Welcome to Watchman on the Wall, a daily outreach of Southwest Radio Ministries and SWRC.com. God is still on the throne, and prayer changes things. Today, historian and author Bill Federer will help us get ready for Independence Day by sharing the background and history of America. July is an extremely critical month for Southwest Radio Ministries, and friends, we need your help. Normally, summertime giving is always slow, but this year with the upcoming election and the economy, giving is at a critical level. Unfortunately, we're having to further cut expenses, reducing the number of radio stations we're on, and unfortunately having to lay off staff. In other words, we need your help. Would you please be praying for Southwest Radio Ministries? Ask the Lord to provide the needed funds so that we can continue to proclaim the good news. And as your lead, would you consider giving a gift to our summer relief effort? Your one-time and monthly gifts are needed during July. You can give by calling 1-800-652-1144. That's 1-800-652-1144. You can also give your gift at our website, SWRC.com. Thank you, friends, for your prayers and financial support. Here's today's host, Josh Davis. We are privileged and honored to be joined by one of our favorites here on Watchman on the Wall. It's author and historian William J. Federer. Here we are on July 3rd, and we'll be talking about some special things throughout this episode, so you do not want to miss it. And we are so blessed to have, again, author and historian William J. Federer. William, we welcome you to the Watchman on the Wall program one more time. Hey, it's good to be with you. Well, we're talking today about your book, Believe. And that book is a book about faith in these difficult days, and we need that faith in our Lord Jesus Christ to weather the storm that assaults us. And you ask some very central questions in this book. But let's start here. Why is what we believe so crucial? I present the book sort of from God's point of view. It's like, why did he even make us? You know, in 2003, they focused a powerful Hubble telescope on a spot in the sky where there was nothing. The spot was the size of a grain of sand held between your fingers at arm's length against the night sky. Nothing there. They focused a powerful Hubble telescope on it for 11 days. When they developed the images in that spot where there was nothing, was 10,000 galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars in each galaxy. It's called the Hubble Ultra Deep Space Field, and it's the furthest picture ever taken away from planet Earth. And they saw that light travels in waves, with blue being the shortest and fastest and red being the longest and slowest. They saw the red shift, which means these galaxies are moving away from us. And the James Webb telescope recently launched confirmed the picture with even more clarity. And so they now estimate that the observable universe is 93 billion light years across and still expanding at the speed of light. Boom! And the largest star they found is Stephenson 2-18. It's a super gas giant. It's so large, if you were to place it in our solar system, it would engulf the orbit of Saturn, the sixth planet from the sun. We're the third planet. Could you imagine one single star that enormous? And God made it all, and he made you. Why would he make you? What could you possibly offer a being that is that powerful? Nothing, except maybe something. What's a galaxy anyway? It's a bunch of rocks. Hot rocks, cold rocks, vaporized rocks, enormous rocks, molten rocks. A rock cannot love you. So it's almost like at some time in eternity past in the mind of God, he said, you know, been there, done that. I can make everything. I would really like someone in my image that could love me. Now it gets interesting because love by definition must be voluntary. The moment it's forced, it evaporates. So in the context of everything God controls, time, matter, space, energy, he intentionally created one tiny thing he does not control, your will. Now, he could control it if he wanted to, but that would defeat the very reason he made us different than everything else. And he doesn't need our love. He's not incomplete in any way. And our love somehow completes him. No, he's complete all by himself. He doesn't need our love, but he wants it. It's like parents don't need the love of their children, but they want it. We're made in the image of God. And so what's the most important thing in your life? Well, somewhere at the top of the list, it's loving and being loved, right? If nobody loves somebody and they feel totally lonely, they're like, why am I even alive? So loving and being loved is a big deal to us. And if we're made in God's image, could it be that loving and being loved is important to God? And the more you love someone, the more you want that someone to love you back. He has an infinite desire for you to love him back, but he'll never force you. Because the moment he would force you to love him, he himself would know he's forcing you to love him, and he would know your response is not a love response. So he will never force you to love him. And he loves everything he created, but could what he created love him back? So all the physical things God made follows rules. Laws of gravity, laws of physics, laws of optics, laws of planetary motion, laws of quantum mechanics. Everything follows laws, and all the animals follow instinct. And then we look at angels. The word angel appears in the King James Bible 289 times. Not once is the word love used in any verse to The word angel means messenger. And so they deliver God's messages to the prophets, Ezekiel and Daniel and Mary, and they smite God's enemies. They bring judgments in Egypt and Jehoshaphat. They smite all the Syrian soldiers and their heavenly witnesses. Jesus says, I'll confess you before the angels. They rejoice when a sinner converts. They worship God. They praise God. They're part of the heavenly hosts, right, worshiping God. But the word love is not used in any verse to describe their relationship with God. It's like a king has a castle, and he has servants that are intelligent and powerful, and then the king has children. You know, angels are not made in the image of God, and Jesus did not die on the cross for angels. Angels cannot forgive. They are mighty beings. They are intelligent beings. They are powerful beings. But they were made for a purpose. What purpose were you made for? We're not mighty. We're not powerful. It's like, why did He even make us? Well, guess what? The word love is used all throughout the Bible to describe men God. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, Psalms 91, because he set his love upon me, therefore I will deliver him. Jesus rose from the dead and asked Peter, Peter do you love me? We are beings unique God, but for love to be love, it can never be forced, because the moment He would force us to love Him, He Himself would know He's forcing us to love Him, and our response would not be a love response, so He will never force us to love Him, but He wants our love. And then there is a second thing, and that's God has to hide Himself behind His creation. Bill, you speak about how God created time, and why is it important for us to have free will? So this is interesting. God created light. Let there be light. And light is a photon, which is a wave. It's a wave of power that's in the electromagnetic field, a perpendicular wave traveling at 186,000 miles per second. And so when God said, let there be light, he stretched out the entire electromagnetic field, which included visible light and invisible, right? Ultraviolet rays, infrared rays. And Einstein's theory of relativity is that the closer you can travel approaching the speed of light, for you, time would slow down. And theoretically, if you could travel the speed of light for you, time would stand still. We'll never comprehend that. But there is a verse in the Bible that says, a day with the Lord is as a thousand years. Imagine experiencing one day as if it was a thousand years. In other words, we are living in ultra slow motion compared to God. God exists in the ever-present now. I am that I am. When you're in the presence of God, you can't think about the past, you can't think about the future, you can't even think. You just experience that you're in the presence of all power and all love and all beauty, right? And so for God to create our reality, He had to create a little space-time bubble where everything moves in slow motion compared to now. And so the speed of light is actually called the speed of causality. It's the fastest two points in the universe can communicate in a vacuum. It's the delay between cause and effect. So in other words, the speed of light is like a yardstick that keeps there a space between cause and effect, because if there was no space, everything would collapse upon itself, and everything would happen right now, and the whole universe would collapse into an infinitesimally small little spot, right? And so God creates light. He's faster than light. He's outside of time. Now, why is this important? because we get to make our little free will decisions. But he can readjust every atom in the universe before time moves to the next micro frame, so to speak, right? So it's our limited free will in the context of his unlimited sovereign will. The importance of this, I want a little illustration I use is you have a GPS, you make a wrong turn, it recalculates. What if the guy in the car next to you is making a wrong turn and it recalculates? What if everybody in the world is making wrong turns and it's constantly recalculating? Right? Well, we make our little decisions. We make good decisions, and sometimes we make bad decisions. You know, you have Mordecai coming to Queen Esther and says, there's a mandate to kill the Jews. If you're silent, you'll be killed, and God will raise up deliverance for the Jews from somebody else. So in other words, God gives us opportunities to make decisions. We make good ones, we make bad ones, but then He can readjust every atom in the universe before time goes to the next frame. So His will is going to take place. And so it's our limited free will in the context of His unlimited sovereign will. So God created us uniquely as beings with the ability to love Him, He's outside of time. And then there's a second thing where I talk about how he has to hide himself. Yes, let's go there. And if God is real, why doesn't he just reveal himself to everyone? So this is interesting. God has to hide himself behind creation, because if he ever revealed himself to you in all of his universe, creating omnipotent power, brighter than a trillion, trillion suns, your response, if you didn't melt, would be like the Apostle John in the book of Revelation, I fell at his feet, his dead. or Ezekiel, where he says, I sat astonied for seven days. I mean, it would be so powerful that your response would be involuntary. In the presence of all power, and God's like, I can do involuntary all eternity long. I'm interested in this voluntary decision. So he hides himself behind his creation. People say, if God's real, why doesn't he show himself? Because the moment he shows himself in all of his power, your free will's gone. And so in the same hiding of himself that gives us an opportunity to have a free will, necessitates that we have faith, right? It's two sides of the same coin. And people say, well, gee, I wish I could see the answers. I wouldn't need your faith. Well, yeah, if you saw God and you wouldn't need faith, but you wouldn't have a free will, right? Because you'd be overwhelmed. So I use a illustration. Imagine if a billionaire, has a son who goes to college and he flies in on his private jet, drives up in his Lamborghini. It's got gold rings, fancy clothes, Rolex watch. He's going to have every girl on campus wanting to meet him. But if he lays all that aside and he drives up in an old clunker, he's got holes in his jeans. All the uppity girls are going to ignore him. But then there's a girl that likes to study with them in the library and they eat together in the cafeteria and they become friends. And she takes heat from the click for hanging around this nobody guy, but she believes in him. They fall in love, they get engaged. And then one day he says, Hey, I want to take you back to meet my dad. And they're like driving up to this castle mansion. And the girl's like, Whoa, she didn't tell me about all this. He knows that she loves him for him. Not because of all of his stuff. If Jesus would have come in His glory, you'd have every political ladder climb and say, oh, I'm your friend, I'm your friend. No. But He came born in a manger. It says in Isaiah 53 of the Messiah that there was nothing in His countenance that would make us want to desire Him. He only wants those that love Him for Him. So He creates us as free will beings that have the ability to love Him. He hides Himself so that we have an opportunity to use our free will. But there's a third thing. Sure. Let's go into that, and what is one of God's characteristics that can never change? This is a constant. God is just. He can never change this fact. He is just. He forever was, is, and forever will be just. You know, in mathematical equations, there's constants and variables. The constant is God is just. The variable is who takes the judgment, you or a substitute. But He can't change it. He has to judge every sin. Right? In nature, there's laws. Laws of planetary motion, laws of physics, laws of optics, laws of—he's a god of laws, and he has laws for human behavior. We just have the choice as to whether or not to follow the laws, but he has laws. And if we sin, he has to judge every single sin, because if he does not judge the sin, by default he would be giving consent to the sin. Like in a wedding ceremony, the pastor says, speak now or forever hold your peace. If you're at the wedding ceremony and you're silent, your silence is giving consent to the wedding vows. Well, if there are sins and God is silent, his silence would be giving consent to sin. And if God gives consent to one sin, one time, he denies his just nature. He denies himself. He un-gods himself. He's kicked out of heaven. And he is not going to get kicked out of heaven, and he is not going to deny himself, and he is going to judge every sin. So he could never be loved back, because if he creates free will beings, and then he hides himself so that we have an opportunity to use our free will, but if we step out of line, one time he has to judge us, because if he doesn't judge our sin, his silence will be giving consent to the sin, and if he gives consent, then he denies himself, and he cannot deny himself. So he could never be loved back until he came up with a plan. He actually had the plan before he created the first electron. And the plan was his own son would become the Lamb. And as the Lamb of God, he would take the judgment for all of our sins. Only as a man could God hang on a cross and die for our sins. Charles Wesley wrote Amazing love, how could it be that thou, my God, should die for me?" So God is just in that He judges every sin, but He's loving that He provided the Lamb to take the judgment for the sin. You know, Abraham and Isaac go into the top of Mount Moriah, and Isaac says, Father, we have the wood for the sacrifice, we have the coals for the sacrifice, but where is the sacrifice? And Abraham says, Son, God will provide Himself a sacrifice. And it has a double meaning. I'm trusting God will have a ram up in the bush, caught by its head in a crown of thorns, right in a thorn bush. But the other is God will provide Himself, right? And that's what happened. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, the only begotten Son of God, in the plan of redemption that was hidden from ages. It was a hidden plan. It says, if the princes of this world had known, they never would have crucified the Lord of glory. The Apostle Paul calls it the mystery of the gospel. In this hidden plan, Jesus became man, and he took the judgment for all of our sins from the just Father upon himself. Now, you say, okay, God's just, and there's one Jesus, and there's billions of us, and we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We all deserve eternal damnation. If God's just, how could one pay for billions? Jesus is divine. and He experienced judgment in a dimension we will never comprehend. It says, a day with the Lord is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day. Jesus experienced that day on the cross as if it was a thousand years. You know, you read the book of Revelation. I'm still trying to figure it out, but one thing seems clear. It's God that is pouring out the vials of judgment in the book of Revelation. It's like, why is this? Well, this is the final judgment. He's a just God. He has to judge every sin he missed along the way. So you can't get 10,000 years into eternity and say, God, there were these sins way back when, and you didn't judge them. You were silent. Were you getting consent to those sins? Is there a party that's unjust we didn't know about? It says, the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever, and the angels cry out, righteous and true are your judgments, O Lord. Nobody's going to question for the rest of eternity that God judged sin. But in that sense, Jesus had the book of Revelation judgment poured out on his head. He took the judgment for every sin that everybody would ever do upon himself on the cross, experienced it as if it was a thousand years. That's why he was sweating drops of blood. You know, I have a degree in accounting, so I like things that balance. You take an eternal being, Jesus, who is innocent, suffering for a finite, limited period of time, it's equal to all of us finite, limited beings who are guilty, suffering for an eternal period of time. Let me say that again. An eternal being who is innocent, suffering for a finite period of time, is equal to all of us finite beings who are guilty, suffering for an eternal period of time. Infinity times finite equals finite times infinity. An unlimited being suffering for a limited period of time is equal to all of us limited beings suffering for an unlimited period of time. Jesus literally experienced the equivalent of eternal damnation in all of our places, and he is the only one who could have done it. And out of love for the Father, and out of love for you and me, he became the Lamb. He took the judgment upon himself, and then he rose from the dead to prove he was who he said he was. The Lamb is God's way to love you without having to judge you. This way, you and I can approach this universe, creating omnipotent, all-powerful, eternal God, who's all just, and not have to worry about being judged. Because all the judgment we deserve went on the Lamb that He provided His own Son. So again, the Lamb is God's plan to love you without having to judge you. So He can love you, and you can love Him back throughout all eternity, and it's not based on you being good enough. It's based on Him providing the Lamb, and Jesus, out of love for the Father and out of love for you, will be becoming the Lamb. And then He fills you with the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. And then the Holy Spirit reaches out through you to share the love of God with the lost and dying world. So instead of you doing good works, hoping to earn brownie points with God, you're already accepted by God through faith in His Son, the Lamb of God, And then it's the Holy Spirit in you that's reaching out, doing the good works, loving the unlovable, rescuing those who are unjustly sentenced to death, defending the defenseless, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, right? There's nothing more exciting than letting the God of the universe use you to love people and to have Him work His will through you. This is the message. This is the belief. This is the reason God made us, so that we could love Him back and have it not be based on us being good enough. Bill, I know we have some people listening who need to hear this message because they have not yet believed in Jesus Christ. What can they do? How can they receive this gift that Jesus has offered? As you said, and as Romans 3 says, that He is both just and the justifier of them who believe. How can someone believe on Jesus as their Savior? Well, you believe in your heart that Jesus is the Christ and confess with your mouth that God raised him from the dead and you're saved. It's an act of faith. You believe it, you receive it by faith. You know, when Adam and Eve sinned, they hid from God. Have you ever sinned against anybody? Yeah. You sort of don't want to be around the person you've sinned against. So Adam and Eve sinned and they hid. So if you sinned against somebody, let's say you're talking about somebody behind their back and you Look up, and there they are. They're walking toward you, and you feel embarrassed. You want to go over and say hi to them, or you want to avoid them? And so when Adam and Eve sin, they hitch. It's like two magnets stuck together, and one of them turns. The first one wants to touch, but the second one wants to get away. And so it's not so much that God sends people to hell. It's once people sin against God, it's their own conscience that makes them want to stay away from God. And so Adam and Eve said, we blew it. We have to do something to make ourselves acceptable to God. They put on fig leaves. That was the beginning of false religions. Man coming up with man's idea how to make man acceptable to God. Did the fig leaves make Adam and Eve acceptable? No. Then God made Adam and Eve coats of skin. And you think, well, how do you make a coat of skin? Uh, something has to die. You think God went to the other side of the garden, killed an animal and brought Adam and Eve some nice tailored outfits, or do you think maybe he killed it right in front of them? And they witnessed the first death ever. Creation just happened. This would have been the first thing ever to die, and Adam and Eve are watching this innocent animal go through the pains of dying, and they're thinking, we're the ones that sinned, but this innocent animal is the one that's dying. And God wanted to make it really clear the animal was dying in their place, that right in front of them, He strips the skin off the animal, and He puts it on their naked bodies. Maybe it still had a little blood on it. They were covered in the blood. And so for the rest of their lives, Adam and Eve are wearing the skin of the animal that they watched die in their place. And whenever God sees Adam and Eve, he sees them clothed with the skin of the animal, the lamb slain from the foundations of the world. And then Cain and Abel, right? Cain tried to worship God through his works. And we know it's works because God told Adam, the ground is cursed for your sake and you'll bring forth fruit by the sweat of your brow. Cain's bringing forth fruit out of the ground. He's sweating. He's trying to work his way to heaven. Did his works were sufficient? No. They were rejected. And then Abel approached God through the lamb. And it's this beautiful picture. God is on one side. We are on the other side. Our sin separates from God. And the lamb takes the judgment for all of our sins. So Noah got off the ark, sacrificed lambs. Abraham sacrificed lambs. Moses had every family in Israel sacrifice the lamb. The high priest brought the blood of the lamb into the holy, holy, sprinkle it on the mercy seat. The blood changed it from a judgment seat into a mercy seat. Solomon offered 1,000 of money dedicated to the temple. Finally, John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and says, Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world. So God is on one side, we are on the other side. Our sin separates us from God, and the Lamb pays for the sin. So I ask people, are you approaching God as Cain or as Abel? If you're still hoping you're good enough to go to heaven, you are approaching God as Cain. Right? But if you're saying, it's not me, I could never be good enough. I'm trusted in the lamb. The lamb took the judgment in my place. Right? That's approaching God as able. And so we thank God for the lamb of God. And so today, anyone in the listening audience, I invite you put all your faith in the lamb and then believe that Jesus on the cross rose from the dead. And then he fills you with the Holy spirit. And then God does the good works through you to show the world He loves them. It's not you doing the good works trying to earn brownie points with God. Yes, amen. The Scripture makes it clear, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And friend, if you need this message, we encourage you, call upon Jesus right where you are. You don't have to be in a special place or a special time. It's just your heart communicating with the Lord. If you want to ask some questions or have some guidance, we encourage you to reach out to our ministry. And we have been privileged to be joined by author and historian Bill Federer. And we look forward to visiting with you again very soon, Bill. We look forward to it as well. Silence Equals Consent, Bill Federer's brand new book, is here. Silence Equals Consent lays out the case that the time is now to speak up or lose your freedom. You look at the chaos all around and you ask yourself, what will happen next? How have godly people been persuaded to let ungodliness reign? In Silence Equals Consent, Bill Federer shows how America's founders were inspired by ancient Israel's covenant government and how this resulted in the U.S. Constitution. In Bill Federer's brand new book, Silence Equals Consent, you will discover if we are being given one last chance to show that we really believe in our hearts through our words and actions. Silence Equals Consent by Bill Federer. Order your copy today when you call 1-800-652-1144. That's 1-800-652-1144. You can also order on our website swrc.com. The fate of the world hangs in the balance and now you are the key to turning things around. The future depends on you. Silence equals consent by Bill Federer 1-800-652-1144 Tomorrow on the program we celebrate Independence Day with some help from John Wayne. Be sure to tune in on your favorite radio station by downloading our SWRC mobile app or by subscribing to our daily Watchman on the Wall podcast. Watchman on the Wall is a production of Southwest Radio Ministries and is supported by faithful listeners like you. Please visit our website SWRC.com.