Articles

00:00:02:00     << Well, we need to take the gospel to the world,
00:00:04:04     but we can’t really share the message of Christ
00:00:06:07     if we don’t fully understand it ourselves.
00:00:09:09     Good morning, I’m Julie Roys,
00:00:10:15     filling in for Nancy Turner on “This is the Day”
00:00:13:01     and today being Wednesday, it’s our Worldview Wednesday.
00:00:16:06     I want to share with you the results of a 2009 Barna
00:00:19:09     survey that examined the worldview of American Christians.
00:00:22:22     The survey found that a mere 18% of born-again
00:00:25:25     Christians in America hold a Biblical worldview.
00:00:28:28     In this study, “born-again Christians”
00:00:30:17     you may wonder how’d they determine “born-again Christian.”
00:00:32:18     Well, here’s the two questions they asked.
00:00:34:16     One: Did you make a personal commitment to Christ?
00:00:39:23     and Two: Are you certain you’ll go to heaven
00:00:42:15     because you accepted Christ as your savior?
00:00:45:12     So that’s how a born-again Christian was defined,
00:00:48:02     and here are some specifics.
00:00:49:29     The survey showed that less than half that were
00:00:52:11     born-again Christians believe in absolute moral truth.
00:00:55:25     In other words that there is an absolute right and absolute wrong.
00:00:59:15     It isn’t just relative to what culture says.
00:01:01:27     Nearly a quarter of born-again Christians
00:01:03:21     don’t believe the Bible as accurate.
00:01:06:03     Only 40% of born-again Christians believe Satan is real.
00:01:10:25     Less than two third of born-again Christians
00:01:12:22     believe Jesus lived a sinless life.
00:01:15:16     And nearly one in ten born-again believers don’t
00:01:17:28     believe God is the all powerful,
00:01:19:28     all-knowing Creator of the universe who still rules
00:01:23:01     the universe today.
00:01:24:26     So, I think the sobering fact here is that America
00:01:27:19     may be regarded as a Christian nation,
00:01:29:25     and certainly our heritage is undoubtedly Christian.
00:01:33:10     But when it comes to how we Americans,
00:01:36:14     even American Christians perceive reality,
00:01:39:00     when it comes to the filter, so to speak,
00:01:40:19     that we use when we make decisions,
00:01:42:28     we quite frankly, and I hate to say this,
00:01:45:06     but we do think like pagans.
00:01:47:19     We just need to consider that and how we can change that.
00:01:50:23     As followers of Christ we want to change that,
00:01:54:24     because we know, as a person thinks, so he does,
00:01:57:28     and we want to honor God with our lives and with
00:02:00:18     our actions, and we must conform our thinking to Scripture.
00:02:04:15     Well, joining me to discuss this topic this morning
00:02:07:07     is John Cross, the director of GoodSeed International.
00:02:10:26     John spent 23 years with New Tribes Mission,
00:02:13:18     and if you don’t know anything about New Tribes--
00:02:15:05     awesome missions organization that goes into areas
00:02:18:21     of the world where there’s never been a gospel witness.
00:02:23:02     Ever.
00:02:23:28     These people have no prior knowledge of the Scripture,
00:02:28:06     of Jesus Christ, even of who the God that we know through
00:02:31:13     our Judeo-Christian tradition, who that god is.
00:02:34:17     Well, John has seen first hand how these missionaries
00:02:37:27     can go into these kind of cultures,
00:02:40:06     and then teach the people God’s truth.
00:02:42:27     And here’s the cool thing: he’s seen their minds
00:02:46:26     become transformed and then adopt a fully,
00:02:50:06     thoroughly biblical worldview.
00:02:52:13     So John, welcome to “This is the Day”,
00:02:55:03     I’m so glad you could join us.
00:02:56:29     << Thank you very much. I’m glad to be with you Julie.
00:03:00:10     << John, tell me a little bit about your background.
00:03:03:25     I know one of your jobs at New Tribes Mission was
00:03:07:20     that you actually went out and would sort of document
00:03:11:00     what the missionaries were doing.
00:03:12:18     And you went all over the world, didn’t you?
00:03:14:10     << I did.
00:03:16:08     I was actually the coordinator for short-term
00:03:18:21     missions for 20 years with New Tribes Mission.
00:03:21:29     And what that did, is it literally took me to the
00:03:26:01     four corners of the earth in that responsibility.
00:03:31:04     And in the process I was receiving an education I
00:03:34:04     really wasn’t seeking at that time,
00:03:35:25     but was getting none-the-less,
00:03:37:18     and that was seeing how people that have
00:03:40:12     absolutely no understanding of the Bible at all
00:03:43:01     - they have no background at all,
00:03:44:13     and some cases they’ve never seen anything that was written,
00:03:46:26     written text- how you could communicate a
00:03:51:16     biblical worldview to them in a way that made good sense.
00:03:54:29     << Hmm. Now for those who may be uninitiated, who have never
00:04:00:26     heard this term “worldview” could you just give us in a
00:04:03:25     nut-shell what is a worldview and why is it so important?
00:04:08:20     << Well, it’s a good question because we’re
00:04:11:04     hearing a lot of ‘buzz,’ the word’s becoming popular,
00:04:13:18     though it’s been around for quite a while.
00:04:15:12     People are talking about a political worldview,
00:04:17:23     you hear it quite a bit.
00:04:19:17     But when we’re using the word worldview,
00:04:21:27     it really has to do with a person’s outlook,
00:04:24:05     or their perception on the world.
00:04:26:14     It’s like you have a pair of eyeglasses on,
00:04:28:28     and everything you look at is being interpreted
00:04:31:09     through those eyeglasses.
00:04:32:20     So a worldview actually answers huge questions we have about life,
00:04:37:21     and death, and life after death.
00:04:40:18     For example, the question “Where did we come from?”
00:04:45:02     That’s a question of origins.
00:04:46:29     And of course some people believe that through
00:04:49:13     the process of Darwinian Evolution we slowly
00:04:52:16     evolved into existence.
00:04:54:24     Others would believe that we were created by an
00:04:56:29     all-powerful, all-knowing God.
00:04:59:15     And so you have two very different answers to the same question.
00:05:04:15     And that is what a worldview is: it’s how you
00:05:07:27     answer these questions.
00:05:10:00     You mentioned truth earlier on there in the
00:05:13:22     survey there done by I think it was George Barna.
00:05:17:22     Well, we answered the questions of origins,
00:05:21:18     now that we’re here, we have to ask ourselves,
00:05:24:03     “What’s the right way to live while we’re here?”
00:05:26:22     And so this is the question of purpose or direction
00:05:29:00     in life, and if there’s a right way to live,
00:05:31:06     there’s got to be a wrong way to live.
00:05:33:00     So we have to ask ourselves,
00:05:35:10     where do we get this information that tells us
00:05:37:13     what is right and wrong?
00:05:39:16     And that leads us to the question of “What is truth?”
00:05:42:21     Now, in our society, we’re a post-modern,
00:05:45:03     deconstructionist society, we are beginning to say
00:05:47:27     “There is no such thing as truth.”
00:05:49:22     And that’s reflected in that survey--
00:05:51:18     there’s no absolute truth.
00:05:53:07     That is a worldview.
00:05:55:03     That’s a certain pair of eyeglasses that a person
00:05:56:29     is looking through at the world.
00:05:59:02     But there’s others, and the Bible claims to be absolute truth.
00:06:03:05     So that’s an issue that a worldview struggles with.
00:06:06:28     So it’s those big questions that have to do with life,
00:06:10:20     death, and life after death.
00:06:12:19     And depending on how you answer those questions in your mind,
00:06:16:17     that is what your worldview is.
00:06:19:18     Some have a very well though-out worldview,
00:06:22:03     others are very random in their worldview.
00:06:23:27     It does not matter. Everyone has a worldview.
00:06:27:22     << So what I find so interesting your perspective
00:06:31:01     is that you have seen these cultures that have no,
00:06:36:08     they don’t even know what a Bible is,
00:06:38:03     they’ve never heard of Jesus Christ,
00:06:39:25     and when a missionary goes in there from New Tribes Mission,
00:06:42:12     we may anticipate that he spend maybe
00:06:45:29     a year or two learning the language.
00:06:47:29     But then I think most of us think when he’s learned
00:06:50:10     the language, now it’s time to tell them about Jesus.
00:06:53:18     But no, not necessarily.
00:06:56:00     You guys actually decide we’re not going to tell them
00:06:58:23     about Jesus first off, we’re going to start, well,
00:07:02:00     where the Bible starts, at the beginning.
00:07:04:01     Tell me, why do you do that,
00:07:05:23     and how New Tribes missionaries would actually share the gospel,
00:07:09:03     and maybe what we can learn from that method.
00:07:13:20     << Well, I think it’s a method that’s very germane
00:07:17:20     to our society today right here in North America.
00:07:21:07     We call it “Worldview Evangelism and Discipleship”
00:07:23:24     because the method actually addresses a person’s entire worldview.
00:07:28:17     And yeah, we would not start with the story
00:07:32:12     of Jesus because according to the Bible,
00:07:37:10     the whole history of the world, the whole,
00:07:39:19     all time from eternity past to eternity future is
00:07:44:26     going to be centered around the events that
00:07:47:09     occurred on a cross and in a tomb.
00:07:50:05     And so we have this central message
00:07:51:23     of the empty cross and the empty tomb.
00:07:53:05     Well we can very quickly say “Jesus was crucified
00:07:56:21     on the cross” but the next question is “Who is Jesus?”
00:07:59:19     And if we come back and say, “Well Jesus is God,”
00:08:02:14     if that’s our answer the next question is “What’s God like?”
00:08:06:09     And if we leave that as an open question,
00:08:09:04     people will fill in that answer themselves.
00:08:13:17     They’ll define God as either a pantheistic god:
00:08:16:06     he’s in the clouds, he’s in the rivers,
00:08:18:19     he’s in the breeze, he’s in the trees,
00:08:20:05     he’s in the stream.
00:08:21:18     They’ll have a pantheistic concept of God:
00:08:25:03     he’s in you, he’s in me.
00:08:26:13     They might have a polytheistic,
00:08:28:20     where they believe in many gods,
00:08:30:08     or one god manifested as many gods.
00:08:33:08     They’re going to fill in the answer to the “god” question.
00:08:37:16     And then “Why was Jesus on the Cross?”
00:08:39:18     “He was dying for our sins.”
00:08:41:20     Well, if you don’t define sin,
00:08:43:20     they’re going to fill that in.
00:08:46:12     And of course we know that in this day and age,
00:08:48:28     in our own country, sin is being redefined.
00:08:51:28     Certain things that at one time we said are sin,
00:08:55:09     even some governments are declaring they are no longer sin.
00:08:59:02     And so you have a redefinition of sin.
00:09:01:20     And so you can go down every key element of the biblical worldview,
00:09:06:04     and if they’re left open to interpretation,
00:09:09:07     a person’s original worldview will fill in
00:09:12:18     the meaning to that word.
00:09:14:06     And what we’re finding, I mean Francis Schaffer said
00:09:17:00     this a number of years ago, he said this and I quote:
00:09:22:08     “The accepted religious vocabulary no longer conveys
00:09:25:27     the words that they were intended to mean.”
00:09:29:16     So we may be using a certain vocabulary like saying,
00:09:33:16     “You need to receive Jesus as your savior”
00:09:37:06     but the way it’s redefined in the person’s mind,
00:09:41:09     we may say a person needs to be born again.
00:09:43:20     Well, I go out for a jog in the morning and I feel ‘born again.’
00:09:47:21     It’s being redefined.
00:09:50:08     They no longer convey the meaning.
00:09:52:26     And so what we have found, not only overseas in a
00:09:56:19     remote location like a tribal location,
00:09:59:08     but right here in North America,
00:10:01:08     it’s very helpful to use an approach in teaching
00:10:04:04     the scriptures that defines all these words
00:10:07:03     with the Biblical meaning, so that when a person is done
00:10:11:18     taking a look at the Bible, they have in their mind
00:10:14:13     a clear understanding of what it’s saying.
00:10:16:15     It makes sense.
00:10:18:00     Now whether they accept that message or not is
00:10:20:01     entirely up to them.
00:10:21:14     That’s their choice.
00:10:22:27     But at least it’s clear in their mind,
00:10:25:01     they know what the Bible is saying
00:10:26:25     and they’re not confused by it.
00:10:29:08     And so we don’t start with Jesus,
00:10:32:00     that’s two-thirds of the way through the Bible.
00:10:34:25     We start right at the very beginning of the Bible.
00:10:37:14     We start with things like, “What is God’s name?”
00:10:40:24     and “What is He like?” “What’s his character?”
00:10:45:21     and you begin to define that.
00:10:47:11     And you slowly begin to move through the
00:10:50:08     Old Testament part of the Bible,
00:10:52:29     hitting key stories, each story defining a different
00:10:57:12     word that is crucial to understanding that message
00:11:01:13     of the empty cross and the empty tomb.
00:11:03:23     << If you’re just joining me, I’m speaking with John Cross,
00:11:05:27     the director of GoodSeed International,
00:11:07:29     and we’re talking about, really, what I think, John,
00:11:09:28     is the paradigm shift from what a lot of us learned.
00:11:14:09     When I was young, we talked about, sort of that
00:11:18:01     one-conversation evangelism where “Could you lead
00:11:20:10     someone to the Lord in one conversation?”
00:11:22:19     Then it maybe moved to a more relational evangelism,
00:11:25:25     but still short of this idea that maybe with one verse
00:11:28:18     or one key idea we could
00:11:30:10     just share the whole gospel in a nut-shell.
00:11:32:15     And there’s a place for that,
00:11:33:29     but we’re talking this idea of worldview evangelism.
00:11:38:08     You’re listening to 90.1 Moody Radio Chicago,
00:11:40:29     and I’m Julie Roys filling in for Nancy Turner.
00:11:43:17     I’m going to be back with John Cross and we’ll
00:11:45:00     explore this topic a little further after this break.
00:11:48:02    
00:11:49:00     Life is a journey, and we’re traveling right beside you.
00:11:52:16     I grew up with Moody
00:11:54:04     We’re 90.1, Moody Radio Chicago- where you turn, for life!
00:11:59:27     I will choose to listen and belive the voice of truth...
00:12:06:12     Welcome back to “This is the Day” I’m Julie Roys
00:12:09:05     filling in for Nancy Turner.
00:12:11:10     And we are talking about truth.
00:12:12:20     We’re talking about absolute truth,
00:12:14:13     we’re talking about a truthful,
00:12:15:22     Biblical worldview and joining me is John Cross,
00:12:18:29     the general director of GoodSeed International.
00:12:22:04     And John, before the break,
00:12:25:17     we were talking about this idea of worldview evangelism,
00:12:28:19     and it being some sort of paradigm shift.
00:12:31:14     I see it as a paradigm shift, do you?
00:12:33:19     << It really is.
00:12:35:06     Because going back 30-40 years ago,
00:12:38:24     if you were talking with someone about the Bible,
00:12:40:19     and you mentioned God, generally speaking people
00:12:43:18     had a rough Biblical concept of God.
00:12:47:04     The same could be said true of sin.
00:12:49:17     There was a lot of these stories.
00:12:51:24     I can remember going to school,
00:12:53:06     you memorized a certain amount of scripture.
00:12:55:04     You had the Biblical stories read to you.
00:12:57:29     At Christmas you celebrated the birth of Christ,
00:13:01:16     at Easter you talked about his death.
00:13:03:13     These things were just part of the fabric of our culture.
00:13:07:02     That’s largely gone.
00:13:10:08     And what you find there is a great big huge hole
00:13:13:08     in people’s understanding, and we just can’t make the
00:13:16:09     same assumptions that we used to make.
00:13:18:16     << So tell me, how do we do evangelism when dealing
00:13:22:21     with a culture that many of the assumptions that we have
00:13:26:16     about the world aren’t necessarily shared
00:13:28:11     by the person we’re talking to?
00:13:30:17     << Well, first of all, I think we have to realize
00:13:33:18     it takes a little bit of time to do this.
00:13:35:09     It’s not a five minute, ten minute thing,
00:13:37:13     though there are ways that you can communicate
00:13:40:17     certain things in that block of time.
00:13:43:09     But you gotta take a mental jump here and
00:13:48:10     realize this is going to take a block of time.
00:13:51:09     We have created tools in GoodSeed to help in that process,
00:13:56:06     but basically what it means is that
00:13:58:09     you’re starting in the early pages of the Bible
00:14:01:05     and you’re laying all the foundational concepts that
00:14:06:19     will make the gospel message,
00:14:08:28     the message of the cross and the tomb,
00:14:11:03     that will make that concept or message crystal clear.
00:14:16:14     And so there’s a number of stories you have to teach.
00:14:19:23     If you’re talking about faith, we use the story of Abraham,
00:14:24:10     because the Bible uses that story to explain the word “faith.”
00:14:28:24     And so once you’ve studied the story of Abraham,
00:14:31:03     you don’t have to study it in great detail,
00:14:32:22     but you get a little bit of an idea of what faith is,
00:14:35:09     now you have a Biblical concept of faith, rather than
00:14:38:06     this mystical kind of mushy idea that floats around out there.
00:14:42:08     << Yeah, and I love what you said last time I talked to you.
00:14:44:20     It was just that whenever there was a concept in scripture,
00:14:47:27     it’s almost always taught with a story.
00:14:50:21     The story of Abraham.
00:14:52:20     We know what faith is: faith was Abraham packing
00:14:56:01     up everything he had and going to a land and he
00:14:58:03     didn’t even know where he was going!
00:15:00:04     That’s faith.
00:15:01:10     << That’s right. The Bible’s very good at this.
00:15:03:20     Now, it’s interesting because in our society,
00:15:05:22     in our deconstructionist’s mindset,
00:15:08:06     there’s a philosophy out there that says we can’t
00:15:10:26     trust word meanings because word meanings shift.
00:15:14:26     A real popular one out there is the word “gay.”
00:15:18:02     We talk about 40 years ago it meant to be cheerful and happy,
00:15:20:21     whereas nowadays it’s referred to as a lifestyle.
00:15:23:16     And it’s true that word-meanings do shift,
00:15:26:04     or they do take on different baggage,
00:15:28:07     however with the Bible, the architecture of it,
00:15:31:21     that the Bible tells stories to lock down word
00:15:36:11     meanings so they can’t shift.
00:15:38:26     So if you’re wondering how the Bible defines the
00:15:41:08     word “faith” it actually tells a number of stories,
00:15:44:18     so that if you read the stories,
00:15:46:02     you come away with a very clear understanding of how
00:15:48:14     the Bible defines faith.
00:15:49:27     It’s not a dictionary definition.
00:15:51:02     It’s defined by the stories so that you can not
00:15:55:16     make a mis-understanding of what it is saying.
00:15:58:14     And that is true with all the key concepts
00:16:01:02     surrounding spiritual knowledge in the Bible.
00:16:03:21     << Now you’ve developed a number of resources so people
00:16:06:07     can do this so they’re not completely on their own
00:16:08:19     with just reading through the Bible with someone.
00:16:10:07     You actually have some resources that kind
00:16:11:25     of help highlight “Here’s an important story,
00:16:15:05     here’s the next important story.”
00:16:16:24     Tell me a little about those and how they’re
00:16:18:26     designed to be used.
00:16:21:02     << Well, that’s our whole ministry.
00:16:23:05     We’re basically an equipping ministry,
00:16:25:17     it’s an educational ministry,
00:16:26:29     and what we do is we create tools: books,
00:16:31:28     DVD’s, audiobooks, different tools of different nature,
00:16:36:00     different ages, different worldviews.
00:16:38:08     We create tools to help a person,
00:16:41:05     a lay person or whatever it may be,
00:16:44:05     to walk a friend or family member through the Bible
00:16:48:15     so the person could come away with a clear
00:16:50:07     understanding of the Biblical worldview.
00:16:52:17     I should mention this, Julie, too,
00:16:54:24     just for today and for your listeners,
00:16:58:14     we’ve put on a special.
00:17:00:19     It’s free, there’s no charge for it,
00:17:02:15     it’s a small gift to your listeners.
00:17:05:06     Two products: one is called
00:17:07:07     “Unlocking the Biblical Worldview.”
00:17:08:26     It’s 4 lectures on DVD, that I did at a conference
00:17:12:25     here a couple years ago, called
00:17:14:22     “Unlocking the Biblical Worldview.”
00:17:16:22     And then a little companion volume called
00:17:18:22     “Beginning with Moses.”
00:17:20:22     It’s a little 115 page book and it addresses a lot
00:17:24:17     of the questions that people have about this approach.
00:17:28:06     You can go to our website: goodseed.com/worldview,
00:17:39:19     and it’ll tell you how to order this and we’ll send
00:17:42:21     it to you at no charge.
00:17:44:12     << Wow. Well thank you John.
00:17:45:18     I appreciate you doing that for our listeners.
00:17:48:11     One thing that I loved when you talked about,
00:17:51:02     when we talked before, when you talked about this
00:17:53:12     not just being for evangelism, but teaching
00:17:57:01     Creation to Christ is so crucial for discipleship,
00:18:01:09     and for early discipleship.
00:18:02:20     And so often we have someone that’s just become
00:18:04:21     a Christian, they’ve said the sinner’s prayer,
00:18:06:28     but they really don’t fully understand what this
00:18:10:20     gospel is that they’ve just received.
00:18:12:24     And we’ll do, let’s take them through the book of John.
00:18:16:15     They’re not, again, quite ready for the book of John yet.
00:18:18:29     Tell me why this is important to use in our
00:18:21:23     discipleship program and how you use it that way.
00:18:24:24     << Well, once again, faith is always built on some sort of fact.
00:18:34:00     So if we want to see people’s faith growing,
00:18:37:15     you can say if you want to see them grow in the faith
00:18:39:17     (that’s a phrase we often use,) what we have to do,
00:18:43:04     is we’ve got to provide them with Bible knowledge that
00:18:47:15     is put together in a coherent, cohesive way,
00:18:50:19     that it makes sense to them,
00:18:52:02     it’s not something that leaves them with a mystical,
00:18:55:24     abstract kind of fuzzy feeling, but they can look at it and say,
00:19:00:05     “You know what? I can trust that. That’s true! I can rest
00:19:03:24     my confidence on it with great hope and with great faith.”
00:19:11:03     So when you take whether a new believer or even an
00:19:15:08     unbeliever and you take them through the Bible in
00:19:18:06     a way that it all ties together.
00:19:20:19     It’s like a puzzle, and as you put all the pieces of
00:19:23:08     the puzzle together, it all pops into place
00:19:26:21     and you see this incredible picture.
00:19:29:14     And you see that the Bible is not just a collection
00:19:31:23     of abstract proverbs or something like that,
00:19:35:23     but it all ties together in one cohesive, unified story.
00:19:39:29     It has a profound effect on your mind.
00:19:42:15     We call it the “click factor.”
00:19:44:20     And I’ve actually seen people snap their fingers,
00:19:47:08     when it all falls together into place they say,
00:19:48:27     “I got it. It makes sense.”
00:19:50:24     << You know what? Let’s stop there, and I want to hear some
00:19:53:05     of those stories, cause you have some great stories about that.
00:19:55:10     We’re going to do that when we come back after
00:19:57:11     our information break.
00:19:58:16     Again that’s John Cross, the general director of
00:20:00:16     GoodSeed International and I’m Julie Roys,
00:20:03:00     and I’m filling in today for Nancy Turner
00:20:04:25     on 90.1 Moody Radio Chicago.
00:20:07:15     Why do you turn to Radio Moody Chicago?
00:20:09:23     For the Word of God that’s preached and taught.
00:20:12:03     I turn to Moody Radio for encouragement,
00:20:14:27     for direction in my spiritual life.
00:20:17:23     We’re listener supported, 90.1 Moody Radio Chicago
00:20:21:25    
00:20:26:11     << Welcome back to “This is the Day” I’m Julie Roys
00:20:28:29     filling in today for Nancy Turner,
00:20:30:16     and I’m speaking with John Cross.
00:20:32:21     He’s the director of GoodSeed International,
00:20:35:15     but also the author of several books including
00:20:37:19     “The Stranger on the Road to Emmaus,”
00:20:39:06     and “By This Name.” And John, before the break,
00:20:43:07     we were talking a little bit about some of the
00:20:45:00     stories you had, and you talked about this moment
00:20:47:28     when the light turns on, and people just kind of
00:20:50:20     go “Ah-ha! I get it!”
00:20:52:15     Tell me about some of those moments you’ve
00:20:54:19     experienced, I know you’ve told me once about
00:20:56:29     something in a conference, I think it was in Canada,
00:20:59:20     and there was a woman who had been attending church
00:21:01:20     for quite a while, and pretty much thought she was a believer,
00:21:05:15     but as you were teaching, she started to realize that maybe
00:21:09:06     she didn’t fully understand what this gospel was all about.
00:21:12:20     << Yeah, I was trying to think of the sort of stories you
00:21:17:22     wanted me to tell, and I hadn’t even thought of that one.
00:21:20:26     << But you do remember it, don’t you?
00:21:22:15     << Yeah, that happened last fall, and I can tell you,
00:21:25:20     we could be here all day just talking stories here.
00:21:29:13     This dear lady, she was in a conference,
00:21:34:22     she came as a delegate to one of the seminars that we do,
00:21:37:27     and what we do in those seminars is we literally take people
00:21:41:16     through one of the tools, usually it’s By This Name,
00:21:45:27     because it’s written for a post-modern mindset.
00:21:48:22     And we take them through that tool and we teach them
00:21:51:24     just as if they themselves were Biblically illiterate.
00:21:55:09     We just assume they don’t know anything about this Bible.
00:21:58:13     Unbeknown to us, this lady was actually on this journey,
00:22:01:23     and she had come as a delegate, sent by her church,
00:22:06:24     to this seminar.
00:22:08:19     But as she sat there, she began to become aware that
00:22:10:25     she did not know what the Bible said on a lot of things,
00:22:13:08     or she badly misunderstood it.
00:22:16:03     As you go through the Bible chronologically,
00:22:21:05     one of the early stories that you get to has
00:22:24:22     to do with the giving of the 10 Commandments,
00:22:28:07     the giving of the Law, actually, to Moses on Mt Sinai.
00:22:33:01     And as you go through the 10 Commandments,
00:22:36:23     one thing that the 10 Commandments does create
00:22:39:19     within you is a profound awareness of how holy God is,
00:22:43:09     and how sinful man is.
00:22:45:06     And as she sat there, she was catching for a first
00:22:48:29     glimpse the holiness of God, his perfection,
00:22:51:24     his absolute perfection, and she was becoming aware
00:22:54:24     that she desperately fell short of that,
00:22:57:19     and that she was sinful.
00:22:59:14     And as you continue on in the story you become aware
00:23:02:27     that if we’re to live with God,
00:23:05:09     only perfect people can live with a perfect God.
00:23:08:08     And so we’ve got to some how get this level
00:23:11:08     of righteousness that’s equal to God’s righteousness,
00:23:13:27     or we can’t live in his presence.
00:23:15:12     And as that came down and descended upon her
00:23:18:13     as we went through the 10 Commandments,
00:23:20:04     and often people become very quiet when you do
00:23:23:09     that because they’re just aware that
00:23:24:21     “Oh, man, I thought I was a good person,
00:23:26:11     I’m finding out I’m a pretty sinful person.”
00:23:29:00     And that’s what happened to her.
00:23:30:25     And so we had finished going through that section
00:23:34:05     of the study in the seminar,
00:23:37:02     and we were just as a group kind of,
00:23:39:21     you know I was handling some questions that were coming.
00:23:41:28     And all of a sudden she stands up in the back and she said,
00:23:44:25     “I just got to say something here.”
00:23:47:01     She said, “I’m just shaking,
00:23:49:08     “I just want you to know if I fall down and faint, I’m ok.
00:23:54:19     This has shook me up so bad.”
00:23:57:12     She said, “I just need you to be aware that this is
00:24:02:10     where I’m at.”
00:24:04:06     She said, “I’ve been thinking that I’ve been
00:24:06:16     “getting my life together.
00:24:08:04     “I’ve been living with a man we’ve decided to get married.
00:24:11:03     “I’ve been getting my life fixed up.
00:24:13:22     “All of a sudden I’ve realized that I am not
00:24:17:09     good enough for God, and I’m facing judgment.”
00:24:21:06     And so she was shaking, I actually went back to her
00:24:23:07     and talked to her a few minutes later,
00:24:24:26     and she reached out her hand and she says,
00:24:26:14     “Feel my hands -- they’re cold.
00:24:28:11     I think I’m in a little bit of a shock!”
00:24:30:28     I said, “Let me assure that good news is coming.”
00:24:34:16     The wonderful thing about it, the Bible has some bad
00:24:37:19     news in it, but it has an awful lot of good news.
00:24:40:07     << Yes it does.
00:24:41:29     << If you stick with the story, you find out the good news.
00:24:44:01     That’s really what the word “gospel” means,
00:24:45:23     it means good news. It’s very good news.
00:24:48:25     It’s not just a little bit. It’s extremely good news.
00:24:51:18     And I could tell you with great delight that she put
00:24:55:21     her trust in that good news.
00:24:57:21     << But you have to know the bad news before you can get
00:25:01:02     how really good the good news is.
00:25:02:16     << Oh, you really do.
00:25:03:23     If you don’t understand that you’re lost in the woods,
00:25:07:11     you’ll think you’re doing just fine.
00:25:09:14     You got to realize you need help before you can get help.
00:25:13:23     << Exactly. And I think our world, our North American world,
00:25:17:23     that has historically kinda gotten that,
00:25:20:25     we’re not there anymore.
00:25:22:20     I think that one of the most difficult things that
00:25:25:02     I found when I was in youth ministry was just
00:25:28:01     getting kids to understand,
00:25:29:17     like you said you did, teaching through the 10 Commandments,
00:25:33:05     but is getting them to understand they’re sinners.
00:25:35:27     Because they think they’re a pretty good person.
00:25:38:12     And I think that’s where a lot of people start.
00:25:40:04     << It really is that.
00:25:41:21     And it’s not just teaching the 10 Commandments,
00:25:44:28     there’s this kind of a process here because first
00:25:47:24     they got to understand the nature of God.
00:25:50:06     If they don’t understand the nature of God,
00:25:52:13     then the 10 Commandments doesn’t really make sense.
00:25:54:24     There’s a certain progression that you got to move through,
00:25:57:26     that we do find architecturally laid out in the scriptures,
00:26:02:00     we can just follow it carefully,
00:26:03:24     and it just kind of unlocks that Biblical worldview
00:26:08:03     in such a way that it makes sense.
00:26:10:29     That’s why we call that series “Unlocking the Biblical
00:26:13:07     Worldview” because that’s really what it does.
00:26:16:18     The architecture of the Bible does unlock itself
00:26:18:08     as we follow it through.
00:26:21:07     << John, I know you were just in Scotland, you recently got back.
00:26:24:12     You’re in Canada now, correct?
00:26:25:28     << That’s correct, yes.
00:26:27:08     << Canada’s home for you.
00:26:28:10     << Yeah, Canada is my home.
00:26:30:17     << Tell me a little bit about what you did in Scotland,
00:26:33:17     and what the response was there.
00:26:35:24     << Well, I was actually writing a sequel to the other tools we’ve made.
00:26:41:25     Most of the tools we’ve created up to this point
00:26:43:16     are written to those who have no background
00:26:47:26     in the Bible at all, they don’t know what it says.
00:26:51:07     And that’s what those tools are addressing --
00:26:56:17     people like that from different worldviews.
00:26:59:00     The book I was working on in Scotland,
00:27:01:16     I was writing a follow-up, a sequel to it,
00:27:04:05     so it’s a sequel to The Stranger on the Road to Emmaus,
00:27:06:18     a sequel to By This Name, All that the Prophets have Spoken,
00:27:08:29     these books that are written for the other worldviews.
00:27:11:23     And it’s to take someone that’s a brand new believer,
00:27:14:13     and take them the next steps.
00:27:16:26     So I’m working on that book right now,
00:27:18:11     it won’t be available for another year.
00:27:20:10     But that’s what I was doing in Scotland.
00:27:23:07     << And you were meeting with some people, weren’t you?
00:27:24:28     Some church leaders, some different people who’ve used
00:27:27:12     some of this curriculum, and they were reporting back to you
00:27:30:15     a little of how it was working, weren’t they?
00:27:32:25     << I did, yeah, and these just came out of the woodwork,
00:27:35:15     I wasn’t really hunting them down per se,
00:27:38:13     but you know they heard I was in Scotland.
00:27:40:29     Let me tell you this little story.
00:27:43:06     This is an interesting one.
00:27:44:08     This gentleman came to me, works in a prison in the UK.
00:27:49:24     And he’s been using our DVD series, it’s 11 hours of DVD,
00:27:55:25     and he was taking these prisoners through this series.
00:28:01:15     And he told me the story how, if I remember correctly,
00:28:04:18     I think he had about a dozen men
00:28:06:20     that he had just taken through it.
00:28:09:02     We’re talking about the “click-factor” earlier on,
00:28:11:21     he told me that when they got to that, he says,
00:28:13:27     “There wasn’t a dry eye in the crowd.
00:28:15:04     “All these men were sitting around in a circle there watching
00:28:18:06     this DVD with the tears just streaming down their eyes.”
00:28:21:23     But he told me the story about one man who came to him
00:28:24:02     several weeks later after he became a believer and he said
00:28:27:17     to him, we’ll call him Robert for his name, he said,
00:28:30:16     “Robert, I need to talk to you.
00:28:33:15     “I’m going to be going before the courts here soon,
00:28:38:09     “and I’m almost certain that I’m going to be released.
00:28:42:08     I got a good lawyer... the crux of the matter
00:28:47:01     “really is that right now there’s another man that’s
00:28:48:28     in jail for my crime.”
00:28:50:21     He said, “But I’m the one that actually committed
00:28:53:15     the crime, the other guy’s innocent.”
00:28:55:26     And he said, “What should I do?
00:28:58:22     “I’ve plead not guilty, if I change my plea,
00:29:04:01     “I’m going to go to jail for a long time.
00:29:06:16     What should I do?”
00:29:09:01     And Robert said to him, he said, “Listen, you’re going to have,
00:29:11:10     you have a relationship with God now, you’re going to have to go
00:29:14:11     and talk to God about that.”
00:29:16:27     And just to make a long story short, the guy went to court,
00:29:21:07     changed his plea from not guilty to guilty.
00:29:23:21     He’s actually in jail for a long length of time,
00:29:26:11     and the other man was released.
00:29:28:23     And he made this statement to Robert before he was
00:29:31:16     transferred from the prison that he was at,
00:29:33:16     he said, “I’d rather be in jail, and be right in my mind with God,
00:29:38:24     than to be out on the street, and be guilty of what I had done.
00:29:44:24     << There is a prison worse than a physical prison, isn’t there?
00:29:47:13     << Yeah, and you know we’re talking about
00:29:49:04     the need for change, radical change in our society.
00:29:52:25     Believe you me, it comes from getting back to the Bible
00:29:56:20     and understanding what it says, because when you understand
00:29:59:13     the Biblical worldview, it does affect the way you live.
00:30:03:11     << Yeah. That’s John Cross the general director
00:30:05:26     of GoodSeed International, and John,
00:30:08:02     what I love about what you’re doing is I think so often,
00:30:11:13     when we think about worldview, we think we have to learn
00:30:14:03     every religion and compare them to ours and learn every system,
00:30:18:08     and the way to think about it, and yet,
00:30:20:25     what you’re doing is you’re just teaching us
00:30:22:21     the Bible and I think that if more of us Christians
00:30:25:10     were just rooted in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation,
00:30:29:22     we’d get it.
00:30:31:09     We would get a lot of this a lot better.
00:30:32:29     So God bless you in what you’re doing and remind us again:
00:30:35:18     you’ve made available some free materials for our listeners at
00:30:39:04     www.goodseed.com/wordview, and those materials again?
00:30:46:14     << Those two materials are Unlocking the Biblical Worldview,
00:30:50:23     a series of 4 lectures on DVD, and a 115 page booklet
00:30:56:06     called Beginning with Moses.
00:30:58:07     And this is written for people that are interested
00:31:00:21     in how to teach the Biblical worldview,
00:31:03:20     it’s written for Bible believers.
00:31:05:26     We have other tools available for those who
00:31:08:06     don’t know the Bible, but is specifically a small gift,
00:31:12:12     there’s no charge, we won’t charge anything for shipping,
00:31:15:08     all you have to do is go to goodseed.com/worldview
00:31:18:14     and it’ll be yours just for the asking.
00:31:21:11     << Well, thanks again brother.
00:31:22:26     Again that’s www.goodseed.com/worldview
00:31:28:29     We’ll be back with Mindy Bells,
00:31:30:27     World editor who is just back from Afghanistan.
00:31:34:10     She has a lot to report on what’s happening
00:31:36:06     to Christians there, so you won’t want to miss it.
00:31:38:02