EP 52 – Did Jimmy Carter believe a different GOSPEL?

Cornerstone Church

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Jimmy Carter accomplished much good in his life with Habitat for Humanity. He would go out there and work, and he was kind of a picture of a hardworking person who had a heart for the poor.

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He would care about people, but his actual policies harmed more people than he did good for them.

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But in the end, what matters more than the earthly works that a person can do is whether they trust in Jesus Christ and lead others to do the same.

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What he just said there is that people don't need to repent and believe in Jesus in order to be saved.

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And welcome to Tearin' Down Hot Places.

01:01

My name's Average Joe, and I got Pastor Jeff and Pastor Tim here. Welcome, guys.

01:07

Tim. Hey, Joe. Greetings. Glad to be here, brother. Pastor Jeff, what do you like about today's topic?

01:16

Well, it says in Isaiah 59, verse 14, that truth has stumbled in the public squares.

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And we're talking about a very public figure. In fact, the most powerful man in the world from 1977 to 1981,

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Jimmy Carter. And the public square is what relates to all of us corporately as a nation.

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And truth truly stumbled in the public square during those years. And we need to understand how that has affected all of us.

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Yeah. It's bittersweet to—well, it's not even bittersweet. It's just sad.

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It's just a sad, sad commentary that we have to make today talking about a guy who claimed to be an evangelical

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Christian, used that, and in fact, to gain office. He carried the favor of evangelicals at the time in 1976 when he was running for office.

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And the fact of the matter is, he probably wasn't. Probably wasn't a

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Christian. Or, Jeff, Tim, do you think maybe we need to start thinking about just not calling ourselves

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Christians? I mean, the culture has redefined that. We've talked about trying to define these things.

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What do you think? Well, here's a guy that did teach Sunday school. He was active.

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Now, this is important to realize. He was Southern Baptist until the

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Southern Baptist made a declaration that female pastors would not be allowed.

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And it was at that point that he broke ranks from the Southern Baptist and joined the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

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But he had other comments throughout his life that really bring into question whether he had genuine faith.

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Now, only God knows. We're not the judge of salvation. We don't know one way or another.

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But we can judge a tree by its fruits. And if he says that Mormons are worshiping the same

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God and do not need to be evangelized, then that's an indication that he doesn't have a grasp on the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Wow. Wow. Tim, your thoughts on President Jimmy Carter? President Jimmy Carter, so he was way before my time.

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But from the research that I gathered, he was a pretty starched

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Democrat. And I understand that you might have some videos that we'll watch. And you talking about some of those videos and what he's saying, it seems like his worldview is probably pretty different from our worldview.

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So it didn't sound like he was an amazing president. It didn't sound like he fully understood the beliefs of the gospel and things like that.

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I'm glad you pointed out the videos, because I'm going to start with the longest clip that I've got. It's only three minutes, but I think it's very impactful.

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This was from his funeral just a few days ago. This is actually, as I was in my

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Christian walk, the first time I was told to really listen to these lyrics, I was shocked.

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I had listened to this song my entire life, and I think many of you will recognize this song, and always thought it was a great song until I really listened to the lyrics.

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So why don't we do that? And here we go. I almost fell asleep.

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That was the slowest, boringest version of a terrible, heretical song ever performed.

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I didn't know if Biden was meaningfully engaged with this or if he was falling asleep.

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I'm not even convinced that's the same Joe Biden from 20 years ago anymore. I don't know. I see people making images of this

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Biden versus that Biden. I don't know. But how awful is that song,

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Jeff? The first time I heard it, it was in a sermon too. I heard it preached that you really got to be careful what lyrics you're listening to.

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And they pulled up Imagine. I'm like, what? It says that? Yeah.

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It says, imagine there's no heaven. Imagine there's no... Wouldn't life be better without heaven and hell and God?

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And nothing to die for. And no countries as well. Yeah. It's not even that it's just a bad song about other things.

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It's explicitly taking aim at Christianity. Right. Yeah. Saying imagine a world without Christianity.

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Yeah. I've actually got the lyrics right here if you want to look at them.

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Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky.

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Imagine all the people living for today. No countries, nothing to kill or die for and no religion too.

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Like you said, Jeff, that's a direct hit, right? Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

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Now here's the interesting thing. Jimmy Carter went and took this.

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He planned this like 20 years ago for this to be the song at his funeral.

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And he also planned... He also played this at his wife's funeral. And it's apparently his favorite song.

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That's very telling, Joe. I mean, it says a lot. It says a lot.

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I've got some other clips I'd like to get into too. So here's... Unless do you want to talk about that song anymore?

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Any other thoughts? Just something about... And then Tim, you can go. Just something about this idea, nothing to kill or die for.

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That means a world where nothing is valuable. If you wouldn't die for your daughter, you're not a true dad.

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If you wouldn't die for your country, you're not a true citizen. If you wouldn't die for your family, if you wouldn't die for your

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God, if a Muslim held a gun to your head and said, renounce the name of Jesus, if you wouldn't die for your

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Christ, you're not worthy of the name Christian. And that's the thing.

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If there's something valuable, it's worth dying for. It's worth fighting for. If you don't believe in the truth of God's Word, then you won't fight for it.

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He thinks the world would be without fighting. Of course, that's not the case either because it's sin in the world that causes all the division.

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If there was only truth, if there was only the Word of God, we would all be rallied around truth and unified around the

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Word of God. But the fighting actually comes from opposition to God's Word. Being willing to fight is a function of love.

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That was so telling that he wanted that song played for his funeral. I mean, that's so garbage.

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But someone reminded me of this psalm earlier today, precious in the sight of the

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Lord is the death of his saints. And I don't know how precious that funeral really was and how celebrating and God honoring that funeral was because it really wasn't if even the song was preaching the exact opposite of the worldview of Christianity and completely targeting

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Christianity and pushing some other agenda as if Christianity is the problem and the reason for pain and wrong beliefs in the world.

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Yeah. And it wasn't a funeral that really had religious conviction, right?

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No gospel. There was no gospel in that funeral. Well, I personally didn't watch the whole thing, but obviously...

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But there was some anti -gospel, I'll tell you that. Oh, yeah? Yeah. That song being

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Exhibit A. It's a scary thing that someone like that can rise to the power and become the most powerful man in the world in 1977 to 1981 or however long he was the president.

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That's a scary thing. Well, I think it's God's mercy and grace and actually shows

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God's control over leaders to the point that they're not as wicked and evil as their mind would go, right?

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The fact that they would be so deceived to think that... If you listen to that song, they think that by getting rid of God, getting rid of religion and getting rid of possessions and love and all these...

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Well, not love as they defined it, but getting rid of a passion of purpose, they're going to have peace.

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You're going to have peace and joy. It's so weird. They think that you can have half of the fruit of the spirit, but not all of it.

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I don't like those parts. Hey, let's look at another video here, guys. Let's look at the evidence.

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Let's give them... It's just a song. He didn't sing it, right? He's dead. But here, let's look at this.

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How about gay marriage? That's no problem with me. I think everybody should have a right to get married, regardless of their sex.

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The only thing I would draw a line on, I wouldn't be in favor of the government being able to force a local church congregation to perform gay marriages if they didn't want to.

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But those two partners should be able to go to the local courthouse or to a different church and get married.

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That's no problem. I have had a problem with abortion. And this has been a longtime problem of mine.

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I have a hard time believing that Jesus, for instance, would approve abortions unless it was because of rape or incest or if the mother's life was in danger.

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Interesting. Now, I had heard that he also, as far as abortion goes, he was in favor of Roe v.

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Wade, but against abortion, a very popular dichotomy. This is a very important thing to talk about, because he would say,

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I'm personally pro -life. I'm personally against abortion. But in the public square, he was for liberalism there, that people should choose what's best for them and whatever they think decision...

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So ultimately, understand this. He is pro -death in what matters, because nobody cares what some individual who happens to live on Pennsylvania Avenue believes.

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What matters is the law. In fact, this is what many people don't understand. They say you can't legislate morality.

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And so if you have a personal belief, well, you can't legislate that. You absolutely and always legislate morality.

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Always. You can't have a law unless there's a moral component. There's no law without a moral component.

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Right. Let's take the gay marriage and then go back to abortion. In gay marriage, he's for the right, so -called, of any man to marry a man.

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People don't understand. There is a pedagogical function of law. Great point.

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Teaching. Pedagogical means teaching function of law. Before 2015, with the

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Dobbs decision, was it Dobbs? Yes. Yeah. Or was

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Dobbs the abortion one? No. Yeah. No, Obergefell. Obergefell. Obergefell.

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Yeah. So 2015, Obergefell. Prior to that, there was something like 90 % of Americans believed it was immoral for sodomy.

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After 2015, it has completely flipped on its head. Even maybe half of Republicans agree with the

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Democrats now that the personal choices to engage in that behavior is fine.

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So what changed? The law changed. The law has convinced people, hey, if it's legal, there must be nothing wrong with it.

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We used to have God's law, which is the law of Moses, teaching us sexual ethics. But at a more basic level that everybody agreed with was kind of what's outlawed by the laws of the land.

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So there's even a function that God gives in civil government. The government does not bear the sword for nothing.

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When government makes something illegal, people recognize from that it affects their moral compass.

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So just at that level, to say that men should be allowed to marry men is to affirm something that's contrary to nature, contrary to the

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God of nature. And for all of human history, at least in this country, it was outlawed.

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This is a massive change. Same thing with abortion. For him to say, I'm personally pro -life and I'm personally against abortion.

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If you allow the law to be Roe versus Wade and you support that, you are teaching people that it's okay.

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And not only that, you're enabling it with the law. You're part of the problem, not part of the solution.

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It's a very sad thing. And it really doesn't matter what he believes in his heart because he's just one individual with one heart.

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The law instructs all of the country and affects the lives of how many babies? Proverbs 24, 11 says, rescue those who are being carried away to the slaughter.

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Don't encourage it. Don't allow it, but rescue those. So there's 60 million dead babies since that time of Jimmy Carter, the 1970s.

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And he all along has done nothing to rescue. He's only encouraged Roe versus Wade to stand.

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Tim, that's my new favorite word, pedagogical. What do you think? Man, Jeff has all the best words.

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Joe, I like - You preached that last week, right? It was awesome. I don't think I mentioned pedagogical. I saved that for TDHP.

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Did you? Did I say the word pedagogical in a sermon? You did. In a recent sermon, you did. And I remember me and my wife talking about it and talking about how important it is as a tool to help people understand how wicked and evil it is to support homosexuals.

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Because everybody watched Will and Grace for years and other shows like that, where they're like, oh, they're just such nice people.

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And they're my neighbors, and I want to love my neighbor and this and that. But no, they are teaching that evil is good.

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And they are flipping everything up. It's teaching. It's a teaching thing, right? Tim, are we teaching?

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What are we teaching people? Man, well, they're teaching people with the letting gay people marry a man marrying another man.

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I think they're under the impression that they're loving that person and they're showing more love towards it.

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Right. But really, when you give approval to that kind of behavior, you couldn't be hating that person much more than you are.

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You need to be able to bring truth and tell them that you believed a lie.

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It is not okay. It's not good in the sight of God for you to marry another man. When you think of a man lying with another man,

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God views that as an abomination. We shouldn't view that as an act of love. Some people have falsely thought that in their head, that that's a loving thing to do.

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Just let them love each other. No, they're hating each other. They're bringing one another into sin. I think that's a little bit of a false teaching or a false perspective that's going on there.

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But no, that's completely wrong. 100 % wrong. It's never going to be right. And it's sad that we have to show the broken pieces on the ground, the broken, horrible things that happen, to use that as evidence to help people.

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But we should use it as evidence. The reality is we should just say, okay, Lord, I don't understand why, but I'm going to obey.

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But here's why. Because as we teach people, as we see our kids get into this, we go from 2%, 3 % homosexuals to up to 40 % homosexuals now.

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That's what they're talking about for the youth. You can break that youth number in wherever you want.

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But there's a huge number of people that are at least experimenting in things that are horrible, that are going to cause pain and suffering.

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Then not only that, some of these things, we get into transgenderism because it's all related. It's all tied in together.

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It's all just a rebellion of God's design for men and women and families. Yeah. And who's indoctrinating who?

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Because some of these young boys and girls think they're the opposite sex or they think it's okay to be gay or lesbian.

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These kids don't even know what that means, but they're getting invited into this idea and thinking to themselves that they're gay or thinking to themselves that they're lesbian, whatever the case is, or thinking to themselves they're a boy when they're really a girl or vice versa.

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Someone has told them that's okay and they don't even know what that means. They don't even have the understanding of what gay actually is and what that leads to and the full picture of what that means.

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And then let's tie in the fires, right? Because everybody's talking about the fires out in Los Angeles, right?

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People get so hyper -focused on their identity as being their sexuality, which that's never capable of being your identity, right?

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It's just something you choose at a moment. They get so inflamed with that that they go and they create the

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DEI debacle and they go out and they, we're just not going to worry about fighting fires.

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We're going to hire people based on their sexuality. And that's who we're going to have in the fire department now.

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So I know we're a little early for that, but - Let me circle back around to what you said there, a couple of things.

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One, the 40%, that doesn't come out of thin air. In a Varna study between ages 19 and 23 years old, they found 40 % of 19 to 23 -year -olds had identified with one of the letters of the

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LGBTQIA +, right? Now it doesn't mean that they'll remain that way. Some of them experiment, like you said, and will come out.

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Now you say it's a choice. It is a choice, but it's also a social contagion and it's something conditioned by parents.

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So if you have an overbearing mother and an absentee father who's not really involved in the life of a child, that very often conditions homosexual behavior into the child.

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It's also socially conditioned so that when everybody's accepting it and trumpeting it all over culture, someone is much more likely to experiment or think it's okay.

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So it's something that's being trained on billboards and on TV and Hollywood, in every movie and even in kids' programmings, they have this agenda to push homosexual behaviors and experimentation.

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So it's coming from a culture, not just from a random choice in a vacuum. Yeah, Joe. What's the characteristics of the mother and the father again?

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An overbearing mother and an absentee father, or a father who's disinterested or maybe harsh and abusive, or just usually it's uninvolved in the life of a boy.

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Or maybe he got kicked out of the family by the family court. Yeah. Absent because not even allowed to be there.

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Right. So us family court advocates often talk about how they enforce child support, but they never enforce custodial meetings like parenting time.

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Anyway. All right. We got another video, guys. Let's get to this one. Wait, hold on. Hold on, Joe. I think we got to touch on...

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It sounded like Jimmy Carter was saying a really good thing that he doesn't support abortion.

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But then he later said that it's OK if there's rape or incest involved.

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I think we have to make that clear that that's not OK. And I think about the story of Dinah when

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Dinah got raped and her brothers wanted to go get justice and they basically murdered the entire town.

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Was it OK for those people to die? Had nothing to do with that act? No. So just like the baby had nothing to do with the act of this rape, the baby in the womb shouldn't have to suffer even if it was a result of rape or incest or something strange.

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The baby did nothing wrong. So the baby doesn't deserve to be murdered. So I think we need to make that clear.

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Christians are prone to thinking that's OK. I was visiting in North Carolina before at a church and the pastor said those exact words and I had to go up to him after service and say, hey, you got that wrong.

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That is not true. And then he didn't say it for the second service, which is great. So we need to be able to call that out and identify that it's still wrong.

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It doesn't mean it's OK. It's a great point. And you know, Tim, what would you say to that pastor about God's sovereignty in those situations?

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God's sovereignty? What do you mean? I'm sorry, Joe. So from listening to Jimmy Carter talk, he was like, oh, but Jesus would definitely allow it in the case of rape or incest.

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He'd be OK with that. When you brought up Jimmy Carter was saying, I think

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Jesus would not be OK with abortion, except in the case of rape or incest.

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And I'm saying to myself, does God think twice about his actions or does he know what he's doing from the beginning?

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He knows what's going on. And even the evil stuff in the world, it's not like he just pretends not to see it.

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He knows what's going on and he allows even bad things to happen and suffering to happen. But yeah, no,

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I don't think that God is pleased with an abortion that happens under any circumstance. Yeah, he wouldn't second -guess himself if he allowed it.

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No. Well, we might second -guess it because we're like, well, we don't understand why any evil goes on.

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We're just grateful that he's merciful with us. Yeah. And important to recognize, God always holds the sinners responsible for the sin.

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So although God in his sovereign decree has included sin and suffering in his plan, the crucifixion of Jesus being the perfect example, it happens at the hands of lawless men,

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Acts 2 .23. And God always holds the sinner, the secondary cause in the grand scheme of things.

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But the one who's responsible for sin is always the sinner. God is not the author of sin.

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So the Shechem is responsible for that in Genesis 34.

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Great points. All right. Now, this one's about religion and politics. Let's listen to this.

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Do you think it is troubling now to see people running for president doing so by essentially preaching sermons, by talking about their faith as if that is a qualification for office?

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I think in a slight way, it's even unconstitutional for an incumbent president to claim that his own faith should prevail and that other faiths are not warranting equal treatment under the laws or under the president's policies.

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I think that's a, you know, it may not be a legal violation of the Constitution, but I think it violates the First Amendment separation.

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And I think the other thing is that we have seen what I consider to be an unwarranted intrusion of the religious community into the political campaigns.

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So I think both the president's using his power to promote

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Christianity and Christians to use their power to try to get that particular chosen person to be in the

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White House both violate the principles that I tried to observe when I was in the White House. So he's not a theonomist.

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No, and he also doesn't understand Thomas Jefferson writing a letter to the Danbury Baptists about separation of church and state or a wall of separation.

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Because what Jefferson was saying is that there's a wall that protects churches from government intrusion compelling them what to do as if there's a state church or a state regulation.

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It doesn't silence the voice of pulpits to speak into the public square and it doesn't silence presidents from saying what they believe.

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It doesn't mean that Christianity isn't even a favored religion in a sense as the

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Trinity case in the 1890s, the Supreme Court declared that this has always privileged

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Christianity. In fact, this is a Christian nation in making a ruling in that case.

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Plenty of evidence for that. As you've often pointed out, nine of the 13 states had an established religion at the very founding of this country.

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Is it possible that Jimmy Carter didn't know that? Was he an uneducated man? In fact, I think the only president more educated was

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Woodrow Wilson. Well, he's educated in the liberalism of the secular humanism leftism of the 1960s and prior.

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He actually started a master's degree in nuclear physics and didn't finish.

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Not a dumb guy, not an ignorant guy, very smart guy. And so I'm looking at him and I'm watching him talk in the middle of that talk and he kind of bites his lip and he started with a word and then he used the same consonant but changed it a little bit because he knows what he doesn't want to say, and that's that we don't follow the

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Constitution. We don't follow the First Amendment the way it's supposed to be. And he was lying, flat out lying, in my opinion, about the

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First Amendment. What do you think, Tim? Is Jimmy Carter right about that?

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No, I don't think he's right. I think it's okay for pastors in the pulpit and presidents of the

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United States to say what they believe. I don't know about you guys, I want to hear what they believe. I'm okay with what they believe.

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I do understand that he was trying to protect like freedom of speech. Obviously, we like that too.

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So yeah, I don't particularly like what he said or how he said it, but I guess he's entitled to his opinion.

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Was it right? No. You know, Ilhan Omar, right? She is a Muslim. If she were running for president, it would be right to question her.

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What do you believe? Do you believe in Sharia law, right? The political arm of Islam.

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Do you believe in this Hadith and this Sunnah of the Prophet? Or how about Surah 929?

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Lay in wait for them, for Christians, and if they refuse to pay the jizya, which is a tax on non -Muslims, then you can kill them.

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Do you believe in Surah 929 or not? That's a perfectly appropriate question because it goes to worldview.

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If you're a person that believes Surah 929, are you fit to be a president? Clearly not.

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If you think that you are, you're insane. You know, London has a

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Muslim mayor today. There was a

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Christian woman I was trying to get on the podcast who's warning people, warning

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Christians specifically in the United States, don't go down this path that we've gone.

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What about someone who practices Satanism? Because there's plenty of Satanists.

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What about Wiccans? What about Haitians who practice with animal sacrifice?

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Is that person fit for office in the United States of America? Well, see, this goes back to the

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First Amendment where we've got to clarify, what does freedom of religion mean? Does it mean freedom of all religions?

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Or were they talking about freedom within a certain specific worldview that was common to all people at the time?

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Right. That was the context in which it was written. Yeah. It had a general

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Christian understanding of ethics. In the same way, if someone has a secular humanist worldview, they may not be a

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Wiccan or a Muslim or a Satanist, but they're secular humanists.

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In that, they don't believe that life begins at conception because life is not made in the image of God.

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Life is just material and organic chemistry. Who knows even when

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Obama says that life, it's above his pay grade when life begins.

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Therefore, he errs on the side of let them kill the baby. If someone's ethics are so malformed that they would allow a baby in the womb, let's say one day before birth, and make a distinction between the baby who's one day before birth and one day after birth, and say that the baby in the womb can be justly killed.

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This is a person with... Everybody knows that that baby in the womb is a human person.

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Everybody knows that. You have to suppress common grace and common knowledge that's revealed in general revelation in the rationality.

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This life in the womb of this woman is not an elephant.

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It's not an eagle, although they would protect a bald eagle. They wouldn't protect a human baby, but you know what

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I'm saying? Everybody knows by general revelation that this is a human life. Anyone who would say, no, you can kill this baby has such a worldview malformation that they're demented, they're wrong, they're evil at the core to kill human life and to sanction that killing.

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Therefore, they're not fit to be president. Any pastor is free to say that. We've been saying that for how many years.

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I think true pastors would agree and would be willing to say that. That is the case.

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Every citizen, every Christian should be willing to say that. How long do you think it'll be before they're openly saying, of course you can kill your own child legally?

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Isn't that the Born Alive Act that Congress tried to pass? Barack Obama argued for that.

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He was the only senator in Illinois who argued that that baby should be allowed to die at a botched abortion.

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Some of them had proposed 28 days after birth. The logic is still the same.

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One day before birth or 20 days after birth. The arguments that they make is that this child is dependent on the mother, can't survive on its own, that the size and capability of the child is not yet formed.

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That's the case of 28 day old, as well as the baby in the womb. You know what it's really called?

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Evil. That is evil. Would you call that high handed when you look to kill a baby made in the image of God after it's born?

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How evil is that to kill the most innocent and the most precious thing, the most precious human probably around?

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You want to kill that baby just because your abortion plan didn't work to murder it the first time or second time or third time?

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What no one's willing to say is that there are certain religions that believe this.

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And they are religions. Not all religions have a Christian worldview. And this

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Christian worldview that our quote unquote secular people believe in is a stolen worldview.

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It's a worldview squatters, as one of my favorite guests said 20 episodes ago.

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Yeah. Worldview squatters. That's right. They masquerade as social justice warriors.

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A secular humanist worldview. We're only space dust. There's no morality.

37:11

That's just situated ethics. So there can't be absolute right and wrong. So why do they advocate for whatever their cause is as if it's actually right?

37:21

It's only right to them. They have to borrow our absolutist worldview with moral standards of absolute right and wrong given by an almighty

37:30

God, a creator who is the standard and whose word reveals these things. They have to borrow our worldview, squat on our worldview, even to be a social justice warrior.

37:40

Do you guys think that the purpose of keeping the conversation of political and religious imperatives is to keep that quiet is because they know that they can't keep their philosophy consistent if they go too far down the road?

38:06

Yeah. It's also more cynical. They're just trying to shut down the voices of those who oppose them.

38:14

They actually don't practice it at all. They love when liberal leftist churches like Raphael Warnock advocate all the things that they love.

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They'll go preach in their pulpits. Kamala Harris was preaching in a church. So no, they don't even have consistency with their own worldview there and what they're demanding of us.

38:32

They're just trying to shut up the voice of truth. So Jimmy Carter has some interesting comments about Mormonism and Mitt Romney on this next clip.

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Do you think that one of the leading contenders for the Republican nomination is Mitt Romney, who is a

38:48

Mormon. He would be the first Mormon nominee for president. Do you think that we have progressed far enough as a country in terms of recognizing religion as no barrier to public office that he could be nominated, could win as a

39:01

Mormon? I hope so. I hope he'll win. I'm not taking a position, but I would be very pleased to see him win the

39:08

Republican nomination. I don't think anybody's gonna beat Obama next year. But my preference obviously would be for his religious faith not to be an adverse factor in the choices made about who should be representing the

39:22

Republican Party. Are we progressive enough, guys? Come on. Mormonism teaches that Elohim was once a man who exalted to become the

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God of this world. But prior to his exaltation, when he was a man, he had parents who were gods themselves, a mother god and a father god.

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And prior to those parents of Elohim, there were grandparents, there were great -grandparents and they were great -great -grandparents in an infinite regression.

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And that there's also an infinite progression. So just as Elohim exalted to become God of this world, the

40:01

Mormon can populate a future spirit world and be God over that. So they see themselves as gods in the making.

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In all of this, they are polytheists. They're not monotheists. They believe in a totally different God, and it's a

40:18

God that is not compatible with the God of the Bible. So it's just ridiculous.

40:24

I was witnessing to a Mormon one time who I knew him really well. Actually, I worked with him. You got to be careful because you go through the gospel with them and they have stolen our vernacular.

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They use our language completely. And if you go through the gospel too quickly, he'll agree with everything.

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And this guy did until I got to the very end and I said, and you don't get to be a God. He said, what's the point?

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That's what he said. What's the point? He wouldn't want to worship Elohim for all eternity.

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But our politicians have trained secular people to ignore what people's holy books say, what they actually say.

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So don't worry about what the Mormon book says. They're just nice people. Thou shalt be nice, and they're nice.

41:15

So they're in complete compliance, right? Well, we saw from Mitt Romney's career that he is always an enemy of that which is right, true, and good.

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And it's consistent with him being an enemy of the God of the Bible. Well, I'll tell you what, too.

41:32

We got Muslims, guys. I've been interacting with some Muslims lately.

41:38

And in Philadelphia, they are growing like weeds. And they're all participating in polygamy.

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And guess what? We are not going to outbreed that. We're not going to compete with that.

41:52

But man, I am seeing signs of revival. People that we reached when we were missionaries in Kensington, now coming back to the faith on fire, reaching all their friends, just the power of the gospel at some of the churches, the

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Block Church, Cornerstone Community Church, Living Hope Fellowship, Calvary Chapel Kings Highway.

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We have connections with all of these pastors and leaders and have spoken and been there recently. Wow, it's awesome.

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One of our own members, Heather Henry, and her husband, David, they were just on the streets of Kensington last week and saw the power of the gospel against demon possession right there on the streets.

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Man, God is still doing a work there, too. So, yeah, we're not going to outbreed them with their polygamy.

42:32

And it's outrageous what happens in that worldview.

42:38

But the gospel will triumph over Islam. It's been going this way since the 600s.

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And the gospel is still triumphing over Islam, although that is the biggest competitor. It's probably not secular humanism.

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Because if you look at France, France lost to secular humanism. And now Islam came in.

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It's now 35 % of France. So their real enemy is going to be over the long term, those who breed, like you said, at that rate versus secular humanists, which are reproducing at maybe 1 .4,

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1 .5 children per couple, which is a decreasing population, whereas Islam is expanding that way.

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So that's our true competition over the long term. Dewey, is it important, though, that we make sure that Christians realize that these other religions, they're not compatible?

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We can't just get along and all have freedom of religion.

43:39

Is one religion eventually going to take over? Yeah, it will be a one world religion against Christ ultimately.

43:47

But I think that actually takes root and hold as we get raptured out. So I'm super optimistic, because when the

43:53

Son of Man comes, he will find faith on earth. He will find Christians holding it down. The gates of hell will not prevail.

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I think this country is especially blessed by God. I think the church will continue to thrive like it is right till the rapture.

44:07

But yeah, there will be a one world religion under the Antichrist. You know, I didn't realize I was teeing up an eschatological question.

44:16

You know I'm going to go there, though. But there we go. All right. So the next one is moving right along.

44:22

So we got this one. I was really interested in what he said about China. But he also talked about Panama and Israel, which are both in the news.

44:33

So here we go. In terms of the election that you ran against Ronald Reagan in 1980, looking back at that election, it's not lost to history, but it is good to be reminded what a huge deal he made of the

44:49

Panama Canal Treaty. I know. Obviously, that was a major foreign policy issue at the time. It's a major foreign policy achievement of yours.

44:56

He demagogued that as if Panama was the 51st state and you were trying to give it away because you were a godless communist or something.

45:03

He really did demagogue it. And that wasn't the only thing. He demagogued also my normalizing diplomatic relations with China.

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Yes. He still felt that Taiwan should be the China when he was running for campaign.

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And he also demagogued my Mideast peace agreement. He maintained that I gave away

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Israel's Sinai Desert back to Egypt and so forth. So to a major degree, much more than my predecessors or successors,

45:33

I lost the support of the Jewish community to my grief. But so the things that I did that I think in retrospect were achievements, were looked upon then as both controversial and had a negative political impact.

45:51

My big thing in that, and then I want to hear what you guys thought. My big thing is, does he not, when he,

45:57

I didn't realize that he was the one that opened the floodgates with China, who I personally don't think we should do any business with because they're so wicked and immoral.

46:06

We should not support them in any way, shape or form, but that's just me. What do you guys think?

46:12

Was he the one that gave away Panama, the Panama Canal deal? Yes.

46:18

100%. Yeah. If you look at Jimmy Carter, I was born in 1977. He was elected in 1976 and then sworn in in January of 1977.

46:32

He had a 61 to 39 majority Democrats in the

46:39

Senate. He had 150 seat majority in the House. So in 1977, they had it all without opposition, just complete

46:49

Democrats running all three, the House, the Senate and the presidency. By Reagan's years in 1981, the country was in absolute ruins.

47:00

Inflation had never been higher. There were gas lines. Cars had to wait for however long, hours long just to get gas.

47:07

Panama was gone. China, the deal you just mentioned. Israel, everything was falling apart.

47:13

Then there was the Iranians who were emboldened to take hostages and the Iranian hostage situation.

47:19

So basically, when Democrats ran everything, the world blew up. The country failed economically.

47:26

The result of that was a blowout for Reagan, the likes of which no one had ever seen. I think in the electoral college, it was like 300 and something to 45.

47:36

Reagan absolutely trounced Carter. The reason for that was unopposed

47:43

Democratic policy, which is capitulation, weakness, and everything that Carter represented was a failure.

47:51

It was proven a failure over four years. So the proof is in the pudding. Tim, what do you think?

47:59

That was a little before my time. I'm not sure about all the history of what happened there, but from the research and the things that I've known and heard,

48:09

Ronald Reagan seemed like he was an awesome president. And Jimmy Carter seems like the more we talk about him, the more

48:16

I watch him talk, he's a contender for maybe the worst president of all time, in my opinion, just for the weak views that he had that appeared strong to maybe unbelievers, but really weak for Christian and for the real progression of our country.

48:33

The thing that saddens me the most, and China continues to benefit from their relationship with us.

48:43

They've conned us into letting them hold all our debt. They are the majority shareholder of our national debt, and they're making a boatload of money off of that.

48:55

They don't have any moral compass.

49:01

They don't treat their people well. And we just allow that. I mean, their people are slaves.

49:08

They have slavery over there. Christians get sent into, and if you've talked to a

49:13

Chinese missionary, I'm sure you guys have. I mean, being a Christian over there is really hard, and they're trying to force people into a state church with a fake

49:23

Bible. But the problem is we don't recognize Christianity here, so we can't condemn them.

49:30

Yeah, and distinguish between China, the people, and the CCP, because it's that government that is communist and atheist that is really the enemy.

49:41

There are probably 10 % of the people within China that are actual born -again

49:46

Christians, but they're not part of the three -self Chinese church. They are part of an underground church movement, a house church movement of genuine

49:55

Christians. So there are wonderful Christian people in China, but that government is absolutely godless and opposed to America in particular.

50:06

Yeah, but we deny our Christian roots, and we deny even, like you said, our laws even have moral components to them.

50:16

And so this denial, denial, denial goes to the big question. Did Jimmy Carter deny

50:24

Jesus Christ? And does it matter if he did? Let me play this video. Carter had been a

50:30

Sunday school teacher in a Baptist church for decades, and he taught it was not necessary to believe in Jesus to go to heaven.

50:36

In a quandary like that about people who don't know about Christ, what would be their fate, I'm inclined to believe that they will not be condemned or punished by God.

50:49

That is awful. You know what I would do if I heard a

50:54

Sunday school teacher teaching that here at our church? I would never, ever, ever let them teach

51:02

Sunday school ever again, and give them a rebuke for trying to teach that to our children. Yep, that's right.

51:11

Jimmy Carter accomplished much good in his life with Habitat for Humanity.

51:16

He would go out there and work, and he was kind of a picture of a hardworking person who had a heart for the poor.

51:23

He would care about people, but his actual policies harmed more people than he did good for them.

51:31

But in the end, what matters more than the earthly works that a person can do is whether they trust in Jesus Christ and lead others to do the same.

51:41

What he just said there is that people don't need to repent and believe in Jesus in order to be saved.

51:47

A Muslim, of course, says that. Jewish people practicing Judaism and all the different religions of the world say the same thing.

51:54

You don't need Jesus to go to heaven. But for a man who teaches Sunday school, who got elected by calling himself born again, he would use that phrase.

52:06

He was the first one to start using that phrase. To do that, it's so hypocritical to get the

52:14

Democrats of the South, which back then before, this is really where the voting bloc that the

52:19

Democrats had in the South over Christians fell apart. Because Jimmy Carter used their language, claimed to be born again, but then he was all for Roe versus Wade, and he made every leftist decision you could imagine.

52:32

And so that's when it fell apart. And the right, those genuine born -again Christians moved to Reagan and have been with the

52:39

Republican Party ever since. It was because of Carter. Carter was a hypocrite. He was claiming to be born again, but he did not believe in the

52:47

Bible. He was really just an old school liberal. He was an early social justice warrior. He was all about diversity, equity, inclusion before there was

52:55

DEI. And that was what he trumpeted. What he was teaching in Sunday school, like Tim said, would not be welcome in any

53:03

God -fearing evangelical Bible -believing church. And some of the research

53:09

I saw that he was one of the first presidents, it was the first president to invite homosexual political activists to the

53:17

White House. Al Mohler, although I couldn't find any audio or video on this, Al Mohler spoke.

53:22

I could have put Al Mohler up here, but I didn't want to do that. He said in his interviews with him that definitely denied scripture.

53:30

And the guy was way too smart, not know scripture and what was going on.

53:37

And it really, really speaks to me, I mean, to election and total depravity.

53:44

Whatever the cover is, it doesn't matter. God knows the heart. Russell Fuller shared with us last week that there are rank unbelievers who keep their jobs in evangelical seminaries.

53:57

They would never tell in a Sunday school class what they actually believe, but they will tell

54:04

Russell Fuller behind closed doors. And they even envy Fuller for still having belief.

54:10

Are there not unbelievers in our churches? When it comes down to it, they don't believe in a literal creation.

54:19

They don't believe in the Bible as the word of God. They don't believe in miracles that Jonah was actually swallowed by a great fish and spit out on the shore, because that sounds fanciful to them.

54:30

They don't believe that Samson grabbed 300 foxes and tied their tails together, because that sounds like a storybook tale.

54:41

They just don't believe it. This is what we're running up against. That's where Jimmy Carter was at.

54:47

And I think the lesson for us is you can claim to be born again, you can claim to be evangelical, but unless you believe the book,

54:56

God's book, the word of God, you're deceiving yourself and deceiving others.

55:02

There's only one way to be saved. It's through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And the only way we know that He died and that He was buried, that He rose from the dead, that He is

55:11

God in flesh, that He is the Son of God. The only way we know these things is by this book called the

55:17

Bible, which God has given us and preserved for us. So that's our epistemology. That's how we know what is true.

55:23

And the truth is Jesus Christ, the way, the truth, and the life. There's none other but Him. I'm glad you're shutting it down with a very uplifting message right there, because I'm encouraged too.

55:34

And I tell you what, even though Russell Fuller was talking about stuff being broken up, and yeah,

55:40

I don't want to go to seminary now, but I do want to learn some languages, man. I want to learn some Greek. I want to get in to really strengthen my faith in that way.

55:48

And I same thing with Jimmy Carter dying. Yeah, it's a sad thing, but we should be encouraged.

55:57

I'm not smarter than Jimmy Carter. I'm not going to out -intellectualize Jimmy Carter, but God has given me a faith, and He's given us all faith.

56:07

And we need to cherish that. So I think it's a thing to walk away with. The fear of the

56:12

Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And if someone loses their fear of the Lord, if they have the greatest intellect in the world, that can run circles around any of us, if they don't know the

56:22

Lord, if they don't repent and believe, they're not wise. Hey, we have children in our church that are more qualified to teach

56:28

Sunday school than one of the presidents of the United States, who is Jimmy Carter, who was actually teaching it.

56:35

In the same way, maybe we're not as smart intellectually as him, but our

56:42

God is much, much wiser. And even his foolishness makes the wiseness of Jimmy Carter look very foolish.

56:51

Amen. Let's do it. Let's get them. Let's lead them out. If you see a brother down, pick him up.

56:57

Lift him up. Pick him up. See a high place. Tear it, tear it down, tear it down.