America has a new president.
There was a very encouraging national prayer breakfast where Christ was exalted. There's a lot of criticism. There's a lot of anger.
The country is still divided. So no better time than now to bring on to this show our longtime friend, a special guest, author, pastor. He heads up this wonderful ministry, Truths to Transform, and Coral Ridge Ministries, Dr.
Rob Pacienza. Sir, you have found yourself in the middle of all this stuff going on. How's it going?
It's amazing. It's not something necessarily you're looking for, but as Jude says, we always need to be ready to contend for the faith. Yes, so you're doing that. I love your messages because obviously becoming affiliated with a political party doesn't make one a Christian. So we're in a country where people conflate a certain denomination or a certain political affiliation or a way you vote with being a believer. So you're trying to make sure that there's a doctrinal clarity as to what believers, what we believe as believers, and how we are to operate in a secular world.
Is that correct, sir? Absolutely. It's our job as Christians, and I really see my calling as a pastor, anytime you see something in the political world that we can either celebrate or we can push back against, we make it very clear why we're ultimately celebrating it or why we're ultimately rejecting it or pushing back against it. I think we're always trying to get below the surface and say, what's the root?
What's the root cause of what we're celebrating? What's the root of what we're ultimately rejecting? Where is this found in God's word? How does biblical truth inform what we call a biblical worldview of all of life, including our political convictions?
Yes, sir. And you've got all these extremes, and having the biblical balance, you've helped a lot of people. Pastor Rob Passians, I love hearing your messages regularly.
Truths to transform, just to hear your sermons right from the pulpit of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, just a heritage church in South Florida, Fort Lauderdale. But you talk about biblical citizenship. You do this with a center for Christian statesmanship. You can be a believer, and yet you can still be involved in public policy without compromising your faith. True or false, and tell us why.
Yeah, true. And our founder, D. James Kennedy, started the Center for Christian Statesmanship on Capitol Hill, which at the time was one of the first Christian outreaches to Christian members on the Hill. He called Washington D.C. modern-day Rome because he wanted to inform those Christians that were serving on Capitol Hill, from policymakers to staffers to interns, that your work matters, your calling matters, that you have an opportunity to be the next generation of William Wilber forces that are going out and operating with a Christian worldview and advancing your theological beliefs to influence public policy in a way that glorifies the kingdom, advances truth, and brings about what the people of God have always been about. That's human flourishing with what our Jewish brothers and sisters would call shalom. Full human flourishing, not just for the people of God, but for all people. So it's so important that we understand that our Bibles and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ are relevant, not just to our private, personal lives, but to our public life as well.
That includes our work, our families, how we exercise our citizenship, even how we vote and how we think about public policy. The word is relevant. The whole counsel of God is relevant to everybody in the world.
To every area of life. Some folks go as far as you can almost hear them saying that you have to ask Donald J. Trump into your heart, that kind of extremism. But on the other side of that, we're all called, whether we agree or disagree with whoever our leaders are, we're called to pray for and to have a certain amount of respect for those who are in office. Is that correct?
Absolutely. I would often tell our congregation that we were called as Christians to pray for President Joe Biden and were called as Christians to pray for President Donald Trump because we realized that at the end of the day, if we had believed in the gospel at all, we believe that we're all sinners saved by grace. We believe that we are fallible and sinful and we need the wisdom of God. And God uses sinful, fallen men and women to advance his kingdom. He's been doing it for centuries. He used Nebuchadnezzar to advance his kingdom.
He used Pilate and Caesar to advance his kingdom. It's our job to pray. It's our job to petition our leaders when they're not operating according to biblical truth and biblical wisdom. But it is our responsibility to pray for them and pray that they would use godly wisdom and to ultimately see the truth of the gospel according to God's sovereign will.
Well, Pastor Rob, you're one of the good guys. You've just been a great friend and mentor to me into so many and I just couldn't miss this opportunity to ask you about what it was like to be in the national capital in the big church auditorium, if you even call it a church, and to have the female pastor rebuke the president and start to share all these unbiblical notions of gender issues. I could hardly watch it. What was it like to be there and what's the biblical response to that, sir?
Will you help us there? Yeah, there's so much to unpack there. I think we were all floored. Not surprised, but shocked, nevertheless, that she would use that platform and that moment to rebuke the president. But not surprised, on the other hand, this is really indicative of mainline Protestantism. I think what you saw on display is what's been happening in mainline Protestantism for many decades, particularly in North America.
And I would go as far as saying I think our biblical response is first. I think we need to clarify that what we heard and what she teaches, not only on that day at the national cathedral, but what she's been teaching her whole career, is not Christianity, and it's not even a subset of Christianity. It is, plain and simple, a whole new religion altogether. It's what we would call woke ideology, which is informed by secular progressive ideas.
So I think it's very clear that we make the distinction. This is not Christianity, not a subset of Christianity, but it's the new religion of secularism, which is called woke ideology, that's super important. And I think it's a moment for the Church of Jesus Christ to wake up and say, this is what happened when pulpits go adrift. This is what happens when we lose our seminaries. This is what happens when we try to be, quote unquote, culturally relevant, and we begin to water down the gospel and begin to water down biblical truth. This is decades in the making. This is why, unfortunately, the national cathedral can't even be called a church anymore.
It's really nothing more than an ancient museum. Wow. That's the voice of Pastor Rob Hasienza, the host of Truths the Transformed, Coral Ridge Ministries. What a clear, clarion voice he is for the gospel in our culture. And Pastor Rob, you sat through that, and only a few days later, there's great rejoicing. Sadly, that same lady, who in the name of God, even though what she was espousing was false, she probably was very sad and heartbroken when President Trump signed a law that banned men from women's sports. There was heartbreak among people that went to church at that.
How could there be? But what a celebration, what a victory that is for all women in our country, to this ban that the president made. What was your reaction to that?
We were rejoicing because so many of us, for the last few years, as we saw the rise of transgenderism, and really the normalization of it, this anti-God, anti-creation order, ideology being advanced in higher education, being advanced by the mainstream media, we really lamented what was happening to our nation, what was happening to society, for all Americans. It reminded me, this really is a spiritual battle. This is demonic.
Anytime we're twisting the truth of God for a lie, anytime we're calling good evil and evil good, that is nothing but demonic. It's nothing but a spiritual battle. So to see the early executive orders, particularly this one, and I actually just posted on social media that you can go on the NCAA website and teach the language of, who's qualified to be in a woman's sports? Surprise, common sense. Only one that was assigned the gender of female at birth. You would think this would be common sense, but not only is it common sense for the Christian, we can rejoice because it's honoring God, it's honoring creation order, it's honoring the God who said that I will create men in my image, male and female, I create them. And so we can rejoice that God has been honored and glorified. And it's when we embrace God's design, particularly in the area of gender and sexuality as a society, we will experience the favor of God again, and it will lead to human flourishing.
That's a good word. Pastor Rob Passianzus, sir, thank you for being such a blessing. Give us your final challenge to listeners out there who are interested in the Bible. Your final challenge to listeners out there about being ever vigilant and being men and women of prayer and how folks can learn more about your great ministry.
Absolutely. We can rejoice when civic leaders and public policy reflects the values and the virtues of the kingdom of God, but we can't put our ultimate hope there. Our Savior and our Messiah does not fly in on Air Force One. Our Savior and Messiah arrived 2,000 years ago and His name is Jesus Christ.
So politics is just a means to an end. It's really the church that is the hope of the world. So this is a moment for us to realize, praise God, we have policymakers and policies that allow the church to exercise its freedom, to allow us to preach the gospel. But now is the time for men and women of God to stand up, to speak out the whole counsel of God and really pray for revival. We need revival in America. We not only need good elections, we need hearts and minds to be saved, hearts and minds to be revived. And we need another great awakening in our nation.
That's what we can pray for. And you can go find all of our resources at CRM.TV. CRM.TV. You can find our television programs, our radio programs, our podcasts, and all of the documentaries that we produce that equip the church in North America how to live out their faith as the salt of the earth and the light of the world. That's awesome. Thank you, sir, for sharing this and for taking time to be with us. And thanks for being faithful and for calling folks to the gospel. That's the greatest, it's still the good news. The good news is still the good news. Amen? Amen. Thank you, Stu.
