Columbine Killings from a Biblical Perspective

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Well, we've all heard about it. We've all been thinking about it. Everyone's talking about what happened in Middleton, Colorado.

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Everyone's talking about the violence and how it just simply doesn't fit that young people, 16 years of age, could engage in such violent behavior.

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And if you've been listening, as I have, to the commentators, to the news programs, possibly you've been struck by some of the same things that have crossed my mind.

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Everyone says such a needless tragedy. Everyone talks about scratching their heads, trying to understand why such things happen.

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And yet, I'd like to suggest to you that individuals whose worldview is determined by the scriptures, individuals who look to the

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Word of God as their final authority, who desire to have the mind of Christ, who desire to think in the way that the

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Lord Jesus taught us to think, we're not asking those same questions. I'd like to suggest to you that it's not actually even possible for the

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Christian to refer to this act in Middleton, Colorado in the same way that the world is referring to it.

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Maybe you haven't caught it. Maybe there have been other things that have been distracting you. But think with me just for a moment this evening about what we've learned about our society from the events of recent days.

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Have you heard anyone, any television commentator, any reporter, any social activist, referring to the events that took place at Columbine High School with such words as evil, wickedness, lawlessness, rebellion?

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Hmm, me either. Those are words that are completely absent from our society as it looks at itself.

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Instead, you'll hear about, oh, these young men were sick. These young men were ill.

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They were disadvantaged. They had been mistreated. The idea of passing a single moral judgment has left the vocabulary of the society that is the

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United States of America. And so people sit around and they scratch their heads because they've bought into the lie.

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The lie that, well, man is basically good. All you have to do is give man the proper opportunities, the proper context, and that goodness will just come flowing out.

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They've bought that lie. And since they have, they look at something like this and go, well, how could this happen?

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How is it possible that basically good young men could do something so evil?

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And so our society is confused. Our society is desperately afraid of passing a moral judgment on even the most heinous crimes.

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Even the most heinous examples of the evil that fills the heart of man.

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And that filling of the heart of man doesn't start when someone turns the age of majority. It doesn't start when they're old enough to be drafted or old enough to vote or old enough to drink.

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No, even a 16 -year -old young man who has the physical strength and capacity to carry a pipe bomb and a sawed -off shotgun, evil fills that heart as well.

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You know, people ask the question, how could something so terrible as this happen, how could

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God allow something like this to happen? Even Christians ask that question.

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I'd like to suggest something to you. The issue is not how could God allow something like this to happen.

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The issue, quite honestly, is why doesn't He allow it to happen more often than He does? How many people are there in our society like those young men?

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And how often, by an unseen hand of restraint, has

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God kept the evil in the heart of man from expressing itself in the most horrific ways?

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We should be a thankful people, thankful to God that He restrains so much evil, and yet we blame

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Him very, very quickly when for but a moment He withdraws His hand and allows the evil that fills the heart of man to express itself.

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It shocks us. But you see, we have absolutely no basis upon which to complain when

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God does lift His hand of restraint. For my friends, those are simply the judgments of God.

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I haven't heard almost anybody talking about that either. But what we are seeing in our nation is not what is going to bring the judgments of God.

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What we're seeing in our nation is, in fact, the judgment of God.

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We don't like to think about the judgment of God. There is something in the American psyche that says that God's judgment can never fall upon us.

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We can slaughter as many innocent children as we wish and call it by the politically correct name of abortion or terminating a pregnancy.

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We can spend billions and billions and billions of dollars satiating our physical desires, dressing ourselves, driving the fanciest of cars, eating the best of food, amusing ourselves, and never once give a word of thanks for all the blessings that are ours and still think that, no, we're not deserving of God's wrath.

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We can allow various media outlets to put the most gross filth upon the air.

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We can allow the gospel to be mocked, the Christian message to be mocked. Despite all of this, almost no one is willing to say

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God's judgment is going to come. Because, well, if you speak of judgment, you're a backwoods hick.

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Amongst your entire congregation, you couldn't put together a full set of teeth if you believe stuff like that. You come straight out of that movie

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Deliverance. You pick a banjo if you believe in God's judgment. And yet, the very same people who would very quickly mock the idea of judgment sit there in stunned unbelief as two young men walk through a high school, callously, coldly, shooting people at point -blank range, throwing bombs, and laughing as they do it.

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And they don't seem to get the connection that maybe they're not as wise as they thought they were.

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The judgments of God fall upon those people who reject

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His truth. The judgments of God fall upon those who hate

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God. And if this society is anything, it is a God -hating society.

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You might say, oh, that's harsh. Is it? Is it?

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How often in popular culture do we see a mockery made of the righteousness of God?

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All the time we hear people complaining about the Puritans, our old forefathers who were

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Puritanical. Aren't we so glad we've gotten away from them? Well, who were the Puritans? They were God -lovers, concerned about God's truth, concerned about God's law.

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We've turned away. We mock. We hate the Christian God. Oh, there are many in our land who speak of being

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Christians, who go to a place of quote -unquote worship, but the worship is a mockery to God, for His truth is not a part of it, and He will have no part of any worship that is not filled with His truth.

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We put up with film distributors and filmmakers who produce the most blasphemous films about the

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Christian faith. They wouldn't do that about any other faith. They'd do that about Islam or Buddhism.

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There'd not only be lawsuits, there'd be riots. But as long as it's Christ, as long as it's Christianity, it can be mocked all day long.

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The nation is filled with God -haters. People who look to science, evolution as their

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God, their Creator. We are a nation filled with idolaters.

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And hence, we should not be surprised whatsoever when we look around and realize the depth of the depravity of the sin that surrounds us, that God's judgments begin to fall.

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We should not be shocked. What should shock us is that there's not more of that going on.

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Not that it happens. The Scriptures told us all about this long ago.

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It's not like God has kept this a secret. In Romans chapter 1, the

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Apostle Paul laid it out long, long ago. He said, The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

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That's us. This nation has heard the

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Gospel. This nation is filled with Bibles. But this nation has kicked

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God out of its collective consciousness. Don't talk to us about sin.

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Don't talk to us about evil. Even when we see the very face of evil itself, we will refuse to call it that.

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We'll suppress the truth. We have it, but we'll suppress it. We'll hold it down. The wrath of God is being revealed all the time from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

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And they're without excuse. Paul says, Because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them.

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For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made, so they are without excuse.

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There is no one in our society who has an excuse before God for their continued unrighteousness, has an excuse before God for being involved in the idolatrous exaltation of the human intellect, of science, technology.

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There is no one within the sound of my voice who has an excuse for denying God's right to be

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God and to determine what is and what is not proper behavior. There is no one who can stand before God and say,

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Oh, well, I have a perfect excuse for having compromised your law. I have a perfect excuse for having believed these things were good and just when they were not.

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There is no such person. God has revealed His truth. He has revealed that He exists.

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Men know that God exists. He has revealed His existence to them through what has been made, so that they are without defense, without excuse.

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For even though they knew God, verse 21 of Romans 1, they did not honor

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Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened.

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Yes, I know, there's all sorts of moral deciding words there. Words that make moral decisions, moral judgments.

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Well, God has the right to do that. His word does that and if we are going to speak

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His word clearly, then we cannot avoid moral judgments. You say, well, judge not, lest ye be judged.

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No, as Jesus said, judge with a righteous judgment and be ready to be judged by the same standard that you use to judge others.

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For even though they knew

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God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened.

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We live in a darkened land. We live amongst people who have embraced a lie about who they are and who

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God is. And as a result, because of that, foolish hearts are darkened.

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Speculations become futile. You have every kind of man -made, worldly thought out there.

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You have every kind of man -made and worldly theory about who men are.

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None of them make any sense. None of them can explain why it is that men do what they do to each other because they won't accept

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God's truth. And people sit around and they see evil, but since they won't call it evil, and since they don't believe that men can be evil, then they're confused.

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Confused about why people would do things like this. Well, those young men's hearts were very, very dark.

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Filled with evil. Professing to be wise, verse 22, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible

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God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four -footed animals and crawling creatures.

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Idolatry. What does God do? Therefore God gave them over in the lust of their hearts to impurity so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.

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For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

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Amen. Man will worship. He'll worship something. It'll either be the true God or it'll be idolatry.

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For this reason, God gave them over to degrading passions. For their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural.

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In the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned their desire toward one another. Men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

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That's homosexuality. A sign that God has given a nation over to its own lusts.

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And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer.

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And that is a description of this nation. We once acknowledged God. We once recognized from whence flowed our greatness.

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From whence we do not any longer. By force of law.

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We refuse to acknowledge him. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge

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God any longer. God gave them over to a depraved mind.

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My friends, it is a depraved mind that cannot see evil when evil is right in front of it.

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It is a depraved mind that refuses to recognize wickedness, violence, rebellion against God and his authority when it's right in front of us.

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Our nation has a collectively depraved mind. God gave them over to a depraved mind to do those things which are not proper.

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Being filled, verse 29, with all unrighteousness. Don't hear that term very often.

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You're not going to catch it on the Today Show or Good Morning America. I can hear those folks talking about unrighteousness.

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Oh no, you're really backwards if you use terms like that. Of course, those folks don't mind accusing

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Christians of being the cause for every evil thing in society, but let's not talk about unrighteousness.

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Being filled with all unrighteousness. Wickedness. There's that word.

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God uses it. It's because it exists. You can't fight it if you won't even acknowledge that it's there.

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But as soon as you say wickedness, you're assuming that there is some standard by which we can determine what it is.

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And that's what people don't want to admit. That there is, in fact, a standard, a law.

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It's a law that we, in general, are flaunting. Unrighteousness, wickedness, greed.

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We've removed that one from the list of sins, haven't we? That's a good thing to be in our nation.

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Greedy. Greedy. Evil. Yes, evil. There it is.

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Full of envy. Isn't that what Wall Street's based on? Isn't that what the marketing strategies are based upon, is making us envious of someone else so that we will go into debt to catch up?

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Envy. Murder. Oh, there it is. Murder. Full of murder.

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We kill each other all the time. Strife. Constant anger.

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Deceit. Oh, you mean honesty is something that's positive? It's something that's proper? Yes. Who cares in our society about lying anymore?

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Our very leaders don't care. At the very highest levels of our society and of our government, deceit is expected.

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We're shocked when we get an honest word from our leaders. Malice. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God.

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That's the biblical phrase. Haters of God. You either love Him and obey

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Him and follow Him, or you hate Him. Oh, there you go. No gray area.

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Yeah, when it comes to your Creator, there isn't any. You either love Him or you don't.

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You hate Him. There's no neutrality when it comes to your attitude toward God. Insolent.

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Arrogant. Oh, my. There's a good description of the entirety of our culture.

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Boastful. Inventors of evil. Disobedient to parents.

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Oh, come on. Along with murder and everything else, you mentioned disobedient to parents?

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Yeah, think about it. Think about what happened in Littleton. Disobedient to parents.

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Unwilling to be subject to authority. At least we do hear people talking about the breakdown of the family, but they won't recognize that the breakdown of the family, part of that is disobedience to parents.

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There needs to be authority. There needs to be respect for the family structure.

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Without understanding, untrustworthy. There is another term that can be used of so many in leadership in our nation today, or in business, or any other aspect of our lives.

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Unloving. Unmerciful. And although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death.

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They know that. Oh, they suppress it, they try to put it out of their minds, but they know that God is just to bring

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His judgments against this kind of activity. Even though they know that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

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Sinners love to encourage other sinners in their sinning. Sinners love to get together in groups and encourage one another in their sinning.

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That's fun. That's how man does it. And so it shouldn't surprise us when we see in our society a mass blindness.

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It's not a blindness that we can't see, it's that we refuse to see. We refuse to see the truth.

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What happened in Littleton demonstrates that there's wickedness in our land.

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What those men did was evil. They weren't sick, they were evil. And God calls all of us evil and calls us to repent of our wickedness and turn from our ways and embrace

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Christ as Lord and as the only way of salvation.

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...series on Mormonism. We're going to do a unique approach to that. The approach is going to be

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Are Christians Mormons? Everybody asks me, Wait a minute, you got that backwards. Shouldn't that be Aren't Mormons Christians?

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You know, they're always saying that. Well, we at Alpha Omega like to turn that around a little bit and ask the question,

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If Mormons believe they're Christians, then Christians must be no different. They must be

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Mormons too. And so we're going to begin that process. We'll look at the person of God the first week, who

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Jesus Christ is the second week. And on the third week, we'll look at salvation and look at the variances and the differences between the systems.

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One of the things that I was struck with in listening to Dr. White's remarks, gentlemen, is

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I was speechless. I listened to this and I just found myself struck in awe over how he nailed this issue.

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And we, I think, after listening to that, have to ask some fundamental questions. Number one, what is going on in our nation?

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How did we get here? We have to look around at our society, a society that's wallowing in depravity.

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As he said it, we live in a God -hating society. We have the

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ACLU, I like to call them the Anti -Christian Liberties Union. They're rabidly pursuing any acknowledgement of God in our society.

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But yet, it seems like we keep seeing Christians out there leading with their chin, pursuing political action.

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And Mike Munoz, I want to ask you, do you think political action, political movement, is the answer to what

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Christians face in this country? No, it's not. And that needs to be qualified, and I'm just going to qualify it real fast and then we'll move on.

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That doesn't mean that we as Christians don't do anything politically. It doesn't mean that we don't get involved in politics. But that's not the answer.

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It wasn't the answer in Jesus' day. It's not the answer today. The answer is that we as Christians need to do what the

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Lord has commissioned us to do, and that is to go out and to preach unashamedly the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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And until God starts to change the hearts of men throughout this nation, this nation is going to continue to decline.

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And in all honesty and all humility and all fairness, I think that as you look around, one of the reasons that we don't see that happening is you have to ask yourself, is the

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Church doing her job in the 20th century? Yeah. And that's an excellent point.

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What is the Church's job? Over on the political side of things,

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Mike Porter, you had mentioned to me earlier in the week our political leader's evaluation of this incident.

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And something that just blew me away when you told me it is, as James put it in his message, nobody's calling this evil.

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Nobody's saying these young men were wicked. They all seem to have some sort of problem.

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And you heard the President of the United States say something that just blew me away. Share that with us. Well, it was really amazing.

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I didn't hear the entire conversation, unfortunately. I heard the brief sound bite. The President, responding to what was going on with the actions in Littleton, he responded saying the boys acted wrongly because they were dissed.

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Everyone gets dissed, even the President. Now, of course, many of you know that the term dissed is shortened for disrespect to make it somewhat colloquial.

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But the idea that the President, the moral leader of the country, the one who has just within the last month and a half declared actions of another leader, immoral, atrocious, has begun military action and such, cannot even look to his own country and declare an action what it is.

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He must say they did it because they had, almost as if he was saying just cause.

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Look at the parallel. The President was dissed. Look at the action that he took. These boys were dissed.

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Look at the action. Now, of course, I don't think the President actually believes that. But you could draw some sort of a parallel.

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If the leader of our country cannot look at something and call it what it is, why should and how could the rest of the country do the same?

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It's almost as if the people who are going to be declaring evil, evil, must do so in a sort of a revolutionary way.

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How dare you judge? How dare you say something malicious like that? And yet, isn't that what the Christian faith is all about?

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Isn't that really what the mission that Jesus calls us to do? He calls us to declare what is evil, evil.

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It is contrary to God's holiness. It is contrary to our faith. And, you know, as you were saying,

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Mike, Mr. Munoz, the response of the church is not necessarily political action.

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What was Jesus' method? Jesus' method was repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. How could you tell someone to repent?

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Well, their actions must be in violation of a particular standard. Whose standard?

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Whose standard do you set down? Well, you set down God's standard. Scripture, Holy Writ. Yeah. The issue of subjectivism in our nation, if you look over the last few decades, we have seen how subjectivism is taking over.

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We see secular humanism becoming the religion of our land.

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People don't think that being non -religious, if you will, is that big of a deal.

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But the fact is when, you know, I'm the guy that gets the phone calls at Alpha and Omega, by the way, folks. And so when you call there during the week,

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I'm there 1 to 5 in the afternoons. And a gentleman called me earlier this week, and he was asking questions about a group called

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Unity that I haven't studied or looked at in years. And he began to remind me some things.

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The subjectivism, you know, you've got your truth and I've got my truth. And let the

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Holy Spirit say to you what he needs to say, and let him say to me what he needs to say to me.

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And they may be two totally different things. That's not relevant. That's not the point. And subjectivism lets us make up our own rules.

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Well, who judges these men? You know, who holds them responsible because they were carrying out their truth.

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They carried out the things the way they saw it. But the fact is, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

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What they did was evil. I want to read something to you from James White's book,

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God's Sovereign Grace, from page 39. What does sin do to man?

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It twists him. Sinful man exchanges truth for a lie. He was made to worship and serve, but in his rebellion against God, he exchanges truth for a lie and directs his natural urge to worship and serve away from God, toward the creation itself.

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Rather than worshiping God, he worships what God has created. This exchange of truth for a lie is vital to our understanding of man in sin.

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Sinful men hate the sovereignty of God. I want to say that again. Sinful men hate the sovereignty of God.

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Why? When God's sovereignty is preached, man has attempted to kick God off his throne.

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In fact, in his impudent foolishness, I want to step back here.

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Because they know that they're living a lie, a lie is exposed when God's sovereignty is preached. I skipped a line there.

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Man imagines himself sitting upon God's throne. He says, it's my life, and I'll do what I will do with it as I wish.

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Again, folks, this is my first time here. How many times have we heard this? Such ideas are part of our sinful nature.

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We do not wish to serve the sovereign God, and the best way to avoid having to deal with Him is to imagine that He is subservient to us.

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We go so far as to think that God can be judged by our standards. We think we can bring

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God before our court and judge Him. Such foolishness comes from our sin.

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It comes from denying the creator -creation distinction. We drag God down to our level so that we do not have to deal with Him.

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Do you have thoughts on that, gentlemen? Well, I was just thinking about what C .S. Lewis wrote, and you need to remember that jurisprudence is a little bit different in England, but he made the statement that it is not

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God who is in the dock, but we are. In other words, we are the ones on the seat of justice.

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We are the ones that are accused. We are the ones that are guilty. God is not. It's interesting you brought up the idea or the topic of moral relativism.

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That's the problem with our country today. Nobody wants to call right, right, or wrong, wrong, because for most people, in order to do that, it's going to condemn oneself.

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And I think Jim said it really well during his first half hour, and that is we as Christians, and you repeated it, but we as Christians, our job is to go out and pass judgment.

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Our job is to call evil, evil, and good, good. We need to be willing to be judged by the same standard, and that is the

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Word of God. And I would also submit that as far as moral relativism goes and ethics, without the

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Word of God, there is no foundation for ethics. You take the Word of God away, you have no foundation for ethics.

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You cannot speak of right or wrong without the Word of God, without an absolute standard declaring what is right and what is wrong.

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And unfortunately, that's where we've gotten in our country. The average American, although if you look at the polls and you look at the surveys, they still give lip service to God, but unfortunately, that's all it is, is lip service.

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And again, in all humility, you have to ask yourself, is that what is going on in the church today?

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What is happening in the church today? I think we've lost sight of who it is we're supposed to serve, who it is we're supposed to honor when we go to church on Sundays.

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And so often we're more concerned with making our churches friendly to the unbeliever. And I'm not against that. I think that we need to make our churches a place where the unbeliever feels welcome.

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But more important than that, we need to make our churches a place where the unbeliever can come and hear truth.

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And let's face it, the truth of the gospel is uncomfortable. It's offensive.

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It's absolutely offensive. And the goal as Christians is we're not to be offensive, but we are to share the truth, and the truth is offensive, and we're going to offend people, and we need to quit worrying about it in that aspect.

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And then I'll let you get in here, Mr. Porter. It's the most loving thing we can do. Yeah, absolutely.

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Mike? It's as Charles Spurgeon said, that the gospel is ours to proclaim, not to edit. It's a favorite quote, of course, of Dr.

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White. The idea is that we can't sit there and decide what we will and will not preach. We can't sit there and say, well, this is a bit too harsh for people to hear.

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We can't sit there and say, well, these, you know, we're getting about... I actually spoke with a pastor who was commenting.

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I commented on his preaching that I felt that it was basically a lightweight gospel. He responded in saying, well, we're getting a lot of newcomers, and I don't really want to hit them with everything we've got the first time out.

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And I said, well, when do you decide that you're going to do so? You know, that wasn't the message that Paul told

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Timothy. You know, if I may, let me read 1 Timothy... Excuse me, 2 Timothy chapter 4.

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Okay, and you might want to get a little bit closer to your mic there. That's kind of awkward to have one of those things sticking in your face all the time.

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Not a problem. 2 Timothy chapter 4, verse 1 and following. I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is the judge of living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word.

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Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with patience and instruction.

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For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires, and will turn their errors from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

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But you, sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, and fulfill your ministry.

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And so what I commended to this pastor is that he was actually fulfilling exactly what

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Paul was rebuking. He was, in fact, giving them what they wanted to hear. When was he going to fulfill his ministry?

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When is the church going to do the same? And it's a hard thing for us to hear, but I would have to say that not to dwell on the idea, not to dwell on the subject too much, but in Littleton there was one girl, as reported in some of the papers, who, strangely enough, fulfilled her ministry.

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And we'll get back to talking about that girl when we come back from this break. Again, this is the dividing line.

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We're waiting for your calls on this sobering subject. 508 -0960. That's 508 -0960.

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And you are listening to The Dividing Line Radio Broadcast. My name is Rich Pierce. James White is out traveling around and speaking engagements.

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And so I'm going to be your host for the next four weeks, including today. And we are talking today, in a sense, we're talking about the

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Littleton, Colorado incident. But more so, we're really focusing on the fact that we need to talk about evil.

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Evil in America, and evil as it's been unfolded here in God's hand.

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But Mike Porter, you were talking about a young lady in Littleton, Colorado.

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Why don't you finish telling us about her? In following up, we were talking about the responsibility of the church to proclaim the gospel, that it should be bold and it should not shirk its responsibility.

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And I called to mind that earlier they had a profile of a young lady who was well known as being a

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Bible -believing Christian. In fact, she would bring her Bible to the church, excuse me, to the school, and she would wear a bracelet that was a

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What Would Jesus Do? bracelet, a common bracelet. One of the boys, according to some of the witnesses, walked up to her, stood to her with a gun in her face, and asked her the question,

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Do you believe in God? And her response was, Yes. And they shot her. And I think you can see that a very interesting way that she fulfilled a ministry that the church needs to be doing, even to the point of death, that we need to be able to proclaim the gospel, that we need to be able to share our faith.

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And of course, she did not get a chance to preach out a sermon or to share the faith. She just simply said, Yes, to the question,

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Do you believe in God? But her very life might have depended on it. We don't know. They might have killed her, whether she did or not.

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But I come to mind one great preacher, George Whitfield, said,

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We need to be able to preach the gospel just as sure as we are going to lay our life down doing it. That's the question, really.

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This is how we need to shift gears here a little bit. We've been talking about what is all wrong with this situation.

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We've been talking about what's wrong in the church, but what do we need to do? You know,

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I kind of picture the average guy that in the last 15 years that I have attended various churches with, and I envision someone who comes into church and he sits down on Sunday morning and he folds his arms and he looks at the pulpit and he says,

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Entertain me. Make me interested in God. You up there, you're to do all the work, and I'm just going to sit here and I'm going to listen.

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And that's the big question. What does the church need to be doing? I mean, we've got all kinds of programs and we've got all kinds of other things going on.

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Mike Munoz, what do you think the church should be doing instead? I think we need to get back to the idea of teaching theology in our churches.

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I've done this. I shared this with you the other day. Often when I teach, I'll stand up in front of a class and I'll ask the question,

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How many theologians are in the classroom? And typically I'll get maybe one hand, and this is in a classroom anywhere from 20, 40, 50 people.

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I'll get one or two hands and I'll follow up that question with another question and I'll ask, How many Christians are in the class?

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And usually that's when all the hands in the room go up. So then I'll ask again, How many theologians are in the class?

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And I'll do that back and forth until they start to catch on. The fact is, if you're a Christian, you are called to be a theologian.

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The question is not, Are you a theologian? The question is, Are you a good theologian or are you a bad theologian?

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Theology is simply the study of God and we need to start promoting that not only in our churches but in our personal lives and our personal time alone with God.

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How much time do I spend studying the scriptures versus whatever my favorite hobby is or how much television do

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I watch or even compared to how much time I spend spending with my family? Not that that's not important at all because it's extremely important.

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And if I was spending quality time in the scriptures, I would probably be spending more time with my family.

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It goes hand in hand. But we've got to go back to what Jim says on this program all the time, Sola Scriptura.

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Scripture alone that is the ultimate authority in the life of the believer and that should shape his thinking, his world view, his behavior and what it is he has to offer the world.

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We say all the time when we talk to Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, when Jesus saves somebody he does it right. And I think oftentimes we look around in our society and we've got a caller,

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Dave in Phoenix is going to be next, David, but we look around and we see the church in a sense trying to reinvent the gospel presentation.

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And the fact is how arrogant is it of us to actually try to think or think that we can do a better job than God designed?

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God designed the gospel to be presented in a certain way. And we're going to go to a phone call now.

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We've got David in Mesa. How are you today, sir? Just fine, just fine. Thank you for your ministry and for telling the truth.

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Well, I appreciate your comments. Go ahead. Well, my comment is this. First, I'm 70 and having lived in a generation that, well, there has always been crime and always those who have chosen to walk away from God.

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But the thing that I'm concerned about, well,

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I'm concerned about a lot of issues, but for example, they want to...

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The secular world who will not acknowledge

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Christ or God will not... They want to blame it on guns.

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Guns are the problem. And we take all the guns away and we won't have any problems. And we put in therapists and we put in counselors and we put in guards in our schools.

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We do all these things. Metal detectors. Oh, yes. Yes, we make forts out of them. This is not the answer.

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The answer is... The question that comes to my mind is that why doesn't anyone raise the question, well, you know, why didn't we have this kind of thing occur say prior to the 1960s?

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Why didn't it happen? What are we doing different today in our schools, in our public schools that we did prior to that time?

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I was educated obviously prior to that time. And I'm...

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I'm really... Do you see where I'm coming from? Yeah, I do. You know, our society has changed so much.

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I'm 38 and I go back to 1960. That's when

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I kind of started out in this world. And in my lifetime, I've seen a tremendous change.

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I've seen our society really truly come to an aggressive position of hating

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God. A point that it genuinely wants to kick

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God out, as James put it in the program. And it's just something that we...

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It's something we... Gosh, for lack of a better term. It's like we're losing ground.

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And the reason we're losing ground, I am thoroughly convinced, is that the society that is the church in our land today has failed to take the gospel out.

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We have this attitude, when we go out, well, we need to invite people to church. Is that what the

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Bible says? Is that what the Bible says? Or does the Bible say we need to be going out, we need to be making disciples?

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Didn't Jesus say we need to be sharing our faith? Aren't we supposed to be out there equipped?

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That's what this program is about, folks. We are here to equip you in the faith. We're here to teach you, like we're going to start next week, how to witness to Mormons.

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And if there is any situation where the society...

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Or if there is any situation where we need to... I'm preaching. Folks, you get the idea.

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We've come to the close of our show. And I want to thank you for bearing with me my first time at actually doing this.

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I appreciate it a great deal. Thank you. God bless you. See you next week. The Dividing Line is a presentation of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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You can contact us at 602 -973 -0318 or you can write us at P .O.

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Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. We are easy to find on the

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World Wide Web at www .aomin .org. That's www .aomin

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.org. You can also find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks on our website.