VCY America presents Crosstalk, a nationwide call-in
program discussing issues that have an effect on
our families, our communities, our churches, our nation,
and our world.
Crosstalk, an opportunity for you to voice your
concerns for biblical principles.
And now live by satellite and around the
world on the internet at vcyamerica.org.
Here is today's Crosstalk.
Hi there, and welcome to Crosstalk today.
I'm Ingrid Schleter, and I'm glad you joined
us for the program today.
We're going to be talking about a very
important topic.
It has to do with evangelizing our young
people.
And for part of this program, we're actually
going to be listening to a sermon that
was preached, a message preached to 5,000
young people who were frankly stunned at the
message that they received from the preacher Paul
Washer.
A group of young people, Southern Baptist young
people, were gathered for a conference.
And, you know, kids were having a great
time and having a lot of fun.
And they came to this, to hear the
message, prepared for them.
And I would suggest that a lot of
them assumed it was going to be another
one of those teen-centered type messages where
the speaker gets up and tells a lot
of funny stories, and, you know, humor is
supposed to engage young people.
And so, you know, you hear a lot
of youth speakers use constant jokes, and they're
funny guys.
And they get up there, and they feel
like they're going to win the young people
by being funny.
Well, Mr. Washer was not funny.
He issued a sermon that was dead serious
and that preached right from the word of
God, and I believe from the heart of
God based on what his word tells us.
And these 5,000 teens literally sat there
stunned.
Mr. Washer, his message was not well received
by the leadership at this event.
In fact, he was never asked back to
this kind of an event again after this
message was preached.
And after you hear excerpts from this sermon,
you will understand why that is.
The message of the cross is to them
the parish foolishness, and hard preaching, coming from
a heart of love.
Preaching is hard, not the heart behind it.
But hard preaching from the word of God
is not well received today in our soft,
touchy-feely evangelical world.
And youth ministry is so fraught with foolishness
done in the name of God.
We hear the term, we've got to reach
the kids, we've got to reach the kids.
What does it mean to reach young people?
What are we reaching them for, and what
are we reaching them with?
That's the answer.
That's the question of the hour, and our
guest today, Paul Washer, who's going to be
joining us after we listen to some of
the excerpts of this powerful message.
If you have young people, make sure to
get a copy of this.
You will be able to listen to the
full sermon on the Cross Talk America website
if you want to listen after the program
when the archive gets put up a little
bit later this afternoon.
You can listen to the entire sermon.
It's an hour long.
Imagine preaching for an hour to 5,000
teenagers.
Imagine that.
Well, he did it, and he preached from
the Word of God, and he preached a
message that so desperately needs to be heard
by young people today.
I'm going to let you listen to that
right now, our first excerpt.
This is Reverend Paul Washer.
Matthew 7, verse 13.
Jesus said, Enter through the narrow gate, for
the gate is wide, and the way is
broad, that leads to destruction.
And there are many who enter through it.
For the gate is small, and the way
is narrow, that leads to life.
And there are few who find it.
Beware of the false prophets who come to
you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous
wolves.
You will know them by their fruits.
Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor
figs from thistles, are they?
So every good tree bears good fruit, but
every bad tree bears bad fruit.
A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor
can a bad tree produce good fruit.
Every tree that does not bear good fruit
is cut down and thrown into the fire.
So then you will know them by their
fruits.
Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord,
will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but
he who does the will of my Father
who is in heaven will enter.
Many will say to me on that day,
Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your
name and in your name cast out demons
and in your name perform many miracles?
Then I will declare to them, I never
knew you.
Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.
Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine
and acts upon them may be compared to
a wise man who builds his house on
the rock.
And the rain fell and the floods came
and the winds blew and slammed against that
house.
And yet it did not fall, for it
had been founded upon the rock.
Everyone who hears these words of mine and
does not act on them will be like
a foolish man who built his house on
the sand.
The rain fell and the floods came and
winds blew and slammed against the house and
it fell and great was its fall.
I stand here today.
I'm not troubled in my heart about your
self-esteem.
I'm not troubled in my heart about whether
or not you feel good about yourself, whether
or not life is turning out like you
want it to turn out or whether or
not your checkbook is balanced.
There's only one thing that gave me a
sleepless night.
There's only one thing that troubled me all
throughout the morning, and that is this.
Within a hundred years, a great majority of
people in this building will possibly be in
hell.
And many who even profess Jesus Christ as
Lord will spend an eternity in hell.
You say, Pastor, how can you say such
a thing?
I can say such a thing because I
don't do my Christian work in America.
I spend most of my time preaching in
South America, in Africa and Eastern Europe.
And I want you to know that when
you take a look at American Christianity, it
is based more upon a godless culture than
it is upon the word of God.
And so many people are deceived and so
many youth are deceived and so many adults
are deceived into believing that because they prayed
a prayer one time in their life, they're
going to heaven.
And then when they look around at others
who profess to know Christ and see those
people also just as worldly as the world,
and they compare themselves by themselves, nothing troubles
their heart.
They think, well, I'm the same as most
in my youth group.
I watch things I shouldn't watch on television
and laugh about the very things that God
hates.
I wear clothing that is sensual.
I talk like the world.
I walk like the world.
I love the music of the world.
I love so much that's in the world.
But bless God, I am a Christian.
Why am I a Christian?
I don't look any different than most of
the other people in my church.
Why am I a Christian?
Because there was a time in my life
when I prayed and asked Jesus Christ to
come into my heart.
I want you to know that the greatest
heresy in the American evangelical and Protestant church
is that if you pray and ask Jesus
Christ to come into your heart, he will
definitely come in.
You will not find that in any place
in Scripture.
You will not find that anywhere in Baptist
history until about 50 years ago.
What you need to know is that salvation
is by faith and faith alone in Jesus
Christ.
And faith alone in Jesus Christ is preceded
and followed by repentance.
A turning away from sin.
A hatred for the things that God hates
and a love for the things that God
loves.
A growing in holiness and a desire not
to be like Britney Spears.
Not to be like the world.
And not to be like the great majority
of American Christians.
But to be like Jesus Christ.
I don't know why you're clapping.
I'm talking about you.
I didn't come here to get amens.
I didn't come here to be applauded.
I'm talking about you.
People so many times come up to me
and they say, Oh, I'd love to follow
you into Romania.
I'd love to follow you into the Ukraine.
I'd love to preach where you preached and
planted churches in Peru in the jungle.
And I tell them, no you wouldn't.
They say, yes I would.
I say, no you wouldn't.
Why?
Because you'd be excommunicated from the church down
there.
What we need to see.
I'm not trying to be hard for the
sake of being hard.
Do you realize how much love it takes
to stand before 5,000 people and tell
them that American Christianity is almost totally wrong?
Do you know what it's going to cost
me to never be asked back again to
something like this?
To be unpopular?
Do you know why you do it?
You don't do it because you get paid
well.
You don't do it because men love you.
You do it because you love men.
And because more than that, you want to
honor God.
I want to tell you something.
We're going to go into scripture and I
want you to look at it as it
really is.
Stop comparing yourself with others who call themselves
Christians, who compare themselves with others who call
themselves Christians.
Compare yourself to the scripture.
When someone, a young person, comes to a
pastor or a youth minister and says, I'm
not sure whether or not I'm saved, the
youth minister will usually throw out a cliche.
Well, was there ever a time in your
life when you prayed and asked Jesus to
come into your heart?
Well, yes.
Were you sincere?
Well, I don't know, but I think so.
Well, you need to tell Satan to stop
bothering you.
Did you write it in the back of
your book, the back of the Bible, like
the evangelist told you when you got saved
to write down the date so that any
time you doubted, you could point him to
the Bible?
What superstition has overcome our denomination?
Do you know what the Bible tells Christians
to do?
Examine yourself.
Test yourself in light of scripture to see
if you are in the faith.
Test yourself to see if you're Christian.
Do you realize if I dismissed us right
now and told everyone to go knock on
every door in this city, do you know
what we would find out?
99% of the people, at least in
this city, believe themselves to be believers.
If you go back to your hometown and
knock on every door, because I went back
to my hometown after I got saved and
knocked on every door.
And you know what I found out?
Everyone in my town is a Christian.
85% of them do not go to
church.
And those who do go to church are
not concerned about holiness.
They're not concerned about serving.
They're not concerned about being separate from the
world.
They're not concerned about the gospel being preached
among the nations.
But bless God, they're saved.
Why are they saved?
Because some evangelist who should have spent less
time preaching and more time studying his Bible
told them they were saved.
And he did it so that he could
brag about how many people came forward in
his next revival.
I love you.
And there are men here who love you.
And I want to go into Scripture now.
Now that I've shocked you into life, I
want you to listen to me.
Listen to the word of God and begin
to ask yourself some questions.
First of all, enter through the narrow gate.
For the gate is wide and the way
is broad that leads to destruction.
And there are many who enter through it.
There is a narrow gate.
And you know, historically, one of the reasons
I'm a Southern Baptist is because the Southern
Baptists have always been quick.
When other denominations have failed to realize this,
the Southern Baptists have always been quick to
realize that there is one gate.
There is one God.
There is one mediator between God and man,
and his name is Jesus Christ.
It's not multiple choice.
Not every road leads to Rome.
As a denomination, we have always told people
what Jesus told people.
I am the way, the truth, and the
life, and no one comes to the Father
except through me.
So I praise God for that.
That the only way any human being on
this earth will ever be saved is through
Jesus Christ.
That is all.
Because you need to realize the Bible says,
For all have sinned and come short of
the glory of God.
And you have no idea what that means.
That we were born radically depraved and God
-hating.
That we would have never sought God, never
come to God.
We have repelled against God, broken every law.
It's not just an issue that you have
sinned.
The issue is you've never done anything but
sin.
The Bible says in the prophets that even
our greatest works are like filthy rags before
God.
And because of that, you know what we
deserve?
The wrath of God.
The holy hatred of God.
You say, now wait a minute.
God doesn't hate anybody.
God is love.
No, my friend.
You need to understand something.
Jesus Christ taught, the prophets taught, the apostles
taught this.
That apart from the grace of God revealed
in Jesus Christ our Lord, the only thing
left for you is the wrath, the fierce
anger of God.
You're listening to Paul Washer.
And I hate to interrupt like crazy, but
we have to take a break.
I hope you will stay tuned.
This is a message he preached over an
hour long to 5,000 young people at
a Southern Baptist gathering.
Managed to offend quite a few people.
But I praise God for those pastors who
are not afraid to offend but to preach
the truth of God's word.
And we're going to continue on listening to
this.
We have another excerpt, and then we're going
to be joined by Pastor Paul Washer as
well as the pastor of his church.
He's a missionary.
The pastor of his church, First Baptist Church
of Muscle Shores, Alabama.
We'll be continuing this in just a moment.
You're listening to Crosstalk.
Back to Genesis with Dr. John Morris, scientist
and president of the Institute for Creation Research.
Dr. Morris, in an evolutionary sense, what do
the terms advanced and primitive mean?
Chris, primitive animals are thought to be those
that evolved long ago, which gave rise to
more and more advanced types.
Single cell organisms are the most primitive, and
then marine invertebrates and up to fish, amphibians,
mammals, and eventually man, the most advanced of
all.
Within each mammal type, evolutionists say that the
more advanced ones are the ones that are
modern.
But extinct varieties were hardly primitive.
Chris, the whole concept of primitive advances an
evolutionary idea which is wrong on the face
of it.
Evolution did not happen.
God created each basic category, much as we
see it today.
None is more advanced than the other.
Each is complex.
And that's the way I see it from
a Back to Genesis perspective.
Visit our website at icr.org.
I'm Chris O'Brien.
Thanks for tuning in.
When I speak in universities, they're always quick
to point out, no, God cannot hate because
God is love.
And I tell you, God must hate because
God is love.
You see, I love children, therefore I hate
abortion.
If I love that which is holy, I
must hate that which is unholy.
God is a holy God.
That's something that the Americans have forgotten.
Many of the things that you love to
do, God hates.
Did you know that?
Pray for a revival.
You're going to have a youth meeting.
You want God to move.
But before you go there, you watch programs
on television that God absolutely despises.
And then you wonder why the Holy Spirit
hasn't fallen on a place and why you
have to create false fire and false excitement.
Because God's not in it.
God is a holy God.
And the only way you and I could
ever be reconciled to a holy God is
through the death of God's own son.
When he hung on that tree.
Now, listen to me.
If you're saved here tonight, you're not saved
because the Romans and Jews rejected Jesus.
You're not saved because they put a crown
of thorns on his head.
You're not saved because they ran a spear
through his side.
And you're not saved even because they nailed
him to a cross.
Do you know why you're saved if you
are saved?
Because when Jesus Christ was hanging on that
cross, he bore your sin, the sin of
God's people.
And all the fierce wrath of God that
should fall upon you fell upon his only
begotten son.
Someone had to pay that price.
Someone had to die.
It was God the Father who crushed his
only begotten son, according to Isaiah 53.
It says it pleased Yahweh to crush him.
People say the cross is a sign of
how much man is worth.
That's not true.
The cross is a sign of how depraved
we really are.
That it took the death of God's own
son.
The only thing that could save a people
like us was the death of God's own
son under the wrath of his own father
paying the price.
Rising again from the dead.
Powerful to save.
This is the gospel of Jesus.
Now, what are you called upon to do?
You say you go through the narrow gate.
How do you do that?
Jesus said the time is fulfilled.
The kingdom of God is at hand.
What must you do?
And Mark, he tells us, repent and believe
the gospel.
You say, Brother Paul, I got saved by
praying and asking Jesus Christ into my heart.
And I'm sure you did.
But you weren't saved by a magic formula
or some words you repeated after someone else.
You were saved because you repented of your
sins and you believed.
And not only did you do that in
the past, you continue to do it even
until now.
Because when Jesus, a proper translation of that
verse he gave is this.
The kingdom of God has come.
The time is fulfilled.
Now, spend the rest of your life repenting
of your sins and believing in me.
Conversion is not like a flu shot.
Oh, I did that.
I repented.
I believed.
The question is, my friend, are you continuing
to repent of sin?
Are you continuing to believe?
Because he who began a good work in
you will finish it.
He will finish it.
Now, we as Southern Baptists preach that you're
supposed to go through that own one and
only gate, which is Jesus Christ.
But we as Southern Baptists have forgot something.
And I want youth ministers and pastors and
everyone to listen to me.
Parents, we have forgot a very important teaching
in the gospel.
It says that not only the gate is
narrow, it says the path is narrow.
What we basically do is lead someone to
Christ, lead someone in a prayer, and then
they spend the rest of their life living
just like the world.
And if you deny me on this, I
can bring the statistics to prove you wrong.
Gallup poll, Barnum polls, every kind of poll
you can possibly look at.
When it questions the morality of the church
in America against the morality of those who
claim to be lost in America, the polls
find no difference.
Now, that is statistics, has nothing to do
with religious interpretation.
Those are statistics.
Book after book is being churned out by
theologian and philosopher and sociologist alike.
What has happened to the church?
We find out that abortion in the church
is just as prevalent as outside the way
in the world.
We find that divorce is just as prevalent.
We find that immorality, you know, as well
as I do.
There are youth here right now who are
practicing immorality and yet worshiping God in the
same breath.
You know, there are youth here that are
doing drugs and yet coming to youth group,
you know, watching and doing things that are
not appropriate for a Christian.
And yet they're coming to the youth group,
believe themselves satisfied, believe themselves safe.
And no one is saying anything except this.
They're carnal Christians.
They're really Christians.
They're just carnal.
That was a doctrine that started in a
Baptist seminary that is not a Southern Baptist
seminary several decades ago.
It is not biblical and it is not
historical.
My dear friend, there is no such thing
as a carnal Christian.
You say, no, wait a minute, Brother Paul.
First Corinthians chapter three.
Are you not carnal?
Paul said that.
No, that's what Paul said.
You need to read the whole book to
find out what he meant.
You see, one of our problems, youth, listen
to me.
Most of our Christianity is based on cliches
that we read on the back of Christian
T-shirts.
Most of our Christianity comes from songwriters.
And not the Bible.
Most of what we believe to be true
is dictated to us by our culture and
not by the Bible.
The Bible never teaches that a person can
be a genuine Christian and live in continuous
carnality and wickedness and sin all the days
of their life.
But the Bible teaches that the genuine Christian
has been given a new nature.
The genuine Christian has a father who loves
them and disciplines them and watches over them
and cares for them.
My heart is breaking because you know as
well as I do, young people, let's not
be hypocrites about it.
Let's not hide it.
There are so many.
You know them.
You might be one of them or you
at least know that they're in your youth
group.
They come to youth group.
They do all this stuff, but in their
heart, they're as wicked as wicked can be.
There's no difference.
There's no light.
Everything that the world does, they do.
And it's appropriate.
It's OK.
My friend, that's not Christianity.
They're not in danger of losing their reward.
They're in danger of hell.
They know not God.
What do we teach?
When was the last time you heard someone
say there's not only a narrow gate into
heaven, but a narrow way?
Jesus indicates that one of the principal signs
of being a genuine Christian is that you
walk in the narrow way.
Do you know what the sign for being
a genuine Christian in America is?
You prayed a prayer one time.
Isn't that amazing?
What are you asked if you doubt your
salvation?
Did you pray a prayer one time?
What does Scripture teach?
Examine yourselves.
Test yourselves in the light of Scripture to
see if you're in the faith, because a
Christian will be different.
Now, am I saying that a Christian is
without sin?
No, because in First John, we learned that
Christians do sin.
And if any man does not acknowledge his
sin, he knows not God.
He's not walking in the light.
So what is the difference?
What am I really getting at?
What am I getting at is this.
If you are genuinely a born again Christian,
a child of God, you will walk in
the way of righteousness as a style of
life.
And if you step off that path of
righteousness, the Father will come for you.
He will discipline you.
He will put you back on that path.
But if you profess to have gone through
the narrow gate and yet you live in
the broad way, just like all the other
people in your high school, just like all
the other people who are carnal and wicked.
The Bible wants you to know that you
should be terribly, terribly afraid.
But you know not God.
I fear men who have spent most of
their life telling other men that they are
saved.
I fear you if you've done that.
You don't tell men they are saved.
You tell men how to be saved.
God tells them they are saved.
What we have forgotten to believe is that
salvation is a supernatural work of God.
And those who have genuinely been converted, regenerated
by the power of the Holy Spirit is
going to be a new creature.
The Bible says if any man be in
Christ, he is a new creature.
Amen.
Paul Washer, our guest today.
He's online with us right now.
And I want to say welcome to the
program today.
Hi, Paul.
Are you there?
I believe we're having some problem with our
guest line today.
OK.
Hello.
Are you there?
OK.
I think we're having some problems.
We're going to get to him.
I'm going to open our phone lines today.
And I'm going to let other listeners call
in if you would like to 800-733
-9829.
Are you as concerned as I am about
the youth in this country who are hearing
and sitting under ministries that are telling them
exactly what our guest today has said?
Is our guest with us on the line?
OK.
We're having some problems.
We had a conference call this one.
We have two guests at once.
And so we're going to just sit tight
here and see what we can do to
get them both back on.
But in the meantime, I'm going to open
our lines today.
800-733-9829.
I wanted to share that sermon with you
today because it really weighs on my heart.
We see so much of this in the
American church.
And not a day goes by that I
don't get emails about some new crazy youth
ministry underway that is designed to introduce the
kids to Christianity based on fun.
Based on fun.
Not the word of God, which was preached
by our preacher today, Paul Washer.
But based on the fact that you can
improve your life and that God will really
make your life A-OK.
God is just really cool.
And what a tragedy it is as we
see the results of that in the carnality
of the American church.
There is absolutely, indisputably a connection between the
message these kids are getting, the message their
parents are getting, and the truth of God's
word.
And what a tragedy it is because there's
a deception going on.
And a lot of this deception is not
even this new spirituality, new age stuff.
It's just simply falsely assuring people that you
can live like the devil and still hang
on to heaven.
How many of our Christian high schools are
hotbeds of rebellion where we have young people
who can do praise and worship in the
chapel and then leave the chapel?
I remember in high school two girls who
used to argue over fine points of doctrine
and one of them would go in the
restroom and take her birth control pills for
the weekend.
She was having a weekend with her boyfriend
and she'd never forget to take that.
Christian high school.
But I think most out there who have
attended Christian schools or have children in Christian
schools can attest to this fact that there's
something terribly wrong.
Something has gone wrong in our preaching.
And I believe our preacher today, speaking before
5,000 teenagers, I believe he hit the
nail right on the head.
I am going to take some of our
phone calls here while we attempt to figure
out what happened to our guest today.
We're going to go to line 2 and
see who's online with us today.
Hi there.
Hello.
Hi there.
You're on the air.
Yes.
I so am grateful for the word that's
going out on your program this afternoon.
I have so felt and sensed this whole
thing going on in American churches.
They want kids to be a part of
a group and be a part of something
and the way they get them to do
that is to change the word of God
by not giving them the pure, unadulterated word.
That's right.
Amen to that.
They're getting maybe a bit of the truth
or a piece of the truth, but they're
not getting the whole truth.
Yes, God is love, but there's the corollary,
which is God's wrath, which renders love meaningless.
Without that corollary of God's wrath against sin
and against wickedness, why does love have any
meaning whatsoever without that?
Exactly.
If you have a child of your own
and you're the parent, you're not going to
put him in front of a semi-truck
and let the truck come without disciplining and
teaching and training.
That's absolutely right.
Listen, I appreciate you calling in today.
We're hopefully going to get our guests on
shortly, but thanks so much for those points
today on Crosstalk.
Thank you.
We're going to the break right now.
We'll be back in just a moment.
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Welcome back to Crosstalk.
Today we're going to go to our guest
line, and hopefully Reverend Paul Washer is with
us.
Hi there.
Welcome to Crosstalk.
Hello.
Hi.
Thank you so much for being with us
today.
Thank you.
It's a privilege to be here.
Well, we've been listening to your message to
the young people, the 5,000 young people,
and we so appreciate the message that you
brought not only to them but to us
as well, listening here.
Can you just share with us a little
bit about your heart when it comes to
youth ministry?
There's a lot of pastors who are simply
not willing to speak the truth of God's
word.
Hello?
Okay.
You know, I had a feeling this was
going to happen today.
Every time we have a program of peculiar
significance when it comes to the gospel, this
tends to happen.
I'm not a charismatic, but I will say
it this way.
I have had this happen to me again
and again.
Never mind.
We're going to carry on here today.
I'm going to see if we have a
caller on line four.
Hello.
Are you there?
Yes, I am.
Hi.
Welcome to Crosstalk.
My name is Eleanor from Pensacola, Florida, and
I want to thank you from the bottom
of my heart for all the messages and
things that you put on that are such
an asset to my life.
I am totally blind, but I get spiritual
food that fills me to capacity.
And, oh, I pray that many, many, many
will listen and observe what this dear pastor
is preaching because it's the word of truth,
and it's God speaking to us, and we
need to heed the call.
And I have 13 brothers and sisters, and
my mother passed away May 24th, and they're
not even speaking to each other, and they
say that they're godly people, and they don't
know what God is all about.
They don't even know Him personally.
And they say, well, we go to church.
Well, that's not knowing God.
That's right, Eleanor.
I'm glad you said that.
That's very true.
Knowing God is such an important part of
our life, and I wake up every morning
talking to Jesus, and Jesus helps me, and
He cleanses me, and sets me on my
right feet, and lets me know what He
wants me to do and how He wants
me to do it, and I couldn't live
without Him.
I need Him so much each and every
day, every moment of the day, and I
thank you for all that you've added to
my life.
Oh, thank you so much, Eleanor, for calling
today, and thank you for that testimony for
the Lord.
God bless you.
Appreciate that.
We're going to go to Don from Lillian,
Alabama.
Don, welcome to Crosstalk.
Good afternoon, Ingrid.
I disagree with—can you hear me?
Yes.
I disagree with this brother in Christ, the
Southern Baptist.
I'm an independent Baptist, and I believe that
he's mixing salvation, which is a free gift
that happens one time, 2 Corinthians 6, verse
2b says, Behold, now is the accepted time.
Behold, now is the day of salvation.
Okay, I don't believe that Paul Washer was
saying that salvation has to be done over
and over again.
He simply was saying the fact that if
you are not in a state of contrition
and repentance on a daily basis, there's something
wrong with your heart.
You heard him use the verse that he
that is faithful, that he that has begun
a good work in you is faithful to
complete it.
He followed up by saying that to clarify,
lest anyone be mistaken.
And I am not going to get into
controversy today.
The gospel went forward in that message, and
I am not going to engage in controversy.
Sometimes it really frustrates me when we have
a brother in Christ sharing the word of
truth, and someone calls in and starts to
debate.
That really, really irritates me, and Don, I'm
trying to be gracious here, but I believe
people understood exactly what he was saying, is
that if you say that you're saved and
you have absolutely no sorrow over sin, from
the point that you quote a prayer to
ask Jesus into your heart, and from that
point on are not concerned about your sin,
have no conscience about your sin, there's something
wrong.
Daily contrition and sorrow over our sins is
the fruit of a true conversion.
That is, yes, an act.
That justification is a one-time act, absolutely,
but that comes when we truly believe and
not when we've gone through some formula, which
the church often tells our children, that we
need to simply sign this card or pray
a specific prayer as led by someone else.
And I think that's important to clarify.
Are we having any success at all with
our guests today?
Really, this is incredible.
We were unable to even get through to
the phones.
We had two phone lines going with the
pastor and Paul Washer both on them.
However, we're going to carry on.
We'll simply go to the phones and talk
with God's people.
Carolyn's calling from Jackson, Mississippi.
And Carolyn, welcome to Crosstalk.
Thank you so much.
I just want you to know that I've
been a Christian school teacher for 17 years,
and this issue has just really been prevalent
for me.
I mean, I just have dealt with young
people over the years and have really had
a burden for them just maybe having what
I consider to be an easy believism, where
once you just pray a prayer, that's the
end of it.
And just really discipling young people, I think,
is what's really needed.
And right now I've just finished my first
year of law school, and I'm wanting to
be a Christian attorney, and I want to
do maybe Christian liberty defense litigation, that kind
of thing.
But, Ingrid, I just want to thank you
so much for your program, because sometimes I
feel like I'm all alone out here.
I know I'm not, but sometimes it just
feels like people look at me like I'm
some kind of Jesus freak or something.
And I don't mind being accused of that,
but sometimes it's just nice to know there
are like-minded Christians out there who are
thinking about the same things and at least
attempting to do what we can before the
Lord comes back or before we go home.
Oh, well said.
And you know something?
I agree with you.
There's such an encouragement and fellowship with like
-minded believers in the times in which we
live when there's such confusion and just divisiveness
and stuff going on in the church.
And we sometimes, even within the body of
Christ, there's such...
What is the term?
People rip each other's hair off to the
greater glory of God when we all truly
are trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so it's frustrating within the church and
outside the church.
So I'm so glad we can be an
encouragement to you in times like this.
I know exactly what you mean.
I just say be radical for Jesus.
That's right.
It is all on the altar, and that's
the way that we as believers are.
We are here for God's glory alone, not
for our own advancement, and we need to
keep that in mind.
That's right.
And the speaker also talked about knowing the
Word, knowing the Word so that we will
have the truth to disperse to people instead
of just our own opinions or whatever is
popular.
Exactly right.
The Word is a mirror that we hold
up to ourselves.
And believe me, the Holy Spirit working through
His Word is one of the most alarming
things when you begin to see the sin
in your own heart when you look at
God's Word, and that's just one of the
many reasons I should say that we need
to be in the Word.
Thank you, Carolyn.
God bless you.
Thank you so much.
God bless you.
Appreciate the call from Jackson, Mississippi.
We are moving on again.
Marcella from Newport, Oregon.
Hi there.
Welcome to Crosstalk.
Hello, and how are you?
God bless you for this program today.
I've got a 15-year-old that is
here setting a thing to it, and he
always says, Boosh is Polish for grandmother, and
he always says, you're always praying this and
praying that, and that's nice as well.
He says, I hope that I give a
good reflection on others and to him also,
but it's hard to find a good church
today.
Yes, it is.
It is.
I mean, you go and they preach everything,
and even the youth groups you have to
watch.
I agree completely with this man, and I
don't know why no one would have him
back.
Can you understand that?
I pray for him.
What is his name?
Paul Washer, and I'm going to tell you
that we seem unable to reach him at
all.
We've been cut off literally from him.
I know.
Well, that's the devil's work, so we always
pray for that too.
That's right.
Thank you.
Well, his ministry is called HeartCry Missionary Society.
He travels all over the world.
They plant churches and work with indigenous people
to start up works within the cultures themselves.
Rather than spending a lot of money sending
Westerners to have to spend years learning languages
and the huge cost of that, they send
missionaries over to train the indigenous people to
begin their own churches and ministries there.
They work in Africa, all over Africa, Ghana,
Nigeria, Zambia.
They work in China and India and Israel
and Peru and South America.
They also have Eastern European countries where they
work, Moldova and Romania.
They're working all over.
It's a missionary society.
You can visit their website.
I'll just give that out right now.
It's heartcrymissionary.com.
heartcrymissionary.com if you'd like to see the
work of Paul Washer.
He works with the church, one of his
sponsoring churches, First Baptist Church of Muscle Shoals,
Alabama.
Muscle Shoals?
Muscle Shoals, S-H-O-A-L-S,
Alabama.
Okay.
Well, I thank you very much, and I
sure hope that the devil will just cool
off and let him come through.
I appreciate it.
Thank you so much.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Thank you today.
We're going to line three.
Thank you so much for waiting, Mike.
Oh, thank you.
I want to praise the Lord for brothers
like this and sisters like you that are
willing to speak the truth and sound doctrine.
And I'm wondering, how can we get this
particular sermon that you're playing so we can
share it with the youth, more and more
of the ones that aren't going to have
access to this kind of sermon?
I'd like to share it with youth in
my neighborhood.
Absolutely.
In fact, you can get the full sermon,
and I encourage everyone to do that.
They can.
It's available on our website.
An MP3 of that whole sermon is available
at crosstalkamerica.com.
That's crosstalkamerica.com.
And in just a few, usually it's a
couple hours after the program, and they finally
get the, they put up the actual audio
of the program along with the information from
the guests.
So you can just visit our website to
get that.
That is fantastic.
God bless all of you.
Thank you, Mike, for the encouragement.
Just keep it up.
Thanks so much.
Okay, bye-bye now.
Bye-bye.
We're going to try one more time here
to see if Brother Washer is with us.
Paul, are you there?
Yes, ma'am.
I apologize for this.
Are you there?
Yes, ma'am.
Okay, I'm just getting paranoid here every time
I hear a little click on the line.
I'm so thankful that you could be with
us today.
God bless you.
Well, thank you very much.
It's a great privilege to be here.
The question I was asking before when we
lost you was just about your heart for
youth ministry.
This kind of sermon is so desperately needed
for all of us, not just the young
people.
But I especially have a heart for young
people, having three older teenagers now and having
seen what they went through in Christian schools
and very much like what you talked about
in the sermon today.
Share with us just a little bit of
your heart.
Well, one of the great problems in America
today is that we have forgotten the theology
of the New Testament with regard to the
gospel of Jesus Christ.
It is the gospel of Jesus Christ that
is the power of God unto salvation.
And salvation is a supernatural work of God
that occurs when the gospel is being preached
correctly.
Instead of relying simply upon God's power and
God's truth, we've got to the point where
we think we can somehow manipulate men into
some form of salvation by using carnal means.
And it goes against the full trend of
the New Testament.
You see this again and again and again
with the church growth, the whole church growth
movement, is that we must appeal to the
unregenerate to get them in the church and
then somehow we'll sort of educate them towards
the kingdom.
What a difference from what we saw at
Pentecost, for example, when the Word went forth
and how the Holy Spirit fell and people
were converted.
One of the things that is really a
sign of the times, if you look back
100 years ago at most literature, Christian literature
dealt with the nature of the gospel, the
nature of salvation, and how to discern genuine
conversion.
If you go into a bookstore today, you'll
not find a book like that on the
shelf.
But what you will find is a number
of books, the entire bookstore filled with books
on trying to make Christians, supposed Christians, live
like sheep.
And the problem is because we've passed over
true conversion, we're trying to make goats look
like sheep, and it just won't happen.
And when you hear the ministers, the media
pastors of America today, such as Joel Osteen,
talk about your best life now, which is
rank heresy, because we know that the Christian
motto should be our best life later in
heaven, not now as we serve the Lord.
In our mission society that we have, HeartCry
Missionary Society, we work with indigenous pastors all
over the world.
Some of them have suffered greatly.
Some of them live on $50 a month.
They live in dirt floor homes, beds infested
with fleas, shoes made out of truck tires,
and all because of the gospel of Jesus
Christ.
And these are the men that I have
lived with, I preach to, I teach.
And then to come back to the United
States and see such reductionism, it borders lines
on just the ridiculous.
We're going to continue with Paul Washer.
And please hold on.
We're going to take another one-minute break,
and we'll be right back.
You're listening to Crosstalk.
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Redeeming the Time from LifeChangingSeminars.com We
are back on Crosstalk today, and Paul Washer
is our guest.
And I just want you to continue.
I really feel compelled to just give you
the time to address our audience today and
not interfere with questions.
What is on your heart for the American
church today?
Well, first of all, the main topic is
the gospel of Jesus Christ and the preaching
of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It is the means that God has given
us for the conversion of men.
And that gospel begins with the very nature
of God.
God is not only, as some say, loving,
but He is a holy and a just
God.
And the Bible also speaks about the nature
of man.
Man is indeed a fallen creature.
Terms often used are radically depraved.
A biblical phrase would be dead in their
sins.
That they do not want God, do not
know God.
Their will is bent against the reign of
God.
And the greatest problem in scripture is this.
If God, and Paul addresses this in Romans
chapter 3, if God is truly just, then
how can a just God forgive wicked men
and still be just?
As we know in a court of law
in America, the things that we're always complaining
about are judges who do not do justice.
If a judge lets a criminal go, he's
considered himself an abomination or a criminal.
In Proverbs 17, 15, God says just that.
That to justify the wicked, anyone who does
that, is an abomination before God.
And yet the Bible clearly says that God
justifies the wicked.
So the great question is, how can a
just and holy God justify wicked men and
still be just?
The answer is found in the cross of
Jesus Christ.
God becomes a man.
The Son of God walks on this earth
as God and man.
According to the predetermined plan of God, He
goes to the cross.
On the cross, He bears the sins of
men.
He bears their sin.
And then He cries out, My God, my
God, why have you forsaken me?
In that moment, the Father turns away from
His only begotten Son because His only begotten
Son has become sin on our behalf.
Or as many old theologians used to say,
He stood in our law place.
And then something that most people do not
understand is this, that when Jesus Christ was
on that cross, He suffered the wrath of
Almighty God.
Many people think somehow that because the Romans
nailed Jesus to a cross and they beat
Him, that somehow the suffering inflicted upon Jesus
by the hands of men somehow paid for
our sin.
And that is not true.
Although that was part of it, our sins
were paid for because when the Son was
on that tree, He bore our sin.
And all the wrath of a just and
holy God fell upon His Son, as it
says in Scripture, and it pleased the Lord
to crush Him.
Someone had to die, separated, separated from God.
Someone had to die under the wrath of
God to satisfy His justice.
And on that tree, that's what Jesus did.
And so before He died, He cried out,
It is finished.
And it's finished indeed, in the fact that
He paid for all our crimes against God.
He satisfied justice.
Now, a just God can forgive and justify
unrighteous men because He has atoned for their
sin Himself.
And Jesus Christ did that when He died.
And then He was raised for or because
of our justification.
And that means that the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead is God's seal, that
that was indeed His Son and that death
indeed satisfied justice.
Having resurrected from the dead, Jesus Christ is
ascended to the right hand of the Father.
And all men, God commands all men everywhere
to repent of their sins, to turn from
their fighting against Him, to acknowledge their crimes
before Him, to give up all hope in
their own good works for salvation and to
throw themselves upon Christ.
Salvation is a free gift and it is
by faith.
But here is where we've gone wrong and
where many of the church had gone wrong
prior to the preaching of Whitfield and Daniel
Rowlands and the great awakenings.
And it's this.
We've turned the gospel into five things God
wants you to know.
Let me give you an example.
Someone will say, ask a person when they're
evangelizing, do you know you're a sinner?
The person says yes.
They'll go, would you like to go to
heaven?
If the person says yes, then they go,
would you like to pray this prayer?
It won't take much time.
Now, the question is not do you recognize
you're a sinner?
The question is has God done such a
work in your heart on hearing the gospel
that you now hate the sin you once
loved and desire to depart from it?
And the question is not do you want
to go to heaven?
The devil wants to go to heaven.
I mean, everybody in America wants to go
to heaven.
They just don't want God to be there
when they get there.
The question is not do you want to
go to heaven?
The question is since you've heard the gospel,
has God done such a work in your
life that the God you once hated and
ignored you now esteem as worthy of all
things and you desire and you seek for
him?
And then the question is not do you
want to pray a prayer?
That is a gross distortion of Romans chapter
10.
It was not practiced in early Christian history.
It wasn't practiced anywhere up until just half
a century ago in America.
The thing is, if this is true and
God has done this work, repent.
Give up striving against him.
Give up trying to earn your own salvation
and throw yourself upon Christ.
Now another thing that's very important in old
preaching, biblical preaching, is that although I must
counsel men how to be saved and even
counsel them using Scripture with regard to the
assurance of salvation, I have no power to
tell someone just because they repeated a prayer
and were halfway sincere that now Christ has
entered their heart.
That is a work of the Holy Spirit,
Him applying Scripture.
When someone is saved, truly converted, you do
not have to tell them they are saved.
They will tell you.
Well, you know, Paul, I am so sorry
that we are almost out of time, but
the Lord enabled you to get that in,
the most important part that we all needed
to hear.
And I pray at some point in the
future that we will be able to have
you back on again and we will pray
that the phone lines will work properly to
get you on so that you can share
even more from God's Word, because what you're
saying is so critical in this hour.
I did tell people during the break earlier,
I should say earlier, when you were not
with us, about your ministry, heartcrymissionary.com is
your website.
And I pray that people listening today will
see the work that you are doing and
pray for what you're doing around the world.
And all we can say is the Lord
bless you and thank you for taking the
time to share the true gospel with us
today.
Well, thank you.
Thanks for joining us, everyone, on Crosstalk.
You can hear the whole sermon that we
aired some excerpts from on our website, crosstalkamerica
.com.
The whole sermon that we heard earlier will
be on there, an MP3 of it, and
we pray that it will be a blessing
to you.
Share it with someone else.
Thanks for joining us today.
I'm Ingrid Schleter.
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