WWUTT 1410 Q&A Hal Lindsey, Francis Chan, and Allah

Good Friday, Listener Questions, and Upcoming Conferences

Hal Lindsey has been doing false prophecy for a long time. What do we need to know about what he has said? Can a former Muslim still be referring to God as Allah? And what are the problems with Francis Chan?

The answer is when we understand the text.

Happy Good Friday from your friends at when we understand the text, a daily Bible study in the word of Christ, that we may know the good news of Christ's death and resurrection from the grave. Visit our website at www .utt .com.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. You're welcome. You sound a little tired there, love. I am a little tired. Why would you be tired? I don't know. Lots of traveling. Yeah, that's it. Lots of traveling. Still recuperating.

I had mentioned on the broadcast last week that she was gone, not even in the state of Kansas. I was home alone for Not even in the state of Kansas? Oh yeah, you were in Kansas. I was in Kansas. I was not in Kansas.

I wasn't in Kansas anymore. Dorothy went back home. That's right. She went home to visit her folks. I stayed here in Texas. It's not just the traveling. No. We're 17 weeks now. Yep. Becky is 17 weeks pregnant.

Yes. Which means the baby is the size of A Pop-Tart.

Or a pear, depends on the app.

I don't think of Pop-Tarts and pears as really being the same size.

I don't either, honestly, but you know. There was an

Somewhere about that. There was an empty box of Pop-Tarts in our living room last night. And Becky and I were watching a show. Sometimes we watch a show together before bed. And after it was over, it was just kind of a moment of silence.

And Becky goes, I want a Pop-Tart. And I didn't even see, I didn't see the box over there. But she said, I've been seeing that box the entire time. Yep, the entire day. I need a Pop-Tart. And my baby's the size of a Pop-Tart, so I need a Pop-Tart.

The Pop-Tart needs a Pop-Tart. That's how that went. And he's already been actively kicking her. Oh, yes. That toxic masculinity. Kicking mama. Well, we decided to wait to record the episode today just so I could get Becky on.

We couldn't do it last night, but now she's on today. So we're a little late getting this posted, but that was so you would have the privilege that I get every day of having the company of Becky with you.

So we've got questions we're answering from the listeners, and you could submit those questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com. Real quick, before getting to our first question, we want to mention a couple of conferences that we're going to be attending.

The first is Well, we, I'm still up in the air.

It's kind of like every Friday episode of the broadcast. Yeah. Is Becky going to be there? Well, I don't know. We have this hope that she will be, but we don't know.

We plan on it, but it doesn't always happen.

Wokeness and the Gospel Conference and the G3 Conference

So the Wokeness in the Gospel Conference is coming up June 11th and 12th. Yes. It's in Dallas, sort of. North Dallas. North Dallas. Hang on, this is Isn't it Denton? Yeah, Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas, which is, that's Tommy Nelson's church, I believe.

The church he's been pastoring for, boy, goodness, how long has he been there? I was listening to him when I was in high school. Oh yeah? So he's been there for That's awesome. Yeah, he's been there a long time.

But speakers include Dr. Owen Strand, Daryl Harrison, Pastor Tommy Nelson, of course, our own Pastor Tom Buck, Rodney Brown, Charles Stolfus, and when we understand the text, we'll be there. Yay! I had asked about a booth.

I don't know for sure if I'm going to do a booth yet, but I will be there. So that's going to be, again, it's June 11th and 12th, a Friday and a Saturday. Starts at four o 'clock Friday evening, and will go until six o 'clock Saturday evening.

So if you are in the Dallas area, pretty close to Dallas anyway, can do that in a weekend, and still want to be able to make it home for church on Sunday, then we invite you to come to the Wokeness and the Gospel Conference coming up.

We're just two months away from that one. Then in October, we have the G3 Conference. That one's always in Atlanta, but this time around, the G3 Conference is at a different location. That's right. It's going to be at the, oh, I don't have there.

Oh, you're pointing to it. The Georgia World Congress Center.

I don't even know where that is. It's on the other side over by the new baseball field from what I gathered. Oh, okay.

Yeah, the new baseball field where Major League Baseball just pulled out from doing the, what was it? The all-star game they were going to be having there? I don't know. In Atlanta, and Major League Baseball has pulled out.

I've been out of the loop. It's because of the recent voting law that was passed in the state of Georgia. You have to be able to show ID in order to vote, so Major League Baseball's pulled out. What, why?

Yeah, I know, it's totally ridiculous. We're political about everything now. Everything has to have some sort of political opinion attached to it, but anyway. So no matter what Georgia does, unless, for whatever reason, they shut down the G3 Conference, we're gonna be there.

It's at the Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta, September 30th through October 2nd. That's a Thursday through Saturday, and you can find out more by going to g3min .org, that's G -3-M-I-N dot O-R-G, and find out more information about the G3 Conference.

There, we will definitely have a booth.

And if I'm there, we will definitely have an infant with us. We'll have a baby with us, too.

Lord willing. That's right. The babies due a month before that. So we've already had a few that have gotten ahold of us and said, no, you're gonna come because I'll be there with my baby. So. I love it.

You need to be there with your baby, too. Let's get to our first question here. It comes from Chris in North Carolina. He says, good evening, Pastor Gabe and Becky. What do you know about Hal Lindsey?

A family member sent me a YouTube video of a series on Revelation. Oh, heavens. I found it to be very eisegetical. That's putting it politely, I'm sure. Steeped in dispensational Zionism. I'm not inclined to follow this guy, but I was curious if you had any additional insight.

Hal Lindsey, False Prophecy, and the Return of Christ

Yes, Hal Lindsey is the author of the bestselling book, The Late Great Planet Earth. Before there was the Left Behind series, before Rick Warren wrote Purpose Driven Life, which is, that one's now as best as I'm able to recall.

I think that The Purpose Driven Life is the bestselling Christian book other than the Bible with over 50 million copies sold. Wow. Before The Purpose Driven Life, the bestselling Christian book ever written was The Late Great Planet Earth.

And it had sold over 35 million copies. Oh my goodness. By the end of the 90s. It was a huge book, talked about, of course, the end of the world. And every five to 10 years or so, Hal Lindsey is putting out another book talking about the end of the world.

I think it's even more often than that. It might be every like three years or something. He puts out another book talking about the end of the world. He has predicted when Jesus is going to come back.

That date always comes and goes.

Yep, that's what I was gonna say. That's why there's another book every five to 10 years. That's right.

He is always, always wrong. Hal Lindsey, this is the guy that came up with the interpretation of the locusts in the Book of Revelation that had hair like women and tails like scorpions. And he looked at this and he saw an Apache helicopter and he went, oh, oh, hey, look.

Got it. That might be what John saw. And he didn't know how to describe it because he'd never seen a helicopter before. So these Apache helicopters got described as the scorpions with hair like women and tails like scorpions.

Okay. It was Apache helicopters. That's what's in the Book of Revelation. So yeah, as you can probably tell by my answer, I do not recommend Hal Lindsey. I did mention him in one of the what videos. Let me play that one for you here.

It's the end of the world. Again, someone else thinks they know the day of the apocalypse or the day of the rapture and Jesus returns. Maybe they've got it all figured out based on numbers in the Bible, current events, prophecy, and revelation, something to do with Israel and the alignment of the sun, moon, and stars.

Many other people have tried to predict the end, but they've all been wrong. The Latter-day Saints, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Seventh-day Adventists were practically built on failed prophecies. Hal Lindsey, Pat Robertson, and Benny Hinn all made end-of-the-world predictions.

So did Jerry Falwell, who founded Liberty University, and Chuck Smith, founder of Calvary Chapel. And let's not forget the infamous Harold Camping fiasco in 2011. But what if this one is correct? What if this person finally accurately predicted the actual day that Jesus will return?

Well, in Matthew 24, 36, Jesus said, but concerning that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven nor the Son, but the Father only. Now, some will try to walk back their predictions by saying something like, well, that's just the day the end starts.

That might not be the actual day of Jesus' return, but it's a significant day for something. But they don't know that either, for Jesus also said, it is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority.

Therefore, be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. Turn from your sin, worship Christ the Lord, and obey His commandments in the Bible. And on the day that you stand before Him in judgment, you were born again ready when we understand the text.

Now, something that you didn't hear in that video, well, of course, that's the audio version of the video. So the graphic that comes up where it mentions how Lindsay and Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and Chuck Smith, it actually, it mentions the predictions that each one of those persons made.

Oh, yeah. How Lindsay said that Jesus was gonna return in 1988.

Oh, that's a little bit overdue.

Yeah, that was a long time ago. And yet he still gets sought after as a prophecy expert. Why? He's on like Daystar. I don't understand.

And Trinity Broadcasting. If you've been wrong so many times, what qualifies you to be sought after anymore for truth? That's right.

And Jesus explicitly says, no one knows the hour or the day. Yeah. Not to mention our prophet test that we have in Deuteronomy 18. The prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.

And if you say in your heart, how may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word the Lord has not spoken.

The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him. And again, what does it say is supposed to happen to such a person? Verse 20, the one who speaks a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, that same prophet shall die.

If this were Old Testament Israel, Hal Lindsey would have been stoned several times up to this point. And yet he still gets sought after as some sort of prophecy expert. He's made his entire career off of this.

He's made millions off of it. That's just sad. Becky and I were in a, what was a 70s theme store? Yeah, retro store. Yeah, it was retro. And we found A lot of 70s stuff though. Yeah. It was awesome.

We found an old copy of the late great planet earth. Yes. And I bought it and gave it to Pastor Tom. Yep. And he loved it. He loved it. Oh yeah, thought it was great. The only reason I didn't keep it is because I already have a copy.

Uh-huh. Yeah. It's one of those that you just have to have. It was such a big book. You can't help but keep that relic of the past.

And you guys cannot hear my eyes rolling.

Yeah, at the end when Christ returns and he judges the world with fire, that book is gonna go up in the fire. But for now, it's kindling sitting on my shelf. Yes. Hey, if we ever have one of those winters again in Texas where

That'll be the first to go in. That's right. Everybody's power goes out and we have to start burning books. I'll be sure to grab that late great planet earth book. There you go. That's one that'll go in there.

Thank you for your question, Chris. I think we've answered that one pretty thoroughly. She or Shay, Shay? Shay in Huntersville. Hello, Pastor Hughes. I'm thankful to God for your ministry. What do you think about a former Muslim, now a Christian continuing to use the term Allah when referring to God?

Whether a Former Muslim Should Keep Using Allah for God

Well, the word Allah is Arabic for God. That is the Arabic word that means God or more accurately, it means the God. But the Allah of the Mormon religion, Mormon. Muslim. There's a lot of similarities there.

Both Muhammad and Joseph Smith heard from an angel and received a New Testament, a new New Testament. So anyway, yeah, there's a lot of similarities between the two. There's a funny Lutheran satire video on that as well.

Yeah, I was thinking how to play it. Nah, you can go look it up. It's Satan asking another demon to give him a new religion. Okay. And the new religion that he gives him is, he's describing Mormonism, but Satan's going, no, that sounds like Muslim.

That sounds like Islam to me. Oh, funny. So anyway, that was good. But yeah, so it's the Arabic word for God. It's not uncommon to encounter somebody who has formerly been a Muslim, now a Christian, still using the term Allah to describe God.

I would hope that as they grow and mature though, that they would stop using the term or do something to greater delineate between the God of Islam and the true God of the Bible instead of using the same name, because he's not the same God.

There are many who will try to say that Islam is, it's just another Abrahamic religion, right? It's just kind of descended from the Abrahamic religions like Christianity and Judaism and Mormonism, but that's not true at all.

The God that the Muslims worship is not the God that Abraham worshiped.

Right. And I would think if you're concerned about that, like a friend doing it or something, then I would have a conversation about that just so that way you are sure that they understand that that is a different God, that we worship the God of all gods.

Right.

Yeah, I don't know if, like you're asking this question, if you know somebody that's doing that, if you're just trying to win a debate with a friend, and that's the reason why you asked the question, I would focus on something other than the word Allah.

Right. Because basically Islam is a, well, it's a religion of works. Anything but Christianity is always gonna be a religion of works. Yep. The thing that differentiates Christianity from other religions is that we are saved by grace and not by works.

Ephesians 2, eight and nine, it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.

So that no man may boast. That's right.

Not a result of works so that no man may boast. But then of course, verse 10 goes on to say, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that you should walk in them.

Right. So we are supposed to do good works, but it's not the works that save us. The works are the evidence that we have been saved. Right. We're saved by grace. And that's the mark of Christianity that differentiates this faith from every other world religion.

Right. If you were to ask a Muslim, where will you go when you die? He might say paradise. He might. You could encounter a Muslim that goes, well, I'm not real sure yet, but God's gonna judge me by what it is that I do.

So I hope I do enough good. Right. Yes. That a law is gonna reward me and give me paradise. Yeah. And if you ask him, well, how do you know that you're gonna go to paradise? And they'll say, well, I read the Quran.

I pay alms. I pray five times a day. I've made the pilgrimages. Right. So therefore I am a righteous man. These are the works that the Quran says that a faithful Muslim must do in order to enter paradise.

So it is salvation strictly by works. And we know, surely you've heard this and can probably point to the reference even because you've seen it online enough times. But the Quran says that Allah does not have a son.

And therefore Christianity is a false religion according to the Quran. Right. But it is God who sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins and rise again from the grave so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

It is by grace and not by our works because the work was done by Christ. Right. The only one who could. That's right. The only sinless man, the only one who could live a perfect life, the only one who was worthy to die and be raised.

Right. And it says in Acts chapter 17 that God showed through whom he would judge the world by raising him from the dead. So Christ is not only our savior, he is our judge. Yes. And it is only by faith in Jesus Christ that we are forgiven our sins and we have everlasting life with God by his grace and not by our works.

Praise the Lord. Amen. So that's the God who saves. That is the God who is gracious, which the Islam, the Muslim God is not that. Right. He is a tyrant God. He is not the gracious, good, loving God of the Bible.

So anyway, you know, however that conversation is going with you and a friend, maybe focus on something else related to the aspects of God rather than having a debate over whether that name is useful or should still be used.

Yes, and if they just became Christian from the Muslim religion, false religion. Yes. Anyway, be patient with them that they take baby steps, you know, just like babies grow very slowly. I mean, you look back and you think, wow, they grew so fast, but really they grow really slowly.

And so it's good to give them that time and that just the time to gather up the wisdom and the knowledge and to grow in the faith.

That's right. So we're told in Jude verse 20, it says, beloved building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life and have mercy on those who doubt.

Save others by snatching them out of the fire to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh. So we need to be patient with one another and help each other. Yeah. And don't, you know, feel like you need to get some blood on your spiritual sword I beat you in this argument.

That's not how to do it. Yeah, you could potentially drive somebody away, somebody who is weak in their faith. But remember, and Becky and I have quoted this many times, even on this episode of the podcast on the Friday episode, but Romans 15, one and two, we who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves, but to please our neighbor for his good to build him up.

Francis Chan, False Teachers, and Handling Church Concerns Wisely

Right. This last question here, this comes from Char in Springfield, Missouri, says, good morning, I have been listening to your posts and have been very thankful for your ministry. I'm wondering if you have any info on Francis Chan.

I'm not personally familiar with his teaching, but I know that he's very popular. I'm concerned with some recent articles I'm seeing about his association with false teachers, Benny Hinn, Todd White, Bill Johnson.

She says Bill Bickle here, but that would be Mike? Yeah, Mike Bickle. Yeah, the founder of the International House of Prayer. I got a name. You did, you got a name. This is rare, guys.

I'm not the one that comes up with these things. That's right, Becky. Or thinks of the names correctly.

Yeah, she remembered a name I forgot. It wasn't coming to me right away. Anyway, so going on, she says, this stems from our church starting a study that he leads on the book of James. And I was trying to research him as I try to do with all teachers of materials we use.

And most of what I saw was troubling to say the least. My pastor saw a comment I made on Facebook and he was very angry that I'd questioned his discernment, first on choosing a study, but was defending Francis Chan and his sound teaching.

If you have anything specific on him, good or bad, I'd appreciate your input. Thank you for all that you do. Well, Char, I did a blog on this and I wrote it, well, this would have been back in 2019 when he was doing the conferences with all of these false teachers that you mentioned.

Guys like Benny Hinn and Todd White and now my Bill Johnson. I just almost said Phil Johnson there. I wanted to be real careful with the name that I was choosing. But yeah, anyway. Wrong person. So yeah, with all these false teachers that he's been palling around with, doing these conferences with, and the guy really has fallen off the deep end.

It's very sad. But if you look up the blog that I wrote, it's at pastorgabe .com, and it's entitled Francis Chan Defends His Friendship With False Teachers. It was written on March 17th of 2019. You can find some of the points that I make about there, the teachers that he's associated with.

I also mention another article that was written by Jordan Standridge at the Cripplegate, and the name of that article is called Farewell Francis. He wrote that one on March 12th, 2019. So just a few days before I wrote mine.

But both of those articles are real good. That'll mention some of the problems with Francis Chan and the direction that he has gone. When I was a pastor in Kansas, we were just two hours away from the International House of Prayer in Kansas City.

And so things that would go on there would affect churches that were in our area. Greatly, yeah. And something that happened a few years ago is that the then president of the SBC, who was Ronnie Floyd, went and spoke at the International House of Prayer.

And that was a big, big issue. I wish that the SBC had made a bigger deal out of that than they did. That was seriously problematic. And I did talk to even a couple of seminary presidents, SBC seminary presidents about that, and was very discouraged by the answers that they gave me about that as well.

But because Ronnie Floyd was there, it then became necessary for me to address my church about the problems with this and why we can't have any affiliation or association with the International House of Prayer.

So there is a sermon or a clip from a sermon that I did, and you can still find that at my old church's YouTube page. They're still sound teaching, still doing great over there in Junction City. First Southern Baptist Church, it's FSBCJC on YouTube.

And if you look through the videos, there's a video of me talking about the problems with Francis Chan. And he's there on stage talking about his unity with Mike Bickle, how much he loves Mike Bickle.

There is Matt Marr, who's the praise and worship singer, leading worship there. There's the young woman, Audrey Assad. She's not only led worship at the International House of Prayer, but she's done duets with Michael W. Smith and Chris Tomlin.

Oh, okay, yeah. Has had a lot of influence in contemporary Christian music. She just basically left the faith just recently. It was this year. Oh, really? It's only been within the last couple of months that that story hit.

I can't remember if it was the beginning of this month. Maybe it was last month. But anyway, so Audrey Assad is apostatized. She was already a Catholic mystic. Okay. So there was a lot of problems there anyway.

But so I talked about how Francis Chan's up there with those people and he talks about how we just love one another and we're just unified in this faith. And no, they're not. Mike Bickle claims that he's been to heaven twice and had a personal audience with Jesus Christ who told him to go back and tell his church this.

So whatever Mike Bickle says is gonna be on par with whatever the Bible says because Jesus told him to say it, according to Mike Bickle. Then you got Matt Maher, who's a Catholic and you have Audrey Assad.

Isn't that equivalent to writing more of the New Testament? Oh yeah, it's the equivalent to adding to the word of God. It's scary. Which the Bible says in Revelation, you don't do that. It says so in Deuteronomy and Proverbs and Revelation.

It keeps going. Multiple places. It's all over the place. Don't add to the word of God. Don't. Yeah. Don't. So we've already had, we've talked about false prophet Hal Lindsey. Mike Bickle is a false prophet.

And Francis Chan is partnering with these guys. And because of that, I don't think Francis Chan's teaching should be used at all. And now his teaching on James, which you're talking about here, Shar, his teaching on James may be perfectly fine.

It might be. Your pastor might be defending this because the teaching is rather sound. In the past, Francis has been really good. He's a graduate of Master's Seminary. So there have been teachings that he's done in the past that are extremely good.

I used to promote his stuff and share some of his videos and things like that. But in recent years, he's just gone a very strange way. And because of his association with those teachers, his teaching is now changing also.

I won't go into some examples of that. But overall, I would just say it's a dangerous teacher to be using and putting in front of people and then thinking that's okay. And then they start finding some of these other guys that Francis is associated with who are just straight up heretics.

I would be careful about what you post on Facebook. If it's an issue like this, I mean, obviously your pastor didn't know that you had qualms with it. So I would talk to the pastor first before posting anything on Facebook, just because you gotta understand that he might be completely clueless as to where Francis Chan is now and remember the old Francis Chan.

And so that's just something that you need to just be patient with and take the right steps. Think back to olden days where you would go to the person first and chat about it and then it goes from there.

Think about olden days in the sense that when we didn't have Facebook to be able to take our, yeah.

Because I mean, sometimes it feels like you're just hitting someone upside the head with a book, with a big book and they're just not prepared for it. So they're gonna come back at you defensively because they didn't even know.

But I mean, he's obviously, she said that he did his research. So he's taken it personally. Like it's inadequate, that he's inadequate. So I would go back and talk with him about like maybe his past choices have been great.

Just this one is very concerning. Something where you sit down and you have a chat. Yeah, there does need to be a little more.

Of a personal conversation there because you don't wanna take your frustrations to Facebook first. Right. Even as pastors, like Pastor Tom and myself, we don't take our woes to Facebook before we're, or Twitter or Instagram, I'm not even on anymore.

So we wanna talk those things out with that person first. And things that happen in my church, I don't post on social media about it all. Unless it's some sort of praise or something like that. But if there's a certain thing we have to work through, I'm not gonna take that to social media.

It's nobody else's business. That's what we need to deal with in our church. Now you posting that about Francis Chan, there's definitely some concerning things. I said that it was a comment.

So somebody else must have posted about it and then she made a comment. Yeah, could have been. But at the same time, I would just wait to say comments until you've talked with the people involved first.

Yeah. And then go from there.

Right. Then after you've had those conversations, then you can start posting some things maybe. I'd still be wise in discerning with how you do that. But you've done your research on this, you find out he's a false teacher.

I don't want anybody else to come into the same error that my own church almost fell into. Right. So then you'll wanna share those kinds of things.

With other people. Right, and you can word it as something as gentle as, I don't know if you guys are up to date on this, but here's this new information about this teacher. Something just wording is everything on, well, on social media, because that's all that it is, is just words.

Yeah. So they can read it however they want, but the more gentle the words and the more words you use to explain it in a gentle approach, I think it's better. Definitely. Personally.

Yep. And Char, I will send you the links that I mentioned, the two articles and the video clip so that you can see kind of all that material in there as well. I'm with you on not using Francis Chan's material in your church.

I don't think that you should. But again, handle those things in a proper order, especially with your own pastor. And you need to be considerate and subject to your pastor's instruction more so than mine.

Yeah. But I understand, I get it. I understand the concern with some of the teaching that's going on there.

Is there a way, since it says that he was very angry, is there a way that you would have someone approach you if you were already upset with them? Like, is there a different way? Or just saying, hey, can we chat about this?

Yeah, I would actually approach it and say, I apologize for putting this on social media before we had the chance to talk about it. That's good, yeah. So in hindsight, realizing this was not the proper way to handle that.

So you're approaching it with humility. That way he's not already preparing himself for, well, here's another fight. Here we go again. We're gonna argue about this. Somebody is getting nitpicky over the teaching.

And so he's ready to put up a defensive front rather than actually hear what your concerns are. So if you approach it with humility, I'm sorry. I should not have approached this the way that I did, putting it on social media first.

So is there a way that we can talk about this that I can show you some of the things that I've seen and what the problems are with Francis Chan? And we can talk about that first. And hopefully he will be receptive to that.

If he is wanting to shepherd you well, then I would hope that he would definitely be open to a conversation like that. That's good. So yeah, there we go. Thanks, babe. Yeah, no problem. If you have any other questions you'd like to submit to the program, send them to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

Don't forget about the two conferences I mentioned. Look them up online. Wokeness and the Gospel coming to Denton, Texas in two months. And then the G3 Conference, which will be in Atlanta at the beginning of October.

Two months. Yeah. Wow, that goes fast. Yeah, it sure does. Okay. Let's finish with prayer. Yes, please. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time together and being able to open your word and hear about the goodness of Christ that we have proclaimed to us through your scriptures.

And I pray we would be reminded on this good Friday of the death of Christ on the cross for our sins and his resurrection from the grave. As it says in Romans 4 .25, he was offered up for our trespasses and it is by his resurrection that we are justified.

So we have our innocence declared before God, not just because Christ died for us, but also because he rose again from the grave. We rejoice in his sacrifice on the cross because we know he was raised from the dead on the third day.

And I pray we don't just think about that on an Easter weekend, but every time we gather as the church on Sunday, we gather on that day because it was that day of the week that Jesus conquered death and rose again.

And may we reflect this victory in our lives, looking with hope toward the resurrection of our bodies when we will join our Lord forever in glory. Thank you for your goodness and grace to us daily and teach us how we may continue to walk in this grace that you have shown us.

In Christ Jesus, our Lord, and it's in his name that we pray. Amen. Amen.