A Cultural Prophecy: Socialism (Pt. 2)

SPEAKER 01 : 0:05

In this age of political correctness, it’s popular to condemn capitalism and embrace socialism. But is that view consistent with God’s Word? Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah continues his series, Where Do We Go From Here?, with some tools to keep you grounded in the truth and not swayed by opinion. To introduce the conclusion of his message, Socialism, a Cultural Prophecy, here’s David.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:33

There couldn’t be a subject more pertinent for us to talk about than this one, because right now, as we meet together here on the radio, We know that socialism is making a rapid spread in our country. We have a socialist mayor in New York City and in Seattle, Washington. We have socialism in the state of Maine. We have socialism just spreading its fingers out across the nation, trying to get a hold of our culture. It is my hope and prayer that there are enough Christians and sensible people to make sure this doesn’t happen. And certainly, the great promises that have been made will not be fulfilled because they are not possible to be fulfilled. So we need to pray for our nation. But one of the ways we can be good at praying for our nation is to be knowledgeable about this subject. And so we’re spending these two days on socialism, a cultural prophecy. I’m telling you about how it started, a little bit about the person behind it, and why we reject it as Bible-believing Christians. We’ll get to that in just a moment. But before we go there, I want you to know that Turning Points magazine is a great hit with everybody who receives it. It is a magazine that coordinates so much of what we do at the ministry through radio and television and on social media. It has articles in it that will instruct, encourage, and strengthen you in your walk with the Lord. It has devotions for every day of the week, Monday through Friday, and one for each weekend for each month. And those devotions are coordinated with the material we’re talking about usually on the radio. So, you’re going to be so blessed by this magazine, and it’s available to you just for the asking. All you have to do is let us know you’d like to receive it, and we’ll send it to you. Over 300,000 people read this magazine, and then, of course, there are many, many more who download the devotions every day. So, this is a great tool to help you every day. It will add value to your life and encourage you to walk with the Lord. Make sure you get your copy today and going forward all of the future copies that are in the process right now. Well, we are talking about a very important subject today, so let’s ask the Lord to help us as we open our minds and our Bibles, and let’s talk about socialism, a cultural prophecy. More people have died as the result of communism than the First World War and the Second World War times two. Communism leads to death wherever you see it across the globe. You will see the deadliness of it That’s all from the heart of the evil Karl Marx So that’s what it is. And obviously there’s much more to socialism than what I’ve said Those are some of the main characteristics and you say well pastor Jeremiah. That’s a good study So what does that have to do with us? What does that mean? well I am afraid this new political trajectory in our nation is more than just a trend. It is a seismic shift toward the socialist agenda. If you look closely, you can draw the connections. First of all, the destruction of our monuments. It’s become common in recent years to see news headlines or live video of protest groups surrounding, defacing, even eventually removing statues and other historical monuments they consider to be offensive. We were surprised when they took down some of the early monuments. There might have been some reason for that, but then they didn’t stop there. They took down Washington and Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, everybody they could find that had anything to do with history. When we witness these events, we’re not simply seeing a bunch of rowdy young people tearing down statues for fun. No, instead, this is a part of a concerted effort to erase the past. The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory, destroy its books, its culture, its history, then have someone write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history, and before long, the nation will forget what it is and what it was. On the contrary, it is interesting to discover that the word remember is found 164 times in the Old Testament. Socialism wants you to forget. Christianity wants you to remember. Remember the former things of old. God said through the prophet Isaiah, I am God and there is none like me. Yes, remember all that God has done for us. On the basis of past mercies, we can build a future of grace. The destruction of monuments is related to the socialist agenda. Cancel culture. Remember what I told you about socialism? It’s totalitarian. Don’t think it’s just statutes and histories that are being torn down. It’s also anyone who doesn’t kneel at the altar of prevailing political passions. You are canceled if you don’t agree. I want to point out that this too is a child of socialism. In cultural Marxism, there is no room for dissenting opinions. Are we seeing that? Absolutely. Number three, the dismantling of the nuclear family. Marxism reaches its icy fingers into your very home. Marxists want to raise your children. They want to do it, not you. That’s what’s going on in our schools today. They want to put all of this insidious craziness into the curriculum, starting now earlier and earlier in school. Socialists know that as long as the family remains strong, socialism can’t flourish. So there’s an ongoing attempt to subjugate the home to the government. That explains much of what is happening in our schools at this very moment. You need to be aware of that. And I’ll tell you what, I think this may be the Achilles heel of what’s happening right now because parents all over this country are waking up when they watched on Zoom what their kids were being taught during the pandemic. They said, wait a minute. This is not what we want for our children. I hope there’s some of you who feel that way. I know that’s the way I feel. the destruction of monuments, the cancel culture, the dismantling of the nuclear family. And how about this? The redistribution of wealth. That’s the central thing that most people know about socialism. This ideology teaches that all human assets should be claimed by the government and redistributed to the masses in a more equitable formula. This would supposedly rid the world of poverty, but somehow it has never worked out that way. It doesn’t take a scholar to see that wherever this principle has been implemented, the poor people have gotten poorer and the few elitists who have been assigned to redistribute the wealth have themselves become filthy rich. Listen carefully. In all the history of socialism from the beginning of time, there is not one, not one single successful socialist story. They are all failures. They all lead to death and destruction and poverty. And don’t give me the Scandinavian countries as an illustration, because they’re not socialists. Those are welfare societies. Socialism fails. Socialism is death. Socialism will lead this country to destruction and everything it was built on, everything we believe will be destroyed if we don’t stop this in its tracks. This one really makes sense. The defunding of the police. Socialists are especially keen on keeping the reins of law enforcement in their tight fists. In America, their first step is to villainize the police, then defund them. And that’s why some cities have slashed their police budgets. And surprise, each of these cities has seen a dramatic uptick in violent crimes in all the months that followed. Who could have thought? Police officers are retiring early and the recruiting of new police officers is at an all-time low. Progressive politicians go to and from work to discuss all of this in their limousines accompanied by their expensive security personnel. Whatever you do, don’t miss the socialist motivation for vilifying local authorities. No matter how loudly they deny it, they are simply trying to let the local government fail. so that they can federalize our cities and states and move control for all that happens to Washington. Everything you watch today is about nationalizing elections, nationalizing schools, nationalizing everything. Nationalize it, then you can control it with just a few people. So that’s where we are. That’s where we’ve been. And here we come to this question. Where do we go from here? You say, Dr. Jeremiah, I’m just one little one. What am I supposed to do about all this? How can I have any response? I mean, this is coming and I see it and I feel it and it touches my children and my grandchildren. So what should I do? Well, I’m not going to say we can start a revolution that’s going to change all this. But let me give you some thoughts that I hope you will carefully consider. First of all, we need to review what the Bible says. You say, well, isn’t it possible for me to be socialist? Can I have a socialist concept and still be a Christian? So I’m going to give you a really quick little survey of what the Bible says. This is from an article that I read by Al Mohler. And this is what you need to know. I’m going to give the references, and you may have to wait until you see it in print before you can copy it all down. But don’t forget to listen. Scripture affirms the dignity of work, Ephesians 4.28. It affirms the fact that those who refuse to work should not eat, 2 Thessalonians 3.10. The Bible affirms private property, Exodus 22. It condemns theft, Exodus 20.15. And covetousness, Exodus 20.17. promotes saving, Proverbs 13, 22, and thrift, Proverbs 21, 20, land ownership, Acts chapter 4, investment, Matthew chapter 25. All of these are honored in Scripture, and the Bible teaches that the laborer is worthy of his wages. Socialism contradicts every single one of those biblical principles. You can’t be a Biblicist and believe what the socialist wants you to believe. So review what the Bible says. You can do your own study on that. Just get a good concordance and go to work. Number two, refuse to live by lies. If you refuse to live by lies, you might have to go out of the world, because it seems like everywhere you look, it’s all lies. I’ve told you this. I watch on television. It’s just amazing to me that intelligent people see this, and it doesn’t just strip every gear in their body. Someone is accused of doing something that they shouldn’t do in opposition to our country. They have all the proof. You can see the proof. It’s recorded. They ask the person and that person says, no, I did not do that. And instead of believing what they can see with their own eyes by way of proof, they believe the person and life goes on as usual. I mean, who ever heard of anything like that? The Bible says there’s coming a day when good will be called evil and evil will be called good. And I guess we’re living in that time. But here’s what I want you to know. You do not have to live by lies. Proverbs 29, 12 says, if a ruler pays attention to lies, all of his servants become wicked. After his expulsion from Russia for writing his famous work, The Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn published a message to the Russian people. And here was his message. Live not by lies. In this essay, he offered a list of what citizens must not do if they were to be faithful to the truth. Here’s what he said. They must not say, write, affirm, or distribute anything that distorts the truth. Number two, they must not go to a demonstration or participate in a collective action unless you truly believe in the cause and it is true. Number three, you must not take part in a meeting in which the discussion is forced and no one can speak the truth. You must not vote for a candidate or proposal you consider to be dubious or unworthy. And you must not support journalism that distorts or hides the underlying facts. And that last point will subtract almost all of the news programs that are on television today. I mean, they don’t tell the truth. Christians have been called to refuse falsehood even to accept or listen to what is false is wrong That’s why if you let your mind be filled with all the garbage of some of these networks that just force these lies out of their network room into the atmosphere You’re hurting yourself Solzhenitsyn said, don’t do it. Don’t listen to it. Don’t allow yourself to be listening to lies and then live by lies. So much of what we hear in our culture today has no connection to common sense. Let us refuse to live by lies. Just because somebody in power says it’s true doesn’t mean it’s true. So review what the Bible says. That’s a good thing. Refuse to live by lies. Here’s another one. Resolved to be a follower of Christ and not just an admirer of Christ. You know what is happening, men and women, in this time? We’re sorting out the church. We’re sorting out Christians. We’ve got some Christians who are admirers of Christ, and we have some who are followers of Christ. Siren Kierkegaard wrote something about that. He said, the admirer of Christ never makes any sacrifice. He always plays it safe, though in words and phrases and songs he is inexhaustible about how he praises Christ. He renounces nothing, he will not reconstruct his life, and he will not let his life express what he supposedly admires. Not so for the follower, oh no. The follower aspires with all of his strength to be what he admires. And that’s what we need to be today as Christians. You know, I know a lot of people who are cultural Christians. You know, they’ve been in the church all their lives. You go to some places in the country where, maybe in the Bible Belt, where they grew up in the family and they grew up and everybody went to church. They go out and live for the devil during the week and show up in church on Sunday. Sort of gives them a feeling of respectability. They’re not followers of Christ. They might be admirers of Christ. They want Christ on their portfolio, but they don’t necessarily want him dictating their life. More and more than ever before, we need to really be seriously asking ourselves, what does Jesus Christ want me to do in this situation? Rethink small groups. As many of us learned during the COVID crisis, small groups are vital in rough times. This is what happened in the early days of the church where they continued daily with one accord in the temple and in breaking bread from house to house. One person has written this, what the experience of the church under communism and a discerning read of the signs of the times today tell us is this, that all Christians of every church should start forming these small groups, not simply to deepen its members’ spiritual lives, but to train them in active resistance. Small groups are not retreats from the rest of the world. They are gatherings that help us care for one another, study the instructions of Scripture, cope with the world, and advance the gospel. They are biblical in nature, and they will prepare us to resist the socialist thought army that is coming after us today. We need to be in small groups so that we can get strength from one another, and when this stuff starts happening to us, we aren’t standing all by ourselves trying to face it as one couple. I believe more than ever before that as we walk into these next days with all of this craziness that’s going on around us, if we are not in a small group, we are setting ourselves up to be picked off. You know, the enemy likes to isolate people and pick them off one by one. You get in a small group and you have some people that can pray for you and help you, and you can ask questions, and if you need answers, you can figure them out. You don’t have to be ignorant about these things. Paul wrote, brethren, I don’t want you to be ignorant. I want you to know we need to arm ourselves with the truth and we need to join hands with others who can help us stay strong during the things that are happening. Number five, resist any way that you can. Paul said we ought to obey God rather than men. Now, I don’t necessarily know that I want to start a cult of civil disobedience. I don’t know that I’ve ever tried purposefully to disobey the government. I did sort of become a little bit of a renegade when they told us we couldn’t have church. We said, no, we’re gonna have church, and we have. That’s an easy illustration of Acts 5 29, where it says you ought to obey God rather than men. So let me tell you a little story that will help you to understand how we can stand in the way of some of this stuff that is happening. Elizabeth Turner worked hard on her valedictorian speech for Hillsdale High School in Hillsdale, Michigan. She intentionally highlighted her faith in Jesus. In the draft of her speech, she said, and this is from her speech, “‘For me, my future hope is found in my relationship with Christ. By trusting Him and choosing to live a life dedicated to bringing His kingdom glory, I can be confident that I am living a life with purpose and meaning. My identity is found by what God says and who I want to become is laid out in Scripture.'” Well, that didn’t go over too well with the school officials. Her principal told her, “‘You are representing the school in this speech, not using the podium as your public forum. We need you to be mindful about the inclusion of religious aspects. These are your strong beliefs, but they are not appropriate for a speech in a school public setting. I know this will frustrate you, but we have to be mindful of it.'” Well, that didn’t just frustrate Elizabeth. When Robert Morgan heard this and read about it, he did something I would have never thought of doing. He picked up the phone and called the school, and he spoke with someone in the principal’s office. Rob was gentle and soft-spoken, but he questioned the school’s decision. This is an infringement on the civil rights of this student, he said. It’s an erosion of our freedom of speech and worship. He was directed to the office of the superintendent of schools, where he left a message on the answering machine and posted a link to the story on his social media sites. To his surprise, Rob said, Superintendent Sean Vondra called me back. He answered and wanted me to know that Hillsdale High School will certainly allow Elizabeth and all their valedictorians to express their genuine faith without any censorship. Can you imagine that? sometimes when something like that happens you will have something go off in your heart and it will say i ought to when it says you ought to do it that’s what happened to robert he saw this he heard it he called the school whoever thought of such a thing well It’s amazing what can happen if we don’t just sit on our hands when people are trying to steal from us the things that mean so much to us as believers. So there are times when you can resist, and God will show you when that is. And when your heart says, I ought to, you do it. And please come and tell me the story. It’ll be in another sermon, I promise you. And finally, I want you to remember Venezuela. That’s where we started. Today, Venezuela is a social and economic wasteland. 96% of citizens live below the poverty line. Most people earn less than a US dollar per day. Poor economic management brought about inflation rates of more than 10 million percent, which is why a roll of toilet paper cost 2.6 million bolivars, the Venezuelan currency. And the lack of investment in commodities means the nation is barren of essential medicines and medical services. As a result, an estimated 5.5 million refugees have fled Venezuela, a number that represents more than a sixth of the nation’s total population. In short, a country once defined by freedom and opportunity is now oppressed, barren, and hopeless. And Marxism caused it. Marxism is among the worst ideas ever conceived. Just ask its oppressed multitudes and its countless casualties. We should be aware of its history, herald its dangers, and oppose its spread.” WHEN YOU SEE THESE CRAZY PEOPLE ON TELEVISION TALKING ABOUT HOW THIS IS GOING TO BE THE NEW FACE OF OUR NATION, I HOPE YOU SHUTTER AS I DO AND YOU HIT THE GROUND AND PRAY, NEVER, GOD, LET THIS HAPPEN TO US. WELL, THE BEST NEWS OF ALL IS THIS, THERE IS COMING A UTOPIA, BETTER THAN ANYONE CAN EVER IMAGINE, BETTER THAN WE CAN IMAGINE. Isaiah 9, 6 describes a time when the government will be upon the shoulder of Jesus Christ. When Jesus returns, things will be different. Amen? Our Lord, when He returns, will right all of these wrongs. He will judge between the nations. He will rebuke many people, and they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” No, friends, socialism, Marxism, and all the other ugly isms of history will be utterly destroyed when Jesus comes back and sets up His kingdom on this earth. And the Bible says this kingdom will be forever and ever. And it also tells us that we can be citizens of this kingdom if we will put our trust in Jesus Christ. He will not only just be the king of the earth, he’ll be the king of our life. And I hope you have done that. I hope there’s been a time in your life where you’ve given yourself to Jesus Christ and asked Christ to come and live within you. He will help you every day. He will meet your needs, He will strengthen your heart, He will give you courage, and He will give you conviction about the things that are right and wrong. Well, tomorrow we’re going to talk about something else that’s going on out there in the prophetic world. Tomorrow’s subject is globalism. And maybe to make it more pertinent, it’s about why so many people don’t want walls, why they don’t want borders, why they think everybody should just be one great big nation, kind of like it was before the Tower of Babel, which the Lord rejected. And I know he does not want what everyone seems to be pushing for in the world today. We’ll talk about it tomorrow as we view globalism and international prophecy. I hope you join us then. If you have a study guide, you’ll be prepared. There’s a book on the subject you can get from Turning Point, and our resource for the month is Understanding Biblical Prophecy, a 30-day Bible study to help you understand what God says about the future. It’s yours for the asking when you send your gift today. Have a great day. We’ll see you tomorrow.

SPEAKER 01 : 24:56

Today’s message from Dr. Jeremiah came to you from the Appel Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. How is this ministry drawing you closer to God? Let us know by writing to Turning Point, P.O. Box 3838, San Diego, California, 92163. Visiting our website at davidjeremiah.org slash radio or calling 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David’s new book, Understanding Biblical Prophecy, a 30-day Bible study. It’s yours for a gift of any amount. You can also download the free Turning Point mobile app to instantly access our content. Search in your app store for the keywords Turning Point Ministries. Visit davidjeramiah.org slash radio for details. That’s davidjeramiah.org slash radio. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue, Where Do We Go From Here? on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.