There's cause for people to be asking questions and wanting answers. I understand when people are asking for more than just that the local church would handle this and kind of keep it shielded within a local church, because he was kind of supra local church, he was kind of known nationally and internationally. And so because of that, and because of kind of the silence, and maybe that silence is due to these parachurch organizations giving the elders of Trinity Bible Church in Dallas time, perhaps that's what's going on, they just want to give them time to conduct their investigation and come to their conclusions, but if that doesn't happen and this gets set aside, kind of swept away, and the news cycle just makes it evaporate, this would be a missed opportunity I think. For the leaders that promoted and platformed Steve Lawson, I think it's an opportunity for them to help other Christians reflect on lessons learned, to do some self-examination, to be leading out in humility and confession where appropriate, repentance where appropriate. I expressed a concern to a friend that Christian leaders would do some self-reflection on what I believe to be the mistake that they made in platforming Steve Lawson, and this goes back 10 plus years. I had concerns about him being promoted and set forth as an example. Steve Lawson used the gift of preaching to build a platform outside the local church, and he wanted pulpits and conference platforms, but really no duties with people as a pastor.

He used students to do his research and ghost writers to write his books. He refused to pastor, but put himself forward as a model for pastors and preachers, and it was our reformed institutions that were complicit in platforming him in that role. He was away from the authority of the local church, and therefore he really wasn't in submission to anyone. He took the place of an authoritative expert wherever he went. He did move from pulp to pulpit, stage to stage.

He was gone more than 30 weeks out of the year and rarely traveled with his wife or spoke about her, and all this is kind of a trending toward and promoting exactly the kind of celebrity that we say that we abhor in our circles, but many allowed it to happen, promoted it, and I think benefited from it, and I don't think that's either loving or wise. It's short-sighted and pragmatic, so that's what I told my friend, and I guess I'm still hoping that the leaders in our reformed institutions won't let this opportunity pass them by, but that they'll reflect on some of the lessons learned, do a bit of self-examination, maybe lead out in some humble confession, and if appropriate, repentance, and by repentance I mean a change in policy, not just to platform a guy who's eloquent or can speak, but to really see he has to be a model as a pastor if you're going to train pastors. If you're going to be set up as a model of a preacher, are you doing it within the context of a local church where there's an accountability for your ministry before the people who know you? You live your life before them, and I'm concerned that that won't be properly confronted, reflected upon, but maybe it will, and I think it's a good opportunity for us as leaders to be reflective about that, who we platform.

Those are excellent points. Pastor Travis Allen is our guest today here on the Christian Real View of Grace Church in Greeley, Colorado. Travis, let's get over to our topic as we preview this upcoming election on Tuesday, November 5th. This has been a long lead-up as all elections have become in our country now. It's been non-stop media and citizen attention to this election for about two years. What are some of your top observations in the lead-up to this election, and how are you shepherding your church as they approach this? One observation that I have is I think that God is giving our nation the leaders that we deserve, and even in that, He's still showing mercy to us. I think about one of the ballot measures in my home state of Colorado to amend the state constitution to prohibit, quote, state and local governments from denying, impeding, or discriminating against, end quote, the right to abortion, and that it should be, quote, a covered service under health insurance plans, end quote. Goes on with language to say basically it's going to be tax funded.

It's going to be supported by the state and constitutionally protected. So the protection of the mandate for tax-funded support to kill babies in the womb, which is really the central right of secularism, the religion of modernism, why should God allow us to breathe one more breath, to take up any more space on His planet? Justice really demands our utter destruction and annihilation, but He's allowing us to live.

There's a mercy there. Yeah, albeit under bad leadership, but even in the bad leadership is an opportunity for us to see what we've been handed over to, as Romans 1 says, and to repent. But as bad as our choices are before us in the political spectrum, as bad as the choices are on the ballot, I see this as yet another expression of divine mercy, that God is being merciful to us even in this judgment.

We're getting the leaders that we deserve. Second observation is if we assess the situation as Christians, not as Americans, not as Republicans or Democrats, but transcend that and think like Christians who are biblically informed, theologically informed, we have to acknowledge that, spiritually speaking, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are on the same side. In terms of morality and ethics, we understand the Democratic platform is maybe a decade or two of the Republican platform, but the Republican platform is trending in the same way as the Democratic platform.

They're unregenerate people, for the most part, who are filling offices around the country. It was sad to me to see that the Trump-Vance ticket made a pragmatic political decision to compromise a stronger stance against abortion. I saw an article in The Hill, and I'll just quote this sentence, Trump has tried to maintain an ambiguous position on abortion for fear of losing support from religious conservatives or losing ground among moderates to favor some abortion access, end quote.

Yeah, I think that's true. He's been probably the most supportive of pro-life causes and will actually join the march in Washington, D.C., pro-life march, more than probably any other president. At the same time, he'll speak out of another side of his mouth and speak very compromisingly. Same thing with J.D.

Vance. So Republicans, they're on the same moral slide as Democrats, maybe just a decade or two behind. And I'm not arguing here for a moral equivalency between two parties at this point, though I cannot see how a Christian can vote for any Democratic party candidate or any aspect of the anti-Christian Democrat platform. So there's no moral equivalency.

I'm not making that argument. I'm just saying that no Christian should put their faith in the Republican party or any political party or movement or any man. Psalm 146 3, don't trust in princes, in mortal man, in whom there is no salvation. So I think we need to assess everything that's going on politically as Christians first and then think about our voting options after that. So a third thing I'd say, since ours is a two-party political system, it seems to me Christians are left with only one party choice, which has a far higher regard for human life. It's not only anti-abortion to protect babies, but where anti-abortion and pro-life is a kindness and a compassion for mothers, for doctors, for nurses, for abortion providers. We want to make it more difficult for them to heap upon their consciences and upon their souls the guilt of murder and bring down the wrath of God.

I want to prevent that as much as I can because I love my neighbor. So having a high regard for human life, refusing to give way to the culture of death that's represented by the Democratic party, I think that's a watershed issue. Even if many who support the Republican party and want to protect life don't understand the implications of their position, there are a lot of implications. When you understand human life has a potential for bearing the image of God and giving glory to God, we want to protect children from the rapacious, kind of LGBTQ movement and, you know, pornography and dark influences in media and culture and those kind of things. When we regard human life as the image of God, we want to secure and protect our borders and define our boundaries as a nation that helps us serve our citizens and strengthen our nation, but then allow those to immigrate who are actually going to benefit our nation and our country and not degrade it and denigrate it. We want to protect our citizens at home and abroad.

We want to strengthen law enforcement agencies to resist law breakers, support our courts to punish law breakers, strengthen our military and our defense, intelligence agencies, and all those things to crush any and all who are going to harm our country and its citizens. All of that is going to be represented in one party and not the other. The Democratic Party, in particular, is opposing everything I just said because theirs is a culture of death. They love death, not life. That's well said.

Let me follow up with that, Travis. You had written or actually given a sermon series before the 2020 election, and I went back and I read the transcript of part of that, and you had written that or said that for some years now the left has been rising up, weaponizing ignorance and grooming people for decades to destroy the foundation they've been standing on. Tools of critical theory, intersectionality have been deployed to tremendous effect. They're pushing the country toward socialism, globalism, a new kind of soft totalitarianism, things like freedom of speech, freedom of religious worship, freedom of conscience, all those things that we've taken for granted as Americans. All that's being swept away is people that are stumbling all over themselves these days to see if they can be the first to congratulate the next phase in this radical sexual revolution.

One more paragraph. Most people today, it's like they're reading Paul's indictment on the world in Romans chapter one. Rather than seeing that as a deplorable catalogue of sins, a descent into madness and seeing it as a bad thing, people have said, yeah, that's what I want.

Whoever gives me that, that's who I'm voting for, unquote. Kamala Harris has made it very clear that abortion is her top priority. We have seen extraordinary harm and pain and suffering happen because of what Donald Trump did in intending and effectuating an overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Yes, my first priority is to put back in place those protections and to stop this pain and to stop this injustice that is happening around our country. How do you explain how half the electorate or more are so unable to see that they are supporting this Romans one dissent? Bottom line, it's a departure from God. That's why.

Unable to see. Romans one describes them as those who have a debased mind. They've been handed over because they have departed from God, turned away from God their creator to worship and serve the creature rather than God.

So God has handed them over. First of all, as Romans one described the slide into madness, it's a handing over to sexual immorality. And that's supposed to be a wake-up call. Sexual morality comes with a destruction of family. It divorces. It ruins family life. It ruins children and it hurts them. That's to be a wake-up call.

So people say, what's happening to us? Oh, it's a departure from the truth. It's a departure from God's word. But failing to wake up from that and see God's mercy in that judgment, God hands them over to homosexual immorality. And so they commit indecent deplorable sins with their own sex. It's another level of God handing them over and failing to wake up from that as our nation has failed to wake up from it. God hands them over to a debased mind. And that catalog of sins in Romans one works out from that.

And so it's just a cascading of insanity. And those are the people who are going to the polls. I've got a close relative who works in one of the county jails. And he said that the administration is trying to get all these inmates registered to vote and get them voting. When you think about people who are caught up in all kinds of sins, they're not convicted of them yet.

So they're not convicted felons, but they're waiting trials. So let's get them all registered to vote and get them voting. That's the mentality you want going into the voting booth. And think about that in Romans one.

These people who have a debased thinking cannot think reasonably and sensibly anymore. And now we're going to put a voting ballot in their hands and say, make your choice. And so making their choice, they're going to choose what serves their sin. Ours is a nation of apostates chosen to serve and worship the creature rather than the creator. And so God has handed us over. And I think that's where we are in our country. I think that's as Christians, we have to see it that way.

But for Christians by God's grace, we have a new nature. We have faith in our hearts. God's given us eyes to see, ears to hear, our hearts to believe and understand.

Our eyes are in our heads and we can see, we can be awake, sober. Our God is on the throne. His eternal plan continues unabated, never thwarted. We're to be about doing His will, preaching the gospel, making disciples, building our churches, worshiping God with joyful hearts and gratitude because He has saved us and He's going to use us to save and sanctify many others as well. Pastor Travis Allen of Grace Church in Greeley, Colorado is our guest. We have links to him at our website, theChristianrealview.org.

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I'm David Wheaton. Be sure to visit our website, theChristianrealview.org, where you can subscribe to our free weekly email and annual print letter, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry. Our topic today in this pre-election preview is we don't know the future, but we know who holds it, and Pastor Travis Allen of Grace Church in Greeley, Colorado is our guest. Travis, you have described why the general population, or let's say half of the electorate, is so unable to see that the party and the person they're voting for is so destructive to our country and life itself. That's one thing.

They're unregenerate. They don't have the renewing of the Holy Spirit going on in their minds to be able to see things truthfully and clearly. But it's another thing when professing Christians support that same person and party. Ray Ortlund, who is a very popular pastor, author, evangelical leader, his sons are heavily involved in ministry, he put out a message, this is about four or five weeks ago, his message was this, never Trump, this time Harris, always Jesus.

And then commenting on this post was David French, again, professed Christian, New York Times columnist said, this is the way. Never Trump, this time Harris, always Jesus. I know you wouldn't say voting for Trump is a litmus test for a Christian, but it would seem that voting for Kamala Harris and the Democrat party shows you are either not saved or are really terribly deceived. Because again, the comparative aspect of these two candidates and parties. Can you explain how a well-known evangelical, like, let's say Ray Ortlund, or even others who have been well-known, like Thabiti Anyabwile, also voting for Harris, I believe, it's from reading what he writes, it's pretty clear.

How do they come to that conclusion? It's hard for me to get into the heads of those who are so far afield, in my mind, from biblical Christianity. I think when they kind of live in, much more in the culture, and that's what's informing their thinking, the political, social issues of the day, and they're immersed in that, immersed in the headlines, added to that, pragmatic in their thinking. And probably a bit of Arminian thinking, too, that says, how do I make myself most appealing? How do I make Jesus most appealing to these lost people? Not understanding or emphasizing the sovereignty of God and salvation, but instead emphasizing what makes Jesus more likable, trying to reach the culture for Jesus, that kind of thing. They want to try to come across as appealing as possible, as popular as possible, and someone like Donald Trump, who can be honestly reprehensible in the things he says, and the way he portrays himself, and the dignity of the presidency.

And so he's not popular with a lot of people. And if you want Jesus to be popular, and you're trying to make him more acceptable to left-leaning people, I think that that's how they justify their never Trump, this time Harris, always Jesus. They want to try to make a case for, let's keep Jesus the main thing, and try to win these left-leaning people by not being an offensive, MAGA, red hat-wearing kind of a person. I think we have to go back to definitions and identifying language such as evangelical. I'm not sure anymore what sense these people are evangelical any longer, when they support that which utterly undermines the gospel that they preach.

They've kind of conformed it to the image of the culture that talks about social justice and reparations and fairness of outcomes for people. They'd rather make it more palatable for the culture, make Jesus more palatable. And so they morph the gospel around those social issues. I think they have perverted the gospel and distorted it. So they need to obey what Jesus said in the Great Commission about teaching people to obey everything that Christ commanded. Apart from the lordship of Christ, there is no gospel. For any gospel that allows people to stay ensconced in their sins, that's no gospel at all.

It's just another form of slavery. So I think we need to help people break free from the slavery by preaching the lordship of Jesus Christ, obedience to his will and his word. And honestly, that does come down to preaching to people who are created in God's image and created for his glory and calling them back to that image-bearing, glory-reflecting role that humanity is to play. And that understanding human beings created in God's image, we understand where life begins, it begins at consumption. And when you deny that, and when you refuse to act like that by allowing human beings to be the most vulnerable of our citizens, being aborted in the womb, man, that's a watershed issue. And how you think about abortion has a cascading effect on everything else you believe about culture, about your military, about law enforcement, about personal property, about nations, boundaries, immigration, all kinds of issues, David. Pastor Travis Allen is our guest today of Grace Church in Greeley, Colorado.

We have links to him and his preaching ministry there at thechristianrealview.org, or you can go directly to their website at gracegreeley.org. We discussed recently in the program about how God's sovereignty operates overall. Explain more how we should understand the sovereignty of God in this election so that whatever happens, we're not thinking that, boy, God has really caught off guard on this one, this one above and beyond his purview. How do we understand the sovereignty of God in this election? When we're talking about the sovereignty of God in this election, we're talking about something about an election that is not operating according to justice, righteousness.

We've got cause for concern. It's undermining the morality and the ethics of Scripture. It's contrary to its theology.

There's an apostasy aspect. And we're trying to figure out how can God be sovereign and evil still be part of this world? It's that old question of theodicy, the justification, theos, God, dikaios referring to righteousness. It's the justification of God in the presence of evil in the world. If God is all powerful, and he is benevolent and good, how is it that he allows evil to exist?

So it's just going back to that same kind of principled question and thinking. And I think whether it's political issues or a particular election or evil unleashed in, say, a family or terrible crimes against children or human trafficking or abortion, how does God, if he's all powerful and all good, how does he then sovereignly oversee all this and not get dirt on his hands? How is he justified in this? And I think that the best way to answer all those particulars is by going back to the greatest, most heinous miscarriage of justice in human history, and that is the betrayal, trials, condemnation, and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. And we go to Peter's preaching in Acts chapter 2, and he says in Acts chapter 2, verses 22 to 24, he says, Men of Israel, listen to these words, Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs, which God did through him in your midst, just as you yourselves know, this man delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of lawless men and put him to death. But God raised him up, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for him to be held in its power. We see in verse 23, kind of attested to in this passage, several levels of causation.

So you have an efficient cause, approximate cause, and the ultimate cause. The efficient cause in the crucifixion of Christ are the hands of godless men. So the Roman soldiers who literally nailed Jesus to the cross. We can imagine many of these soldiers doing it gleefully, you know, as soldiers can be calloused who are in the presence of death all the time, they could be calloused and guilty in some way of their callous view of death. You can imagine a soldier or two just following orders. He's routinely crucified criminals, insurrectionists, rebels, as a just punishment for crimes against Rome, crimes against society. And so they're just doing their job.

They've done it all through their military career and they're just doing it again. They are, as Romans 13 says, those who carry the sword and they don't do it in vain. So you could see an efficient cause like a Roman soldier in any particular case, maybe not bearing the guilt of that crime because he was not informed of who this insurrectionist is, who this enemy of Rome is. He's an efficient cause. He's the one who nailed Christ on the cross.

You could back up though and see the proximate cause. And this is where Peter lays moral blame. The proximate cause are the Jewish people. In fact, Peter is quite direct in his indictment of the Jewish people. He takes the hammer and the spikes out of the hands of the Roman soldiers in this passage, and he puts them directly in the hands of the Jewish people. You nailed him to a cross.

Though you use the hands of godless men, you did this. And that's where he places the guilt. That's where he places the moral culpability and responsibility on the proximate cause. In his sovereignty, God is the ultimate cause of the crucifixion. It was his predetermined plan. It was according to his foreknowledge. Not in the sinful actions of proximate or efficient causation. It's his choice, and yet he is guiltless because he did not nail Christ to the cross. He did not commit murder. God didn't. Men, by their own free will, chose freely, doing exactly what they wanted to do. They chose freely to crucify Christ. Matthew 27 25 says, all the people answered Pilate and said, his blood be on us and our children.

So in the same way that God by his providence controls all things according to his predetermined foreknowledge, foreordained ends, all things means that elections are included. It means crimes against children are included. It means terrible things, heinous things are included in that. The greatest miscarriage of justice that's ever occurred in all of human history or ever will ever occur is against Jesus Christ, because only he was completely guiltless and not deserving of death at all.

So no one else can say that. Everybody else has sin against them in some way. Only Jesus Christ is completely innocent and righteous. So we as the efficient proximate causes, we bear moral responsibility for our choices. We vote. We must justify our thinking according to biblical principle.

In an election like this one, when we're effectively offered two choices only, we know one way we cannot vote, one way that's a better option. And yet even in the majority, maybe pursuing the bad option, the most unrighteous of these two options, God is still at work as the ultimate cause doing his perfect will, bringing all his decree to its perfect end by his providence, by the workings of human beings and their free choices. He is sovereign over it all, bringing it to his determined ends.

Well, that was very profoundly answered. I really appreciate your giving us that perspective based on the greatest injustice of all and how God could ordain that. That's his own son who would come to earth, the perfect son who did not deserve to die, but not only allow it, but actually that's God's plan. And let me just add to that, that we obviously see that why God is righteous in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is because he used that as the very means to glorify his amazing grace.

He used it to reveal who he is. Christ is the image of God, and he is the perfect image of man too, bringing God and man together in the incarnation and in the crucifixion, forgiving his people of their sins, covering them in his righteousness. He brought the greatest salvation and the greatest glory to God that could ever be brought is through the cross of Jesus Christ. And so God has, not only is he guiltless in the crucifixion of Christ, he shows himself most glorious in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, even though it was a heinous crime.

It was men who are culpable and responsible for the sin that was committed there. It's God in his greater glory that answers for the ultimate cause of why that happened. And so even though we don't understand from this election to the next one, from this crime to that crime, we don't understand in God's providence how it is that in his sovereignty he plans and ordains all these things. We know, because of this particular example, which is the greatest example, we know that God has a good, wise reason in mind. And so his purposes are perfect and holy and righteous and good, and his methods are wise. If we can't understand him, that says more about us. It says nothing about God.

Travis, that segues well into the final question for you today, is that as you trust in the sovereignty of God, that he does all things for his glory and our good, for the good of believers. Particularly, lots of things about this election can cause anxiety. Who's going to win? How will this affect our lives and our way of life and Christian liberties and God's honor and the protection of the unborn and the freedom to worship and churches and so forth? Is there going to be voting fraud?

Is it going to make a difference? Financial insecurity, uncertainty, debt, inflation, affordability, illegal immigration—you mentioned that earlier—crime, a lack of justice for criminals, sexual and gender perversity, our educational system, attempts to operate without focusing on the most important issue in the world. Who is God? There's world instability, and there's wars going on in the Middle East, Israel, Iran, Russia, Ukraine. Christians love this country. We want peace. We want unity. We want stability.

Of course, that's normal. So how to have peace when things, as you described earlier, are so clearly declining? Knowing things—you read Revelation—you know where the world's going. It's going to get worse in the world before, again, God's ordained that, and it's going to be for His glory in the end. There may be persecution and suffering for believers in this country, depending on what happens politically. How do we not get anxious about those things, and instead, what should we be trusting in as far as God's character and eternal plan? What Scripture passages would you exhort us to focus on in this time of potential anxiety in this country? When we see what's happening in our country and understand that it's due to a departure from biblical thinking, from theological thinking, doctrinal thinking, if we see that all the chaos and all the insanity and all the moral degradation and depravity is due to a departure from Scripture and God and worship of Him, well, obviously, the answer is to be biblically minded and theologically informed and doctrinally taught. I've heard people say, well, you don't want to be so heavenly-minded that you're of no earthly good. And I just answer back and say, I think that the Bible would tell us that we need to be so heavenly-minded that we are of some earthly good. I think the more that we put our minds into Scripture and the more we understand its doctrines, its teaching, the Word of God is dwelling in us richly, as Colossians 3 16 says, the more it sets a foundation under our feet, a God in heaven who's in control of all things, who we hope in and love and trust, and resting in His sovereignty and His goodness, His perfection, His power, His wisdom, there's nothing that can touch us. And so the more we love Him and worship Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, the more we serve Him, it's going to translate into loving people well and with wisdom, with great wisdom. If you asked about passages of Scripture, a few of them that come to mind, I go to maybe, first of all, Isaiah 45, that whole section there in the 40s of Isaiah, God is saying, I'm God. Look at the idols of the world.

They're nothing. I'm God. And there is no other, trust me. A righteous God and a Savior, there's none except me. Turn to me and be saved all the ends of the earth, for I'm God and there is no other. I've sworn by myself the Word has gone forth from my mouth in righteousness and will not turn back, that to me every knee will bow and every tongue will swear allegiance. When I think about the operatives on the democratic side and I see the lies and the misrepresentations and the foolishness, I just am reminded, to me every knee will bow and every tongue will swear allegiance. Same thing as Paul says in Philippians, every knee will bow to the name of Jesus Christ and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. Psalm 2 is God putting His anointed Son in the position of authority as a King.

Though the nations rage and the kingdoms rebel against Him, there's no toppling the Son of God. Isaiah 1, that whole section, come to me, let's reason together, though your sins are scarlet, they should be white as snow. We've got a sin-saturated nation and I think we need to think about both people on the republican side, the democratic side, and every other political party as those are sinners in need of salvation.

Even Kamala Harris and Walls, those people are not our enemies, they're our mission field and we need to we need to be praying for them. 1 Timothy 2. Obviously they're doing great harm and destruction, so they are enemies to the gospel, they're enemies against God, but God saves enemies. The apostle Paul himself, the apostle to the gentiles, was an enemy for the sake of the gospel and God sent Christ to confront him on the Damascus road and convert him.

So if he can be saved, believe me, anybody can be saved. Hebrews 12, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author of perfecter of our faith, Romans 12, 1 and 2. Not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind. When we're transformed by the renewing of our mind, we put God and his concerns and Christ and his commission in firmly in the forefront of our mind so that we're great commissioned Christians, Matthew 28, 18 to 20. Making disciples is our chief work here. No matter what we do, what vocation we have in life, that's all good and God-glorifying as we act like Christians in the world, but we got to think according to making disciples of all the nations and teaching them to obey everything Christ commanded. And then obviously local church work and ministry.

The local church has to be the training center, according to Ephesians 4, 11 to 16, building up this body of Christ so that we are very effective in bringing glory to God and his wisdom and his power to transform us, but then to teach us how to share the gospel with the world. Travis, you've given us so much to think about and so much truth from scripture to anchor ourselves in as we go into a time that can cause anxiety and uncertainty about the future. And so we just appreciate that you take us back to scripture, what God has thus said, and just the importance of the local church. And we so appreciate who you are and what you stand for and just pray all of God's best and grace to you and your wife and Grace Church in Greeley, Colorado. Thank you for coming on the Christian Real View Radio program today.

Brother, it's been my pleasure once again. Thank you, David. What a dear brother in the Lord, Travis Allen is. We encourage you to connect with his preaching by visiting our website, thechristianrealview.org.

We'll take a short break now, and then Robert Knight of the Washington Times joins us. I'm David Wheaton, and you are listening to the Christian Real View Radio program. You have a left wing foundation that realizes it has a problem advancing its political goals because of evangelicals. And so they will think, okay, what we need to do is find some mechanism by which we can change evangelical minds. They will then recruit well-known organizations like the National Association of Evangelicals, the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, and denominational organizations. That was recent guest Megan Basham talking about how evangelical leaders traded the truth for a leftist agenda, which is the subtitle of her bestselling book, Shepherds for Sale.

For a limited time, you can order Shepherds for Sale for 20% off by visiting thechristianrealview.org, calling toll-free 1-888-646-2233, or by writing to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. We didn't want our kids doing all these secular games like Elf on the Shelf. We really wanted to put Christ front and center at Christmas, and they actually engineered a wooden manger that's small enough to hide. And then I wrote a family devotional with 25 devotions for every day in December leading up to Christmas, including Christmas Day, that you can do in about seven minutes.

And the devotions are just loaded with the deity of Christ and the gospel. That was Pastor Grant Castleberry describing Manger in Danger, a new daily devotional in game for families with children age 4 to 12. Manger in Danger retails for $40 plus shipping. We are offering it for a donation of $30 or more to The Christian Real View. To order, go to thechristianrealview.org, call 1-888-646-2233, or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Welcome back to The Christian Real View.

I'm David Wheaton. Be sure to visit our website, thechristianrealview.org, where you can subscribe to our free weekly email and annual print letter, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry. Today's program is a pre-election special, and now Robert Knight, columnist for The Washington Times, joins us to offer some insight on what to look for. You have watched and written about these two campaigns over the last many months. What are your final summary thoughts as you look back over this campaign just days before this election? Both sides are terrified that the other side's gonna win. Democrats have convinced themselves that Donald Trump is the incarnation of Adolf Hitler, and Republicans see Kamala Harris as an outright Marxist. I think one's accurate, one isn't.

I don't think Trump is by any stretch a fascist or a Nazi, and I think that's just name calling. It's a projection on the part of a lot of dishonest Democrats. And if you look at what he's proposed, it's decentralizing government, not increasing it.

It's re-energizing our fossil fuel industries to stop inflation. There's also J.D. Vance, President Trump's choice for vice president. He's been very impressive on the campaign. He's taken the toughest questions from the media, many of them designed to trip him up and try to create sound bites that they can use.

He's defeated them all. He looks sharp, he looks like he could take over the presidency, and he's a great contrast to Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, who's been dubbed Tampon Tim because as governor of Minnesota, he ordered boys' rooms to have tampon dispensers. He created a gay-straight alliance when he was a teacher. He's been totally in on the whole LGBTQ agenda, and he has questionable ties to Communist China. In the Republican platform, it stands in stark contrast to that of Kamala Harris and the Democrats. They're the ones proposing more and more centralized government, open borders. I mean, she says she's for border security now, but it's clear she wasn't for three and a half years and allowed 10 million illegals to cross.

That's very unpopular with most Americans. You have two sides worried sick that the country is going to go down the tubes depending on who's elected. But I think Republicans have more to worry about since Kamala Harris, his agenda is so radical, so Marxist.

She wants to restructure the Supreme Court, add justices. Democrats want to get rid of voter ID. They want to loosen all election integrity laws.

They want to create a one-party state, basically. Donald Trump, on the other hand, says none of that in his four honest elections and election integrity safeguards like voter ID. If you look at their social agenda, how it stacks up against the Bible, there's no question again. Donald Trump, while not being perfect and giving ground on abortion, has made it very clear he would end all these medical experiments on children in the name of transgenderism. And he appointed constitutional judges who overturned Roe v. Wade. On the other hand, Kamala Harris is all in on the transgender agenda. Her administration issued an executive order ordering schools all over the country to keep parents out of the formula and to impose sexual orientation and gender identity as elements in Title IX, which prevents sex discrimination at schools.

And what that does is empower men to go into women's sports and teachers to use the opposite-sex pronouns for a child without even telling the parent. I mean, this is a very radical agenda that Americans don't want. It's the sleeper issue of the campaign because it's not just about transgenders. It represents a worldview that's anti-God, anti-Christian, anti-common sense, anti-biology. And a lot of Americans are alarmed by it for good reason because it's the vanguard of a larger attack on biblical values. I've said this before, David, I think if the LGBTQ people get whatever they want, it would eventually lead to the outright criminalization of Christianity. I don't think that's hyperbole.

I think we've seen it in action. And I think Kamala Harris represents that. In a visceral way, people ought to be rejecting her and the Democratic Party and the values they embody. On election night, as the votes start to be counted, hopefully, they'll be quickly and not drawn out over several days and so forth. What are some of the key markers that our listeners should be looking for on election night that will be significant? Donald Trump doesn't have to win all the battleground states to be elected. He just has to win a couple of them that he didn't get last time.

If he takes Nevada and Georgia, for instance, but loses Wisconsin and Michigan, he's in. Pennsylvania is very important. I'm afraid the vote counting may take longer in Pennsylvania than the way they've set it up. And in a couple of other states, courts have decided that you can count ballots that aren't even dated up to three days after the election.

Things like that shouldn't be allowed to happen because it does create uncertainty. I'm very partisan here speaking, not as a columnist for The Washington Times, but as a citizen. I hope it's too big to rig, as Trump says. I hope there's a landslide in favor of Republican Congress and a Trump administration because the Democrats have done so much damage to our country, trying to wreck the energy sector, opening the border, creating incredible inflation, a feckless foreign policy that's led to wars all over because our enemies are empowered. It's just disaster after disaster under Biden, and Harris promises more of the same. I am worried about vote fraud. I keep seeing reports about votes being counted in Michigan, for instance, several hundred votes all recorded at one address, that sort of thing.

I haven't verified these reports, but that's worrisome. You know, you can fix an election by tampering. And I thought we saw some of that in 2020, in addition to other things like Mark Zuckerberg throwing $400 million into taking over election offices in key states like Wisconsin and turning them into Democrat get-out-the-vote operations.

This time around, he's not doing that. That's in favor of Trump. Also significant that The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today have all said they're not going to endorse a candidate. And they're pretty much Democrat newspapers.

So what's going on here? I think they see the way the wind is blowing. Kamala Harris is very unpopular. She looks like she's in over her head. And I think they fear that the American people are on to this and are going to deliver a resounding victory to Donald Trump.

I could be wrong, but that's how it might shape up. We have links to Robert Knight at thechristianworldview.org where you can sign up for his free weekly column. He'll also join us next week for post-election analysis. Let's close today by praying for our country and for our people. Lord, you are sovereign over the universe and certainly this election.

You are ordering the world for your determined purposes and ends that will bring you the most glory. We ask that you increase our faith to trust you and to live boldly for you no matter what our circumstances are. And for those listening today who have never put their faith for salvation in your saving gospel, may they repent of their sins and place their faith in the sinless life, substitutionary death, and supernatural resurrection of your son Jesus Christ. For as he prayed to you, Lord, this is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Father, have mercy on our nation and may we turn to you. In your son's name we pray.

Amen. Until next time, think biblically, live accordingly, and stand firm. The mission of The Christian Worldview is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. We hope today's broadcast encouraged you toward that end. To hear a replay of today's program, order a transcript, or find out what must I do to be saved, go to thechristianworldview.org or call toll-free 1-888-646-2233. The Christian Worldview is a listener-supported, non-profit radio ministry furnished by the Overcomer Foundation. To make a donation, become a Christian Worldview partner, order resources, subscribe to our free newsletter, or contact us, visit thechristianworldview.org, thechristianworldview.org, call 1-888-646-2233, or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. That's Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Thanks for listening to The Christian Worldview.