Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - John MacArthur - Is this a horrible time to raise kids?

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

Jonny Ardavanis is the Dean of Campus Life at The Master’s University and hosts the podcast Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis. He is passionate about the Gospel and God’s Word and desires to see people understand and obey it. Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis: Big Questions, Biblical Answers, is a series that seeks to provide biblical answers to some of the most prominent and fundamental questions regarding God, the Gospel, and the BibleIn this episode Pastor John MacArthur from Grace Community Church answers the question: “Is this a horrible time to raise kids?”Subscribe to stay up to date with each episode! Watch VideosVisit the Website Follow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Hey guys, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial In. In this episode, I sit down with Pastor John MacArthur and ask him, is this a horrible time to raise your kids? Let's dial in. Pastor John, I previously heard you say that you keep on hearing other people say, what a horrible time to raise your kids with the world in which we live. And then your response to that was, what a wonderful time to raise your kids. Can you elaborate on that? I love that idea and even your earnestness and passion behind that, what you said. Yeah, well, I think in America, you know, we had a kind of superficial cultural Christianity, you know, for the first 200 years of America's existence.

And so there was a sort of acceptance of Christianity on a very nominal level. And some of the benefits of that were there were laws, you know, that were very clear against certain kinds of sins. And so that was supposed to be the best time to live. The truth of the matter is that might have been the hardest time to live. Yeah. Yeah. You know, because, you know, you get caught up in being a phony Christian and, um, you know, it's easy. I, I wrote a lot of books on the gospel trying to help the church understand the gospel. And people would say, why are you always explaining the gospel? And I said, because there's so many people preaching and teaching in the church that get it wrong but they succeed they succeed because there's an acceptance of any kind of Christianity

so I think that's kind of winding down now and I think we're at a time when Christians are going to be persecuted so you don't need to pretend to be somebody so you can get persecuted so I think there's a reality check going on in our country. And I think it's now we're becoming like most of the rest of the world and most of human history. Christianity is an alien group of people and the world is hostile to it. And that's the way many nations have always been. So I don't think we should look at this and say, well, you know, and we're going to have a very difficult time. We were basically made for this time. This is our time, right? This is our time. And I was telling you about my little great grandson, little one-year-old John Owen,

running around the church for the first tour of the church with his 14-month-old legs. And somebody said, oh, it's so sad what world he's going to live in. And I said, this is where God brought him. This is his time. And we come to the kingdom like Esther for such a time as this. So there are going to be challenges. I agree. But it's going to be harder to be a fraud and a hypocrite, especially with the internet. If you're trying to hide something, pretty hard to hide nowadays. Even phonies in religion are exposed almost on a weekly basis. So this is a time for truth. This is a time for strength. This is the time to proclaim the gospel.

This is a big dose of reality that most Christians through church history have had to face. Hostile rejection and persecution. And that purifies the church. I remember talking to a pastor who came from Eastern Europe and he came to visit our church and Eastern Europe was still locked down. This is a number of years ago. And I said, it must be difficult for you to minister under the conditions where you're persecuted and you're ministering underground. It was still the underground church. And he said, no, he said, I can't understand how you can minister here with all this freedom. How do you know who's real and who's not?

So this is the best of times. I'm glad I've survived to be around for the adventure of this time where the truth is going to mean more and where the culture fears the truth more than they fear anything else. That's a perfect scenario for us to proclaim the gospel. My last question for you then, Pastor John, is how can someone, how can I live boldly for Christ when conviction in a world of tolerance is automatically interpreted to be bigotry and hatred. How can we live boldly? Well, you just live boldly and then you love. You live boldly and then you love enough to tell the truth.

The goal, again, the goal is love. The most loving thing you can do is to say to somebody, you're on your way to hell, there's a wonderful message of salvation through Christ. They resent that because Jesus even said in John 7, 7, they hate me because I tell them their deeds are evil. So you got to get past the hate of the confrontation part of the gospel. But I think this is a great time to be bold, but be loving.

And we can't forget to speak the truth in love. No, thank you, Pastor John. We are here for such a time as this, and I'm thankful you're here for it. I'm thankful for this conversation. So thanks. Thank you. Yeah.