Culture & Christianity: The Allen Jackson Podcast

Allen Jackson: Spiritual forces are shaping your life today, and they will shape your destiny for all eternity. I think we have to acknowledge that evil exists, but at the end of the day, the Spirit of God within you, and your Bible, and a desire to be free are the most powerful forces to help you walk towards freedom. Jesus walked into the slave market and paid the price for you and for me to be delivered from the kingdom of darkness that we could come into His eternal kingdom. You keep seeking the Lord, and He will lead you.

Welcome to Culture and Christianity. We are stepping into fall very soon. Last week, I had a conversation with Billy Hallowell, and he had just finished a documentary around angels and demons and the supernatural. You can see that at CBN; it is available. The conversation with him sparked enough memories and ideas in me that I really want to do a follow-up to that interview I had with Billy. If you haven't seen the documentary, I would recommend it to you. I think it opens the door for a variety of conversations and thoughts and things that you can seek God about and open your Bible about.

In big-picture terms, I want to talk about angels, demons, and you. I have a book out by that title, which is really a series of sermons that I did on that. For full disclosure, it started when I was on vacation and I decided as a part of my vacation I would read the book of Revelation every day while I was on vacation. As I began that, what became so clear to me was that the book of Revelation, on one level, is an angel story. The angels of the churches in the opening chapters, the angels as a part of the scene in heaven—every time we see the throne room of God, we see angels in various numbers, sometimes enormous numbers, various configurations. When the judgments of God begin in the earth, the angels are very much engaged with that.

I was convicted as I was doing that, that I really had not given, in my awareness, an appropriate biblical place to the role of angels. I started that study and, from then until today, I have the habit when I am reading my Bible that every time I find the word "angel," I just circle it. I am finding that angels are a part of the biblical narrative from the beginning to the end. But if you are going to talk about the angels, we have to talk about the unholy spirits. It is not a fair conversation if we only talk about the part we like.

The really bigger conversation for this session is the reality of spiritual things: the spirits that are under the authority of God directly, in pursuit of the purposes of God in the earth, and the spiritual forces that are arrayed against the purposes of God in the earth. Both exist. Both are every bit as real as any part of our material world that we engage with. We are a little reluctant, I think, to lean into that, or we have known somebody that has embraced that and they have been so weird that we have stepped back from it.

I don't think you need to check your brain at the door or check logic at the door in order to believe in spiritual things. In fact, I think you are ignoring a great deal of observable reality if you don't include spiritual things. Right now, we have a national tragedy unfolding before us in the trial of Lindsey Clancy, who murdered her children. A judge and a jury are trying to decide her culpability in that. I haven't followed it very closely, but I do know that a part of the reporting has been that she heard a voice, apparently one time, that instructed her to kill her children and kill herself.

Anybody that has read the Bible casually should have at least some question around a voice affecting somebody's behavior—at least the possibility of there being a spiritual connection to that. But that is very difficult to evaluate in the context of a courtroom with a jury, so I am not offering an opinion other than to tell you that spiritual forces are shaping your life today and they will shape your destiny for all eternity. To say you don't believe in spiritual things means you really are setting aside the counsel of Scripture.

What to do with that is not simple. I am a bit fascinated at the way secularists now have spiritual conversations—people who say that spirituality or faith, or faith in God or faith in Jesus, has been a limited part of their lives, and they are far more open to believe in spiritual things impacting them. Yet those of us who spent our lives in church and have kind of lengthy pedigrees around Christianity, we tend to be minimalist sometimes around spiritual forces. We are cessationist; we believe when the last of the apostles died, the miracles stopped.

Or we don't believe that unclean spiritual forces have really any impact on us if we are Christians—that we are immunized against them. It is a bewildering set of positions that Christians take, so I am going to walk you through today. I am not going to do an in-depth Bible study; I am certainly not above that, as that is where I spend most of my life. But in these podcasts, I try to use Scripture more to inform the direction and then share some opinions, which means you could disagree with me and we could both go to heaven.

I think I would rather start with the realization that God is a Spirit, and those that worship Him worship Him, the New Testament says, in spirit and in truth. If you are a Christ follower, a person that embraces the Christian faith, you have embraced the notion of a spiritual reality that shapes your life in time, and ultimately you are trusting for your eternity. So I am not inviting you to something that is weird; this isn't the lunatic-fringe portion of Christianity. It doesn't diminish our intellect or our responsibility to develop our intellect, to learn.

I think we want to do everything we can to learn, but at the end of the day, God is not like me; He is different than me. He is a completely different being than I am. He is the Creator and the initiator and the sustainer of all things. You and I are not that. We are a finite part of His creation. So in our desire to know God, which is what the Bible is—the Bible gives us a way that we can know the Creator of heaven and earth, have a relationship with Him in such a way that we can participate in His eternal kingdom—that is what the Bible presents to you and to me.

It is ultimately not a science book or a history book; it doesn't answer all of the questions that we have, but it does give us a pathway, if we are so inclined, that we can know the Creator, have a relationship with Him, and participate in His kingdom. It is the greatest invitation that will ever be presented to a human being. It is not about joining a church or a denomination or an affiliation. Jesus is the door, He is the key; Jesus Himself said no one comes to the Father except through Him.

The reality of spiritual things: you and I are created as a physical being with five senses. We can see and hear and taste, touch, and smell. Those are the portals through which we experience reality. We can know the texture of something or the taste of something. But the spiritual world is not available to us through those five senses unless God chooses to give us some unique discernment and pull the curtain back.

There are any number of biblical examples of that. The prophet when the Aramean king sent his army to surround the city of Dothan where the prophet was, and the prophet's servant goes up on the roof and he sees all the surrounding armies, and the prophet prays that the Lord will open his eyes and the young man who is serving can see the armies of God standing between them and the armies of a foreign king. There are many examples of that.

In the New Testament, the Mount of Transfiguration, when Jesus took Peter, James, and John up onto a high mountain and He was transfigured, transformed before them, and He has a conversation with Moses and Elijah, and Peter, James, and John could see Moses and Elijah. So they could, with their physical senses or vision—it is not elaborated beyond that in Scripture—recognize both Moses and Elijah. I don't think they had on big laminated name tags and they had been dead for hundreds of years before Peter and the crew got there.

There are all these places in the Scripture where God pulls back the curtain a bit and we can observe spiritual forces. The New Testament tells us that angels are ministering spirits sent forth to help us; they are messengers to help us. The book of Revelation describes that, as I've mentioned already. Angels are a part of our existence, and I don't think we want to worship angels, I don't think we need to seek angels, I think we need to recognize they are a part of our lives. Typically, the Bible says that sometimes to practice hospitality because sometimes we entertain angels and we are unaware of it; we didn't recognize them as angels.

There have been a handful of times in my life where in retrospect, not in real-time, but in retrospect, I am quite confident that God has put angels in my path and they have made significant impacts on my unfolding story. My brother and I went to Hebrew University; we lived in Jerusalem, and it was a difficult season in our lives for a lot of reasons. I had made the decision, thinking I would step out of ministry. That weekend we went to Jaffa; we lived in Jerusalem, and we went to Jaffa, which is over on the Mediterranean coast. There was a conference being held in a youth hostel.

It was not an elaborate place to stay. We were in a room with 20 bunks and there was one fan; it was a pretty simple place. We had a meal break the next day around lunchtime and we were just sitting outside in an open courtyard at a picnic table, and a woman came up and said, "May I sit with you?" At the time, I thought she was a really old lady; she's probably younger than I am now—the arrogance of youth. We invited her to sit down. I didn't feel like talking to her; I was discouraged. I thought my life was changing course.

She sat down and asked us two or three questions, and she spoke English; she spoke American. She opened her Bible and began to read some passages to us from Isaiah, and they were completely on point with where we were in our lives, talking to us about not quitting, but understanding that God was opening and we had a remarkable conversation with her for about an hour and a half. She lived in Jerusalem, she said, so we made plans to meet, and we knew the city at that point pretty well because we had been living there for several months and we were very comfortable in navigating Jerusalem.

We got an address where she said we could find her, and we were very much looking forward to that because we left that encounter with the courage to stay engaged. We got back to Jerusalem and we spent two or three weeks trying to find the address and the person, and we never did make another connection with that person that spent that time with us in Jaffa that afternoon. But that encounter changed the trajectory of my life. I didn't get a business card that said "angel," but I am confident in my heart that God sent an angel at that point in time with the message that I needed to navigate the decisions that were on the table in front of me.

I could take you through another handful of experiences that I think were, without any doubt, God providing spiritual direction in a tangible form. Not God spoke to my heart—I have heard God speak to me with the same clarity that I have heard Him speak to people—but He doesn't do it on a momentary basis, and I don't want to give you that impression. I am of the opinion that if God gives you a direction, you don't really need further instruction until it is time to change the direction.

Sometimes we want constant affirmation, and I don't believe that is a very mature way to respond. Children, young children, may have to have constant reminders to say "thank you" or to say "please" or to say "you're welcome," but if you need constant reminders to say that when you're 16 or 36 or 66, there is something wrong in either the learning process or the training. I feel that way with the Lord. If He provides direction in our lives and we are moving anything towards maturity out of infancy, we should be able to hold the assignment until we are given further clarification or further direction, which means I don't have to have affirmation every day. I am happy for all the affirmation the Lord wants to provide, but sometimes I think we want to hold a rather childish, not childlike, but a childish posture with the Lord, and I would encourage you to grow up. If the Lord has told us what to do, let's go do that with joy and enthusiasm. When He needs to redirect or refine our form of service, I trust Him to do that. In my life, He has proven to be very, very faithful when it is time for course corrections or adjustments, and I trust Him to be that way with you.

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The other side of this equation, and the one I want to talk about with you a little bit too, is the unclean spirits, the unhealthy spirits. When we talk about the healthy spirits, it is not just angels; it is the presence of the Holy Spirit that dwells within you. It is one of the characteristics of the New Covenant that you and I have become temples of the living God, that the Spirit of God lives within us. You should recognize His voice and recognize His promptings, know how to cooperate with Him and know what grieves Him and know what makes Him unhappy, and care about it.

If you will put the "care about it" first at the front of the priority list, you will become far more adept at recognizing His promptings. If you don't care, it is highly improbable He is going to bother you. But if you care about the promptings of the Spirit of God and it matters to you, and you will do the things necessary to walk uprightly with the Lord, I find that He becomes far more involved in my life. The flip side of that equation, which I keep trying to get to, is the unclean spirits and their influence in our lives.

I think they have phenomenal presence in our world. You don't have to have much discernment at all to look around you and say some things are evil. If something cannot be explained by a logical progression and observation, my default position is that there is some spiritual influence involved in it. It can be good or bad, but there is some spiritual explanation. I think we have to acknowledge that evil exists and that it doesn't just exist in the hearts of human beings—that there are spiritual forces beyond human beings who are described both biblically and by observation as perpetrators of evil.

If that is the case, then you and I should have an imagined plan for overcoming expressions of evil. I believe viruses and bacteria exist and that they are very prevalent in our world, and God has gifted us with some rather elaborate immune systems which will protect us from the majority of the bacterial and viral threats that we face. But there are certain practices of hygiene that help us maintain physical health, and there are certain practices of spiritual hygiene that will help you maintain your spiritual health.

Saying that I don't believe in a virus or a bacteria and practice poor hygiene will not make me healthier. Saying I don't believe in them doesn't protect me. Ignorance does not provide an excuse, even if it is willful ignorance, and the same is true spiritually. Just choosing to be ignorant and uninformed doesn't mean you will be spiritually more healthy. Sometimes Christians get confused and they think you have to attach intent in order to have a negative impact. If I didn't intend to do something to make myself vulnerable, then I shouldn't be vulnerable.

That is a very naive approach to life. I don't have to intend to subject myself to somebody who has a cold in order for me to be exposed. Sometimes exposure comes; it isn't about intent. So please don't use a lack of intent as a credible defense or imagination of spiritual protection. I don't believe it is legitimate. Sometimes God in His mercy and His grace protects us from things, and I am very grateful for that. I don't ever want to diminish the role of God's grace and mercy, but I don't want to build a life that excuses any responsibility on my part.

Having done all the things God has shown me to do, then I am very comfortable fully relying on His grace and mercy. But if I ignore what God has shown me to do, if I ignore the Ten Commandments, if I ignore Jesus' teaching, if I ignore the clear counsel of Scripture, then I don't think I am relying upon God to protect me. I think I am leading a presumptuous life, and I don't want to do that and I don't want you to do that. If we can accept the point that there are spiritual forces that want to help us and there are spiritual forces that oppose the purposes of God in our lives, then I think we can have a credible conversation about what to do with that.

I want to recommend some resources. If this is a new conversation to you, there are some books you can read that I think will help. One author, Dr. Neil Anderson, has written a variety of books and has spent his life understanding this topic and, I think, has done so in a way that is very approachable. If you come from a Christian tradition that didn't have a robust conversation around spiritual realities, I think Dr. Anderson's thoughts and writings are very approachable and can be easily interpreted. One book is "Victory Over the Darkness," and it is really grounded in your identity in Christ, which I am going to talk about more, but it's a very worthwhile read.

"The Bondage Breaker": overcoming negative thoughts, irrational feelings, and habitual sins. Acknowledging that there are spiritual forces engaged in our lives that shape our lives and our personalities, and that are forces arrayed against us. What I like about "The Bondage Breaker" is it gives you some steps to freedom—some prayers that you can pray, that you can walk through, and the scriptural support for those prayers so that it doesn't require the intervention of somebody else. Far too often when we have this conversation in Christian circles, we want somebody else to be our solution—somebody that has more experience than we have to bring us the answers, to distill it down and tell me the two things to do, or to pray a prayer over us.

I often call it the Naaman Syndrome. Naaman was the leader of the Assyrian army that had leprosy, and when a servant told him that there was a prophet in Israel that could heal him, he lined up all of his permissions and presents himself at the prophet's house. Then he's angry because they just send a message out and say go dip yourself in the Jordan River, and Naaman's angry. He said, "I thought you'd come out and clap your hands over the place where I was and say a prayer and I'd be healed." I think most of us at some time or another in our lives have a Naaman attitude. We want somebody to pray a prayer for us, somebody to do our spiritual homework, somebody to make the effort to distill it down, somebody to teach us.

At the end of the day, the Holy Spirit is our teacher and we have our Bibles. I am grateful for what we can learn from one another and from resources, whether it is a podcast or a sermon or however. But at the end of the day, the Spirit of God within you and your Bible and a desire to be free are the most powerful forces to help you walk towards freedom. You don't have to have a connection with some person with a special insight. Isn't that good? So don't give up your determination to be free thinking somebody else can pray a prayer.

"The Bondage Breaker" is a great resource for you, and the steps to freedom are great tools, and I wouldn't think about them in terms of "Well, I read the book and I walked through the steps of freedom." Good. I would do it again. I would make it a part of my spiritual hygiene. I've had a bath in the last week. In fact, I've had more than one, and I have a plan to have more than one in the days ahead because I don't maintain my physical hygiene. It requires continuous attention. Maintaining your physical health requires consistent, ongoing attention; your spiritual health's no different, and your spiritual cleanliness is no different.

Another book I would recommend is by Derek Prince. It is called "They Shall Expel Demons: What You Need to Know about Demons—Your Invisible Enemies." Very similar topic to what Dr. Anderson picks up, slightly different approach, different individual, different set of life experiences, but it will open a set of conversations for you derived from Scripture. Sometimes Christians spin off in arguments, and I don't think it's helpful. I have a life practice that I encourage others towards: that if you and I can disagree on a point and still both go to heaven, I will extend to you a hand of fellowship.

Sometimes I think we draw lines in the sand around secondary and tertiary things and then we limit our learning. We'll argue about how frequently we take communion and whether the communion that we receive is with purple grape juice or red grape juice or fermented grape juice or not. Or we will argue baptism—the appropriate place to be baptized, the appropriate timing to be baptized. I have opinions about a lot of those things. Or we will argue eschatology—the return of the Lord—are we pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib, no-trib, some other trib.

We become so animated and so determined to be right that we isolate ourselves from other believers. As far as eschatology goes, I want out of here on the first load up, but I want to prepare as if I have to live until the very end and then I will trust God to lead me through that. I have some opinions, but I don't want to bring division to the body of Christ. When it comes to the conversation about spiritual forces and demons, Christians get a little isolated.

The New Testament, as I understand it, the word that is most frequently used when it deals with the people of the covenant and unclean spiritual forces—unclean spirits, evil spirits, demonic spirits; they are really interchangeable terms as they are used in the New Testament—the most consistent way their impact on the people of faith is described is the people were demonized. It doesn't say, typically, that they were possessed. I don't want to spend time in this podcast having the debate around possession, oppression, suppression, depression. I understand there are different meanings to those words.

If we could establish a baseline that unclean spiritual forces can influence your life, and if that's the case, then what I would submit to you that we want to know is how to limit their influence or how to overcome their influence so that it is minimized or nullified. If we can choose that pathway without having to descend into the full debate, for this session, I think it is adequate. I believe that Dr. Anderson's books or Derek Prince's book will give you a beginning on that. I'll add one more. In full candor, this is distilled from what I learned from both of those people, so I don't claim anything about this to be unique.

I've put together a little book—in fact, it was this year—"Your Identity in Christ: 12 Truths about Who You Are." I am confident if that you become very well-versed in who you are in Christ, and you lead a life with the desire to honor God and to put Him first in your life, that the Spirit of God will continually put you on a path towards spiritual freedom and liberty. But to imagine that you can attain spiritual freedom and liberty and maintain it and sustain it apart from understanding who you are in Christ seems very presumptive to me. So it is another great tool. I am not working on a commission, so I'll put it in that list.

When we talk about unclean spiritual forces, I think we unwittingly make ourselves vulnerable. The counsel of Scripture is to not seek direction from any spirit other than the Holy Spirit. Anytime you and I put ourselves in a position of trying to get spiritual guidance, direction, insight, pictures of the future, apart from the person of the Holy Spirit, we make ourselves vulnerable. There are a lot of ways that our culture encourages us to do that. Typically, we roll them up into a conversation around the occult, which as I use the term, typically means this pursuit of spiritual direction from something other than the Holy Spirit.

It involves things like witchcraft, fortune telling, Ouija boards, necromancy—when we contact the dead, whether you call it a seance, whatever language you use around it—I think that whole set of behaviors, biblically, is prohibited. We are told not to do it. I don't think it is God trying to limit our creativity; I think He is trying to protect us from spiritual forces and influences that are destructive. So I would encourage you to take the simple approach to Scripture and just not do that.

If you have done it, there is a simple little paradigm that I've invited people to, and it didn't originate with me, it's come from Scripture, but it begins with repentance. God, I'm sorry. Repentance means a change of mind and a change of behavior. I'm sorry I did that and I'm going to choose a new behavior. Forgive me. Then I want to renounce; I want to separate myself and I'll say it out loud, I want to separate myself from any influence that I open myself up to through my choices or my behavior. Through the blood of Jesus, I have been set free.

Then release. Sometimes there are other people that I need to forgive or other institutions; there are some things I need to turn loose of. Maybe I bought books or paraphernalia or tools that you may have used in pursuit of the occult. I would separate myself from those. I wouldn't keep them around. I don't want any lucky charms or any talismans or any of those things. I don't want to give place to anything physical in my life that is a connection to direction from an unclean spirit. I don't intend to do that, not in a purposeful way at all.

So that little pattern of repenting, of renouncing, and of releasing is a great little trifecta for helping yourself walk through places of spiritual freedom. If the Holy Spirit reminds you of something—if He reminds you of a time when you were young and you got involved, you went to see a fortune teller—I'm not adding shame to that. I'm simply saying if you have the desire to bring alignment, say, "God, I'm sorry. I did it unwittingly. I did it under the influence of an authority figure. I did it with a group of friends. But I repent of it. I want to renounce it in Jesus' name. Anyway, I opened my life to anything unholy, I renounce it in the name of Jesus."

If there is anything there that needs to be released, then I will release it. Again, don't use "I didn't intend to do anything wrong." We lost a whole generation of Americans to the ravages of lung cancer caused principally from cigarette smoke. They didn't intend to cause lung cancer; we didn't have the knowledge to know it was destroying our physical bodies. But ignorance didn't protect them from the ravages of disease. Ignorance won't protect us from the ravages of spiritual forces of darkness.

So when the Spirit of God makes you aware of something, you don't need to feel threatened or ashamed or embarrassed or belittled or attacked. What I would submit is we want to be grateful. God, thank You for showing me that and thank You now that I can walk out from under that. It doesn't have the power to define my future. Don't be involved in the occult, and if you have, ask the Lord. I trust the Spirit of God to bring a sense of being conviction, being ill at ease.

Do you know how to distinguish between the Holy Spirit and an unholy spirit? The Spirit of God will convict you of ungodliness. He'll make you ill at ease with it, uncomfortable with it. But He will show you a pathway of resolution. That is the pattern of the Spirit of God. An unholy spirit will always condemn you, will tell you that you're wrong, you're a failure, you're always going to be a failure, there's no chance you're going to outrun that, your future is sealed. That kind of condemnation that diminishes your worth and your value never comes from the Spirit of God.

The whole point of the Jesus story is that Jesus came to this earth to deliver us from the kingdom of darkness. It is the ultimate search and rescue mission. The other characteristic of the Holy Spirit: He'll convict you, He'll make you uncomfortable, He'll make you ill at ease. When you know that He is calling you to an account, there's a forfeiture of peace, but He doesn't control you. The Spirit of God will never force you to be holy. I have yet, in all of my years of ministry, yet to had a meeting with someone who said, "You know, Pastor, I woke up this morning and I just couldn't stop being holy. In fact, I wrote in my journal this morning I want to be ungodly, and I've tried all day long, but I just couldn't be ungodly."

The Holy Spirit will never manipulate you, dominate you, and control you. An unholy spirit will do precisely that. I have sat with many, many people whose lives were unraveling because of very destructive behaviors, and without any identification on my part, they would say to me, "I know that this behavior, this habit, this addiction, it's destroying me physically, or it's destroying my relationships, or it's destroying my finances, but I feel powerless to stop." That is the description of an unholy spirit. If you're in one of those places, read "The Bondage Breaker," walk through those steps of freedom. Don't imagine you're a victim because there's not somebody else to do something for you. The Spirit of God will bring freedom to you.

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Jesus came to set us free. The image that is presented in the New Testament is that Jesus delivered us from our bondage to sin, and I'll wrap with this analogy. In the Roman world, slavery was widely practiced. It's still practiced in the world today—more slaves in the world today than at any time in human history. I read that statistic this week. But in the Roman world, when a country was conquered, it wasn't uncommon for some portion of that population to be sold as slaves. They'd be in some public setting—a public square, some public arena—typically would have been Roman soldiers around. They would drive a spear into a wall, into a pole, and maybe you'd be stood on a platform, but to be stood underneath the spear in a public square, it was understood you were being sold into slavery.

It is a very humiliating place. High degree of probability you'd be naked. People would come and examine you to decide your worth and your value. When you're being sold as a slave, you could be sold as a slave for noble purposes or some very debased purposes, because you are void of any determination. That decision is being made by the purchaser. That is the image in the New Testament: that you and I are in the public slave market being sold under the spear, and Jesus walked into the slave market and paid the price for you and for me to be delivered from the kingdom of darkness, that we could come into His eternal kingdom.

We were delivered from bondage to sin. And then the invitation is: don't allow yourself to enter into that bondage again. So I don't want to lead a presumptuous life upon the sacrifice that Jesus made for me. I am very willing to call Him Lord and King for what He's done for me. And the way I honor the sacrifice He made that I might know that freedom is I'm very interested in leading my life in a way that finds the fullest expression of that freedom that He sacrificed so fully.

I don't want to know the minimum I can do. I want to know how closely I can walk to the Lord. With my vegetables, I want to know what the minimal daily requirement is on kale and how many donuts are allowable, but when it comes to walking with the Lord, I want to walk as far away as I can from the darkness and as close to the direction of the Spirit of God as I can. So if that leads me to daily Bible reading and daily prayer and intentional community with people who prefer godliness over ungodliness and attending a worship service, even though every time I attend it may not be affirming for me or encouraging or even feel meaningful to me, I will engage in those behaviors because I have a desire to walk as close to the Lord to initiate and sustain as much momentum towards godliness as I'm capable of doing.

If you'll do that, I have complete confidence the Spirit of God will put you on a path that will bring freedom to your life. You don't have to be afraid of unclean spirits or demonic influences, but you need to recognize they exist. If you choose not to be aware of them, I promise they're aware of you, and ignorance is not a good defense. Inform yourself with the word of God, become familiar with the person of the Holy Spirit, know the boundaries that God has given us, and choose to honor them. When you ignore God's boundaries, you make yourself vulnerable to unclean, destructive spiritual forces.

Don't do that on purpose. Don't confuse success with spiritual health. Don't confuse accolades and affirmation, fame, big platforms with spiritual health. Let's humble ourselves before the Lord, comply with the simple Scriptures that you know, the truth that you know. And if there is further truth that is necessary for you to have freedom, I have complete confidence God will bring that truth to your awareness. We'll work on this topic some more. I know I've just opened a door, but I thought on the heels of the documentary that Billy had done, it was worth having a little further discussion. God's moving in the earth; I want to be a part of that, I know you do too. You keep seeking the Lord, and He will lead you.

Thanks for joining me today. Before you go, please like the podcast and leave a comment so more people can hear about this topic too. If you haven't yet, be sure and subscribe to Allen Jackson Ministries' YouTube channel and follow the Culture and Christianity podcast. You can do that on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcast. Together, let's learn how to lead with our faith. We can change our culture. I'll see you next time.