Leading The Way

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining Dr. Michael Youssef for what's poised to be a very powerful leading the way. This is a message he's titled, if the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? Dr. Youssef recently served as guest teacher at a prominent church in Texas. And following his visit, an attendee who traveled specifically to hear his message reached out to Leading the Way, sharing these kind words. He writes, I attended Dr. Youssef's message and was moved and motivated. I've listened to Leading the Way for more than 20 years, and I was overcome with joy to accept the call today for fasting and prayer.

There is no teacher in my life who's had more of an impact on me. I'm 64 now, and I'm thankful, so thankful for his timely messages. My spirit has been downcast, but after listening today, I was refreshed. I love you, Dr. Youssef, and I'm eternally grateful for your dedication to God and your willingness to preach God's word. The Lord sent you, and your visit has helped make me whole again. Friends, certainly political ads and associated drama have all become commonplace in our culture today. It's difficult to know what to believe when there's so much noise about election issues, so many people in the spotlight.

And that's why Dr. Youssef wanted to share his recent message and a call to prayer and revival. Listen now to this powerful word from Dr. Michael Youssef.

Dr. Michael Youssef: History repeats itself. History repeats itself. Perhaps there is no place where this statement is more true than in all of our biblical history. History repeats itself is not a cliché. Please listen to me. It's not a cliché. It's a profound historical occurrence. We see this again and again in the scripture. We see it in the repetitive history in the word of God. From the Garden of Eden and the man's fall to the 21st century, it's the same thing. Just keep repeating itself. We see how this disobedience and compromise of the gospel of Jesus Christ brings about disasters.

Perhaps we see this cyclical history very vividly in the book of Judges. How many times were the people of God abandon the faith, compromise their faith and Yahweh and God as a consequence pulls his hand of protection. And then they get delivered to the Canaanites and the Amorites and the Moabites and the mosquito bites. Then they repent and God, merciful God, hears them from heaven and he sends them a deliverer again and again. They keep going. But the problem with each cycle, people of God sunk deeper into sin and idolatry and rebellion. And this pattern continued into the 6th century BC.

As you know from the scripture, the Old Testament writers, they're telling us how God basically his a Youssef translation basically came to the point of saying enough is enough. And he permitted them to go into exile in Babylon. Now the Islamists and the Islamic terrorists are really the equivalent of the Babylonians of that time. Today, the Babylonian terrorist of our day, not taking us into exile in foreign land as they did with Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and many of the Israelites, now they are taking us hostage. They're literally taking into exile in our own lands as they invade those lands with vengeance.

The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar demanded tributes from the people of Judah. And today, our Babylonians call that jizya. There is a name for it. And it's a penalty tax that you pay if you want to stay as a Christian or a Jew in the lands that they invaded, Christian lands. And it happened throughout history. When Judea refused to pay this tribute, the Babylonians laid siege on the city and they laying siege on your city and many other cities just as in the time of the judges. When God took away his hand of protection from the people of God, God did so in the 6th century as the exile began.

Terrorism in the Western world today is our own exile. Terrorists are our Babylonians today. And just as God handed over his rebellious and faithful Israel, which is the apple of his eye, he has handed the rebellious, unfaithful Europe to the hands of the terrorists. I remember 20 years ago, I have warned the leaders 20 years ago. And I said they're building a spine, and then they're going to be building the ribs, and then they're going to choke the country. 20 years later, they're doing exactly that. 13 of the 14 big cities in England now have Muslim mayors.

And not just Muslim, Islamists. There are so many naive souls who confuse kindness with foolishness. Even the Pope of Rome have dedicated a chapel for the Islamic prayer that they can come into the Vatican and do their prayers to Allah. And you see denomination after denominations say that we need to reason with the terrorists that what we need to do is improve their economic conditions. What we need to do is to have better diplomacy. What we need to do is have better communication. Then we could end their invasion and determination and drive to impose their caliphate, which means a worldwide Islamic successor to the prophet.

And the prophet was not just a religious leader. He was the political leader. He was the military leader. And therefore, there are no separation of religion and Islam. And once they take over as they've done so many parts of the world, it's over. Freedom of religion will be over. And just as wanting to be absolutely truthful with you, I need to make the distinction between the Islamists and the Muslims. The Islamists are different from the rest of the Muslims. Islamists compose about 20% of Muslims. And that is over 400 million people. But they are the very people, these Islamists, that are outlawed in many Arabic Middle East countries, Islamist countries.

They're outlawed in Egypt. They're outlawed in Syria. They're outlawed in United Arab Emirates. They're even outlawed in Saudi Arabia. So what do they do? They come here to the naive West. And say, oh, we love Jesus. Nah, they don't love the same Jesus that we know. Islamist jihadis are invading the West with a vengeance. Let that sink in your mind. They're outlawed in many Arabic countries. I want to make it very clear that the Muslims and the Islamists are not the same. You must understand the difference. But I also want to make it clear that I love the Muslim people.

I love the Muslim people. That was not always the case. When I escaped from the Middle East back in the 60s from the socialist Islamist government of Egypt at the time, I escaped with the clothes on my back. And I wanted nothing to do with that part of the world. When I left, I said this is it. It 's over. I don't want anything to do with that part of the world, but God tricked me. The Holy Spirit tricked me. Said I did not save you. I did not bring you here in order to be a pastor in a fluent church.

I want you to love the Muslim people. And we did. And And we started a television station, Kingdom Sat, 260 million homes in the Muslim world and preaching the gospel 24/7. And I am absolutely humbled beyond measure to tell you that there are hundreds of thousands of Muslims that are coming to Christ at a huge sacrifice. These dear people, when they discover the truth in Christ, they literally do not count their life to be valuable because they said if we die, we'll go to Jesus. We were willing to die for a lie. Now we can die for the truth.

But the problem is that the folks that we're dealing with here in the West, they have made a pact with the Marxists and the Socialists and the trust fund kids in America and the anarchists. And they made a pact that both because they hate Western civilization and they want to destroy Western civilization. They made a pact with each other. And you see them all over the news translation. We make a pact with the devil if we have to if it helps us destroy Western civilization as we know it. And make no mistake about it. Western civilization, and I've done this academically, Western civilization is the result and the fruit of the reformation.

It was the reformation when God raised these reformers 500 years ago. They went back to the scripture. They went back to the word of God which was forbidden back then in the dark ages. They used to chain the Bibles to the lectern. And the lay people were not allowed to read it. But with the translation of the Bible, some people paid with their lives so that we can have that Bible that we take it lightly. And the liberty, the freedom and the prosperity and the individual freedom and and the respect of an individual, all that is the fruit of the reformation.

And the amazing thing to me is that there are so many countries are trying to imitate the West. And then they fail because Western civilization rose out of the reformation of the Bible, the reformation of the faith. Here's another fact that I need to tell you before I get to the heart of the message. The unfaithful Israelites who caused the Babylonian exile did not abandon their Hebrew religion altogether anymore than the church buildings of today in the West and Europe and even in the United States who have all the trappings of Christianity. And yet they raise a Rambo flag and the transgender flag above the cross.

I saw this with my eyes in Boston recently. These compromising Israelites still made the ritual sacrifices in the temple, but they added to their religion. They added Baal, and they added Ashtoreth, and they added all these gods to Yahweh. Today, there's so many churches across America and across the world. They are absolutely departed from the faith. They call it universalism. 60% supposedly of all Christians in America are universalists, which says that in the end, God is so merciful. He's going to let everybody into his heaven because he's a merciful God and you don't have to believe in Jesus.

That's just preached from many mega churches. They call it emerging church, which is rewriting of the gospel. They call it insider movement, which says that the Hindu can be a Hindu and the Buddhist can be a Buddhist and the Muslim can stay a Muslim as long as they take Jesus along the way. They call it hyper grace that says because we're saved by grace alone and therefore we don't have to had live righteously before God, that we can send our hearts content and grace will cover it. They call it unhitching ourselves from the Old Testament.

They call it Chrislam, which is a blend of some Christian stuff with Islamic stuff. And they say that's the only way that we can ease the tension between the two groups. Oh, my beloved friends, please listen to me. The faith we defend is a set of bedrock truth that Jesus and only Jesus is God incarnate, that Jesus and only Jesus is the only sacrifice for our sin, that Jesus and only Jesus is the begotten son of the Father, full of grace and truth, that Jesus is the heart of Christianity. And if you take the heart out, you're going to end up with a a dead corpse.

Give God glory. Amen. Sadly, in the 7th century, the Christianity that the prophet of Islam was exposed to was riddled with heresies, unlike the ones that we're experiencing in churches today. Heresies such as Nestorianism and Ebionism and And these were corpses without the beating heart of the truth. Today, in large part, the so-called Christian church in the West is riddled with heresies and weakened by false teachings from many a pulpit across the land. But what breaks my heart truly is that these Christian heresies dominate many churches and denominations today. And thus they have created a spiritual vacuum, created a spiritual vacuum.

And who fills that spiritual vacuum? The Islamists. And trust me, they did this in the 7th century and they're doing it in the 21st century. The only way forward is for God to send us a spiritual awakening to this land. Awakening that causes empathetic Christians to repent and turn back to the truth of the gospel and awakening that will bring the lost to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and awakening that causes believers to stop compromising and placing one foot in the world and one foot in the church. I have to confess to you that in the last 52 years of ministry since I was ordained, that I do not fear the jihadis and the terrorists nearly as much as I fear that the Christian church might depart from the scripture altogether.

You say how come? How come? You see political Islam always grows in history. I can prove it to you. Political Islam always grows stronger when Christianity is weak and compromised and in retreat. Believe it or not, I read the writings all the time. I read their writings. And they know that. They know. I remember when the bishop of Durham, 35 years ago, came up with the statement saying Jesus never rose from the dead. All the headline in the Arabic press says you see we've been telling you this for 1,400 years. Now your bishop is telling us.

And that's why I literally fear the departure from the truth. They know that's a secret. They know when the church is weakened that they can take advantage of that. It's their golden opportunity to invade. They will openly tell you that in the first two jihads, the one in the 7th century and they got all the way to France and then they got stopped. And the second jihad in the 15th century, they came all the way and occupied Vienna. And they say, well, those first two jihads, we did it with the sword. But this third jihad in which we're going to take over Europe and we're going to take over the Vatican, we're going to take over the West is not going to happen just with the sword, but it's going to be birth rate.

Just few years ago, there were 5 million Muslims in Europe. There are 50 million now. 12 of the 14 big cities in England have an Islamist mayor. I just can go on and on. But I want to tell you also, the first 600 years of Christianity, the Christian faith dominated the Middle East and North Africa on Syria to Egypt and Lebanon. All these were Christian lands. And when the Muslims invaded these Christian lands, they did not only use the sword, but they also because their churches mostly was very sick and weak and riddled with heresies, they were able to deceive the so-called Christians.

Heresies such as Arianism which taught that Christ was subordinate being, not equal to God the Father. Nestorianism which split the deity of Christ from his humanity. The Sabellianism which denied the Trinity altogether. But there were two Christian heresies in particularly that gave rise to Islam and influenced the founder of Islam. The Ebionites and the Docetes. The Docetes basically said that Jesus only appeared to be human and his crucifixion was an illusion. And while the Ebionites and he was disciple by Ebionites monk, the Ebionites view Jesus as a human prophet, a Messiah, yes, human prophet, but they denied that he is the son of God.

And to this day, that is what they spreading around the world. Not only that, but there were legalists around Arabian area where Christian heresies were abound. The population of Arabia at the time of the rise of Islam basically was a a bit of a hodgepodge of pagan idolatry, various strands of Judaism and assortment of pseudo-Christian groups. No wonder there's so much confusion and utter contradictions in their books. Now I can stand here and give you historical evidence after historical evidence of how compromising churches, unfaithful churches, those who compromised the truth of the gospel were invaded by the floods of Islamization.

I don't need to go into history. But what we are seeing today with our own eyes in Europe today, this modern invasion, what is being attempted to be done here in your backyard, right here in this city. That is why I'm calling out now is the time to rise up and be the church of Jesus Christ. History repeats itself. As I said, I can give you tens of examples, but let me just give you one. The first as I said, the first few hundred years of Christianity, the Christian faith was established in the Middle East, North Africa.

Within 200 years of Christianity, the population of all the Middle East countries and and the North Africa was between 85 to 90% Christians. Did you get that? In fact, Saint Augustine of Hippo and and Cyprian of Carthage, they all came from the church in North Africa. Alexandria, Egypt where became the center of Christian thinking and Christian theology, the first seminary in the world was in Alexandria first 350 years before Rome was ever on the scene. Modern day Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Algiers, North Africa, there estimates between 40 to 50,000 churches at that time by the middle of the 600s.

And the Christians had tens of thousands of churches embraced false teaching in North Africa. It's a teaching called the Montanists. So the Montanist movement was rapid in that part of the world. And simply put, the Montanists believe that the canon of the scripture is not closed, that God can still speak authoritatively today and be equal to the writers of the scripture. Well, so when the Arab Islamists came invading in 647 and 648 declaring that God has spoke to a man in Arabia by the name of Muhammad, Christian leaders said we'll let hear about it. We're open-minded, right?

We're not narrow-minded. I'll accept all the ways lead to God. Tell us about it. Within between 30 to 35 years, all of these tens of thousands of churches turn into mosques. Is that cannot happen here? I think if I told this story with this historical incident 70 years ago, people would say it would never happen in the West. That could never happen in America. Could never happen in Europe. That could never happen in Canada. It could never happen in Australia. But beloved, it's happening. We're seeing it with our own eyes now. Everywhere you look, there's a takeover.

They're buying churches and burning some of them in Europe with vengeance and turning them into mosques. This is their idea of their superiority. And they have the final word from Allah. Now I can go on as I said, I talk about Islamic conquest of the Byzantine church and the Christian church in the 1400s and in Europe and all the way to Vienna. But again, I did not really come here to give you a history lesson. I came here to show you that history repeats itself. Can you say that with me? History repeats itself. And that is why you can lead the nation.

This church can lead the nation in rejecting falsehood, in rejecting false teaching, and you take a stand and that you proclaim the gospel unashamedly and invade even Satan's territory with the gospel of Christ alone is the savior of the world. Now I come here to pour my heart out to you and tell you that I came with a prayer in my heart. Please, God, you will raise up heroes who would help rewrite the future. May God do it. May God do it.

Guest (Male): A challenge to commit to prayer for our hearts and the nation. Thank you for joining listeners across six continents for Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef. And a recent message Dr. Youssef shared called if the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? Experience additional content from Leading the Way and ways that you can further connect with Dr. Youssef when you visit ltw.org ltw.org Hey, may I also invite you to pray for Dr. Youssef? He's preparing to travel to the Middle East for several events where he will be sharing the hope of Christ. Please pray for his travel safety.

Pray for the many who will experience that hope like never before. You can learn more about these events and many others when you visit ltw.org.

Guest (Male): America doesn't need more noise. It needs prayer. More than 600,000 believers are praying across all 50 states and are crying out to God daily. Join the movement. See answered prayers from across the nation. Share your prayer with the community. Download free prayer guides with the Awake app and experience Awake rallies with Dr. Michael Youssef. Pray boldly, live faithfully. Visit awakeamerica.com.

Guest (Male): That's all for today except for this invitation to join Dr. Michael Youssef right here next time for more Leading the Way. Oh, and this quick reminder that you can connect with the ministry representative to order products or express your generosity when you call 866 626 43 56. That's 866 626 43 56. Until next time, thank you for listening to Leading the Way. This program is brought to you by Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef. Connect further with audio and video content at ltw.org or through your favorite social media platform.