Save America Ministries

Chuck Crismier: The year was 1947. Right after the the United Nations was formed and just before Israel became a nation. The then chaplain of the United States Senate, Peter Marshall, a fellow who had immigrated from Scotland, declared to the United States Senate these words. The choice before us is plain: Christ or chaos, conviction or compromise, discipline or disintegration. He said, "I'm really tired of hearing about our rights and privileges as American citizens. The time has come, it is now, when we ought to hear about the duties and responsibilities of our citizenship." America's future, he said, depends upon her accepting and demonstrating God's government, God's government. May his kingdom come, may his will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. That was Peter Marshall. And then came his son, Peter Marshall Jr. Peter Marshall Jr. wrote a book called, The Light and the Glory that took us back in our history to the time of the Pilgrims and portrayed for America about 30 years ago, a wonderful picture of what God had intended for America to be. The same picture that was portrayed by a godly attorney by the name of John Winthrop in 1630 in his model of Christian charity before he unloaded four boatloads of Puritans on these shores. And historians have looked back and said it was the clearest expression of the American vision ever penned. Well, that was then. That was then. Then came Richard Halverson. Now you may not know Richard Halverson, but Richard Halverson was a another chaplain of the United States Senate, and in 1995, six months after we launched this radio program, he crawled out of his deathbed in order to make sure he had the opportunity to deliver a message to the church in America that was on his heart. And he did that right here on Viewpoint in 1995. A month later, in November, he passed away. Richard Halverson, on the back of his, my latest book, or not my latest book, my first book, is penned a message that he gave at that time that we need to hear. Here it is. "In my years as chaplain of the Senate, I cannot remember a time of greater frustration among members of Congress and their staffs, or more expressions of anger for the people." "Several years ago, there came to my attention a quote written at the end of the 18th century by Alexander Tytler. Amazing is it not that the following quotation written about ancient democracy long before American democracy had been really tested is so timely. Tytler said, 'A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been about 200 years. Those nations have progressed through the following sequence.' Now, please pay attention to this sequence that Richard C. Halverson gave us as chaplain of the United States Senate. It was a warning to us of the death rattle of America's dying gasps that could could be heard throughout the land. From bondage to spiritual faith. From spiritual faith to great courage. From courage to liberty. From liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back into bondage. Where do you think we are in that realm, my friends? Where do you think we might be? Well, here's what George Gallup Jr. had to say a few years ago. He said, "Whatever strategies are developed to revitalize religious faith in our churches and in society as a whole, they should be considered with urgency. The observation that the church is only one generation from extinction applies today as perhaps never before." Well, let's go back then to 2009. In 2009, George Barna gave his regular report and said, "Christianity is no longer America's default faith." He said 50% of the adults interviewed agreed that Christianity is no longer the faith that Americans automatically accept as their personal faith. Then, in addition to that, believe it or not, came the Christian Science Monitor with these words, "The coming evangelical collapse. An anti-Christian chapter in Western history is about to begin." This was in 2009, friends. "We are on the verge, within 10 years," they wrote, "of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This will this breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment of the West. In the Protestant 20th century, evangelicals flourished, but they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century. This collapse," they wrote, "will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have never believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity seen as the opponent of the common good. Millions of evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is very close." Now, that's an amazing statement coming from the Christian Science Monitor, friends. And yet Time magazine in 1993, right after Americans had been flooding back to church after Gulf War I, patriotism was riding a high mark. And Time magazine said, "Well, Americans may be flooding back to church, but church will never again be the same." "Why?" "Because Americans are looking for a custom-made God, one made in their own image." Well, that sets the stage, friends, for our conversation today with Seth Gruber. He's joining us again after several years concerning his previous book. Today, he comes to us with a book with a very glaring warning title, The Last Stand. The Last Stand, and in it interesting, the subtitle, Christ or Chaos, The War for the West, exactly the words that Peter Marshall Jr., or Peter Marshall said in 1947 before our Senate, a warning for the future. Seth, it's good to have you on the program.

Guest (Male): Thank you, brother. I appreciate you.

Chuck Crismier: Well, when you look at that, you see this is not a this is not a story lately told. This is something that we've been warned about for a very long time, haven't we?

Guest (Male): Yeah, that's right. And your intro was beautifully captivating and fun to listen to. Very few people know about that Scottish judge and historian, Professor Alexander Fraser Tytler. I've been saying that for years from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, complacency to apathy, apathy to dependency, dependency right back again to bondage. And modern Christians have kind of truncated that into simply hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times, and the cycle goes on and on and on until the church wakes up.

Chuck Crismier: There you are. And today on Viewpoint, friends, for the balance of the time, Seth and I are going to have quite an open conversation here. I hope your hearts and minds are open. This is a very important time, The Last Stand. Once upon a time, children could pray and read their Bibles in school. Divorces were practically unknown, as was child abuse. In our once great America, virginity and chastity were popular virtues, and homosexuality was an abomination. So what happened in just one generation? Hi, I'm Chuck Crismier, and I urge you to join me daily on Viewpoint, where we discuss the most challenging issues touching our hearts and homes. Could America's moral slide relate to the Fourth Commandment? Listen to Viewpoint on this radio station or anytime at saveus.org. Seth Gruber is founder of the White Rose Resistance, a national movement calling the American church to confront abortion in the culture of death. He's an international speaker. He's written a number of books, and he's joining us here today with his latest book, The Last Stand. Seth, what you may not have known, to put all this in context, is that in 1992, after 18 years of law practice as a trial lawyer in California, the Lord spoke to my heart right there in my law office, saying, "Son, you've been pleading the cause of men long enough. I want you to plead my cause in the land as a voice to the church, declaring vision for the nation in America's greatest crisis hour." And people would say, "Well, why why would you speak to the church? That's the that's God's warmest audience. That's the choir. Why should why not me speaking out there to the liberals, the abortionists, the homosexuals, Slick Willy, the White House, or whatever?" And I said, "No. God wants his his message is to his warmest audience. If his warmest audience can't get it right, then where's the hope for the rest of us?" And people couldn't quite understand why a lawyer who had been involved in pleading cases at civil trials should be involved in pleading a spiritual case to the church in America. But that's exactly what I've been doing now for 33 years, having formed Save America Ministries in 1993. So, you're doing in a in a sense, maybe largely the same thing, aren't you?

Guest (Male): Yes, brother. Thank you. I mean, listen, why? Because the church is the most powerful organization for change in the world. Why why do you think it is that every communist despotic regime in one of their first acts to seize and to keep power target the churches? Why is it that in the French Revolution all of the churches were turned into temples of reason? The spires were chopped down to be the same height because of feminist radical egalitarianism, and then they started doing weird pornographic drag queen performances in the where? The church.

Chuck Crismier: Notre Dame.

Guest (Male): Yeah, why did Gavin Newsomalini, Chuck, when he during the Fauchie-ouchie scamdemic, why is one of the first um dictates that Newsome unconstitutionally signs into quote unquote law is to say, "No singing in churches." But of course, if you're at a leftist rally in San Jose, Los Angeles,

Chuck Crismier: You could scream to the

Guest (Male): Berkeley, yeah, exactly, you can scream George Floyd's name a thousand times and the spit can fly off your lips. And Fauci actually came out at that time and said, "Thank you for this, guys, because systemic racism is a public health crisis." So, so we learned that COVID is woke. That we learned that the the COVID virus can differentiate between secular leftists and religious conservatives. And so it would only spread when religious conservatives would get. No, of course that's stupid. We all understand what it was. It was an attack against the church. Why have the most high-profile Supreme Court decisions in recent years been about Christian resistance? "Bake the cake, bigot." Jack Phillips, "Bake the cake, bigot." Um, photographers who don't want to photograph sodomite weddings. "Take the pictures, bigot." Um, you know, pro-life sidewalk counselors thrown in prison. What's my point? My point is that the left understands the spirit of the age, Chuck, and his acolytes and the culture of death. They know and they fully know that the only true hindrance or hurdle to their secular sexual liberated totalitarian society is the blood-bought bride of Christ. It's the local church.

Chuck Crismier: All right, well that's true.

Guest (Male): And the church.

Chuck Crismier: That's true, but what do you do with Jesus's words? Jesus said, "You're the light of the world." But he said, "If the light that's in you be darkness, then how great is that darkness?" And that's where our problem is. That's where our problem is because God's people, why we think we're resisting the world out there, we're living like the world because we've been seduced into adopting the ways of the culture, the mind and heart set of the culture in God's own house.

Guest (Male): Yeah, well said. Or or we've opted for Tim Keller's third way-ism, um, where we're not preaching necessarily a heterodox um, message, but we just say, "Oh, well, we just do Jesus at this church." We just do Jesus. We don't do I don't do politics. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that over the last 10 years. We do Jesus, you know, you know, Chuck, Great Commission, you know, go to the very ends of the Earth and uh, you know, preach and baptize and in the name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit. And of course, pastors tend to leave out the next part that says, "And teaching them to obey all that I've commanded you." And so we most evangelical Christians in the West, brother, we grow very uncomfortable with the totality of the dominion mandate. Instead, we prefer just an evangelism mandate or a house mandate, right? But we grow very uncomfortable with the first job description given to the first human beings, Adam and Eve. It's called the dominion mandate.

Chuck Crismier: Yeah, take dominion.

Guest (Male): Well, some people call that dominion theology, and then take it over into a Marxist kind of a viewpoint. So there's a lot of confusion out there as to what these things actually mean. And when you say talk about the Matthew 28, a Great Commission, uh, interestingly, 12 of the original 13 colonies had in their original documents the mandate to spread the Gospel across the Seven Seas and Seven Continents. So you can't avoid those kinds of things, uh, but it is true, but have we have we done that? And what gospel are we presenting right now? Well, according to most now, it seems we're presenting the Gospel of well, go along to get along. We're presenting a Gospel of if it feels good, do it. And so, we have adopted the Robert Schuller viewpoint of it's all about feeling good. It's all about empathy. It's all about compassion, but it's not about truth. We've laid truth on the line, walked over it like the Chinese took the horrible military over Tiananmen Square and crushed the people. And that's what we're doing. Truth no longer matters. We say it does, but we're not lovers of truth in this country, including much of God's house.

Guest (Male): Yeah, amen, brother. And so I put it this way, the church's forgetfulness has always been her undoing. Um, let's put it this way, remembrance and forgetfulness are the measuring rods of faithfulness throughout the Bible. And reveal that there's only two kinds of people in this world. Forgetful hearers or effectual doers. Effectual doers or forgetful hearers. And um, the greatest advances in human civilization, according to Churchill, have come when we recovered what we had lost, when we learned the lessons of history. The reality is, brother, that none of the issues we're facing right now from the murder of babies to the sexualization of kids, to Pride Month this June, which we we actually are reclaiming as Life Month because it's when Roe v. Wade got overturned. Um, pride, right? The queen of all vices and apparently the vice of all queens. Um, the insistence by the left that we include youngsters in their sexual revolution. The insistence that we call um, pedophiles, minor attracted persons. Um, the insistence that the state is a better parent than you. The multiple stories of schools hiding the gender identity and and the trans identity of minors at the school from the parents. Okay, the list goes on and on and on. The reality is none of these issues are new. Not a single one of them. These are all um, elements of pagan societies and civilizations. And those are civilizations that are no longer here anymore, Chuck. Um, J.D. Unwin is an Oxford anthropologist and ethnologist, who wrote a book in 1934 that stays completely buried by the liberal academic left, Chuck. Um, I went, I think maybe the second most viral um, video I've ever been in was by my friends at Cross Politic up in uh, Moscow, Idaho. And I they cut a clip of me when I was on their show at Anfest in um, for Charlie, because we're dedicating my next film and book to him. Um, in in Phoenix in December, a few months ago. And it's over three million views on Instagram right now. And I'm explaining what I'm about to tell your listeners, Chuck. And I get a meta meta, you know, Instagram fact checked saying, "This is not true. Don't listen to this guy, you know, what he's saying is not an accurate reflection of the findings that he purports to uh, extrapolate." But of course, it is. I've actually studied it. And he he released a book called Sex and Culture. And it was a study, very dense reading because he gives his research methods, his conclusions, right? And he looked at 86 civilizations. Listen to this, brother. Over 5,000 years. And asked the question, why do civilizations rise and thrive, if if they do? And what causes civilizations to decline and fall, if they do? Um, and he found a 100% correlation. I mean, you want to talk about a powerful study. A 100% correlation between the coupling of what he called prenuptial chastity with absolute monogamy and cultural energy, cultural prowess, cultural advancement. He said it was these civilizations that gave us the best art, food, like culinary, architecture, furniture, family, standing armies, on and on and on and on. And then in the inverse, he finds a 100% correlation between um, societies that codified what he called, this is interesting, he called it total sexual freedom. And he said, "When a society codified this, within 90 to 100 years, they were done. They were done. And they were replaced by another civilization with greater social energy." Um, and so when did America adopt total sexual freedom? That's is the what we examine in my book, The Last Stand, Christ or Chaos, brother. I think it was 1973.

Chuck Crismier: Well, we we looked at the mid-1960s. My wife and I were married in 1966, uh 60 years ago.

Guest (Male): Awesome.

Chuck Crismier: And it was right in the heart of that. It was a moral and spiritual rebellion against all authority, and out of that merged the or came the sexual revolution. And it was it was a what should we say? A great truth quake that took place in our country at that time. And we're seeing the echoing consequences of it in every area of of our of our country. And interestingly,

Guest (Male): Yeah, that's right.

Chuck Crismier: let me let me bring this up because it may be awkward to bring this up, but in the early 1900s, we had what was called the fundamentalist movement. And the whole idea there, and I have the original books that, you know, gave all those messages right here in the library.

Guest (Male): Yeah, J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, yeah.

Chuck Crismier: Okay. So, at that time, there was a a desire to protect the the fundamentals of the faith, because they were coming under assault.

Guest (Male): That's right.

Chuck Crismier: Then, by the 1950s, came a feeling that, "Well, this is just too tough. These fundamentals are just too tough. We need to," I hate to use the word liberal, "but we need to liberalize those and try to protect the what we were calling the definite essentials, the fundamental essentials, but we're going to have to become more like the culture. We're going to have to embrace more the culture to be accepted by the culture." And out of that came what is called the evangelical movement. And Christianity Today by Billy Graham and associates.

Guest (Male): That's that's right.

Chuck Crismier: Now, it's hard for us to accept that it was Billy Graham and his associates that actually paved the way for the gradual movement away from the fundamentals. Do I have that correct?

Guest (Male): Yes, that's right.

Chuck Crismier: Okay. Now, that having been said, we've been on a trajectory ever since. You go to what should we say? The late 1950s, early 1960s in Southern California. Robert Schuller started the whole church growth movement right out of one of the evangelical bastions or seminaries, Fuller Seminary, right there right by my law office in Southern California. And I was right in the epicenter of this as it started in the early 1970s. And we see how it spread. It spread to the Willow Creek Movement. It spread to the Saddleback Church Movement. The some of the most momentous movements in the Christian community since then were all based upon the liberalization of the truth.

Guest (Male): Right.

Chuck Crismier: So, how can we expect the pagans to live like Christians when the Christians are increasingly living more like pagans?

Guest (Male): Yes. That's right, brother. Yeah, the the the media attack against the book, The Fundamentals, um, led to Christians totally retreating from culture in what came to be called the Modernist Fundamentalist Crisis.

Chuck Crismier: Right.

Guest (Male): Um, at that moment, right before the Great Depression, that Christians begin to retreat. And as a result, when FDR you know, then he's running on a program of replacing what the church should have been doing with government. And so we get our modern America. I guess, brother, I'm saying it's not a coincidence that the bloodiest century in human history lines up almost perfectly with the retreat of the church.

Chuck Crismier: All right. So, you say, "This is The Last Stand." Friends, $27 will put this book in your hands. It's a hardbound book. $27 on our website saveus.org. Call us 1-800-SAVE-USA. Write to us at Save America Ministries and $6 for postage and handling, we'll get The Last Stand in your hands. There is so much more about Chuck Crismier and Save America Ministries. On our website, saveus.org. For example, under the Marriage section, God has marriage on his mind. Chuck has some great resources to strengthen your marriage. First off, a fact sheet on the state of the marital union, a fact sheet on the state of ministry, marriage, and morals. saveus.org. Marriage, divorce, and remarriage, what does the Bible really teach about this? Find all of this at saveus.org. Also, a letter to pastors, The Hosea Project, saveus.org. And many more resources to strengthen your marriage. It's all on Chuck's website, saveus.org. Again, you can listen to Chuck's Viewpoint broadcasts live and archived. Save America Ministry's website at saveus.org.

Chuck Crismier: Well, you have a chapter, my good friend, called Standing at the Gates of Hell. Do you really mean that?

Guest (Male): Yeah. Amen, brother. This actually strikes this strikes to the heart of what we were talking about, about the retreat of the church, about even I call them the Evangeli-fish movement. Of course, I I do count myself an evangelical. I I like to use the word Protestant. But the Evangeli-fishes insistence on being gospel-centered or we just do the gospel. We don't do politics. And a lot of

Chuck Crismier: Well, how about we don't obey what God says? We just believe that he wants us to believe that Jesus is the Son of God.

Guest (Male): Yeah, yeah, that's right. Um, but what you said about the gates of hell is actually a powerful poignant um, intense scene between Jesus and his disciples that I think we haven't fully comprehended what that means actually. And watch this, brother, um, how that is extrapolated into the public square. The the public square where the evangelical church, by and large, in the 20th and certainly the 21st century, doesn't want to actually fight and contend for the truth. And what's one of the most pivotal scenes recorded in scripture, Chuck, as it pertains to our last stand, is when Jesus asked his asked his disciples a question about his identity and by association their own. Right? Caesarea Philippi. He asks his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?" And what do they say? "Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets." And but he says, "But what about you, Jesus says, "Who do you say I am?" And this is when Simon Peter says, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." And Jesus says, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter." And on this rock, I will build my church and the gates of Hades or hell will not overcome it. Okay, so Matthew 16. But, brother, in reading the Bible, we quickly learn that Jesus is very intentional about who he talks with, where he goes, and what he does. There is little doubt in my mind, bro, that Jesus asked this question of his disciples at this moment because of where they were. Caesarea Philippi, the Roman Empire's version of Sodom and Gomorrah, located at the foot of Mount Hermon in Northern Israel. It was a center of pagan worship dedicated to the Greek god Pan. And yes, that is where we get Peter Pan. The temple grounds included a cave with a doorway. Now, watch this, Chuck, the pagan residents who lived there believed that this cave was a literal gateway, a literal entrance to the underworld, to hell.

Chuck Crismier: Well, it's interesting you should mention that because it was in 1995 when I had taken a group to Israel, and I literally stood in that cave, it's elevated above the area around it, and I spoke to the whole group that was gathered all around there, not just the people that we had come, but lots of others. And declared those very things from that that location. Uh, it's it's amazing. Jesus called his disciples to a serious commitment to his kingdom, didn't he?

Guest (Male): Well, yes, well, think about it. So think about what that means, though, bro. That that has affects so much of how we view the culture, our calling, our our our role as Christians. What does it mean to be a Christian, a Christ follower in a country with a place, with laws, with people, with traditions, in America, the most powerful child of the Reformation. Well, what does it mean to our ideas of the separation of church and state, which would have been totally, totally foreign to the Patristics? It's here at the literal gates of hell that Jesus declared he would build his church and promised that Satan's kingdom would not prevail against him. Where? Where? In the middle of all the pagan, weird, sex cult, baby killing, infanticide worship. Right there, where it all happens. He says, "And the gates of Hades will not prevail against the church," meaning gates are stationary, and the church is a forward-moving army. It was here that Jesus expressed his vision and his will for his disciples on the doorstep of hell. Jesus told his disciples and us by extension that we would go to battle against the gates that separated life from darkness, good from evil. And the stationary gates, the stronghold would not be able to withstand the force of good that is his church. In other words, Chuck, Jesus was setting his disciples up for global assault on the minions of darkness and wickedness, and we have forgotten that.

Chuck Crismier: And aren't we there? You know, it used to be earlier on, in fact, the era that I grew up in, I'm probably almost twice your age. But even even though you were the third son of Adam and Eve, Seth. But that having been said, when I grew up, we sang songs like, "Onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war." We sang songs like, "Stand up, stand up for Jesus, you soldiers of the cross. Lift high his royal banner, it must not suffer loss." That whole concept has completely been removed in favor of liting, touchy-feely, limp-wristed kind of worship songs. And it it shows the dramatic difference between the spirit of a church so-called a church militant as opposed a church, what should we say? They would say it resilient today. We just flow with the culture.

Guest (Male): Yeah, well, I've been saying for some time, brother, that unless the church flatulent becomes a church militant, it will become the church irrelevant. Um, and, Chuck, I don't mean like militant in terms of AR-15s, although I am saving up for a few more. Come on, it is America, it is 2050 after all. You should uh, you should uh, you should repent of your sins, get married, have a bunch of babies, and buy a lot of guns. That would be a great way to celebrate the 250th. Um, and also banning abortion and gay stuff. But but I mean militant for righteousness, militant to follow your king in crushing evil. Um, it it reminds me of another distinction, it's something that we've forgotten in the church as it as it pertains to our last stand, Chuck, to the fact that, like, hey, actually you were you've been drafted and enlisted into a war, dear Christian. And that's the difference in um, the word enemy as used in the Bible. Chuck, you might find this interesting. Um, in Latin, it it is hostis, meaning uh, public enemy, like the enemy of the state or like a collective group, like the enemies of mankind. And the other word is inimicus. It means uh, personal or private enemy, a foe, someone who's unfriendly. That same distinction is mirrored in the Greek New Testament. Um, it's the same difference. So polemics, yeah, it means public enemy. It's derived from the word for war. Uh, and then extros is a private enemy. Uh, like a personal antagonist, the the Karen and HR that you don't like, a bully on the playground. And that's that's the Greek word used in Matthew 5:43 when Christ says, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." Um, he's not using the word for enemies of mankind, like Arabella, right? Or like the uh, uh, abortion industrial complex. Right. So he uses the word for personal antagonist. And that distinction's totally lost in English translation.

Chuck Crismier: That is that is absolutely true, and I think it's important that we understand that. Another aspect of this, uh, is that our real battle is not a culture war. The culture war is a fleshly war against the things that we disagree with. The spiritual war is a war in favor of the things that God commands and would disagree with those things that God doesn't command. In 15 years ago, Dr. James Dobson, a long-time friend of mine before he ever started Focus on the Family, by the way, that shows you how old I am. Um, he he joined me on the floor of the National Religious Broadcasters convention for an interview. And here's what he said. I couldn't believe my ears, but this is what he said. He said, "Chuck, we've lost the culture wars." That was 15 years ago. "We've lost the culture wars." What he was admitting in that regard is maybe we put the emphasis on the wrong syllable. Maybe it was a war we couldn't win in that regard. We should have put the emphasis on the spiritual. We should have put the emphasis on, what is it that God requires of us? And when we did not do that, Jerry Falwell did not do that. Neither did the founder of the Christian broadcasting. In fact, when uh, Ralph Reed left the Christian Coalition, Pat Robertson appointed two guys to head up the Christian Coalition. Uh, Don Hodel and uh, what was his other name? Anyway, there were two guys. And they made a public statement. Here it was. "If we were to fill all the elective offices in America by professing Christians of the ilk that we currently have in America, America would still not change." He said, "America will only change until the hearts of the people change." Guess what? Pat Robertson immediately fired them. That message would not sell. It wouldn't raise money. But it was the truth. Because the heart of the matter was the heart, and that's not where the focus was. The focus is on, "You do what we Christians think you ought to do," rather than, "How about your heart? What is it about your heart that is causing this problem?" So we missed the boat. And now we're having to deal with the repercussions of that. How do we now restore the sense of the spiritual battle?

Guest (Male): Yeah, that's good. Well, I mean, that's always going to come from the pulpits. Um, and that's why the White Rose Resistance exists. We exist to mobilize and inspire the local church to reclaim their great legacy of resistance and reformation. Um, this has always been our job. And I like how Shafer said it. He said, "The ignorance of the church is more dangerous for a culture than the decadence of the world."

Chuck Crismier: Wow.

Guest (Male): Or as Hilaire Belloc, Chesterton's best friend, put it. He said, "It's it's not the barbarians at the city gates that worry me. It's the traitors within. Those who who mock their faith, who scoff at their history, and who welcome the enemies of Christ with open arms. These will be the ones who bring down Christendom brick by brick." In other words, brother, I don't really fear all that much the drag queen, sexual perverts, and baby killers. You want to know why? Because that's always been a feature of nearly every civilization as it begins to forget God. Um, the only thing that has been able to obliterate that kind of evil and actually create a society where women and children and babies are protected and valued is the local church. Um, what you were just saying about, you know, well that, you know, that that whole thing about the the spiritual war and the hearts of Christians isn't going to sell well. Um, and so we need to focus on giving, you know, getting conservative political power. Um, that reminds me of the significance of the rescue movement. Operation Rescue, normal moms and dads sacrificing to save babies. The moral majority gets built on the muscle and back of the rescue movement, which ushers Reagan into office. Maybe Chesterton was right. The most extraordinary thing in all the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.

Chuck Crismier: There you go. The Last Stand, friends, $27 on our website, saveus.org.

Chuck Crismier: Have you ever considered what the early church was like? Many people are developing a heart longing for a greater fulfillment in our practices as Christians. A recent study showed 53,000 people a week are leaving the back door of America's churches in frustration. What is going on? Why has there not been even a 1% gain among followers of Christ in the last 25 years? Could it be that God is seeking to restore first-century Christianity for the 21st century? Jesus said, "I'll build my church." Is Christ by his Spirit stirring to prepare the church for the 21st century? The early church prayed together and broke bread from house to house. They were family, and it was said by all who observed, "Behold how they love one another." Incredible, but the same can be found right now. Go to saveus.org and click Cell Church. We can revive first-century Christianity for the 21st century. It's about people, not programs. It's about a body, not a building. That's saveus.org. Click Cell Church.

Chuck Crismier: Welcome back to Viewpoint. I'm Chuck Crismier. Our guest today, Seth Gruber with his book, The Last Stand. Christ or Chaos, The War for the West. It is true, Christ or Chaos. We have chaos now because we have progressively abandoned the authority of Christ. Interesting, even within many people's theology, there is a war against the idea of Jesus as Lord. Believe it or not, it's true. Major theological warfare against the phrase Jesus is Lord. Why? Because they're saying, "Oh, that's work salvation." Really? If that's work salvation, then you've missed the whole concept of the scriptures. It's about the Kingdom of God. It's about his righteousness. Jesus said, "Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all the other things will be added unto you." The whole message of the Gospel is about the Kingdom of God. Entering the Kingdom, living according to the ways of the Kingdom. If we do not live according to the ways of the Kingdom of God, we're living according to the ways of another kingdom. And there are only two kings. Jesus actually spoke directly to that issue concerning the religious leaders of his day who claim to be the kingpins of Israel. That's right. They were the kingpins of Israel. And he said, "You claim to be the sons of Abraham, but you're not. You're of your father, the devil." There are only two fathers. Father God, the creator, and the devil. Only two. And each of them has a kingdom. So the question then is, what kingdom are we actually serving? And we got to be careful when we try to answer that question, because it's not just what we say we believe, it's how we live. You see, the Hebrew understanding of the word believe is not to give cognitive assent to certain facts about religion. It's to live according to what we say we believe. To hang our very life on it. That's what it means to believe. Are we really believers? If we're really believers, are we really embracing the Kingdom of God and his righteousness? Or are we doing a trying to straddle the fence? It can be a very dangerous thing for men, as Seth, I'm sure can well assure us. Straddling the fence can be very dangerous. God is not going to allow those who claim his salvation to be fence travelers. We have to live according to the word, the will, and the ways of God. And there's one word that differentiates the two. Well, two words. The first one is repent, and the second word is obey. The first word is repent, and the second word is obey. Seth, did you know that over the past eight years I've had numerous pastors and parachurch leaders on this program who've admitted that the word obey is the most hated word in the church today. How could that be?

Guest (Male): Yeah, well, because uh, turns out, uh, it's easier to be selfish sensei, feeding our appetites than to actually restrain that, um, and build communities around honesty and repentance of sin so that together we can build something that no one individual could. And that's how the local church, the early church operated, was a radical repentance, a radical honesty, radical fellowship, and radical love. And you're right, the whole phrase, "Jesus is Lord," or "Jesus is King," seems to be hated more now in our lifetime than we've ever seen before. But that's the same message that the early church was preaching. But I want to want to add one other piece to that, Chuck, early Christians, the Patristics, okay? They weren't just martyred for saying that Christ is king. They were. They were. Don't get me wrong. I mean, you were supposed to say, "Caesar of Curios, Caesar is King." And they were saying, "No, Christ is king." And he's the only king. He said, "All authority in Heaven and on Earth has been given to me. Therefore go." So, yes, they were martyred for that message. But one of the things that we forget, and one of the things most pastors aren't preaching about the early church, was how many warrior Christians in the early church Patristic era, brother, were killed for their defense of babies and children, for their refusal to allow abortion, infanticide, and the sexualization of kids? The early church was martyred in large numbers because they were standing for the sanctity of life. They were standing against the abortion industry of their day. Adia of Dadesa, uh, incredible, preached against infanticide and child limitation and was martyred for refusing to soften his defense of the unborn. Benignus of Dijon, a preacher and missionary from Lyons, uh, executed in Apagni. Um, he provoked violent opposition in the pre-Christian area of Gaul by caring for and hiding children with severe deformities and disabilities, some of whom were infants who had been left to die through exposure. He was killed.

Chuck Crismier: Well, that was the nature that was the nature of Rome. And they they saw no respect for babies that they didn't want. They'd leave them out on the doorstep or somewhere exposed, and Christians would come along and embrace those little babies and raise them. And over a period of 200 years, well, guess what happened? Well, Will Durant, the famous historian said, "It was amazing what actually happened. It became the confrontation between Caesar and Christ." They met in the arena, and after 200 years, Christ won. Why? Because the Christians acted like Christ.

Guest (Male): Right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, uh, was a Christian slave who was um, sentenced to hard labor in the mines of Sardinia. He was uh, later freed by a rich Christian benefactor, and then he was assigned the first piece of real estate the church to ever owned. It was a cemetery along the Appian Way where I filmed that in my film, The Last Stand, which any church can host a screening of right now by going to thelaststand.film, thelaststand.film. Uh-huh. Uh, and his cemetery became a place where pagans traveling in and out of Rome confronted a Christian ministry. Um, but his position outside of Rome brought Callistus into conflict with exposure, the infanticide walls, where you could just leave a baby. And the baby would be eaten alive by an animal or sometimes uh, apprehended by a pimp who would raise that kid in a in a brothel to be a sex slave, or rescued by a Christian. And Callistus started something called Life Watches, an early precursor to pro-life sidewalk counseling, where Christians were positioned to watch the infanticide walls. So when pagan Romans would put their infants to be left to die, a Christian would run up, rescue the baby, place it into a Christian family, and raise that baby in the fear and admonition of the Lord. And thus pro-life sidewalk counseling and the adoption movement were launched in the same moment.

Chuck Crismier: So what do you do with what do you do, Seth, with evangelical Christians, professing evangelical Christians where the abortion rate is nearly that of their secular counterparts? What do you do with that?

Guest (Male): Yeah, we've been worshiping at the idols of Astroth, um, Baal, and Molech. And the church has by and large adopted all of the same serpents of the uh, promises of the serpent, um, that the pagan world has adopted. When you look at the divorce rate, when you look at the porn addiction, when you look at the abortion usage, it's basically the same between the church and the pagan world. And so how are we going to raise up a generation of iconoclasts, who are going to tear down the high places of our pagan society when we've erected those high places in our own living room and in our own bedroom?

Chuck Crismier: All right. That brings up the second the second word. Okay. It's the R word, repent. And to repent means to acknowledge how far we've fallen away from God's requirements of of holiness and righteousness in our lives. And to agree with God's assessment, to confess those things openly and to turn from them radically. Here's what happened. In 1996, Dr. Bill Bright through the Templeton Foundation, the million-dollar reward that he got from them, sponsored an effort to bring the church together for prayer in America. In St. Louis, Missouri, 1996. He brought uh 4,000 Christian leaders together, not to pray for the nation, but to pray for the church. Nancy Leigh DeMoss, who was the uh, come to find out was the featured keynote speaker for that event, consolidated her message in these words, "Begin at my sanctuary," quoting the Book of Ezekiel. "Begin at my sanctuary." So I sat together with one of the foremost prayer leaders in America during a private time there at that event. And I said, "How is it that we have had these national days of prayer now for 40 years? And we've had uh, themes like, uh, heal our land. And seek his face, but we've never had one turn from our wicked ways," or repent. "Why is that?" And here was the answer. Are you ready for this? Three words. "It's too negative." That was the answer. If I told you who it was, you'd gasp. Really? You'd gasp. It's too negative, which is reflecting the problem that we have had. We're trying to impress and win the world by becoming more like the world and raising more and more money. And we're afraid to call even God's own people to repent because it may cost some money on our ministries. That's the problem. We're at The Last Stand. I believe we are. I believe we're at The Last Stand. And we're not in full agreement with what God has said. We just aren't. From pulpit to pew, we're not. And we like to think that it's a problem with the liberals and the abortionists and the homosexuals and Slick Willy in the White House or Barack Obama or whatever. But actually, from God's viewpoint, it's his warmest audience that we call the choir.

Guest (Male): That's right. That's why I love to quote Shafer like I did earlier. The the ignorance of the church is more dangerous for a culture than the decadence of the world. We are Jill Pole and the Silver Chair who was given signs to remember and to repeat when she wakes up in the morning, when she lies down at night, when she wakes in the middle of the night. Told by Azlan, whatever strange things may happen to you on your journey, let nothing turn your mind from following those signs. Why? Because she was given a mission by the great lion. And what was that mission? It was to break a spell. It was to free a prince. It was to free a land. But as she went down into Narnia, she forgot to repeat the signs. And it was her forgetfulness that got her and her friends into such a mess.

Chuck Crismier: No wonder God told the children of Israel, "Remember, remember, remember. Remember, remember, remember." And that's exactly, that's the message, isn't it? Remember, and then respond accordingly.

Guest (Male): That's right. Yeah.

Chuck Crismier: The Last Stand, friends, Christ or Chaos, Peter Marshall, that uh, chaplain of the United States Senate in 1947 declared Christ or Chaos to the United States Senate. His son, coming to Richmond, Virginia, after we were called to come to this place, uh, the birthplace of the nation. I asked him as he was on his way to uh, speak as the keynote speaker of one of our uh, governor inaugurations. I said, "Peter, with all you know about American history and Richmond, Virginia, how would you characterize Richmond, Virginia that industry says is the premier testing ground for all of America?" And he responded with these words, "Pride, stubbornness, and rebellion." That's the characteristic of America today. Even in God's house house, Seth, and I'm concerned about it. It is The Last Stand. Don't you think so?

Guest (Male): Yes, I think so. And as we discussed in the first portion of your program, uh, J.D. Unwin's research is historically ruthless. There's not a single exception or example of a society that has codified and celebrated what we have done in America and continued to thrive past 100 years. It really is a civilizational moment for the glory of God, for the furtherance of his kingdom, and for the protection of the families and babies. I think it's time for the local church to wake up. And so any church in America or Christian school, you can host a screening for free of my new film right now. Pick up a copy of the book as well. But for your congregants, your parishioners, and your students, go to thelaststand.film, thelaststand.film. And you can just press host a screening. Our team will work to set you up with a date to bring this film to your church or to your school. Maybe maybe if we awaken the local church, we can reverse this crash course.

Chuck Crismier: Thelaststand.film, huh?

Guest (Male): That's it.

Chuck Crismier: Very good. It's as simple as that. The book is called The Last Stand, Christ or Chaos, The War for the West, friends. And $27 will put this hardbound book in your hands. It's on our website saveus.org, saveus.org. Call us 1-800-SAVE-USA, 1-800-SAVE-USA. Write to us at Save America Ministries, PO Box 70879, Richmond, Virginia, 23255. Write a check and $6 for postage and handling, and become a partner, friends. Yeah, become a partner. Uh yours truly receives no remuneration whatsoever and has never and will never receive any remuneration from your donations. They all go to get the message out. Help us in that regard, we pray. Now, don't wait for the other guy to do it, he's not doing it. You be the one that, you be God's hand extended to help get the message out. Remember, it may be our last stand. That being the case, what will you do? God bless and be a blessing. You've been listening to Viewpoint with Chuck Crismier. Viewpoint is supported by the faithful gifts of our listeners. Let me urge you to become a partner with Chuck as a voice to the church declaring vision for the nation. Join us again next time on Viewpoint as we confront the issues of America's heart and home.