Generations Radio

Imagine if your good friends were a couple dedicated to help you build the marriage you've always dreamed of. Steve and Rhonda Stoppe are that couple. After three decades of helping couples build no-regrets marriages, the Stoppes have compiled their success secrets into an easy-to-read, fun, and interactive book. It’s called The Marriage Mentor: Becoming the Couple You Long to Be. Guest host Adam McManus talks with Rhonda in this first part of a two-part conversation. Today, they discuss the first five chapters: If your spouse would change, would you be happy? What’s the big deal about respect? We’re falling out of love. Your marriage can survive toddlers and teens. The grass is not greener on the other side. She is the founder of No Regrets Woman, a ministry dedicated to helping women live life with no regrets in a way that honors God and His design for them. Rhonda ministers alongside her husband, Steve, who pastors First Baptist Church of Patterson, California. They have four grown children and 15 grandchildren.

Will Christian pastors speak out on the California infanticide bill, or should they speak out? We provide a few biblical examples from Jeremiah 23 and Titus 1, where God holds pastors responsible for going after societal sins. But why are churches so powerless to affect culture these days? The man-centeredness revealed in the marketing programs and the programs themselves may be one reason. We quote Tozer. 

Are we really safer now than we were in the 1970s and 1980s? Universities are 50% more liberal. Nations are far more anti-God than they have ever been. Science has recently taken more steps in the development of nukes and their delivery systems. World economic systems are teetering on the edge of disaster. Russia is desperate. Are we really safer? Has the moral nature of man improved that much since the days of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin?

We rate the biggest influencers in society from Disney to Harvard and Yale to the New York Times. And then, we take on the role of investigative journalism like Ministry Watch and the Roys Report. Can journalism save the Christian faith amidst the scandals that are tearing down the largest ministries and the megachurch movement in America?

UK church attendance dropped from 40% to 2% since the turn of the 20th century. There is no more vivid demonstration of the Gentile apostasy mentioned in Romans 11 than this statistic. Yet, there is still a remnant of a conscience left, with 58% of UK'ers concerned they may end up in hell given their life choices. People will concoct their own gospels to pacify their screaming consciences instead of relying on God's gospel, the only gospel that counts.

Government is redistributing more wealth than ever, but the rich are still getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer. Maybe the pig was right. Some animals ARE more equal than others. But what causes the disparity? The system isn't fair, not because the governments are redistributing enough wealth. They do that all the time. But, the governments steal in other ways, while stealing from the rich and giving to the poor in welfare programs. But how does this work? Curious? How do Christians react to socialism? The disparity of wealth? The wealth effect that attends quantitative easing (another term for stealing)? Christians had better be equipped to answer these questions concerning corruption at the very highest levels of government today.

Electric cars produce more carbon than gas cars over 100,000 miles on average, if you include the 100 barrels of oil is used to fabricate a single electric car battery. But then again, maybe more carbon dioxide would be better—providing the earth with less ice but more greenery. Is that better for the earth or worse? Who knows! It's a very bad mix of bad science, bad politics, and bad economics . . . all sans the fear of God and humility. Government has turned into a respecter of persons, a godlike entity determining good and evil for itself and controlling all life on planet earth. The anxiousness to state control has produced an over-eagerness to accept every wild hypothesis without sufficient repeatable tests and honest scientific conclusions concerning probabilities, to include alpha and beta risks. It's an unholy alliance of businesses (Tesla), government (regulatory credits), and bad scientists (Al Gore).

Socialist education is faltering a bit in the United States. The Covid years rendered a 1.2 million drop-off on socialist university attendance, and a 2.5 million drop-off in K-12 public school registrations. Could this render a little hope for the next generation? We take a look at lifetime earnings for various careers. Education majors pull in only half of what engineers make in a lifetime, far less than the average plumber who makes $2.8 million over a lifetime . . . and quite a bit less than a truck driver who makes $2.5 million over a lifetime. Is this a good time to run up college debt, given the everything bubble, the poor R.O.I., and the heavy-duty, left-wing socialist indoctrination?

No single person has ever made more of an impact on the world than Jesus Christ. This statement would have been hard to say in A.D. 85, but there is no question about it today. Jesus has affected our calendar, language, idioms, social mores, treatment of women, charity, hospitals, economics, science, liberty, music, art, and abolishment of chattel slavery. Kevin Swanson interviews Dr. Alvin Schmidt, the author of an eye-opening, landmark treatment of 2000 years of world history. Get your children to listen to this one!

Have you ever complained about politics? How about lighting a candle, instead of cursing the darkness? When you are severely outnumbered, how might you maximize your impact without wasting your resources, especially in the realm of politics? Kevin Swanson provides a concept where 0.2% of the population applying 0.2% of their time and resources could change the political direction of a state.