Letter To The American Church with Eric Metaxas - Part 2

00:00 - Announcer (Announcement)
Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture.

00:09 - Jack Hibbs (Host)
Who would have thought 10 years ago we'd be talking about this tonight, where schools believe across the United States that parents have no rights over their children's sexuality, you say, well, that's insane. You would have said that then and you should be saying it now. The problem is now we know it. Back then we didn't know it. Now we know it. And if we don't speak up, as Eric was saying well, well unto us.

00:35 - Announcer (Announcement)
You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.com Today. If this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five-star ratings. To us that's like saying amen or yes. Then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs.

01:04 - Eric Metaxas (Guest)
The Lord calls us to live out our faith in politics in every single sphere. And I want to say it again the reason I wrote a letter to the American church is to say we know what happened when the German church got this wrong. We know what happened and actually I want to mention there's a chapter in there called 12,000 pastors. There were 18,000 Lutheran pastors in Germany at that time 18,000. The Nazis very quickly just brought their kind of racial view of the world and every other thing to bear in government. They took away people's liberties. I mean, it was just dramatic, kind of like what we saw with COVID, just unbelievable governmental overreach and just pushed and, pushed and pushed. A number of pastors stood up and said no and they wrote this thing called the Barman Declaration where they made clear that the government whether it's the Nazi government or any guy has no right to tell us we're the church of Jesus Christ. Okay, so they write the Barman Declaration. About 6,000 of the 18,000 pastors sign it.

02:14
Okay, by 1935, two years later, the government had been so wicked and had bullied people that many in the church just like now, who had been initially brave, said we're going to back up, we don't want any trouble. We don't want any trouble. So by 1935, 3,000 of the 18,000 pastors were standing strong only 3,000. On the other end of the spectrum, there were 3,000 that were 100% pro-Hitler. It's kind of like, you know, you want to talk about it like a totally woke church today. So there are 3,000 maniacs, totally pro-Hitler maniacs, among the Lutheran pastors. So 3,000 complete nuts, 3,000 heroes. But here's the key, and it's why I call the chapter 12,000 pastors. In the middle were 12,000 pastors who said we're not going to choose, we're going to sit back, we're going to sit this one out, we'll let you guys fight it out. We don't want any trouble and we think we have a biblical mandate for not being involved in politics, so we're going to be silent. We don't want to be divisive, we just want to preach the gospel. And you want to ask them what useless, dead gospel were you preaching in your church? That you did not speak out and take sides in a situation that would lead millions of women and children to their deaths in the death camps. And that's just one example of the nightmare unleashed by the Nazis because of the silence of the church. But it wasn't the pro forget about the pro Hitler Lutheran pastors. Okay, let's talk about the 12,000 in the middle who dared to think we don't need to choose. We're not going to vote, we're not going to get involved, we're just going to sit back and do our little religious thing, because that's what we believe it is to be a Christian. We don't want to get our hands dirty.

04:22
Bonhoeffer tried desperately to wake up the church and to say church, this is your job. God called you to fight for what is right and true and good for the sake of the gospel. Fight politically for the sake of the gospel. Call out evil for the sake of the gospel. Live your life in such a way that you don't fear death but you fear God.

04:48
And we know, if we are not speaking up against the transgender madness, if we're not speaking up against open borders because we say, oh, that's, that's too political, ladies and gentlemen, because of open borders we have murderous thugs, drug cartels, trafficking women and children. If you are against child rape, you got to speak up. You cannot act like. This is an issue that I don't want to get involved. I'm a Christian. I don't get involved. If you're a Christian, you, more than anybody, ought to know that trafficking people for to degrade them and to rape them is satanic evil, and silence about that is no different than silence about slavery. It's no different than silence about people going in boxcars to the death camps.

05:36
The Lord calls us to speak. The Lord calls us to act. He Lord calls us to act as though we believe what we claim to believe, and when you are silent, you are allowing evil to happen. We need to be big boys and girls and make choices. In politics. It doesn't mean that we think somebody's perfect, but we need to understand what is at stake. Human beings' lives are at stake. Our nation is at stake and, by the way, the way this nation goes, the whole world goes. So if I lived in China today, I would be hoping that America is going to wake up and be America and stand up to the human rights abuses and the evil that is happening there. We, the church, are responsible for these things, so we need to know that Listen he said, the way this nation goes is the way the world goes.

06:23 - Jack Hibbs (Host)
We have a huge responsibility being Californians, because as California goes, this nation goes, then the world goes. Let's make sure of that. You're talking about 12,000 pastors, chapter 5, page 41, where Bonhoeffer is pleading with his fellow pastor, brothers, to get involved and to see the urgency more than ever. And the problem that he had to deal with. It says here, is that the bulk of his brothers in the pulpit, they believe that the Nazis could be reasoned with. It says here, and so imagine, if you were to imagine, if that's true, think about it right now. Everybody, nobody, wants to hear this, but it's the truth. These, the sister, the brother, sister, things of perpetual indulgence. What?

07:17 - Eric Metaxas (Guest)
is this the Satanic pseudo nuns?

07:21 - Jack Hibbs (Host)
These transvestite nun things. So listen, do you literally believe that you could call it if you had their email? Could you do? You think you would say, can we meet at Starbucks and talk about this? Don't really think everybody, because the public school wants you to think this, but they can't even do it. They won't even listen to parents. They're blocking you out. And so here's the thing is, the enemy of your soul is Satan, who manifests in the lives of open vessels, people that are not even knowingly doing his bidding. But to think in the culture, who would have thought 10 years ago we'd be talking about this tonight, where schools believe across the United States that parents have no rights over their children's sexuality, you say, well, that's insane. You would have said that then and you should be saying it now. The problem is now we know it. Back then we didn't know it. Now we know it, and if we don't speak up, as Eric was saying, woe unto us.

08:37
Jesus makes it very, very clear that it's gonna be better for a person to have never been born than when he gets a hold of them the day of judgment, if they have offended children. Think of that. The Bible says that before the end comes, you'll recognize, because it's gonna take on the days, as it were, of Sodom and Gomorrah. Aberrant sexuality, notice, everything has been sexualized. The Dodgers have been sexualized, target has been sexualized, everything is sexualized. Sex is America's God. But who's defining it? Because God made sex and he knows exactly how that should be done. And every normal listen, every normal person knows this. Kids today would not be going through what they're going through if adults didn't have an agenda to have preloaded their little precious minds. And the day that God gets a hold of those people who have changed the mind of a little child to confuse them, who's the author of confusion? Satan, not God. Confusion when somebody says that's just unloving. This is what you guys are saying. Oh, what's your rescue plan? What is your special op to reach our children? What are you doing? Think about that.

10:09
I grabbed a bunch of pastors from up and down the state and I got ahold of some people in DC and I said, hey, can you open some doors for me? If I grab some pastors, I want to take them down to the border and I want them to see what's going on. And they said, yeah, we'll make that happen. We went down there and we not only interviewed the various agencies that were there Homeland Security, but the California I get the acronyms confused, but it was not only the California agents that are there, but Homeland Security was there and Border Patrol, ice. They're all there and they're showing us what's going on and they're showing us pictures and things where they use in training classes, of what happens when you don't enforce the border laws.

10:57
Do you guys listen to this? When you don't enforce the border laws, here's what happens. A market opens up, a black market, underground market, a market opens up where bad guys south of the border Hondurans, colombians, some Mexicans, but not so much A lot of them Nicaraguans, others they form groups and as they get close to the border, we have people telling us that when think about this people real true stories. Mexico City, sweet, precious family. They got some money enough. What are they gonna do on vacation? They're gonna go to America. They're gonna go to Disneyland. They're gonna go to California true story.

11:42
When you get 50 to 30 miles out from the California border, that's no man's land. When you are somebody south of the border by residence, if you're making your way to America, these groups, these gangs cartel. They pull you over. Many of them are dressed like federales. Pull you over. So watch this.

12:10
They showed us images because it was evidence where these families were separated. The mother was taken and the sister was taken into the slave trade. The husband was shot in the head and the seven year old boy? They gutted him open from his belly button up to just below his collar, opened him up, took everything out of him and stuffed him with drugs and put his clothes back on and put a ball cap on and put him in the back of the car and drove him across the border into America. Inside of him was drugs and they. We were like this and they said this happened.

12:53
Listen. Prior to shutting down the borders, this was happening every day. So listen, as Americans, oh, I believe in open borders. All right, you have no idea. You are so ignorant. You may mean well what you're saying. You don't even know what you're talking about. I've seen it.

13:10
You read the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 28, when God says if you follow me, just just, I'm God. You're not. I made the universe. The earth is spinning. You have no input on that. Your carbon footprint doesn't change any of this. If you do what I've designed this thing to do, you know, listen, today, we today, we took the grandkids to the Marconi Auto Museum in Tustin. Is it Tustin? Where's it at Tustin? In Tustin, you gotta go.

13:46
You know what I was freaking out about Is this sheer precision of engineering. Precision of engineering in these incredible vehicles, these cars that you're looking at, that are made by, you know, the Italians and these Germans that make these cars. And you're just looking at the preciseness of it. Nobody, nobody, would walk along and say isn't evolution amazing? Every one of those cars were meticulously designed. Guess what? That's only a little hint of what God did by creating you and this universe.

14:21
And God said in the book of Deuteronomy if you just do what I know what's best for you sound like a parent Just do what I know what's best for you, your crops will explode with bounty. You'll have so much food. In fact, you will bless other nations. If you just do what I know what's best for you, your women will not miscarry their babies, he said. He said you'll build a home and you'll live in it. It'd be yours. Read Deuteronomy 28.

14:56
Then he says in Deuteronomy 28, toward the end if you choose to do it your way, your wives are gonna miscarry. Your borders will be invaded. There'll be confusion in your streets, he said even when no one's pursuing you, you're gonna be panicking and terrified. And he said you will work all day to farm your crops and you'll harvest only a quarter of it. You'll just get by and listen to this. He said you'll build a home, but another man will live in it and he'll be a foreigner. And you may have a wife, but other men will sleep with her. God says all these things will befall you if you don't follow the prescription that I gave you to live life. And so there is hope While we still have the ability to breathe.

15:50
It is a remarkable thing that we can stand up for what's right, and I know this sounds kind of insane, but I said it yesterday in the opening words to those pastors we love the Bible because it gives us. It gives us hope when we read about a little kid teenager being totally offended that this uncircumcised giant was mocking his God, that he said that's it. And that little kid takes his sling with five stones, mind you, because read your Bible Goliath had four brothers. David wasn't ready. David was not just ready for Goliath, he was gonna hunt down his four brothers. And we love that. It's not a story, it's an actual event that took place and we love reading it.

16:44
And when Jehoshaphat was completely doomed, god shows up. And we read all these things in the scripture, in the Old Testament, where all these impossible things became possible because one person stood up. Amen, and we love that. But you know what? You will leave it. Listen, and I know I'm not. This church is different.

17:02
But if you're visiting or you're watching right now and if you think, well, you know, I just go to church on Sunday, well, why don't you stop? Make room for somebody else to go? Because if you're not serious about doing Christianity for the rest of the week, listen, you need to make room for people who are willing to live out their faith. Because the fact is that we are up against giants right now and you're either going to say pull the wool, the blanket over our heads, or you're going to say, wait a minute. All these things that have been written in scripture, they're from God and they're for our learning, and so we're gonna take these promises and we're gonna stand.

17:48
If David can stand against Goliath, we should be able to stand against the school board. We should be able to stand against some teacher that is molesting your child, if not physically, in their minds. We need to have some righteous indignation, we need to get wholly angry. It's a good thing to say you know what? And, like Bonhoeffer said, this is it. If we don't stand up in this urgent hour, it's over, it's all is lost. If Israel never crossed the Jordan, all would be lost. Think about it. Right now, we have the comfort of coming to church on Sunday and Wednesday and going back to whatever we're doing, but if we don't look ahead, one of the chapters is are we, as Christians, supposed to know the future? Can we know the future? The answer is we know the future by reading the past. Why stand ye here idle, was the cry of Patrick Henry. We read that on Sunday, did we not? Our brothers are in the field. The battle has come, eric. Last words.

19:03 - Eric Metaxas (Guest)
I just know that God has called his church to action and that our faith Bonhoeffer talks about faith in action If your faith is not lived out self-sacrificially, because you know you cannot outgive God. So when you make a sacrifice for him, whatever you do, whatever you do, he is with you, he will bless you. He made you to live out your faith and we've had this idea in the church. I don't need to live out my faith In other countries. They might need to do that. They might need to pay a price. We're fine here. Well, the Lord has allowed these wicked things to happen to tell you. No, I need you to live out your faith in every sphere. Do not be silent, do not be quiet, do not be passive, do not be deceived and do not argue with people who cannot be argued with. We need, by the grace of God, to be mightily activated. If the church does not wake up now, it is over for America. So I say, by the grace of God, church, in the name of Jesus, wake up now.

20:25 - Announcer (Announcement)
This Jack Hibbs podcast, as well as all the broadcast outreach opportunities, are listener supported. Will you consider partnering with us through a special gift? Go to jackhibbs.com to learn more and stay connected.