The Eric Metaxas Show - Eric at Calvary Chapel (continued)

Episode Date: February 23, 2021

Eric's sermon at Calvary Chapel continues with examples of courage in the face of great evil as displayed by bold luminaries such as William Wilberforce and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Folks, welcome to the program. I believe it's Tuesday. I really wouldn't know. I'm off the calendar. Albin, I've decided to go off the grid. When I say off the grid, I don't just mean physically in terms of geographical location, but I'm going off the calendar. I don't recognize days of the week. I don't recognize anything anymore. It's just today. Okay. Well, you're big enough now to do whatever you want with the week. Exactly. I said, when I get big, I'm going off the grid, off the calendrical grid. And that's Gregorian and Julian because I don't. care. That's the kind of power I have right now. I'm mad. I'm drunk with power. Okay, Albin, we got to tell people today we are playing. I preached at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills a week and a half ago. Seems like it can't be just a week and a half. It's amazing. I was with my folks in Connecticut this past weekend. The previous weekend, I was at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, California, Jack Hibbs's Church. We're going to play that sermon. This weekend, I fly to San Jose, which is near San Francisco, San Francisco, California, which is now, I believe, reclaimed by Mexico. Am I getting that right?

I think so. Or can we have to pronounce it like Nicaragua. Oh. San Francisco. San Francisco was the saying who was Francis. He had the animals. And so San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, those places. are all named. It's obvious that Mexico really owns California. They're going to take it over

really soon. They're going to have Gavin Newsom. Listen to this, drawn and quartered. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. Yeah. That's the first thing you're going to do. Listen, people want to hear about, you wrote something up about the council culture. The Muppets, I'll let you tell it. Okay. Yeah. In fact, you sounded like a Muppet right there. And it reminded me that, you know, I think it was over what a weekend, Disney put out this whole thing about how the Muppets now have to come with a warning. Okay. So it's kind of like a little bit of censorship there on the Muppets. And instantly, it reminded me of the McCarthy hearings.

It was like the McCarthy hearings all over again. I mean, think about it. First they came for Charlie McCarthy. And Edgar Bergen did not speak out because he was not a puppet. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Albin, I'm sorry. This is too good to just jump in. this is what Martin Niemaller, who was friends with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he wrote the famous poem,

and you are now applying this to what is going on with the Muppets. This is really important, folks. Listen up. Go ahead. Yeah. Okay. And then, then they came for lamb chop, and Sherry Lewis did not speak up because she was not a puppet. Then they came for Kukla and Fran, and Ollie did not speak up even though he was a puppet. No, no, no. Oh, you're right. because Fran Fran did not speak up but she was a, she was

a human being. Hucla Fran and Ollie Ali did not speak up. Please continue. Yes. And now, of course, they've come for Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, and all the Muppets, and Jim Henson, he can't speak up because he passed away in 1990.

So there you have it. Wow. And now they're going to come for the rest of us, dummies. So you've got to be, you know. That was funny. That was good, Alvin. That was good. Let's keep that in the show. Okay, they're going to come for Gonzo. They're going to come from Fazi, the bear. They're going to come for all the Muppets.

I want to say this because I tweeted this out the other day and they got a zillion retweets. If you think things are going crazy, folks, that's because they are. But here's the point. They're not really going that crazy because most of us see that things are going crazy. When they're canceling the Muppets, when they're canceling Mike Lindell, when they're canceling me. You just know something ridiculous is happening. It cannot happen in America because we still have a voice and we will use our voice while we have our voice. I have this program. I have social media, but you've got to use your voices. This is part of what I talk about

in the sermon at Chino Hill. So we're going to run that today, both hours. It was the long sermon. We already have it on our YouTube page. If you want to just go there and watch me, deliver it rather than listen to it, but we're going to play it in both hours today. It is a kind of real madness, Albin, that we are experiencing this. I said yesterday, Amazon is no longer carrying my friend Ryan Anderson's book when Harry became Sally. It's about the transgender craziness, right? Well, they, I think they banned Abigail Schreier's book. We had her on this program or some other store banned it. When people are doing this, we need to stand up.

If you don't stand up, ladies and gentlemen, you are part of the problem. You are part of the problem. You must speak. You must act. Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak, is to speak. Not to act is to act. God will not hold us guiltless.

We are obliged to do something when we see this madness. So when anybody tries to cancel someone else, number one, you need to support the person whom they're trying to cancel. So they've tried to do that, to me, in a number of ways. They've tried to do that horrifically to Mike Lindell. So I will say it on almost every program. Please go to MyPillow.com and MyStore.com and use the code, Eric. We need your support on this program.

Mike Lindell really needs your support. Please go to MyPillow.com and MyStore.com and use the code, Eric. Um, most of my books are available at my store.com. And I want to say that because Amazon is now getting involved in the cancel culture, we need to find alternative venues, uh, for how we can, uh, get our books and other things. So that's why I want to say my book, uh, many of my books are available at my store.com. Use the code Eric. You get a big discount. Also, um, Socrates in the city.com has many of my books available. signed copies. And let's not forget, Albin, this program, we can go, you can get Albin's books and my books. What's the website? It's called shopmetaxis.com. But if you go to metaxis radio.com, right? No, no, no, no, no, no. Whoa, whoa. You're the producer. I think you need to know the website. It's metaxis talk.com. I just had a brain freeze.

It's Metaxistococot.com. It's been that way for one. And you're the producer. Can you imagine how bad it is for the rest of the world? This is getting really true. I know. You can go to shoutmataxis.com. People are just, they're getting fatigued.

But folks, listen, this is no, we're not asking much. Please take, take control of where your dollars go. I've spent like zillions at Amazon and stuff and probably will continue to spend money there because there aren't great alternatives. But when we find other alternatives, maybe we need to send a message to Amazon and do whatever we can. So again, I will say most of my books are available at mypillow.com. You go to mystore.com.

Use the code Eric. You can go to Socrates in the city.com. If you go to shopmetaxis.com, which is just this radio website, metaxis.com, and you can click through to shopmetaxis.com. But honestly, you can get hats. mugs, t-shirts, and my books and Albin's books, you can get them there. We need to speak up. So today, if you listen to my sermon at Chino Hills, which we're running in both hours today,

you'll hear me talk a little bit about this kind of thing. Tomorrow, Albin, we're running my Socrates in the City conversation with Peter Thiel, one of the geniuses entrepreneurs of our time. I spoke to him about, I guess about a year and a half ago at Socrates in the city. and we're going to be running that tomorrow because I will be out of pocket, as they say. I'm going to be down at the TBN studios recording a ton of stuff, so I won't be able to do the program tomorrow. Thursday, we hope to have John Zamirac on the program.

Can I just mention real quick about John, our friend Reverend John Rankin? If you go to Rev.john.com, you can go and you can contribute to help his ministry as well. he's passed away and they're looking for raising funds there as well. He's a great guy. Yeah, his wife and daughter need our help. And so I wanted to publicize that. It's REVJohn rankin.com. Rev.johnrankin.com. We'll be talking to his sons on this program in the weeks ahead. His sons, Chad and Stewart. As we know, Jeremy passed away a year before John did. Really tragic. But God is on his throne. Rev. John Rankin. dot com. So in both hours today, we are airing my sermon at Chino Hills. The first hour is obviously the first half and the second hour is the second half. And this is just the intro.

Okay. What can you do with an English degree, by the way? What can you do with it from Yale? Like nothing. Okay. So I got a job as a proofreader at Union Carbide, Danbury, Connecticut. This is all in the book, and I promise you, this was, the biblical word is Gehenna. You familiar with that idea? This was so miserable, because I'm like a poet, I write humor, I did I, no, you're going to go to a chemical international conglomerate. You're going to sit in a cubicle, a quarter mile from the nearest window, and you are going to proofread chemical manuals that it was, exactly. And I did this eight hours a day, and it was, it was horrible, but I had to do something. And this is God.

In the middle of that hell, that misery, that depression, which it was. I mean, at the time, I mean, I struggled with depression and stuff my whole life. Seriously, this was really bad. This was like, you know, I joke around, but it was bad. And in the middle of this, what does God do? He sends somebody into my life, graphic designer. I write about him in the book, Ed Tuttle. He befriends me and whatever, and he says talking to me about the Bible and this and that.

Now, of course, my first instinct is like, don't get to close with that weird stuff. but he was a born-again, charismatic, spirit-filled Bible-believing Christian, but he attended an Episcopal church, and I figured he's safe. They could piss him. They don't believe any of this stuff. So, you know, come on down. So I got into these conversations with him, and whenever he said, like, do you want have a Bible study?

No, I don't have a Bible study. You want to go to church with me? No, I don't want to go to church. So I was like, keep your distance, but I was in enough pain that I was like, Keep talking because I'm in pain. So we kept talking over the months and months and months. And the Lord spoke to me in a dream about a year into this. And I'm not going to tell that because it's a whole dramatic story.

But the Lord got me where he wanted me for his purposes. And when I came to know him, it just changed everything. And I first of all, I prayed, okay, Lord, I have not been doing too well with the career thing. So why don't you take a shot at it? I'm going to just do what you want me to do. What do you say? And the Lord led me on the strangest path to working for Chuck Colson, writing for Veggie Tales. I'm the voice of the narrator on the Esther video, by the way.

I should have said that up front because now you listen to what I have to say. You're like, oh, oh, you know, I heard Yale. Veggie Tales. Whoa. Yes. If you pop in the Veggie Tales Esther video, I am still the narrator. To this day, to this day, I'm still on that video. So, yeah.

They're applauding. You're applauding. Shame on you. Shame. What is wrong with you, people? I talk about communism, and they applauded. Bob the Tomatoes. That's when they applauded.

Suzanne, seriously, that's the kind of a group we're dealing with here. So, by the way, I know Bob the Tomato personally, and he's a broken, he's a bitter, binaustic. Pray for Bob. You know, when the cameras come on, he's like the Christian tomato, but behind the scenes, it's dark. Yeah. So, I'm sorry, I know the kids in the room, I shouldn't share that, but it's, so.

So, the Lord took me on this bizarre journey, but here's the thing. Once you know Jesus, he's the source of truth. He's the source of goodness and love and everything, and you can follow him. You don't have to be afraid. In fact, my friend had Tuttle shared with me a scripture before I was really ready to be shared, you know, scriptures with. But he says, you know, I just wrote this down on a note card. He gives it to me, and I tack it up in my cubicle. And it was at Jeremiah 29, 11, I guess it says, you know, I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord.

Plans not to harm you. Plans to give you hope in the future. And I remember reading that and thinking, I'm not sure I believe God exists. I kind of hope he does, but I don't know. But if he does exist and he says, I know the plans I have for you, plans not to harm you, not to embarrass you and make you into some religious freak that is not, you know, that checks his brain at the door or whatever. You can trust me. I'm God. I have plans for you to turn you into something that I created you to be from before time. And you can trust me. And I remember that ministered to me. It's kind of like the magic of the word of God, right? It just ministered to me, even though I wasn't sure. And it opened me up. And that's, after some time, I was able really to receive the Lord in this dream. And he kind of set me up. And I say this also, to be really clear. Think about this. In the dream, I was literally unconscious. I was sleeping. Have I made that clear? Yeah, so I can't take any credit, like intellectual credit. I reasoned my way to God.

No, no, I didn't. And I say it's just like Lazarus. Like Lazarus, if you want to be raised up off of the slab where you are currently rotting, you need to exercise your faith, Lazarus. Come on. Lazarus had no faith. Lazarus wasn't even there.

We need to be spiritually and theologically clear. It is all God. He doesn't say, come on, you can do it. this is like you're dead and he raises us up we're not sick we're dead I was spiritually dead I was unconscious

and the Lord spoke to me in my spiritual death and raised me to life that's what it is to believe in him so we need to understand we cannot take any credit for our faith we can't walk around like I'm proud I'm a Christian because you know like I'm better than the non-Christians because

that's the whole point that's the whole point and that's what will give you compassion for people who aren't where we are is to say that's me, apart from the grace of God. That's a fact, right? So in all of this stuff, I get saved and the Lord starts steering me around.

And next thing I know, he guides me to write these biographies. I promise you I had zero intention ever of writing a biography in my life. But the Lord led me, may I say miraculously. I never used the word miraculous loosely. There are certain things that are a blessing, but it's not really a miracle.

but the Lord miraculously led me in several, I'm still going to write that book. What happened after I get saved at the end of this book, I want to tell the stories of all these miracles. But the Lord led me to write my book on William Wilberforce, who battled the slave trade

in the British Empire, incredible hero because of his faith in Jesus, stood up against racism, slavery, because his faith in Jesus. All the good people who went to church didn't lift a finger. It was the born-again the Jesus freaks, the Methodist,

the evangelicals, the Bible bangers, those people in the 18th century, those were the ones who knew that God is the enemy of slavery or racism or whatever. So if anybody says to you, you know, racism's wrong, and he said, yes, I know that, but do you know why it's wrong? And they're going to look at you like, what do you mean? You can't even ask that question. That's embarrassing. Yeah, nobody knows why it's wrong.

I know why it's wrong because God says it's wrong in his word. God declares that we're all equal in his sight. God declares it. If you don't believe in the Bible, you tell me why it's wrong. Go. All good things come from God. Slavery is wrong. That's from the Bible.

Jesus freaks like William Wolbeforce, he gets saved and dedicates himself for the abolition of the slave trade. Bonhofer, that was the next book I wrote, why did he speak up for the Jews? He's a Christian. He spoke up because he was a real Christian. He was not a church. going Christian. He was a real Christian who knew Jesus, who knew Jesus, parentheses, was a Jew, and that these are God's people. And that doesn't even matter if they're God's people, because the Uighur Muslims suffering in China today, God demands that we speak up for them,

that we use our voices to speak up for anybody that is being oppressed in this world. We have an opportunity. We have a duty. So I write these books, and the Bonhofer book kind of broke through in a way that I didn't anticipate, but part of the reason it broke through is because it was a prophetic story. I didn't know it at the time. Actually, as I was writing, I got a sense that God is saying something here because as I'm writing it, I said, this reminds me of what's happening in America. How can this be? What's going on? What are we not seeing? And just as Bonhofer was a prophetic voice in the church at that day, trying to get them wake them up, I feel like my Bonhofer book, it's his story again, trying to say to the church, hey, you think you're different

than the Germans in the 1930s? You're not. You're exactly like them. Are you going to make the same mistake? God gives us warning after warning. And I really feel like in America today, we are drifting in the way that the Germans were drifting. And these were good people, many of them Christian people. So we can't act like, oh, you know, they were anti-Semitic, Hitler-loving monsters. No, no, no, no, no. Many of them didn't really know what they thought. But thought. And Bonhofer and others tried to wake them up and saying, if you, the church, do not stand and speak loudly

now, tomorrow, you won't have a voice. You will not have the ability to speak tomorrow. And they're like, well, we're going to give it another day. We're going to let it ride a couple more days. We're not ready to speak yet. Folks, that's where we are in America right now. When you talk about

not being 100% sure that a presidential election was on the up and up, and people say, well, if you even bring that up, you're a violent insurrectionist, and we're not going to let you speak. You're going to say, well, you can't stop me from speaking. This is the United States of America. And I don't even need to be right. I have the right to say anything that I want to say if I feel like saying it, this is the United States of America. And we need to honor each other and to talk to each other.

And if somebody has a doubt, you know, you need to maybe help them get beyond that doubt. Otherwise, maybe you're hiding something, right? And the thing is, we have every right to bring these things up. But the canceled culture we're experiencing now, I'm telling you that's exactly what happened in Germany. How do you take freedom away from people without guns? Well,

you use their own culture against them. In America, everybody wants to be nice. We believe in tolerance. We're nice. Even Barnhofer, when he came to America in 1930, noticed that at Union Theological Seminary, everybody was like about kind of getting along. you'll get shut out. Now, hard to believe, but the woke culture was at Union Theological Seminary in 1930.

It was already a very theologically liberal place, and they had taken this idea in that we don't really want to, you know, we don't want to butt heads over truth. And Bonhoeffer was like, what are you talking about? He was German. They were all about truth, right? What are you talking about? I'll argue, you know, until I have no voice.

Like, well, he noticed that in America. Well, I'm telling you, folks, that in America today, we are very similar. We want to get along with everybody. So when somebody says, you can't say that. That's racist. You know, you got to say, excuse me, I think I'm not a racist. And if I am, by the way, I don't want to be. But don't use that label because you're basically trying to communicate, hey, shut up.

I don't like what you're saying. But that's where we are right now. And if we don't speak up against this, we have ourselves to blame. When somebody says to you, you're a violent insurrectionist, because you question this or question that. You have to stand up and say, listen, folks, I'm not that. And the very fact that you're saying that kind of tells me what I need to know about where you're coming from.

You're not interested in truth, or you would say, keep talking, maybe I'm misunderstanding something, you're not saying that. You're telling me, shut up, shut up, shut up, because you seem to be afraid of where the conversation might go. And that tips me off. That's a red flag. you might be hiding something. When people try that, folks, right now

if you go to China, that's what they do. If you say the wrong thing, you're getting big trouble. They don't have freedom there. They don't believe in anything. They're an atheist, Marxist regime that oppresses its people. But the point is that in America we have responsibilities. Because we're a free people, we have

a responsibility to speak the truth and God says to us, I got your back. I have defeated death. You have nothing to be afraid of. If you don't speak, the truth, who will speak the truth? I've already paid your debts. I've already taken care of you on every level. Fear not, be of good courage. God says that to us, and it's not like we're doing it on our own. He is behind us. And so when you speak the truth in love, when you speak boldly, God can use you.

But if we are silent, we have already become part of the problem. And that is precisely what happened in Germany. Chuck Holson talks about it. He says, there was a spiral of silence. In Germany, if you brought something up, or let's say you didn't say Heil Hitler loud enough, people would look at you. Like, what's wrong with you? What are you a racist? What are you violent? You Trump got? Who are? What's matter with you? You got you have a problem. Write his name down. He has a problem. He doesn't love Hitler enough. Once the culture starts doing that, starts looking at you, oh, you didn't say this the right way. You didn't say that the right way. We don't know about you. We're going to put you on a list.

That's the end of freedom. So when that happens, you need to raise your voice. You need to raise your voice as an American. You need to raise your voice as a Christian and say, that's not going to fly here. I will fight to the last drop of blood because there are people who have died. There are people that have died for freedom.

And I'm willing to die for freedom. And of course, people have quoted me and said, oh, last drop of blood. Eric's calling for violence. No, no, no. That's my blood I'm talking about, right? I'm talking about Nathan Hale died. He said, my only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country. Okay, is that a man who has made an idol of nationalism?

He was a profound Christian who understood that the values that George Washington was fighting for, he would be glad to die for those values, and he did die for those values. Folks, those are stories of beautiful patriotism, and we have denigrated them for 50 years. We need to understand we are there now. And God is looking at us now. And he is saying, you have to demand of your leaders all the right things. And by the way, it's not for you and for America. If America goes down as it is doing, you know who will suffer?

People in China will suffer the horrors of the damned if you do not speak up with one voice. Because you have enabled that nation to get rich, to get powerful. What do they do with the power we've given them, naively, they use it to oppress their own people. If you are a serious Christian, if you are a Uyghur Muslim, you suffer in that culture. Folks, God created us to care about those people. He gave us freedom for those who have no freedom. When we speak up in this nation, we know we want to make this nation stronger and better and everything. Why? For the sake of those who have nothing that we have ever had. We've been given freedom for God's purposes. It's not just

so we can get more freedom and we can enjoy our freedom. No, there are people around the world looking to us. When Reagan said to Gorbachev, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall, do you know what the deep state told him? They took that out of the speech literally seven times. You can read about this. They said, you can't say that. You can't say that.

You don't say that. And he said, I'm going to say it. And I think when he spoke those words, Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall, it was a prophetic word and that the demons tremble. when he said that. You can't say that. Don't say that. He said, I'm going to say it. And when he said it, folks, there were people in the gulag, people suffering, people who had no food, people who were suffering in the Soviet gulag. Word got back to them that America has a leader who's willing to stand up to communist leaders. There's hope for us. Some of you know what I'm talking about.

We don't deserve our freedom. It's a gift from God. We don't deserve our salvation. It's a gift from God. If you know who the Lord is, who has given you these things, you know you want to do something to try to pay him back. You'll never pay him back, but you want to spend the rest of your life living to his glory because you could live in eternity.

You'll never be able to give him back. But he says, I just want you to understand that what I've given you is a gift for those, who don't yet have that gift. There are people around the world who've never heard the gospel. There are people around the world who've never tasted freedom. You need to know what you have, and you need to use your voice for my purposes in history.

And if you don't, what will happen to your nation is the same thing that has happened to other nations, and it happened to Germany. The story of Bonhofer is kind of funny. I noticed on Amazon, you know, they ranked the books on how. they're selling. Like in the last six months, the Bonhofer rank has gone up. And I thought, why would that be? Because people understand it's like a handbook for where we are now. The Reichstag

fire. Some of you familiar. In the Bonhofer book, I'll never forget this, the Reichstag, which is the German parliament, was burned. Somebody set fire to it. What did they do instantly? Before they knew what had really happened, because they didn't care, they said, we're going to blame this on our political enemies, and they rounded up the political enemies, they put the heat on their political enemies, they had a wonderful excuse. It was the Reichstag fire. Well, unfortunately, and I've got to tell you, I've been talking about Bonhofer for 11 years right now, to see what happened in my country when that whatever happened at the Capitol, nobody really knows, obviously, none of us knows what the heck actually happened, which tells you something. But the fact is that,

it wasn't five minutes before they had the guns out blaming everyone who voted for President Trump. And I think, I don't care who anyone voted for. In America, we don't behave that way. We don't start demonizing people for how they voted. That is satanic. We don't do that in America. And when people start doing that, you know where they're coming from.

Because we have not done that in this nation. And to this day, we still don't know exactly what happened. Keep saying, if you even question what happened, you're guilty. Well, let me tell you, I'm smart enough to know by the grace of God. No, that's not how it works here. Here, we're allowed to ask questions. We're allowed to get the truth. And by the way, if you tell me, no, you're not, then I know you're hiding something.

So we have to be aware of the hour in which we live. When that happened, I have to tell you, it did kill me. Because I said, I didn't realize we were at this level in this nation. the church has to wake up, the church has to speak loudly, this church, and by the way, you're not wearing masks. I just want to say that we know right from wrong, and you don't really need to be a Christian in many ways to know right from wrong. What is happening right now? There are patriots all over this country who don't have the faith we do. They see. They can smell truth because God, who is truth, created them in his image, and we can see these things. And I actually believe a lot of people are being led to God through.

these times because people see what is happening. And what I would say is Bonhoffer, when you say, oh, I would never have gone along with things back then, folks, many American Christians, in fact, literally, most American Christians are drifting along

just as the Germans drifted along. God needs a remnant to stand, to speak up. If that had happened in Germany, the Holocaust never would have happened. But they said, tomorrow. Not yet. We're not there yet. We don't want to be political. We just want to preach the gospel. What dead gospel are you preaching that you're not willing to stand up for the Jews and

box cars being taken to the death camps? And I'll say the same thing. If you care about the religious liberty, the Uighur Muslims are suffering the tortures of the damned in Chinese camps. And people say, well, you know, China's not our enemy. If you are doing that to people because of their faith, you are my enemy. You are my enemy, and I'm going to do anything I can to free those people, because why am I not behind the barbed wire? I'm no different than they are. We all want freedom.

If we do not fight for things, if the Church of Jesus Christ does not fight for these things, and tell the people outside our church, hey, do you know what's going on in China? Do you know what is happening? Do you understand that we play a role in this? That for 20 years we've looked the other way. Democrats and Republicans have looked the other way,

and this is a human rights issue, we need to confront them on this. You want to trade with us? No trade unless you change your human rights policies. When somebody says, you know what, I care about the poor. That's why I have, you know, BLM painted on my helicopter. Folks, you need to tell people, and you can tell them however you want, depending on the context,

but you say, listen, because I'm a Christian, I'm commanded to care for the poor. And because I'm commanded by God to care for the poor, I condemn anything socialist or Marxist, and you maybe didn't know it, but BLM, they're not what they say. They're a Marxist organization that is dedicated to destroying the nuclear family, and that is going to do everything they can, which will hurt urban poor and mostly blacks. Did you know that? If you care about the urban poor, you better speak up against Black Lives Matter.

I'm looking at you if you're not speaking up against Black Lives Matter. I'm looking at you if you're not speaking up against Black Lives Matter because I know what I know. I'm not making this up. This is not my politics. Forget politics. This is about people who are suffering and who are being kept in a state of suffering because you and your guilty white friends are throwing money at a Marxist organization destroying families. And that basically is antithetical to what most black communities believe.

Did you know that? You didn't know that. You're not hearing that on the news, right? If we don't speak up against Marxism, if we don't speak up against it domestically, if we don't speak up against it in what's happening in China. Folks, God is looking to his people now. And people say, how could Barnoffer be so courageous? I don't, you know, I came up with a line this morning.

It reminds me of, you know, when somebody like Tony Evans is preaching, they're like amazing preachers and they come up with these lines that you'll remember. I normally don't come up with lines like that, but I came up with one today. I said, courage is just faith in a crisis. That's all it is. You know everything you need to know. by faith, when you come into a crisis, it looks like courage to everybody else. They're like, wow, how do you do that?

And like, how do I do that? I serve a God who defeated death. And I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid of dying. I'm not afraid of my neighbors canceling me. I'm going to do what I think is right because I know people are looking at me and they get strength from my courage. It helps them to be courageous.

And if I am cowardly, it leads to the spiral of silence that shuts up even more people. So I, everybody's looking at me. God is looking at me. The devil is looking at me. My friends are looking at me. My family's looking at me. My enemies are looking at me. They can tell what I believe by how I act. They don't need to see the statement of faith on my church's website. They look at me. Am I willing to speak when somebody else is not willing to speak? Am I willing to do the thing that might bring me, you know, some people looking at me funny because am I not on the right page? Folks, we were born for this hour. If the church will stand in this hour,

I promise you. If you and those you know will stand in this hour and speak boldly, what you know, I promise you, God will continue to have his hand on this nation

and will give us what Lincoln called a new birth of freedom to God's glory. We are the church. We are privileged to stand in this hour. People have prayed

and prayed and prayed. Here we are. Stand. to God's glory in Jesus name. Hallelujah. Amen. Hey there, folks. Another segment of Ask Metaxis. I'm playing the role of Metaxus.

I feel qualified to do that since my last name is Metaxus, and I'm the host of this radio program, the Earth Petaxis show. Albin, you play the role of the axing man. You ax me and you ax Metaxus and Metaxus answers. Okay. I'm getting a little nervous here, but I've got a good question for you, sir. Hello, Eric Metaxus. Drew, thank you for all you do to deliver excellent content. I really enjoyed your recent conversation

with Anne Graham Watts about prayer. Reading her new book will be a joy. It was refreshing to hear you two talking about writing down your prayers. Through the years, I have felt a little lacking due to this practice to ensure my concentration during my quiet times. Hope your genuine conversation will encourage many of us to pursue praying with consistency and journaling prayers to help our wandering mind stays focused blessings from Susan P. Oh, I love these questions. Well, yeah, the conversation with Anne Graham Lotz, obviously you can watch it on our YouTube channel or you can go to Metaxistalk.com and listen to it. But she was talking about writing down her prayers.

And I thought to myself, there are certain strains in evangelicalism where people act like all prayer must be spontaneous. And if I write it down, that's bad. well I'm here to say that's not right sometimes a written prayer whether it's in the you know episcopal prayer book or whether it is in another book of prayers or whether it's the Lord's prayer which is written down in the Bible that can serve as a template and there's nothing wrong with a written prayer now if you read it really quickly like you don't care what it means like it's a magic spell and just go our Father or not heaven That's not a prayer. That's nonsense.

But if you pray it, our father who aren't in heaven, that's written down. But you make it your own when you pray it. I think that that's really an important thing. Bonhofer wrote prayers. By the way, that's a good opportunity to mention my Bonhofer book. It's 10 years anniversary, new edition. It's got a kind of funky cover to it. But Bonhofer, offer in his life. He wrote prayers out for prisoners. When he was at Tegel prison, they would ask him, would you write a prayer for me, pastor? He was really a pastor in the prison while he was there. And I think that there's nothing wrong with writing down a prayer if it helps you to focus or using someone else's written prayer. There are devotional books of prayers that you can buy.

I really think that we have to be really careful just because it's written down. mean you need to read it like the heathen, you know, like read it like just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I mean, I've seen people do that my whole life, where they just, whether in the Greek church or other churches, you know, uh, bat anemone, you see, um, so they're not praying. They're just reciting. And people do the same thing with, uh, with, with any prayer that's written down. You can just do it to do it, you know, with the Hail Mary or the Our Father. But you can take those same prayers and pray them specific.

and personally to God. And I recommend to those of you who struggle with prayer, I think I said it in my interview with Anne Graham Lotz, that, you know, the Lord's Prayer, imagine, imagine if somebody asked Jesus, how do you pray? Wouldn't it be great if we knew his answer? Well, they did, and we know his answer. It's called the Lord's Prayer.

And you can use that as a template. It's written down, but you make it your own. And you can noodle off on some of the sentences. You can say, you know, thy will be done, thy kingdom come. And you can ruminate on that in your own words and say, what does that mean? Thy will be done. Father, I pray that you would bring peace to our cities, Father, I pray that you would bring, you know, you pray his will.

But you use the written text of the Our Father of the Lord's Prayer as a template. So those are just a few thoughts. Thanks for listening, folks. It is our joy to be with you. Tell your friends about this program. Please subscribe to us on YouTube. Don't forget. See you later.