Family Talk

Dr. James Dobson: Welcome everyone to Family Talk. It's a ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute, supported by listeners just like you. I'm Dr. James Dobson, and I'm thrilled that you've joined us.

Roger Marsh: Each day the headlines warn us about the imminent danger of war, whether it's the potential for an attack in Venezuela, to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, from Israel and the Middle East to the impending uprising in Iran. It seems like just about everybody, everyone alive on planet earth today, is at risk of potentially being impacted by some kind of military offensive. As Christians, it can sometimes be a bit daunting to watch these scenarios unfold, and then we wonder, where is God in the midst of all the chaos?

Did you know that for the body of Christ, the warfare we often hope to avoid is actually taking place right now all around us and that we are right in the middle of it? On today's edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, we're going to take a closer look at the spiritual warfare that not only impacts the world, but more specifically is aimed straight at us. I'm Roger Marsh and our guest today on Family Talk is a man who is most uniquely qualified to address the geopolitical ramifications of what's taking place on the surface.

He is also first and foremost an expert on spiritual warfare that is raging all over the world, Dr. Michael Youssef. Welcome back to Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. It's good to see you again, my friend.

Dr. Michael Youssef: Thank you so much, Roger. Thank you for having me. I appreciate that. As you know, Dr. Dobson was very dear to me and a great encourager. I will never forget him coming all the way across, once to Florida and once in Atlanta, to speak for events of Leading the Way. He just encouraged me through the years, and I will never forget that. I'm grateful to him.

Roger Marsh: He had such a love for you and your ministry and appreciation for what you did as well. We were talking before we started this broadcast today about how we had a chance to do a face-to-face. Your travel schedule was going to bring you to Colorado Springs. It was a real needle in a haystack type of thing, but we were able to do it.

Dr.'s eyes just lit up. He said, "Oh, I can't wait to see Michael again." I'm sorry that it didn't work out for that, but we're grateful that you're here today to share with us about your brand-new book about winning the invisible war. You've got another book on an unholy alliance. You're very prolific in this season of life, Dr. Michael Youssef, and yet you've also handed over the reins or made the plans for handing over the reins at Church of the Apostles. Talk about what's happening in your world ministry-wise and personally.

Dr. Michael Youssef: Thirty-nine years ago, the Lord laid it on my heart, actually almost 40 years ago now, to plant a church here in Atlanta. I really didn't know where to go, but God very clearly said, "You just start and I will take care of it." Sure enough, I told a few friends, so we started in a hotel function room with 28 adults.

Thirty-nine years ago, the church of course took off, and God blessed and gave us an anointing in the city. We had the enormous opportunity of reaching the leadership of the city, the business community, and many people came to Christ. That church just flourished and flourished.

I have to be very truthful with myself that I'm 77. I wanted and always believed in the next generation. I have done everything in the last 10 years particularly to train the next generation and work with the next generation. I'm blessed that one of those leaders in the next generation is my youngest son. He's 41, Jonathan Youssef, who is a great preacher and a great expounder of the Word of God.

He finished a doctorate in preaching over there with Dr. John MacArthur before he went to glory. It was the right thing, and the elders of our church and all of the leadership believed that this is God's timing and God's move. I would be handing over the baton to him as I continue to be on television and radio, as well as traveling the globe doing evangelistic crusades in the U.S. and overseas.

Roger Marsh: I love to hear that. With your four grown children and your 15 grandchildren, you've doubled the number that Lisa and I have, and we're trying to catch up. But we can't convince our kids to be as fruitful as your kin. Nonetheless, what's it like just as a dad who has a son now who is not only following you in the ministry but has achieved the level of education that you did? It must have been really gratifying to watch.

Dr. Michael Youssef: It's indescribable. There are no words to express my gratitude to God, and I say that to him every day. Jonathan, but also Joshua, whom God led to form a ministry to help the persecuted. He came to me one day and he said, "Dad, our Kingdom Sat is in 260 million homes in the Arabic-speaking world. Thousands of Muslims are coming to Christ. When they come to Christ, they get thrown out of their homes and out of their jobs."

God laid it on his heart to start Help the Persecuted. He goes there and does practical help as well as spiritual help in all of the Middle East and Afghanistan and whatever the trouble spots are of the world where there's persecution. He's doing a great job there, too. My two boys, I'm so grateful to the Lord that both are committed in serving the Lord.

My two daughters have been wonderful wives and mothers to their children. They are involved in ministry in their own churches. The whole family loves and serves the Lord, and I cannot be more grateful to the Lord for anything. Beyond my salvation, that's the next thing I'm so grateful to the Lord for.

Roger Marsh: We read in 3rd John to know that our children are walking in truth, and to see that happening in your family is just remarkable. Then this very prolific season of writing for you, which I think is remarkable. Thanks to modern technology, you can be a lot more prolific.

I love the title of this book because there are so many people in the church right now who are looking at the world and they're seeing chaos and disorder. It's very unsettling because this is more than just a cluttered house; this is a cluttered culture. Talk about why it was so important for this book right now. It's kind of prophecy that's playing out in real time right before our eyes.

Dr. Michael Youssef: The spiritual war is not only what we are seeing around the world, but also it goes on, the battle goes on between our two ears, right here in our minds. I believe it was Tim LaHaye many, many years ago who wrote a book called *The Battle for the Mind*. The truth is the battle for the mind has been going on ever since Adam and Eve.

That is the truth. The serpent came in and brought doubt. You look at some evangelical churches now. I come back in the '70s and '80s from a mainline denomination where I had to leave because of the drift into liberalism and, really, I call it apostasy. But at that time when I left in 1990, I never dreamed that this same battle, the same argument, the same spiritual war would be in evangelical churches.

They're doubting the authority of the scripture and accommodating to the culture. They are more concerned about pleasing the culture than pleasing the Lord, more willing to compromise their convictions. Some of them have preached the gospel in times gone by, but now they're kind of softening everything. Under the guise of love, they have compromised biblical truth.

That is the battle that's really taking place in the churches of Jesus Christ in all the Western world, but certainly it's in America. America is a land that I love, and I'm grateful to be here as an immigrant. I'm grateful to serve the country that has given me a home when I escaped from Marxism and dictatorship.

It is the burden of my heart to show the believers that this is a winnable war. It's invisible, but because the Word of God says that he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world, therefore we have the weapons. Our weapons of warfare are not carnal. We have the spiritual armor, the full armor of God.

Then we have the Holy Spirit daily empowering us and encouraging us to win because we know that the battle itself already been won. The battle was won on the cross by our Lord Jesus Christ, and he's the one who gives us the victory. But if we stay true to his Word and stay true to the gospel, that is the burden of my heart.

When I wrote *Winning the Invisible War*, it was to encourage those who may be wavering and wondering and they're saying, "There's doubt here and doubt about this." I'm trying to strengthen those, at the same time trying to explain things from an eternal perspective. Don't forget the eternal perspective. Eternity is a very long time. Don't sell your birthright for a pot of soup because that's all it is.

That was the burden of my heart whether with this book, *Winning the Invisible War*, or the book about the unholy alliance between Islamists and the Marxists. This is being waged all over the world. I'm seeing it in England in such a way. Nine of the top 11 cities in England are basically run by Islamists, not just Muslims. There are some Muslim people who are not Islamists.

The mayors and the councils, this is happening in Australia. We just saw the horror of left-wing prime ministers in Canada. We have a little reprieve here in the United States, but we were heading that way. I'm doing everything I can to sound the alarm bells so as to wake the church of Jesus Christ, the believers, the elect of God. I see the Lord is coming, and therefore it is vitally important for us to be ready and staying awake.

Roger Marsh: Dr. Michael Youssef is our guest today here on Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. We're talking about Dr. Youssef's brand-new book called *Winning the Invisible War*. We've seen a lot of statistics coming from the last election and some of the Barna data that indicate that Generation Z, especially younger men, are being drawn to biblical principles now.

Maybe even either they grew up in Christian homes and they didn't get the full gospel, or they didn't grow up in Christian homes and they're looking at the chaos and saying, "I want some kind of order. I want some kind of structure." What they're running into in many cases is this term that you use in your book, the "Christian draft dodgers."

They basically tried to make this nice little utopia where they're thinking, "I read Ephesians 6, but what's this thing with spiritual armor? I don't want to wear that." Talk about why we have to be real about the fact that we have been surrounded in many cases by Christian draft dodgers in the spiritual warfare.

Dr. Michael Youssef: Satan's number one deception is either that he doesn't exist or he's frightening people so much. You get the two extremes, and neither of them, of course, are the truth. Therefore, to understand the biblical view, the full armor of God actually most of it is permanently put on. It's not just something you do every day, but it's something you remind yourself every day.

The helmet of salvation and the breastplate of righteousness, all of that has to be on all the time because we are in the battlefield all the time. I've never seen a soldier go into the battlefield in his pajamas. That armor of God should daily be reminded that we are wearing that.

Take the sword, the Word of God, which is being undermined. I just saw a statistic that the Bible is now becoming a bestseller again. I just pray that people read it because it's no use just buying a Bible and letting it gather dust, or listening to somebody who tells you that these are just mythical stories from the past and they're not for today.

Even evangelical pastors are saying to the older generation, my generation and your generation, saying, "You don't have to defend this thing about Noah's flood and Jonah in the whale and all of that because your grandchildren cannot accept that, so you keep quiet about it."

Give me a break. If the Lord Jesus Christ himself talked about Noah and the flood, he talked about Jonah inside the whale, why wouldn't I defend it? The integrity of Jesus is on the line here. Their arguments are false. They say, "We'll just talk about the resurrection." But the God of the resurrection is the same God of the Old Testament. There are not two Gods; there's one God.

The manifestation of that one true God happened both in the Old and the New Testament. In the Old Testament, we have a theophany. This Sunday I'm preaching on Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. This is the pre-incarnate Christ who came there, and the pre-incarnate Christ came down to Abraham. The pre-incarnate Christ has always been appearing in the Old Testament.

Then he fully came in the New Testament in the gospel account. They hoped to see him; the New Testament said he's here. Therefore, we should be encouraged to see the unity of those two testaments, two covenants, that they're basically one house. One is the foundation, the other one is the roof of the house.

Therefore, it is one book and we need to be defending the scripture, we need to be defending the content of the scripture unashamedly. For those who undermine the supernatural or deny the supernatural, it's a no-starter. I don't know where you go with those. But if you believe in the resurrection, as some pastors say, "Focus on the resurrection. Don't focus on all these other things."

But the God who raised Jesus from the dead, could he not do the other things? The argument is full of holes and it's a fallacy. We need to be standing up, and I'm talking to pastors who I know listen to your program and many fathers in the homes who are leading their families. Don't be ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God unto salvation.

The power is not in what I say or anybody else says; the power is in the gospel itself. You hang in there on the gospel and the gospel has the power to change lives.

Roger Marsh: I'm glad you brought that up, Dr. Michael Youssef, because one of the hallmarks of James Dobson Family Institute is what Dr. Dobson was all about. He said, "Look, my vehicle here is to talk to the family, to marriage and families, but it's all about bringing people to Christ. I want to take as many people home to heaven with me as we possibly can."

I was thinking of the words when we had Jack Hibbs at one of our events not too long ago. He was talking about how Billy Graham was America's greatest evangelist, and Dr. Dobson was America's greatest discipler because of how you play this out in your family. As you were just describing Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, I remember those stories when we were kids.

I completely get it. The faith that they had to say, "Look, we're going in there because if God can deliver us, he can deliver us, but if he can't deliver us, we're still not bowing the knee to you." I wonder how many young people today find that everything is transactional. That's something that we as parents and grandparents really have to guard against, and pastors and lay leaders as well. You're challenging us here to the point where one of the quotes in your book that I really love is "our mission as Christians is to make Satan afraid of us."

Dr. Michael Youssef: That's exactly right. This is the issue, particularly this wokeism that invaded many a church. It basically says you shouldn't be offending anybody. What you're doing is you're leaving people who are under the slavery of sin and Satan in those chains. While in reality, we should be invading those territories, bringing people to salvation and freedom in Christ.

That scares Satan more than anything else. I always tell my congregation and my colleagues who are pastors in the church—we have a wonderful team of pastors—I'm always reminding them that as long as we are faithful and proclaiming the truth and invading Satan's territory, we're going to keep Satan on the run instead of him keeping us on the run and compromising and being afraid of him.

How can you be afraid when our God conquered the greatest enemy of all, death? What can they do to me? People say, "Oh, take security with you, do this and do that." I say, "What can they do? Kill me? I go to heaven." The worst they can do has already been defeated by my Lord Jesus Christ.

I just want to literally sometimes want to scream and say, "Wake up because we have a great God." Our great God is going to deliver us as you already said with the three young men. Our God is able, but if he doesn't, if he chooses not to, that's fine too. We will go be with him.

We need to rise up to this moment, to this occasion, to these challenges, which they are new. Satan's trick is not new; it's the same one as it was in the Garden of Eden. It's the same trick, but he puts on new dresses on every generation. It looks different, but he's the same devil who appears as an angel of light and misleads God's people.

Dr. Dobson, my goodness, he impacted my family, impacted millions of families around the world, not just in the United States. His cry for all these years is "family, stay strong, stay on the scripture, stay anchored in Jesus." Because the men, husbands and fathers, are the spiritual leaders, he spoke very clearly to them and to me personally when I was a young dad.

I just thank God for his legacy and I thank God for God using him. I'm sure he's rejoicing in heaven right now. Meanwhile, we now have that responsibility to carry on his legacy.

Roger Marsh: I love that visual that you just described, Dr. Michael Youssef, for all the people who have entered into eternity just even in the past 12 months. I still see Dr. Dobson as the one standing next to Saint Peter with a big smile on his face, looking, waiting to see people. He's going to get mobbed by folks who he didn't even know, and we all are when you get right down to it.

It's amazing how when it comes to spiritual warfare, as you write about in your new book, there are so many Christians who—and you use this term very graciously—talk about how clueless many Christians are, whether it's parents or new believers or even people who have been walking with the Lord for 40 or 50 years but really haven't engaged in the scriptures.

How do we use a resource like this or just have conversations with people who think, "Oh, yeah, I'm a baptized believer, I'm in church every Sunday, I tithe 10%," and yet when the heat gets to be too much, they just kind of shift into neutral and say, "I'm good"? How do we get them engaged?

Dr. Michael Youssef: Honestly, I can tell you that only the Holy Spirit can do that. But he also uses people. He uses you, he uses me, he uses many other faithful pastors. So many faithful pastors, I thank God for them, so many who are standing strong and many of them are friends of mine.

That is something that we must always reach out to those who are either teetering or going through doubt, younger pastors. I sought through the years to have an opportunity to talk to these younger pastors and challenge them, encourage them. My own testimony is that through my life in three continents, I have faced many a dark time, times that could have persuaded me to turn my back on the gospel.

But with the power of the Holy Spirit, we must always seek the Lord Jesus Christ and the power of his resurrection, but also ask him to give us the Holy Spirit in abundance. Just think, if every member really is seeing themselves as soldiers for Christ, the impact it would have in their workplace and their neighborhoods.

We could turn this country upside down for Jesus if people stop being pew-warmers. We have so many pew-warmers on Sunday. And become soldiers, and that is what we're called to be, soldiers. In fact, that's what Paul tells Timothy to be. He said, "Do the work of a soldier, do the work of an evangelist." That is the cry of my heart before the Lord takes me home.

Roger Marsh: Dr. Michael Youssef is our guest today here on Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. *Winning the Invisible War: How to Recognize Lies, Resist Temptation, and Be Victorious in Spiritual Warfare* is the title of the brand-new book. Dr. Youssef, our time is going by much too quickly. Can we ask you to come back next time to continue this conversation?

Dr. Michael Youssef: Please, I would be more honored than I can express in words.

Roger Marsh: Well, the pleasure and privilege will definitely be ours, Dr. Youssef. What a privilege it was to sit down with Dr. Michael Youssef today on Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. I'm Roger Marsh, and I know I walked away from that conversation more convinced than ever that the invisible war is very, very real. Today's broadcast featured part one of this compelling conversation with Dr. Youssef about spiritual warfare, the authority of scripture, and what it truly means to live as a soldier for Christ.

I hope you'll join us again next time when Dr. Youssef returns for part two of this conversation. If you'd like to hear the broadcast again or share it with a friend, go to drjamesdobson.org/familytalk. In addition to the audio, there you'll also find a link for Dr. Youssef's brand-new book. It's called *Winning the Invisible War*. Again, you'll find both the audio resource and information about the book when you go to jdfi.net.

Here at the James Dobson Family Institute, we are carrying on the mission that Dr. Dobson dedicated his life to: strengthening families, proclaiming the gospel, and defending what is true and right in the culture. Dr. Dobson went home to be with the Lord last August, but the work continues here at JDFI.

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I'm Roger Marsh, on behalf of all of us here at Family Talk and the James Dobson Family Institute, thanks so much for listening today. Be sure to join us again next time right here for part two of my powerful conversation with Dr. Michael Youssef, describing how to win the invisible war. That's coming up right here on the next edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, the voice you trust for the family you love.