Everything we do zeroes down to a final worldview authority, and that is God's Word. Apart from God's Word, there is no authority. And I'll demonstrate that in a little bit here, but we need to have a trusted, reliable authority from which we develop a worldview and then can evaluate all other thoughts, ideas, worldviews, opinions, perspectives, everything from one source. God's Word. Anything outside of God's Word is questionable. And we need to have a biblical foundation. But we need to know what determines this biblical foundation. So that's where everything goes in the series of messages. in our training at LTIA and worldview studies. Everything goes back to, look, you have to have an authority from which you evaluate all other worldview opinions. And there's a contest going on right now. It's been going on since the time of Adam and Eve. It's been going on since Satan challenged Christ and challenged God in heaven. That has been going on for quite some time. And there are many, many different types of worldviews, but it really comes down to just a contest between two. Self and God. Whether you're Lucifer or you are somebody else, there's really only two. And we separate those two by calling it humanist worldviews versus God's worldview. That's what it is. Paul wrote in his, in 1st Timothy, in 1st Timothy chapter four, verses one through two, Paul wrote that a very ominous statement here, something that we need to heed and take notice of, because we need to prepare for our future. We don't know to what extent this will take place. We don't know when this will be fully realized, but we do know it's going to happen. 1 Timothy 4, verses 1 through 2, Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith." Now that is a key note to pay attention to. In the latter days, people are going to depart from the faith. The reason why that's key is because there are people who call themselves Christians, whether they are or not, I'm not getting into that. The fact is that there are those who apparently, as Paul represents in the passage, who have the faith, but they're departing from the faith. What does that mean? That means that they had clear knowledge and understanding of truth and have walked away from it. And then it goes on and says, giving heed to seducing spirits. That's part of what is going on, the prince of the power of the air. There is influence. Now this is not just some sort of mysterious effluvium floating around in the air. We breathe it and suddenly, oh, now I've been poisoned by seducing spirits. No, it doesn't work that way. These seducing spirits are poisoning minds and thoughts and opinions by expressing ideas, communicating ideas. False literature, or I should say false messages in literature, false messages in communication. Things that are said by friends, family, other people, poison. It makes for a great message when you're thinking about the School of the Prophets. There's poison in the pot. Poison in the pot. Yeah. There's poison in the pot. There's poison in our education system. There's poison in our media system. There's poison in our government, our politicians' speeches. There's poison everywhere in this environment. We're not breathing it in with oxygen. We're taking it in through our ears and our eyes. Poison. From what? Seducing spirits. Seducing us away from God. Seducing us away from truth. And doctrines of devils. giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. You see, people are parting from the faith because they're being seduced into other truths, so-called, which is not another truth. Paraphrasing Paul's statement to the Galatians, I'm surprised that you are so soon removed from the gospel, which really is not another gospel. The doctrines of devils are falsehoods. false gods, false teachings about how to be saved, false sources of authority. There's a lot of seducing doctrines of devils. Whatever you want to hear, whatever opinion you have, Satan will make sure that it's there for you. As I'll mention again later, people hear what they want to hear. People see what they want to see. And when you have an opinion, you are looking for the experts who know what they're talking about. Yeah, those experts are the ones who agree with you. That's what makes them experts. speaking lies in hypocrisy. That is, knowing what the truth is, but lying about it anyway, and having their conscience seared with a hot iron. That is, no conscience anymore, not responsive to the Spirit of God, having grieved Him to such an extent that they are numb to the convicting presence of the Spirit of God. unresponsive. As the latter days approach, the anti-christian sentiment will grow increasingly in dominating our culture. And what I mean by dominating our culture is that our world will be ruled by anti-christian rulers. And the citizenship, the citizenry in our population will be less tolerant of the Christian faith. Not only that, but the courts of our land will be filled with judges of men who do not know God and who have no regard for justice. Oh, we have a very hypocritical judicial system now, a double standard politically in our system. We can be outraged about that in America, but that's something that's been a part of human history and cultures forever. But we've been blessed and have taken much of what Judeo-Christian influence has been a part of our culture, we've taken that for granted. That's slipping away. because of seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. A culture that does not believe in God is a culture that will not tolerate the ideologies that criticize and oppose their views. The reason why we enjoy the freedoms, the reason why even those who have and hold to the doctrines of devils today is because we live in a free society, a free culture. Why? Because it's Christian-based. But that's not true with other worldviews. We're seeing this come to pass right now, and it's been coming to pass for a long time, but it's advanced and has been advancing in full force in just a few years. If we're going to remain faithful to God in a hostile environment in the future, and even today, we need to make our commitment now and not later. Neglecting, ignoring, postponing your commitment to Christ now is solidifying in your heart and in your soul non-commitment for the future. Now, that is a very profound principle right there. Postponing or neglecting or ignoring a commitment to Christ today is solidifying in your own heart right now a non-commitment to Christ later on. You are training and practicing right now what you're going to do in the future. As the adage goes, for those who train to thrive in the world as leaders, you will do tomorrow what you practice today. If you intend to be faithful to God in the worst of times in the future, you need to have your commitments solidly established today and have that rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed every day so that when times really get bad, you have already been trained and practiced and rehearsed to do that which you need to be doing. We live in a changing world, and I showed this picture this morning. This is the proverbial frog in the pot scenario to illustrate the danger of subtle changes that go on, things that we're not aware of. Whereas you may throw a frog in the pot, in a boiling pot of water, he's going to jump out right away. put him in a lukewarm pot, he's gonna sit there and the temperature's gonna rise, unaware that he's cooking to death, and inevitably leading to his death. Now fortunately, you don't have to stay in the pot. That is one of the benefits of having church, assembling together, There was an excellent presentation made yesterday morning by one of our young deacons. And Brother Chris was talking about and giving a lesson on anger. I mean, that was a fantastic lesson. But we come and we listen. We're trained from the Word of God and we hear things that are important to us that help us survive in a hostile environment. I say hostile now, but Can we really say it's hostile? Well, yes, it is hostile, but nothing like it could be, nothing like it has been, nothing like it is elsewhere, but it's coming. And we benefit so much from the training. I've said it before that the type of instruction and training we get in our churches today is the kind of training that people will spend thousands, I mean literally thousands of dollars if you're aware of leadership programs and trainings and professional organizations that send people to get trained to create a better leadership, a better environment in their organizations. I'm talking literally thousands and thousands of dollars spent on what we get here for free. If we come, if we listen, if we pay attention. The Christian presence in the world, the way we've known it has diminished in our lifetime. What will it be like in three years? That's a good question. What will it look like? Well, just in the last couple of years, it's really accelerated. A lot has come to the surface. Our faith, our teachings, and our practices as Christians will be less familiar to the population as a whole than it is today. It will become increasingly strange and less acceptable than it is today. And we'll face more opposition, more censorship, and more persecution. That's our future. That's where we're headed. Must that happen? Does it have, it has to happen? Why must it happen? Well, there's two reasons why this has to happen this way. That is, persecution of Christianity has to happen, and it's inevitable. First of all, the Bible says it will happen. Well, that's how I started out. When you talk about a biblical worldview, this is what you refer to. This is the authority by which all other thoughts and ideas are measured. and determined to be true or not. If the Bible says it, then that means God has said it, which means it's true, which means it must happen. And we just read in 1 Timothy 4, it's going to happen. Well, it must happen. Secondly, the reason why it must happen is the God of this world is in control of things, also known as the old serpent, that old serpent, the devil, originally named Lucifer. And his intent is on destroying and preventing the light of the glorious gospel from shining in the world. His agenda is described in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verses 3 and 4. But if our gospel be hid, it's hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world hath blinded, blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. We're talking about a darkness taking place. A darkness without truth. And that's what he's referring to. I brought a message on that several months ago about the light of Christ and the light that shines in the world. We're talking about the light of truth. Satan's agenda is to put a lid on truth, to put a cover over light. Specifically, what are we talking about? We're talking about censorship and cancellation of the truth of God's Word. So this isn't something that we're talking about that happens individually or locally. In a small way, we're talking about a global, worldwide agenda, which is designed to shut down expression of the gospel message. That's why we are witnessing, even now in our culture, the efforts and attempts to control speech. conversation, ideas. Why? Because that is essential to the agenda Satan is pushing in the world. He does not want and cannot allow the gospel message to be shared. And the mechanism to control and shut down the sharing of the gospel is to control speech. Now, later on, I'll bring in another message. I'll talk about the options of shutting down the message, where I deal with censorship, cancellation, and incarceration. It's inevitable. It has to happen. we will go back to what we read about in the book of Acts. It has to happen. That's what happens when you live in a culture that disconnects itself from God. It's inevitable. And we should not be surprised. And this is what we learn about in books about martyrs since the time of the early church up to today. Senator Wolf up in DC, at the time we used to go out and talk to him every year and he kept up with all the martyrdom reports in other countries and gave our group updates on the martyrdom taking place. And then Voice of the Martyrs started putting out their publications to keep people updated on the martyrdom that is going on and the persecution against Christians. And this persecution will repeat itself in America. If it doesn't happen in our lifetime, it will come. It's inevitable, it has to. Because Paul said it's going to happen that way. It's the latter days. It's inevitable. And that's why I say it must happen. And if it happens in our lifetime, then we need to be prepared for it. And it's not going to be a picnic. It's not going to be something that happens to somebody else. It's going to happen here, and it's going to happen to us. So this message is an introduction to a series of messages titled World View Warfare. And these are the lessons that I present in D.C. And I started these back in the 80s, and then formally put them together and started presenting them in the 90s, and just been adding to them. But worldview warfare has been talked about for many, many years. Francis Schaeffer, I tried reading his books, When I was in, back in the 70s, I just, I put it down. Colleen couldn't finish it. And she was a poly-sci major at UCLA. It took another 10 years before I picked up his book, and then after that, I got hooked. I read his book every year. That was my annual reading, getting ready for LTIA. The man had a profound insight into world view warfare and what was going on. And he could line up Western civilization, and that was his specialty, and just like setting up dominoes, he said, there's a cause and effect. Ideas lead from generation to generation, and you can see how everything's connected from the beginning right to today, and why we are what we are today. Why we think what we think today. I'm going to show you evidence of worldview warfare in our culture. I'll show you the cause of worldview warfare, and I'll show you the solution to worldview warfare. Now, oftentimes messages like this, and we had, I saw this happen years ago at a discipleship conference when we had John Whitehead from the Rutherford Institute come and speak to our group. A lot of times, messages such as these produce a lot of fear and alarm in people. It's like the hysterist revelation, or the hysterist interpretation of revelation. They get everyone hysterical about, oh, the blood moon's happening. Christ is going to come back today. Well, Jesus said no one knows the day or the hour. And so far, the hysterists have been 100% wrong. For hundreds of years now, they're 100% wrong. I always like to say, well, someday they'll be right when it actually happens. But right now, they're on 100% failure, right? But it sells books, and it gets people riled up, and they're in hysterics. And that's what happens when you talk about worldviews and all that's happening. It gets people riled up. And we don't have to be that way. We don't have to be alarmed. The evidence and the trends are alarming, but that's not the intent of scripture warning people about this. It's giving information. Because Christians don't need to be fearful. They don't need to be fretting, and they don't need to be disheartened. Rather, we need to be informed. Because as the Bible says, Knowledge is strength, not weakness. It's strength. It equips us and helps us realize we need to be committed in order to persist into our future. We can't take things lightly, regardless of what may come. Now, after writing about the agenda of the God of this world in 2 Corinthians 4 and 3 and 4, Paul continues his statement and he says, for we preach not ourselves. It's the Word of God. It's the Word of God. It's Christ and Christ's message. We preach not ourselves, he says, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts. That's the light that Satan is trying to shut down and prevent from shining in this world. It has shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. Because there's no power in this flesh, in this body. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed. We're perplexed, but not in despair. Persecuted, but not forsaken. Cast down, but not destroyed. Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus. That the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. So the way we conduct ourselves, the way we live in a darkened and hostile and persecuting environment, Our sustainability, our persistence, our commitment is all to the glory of God, not ourselves. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. And we give God glory that way. The light of Christ from our lives shines brightest when the culture is darkest. But the manifestation of Christ in our lives in a darker culture requires more determination and more resolve to resist. To succeed in Christ, You need to be strengthened and strengthen your resolve to live for Him. As opposition to your faith increases, your commitment must increase. Now Jesus talked about the anticipation of what we'll see in the latter days, Luke 18 8 I tell you that he will avenge them speedily nevertheless when the Son of Man cometh shall he find faith on earth? there's going to be a crisis of faith in the latter days and that means there's going to be a loss and a A loss of discernment, a loss of belief, a loss of holding on to that which is true. Some are already experiencing a crisis of faith. They don't need persecution. But Paul referred to this in 1 Timothy chapter 4 in which he said, in those latter days, many will leave the faith under the influence of seducing spirits. Whether there's persecution or not, we see that happening. Here's what's going on. There's a decline in Christianity taking place in America. The Barna Group has conducted over a million interviews over the last thirty years. That's when they started. Just to do hundreds of studies. To study religious and Christian trends in the population. Survey results for the past 20 years show that since 2000, the number of people who identify as practicing Christians has dropped almost one half, from about 45% to 25%. That means that Christian influence has drastically reduced. That means the impact of Christian thought and Christian ideas and Christian message has drastically dropped. Of course, it's been replaced by other things, other ideas. There is no void. If there's not practicing Christians, then there's something else. There are non-Christians and there are non-practicing Christians. And so it's not surprising to see the rising trend of non-practicing Christians. But when I look at that, I think, and how long will that last before they're non-Christians, before they claim that they're non-Christians? It can only last so long. That's where we're headed. And that's what 1 Timothy chapter 4 tells us what to expect. In the latter times, some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron. This is what happens when we're disconnected from God. Because when you disconnect from God, you're disconnected from truth. To illustrate what the future holds for us in a world that's not Christian, I recently saw a taped interview. The executive director of the abortion rights non-profit group Avow Texas, Amy Ehrenbeid was interviewed by U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee on Abortion Rights. And that was because of this leak that took place from the Supreme Court about overturning Roe v. Wade. And Representative Bishop asked Amy if she believed men could become pregnant and have abortions. Oh, you can see it on YouTube. You can find it easy, that interview. Without hesitation, she said, yes. Now, this is astoundingly moronic. But it's biblical in that it's pathetically wrong, just like the Bible says. Isaiah 5 and 21 say, woe unto them that call evil good and good evil. I mean, can you get any more perverted and twisted than that? That put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight. It's astounding. When people can say, yes, men can become pregnant and have abortions, you know that there is no limit to fantasy land. I mean, there's no limit to what you can imagine. Romans 1, verses 21 and 23 explain why this kind of absurdity happens. Saying, because that when they knew God, and I love that phrase, when they knew God, not if they had known God, but when they knew God, everyone knows God at some point in their life. They glorified him not as God. Oh, that's the problem. When they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations. Oh, see what happens? You disconnect from God, you disconnect from truth. Now what happens? You've got to invent. You have to come up with your own vain imagination, your own explanation for why you're here and where you came from and where you're going. Because if it's not God's word that's guiding you and telling you how to think about it, you have to invent it yourself. That's a vain imagination. And their foolish heart was darkened. And this is what Jesus talked about. If the light that be in you be darkness, how great is that darkness. That falsehood is worse than having nothing but a blank slate in your mind. And that's what happened to Pilate. When he stared Jesus eye to eye, he was looking directly into the face of truth. And yet, even though he looked truth right in the face, he still said, what is truth? And then he turned around and walked away from it. Because truth, the truth of God, did not conform and was not confirmed by his worldview. And he rejected it. So the heart is darkened. And then it says, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. And so rather than worship and glorify the God of heaven that created all things, they turn to the chicken and bow down before and say, hail God. That's where we are. We're at that point where people believe that men can be pregnant and have abortions. That's why I'm bringing this up. That's why it's a good time to talk about worldview warfare right now. We have people, this statement was just made last week. I think it was just last week. These are the people who are, we got people like this running our country. We got people like this who are influencing our culture, our communities. These kinds of people are in the education system teaching kids. This is very dangerous. But what that shows us is, boy, we are coming to that point just like the Bible said. It's coming. Well, it's already here. It's just a matter of degree now. It's not when will it arrive? It's how much will there be tomorrow and the next day? But here's the bottom line for us. Will we be prepared? for such a culture, for such an environment, we'd be prepared to survive. Will our children be? Because each generation is facing greater and greater odds against them. Every generation is faced with, and think about it, I'm thinking about, I have grandchildren, and I'm thinking, and then great-grandchildren will come along, and boy, I'm not going to be here to see the worst of it. Maybe. If you think America's bad right now, then you haven't read much. You're not very aware of how bad things really can be. If you listen to what I've been reading out of Fox's Book of Martyrs on Wednesday evenings, you know things, this is like heaven on earth right now. As much as we complain about it and don't like it, we haven't seen anything yet. And those days are coming. And something we need to prepare for, we need to prepare our kids for that. Because they're going to see things that we can barely imagine. And that's a very sobering thought. I would rather it be me. But it's not. It's going to be my kids. And we need to help them and prepare them. And the Lord said and has given us resources to help us thrive. Our kids need to know how important it is to be here in church. That cannot be compromised. That is an uncompromising doctrine of God. They need to understand how uncompromising it is to be firmly established and trained in the Word of God. And they need to know how important it is to be uncompromising in their yieldedness to the Spirit of God. Because without that, there is no hope. of survival. We're glad you joined us for our services here at Mission Boulevard Baptist Church. If this program has helped you and you would like to have more information about trusting Christ as your Lord and Savior, or if you would like to have resources to help you in your spiritual walk and growth, please email us at the address on your screen. We look forward to having you join us again online, but you are always welcome to personally attend any of our services at the Mission Boulevard Baptist Church here in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Hi, this is Dr. Patrick Briney. I hope and pray this important lesson has improved your life. For more life-changing lessons, and to get your free book that I've written for you, visit my website at patrickbriney.com. And please share this valuable lesson with at least three of your friends, to enrich their lives in our Lord Jesus Christ. I'll upload my next lesson for you soon. God Bless.