of opportunity may have gone. hopefully, and for my personal perspective, people may be outraged by the second midterm and maybe they will be an independent majority in both the house and senate but then there'll be a lame-duck in two years. and so i mean, i'm sorry i can't -- i can give you much more hope about 2008 but looking at this from the lens of the political scientist outside of those rigorous fiscal models, it doesn't look all that great. for that possibility. i am hoping that it will be a sea change in congress, and that there is a re-election but again, you are going to have to -- african-american voters and advocates on these issues will have to pressure the president doing it. >> host: i absolutely enjoyed

reading the book and enjoyed talking with you about it and i hope any more people will. >> guest: thank you so much for having me. ..

[applause] thank you very much. [applause] thank you so much. what a joy to be with you guys, to be here in-house ton. houston first baptist. i want to thank the church and the pastor for hosting us and making this possible, and i want to thank the churches that are participating all over the country. we have churches and small group bible study and home groups in 42 states around the united states. as well as in canada, india, new zealand are participating. welcome, we're glad you're with us.= and god bless you. [applause] for the next three hours, we're going look at some issues that are sobering, to say the least. we're going it?z take questions here at houston first baptist. but we also want to take questions from those around the

country. not all of you. we hope to take as many as we can in the three hours we have here. but we would love for you to tweet those questions in. some of you already have. but you can tweet in the questions during the event even those here thinking you don't want to get up the microphone and you can do that@jcr/traffic. again,@jcr/traffic. and we look forward to those questions. this is an interesting moment in our country's history. and this is a book very different in many ways from any of the books i've previously written. i mean, yes, it deals in large part with bible prophesy. the number one question i get asked as i travel around the united states and the world is, joe, it's fascinating you talk about israel, bible prophesy,

about israel, prophesies about iraq and iran and russia and egypt. it's fascinating with but what about us? what about the united states. why is the united states in the end times bible prophesy? that is usually the number one question that i get asked certainly it has been in the last few years. it's rival only in my case by, joe, how can you be jewish and believe in jesus? that's a good question do. i love to answer both of them. but i was getting asked this question about the future of the united states so often they decided to way book about the united states even though is not been my primary focus. but i wanted to begin in prayer this morning as we look at some of these issues. i want to raise four questions that i deal with in the

"implosion" book then we'll go to prayer. but let me just set up these four questions. these, hopefully, over the next three hours are going to be the major themes that we discuss, and of course, your questions can be veriuations of those, or generally speaking anything else you want to talk about. i reserve the right to say no comment on, especially on political things. this won't be a partisan or political event in any way. i did, you know, i do live and work in washington, d.c. and i'm a failed political consult assistant. everyone i ever worked for lost. so i've gone through what i call political detox. i'm out. i'm clean. [laughter] this particular year, i need a patch to keep that all regulationed. i'm going to be on my best behavior. these issues are much more

important than partisan politics. i don't say it's an issue that is critically important in the country. but that's not going to be our focus today, andlet open in prayer. these are the four questions i want to wrestle through in prayer, in the conversation, because it's what i deal with in the book. first, how much trouble is america really in? is it really possible that we could collapse, that we could implode? that seems like strong language. okay we're having a rough patch. a dry spell. maybe we're in the decline as the country, but plals? implosion is that really possible? that be the first sort of set of questions. secondly, a question that was very pointedly ask this week by dennis miller pitches on his

radio show. he said cut to the chase man, is there any hope for our country? have we blown it? he put it a little more crudely than that i'm not going to repeat exact ily what he said. is there hope for america? can we turn around this country given how off track we are in 70/80% of the american people believe we are off track and the question is can beget back on track? is it possible, for example, to experience a third grade awakingenning? a spirit yule revival so sweeping, so game changing, e involve e jobbingtive of the great awaking of the early to mid 18900? is it possible we scrolled a third one that god would rest your country by pouring out his

holy spirit in a dramatic and exciting way? that is one of the questions we want to process through a set of questions today. third, this issue of where is america in end times bible prophesy. that being the question people ask most. okay. forty fifth as my pastor -- fourth my pastor says. how do we live differently if all things are true and scriptures you will be teaching on today and the things in your book, if that's all accurate, what this has does that mean for us? how do we practically live in days that are challenging and as sobering as these? in that four-general areas those four themes. let's go to the lord in prayer and ask the lord to spend time with us today. father, in heaven, i thank you for your grace and mercy. and i thank you for the opportunity to have this

conversation here, in houston, but in churches, and homes, and small-group bible studies all over the country and several places in the world, lord. i pray that you would be with us and that you would reveal to us your heart for this country, what you're saying to the churches and what you're saying to our leaders at every level of our society. be gracious to us, lord, and guide us. we pray in the name of our lord and saver, jesus christ, amen. one -- when i was working on the book "implosion" i happened to be own a phone call with at governor of state here in the united states. american governor, and we were talking about israel and radical islam and what was happening in the middle east. that's my major focus, right,

that's the book -- i write about is what happening in the israel in the epicenter in relationship to bible prophesy but also here now in the geopolitical world we love in. the governor was interested in those things. he had a long-standing interest in the things. that's what we were talking about. but it being a year approaching the political season, he asked me what i thought about what was happening in the political realm, and again, i said this. i don't want to talk about it too much. and this wasn't somebody running or anything. don't start guessing. that's not the point. the point is, so we have the conversation and one point he asked me, as we were talking about how much u trouble our country is in. he asked me, what happens to america in bible prophesy? and it was the first time that a political leader had asked me that question.

and it was sort of striking to me, i hadn't had that experience yet. a key leader in our country was asking a question i hear from people all the time everywhere i go, but u thought, the fact that he sees this country is so much trouble and that something that is curious to -- we're in big trouble here. again, same basic themes. what happens to america? the reason people are asking that is because they're deeply, deeply concerned about where we are. i was actually heading to a radio interview earlier this past week, and the radio station was -- it was a late interview. it was live and one-hour intersphriew 11 to midnights one night. and for some reason, i said yes to doing it. and so they sent a car sf to get me at my house. because i was, you know,

probably not going to make it on my own. i was a little slopy. they were kind and sent the car. honestly i wanted to take a nap. about 35 minute drive into the city. and but the drive was very chatty, which was nice, but i was like. lord, i just totally want to, you know, tune out and -- i wasn't like in a best mood. it was terrible. i'm confessing this upfront. because i'm writing a ook how the church needs to wake up. and engage people are we're are in the country and talk about christ and how desperate we are and i want to sleep. why is the guy asking me about the washington nationals and they were winning they night. i suggest why don't we listen to the rest of the game. that bought me about ten minutes. then they won and he turned the radio off and said what is your

bock about? man! i'm just being honest. it's terrible but i'm telling you up front. so, you know, i was trying to give him a short answer and i said it's called "implosion, can economic america recover in economic." he said i'm from a muslim-arab background. by the time we got to the radio station, he said, you know, i'm a muslim but my wife is a christian, and i'm starting to visit a church together here in the washington area. i'm getting curious about spirit you'll things. i thought lord, i'm sorry. i'm such a moron. excuse me sir, i can't talk to you. i have to do a radio interview talking about how people we need to wake up and jesus. if you can hold on for and hour. i'll be back in an hour and talk

about it on the drive home. we can. and again, he -- we covered a lot of ground. very breasted young -- interested young man in things particularly christ. he's weighing this country he's adopted. a country that is now a citizens of, our country, the united states, he's like, you know, i thought i came from the middle east where it was rough. but things are going off track here, and he was asking very, you know, specifically, do you think that the end of the world is coming? the pastor of the church that he was visiting had been giving a sermon about bible prophesy. he'd never heard heard of the things before. he said i'm scared. because i see us in big trouble, the mutledz east in big trouble, and the world is in trouble. and i'm worlding for the pastor is right? does the bible talk about the end of the world? so this is clearly a theme. and i people use different

terms, they talk about it feels the wheels are going to come off the country. they talk about how it feels like you can ear the ice cracking under our feet. both from the economic side and from the spirit l. how much trouble are we rm in? economically, i walk through much more detail in the book than we can do today. but just some big picture. we are now in about 15.6 or so trillion dollars in federal debt. now, both parties are hugely responsible, and my point today is not to point i think ifiers. there's plenty of blame to go around. the point is we're at 15.6 or trillion so dollars. we have hit 100 percent of the gdp.

the gross domestic product.qq what we build in wealth we oweq 100 percent of it to foreign creditors. china, saudi arabia, others. that's not good. but that's a tip of the iceberg. we are approaching 65 trillion dollars worth of unfunded liability. in other words promises that our government has made us regarding social security, medicare, medicaid, promising that politicians made who knew they wouldn't be around when the bill came due. so 65 trillion dollars worth of promises that we can't afford are coming at us as 75 million or so baby boomers go to retirement. a number, you know, you are here you hoping we can keep the

promises. and there's others who know we can't and that is creating anxiety. as it should. now just -- that is a tough that's a tough word. we can't get our hand around trillion. when i -- when my wife and i first moved to washington, d.c., in 1990 when he got married. the joke was there that a billion here. a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money. in other words, politicians would waste billions and it didn't matter to them. that was rounding errors. billions. now we're talking about wasting trillions. 40 cents on every dollar the government spends is borrowed. 40 cents. which means that every dollar we spend not on social security and medicare and medicaid everything on defense everything else is borrowed. now, if we were to pay one

dollar back per second to pay down the debt, every minute of hour of every day, it would take us about 32,000 years to pay off 1 trillion. about a trillion seconds in 32,000 roughly. the numbers in the book. we owe 15 trillion plus and heading toward 65 trillion. this is why people are beginning to wonder. i mean, beam a lot more letters after the name than me. people who have studied this stuff. people who know the stuff. people who are economic fiscal financial experts. they're looking at this from both parties. i quote them from both parties democrat and republican and saying, we -- we can't do that. that's not going to work. greece, that's one issue. that doesn't look god for them.

this will be worse than greece. we're a larger economy and our debt is amounting up so fast. who becomes our creditor? who helps get our bills paid when that goes on? i liken it, and i do in the book, the risk we've 0 the titanic. that was of course recently released in 3d and if you see it, if you haven't seen it. you basically know the story. the bottom line is okay, we know there's an iceberg out there. 15 trillion feet high. and mind it there's 65 trillion more icebergs. but rather than slow down like the captain of the titanic, they speed up. let's get to new york city faster. that'll make headlines.

it made headline bus not the once they wanted. we are at the point we are speeding up spending more again not partisan point. just factual point. i was upset with president bush when he was sending 3 to 400 dollar deficits spending more than we had by 3 to 400 billion dollars now we're spending $1.2 trillion more each year than we take in.ñ we essentially quadrupled our speed etch as the icebergs approach.ñ this is why people are getting scared. they're not seeing more jobs as a result of that spending and debt, they're not seeing theirw house rescue from foreclosure.ñ they know what debt us. they knowñ when you go underwar sometimes your creditor takes back what you thought you owned free and clear. you thought it, but wasn'tç true.

millions of millions ofñ americans are through struggling with that now. it's causing tremendous anxious sei. that's why we're heading. washington, in my view, politickings is a lagging indicater of where people are culturally in other words in a democracy while it's imperfect, -- [inaudible] the credit card wracking up it up and signing up for a new one and getting a new credit card. that's how we are living overall as country. because we think that it doesn't matter. somehow we think it's all free, it just go yo go the atm machine stuff comes out. you pay the credit card, people, you know, you ñget stuff. and we are right-hand turn connecting that the÷ bills will come due.

that's -- that debt is reflective, i believe of something that isñ going on wrong, or a misunderstanding of how we should live our lives. and the bible is clear about not getting into debt because itñ makes you a slave as the debtor to the debtee.o in other words the person who is lending you if the money starts to the have the ability to control our life and in this case, potentially control your country if you're giving them control. if you're asking them, would you basically pay my bills for me. this is one of the issues that is causing people tremendous anxiety. if it were only economic, that would be one thing. but this issue of implosion. could the country begin to sink, you know, okay, economic you think we're not going to sink. it may be bad. it's bad now.

could get worse. but when we look atñ the families, and our communities, our own personal sphere of influence, and wñhat we observ not in the -- we know the country is imploding. right.ñ men who we never thought wouldñç betray their wives are betrying their wives. couples we never thought wouldñ get divorced are getting divorced. kids who we never thought would get involved in drugs and meth or crack or all kinds of trouble with alcohol and as well as other types of drugs, good families we thought, we neverñ thought that would happen. it's happening.ç people -- families are imploding. now when individual families implode, that is horrible. when you begin metastasissing

that cancer to mix my metaphors across a country and that break down of individual lives and moral codes and commitments and people begin to betray each other every increasing numbers, at some point we're going hit a tipping point. we're going hit some point wher we enter a death spiral. we begin to go down, down, down and we cannot pull the plane out of it.ñ when pilots experience the death spiral they're flying in bad weather. they usually don't haveñ instruments or they're not working, and but they haveñ perception that they're doing the right thing.ñ and they're beginning to turnñ the plane, or -- but what they're really doing is spiraling downward, but they don't have a proper sense of what they're situation is.ñ

and everything they do to try to pull out ofñ it, there's a poit which you can't. people die that way. you look at -- i put a lot of detail in the book on some of these specific issues, but i want to mention some that have come up in recent weeks tickettics to paint the the scene. we're going get to the hope. dennis miller's question. i hope he's watching. we had good conversation theç other day. for example, the fbi just put out updated statistics for crime in the united states, crime last year was actually down slightly. but if you look it in the context of from 1960 violentv crime is up more than 460% since 1960. okay in the lastñ few years its leveled off a bit. last year down slightly. but in small town america, small

towns. less than 10,000 people each,ñ there's a murder waive going on in america.ñ last year murders in small townings in america shot up 18.3%. people slaughtering each other in small towns. you say, okay, chicago,ñ washington, new york, l.a., weñ get they have problems. but may berry, andy grit i.t. w thinkñ rock solid american valç are. that's small town america. that's bread and butter. that's where we're okay.ñ cities have problem. but small town -- no. but the answer is that's not actually true. children, teens, are now using marijuana at higher levels than smoking tobacco.

23%, one in four, one in four,ñ american teens are usingñ marijuana. which scientist tell us is añ gateway dragç eventually doing worse drugs. one in five american teens are bing drinking alcohol.ñ÷ one in five. teachers of the year in a givenç city, accuse of sending swalingly exprice it messages to a 15-year-old in the school. a university of georgia professor charged with prostitution. convicted sex offend in utah is running for the school board has not won yet. a teen shot is his sleeping sister this week because she gets straight ast and he didn't likeñ that.

añ pastor in california wasññ returning from bible study when he wasñ gunned down by a gang.ç you know the stories.ñ we could tell the headlines. this is cultural decay. this is moral decay.ñ and now, you know, broaden it out a bit. pornography. the porn industry inñ americañ makes more money each year than abc, nbc and cbs combined. the number one, two, and three novels on the new york city best seller list are a horrificññ pornographic novel series for women, i'm not going to talk about it. but this novel series has sold more than 10 million copies in the last six weeks.ñ this is aimed at women from

young teenage girls through moms, through olderñ women are reading it as well. but it's being described and not even as a negative but the media is describing the novels as "mommy porn." 10 million copies in six weeks. abortion.çñ since 1973, as americans have killed 53 million children. 53 million plus. we are rapidly approaching 60 million children murdered in the unitedñ states.ñ which means when we -- if god forbid we get there in the next few years despite all the efforts to stand for life, to try to legislate pro-life, to get pro-life judges all the christians and others have done to try to do that.ñ all the prayers, we if we -- if

weñ get to million apportions e will be -- ten times more thanñ the nazis during the holocaust that americans have murdered. you have to ask yourself at som point, aside from whether theñ law of, you know, whatever of law dynamics works for our country to implode at what point does god either remove his hand of grace and favor from a country, or proactively begin to judge it? . ññçvçññññññññyçx

were orthodox jewish. they escaped out of russia, the czarist, fascist, back in the early 1900.ç if you were an orthodox livingñ in russia back in the early 1900's you would have two options. you could try to get out and so by gods grace my family was able to escape and then rather than escaping out of horrifying russia and all the persecution of the and the sort of settling in germany or austria or poland

as many russian thought, okay we are safe here and of course they weren't but god moved our family across the united states across europe to the united states and my family like any good jewish family set up shop in brooklyn which is where my father and his brother were born.ñ it's inñ this country that my father and i and my family hasñ come to know jesus as theñ messiah. and my mom's family, some of them drifted from the war and so my mom was in her mid-30s when she came to faith in jesus christ. she had been racing a church that never preach the gospel.ñ she had come from a strong christian heritage but she and her mom were going -- her father left is a violent alcoholic who tried to kill his wife with an ax. that was a bad situation so my mom grew up as an only child in

the home of a single mom, going to a church that offered no hope. they were religious, but they didn't seem to understand the bible. they didn't teach jesus as the way of salvation.÷ this is where we are and whethe people where the people are christians orñ or muslims or hindus, people are beginning to get that we are in deep trouble the ice is cracking under our feet so my family background, i love the country and iñ can't believe, i can't believe what i'm seeing. that is why on a saturday morning, a summer saturday morning you have turned out to talk about theseñ issues. the goodñ news is, and by the y i do need to add one other thin and that is marriage in and the movementñ of activism in theñ united states, the president

declaring himself essentially or being declared the first president and saying he is for this and apparently there is no political resistanceñçñ to tha. he is not worried about that, andñ so you know, because the e he is running against presided over the first marriage law in÷ the united states.ç these are just facts. i'm not making a judgment on it right now but i have strongñ personal feelings about both of those situations but my point is, we are in a country where increasingly people are saying i don't really care what the bible saysñ and if you care about wht the bible says in protecting life and the sanctity of marriage, we don't want to hear that and we are going to legislate against that. that is where we are. can we turn it around? and the answer is, i don't know. i don't know if we can turn it around.ñ you say, then why are you wasting my time, some? i will be honest and i say in the book, "implosion," i don't

know forñ can turn this thingñ around.ñ i hope so, i hope so but i'm not sure. i am not sure because we are not in -- the united states, we don't pop up. many countries are mentioned specifically and others are alluded to. regions of the world are alluded to but not the united states. you know, is real of courses the epicenter of god's plan and purpose in the end times, and there are plenty of countries around israel that get mentioned specifically that have specific prophecies about those countries. others have names that are a little funky. in the bible we don't quite know what it means that you could do the historical detective work and figure out what it means. the nation we now know as russia, nomar, not being where

gomer pyle is from but being the nation of turkey for example. it talks about the kings of the east coming against israel through iraq in the last days, but there is no kings in the west. there is nothing specifically that refers to the united states, and there are a lot of theories and i write about a lot of the theories and i kohl a number of the books that have been written over the years. maybe it's babylon, maybe it's the land of the worried wings. they're all kinds of theories out there but the bottom line is we are not there. the people asked me, why aren't we there? what you mean were not there? what are you talking about? some are offended by that. just to be clear joel, don't you believe we are actually in the last days? yes, i do and i talk about why in the book.ññ we can talk about that more today but one of the main reasons is because israel has been reborn as a country. the are returning back to the

holy land after centuries of exile. that is exciting and does doesn't end time prophecies we find in ezekiel 36 and 37 among other places that say these things will happen in the last days.ñ we are seeing rumors of wars, betrayal, everything with jesus the apostles and the profits that would happen is in motion. so yes i believe we are in the last days of people say to me, well dude, son, for we are in the last days now and we are living in the wealthiest mostñ powerful country on the face of the planet, and the history of mankind, what do you mean we don't have a role? obviously the bible talks about the process that deals with all nations. for example the hebrew prophet

hey guy and i'm not sure how many of you have done -- to but i encourage you to do it. i love that little book. the book of joel, my favorite. it's only three chapters, in english and foreign hebrew but whatever. anyway i love that book. in chapter 2 god does say i will shake all the nations in the last days. the book of hebrews actuallyñ close the book of haggai reminding us in the new testament and remember god said in the last days, god is going to shake all the nations. we are one of those nations.ñ i believe we are going to be shaken a lot harder as we moveñ forward. why? god is not shaking us out of judgment yet. i believe he is he getting to shake us and will shake us more because he loves us, because he is trying to get us to let go of anyone or anything or any ideology, any religious system

that we are holding on to for hope, for peace, for security in this life or in the life to calm other than jesus christ. god wants to shake us so that hopefully we will let go of what we are holding onto and focus exclusively on jesus who says i am the way, the truth and the light. no one comes to the fatherñ except through me. jesus said i am the living water. it was jesus who said he wants the living water to well up inside of us. he said i am the resurrection and the life. he who believes in me will live even though he dies. the scriptures in the new testament tells us he who has the son hasñ life. he who does not have the son of life does not have life. the bible is clear that jesus is it. he is everything that we need. he is our shepherd. he is there good sheppard. he is our great shepherd. he is our chief sheppard.

all of those descriptions of jesus are in the bible but many around the world and around the united states have drifted from that or effectively repelled and rejected that. also the church is slipping in the bible says it will be -- in the last days in the church will get weak in the last days. those are coming to pass but people are asking, if america is in the bible prophets, generally we are in there under the all nations prophecyñ but we are nt specifically in there, why not? and the answer is of course we don't know exactly why not because otherwise we would have to know only what god told us but what we can surmise is that the united states is not a major player. somehow we are neutralized as a

country, as a political comeñ economic, military, cultural force in the world as we go deeper into the last days. otherwise, the lord would sanctify that we are a major place. so in the book, i walk walked through a number of scenarios.ñ how might we be neutralized by there are a number of ways this could happen. and economic collapse could be one of them. it's not that we don't exist as a country but we are so internally focused on our own economic problems that we don't have the capacity or the desire to project influence into the rest of the world as the other end time prophecies began to accelerate into motion or maybe we will be destroyed or at leas harms terribly in a war or a terrorist attack. natural disasters, god could

use. political paralysis. we are fighting with each other so much that we just grind yourself grinder self to a hault and therefore we are unable or unwilling to project forward for influence in each of the worlds are the critical moment in global history. i don't know but the point is there a number of scenarios and given even where we are as a country, it is worth assessing these very scenarios to ask ourselves, then in dannatt is thereñ hope? now there is always hope. jesus is clear, the apostles are clear that if we turn away from our wicked ways, our sleeping ways, our drifting ways, if weñ turn back to the lord jesus christ, he will forgive us.

he will save us. he will rescue us. those are individual promises that the scriptures are clear about that the bible does not give us any promises about our country being saved as a country. it doesn't mean it won't happen. it just means it's not the pinpoint, it's not defined in scripture and therefore we don't have a rock solid nafisi. let's talk about a specific verse that many point to and it's añ good first. chapter 7, verse 14. why don't you turn if you have your bibles there, and in the book i quote it as well but second chronicles, chapter 7, verse 14. it says king solomon has been praying to the lord at the dedication of the first temple in jerusalem. and now this is the war -- the lord responding in a midnight or a nighttime vision to solomon,

answering his heartfelt prayer and the lord says clearly that, if my people, who were where are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn, repent from their wicked ways, then i will hear from heaven, and i will forgive their sins and i will heal their land. it is sort of classic computer basic program. if we will turn to him and we will see kim and we will beg him and plead with him and we will repent, we will be willing to turn away from what we have been doing and go back to christ, that's what father in heaven who loves us, if we will implore him, then it says, i will hear

from heaven and i will forgive their sins and i will heal their land. let's be clear, the context of that promise is to the nation of israel and the jewish people. spend some time this afternoon or this evening going through the first few chapters in the book of second chronicles particularly chapter 6 and seven and you will see this is gazette we do conduct. a specific promise to the nation of israel. now, does that mean it cannot be used as a promise for us? well, i would say it's not a promise for the united states or for any other country. in other words, god specifically says to the people of israel he says if you pray, i will respond and i will heal you. it is not a promise ironclad for every country. however, the good news is that

they are principles that are applicable to any country. paul, the apostle paul told timothy that all scripture is inspired by god. it is god's reasoning and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training and writing to the man of god. we will be thoroughly equipped to every good work that god is equipped for us. the point is an old testament promise to israel is not a promise to the united states but it is useful as a principle of the way god works. therefore, when you think about the first great awakening, the second great awakening, men like jonathan edwards, a pastor from new england, from massachusetts, he would use a verse like this and he would pray and encourages people to pray second chronicles

7:14.ñ not only is god obligated to answer that for america but hopefully he bled because that is the kind of god that he is. we need to be careful about prayer. we can just put our quarters into the god vending machine and hit the button and get the kit cat out. whatever we want, as long as it put in $1.25 or whatever it is, boom, there it is. that is not how god operates in the premise like that is for israel but we should use that prayer. we should use that promise and save -- and they need needed too. that they would all turn to the lord especially with iran building nuclear weapons. what we really need to do was turn back to the god of israel and his son jesus the messiah. that is what israelis do right now and we have to be praying for them to do that.

that's part of praying for the peace of jerusalem. but this is the time to be begging god, begging god to do this, to heal our land. and it really needs to start with the church. there are 340,000 church congregations around the united states and jesus says you are the light of the world. and that light is not supposed to be hidden under a bushel. the city on the hill is supposed to be seen far and wide. we are supposed to be like houses as church congregations in a very dark world. and unfortunately, i think it's fair to assess at this point, not as appointed judgment just as a point of observation, that a lot of 340,000 church lighthouses in this country, the light is going dim.

or in many the light has gone completely. the church that my mom grew up in, there was no light there. the lighthouse was there but there was no light in the house. they didn't know christ personally. the church that my wife grew up in on the jersey shore, no light in that little church.ñ fortunately she got saved because her neighbors had little vacation bible school and she was like yeah, iñ want that and she gave her life to christ at the age of eight. at her church did not teacher how to know christ personally. i remember when we were married we went there to visit her family and they went -- but her family was not saved yet either at the time. most of them now are saved and had spiritual awakenings in their own lives in the last few years but we happen to be going to a christmas eve service that night in in a pastor god bless

him got up and he said, the church was actually packed. the church is not normally packed. at church on the seashore new jersey and we got married there, but it's not usually packed. like a lot of these churches, why would i go there than? why not just sleep in and why not go to starbucks and do something else, anything else than go to a dead little church? whitey that? anyway it was packed that night every person making their biannual christmas or easter pilgrimage, was really packed.ñ we were praying and thinking at least tonight something hopefully will happen. the pastor gave a sermon and he said, what do we really know about jesus? we don't know much. we know about his birth that we don't know what he was like when he was a kid. we don't know if he got into fights with his brothers.

he started going through this for the next 20 minutes and told us all the things we didn't know. we don't know about his teenage life. sure we have one story when he was 12 but what was he like as a teenager? did he date? city of the job? so at the end of this, it'sñ almost midnight. we have our candles ready to be let in front of everybody in the world. and he finally said, so we don't know much about jesus but what we know is enough. let's pray. [laughter] seriously, i wanted to jump up but i did not want to embarrass lynn's family but i wanted to say are you kidding? that sit? these people need jesus. could i just have the pulpit for just a few moments? does anyone here know jesus? it doesn't have to be me. there's a lot we know aboutw jesus. it was painful, and people grow

up -- let's set aside for a moment pagan culture. i'm talking about the unitedñ states, pagans, people who don't have any idea of battle cries.ñ they have no interesting got. i'm not talking about other religions right now. i'm talking about the church. a lot of the church is weak and growing weaker or dead. if there is going to be hope in this country, and there is hope for us individually, but if there is going to be a broad taste, game-changing transformative season in american history, it has to begin with church. i have lived in washington for 22 years. i can tell you salvation is not coming from washington. i know you are wondering, maybe but honestly a lot of christians

are waiting to get the right people in the right spot in washington and that willñ be wt we need. i am not saying we don't need it for other reasons but it won't save the country. we have been there are times where one party controlled everything and many people were excited about that and many people were all upset. we have seen a switch and the other team controlled everything in washington and the other side was all upset. that didn't say the country either. we have seen a divided. washington cannot save us. it could begin to turn the ship away from the iceberg and it could slow down spending. just one thing to do, stop spending us into the titanic mode. that would be useful. but we need something so much more than that, and in a year where we are battling and discussing constantly who should be the next president, should be our next leader, what team

should be in charge in washington, my hope for the book in motion in my hope importantly for your individual lives and as pastors, as bible study leaders and people, just your regular everyday lives, that your conversations would be about how much more that we need, that political change. i'm not sayingñ we don't need . i have a whole chapter about what the white mean by political.ñç i am not saying don't get engaged. what i am saying is, that was the scene of my life and if you want to work for prime minister, if you want to work for president, hey what you come work for a king? i have got a message. this is the message of the hour. is the message of the gospel, that there is hope and i need to not try to go to sleep in the car service to tell the rest of the country they need to wake up to tell people about jesus.ñ

i need to wake up. forget about the washingtonñ nationals.ñ go to bed earlier, joel. it's not that hard. i engage people who want to be engaged in a spiritualç conversation. we are going to end in a few minutes this section and continue this conversation with your questions but i wanted you to turn with me to a book in th bible you're not likely to expect in this conversation but the book of jonah. if you turn turned me into the book of jonah, one of the minor prophets. oh my goodness, a small book. again i like small books and i like jeremiah too. turn with me if you would to the book of jonah and as you do that, let me set this up for a moment because i want to put some context into the rest of the conversation we are going to have because obviously we have not gotten through all of that yet. these are the four things we are working ourw way through in the three hours.

but i have four sons. four sons, caleb, jacob, jonah and little noah, 18, 16, 14 and eight. and there is a little gap there between jonah and noah. why did you have a little noah? jesus said in matthew chapter 24 that he is not coming back again until the days of noah so we thought you know, if we are holding him back we had better have a noah, so now he is eight and he gave a slight to the word jesus christ. attribute is israel, baptized and so we were that living in the days of noah. if you forget everything else i'm saying today, least know that. don't walk out of here saying, didn't know we were living in the days of noah. we are getting closer to the return of jesus christ. i'm not harold camping.

i don't know. i'm just saying we are getting close. but jonah, i guess he is just about 14 now and he was 11 at the time but i have been invited on a series of trips to go into iraq as part of our ministry which is called the joshua fund. the joshua fund is a nonprofit ministry to bless israel and her neighbors in the name of jesus. so we are providing food and clothing, medical supplies, pastor encouragement, bible teaching in all kinds of things in israel but also in the neighboring countries around israel,? so we have been invitd to come into iraq into a pastors conference. for a guy named rosenberg to be invited to preach the word of god and iraq, i was amazed. i was very excited. i had been three times at that point that we have been invited to come back into another conference, so, and they're not

that many pastors in iraq so it's not like it was a huge conference. it was three or four dozen people but jonah said, dad, heard you mention that as part of this conference you are going to be traveling through the province of ninemile. i said yeah actually we are and i'm going to tell you aboutñ that. he said well, could i go? you can go to iraq. you are 11. have you seen the news? do you have any idea what's happening in iraq? he said but you know i really would like to go. i hear what god is doing over there and i want to see it for myself. i sits with her, i loved it and i appreciate you but jonah, no, it you may not go to ninemile. [laughter] now my wife god bless her says, really? that is your answer? so your son jonah, don't go to ninemile? do you read this book at all, sweetheart? i said honey, okay i have got

the story but i'm saying the kid is 11. look at what is happening on the news. do you really want me to take into iraq? she said at lease pray about it. you don't want to be the data tells jonah come you cannot go unless the lord says. let him be the one that says no and not you. alright, so we prayed about it and -- brigety get to him on amman jordan and we are waiting for a middle of the night flight. i can't confirm this but the flight from jordan into iraq started at night because the rocket fire, they didn't want people to see the planes so they would fly them in at night and have the lights off and circle in an land. this was the north so it's safer than bad dad or fully show fallujah or something but anyway we are in amman and having some starbucks, it's not that difficult at that point.

we are flying into iraq and suddenly there's a massive storm or marching over the city of herb deal, the northern city we were going to land in an it's so bad that they turned the plane around and sent it back to amman. when we got there one of the passengers we brought with us to teach had been sleeping and he woke up and said, that's funny, it looks the same as oman. actually, it is. so anyway i am texting len and i sayñ we are a little discourag, jonah and i because we want to get in there and at this point we don't know. we don't know what's going to happen. and lynn and her sweet wisdom, god bless her, i have this jewish pessimism and medium battle with the holy spirit that is trying to be more optimistic about life that but she is a

gentile and has the holy spirit so she is optimistic about life and it's a wonderful gift of faith. soshi texts back, i really wouldn't worry honey. i think this will be the first farm in history that prevented jonah from getting to nineveh. sure enough we got there. so we did go to nineveh and i will share that in a moment inñ the book of jonah, let me just read a few verses from chapter chapter 1, again as we finish this portion of our conversation and prepare for the q&a for the next two hours. the word of the lord came to john a, son of anna matar, go to the great city of nineveh and preach against it, because of its wickedness -- because its wickedness has come up before me. but jonah ran away from the board and headed for tar she's

which is southern spain. he went to now currently known in israel as java to a ship bound for that port and after paying the fare he went up or and sailed to flee from the lord. man of god, he is a prophet of god and the word of god and the lord is speaking to him specifi words for this wicked city, nineveh which is the capital of the syrian empire.ñ the man of god who knows the word of god says he's not going to do it, taking a disney cruise in the other direction. and it says that the lord put a great wind on the sea and as the storm arose, the ship threatened all the sailors were afraid in each cried out to his own god. in other words not to the god of the bible, not to the god of

abraham, isaac and jacob but whoever their pagan gods were and it did not work of course. so they start throwing cargo into the sea to lighten the ship but jonah had gone down below deck where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. get the picture? the city is going to be judged with fire from heaven. the terrible disaster is coming against the city's nineveh and god sends a man after his own heart and i hate to use that term, but to warn them that this is coming. he doesn't actually tell him to tell the people to repent but tell them this judgment is coming. you need to know this ahead of time. and jonah goes the opposite direction and he is in the midst of a storm where he is now putting the lives of these pagan sailors at risk. he doesn't care.

he is downstairs in the whole of the ship fast asleep. he is dead to the world. and the captain finally comes to him and he start shaking him and he says hey, how can you sleep? you have got to be kidding me. how can you sleep? get up and call on your god. maybe he will take notice of us and we will not perish. how convicting is that that a pagan captain of a ship going nowhere, going down to pass have to shake the man of god who knows the word of god and he knows the truth, and knows god in a real and amazing way and god speaks to them directly. this pagan has to shake him and say hey man would be doing sleeping? we are in deep trouble. we are going down. maybe you have a god that can save us.

maybe your god -- and of course he does have a god that can save him but he's asleep. he is not saying anything, not to the guys on the ship but he shouldn't be on the ship anyway. is it possible that much of the american church today, we have become like jonah? we tell the story, we have a veggie tale version and people are slapping each other with fish and that's fine but we sort of romanticized and we made a children's story. it's a very serious story about a city, about a country that is so wicked, god is done with it and he says i just need you to know this is what you are doing and judgment isñ coming. and jonah won't do it.

he won't do it and goes the other direction. he does not want people to repent. he's asleep. this country that we love is in trouble and it doesn't show up in bible prophecy. we are not one of those countries that specify a great lesson to the world until the end of time. it doesn't say that. we think that in god has used this in extraordinary ways. we know the word of god. we know the god of the bible. we have been personally saved by him and the country senses, our country senses that we are -- that we feel we are in the midst of the storm in and the wiki go down and the church, too many in the church are sleeping. and a pagan, a muslim arab

driver has to say hey, joel iñ know you're in the way to talk about this book but dude, can you stay for a wake for a few minutes to talk to me about jesus? how many muslims that you know if you know any, you expect them to be interested? maybe i should know christ. i have written books about this and i still forget. i still slip into business as usual. i suspect i'm not alone.ñ and i'm just saying we are at a moment where pagans are saying hey don't miss your time. we are in trouble as a country. people are talking about this all the time. have we gone too far? have we already gone too far? is there any hope for this country?

god is ricky this country twice before. the great awakening, the first great awakening in the early 1700's and the second awakening in the 20th century. in the q&a will talk about those events. god has rescued us twice before. but short of a third great awakening, the research i have done and looking at scripture and putting it all together, i don't think we can make it and less god pours out his holy spirit and a spiritual awakening that revives the church so dramatically the light start popping on all over the country. if that doesn't happen, i believe america implodes the. whether it will happen or not, we don't have a promise that it

will happen but i think we can say fairly that if we don't egg and plead and get on our feet and pray and fast and ask the lord under the principles of second chronicles 7:14, to forgive our sins comity healed us, then why should he do at? if we could know him, if we won't reach out and say lord, even those of us that are away, we don't have the power, we don't have the strength and we don't even at times has the vision to be the society that our society needs. we need you to move in power. if we don't ask, we won't receive. that is my concern. james tells us, you have to not not because you asks not. because you ask with an internal

motor. i'm not asking for a third great awakening to sell my book. don't buy it. at hope it's helpful. i'm trying to provide a resource but that is not the point. the point is a we are at the brink and if we don't wake up, and share the gospel and live the gospel in front of people in the forward-leaning and trying to be delayed in the darkness, i don't think we will make it as a nation. let's close in prayer and then let's prepare for some q&a. will take a brief break and come back. if you want to tweak questions to us, it's at jcr/traffic. again at, the, j. jc r./traffic.

we have a team in the back and we will start to work our way to your questions here as well as questions coming in from all over the country and maybe even some from around the world. let's close this morning in prayer. father, we love you very much and we are really concerned about where we are as a country. i pray that the things i've written will be useful to people. this conversation would be useful in helping us think about where we are and how serious it is and where we go from here. i pray for the next two hours in this conversation, we would be edified and encouraged as we look at examples of how you have transformed our country and how you have saved countries in the bible in the past. when jonah finally did go,

people did repent and even the king commanded everyone to repent and to pray and fast and you relented, you poured out your mercy on that city. we repent and when we turn to you you want to save us. that is your heart in that is your desire and we pray that you would have mercy on our country and on our churches and we pray second chronicles 7:14. if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then i will hear from heaven. i will forget their sins and i will hear them. lord i pray that you would do that and unleash a third great awakening far beyond what we could hope for her dream of or

imagine. we don't have any other hope that you and we pray these things in the name of our lord and savior, jesus christ. ayman. there are going to be microphones that he will see here in a moment. i guess they will point that out to you in a moment but we will take questions from twitter and i just wanted to begin this section with a story. and the story comes from the first great awakening. in the early 1700's, actually it was a late 1600's. a lot of people would come to the country in the 1410 1500's. they were pilgrims who did love jesus. not all of them but many who came to the united states to settle in this country to economy -- colonies it was considered at the time many came in order to have religious freedom to not be told by state church what to pray, how to pray, how to read the bible but

to really and truly be able to worship the lord and teach the word of god as is the lord directed them and yet, by the late 1600's, all the exhaustion, all the effort, all the hard work of building are trying to build the basis of a new land, a new country, had seen to take its toll and of a lot of people who came as believers began to slip in the area of discipleship. they weren't transferring what they need to be the word of god and the changing power of the holy spirit. they weren't really transferring that to their children and they weren't preaching the gospel systematically that effectively into the colonies. we have our church and we will just be happy here and we were glad to know the lord but trying

to reach other people, that is not us. that was the mindset among many, not all of the churches in the 1600's and some pastors began to notice, we have a problem because the culture was beginning to slide even then. and the people began to get worried and pastors began to worry about the spiritual slide of the colonies particularly in new england where some of these key passages were. there was a pastor named jonathan edwards. he was a young man. his grandfather -- was a pastor at, let's see, edwards father was a pastor and his mother's father, so his father-in-law. takes me a second here.

reverend solomon stoddard and stoddard was a strong man of god. he loves the lord and he began to see some early signs of spiritual awakening in his congregation and jonathan edwards married into the family and hadn't been around as a young man, began to see the early stirrings of what god was doing. all of this was on the heels of a major war in the united states that we don't really study much. maybe you have never heard of king phillips. king philip was the british name for native american, an indian chief and there was this massive war between king phillips forces and the british english forces known as king phillips wore. in 1675, i quote a history book about this, the algonquin indians all over southern new england rose up against the

puritan colonists, whom they had lived peacefully with for several decades. the results according to this historian, the result was the bloodiest war in american history. a terrifying conflict in which the puritans found themselves fighting with the cruelty that they had thought only from their perspective, the native indians, or capable of. that may have been a wrong perception and clearly they were fighting with great brutality on both sides. in august 1676, when the severed head of this indian leader, king philip, they captured him and they killed him and they cut off his head and they displayed it in plymouth, massachusetts. thousands of indians and english men, women and children were now dead. more than half of the new town in new england had been wiped

out and the settlers sense of themselves as civilized people of god had been deeply shaken. it was really in the aftermath of this horrible war, this shaking, the pastors like reference stoddard and others began to implore god, beg god. this is not novel not what we came to start. how did we get to the spot? how good this level of brutality and violence be the result of fix experiment that we came to bring christ and the walk with him to teach his word and live by him. then in october of 1727, a terrible earthquake shook the homes of new england and there was a series of aftershocks, literal earthquakes. earthquakes are not common in new england but there were some big ones, and in the context of the aftermath of the war, these

prayers, god began to literally shake the colonies. and people got scared and people began to say, maybe we need to turn back to the lord. people were fearful that they would die in these earthquakes and go to hell forever and ever and ever because they had not even their lives to the lord jesus christ. out of this, jonathan edwards, this young pastor, began to pray second chronicles 7:4 teen. not because it was a promise to her country but it was based on principle that we can at least ask. jesus did say ask and ye shall receive. seek and ye shall find. knocking the door shall be opened. then as he began to pray this it didn't go like he thought. as i write about an implosion, the people in the community began to die from terrible death like a young woman, a young mom

suddenly got this this terrible illness and boom she was dead. it happened in the congregation as well as in the community. that is not what i meant. what i meant was we want to wake people up spiritually. god used to those sudden tragic deaths in the context of other ways that he was shaking the community and the region and the country was not a political entity yet, and people began to come to church. as i write on page 237 in "implosion" the tragic deaths were mighty people of their own mortality and focus them on the prospect of spending eternity either in heaven or in hell. five or six people suddenly came to the church and were converted. they became followers of christ.

a well-known immoral woman in the community came to the church and she was dramatically safe. something began to happen. this is a quote from jonathan edwards. the news of this woman's conversion, this a moral woman's conversion, seems to be like a flash of lightning upon the hearts of young people all over the town. people began to talk about how things were changing right of run of their eyes and they began talking about their own need for dramatic transformation. it's one thing to say, i'm not as bad as her by people began to recognize they weren't that far off. maybe they were not doing her sins but they were far from christ also and god began to work. the work of conversion was carried out in a most astonishing manner edwards wrote and increased more and more. it's not like jonathan edwards was suddenly more spiritual than he had been. it's not that he was preaching the gospel with more clarity

than he had been. he had been praying and he had been faithful and suddenly something began to happen. more than he could have hoped for or dreamt of. he prayed for it but you know that you pray for something sometimes than the newer light, it's actually starting to happen. the apostle peter was in prison and they are praying, oh lord, lord you love peter. and the stone on which were building the whole church. oh lord, release him from prison. the server and grow -- will get that. we are trying to pray for peter. oh lord, we pray for peter. it's peter, it's peter. you're out of your mind. lord, you know lord jesus that you are the great god. shoes like seriously, peters at the door. it's his angel.

we don't expect sometimes, often actually that god will hear our prayers. my pastor in college, the one who discipled my life for me is from the country of india and he used to say joel, joe well and lynn, this is the prayer to god. we sometimes needed english to english translation. joel and lin lynn we serve the prayer hearing ended higher answering god. a wonderworking god. this is the god that the bible describes and in this book what is interesting, as i was doing the research, i was praying for it and holy smokes, i am paraphrasing, he had to put a few more the's and thou's, in the old english talk but things

began to happen. people got saved and not only did people get say but edwards writes that everyone in the town started talking about eternal things. they stop talking about normal things. they started to talk about eternal spiritual things. they started coming to church. somewhere filled with joy, they were excited. others were weeping with sorrow and distress he says because of the souls of their neighbors. they wanted to see them say because their own souls that they wanted to see where five. he calls this a shower of the -- began to move. i did this research in one of the things that is interesting to me is spiritual awake thing revivals, they have happened, they can happen, they do happen but again you cannot put your quarters into the vending machine and hit revival and do a to a certain set of things that will determine that a revival will calm. now they're a things that we

can -- that we should be doing anyway in hopes that there will be a revival and i brag about that in a chapter on, could they possibly experienced a third great awakening? and i go through that but i just love the stories. edwards ends up writing a small book called a faithful narrative of the surprising work of god. he believed in god. he believed that god was a prayer hearing, prayer answering god but he called it a surprising work of god because we know god can do it. we don't eyes believe he will do it. and yet, he saw people move. in a world without radio, without television, without the internet, without twitter, without facebook, the story begins to move. this little pamphlet, this booklet about what god was beginning to do dramatic way in his community, the holy spirit pouring out in changing people, people he never thought would get saved, that booklet began to move and they kept printing and

printing and printing. it spread all over the country and people began to read the stories in thing, love god if you are you're doing it in massachusetts, do it in our town. if you are doing it in northampton do it in our little town and pastors got excited and they began to pray because they knew the bible but now they began to see the surprising work of god in towns in your country. god heard those prayers in and and then began to say yes. this began to spread and then a pamphlet got sent overseas and people like george whitfield and john and charles wesley began to read this thing and go wow, what's going on in america flex lets go over there and see if we can be helpful and he began to sense the world was telling them to come to america and preach the gospel and plan churches and make disciples and train pastors and this continued to spread. i just want to set up this period of time in this q&a

because with that little story. there are so many others. i wish i could take the next 90 minutes just to tell you the stories but that is why he wrote the book, to capture it and at the end of the book i have a list of other resources, books that would be useful if you got into these. my point is you can read a number of other books that talk about these awakenings are going think it's important because the i think we get, lord it looks so bad. i don't think you could change it. i don't know if you will and maybe we should just give up and we should just hunker in the bunker. i don't think that is what we should do. i can't say what the results of our prayer is prayers going to be. that is up to a sovereign god, but we should be cognizant that god has given us to game-changing, sweeping, transformative spiritual revivals. the secular historian journalist dubbed the great awakening as the is the second great awakening respectfully.

that wasn't a christian way of describing it. the nonbelieving world went wow, that's huge. that is a big deal, and so it was. on that note it do we have some questions from people thinking they are ready to ask some questions and if not we will go straight to questions from twitter. we will start over there. wake up, people. the first one is, do you think that the current economic and foreclosure crisis is directly related to god's judgment on our country? that was a twitter question from andrea. do you think that current economic and foreclosure crisis is directly related to god's judgment on our country? i wouldn't yet use the term judgment. i don't think that we are yet in a season of judgment. i think that is coming and i think if we stay on the path

that we are on, that judgment is coming. but i think we are in shaking. i think we are in the early stages of the type of shake and that god spoke through the profit haggai in the old testament and through the writer of hebrews in the new testament where he said i will shake all the nations. i think it goes back to this point about god-loving us so much. believe me, he is a just god and there is a point you can push god too far and judgment and wrath will come. the scriptures are clear about this. but, he is a long-suffering god. he is a patient god and i think because he loves us, he is trying to wake us up. what is the thing generally speaking that most americans are clinging to more than jesus? our 401(k), our housing value,

our wealth. this is a big part of our lives and the lord is shaking that. just this week the federal reserve pointed out, new data showing that the average american family has lost 40% of affair net financial worth in the last three years. ..

>> great question. i do process that question into more detail in "implosion." i think you're right. i think the key is to get back

into the scriptures and look at examples -- we're talking about passages so let's isolate that question on pastors. it's critical we get back to the scriptures and say, lord, walk me through examples, setting aside the first and second great awaken for a moment, but scripturally, walk me back through times where people were told to repent and didn't, times they weren't told repent, but they did. times that -- walk me through different examples. so one of those we talk about with joan in jonah was not told -- if you go to the text -- i re-read it last night to make sure i was not off on this. but jonah was not told, according to the text -- we don't know what he was told -- tell the people to repent. and it's intriguing to me because you would think that

with a message of judgment, you'd want to give people the ability to repent. it's possible the lord did say that what you should say, but that jonah can't say it. why die say that? stick with me. jonah, chapter 4, -- well, champ ter 3, of course, we walks in and says, 40 more days and ninava will be overturned. that's his message. 40 more days and ninivina will be judged and they believed god. they declared -- he didn't tell them to declare a fast. jonah didn't. not that we know of. they declaring a fast and all of them, from the great toast the least, put on sack cloth. then the news reached the king, and he issued the proclaimation,

saying, don't let any man or beast, herd or flock, take anything. do not let them eat or drink -- talk about a fast -- normal we we talk about have water, liquid, consult your doctor, but don't eat. a meal two meals, a day, several days, 40 days jesus fasted. but this is not even supposed to drink anything. why? because -- i'm not saying that's a principle we have to apply. the text is saying, the kick is saying, we believe the man of god. we believe the word of god. we're in trouble. we better beg ', plead, for mercy, on the hope, the off chance that god might relent. and he says, the king says specifically in chapter 3, verse 9, who knows, god may yet relent and with compassion, turn his

fierce anger so that we will not perish. now, right before that, he not only talks about fasting but he says, let everyone urgently call on god and let them give up their evil ways and their violence. it wasn't just, don't eat, don't drink. let's have a religious ceremony. it was, people, people, this is serious. we've got to respent. we've got to turn. now, jonah's reaction is, woo-hoo, that's so exciting. i love to see wicked people respent and come to know the god of abraham, right? versus 1, chapter 4, but -- but what? what could possibly be but after this tremendous respentens. it says, godshot they did and how they turned from their evel ways and he had come. passion on them and did not bring upon them the destruction the had threatened.

but jonah was greatly displeased, and he became angry. okay. jonah's got issues, god bless him. he says he prays to the lord and says, oh, lord, is this not what i said when i was still at home? this is why i was so quick to go to flee to tarish. i knew you are a gracious and compassionate god, slow to anger and abounding in love, a god who relent in sending calamities, and now, lord, take my life. what? for it's better for me to die than to limp all -- than to live. all the people repented. so now, walk with you. this is why i didn't want to go. this guy's heart was way off. but what -- this is an

interesting example, and there's a lot of lessons there, but there's another lesson, and that is from the book of nahom. it's a great little book. one of those minor prophets, and jonah -- my jonah, we actually went to the town where nahom is from. nahom was a guy from the up to of el kosh. and el kosh is still in iraq. and an oracle concerning ninova. didn't we just read that story? yes, we did. the bac of division of nahom, this is an entire book of judgment against ninova. i thought we just covered that?

the people turned to god and that guy got mad -- didn't we just go through this story? didn't they repent? yes, but, different theories of how -- of the time frame but roughly 150 years later, ninova had slid again, and the people were so wicked, and this test just goes through how horrible it really was, the violence, the wickedness, the the sore scorsercs, and he is told judgment is coming, and it did come, not long after the evil prophet brought the word, and in 612b.c. we know that ninova was in fact destroyed. those are two examples, two books that will about useful for pastors to up pack and go back

through, because here's two cases of a wicked society, facing judgment, and when one -- that same exact society, when they heard the word of the lord one time, they really responded powerfulfully, and god relent because they repented. but the second time? they didn't repent, go god carried through on the judgment he had proclaimed. let's stop for there for now so we can open up for other questions. i think there's a lot of fascinating examples related to the nation of israel and ninova and others that are useful prims and examples we can draw from when we look at our country now. we need to be preaching a message of repentens. >> yes? >> it seems to me the attacks on

the church and on christianity in particular, have been becoming more obvious and more blatant. not only the recent advocacy for the homosexual lifestyle and all of that, along with the abortion you mentioned, and also, for example, the books you mentioned earlier that were number one, two, and three, on amazon, the main character who apparently does some obscene things, is named christian. this is not an accident. it's a blatant and more obvious attack on christianity, and on the faith, and on jesus christ, and his church, and i'm wondering, in all of your travels and everything, have you seen a shift in the church's attitude about this, to combat this? we're being attacked openly, blatantly, and viciously, and is the church doing anything about

it? >> it's a great question, and it's not a very comforting answer. some churches are. but i think most believers, we're like the frog in the kettle. if you the frog in boiling water, it jumps out. you put the frog in a lukewarm temperature, and it boils to death and it doesn't have a trigger mechanism to jump out. we're the frogs in the kettle, and that is realizing how bad this really is, we're signed of acclimb tieing, as it were -- >> we're not begging for mercy for our own lives and then be filled with a spirit used by god to be a light in the darkness. and this is why we need an awakening.

this i white it's called revival it you're a follower of jesus christ but you're slipping in your spiritual life, we need to be revived. we have life but we need to be revived. the rest of the culture needs to be vived. right? you can't dereviveed until you have been vived. you can't have life stir in you 'again if you don't have it at all. but how can we be that life, that witness to a world that doesn't get it if we are asleep or we are not -- we're running the other direction. it's possible that in a room this size, these folks and congregations all the over the country, it's possible there are people who are listening today, watching today, who god is calling you to be actively engaged in teaching the word of god, preaching the word of god, making disciples, and helping be

part of showing light to people who are lost, those in the church but also outside. and you are on the run. you are going in the opposite direction. today, god is saying, stop. turn around. don't be a jonah. don't go away. follow me. now, we teach our sons what repep tense is. we don't want to use the word repent anymore. sounds sort of religious and intolerant. repent means to turn around so we taught our boys that's what it means. so let me take my you cannest, noah. years ago, i said, noah, i'm trying to teach you what it means to repent. this is important biblical concept. the first thing jesus said when

his ministry began was, repent. the first that that john the baptist said when his ministry began was, repent. the first thing that the apostle peter said was, repent. so, know was here's the deal. we're sitting here in the living room. what want you to do is when i say go, you start running through the living room, through the kitchen to the dining room. but when i say stop. i want you to stop. okay? okay, ready? go. and he starts running, and he's running across the living room. across the kitchen, he's heading into the dining room and i said, stop, noah, and he stops. i said, repent, noah, and he turns around. i say, come back to daddy, and he comes running back and jumps in my arms and i hug him and kiss him and say, welcome home. that's the picture of repentance. that is what god is saying to those of us who are drifting or walking or running away from

him. he is saying, stop. not because i hate you. because i love you. stop. you're going in the wrong direction. you're going away from your father, who loves you, which protect you. turn around and come back, and i will hug you and i will clean you up and i will strengthen you, to go be used by the lord, to be a light in this dark. and i talk about this, write about this in the book, but this is a critical need. the church is -- maybe we tweet about it, blog about it, gripe about it. i have a dear friend, older woman, and she -- a friend of ours, and she has gotten politically obsessed. she needs to go through fox detox. i'm not saying anything against fox. been on it many times. i'm just saying, she it's

obsessed. and we can get that way. we can get rivetted on the negative. that's another -- that guy, and that's the president, or the speaker of the house, or -- whatever. it can become bitterness, anger, but it's not like it's transformative and it needs to be. that's where we are. the church needs to be. right now i think we're genuinely -- a new tweet that just came in: is the church at fault for the moral collapse of society by not taking a stand against premarital sex? a question from naomi. yes. i think that true. the church has this -- i think we can't just take stand against. i think you need to -- we should. let's start with that. we should be teaching our children and modeling not having

premarital sex. since i asked the question, i was a e virgin and my wife was a virgin. that was god's grace. but the people we minister to, the young people, this is not generally speaking their supplies they're coming out of an awful lot of brokenness. they have been sold, this is awesome, and expected, and normal to give themselves away before marriage, and, one, it's making their marriages really lousy now. they're haunted by their past. they have brokenness. there's all kinds of issues. but many of them didn't even know that it was wrong or those who knew it was wrong, didn't know that there was a cost. there's just so many pieces there. so, one, we need to be modeling this. we need to be speaking about it. we need to be teaching about

god's plan and purpose for marrge, and for sexuality, and not act as though sex is a dirty thing. it's beautiful. but it has to be from the lord. and just like anything in the scriptures, if -- when god gives it, it's a blessing, unless it's abused, and the church needs to be a light in this area as well, because this is a huge area that young people are struggling with. i mean, not just young people. older people struggle with immorality, too and it's an issue that the scriptures -- i haven't looked up ever -- am every episl deals with lust. and those are little ones. but even then he mentioned multiple times staying away from lust, being faithful, and so this is a critical issue, and it

has a horrible effect on our culture. i'll say this last thing mitchell conversation with dennis miller. dennis said, on abortion, i don't know. i'm not smart enough to know if at it wrong, but i don't feel like it's my job to tell a woman not to have an abortion. i said, well, i hear you, but one of the great moments in recent history for the prolife movement has not been the church, it's been the sonogram. right? just seeing that little baby in your womb changes often the dynamic. that a person in there. that has been huge. the numbers of abortions are going down by hundreds of thousands but we're still over a million a year and what people don't say, when they have this big argument over abortion, is, the haunting pain that comes

with the abortion. that it stays with you. now, god forgives sin. he heals sinners. he cleanses every sin away when we come to faith in jesus christ. he washes it away by his life and the great thing is you can be liberated from that haunting fear of that sin, or any, when you receive christ as your save your and you ask him to forgive you, and even as a believer, some christians are doing this as well. unfortunately not man. first john, 1:9, tells us if we admit our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. not all accept premarital sins, not all since except abortion. he says he will cleanse us from

all unrighteousness. and knowing women as my wife and i do who have gone through this, who hav done this, and now are haunted by this, we do see the liberating power of christ alone to heal. we are not. >> 85% of americans say they're christians, 84% say they believe the bible is holy word of god, what's the problem in why do we have 53 million abortion if most of us are believers. how come we have important

nothingography rampant, killing men and now women and destroying young people and homes and lives and families if we're all believers. there's a disconnect, and it's painful, and that's why we desperately need a revival. yes? >> i have children the ages of your children and my husband and i also teach sunday school to middle school age kid at our church, and a problem i run into is in discussing some of what's going on and what they see on the news, and hear us discuss on the news, feel like our kids are torn between this, oh, my gosh, it's hopeless, the future is so bleak for us, what kind of world do we health but then i think, i'm not alone as a christian parent. on the other hand i'm saying, you know, things are terrible and the world is falling apart but go to college and get a good degree and make a lot of money. so i know that's conflicting message to. the as far as where their hope lies but this suggestion formants to not make them feel

like it's too bleak, give up, it's hopeless. >> amen to that. bless you sister, for that. our first born is going to college this fall, and we're excited about that. now, what we're teaching our kids is, yes, things are bad, and they're going to get worse actually. you see, kids already know that the country is in trouble. and they -- but they have good cheese meters. their knows can sniff out hypocrisy and cheesy talk from the parents and pastors. when we want to play games with them at church and not teach them the word of god, we're not only not equipping them for the battle they're about to go in but we're actually disarming them. this is a mistake. too many in the church are

coddling kids, playing games with kids, saying, oh, don't come to service where the word of god is being taught. just you guys go off and play. but, see, the thing is, one of the things i learned through having four sons, they're prewired for major cataclysmic conflict between good and evil. the want to watch star wars. they're all in. they want to watch lord of the rings. huge conflict with the world about to end and you'reown only guy on your team to battle the forces of evil? i want to be that guy. i want to be frodo. i want to be sam, luke. my point is, -- and a few years back, i was watching my kids be all in on these huge clashes and end of the world type stories and i'm like, i'm not teaching them what i teach everyone else? the power of god to transform? what's my problem?

i'm cheating my kids, and, by the way, when they can learn the language of -- whatever the languages of the elves, they learn "star trek" languages and i'm think, i'm not teaching them the language of scripture, and telling them, you are frodo. the world is coming to an end and you're going to have to battle against forces that are going to be difficult. but stay away from -- don't put the ring of power on. stay focused on jesus. okay. i'm not following all that. i understand we got age range issues and stuff. it's all good the point is, i think we're cheating our children. i think we are acting as though they don't get -- they don't want to be in a spiritual battle. but what is interesting, my brother-in-law is a missionary in brazil, and he wife is

brazilian, and they're home now, and it's been wonderful to spend time with them. and i met with him, my wife's brother, we were trying to share the gospel with him. he was not on the team, let's say, at the time, and in fact he threw a bible at us. now he is preaching the gospel and they're reaching at-risk children in brazil. one thing he said to me, you know -- the statistics are all very clear that about 90% of people who are in fulltime christian work, were saved before the age of 15. now, when god reaches into a young person's life and gets their heart and changes them, it can stick and be a game-changer for a lifetime, and often it's because they've been rescued from the other mistakes they might make. not all of them. they're kids. but god can often grab their heart, save them, and uses them

powerfulfully later. he sigh, why then is most missionness the world focused on adults when, i we reef children, they're the ones who will change the world, and they want to that's lou little boys are wire to fight good and evil. they want to be on the good-guy team. and we're like, yeah, we'll get it to. i would -- my pastor says, not a sermon, just a thought. i think that was a whole full-blown sermon. we need tone gauge our kids, help them understand, and take them on mission trips and get them involved and encourage them to pray for -- one of my sons here is jacob, and he -- one day he was reading through the strip tours and came to vest verses about sharing the gospel. and he says, maybe shy share the gospel. so he told his mom and me, i'm going out in the neighborhood and going to find someone to share she gospel.

jacob is not a talker. doesn't talk much. that's because his brothers talk a lot. i do a fair amount of talking. so, he maybe doesn't have enough oxygen in the room. maybe -- he goes out and he actually found a guy and started sharing the gospel with him. turned out the guy was believer. i was like, wow, awesome, taking you for a milk shake. i said -- he home-schools so how many unbelievers do you know? your brother's already saved. their friends are already saved. so, how many unbelievers does he know? i said, your soccer team, let's be praying for them. so he has praying for his soccer team. so, a couple days ago, the tournament, last game of the season, he said, think i really want to give them a gift, something -- what can i give them we could share the gospel with them. all right, jacob, you're thinking good. this is good stuff.

i don't know let's go to christian book store and find out. if you give me a couple more days i could call my publisher and gotten stuff for free. whatever. it's tomorrow. so i'm with you there. so we went to the christian book store. i asked the young guy, do you have some gospels according to john? i'm sorry, what? i said, you know, just the gospel of john, a little -- i don't know. so he gave me a commentary about john. i said, no, an actual bible but just john. no. so, i don't mean to be critical of that. a christian book store. i'm just saying we were looking all around and weren't finding anything so finally we saw on the shelf 15 copies of josh mcdowell's more than a carpenter. a great book, really clear and i said, 15 copies. jew's books for signs. that's what the apostle paul says, that's a sign. so we got it. and he went home and he wrote a

note into each of the kid on the team and he wrapped them up and gave them to the kids on the team. and this is the way we need to help our kid get engaged in the work of the kingdom now. we can't just outsource it to the pastors. we all got to be engageed, including our kids. let's take a twitter question. should we pray that god not judge america or do we need his judgment in order for our nation to repent and town him -- turn to him. this question is from cindy. i don't think we're in a season of judgment yet. the judgment will come. but even when you look at the book of revelation and the tribulation, even though, yes, judgment begins dramatically in that seven-year period, and the bible speaks of the wrath of god being poured out at a series of

jams poured out on all nations. but even in the tribulation, while there is judgment coming, guys are shaking in order to wake people up. but we're not there yet. i don't know how far away we are from the rapture or the tribulation. it may not be that far off. but we're not there yet. and so the question -- i think we're more in a -- hegi chapter 2 moment where god is shaking all the nations to wake us up, and we saw it on 9/11, as i write about in implosion, 9/11 was a huge wakeup call to the country about external threat, just as these threats are internal. but we also still face serious storm threats, and what is interestings after 9/11, nor next few months, people start turning back to church.

churches were full. and then not so much. i quote research in the book that shows that not long after 9/11, certainly -- if you went into 2002, 2003, the church pretty much went back to it normal sizes. now, many people did come to christ post-9/11. that was a trigger for many but sort of a massive spiritual awakening? it didn't happen, and you would have thought that would be a moment where god would get our attention. not because he caused those attacks. that was evil. the evil of radical islam that did that. not god. but he allowed those attacks. why? in part to shake us. in part to get our attention. and for most, it didn't work. you think, if that didn't work, what coming down the pike? >> hello, this couple of months

ago i read a book on isaiah 9:10. >> the hard by jerry. >> yes, it was written as a novel but well-documented and i liked the analogy to israel. >> i haven't read it. i can't comment. but what is interesting, in the secular world, there actually are a number of books coming out -- i actually cite a bunch of them in this -- in my book, but let me just give you some of the titles that have come out in the not too recent past. coe has sunday, the rise and fall of the american empire. the end of america. letter of warning to a young patriot. nemesis. the last days of the american republic. are we rome? the fall of an empire and the fate of america. the post american world.

dismantling america. after america. suicide of a superpower. will america survive to 2025? that's just a handful of books that are being written by people who, seriously, a few years ago, if somebody raised an issue of could america implode, could we not survive could we collapse? that would have been considered offensive. deeply offensive to most americans, certainly most christians. but i'm not getting any pushback. i would say i'm behind the curve in noticing and feeling like, all right, if the lord is telling me to write about this, most of those books deal with the economic, the political, and some of them deal with cultural, but most of them don't deal with the spiritual. therefore, they're defining much of the problem, but they're not defining the answer. they're diagnosing the cancer in our body politic but they're not

offering a cure. and this is a point that i make in implosion, which is that we need to look at society through three lenses. through what i call the economic lens. through the geo political lens. and then through the lens of the bible. my view is if you only look at current events, events in history, currently now, through economic and geopolitical lenses, you're not able to see in three dimensions. it's only when you look through the third lens, through the lens of a biblical perspective, can you begin to see clearer. it doesn't mean you'll understand everything about every moment of what's going on in your country or others but we can't certainly understand what's happening in a country or how to fix it unless we're getting god's perspective. and unfortunately too many churches aren't teaching the

scriptures. me a use a verse here or there but they're not teaching through the bible. they're not picking a book of the bible -- take jonah, or take first peter, and just go through verse by verse, line by line, chapter by chapter, and unpack, what is god saying? what was he saying to that city or nation? what is he saying the church? that's how the hers were written. imagine getting -- these days people dope even mail letters. that's why the post office is imploding. that's a separate issue. imagine you get an e-mail from your wife and, let's say you're on a business trip, and it's a long, detailed e-mail and she is sharing what's going on with the kids and her and things -- critical information you need to know, but rather than read it all, you just pick out a line that says, i love you. or, i miss you. awesome. maybe that's the first line, for example. hey, i'm go.

and the next line, i love you, i miss, and the mortgage us die and we don't have any now and won't have a house when you get home. my point is we can'tic and choose verses out of these epistles, whole letters for the church to walk through the challenges if you just cherry pick your way through it you're not going to understand the totality of what god is saying and you won't know the context of why god is saying what he was saying. was at a pastor retreat, and we are were going through first peter, which is a book about how we're going to suffer as we go deeper into the last days, and it's because god wants us to draw closer to him to our suffering servant, jesus, who suffered fitz and -- suffered first and most.

so the scriptures are clear heaves going to let us suffer and in fact he's going to bring suffering into our lives to draw competely dependent on christ. because he is our example. and somebody pulled out this express said, there's a verse here that says, by his wounds we are healed. the young past you're says i have friends that say that verse you apply that to member who is civic and they will be held. i said, okay, i appreciate that question. it's a great question. but that's completely missing the context of the text. is god a healer? absolutely. gentleman have extra is a healer. he raises people from the dead. this who is god is, and he doesn't just heal people in the bible. he heals people now. but, again, you can't put the quarter in and say that god's going to heal you just because you pray for it. otherwise, when paul prayed

three times for the thorn in his flesh to be taken away, how come god said, no, no, no. my grace is sufficient for you. my strength is perfected in your weakness. god answered the prayer. the answer was, no. i'm not going to heal you. deal with it. as i help you deal with it. as i take you through it. as you identify with my suffering, but i give you power. because, paul, want you to be weak so people don't think, paul is so great, paul is so smart, paul is never sick, he has car and jet planes and rolexs. i want to be like him. who wanted to be like paul? ship wrecked. tortured. beaten. flogged. stoned. if you were in the 60s, okay, maybe. but, you know. he would go around and he said, even when i preach, i'm not

trying to preach entertainment. i'm not trying to put on a show. i preach -- i try to forget everything except christ and being crucified. i don't want people's faith in christ to rest on how brilliant am as a speaker. i want it to rest on the power of god, that christ is powerful, that he is rised. i'm a moron, he is saying, compared to christ. don't pend on me. depend on christ. so he says i'm going fear and trembling. when jacob said he was scared to share the gospel with member in our neighborhood issue said, welcome to paul's world. paul said, niche fear and trembling. do you feel that way? i don't want to share the gospel. that would be -- >> the fear and trembling is a good thing. it makes us dependent on christ.

let me stop there so i can take your questions. >> there's many people that feel like the bankruptcy economically of our country, the bankruptcy morally of our country, is imminent. it's not if it's going to happen. it's when it's going to happen. and i know you've been in several countries throughout the world that have gone through that situation. but have you seen churches that have prepared for the opportunities because whenever this does take place, it's going to be a tremendous amount of opportunities for the church? have you seen churches that did prepare for the opportunity and how did they prepare for it? >> that's a great question. generally, the places i've gone, and the christian leaders i've spoken to that are national christian leaders from their country, generality tell -- generally tell me they were unprepared.

didn't see the driven about to be burnt down. take china. i have not gone the people's republic of china but look at china and you say, okay, enemy, they make good products for william, -- for wal-mart, but we got some concern, they're a rising economic power. owl kind of issues. but the church was effectively burn to the ground 30 some years ago, right? the communists just tried to decimate the church and they did a pretty good job in terms of trying to decimate the people of christ. but now there is north of 100 million followers of christ, some say 120 million followers of jesus christ. why? because they have preachers on television? because they have megachurchs? because they have christian book stores on every corner? because they have -- because they're tweeting their faith? they're handing out door-to-door? no. jesus allowed godless, athiest,

communist to essentially burn the church down so he could grow something better, stronger, deeper. people who realize i don't have anything but christ and they began to say, need jesus. and when they were in prisons or huddled in their home and realized, we're terrified. how come the next door neighbor have a light in their eye? something in their soul -- something sweet and peaceful about them. they're going through the same nightmare i am. what do they have that i don't? and that -- people -- chinese people start going to friends who were christians, true followers of christ, what do you have? i want it. and the cleaners, the believers of jesus would say, i'll tell you but you could get beaten. you could get imprisoned. they could kill you for this. okay, maybe, but i can see you have life, and i need it. for this life and the life to come.

and people are coming to christ. one of the greatest spiritual awakenings in the world and have to ask ourselves, i the church stronger in china or in america? and if you conclude that it's china, then you have do ask yourself how we got there how did they get there? how did god take them to this strength? there's the back to jerusalem movement in china, this missionary movement, where chinese believers in jesus say they want to reach every country, every culture, between communist china and jerusalem with a gospel, and western missionaries are saying, i don't know if that's a good idea. you know, that's hindu country, buddhist, muslim country, they'll kill you, torture you beat you, execute you, and the chinese believers are like, and that would be different how? than what we have?

but we have the life. we have the truth, the living water is inside of us. it didn't come from a church steeple. the church is not the steeple? the fear is -- they don't have the building. they don't have -- christ is living powerfully inside them and i have to ask, in suddenna, there's now five million followers of christ in iran there's more than a million followers of christ, in a muslim country, a radical muslim country building nuclear weapons. do we want what happened in china? do we want what happened -- a decides genocide in sudan, do we want islamic revolution in united states? we don't. but before you say, god, please don't let terrible things to happen to our country, we have to look at it from god's perspective. i don't want terrible things to happen. i want a revival to come without terrible things to happen, but generally peeking in the

scriptures and in history, god allows nations and churches -- churches, captle c -- in a sense to be burned down. in order that hing grow something deeper, stronger, where all the believers have is jesus. now, that is why this book might not do well. and i understand that. but i'm asking you to think about that god is shaking may need to get worse to get us really where we need to be. 9/11 didn't work. yes, sir. >> the country has been brainwashed -- >> can you start again. >> the country had been brainwashed by the separation of state and god and church. churches have been intimidate by that, and the minority that do

not believe, but we have lost in the book -- for instance, a drunk driver kills an expect tenant mother, he is charged with two measures and yet that same woman can get an abortion and walk out a free person. how can the church address those issues? >> well, that's a great question. i mixed that poll politics is a lagging indicator of where a country is morally and spiritually. the greatest way to change the state capital is to change hearts. changed hearts -- hearts fixed on jesus that say i wouldn't live in a biblical way. want to follow the scriptures. i want me leaders to lead based on biblical principles. i'm not -- i want them to live by basic biblical prims.

start with, not getting us in debt, because we will be enslaved by debt. that's a basic principle and we're not living by it. but ultimately the way you have to really -- the only way to get there is the society to change, the way society changes is for individuals to change. individuals can only change by their hearts changing because their mind will only change if they're heart has been transform and that can only happen through christ and i think we're at the point where the church -- i'll speak for myself. my -- going to the radio interview and not wanting to talk about jesus on the way. i couldn't be bothered at the moment. at it good to confess and say, we're all like that. i hope that if you haven't dish if you're not comfort enable how to share your faith, maybe take

a copy of implosion and give it to a friend and say, i heard this guy talk. i'm curious your take. let's get coffee. that's a good way to get a spiritual conversation started. but in the end, we -- i have to start sharing my faith more, and we need to start engaging our culture, even if there is a -- i think about my brother-in-law. he threw a bible at his sister and me once when we were trying to share the gospel. that happens. people who don't love jesus think this is foolishness and offensive to them. but you know what? i think it's fair to say that he loves the fact that we tried. and that we prayed for him. because -- not because of us but because god opened his eyes a few years later through a crisis. through something horrible happening in his life that shook him so much that he had to ask

himself, what do i have? my sister has something that i don't have. we went to the same church. we went to the same youth group. we played the same games. we were rebels together. but somehow my older sister knows god in a way that is permanent and -- that it personal and real and when the crisis came to our family, it's sustaining her and not sustaining me. you will get resistance. we will get resistance, but we're not trying to please them. we're trying to rescue them from hell. let's just be clear. it's not just about a bad life on earth. we're trying to rescue them from going to hell and burning in the lake of fire forever and ever and ever, with no way of escape. or receive christ as their

savior and be born again and go to heaven and live with jesus andol and me, forever, and ever, and ever. those are the choices. if we really believe that, we have to live it. we have to communicate it. we dare not -- we cannot try to slip into heaven incognito with a hoodie and sunglasses saying, thank god, i'm saved. jesus said, before he left earth, he said in matthew, chapter 28, go and make disciples of all nations. baptizing them in the name of father, the son, and the holy spirit, and teaching them to obey all i have commanded, and i am with you to the very end of the age, i'm with you always. he's with us. the verse starts -- the verse

before is, all authority in heaven and on earth, has been given to me, christ said. therefore, go. in other words, i'm in charge. you'll get resistance. people will hate you. do it anyway. and i'll be with you the very enof the age. we're getting close to the end of the age, and the questions, are we making disciples? and i'm going to be with you question in a moment. this is an important point. many of us are going to get to heaven. and we are truly born again, and jesus is going to welcome us with open arms when with get there. but i suspect he's going to say, i'm so glad you're here. become aboard. i prepared a place for you. now, would you introduce me to some of your disciples? and some of us, many of us are going to say, my what? my who? you know, your disciples. many of us are going to get blank looks on our faces and are

going to be like, is that streak in what did you say? your disciples. i said go and make disciples of all nations. right? lead them into the kingdom of christ. help them to grow in their faith. teach them the word, show them how to live the christian life. take them under your wing and help them to grow. and a lot of christians, born-again believers,er going to be horrified, standing before jesus saying, was that an important thing to do? now, i'm paraphrasing -- walk with mily to me considering of this possibility. the lord could say, really? the great commission, that's what i said, one over the last things i said is to go and do this, make disciples. most of us don't know what a disciple is. most of us -- they don't know how to make other disciple. most of us have never made a disciple.

i was very fortunate. not only were my parents investors in my spiritual life but when i went to college, there's a great guy on stafford campus' crusade for christ who taught me to to sayre my taught, and my pastor in college was this man from india, dr. koshi. he took my -- then my girlfriend, lynn, and i, and a number of others, young people, and we would meet at 7:00 every morning and i'm not an earl early guy. i was filmmaker. one of the reasons i did it. i digress. and he said these things you heard me say in the presence of many witnesses, teach them to reliable men. that will be able to teach others also. personal. investment.

and that dr. koshi says every christian needs to answer two simple questions. first who is investing in me? and who aim investing in, or grammaticallier who correct, whom am ien vesting? who is my paul? someone who is personally, intentionally, building into me, helping me become a man of god the way i should, that i can have an impact on my society. but it's not enough just to have a paul teaching you. we need a timothy that we're investing in. a younger guy, or several, or in the case or women, please don't take the younger guys, take the younger women, and take them under your wing and begin to invest in them, encourage them, train them, the way paul trained timothy. many are not doing this. this is why the church is weak. at its core, i believe it's a

failure not of evangelism. i believe it's a failure of discipleship, it's an epic failure of discipleship. this is how churches grow weak, because older, wiser, believers, are not investing in younger people, or at least younger than them, at least younger spiritually, and helping them to take what they know in their heads scripturally and get it into their hearts and then get the gears moving, get the athlete in motion, in their life, and that -- i wrote a book called "the invested life: making disciples of all nations one at a time." i wrote a few notes and we worked on it together. we never seriously tried to publish it. weighted as a workbook with people we were discipling, but

when i was working on this project and i began to think, the biggest crisis in our country, at its core is, the epic failure of discipleship. the church is not passing on and training younger believers to live this way. a moral, holy, prayerful life. that's the failure so continuedale said we'd be willing to publish that. so in september, a little book called "the invested life" will come out, which i hope will be helpful. another resource like this one, but sort of taking you to the next stage because we don't want to again to heaven dish don't want to get to heaven and stan before jesus and have him say what part of the great commission did you not understand, son? was it in greek? well, actually it was but you had all the translation. so that's a critical issue. one of our last patients.

thank you for your patience. >> thank you for you teaching today. as we make disciples, as i strive, one of the hardest questions i get from believers and nonbelievers alike is what the rapture is, and you talk about that in your book as one of the downfalls of americans itch agree fully with you. i was fortunate enough to read the whole thing and i encourage everybody to read the whole thing. one one of the final ended to america will be when we are raptured because we have such a great christian body here. it will not be the same america. one of biggest pushbacks i get -- you talk about, we're all gob believing christians are going to be gone in the blink of an eye. what about the chirp who have not reached the age of decision? do they go, stay? what does the bible stay about that? >> that's a big one to close on. with three minutes to go.

it's a great question, the, though, and one on our hearts. i define the rapture, i know that term is not in the bible but i walk through what it means. the worth trinity is nose in the barracks either, but be learn from the scriptures, at a moment of god's choosing -- that's the context -- the trumpet is going to blow and the word jesus christ is going to come down, and the dead in christ, people who died already but had known christ as their personal savior, and we'll meet them in the air. gone, boom, out of here. that's going to be exciting. what happens to young people? the answer is, i do not know. wonderful scholarships i respect believe if children are not yet age 13, that would be an age of

accountability, and everyone under that will be raptured. i don't know. i just don't. i means at least we need to be very sober about teaching our children to know christ permanently and make that an urgent priority. but we cannot only limit our ministry to our children. i mean, a lot of people, a lot of young couples, young families, say the great commission, go and make disciple, but i'm busy. it's hard. and believe me, it's hard. it was harder for my wife because she did all the work but it's challenging are f-first to give birth to four boys, and it's hard and we don't have the gift of raising teenage daughter. that's apparently a challenge also, and god blesses you for doing that, because some day that may come in handy, for our sons. so keep up the good work. anyway, i don't know the answer to that question, but we need to

be praying and i want tone courage you now as we close, this is the critical moment in our country's history. i don't know how much more time we have. good-good-... flsh to get into the scripture but it might be good for a book club, and it's i hope it did good

evangelistic tool that you share that with the neighbor. and began to get into the conversation spiritually. the gospel is clear in there as well as the whole spiritual conversation. this is an exciting moment in our country for the church i think. i want to be optimistic, because i describe myself as a strategic optimist but a tactical pessimist. i know it is all going to work out somehow but i fear partly by jewish side of me is it's well today but tamar is going to get worse but we are not supposed to live by fear. we are supposed to walk by faith and the love this country. it's in deep trouble, and we have the answer and the answer is jesus christ. he has rescued us in the past. he might rescue us again. made the church be blessed by

god, to be used for him and buy bye-bye him at this moment, and may you truly give your life wholly and completely to christ. don't hold that. don't behalf in. be all in with christ at this moment. we look at what is happening in the last days and we look at what is happening, what the bible says, and we can go check, check, everything is ready for him to come and get us so if you are living a life, drifting or rebellious from christ, if you are doing anything, watching anything, listening to anything, reading anything, spending time with someone or something for which he would he ashamed when christ comes back for you, could i encourage you to, and in fact if you have any major plans for sin in your life, can i encourage you to postpone those? yet very -- better yet cancel

them out right. now is the time to turn around and come back to the father and plead for his forgiveness through the blood of christ in him alone, that he would use you, bless you, mold you, you and your household and your church and your community and this nation. this is the moment. let's pray. father in heaven we thank you for this time and these are big topics and i thank you for giving us this time and all these folks who are here in houston and around the country and even around the world. who are interested in this topic, i pray that all the things we have said today that they would be edifying and would be encouraging to people to get back to christ. we need your spirit to move. we need a third great awakening in this country and we need a spiritual awakening in the church all over the planet.

may you purify your bride, for your namesake before it's too late, please father. we pray in the name of our great king and our savior, jesus christ. amen. and let me just close by saying thank you everyone here at houston's first baptist and around the country as well and i also want to say that i hope this is a resource for you and i hope invested in life in september will be and also the pastor here wrote a fabulous book about the walk with christ, abiding with him in this moment in history called, i am changes who i am. it walks through what jesus taught in the book if john. i love the book and i endorse it. i don't endorse a lot of books that greg but greg has become a friend and this is why we want to do this event together.

i would encourage you to consider that book as well. i am changes who i am. this is the story of christ in us. may god left you in thank you for your time and i really appreciate you guys coming out on me humid houston summer morning. god bless you, thank you. [applause] >> well there is a new exhibit at the library of congress and it is called books that shaped america. booktv is taking a tour that exhibit and joining us is roberta shaffer who is associate librarian for the library of congress. ms. shaffer, why do you call it books that shaped america? >> while we actually call it looks that shaped america is supposed to some of the other words we considered like changed america because we think that

looks slowly have an impact on american society and shapes seem to be the better word to imply that kind of connotation. >> when you think of the words shaped and what you just said what comes to mind immediately? >> that is the fabulous part of this exhibit. no one book is shaping america. so many books have had such a profound influence on american culture and society and indeed of what america is. that it would be impossible and it really would be improper to pick one book from the 88 that are here. >> there are 88 books and the exhibit starts out with common sense. >> yes it does although the earliest book is actually ben franklin spoke on electricity. so, we have two books about common sense in the show. one is dr. spock's book on raising your child in a commonsense way and of course thomas payne's book that shaped

the american revolution. >> now when you see these books, are these all first editions very rare? >> they are not all first editions that are very rare although we have many books in our collection in our library of congress collection that would be first edition in very rare. it's not one-of-a-kind, but we have selected books for a variety of reasons. some of them have subscriptions by other famous people are the authors themselves. two books in this collection that i just adore books that are part of the armed service book outreach to people serving in the military. so we have two examples of books that soldiers -- i believe now they are at the war front on ipods and other things but at least annealed in des. >> what are the two books that you have? >> i believe that one of them as tarzan and i'm trying to think now what the other one is.

but oh my goodness. >> while you think of that, in this exhibit there are a lot of novels. >> yes, novels are a critical part of american culture. not only novels that people have read, the common people read that but some very highbrow and very special novels. some novels that appeal to spread -- people of all ages. the "wizard of oz," charlotte's web, hardly limited to just a children's audience. >> and gone with the wind is here as well. how did those book shape america? >> well many of them identified who we were becoming or the aspirations we had as a nation. others told of that experience that we had uniquely as americans like the diaries of lewis and clark. many others really defined our dialect, huckleberry finn or nora hurston's book.

they talk in dialects of a shape not only ideas but how we speak today. >> now y'all -- also have some social cultural books and i want to ask about those. for example you mentioned dr. spock. there a couple of cookbooks in this collection and of book called the big book. >> we also thought it was very important to look at nonfiction and books that either were self-help are kind of broke barriers of certain kinds. so we looked across the broad spectrum of books that shaped america. we did not want to limit ourselves to a particular genre or a particular kind of look or even a certain kind of author writing style. we looked for many books that were innovative, the kind of showed america as as this innovative country, as a country that looked for practical solutions to shared her experiences broadly, that used books and stories to inspire,

going to the frontier. that could be literally or intellectually. >> here at the library of congress, you are in charge of the windowing process? >> that's an interesting question. it's definitely a very large committee with no chairperson which i think is really interesting. we had a number of concessions as people brought forth titles, and believe it or not, it was not all that difficult to select these books, because they think as you have implied, this is not a definitive list. there is no article that shaped the title in this exhibition so we really decided what we wanted to do was choose books that would get america talking about books. that was not as difficult to find consensus on as maybe choosing the 50 books or the 100 bucks. and so we didn't need a chairperson.

>> some of the books in here have created social movements. ida tarbell, upton sinclair, rachel parson. >> i think one of the interesting things about many of the books here are that they not only created social movements that but some even lead to legislation, so we have seen the jungle in here and we know that it really created the forerunner legislation to the food and drug administration being created. not only social movements but actually legislation, actually social change. >> why 88? >> 88 is really where we decided to stop. we were worried about using a number that is commonly associated with a definitive list so we avoided 10, 25 and 100. beyond that it was kind of up for grabs them a when we got to 88 we said you know we think that's a good number. it won't give anybody the impression that we meant to stop

at 88. >> poetry books, are they inhere? >> they are. we have quite a few exemplars of poetry running the span of 18th century so we have got walt whitman. we have allen ginsburg so we really tried to be very clear that poetry has been an impressive part of american history and that americans have been very committed to both writing and reading poetry. and i think that continues today. >> what about religious books? >> well we do have a holographic rival. a lot of the books, while they would necessarily be associated with a religion, have a moralistic or a kind of a do good tone to them. and we really felt that is more representative of america. in our values and then a particular religious books so we try to look at the values of america, her spiritual sort of

persona rather than looking at particular books. >> roberta shaffer how did you get your start here the library of congress? >> oh my goodness. well, i started here over 30 years ago as the first special assistant to the law library and fresh out of law school. i absolutely fell in love with the library of congress, and 30 plus years ago today, you cannot keep me away. i run to work every morning and i think that working here in being here, surrounded by books, manuscripts, musical scores, movies, the whole gamut of what really is knowledge in america is such a thrill in such a privilege that they really are going to have trouble getting me to retire. >> is it open to the public and how long? >> it's entirely open to the public and it will be up and through the end of september, but let's say you can't come to

washington. we have a viral version of our exhibit on our web site, and part of this exhibit, part of this conversation is an open web site where we are asking people from all over the world to comment on the books we have selected, but also to tell us why you think something we selected shouldn't be on her less than even more important, why something you think should be on the list should be added to the list. we want to hear from you. so far we have heard from over 5000 people, and we encourage everybody to go to our web site, www.lsc.gov/book fast and you will find the list of the books and you also find the opportunity to complete a very very brief form telling us what you think of the book and what should be on the list. >> roberta shaffer the last book you have published in here was 2007. >> yes, we kind of decided to

put a cut-off on it. we thought if we are really we are really going to be looked at books that shaped america, we have to give them an opportunity, give books an opportunity to prove their worth in shaping america. so this is an organic endeavor by the library of congress. we intend to keep looking at looks that keep shaping america. we thought you know, about a decade, that is a good place to stop so since we are in 2012 now, let's stop a 2002 and we will keep revisiting at. >> three of the later books you have in here, randy schultz and dan cesar chavez 2002. >> they are and of course randy schultz baas book had a huge influence on aids research and raising our consciousness about the terrible disease. and cesar chavez of course, leading voice, of farmworkers but really a leading voice of america. >> roberta shaffer these books in the exhibit, where they bestsellers and maritime?

>> many of them are best-sellers and actually many of them continue to be and have not gone out of print so even though that was in a specific criteria so many of them have been translated and kerry american ideals across the world. >> now i want to ask you about one of their specific book and that was dickinson's book of poetry. >> course emily dickinson is a must-have american poet but the particular books that we have here in the show is an art book. is done by a cooperative in cuba and they have reproduced the book of poetry and they have also made a facsimile of an amorous than a little tree. it's made out of recycled material. emily dickinson of course is a phenomenal poet but we really didn't know about her or discover her until the mid-1950's when we finally were able to see her poems, or recent poems and loved her poems upon edited in the way she has been.

>> who is doing the editing? >> you know those professional editors, they like to take your pen and make it conform so emily of all people that was -- >> roberta shaffer associated editor of the library of congress, books that shaped america is the name and is located at first and independence avenue in washington d.c.. right across from the nation's capital. >> now you have seen the exhibit, books that shaped america. if you would like to join local plus chat room and talk with roberta shaffer about these books and get your input on what books you think should be included, e-mail us at tv.org.

[applause] [applause] [applause] >> hi everyone. can you hear me? oh good, wow. this is so exciting. this is my very first book, and i very first and probably only book signing. [applause] this is so good. this is so good.

well, you know that me just say i am so proud of this product. the book, "american grown" is everything i would have imagine. i wanted the book to be beautiful and i think the pictures are absolutely beautiful. i can tell because when malia and sasha picked it up, you know mom, your book how nice. they actually got pulled in by the pictures. they couldn't put it down and they started looking through it and then they started actually reading it. eventually i actually got a thumbs up. so that is what we hope the book will be. the book is really not just the story of the white house garden and how it came to be and how we had our ups and downs in trials and tribulations but it's also a story of community gardens across the country. everything from my wonderful community garden in hawaii to some excellent school gardens that are happening right smack

dab in the middle of new york with some gradeschool kids, so the stories in the work that people are doing across this country are really an important part of the book as well. but we also talk about one of my key initiatives, all about getting our kids healthy, so the book shares that journey and some of the interesting statistics and work that is going on all across the country to help our kids lead healthier lives. then it's a little practical too. it gives a few tips. i'm not the best gardener in the world but i had a great team of national park service people and i had my bancrofts and tubman kids, tubman and bancroft gives. [applause] they are my partners in crime in this respect. these two schools have been with us from the very beginning and that was one of the things that we said when we started exploring whether not picket plant a garden on the south lawn, it would have to be a teaching garden.

it would have to be a garden that kids could participate in and understand where their food comes from and engage in that process because that is really what i learned in my own life. when i involved my kids in the food that they ate and we didn't garden in chicago but we certainly went to farmers markets and we got them involved in really changing their diets and owning that process, that they accepted it a lot more. we have seen that with these kids. these kids are working in the gardens in their own school and i know they are bringing back ideas and questions to their own families and helping it them change the way they even do great things. so these kids have been amazing. and they have just been a pleasure. they come to the white house. they don't get starched up and look around. they get to work. they get to work, and they get our garden planted and harvested in a matter of 10 or 15 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes they get it

done. so we couldn't do this without them. i am so proud of you all, so proud, proud, proud of you all. [applause] thank you, thank you for helping me. thank you for having me. so i just want to thank you all for staying in the rain, for coming out. i am just thrilled and i hope you all enjoyed the book and i hope this becomes the beginning of many conversations in your own homes in your communities and i hope that it leads to a health generation of kids. there are also some good recipes in there too that are easy to follow and they are pretty good, white house chefs, so i urge you to try them. you while thank you so much and i look forward to seeing you up here. alright. [applause] are right, sounds good.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] alright, that was my first book. a do you guys want to come around and get your books? there you go. that is great. >> there you are.

>> , round. [inaudible conversations] >> there you go. thank you sweetie. thank you for all your help. there you go. very special. >> you can see pictures of you in there. you found some. hi matt, how are you? it is so good to see you guys. thank you for taking the time to come out.

oh cool, very cool. how are you? it is so good to see you. oh my goodness, thank you. i am so proud of you all. oh my goodness, you guys were so good. how many more days of school? four and a half days. what a good way to end the year. hi, how are you? >> thank you so much. >> i remember. thank you so much. hey, how are you?

are you finished with school? are you excited about at? you are going to keep reading, right? >> thank you so much for coming. >> thanks for coming out. hi, it's a so good to see you. it's nice to meet you. how are you? it's so nice to see you. oh my goodness. are you ready for this summer? we all are. how are you? it's wonderful to see you. thanks for taking the time. thank you. hi, how are you? are you a garden or?

oh my goodness. it's okay, it's okay. how are you? is it's so good to see you. thanks for taking the time. are you a garden or? excellent. excellent. i hope you get out there to visit. >> thank you so much for coming. >> how are you doing? it's so nice to see you. [laughter] hi. oh yeah. the recipes, i have eaten them. >> thank you. thank you so much.

hi, how are you? you are so sweet. [inaudible] >> that is what we think about. thank you. thank you so much. it's wonderful to see you. [inaudible conversations] hi, how are you? so this is going to your knees? excellent, excellent. congratulations. hi.