Ankerberg Show

John Ankerberg: 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. To learn how our secular culture affects us but won't ever redefine or change God, join us for this edition of the Ankerberg Show.

Welcome to our program. I'm John Ankerberg and I'm really glad that you joined us today. I've got a great guest with me that you've just heard me announce, but his name is Dr. Erwin Lutzer and he's written a book called *The Eclipse of God*, which we're going to talk about. But I'd like to start this program with this question to you.

I've asked a lot of people, "Hey, do you believe in God?" And just a couple of weeks ago, a person said to me, "Yeah, I said I had a couple of nightclubs and I used to tell jokes, but I do believe in God." I said, "Hey, that's really great. When you stand before God someday and he asks you why should I let you into my heaven, what are you going to tell him?"

He says, "Well, I told a lot of these people jokes and made them happy." I said, "You really think that's going to fly?" And he says, "Well, I don't know." I wonder about you. You're going to stand before God and he's going to say, "Why should I let you into my heaven?" What are you going to say?

When you say you believe in God and then you never live anything connected with that statement in your life, what should I think about you? Erwin, I'm going to throw that over to you because it's part of your book, this best-selling book, *The Eclipse of God*. Why is the statement "I believe in God" largely meaningless?

Erwin Lutzer: Well, John, one reason is because of what you've already given, that people say that and then don't live according to that belief. But there's something else going on in our society. People are defining God in whatever way they want. So, "I believe in God," I've had people tell me, "Well, my God would never judge anyone."

So they have their own God, and others have a different God. And so you go into the buffet of religion, if I could say that, and you choose a little bit of this religion, a little bit of that religion, and a little bit of the other, and make your own concoction and call it, "This is my belief in God." It's largely meaningless because it depends on the God in whom you believe.

John Ankerberg: I got one for you that's based off on a Bible verse. Matthew 6:10, we read the Lord's Prayer which states, "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." But in the minds of many today in church, they've changed that around so it says, "Our will be done in heaven as it's done on earth." And that is really true. They do whatever they want.

People 16, 17, 18 are leaving church because they've listened to what the pastor's been saying, but they watch their parents, and their parents have never done anything that the pastor's been saying, and they just make up their own religion.

Erwin Lutzer: And they do that oftentimes because of moral reasons. The God that they were brought up believing in restricts them and they think to themselves, "I need to free myself." And liberation actually turns out to be sin. In other words, "I want to be liberated."

And then they discover that sin takes you farther than you intended to go, it keeps you longer than you intended to stay, and it costs you more than you intended to pay. And pretty soon they find themselves in desperate straits, especially when they have left the living and the true God.

John Ankerberg: People actually want to change the name of God today because of the differences in gender. So let's change it to either he, she, or they. It would be more culturally relevant and accessible to all kinds of people in the gender spectrum if we did that.

Erwin Lutzer: John, I can't even begin to imagine how utterly foolish that is, to think that we are able to change the nature of God by just thinking about him differently. Now to be perfectly clear, God is not a male, but he reveals himself as a male. He reveals himself as a father. Don't you think that we ought to honor his preferred pronouns?

John Ankerberg: That's what everybody else wants to do. They want to have their pronouns honored.

Erwin Lutzer: Exactly. And so what people are thinking today is somehow we can change the nature of God and that is within our power. Well, that certainly is not the God of the Bible. And here's what is happening in today's world. People look into the mirror and they see themselves and they think that they are God, the God according to their making.

And as a result of that, we're living in an era in which there is a multiplicity of gods. The Bible talks about the fact that people have idols in their hearts. And it was Calvin, the great reformer, who said that our minds are basically idol factories. That is to say, we're always looking for some other idol than the true God.

I read an article in which it was said that God is becoming more liberal. He's now approving of same-sex marriage. He's approving of this and he's approving of that. So God is changing. And we want to emphasize today that God is not changing. The Bible says, "I am the Lord, I change not."

God is not changing. People's opinion of him might change, but that certainly does not change the Almighty.

John Ankerberg: Let me tell Christians just a little bit of comfort here. In Psalm 50, verses 21 and 22, God actually rebukes his people for redefining him to make him like ourselves. This is what he says in Psalm 50:21: "These things you have done, and I have been silent. You thought that I was one like yourself.

But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you. Mark this, then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart and there be none to deliver." So God doesn't like us messing with his name.

Erwin Lutzer: And what we need to do is to recognize here that we are living at a time when the idea of God is very fluid, as we've emphasized, and people are believing in false gods. Now the Bible does speak to people who have put their faith in a false god. This is beautiful imagery. I'm reading from the book of Isaiah, this is chapter 29, verse 8.

And the context is this, it's talking about the gods of the nations, not the God of Israel, and it says this: "As when a hungry man dreams and behold he is eating, and awakes with his hunger not satisfied. Or when a thirsty man dreams and behold he is drinking and wakes faint and his thirst is not quenched. So shall the multitude of all the nations be that fight against Mount Zion."

Imagine this imagery. You go to bed hungry, you dream you are eating, you're at this banquet, but then you wake up to reality and you're still hungry. You go to bed thirsty, you believe that you are drinking cool water, but you wake up and you recognize it was a dream. And there are many people today who are going to experience someday that they have believed in a dream and not reality.

John Ankerberg: Erwin, I used to speak on university campuses like University of Chicago, Northwestern, Minnesota, University of Michigan, and so on. We'd have a thousand kids out there and I'd say, "If you listen to me for an hour, you can ask me questions for an hour."

And I found out they had a new one. They would say, "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual." Okay? And then they defined themselves what spiritual meant. And it's basically you can choose your personal combination of delicacies. No matter what you choose, no person can judge you. You're spiritual.

Erwin Lutzer: You know what they're really saying? They're saying, "I'm spiritual but I really don't believe anything that has content."

John Ankerberg: They're atheists. They really don't have any god.

Erwin Lutzer: Right. The Bible indicates that Satan would like to give people a spiritual experience and they have this experience of the spirit world and they think that they are experiencing God, when in point of fact they are experiencing Satan. These beings appear as angels of light, but they are actually angels of darkness. We're talking about some very serious matters.

And then what you also have today is people who may not be in contact with demons, but their self-consciousness becomes God. And what are the characteristics of this God? Well, I can predict. Number one, it's a God who accepts you as you are. A God who doesn't rebuke you. A God who is endlessly tolerant.

A God who recognizes your own value for who you are and he basically looks at you and believes that you're okay the way you are. So we want a God that will help us, but not a God who's going to rebuke us. We want a God who's going to be able to help us in a time of need, but not a God who's going to ask us to repent of our sin. And so we have redefined him according to our liking.

John Ankerberg: What's the difference between the God of the Bible and these self-made gods?

Erwin Lutzer: Self-made gods can never forgive you.

John Ankerberg: Never. And people go crazy with guilt.

Erwin Lutzer: Because they're trying to forgive themselves and they have no basis upon which they can do it.

John Ankerberg: And I bet there are people right now that are listening to us all over the world that you feel guilty because of something that you've done and nobody else knows about it but you do, and you can't stop thinking about it.

Erwin Lutzer: And yet what you try to do is you try to fill your life with alcohol, with drugs, with sensual pleasures. Why? You're trying to deaden the pain of a conscience that is troubling you and you don't know where to turn.

And I want to say to all of those of you who are listening who fit that category, you've tuned in today to the right program because before this show is over, we're going to explain to you how you can be free of that kind of guilt.

John Ankerberg: A lot of people want to commit suicide because they say there's nothing more for me to live for because I've lived for everything and I've got no joy. That's another thing. No joy.

Erwin Lutzer: Before we turn to the solution, I want to make one other comment and this, of course, is in my book also. This is the book. It's the story of me meeting some people at O'Hare Airport in Chicago from Germany. And because I know a little bit of German and they knew some English, we were able to communicate and I wanted to share the good news of the gospel with them.

They had just read a book which I had read just a few months before, and the author said that as he sat down to write, it is as if it was an invisible hand that came and helped him.

John Ankerberg: Automatic writing.

Erwin Lutzer: Yeah, and it is demonic. And what does God say? God says, "You are seeking my will. Your will is my will. What you want to do is what I want you to do." So here you have a conversation with God, and God is just authenticating who you are, how you've behaved, and what your situation is.

And so you're attracted to that God, but as you emphasize, that God cannot take away sin. And you may have a lot of optimism in your mind. You know, John, I tell the story of me being out on a golf game and there was a duck that flew off and I went to look into her nest and she was sitting on a golf ball.

John Ankerberg: Probably yours.

Erwin Lutzer: Probably mine, yeah. By the way, I didn't win that game, I can assure you. Now here's the point. That duck had so much optimism. I've often thought about her. She had all these ideas in her mind that a little duckling was going to hatch and she'd be able to take care of that little duckling.

Positive thinking can be very helpful. But no matter how much a duck has positive thoughts about sitting on a golf ball, it's just not going to happen. So you have people today who say what we need to do is to have faith in ourselves. Well, that's a bad place to put your faith. We need to have faith in our consciousness. Our consciousness can lead us to God.

John Ankerberg: Or in our money.

Erwin Lutzer: Or our money or sexuality or whatever and that's another god, by the way, that we have today in our society. So many people believe that I'll pursue this to find meaning, to find hope, to find forgiveness. But you know what? No matter how positive their thoughts, the simple fact is it cannot produce.

I want to just say this to all those of you who are listening for a moment. In Chicago a number of years ago, someone went into a drugstore and they took from the shelf medicine and filled them with poison, with cyanide. People purchased this medicine, they took it home, and seven people died.

Now the bottle had the right label. The bottle said this is medicine, this is Tylenol, but the content, of course, was poison. And you know, you may have a religion that even has the right label. As a matter of fact, your religion may even have the label Christian. But the question is what about the content?

What is it that you believe? Where have you placed your own faith? Is it in something that actually is real, that has reality, promises that can be believed, or have you placed your faith in something that is really a dream, maybe even something that is poisonous? That's a question I want to leave with you today.

Because it is so important for us to understand that we have to believe in the right God and we have to believe on his promises. And as you look at the various religions of the world, I sure hope that you understand that the evidence for Christianity is powerful. And yes, there is a medicine for our need.

The Bible speaks directly to the human heart, it speaks directly to all that we are going through in our sinfulness, and it brings us back to reality. There is a Savior, he has the right label, Jesus Christ our Lord, and he is the medicine for the human heart.

John Ankerberg: And I'd like you to lead them into a prayer for some of those that are ready. They've been listening and they're saying, "You're talking about me, and I want to invite Jesus Christ into my life right now." Would you say a prayer for them that they could say after you if they mean it? It's not the prayer that saves them, it's whether or not they trust Jesus. In the words that they're saying, are they going to trust him to do what they ask him to do? Would you say a prayer?

Erwin Lutzer: I'm honored to say a prayer, and I want to emphasize again, it's not the prayer that saves people. It's the transfer of trust to Jesus Christ, where you are confessing that you no longer trust yourself. You can't deal with your own mess, your own sin, and you're going to trust him to do it.

Because Jesus said this: "Come unto me all ye who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." And he is able to forgive us and to accept us. He who has the Son has life; he who has not the Son of God shall not see life. So for all those who are listening, if God has spoken to you today and you know that you need that Savior, that reality, I'd like to pray.

Father, we thank you today that Jesus Christ can be believed. We thank you for his promises. We thank you that the Bible says as many as received him, to those he gave the authority to become the children of God, even to those who believe on his name.

And Lord, I want to pray for those who have doubts. Help them to remember that they can come to Jesus Christ with those doubts. We thank you that he does not turn people away. May they come with fear, may they come with doubt, but may they come to someone who is real, someone who was crucified, dead, and then raised back to life again and is even now seated at the right hand of God the Father.

Help them to know that Jesus died for them and may they believe and be saved. And then Father, would you grant them the assurance of eternal life given by the Blessed Holy Spirit of God? We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

John Ankerberg: Thank you for being with us today. And next week, we're going to do another important topic. Let me ask you this. Do you think that we should still believe in the God of the Old Testament? Is God more tolerant today in the New Testament than he used to be in the Old Testament?

Is it safer to sin today because there were certain sins that if you did in the Old Testament you were stoned? That's not true today in the New Testament. So what's changed? A lot of you don't know, a lot of you would like to know, that's what we're going to talk about next week. I hope that you'll join us.

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