Welcome to Truth Talk Live. All right, let's talk. A daily program powered by the Truth Network. This is kind of a great thing, and I'll tell you why. Where pop culture, current events, and theology all come together.
Speak your mind. And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host. We're going to get an update on what all happens on Easter this year.
We would love to know. You know, are you planning on doing a Passover Seder or something like that? Or are you in the middle of something for Lent, where you're fasting, or something along those lines?
Or maybe you've got other plans. Well, I've got some help with me today, plus an update on March the 16th, the big day. Everybody preach 3-16. We're going to get an update on what all happens on Easter.
We've got Dr. Dait the Word himself, Dwayne Carson. And I am excited about this topic, like I really am, because I'm looking out the window of what we call the Truth Booth, and there is a beautiful purple-looking tree that is totally blossomed. It looks like Easter is around the corner, and we've got to be ready, don't we, Doc? We need to be ready, yes. You know, Lent gives us the start, and now that we are less than a month away, the focus really should be ramped up as we want to be able to not just celebrate Easter, but grow like the disciples who, on that road to Emmaus, they found as they heard the story from Jesus, their hearts just burned. It's the right kind of heartburn.
Every Easter, I want to have great heartburn, Bobby, great heartburn. There you go. Well, we need you to call in. Really, how are you doing? 866-348-7884.
866-348-7884. How are you preparing for Easter? I know lots of folks are eating fish on Fridays. That's something. My daughter and her husband are in a full-on fast for 40 days. That's really cool.
What is it that you do? Again, one of Tammy and I's favorite things is we're getting our Passover Seder together. We plan on harvesting a lamb and doing those kind of things and making matzah and all the bitter herbs and all that stuff we do every Easter.
And they're very exciting. And Passover is on the 12th, which fortunately I know a guy really well who's really good on calendars, and he tells me these things. The Easter is on the 20th, so you're right.
We're less than a month away. What is your son and daughter-in-law fasting? They're fasting all meats and dairy products.
Okay. Cutting out some serious things from their diet. That's what they're fasting, yeah. And it was interesting.
We went to eat Mexican food with the other night, and all the different things. Well, we can't have that. We can't have that. We can't have that.
We finally figured out they could eat beans. So anyway, I'm proud of it. It's exciting to see stuff like that. From my standpoint, it's a hard thing, right? Yes.
Anything like that can become legalistic. You're just going through the motions. But how is it turning us to really think about the Lord and grow in their dependence of the Lord? I've always looked at the fasting. I want to grow in my knowledge of who God is, more dependent on God.
He provides for us, and the greatest provision of all time was at Calvary. Yeah, and due to my relationship with Nikita Koloff, and people who know Nikita know that he is one of the greatest fasterers I have ever met, and certainly got me into the practice of it. And so I actually took on his advice from Man Kemp, and I fast very, very regularly, at least once a week, and for a full 24, sometimes 30 hours, something like that, full on, don't eat anything, just drink water. And the practice really gives you that. It puts your heart in a different place. It just does. And it puts your body in a different place. To really turn towards him when you start to feel that hunger pain, you go, oh, why am I doing this again? So that's kind of just our regular practice. We aren't doing that just for Lynn. Tammy and I, we share that together, actually, every Monday.
At Thomas Road, fast started on Sunday night and would go through Monday night. And just that I-need-God mindset. That was the whole idea of the fast.
I can't do this. And I'm not going to be dependent on worldly things to satisfy me. There is a satisfaction that comes as you hunger and thirst for righteousness. There you go. I love that. So how about you?
You're out there. You've got a phone in front of you. Why not call? 866-348-7884.
866. We would love to know how you're preparing for Easter this year and getting your heart towards that where you're hungering and thirsting. Because every year, God just illuminates something new about the Easter story that just wows me.
And I'm so excited to see what He's going to give me this year. But we need an update, because one of the preparations we had for Easter this year was 3-16. And, doc, the whole world.
I mean, I can tell you, I don't know of a church that I'm personally connected to in any way, shape, or form that didn't participate. Yeah, we'll get reports literally from all over the world of how God worked and brought about change. And I'm hoping my son calls in.
Barnes lot parking. One second, Robbie. Yeah, that's okay. And the other thing that I loved that I heard, and we've got to go to a break, and this is a great opportunity for you to dial 866-348-7884, is a lot of these churches had record attendance because people were inviting all these people to John 3-16.
So we're going to get that update when we come back. And we need your, how are you preparing for Easter? 866-348-7884?
You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. It's less than 30 days away, and so how are you preparing for Easter this year? We would love to know that from you. 866, the number to call in and share, 866-348-7884. And we've got, of course, Dr. Date the Word Carson with us here. We were sharing an update on 3-16 and what happened there. But actually during the break we had a wonderful call from Larry Barnes who asked us to pray for he and his family. So that's what we ought to do, don't you think, Doc? Absolutely.
Let's do that. So Jesus, thank you. Thank you for Larry. He's listening up there in Ohio and we have so many wonderful listeners around the country and we're so thankful for every one of them. And we certainly pray for Larry and his family. Lord, do you know what the situation is? We're like a lot of us, we just need prayer. Lord, we need you in our life. We need you to be guiding us and directing us because from what I understand apart from you we can do nothing. So Lord, we pray for Larry, we pray for all of us that we would truly turn our hearts towards you in this season, in all seasons of our life actually, but especially in this season where you're preparing for the greatest show on earth, Lord. Love in a way that is explained through John 16 but certainly is experienced through this time leading up and through Easter.
In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. So when we were closing in, I remember the reports that were just so encouraging to me. I just thought it was so cool that you heard from several churches that their attendance greatly grew because people were inviting people to the John 3 16 thing. And then I remember one of them you said that the people that came as guests weren't the ones that came to Christ, it was some of the other people in the church.
How cool is that? Yeah, we got a report yesterday that a church did have quite a few visitors but it was regular attenders that would end up getting saved. One had been coming for a little over a year and one had been coming for like five years but had never gotten saved. And it was through the preaching of the clear gospel, John 3 16, making it so clear that they realized, hey, I've never been born again. And they came forward and got saved.
We had a church up in Staten Island, New York City, a guy who's been up there several years now working and the church has been around for well over 100 years but a good friend of mine passed him there. He cast the idea back in January, March the 16th would be a friend day. And he has four services now and so all of his people, all four services brought visitors, probably they had 37 people get saved on March the 16th. I keep calling it John 3 16 day, March the 16th. It was John 3 16 day and I heard it everywhere and it was so neat.
God had given you that vision and I got to watch for pretty much two years. You light up every time another pastor or some other association or this or that would agree to do this and then, oh my goodness, God showed up in a big way across the world. Wasn't there over a thousand churches in India? Over a thousand just with one organization. With another organization it was over a hundred thousand. Wow.
Wow. And across England and Europe you had it going. This was a worldwide event.
Worldwide event and hopefully again it continues to build. I have a dream Robbie that 3 16 truly would become John 3 16 day, an international day of evangelism. John 3 16 gets up with a thought today, I am going to share John 3 16 with someone because it's the greatest message from God that man could ever hear. Yes, man is a sinner. God is going to punish the sinner. But he's made a provision and that's John 3 16. As I preached Sunday I said, you know, it's so shocking to read when we think about who God is and as Jesus was talking to Nicodemus.
It says for God so, you're waiting for him, he's so angry, he's so upset, he's so mad. No, for God so loved the world. And it's a totally different concept about who God is because the Old Testament does tell us about God being wrathful toward those who are wicked.
But he is making a provision. And the fact that he would send his son, God loved to the level he gave. He gave his son to die.
And then his son in dying, being resurrected, we're talking about that with Easter, he now offers the greatest gift of all time, the gift of eternal life. And this was being preached all over the world. The church where you're at, they preached it there. I had people tell me that I didn't even know were pastoring that they preached John 3 16. And I didn't realize, he said, yeah, I'm filling in a pulpit. So I preached John 3 16 and people loved it. Yeah, we had a boot camp that I was, Masculine Journey Radio, we had our boot camp in Georgia this year.
And so I just started the whole boot camp. All my opening slides had 3 16 on there because it was the 3 16 boot camp. And we did see one young man come to Christ and that was really exciting and he's getting baptized on 3 21, which there's a connection to that, right? Yes, 3 21 to 3 23.
3 23. You're right. You're right. I should have known.
You are date the word. John 3 23 speaks about them going to Siloam for baptism. And so, yes, there are people that have scheduled baptism for this Sunday because they knew there was going to be people saved on 3 16.
Yeah, that's so beautiful. Yeah, it's 3 23. Robbie doesn't do math or calendars.
7 and 6 does make 3 now that you think about it. But anyway. Before we go to this break, because of the people listening in Winston-Salem, I want to tell you something about the calendar that we're doing this year for Easter. Okay. You know, from April the 1st to April the 20th, it's 20 days, Robbie. That's right. 20 days. Well, there's a gospel that has 21 chapters.
I'm familiar with that. The Gospel of John. And so John is all about people believing, so we're calling it an April to believe. An April to believe. And our challenge is read one chapter a day out of the book of John.
John 1 on April the 1st, John 2 on April the 2nd, all the way to April the 20th, and you read John 20, which is a resurrection story. And so we're pitching that idea to people from date to word. Let's have an April to believe.
There you go. And as Doc mentioned, we're going to lose folks in certain markets, but other ones you can listen to all of the show on TruthNetwork.com at the podcast page. But for the rest of you, we will be back after this break, and we need your calls.
866-348-7884. How are you preparing for Easter? We'll be right back. You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com.
Welcome back to Truth Talk Live. Today's question is, how are you? How are you preparing for Easter? I like what Dr. Carson suggested that he's doing with date to word is a 20-day challenge there to go through the first 12, 20, excuse me, 20 chapters of the Gospel of John in those first 20 days, preparing for Easter. How fun will that be where you'll land on this resurrection story on the 20th? And, you know, but in your situation, I know you've got something that you do every year or whatever. I would love to, we would all love to know that because we can glean from how you've seen God every year. We would love to hear it.
866, the number to call in and share, 866-348-7884. And we do have Clayton Carson. I'm guessing he's date the word junior. Date the word junior.
A little bit of a relationship. Are you date the word junior? That is me. I am the youngest of the four kids of Duane. Wonderful, wonderful, Clayton, I know.
And it's great to talk to you. So what have you got for us? Yeah, well, my dad wanted me to call in and talk about how 316 went. I just want to tell you that's what we went back to towards the push to Easter. And we had some incredible results. There was a church plant in India among unreached people groups that saw salvation. And so just from the movement of preaching, 316, I think we had probably close to half a million pastors preaching on 316.
Wow. That's a lot of people because you figure that you've got that many pastors. You can imagine how many participants that got a chance to hear it. And a lot of us have heard it many different ways, but it's one of those things that you can plumb the depths of forever, right, Dr. Carson?
And still come up with something that just totally blows your mind. Yeah, the guy that preached for D.L. Moody years ago in Chicago preached John 3.16 on a Thursday night, came back on Friday night, came back on Saturday night, came back on Sunday night, came back on Monday night, came back on Tuesday night. He just, every time he tried to move away from it, it was, there's more here to explain how much God loves you. And so it's one of those verses that it's so simple, but yet it brings out so many concepts about who our great God is.
And the fact that it could be shared with an unreached people group, people who've never even heard the Gospel, but in the first time hearing it, could come and know the Lord as their Savior. I think that's so cool. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
And it changes generations and generations and all sorts of things. How about, Clayton, how about in your own church? Did you get a chance to see something there? Yeah, so we got, we had four visitors, which is, we're a church of about 30, so we had about a 20% increase in attendance. And one of those people indicated that they weren't a Christian, so they got to hear the Gospel. They didn't get saved, but it was cool to see some of my younger church members inviting people in. And so then we had, just by the Lord's providence on Sunday night after our Sunday evening service, a lady just walked into our church. It was saying she needed help, and she was just distraught and got to share the Gospel with her as well. And I truly believe that if a church's pastors are dedicated to preaching the Gospel, God's going to bring people to you to share the Gospel with. That's beautiful, isn't it?
And I couldn't agree with you more that, you know, God's looking for people where he can trust with his message, and once he's got them, he wants that to be a lighthouse. I love it. I love it. I love it.
So thank you. Clayton, what was the story about Pastor Pig down at Immokalee, Florida? I think he told you a really cool story. Well, so he had a young girl who had tried to commit suicide a few weeks before, and her mom got an invitation to come to fellowship church in Immokalee, Florida for 3-16 to hear John 3-16 preached. And at the end of that, when Tim gave his information, that young girl who just weeks before was hopeless found hope in the Gospel and got saved. Isn't that outstanding?
That's just awesome. It is incredible what the simple aspect of just every now and then having that, we're going to make a day be the day where we're going to focus on the Gospel and make sure people understand it. But see, the neat, amazing, beautiful things, and suicide has had a great effect on my life in so many different ways, but I can assure you, if there was a young girl that was suicidal who gave her heart to Christ, that young girl had parents, she had brothers and sisters, all sorts of people touched her life. They touched her life right this minute, right? And they are seeing the change, and it's amazing to me, just absolutely amazing how one person in a family gets saved, and all of a sudden, all sorts of people, maybe they just increase their relationship with God that they already had, or of course they also come to Christ, and then you've got generations and generations, and so it's just a beautiful thing.
Yeah, absolutely. We were with a pastor on Wednesday that's working in Uganda, and he likes to say, transform people, transform lives. And what a way to sum it up, that if someone gets saved, there's light in darkness now, and that house can't contain that light, it's going to shine now, and so all it takes is one person in a house to get saved, and more people will get saved. It's absolutely beautiful. Well, so thank you, Clayton, for that update.
Obviously, God did mighty things, and continues to do them as we begin to hone in on Dr. Carson's dream of 316 being that kind of evangelism day every year. Absolutely. Thanks for having me on. Thank you, Clayton. God bless you. All right, how about you?
Maybe you had something happen on 316. You want to call in and tell us? We would love to hear it, 866-348-7884, but today's topic is, of course, we're counting it down.
It won't be long. It's less than 30 days, you know, as we begin to prepare our hearts, and you know, I personally look forward to the path that God takes me on through the Bible. And your idea of going through the 20 chapters of John, you didn't get a chance to really get into that much, Doc, before we had to go to that break.
Yeah. Well, each chapter in the book of John is focused on helping someone come to a place to believe. When John finishes writing, he'll say, this has been written that you may believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
Well, you know, then you look at each chapter, and you're going to find almost, I think there's only two chapters that the word believe or believed or believing is not in it. But it starts off, April the 1st, you'll read John 1, and he's the word, and John 1, 1, he came to his own, and his own did not receive him. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become the children of God to those who believe in his name.
And so right off the bat, if you're putting your trust in Jesus, you're going to have your eternity changed, your relationship with God is going to change. I go from being an alien against God, away from God, to now being one that is adopted, part of a family, I call God Father. I get to have that kind of relationship with him.
I'm his child. And what a privilege to be able to call God Father. But that starts off with John 1, and then as you work through, each one of these chapters will be... Let's hang out in John 1 a second.
Okay. I love John 1. It's one of my absolute favorite chapters in the Bible. One of the reasons is that he makes this incredible statement that Jesus is full of grace and truth. Full of grace and truth.
Right. And here's an opportunity to see something. When I saw it the first time, it just lit up my world like there's no tomorrow. And the reason is, is that when I finally came to understand grace, is, you know, we all know people, I bet you've known them in your life, that when you were in their presence, you just knew that you were their favorite. And they had great faith in you. They believed in you.
And they trusted you. And when we come back, we're going to delve into that more, plus John 2, but even better would be your calls. 866-348-7884.
How are you preparing for Easter? I know you've got something out there. Call us.
866-348-7884. We'll be right back. Truth Talk Live! You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com.
Welcome back to Truth Talk Live! Today we're talking about how do you prepare for Easter? How is it that you are getting ready for this amazing show that is how, essentially, God's love in so many different ways?
Your preparations for that. We would love your phone calls and to hear, you know, your insight. You know, everybody sees God in their way in some beautiful, amazing ways. And if you don't share it, we don't get to see it with you.
866-348-7884. So I was sharing one of my ways. Maybe you've heard this before, Doc, I don't know, but I was trying my best to understand the word grace. And I couldn't understand it because people said grace and there were people that, you know, they call her grace, you know, like queens and stuff like that. And I just, I was missing it.
And I knew that it meant, you know, something along the lines of unmerited favor and things like that. But I hadn't put it together where I could really feel it, you know? And so I was watching a movie. It was called The Barbie Mermaid Princess with my daughter, my granddaughter, Lila. Have you ever heard this story, Doc?
I haven't. Okay, so the story went that this mermaid, you know, she was born the queen. I mean, she was born the princess to the, you know, she was the king's daughter. But the evil, you know, sorceress mermaid whisked her away when she was born and she didn't get to grow up in the palace. And so she didn't know that she was the queen, but she had an amazing talent and that was that she could bedazzle, she could put pearls on anything.
And so she gets invited to the, you know, the ball at the palace and she sneaks without letting her mother know that she's going. And on her way, she comes across this stonefish and the stonefish has got this horrible temper and he tells her, I'm the most poisonous fish in the sea and I'm going to kill you, you know? And she treats this stonefish so unbelievably nice, it's unbelievable. She says, wow, Mr. Stonefish, you know, that's a pretty scary voice.
You know, you're going to scare away all your friends if you keep acting like that. You know, well, you don't understand if you touch me, I'm the most poisonous fish in the sea. One of my spikes will give you the most horrible death, you know, like that. And she says, oh, I can fix that for you. So she puts pearls on all his spikes, right? And then he's like, oh, and she goes, now you can go be friends, you know? And as I was watching her, like she treated him with such dignity but also with favor.
Like I saw in her that she had been born a princess because she had grace. And when I saw that, all of a sudden I remembered people in my life and one of which was Pastor Quartz, Mark Quartz who was at Calvary all those years was my pastor. And whatever you're around, Pastor Quartz, you always felt like, man, I am his favorite. Like he treats me so beautifully. Like he really cares about me. He really has faith in me. He believes in me. He would call me at times and ask me my thoughts on things.
And he was the pastor of this huge church. And I realized what grace was in people like that that I had been around, godly people that you just felt awesome when you were in their presence. And then I looked at that passage in John.
They were talking about chapter one where it said Jesus is full of grace. In other words, when we're in his presence, then oh my goodness, we're going to feel that. We're going to feel like we feel when we're around those people that really, really favor us. That we're really their favorite.
Like maybe you were your dad's favorite or maybe you were your grandfather's favorite. However that looked. But then, you know, earlier you said that in the Old Testament people see God as wrathful. And I don't actually see it that way at all. What I see, you know, when I think about the same word, grace, is the first person in the Bible to find grace was Noah. And it says he found grace in God's eyes.
Right? And you talk about a point of wrath. Almost everybody in the deal is going to die. Except who? Noah. Because he was clearly God's favorite. But you think about how it just, that God kept looking for somebody that would look for him. And he found him in Noah. And again, because of Noah, obviously through him came the line of Christ. And eventually we all would get to John 3.16. But if it hadn't been for Noah finding grace, right?
It's kind of neat. So I couldn't let John 1 go without me talking about Jesus is full of grace and truth. And that truth is equally who he is. Because he is the truth.
Right? Which John will point out in future chapters. And Jesus will claim that. I am the way, the truth and the life. And if we don't have truth of what is exact, what is correct, what is right, then we're all going in different directions and we're going to miss what God has for us.
Someone's got to be able to know this is what is correct. And Jesus brings that to us. And you know, this aspect of him being full of grace and truth, it's a mystery. Because it's not 50-50.
It's 100%, 100%. He was full of both grace and full of truth. And that makes him so interested because many times we kind of lean one side or the other where we're going to be more gracious to someone or we're going to be more strict with someone. Jesus was able to be both full of grace, full of truth. You know, and as we talk about Easter and certainly Good Friday, you know, there he was. And saying, Father, forgive them. For they know not.
In other words, there's all this grace that you can possibly imagine and at the same time completely true to who he was and what would happen. You know, when you get to that cross and there's so many things, I look at it from this standpoint sometimes, Robby, I did not expect this. How do you have someone that is being so abused, falsely accused, they're mocking him and ridiculing him, but then there's the scourging. There's the beating with their hands. They slapped him.
They blindfolded him. All these horrible things. And then comes this moment, Father, forgive them. I wasn't expecting that. Wow.
And you know, they weren't either. It had to shake them right to the core to know that what they were doing to him, he was still extending mercy and forgiveness to them. Right. And from what I understand, since you're talking about the Gospel of John, John mentions God as Jesus' father 110 times, or the word Father Jesus. Jesus refers to God as his father 110 times in that book. And just think, if you take Doc's journey of a chapter a day for those 20 days, you're going to begin to see that what they heard him say was Father. Forgive them. And for a lot of them, they never thought of God as their father.
In other words, that was not necessarily their perspective. And so, talking about you didn't see that coming, like, what you talking about Willis? That dates some of us with that one, probably. What you talking about Willis?
I remember that. But, you know, that's how they, I just, you know, it had to dumbfound completely the audience, but then no doubt that when that centurion, when it went dark, and he said clearly this is the Son of God, because at this point in time it became obvious. Yeah, he makes a great confession, just like Peter made. This is the Son of God.
This is not just some ordinary criminal being put to death. Surely this is the Son of God. One of the thoughts people can do for going into Easter is just look at the different Biblical characters that were involved with Easter. You think about Barabbas. You know, all of us can identify with him because Jesus took our place, the just for the unjust.
So there's a lot of different things that a person can be doing to prepare themselves as we now get closer to Easter, again, doing the Lent. Well, I heard, you know, since you're on the characters, right, I talked to Stu this morning, I think it was right around lunchtime, and he took off on Simon the Cyrene, and he goes into the story, which I knew the whole time when we was talking about, but he went into a story that was like, you could just see, he goes, Robbie, Simon the Cyrene is my new hero of the Bible. It's like my favorite, and you could just see Stu just totally, you know, jumping into that experience and living it again, as you know, or anybody that knows too well, his delight in the Word and his hunger for it. And I wish all the world could have heard what I heard, and maybe you will, I'm sure next week he'll cue you all in on his whole view on Simon the Cyrene, but I couldn't help but note that that's something that Stu apparently already took on. Yeah, he had told me a few things about him, and it is, what a man that he carried the cross of Jesus, and if you look at each one of those characters, and that's where we first started, those two disciples on the road to Emmaus, oh my goodness, if there was ever a journey that you want to take, that's the journey. Can I go back in time, and I be the one that's walking with Jesus that afternoon after he's resurrected, and just hear him open up the Old Testament of who he was in the Old Testament, and now he's lived it out. Oh Robbie, Easter is coming! Then you get the heartburn you were talking about, that good heart, their hearts burned, oh yeah, we want to hear that, we want to experience that, and you know where you can find it is in the Word, and you know, dig in this weekend, we'll be back with you Monday, thanks for listening.
