The REAL TRUTH about the Las Vegas Shooting

The Christian Response to Mass Violence

Welcome back, everybody. Thank you for joining us tonight. We wanted to take this night and address the recent events from a biblical perspective and do something that was meaningful and appropriate, especially in light of the fact that right now everyone's asking important questions.

And it's the role of the Christian church, the people of God, to be salt and light to a culture. And Jesus actually says in his most famous sermon, actually, the most famous sermon in history, the Sermon on the Mount.

When he speaks to the church, he says, you are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. We often think today about salt as something that makes things taste better. And there may be an element to that that's important to discuss.

But in reality, salt in Jesus day was something that acted as a preservative. It did stop things from spoil and from decay. There's no refrigeration. And so they use salt as a preservative. And so Jesus says to people, he says, you're the salt of the earth.

You're the light of the world. You're the preservative. You are what stops the unbelieving world from going into spoil and decay. You're the salt of the earth. You're the light of the world. And he, of course, tells us as Christians not to hide our light, but to let it shine before men so that they give glory to our father who is in heaven.

But Jesus also gives apparently a warning in that passage and says that if the salt loses its savor, it's not good for anything but being trampled under the foot of men. And we've seen in the last generation as the Christian church has moved away from being salt and light to a culture and opted for more of the idea, ideology of escape.

We've lost our influence on the culture. We've lost our light. It's been diminished. And an incident like this. It's important for us as Christians to be the ones offering the answer, the answer that comes from Scripture.

You're going to hear people talking a lot about how do we solve this problem? And it's interesting, the conflict that you see, you see people saying, well, if we just had more background checks and mental health things on this issue, we would have solved the problem.

We need to do that. And so people are actually hashtagging gun control. It's actually trending right now because they think the problem is mental health issues. The problem is not enough legislation. The problem is the weapon.

But we know from Scripture, the problem is not the weapon. The problem is the person holding the weapon. The problem is a heart issue. Again, the Bible says the heart is deceitful above all things. It talks about our condition as not sick spiritually.

It's not that we need a little bit of help. The problem is more fundamental. It's worse than we think it is. The problem is that we are the offenders. We are the criminals in God's universe. We are the rebels against a holy God.

The problem is that we are corrupt. The Bible says we're dead in our sins and trespasses. Dead spiritually, not sick spiritually. And if you address this issue, trying to address the mental health issues or simply legislative issues, you're missing the whole point.

If you take the gun out of the hand of a murderer, that murderous heart will lead that person to go and find another weapon. And this is, of course, why you see that there are more deaths via knives and hammers and fists than there are with guns.

Even in countries with very strict gun control, you still have murder. You still have mass murder. You have mass murder with knives. You have mass murder with vehicles. If you don't solve the problem of the heart, you don't solve the problem of the weapon.

And so the next point I want to make is dealing with the foundations of this. I want to say that in all my years of pastoral ministry, I've dealt with a lot of very, very difficult situations. For many years, I was a chaplain at a hospital and I had people, at least five people a day in front of me in the worst situations you could possibly imagine.

It was taxing on me emotionally. It was hard sometimes to go from one person to the next person hearing the worst examples of depravity. And these are real people, real flesh and blood. It's not theory.

These are hurting people. And oftentimes when there are tragedies like what happened in Las Vegas, people often say, where is God? If God is good, then how can we have this level of evil in this world?

If God is so good, then why does he even allow wickedness to be rampant? And so oftentimes when people are the victims or people experience tragedies like this one, the knee jerk response of any image bearer of God in his world, knowing the goodness of God deeply, being aware of God's goodness and his holiness and his presence.

And it's inescapable. And suppressing that truth, what we often do is these tragedies strike. What we do is we do what seems natural to us. We say, let's revolt. God can't be there. God couldn't possibly be present in this universe with this kind of wickedness.

And what I want to suggest to you humbly is this. In particular, those of you guys that have been impacted by what happened in Las Vegas, and I'm sure some of you have. If there is no God, if the triune God of the Bible isn't actually there, if we actually revolt and we turn away from him in the midst of tragedy, then the truth is, if he's not there, there is no pain.

There is no meaningful pain. There's no meaningful moral outcry. Because you see, if this world postulated by the unbelievers is actually the way that it is, if we are all the random results of evolutionary processes that didn't have us in mind, if it's true what they say, that there is no God, there is.

Sorry, there is no good. There is no evil. There's only blind and pitiless indifference. If that's true, then that's true. There is no good. There is no evil, only blind and pitiless indifference. And what took place on Sunday evening was nothing more than the scattering of protoplasm.

As my friend says, it's just stuff. It's just a universe being banging along in the cosmos. It's just meaningless things banging into one another. It's just one bag of biological stuff that fired things into other bags of biological stuff.

There's no there's no moral problem there. It might have hurt. It might have been uncomfortable, but it wasn't wrong. You see, if the unbelievers universe is true, then there is only sky above us, no justice ahead of any of us, which means that if there is no God, if the triune God isn't there, then there is no pain to be concerned with.

It just happened. Now, here's what we know. For all those who feel the pain of this incident, which is everybody, including the atheist, we know that it is inescapable. We're in the image of God, and we know it was wicked.

We know that it hurts. We know that it is wrong, and we know that all of us demand justice. And there's only one workable worldview to make sense of that. And that is with Christ as your foundation, knowing that these are image bearers of God with inherent value and dignity and purpose and worth, knowing that there's an absolute standard that stands above all of us, that is outside of us.

It's outside of our preferences. It's outside of our little personal likes and dislikes. It's an objective standard that was true before we got here. It's true now. It'll be true when we're gone. It's God himself as the standard, and we know God is love and love does no harm to its neighbor.

We know with Jesus, we can say there's an absolute standard. You shall not murder. When we have Christ as the foundation, we have a meaningful reason to cry and to grieve. I want to say this without Christ, there is no meaningful grief.

There's just what is. But if you run to Christ and not away from him, there's actually a foundation for your pain. There's a reason to cry. There's a reason for the pain. There's a reason to actually grieve in a meaningful way with Jesus, knowing his sovereignty, knowing that he doesn't waste anything, knowing that nobody thwarts him.

You can grieve in a meaningful way with Christ. So rather than running away from God, you run toward him and actually have a foundation for your pain. The next point, suffering and the sovereignty of God.

Yes, God has a purpose in Las Vegas. Now, that sounds like a contradiction, a holy God. That allows evil things to happen. Well, it only seems like a contradiction and confusing if you don't actually start with what God says in his revelation about the world.

And here's what he says in his revelation about the world is that we're the rebels. None of us are guiltless. All of us are the rebels. All of us have fallen short. All of us are worthy of God's wrath.

And we live in a world that we asked for, that we ultimately want. And yes, sometimes in this world, we're the victims of other people's sin. That is often the case. But I would actually argue that the majority of the time in our private time were actually the perpetrators of the most sin.

The Bible says that the two greatest commandments are to love God with your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as you love yourself. And each one of us fail every day. We violate the two greatest commandments that God has given every single day and often, often with such a high hand.

We're all guilty. And when we say that God has a purpose in all of this suffering, we say that in a context of a world that has fallen in sin. And yes, God is redeeming it. And he is going to be victorious with his gospel.

But there is still sin. We are still guilty. And this is the world that we asked for. We said, God, we don't want you on your throne. We don't want you on the throne of our hearts. We don't want you in our world.

So we will choose our own law. We'll be a law to ourselves. We don't want your ways. And what happens is sometimes we run into other image bearers of God who also believe that lie and we're impacted by that lie.

Often we become the victims. Yes, God has a purpose. And if you say, what, how could God have a purpose in such wickedness? I want to point you to one example. In the book of Acts, when the church was gathered together after Pentecost, after Jesus died and rose again, was ascended and seated on his throne as the king.

They spoke about Jesus and what took place shortly before that. And they said that gathered in the city against her holy servant, Jesus, was Pontius Pilate, Herod, the Gentiles, the peoples of Israel.

And they named all these people that all had different motivations in killing Jesus. Pilate had different motivations. He's a coward. He knows he's innocent, but he does it anyways. Herod was just wicked.

The Gentiles, the Romans, they're just doing what they do. And the people of Israel were jealous of Jesus. They hated Jesus. Everyone had differing motivations and fallen hearts that were working in the midst of this awful crime against the most innocent person who's ever lived, the only innocent person who's ever lived.

And they said this. They were gathered together against Jesus to do whatever your hand had predestined to occur. God predestined the murder of Jesus. These wicked people murdered Jesus and God predestined it.

And what? For what? For the redemption of the world. For what? To recreate the world. For what? For salvation, to reach the ends of the earth and all the families of God, to return to worship God. Psalm 22.

Yes, God is sovereign, even over the most wicked act committed in history, murdering the son of God on a tree. God was sovereign in that. He's sovereign in Las Vegas. God will have the final answer. He never wastes a hurt.

The next point, we have a savior who understands our pain. I want you just to consider this when you think about evil in the world. Not only do we have a savior who was holy and righteous and good and he pursues the rebels, but we have a savior who sympathizes with us in our pain.

Jesus doesn't just sit far off as some absentee landlord looking down upon the rebels, just watching their pain. Jesus enters into humanity. And while he comes to save the sinners, to take what they deserve to live the life they failed, what else?

Well, this is what else Jesus experiences. Is everything this fallen world has to offer? Homelessness, poverty, rejection, false witness, being falsely accused in trial. And I think this, which relates to Sunday, relates to Las Vegas, the Lord of Glory, the innocent, the guiltless one entered into creation.

And wicked men did things to his body that he didn't deserve and they had no right to do. And Jesus experienced the tragedy of murder himself. If you say, how can God be in this? How can he understand my pain?

Jesus understands your pain more deeply than you do in that he entered into his own creation and he experienced the crime of murder himself. You have a savior who sympathizes with your weakness as he's winning the world with his gospel.

And the final thing I'll say here tonight about Las Vegas is that the gospel is the true hope of our nation. And let me just say this. It's important that we break away from pithy slogans and cavalier statements about the gospel T-shirt Christianity, things like the gospel is the hope of our nation.

Just some pithy slogan. It is not a pithy slogan. It is the absolute truth. Only salvation and reconciliation and peace with God will bring peace among men. It is only when we are brought to peace with God that our love for God begins to flow to love for others.

Peace with God is the foundation of peace with men. And it is only that direction. It never happens from the top down through the government or these institutions coming down and changing things from the top down.

It comes from hearts that are molded by their creator. And peace with God leads to peace on earth. And I want to say one final word. What's interesting in situations like this is the unbelievers say, well, the answer is the state.

The answer is more legislation. What's powerful about that is it's identified all the time. As the answer for the unbeliever, we don't want God. We don't want his answers. We don't want his savior. We don't want his king.

We don't want his laws. We don't want his justice. So what we will have then is the state come in to rescue. And it goes to show what a friend of mine says. If we will not have God as our father, then the state will be our mother.

And there is no salvation there. There is no redemption there. There is just tyranny. The answer for the world is Jesus. It always has been. It always will be. Our role as believers, our task before God, our divine task is to be on mission, to herald that truth of the gospel, to defend the glory of Jesus and the Christian faith and to do it with our mouths and our fingers in this world where God has gifted us the ability to be connected to the entire world in an instant.

We have a duty before God to be that salt and be that light. I want to encourage you to join us as we enter into that task. Stay with us for a very special guest. Good friend of ours, Dr. Ben Merkel of New St. Andrews.

Education Cannot Save, Only Christ Can

We'll be right back. Welcome, everybody, to next week with Jeff Durbin. I'm Jeff Durbin, and we have a very special guest today. He's our friend. He is Dr. Ben Merkel. He is the president of New St. Andrews in Moscow, Idaho.

Welcome, brother. Thanks very much for having me. Absolutely. So interesting show today. We have a lot of stuff that's on people's minds, theological questions, worldview questions, questions about society, culture, law.

And so you are one of my favorite. I think that the work that you do in New St. Andrews and some of the things you have to say are very, very important. So we want to make sure that we get you connected to as many people as possible.

Absolutely. So in light of the situation, what took place in Las Vegas, in light of the questions that everyone's that everyone are asking, how can education answer the problem that we face in light of Las Vegas?

Right. Well, I'm afraid the answer is it can't help at all. It's education can do nothing for us at this point. And what I mean by that, I mean, it's probably strange for a college president. I'm here pushing my college to say that.

But I think, you know, earlier you were describing the many false gods that people will try to bring to bring salvation at this moment. And they'll try to bring, you know, legislation about gun control or or any number of different things.

They'll say, well, this is the real problem. If we fix this, then these terrible things wouldn't happen. They're all false gods. And education will be just one more false god that is trotted out as an attempt to save us from situations like this.

And it can't. Only Jesus can save us. But the reason why education will be trotted out, it'll take a little bit longer. It'll be in the months that follow. We'll start to see everybody point to education is because education has this great quality of bringing with it government money.

Right. You know, as soon as you say, well, if we just had if people were just educated about this and that means we need a program and then that brings federal money and then you get all this federal money to fund these different programs and they never save anybody from anything.

Our secular education system actually is built to kind of shield us from our need for Jesus. You know, how so? How so? Well, I think of I think I think the real thing that's dangerous about particularly what we see in education right now is this really intensely sort of therapeutic angle on education, where it starts with this premise that you, apart from Christ, you ruled by the old man, you ruled by the flesh, that that is your most authentic self.

Right. That is that is the real you. And we must do all that we can to shield you from anything that would try to pull you away from that. OK, so any any urge that you have that urge, anybody that tells you that urge is wrong, we need to keep those people away from you and we need to bring all the money we can, all the programs we can to try to fulfill and satisfy that urge as much as possible, whether it's sexual or narcotics or who knows what it is.

We're trying to protect people in their old man and the education, the world education kind of comes as this big shield around you to protect you from what is really the call of the gospel. That that old man needs to die.

Old man needs to die in Christ. And so any education that comes and shields you from the message that you need to die and die in Jesus. Well, it's a false God and it's going to do us no help. Now, I think I think when we when we come to know Christ and we die in him and we rise again to a new life, then education can do much good.

But it comes as a second. It comes it comes kind of behind to help because the goal is Christ. He's the one that's going to save us. Education can't save. I met with a year ago. I was with a guy who's in the, you know, personally billionaire, billions of money.

And he's talking about how whenever he sees a problem, he knows what he needs, what they need is education. There's no problem that education can't fix. That's a that's a false God that needs to die. We need to do anything we can to get rid of that.

Jesus saves. And then once Jesus saves, then there's a paideia that comes along and helps us to understand the whole world from that context. Paideia. Paideia. Paul says that parents are to raise their children in the paideia of God.

It translated the nurture and admonition of the Lord. It is the enculturation of your whole mind to see the world from the from the perspective that God has given us in Scripture. It's from his from his vantage point where we're seeing the world as it points to the glory of God.

And when you see the world that way, it makes the Christian life. It gives all the glory to the Christian life. It makes it compelling. It also prepares you for moments like this, right? When you have all these theological questions.

I mean, these that you don't initially think of as a theological question. It's just a big why. But it's actually a theological question. And what you just did, you walked through a worldview, a way where you once you understand the gospel is true, you can actually interpret this event in light of all that.

And your faith is actually strengthened rather than weakened. Yes. And we want to. And so that's why I think an education is so helpful. Once you see Christ, then that education can be really helpful in strengthening your faith.

That's what we want to give at NSA. But I see just even Christians take that enculturation, that obligation to provide enculturation. They take that so lightly. And so we send our kids off to be educated, enculturated by people who are actually building fences between them and the gospel.

We know a recent statistic that it's it's somewhere between 60 to 80 percent of Christian kids that go off to a secular university lose their faith in the first year of college. Right. They end their freshman year no longer having faith in Christ.

And and, you know, just to put that in perspective, you'd have a better chance of putting your children into the force that landed on the beaches of Normandy and surviving than we would when we send them off to be enculturated like that.

And it's I think it's a real a real tragedy and really important. And so I would say we need to stop with education. Right.

So then you and I both share a perspective about the future that is rather unique in our current context. When you hear you when we talk about the future, we talk about it as something to be invested in.

We talk about victory, but it's not merely just this optimistic, motivational thing. It's more a hope rooted in Scripture. Right. Because Jesus rules on his throne and Psalm one ten one, he's putting all of his enemies under his feet.

Yeah. So we view the future even through a tragedy like this. This is not the end. No, it's it's a it's an enemy to be defeated and put under Jesus feet. And so you're the president of a very good college and you're doing important things in terms of whole perspective.

Right. So you guys think a lot about every realm and to take a word to take dominion over this realm for the glory of Jesus. Yeah. Whereas most evangelicals, I would say, OK, maybe that's not fair. Many evangelicals today are thinking about escape.

Yeah. I mean, I've already seen it today across my feed. People saying in light of Las Vegas. Come quickly, Lord Jesus, right? The answer is, oh, this is horrible and it shows the depravity of man. So what we really need is to escape this world.

Right.

It's it's I think it's the it's the sad fact that we don't take the Great Commission serious. Yeah. Jesus actually said your job is to go out and preach to the world. And and we don't we don't if if I send my son, you know, to go do the dishes.

And then he comes back having having not even begun knocking the door saying, I want to be done now. You know, no, you're supposed to go do the dishes. You can talk to me when we're done. And God has sent us to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth, to see the whole world know him.

And and we need to not forget that's our job and we need to keep at it. And the fact that things look grim, there are many moments when things will look really, really grim. There are moments where it look like you're the only one left.

That doesn't matter. We don't I don't judge. I don't judge my obligation based on how feasible it looks to me. Yeah, I judge it based on what God has clearly commanded me to do. And it doesn't matter how grim it looks.

My faith is what informs me, not my sort of taking the cultural temperature. And our job is to preach this gospel and to preach it in such a way not just that it goes wide, but goes deep so that it's something that can be passed on after generation after generation.

And that means it's going to develop a depth to it. I think that's why you're describing the need to see literature, philosophy, politics, the family life, all of these different things in the context of scripture, because we're building an entire culture that's being passed on.

That's right.

So how can people get a hold of of Lucy and Andrews? How can they get connected?

Yeah. Visit our Web page, NSA dot edu. And and check us out. One thing that we would love to invite people to is this next summer we'll be having a worldview conference for high school students, 14 to 18 called Conference.

If you go on our Web page, you'll be able to find it. But it's the called conference. I think it's called Conference Ninja. I'm not sure where it came from. Anyhow, so and we will be having a worldview conference there this coming summer, which should be a great opportunity to bring a number of really interesting, good speakers together.

Excellent. All right, guys.

President Dr. Ben Merkel, New St. Andrews, make sure you get a hold of them and stay with us. Be right back. You can get more of this interview at Apology of Studios dot com. We're going to extend this discussion.

You can get it over there.

Thanks very much. If you can think of the flinch of their mind when you throw a ball at somebody, some people jump back and some people reach forward to catch it. We want to shape graduates who their mind flinches in terms of cultural influence.

When they hear an argument that needs to be engaged with, when they see a message that needs to be dealt with, that we want people who jump towards it and go after it. And that's what our curriculum is about.

End Abortion Now and the Church's Public Witness

Welcome back, everybody, to next week with Jeff Durbin. I'm Jeff Durbin. Thank you guys for watching this week's episode. I want to really encourage you to like and share this particular episode in the context of our cultural conversation right now.

It's vitally important that Christians are salt and light and have a message that's meaningful, that is founded on scripture, that can address the hard questions that are being asked right now. So, again, join us in our ministry as we bring the gospel into conflict with every realm.

The heartbeat of this show and every show is our message with End Abortion Now. You can go to End Abortion Now dot com with your local church to get equipped with free resources and free training. Earlier this year, we had a fundraising event to raise money for a year of work toward our mission under the banner of End Abortion Now.

And since that time, we've had 250 local churches across the United States partner up under the banner of End Abortion Now at End Abortion Now dot com. These are churches that have gotten free resources and free training, and they're out and about right now in their local communities, preaching the gospel, standing on the word of God, proclaiming God's truth in this area and saving lives, literally saving lives.

I just had one church contact me last week that said they're on their 24th save. That's 24 children saved from death because of this work got message right before we started this episode that we have another save across the country just happened.

So this is an amazing work of God that we're all humbled to be a part of. And I really want to encourage you to be a part of it. Since we started this year, we did a national conference. We had over 100 churches represented.

We were able to pay for a lot of pastors and leaders to come out and to spend time with us, to get equipped, to get networked, to get trained together, to get ready to bring the gospel together in a meaningful way to end abortion now in our nation.

We've been able to send out to local churches across the U .S. resources, signs, tracks, everything they need to do the kind of ministry that we do. We have close to 100 saves at our local abortion mills at Apology at Church that we know of.

And God is just doing tremendous things with this work. Right now, you can go to endabortionnow .com and get all this free training and resources, but you can also get into contact with your local legislature to demand an immediate end to abortion in our nation.

So much more is happening right now. We have this amazing new platform that's been seen now by over a million people in the short time that we started it next week with Jeff Durbin. Is it's our hope that we've been able to we'd be able to connect with Christians across the country to join together and to partner on this vital issue.

It's really the heartbeat, the heartbeat of this entire show to stand in the biblical worldview, to address cultural issues and to point people constantly back to end abortion. Now to join together as the Church of Jesus Christ across the country.

This platform does that. And another platform that we've started does that. And it's called This Is Why. I want to encourage you to watch our episodes of This Is Why. It's on this channel on Apologia Studios.

It's also on Apologia Studios on YouTube. The amazing thing is, is that when we started fundraising for this work in comparison to all the money raised by pro-life ministries across the country in the tens and hundreds of millions, we were able to raise a small amount of money that is doing so much damage.

We were thinking actually this week while on mission to support the church in Ireland and to get some content for end abortion now that if you put everything together in terms of the money raised, if each church saves just 10 lives, we're looking at saving lives for merely hundreds of dollars and not thousands and not tens of thousands, not millions, but just hundreds of dollars.

God is doing an amazing thing, which demonstrates that you don't need big numbers. You don't need a lot of money to do a lot of damage to the kingdom of darkness. This show itself, we raised money for platforms to speak to the culture and to engage this issue and to point people back to end abortion now.

And this show itself was funded by a member of Apologia Church. God always provides for our needs. And with just a small investment, we've been able to connect churches across the country. We've been able to save lives.

We've been able to speak to our legislature, and we've been able to actually literally have millions upon millions upon millions of views, content that points people back to Christ in this conversation.

Just this last week, we had about 48 hours of traveling to go to Ireland to meet with some churches out there to equip them for this work in their area. Right now, abortion is illegal in northern and southern Ireland.

It's a 14 year prison sentence for abortion. And right now, the left and unbelievers are fighting to have all of that overturned to legalize abortion in Ireland. And so end abortion now is actually helping the church in Ireland now to actually fight against that, to keep abortion illegal in Ireland.

We're also telling a larger story in the midst of it that you'll see very, very soon that if the church does not speak with the gospel and the word of God, then we have to face this monstrosity of abortion.

It happened in America. It may happen in Ireland. The church is called to stand up with the truth and to be bold and to speak the gospel into this context. We actually have a short clip here for you guys, just a little bit of a taste to whet your appetite about the content that is coming from our ministry in Ireland.

Take a look. And all I'm calling you to listen, this isn't my country. All I'm calling to I'm pleading with you as a brother in a nation where it's legal, be consistent.

But you see, the thing about it is you can't. I'm telling you now, standing and preaching the gospel and calling murder in pro-life rallies. I'm telling you, it's not going to work. So don't preach the gospel.

No, no, I'm not saying that. You just said that. I preach the gospel. I preach on the street.

So the gospel is not the power of God for salvation.

Yeah, of course. I preach the gospel on the streets.

So so so is it the power of God for salvation at pro-life rallies? Pick your pick your time. Is it is it the power of God for salvation? Oh, my friend. So I want to encourage you guys to be on the lookout for the content that we have coming up from our trip in Ireland.

And I want to encourage you guys to pray for the church in Ireland. Pray for the church in America right now and join together with us in sharing this content, getting the word out, using that share button.

It is power. It is a gospel tract all the time. I want to encourage you also finally to go to end abortion now dot com. If you haven't done so yet, I want to encourage you to do so. Go to end abortion now dot com.

Get connected with your local church. Get equipped with the free resources and the free training. And then join with the Church of Jesus Christ across the nation as we work together to end abortion now in our nation.

And we do it by standing on the word of God with the gospel on our lips. Thank you guys so much. Use the like and share. Let everybody know. And we will see you next week on next week with Jeff Durbin.

Thank you so much.