| Time | Text |
|---|---|
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End-Time Conundrum
00:03:43
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| We as followers of Jesus are not allowed to be given over to a spirit of fear. | |
| Now, that doesn't mean that we don't take practical steps to protect our churches, our congregations, and so there's the practical. | |
| Okay, what happens if they manage to get an atomic bomb through? | |
| As followers of Jesus, we're not allowed to be given over to anxiety. | |
| That's right. | |
| And so, now here's this is the end time conundrum. | |
| I'm trying. | |
| This is the end-time conundrum. | |
| On one hand, we have a legitimate, we have issues to be concerned about. | |
| We have dangers to our lives in our nation. | |
| We need to elect responsible leaders. | |
| We need to pray for responsible leaders. | |
| We need to take practical steps and actions to do things that a responsible shepherd does to protect his sheep. | |
| Very simple. | |
| But beyond that, we're actually called also to lay down our lives for our enemies. | |
| You go, well, I don't like that. | |
| I'm not going to lay down my life for some jihadi. | |
| And I go, well, wait a minute. | |
| Jesus laid down his life for you, you ungrateful rebel, right? | |
| All of us, didn't he? | |
| And so Satan wants us to be afraid of all Muslims so that we won't engage them and share the gospel. | |
| Now, ultimately, that's not an option. | |
| Jesus said, if you're not willing to lay down your life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, you can't be a Christian. | |
| You can't be one of my disciples. | |
| Okay, so first of all, we have to go, Satan's trying to scare us, not going to work. | |
| I'm going to continue to love Muslims around me. | |
| And, you know, maybe they won't all get saved, but maybe some of them will. | |
| Maybe some of them won't, but at least I'm diffusing a time bomb so that when this 18-year-old kid is, you know, someone gives him the spiel at the mosque and they say, well, you should, and he goes, you know, I hear what you're saying, but I like Jim. | |
| You know, he was really nice to me, and I don't want to go blow up his place, this sort of thing. | |
| So look, even if you're a secular, if we're loving people, that should be a good thing. | |
| But beyond that, there's just the larger issue of we need to reclaim a theology of the cross. | |
| The bottom line is, if a nuclear, if an atomic bomb gets through, what happens? | |
| We die. | |
| We go to be with Jesus. | |
| I mean, you know, the end result is, what can man do to me? | |
| My death is my martyrdom. | |
| My imprisonment is my meditation, right? | |
| I have a chance to go worship in prison for a few years and grow in the Lord, if that's the case. | |
| But, you know, that doesn't mean that we don't take all of the practical steps, again, to protect the sheep. | |
| Those two things are not in conflict. | |
| And so, you know, we have to build the wall. | |
| We have to use wise immigration policy. | |
| The bottom line is if you look at Western Europe, it is a colossal, absolute nightmare. | |
| You have examples. | |
| You know, look, you know, and I've talked a lot, and you know, I work with ministries ministering in the Middle East. | |
| We're ministering to the folks that are coming out of Mosul. | |
| These are folks that some of them welcomed ISIS. | |
| We're ministering to them. | |
| You know, the Lord causes his rain to fall on the just and the unjust, and that's what we're called to be like. | |
| However, I also recognize that the just open doors immigration policy that Western Europe has been implementing, it's destroying the entire continent. | |
| You have examples where in England and the Netherlands and just some of these small cities, you had thousands of girls over a 10-year period, thousands that were gang raped, that were groomed into prostitution. | |
| You know, and you go, well, but we have to do the loving Christian thing and just let all of these refugees in. | |
| You go, okay, that sounds really loving on the front end, but how loving is it to your daughters and your neighbors' children when in 10 years down the road, you're going to have logistically, you are going to realistically have rape explode and this sort of thing. | |
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Loving Enemies Wisely
00:00:23
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| So we have to be able to wrestle through this conundrum. | |
| How do we love our enemies and still use wisdom? | |
| And it's not easy. | |
| The answers aren't easy, but we can't just go, well, I'm just going to shut the door and hate them all and pray for bombs to fall on the Middle East because that's not the answer. | |
| So we have to, you use wisdom, but we still have to be wrestling through, but what does it mean for me as a disciple of Jesus to love my enemies? | |
| And it's hard. | |