Dr. Brown Interviews Skillet Frontman John Cooper

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network.

The name of the book, Wimpy, Weak, and Woke, How Truth Can Save America from Utopian Destruction. It's time for The Line of Fire with your host, biblical scholar and cultural commentator, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity.

Call 866-34-TRUTH to get on the line of fire. And now, here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Hey friends, this is Michael Brown. It's my special joy to be with John Cooper. Those of you who may not know John Cooper or may not know the band Skillet, actually you know them very well because every single day coming into the broadcast, coming out of the broadcast, you hear the voice of John Cooper, who is the front man, lead singer of Skillet, together with the great band that ministers with him, making an amazing difference in millions and millions of lives. And John is not just a, quote, Christian rock star.

John is a prophetic voice to the church today, speaking as clearly as anyone I know, and with amazing open doors to secular media and to secular audiences because of the way God has raised up Skillet. So one day we've planned it out. We want to get the whole band on together so that they can, we can all interact with Corey and Seth and Jen, the whole band, just have some fun.

But today it is the man himself, John Cooper. Welcome to the broadcast, buddy. Hey, it's great to be here with you. And yeah, we'll do that with the full band.

The full band loves Dr. Brown. So we appreciate you and all that you've done for the kingdom. So, on with it. On with that revolution, man. Come on now.

Yes. And it was actually our mutual friend, Dr. James White, who introduced us. James saw, John, that you were reading Can You Be Gay and Christian said, you guys need to connect. You reached out to me immediately. I normally reach out quick.

You reached out immediately and we become close. We probably in contact most days of the week, would you say? Yeah, absolutely. I hit you with all sorts of questions.

And I haven't stumped you yet, but I'm going to get there one day, I'm sure. Yeah. And the fact is, I mean, you're sending me, hey, check out this interview or here's an open door on Fox and Fox News or some secular publication is quoting you. And you're not afraid to step into the controversies. But I want to go back to when Skillet was first founded, in your first book, which is autobiographical as well, you talk about this, how you were approached by an agent who told you that they could really make Skillet big if you would just do one thing.

Tell us about this. Oh, okay. Yeah, sure.

All right. So just so people understand who I am, if you don't know me, so my name is John. My parents were Christians. My mom was a Jesus lover.

I sort of say she's a Jesus fanatic and I mean that in all the good ways. Just loved God. I can't remember a time in my life where my mom wasn't reading the Bible to me, teaching me what the Bible, teaching me how to pray, teaching me what the Bible meant, making me memorize scriptures ever since I was in a high chair. So my mom was very much a Jesus lover. I gave my life to Jesus when I was five years old. And God's grace has been on my life. I've lived for Christ mostly since then. My mom passed away when I was 15 years old. She died from cancer.

She fought cancer for about three years. I subsequently had a very difficult time in high school fighting with my dad, some very dark periods from that. And on my first book, I write about how Jesus, who I knew as my Lord and Savior since I was five years old, thank God I knew him as my Lord and Savior, most important thing, but I began to know Jesus as a friend. During my teenage years, I began to know Jesus as someone I would talk to about my problems, and I would ask him to heal me. The Bible says that he is close to the brokenhearted, and I didn't feel that he was close to me, to be honest. And I said, Jesus, I need to feel that you're close to the brokenhearted because this stinks.

This just stinks. Where are you in this? And through that time, I grew close to the Lord, and I became a passionate follower of Jesus leading into my college years. And I began to study the Bible, and that's when I got what I would call on fire for Jesus, whatever you want to call it.

And I just felt, I felt a real life change at that time. And I wanted to make a difference for Jesus in my generation. I loved music. Music was there for me. I wanted to use music to tell people about Jesus, to sing about hope.

So maybe there's some kid suffering in his room at night. Maybe he could listen to my music, and it could help draw him to Christ, just like Christian bands like Petra or Striper did for me. And I wanted to do that because I love music.

And so anyway, I started, we signed our first deal in 1996. Skill had started, but I never wanted to only play Christian music. I wanted to sing music to the world. I don't want to just play to religious people.

Are you kidding me? I want to play to everybody. And I believed that God had told me that that was going to happen. I believed in my heart that he revealed to me, you're going to be a musician, not just for Christian people, but you are going to be a light in dark places where most people can't go. Those are the words that I believe that came in my heart. God spoke to me, whatever you want to call it. And so I held on to that. And then that happened miraculously. We got signed to a mainstream deal.

We never shied away from talking about Jesus. And so at the height of our career, as we had this song called Monster that came out that was hitting big at radio, all that to say in age, it came to me and he said, hey, I think you could be the biggest rock band in the world, but you got to strike while the iron's hot. Do you feel me?

That's what he said. Do you feel me? And I said, yeah, sure. But I had no idea what he meant. And I said, uh, yeah, sure.

I know what you mean. And he goes, I don't know if you really know what I mean. And I said, I don't know, maybe not. And he goes, hey, let me just say it to you plainly, John, because no one else is going to tell you.

You could be the biggest band in the world. You've got to stop talking about Jesus. Stop doing Christian interviews. Stop doing Christian radio shows. Don't talk about Jesus because it hurts you and it makes you seem like not like a real rock star.

And so I wrote about that in my first book and long story short, all I could think of, I came out, came to the bus, I talked to my wife and said, this is what this guy said to me. And the scripture keeps coming to me. You know, when Jesus says, if you, if you claim me before men, then I will claim you before my father. And I just knew the last thing in the entire world I could ever do is be ashamed of the Lord Jesus Christ who was close to me in my darkest times, who saved me from sin, who gave me a brand new life. Are you kidding me?

And so I made a commitment that day. You know what? I'm not just going to be unashamed of Jesus. I'm going to talk about Jesus even more than I did before because I know that that is not the word of God. I know what that guy is saying is not from the Lord.

So that's what we've done with our, tried to do with our career. Yeah. And really it is what Jesus said. What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?

And that's the deal the devil wants to make with each of us to pastors and leaders. If you just get off this subject, if you just step back here, if you just compromise a little here, you can be much more popular, right? You're popular, but you're ineffective.

Your message reaches everybody, but it helps no one. So I just want you to help our listeners understand something in terms of being a crossover band. You preach holiness. You and Corey, wonderful marriage.

I've met your kids, wonderful kids. You are committed to the Lord on all fronts. In other words, it's not worldliness. It's not, well, we're a crossover band. So we kind of party a little with the world. And then we go to church. You live for God, you live Godly lives, you travel together, et cetera.

But what does it mean to have a crossover message? In other words, take us for a moment before we talk about your book, Wimpy, Weak, and Woke, and really dig into that. Friends, if you don't have a chance to hear the whole interview, by all means, go ahead and get the book.

You can get it in different forms on Amazon and other places where books are sold. John Cooper, Wimpy, Weak, and Woke. And I wholeheartedly support John's message in the book. But help us understand a crossover mentality where you can talk about, say, Sick in the Head or Monster or Savior, and you're not explicitly using sin words or even explicitly preaching Jesus in that specific song. So hundreds and hundreds of millions have downloaded your music. You have over several billion downloads.

I mean, in a very exclusive club in terms of influence and reach. But we've got about three, four minutes. Explain how this works. Like, you're writing a song. Who are you writing for? What are you hoping? What kind of message do you want to get across? Yeah, that's a great question. And in fact, I just want to say, currently, the only place you can get the physical book is my website, johnlcooper.com.

You can get the Kindle version on Amazon, and hopefully the physical will be up there at some point. I do think that it's a little bit of a, sometimes it's a little bit of a dance, knowing I want to write a song that lots of people can relate to. And I don't, it doesn't matter to me, like for instance, we have a song called Hero. It doesn't matter to me if everybody that listens to it says, oh yeah, this is about Jesus.

I don't care who the hero is to them. They can interpret how they want to. I like that music can do that. It draws people in to a story. I have my interpretation.

They have theirs. The amazing thing about the internet is that I can get on the internet and Michael Brown can say, who is your hero? Who did you write this song about? And I can say, I wrote this song about the Lord Jesus Christ who saved me from my sin, gave me a brand new life. In fact, I'd like to tell you a quick story about it.

I know I'm going to have a second, but let me tell you this story. There was, in 2010, when our record Awake came out, we had a promotion with NFL. They used our song Hero, actually. It was just a little blurb. Well, years and years later, I got an email from a couple. There's a couple. They were married. They were both, they both were pornography filmmakers. They made pornographic films. They were watching NFL one night and a snippet of a song came on that they said, that's really cool.

Who is that? They went on a forum. They found out it's some band called Skillet. They listened to the record.

They became fans of the album. Then one of them said, I wonder what this song Hero is even about. Looked up an interview with me where I talked about my faith in Jesus Christ. The wife says, well, maybe Jesus is a hero. Let's go to church and find out. She gives her life to Jesus and her husband is still unsaved. She stops working in the pornography industry whilst witnessing to her unsaved husband who eventually gives his life to Jesus.

They quit working in the pornography industry, go to church, and after three years of being discipled, they begin a ministry witnessing to people making pornographic films, all because God did a miracle from our song being on NFL. When I brag about that, I would never boast on Skillet. I only boast in Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection, just like that great hymn says. We're boasting in a God who does something you could never imagine because you wrote a song that could either be about Jesus or Martin Luther King Jr. or pick your hero. I'm okay with that because I know in the background I'm going to make a stand for Jesus, but I'm inclusive enough to say this song doesn't have to be about Jesus for you to love the song. It can be about your wife or your kid or a police officer, whoever you want to be. But to me, Jesus Christ is my hero.

So that is kind of what I try to do. Very inclusive, but also very bold and unashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Right, and you're known as a Christian rock band, unashamedly so, and yet God has promoted you. But what's amazing is many people who never would have heard of Skillet, never would have heard the song, if it was just a hymn. So, of course, they're hymns, endless hymns and worship songs. We love them.

We sing them, write them day and night. Praise God for that. There's this other message that can get a general message to the world with a powerful truth, but then can also lead people in the full message of the gospel. We are going to be right back and we're going to start to dig into the context of the book, the contents of the book. Go to johnlcooper.com to get your own copy, johnlcooper.com. This is Michael Ellison, founder of Travita Wellness. I want you to hear an amazing testimony from my friend, James Robison, and most all of you will know of him. He and his wife, Betty, host the Life Today television program. Now, here is James. Let me tell you about a miracle I experienced. My friend, Michael Ellison, he and his wife are our 40 year plus best friends.

Well, let me just say this to you. I had so much pain with what was called tennis elbow that I could hardly reach over and pick up the phone without pain without it hurting me. I couldn't pick up something to drink a glass of tea or anything.

It was very difficult to do anything without wearing a tight strap. And then Michael shared the nopal cactus juice with me, nopalaya. I began drinking about that much in the morning in a glass and that much later in the day. And in three months, I was a different person. I have now gone more than 10 years with no pain, not better. Well, I have no joint pain. I am telling you it did something to the inflammation in my body. That was undeniable. Now that's just my testimony. But that's been more than 10 years with no pain.

Matter of fact, if I miss for some foolish reason, a few days, I can feel it creeping back that fast. So give it a try. See if it helps relieve your pain. I hope it does like it has mine because it worked for me.

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Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. All right. You hear the voice of Skillet introducing us. Really felt it was the Lord, by the way, that gave us the connection as John and I become friends. We've gotten to be friends with the whole band and spend time with the whole band. And John and I interacting all the time.

Every time I write a new book, send it to the whole band and other books, the questions come up, send them. So I feel this deep union with all four of them. And then John and I, as I said, in regular, regular contact. And we are fighting the same battle that we're all fighting because the reality is all of us today are in the line of fire.

That's the reality. And when we were coming up with new theme music a little over a year ago, I felt the song drop in my mind from Skillet, The Resistance. And then I even kind of heard an announcement and where it would fit. And when we looked at it, it fit perfectly. We were kind of shocked.

And then we were able to get the rights officially to use it. So I know some of you don't like loud music or the style. Overwhelmingly, we have Skillet fans that weigh in and appreciate the music and style. But as you get to know the message and you get to know the man behind it and the band behind it as they're all devoted to the Lord, you get a better feel for why we are so in this together, getting this message out together, time to push back against the darkness. So John, is this a battle that you always plan to fight? Like I'm going to be a culture warrior.

I'm going to be weighing in on the controversial issues of the day. I feel this in my bones that I'm supposed to do this. Or is it basically the battle came to you and you could do nothing but respond?

Yeah. I can't help but laugh about it. I did not want to be in culture war. No rock musician wants that because, I mean, you're on a stage and you hope to be liked.

I mean, it's like you're hoping you're making music that people like you and they want to listen to music. I did not want to do that. In fact, I really believed like I'll never have to do that. I'm going to be the guy that is just the nice guy. I mean, I tell people that Jesus loves them and if they get really mad at that, so be it. But who's going to get mad that Jesus loves them? I never ever wanted to do this. One of the quotes I wrote in my book, I have the book here.

This is what it looks like. I wish that I had the quote pulled up, but I don't. But it's from Nietzsche. I'd like to give you a, I can't quote the whole thing, but this is basically what Nietzsche is saying. In case people don't know who Nietzsche is, he's probably one of the most, I would say, influential philosophers of the last two centuries. Most people know his statement, God is dead. That's Nietzsche. Nietzsche basically said this, we've been attacking Christianity in the wrong way.

I don't know how he said it, but this is basically what he said. Who cares if people believe that Jesus is the son of God? Who cares if people believe that Jesus died on a cross or rose from the dead? That's just a truth proposition and it doesn't affect us in the here and now. Instead, he says, what we need to do is attack the moral principles of Christianity.

That is what is ruining people's lives. I'm going to read the exact quote. I pulled it up in your book. Christianity, hey, this is Dr. Brown. What do you expect here, man?

Come on, baby. Here's what you quote Nietzsche is saying. Christianity has thus far always been attacked in the wrong way. As long as one does not perceive Christian morality as a capital crime against life, its defenders will always have an easy time. The question of the truth of Christianity is something entirely secondary as long as the question of the value of Christian morality is not addressed.

Yes. Man, I mean, that just says it all and that's the reason I have so many quotes in this book, 650 footnotes in the book, because I truly believe that Christians are naive. They're just like I was. They're naive to exactly what this spiritual warfare is all about. Nietzsche, Marx, all these people, they could care less if you believe that Jesus is the son of God any more than if you believe that fairy godmothers created the world. They don't really care. What they care about is that Christian morality is, what do you say, a capital crime against humanity. It's making people suffer. That is why I felt I ended up getting pushed into this because I didn't want to talk about culture war, but it was the culture that kept saying, hey, hey, skillet, you've got to speak out against Trump. You've got to speak out against the pro life movement.

The pro life movement was, it seemed to be hurting women. So skill, why aren't you speaking up for that skillet? Why aren't you speaking about what's happening at the border during the Trump presidency? Why aren't you speaking up against Trump's tweets? And like, like I never, I never even publicly supported Trump. So I'm just like, what are these people on about?

I've never endorsed a candidate. I've never even talked about politics, but I'm getting all this pressure from the music industry and even from a lot of my Christian friends who are saying, John, why is it, why aren't you and skillet speaking out against, you know, all this stuff? And I was like, I don't want to, I just want to play music. But they eventually pushed me so far that I thought, I'm going to have to speak up and I believe that what the world is saying is wrong and we're going to have to stand against it. So I guess what I'm trying to say is to encourage Christian people to understand that this quote unquote culture war, it's not really about culture war. It's basically about tearing down Christian morality so that they can tear down Christianity. It truly is a war against Christ, even if it doesn't always seem like it.

It's really a battle between life and death. And that's why I've gotten so vocal about it. So in other words, if we don't push back against the cultural encroachment on our values, our beliefs, our morality, in schools, in media, social media, et cetera, that if we don't push back against this, it will actually mean gospel losses. And John, we've seen it with the younger generation having twice as many atheists percentage wise as other generations in America. So many young people dropping out of church, you know, for example, there's the perception if gay is good, then the church must be bad.

Why is God so mean? So this is not something we get to sit out. And I've heard from parents, grandparents who are saying, I'm pulling my kids out of school. I had no idea what was happening in school. I thought I knew what they were being taught in schools.

I had no idea. And if you have college age kids now in different settings, Christian, secular, you know what's out there. And if we don't speak out, what do we say to the next generation?

Man, that is so powerful, Michael. You know, one of the things I think is happening is that Christians, including myself, so I will put, I will say this, I am the number one, let me rewind and say it again. The person I'm about to describe, that was me. So I'm not pointing my fingers at other people.

I'm pointing at me saying I used to be like this, okay. I just did not, I didn't believe the Bible as I ought. I did not believe that if we reject God's created order, okay, if we reject the law of God, the commands of Jesus, and the world that God created, I didn't believe that it was going to leave us living in a world of chaos.

Now, if you had said, John, do you believe that, I probably would have said, yeah, that's probably true, but it's probably not the end of the world. I didn't realize that, and I think that a lot of Christians are in the same place that I was because we've grown up in a society that is frankly really good. I mean, America's a great place to live, and we have the benefits of a Christian worldview. We have the benefits of a pretty just society in comparison with, say, world history, okay. Doesn't mean America's perfect.

It just means if you take in all of human history, America's a pretty just place to live. You can eat here. You can work here.

You can raise your own kids here. You have freedom of speech here. I just kind of took all of that for granted, and I think that what a lot of Christians don't realize is that if that goes away, there really is no exaggerating the barbarism that we really could get to, and I'll just say, like, for my belief, as I've had these conversations with Christians who say, John, and I know they say it to you even more than they say it to me, Michael. They say, John, why are you being such an alarmist? You sound like you're full of fear.

You're exaggerating and this and the other. I just say to them, at some point, this culture war, this spiritual battle, I believe, is going to come to your front door, and when it comes to your front door, that's when people wake up, and I've seen that. In 2020, I spoke at a church about politics, and I was trying to explain to them what radical gender theory was, that they are teaching this at schools, and I had somebody that I know, somebody that goes to my own church, to be honest, just say, John, you sound like a right-wing conspiracy, like hard right-wing conspiracy theorist, is that nobody is teaching this at school. All right, hold on, hang on, right there, right there, we are going to leave, oh yeah, I know, but we'll be back momentarily, stay right here, be back with my guests right after the break.

Hey friends, Dr. Michael Brown here. Do you remember when people thought I was crazy, and I said it's not too late for America, that God can still do something in our country, that there is going to be a pushback, a gospel-based moral and cultural revolution, and do you remember when people thought that you were crazy because you felt the same way, because you believed what I was saying and already felt it in your heart? Well friends, that pushback is here. The gospel-based moral and cultural revolution we've been talking about for 25 years is unfolding, and we are right in the thick of it, and the line-of-fire broadcast is divinely positioned for such a time as this. Friends, you would be so gratified and blessed as I hear, if you could hear what I hear, testimony after testimony as leaders, young people, old people, moms, dads, students, people from all backgrounds come up to me and say, Dr. Brown, you're providing a template for us, you're providing a blueprint for us, you're showing us how to do this, how to have hearts of compassion, backbones of steel, but friends, it's a joint effort. We do this together, and with your support, we can amplify this broadcast around the nation and amplify this voice to shake the nation. Join our support team today.

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Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks for joining us today on the Line of Fire. Hey, just a shout-out reminder to all of our great Salem stations in Chicago and in Phoenix and in Dallas. We are developing brand new programming for the beginning of the year.

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As the church gets healthy, the nation will be shaken. I'm speaking with John Cooper, frontman lead singer of Skillet, whose music and message you hear every day on the broadcast at the beginning and end of every segment. John's new book, Wimpy, Weak and Woke, How Truth Can Save America from Utopian Destruction. Get the book at johnlcooper.com or you can get the Kindle, the e-book on amazon.com. So, John, we're going to talk, the one question I haven't asked is, who's Wimpy, Weak and Woke?

Let's break that down. And again, friends, the book is in depth. John is a real clear thinker.

He's able to take in a lot of philosophical and cultural and political discussion and then bring a simple, clear message, which is one of the things I most appreciate about how God is using John. But you're speaking at a church, you're talking about this radical gender ideology, and someone comes up to you and says, nobody's teaching that. Of course, we've been documenting it for decades.

Nobody's teaching that. All right, you sound like some right-wing conspiratorial theorist. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah.

And so, that's that. And then one year later, when schools are back open from the pandemic, this person is like, I don't understand what's happening. My grand kid came home with a gender unicorn. And of course, you know the gender unicorn.

Basically, my kid's coming home with all this information saying that she can pick her own gender and that maybe she changes from day to day. I don't understand what's happening. And so, this is a true story. And I'm going, yeah, that's what I said last year, and you told me I was a right-wing conspiracy theorist. And so, actually, this is, when it comes to your front door, then all of a sudden, you go, okay, wait a minute. I believe it now.

And I think that that's beginning to happen. And I will say, Michael, that actually happened to me. I'm not going to get into this right now, but I do write in the book some of my own story.

I live in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Three blocks from my house is where Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people, killed two of them during the BLM protests and then the subsequent riots that happened there. I mean, I can see that from where I live. So, all of a sudden, it gives you a new perspective of what's going on. And I think we can jump straight into the definition of who's wimpy, weak, and woke.

Because I mean, the apoplectic rage that I've experienced on my social media just from the name of the book blew me away. And no matter how many times I say it, people seem to not hear me. As I just say to people, I'm not saying you're wimpy, you're a weakling, you're a sissy and grow up. I'm saying that wimpy, weak, and woke is an ideology. It is a way of thinking. And in the book, I say, we have become wimpy, weak, and woke.

This is, it's American society, but it's also the church. And what I just described a second ago about, you know, the fact that radical gender theory has been taught in schools now for, I don't know how many years, but a lot of Christian people still don't believe it. That is because we are weak. We are weak philosophically. We are weak theologically. We aren't doing the work we need to do to understand the times that we were in. And because we don't understand the times we were in, then we begin to apologize for the character of God. You know, I keep saying we have a lot of people unashamed to say the name of Jesus, but they are ashamed of the character of Jesus.

We start redefining Christianity because we feel embarrassed about certain prohibitions, whether it's sexuality or gender or whatever it may be. And so that is the weak part. The wimpy part is that we value empathy and winsomeness over truth telling. And you always say in your program we have to have backbones of steel and hearts of compassion. Well that's it.

You're combining. We tell the truth and we do it with love and we try to communicate our passion for people. We're telling you this because we don't want you to suffer. But the church today is sort of won over by empathy. In fact, I have a chapter title in this book. It says, Empathy, One Commandment to Rule Them All. And that's of course a play on Tolkien's One Ring to Rule Them All. But the idea being that we value empathy is like a super commandment. And the Bible doesn't say it like that.

We are supposed to be truth tellers because we love people. So that takes care of the wimpy and the weak. What woke means is basically this.

And this is the one that really gets a lot of people. Because a lot of people say, John, all that woke means is that you care about discrimination. And they say that Jesus cares about discrimination.

I agree. As Christians we should care about discrimination. We should care deeply about justice. What makes you woke is when you value, now let's just say value.

Let's say it like this. When you see the world from a totalizing worldview of oppressors and oppressed groups, it's sort of this us versus them, the haves and the have nots. Everything is about who has something and if they have something that means they stole it from someone else. In other words, it is a Marxist way of seeing the world. And so because of that you attach morality to the people who are being oppressed, who you perceive to be oppressed. And then you attach immorality to the people who are the oppressors. And if you understand that woke worldview, it explains literally every single weird thing that happens every week, whether it's the reason that college kids were praising Hamas after the rape and murder and all the horrible things we saw in the Israel massacre, it explains that.

It explains why drag queens are coming to schools and doing readings for kids and the reason you're not allowed to say anything about the drag queens. Every single thing that happens in American society, BLM, whatever it may be, is explained through that woke worldview. It is permeating into Christianity and the point I'm making in the book is that it is a totalizing worldview but the Bible also gives us a totalizing worldview and these worldviews are at odds.

Yeah, they are at fundamental odds. It is a war between different kingdoms and in that sense it's not Marxism versus capitalism, socialism versus the American way of life. It is a fundamental anti-God, anti-Christian morality Marxism that we are battling with.

That's the issue. You know what's interesting with the term woke? I have an African American friend, an educator, and he pointed out to me that the word had a certain meaning in his circles, in his communities. In fact, I'm looking at an article saying that woke dates back to 1962 when the term was listed in a New York Times Magazine glossary of phrases and words you might hear today in Harlem. And it was meaning to be aware of sensitive social issues, to be aware of what's happening around you. In point of fact, like many, many other words, the word has taken on a broader meaning.

So, for my African American friends listening say, hey, woke is a good word in our community. On the broader level, it's taken on another meaning and the thing that's so interesting is that you will have, John, it's so common, you will have rich, white Americans taking offense over things that the alleged oppressed people haven't taken offense over. You know, for example, then outrage over the Washington football team being called the Washington Redskins. I read major surveys that was done among Native American peoples that said, we like the name. We like being associated. We enjoy it, but the name had to go because it was culturally insensitive.

Now I've read that there is a petition drive among certain Native Americans saying, bring these names back like Cleveland Indians, Washington Redskins. This was positive to us. So, it's even interesting who takes offense over what. But what we're both saying is the way to really stand against injustice, the way to really stand against oppression, the way to really stand against unrighteousness is to align with biblical values. So, John, we've got three minutes before our next break, again, the name of the book, Wimpy, Weak, and Woke, How Truth Can Save America from Utopian Destruction. So, John, do you think that on some level that people are looking for the Kingdom of God and the values of the Kingdom of God, just like the hippies, the rebels, as much as we were caught up in the whole sinful sex drugs rock and roll, the bad rock and roll, and Eastern religion and all of that, but there was a longing for something more. There was a recognition that there was more than the American dream.

Do you think a lot of people, especially young people, are looking for something good, but it's been hijacked? Oh, man, what a great point. And I'd like to rewind slightly.

I know I'm going to make it fast. I'm glad you brought that about woke. Woke can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, which is why I define it the way I'm using it in the first chapter, so nobody has to wonder. Let me read this straight from the book, if I can.

I write, Caring about the poor, hating racism, desiring to raise the standards of education and minimize disparities between groups of people is not being woke. In my view, these are the actions of people who have been rescued and changed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. A love for Christ will naturally beget a love for people. It will also cause us to begin to hate the things God hates, such as racism and bigotry.

So I'm glad you said that. Absolutely, I realize people define those things. And yes, what I think has happened is that once people have taken God out of the worldview, and man is now in the worldview, people say, well, I want to make the world perfect, and I want nobody to suffer, and I'm just going to use all of my own ideas to do it because I truly hate suffering. And if you take that to its logical extension, you're talking about building some sort of perfect world or a utopia of some sort, caring about social justice. And what happens is that Christians have gotten confused and thought that that secular utopia sounds a lot like the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is what? Righteousness, peace, and joy, and the Holy Spirit. And they go, well, that kind of sounds a little bit like utopia, doesn't it?

Part of the main point of the book is that utopia and the kingdom of God are very different things, and we can talk about that in the next section. Yeah, and tell you what, friends, I'm going to do some real high-level stuff here just to take you behind the scenes of how Jon Cooper and I interact privately. I want to commend Jon as a veteran of many interviews, doing it for a hotel room is a skill that's been on the road for a while. He knew to have the bed made before the interview.

Many a time, I've sat to do an interview and realized in the corner of my eyes, like, oops, there is the unmade bed. Jon's also given me amazing counsel. We were talking about coordinating a trip where he could join me on the road one time, and I was joking with him. I said, hey, buddy, that means you got to iron my shirts and stuff. And he said, well, a key thing, or slacks, he said, a key thing is if you wear leather, then you don't have to iron those. So, we have it in court, but then he did tell me not iron slacks, not leather slacks. So, I haven't incorporated that the leather look. I probably won't.

I probably won't, but this is the high level of communication that often takes place. Okay, we will be right back and get more into the book by Jon Cooper. This is Michael Ellison, founder of Travita Wellness. I want you to hear an amazing testimony from my friend, James Robison, and most all of you will know of him. He and his wife, Betty, host the Life Today television program. Now, here is James. Let me tell you about a miracle I experienced. My friend, Michael Ellison, he and his wife are our 40 year plus best friends.

Well, let me just say this to you. I had so much pain with what was called tennis elbow that I could hardly reach over and pick up the phone without pain, without it hurting me. I couldn't pick up something to drink, a glass of tea or anything.

It was very difficult to do anything without wearing a tight strap. And then Michael shared the Nopal Cactus juice with me, Nopalaya. I began drinking about that much in the morning in a glass and that much later in the day. And in three months, I was a different person. I have now gone more than 10 years with no pain, not better. Well, I have no joint pain. I am telling you it did something to the inflammation in my body that was undeniable. Now that's just my testimony, but that's been more than 10 years with no pain. Matter of fact, if I miss for some foolish reason, a few days, I can feel it creeping back that fast. So give it a try, see if it helps relieve your pain. I hope it does like it has mine because it worked for me.

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Call 800-771-5584 or go online to TriVita.com. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome back, friends, to the line of fire, speaking with my good friend, genuine good friend, I call him kid brother, John Cooper. The website, JohnLCooper.com. He's got a great podcast, of course, all the Skillet music available there in his new book, Wimpy Weekend Woke, How Truth Can Save America from Utopian Destruction. You can get the physical book there.

If you want to get the e-book, go to Amazon.com. And I was telling John great news on the e-book. Along with the great reviews, he's getting blasted by these angry one-star reviews. You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of someone screaming and yelling and saying, I don't have an anger management problem.

Will you shut up? I think that the truth of the book is too close to comfort for some. And it also speaks to the fact that you've got a wide audience.

And not everybody is a born-again, fundamentalist, Bible-reading Christian. And therefore, you're stirring some things up through the book. What's your goal?

What's your hope? What do you want readers to get out of this book? Yeah, it's funny to have those. The day the book came out, amazingly, within three hours, everybody read the entire book and gave it a one-star.

It was amazing. Yeah, I've had that. It's an honor, though. And then it balances out once people actually read the book. It's mainly people who like you that buy it and read it, and they'll love it as I've enjoyed your writings as well. But go ahead.

Yeah, yeah. My main goal is this, to explain that there is—how do you want to say it? The truth of the Bible is so—is it redundant to say true? The truth of the Bible is so true, Michael, but it really is. I keep getting more convinced that the Word of God, every Word of God is true.

It blows my mind every day. And if you do not build your life upon the Word of God, your life is going to suffer. Now, we also believe in the eternal life, and of course, we have the life of the soul. But I'm talking about your life even here on earth is going to suffer, because the principles of the Bible are true.

And I think that that's one of the things—I want to give people this very much binary choice. The totalizing kingdom of God looks like this. And then on the opposite side, the totalizing kingdom of man looks like this.

In 2020, I will be honest with people to say, I never truly understood the words of Isaiah until 2020. You know the scripture that says, woe to those who call evil good and good evil. They trade darkness for light and light for darkness. Reading that my whole life, I mean, it's not that I can't understand it. I'm just thinking, who would ever call evil good and good evil?

I didn't even have the brain power to understand a statement like that, because I was raised in America. And even my atheist friends when I was a kid, whenever they sinned or partied or had sex outside of marriage, they didn't think they were doing something good. In other words, they kind of knew they were doing something that was not healthy, but they just wanted to do it.

It was hedonism, you know. Now the tables have turned. Now we're in a society where we have so pushed God out of society that we are calling sin wonderful. I mean, the best way to describe it is abortion. One side calls abortion murder. The other side calls abortion justice. It is an act of mercy. It's an act of love. Reproductive justice.

That's right. Reproductive justice. And that's the best way to say it. How am I going to live in a world where, you know, the president, President Biden said that it was almost a, this is a quote from President Biden, it's almost a sin, he said, to not let 12, 13, 14 year old trans identifying kids begin this gender transition.

He says it's almost a sin. How are we to live in a world like this? So what I hope people get from the book is that there are two very different world views and the world view of Christianity and the Bible is so reasonable. And all of God's laws, they're not arbitrary. They make sense. They are reasonable and they lead to life. And just like the scripture says, I put before you today, life and death, choose life that you may live. And that's what I hope people get from it.

Yeah. So 11 chapters in the book, starting with chapter one, the death of naivete and then chapter 11, this is the kingdom is where John, you lay out a positive view of the kingdom of God and the implications of this in the present age. But let's dive, dive into one chapter, chapter nine, there is no truth. You bigot open that one up for us. Yeah, that's funny. So I'm laughing at my own tie. It's really bad when you laugh at your own jokes. You know, there is no truth.

You bigot. Well, one of the things in the book, so I begin with this philosopher called Hegel. Hegel was the precursor and discipler, if you will, of Karl Marx. Not that he literally discipled Karl Marx, but Karl Marx believed that he was a sort of disciple of Hegel.

And so I begin with Hegel. We go through Karl Marx, we go through Freud, the critical theories and sexual revolution, and we are leading into postmodernism, which if people know, these are people like Michel Foucault, Derrida, I don't know how to, I don't actually know how to pronounce their names, that's how I pronounce them, Jacques Derrida. And these postmodern philosophers, and they have led us to a place of the complete demolition of absolute truth. And of course that's what postmodernism teaches. Postmodernism teaches that even if there is absolute truth, we could never know it, so therefore you have your truth, I have my truth. So when you hear a young person say, I had to share my truth, they are speaking in a postmodern way, whether they know it or not.

That's where this comes from. And so one of the questions that I'm posing in this chapter is, if they say there is no such thing as absolute truth, then why are they also so dead set on bigotry being a great evil? If there is no absolute truth, then why is bigotry even wrong?

In fact, maybe it's even good, maybe it's right. In other words, without the law of God, how are we to have any sort of idea of how we are supposed to live our lives or not? And the reason I'm going through it is because what I'm showing is really, postmodernism is nothing more than the logical extension of what Marx was beginning, which was a battle against God. They all want to do away with God, and they want to do away with any principles, namely the moral principles, as Nietzsche said, of Christianity. And they don't care how they have to do it, and this is why, on a practical level, this is why sometimes when you're in conversations with people in 2020s, you just feel like you're not having a good faith conversation anymore. It feels like they just want to say whatever they need to say to win a fight.

They may even say contradictory things to always get to their point, and your mind is being blown because you're like, how can the same people that say that there's a war against women, how can they then turn around and say that a man who says he's a woman actually is a woman and should be able to play on sports teams, and then they can't define what a woman is, but they also say that we're abusing them. These things don't make sense together. Well, the reason is because the postmoderns don't care. They don't care about the truth.

All they want is a secular revolution. And Foucault even says that. I've got a great quote from Foucault in the end when he says, hey, sometimes we use contradictory arguments in order just to win. It doesn't matter that they're not congruent because they don't believe there's anything that's saying the truth.

They will admit to doing that. So really all it is is a leftist progressive secular revolution against the truth and against Christianity. And the reason that really matters is that I believe that that is the reason that we all feel so chaotic all the time because we're living in a world of absolute contradictions all of the time. Here's a contradiction for you. In America we have a group called Queers for Palestine. These people could never go to the Gaza Strip, as you've talked about on your show a billion times, they could never go to the Gaza Strip and live as queer people and a man dressed as a woman or vice versa or live an openly LGBT lifestyle.

They could never do it there. So why are they fighting? The contradictions don't matter to them.

The only thing they want is revolution. And once Christians understand that, I think we can begin to fight that battle with the truth of God more confidently. Yeah, Jon, two minutes left. You recently shared a testimony with you how someone had come to faith through your podcast. You hear these things. I know it's tremendously encouraging. Just share a quick testimony with us. Oh, man. So many amazing testimonies, you guys. I'd like to give you this one, which is pretty cool.

I have a young adults group that we did at my church. This is in 2020. And I began talking about these things and talking about the law of God is not arbitrary. God's commands are not arbitrary. They actually make sense. And if Christians, if we can learn and think deeply about this, we will be able to communicate to the world and maybe their eyes will be open. And I just want to encourage people. I've had three people from my young adults group who were under, they were about to get fired for not signing these forms that say, you know, that I believe that a trans man is a man.

I believe a trans woman is a woman and this and the other. They had to sign these forms. They could lose their jobs or get kicked out of college. Three of them, based on the things we discussed, went back to their employers and said, I can't sign these things. And here's my reasonable reason why. And all three cases, all three, they convinced their employers or their colleges that, that, that this was reasonable and it was a fair position and none of them lost their jobs.

So I want to tell people God's truth is real, but we have these amazing testimonies. I met somebody the other day. She, she, she's about 13 years old. She had been sexually abused for three years by her father's best friend. And she finally told her dad and her dad called the cops on his best friend.

His best friend found out and prior to his arrest, the man killed himself. And this young girl believed it was her fault. And so she went into depression and she was seeing psychiatrists. She came across skill as music. She came upon my podcast. She gave her life to Jesus after watching the podcast.

And now she's like, I don't have to see, I don't have to see those anymore shrinks. I don't need to, I don't need any more of that because Jesus is now my peace. And I know that it wasn't my fault.

And I know that it was right that I told my dad, Jesus, the work of the Holy Spirit, he is doing healing in this family. Only something that God can do. Amen. Amen. Man, that is glorious.

You share some of these with me and I rejoice, but I'm sure you hear so many more. Go to johnlcooper.com and friends, pray for John, Corey, Seth, Jen, pray for the band because God is using them on the front lines. We're in this together. Thanks man for joining us. Thank you, Michael. Another program powered by the truth network.