Lawfulness vrs Lawlessness

TNG Radio, where today's culture and timeless truths come together. It's reasoned relevant content apologetics, worldview, and answers to the questions that you need to know. From Alex McFarland Ministries, this is Truth for a New Generation Radio.

And now the man who preached in 50 states in 50 days, speaker, writer, and advocate for Christian apologetics, Dr. Alex McFarland. And finally, that has a search feature allowing you to compare any two things. Now they could be a comparison of similar things like spaghetti versus lasagna, Ford versus Chevy, or dissimilar things like a sofa to orange juice or a Hershey bar to a washing machine. It was very interesting.

Alex McFarland here, TNG Radio. But do you know what the number one most searched comparison was? It was life versus death. Life, generally positive. Death, generally negative. Isn't that something?

Life is preferable to death, even on this public website. Well, I welcome you to the program and it's great to have you listening. You know, as I record this show, and certainly as the show airs throughout North America and online, the whole world is just talking, talking, talking about the coronavirus, COVID-19. And it really has in the last two weeks just enveloped the world. The economy is suffering, the stock markets are crashing.

And I've interviewed a number of experts this week, both cultural, medical and financial. And in the weeks ahead, we're going to talk about our response to a chaotic world related to the election. I mean, three to seven months ago, even CNN was predicting that Trump would win the 2020 election in a landslide if the economy was strong. And those that want the president reelected, as I do, I hope Donald Trump gets reelected for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is his Supreme Court appointments. And soon, certainly within the next, you know, one to four years, Ruth Bader Ginsburg will recuse herself from the court or, you know, for some reason, need to be replaced. And I pray for her. And I hope God gives her good health, years of life and a relationship with Jesus. But hey, if a Democrat were to win the presidency in 2020, I can promise you Ruth Bader Ginsburg would step down from the court.

She's only remained there now because I think she's probably trying to ride out the Trump presidency and outlast him. But if Donald Trump gets reelected, he wants to put an originalist. And what that means is understanding the Constitution as originally written. And what I want to do on this program is talk about a contrast of not life versus death, not necessarily prosperity versus adversity, but lawfulness versus lawlessness.

Because one of the things the president has done in appointing Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and literally dozens and dozens of lower court appointees, he very wisely has appointed people that not only believe in the Constitution as originally written, but also believe in morals. Now, Jefferson in the Declaration used the term self-evident truth, my next book that I've been working on, and it's going to come out pretty soon. But my next book is on the topic of natural law. Now, when the founders wrote about, quote, the laws of nature and nature's God, what they were talking about were these undeniable objective moral truths, the ethical and moral boundaries that define life and reality. Now, folks, one of the things if you take logic or much philosophy, and if you take logic and philosophy from a teacher that believes in moral truth, and what we call epistemic realism.

Now hang with me here. Epistemology is from a Greek word pisteau. Pisteau is trust, but it's also knowledge. It's how we know things. And when the Bible talks about putting our faith in Jesus, our belief, it means trust, but it's trust based on knowledge.

What do we know? Well, we know that Jesus is the Son of God and he rose from the dead. And we accept that on faith, but we are justified in believing that because there's an empty tomb, there's the eyewitness testimony of the apostles, there's the changed lives of millions of people.

There's even things like the Jewish Christians in the first and second centuries worshipped on Sunday, Resurrection Day. So there are compelling reasons to make the decision to trust Christ. And yes, it is faith, but it's not a blind faith. It's faith based on knowledge. And lest you think that that's some kind of a leap into the dark, I want to remind you, we all make faith decisions all the time.

We eat in restaurants, we don't interview all the cooks, we don't look at all the expiration dates of the food in the kitchen. We just trust and we make a justified, measured decision. And that's faith. And if you've ever flown on an airplane, you've really exercised faith. Well, the word for faith based on knowledge is pistuo. Now we get a word from that epistemology. Now your epistemology, if you live in the Western world, as most of us do, is a belief system called realism. In other words, there is a real world and we can know things about it. Now, academics and politics and culture in recent decades has turned away from that to really subjectivism, meaning that we all make up reality for ourselves. And that's just not rational.

That's delusional. Now stay tuned because when TNG radio gets back, we're going to talk about lawfulness versus lawlessness. I want you to stay tuned. I know we're laying sort of a deep foundation here, but it's all going to make sense. We'll connect the dots and we'll talk about our response to a chaotic world when TNG radio gets back.

Don't go away. From I Am A Watchman Ministries, here's today's I Am A Watchman Minute. Did you know God provides clues, prophetic signs to announce and confirm His working? It's important that God's people correctly identify and interpret these signs.

In Luke 12, Jesus rebuked the crowds for being able to identify and interpret signs, which predicted the weather, but were unable to identify and interpret the signs which announced His coming and accompanied His ministry. Today, watchmen are to watch for and be spurred on by the prophetic signs that indicate the return of the Lord is near. Watchmen do not just watch, they work to see that as many as possible are ready for the return of the Lord. Visit IAmAWatchman.com to learn more about these times and what it is to be a watchman for Jesus Christ. Be bold, be faithful, be a watchman. IAmAWatchman.com You don't need to have a Bible degree from Liberty University to love, serve, pray, worship, or obey God, but it can make life more vibrant when you do. When you're ready for a religious studies degree, you'll find more than 60 ministry degree options from a bachelor's to a doctor of ministry, and you'll pay one low block rate for divinity courses at Liberty University, where we train champions for Christ. Go to Liberty.edu backslash explore to learn more.

That's Liberty.edu backslash explore to learn more. We care about justice and aren't afraid to ask hard questions. In fact, we care about a lot of things. We have passion for truth. We are engage magazine.net, an online group of millennials brought together by a common goal to share truth, apply scripture, and to get involved in our lost and hurting world. Engage magazine.net, host discussions that help you apply a biblical worldview to your daily life.

Engage magazine.net. Christians don't necessarily agree with one another when it comes to questions of religious pluralism, homosexuality, the role of government abortion and war. Too often we manage these disagreements by ignoring them. Yet we're called to engage the world for the sake of Christ. How can we be effective if we avoid society's most pressing questions in 10 issues that divide Christians? Alex McFarland challenges us to drill down to the biblical core of 10 current issues such as social justice, evil and suffering, pornography and environmentalism as he echoes the biblical invitation, come let us reason together. Only by engaging the scriptures deeply, thinking clearly and speaking truthfully, can we and God's family address our differences and discover the peace that comes with unity of purpose. 10 issues that divide Christians. Find this book and many others at AlexMcFarland.com. Welcome back to Truth For A New Generation.

Alex McFarland here. We're talking about lawfulness versus lawlessness. And one of the reasons that it is so imperative that our culture rediscover a moral conscience is because of this. Look, your behavior emanates from your beliefs. And if we don't believe that there are things true, if we don't believe there is good to pursue and evil to avoid, we're just going to have a lawless culture. Before the break I was talking about epistemology.

How we know what we know from the Greek word pistuo. And the epistemology of our world, really for 2,000 years, has been what's called realism. Now belief in the real world is very godly. There is truth. We can know things. Man is made in God's image. Man can think.

Man can reason. And man can not only know truth about this world, by God's grace we can know truth about eternity. We can actually know what God has revealed about himself. And we can be prepared to meet God one day through a relationship with his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. But you've got to understand, largely since the 60s in America and the West, in academia there's been a radical turn against realism.

To what? To relativism and subjectivism. Now objectivity and realism says that there is truth and I can discover it. Subjectivity and relativism says that there is not truth.

I determine my own reality. That's why we've got people nowadays, folks, they may be a genetic female or a genetic male, but they identify as something else. Facebook, may heaven help us, has something like 81 genders. And oh boy, if you really want to create a firestorm, you just go to a university campus and declare that you believe in binary gender.

Binary is two, male and female. And my goodness, because people have abandoned belief in God, abandoned belief in objective truth, we are lost in this sea of relativism, subjectivism, slash delusion. I mean, I might believe that I could play NBA basketball, but at 56 years old, 5 foot 7, and probably 20 pounds overweight, I could believe it as hard as my little heart could muster. But I do not have a future in the NBA, because realism trumps emotions and feelings and misconceptions any day of the week.

We can have tightly held misconceptions, but realism plays the trump card. Now, why am I saying all this? It's because we must, we must get back to a humble posture before God and truth and the real world. Maybe this coronavirus that is taking away image and money and rocking the world, maybe it is something God has allowed to bring us back into focus of reality.

Now, let me just say this. In Deuteronomy chapter 11, the people of Israel are about to enter the promised land, and they gather on two mountainsides, Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, and the people, along with the priests, declare their allegiance to Jehovah God, the one true God, and they promised to follow his laws. Now, at a time when most of the tribes of the world were polytheistic, in other words, they believed in many gods, Israel was monotheistic, and God's reveal laws were followed rather than man's subjective customs being followed.

This was a very significant moment in Israel's history. And so God has them gather on these two mountaintops, and Joshua is instructed with very specific detail to build an altar, which, by the way, in 1987 excavations at the northern corner of Mount Ebal, archaeologists found what is believed to be the altar of Joshua. Now, in Deuteronomy, Moses had given very detailed instructions regarding the building of an altar, and it was to be made of stones, parched on the outside with lime, and no iron tools were to be used in the building of this altar.

And the digging out of this area in 1987 revealed the bones of many kosher animals, presumably made as sacrifices amidst stone and ash. And that may have been the altar that was built there. But the way to remember this, these two mountainsides, Gerizim, Good, Ebal, because God says, here now, if you follow God in his decrees, you'll be blessed, you'll have favor, and if you abandon God in his decrees, you'll have judgment. So Gerizim were the promises of blessing, Ebal were the warnings about judgment. Now, in a similar way, the Declaration of Independence and America's founders pledging to build a nation on God's laws is almost like Israel. President Harry Truman in 1948 said that America was based on, quote, the Decalogue. He really said, Exodus, Isaiah, and Matthew formed the foundation for America's government. Now, in Exodus, he was no doubt referring to Exodus 21-17, the Ten Commandments.

That's the Decalogue. Isaiah, prophet, priest, and king, that's an allusion to three branches of government. Harry Truman understood what very few understand today. And then Matthew, he was talking about the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7. So this was hugely, the way that we were founded, good civil government meshed with God's word.

This was hugely significant in the history of nations. Now, Israel wouldn't always follow God's ways, and their vacillations are recorded in the Old Testament. And America hasn't always honored the precepts of our Constitution as influential court decisions of the last 30 years document, like Roe vs. Wade, and the Obergefell decision in 2015 that invented not a natural right, not a constitutionally protected right, but a manufactured artificial right, the right to gay marriage. So America hasn't always followed our founding precepts either. But, failures and foibles aside, the foundational laws of God are there, undergirding both Biblical Israel and the USA. So when we come back, we're going to talk about truth, morals, objective reality, rather than subjective opinionism.

We're going to contrast lawfulness versus lawlessness. And the future that we experience, we're in the process of choosing right now. May God help us to choose wisely. May God help us to choose wisely.

May God help us to choose wisely. If you're a Christian parent, you of course want to instill a Biblical view of life in the hearts of your children. If you're a pastor, you want to offer ministry that draws young families to your church. This is Alex McFarland encouraging you to check out my new book and video curriculum, The 21 Toughest Questions Your Kids Will Ask About Christianity. Why do bad things happen? We interviewed hundreds of children, ages 5 to 12, and we address actual questions from actual children, the spiritual issues that are on the minds of your kids.

Did Jesus ever sin? The 21 Toughest Questions Your Kids Will Ask about Christianity. In the midst of a culture obsessed with relativism, Alex McFarland is a voice you can trust to speak the timeless truths of Christianity in a timely way. You're listening to Truth for a New Generation Radio. Welcome back to TNG Radio, Alex McFarland. So glad you're with us.

I want to continue our discussion of lawlessness versus lawfulness. I do want to say a big thank you to people who came to our recent event at Ridgecrest. We were in western North Carolina. We had people come from across the nation. I'm deeply grateful for that. We talked about what Truth for a New Generation is doing in the way of events, publishing, and broadcasting. We're trying to evangelize the lost and equip the saved. God has blessed us. I give God the glory through our various radio, online, our events. I'm on the road speaking continually.

I'm somewhere. And then we have events and conferences we organize, and then we distribute over $70,000 worth of literature a year of the books. The Lord has allowed me to write booklets, and then we occasionally purchase some books by other great authors that we believe in. People like Josh McDowell and Lee Strobel and some trusted authors. We see about 2,500 to 3,000 people a year make a salvation decision for Christ.

And most of these are young adults, 20-somethings and younger, teenagers and college students. And that's our heartbeat. I also was able to report to the people at the recent retreat about our equipping myself and others going to churches and equipping the church to defend the faith. And so we value your prayers. My website is alexmcfarland.com.

alexmcfarland.com. Now, let me talk about lawfulness versus lawlessness. Part of the reason that America has been the shining beacon to the world is because, like Israel of old, we were based on God's laws. Now, it's not just the fact that they are the laws of God. These are the moral truths written on the heart of all human beings.

All human beings have a moral conscience. And so, anytime you talk about moral boundaries, most people that really don't understand our Constitution Bill of Rights, they will say, Separation of church and state, First Amendment, Congress will make no law regarding the establishment of religion. But what we need to help people understand, and if I could, I would put it on billboards across this nation, morality and religion are two different things. The non-establishment clause of the First Amendment that says Congress will make no law regarding the establishment of religion, even though clearly Christianity was the pervasive belief system of the founders, and it really was for more than 200 years, only up until the last really 15, 20 years, has Christianity begun to seriously erode in America due to the unrelenting militant secularism of public education, and really the Democrat Party, and the liberal judges that they've put in place. But let me say this, while Christianity was the default position of the founders, and for our culture for most of America's history, listen carefully please, in no way did the non-establishment of religion clause in the First Amendment mean that we should abandon morality. The cultural cry that the government not show preference to Christianity has really migrated into a cultural assumption that we cannot recognize any moral boundaries.

And that's why we really are on the cusp of lawlessness, and let me say this, if the coronavirus doesn't really become contained and get reined in, if we experience shortages and look, the world's stability really could unravel. That's why Reagan called America the city on a hill, and that's why it is in the best interest. The three great Judeo-Christian superpowers, America, Britain, and Israel, although thankfully there are some other nations that are becoming more and more Christian, but that's why it really is in the best interest of people everywhere to care about the preservation of Christianity. Even if you're not a Christian, if you're listening to this program and you're a skeptic or an agnostic, and I know that we have many listeners who are because I hear from you and I'm thankful to, but listen, Christianity is like gravity. You benefit from it even if you don't know about it or necessarily believe in it, because Christianity is that stability, that glue that holds a culture stably together. As my friend, the late great Chuck Colson, would say, Christianity is the conscience of the culture.

The coronavirus is an indicator of how quickly the world could digress into panic, hysteria, and lawlessness when people become afraid, when people don't know what the future holds, and there's unrest and apprehension that motivates people to do just very irrational things. So let me say this, and we're going to have to pick this up at a future date. In the early church, Tertullian was a Christian leader and he said this, that the skeptics would say of the church, my, how they love one another.

He wrote a book called Apology and it was a defense of the Christian religion, and so Tertullian would say that the non-believers would say how they love each other. Now may that be said of the church today, and let's in a world that teeters on the brink of lawlessness, let's show them the rationality, the reasonableness of lawfulness, because truth exists, truth can be known, truth can and must shape our lives, and truth is real, truth is objective, and truth is knowable because of the orderly, revelatory God who created this universe and who put us in it. Friends, this is no time to be in a panic, this is no time to be depressed or despondent.

This is a time to be excited because we have great opportunity. In a world unraveling, we can show the world the stability, the rock-solid security, and yes, the transcendent peace possible available to all through Jesus Christ. From the streets of Beijing to Main Street USA, Jesus offers himself to all people.

And you know what? As toxic as the coronavirus might be, what's even more destructive is sin. And through Jesus, we have not only forgiveness of sin, but peace in the midst of life's storms. Stand for truth.

Stand for lawfulness. And let's help the world understand how relevant this is to all people. Call us at 877-YES-GOD-1.

That's 877-YES-GOD and the number 1. Or give online at AlexMcFarland.com. While you're there, listen to Program Archives, read Alex's blog, invite Alex to speak at your event, or contact Alex with a question or comment. AlexMcFarland.com. Thanks for listening today, and join us again next time as we bring you more truth for a new generation on TNG Radio.