Why Are Christians Losing Their Faith?

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. So, the son of the famous Pastor John Piper, Abraham Piper, is now famous on TikTok for his Bible bashing videos.

How'd that happen? It's time for The Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Michael Brown is the director of the Coalition of Conscience and president of Fire School of Ministry. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH. That's 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Have you had a personal crisis in your own faith? Have you gone through a season of doubting God, doubting the God of the Bible, doubting whether the scriptures are God's word?

Are you in that state right now? Or maybe you passed through that and you've come out on the other side with strengthened faith. I'd love to hear from you today. 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. Maybe someone very close to you, maybe one of your children that was raised in the faith and seemed to be fervent at one time has turned away. Why?

What is the reason? We're going to talk this through today. We're going to talk about Abraham Piper, John Piper's son, and how he's come to sudden internet fame, New York Times article talking about him and his attacks, especially on evangelical Christianity and things like that. Want to understand why, what's going on, respond to concerns that are being raised.

But let me start here and say that you are not a statistic. I have a brand new book, releases May 11th. You can pre-order it now on our website, AskDrBrown.org. Has God failed you? Finding faith when you're not even sure God is real. Has God failed you? Again, you can pre-order it, sign, numbered copy on our website, AskDrBrown.org, or just pre-order it anywhere else online just to get it without the signature and numbering.

I start off the book with that very chapter. You are not a statistic because the stats are out there. The stats are all over the place. The stats are out saying, yeah, the rise in religious nuns, N-O-N-E-S, that we went about a decade from 85% of Americans professing to be Christian down to 75%. Now, obviously, 85% of Americans were not Christian.

We're near that. Half of Americans are not truly Christian, obviously. But this conspicuous sudden drop in numbers. For the first time, a Gallup poll has indicated that less than half of Americans attend church on a regular basis, not just because of COVID, but just changed lifestyle habits. And then I know that a lot of the falling away is from those who are not truly saved.

In other words, they are nominal Christians, and now they are no longer nominal Christians, so they have no religious affiliation. But the stats are not what interests me. What interests me is individual lives that make up those stats. So I start Has God Failed You by saying you are not a statistic.

I didn't write the book for statistics. I wrote the book for people, for individuals with real-life stories. In fact, as I was writing and I was thinking different things people have gone through and why they've lost their faith, my heart started to break as if I was looking at people's eyes. I don't mean I had a visionary experience.

I mean it was so real to me. Writing about a mother that prayed and prayed for the healing of her child and the child died. No, I didn't have one specific case in mind. I had many cases in mind and many stories.

But I would see faces in my mind's eye as I wrote and think of the struggle, the pain, the challenge that individuals were going through. There's so many reasons why people are turning away. And I'm going to give you a list of them a little later in the broadcast and actually play a video from Abraham Piper and interact with it directly and just lay that out for you in terms of some of the things that he's saying. It's not to attack him personally. That's not my intent. And you'll see when I interact with the video that's not my intent at all. It's rather to find out why people are struggling.

Why are they losing their faith? And listen, I want to give you complete liberty here. So I just get my call screen up here. I want to give you complete liberty.

You have it all the time, but I want to reinforce it. You can call in anonymously if you just don't want to give your name or you don't have to mention the place. You can just say it's, you know, don't want to say where I'm calling from. You may want to be totally candid. This is who I am.

Give your whole name. My point is you're safe here. If you call in and say, look, I'm a pastor and I'm struggling and I don't even know if I believe in God anymore, you're safe. Now you say, well, people recognize my voice. Well, most of you are not pastors calling in in that situation, but call on behalf of someone else if you don't want to talk about yourself. If you're struggling or if you once believed and no longer believe, by all means, I'd love to hear why. Or if you went through a crisis and struggle in your own life, if you had a season or a season of years or many seasons of struggling with severe doubt and unbelief and pain and questions, and you didn't know where to go and you didn't feel that you could ask the questions, either in the home in which you were raised or in the church environment where you found yourself, but you've come out on the other side, strong in faith, confident, I'd love to hear from you as well. 866-34-TRUTH. I'm not taking random Bible questions today. We are going to focus more specifically, more specifically on the questions, the challenges relating to our faith.

866-34-TRUTH. There has been an increase in reports of people who were once believers who no longer believe. Dr. Paul Maxwell, the most recent one, I was not familiar with him at all, but he wrote for Desiring God.

He was a former professor at Moody Bible Institute, and he has now said he no longer believes. You know, last couple of years, different Christian worship leaders or Christian rock singer or author and pastor Josh Harris, who was famous for his like his stating goodbye book, no longer believe, announcing the faith, some going to some real extremes, others more moderate in their rejection. This is nothing new. This is nothing new. This is not the first time something like this has happened.

All right. Here's a Royce, Julie Royce report from a Moody professor and author for Desiring God announces he's no longer a Christian. That was just last week. So we're hearing about this more and more. There has always been apostasy. There has always been falling away. But now it becomes instant news.

And let's think of this. How many atheists come to faith all the time? How many people who are agnostic come to faith? I mean, on a weekly basis around America and around the world, agnostics are being saved. Atheists are being saved. People from different religions are being saved. People from nominal Christian backgrounds are being saved. But that's not big news. That's not going to be reported. But the moment you are a Christian, somewhat well known, or in some cases very well known, or in the case of Abraham Piper, the child of a famous Christian, even if you're not looking for the notoriety, even if that's not your goal, you're going to get it.

Here. If you want to really make it big, be a Christian author who writes a book denying the resurrection and time that to come out around Easter. Oh, you'll get your publicity.

Or just something around either Easter or Christmas, denying the reality of Jesus, the historical Jesus, or the trustworthiness of the Bible. Or that's when you announce that you no longer believe. You get a ton of publicity.

The world is interested in that. But again, each life is an individual. And for many of these people, it's been a very difficult journey. For many people, they struggled for years. For many people, they felt hypocritical. And they so my heart goes out to those who've fallen away.

I want to see them turn back. Now I've interacted with some who are downright hostile, fell away many years ago and are aggressive atheists and are downright hostile. Pray for them.

I don't know that I could be of much help. But others, they seem to be sincere and they seem to be struggling. And we want to help them get back to God. And in some cases, I don't believe that the person really knew the Lord. In other words, they were raised in church.

They were raised with the Bible. And I don't know Abraham Piper at all. Don't know Paul Maxwell or any of these people personally. So I'm making a general statement. Please don't take this as a specific indictment of individuals that I don't know. But they're definitely people who fell away, but they never really knew the Lord. They fell away from their profession of faith. They fell away from the Christian religion. They fell away from their evangelical roots or whatever the roots might be. But they never personally really knew the Lord.

And that, in fact, is a big, big issue. I recently interacted with a former charismatic now agnostic and a former evangelical now atheist. And when I was interacting with these gentlemen, I asked them when they were believers and they said they were believers, did they ever see a miracle for which there was no natural explanation? A miracle for which there was no natural explanation.

Both said no. Well, that's interesting to me. That's very interesting because that means that their experience with God is very different than many of your experiences. Several times on social media, I've said, hey, if you witnessed a miracle in your own life, healing, something happened, someone close to you, document it, inexplicable.

The only explanation is divine intervention. Go ahead and post it. I'd love to see. I've been blown away by some of what I've read. And these are individuals that go through the details and I can supply the medical records if you need them, you know, in those cases and things like that. And then just the many, many things that many of us have experienced. And I'm going to take your calls in a bit and I want to play an Abraham Piper video and interact with it, but just laying some foundations here. 866-34-TRUTH and we will be constructive and we will be helpful and we will be edifying. That's our goal. My goal is not to bash others or mock others. My goal is to say, hey, what can we do to help build faith, strengthen people, help them to overcome issues and rejections?

Because the objections, the issues, nothing new, nothing new in that regard. But I remember in 1994, I was in prayer. I was trying to get things finalized for my calendar for ministry trip to Italy, ministry trip to Finland. And it just seemed that my secretary and their contact folks, we were missing each other. And it was the days before the email blast, you know, fax didn't get through and just whatever was going on. I was praying. It was a Sunday night and I just had this sense within 24 hours, Finland, Italy will be resolved because we're trying to lock in dates.

And I was kind of paralyzed in my calendar plan until we did that. I traveled a lot in those days. And then I get this sense out of the blue and you'll hear from England also. This is all within 24 hours and you'll hear from England also.

Well, I hadn't preached in England since 1987 and I had no ongoing contacts where I was expecting to hear from anyone. Well, sure enough, within 24 hours, a call from Italy, fax from Finland, whatever the order was, those things falling into place. And then my secretary calls and says, Mike, get a call from so-and-so from England, really wants to talk to you. What?

England. God laid on my heart the night before. When I speak with this pastor, he had picked up one of my books in the most absolutely unlikely way. He said, I don't think anything about you, but God laid on my heart to call you to invite me to speak at a pastor's meeting that we'll have. And I said, I don't know anything about you, but God told me I was getting the call from England today.

Let's do it. Became a dear friend, still a great brother, you know, friend to this day. Amazing meetings we had in England during those days. I mean, it's just one little thing. But when those things happen again and again in your life, you realize, okay, God's at work. Even when I hit a wall with a thousand questions about that wall, I still had that I still had that confidence of God's ongoing working in my life. We'll be right back. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks for joining us today, friends, as we talk about why it seems more and more Christians are losing their faith today.

86634. Something we've talked about, of course, over the years, but focusing on, again, my new book, Has God Failed You? Finding faith when you're not even sure God is real.

I think you'll find it to be a tremendous lifesaver. I really leaned heavily on the Lord in writing it. I didn't feel worthy or adequate to write it and really leaned on the Lord for insight. Life and death, sensitive, sensitive issues. So this book could help you, help someone you love. 866-34-TRUTH, if you have your own faith story, if you're struggling with questions right now.

I'm going to go to your phone calls shortly. But first this. So Ruth Graham, writing for the New York Times, had this article, and this is what kind of sprung everything for us. A pastor's son becomes a critic of religion on TikTok. John Piper is one of the most influential theologians in America. His son Abraham calls evangelicalism, quote, a destructive, narrow-minded worldview.

So some of his videos have gone viral, one I'm going to show in a moment, viewed over 800,000 times. And the New York Times article has all these thumbnails where he's raising these questions and poking fun at things that he was raised believing, you know, why ultimate meaning is impossible and why nothing really mattering is the best and saying, hey, I don't attack Christianity. I attack evangelicalism specifically. I didn't know that when he was young that he was under church discipline. John Piper wrote an article about this. Piper wrote the article whether a pastor has to have believing children, believing adult children to serve in ministry. And then so when his son was 19, there were issues, and I believe he gets under church discipline, if I understood the article correctly.

Now, we'll come back to that, but just let me say this. You don't get disciplined for not believing. You come under discipline if you are claiming to be a follower of Jesus, claiming to be a believer and living in overt rebellious sin and refuse to repent.

So a guy leaves his wife, shacks up with his girlfriend. So he's living in adultery, coming to church, taking communion, saying, hey, I'm a follower of Jesus, refuses to repent. That's someone's discipline, not someone who renounces their faith. Then you pray for them to come back. All right, let's take a look at this viral video just to give a sample of Abraham Piper and some of the problems he's having now with the Bible with faith.

Obviously, had these for many years, but expressing these on these very popular videos. You want to know one of the silliest things about being raised devoutly evangelical? Children are expected to read the Bible. That doesn't seem weird to you.

Stick with me for a second. You might think of the Bible as for God so loved the world or that one emotionally lucid moment Paul had when he wrote about love. And now everyone reads it at their weddings. But those are the boring parts to a kid. Anyways, while other kids are learning to read with comics or whatever normal parents have around the house here, fundy kids are six, seven, eight years old, devouring stories of Jezebel being defenestrated and then eaten by dogs or Judas's bowels bursting out or Noah's sons laughing at him when he was passed out, drunk and naked or Lot's daughters who got him drunk and screwed him so they could have babies.

And those are just a few highlights off the top of my head decades later. The good book is full of children's stories like these. It's basically Game of Thrones, except if you don't read it, you go to hell. I almost forgot about all the times I went back to Song of Solomon so I could read about breasts.

I'm thinking maybe the message of God's word didn't land on me like it was supposed to. Hey, if you're deconstructing, good for you. There are a lot of serious thinkers out there that can help you navigate this stuff. But if you just want to roll your eyes at how weird it all was, that's what I'm here for.

Stick around if you want to. Yeah, so those videos, that kind of thing, has a lot of appeal, especially to younger generation, the way it's done. The whole problem is that the kids are not growing up reading those stories. Kids are not growing up reading stories where the Bible candidly tells us about human sin and candidly tells us about the fruit of human sin. Look, a kid growing up reading war stories and reading about what happened to the Nazis and how they were destroyed by the Allies, it's going to be pretty graphic reading, but it's really to tell you that the bad guys came down and were really punished. The Bible speaks to us honestly about human beings. And when you read it, there's some portions that are more appropriate for a younger audience that are not going to be read in certain settings, certain circles.

The whole thing is, what's best? Any parent would know and understand that there are certain things that are better for younger children, certain things better for old children. The same with the Bible, because the Bible's written not just for little children, and the Bible's not just written for adults. The amazing thing with the parables and teachings of Jesus is that a little child can understand them, and a brilliant scientist can understand them. So, the fact is, the Bible tells the truth in stark ways.

But here's the deal. It doesn't do it in a way that is going to satisfy the interest of some unclean person. The Bible doesn't do it in some way that's like, ooh, let's look behind the curtains and see what happens. No, it just tells us the stark facts, the ugly facts, and it doesn't shy from that because it is speaking the truth.

And even Song of Solomon, which is interpreted on multiple levels, is still a beautiful love song, and God's saying in a beautiful love song that there is beauty and love that's majestic, and something he put within wedlock, and something that he put within the human race. Shouldn't that be celebrated? Here's the deal. It's one thing to raise serious issues, and Abraham Piper does that, and others say, hey, do you really believe in hell? Or you really think that people are just burning right now, being tortured and burned, and after your Sunday service, you go out to Outback and have a nice meal.

I agree with him that there's a lot of hypocrisy in our circles. I agree with him that we can preach a caricatured message of hell, and then we can preach it in such a way that our lives indicate we don't believe it. In the 1980s, I once preached a message entitled Four Things That Christians Don't Believe, and the four things were God, salvation, heaven, and hell. And my point was, if we really believed in God the way we said we did, we'd live differently. If we really believed in the power of salvation the way we say we do, we'd live differently. If we really believed in heaven and hell and eternal consequences and eternal world, we would live differently. The great comment of Leonard Ravenhill that is on his tombstone are the things you're living for worth Christ dying for. In many cases, the answer is no. So on the one hand, Abraham Piper can have these ridiculous and superficial attacks on the Bible, and when you dig deeper, you realize there's a reason that the Bible has been recognized as the word of God, and there's a reason that the Bible has withstood the test of scrutiny and attack and ridicule and mocking and inquiry from every angle, hostile and friendly.

There's a reason it has withstood, and Jesus said that heaven and earth will pass away, his words will not pass away. Bank on it. Mark it down. It's true.

It's reality. But there are serious issues that are raised. There are serious questions about the Bible, about the God of the Bible, that sincere thinking, sensitive people raise. Abraham Piper may be mocking now, but he may have gone through that himself as a sensitive young man reading texts that troubled him.

And what do we do with this, and how do we relate to it? Friends, we need to have answers for those who are genuine seekers. Those who are mockers, you pray for them, you can't really help them. But they're influencing others, and now these others will have questions. We need to have solid answers.

So I agree. There's a lot of hypocrisy, a lot of double standards, and because of that, people leave the faith. And there are other reasons for which people leave the faith. Sometimes they just don't leave the faith.

Sometimes they just have a bad experience in church, or there's an abusive pastor and they, you know, that gives them a bad feel about the faith in general. I understand all these issues, but here's the reality. There are answers for every question.

Philosophically, intellectually, spiritually satisfying answers. And, more importantly, if we will take God at his word, and seek him like nothing else matters, and seek him more than you seek anything else in this world, with all your heart and with all your soul, he will make himself real to you. It is sure. You're gonna say, I did that.

Well, if we sit down and talk, I'll show you that you didn't do that. You may have been a little serious. No, no, I'm talking about a deeper seeking. I'm talking about seeking and going after him like there was no tomorrow. That if God did not help you, if God did not meet you, you're gonna die. In other words, you're gonna find God, or you're gonna die trying.

You'll find him because he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. Number one, I don't condemn Abraham Piper. Pray for God's best in his life. If he never really knew the Lord, pray that he would truly know him.

If he did know him and walk away, I pray that he'd be yet another prodigal that comes back. Second, I understand the hypocrisy. It's ugly. It has pushed many away. We preach one thing and live another.

I understand why people fall away. The antidote to that is let's live out our faith consistently. I could take Abraham to meet believers all around the world, and he would say, these people are authentic. These people are living out their faith in America, in the nations, and he would say, well, that's the real deal.

Third, let's give solid answers to serious questions. And fourth, ultimately, the answer, the great answer is a personal encounter with God. When you have a personal encounter with God, when you know him and experience him in an undeniable way, as Job did at the end of the book of Job, the questions disappear because of the beauty and the majesty and the goodness and the glory of God. Well, it's not some preacher talking. I've been through it intellectually as well. I've had my faith challenged by rabbis and religious Jews and professors, especially the early decades of my faith.

Every day almost was a challenge from one area or another. But God is real. God's word is true. Fear not.

If you truly long to know him, he will make himself known to you. All right. 866-348-7884. We've only got a few seconds before the break, so when we come back, I'm going straight to your calls. And I want to give you space again to be totally honest. And if you're saying, look, I just can't, someone recognized my voice, that would be it. Well, then tell the story about someone else.

Do it in the third person. But if you're struggling, if you're hurting, if you're on the way out the door, or maybe you're already out the door and want other listeners to know why, this is your opportunity to call in. So as soon as we come back, straight to the phones.

866-348-7884 is number to call. And I'll give you my list as to why so many have fallen away today. We'll be right back. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get into The Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks, friends, for joining us on The Line of Fire. There have been seasons through church history of great apostasy, of people falling away. Jesus does speak of iniquity abounding because of which the love of many waxes cold. And that's certainly something happening now with so many sinful distractions being so available that the battle for purity, the battle for obedience becomes more intense. We're definitely one of those seasons.

Is this the final great falling away that many believe will come? Is it just a season? Well, certainly we're in the season right now.

We'll see if it is the final, but certainly in that season. The good news is that God does not sit by idly when this happens and that there are answers in him. 866-34-TRUTH. Let's go to Tracy in Richmond, Virginia. Thanks for joining us today on The Line of Fire. Hey, how you doing? Doing well, thank you. All right, I just wanted to share a little bit of my background and kind of let you know where I'm at. I grew up in a Baptist church and I kind of had abuse at home, so that was kind of an out for me and, you know, a safe place. And I think by the time I was a teenager, maybe 13 or 14, you know, I got interested into the Wiccan and the witchcraft and the, oh, you know, this is magical. And, you know, I kind of got into some of that and I moved to North Carolina, was dating a military guy at the time, and he ended up getting deployed over to Afghanistan. And I kind of got in with the bad people.

I would say it was kind of cult-like. I, you know, mingled with people doing witchcraft and I'm talking, you know, black magic, dark magic, evil, bad cops, you know, people killing people for drugs, all kinds of stuff. And at that time, I'm trying not to get emotional because it's a pretty powerful story, but my grandma had passed away.

And so I came back to Virginia for her funeral and ended up going back there. And I don't know why I should have stayed, but just being in with those people, you know, they were doing some pretty bad things. They started drugging me and doing spells on me. And I've seen girls, you know, take clothes off and climb trees and chant, you know, spells at the full moon and, you know, making all this crazy stuff happening.

And, you know, and so I write a lot of poetry and so I pay attention. I listen to what everybody was saying there and I was writing poetry about it. And they got scared because you had military people going AWOL, changing their identities. And, you know, they're like, how do you know so much? Well, they wanted to kill me. And they called my brother and told him if he didn't come get me by morning, that they were going to kill me. And so that night, it just happened to be lightning and all that outside. And so I go outside and, you know, I start praying to God and I said, if you're real, I need you to come back to me now.

You know, I need your help. I need to be safe. I need to get out of here. And I went back in and they had taken all the guns out of the house because they were scared.

You know, I was going to go crazy and, you know, start trying to kill them. And so I sat on the bed and opened up the Bible. So then the beginning and just started reading. My brother got there and he didn't even know where I was. I don't even know how he found me. And so he got me out of there. And, you know, me and my brother, we kind of had this bond growing up and even to the end.

And Tracy, yeah, I apologize for jumping in, but just for time's sake, I know there's a lot that could be told and a lot of detail. So how is it that God then brought you back? God brought me back because my brother came and got me and brought me to safety.

And when I got home, you know, I just realized everything that happened and that that was like divine intervention, you know. And, you know, even to this day, I struggle because I do hang out with a lot of atheists. I listen to heavy metal music and, you know, that kind of ties into what some people think. Oh, it's devil worshiping, which it's not, you know, but I've remained strong in the faith just from that.

And I mean, I have many stories. I know y'all are on a time crunch, but that was probably the most powerful, you know, one in my life. So crying out in that time of real crisis. And let me encourage you, fill your heart and mind with worship. And that'll also put you in a good state, an even better state, one of even greater strengthening. But it looks like the roots you had, even though you went away, that those roots were there when needed. So parents with kids who are prodigal, that's a crazy story, Tracy, but your kids are away from the faith, but you know that they have roots. Really pray because God pulls on that.

I've heard stories like that so many times, people so far away, but those roots that they had growing up, those seeds that were planted in them, they come back. 866-34-TRUTH. Let's go to our friend Eddie in Connecticut. Welcome to the line of fire. Dr. Brown, how are you today?

Doing very well, thanks. Dr. Brown, it's great you're having this topic because in the Bible study we had this past week, this is basically what we talked about, and I posed a question, and I simply said this, and I'll use you as an example, Dr. Brown. I say, say you're having dinner, Dr. Brown, with your wife, and all of a sudden she looks out the window and says, the house is surrounded by the FBI.

They get out, they kick your door in, they take you out of the house, Dr. Brown. They said, you're under arrest for the murder of JFK, and you're going to say, I had nothing to do with it. And isn't that the story of how everything started? We had nothing to do with Adam when he didn't eat, but yet we're all blamed for that, blamed for that, and we all carry the same, so that we were struggling with the fairness of God.

Like, how was that fair? You had nothing to do with JFK's assassination, but you're charged for it. Let's go, pal.

You're coming with us. You're like, I had nothing to do with it. So all of us being judged when Adam fell, and all of us now inevitably falling, so how is it my fault? It reminds me of one time with our older daughter, Jen, where she's a great wife and mother now. We laugh back about her teen years, but even, you know, her childhood years, teen years, she was always pushing the limit and getting disciplined.

And whatever happened one time, she had to be grounded or disciplined somehow. And I remember saying, I wish Adam never sinned, because if Adam didn't sin, then she wouldn't be in trouble today. So here's my answer to that important question, Eddie. Number one, I ask every individual, is anybody stopping you from doing good now? Is anyone forcing you to do evil? Is there any external force that is saying, you cannot choose to do good and you must choose to do evil? And the answer is no. I mean, no, we can't fly through the air.

We don't have the ability to do that, and we can't live with total perfection. But is anyone making a guy go out and murder someone? No. Is anyone making someone use drugs?

Is anyone forbidding you from helping the poor or the needy? In other words, we make choices and ultimately God could say, forget Adam. Don't even think about Adam. What about Eddie?

What about Mike? What about this woman? I'm just going to judge you on the choices that you freely made. That's the first thing, because no one will be able to accuse God on that day. The second thing is, all right, he knows that we're all going to blow it, so he sends his son to die for us.

How's that? He knows we're all going to fall short, we're all going to blow it, so rather than condemning us all for the choices we freely make, he sends his own son to die in our place, so that through him we can have forgiveness. So even if we could say, well, it's all inevitable because of Adam, God's saying, well, fine, I'm giving you a free gift of grace and forgiveness through the cross. Every evil wrong thing you've ever done, he'll pay for, and all you have to do is receive that gift and receive a new heart to live for God.

It's that simple. So God's covered in that respect. Number one, we make our own choices. Nobody made me sin. I chose to sin.

That's one thing. And secondly, God has given us complete forgiveness through Jesus. He'll wipe it all, everything we ever did, he'll wipe it all clean. If anything seems unfair, it's that, that God would offer us that much grace, and then we could be with him forever and ever and ever and ever, and have power to live a life pleasing to him. So he covers that.

No one will be able to accuse him on that day. I'm glad you guys keep having these good discussions in your Bible study. 866-34-TRUTH.

Let's go to Henry in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Thanks for calling the line of fire. Hi, Dr. Braun.

Hey. Yeah, I just wanted to talk about my journey. It's really right before COVID hit, and I had quite a bit of, you know, questioning things on my mind, you know, being an evangelical. And some of the things that, you know, had me questioning my faith were just, you know, you see some of these pastors out there, limousines, and, you know, flying high-ear jets, things like that, and then after COVID hit, you had some more of these pastors predicting the end of COVID during that time, and that didn't happen. And then later on, with the election and some of the predictions that came as far as who was going to win and what was going to happen, again, that didn't come true. And I think, you know, it kind of shifted not just me, but a lot of the evangelicals to their core as far as, you know, what exactly is going on, and, you know, these are so-called pastors, and people's faith, and they happen to be wrong about a lot of things. So that, you know, as I said, it shifted my faith, but during that time of COVID, it gave me a time to reflect and really kind of, you know, humble myself and ask God, okay, well, God, you know, what's going on? What do you want me to do?

Where am I going wrong? You know, is this the Church for me? Is something going on with the Church? Is it a false Church? And the thing that helped me was a focus to go back to the Church Fathers and studying the Church Fathers and reading about them and what they believe that helped me sort of bring back the foundation for myself and get on Father's footing as far as what they believe, and it helped me tremendously. Yeah, Henry, first, thank God that your faith has gotten stronger, because others have just walked away. The failed prophecies brought a lot of reproach on the things of the Spirit, especially the Charismatic Church, and people have wondered, well, these guys claim to be speaking for God.

Is God even there? But the good thing is if it's pushed you to go back to foundations even more, then your foundations will be stronger. See, the crisis can be the thing that pushes us to really come to know God better for ourselves. It can make us or it can break us.

In Henry's case here, it ends up being positive, and many others not, which is why we must be so careful. We who claim to speak for God, who claim to be teachers of the Bible, who claim to speak his heart or his mind, who claim to be prophets, whoever, we must be so careful to honor him and to speak carefully lest people's lives be destroyed. Hey, Henry, thank you for the call. It's The Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Get into The Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Friends, let me encourage you, if you've never struggled with your own faith, ask God to give you compassion on those who do struggle. Don't look down at them demeaningly, I don't struggle. Maybe that's just the way God wired you. Maybe it's just a gift you have. Maybe someone else, they're more sensitive in certain areas, or their conscience bothers them in other areas, or they have a different upbringing than you had. Ask for compassion so that your strong faith can help them rather than further condemn them.

866-34-TRUTH. I'm going to go back to the phones in a moment, but I wrote an article talking about John Piper's son becoming a TikTok star bashing the Bible. He says he's not attacking Christianity, he's attacking Evangelicalism, but when you attack the Bible, it's a larger attack. So I wrote up a list of some of the principal reasons why people fall away. So let me just read it to you quickly. This is in the article, in the article, why has John Piper's son become a Bible bashing TikTok star? And my goal in talking about this is not to bash him, but let's pray for him and those who are influenced by him.

So here's my list. Why are people falling away? I said it's a perfect societal storm. First, a superficial, me first Christianity preached in America for the last generation. Second, the lack of personal experience with God. Third, a dearth of solid discipleship and in-depth knowledge of the word. Fourth, a steady stream of leadership scandals. Fifth, the rise of the new atheism and with it the demonizing of the God of the Bible, especially the God of the Old Testament. Sixth, the ubiquity of the internet, instantly popularizing the latest anti-God statement and turning it into a viral meme.

Seventh, the continued breakdown of the American family. Eighth, the increasing number of out and proud LGBTQ individuals, many of whom are friends and family members of Christians, causing the latter to question the Bible's teaching on homosexuality. And I mentioned before as well, just the pervasiveness of the availability of sin, even, you know, those struggling with sexual sin, porn, all stuff everywhere that, and all the distractions, this can pull us away from God as well. So it is a perfect storm in that respect, but God is real, the Word stood the test, and there are answers. And ultimately, the greatest cure of all is to bring people into a real, personal experience with the living God.

As Leonard Ravenhill used to say, a man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument. All right, let's go over to, hang on, where is my mouse here? There we go.

Let's go over to Russ in Salt Lake City, Utah. Thanks for calling the line of fire. Hey, Dr. Brown, I appreciate everything. I'd just like to give you a little bit of wisdom from a 75 year old who has served the Lord for the past 40 years. Everything you said today about having an encounter with God is right on.

I was very fortunate because I had an encounter with God. But there's a couple things that I'm finding today in our society. And that is, number one is, is commitment.

The people today don't want, don't seem to want to make a real commitment. Whenever I go out and have bacon and egg, I understand the chickens involved, but the pig is committed. And all I will tell people is, is to spend quality time with God, get to know who God is, get to know what he wants, and everything seems to run smoothly. Yeah, you know Russ, there's no question that just being grounded, quality time in the word and prayer is foundational. Now many will say, I pray and I feel like God is distant.

I read the Bible and it confuses me. So we want to help those who struggle in those ways. But for so many, quality, regular time with God is a fabulous foundation, the foundation for everything else, the foundation for everything else. God, the character comes out of that. God, the relationships coming out. God, the lifestyle comes out of that.

Absolutely. And for those who say, I've got a million questions. I read the Bible, just questions. And why did God ordain this? And why did God call for this?

And what kind of God would do that? And I don't get this, I don't get that. Sometimes we get frustrated because we don't have the answers. And so if that's the case, say, those are great questions.

I never struggled with it, but those are great questions. Let's go find the answers because the answers are there. All right, let's go to, nope, we won't go there. Let's go over to Andrew in Michigan. Welcome to the line of fire. Yeah, I appreciate it, Dr. Brown.

Sure. I wanted to ask you, if you feel like sometimes apologetics, specifically in the field of creation, apologetics can cause a stumbling block more than it can be helpful, only because this seems to be a lot of people who plant both feet in one camp and treat it as more of maybe a gospel issue than what it was. The Bible said, listen, that's just a fact. And then people who maybe are seeking God don't bind their explanation of creation to be plausible, and it becomes then a stumbling block for them in believing the Scripture and the truth of it. Yeah, so that does happen at times. For example, for example, for example, let's say that you are going to put all your weight into defending young earth creationism and a literal seven-day account in Genesis 1, and it's there to teach us scientific order, et cetera.

And you're going to just ground everything there. And then someone's going to look at that. And then in their view, and I'm not a scientist, so I'm not debating this now, okay, but in their view, science has decidedly against a young earth creation. Then the only alternative they have is, I guess I just have to reject the Bible, because I can't reject what I know to be true. Again, this would be the argument that's being raised, and I think this is what Andrew is alluding to. See, when I read Genesis 1, coming at it from a Hebrew Semitic viewpoint, I don't read it that God's teaching us about the order of creation.

I don't see that as the goal. I see it as God teaching us about who he is and about how he establishes his order in the world. And in contrast with ancient Near Eastern cosmologies, these writings about the origins of universe from Babylon, from Egypt, from other places, God is saying, no, no, no, I am the one true God. No, I am the one who brings light out of darkness. So I am the one who brings order out of chaos.

I am the one who subdues everything that must be subdued. I'm just reading one author, and he's saying, hey, when people wonder why is there light before there's sun, and you even have trees before there's sun, he says, well, it's because what happens on day one has its parallel on day four, what happens on day two has its parallel on day five, what happens on day three has its parallel on day six, so it's just laid out schematically like that. In other words, the purpose of Genesis 1 is to teach us science, it's to teach us about God, and therefore rather than having that battle, someone's like, oh, okay, that's fine then. And then the other thing is science keeps learning, and science unlearns things, oh, that we were wrong about this, we're wrong about that. So if the Bible gave us a scientific account, then the only generation that would ever recognize it was accurate is the final generation that had all the science right.

Everything up to that would think it was wrong. All right, thank you, Andrew, for the call. Let's go to Dylan in Richfield, Utah. Thanks for calling the line of fire. Time is short, so please dive right in. Oh, hello. I've been, oh, yes, yeah, I've been mostly, since I've been online recently, I've been noticing that there's a lot of false prophets, and I can say that I was misled by a couple of them.

So I've been trying to make a list and go over all the things I need to look out for. Got it. So just, Dylan, candidly, has this, when you see, okay, this guy prophesied this was going to happen, and COVID was going to end here, or this guy said Trump was going to win here, or the election was going to be overturned there, and none of those things happened, did it make you wonder if God was real, if the whole thing was a sham? Did that go through your head? Oh no, I knew God was real. Got it, okay. But did it make you wonder whether the gifts of the Spirit are real? Um, no.

Okay, but just help you to see that there's some that are giving misinformation. So here, Dylan, thank you for the call. And again, I'm glad to hear, Dylan, that this did not cause a larger shaking of your faith to the reality of God, because hey, if these are your circles, and hey, the Lord's moving here, and praise the Lord, the Lord said he's going to be doing this this year, and praise the Lord, I've got this promise from God in my own life, and this is happening, and that's happening, and then it doesn't pan out, or it's not just it takes time, but the time limits pass, the guaranteed things pass, the, it's like, what is the, is that the only thing that's not real? Are there other things that are not real?

Dylan, thank you for calling. You know what it's like? It's like when a parent finds out that their child's been living a double life, or their spouse has been living a double life. You begin to say, well, what else, what else don't I know? What else isn't real?

You begin to probe. So that's why it is so terribly dangerous when people claim to speak for God, and they're not. I'm not just talking about one person missing at one time, I'm talking about many missing in on a grand stage. By the way, we have been working behind the scenes with a number of key national international leaders forging a statement on prophetic standards. It is virtually done getting the final fine-tuning grammatical editing, and hopefully within the next week or two we're going to post it. We have right now well over 70 signatures from key leaders from American around the world saying, amen, we sign on to this. But notice we did get two calls about that today. Listen, bottom line, if you're struggling, I want to assure you there are answers to your deepest questions, there is healing for your worst pain, and as I've written the book asking the question, has God failed you? The answer is it may feel as if he did, but God truly doesn't fail, and we want to stand with you and believe with you and be here to help you until you are strong and full of faith, you know God, and you have answers to your questions.