Eric Metaxas - Is Atheism Dead? - Leaders' Talks

Hey, I'm Steve Holt, the senior pastor of the Road at Chapel Hills.

This is the Road Podcast.

Thanks for joining us.

My heart is to empower you to change the world.

I hope this message impacts you.

Here now is our guest speaker.

Let's welcome.

Oh.

God bless you.

Thank you.

Wow.

Holy cow.

Now you sit down.

Thank you very much.

God bless you.

God bless you.

Sit down not that quick.

Come on.

I was enjoying that.

No, that's um, I get I get really humbled, which is uh a good thing.

But what a what an insane blessing uh to be here with you this morning.

I I feel so honored, um, but I feel conflicted about everything.

Because, you know, we're behind enemy lines, we're in a broken world, so you can't really rejoice too much.

Like even when somebody says, I record six New York Times bestsellers, you know, every time somebody says that, I'm thinking, like, the New York Times can go to hell.

But I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that, hey, I wouldn't say that from the pulpit.

I would say go jump in a lake, you know.

But but it it's funny, right?

The world in which we live is broken.

There is sin.

And every accolade or whatever, look, you look to scripture, Paul says it, right?

I count all these things done, okay?

That's the polite word.

I think King James uses the real word, right?

We have to get perspective.

And when things are crazy as they are in America right now, it's good.

It gives us perspective.

It says, these things are crazy.

These things are not of God.

It forces us to look to God, it forces us to see what's right.

When I wrote the Bonhoeffer book, one of my favorite things about that, there was a quote in the Bonhoeffer book where he is looking at the craziness of what's happening in Germany.

This is already during the war.

And he writes to a lot of these young men that he'd been mentoring, and he basically says, This is good because we're seeing things as they are.

We're living under an illusion.

When everything's okay, we're really living living under an illusion.

Um, and sometimes the Lord allows things to get horrible, to bless us.

If you're looking at things from God's perspective, you see differently than if you don't have God in the picture.

Uh your hope is not in this world.

And you see through this world to Him.

And so I really think that now, as things are crazy, it just forces us to say, okay, all right.

I admit it.

Things were always crazy.

I just didn't see it.

Or I didn't have the courage to see it.

I kind of wanted, you know, whatever, world's accolades or success or peace or whatever, and God says, no, no.

The peace is on the other side of the cross, and and we need to know that.

And we need to know that with joy uh and with the with the peace of God.

So I I want to so much I want to talk about this morning.

First of all, I want to thank uh Pastor Steve Holt for allowing me to be here.

I cannot tell you how honored I feel.

I really I do I do.

And um and and if you're at Radiant Church watching this, I'm I'm just here to say that uh now that Todd Huddenall and I are friends, I can say, Todd, it's obvious when you asked me you know to have this kind of streamed into Radiant Church, it's obvious that you you didn't get to prepare a sermon this week.

I think that's I think that's look, listen, sister brothers in Christ, I'm keeping it real, okay?

We know what happened, but but all things work together for good.

So that's a that is my love language.

If I insult you publicly, that is my love language.

Todd Hudnell knows, and Kelly, they know I love them.

And so, but I I really feel very, very honored um uh to get to speak to to you folks as well.

And if you're at Radiant Church, uh you're gonna have to come here if you want me to sign your book.

Isn't that right?

Because I'm signing books, I'm not signing a Radiant, all right?

Uh but I um I I just I just want to tell you, I feel very honored.

And when I get out and get to meet folks like you all, I get so encouraged by what the Lord is doing.

And and I'm not blowing smoke, folks.

You need to understand, God is at work among you.

This is real, this is beautiful to see, you know, if we're gonna quote Romans 8.28, every crummy thing, everything can work together for good, and does work together for good for those that love the Lord and are called according to his purposes, including COVID, including every evil sick thing, God says, okay, if you're called according to my purposes, if you love me, I will make that work together for good for you.

And churches like this, where there's no fear of speaking truth, numbers have increased dramatically.

I've been speaking all around the country, and I'm only invited to crazy churches like this one.

Right?

And and I want to tell you the story is just about the same in every single one of those churches.

How the numbers have exploded since COVID.

Now, why would that be?

That's called a free market, folks.

People are voting with their feet.

They're saying, I'm going there.

I want to hear that.

I didn't know, I never heard that guy before.

I didn't know that kind of courage existed in the church.

I thought we could just have, you know, kind of like non-confrontational exegesis every week, you know.

We don't want to be divisive.

We don't want to talk about stuff like truth, because that might hurt somebody's feelings.

We don't want to do that.

We don't want to be like Jesus, you know, because he lost some followers.

We don't want that.

Are we kidding?

Yes, we're kidding.

We're kidding.

Um does anybody know what the title of this sermon is?

I believe it's Bonhoeff or Marxism and the Kingdom of God.

Right.

They said, we need a title.

I said, why do you need a title?

Do you hand out do you hand out, you know, leaflets with the title on it?

Anybody get a leaflet?

So nobody knows the title, so I could pr I could I could preach anything I want.

But now you've lass sued me into preaching on this subject, and so I will I will follow that.

Um but I uh I want to refer to what the pastor said.

The reason my book, because I'm I'm I'm sort of framing things around this book that uh that that I wrote, is Atheism Dead?

Now it doesn't matter if you were alive in 1966.

I was alive, but I wasn't reading Time Magazine at age three or whatever I was.

But it's a cultural marker that Time magazine brought the idea of the death of God into America's living rooms in 1966.

Now, before that, that nasty, foolish idea had always existed, especially in certain intellectual circles, but it hadn't trickled down into mainstream America until 1966, when Time Magazine puts this in America's living rooms, is God dead?

The question, right?

Now, the reason they did that is because science up to that point, if you were one of those kind of people who doesn't really believe in God, you say, well, it looks like science is pushing God and faith out of the picture, and that the more we mature as you know, enlightened adults, we're gonna we're gonna need that thesis less and less and less.

That's all the you know, the intelligent people could see that, right?

So they kind of introduced that into middle America.

Now, of course, we know that's not right, uh, it's not even close to right, but you could see how, based on the evidence of science, why some people might think that.

Well, what I want to talk about is the irony of the fact that roughly since then, since that mistaken notion came into, mistaken notion is a very polite way of putting it, right?

Came into the American culture, the evidence for God from science, from science, has increased dramatically, dramatically, dramatically to the point where today there is zero question that science essentially proves the existence of God.

Now the headline is nobody knows it.

The headline is most people in the church don't know it.

Most people in the church, including me, we sort of internalized the big lie that somehow science and faith are sort of at odds somehow.

Folks, that that is a lie from the pit of hell.

The fact of the matter is, the God who not only is not dead, but is life itself, that God gave us the ability to do science.

And it is from Christian faith that you even get modern science.

So the level, the lies that many of us have have taken in and really I said it's it's really time.

God has made it clear now, and that God always has a sense of humor.

We don't know why he lets the science kind of point like away from him, sort of.

I don't know if he's playing a joke on us.

He's kind of like, let it ride.

Give a few more decades, give science a few more decades, let them think what they want.

You know, it's kind of like when you have a little kid, like, let him smoke that cigar.

Don't worry about it.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, really get a good draw, pull it down into your lungs, make sure you really get that.

Go ahead.

The Lord, the Lord, when you love somebody, you kind of sometimes you let them, you say, like, let them, let them figure it out.

We'll give it some time.

So, science, as the as the Lord has kind of allowed this lie to go out there for those that have wanted it, he he has known that, you know, since he invented reality, that the more you learn from science, the more inevitably it's going to point to a designer.

There's just no way around that.

So the question today that I thought I have to ask is it's the antithesis.

It's is atheism dead?

And in the same way that the magazine asks the question, is God dead?

They're politely saying, We think God is dead.

I am, you know, politely saying, I'm sure atheism is dead.

I don't have any doubt about it.

But people say, Well, I'm an atheist, I'm an atheist.

You could be a flat earther, good for you.

I'm here to tell you, and I know there may be some here, and don't come up to me later and talk to me about that.

But I I also don't believe mermaids exist.

I apologize.

I'm just sorry, I'm harsh that way.

I'm saying there are no mermaids.

Um but just because there is there are people who say I'm an atheist, it doesn't change the fact that that the facts now, today, make it intellectually untenable.

Now, if you want to say, I'm an agnostic, if you want to say I've had experiences with Christians, they have been hypocrites and they've hurt me and they're dead.

That you can have a conversation about that.

You should have a conversation about that.

But the thesis that there is no God, I would say to you flatly, is dead.

There is no question, now that it's gonna make some people angry.

Well, look, something might make you angry.

The question is, is it true?

And so I want to I want to talk about that briefly.

It's sort of funny to me that right in scripture it says the fool says in his heart there is no God.

3,000 years ago, the scripture declares that that thesis is not really gonna get you very far.

It's foolish.

If you want to say I have issues with God, I'm not sure who God is, God has messed up my life.

Well, we can have a conversation about who is God.

But I think we're gonna get to a point where there are gonna be people who are gonna say, like, well, there may be a God, but I hate him.

Well, that that's nasty.

That's that's ugly.

But I think the idea that there is no God is no longer gonna be an option.

And I think that for people who are familiar with what I write about in this book from science and biblical archaeology, some of the things, I I think we need to know that.

But for the church, I want to say it's good news.

Reality always points to God, because parentheses, the Lord created reality.

Did you know that?

Right?

He created the universe in which we live.

So I want to give you some of those um facts, and then I want to talk about the title of the sermon is Bonhoeffer Marxism and the Kingdom of God.

Um, and so I want to I want to talk about that.

But first, let me give you the evidence of what I'm talking about.

When I say that, the question today is whether atheism is dead.

Why do I say that?

Well, what I mean, roughly speaking, is um, you know, when people say, well, what do you mean science points to God?

What does that mean?

Well, here's what I mean.

Um Christopher Hitchens, the famous new atheist, uh, who was a very nasty debater.

He was not really fair.

He didn't seem to care about truth.

He cared about winning, which is the hallmark of the atheist worldview.

Because you don't even believe there is such a thing as truth.

If you don't believe in the God of Scripture, what is truth?

Right?

That's the question that Pilate asked.

What is truth?

What is truth?

What in the world?

What the heck is truth?

What are you talking about?

They may not say that.

They'll just pretend, like, yeah, yeah, okay, let's have a debate.

But on what basis, if you take God out of the picture, do you even say there's a right or wrong or true or false?

We need to call out atheists on that, right?

If an atheist says, like, I'm against racism, I say, okay, that's great.

Tell me why.

I know why I'm against it, because the scripture makes clear that we're made in God's image.

It's an abomination to treat another human being as though they're any different from me.

God's no respective person.

That's biblical.

So if you don't believe the Bible, where do you get the idea that racism is wrong?

Please tell me, quick.

I'm here to tell you, they don't want you to ask that question.

They have no answer for that question.

If you believe there is no God, then you do believe that we evolved out of the primordial soup from nothing through random mutations into who we are today.

So if that is true, and I'm just breaking down the facts, folks, this is not ideology, okay?

Darwin and all these others, when they understood, like, okay, we all got here through accident, that there was no God planning you, there was no God planning to create people in his image, but it just kind of happened.

We're just animals, we're just more evolved than those other animals.

They all knew, the Darwinists, that where this leads is to the inevitable idea, and the Nazis, I mentioned Bonhoeffer, they had no problem with this.

It leads to the inevitable idea that some people, some groups will be more evolved than others.

That is a lie out of the pit of hell.

But if you put God out, you say we're not going to deal with God, there's no God, how do you escape that idea?

How do you escape that the red man, the black man, the brown man, these are groups, some might be more evolved than others.

How do you get away from that?

Well, I'm here to tell you, you cannot.

So when you ask somebody who doesn't believe in God why is racism a wrong, they no matter what they say, I'm here to tell you they have no answer.

And that's just one picture of how they have no answer about the meaning of life, why murdering the person sitting next to you would be wrong.

They don't have an answer, but they don't want you to get into that because it's embarrassing.

And if you do insist on getting into it, they'll come up with some tautology, like, well, I create my own meaning.

I believe we create our own meaning.

You know, that's like saying you owe me$5,000 and go, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna create my own money in the basement.

I'll be right back, you know.

Like I'm gonna I'm gonna print some money.

I'm gonna print some money.

It's like uh I'm here to say, no, that money is not acceptable to me.

What are you talking about?

When somebody says we create our own meaning, even the concept of meaning doesn't allow you, if you really think about it, you create your own meaning.

If you create your own meaning, there is no meaning.

You're you're you're you're you're blowing smoke.

But that's what the atheist I hate kids.

Get that kid out of here.

I hate the kids.

No, I don't.

I you can only joke like that if you love kids, right?

Um if you if you I'm sorry.

Um so what follows from this thesis that there is no God, I'm here to say to the church, folks, you need to kind of be aware of this.

Stop giving people that grace on that stuff.

And and you know what I'm saying?

That like if somebody says there's no God, you say, okay, I disagree with you, but let's talk about this.

If there is no God, where do you get the idea that racism would be wrong?

Can you explain that to me?

Again, people are gonna they're gonna sputter, they're gonna get angry because they're like offended and they're embarrassed.

And they're gonna be like, well, what do you mean?

How could you even say that?

Well, I'll tell you how I could say it.

Because all the people who stood against racism and slavery tended to be born-again Christians in history.

And what gave them the strength to stand against it was they knew this was God's command.

So if you don't know what's God's command, why would you, you know, you just be like, whatever.

Well, that's this is where we are as a church.

As the evidence for God becomes clearer and clearer and clearer from things like science, I think we need to be bold about it and say the the evidence for God is dramatic.

And by the way, if you insist on this other way of thinking, I'm gonna hold your feet to the fire on some of these ideologies, on on why any of these things would be right or wrong, or whether there's such a thing as right or wrong, or truth or falsehood.

Where do you get that from?

One of the things I talk about in the book, I want I want to talk about the science, but I just have to tell you that one of the most dramatic things in terms of how you can see that atheism cannot work, is if you look at those who looked at the thesis of atheism the hardest.

When we talk about, you know, the so-called new atheists Christopher Hitchens and Dawkins and that gang, I just gotta tell you, in doing the research for this book, I was embarrassed for them.

And I was kind of amazed that they were given so much air time because the the intellectual shallowness and dishonesty was stunning to me.

It was actually stunning.

I just thought, this is it?

That's all you got?

You know, like I was intimidated by their intelligence.

I thought, they're so amazing.

And then you actually read what they wrote and you think, this is sad.

They're just trying to sell books.

Now, the people who looked really seriously and honorably at atheism in the 20th century, two of the top ones would be like Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus.

If you went to college, you may have had the misfortune of reading some of their books, right?

It's the most depressing stuff.

It's like, kill me now.

It's so depressing.

Because they had the guts and the intellectual honesty to see that if they're if we're living in a world with no God, which they believed, okay?

They said, well, if that's true, how do we live?

How do we have ethics?

How do I live as a human being when there's no God?

They they kind of did the math, so to speak, right?

They looked at this rigorously, and they understood that that's almost impossible as a human being.

Because if I I've internalized so many ideas about love and meaning and these kinds of things, and if I really look harshly, clearly at this idea that there's no God, I don't know how I can have meaning or good or evil or love.

They saw that and they struggled honestly with it.

And they struggled honestly with it so hard that what nobody seems to know, but I I wrote about it in my book, I was blown out of the water when I discovered this.

Each of these two figures, Camus and Sart, at the end of their lives came to faith in the God of the Bible.

Now, here, what's crazy, and this is a lot of the stuff in the book, is kind of like this, I'm telling you, nobody knows this.

It's as if it's not true.

But I I looked into it, and you know, this happens to me a lot of times.

I was talking to Pastor Steve yesterday.

Sometimes that you're you discover something and you you know you think, this can't be right.

And you start looking into it, you're thinking, it can it can't be.

And when you discover out that it is, you think, okay, why does nobody know this?

That the two men in the 20th century who looked harder at the bleakness of atheism than anybody came out on the other side.

And nobody seems to know that.

And then the people who didn't look hard, the people who are just trying to sell books and get the applause of undergraduates, those people who who really were playing games, just trying to sell books, they they they kind of acted like atheism is a good thing.

Atheism is great.

I don't have any God looking over my shoulder while I sleep with my grad student.

Right?

And then you you realize that the people who understood what it is to have no God in the universe understood that's a nightmare.

And they eventually came out the other side.

If you're gonna say there's no God, have the honesty to say there's nothing good about it.

Have the honesty to say that.

So that's one of the arguments is that the people who looked the hardest at this idea understood this is this is a horrible thing, and eventually came out on the other side of it, and nobody seems to know that.

I'm here to tell you that the people who did the math, that's that's the answer they came up with.

But just to go back to science, I mentioned Christopher Hitchens.

He was once asked, what is the best argument on the God side?

On all these debates with people, what's the best argument of the God said?

And in a rare moment of candor, because trust me, he he was not about kind of helping others get to the truth, right?

He was about, you know, crushing his opponent and moving on.

Well, in a rare moment of candor, he said, Oh, the best argument for the God said is the fine-tuned argument.

Now I'm just curious, how many people here know what I mean by the fine-tuned argument?

Would you raise your hand?

Okay, you guys can go take a cigarette break, because I'm gonna the fine-tuned argument.

Now, this is what Christopher Hitchens actually said.

He had the honesty to say, this is the best argument, the one that troubles us on the atheist side.

What the fine-tuned argument is, is is very simple, but you need to get to know it.

Because the evidence for this has piled up so insanely that it's funny at this point.

And most believers don't know this, and that's why I wrote this book.

I said, we need to understand science.

Specifically, the fine-tuned argument has just made it a slam dunk.

It's over.

You want to say I hate God, I hate Christians, you can say that.

But you really can't say there's no God that we just all got here through random natural processes.

That's no longer on the table.

So, what do I mean by that?

The fine-tuned argument is basically this that the more science looks at and can see, okay, in other words, the more science advances, the more they can see.

And I don't just mean that the microscopes get better and the telescopes get better.

That's part of it.

But the point is that we can see things with the tools of science better and better and better and better.

So we're we're starting to see some things that we didn't know 50 years ago when Time magazine published this, okay?

Um, for example, we know now that the size of the Earth, I mean, if you watch Star Trek or any of these things that we've watched for decades, you'd be like, what in the world would the size of a planet have to do with whether there's life?

Nothing, right?

Well, we now know from science that if the earth were the tiniest bit smaller, there could be no atmosphere.

There's this thing called a magnetosphere that we now know that the earth would not have a sufficient magnetosphere to hold in the atmosphere.

We all take it for granted.

You walk outside, you breathe.

You take it for granted, don't you?

You take it for granted now that you're breathing, don't you?

Of course we do.

Science has discovered that if the earth were the tiniest bit smaller, I don't mean 40%, I mean just a little bit, there would be no atmosphere.

And you go, well, whew, I'm glad it's uh it's not a little bit smaller.

But science has also discovered that if Earth were the tiniest bit larger, and the mass, the gravity would would pull down, uh, would be more powerful, right, if the mass were great.

And and our atmosphere would also be something that wouldn't work for us.

We wouldn't have too little atmosphere, we'd have too much of it, whatever it is.

The science now says if the Earth was smaller or larger by a tiny bit, there'd be no chance that we could be here.

And you think, well, gee, that's weird.

That's a nice coincidence, isn't it?

It just happens to be just the right size?

You know, they also they they also call that the Goldilocks principle, right?

A little to this, a little to this, but this is just right.

Well, science has discovered that with the with the size of the earth.

But science has discovered that with other stuff and other stuff and other stuff and other stuff and other stuff and other stuff.

And the more science looks at everything, the more it says, well, this is curious.

It looks like everything's perfectly calibrated.

It's really nuts.

What a coincidence! How lucky for us that we just happen to be in the place that's perfectly calibrated for life.

Now, a couple of simple examples, because many of them we could go on for days, but but that the size of the earth is the most simple.

But even the existence of the moon.

Who here, if you look up at the moon, you go, that's nice, who would dream that scientifically, that scientists know that if the moon weren't there, we couldn't be here.

Now, you kind of think, well, that's just weird.

What is that?

You know, it's this tiny thing in the sky.

I mean, what does it have to do with whether we could live here or not?

Well, scientists now know, this is not like some thesis, they now know that if the moon weren't there, okay, you know, with its own gravity, with its mass, because it's so big compared to Earth.

I mean, it's small compared to us, but in terms of the moons that you look at around the solar system, it's really huge.

And it is so big that it stabilizes the rotation, our rotation.

Did you know that we're rotating?

Yeah, you can almost feel it.

So we now know from science that if the moon weren't there, our rotation would be crazy, and the tides and the seasons would be it would be madness.

There'd be no life.

So, like, science is telling us this?

Science tells us, this is one of my favorite ones, that it how many people here, now I know you guys, I'm jealous being here in Colorado, you've got the amazing uh weather here and whatever, and at night you can see stars, right?

Um, how many people here would have ever seen Jupiter in the night sky?

I'm always curious if there's anybody, okay, you guys can take a cigarette break because I don't want to I don't wanna I don't want to waste your time.

But folks, this is the kind of thing, this is the sort of thing that just blows my mind.

Jupiter is 400 million miles away, okay?

Uh you kind of you you look at it, if you ever see it, if you ever know where it is, you'd be like, that little pinprick of light in the sky certainly has nothing to do with whether we could live here, obviously, right?

Science says, no, wrong.

Science says if it weren't there in our solar system, it is so massive that its gravity pulls asteroids and meteors that would hit Earth away from Earth in its general direction.

Because its gravity is so huge that it that it does that.

Science now says that if it weren't there, that little nothing in the sky that you never even think, you probably haven't seen it, if it weren't there, we could not be here because the number of asteroids and meteors hitting Earth would be so devastating that there it would have never been possible for us to flourish or exist in the first place.

Now, what I'm telling you is not Christian truth, it's science.

This is just science.

You could teach this in school.

This is this is not, you know.

But I I want you to think for a second, every little thing that we look at today with science that we might not have known 50 years ago, we're starting to see, inevitably, that everything seems perfectly fine-tuned so that we could be here.

Now, again, I find that funny because it I just mentioned a couple of basic ones, but everywhere that scientists look, they notice this.

So it's like if there were 200 dials on a wall behind me, and I said, if any one of those dials is moved a millimeter to the left or a millimeter to the right, the whole thing can't exist.

If any one of them, that's what scientists say, okay?

Uh they they talk about the uh the creation of the Earth, uh, the creation of the universe and the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.

Science says that, oh, by the way, uh the four fundamental forces of physics, gravitational force, electromagnetic force, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force, these four fundamental forces came into existence exactly at the level that they have today, uh a millionth of a second after the Big Bang.

And if any of those four fundamental forces were just the tiniest bit different, like 0.000000001 different, the universe, as we know it, could not exist.

Folks, this is what science says, okay?

You're not gonna get this in Bible study.

This is science.

So science is coming to the conclusion which they are arriving at if they're if they have if you have an atheist ideology, this makes you very uncomfortable.

Because you say, so everything is perfectly fine-tuned on the level of the creation of the universe, the creation of the earth, the creation of life.

Everything is so exquisitely fine-tuned that it seems really obvious that some infinitely intelligent designer designed it this way.

But if you don't like that thesis, you've got a problem.

So what do you do?

Well, you come up with a really loony thesis, and you you hope nobody will notice that it's loony.

So what scientists are saying, uh, now when I say scientists, I shouldn't say scientists, what I mean what it what atheists are saying, because there are tons of scientists who either believe the way we do or know that there's some kind of a god.

They get it, okay?

But there's some that say that's so odious a thesis that, okay, we're gonna come up with something called the multiverse theory.

Have you heard that one?

Yeah, the idea that there's there's probably infinity of universes, and we just happen to be in the one that's perfectly designed, right?

Like that, we don't have time.

It's so silly.

So ironically, the scripture 3,000 years ago, the fool says in his heart, there is no God.

The more we discover from modern science today, the more we know that is just a fact.

And and we need to know the science because, again, I'm here to tell you it's delightful.

You start glorifying God as you read about what God has created, you cannot help praise God and be in awe and wonder who is this God?

I mean, a lot of times our view of God is way too small, right?

I mean, you can even get confused just thinking of Jesus as God, okay?

Because he's, you know, he's just like sort of like one of us, except way better.

And yeah, technically he's God, but you know, he's my friend, and I talk to him.

Do you understand who created this universe out of nothing?

It it hurts your head, folks.

It it is really painful when you start understanding who God really is.

It's scary.

It ought to be scary.

It ought to put you on your face and say, I know I'm not worthy.

To talk to him, to be I and we're not.

And then you think, okay, and and God knows that, which is why he sent his son to die for us.

Like, but until you understand how unworthy you are, you can't really appreciate what he did on the cross.

Until you you understand how distant you are from approaching him, how impossible it is to ever begin to approach him.

When you really get that, and I'm here to tell you, the more you study science, the more you will just be like, oh my goodness.

I I can't believe and the God who created all this, he wants to have a relationship with me.

That's the most humbling, heartbreaking thing I could ever even dream of.

It seems crazy, but it's it's true.

It will change the way you live.

So it's important we understand these kinds of things, but it's also important that we do the math.

How do you get from there to where we are today?

What do we do today?

And I'm just here to tell you that the lie that there is no God, as it filtered into the culture uh over the decades, you kind of think, okay, so so where does that go?

What do we do if there is no God?

What does that mean?

Well, to cut to the chase, it means the state and the government will pretend that it's God.

And it will know that people who believe in the real God are a threat to their power.

And we're living in a strange time right now, folks, because we are seeing it in America, right?

In other words, the idea of Marxists, you know, anybody who talks about Marxism being good, the historical record is not good.

Not only does it not lead to prosperity and utopia, but it leads to cruelty and satanic evil, usually.

And particularly to people who believe in God.

I mean, ask the Uyghur Muslims, okay?

They don't believe in Jesus, but they believe in God.

They are the greatest threat to the Communist Party of China today.

Because if you believe in God, you will do what God tells you to do before you'll do what the state tells you to do.

And folks, we see this over and over and over again.

Barnhofer knew that the lip service that the Nazis gave to God was a joke.

Because everything they believed, their racial view of the universe, that some races are better than others, everything they believed stemmed from the idea that there is no God.

And by the way, we are going to be God.

They wanted to be God.

And that that lie goes to Eden, right?

If you do this, you can be as gods.

It is the same thing over and over and over.

And today we see it because we see that as God has been shoved out of the picture in American life, Marxist ideas, not just the idea that there's no God, but everything that follows from it has filtered into American life.

So the cultural Marxism we see, the madness of the transgender world.

I mean, folks, I don't know about you, but I cannot, I just think from my mental health, I need to guffaw at the idea that there's a big dude crushing it in women's swimming.

How is that not hilarious?

That is the funniest thing I've ever seen.

And there are people unable to say, uh, excuse me, sir, you can't swim here.

They don't have the courage to say that.

And they're letting women who have trained forever be beaten by a dude.

But they say, Well, we can't say that.

His name is Leah.

Uh, and it's uh she.

No, it's not.

I I don't need to be mean to say that.

But we live in a world where the reality of God, when you take it out, it leads to lunacy.

And this is one lunacy.

And I'm really here to tell you, I think most Americans see this.

Most Americans see when, like, there's a thousand reasons not to get the vaccine, and then all the people who get the vaccine are still getting COVID.

And wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

Most people are waking up that there are a lot of things that don't make sense.

And you start realizing, look, even if you don't believe in God, you just be like, look, I'm just about truth.

I'm trying to raise my kids, I'm trying to.

None of this stuff adds up.

Folks, when you try to replace truth with whatever, eventually it will catch up with you.

If you say one plus one equals 2.5, your bridges and buildings will fall down.

Your weapons won't work.

We are living in the reality created by the Lord.

And you cannot kick against these goads for very long.

You are made by him.

And so when you take the idea of God out of everything, everything becomes political, and and everything buys into any variety of these various lies.

And I'm here to say that I think most Americans see this, and they're very open more than ever to what many of you in this room know to be true.

That there is a God.

And he created you and loves you, and the love you have for your children and spouse and parents, whatever, is a reflection of him.

It's not nothing.

Okay?

The Marxist atheists would say, whatever love you feel, it's not really love.

There's nothing transcendent, there's no love, there's no beauty.

You're just an animal and not even an animal.

You're nothing.

And you need to just like deal with that.

Well, nobody can deal with that.

First of all, it's not true.

Secondly, you're made by a God to long for meaning and truth and transcendence and beauty and love.

You're made, you can't escape it.

Even if you hate it ideologically, you are made to long for those things.

And I think there are people that they're waking up, they're looking around and they're understanding that this way of seeing things is not working.

I was willing to give it a chance.

You know?

When we thought with big government money we can we can wipe out poverty.

Well, in the 60s that sounded like a good idea.

Well, it hasn't really worked, has it?

Have we wiped out poverty?

No.

We really we really have not succeeded.

These things have not succeeded.

Government can't solve problems that only God can solve.

And and by the way, God can only solve those problems if his people will obey him and live out what he calls.

I mean, America and the self-government that we have comes out of that biblical idea.

Now that's not escapable.

All of the founders understood that.

Even if you didn't believe in the God of the Bible, you could see that the people who do believe in the God of the Bible govern themselves.

They are virtuous because they fear God.

They don't fear the government.

They do the right thing, they don't steal, whatever, because God says not to steal.

So all of these ideas lead to the possibility of freedom, lead to the possibility of flourishing, lead to the possibility of a virtuous free market that creates wealth and jobs and can bless people.

These things actually make sense.

But if you take God out of it, it doesn't work.

You can't really have democracy and self-government without God.

You can't really have anything good without God.

And I think we're living at a unique moment in history where we get to see this in a way that previous generations couldn't see it.

We see the outworking of godlessness manifesting itself in lawlessness and Marxist madness.

And I think not only do we see this, but as I said, many in America are seeing this.

And they're hungry for what we have, if we actually have what we say we have.

If we have what we say we have, we do not fear death.

If we have what we say, if we actually believe Jesus defeated death on the cross, like actually, not metaphorically, he defeated death on the cross, then I don't fear death.

And if I don't fear death, I fear nothing.

If I don't fear death, you can't control me.

I am genuinely free.

I can only be free with God.

God calls me to live freely, fearing him because he loves me so much that he died for me and defeated death.

If I can live that way, I'm free.

Now Bonhoffer lived so freely that he wasn't afraid of going to the gallows.

Because he says, if you kill me, parentheses, Jesus already killed death, so you can't.

Even if I die, I don't die.

In fact, not only don't I die, but I will step into real life.

Folks, if the church does not know that that is true, we are not the church.

We need to know Jesus defeated death on the cross.

That is real.

He did it for us, but if we don't really believe it, we say we believe it, if you don't live like you believe it, then you don't believe it.

We need to live and act free.

We need to know that God is the only one that we should fear.

And by the way, he loves us.

He is for us.

He is looking for a church willing to speak the truth, willing to understand that I'm only going to do what I think God calls me to do.

And even if I get it wrong, he loves me.

If I get it wrong, he is faithful to forgive me.

If I say, Lord, I screwed that up.

I should have done this, I should have done that.

Folks, if you're following that God, you are free.

If you follow that God, you will glorify him.

All things in your life, good and bad, will work together for good if you love him and are called according to his purpose.

We're living at a time in history where God has made this clear to us.

And he has allowed things like science, and I didn't even mention biblical archaeology, but things are coming out now.

Obviously, I hope I put most of them in the book.

But these things that we can now see have been God's way of saying, when you really need this stuff, obviously you didn't need it in 1966, but now things are really bad.

So I'm going to give you more evidence for myself in case you were going wobbly.

And here's some more evidence and some more evidence and some more evidence.

Because we need to know, not hope.

I don't hope that all that stuff is true.

The Lord says, No, I don't want you to hope.

I want you to understand it is.

I want you to know it is.

If you know these things are true, if you know that science points to me, if you know that all of reality points to me and cannot help but point to me, if you know that, you will live your faith much.

More boldly, you will be much more courageous, and the Lord understands it's not easy.

He wants to give, He wants to help us, He wants to encourage us, He wants us to encourage each other as things get tough to say, it's okay.

His promises are true.

He is real.

It's not some philosophy that I bought into.

This is all of reality.

And so it's going to affect everything I do.

It's going to affect me so that some people say, Oh, you're getting political.

I'm going to say, no, no, no.

I'm just living out my faith in every sphere of life, which the Lord commands me to do.

So you might try to shut me up by saying I'm being political.

I'm here to tell you no.

God commands me to live out my faith in every sphere.

And if I don't, if I keep it in a little religious corner, I am bringing shame to my walk with Him.

I need to live out my faith.

He called us to that.

He died so that we would live out our faith, that we would walk in courage.

And I'm telling you, folks, there are people outside this building who are longing for what we have.

They're not even sure it's possible to live this.

But if they see people living it out, they are going to come to know that this is real.

This is a season in this culture, folks.

The Lord has brought us here for such a time as this.

He's allowed us to go through these difficulties for such a time as this.

His hand is on this nation.

And if this church in America will do what the church in Germany failed to do, we will see a dramatically different outcome.

I believe the story of Bonhoffer is a warning to the church to say, this is exactly what will happen to you.

Exactly.

If you do what they did, if you don't do what they didn't do.

If you do not learn from that lesson, folks, we are going down that path.

And you realize in many ways we have been going down that path.

And the Lord says, okay, do you see now?

You think the Germans are like uniquely crazy?

No.

You're exactly like them because I'm no respecter of persons.

You're exactly like them.

But I've given you this as a warning to say that it doesn't have to be that way.

You can obey.

You can wake up before it's too late.

That's what's happening now.

God bless you.

Hey, thanks for listening to the Road Podcast.

It's been my joy to be a part of your life today.

And you know, that's part of what we do here at The Road, and this is what I do in having this Road Podcast is to empower people to change their world.

My passion and desire is that you would take God's word through the power of the Holy Spirit and make that relevant for your life.

You know, the reality is that God has placed your life here on this earth to make a difference.

And if you'd like more information about how to grow in Christ, if you need prayer, if you want more equipping in different areas of your life, go to theroad.org.

God bless you.