Special Guest: Pastor Robert Jeffress

0:00:01 - Speaker 1 Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture When COVID hit, there were a handful of churches that stayed open. 0:00:13 - Speaker 2 And those churches that stayed open, robert, people flocked to those churches. The sheep went looking for food. When the churches that stayed closed for say, a year or whatever it was when they reopened and I'm curious what happened in Texas when they reopened? in California, they reopened whoa, they reopened the LM And they reopened absolutely apologetic. 0:00:41 - Speaker 1 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. 0:01:10 - Speaker 2 We have with us today, in a sense, a founding father, Oh my. 0:01:17 - Speaker 3 I'm old. 0:01:19 - Speaker 2 No, no, not by age, but by helping us with this vision. As soon as we started talking about getting away from the cancel culture and how can we continue to promote the gospel without fear, robert Jeffress was one of those very, very foundational guys, thus the founding father, where we had to have him on. And there's a handful of people and I mean a handful that this program is dedicated to safe, biblically sound teaching without drama, and Robert Jeffress is an icon in the Christian church, a prolific author. I am not going to name the news programs you have been on, but you've been on all of them and you are a frontline warrior. I want to welcome you to today's program. 0:02:06 - Speaker 3 And congratulations on real life. 0:02:09 - Speaker 2 Yeah, thank you, pastor, we are blessed, and so one of the things right out of the gate, let's try to get your book sales up and over the charts here, and that is, tell us about your most recent book that you've written. 0:02:21 - Speaker 3 Yeah, it's called What Every Christian Should Know And it's subtitled 10 Corp Believes for Standing Strong in a Shifting World. And this is really an update of a book called Basic Christianity that John Stott wrote. What I've done, Jack, is go back and look at the 10 core foundational truths of historic Christianity and why we should embrace those truths in a changing world. You know I'm sure you've heard all of the polls You read them regularly about how many Christians are falling away from basic truth. 50% of Christians say that Jesus was not sinless, 60% of evangelicals saying there's more than one way to heaven other than faith in Christ. And I have to ask myself, why is that? It's because they're not hearing these truths. They're hearing them in your church, But they're not hearing them in most churches. So this book is a call back to those 10 basic beliefs about God, salvation, the Holy Spirit and so forth. 0:03:21 - Speaker 2 Well, here's the amazing thing about what you're saying is somebody who might think that they are a mature, rooted, grounded Christian will hear a book titled Like Yours and even the comments that you just made, and they're going to think I don't need that. And yet I'm reminded that Peter said it's really important to me that I write to you guys again. And when people make the assumption oh, pastor Robert, i've got that down, or I've got that down, well, we've discovered. Certainly since COVID, people could say something. They could say that they believed in something, whatever that is, if you were to ask them what does being born again mean? We encountered people who were Christian but couldn't even tell you what being born again meant. They didn't understand what's the function of the Holy Spirit, what is the value? Why do I need to read my Bible often? I think that it's been the pulpits that have created What did Spurgeon say? that we, in his day, that we have preachers preaching sermons for Christianettes. Yeah, and I think that when I say we, i don't mean you and I, but we as pastors, have created a flock that is undiscerning. They don't have boldness, they doubt the Word of God. They're wondering why they read the Book of Acts and all these powerful things are happening, but it's not happening to them, and some people want to blame God for being sleepy, and it's exact opposite. 0:04:59 - Speaker 3 And if we don't? know the truth we can't pass it on to our children. I mean, like somebody said, every civilization is only one generation away from barbarism. Wide changes say we're only one generation away from atheism. I mean, right now, 50% of Americans say they're not sure there is a God, 50%. Why is that? Because they, through COVID, a lot of it. they got disconnected to the church. You know, you take a piece of coal, it remains on fire when it's in the fireplace. You separate it, it grows cold very quickly. And so I think there's a need for good biblical, doctrinal preaching. And I would say to people watching, right now, if you don't know how to explain the Holy Spirit to your children, who He is and what He does, if you don't know why we can know that the Bible is the Word of God, here's a book for you that you can pass this truth on to your children. 0:05:54 - Speaker 2 This is off the wall question, but maybe not. Does the book stand alone, Robert, or do you see any need for maybe a children's version? 0:06:03 - Speaker 3 I think we will do a children's version. I bet we're in talks about that, but there's a study guide that goes along with the book. It's great for small group model studies, sunday school class curriculums and people can go through. 0:06:15 - Speaker 2 So I just want to encourage everybody to go to. In fact, i didn't ask you where would people find all of your books and all of your teachings? 0:06:23 - Speaker 3 Amazoncom. 0:06:23 - Speaker 2 Amazoncom for the books. Tell us a little bit about the remarkable story of you being the senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. 0:06:34 - Speaker 3 You know First Baptist Dallas has been in downtown Dallas, six blocks of downtown Dallas, for 155 years. Many people don't know Billy Graham was a member of our church for 54 years, even though he lived in North Carolina. He wanted to be at First Baptist Dallas because of our history of biblical teaching and a biblical foundation. But anyway, i grew up in the church. The church had two pastors in 100 years 50 years each George W Druitt and WA Chris Wall two pastors in 100 years. So there's a strong foundation there And I grew up in the church and 16 years ago got to come back and be the pastor of that great church. 0:07:16 - Speaker 2 And to God be the glory. But under your leadership, what has that church grown into today? 0:07:22 - Speaker 3 Well, it was interesting. The church was in a period of decline and a downtown church. All the churches had gone to the suburbs. But God wasn't finished. With First Baptist Dallas, We ended up doing the largest building program in modern church history in the midst of the recession in 2008 and 2009. Our people gave $135 million completely debt-free. We blew up all of the buildings. I watched it happen. Yeah, Fox and Friends carried it the implosion. But anyway I give the glory to God for what he did. We have a new campus. God is blessing the church with all kind of new members. We have been just truly blessed by God. 0:08:09 - Speaker 2 So I'm curious if you saw this, as I did, in our area of Southern California when COVID hit, you got to remember we were under the heel of Lord of Caesar Either Lord Newsom or Caesar Gavin, whatever But he just refused to recognize. He had this essential, non-essential, and immediately, i mean within the first week. We were asking his office where do you place the churches in California? Where do you place the churches? He wouldn't answer, just fed, it wouldn't answer. We have since learned that that's his tactic If he's approached on an issue, he backs away. It's interesting, he won't speak. So I sent him a video And for it was about 12-minute long. And I told him, with all due respect and with honor to the Office of Governor in California, i being a native Californian, i But a citizen of heaven we're opening up our church. We can't. We've been doing this media thing for a moment. That's not working. We need to help the community. Well, our mayor and the city council went nuts. They loved us, and then our county board of supervisors. They said any heat you get, send any letters to us. They took care of us. Well, frankly, newsom didn't do a thing about it, which we're grateful for. But the point is this that the church in California is ignored, and I'm going to tell you why it's ignored. A lot of people don't realize this. There are some really powerful ministries in California. It's not recognized because you know how media will black you out or cancel you out. So you've got ministries like Dr David Jeremiah For forever. We had Dr Charles Swindoll with us before he went to Texas. We had Greg Laurie, chuck Smith, on and on it goes. But what happened was when COVID hit, there were a handful of churches that stayed open. And those churches that stayed open, robert, is an interesting thing that happened. People flocked to those churches. The sheep went looking for food. When the churches that stayed closed for say a year or whatever it was, when they reopened and I'm curious, what happened in Texas when they reopened in California they reopened Woke, they reopened BLM, they reopened absolutely apologetic And they wound up imploding And some of those founders since left handed it over to new people. But the churches that did stay open, they got super blessed. 0:10:47 - Speaker 3 We saw exactly the same thing. Super blessed Churches that, say, closed a year. They could never figure out how to reopen again, and so forth. They lost their members, they stumbled, and you would at least hope pastors thought their church was essential, you know, yeah, well, but apparently they didn't. 0:11:04 - Speaker 2 If they didn't, then boy. I don't want to be mean about this, but let's just be two pastors talking to one another here. If a pastor doesn't see when somebody comes out and announces and I'm not going to mention his name when he comes out and says, right from the get, go, we're not going to open our church until next Easter Well, that's like a year and a half away. First of all, what made him say that? second of all, it's what about your flock? What about those that are? 0:11:28 - Speaker 3 hurting, and what good, jack. I mean, it's one thing if everybody is closing and being a good neighbor, but when they are persecuting the church and singling out the church, we have to do exactly what you did, and you set the standard for a lot of churches. 0:11:42 - Speaker 2 You and I watched the news, not that the news drives us, but we were looking at what was happening. And you got to remember people, a lot of people forget that when this initial thing I think Trump said, give us 15 days, give us 15 days, we thought the news coming out of China. We thought people would be dead on the streets. We were seeing videos of people in various parts of China laying in the streets. Well then we were asked 15 days to flatten the curve. After that we began to see experts. They could not agree And then it's like, okay, we've got to do what God's called us to do. But to see what's happened since, i personally believe it's my opinion that the COVID event, god used it. I'm not saying God sent it. I'm not saying I'm not, that's his business, but I will say that God used it And what we saw in California was that it was like a winnowing The wheat from the chaff, because since that time, the churches in California there's a steel spine in those churches that stayed open. It's really awesome and encouraging to say it. 0:12:52 - Speaker 3 And, by the way, that's one of the things we talk about in the book. It's one of the chapters. There's what every Christian should know about the church. What most people forget is the local church is not man's idea. It was God's idea. God created the church. It is essential. You can't grow as a Christian apart from involvement in a local church, And we saw the same thing in our church. The mushy middle is gone, Gone, gone, They're gone And they're not coming back And we're not going to miss that. 0:13:20 - Speaker 2 And you're not. you know, they know where you're at, They know what you preach and teach. They can come back when they want, but you're not going to go change your messaging. 0:13:29 - Speaker 3 You're not going to alter the word of God to bring them back, and I'll just tell you some of the good that comes in, and you've seen it as well. Our internet ministry, icampus, exploded on Easter Sunday. That first COVID When President Trump announced he was going to watch our service. We had a million and a half viewers. We had 30,000 who were saved that day And they haven't gone away. I mean, they stayed with us And so it's been a blessing. I would never dreamed it up or planned it, but God used it for good And look, you and I agreed that there were some. 0:14:06 - Speaker 2 There were some. Now we, by the way, we heard it this week from the CDC that 6% of the COVID deaths reported were actually COVID deaths reported 6%. The other percentage was those being reported as COVID death but they had co-morbidity issues. Having said that, you know we're sorry for any death, but the bottom line is, i love the fact that you are so committed. You will not waver. You are inspiration to me and millions of other people And it's an honor to be with you. Before we wrap this up, just give a barrage. Have Robert Jeffers barrage us with again the book. If you can, as memory provides, go through highlights of the chapters. That would help us promote your book beyond the walls of this conference. 0:15:06 - Speaker 3 Well, it's called Whatever Christians Should Know, 10 Corp Beliefs for Standing Strong in a Shifting World. You know, the truth is, jack. Cultures change, opinions change. God's Word never changes. And the first chapter is the foundational chapter. Most people were surprised I didn't start with Jesus Christ. What every Christian should know about Jesus Christ, that's the second chapter. The first chapter is what every Christian should know about the Bible. The truth is, apart from the Bible, we wouldn't know a lot about Jesus. Yeah, there's some external evidence he existed. We wouldn't know he rose from the dead. We wouldn't know about the miracles. We wouldn't know about his bleeding death on the cross on our behalf. That's all from the Bible that we know that. So every doubt that a person has begins the same way. it began in Genesis 3, when Satan slithered up to the woman and said has God really said? In my own life, the crisis time as a college student is when I listened to professors at a Christian college talk about the contradictions in the Bible, the errors in the Bible, and I came to the point I said if this Bible is filled with errors, why do I want to spend the rest of my life teaching it? And I almost walked away from Christianity as well as the ministry, because I didn't have a firm foundation in the Bible. But fortunately some people showed me why you don't have to commit intellectual suicide to become a Christian and believe the Bible. So I would say, of all the chapters, this chapter is the most important And, by the way, your kids are going to ask you, your grandkids, mom, dad, grandpa, why do you believe the Bible? How can I know it's true? So I would get the book what every Christian should know, just for that first chapter. Everything else, jesus, the Holy Spirit, sin, salvation, the church it's all built on that foundational. 0:16:58 - Speaker 2 So before we wrap this up, you know this a big big part of now today's books is audio books. Will it be available on audio? It already is on amazoncom. On amazoncom, listen everybody we have with us Pastor Robert Jeffers, pastor, longtime pastor, a first Baptist church in Dallas, texas. If you're ever in the Dallas area, you gotta go. I was there late one night, at about 11 o'clock, and I walked around six city blocks just to pray and to thank God for the ministry of Robert Jeffers. His ministry online on air, on TV, is pathway to victory And we love it. And in fact, coming down from my hotel room down to this meeting here, he was on air And so listen, we are grateful, robert Jeffers. 0:17:46 - Speaker 3 I love you brother. Thanks for all you do. 0:17:48 - Speaker 2 Thank you, brother, take care, bye, bye. 0:17:54 - Speaker 1 This Jack Hibbs podcast, as well as all the broadcast outreach opportunities, are listeners supported. Will you consider partnering with us through a special gift? Go to jackhibbs.com.