Ankerberg Show

Guest (Male): Folks, when you leave your home each day, do you realize how much our radical secular culture has influenced how you live and think? You may be surprised that it has influenced you more than you realize. For example, our secular culture is trying to redefine or rid us of even believing in God.

My guest today, Dr. Erwin Lutzer, former pastor of Moody Church in Chicago, writes in his new book, *The Eclipse of God*, "Just as the moon obscures the sun's light during an eclipse, radical secularism has obscured the light of God. Yet God is still God, even when we no longer see or acknowledge him."

Today, we live in a world where radical secularism has redefined God's moral standards. And we are watching the unraveling and destruction of our culture. We have seen an increase in violence, treachery, the abuse of the law, sexual perversity, drug use, and suicide.

Radical secularism continues to make more changes in our morals, laws, and education. And this darkness is being protected and normalized while light is being vilified and criminalized. This is not just the clash of worldviews, but the clash of spiritual forces that affects us all.

The God of the Bible is watching and weighing us on his scales of justice. So learn how our secular culture affects us but won't ever redefine or change God. Join us for this edition of the *John Ankerberg Show*.

John Ankerberg: Welcome to our program. I'm John Ankerberg and my special guest is Dr. Erwin Lutzer, that we've just introduced. And we are talking today about the important topic of the God of creation. Did God actually create the world and everything around us, including the universe, and including you and me?

Or has everything come about by blind chance, just as a lucky throw of the dice, and here we are? Darwin said you just evolved and you're a lucky one to show up. So that's what we're talking about today. And Erwin, when I come to you, there are plenty of atheists that are on Darwin's side.

I remember Richard Dawkins, the atheist, who said even if there were no actual evidence in favor of the Darwinian theory, we should still be justified in preferring it over all other rival theories. I thought that very interesting. And evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin writes, "Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural."

"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity to some of its constructs because we have a prior commitment. We have a prior commitment to materialism, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated, we believe that. Moreover, materialism is absolute for us, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door."

Now, that kind of tells you that they have a bias before they even start looking at the evidence. But I want to talk about the important question of why is it important that we have a God that created everything versus us just being a lucky chance that we're here?

Erwin Lutzer: John, that's huge. If God didn't create us, then we don't even know who we are. And I've had this debate also, and I'm sure that you have. Why should we believe that the earth was created and the universe? Why don't we just believe that it existed?

The fact that something exists means that something has existed forever because I think we all agree that out of nothing, nothing comes. If there was nothing, there would always be nothing. The question that we have to answer is this: does it make more sense to believe that the universe existed forever from eternity past, or does it make more sense to believe that God created the universe?

It makes much more sense to believe that God created the universe and that God existed forever. And here's why. When you talk about the universe, we know that it's really based on cause and effect. We also know that the universe is running down. It's running down out of energy.

John Ankerberg: Second law of thermodynamics. Yes, sir.

Erwin Lutzer: Exactly. And so the question is, does cause and effect apply also to God? No. We know it only applies to the physical world. That's the only world that we have available to experiment on.

But to believe that God existed forever is mysterious, but it is not an impossibility and is so much more rational than to believe that the universe existed forever. Because the universe does not have within it the reason for its own existence. That is, of course, beyond all possibility. It is much more reasonable to believe in God, and the implications, of course, are absolutely huge.

John Ankerberg: So let's take the implication that God has created the world, and what are those implications that come out of that for law, morality, for who we are, for human beings, for the value of human beings? Where are we going? Where are we headed?

Erwin Lutzer: Well, humanists would like to recreate themselves, and just briefly, we do want to touch on the whole transgender phenomenon.

John Ankerberg: Let me ask you this. If a mom and dad has their son or daughter come home from school and says to them, "I think that I am a different gender," what would you want the parents to say to their young person who asks them that question?

Erwin Lutzer: First of all, you have to speak compassionately. You have to understand where they are coming from because they may be dealing with a host of internal issues that they are trying to resolve. Young people especially go through times of inner confusion, and they think to themselves, and society says, "Oh, you must be trans."

But what are the implications? First of all, if a child asks you to give them a different name, names are not gendered. But if your child was born a girl, let's suppose that her name is Betty and now she wants to be called Burt because she thinks that she is a boy, you have to help her to understand the following.

Number one, self-perception is often incorrect. There are people in psych wards who genuinely believe that they are Napoleon, but that doesn't make them Napoleon. So the thoughts that you have as to what your identity really is may be incorrect.

But second, and this is so critical, if the child wants you to call him or her by a different pronoun, you ask the child this: "Don't you think it's important that I be authentic?" "Oh yes, we should all have authenticity." I lovingly have to tell you I cannot call you something that I do not believe you are.

And then, next, critical, help them to see the consequences. You can choose any path that you want along the road, so to speak, but what you can't do is to choose where that path ends. You are actually undercutting all possibilities of a happy marriage if you go down that road.

John Ankerberg: I'd like to go to the second question is that when God created Adam and Eve, he created man in the image of God. They were both equal. And that has fantastic repercussions all down through history. Men and women are equal. It applied to slavery. It applied to how we treat our wives, how we treat our husbands.

Erwin Lutzer: I'm sure throughout the world right now we're speaking to people who have been devalued, people who have been sold into various kinds of slavery. I want them to know this. They are important to God, and they are created in God's image, and as such, they have a tremendous amount of value.

And we are not animals. And we're not in a position where we think we can change our gender. God has to help us to understand what our role is, and even today, if there are those who are going through times of great inner difficulty, we want to point them to Christ. That we believe Christ will help them in the midst of that.

John Ankerberg: Okay, this is your new book that has just come out. It's a fantastic book, almost 300 pages, and I recommend it highly. And I want to read something about what we're talking about. You said, "The terms male and female are not cultural constructs. They are not social roles foisted upon mankind by the accretion of culture and tradition. Gender, what is given to us at conception, is not for us to choose. God gave us this dignity to serve and glorify him."

Erwin Lutzer: You know, the fact is this, that there are people who feel a sense of confusion within, but as I've already mentioned, we have to help them to understand that the confusion should not lead them down a very dangerous path.

As a matter of fact, the statistics indicate that young people especially oftentimes grow out of this confusion even as they grow up. So the implications for their role in life are huge, and they need to be able to accept the fact that God created me as I am, and I accept my role because in acceptance there is peace.

John Ankerberg: Yeah, because God created man and woman, and he created us in the image of God. He gave us something inside of us that when Adam and Eve sinned, we fell morally. We are not perfect. We are not naturally good. We do have sinful parts of our humanity.

We can be good, but we can be evil. The seeds of evil is in everyone of us. You have talked in Reformation places such as Germany and different spots where the concentration camps were. You talked where Luther put his 95 theses on the wall at Wittenberg. You talked about different things all across the world, and it has to include the fact that man has done evil to a big extent.

Erwin Lutzer: The very fact that we're talking about evil shows that we were created as beings with a consciousness and with a moral compass. And even though, of course, that compass is not always followed, in fact it's seldom is, it is there.

If God does not exist, morality is totally impossible. What we want to do is to help people to understand that no matter how far they have fallen, they are still very important to God, and that God is able to lift them out from where they are and forgive them and give them a sense of self-worth and dignity that we as human beings can have.

John Ankerberg: Let me ask you this. Why is God absolutely necessary for human rights? Because all over the world we have problems with people figuring out that question.

Erwin Lutzer: There is no such thing as human rights that can arise out of a country or an individual. We need transcendent rights that are really applicable to everyone. And no place do we see this more clearly than the Nuremberg trials where the Nazis were tried after the war.

Here was the problem. The question was, "By whose laws should these evil men be judged?" British law, American law? What about the laws of Germany? The Nazis argued, "We didn't break any laws because Hitler made the killing of Jews legal."

So there was an American attorney by the name of Robert Jackson, who stood up and gave a speech in which he said, in effect, "There is a law above the law, a transcendent law that applies to all cultures, and that's the law that we need to be able to indict these men."

Now, this is critical because what that means is that God has to exist in order to have a law that's universally applicable. And so we have to understand. Now, here's the interesting thing. There may be some atheists who are listening who say this: "Well, I would agree that they were evil just based on my atheism."

No. You agree that they were evil because you were created by God with a God consciousness. You also have a sense of morality, a sense of decency, and that's where you got it from. You got it from your creation. Logically, you did not get it from an atheistic philosophy. Now, I show this more clearly in the book, but out of atheism, no morality whatever can arise.

John Ankerberg: If God exists and made us as human beings and made the universe, there's a hundred billion trillion stars out there, and our sun is a star, which means there are planets around all of that, and that's just the observable universe that we can see with the James Webb infrared telescope.

The universe is immense. God is very powerful. And the fact is we're going to die someday, and we're going to appear before this God that made the universe and made us, and he made the moral laws. And we all know inside of ourselves that we have broken those moral laws. What are we going to say to God when he says, "Why should I let you into my heaven?"

Erwin Lutzer: John, that's the most important question that anyone could ever ask. And there are people who are listening today who wonder about that. But first of all, we also have to establish the fact that indeed we are going to be judged by God. One other comment about atheism.

I remember being friends with an atheist, and we used to walk together in the neighborhood and frequently talk together. And I said to him, "Are you troubled by the fact that according to your philosophy, the Nazis will never be judged? That they got by with what they did because there's no justice in the universe? When you die, you simply die like a dog," as is frequently said. And he said, "You know, that is very troubling."

So isn't it interesting that atheism has no ultimate answer to these kinds of questions? But in answer to your question, John, I want to speak personally to all the people who are listening. Perhaps you were able to get snatches of this program.

You may wonder about these big issues that we're talking about. But I want to direct you to the words of Jesus. Jesus gave this parable. He said there were two men and they decided to build their house in the very same neighborhood. One man built his house upon the sand. The other built his house upon the rock.

Now, the point that Jesus is saying is this: there are some lives that look identical to one another. On a beautiful afternoon, the house that was built upon the rock may have looked exactly like the house that was built upon the sand. But then Jesus said, "When the floods came, when the rain beat down upon the house, when the winds blew, one house collapsed and the other stood."

What's the difference? Well, Jesus explains the difference. He says, "Those who hear my word and believe on me, they are like unto the one who built his house upon the rock." The others have built their house upon the sand. And maybe you look as good as your neighbor or look as good as some Christians that you know.

But the question is this: what about your foundation? Have you come to saving faith in Jesus Christ? He said not only "I am the way, the truth, and the life," but he also made statements like this: "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger. He who believes on me shall never thirst."

In these promises that Jesus Christ made, his integrity is bound up with these promises. I believe that God has spoken to many of you today, and you know in your heart that you are not ready to meet God. God the creator, the vast God who existed from eternity to eternity.

The fact is he's a God of mercy, but he's also a God of justice. And as John asked the question, are you prepared to meet him? Is your house built on the rock or is your house built on the sand? I'm so glad to be able to tell you that when Jesus Christ died on the cross, he died for the worst of sinners, for all people, because none of us is able to save ourselves.

But receiving his forgiveness and his acceptance is not automatic. It only happens through repentance and faith. An acknowledgment that you cannot save yourself, an acknowledgment that you want a life that is built upon the rock, even though there are people around you who built their house on the sand and who insist that their house is just as strong as yours.

Well, if they've not trusted Christ as Savior, if they have not seen him as King and Lord, they have built their house on the sand. I want you to make sure that your house is built on the rock. Would you receive Christ as Savior?

Father, cause the people who have listened to this program to acknowledge their sinfulness and trust Christ alone, who died for sinners and who promised us eternal life, and who promised us that if we build our house upon the rock, we shall abide. We love him and we thank him in his name. Amen.

John Ankerberg: Amen. And folks, please take that seriously. And next week we're going to talk about that topic even more. You know, there was a famous preacher that preached a sermon called "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."

And I'm afraid today that our people have changed that around, and it's God in the hands of an angry sinner. We're going to talk about which is really the truth next week, and it makes a difference to you. So I hope that you'll join us then.

But stay tuned because I got a special word for you in just a moment. Now, thank you for listening to the *John Ankerberg Show*. We're a listener-supported ministry, and your gifts help us continue to share the gospel with millions of people worldwide.

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