America's Response to 9/11 and Comparing Christianity to Islam

And good afternoon and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. Our phone lines will be open today at 866 -854 -6763. 866 -854 -6763 is the toll-free number for you to access the program, as they say out there in the real radio world.

And last week we took a whack at discussing America's response to the terrorist attacks on September 11th. And during the course of the week I took the time to put a new main page article up on the website that was relevant to the same issue and then linked to The Dividing Line program.

I also addressed this issue in Sunday School. Unfortunately our faithful person who puts the sermons and stuff up on the the prbc .org website has only recently gotten back from being in New York when the attacks that took place.

And so my Sunday School lesson I don't believe is up there yet, but eventually we'll hopefully be able to link to that as well. It has been most interesting to note the responses, and in fact one of the reasons that we have the phone lines open today right from the start is maybe some of you who have given us some very strong responses to the main page article and to last week's program would like to possibly get in touch with us and explain some of, maybe even some of the terminology that you have utilized in your responses.

We've gotten two kinds. We've gotten very positive responses to the discussion of the inconsistency of America asking for God's blessing while at the same time utterly and completely not only ignoring the issue of repentance, but even more than that, rejecting in the strongest possible ways any call for repentance and in fact identifying anyone who would call for repentance as being unpatriotic, as attacking America, so on and so forth.

In talking with a lot of folks I have discovered that there is definitely an undercurrent of people who fully agree with what I had to say and with what others are saying, but they're afraid to come out and say this in many situations because of the presentation throughout the media and sadly throughout the church as well in regards to this necessity of not speaking about repentance, not speaking about judgment, not speaking about punishment, not speaking about sin.

There's a time and a place, we're being told, and so there's a hesitance to speak out on these particular subjects. But then we've gotten other kinds of responses. We've gotten the positive ones. We've gotten the responses from people that said, you know, this is, you know, thank you very much for addressing this, for being willing to address it, so on and so forth.

But then we've gotten the others and some of them quite honestly I could not even read to you. One that I looked at last night, I suppose if I had a little bleep button where I could bleep out the profanities, I could read the entirety of the text to you.

But all we've got is a cough button and that would just create silence and it would just be holes in what I was saying, so that really wouldn't work too well. And besides that, silence is just not nearly as good as the beep because the beep actually tells you that there's, you know, there's something there that you're not supposed to be hearing and then your mind, of course, fills in with the worst possible thing you can figure out anyways, which would be about right with this particular message that was sent to us through the website.

But there are a lot of folks that just, you know, you're attacking the nation, you're attacking the United States. So we have a lot of folks who actually think they're Christians. Now, of course, this fellow who used that language, he did talk about theology and things like that.

And I do know of some particular religious groups that were in profanity is not considered to be really a sign of spiritual immaturity or anything else. So I guess maybe that person comes from one of those.

I don't know. But in any case, it's truly been amazing to observe the kinds of responses that we have gotten and the fact that a lot of folks don't even want to be challenged to think through what our current national crisis might mean.

But it has done nothing for me but to cause me to think ever more concerning this particular issue and to be ever more convinced of the necessity of repentance, the necessity of calling for repentance, calling for people to consider well the meaning of the Scriptures when it speaks to us of repentance and God's judgment upon the unrighteous.

And I think that is going to truly become the theme of anyone who truly believes in Scripture, truly believes that we need to believe all of Scripture. That's very, very, very important. And that's, I think, a very important thing.

I'd like if we can, remember the phone lines are open, 866 -854 -6763. I would like you to, if you have a Bible available to you, turn with me to Jeremiah chapter 7. I was just watching a moron come into our chat room, and thankfully others managed to kick the moron out of the chat room.

There are some really weird people in the internet, that's all I can say. But if you would turn to Jeremiah chapter 7, I have been caused to think about this passage many times over the past week. Because of the repeated statement, well, look, you know, there's a time and a place for everything, and we really should not be talking about sin right now.

We shouldn't be talking about judgment right now. Let's just all get together, and let's say the Pledge of Allegiance, and wave a flag, and feel warm and fuzzy inside. And the big one I've heard is, don't you dare talk about these things right now, because people will think that you're like the radical Muslim fundamentalists.

And I've thought about that a number of times. I've thought about the fear that people have that someone's gonna say, well, you people are like those radical Muslim fundamentalists. Okay, well, what do you do about that?

Are we like radical Muslim fundamentalists? Do we have any desire to hijack aircraft and fly them into major buildings in Islamic nations? No. Do we have a doctrine of jihad? No, the Crusades were not Christian in any way, shape, or form.

That's an aberration of Roman Catholicism, so there's certainly nothing biblical about that. So what are the similarities? Well, we've got a different God. Oh, no, no, no, no, Allah and our God, they're the same God, right?

No, no, no, they're not. Allah is so transcendent that he has, as they say, Allah has no son. Allah is Unitarian, we are Trinitarians. I guess the Jehovah's Witnesses might have to talk with, defend their position at that point, but we are Trinitarian, Allah is Unitarian, hence there can be no expression of love eternally in Allah as there is amongst the divine persons of the Trinity, and Allah is so transcendent that there is no imminent entering into the creation that we have in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

Islam rejects the idea that Allah could in any way, shape, or form enter into his creation. The concept of redemption is foreign in Islam that, I mean, on every fundamental level, there's a vast difference.

The only thing that we're similar in is that we're monotheists who believe God is personal and has revealed himself in Scripture. We obviously disagree as to the Scripture, what is the Scripture and what the Scriptures teach and so on and so forth, but as far as who God is and how he's revealed himself and salvation and the end of the world and how a person is saved and everything else, very, very different.

But people still might think that we're similar. Why? Because we both believe in objective truth and there's nothing that we can do about that and there's nothing we should do about that. In fact, the amazing thing is, it seems to me there's a number of Christians who actually want to back off from confessing objective truth so we don't look like someone else who confesses objective truth because believing objective truth is so completely, so completely opposed.

Our society is so completely opposed to the idea of objective truth that they're going to hate anyone who believes in objective truth. Subjectivists don't like people who believe that there's objective truth.

That's just the way it is. And so, it seems there's some people actually, well, let's not talk about these things and so on. It amazes me. What is the right time for speaking about judgment? If when judgment comes is not the right time to speak about judgment and when judgment wasn't coming and everything was, you know, the stock market was going through the roof and there was the dot com millionaires and, you know, everybody was just fine and dandy, what was the national discussion then?

Well, mainly sexual debauchery. That was primarily the national discussion then. You didn't hear much in the way of a call for repentance then either. So now, judgment comes and I saw a graphic within the past, I think, four months, $17 trillion dollars, or was it $12 trillion?

It was either $12 or $17 trillion dollars has disappeared, poof, gone. Within the first five days of the stock market being opened again, $1 .2 trillion dollars, poof, gone. And so, now's not the time.

Exactly when is the time to talk about these things if now isn't the time? Of course, those who have been very negative have been so without any particularly decent biblical argumentation. It's just all been chest-pounding and flag-waving and you mean non-patriotic person.

Well, when I think about that, when I think about people saying, well, you need to, you just need to be nice, you need to be kind, you need to, you know, just get on the bandwagon and everything else, I think of Jeremiah chapter 7.

Jeremiah chapter 7. And again, I'd like you to think about what was going on here. By the way, the phone number is 866 -854 -6763 if you'd like to participate today. Think about what's going on in Jeremiah chapter 7.

Put yourself in the context. The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying, Stand in the gate of the Lord's house and proclaim there this word and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you of Judah, who enter by these gates to worship the Lord.

So, let's let's picture this. Jeremiah lives in a day where there is a certain amount of economic prosperity. We know from reading Jeremiah that there were palaces, there were rich people, but there were people who had a lot of money.

And he lives in a day when the people of Israel believe that because the temple is there, then God is with them. And they are a outwardly religious people. They go to the temple, they offer sacrifices, they observe various feast days and holidays and the like.

And so, from an outward perspective, the Judah of Jeremiah's day is very similar to the America of our day. There is a place of worship, there is religiosity in the land, there is a sense in which we have experienced God's blessings in the past so we will continue to be able to do so in the future.

And it is in that context that Jeremiah is sent, not to a small synagogue someplace, but he's sent to the very heart of religious worship in the city. He is sent to stand right at the gate of the Lord's house and proclaim these words to all of Judah, all who enter by these gates to worship the Lord.

Verse three, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, amend your ways and your deeds and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in deceptive words saying this is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.

For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly practice justice between a man and his neighbor, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place nor walk after other gods to your own ruin, then I will let you dwell in this place in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever.

Behold, you are trusting in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder and commit adultery and swear falsely and offer sacrifices to Baal and walk after other gods you have not known? Then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name and say, we are delivered that you may do all these abominations.

Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? Behold, even I have seen it, declares the Lord. But go now to my place, which was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at the first, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of my people Israel.

And now behold, you have done all these things, declares the Lord. And I spoke to you, rising up early and speaking, but you did not hear. And I called you, but you did not answer. Therefore, I will do to the house, which is called by my name, in which you trust and to the place which I gave you and your fathers, as I did to Shiloh, I will cast you out of my sight as I've cast out all your brothers, all the offspring of Ephraim.

As for you, this is to Jeremiah, as for you, do not pray for this people and do not lift up cry or prayer for them and do not intercede with me, for I do not hear you. Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?

The children gather wood and the fathers kindle the fire and the women need dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven. And they pour out drink offerings to other gods in order to spite me. Do they spite me, declares the Lord?

Is it not themselves they spite to their own shame? Therefore, thus says the Lord God, behold, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place on man and on beasts, on the trees, the field, on the fruit of the ground, and it will burn and not be quenched.

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat flesh, for I did not speak to your fathers or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices.

But this is what I commanded them saying, obey my voice and I will be your God and you will be my people and you will walk in all the way which I command you that it may be well with you. Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own councils and the stubbornness of their evil hearts and went backward and not forward.

Since the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have sent you all my servants, the prophets daily rising early and sending them. Yet they did not listen to me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck.

They did more evil than their fathers. You shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. And you shall call to them, but they will not answer you. You shall say to them, this is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord, their God or accept correction.

Truth has perished and has been cut off from their mouth. Cut off your hair and cast it away and take up a lamentation on the bare heights for the Lord has rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath.

For the sons of Judah have done that which is evil in my sight declares the Lord. They have set their detestable things in the house, which is called by my name to defile it. They have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command.

And it did not come into my mind. Therefore, behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when it will no longer be called Topheth or the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of the slaughter. But they will bury in Topheth because there is no other place.

The dead bodies, this people be food for the birds of the sky and for the beasts of the earth, and no one will frighten them away. Then I will make the cease from the cities of Judah and from the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, for the land will become a ruin.

Those are hard words, but if you have a Bible, they're right there in front of you. They were there on September 10th and they were there on September 12th. Nothing changed in them. The call to repentance was the same.

Now, when you read that passage, many immediately go, well, don't you realize, are you so dim-witted that you do not understand that this has nothing to do with America because America, that was about Israel.

That has nothing to do with America. Well, is that the case? Is it the case that if it was mentioned, if it was said of America, I'm sorry, said of Israel, that means it cannot have any application to anyone else.

And there have been people who have written to me, and I think they're very deeply influenced by various forms of dispensationalism, basically, who have said, look, God only holds Israel accountable for those things.

Well, isn't that interesting? Let's think for a moment. What sins did God mention there in Jeremiah chapter 7? He mentioned sins of oppressing widows and orphans, of not having justice in the land, of shedding of innocent blood, the murder of children.

Specifically there toward the end, he talks about the offering of children and sacrifice to Mulloch. There's idolatry. There's all sorts of sexual immorality mentioned along the way, and committing adultery, stealing, murdering, swearing falsely, offering sacrifices to Baal, walking after other gods that you have not known.

That's verse 9. And I look at a verse like that, and I start thinking about the Canaanites, the ones that were driven out of that land. What did they do? Well, they were involved in idolatry, the worship of false gods.

They stole, they murdered, they committed adultery. They swore falsely. They offered sacrifices to various and sundry gods and caused their children to pass through the fire, that is, sacrificed their children upon the altar, and so on and so forth.

And what happened to them? Scriptures tell us that God's wrath came upon those nations, and they were driven out. Some of you may recall just a few weeks ago, before the attacks took place, we were talking about homosexuality, and we raised this very issue in regards to Leviticus, and the call to the Jewish people to be a holy people, and the discussion of the fact that the peoples of the land that were going to be displaced and were going to be judged had engaged in all these various and sundry sins, and the people of Israel were warned not to become involved with those things.

Well, interestingly enough, that's exactly what we've got going on now as well. That's exactly what we have going on now as well. We have the same sins, and someone said, well, what do you mean the same sins?

Well, don't we have the very same things going on now? Don't we have stealing, theft, murder, every form of adultery, fornication, homosexuality, gross dishonesty? I mean, don't I remember something just recently about high government officials let go, just not even removed from office because even though it was very obvious that they had committed perjury?

Nobody cares. It's just, you know, hey, you know, we all do it, or so we're told. And right there, after stealing, murdering, committing adultery in Jeremiah 7, 9, you have swear falsely, dishonesty, injustice, offer sacrifices to Baal, offer sacrifices to Baal, walk after other gods that you have not known.

Boy, is that happening all over the place. Seems to have become the national religion. There's a new god out there, and he, well, if you've got a Christian background, he can sort of look Christian to you, and if you've got a Muslim background, he can sort of look Muslim, and if you've got a Sikh background, he can look Sikh, and if Buddhist, you can look Buddhist, and, you know, all sorts of stuff like that.

And then what about this offering of children? Again, I'm not going to be making any friends, but I cannot help but thinking about the fact that when the Congress stood on the steps and sang God Bless America, that was the same Congress who has acted consistently over the past number of years to make sure that we are able to legally in this land practice a form of infanticide that makes anything that was ever offered to Moloch look tame.

Look tame. If you know what is involved in partial birth abortion, you know that we have actually gotten better at it than the Canaanites were, and what I mean by that is we're even worse. And back then, they may have offered their kids so they could get a better crop.

Now, we offer our kids so that we don't have to worry and spend the money and the time on being responsible for our own sexual activities. At least they were trying to get some food out of it. I think what we do is worse, and so that's what I was trying to communicate last week, was God bless America with what?

Yeah, we can sing God bless America. What do the words say? The words aren't saying God bless America with continued economic prosperity and protection that has nothing to do with how we live. What should God bless America with?

Well, I think we all know. God needs to bless America with repentance. God needs to bless America with a love for his truth, but repentance and a love for truth rarely comes from economic prosperity. It rarely comes from protecting a people from outside forces.

Those are blessings that come to a righteous people, a people that are concerned about God's law, not to people who want to offer prayers without concern about personal holiness. Hence, Jeremiah says, will you steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and offer sacrifice to Baal, and walk after other gods that you have not known?

Then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, we're delivered that you may do all these abominations. You see, there's everything fine about the nation coming together and praying, but when the nation comes together and asks the people to pray who, A, don't either know God, I mean, they're blatant followers of another god, or they are movie stars and singers who live debauched lives of drug abuse and fornication, and yet they're the ones that we're supposed to look to to lead us in asking for God's blessing?

I don't understand it. It's right there in front of us, folks. It's right there in the text of scripture. Well, we've got one person online, 866 -854 -6763. When we come back, we'll be talking with you when you call in at 866 -854 -6763.

And welcome back to The Dividing Line. My name is James White, and we are discussing recent events again this week, again, hopefully in a theological context, one that'll be useful to people. We are especially considering the confusion, I would like to try to think, but I think a lot of it has to do with the depth to which man's religion has infiltrated what is called evangelicalism today.

Some folks in the chat room were just noticing some quotes that I had seen earlier this week. People are asking, quote-unquote, religious leaders about what happened in the attack, where was God, and the general consensus, and of course, it can be the only consensus from a non-biblical perspective, is to say, well, you know, there's this, you know, there's free will, and you know, God was there, but He was in the firefighters, and you know, God could stop these things from happening, but He'd have to dehumanize us to do it.

And the idea of a sovereign God with a decree who works all things after the counsel of His will so that everything is purposeful and everything resounds to His glory, just, that's not exactly what people want to hear right now.

For some reason, they find more comfort in a God who was either caught by surprise or is just doing His best to clean up the mess than it is to believe in the biblical God who brings these things about for a purpose that is always the best purpose.

People don't want that. They don't want that kind of thing. So anyways, 866 -854 -6763, and let's go to our phone callers, and let's talk with Paul over in North Hollywood, California. Hi, Paul.

Paul Hi, Dr. White.

How are you doing?

Paul Okay. First off, I wanted to thank you for everything you do these days.

Sadly, we're discovering that every day.

Paul Yeah, I wish you could have been the one to address the nation during the National Day of Prayer. Paul The reaction, I don't think, would have been too great.

Paul I don't know that I would have gotten out of the building, personally.

Paul I had a question regarding Islam. The media has

Paul Yeah, it's really interesting. I'm sitting here, of course, in front of my computer, and I have a little program here. What's it called? Sticky Notes 7 .0, if anybody knows what in the world that is.

And one of my sticky notes that I have up here is, consider and pray about engaging the Muslim topic. And that was from probably two weeks before the attacks. And I don't claim to be an expert on Islam.

My knowledge of Islam has primarily been from the apologetic perspective of, for example, debating an Islamic apologist on the deity of Christ in the New Testament, or something like that. But my understanding, and I happen to have the Quran sitting here next to me, the religion itself, from my study of church history, somebody, somewhere along the line, very early on, got the idea that Allah is glorified by the destruction of the infidel.

And when you look at the spread of Islam from the time of Muhammad over the next two centuries, to where it not only takes over all of what we would call Palestine, Arabia, the whole area there, but it goes across North Africa and up into Spain itself, that kind of tremendous expansion was not missionary expansion.

It was, in point of fact, military expansion. And so the first followers of Muhammad, those first generations, those first individuals who knew those who followed Muhammad were the closest ones, clearly understood the command to suppress unfaithfulness and to spread the faith of Islam as having a very strong militaristic external force to it.

And then, only after that expansion stops, and you have the development of what might be called Islamic culture, in the sense of, all right, now that we have this religion and this religion now needs to propagate itself within a particular culture for a particular period of time, it's not based upon militaristic expansionism anymore, we've expanded as far as we can, only then do you start seeing a moderation.

And I think it would be fair to say that the majority of those who call themselves Muslims today take, obviously, a moderate view of how they're to live. Islam not only has the Quran, but then you have, similar to what developed in, well this is sort of interesting, it's very similar to what developed in Judaism, where you have the Talmud, which is made up of the Mishnah, the Gemara, together they become the Talmud, and the Talmud becomes the Jewish commentary upon the scriptures.

Similarly, you have, in Roman Catholicism, the development of canon law, tradition, and the dogmas of the Church. Well, in Islam, you have the development of the Hadith, the various sayings of Muhammad that are passed down externally, interpretations of the Quran, and each of the various major groups within Islam gravitate more or less toward certain of those works, and consider certain of those works to be more binding, and have more interpretive authority than others.

And in fact, some they'll reject, and some they'll accept. And so many of Muslims today take a more moderate viewpoint than, say, the initial generations did, but they do so primarily because of the interpretive filter being applied to the Quran.

If you've read the Quran, it's simply strange. I mean, it's very obvious that some of the things were written in a somewhat of an ecstatic trance on the part of Muhammad, and very, very liable to wildly varying interpretations.

It's almost like apocalyptic literature, but without the clues given to you as to exactly how you're to interpret things. That's why you, even on fundamental issues like, did Jesus Christ actually die on the cross?

Was that even Jesus? The Quranic material there is able to be interpreted in a number of different ways, so that you will encounter Muslims who would say that Jesus, that wasn't Jesus, or someone who looked like Jesus, or was Jesus, but he didn't really die.

And there's all these different takes that are taken to it. The other thing to remember about the Quran as well, and this wasn't really exactly what you're asking, but someone in the chat channel had mentioned something about this earlier.

People ask, well, is what we have today what Muhammad gave? And one of the major differences between Christianity and Islam is that it is very well known that those who have attempted to delve into the early textual state of the Quran, many of them have been murdered by Muslims for daring to blaspheme the Quran by suggesting that there have been changes.

I mean, ask Salman Rushdie, when he wrote the satanic verses, those were verses that the evidence indicates would have been in the Quran before what's called the Uthmanian revision, and that demonstrated that there was still an element of polytheism in Muhammad's thinking.

Well, the Uthmanian revision brought all of the manuscripts that were currently available of the Quran into one, it brought them all into one form. So there's a level of conjecture to even know exactly what existed before the Uthmanian revision, but the reason that manuscripts of the Quran agree today is because of what took place at that time.

It basically gathered them all up, made them all read the same, and they had the power and ability to do that. Excuse me, I should have used my cough button there. Here, let me do that. There, I didn't cough there, but I did use it.

It was just sort of not quite at the right time. Anyways, so there's not quite as much variety in the varieties of Islam as there is in the various forms of quote-unquote Christianity, but you will find a lot of, you know, just like there are Catholics in Catholic countries who are Catholic just because they were born that way, there are Muslims who are Muslims because they live in a Muslim country, and that's what you do.

There's no fervor, there's no more strapped explosives around their body as do anything else, they have no interest in such things. And so certainly those who would fly an aircraft into the World Trade Centers are certainly in the vast minority.

The problem is it's a little bit like the fundamentalist Mormons in Utah, and that is the fundamentalist Mormons in Utah can go back to the writings and the teachings of their earliest leaders, they can go back to Joseph Smith, they can go back to Brigham Young, and they can demonstrate very clearly that those men taught that you had to enter into the eternal covenant of marriage to become a god.

Now the modern church says you don't, they see a contrast there, they go back to the earlier, they can defend their position very well, and as a result they're willing to go to prison. I just saw this week a program that had three polygamous wives on, and their husband is in prison for engaging in polygamy, but they're pressing on without him.

Well, why would they be willing to do such things? Well, because they have that commitment to those earlier prophets, they believe they were truly prophets, and they feel persecuted by the modern Mormon church.

Well, the radical Muslim can go back to the earliest interpretations of the Quranic literature, and they can say, look, look what we did, we basically conquered a whole section of the world, and many of them feel that Islam has been in retreat, primarily due to Western civilization.

Many of these individuals believe that Western civilization is fully and completely inconsistent with Islam, that it is decadent, that it is materialistic, and on both of those accounts they would have a lot of reason for saying both of those things, and so they see the holy war, the jihad, as being one that's necessary both for the survival of Islam and the propagation of Islam, and they can say, look, our earliest leaders, just like the Mormons can go back to their earliest leaders, our earliest leaders taught these things, and who cares if the modern majority has decided to compromise?

We're not going to. For judgment, and again, here's a situation where, yeah, there is a similarity there. The difference is that with the situation with Israel, it's based upon holiness, and it's based upon the establishment of the people of Israel, from whom comes the Messiah, and from whom then comes the gospel to the world.

There is no gospel in Islam. In Islam, the reason for subjecting those people is not punishment, but it is to propagate the religion of Islam, and no gospel comes forth after that. I mean, that's really where the difference has to lie, and I think a lot of folks are trying to get away from every similarity that can be drawn, and you can't.

We're monotheists. They're monotheists. There is a belief in objective truth in both situations. There's scripture in both situations, but the gospel becomes the difference between the two, and the means by which we propagate it.

We do not fight with instruments of carnal warfare. The instruments of our warfare are spiritual. Well, that's not the case in Islam. The instruments of their warfare are the gun, and the bomb, and the terror, and whatever else it might be.

So here in the United States, we have a lot of, you know, Islam has actually been getting a tremendous amount of free press, and there's been a tremendous amount of assertion that, hey, you know, real Muslims are not like this.

You'd have to wonder what would have happened if it were.

Like some Christian, you know, fanatical person. If they would go out of their way to have Christians on the air defending Christianity. Right. I don't think so. I don't think so either. I don't think so either.

Changing gears, I listen to the Bible answer a lot, and Hank often, and rightly so, I guess, you know, not just talking about the sins of our nation, but there's sin in the church, and the church needs to be reformed.

But many times, he seems, I feel that he has the assumption that if the church was reformed, that the culture would inevitably be reformed, that we wouldn't see so much evil, that it wouldn't be so dark.

And my question is, is that a correct assumption? Couldn't it be that the church, I know probably impossible, could be as pure as possible and follow God, you know, perfectly, and still this would be just a dark of a world that, you know, that's why we would still shine as lights, because the world would still be dark and evil.

Right. I don't think that there's.

A promise, necessarily, that as long as we will do our thing, if we will submit perfectly to God, if we will do the things we need to be doing, and if God has blessed us with a spirit that truly causes us to desire to be submissive to his law, so on and so forth, that that's going to translate into some sort of great revival in the land.