Experience God’s love and guidance in ways you may never expect. In this episode, listen to inspiring stories from Nicaragua where government-imposed limitations can’t stop the spread of the Gospel. Learn how Greg Harris and the Through the Bible team, alongside partners like Shareware Global, are transforming challenges into opportunities, reaching hearts and minds in Nicaraguan schools. The episode unfolds with insightful commentary from Dr. J. Vernon McGee on 1 John 4, illustrating the transformative power of scripture and God’s indwelling spirit in our lives. His teachings shine a light on discerning truth in a world beset with falsehoods.
We’re living in a time when there is an increasing awareness
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that this world is under the influence of the prince and power of the air. That is the enemy of our souls. But stay with us for some good news in our continuing study of 1 John. I’m Steve Schwartz, and I’m so glad that you’re here as we make our way through the Bible together. Our teacher, of course, is Dr. J. Vernon McGee, and he gives us great insight into a verse that fills us with confidence, even in dark days. 1 John 4 says, and have overcome them because he who is in you is greater than he who’s in the world while talk about confidence building in this verse we hear that we don’t have to battle all this stuff on our own we go in God’s strength dr. McGee even gives us a hint behind his passion for Bible study he says I try to get people into the Word of God because I’ve seen that the Spirit of God opens people’s hearts and he protects them from this world Now, God’s protection might look different depending on where you live in this world. Greg Harris, president of Through the Bible, and my close friend, is here to give us insight into how God is working. This time, Greg, you recently went to the country of? Nicaragua.
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Yeah. Tell us about it. And, oh, man, Steve, this is so exciting from a number of different aspects. First of all, those who have been around our ministry a long time might have noticed we don’t talk a lot about Central America. Now, the reason for that is that we actually struggle to get radio signals into that part of the world. And so because a few years ago we were primarily a radio ministry, we would struggle to reach Nicaragua. But now with our digital ministry, the world is open to us.
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Yeah.
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And so this trip was very different in the sense of we were going as the guests of another ministry. Let’s call them the Gideons Canada. They go by the name Shareware Global, but most people know the Gideons. You know, Bible in every hotel room. These are wonderful, godly, Bible-loving people. Well, they have been given an unbelievable open door. Yeah. in Nicaragua.
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Yeah, tell us about that.
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Yeah, well, the government there has closed over 5,000 what they call NGOs or non-profits. A lot of them are Christian ministries, okay? And yet, for some unknown reason, the education minister invited Shareware Global to distribute more than a million Bibles in the schools of Nicaragua. Wow. Now, one of the ways they start before they give people a Bible is give them a magazine. Have you seen these?
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Yeah.
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Beautiful magazines. Absolutely. And they’re well produced and they are like the Gospel of John. Yeah. Well, now every one of those million or so magazines is going to have a QR code that links people to through the Bible Spanish app. Yeah. So this is a whole new way for us to do ministry.
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Yeah. Now, didn’t we also get some special access into schools?
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Yeah, I couldn’t believe it. We were literally in the schools going to classroom after classroom giving our own testimony and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. And some of the people, everybody did it their own way. Some people invited the kids, do you want to raise your hand? Some just shared the gospel. Some just shared a testimony. We probably went into about 25 different classrooms.
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These are public schools?
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Yeah, they’re public schools, Steve.
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Something you would not be able to do in the United States.
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I don’t think so. No.
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And yet you can do it in Nicaragua.
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And this is the paradox of the world we live in. You’ve seen it. As you go around the world, you see tremendous oppression, but then you see a level of openness that we don’t have in the quote-unquote somewhat Christian West. And so this is really an amazing opportunity. Now, one of the things about this trip that was interesting was I remember thinking, well, this is a ministry development trip. We’re going to start doing this, and we hope to bring you stories soon. Right, right. But we didn’t hear any TTB stories on this trip because we have not yet given out TTB. Right. But God had a plan. So we went through immigration. You’ve done this many times. And there’s a guy with a menu. You and I have seen this on trips. He’s like, come into my restaurant.
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It’s comfortable. I will sit here.
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And I said to our young colleague, James. I said, James, let’s go here and praise God that he’s more spirit led than I am, because he said, why don’t we just walk down and see what else is there? Well, we went into another coffee shop and we were talking. We had like two hours. We’re just talking about the ministry and Christian leadership. And this man next to us gets up and says a very edifying conversation. Well, it turns out that he was overhearing our conversation. He said, I’m a missionary in Nicaragua. My ministry just got shut down by the government. Wow. And we said, oh, brother, we’re so sorry. And he said, who are you with? And we said, through the Bible. And you’ve seen this before, Steve. His eyes lit up. He said, I came to Christ listening to Dr. McGee in the military decades ago. Wow.
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That is such an incredible story to hear that. And it’s a story that we’ve heard over and over again when you say, hey, I’m a part of Through the Bible. And they’re like, oh, I got saved through Through the Bible.
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Or my grandmother got saved. And it never gets old, though. It’s just so encouraging. And so it makes me think of the faithfulness of our supporters and our prayer of supporters. If you hadn’t supported for decades, we wouldn’t have met this man who, by the way, is now a missionary in Nicaragua.
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Yeah, now you said. He said he was having some difficulty, right?
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Well, he was because they shut down his ministry. So he was he was very he said, I’m not usually depressed, but I’m discouraged. And he said he emailed me later. You know, I was in the airport. Yeah. And he said, I’m walking on air all day. This has been such an encouragement.
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So it’s wonderful.
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You know, God has what a friend of mine calls divine appointments for all of us.
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And you and James had one of them.
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And thanks to me listening to James and going to the correct coffee shop.
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Yeah, praise the Lord. That’s great. Greg, let me pray for us as we begin our program. Heavenly Father, we are so encouraged by this testimony of just how you orchestrate things behind the scenes that we do not understand and will not fully appreciate until we’re with you in glory. So we thank you, Lord, and praise you for the opportunity that Greg and James had to encourage this fellow believer, this brother in Christ, serving faithfully in Nicaragua. I pray that you would continue to make a way for him as he seeks to repurpose his ministry as he has been asked to leave that country. I pray for the ministry through the Bible, that it would continue to grow. in the country of Nicaragua, and that we would be able to come back on the air and give stories of testimony of people coming to Christ and being discipled. Thank you, Lord, for your word. I pray that you would bless it as it goes out now as we open your word together. In Jesus’ name, amen. We’re off to 1 John 4 as we go through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.
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Now, friends, we return back to this section that we said that there are certain hurdles that you have to get over in this passage because it’s rather difficult. And one is the hurdle, of course, that this is an area where Satan definitely would not want you and me. to be warned concerning him. And that’s what this passage does. You see, John’s been talking about that believers are to love each other. But friends there have come in to us. As John made very clear, he says… They’ve come in and they’ve gone out too because they were not of us. And we need to beware of these false teachers, false prophets that are abroad today. And the mark is they deny the incarnation. And when you deny the incarnation, the deity of Christ, then you deny his work upon the cross because it all rests upon who he is. and the attempt to tear down by complimenting him. You know, the old saying is, they damn him with faint praise and praise him with faint dams. And that’s the way that the Lord Jesus is being treated today in many circles. But he is who he claimed to be, God of very God. Now, he’s saying to God’s children, that they ought not to be deceived. But again, the question arises, how are we to tell? Well, the objective way you’re to tell is they deny the incarnation. Now you have the internal, the subjective evidence. And what is that? Well, here in verse 4, “…ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because greater is he that’s in you than he that’s in the world.” Now, there’s no reason for you to be taken in by this satanic teaching or the denial of the deity of Christ. I had a man that came to my door. And he handed me an envelope in which he had a gift for our radio ministry. And then he told me, he says, I used to be an officer in the church. and a high officer, by the way. Then he says, I got saved and I got my eyes open. And he says, I knew I was in the wrong place because he said they were denying the deity of Christ. And this denomination is a denomination that I was brought up in. And he said, I found out that they were denying the deity of Christ. So he said, I got out. Why did he get out? Well, he’s indwelt by the Spirit of God. Greater is he that’s in you than he that’s in the world. So that there’s no excuse for you to be taken in today by a false teacher or false prophet or false teaching. The thing to do is to go to God about the matter. I had a dear lady right here in Southern California that she told me that she began to listen to me, and she was very critical at first. In fact, the matter is, began to ridicule. She was in a cult, and she felt like what I had to say contradicted what she was being taught, and it sure did. But she began to test it by the Word of God. Now, this woman was really a born-again Christian, but she got caught up in a cult. But she got her eyes open. Why? Because the Spirit of God is there to teach. Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. And you can overcome all this false teaching today because of that. Now, every Christian, and I need to be very definite here, is indwelt by the Spirit of God. This is no ifs, ands, or perhapss, or buts about it. Every child of God. Listen to Paul in Romans 8. He says here in Romans 8, verse 9, “…but ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God, or since the Spirit of God dwells in you.” He wasn’t raising a question about whether the Romans were saved or not. He’s actually saying they are, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now, if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he’s none of his. And that is the very wonderful thing that back in the fifth chapter, he had said is one of the present results of being justified by faith. He says that the love of God is shed abroad in your hearts. Now, we’re going to talk about that in just a minute. This love of God, that is God’s love for us, is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given unto us. The Holy Spirit is given to believers. Now, that’s not the only place. Over in 1 Corinthians, the 6th chapter, verse 19. What, Paul says, know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? Now, of course, Paul must be talking about some super-duper saints, some that have really arrived. spiritually minded, and those that were living on a high plane. No, you know who he’s talking about? He’s writing to the Corinthians, and he’s just called them carnal. He’s called them babes in Christ. He’s just about called them everything that they should not have been, but yet they were. And the thing is that every child of God is indwelt by the Spirit of God. Now, since that is true, and that’s the reason you don’t need an angel to appear to you tonight to tell you that you’re in the wrong place. The thing is that you need to have the Holy Spirit teach you. And friends, the Holy Spirit teaches through His Word. And you can’t just stay away from the Bible and be ignorant of it and ignore it. and expect to have the Spirit of God lead you and guide you. And that’s the reason that we’re trying to get people in the Word today, because we’re reading these letters that reveal that the Spirit of God opens people’s hearts, and it protects them from this world that we’re living in. We’re living in a big, bad world, let me tell you. And today, there’s a lot that’s false that’s going on in the world. And we need to be warned concerning it. And we can test it. Now, here’s a test. It’s just like putting litmus paper down in a solution to tell whether it is an acid or a base. Believe me, this is a test that’ll work, these twofold things. The one that’s teaching, does he deny the incarnation? Well, that’s the spirit of Antichrist, friend. You’re not going to follow that. That’s contrary to Christ, although it may imitate him. Generally, these false teachers are very attractive. Persons, many of them have charisma, and they make a fleshly appeal to folk. But they can be tested. The Holy Spirit is there to be our teacher and our guide. Now, John, and I love the way he does it. He just gets right down to where we are, right where we live today. And he says here, they are of the world, therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. That is, these false teachers. And certainly they get a following. The occult and the cults are growing lots faster than Christianity is growing. Why? Because they have the advantage of appealing to the flesh, which we do not have. And I think it’s tragic today. to have Christians using fleshly means to draw even a crowd in. We need to be very careful of the methods that we use. Now, if they’re fleshly methods, we need to recognize God can’t bless that at all. We need to be very sure that the Word of God is being given out. I don’t care whether several thousand people come to your church, friends. That’s not the important thing I’m interested in. Not how many that come, but Is the Word of God being given out? And is it given out in the power of the Spirit, that the Spirit of God can take it and use it? That’s the thing that’s important today. And it’s not a great deal of pious promotion today about some cause and some sentimental appeal that causes you to give. The question is, is the Word of God going out there? Are they getting results? You wouldn’t want to invest money in a company that’s got a nice, beautiful building, and they put up a nice front, and the president of it is a very handsome fellow, and he is certainly very personable, and he has charisma. If you’re going to invest in that company, you want to know whether it’s making money or not. Is it getting results? Is something happening there? That’s the thing that’s important. And I think God intends us to use a little consecrated common sense when we are dealing in the area of religion. They are of the world. The worldly crowd, therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. Now, when we were using Cain and Abel as illustrations, that is, John used them. When he meant that Cain was not righteous, he was not God’s child, we didn’t mean to say, and John didn’t mean to say he wasn’t religious. Why, he brought an offering. In fact, I have a notion his altar was much more attractive than Abel’s offering was. Cain’s was beautiful. It had fruit there. It had the fruit of the field. But Abel’s was bloody. It was sickening to some people, nauseating to others. But believe me, that’s the one God accepted, you see, because it recognized the sin of man and the need of a Savior. And Cain did not recognize that at all because the flesh depends on itself, doesn’t depend on God at all. Now, will you notice here that John is making it very clear to us that the important thing is that Jesus Christ is who he claimed to be. That’s important, my friend. And he says here in verse 6, “…we are of God. He that knoweth God heareth us. He that is not of God heareth not us. By this know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” Now, I’ve learned in my ministry, and this is the illustration that I use, I always would tell the people, I didn’t mind speaking out and saying to them, I use the Bible as a Geiger counter. You know, a Geiger counter tells you whether there’s some uranium there in the rocks and in the soil. And so I just run the Geiger counter over a congregation. And the Bible is what I use. It’s the Geiger counter. And I want to tell you, God’s children will always respond to it. That was my confidence. And it’s my confidence on this radio that God’s people are going to hear. And you know something? I don’t expect the other crowd to hear. Now, if they don’t want to hear, all they got to do is turn the button on the radio. And we never ask them to give anything. We ask God’s people to support God’s work. After all, that ark was carried on the shoulders of priests. That ark speaks of Christ. And friends, if we’re going to take him to the world, we got to carry him on our shoulders. That’s the thing that we’ll have to do. Now, John was sure of who the Lord Jesus was. John could say this. The Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us. And we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And then he gives the purpose of his gospel. Many other signs truly did Jesus, which are not written in this book. But these are written. that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ and that believing you might have life through his name. John had indubitable, indestructible, inevitable evidence that Jesus was who he claimed to be. John knew that. And that is something you and I need to be a little more sure of today. Notice what he says in verse 7. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. Now, this is a very wonderful section, by the way. Beloved, let us love one another. Why? For love is of God. Now, let’s be very careful here what we’re talking about. Having given a warning against false teachers who are not to be loved. Let’s be clear on that. Certain false teachers, I don’t pray for them. I’m not giving any pious platitude today about, oh, I’ll pray for them. I’m not praying for them. They’re the children of the devil. I’m not praying for them. I’m praying for God’s people and God’s children. And I’m praying for the lost sinner that’s going to turn to Christ. And we’ll turn to Christ if I can just get the word to him. So having given a warning, you’re against these false teachers and they’re not to be loved. He returns now to the theme of this section. Believers are to love one another. And now let’s be careful. What are you talking about when you say love? Well, I’ve dealt with this before. The word for love is not eros. It’s not sex that we’re talking about. This love he’s talking about is agapao love. It’s not sentimental. It’s not sexual. And it’s not social love that he’s talking about. It’s supernatural love. It’s what the Holy Spirit can put in our hearts. And only the Spirit of God can make real to us the love of God. And then only the Spirit of God can enable us to extend that love to others. Now, the norm here, as he makes it clear, is the love of God. Verse 8. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. Now, he that loveth not knoweth not God. Now, that’s another test of whether you’re a child of God. Really today. Now, I didn’t ask you if you love your papa and your mama. I’m not asking you if you love your wife or your husband or your children or your kissing cousins. I’m not asking you that. But I am asking this. Do you love other believers? And maybe somebody’s going to say, well, I could love some of them. Well, that’s helpful. You’re moving in the right direction. There’s some of them are pretty unlovely, let me tell you. And I can say this, we can love them in the sense we could have a concern for them. And I think we can do that. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to put our arms around them. I don’t think that’s essential today. There’s too much of that in Christian circles. And it’s all right for Hollywood when they meet to greet each other with a kiss. But we’re told to greet each other with a holy kiss. And that’s a little different kind of a kiss, by the way. And I don’t see very much of the holy kissing going on. But the way you can show your love is your concern for others that is going to result in help. Now, he gives another definition of God here. God is love, verse 8. We’ve already had the definition before, God is light. Now, we come to this second major division. We haven’t just come to it. We’ve been in it ever since we were way back under in chapter 2. But now we’re in this section here where we’re given the definition, God is love. And that’s the norm of love. God is love. And in this was manifested the love of God toward us. Now, he gives an illustration of it as Paul does. You say, how does God love me? Well, you won’t find that love in nature. You’ll find a bloody tooth and a sharp claw. And that’s what nature reveals today. But you will find the love of God at Calvary. You’ll find the love of God manifested how? Verse 9, “…in this was manifested the love of God toward us.” that God sent His only Son, His only begotten Son, into the world that we might live through Him. Now, God has proven His love. And as Paul says, He laid down His life for us. That’s the proof of it. And for a righteous man, some might even dare to lay down their life. Well, I don’t know whether you could get anybody to lay down your life for you today. I think I’d have a little problem there. But God has proven his love. He gave his son to die for you, and he gave him to die for you, not after you won a Sunday school bar or attending Sunday school, not missing a Sunday for about five years. God loved us when we were yet sinners. While we were without strength, while we were lost, while we were absolutely unlovely, God loved us. And the explanation is found in him and not found in us because we are not lovely friends. And some of us don’t seem to ever get very lovely, by the way. Now, I see I’ve come to the end of our program again today. And we’ll pick right up there next time. So until then, may God richly bless you, my beloved.
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God loves us even when we’re still sinners, even when we’re without strength, when we’re lost, when we are absolutely unlovely. In spite of all that, God loves us. Think about that. If you’ve never responded to God’s love, there’s no better time to turn to him and say, I don’t know a lot, but I know I need you. Read more about God’s offer of salvation simply by clicking on How Can I Know God in our app or at ttb.org or call 1-865-BIBLE and we’ll send you a few free resources by mail. I’m Steve Schwetz, grateful for you as together we take the whole word to the whole world.
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All to him I owe. Sin had left the prince unsaved. He washed it white as snow.
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We’re grateful for our committed listening family who faithfully pray and invest in Through the Bible as we together take the whole word to the whole world.
Experience God’s love and guidance in ways you may never expect. In this episode, listen to inspiring stories from Nicaragua where government-imposed limitations can’t stop the spread of the Gospel. Learn how Greg Harris and the Through the Bible team, alongside partners like Shareware Global, are transforming challenges into opportunities, reaching hearts and minds in Nicaraguan schools. The episode unfolds with insightful commentary from Dr. J. Vernon McGee on 1 John 4, illustrating the transformative power of scripture and God’s indwelling spirit in our lives. His teachings shine a light on discerning truth in a world beset with falsehoods.
