Pastor Tim Keller, DEAD at 72!

The following program is recorded content created by SteveNobleShow.com.

And now here's your host, Steve Noble. It was a sermon that I listened to probably eight to ten times. And it was probably about, wow, six, seven, eight years ago. And so I listened to the sermon eight to ten times because there was one particular section of the sermon the pastor was preaching that really just kind of rocked my world as a Christian.

And especially as a Christian that talks a lot, not only here, but in classrooms and pretty much wherever I go unless I'm asleep, I tend to have that problem. And so I'll never forget it. And I've quoted it often.

You've probably heard me say it here on the show. If you're all truth and no grace, you're a bully. But if you're all grace and no truth, you're a coward. John, chapter one, verse 14.

Jesus, full of both grace and truth. And that was Pastor Tim Keller, who had preached that message, who I had listened to. There was a period of time when I listened to a lot of Tim Keller and mostly when I was at the gym. I listened to Tim Keller and I listened to back in the day, Robbie Zacharias.

And I would listen to some news podcasts. And the reason that I was drawn to that message was because I had listened to a lot of people. I listened to Tim Keller. I think started when I heard about the way he was interacting with the skeptics and he was surrounded by them in New York City at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, which was a PCA church Presbyterian Church in America, an evangelical church. That after the sermons on Sundays, he would invite seekers and visitors and skeptics to stay after the message, stay after the stay after the service was over.

And he'd come down front of the stage and just simply answer questions, ask whatever question you wanted. And that was really convicting to me and encouraging that a Christian didn't have to be on our on your heels. You were actually if you're a good student of scripture and you have a solid theology in a quick mind and a quick wit and a heart for people. You lean into that. You don't need to hide. You don't have to worry.

You lean into it. And the reason Tim Keller did that was because he loved people. Tim Keller went to be with the Lord today, a long, productive life, to say the least, died after a battle with pancreatic cancer for the last four years. And he was born in 1950 and died earlier today.

His son wrote this on Facebook. Timothy J. Keller, husband, father, grandfather, mentor, friend, pastor and scholar, died this morning at home. Dad waited until he was alone with mom.

If you're married, just think about that for a second. She kissed him on the forehead and he breathed his last breath. We take comfort in some of his last words, quote, There is no downside for me leaving, not in the slightest.

See you soon, dad. That's what his son wrote. The reason for God was his biggest bestseller wrote like 31 books. But the reason for God, which was really an apologetics work, was based on all those interactions with people that he had at his church in New York City.

I mean, if you want to plant a church in a tough spot, go to New York City. But Tim Keller just had this incredible ability. He was a very gentle person, wise as a serpent, gentle as a dove. And in case you're being triggered right now, there were there were some things in the last few years, especially with the political era and Trump and some other things that I was like really disappointed.

Some positions he took and some things he said. But that's just part of it. And if you and if you take some political statements that you disagree with from a fellow follower of Jesus Christ and there's no doubt that he was and somebody with a profound kingdom impact and there's no doubt that he had one. And then you throw it all out, throw the baby out with the bathwater. Shame on you. If politics is so powerful in your life that somebody that's preached the gospel more than pretty much anybody listening to the show or myself and reach more people and taught more people and taught the word of God as much as he did and affected a city as much as he did, to throw all that out because you disagreed with him or I disagreed with him on some political things here and there in the last few years is ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And I guarantee you that's happening out there.

Hopefully it's not too many people. But that book, The Reason for God, was just incredible. The meaning of marriage. We did that in our small group as a six or seven or eight couples, and that was super powerful. The Prodigal God was a great book. And just his preaching in general was incredible. And he just had an incredible, profound impact and died at 72 this morning. He was married to Kathy Louise Christie of Pittsburgh in January 1975.

They raised three sons as a family. The Kellers planted Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City in 1989, which grew to a weekly attendance of over 5000 people in New York City. And through which God brought many other fruitful ministries such as Redeemer City to City, Hope for New York and Redeemer Counseling Services. I have a dear friend who's on my board who was at Redeemer and it was just amazing the stories he's told me about all the ways that that church under Kellers leadership and the power of the Holy Spirit was touching the city of New York. After stepping down as senior pastor of Redeemer in July of 2017, he continued to serve city to city full time. A ministry that has helped start more than 1000 churches in over 150 cities and trained or reached more than 79,000 leaders. He was ordained in the Presbyterian Church in America in 1975, served as a pastor at West Hopewell Presbyterian Church and then Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City.

That was 89 through 2017. Amazing. He taught at Westminster Seminary for a while. He got his degrees there.

Gordon Conwell, Westminster Seminary, which is in Philadelphia, Bucknell University, where he got his bachelor's degree. Just an incredible mind and incredible communicator and an incredible teacher. And I think just a great example of what it means to be full of both grace and truth. And somebody that's as wise as a serpent and as gentle as a dove.

He had this disarming way about him, which I'm sure was a pretty good representation of his father in heaven, who he's now met face to face. Let that sink in. I'm sure he heard those words.

We all long to hear. Well done. Good and faithful servant, Pastor Tim Keller, 1952, this morning in 2023. This is Steve Noble on The Steve Noble Show. Grateful for the way that man touched my life. Never had a chance to meet him in person, but that won't be a problem once my day comes. This is Steve Noble. We'll be right back. Well, here's a question for you.

Welcome back at Steve Noble, The Steve Noble Show. Do you trust the government? That's getting harder and harder all the time, is it not, to trust the government?

So I'm going to go through a few stories there. Shot across the bow for all of us that make sure we are sufficiently skeptical about the federal government and its increasing problems with tyranny. And then a little note here. Tim Scott, South Carolina, officially entering the race. He's filing, FEC filing shows that he's entering the race for the White House. So that'll be interesting. Tim Scott, great, great man, is a believer, very, I think he's a very effective communicator.

He's very gentle, but smart. And so it'll be interesting to see. Once he gets in there with Tim Scott and Nikki Haley and of course Trump. And then I heard a story this morning that there was a little leak that DeSantis would officially be announcing sometime the end of next week before Memorial Day. And so there's that. So this is going to get interesting fast.

And so we'll have that to talk about this summer. Yesterday, I finished teaching my last class for the school year, which is great. I was asking all my students, I mean, am I an ogre or something? Because I'm like, is this their last class of the whole semester?

Mr. Noble's class, be it Christian ethics or U.S. history or civics. And they're all like, yeah, like, yeah, sorry. Are you guys excited to be done? They're like, yeah. And I'm like, hey, so am I. You don't want to see me next week and I don't want to see you. God bless you.

Get out. It was great. Anyway, we had a great school year. On that note, by the way, God continues to bless the teaching side of my life. So that's Noble U now. And that's in-person classes in North Raleigh, where I live, and also down in Cary at an outstanding church down there, Shepherd's Church, which was formerly Colonial Baptist.

Steven Davies, the pastor there, incredible man. And then online. So I have all four of my classes this fall will be online as well. U.S. history, world history, which I'm adding. So I'm spending my summer prepping for world history, civics and then Christian ethics. But all four of those will be online.

This is pretty much eighth through 12th grade. You can actually audit them, too. So if you're an adult, which pretty much everybody watching or listening right now is, you can audit those as well. I had probably 10, 15 or 20 people audit the classes just this year. First year I've ever put anything online. But right now, all my classes, I'm right at about 73 percent full.

And it's not even the end of May. OK, and classes don't start until August. So you might want to if you've got sons or grandsons, grandsons, sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, you might want to make a move and get checked out and see, see about my classes. You can go online. Noble U School dot com if you want. Noble U like university. Noble U School dot com or just text. You can do that.

Text the word truth to 66866. And that'll get you in some information and we'll get to get the ball rolling and just give you information. Check it out and see if that's good for son or daughter, grandson, granddaughter. Or if you want to audit any of those classes as an adult, I guarantee you will benefit.

Noble U School dot com or text truth to 66866. OK. This was funny, kind of. I heard this one yesterday. I think it was.

Yeah, this was the Buck Sexton and Clay Travis. The story came out just in the last 24 hours. It was on Epoch Times, but you can find it in other places. Researchers at the Department of Defense wrote a devastating takedown of the it's called the proximal origin story, which was used by Dr. Anthony Fauci as proof that the covid 19 virus had come from nature. OK, that's still Fauci's lead position that it was, you know, some bats or whatever and wet market, whatever.

They're in Wuhan. And so this research is at the Department of Defense. Right.

DARPA, which is they're like crazy bio engineering craziness stuff in the DOD. So this letter is just an absolute takedown. But the thing about about the letter is it was written. On it was released on May 26th, 2020.

Isn't that interesting? May 26th, 2020. It was authored by Commander John Paul Crichton, a Navy doctor working at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA and Dr. Robert Cutlip, a research scientist at the Defense Intelligence Agency. The paper came to light on May 15th, just a couple of days ago when it was leaked to the public. The working paper forensically dismantles the natural origin case made in proximal origin and concludes, quote, the arguments that Anderson et al, the original paper used to support a natural origin scenario, which is what Fauci wanted you to believe for covid are based not on scientific analysis, but on unwarranted assumptions or cover your rear end. The existence of this internal Pentagon paper is crucial as it proves that government officials.

Remember what we're talking about now. Government officials were well aware in the early months of the pandemic. Did Trump know that there was no evidence in support of a natural origin in the covid-19 virus? Additionally, given the crushing discrediting of proximal origin, Pentagon officials would also have been aware of Fauci's efforts to seed a false narrative about the origin of covid-19.

Where's the justice in all of this? Proximal origin was initially conceived by Fauci during a secret teleconference held on February 1st of 2020. The ostensible purpose of the teleconference was to deflect attention from a possible lab origin of covid-19 and to shift the focus to a natural origin theory. Fauci directed a number of scientists to open to pen a study that could be used to discredit the lab leak theory.

Despite on why and why do that? Because he was involved in the funding of gain of function research in Wuhan. Despite being directly involved in the inception of the paper, as well as in shaping its arguments, Fauci's role was concealed from the public.

Fauci later bestowed Anderson and Gary with lavish taxpayer funded grants. The people that wrote the paper that he used, you know, lied all of us. The defects in proximal origin were immediately noticed by reviewers at Science Journal Nature. This fact only became known late last year from emails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act.

That's right, you had to go dig for it and use the law. However, with the help of Jeremy Farrar, who now is the chief scientist of the World Health Organization and who has helped Fauci shape the natural origin and narrative, proximal origin was accepted for publication in nature medicine on March 17, 2020. Of course, it was. It boldly concluded that no laboratory scenario is plausible, which we know is a lie. In April 17, 2020, President Donald Trump confirmed that the covid-19 pandemic likely started in a Wuhan laboratory in China. On the same day, while attending a White House press conference, Fauci categorically dismissed the possibility of a lab origin of covid-19, citing proximal origin as corroboration, right? The letter that he helped craft and then pressure to give a bogus answer as opposed to the real one, which was the Wuhan lab created it.

Proximal origin became the media's go to natural origin authority. And this is I hold Trump accountable for all this mess because he he was he managed that whole thing loosely. He got all into the Operation Warp Speed because he wanted to be able to say that he saved millions and millions of lives, which I don't think he did. And and he should have been managing this as a crisis mode, like a wartime president. And he and he didn't. Yet while the public was being told by Fauci and the media that proximal origin had settled the origin and I voted for him twice, by the way. So back off a little. Pentagon researchers came to a very different conclusion.

Of course, Creighton and Cutlip found that the covid-19 features with proximal origin described in natural evolution were actually, quote, consistent with another scenario that SARS covid-2 was developed in a lab by methods that leading coronavirus researchers commonly used to investigate how the viruses infect cells and cause disease, assess the potential for animal coronavirus to jump to humans. That's called gain of function. We'll pick it up there when we come back. Unfortunately, you cannot.

Trust the federal government in general. Unfortunately, it's not unfortunate. It's definitely unfortunate. Welcome back at Steve Noble, the Steve Noble Show.

Good to be with you. It's totally unfortunate. It's just a total bummer and it's getting worse. And the FBI, the Department of Justice is at the center of it, which is the weaponization of the Department of Justice is very scary. I talked about to my students about this, I don't know, a couple of months ago when some more information came out about Kennedy's assassination and the CIA's involvement with Lee Harvey Oswald and all that kind of mess. And I said to my students, unfortunately, and this is going to sound terrible, unfortunately, if they actually came out and said yes, the CIA collaborated with Lee Harvey Oswald and others to assassinate the president of the United States. Like if that actually came out and we and we actually now we know that our own government assassinated the head of the executive branch. Let's say that that that was all a done deal.

What do you think would happen in this country as a result of it? An outrage? An uproar? Do you think anybody's going to storm the Capitol? No. Do you think anybody's going to surround the White House?

No. I think, unfortunately, that story would be gone for the most part in a week or two. Wow, I can't believe that happened. That's terrible.

Well, we got to make sure that never happens again. It's sad, isn't it? And you wonder why in First Timothy, chapter two, the Lord commands us to pray for those in authority over us. I wonder why that is.

Because they need it. Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's your part.

That's my part. I can't go drain the swamp, but I can pray about the swamp being drained. And we can pray for people from the president on down both sides of the aisle as we should.

And it should be pretty obvious, isn't it obvious now why we need to do that? Pray one Tim to dot org. Go there. Pray one Tim to dot org. Click on your state.

For most of you, that's North Carolina. Click on your state and sign up for the email that comes to you every day, really early in the morning. And it'll give you five or six or seven legislators to pray for so that you can be in compliance with God's command to us to pray for those in authority over us. I thank God for my friends at Capitol Commission and that and that daily email, because it's helped me walk more closely with the Lord with respect to that command. So you should do that as well. Pray one Tim to dot org. First Timothy Chapter two is where you'll find that command.

So check that out. On June 8th, by the way, if you're anywhere near the Raleigh area, we'd like to drive in for the day. This is a really important fundraiser. We only do a couple a year. And so this is the beginning of summer one, which will carry us to our October house party. And we do both of those with my buddy Christopher Prieto, the genius behind Prime Barbecue up here in the Raleigh area. He's doing a little bit of a Mexican twist. So we'll have brisket tacos, which will be incredible.

The best brisket I've ever had outside of Texas. This is a really important fundraiser for us. Like I get this all flopped one day and the Lord's just done with this radio ministry. That's how it'll happen.

People just not give. And then that'll be it. We're done.

Literally, that literally could happen. So but he's been he's been faithful and it's his anyway. He wants to keep it going. But if you want to be a part of that, just send me an email. I'll get you an invite and come out and be a part of it. We're mostly going to talk a little update on the radio show, but mostly about the teaching side of my ministry now, which is really where my heart is for them. Mostly going into the future and just reaching more and more of these high schoolers with these really important subjects in a biblical world view and discipleship and a gospel heart.

Super, super important. So if you'd like to be a part of that fundraiser, like to come to town for it at Prime Barbecue. Just send me an email. Steve at the Steve Noble Show dot com.

Nice and easy. Steve at the Steve Noble Show dot com. Hey, Steve, I'd love to come to the fundraiser. Awesome. And please don't don't come just to eat. OK, wink, wink, wink.

Got it. And if you and if you can't come, but you'd like if you if this ministry or maybe my daily dose or whatever is a blessing to you and you'd like to help. Well, just go to the website, the Steve Noble Show dot com. And there's a donate button there.

And we need all the help we can get the Steve Noble Show dot com. Or if you actually want to come to Prime Barbecue with a fundraiser the evening of June 8th, which is really casual. We have a blast. It's it's a really cool place. And we just have a lot of fun. It's really nice, casual evening. It's not chicken and rice and wear suit, right? Wear shorts and a Star Wars T-shirt. I don't care.

It's casual. Steve at the Steve Noble Show dot com. If you want to email me about that. Suspended Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Garrett O'Boyle delivered chilling testimony on Thursday, warning his colleagues not to speak out about government corruption after he alleged that the agency left his family homeless. FBI guy, a couple of them did yesterday.

And the Democrats are being apoplectic because you're going Jim Jordan leading the effort there. The House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government, which is exactly what's been going on for decades. O'Boyle, O'Boyle advised future whistleblowers not to come forward about potential FBI corruption because of the alleged retaliation he and his family endured. North Dakota Republican Representative Kelly Armstrong asked O'Boyle what advice he would give to future whistleblowers, quote, with all the hardships you've gone through, if one of your really good friends, your former colleague, came to you and say, I have this thing that's being covered up. I think the American people need to know what to tell. O'Boyle replied, I would tell them first to pray about it long and hard.

I would tell them I could take it to Congress for them or I could put them in touch with Congress. He continued, but I would advise them not to do it. Armstrong asked, you would legitimately try to protect one of your colleagues from doing what you've done.

Absolutely, O'Boyle responded. And how would you and how do you think that solves being able to shine light on corruption, weaponization, any kind of misconduct that exists with the American people, Armstrong questioned. It doesn't solve it, O'Boyle candidly replied, before giving an eerie warning to future whistleblowers. But the FBI will crush you, he continued. This government will crush you and your family if you try to expose the truth about things they are doing that are wrong. We are all examples of that, O'Boyle stated, referring to himself along with two other FBI whistleblowers, former special agent Stephen Friend and suspended supervisory intelligence analyst George Hill, who testified in front of Congress Thursday as well.

Armstrong yielded back his time, concluding, I can't think of a more sobering way to end a hearing. No kidding. The three on the record FBI whistleblowers accused the agency of retaliatory conduct after they spoke out about the bureau's abuse and misconduct and politicized rot, i.e.

the swamp. A report released Thursday by the committee revealed allegations that the FBI unjustly investigated Americans and pressured staff to, quote, reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism and even manufactured D.V.E., domestic violent extremism cases where they may not otherwise exist. And then the FBI pushed back on them, reassigned them, suspended without pay, stuff like that.

I don't like saying it. We can't trust the federal government. Nor did the founding fathers want us to implicitly trust the federal government. That's why they built the government via the Constitution the way that they did, trying to avoid corruption in the concentration of power, and then enabled us the way that they did to hold truth accountable, to hold those in power accountable by utilizing the truth. But if you can't get to the truth, and if it's retaliatory based on telling the truth about your government, you don't live in a representative republic anymore. You live in another kind of country that we're moving towards tyranny. I often bring up Stalin's number two guy who said, show me the guy and I'll show you his crime. We'll use the power of the government to just make it look like he's a criminal and we'll deal with him, whoever's in the way.

Here's another one. FBI whistleblower testifies bureau may have had confidential human sources in the Capitol on January 6. Say it isn't so. A whistleblower from the FBI's Boston Field Office testified that agents in Washington refused to share hours of video footage from the January 6th Capitol riot between the offices because there may be undercover officers or confidential human sources in the videos whose identities would need to be protected, of course, because that would then prove the FBI was playing some role. The revelation came in a prerecorded video testimony from whistleblower George Hill, which was played during a hearing of the subcommittee that I mentioned.

Representative Matt Goetz noted that a second whistleblower who was testifying in person at the hearing, Marcus Allen, was allegedly retaliated against for sending an email linkage to a website that said federal law enforcement had some degree of infiltration among the crowds gathered at the Capitol. You can't say that because it looks like that's true. When asked whether the FBI had confidential human sources at the Capitol, Ray, the current head of the FBI, testified in November. Listen to this.

Listen very carefully to these people. Quote, I have to be very careful about what I can say, about what we do and do not, and where we have and where we have not used confidential human sources. But to the extent that there's a suggestion, for example, that the FBI's confidential human sources or FBI employees in some way instigated or orchestrated January 6, that's categorically false, Ray added at the time.

Ray later added that lawmakers should not read anything into my decision not to share anything on confidential human sources after he did not outright dismiss a question of whether the FBI had confidential human sources dressed as Trump supporters inside the Capitol on January 6. Wow. Wow. That's eye-opening.

I have to be very careful about what I can say. I'm going to go over that. A couple of things in this very short statement by Christopher Ray that I think show you exactly what's going on. And then to finish up today, if I had a known, if I had a known, would you want to know the future? Great article on that. We'll be right back. That's good, chill music when you're trying to deceive an entire nation.

Welcome back. It's Steve Noble at The Steve Noble Show. Let me finish up with this. This is the comments from Christopher Ray about I've been talking about some of these FBI whistleblowers and one guy's like, yeah, there may have been some confidential human sources in the Capitol on January 6. FBI guys.

OK. And so Christopher Ray testified in November last November. I have to be very careful about what I can say. Remember, the point here is we can't trust our federal government generally, which is why you have to question everything and be very skeptical. I have to be very careful about what I can say about what when we do and do not and where we have and have not used confidential human sources, because he doesn't want to.

It's like the NOC list in Mission Impossible, right? He doesn't want to betray the confidentiality of sources or actual FBI agents. OK, so we're going to be careful of what we say. All right.

I'm with you there, Chris. I got it. But to the extent that there's a suggestion, for example, that the FBI's confidential human sources or FBI employees in some way instigated or orchestrated January 6, that's categorically false.

OK, here's here's how you play the game. Then we'll move on. So let's let's say and I think we can all agree that most likely the FBI, in fact, had confidential human sources and probably FBI employees in the January 6 crowd. Then so Ray is not denying that because he said later, don't read anything into my decision not to share anything on confidential human sources. So I didn't tell you anything, so I don't read anything in that.

But if we did the the suggestion that they somehow instigated or orchestrated January 6, that's categorically false. OK, can you participate and manipulate without instigating or orchestrating? Think about that for a second. It's like a it's like a it's like a quiz.

It's like a riddle. Can you participate in something and manipulate something? So that's true on the one hand. But on the other hand, you did not instigate and you did not orchestrate that event.

Hey, hey, bro. Hey, bud, I didn't instigate it. I didn't orchestrate it. That being said, I did participate and to a certain extent, I did manipulate, but I didn't instigate and I didn't orchestrate. Is that am I speaking the truth there?

Bill Mann, my attorney friend on Facebook Live, am I am I. Am I making sense? Can I say that? Am I am I good there? My work, am I working the game? Well, am I doing that?

You tell me, Bill. I'm Facebook Live. I didn't instigate. I didn't orchestrate. I did participate and I did manipulate. But that doesn't mean I instigated and orchestrated. Your Honor, is that am I cool there? Can I can I do that?

Can I can I play in between those lines? Because that's what I think Christopher Ray's doing, which is why you can't trust the government. That's why we hold them accountable to the best of our ability. Pray for them. Absolutely. Pray for justice and truth, transparency.

But trust them as far as I can throw them. Jane, very far. All right. Thanks for this one, Bill. This one by Bill Muhlenberg, who's got a good website, Bill Muhlenberg dot com.

It's called Culture Watch and pretty good website. Bill has spent some time on that this afternoon. If I had a known I like this one. So I want to I want to finish with this. And we had, by the way, yesterday on Theology Thursday, really powerful. Dr. Vogt from Bob Jones University, the science department down there sharing his cancer journey, which he's currently still in. And really powerful, open conversation yesterday about God's providence.

So go check that out. Make sure Facebook Live rumble the podcast. Is that podcast up yet, Josh? It'll be up tonight.

OK, wherever you get your major podcast platforms. If I had a known by Bill Muhlenberg, it's a blessing of God that he it's a blessing of God that he does not show us all that would will befall us as believers in the years ahead. How many new Christians would be deterred from going on if they had a fuller picture of what they would have to go through in their journey with Christ? So in his mercy, he seldom reveals to us early on the things that we will go through and deal with. Of course, this does not mean we are never told of what lies ahead. Sometimes God does offer his saints a pretty solid glimpse of what will be their lot.

For example, in Acts nine, we that's the conversion of Saul. Right. And he's like, hey, here's what's going to happen here in a nice town. Tell them what's the deal. And then, hey, this isn't going to go well for you.

You're going to have some problem. We know that Paul suffered massively for his faith and he endured heaps of persecution and opposition. So in this case, God actually warned him well ahead of time that this would be the path he must travel on.

To be forewarned is to be forearmed. But generally speaking, most believers are only given as much light as they need for their immediate future, as is often mentioned when we read passages like Psalm 119 105. Your word is light into my feet. We understand that we get enough light for each step we take and not for miles ahead. We have the general word of God always with us, but specific guidance and particular divine leading may well be piecemeal and partial. Obviously, if we knew all the details of our overall journey beforehand, we would have little need for faith and trust in God because we would be working the thing ourselves.

Right. Not knowing much about our path ahead keeps us dependent upon God and means we cannot rely on ourselves. We need him every step of the way. Yes, it's riskier this way and we may feel quite insecure and uncertain at times. But if that drives us to our knees and makes us even more fully trusting in him, that's all for the good. Also, if so much about the upcoming years was revealed to us long ago, most of us would have been too freaked out to want to go on. We would have complained to God and told him that those upcoming burdens and trials would be too much for us to handle.

We would tend to want to tell God thanks, but no thanks. When I became a Christian nearly 52 years ago, this is Bill Muhlenberg writing, obviously, because I'm super young. Little did I know what would have happened over the decades to follow. That included all sorts of things as living in different places, getting several academic degrees, living in a bunch of places like Australia. Over the past half century, there have been various trials and hardships, but it's the past three and a half years that really have been the hardest for me. I certainly would have been quite spooked had I known all about them beforehand.

I refer to two things. First, he says, there was two years of Covid lockdown hell because he was in Australia. A few other places on earth had such drawn out draconian and deranged measures inflicted upon us by a heavy handed government drunk on power and control.

It really was miserable for all of us, but a few here in Melbourne. And then right after that started to come to an end, we learned of my wife's terminal cancer condition. Needless to say, that too has been a very hard road to travel on for both of us.

It is still ongoing and just where and when things will end up is another huge unknown. Here, too, we can only take one step at a time, trusting God along the way. And I know some some.

Somebody needs to hear this. Of course, as is often said, God gives us grace for when we need it, not beforehand. Christians often say they wonder if they could withstand severe persecution, if they'd ever came to them. They think they could not hold up. But the grace to endure will only come when we go through such things.

And it is true here. God has given us heaps of grace over the past few years, and that is sufficient. But again, had I known years ago all this was going to befall us, I might have had second thoughts about trusting God and serving him fully, regardless of what might take place. So in our case, he writes, as with all of us, it was a grace given to us by God not to be told everything ahead of time. Let me read that again. So in our case, as with all of us, it was a grace given to us by God not to be told everything ahead of time.

Many others know this reality. Some years ago, John Bloom penned a short piece titled God is Merciful Not to Tell Us Everything. In it, he said this. In her book, The Hiding Place, Corrie Ten Boom recalled the time when, as a young girl, she was returning home on the train with her father after accompanying him to purchase parts for his watchmaking business. Having heard the term sex sin in a poem at school, she asked her father what it meant. After thinking for a bit, her father stood up and took down a suitcase from the rack. And this is how Corrie remembers their conversation. Will you carry it off the train, Corrie, he said. I stood up and tugged at it.

This is Corrie Boom writing. It was crammed with watches and spare parts he had purchased that morning. It's too heavy, I said.

Yes, he said. And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It's the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children.

Boy, should our culture hear that. When you are older and stronger, you can bear it. For now, you must trust me to carry it for you. God is also a wise father who knows when knowledge is too heavy for us.

He's not being deceptive when he does not give us the full explanation. He is carrying our burdens for us. Yes, if we think our burdens are heavy, we should see the ones he's carrying, the burden he gives us to carry our light.

Right. Matthew 1130. The sorts of things I'm now going through, I would not have imagined when I became a new believer at age 18. Had I known what was to come, I might have had second thoughts about the Christianity thing. But God is wise enough and loving enough to tell us all that we need to know and keep from us, at least for a while, what we do not need to know. And it should be pointed out that this is not just true of our own personal situations, but of what is going on in the wider world as well. God tells us all we need to know about global political and cultural events as well, but not everything.

A short part of a sermon Billy Graham preached 50 years ago in St. Louis is worth concluding with here. Habakkuk said, Lord, please tell me what you're doing. And God said, no, I'm not going to tell you Habakkuk, because if I told you what I was doing, you wouldn't believe it. If God today told us what he's doing in the world, we wouldn't believe it. Don't you think God's given up and God's abdicated and God's left the throne? He hasn't.

He's still on the throne. And those of us that know him put our trust in him and him alone. I don't put my trust, Billy Graham said in Washington. I don't put my trust in the United Nations. I don't put my trust in myself. I don't put trust in my money. I put my trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. When all the rest of it fails and crumbles and shatters, he'll be there.

Amen to that. God doesn't give us everything there is to know. He gives you what you need to know.

Remember that. And trust in God's providence based on God's character. If you struggle with God's providence in your life, study his character more. The more you know his character, the more you'll trust in his providence. Just thought that would be a good way to finish our week together. This is Steve Noble on The Steve Noble Show. God willing, I'll talk to you again real soon. And like my dad always used to say, ever forward. Another program powered by the Truth Network.