This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Truth Talk Live. I am Peter Rosenberger. Glad to be with you today.
If you want to be a part of the program, the number is 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. Let me start with a question today. Have you ever looked at your life, your circumstances, things that you're going through and thought to yourself, this is so ridiculous, it has to be God?
Have you ever had that question in your mind? Most of you know my story. Okay, and I'm still, by the way, in Aurora, Colorado. We've been here now almost five months in the hospital with this very, very lengthy stay.
It doesn't show many signs of slowing down. I've been a caregiver for four decades for my wife. She was critically injured back in 1983, nearly 100. She's had now 98 surgeries. Both of her legs amputated tens of millions now of dollars in medical bills, countless hospital stays.
Okay. That's the back story. And I was talking about this with my mother last week and just this journey that we were supposed to come here for two operations, get it fixed, and then leave and go back to our home. We'd be back home by the middle of March tops.
And here we are now heading towards the middle of June before we can get out of here. And my mother said, this is so ridiculous, it has to be God. And I thought, well, that's a statement right there, isn't it? And she wasn't saying this from a place of scorn. She was saying this from a place of faith. As a believer, I gave up the whole notion of coincidence a long time ago, happenstance, chance, that how does that fit into a biblical worldview? How does that fit into the biblical narrative? And so when you say something like this, like my mother said, this is so ridiculous, it has to be God.
It is a statement of faith saying that God is working in this and our minds can't comprehend it. Let's go back to scripture. Let's go back with God. Go back to Isaiah 55 eight. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways. My ways declares the Lord.
Well, now I go back again to my driving question I've had for several months now. Christian, what do you believe? Do we believe this or not?
Okay, do we believe it or not? It's just that simple. Let's look at the pattern that God has of doing things that are just ridiculous.
That people look at and scratch their heads. I mean, think about it. From what I understand from biblical scholars, rain was not something that people knew about until Noah's time. In fact, if you go back and look in Genesis two, five through six, when no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground. Okay, so rain.
Rain as we knew it was not a part of the lifestyle of people there during the days of Noah. And then all of a sudden this guy starts building this massive boat out in the middle of wherever. And I think this thing took him the span of, I don't know, maybe even up to a hundred years. And he's doing this out of just sheer obedience. And do you not think that the people around him were mocking him?
And calling him all kinds of names or being derisive or whatever? It was just so ridiculous. Until the rains came. Think about Moses. You remember when the snakes bit all these people because they were mumbling against God? And God told Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it up on a pole and had the people look at it and then they be healed?
That was crazy. They actually covered that pretty well in the chosen. And they had a flashback to Moses and Joshua doing this and they kind of had some dramatic interpretation. Joshua looking at Moses and saying, why are you doing this?
And Moses said, because he told me to. I mean it was just ridiculous. You think about Jericho then and go out and march around the city and then on the last day go out and march around the city and blow trumpets. And then the walls fell down. It's, again, ridiculous.
We can't even wrap our minds around this. And then I can go through story after story. Remember with Elisha and the floating axe head? Remember that story? And then you got, go all the way down to time and see the angel appeared to Mary and she's, by most accounts, most scholars agree, she was probably just a teenage girl engaged to Joseph, virgin, and said, you're going to have a baby. And she's like, what do you mean?
How can this be? But, again, none of this stuff made sense. And then the ultimate that didn't make sense is that a Jewish carpenter will be crucified on a Roman cross, executed, and that's the savior. And so when Paul preached this, they looked at him with incredulity. They couldn't wrap their mind around it.
It was foolishness to them. And yet there it is. And so I look at this statement that my mother made.
This is so ridiculous it has to be God. Sometimes I think we step back a little bit from our circumstance and realize, wait a minute, is this one of those ridiculous moments? Is this one of those things that I need to take a pause on and see, maybe I'm missing something here. Maybe you're facing this. Maybe right now you've gotten a crushing diagnosis with you or somebody you love. Maybe you just got it today and you're driving home. Or maybe you're holding it in your hand and you just got the text.
Or the letter. Maybe it's a financial disaster. Maybe you got the bill in your hand. Maybe you're looking at things right now that you're like, oh my goodness, this is just ridiculous. Maybe you got a child that you can no longer reach who has gone into all kinds of things.
Whether it's being sucked into the whole drug culture or the trans culture that's out there. Who knows? There's so many different things going on. Maybe that's what you're facing. Maybe your marriage seems beyond repair. Or maybe your body is just worn out. Your mind is worn out. Who knows?
There's so many different things. Are you willing to take a step back and say, this is so ridiculous it has to be God. It doesn't mean that God caused the sin. He uses sin sinlessly. Remember the story of Joseph when he told his brothers, what you meant for evil, God meant for good. The soldiers that nailed Jesus to the cross and those Pharisees that pushed all this to happen. They were not doing this for God's glory.
They were doing this out of sinfulness. But God purposed. And He superintends all of that.
So He uses sin sinlessly. And He's able to weave His decree and purpose into these things. That sometimes they're self-inflicted. That we do it to ourselves. But I heard a great quote the other day. What do you think of this quote? He will never protect you from something that will bring you to Him.
He will never protect you from something that will bring you to Him. Now that's a quote. It sounds kind of nice on paper. But when you're seeing how this fleshes out in your life. And as I'm watching this unfold with my wife in 98 surgeries. And I wrote about this by the way. And you can see this if you want to go out to my wife. Go to my website PeterRosenberger.com and click on my Substack page. You can see it there.
My Substack. If you want to see the whole article fleshed out. Or you can go straight to caregiver.substack.com.
Caregiver.substack.com and you can see the whole article. But I fleshed this all out of what this looks like in our life. You know at 25 surgeries you've got to store it until the grandkids. At 50 surgeries people start saying maybe you ought to write a book.
90 surgeries. That's when you realize that wait a minute something here is beyond the pale. It's so ridiculous that it has to be God.
And what do we do with that information? And I can you know as many people as listen to this program this network. I got to say there is somebody listening today that is looking at a ridiculous set of circumstances that is just mind numbing. And so I ask you would you be willing to take a moment just step back from that just a hair and say what is God doing in this? Can I see where God's principles will apply? Is there scripture that comes to your mind? Are you willing to go and look and see the hand of God?
And lean not on your own understanding. That's what we're going to talk about some more today. And if you want to be a part of that 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. We'll be right back.
My name is Peter Rosenberger and I'm very glad to be with you if you're just joining us. We're talking today about those moments in life where things get so outrageous, so absurd, that the only possible explanation is God. And if this is something that's going on in your life right now, 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. This all came from a conversation I was having with my mother last week and then she just mentioned this offhand and she again she wasn't trying to be disrespectful or scornful. She was like, are you seeing God in this in ways that you didn't expect? Or are you willing to believe that he's working in this?
That was the tone of the conversation. And as we see throughout scripture, Noah, Moses, David, Mary, Jesus, God has a habit of doing things that make no sense to the world. In fact, I would suggest to you that if the very dirt was cursed in the fall, go back and look at Genesis 3 17. And to Adam, he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain, you shall eat of it all the days of your life.
But let me go back to this. Cursed is the ground because of you. Do you think that if the very ground is cursed, that our thought processes were not, our ability to think, to reason, to understand, do you not think that those things were cursed as well?
Do you feel that maybe that is consistent then if the very ground is cursed? Then what about our minds? We go through scripture after scripture where it says, let this mind be in you, which is also in Christ Jesus. Don't be conformed to this world, be transformed by the renewing of your mind and just talk about our minds. But the implication is we don't think right. And go back to when Jesus was in the temple.
You remember that when he was 12 years old and they were marveling at him? I heard a great teaching on this once because Jesus' mind was so clear because it was not encumbered by sin. So the way he was able to reason and think and understand was astonishing because it wasn't burdened by sin, it wasn't contaminated by sin. And so the natural inference and conclusion, quite frankly, that we draw is that our minds are not right.
How could they be? We are contaminated to our very core because of sin. Our minds don't think clearly. One day that won't be the case.
Can you imagine? But right now it is the case. And we war against that because we look to the natural all the time. And Paul tells us this repeatedly in scripture. Jesus is saying, don't be afraid. What's the matter with you people? They're in the boat with Jesus.
He's asleep and the storm's going. He's like, what's the matter with you people? And Paul is repeatedly saying this throughout various books in the New Testament.
What's the matter with you people? What's your thinking like? And scripture reminds us repeatedly that God's thoughts are not our thoughts. Our thoughts are not God's thoughts. His ways, our ways, there's a disparity there. So when we see these things happening around us, and sometimes they're incredibly painful, very painful, are we willing to do something different?
Are we willing to step back and say, where's God in this? My father, my mother told me this about my dad, and just recently we've been talking about it because he went on to glory last year, and just one of the wisest men you'll ever meet. But if something went awry in his life, their life, her life growing up in family, I didn't remember these conversations he had, but she said the two of them had them. She said, I noticed one thing about your father. He was never suspicious of God.
He was always suspicious of himself because he knew that he was easily caught in the snare of looking at things in the natural. He said, God doesn't do that. God's not limited to that. And so the question he would ask himself is, what's God doing here? What does God say? What does the word of God say? What do the scriptures say? And that's the whole point of all of this conversation is, am I willing to believe that this is so ridiculous that it has to be from God? And if so, why do I believe that? What basis do I have to believe this?
And I ask you the same thing. If you're looking at a mountain of medical debt, if you're looking at a broken relationship you can't repair, a child who's lost and wondering, a physical diagnosis you never saw coming, a job situation, whatever. Whatever's going on, however ridiculous it may be.
Oh, come on, you've got to be kidding me, kind of thing. Are you willing to have the conversation with yourself and maybe with a trusted pastor or friend? Call into this radio program and say, this has to be God. Now it doesn't mean that you've made a bunch of good decisions and things are happening to you in spite of that.
It may mean you've made a bunch of bad decisions. But even that, God superintends that to bring you to your knees. You know, it's hard to cry out to a savior that you don't think you need.
And I think this is the problem we have in our broken, fallen, sinful world. As long as we think we have a measure of control over something, we put God on a shelf. And how many of you feel confident in saying God's not going to be put on a shelf? He doesn't allow that. We may deceive ourselves in thinking we're doing it, but God doesn't do that.
He is not going to sit on a shelf. And He will allow us to flounder, to struggle, to even hurt in order to bend the knee to Him. Because He knows that that is the only thing, the only place, the only source of life. And as long as we give ourselves this delusion that somehow we can have a measure of control over this and this and this, okay, I've got this God, then we're deceiving ourselves.
We don't have anything. And He knows this. The question is, do we know it? And are we willing to act on it? And so, I go back to you and say that sometimes we have things that are so ridiculous that it has to be God. And are we willing to stop and just say, Lord, what is going on here? What am I missing?
Where am I going wrong on this? Not what is He trying to teach me? Because God doesn't try to do anything.
That's crazy. I've never liked that phrase. At what point do you think God tries to do something?
No. Let's get our words precise. God doesn't try to do anything, but He will purpose things in our life, sometimes things that are so painful.
He let a man be born blind and lived that way for his entire life until Jesus healed him for his glory, not because of the man, not because of his parents, but for God's glory. And the question I keep coming back to, and I've done it for this entire five-month stretch that I've been here in the hospital, is, Christian, what do you believe? Why do we believe it? And are we going to act on it? And that's what we're going to talk about some more here. 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884, this is Peter Rosenberger. Don't go away. We'll be right back. Truth Talk Live!
You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com Welcome back to Truth Talk Live! This is Peter Rosenberger, very glad to be with you today. PeterRosenberger.com PeterRosenberger.com if you want to go and take a look at some of the things that I have out there for my fellow caregivers. And if you are not a caregiver, that's okay. There's stuff out there for you as well, too, because if you love somebody, you will be a caregiver.
If you live long enough, you will need one. And one of the things I want to address is to equip people to deal with this. And it's not just caregiving. That's the field that I do most of my work in. But it's always about wrestling with something that we can't control. It's always about dealing with the provisions of God in the midst of suffering and heartache. Do we understand what God's provision in that means?
And those are the things I write about and I talk about. And if you want to weigh into that, it's 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. I want to go back to what we were talking about in the last block, Genesis 3. And in Genesis 3, well, let's just go all the way back here. Then to Adam, he said, "...to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree, about which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat from it. Cursed is the ground because of you.
With hard labor you shall eat from it all the days of your life." And this is one of the greatest pivot points in human history. I mean, everything stopped at that point. And the impact of sin was so great that it affected the ground. And it stands to reason, and I think we can reasonably deduce. Now, if you're a theologian and you want to argue with me about that, that's fine. I would gladly hear a different opinion on that, but I don't think that Scripture supports a different opinion. I think it supports that our minds, if the very ground was affected, how much more so our minds?
Because look at so many different Scriptures that talk about our minds and what happened to us. And so we look at our culture right now, look at what's going on. Do you feel that there are people with broken minds out there? I mean, truly messed up things.
Do you see that? Because I'm seeing it every day. And I'm here right now in a hospital where I've been for almost five months. So I'm seeing it very acutely with people who are going through horrific things, not just physical maladies. And this is a part of town where this hospital is an amazing teaching hospital, but unfortunately it's a bad part of town. And you see it all. While I've been here, there's a pond, there's a holding pond across the street from the hotel as I walk by this every day. And it's right in front of the hospital. Well, they've pulled a body out of there since I've been here.
I mean, you see everything. It's crazy, with a capital K. And so what we have, our minds are not right. The fall didn't just bring thorns, pain, and labor and childbirth. It broke our entire operating system. The curse didn't stop with the soil.
It infected the soul, not just the soil. Our minds broke. Our reasoning became corrupt. We lost the capacity to think rightly about God, ourselves, and the world around us. That's why we have all this crazy stuff going on, not just in the world, look at in the church.
How much bad theology did you get on our airwaves and from pulpits around the country? This is the month right now where so many people are celebrating pride. First off, just take the sexual deviation from it, just celebrating pride alone. What about pride is worthy of celebrating? You know? Pride is what caused Satan to be thrown out of heaven.
I mean, the hubris that he had, what part of this, if there was ever an indicator of who the prince of the air is, it's the fact that we have a pride month to celebrate in this country, which I refuse to participate in. But, you know, look at what's going on, look at the reasoning that goes on, that somehow it's okay to mutilate a child who dresses up, thinks he's a girl, a boy thinks he's a girl, and let's go out and just mutilate his body. Do you understand what I'm saying here? Do you see how messed up this is?
Look at these track stars that are having these girls that are spending all this time practicing and working hard to be accomplished in whatever activity they're doing, and then puts on a dress and tells everybody he's a girl, and he participates and is setting all kinds of records. Is that troubling to anybody? And we're seeing this over and over and over and over again, and to the point where there's calls to celebrate.
Then you've got this guy right out here in Boulder, Colorado. This happened just this weekend. And he was here illegally, and he set these people on fire. And then it's just everywhere. People's minds are broken. And this is what has happened to us. We can't think properly.
And I want to pause it for just a second. You know, total depravity, right? Sometimes we confuse that with utter depravity. Total depravity means that every part of our being, our mind, our will, our emotions, our body, has been touched, stained, and corrupted by sin. Nothing inside of us escaped the fall. It didn't make us incapable of doing any good in the horizontal sense, but it made us incapable of doing anything truly righteous before God apart from grace.
You got that? Because utter depravity means that we are as bad as we could possibly be at every moment. Well, that's not what Scripture teaches. Fallen humans still can show faint echoes of the image of God through acts of kindness, creativity, sacrifice, and even love. But even those are stained with self-centered motives and corrupted desires apart from Christ.
Paul laid this out really spectacularly. You know, and he was quoting from the Old Testament, there's none righteous, no, not one. And we think that somehow we're going to choose this. And I saw a great quote the other day.
It was 99.9% and.01% of us, we still fail. We have nothing to bring to Him. Our righteousness is what?
It's a filthy rags. This is what Scripture teaches. As it is written, there is no righteous person, not even one. There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks out God. They have all turned aside.
Together they have become corrupt. And there is no one who does good. There is not even one.
And that's what the text says. And so contrast that with what we have is this seeker-friendly mentality. Well, he's seeking for God.
Well, is he? Is he really seeking for God? Or is he seeking the benefits of God without Christ? See, on the other side of the cross, then we're thinking, well, of course he's looking for it. This is what we have found in Christ, so therefore that's what he's looking for. A lot of people you'll find are looking for the benefits of God, but they don't want Christ.
You follow me? And how broken this has all become, and we all want to be nice and get along and everybody else, but we have a bigger problem. We don't think right.
And that's why we can't lead on our own understanding. In the Latin, the term was passe non peccare. Passe non peccare. That's the Latin. Which means able, not able to sin.
What happened is, let me back it up because it gets double negative and so forth. Sometimes it's easier in the Latin. Passe non peccare means able, not to sin. In other words, had the ability to sin. At a point, they lost the ability to not sin, but they had the ability to not sin before the fall. But that was forever taken.
We don't have that. We've never had that until Christ. And Christ was...
He's the only other human being that ever was that since Adam and Eve fell in the garden. What happened then, we became non passe peccare. That's why it makes it a little easier because it's double negative. Non passe peccare means, you know, non passe non peccare means not able, not to sin.
Apologize for that. A lot of this Latin gets weird and I'm not very good at it, but I'm trying to understand a little bit better. Non passe non peccare, not able, not to sin.
It's double negative, but it's kind of weird. But it's an old doctrine in the church to understand that we don't have the ability to not sin. Without Christ.
That's it. We cannot not sin. But in one man, all sinned.
But in the greater Adam, the second Adam Paul talked about. In one man. And so that's why I wanted to show you today because I know so many people look around and there's so many things hitting it, particularly those of us who are in caregiving situations. It is so intense on us. And it's such a crucible of crisis and complexity and so forth. And our minds aren't clear.
Jesus amazed them at 12, but he didn't have a mind that was besmirched by sin. But we do. And we can't lean on our own understanding. Yet we want to do that. We say, OK, we got this, we got this. Then when it gets too big, oh, we need some help.
We don't have it at all. That's why we have to flood our minds. It says, Thy word have I hid in my heart so that I might not sin against thee. Does that make sense more now when we see all these things? I don't mean to get all the confusion there with passe non peccary and passe non peccary, passe non non peccary, but it's... You know, when we have this ability taken from us that we are not able any longer to not sin, then what is the only antidote to that? And the only antidote is that is the word of God and the righteousness of Christ.
And so when we go into situations that we don't understand, when we go into situations that are highly charged emotionally and mentally, and there's family dynamics we're dealing with, there's cultural dynamics, the only way that we can navigate those things with clarity of thought and with focus of God. Thy word have I hid in my heart that I may not sin against thee. Thy word lamp unto my feet and alight unto my path. How many of you all think, I've been in the hospital five months.
Grace has got 98 surgeries. How many of you think that I need His word as a lamp and alight unto my path? This is the whole point of all this. And this is why we're doing this today. 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. If you want to be a part of the program, 866-34-TRUTH. This is Peter Rosenberger.
We'll be right back. Truth Talk Live! You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live! I'm Peter Rosenberger, 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884.
Thank you for letting me just detour into that a little bit. I've been studying on that myself and I've felt like it might be something that somebody here would appreciate, as life can come at you pretty fast and it's hard to know where's solid ground sometimes. What does it look like to approach the difficulties we face in life with a clear understanding? And we're not going to do this on our own. We're going to have to lean on Him for this. Because you can't do it.
Again, 98 surgeries. I mean, come on. Don't you think that Gracie and I both need clarity of thought as we deal with something this massive? But why would we want to shelve the clarity of thought that comes from God in the massive things when dealing with the smaller things?
Let it permeate everything. So that every step we take, we don't have to worry about it. Remember what Jesus said, look, when you're called in front of magistrates and all this stuff, you don't have to worry about what you're going to say. That's the whole point of the presence of God in our life. Is that we are consumed with His thoughts. Don't let your thoughts be here on the earth that are so low. Remember in Proverbs it says, there's a way which seems right to a person, but its end is the way of death.
You know, that's what happens when everybody starts kind of doing what they think is right and what's good. And, oh, this works for me and that's your truth. By the way, I really don't like that phrase when people say, well, that's your truth. It's either truth or it's not.
You tracking with me on that one? It's either truth or it's not. And so we go back to then Isaiah, for my thoughts are not, nor are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
And I go back to what I said in the first block here. When my mother said, it's so ridiculous that it has to be God. Because we serve the God who does ridiculous things to us, not to Him. He understands what He's doing. He's God. We're not and we trust Him and He's invited us to trust Him.
And why do we trust Him? Because of the most ridiculous thing of all. Paul talked about it. It was just, it caused people to be, it was a stumbling block to think about Jesus being crucified on a cross and that was God's plan of redemption.
It was ridiculous to these people to hear that. And yet that is the very thing that is the reason we can be declared righteous before God. That gives me such great comfort and strength that I'm serving the God of the ridiculous.
And as we are keeping our eyes low here and looking at things and trying to figure it out on our own, we're going to come up short. But do not be conformed to this world, Paul says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable. We are destroying arguments, he said in 2 Corinthians, and all arrogance raised against the knowledge of God. And we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. Why do we need to take every thought captive? Because in our natural state, our thoughts are apparent and they need to be brought to the obedience of God. And we cannot do this on our own.
We do not have the ability to not sin. We don't have that, but He does. And that's why we cling to Him. And He will guide us even in a hospital, even in a rehab center, even in divorce court, even in a funeral home. That's the promise of the gospel, that He is with us forever.
He's not going to abandon us. Waiting for you in these places that we have to go to. And we're not called to be insulated from a lot of these things in the world. Have you ever noticed something, and I'm going to throw this out, maybe you've got an opinion on this, maybe this is something that resonates with you. I have found that the further away people are from suffering, whether it's theirs or somebody else's, the weaker their theology becomes. Have you noticed this?
I mean, this is what I'm just seeing. When we are insulated away from the things of this world that are broken and messy and painful and suffering, then we, our theology suffers. Jesus said, sick, naked, thirsty, hungry, prison, stranger. What that implies, and I think we can reasonably deduce from scripture, is that we go deep into the brokenness of this world. Ministering the gospel.
We don't have to go look for it, it's everywhere, but we don't want to insulate ourselves from it either. We want to be prepared at a moment's notice. Our feet are shod with the gospel of peace. I remember the first time Gracie and I were on the Today Show, and I did a foot washing service. You ever done a foot washing service? I did that the night before we flew up to New York.
This is when we lived in Nashville. And I washed her feet in the sink with a comet and a brush because she has two artificial legs, so she didn't have to be there for it. But I washed her sharpie, and on the bottom of her prosthetic feet I wrote, John 3.16, that her feet were shod with the gospel. So that we're prepared at a moment's notice to boast all the more gladly in our weakness so that Christ's power may rest upon us. And by the way, I'm sorry about all the sirens that you hear in the background from my hospital, and it's just that's all I hear all day long are these sirens and these fire trucks and so forth. So that is the reality of our commissioning, if you will, that we're prepared at a moment's notice to do that, but we cannot do this on our own strength. We cannot do this with our own understanding, and we lean on the understanding of Christ. And some in this audience, I know as many people as listen to this program, and this network, are struggling with very, very painful things that are very confusing and complex and don't know how you're going to navigate through this. What does the Word of God say? We go back to the Scriptures, and sometimes all we know is just literally one footstep in front of us. Remember, it's a lamp into our feet, not a searchlight.
So we're hoping to get a five minute plan, and sometimes He's going to give us a five minute plan, and that's it. And sometimes it's for us to be still, and that's it. But that's where walking in faith like this brings peace and that clarity of thought, peace that passes all understanding. So when we try to lean on our own understanding, we're going to get ourselves in turmoil. Somebody's dealing with that right now. We're all dealing with it. It's the human condition. But when we just take a moment, breathe, what does the Scripture say?
What does the Scripture say? If you ever get a chance, it's worthy of watching. I'm going to digress just a hair. But there's a great interview from the, I think it's the 70s, early 70s, judging by the clothing, of Woody Allen interviewing Billy Graham.
And you can probably find it somewhere on YouTube or something. And Woody Allen's being, you know, cutesy and clever and smart and trying to be funny and all that kind of stuff, and interviewing Billy Graham. And it's a most unusual pairing. And Billy Graham is just relaxed, nonplussed, he's just sitting there. But he doesn't get hooked into the silliness of the questions that Woody would throw at him, which were, you know, clearly born out of a place of silliness and not necessarily a reverence for the gospel. And every answer Billy Graham says, well, the Scriptures say, the Scriptures say, the Scriptures say.
And he didn't even miss a beat. That's amazing. It's an astonishing interview.
If you get a chance, go do a search on it and see if you can find it, because it'll really impress you. And I think the thing that you'll leave with is, how important is it for you to know the Word of God? You know, when the Reformation took place, we had this massive biblical illiteracy. And that's one of the things that caused people to actually be burned at the stake and executed, because they translated the Scriptures into the common tongue.
And the Catholic Church was just furious with this. And then with the printing press and everything else, people were able to read the Scriptures in their own language. Luther translated it into German. You had Wycliffe translated it into English.
But there was enormous pushback. But people were starved to be able to read it in their own tongue and learn it and see it for themselves. We have the Bible printed in, I think, I don't know how many languages.
You can get, most people have four, five, six Bibles. And yet we still have a biblical illiteracy problem. People don't know their Scriptures. They do not know the Word of God.
What does it say? And if we're not hearing it preached from our pulpits, are we studying it ourselves? Preachers will have to answer to God for what they do. But I look at a lot of the messages I see coming from a lot of pulpits out there. What I'm hearing doesn't really sustain in a 98 surgery type of journey like we've had. You've got to have far more. It doesn't sustain. You can't have that cotton candy theology.
You've got to have the whole counsel of God preached to you with great clarity and precision. And we cling to that because there's no other place to go to. And that is Truth Talk Live.
The way it is. This is Peter Rosenberger and I'm so glad to spend some time with you today. PeterRosenberger.com if you want to see some more. Got a lot of things out there for you to look at. We'll see you next time.
