Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sam Nil. Welcome to the Code Red studio.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: Zach, it is great to be here with you.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: It is surreal for me. I'm sure you probably had experiences like this in your ministry. Yeah, probably the first time I've told you I came to Christ through radio.
Probably the first time I heard your voice was on Focus on the Family years ago, back in the 90s.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Yes, sir.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: And they were pushing the Song of Solomon series.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Yes, sir.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: How often do people come up to you and tell you that they heard that series and were impacted by it?
[00:01:02] Speaker B: You know, we just did the Song of Solomon on a lark. Someone said, you teach it in Bible, get studies. You ought to do a sermon on it. And so it did.
And our church went from about 700 on Sunday to 1250 in six weeks.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: We had to go buy big pillows and throw them out because we ran out of chairs. And so the guys, single guys, would sit on the pillows and we'd let the ladies sit. We did four services and we packed them in.
And I. And I knew that we had hit on the mother lode, that this was a time in the 80s where so much was up in. In the air.
Is there a God? Is there. Is the Bible true? Is there right and wrong? Is there a moral absolutes? And when that is the.
The fragrance of your civilization?
There are certain things that suffer.
Marriage, dating, courtship, fidelity, sex. What it is, what it isn't. Those are very divine interpreted things. And when you remove God from them, they're just kind of biological phenomena.
And so I had a Bible study down in Dallas called Metro.
And I said I was going to teach the Song of Solomon.
And the first night that we gathered, I had 4,000 Dallas singles.
4,000.
And we filmed it and put it out there, and everybody in the world wanted to hear it.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: How did people find out about it? Did you market it?
[00:02:45] Speaker B: No word of mouth. The Dallas Morning News ran a story on it, and I started doing. And then we had a group at our church. All they would do was reproduce the tapes called Love Song and send them out all over. Campus Crusade took it in their military ministry and tried to put the Song of Solomon on every military base, every submarine, every destroyer had the Song of Solomon on it. Just because, as you know, military men and marriage can struggle.
And then I started doing conferences on it. I would do three hours on a.
On a Friday night, three hours on a Sunday morning, and I would teach those eight chapters right there.
I did 90 of those.
Now I can teach the book of Romans, I think, a lot better than The Song of Solomon.
But nobody wanted to have a conference on Romans.
But they were struggling with sex, pornography, homosexuality, divorce, infidelity.
What they always say, Zach, is that the greatest cause of divorce is marriage.
You know, and so marriages that suffer.
And so I found out that I. I had just tapped into something that people were desperate to hear about. And it wasn't that I was doing something on love, sex, marriage or whatever. I was doing something on what the Bible said.
And I was taking chapter one, verse one, because who reads the Song of Solomon? Normally you take it and allegorize it between Christ and the church or God in Israel. And those are true.
But the relationship in God to his people is seen clearly in the relationship of man and woman the way it ought to be.
The greatest husband of all time is Christ. The greatest bride, as she should be, is the church. And so when you take the Song of Solomon and look at this relationship, the Song of Solomon is to marriage, what Romans is to righteousness, what Corinthians is to wisdom.
That's what the Song of Solomon is. And so there is no man that can read the Song of Solomon and go, well, I got that down. No woman can say, I've got that down. You come away going, oh, I'm embarrassed.
This is what it ought to be. And when we would film that, Zach, with 4,000 singles, we had a four camera setup running it, and we had one guy that was the Texas Rangers cameraman, that would run around with a handheld.
And I would have to stop during the study and just kind of pause because the girls would be crying and the guys would be sitting there dumbfounded in guilt, and I would have to let them know this book isn't the success story that we all deal with. This is a book that we struggle with.
And so be of good cheer. That's why we have a Savior and a Bible and a Holy Spirit and the New Covenant to redirect us in life.
And so I would meet people just like when I spoke in your church there yesterday that came up and said, I heard the Song of Solomon in college.
And so I did. I did conferences all over, just saying, this is what love and marriage is.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: And those are. Those are still. The last I checked, they were still on the Benton Bibles website.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: Yes, they are. Because that's the great thing about teaching a Bible book is shelf life. It never goes out of style.
And so, you know, the book is the Art of Attraction and then the Art of Dating, and then you get into their courtship, then you look at their wedding in chapter three.
And so it isn't until chapter four that you see the honeymoon night. You don't see sex till chapter four. You watch him have a fight in chapter five and six. And then you have makeup sex and six. And then you have them committing to the end in chapter seven and eight.
And so half of the book is to singles because that's where marriage starts, is a proper single.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: I've taught the Song of Solomon probably three or four times and keep waiting on that 4,000 people to show up. Never has happened for me, but I always have to start with a disclaimer that, you know, so much of this was inspired, if not directly quoted from Tom Nelson's material. And it's been a great, great blessing.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: And I always have to say, when I'm teaching it, I don't do this. You realize.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: Well, you know, I was going to ask you about that. So I.
You and Teresa, thankfully she's able to be with you this week.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: Right.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: And you just seem like the sweetest, most normal, down to earth people.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: That's what we are supposed to be
[00:07:35] Speaker A: doing 101 other things other than ministry. And I wonder, when you were teaching that and it really hit big, how did the two of you process?
People probably presumed y' all were the perfect couple.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: And you may be. I don't know you that well, but
[00:07:54] Speaker B: no, but like I say, the book is a. It's a standard.
No one can read the law of God and come away and go, no problem. Nobody can look at Jesus and come away and go, no problem.
Well, nobody can read the Song of Solomon and say, I have no room for improvement whatsoever. I'm constantly being rebuked. Sometimes Theresa will say to me, hey, Mr. Song of Solomon, man, I love that.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: So that began in the 80s. Prior to that, were you known prior to the metro? When did you first get on the radar and it occurred to you that the Lord was giving you some voice and a platform beyond that of the
[00:08:43] Speaker B: average pastor, you know, probably the Denton Bible Church, we celebrated our 50th anniversary this year and we were the church that wasn't planted.
No one had an idea of starting Denton Bible.
Mel Sumrall that started the church had a daughter that got sick at 9 and was dead at 3 by a virus. It plunged him into a depression.
A guy, he was the head of CF&I Steele up in Pueblo, Colorado. A guy took him that was a Dallas seminary grad and mentored him, discipled him and brought him out of it. This depression he was in and he said, this is really something. The Bible has answers. He said, yes, it does. He said, I think I want to do this. And so Mel became the oldest graduate in the history of Dallas Seminary.
I meant to go to Texas A and M. I was a quarterback and the coach saw a film of me.
I was the first quarterback in Texas to wear white shoes a la Joe Namath.
And the coach at A and M didn't like Joe Namath. And so I didn't get a scholarship offer because of my shoes. So I came to North Texas. We threw the ball about 50 times a game. So I came to North Texas and basically God just destroyed me. I had two season ending injuries and found out that I was not as good as I thought I was.
And for me it was like getting terminal cancer. I said, if I don't play football, I have no life. And I didn't.
And I began searching and God found me and I was saved. Listening to a navigator share the gospel with my roommate, listening over his shoulder. And I ricocheted off my roommate who became a bouncer in a Houston topless bar and it bounced off of him and hit me and I got saved.
And then I began a. I worked as a Methodist college director and they brought in a liberal over the church who didn't agree with the deity of Christ, the death on the cross, the inerrancy of the Bible or anything else. And I said, I can't stay around here. And so I was out of a job.
Mel took a church of a group of Methodist folks. Nothing against the Methodists here, but they started a church and Mel pastored them. And he had a guy come to him that was one of the heads of the church, said, I don't want you to be asking people to receive Christ because that is offensive. Ask him to be part of the fellowship of the church. Mel said no.
And so Mel got kicked out of his, I got kicked out of mine and we ran together and just inadvertently, 20 people got together and started a group that met on Sunday that came to be known as Denton Bible. And so no one really planned on Denton Bible. Denton Bible was my worst nightmare.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: And you weren't doing Metro at that time?
[00:11:27] Speaker B: No, I wasn't doing Metro. This was 1976.
And so Denton Bible began with 20 people and began to grow to 70. And we just. We still don't know how we ended up. We prayed. I know we knew that there was no way we could have a church unless we prayed. And so we just prayed and things happened. A man gave us Money that we were able to buy land, a bank said, I like what you're doing. We'll give you the money to build a church at federal interest plus one. We built a church and then slowly and surely we grew. I did the Song of Solomon. We doubled and we made our church. Zach committed to making disciples. Our life verse was God gave some as apostles and prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, for the building up of the body of Christ. And so we were for the equipping of the saints for the work of service.
And so we started a small group ministry in our church. You could get in a discovery group. If you were a young Christian, you can get in a discipleship group that could equip you to disciple others. And so we use the major, the church service as kind of the cauldron, the pot that we would stir for people to volunteer to get into small groups of discipleship. And so we built our church on the small group principle. And of course, it worked well for Elijah and Elisha and Samuel and Jesus and Paul and Peter. It worked for them and it'll work for us.
Your greatest experiences are not just in lectures. They're in small group and intimacy.
And so we built our church on that. And then after we got going, that's when the phenomena of the Song of Solomon hit.
And so I still. If people say, could you come and do a conference for me? I say, sure, give me six hours, that's all I need.
And I'm going to teach you what that text says.
And what that text says is what it said in 1988 When I taught it and what it will say forever. It's been laying there since about 1000 BC for somebody to teach it. A book that is akin to that is the book of Ecclesiastes.
There's nothing any better for modern man that is walking around wondering, what am I here? What am I supposed to be doing? What's the purpose of life?
Ecclesiastes.
[00:13:52] Speaker A: I feared that book for so long and didn't want to teach through it. But it was probably one of my favorite studies.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: Oh, yes.
Believe it or not, I have had two professional comedians, Jeff Allen and Dave Orion, that have trusted Christ through that book. They were the funny guys, the tears of a clown.
And in private, they were suffering.
Somebody gave him that book on Ecclesiastes that begins with vanity, Vanity. It's all for nothing. You're going to lose it all. We're going to put it on the curb and give it away, and you're going to die. Have a nice day.
And so he deals with humanity.
Human is from the word humus. It means dirt.
Ashes to ashes, dirt to dirt. That's what you become. So how do you find meaning?
And the Song and the book of Ecclesiastes penetrates that humanity to say, this is how a human makes it in a world where you die and lose everything.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: Song of Solomon was for your early ministry.
You did some teaching on depression. Yes, and I saw a resurgence of Tom Nelson popping up everywhere as a result of that.
[00:15:06] Speaker B: That was another thing I didn't plan on.
My people used to always think I was Tom Nelson the sex guy. Now I'm Tom Nelson the depressed guy. My life has gone that way. You know, sex and depression. But, yeah, I overworked, basically. And back in about 2005, 2006, I began to have pain in my body. And I didn't know where it came from. It was just pain. And then I got to where I couldn't sleep, and then I was having to take stuff to help me sleep, and I was working extremely hard, doing conferences.
And then one night, getting ready to preach, all of a sudden, something gave way in me.
All of the life went out of me. My heart rate shot up.
I just sat there in my chair and began to sweat bullets. And then it passed, and I didn't know what it was.
And slowly and surely that grew worse and worse until I had to go into a hospital.
I could not read. I could not watch TV show. I could not sleep.
And there was just. I could not relate to people.
Something had happened, and it scares you to death, Zach, because you're not sure what it is. It's not like you break an arm or you got a compound fracture. You can't see it.
[00:16:25] Speaker A: Could people tell it?
[00:16:26] Speaker B: Yes. They could tell I was withdrawn. I didn't like to be in public. And I got to where I couldn't preach.
I could not sit in a chair for 20 seconds because it's like I was on pure adrenaline.
My wife could hold my legs on her lap and give my legs a massage, and she could feel all my muscles, like electricity going through them. They were crackling.
And I had to drop out of the ministry for four months. And I didn't know what was wrong with me. I went into a hospital twice because it got so bad, and they didn't know what to do with me until my internist went to his Hindu psychologist psychiatrist friend, and he gave him my symptoms.
And this Indian Fellow said, I know exactly what he's got. He said, I talk with him seven times a day. He is classic anxiety and depression. He said, I'll tell you what he's like too. And he described me. He said, he's self motivated, he is on call, he is 24 7, he's highly committed. And he said, he has run out of gas.
And so I, I had to stop all of my ministries to take something to help me sleep and then something to help my body build back itself. It was called Lexapro and it just let my body begin to build back and normalize and I had to get rid of. He said, you've got four jobs. You're doing, you're, you're preaching and you're writing and you're doing commentaries and you're doing conferences. You can't do that.
And so I stopped and I slowly and surely my joy came back and I went and spoke at Dallas Seminary about it. And the seminary packed out to hear it. Because the guys that struggle with this are pastors, coaches, educators, politicians, TV people, because TV is relentless.
It's the most punctual thing that is done in American society.
Television at 8 o', clock, it comes on whether you're there or not. And so you got to be ready. And so radio and TV people that struggle with this, entertainers that struggle with it. And basically it's where you're just running on pure adrenaline and you have no rest. This psychiatrist said to me, he said, God rigged it to where the earth turns every 24 hours and it's dark for 12 of them. You produce melatonin and you go to sleep.
And that is a divine established scenario, is for every creature to rest. He said, animals sleep. There is no animal that goes 24 7. Mosquitoes sleep because created things can't go continually. God neither slumbers nor sleeps. He's the only one that doesn't need to. Humans have to. And so he said, what happens is, in the old days, the earth would turn, it would get dark and everybody'd stop. You'd go sit on your porch, you drink lemonade, the mother would darn socks today, would sharpen his hoe, his axe. And then the next day you go to work. Well, pretty soon we got electricity, we got gasoline, we had internal combustion engines, and we turned night into day.
And he said, that's fatal because you don't rest.
And so now everybody has their nightlife.
And after a while you can do that for a while, but in times it will catch up with you. And so he said, you have to learn to. When it shuts down, you got to go home and you have got to read and be pensive and to sit with your wife and watch Aerial America on.
Yeah. And watch something that's pensive and quit running so hard.
Rest.
And he was right. And so in America, most of your counseling is going to be either on marriage, on kids, or on depression and anxiety.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: Was there anything in you that resisted medication?
[00:20:48] Speaker B: Yes, on medication.
Excuse me. It's like saying that you're gay. All right. You keep it in the closet. You don't want to talk about it. Yes, I use medication.
[00:21:00] Speaker A: And that's gotten. And you're part of the reason probably, that that's gotten better.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I mentioned the name of it. It's called Lexapro and the Laraspam to help me sleep. And it did.
And so people say to me, oh, I wouldn't take medication. Really?
So you're going to get diabetes and you're not going to take insulin? I'll assure you, you're going to take insulin. No, we are physical people, and we can get biologically out of kink that you have to have something to level yourself. And then you start dealing with the stuff that got you there. You're over scheduling your priorities, your whatever, and you can start moving backwards into a more simple life.
There's a great text in the Book of Proverbs about, look well to your flocks, take care of. Of your sheep, for riches are not forever, nor does the crown endure to all generations. If you're a shepherd, you have grass for your flocks, you have herbs to gather from the mountains, you have wool for your clothing. You can buy a field and have a house for your maidens. It just. Solomon just says, if you've got a simple life, enjoy it.
Keep your life simple.
And he says, money ain't going to get it. It's not going to do it. You ever seen the movie Citizen Kane where he. He dies with the word rosebud bud on his lips. And you search for the whole movie to find out what the richest guy in America was thinking of when he died with rosebud. Turns out it's a sled he played on when he was little because he lost the meaning of life.
And so life is to be an Eden means delight. That you have life, you have God, you have a mate, you have something to eat, and you have a job. Keep it simple, a simple life. They have said before, and I've heard this, Zach, that the happiest People in the world are the Amish, because an Amish guy, they have very simple lives. And somehow the Amish sensed that the Industrial revolution is going to get us in trouble because we're now going to have, we're going to fill up all of our time. And so they like instinctively don't do anything after the Industrial Revolution. And they have simple lives, they're not in debt.
And I found out that that's kind of what Solomon was talking about in the Proverbs.
[00:23:28] Speaker A: So as now, after 50 years of pastoring, moving into pastor emeritus and doing some traveling and speaking in different places, the way that I'm wired, we're probably similar in that.
[00:23:43] Speaker B: Driven, right.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: Hard working.
I'm probably a perfect storm for what you're describing.
And then comes along AI and it can make you three times as productive as you were before.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: It's like you have a staff of 15 people working 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
And it's almost like throwing fuel on that personality type, it seems.
[00:24:07] Speaker B: Right.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: Where do you see that leading? What warnings would you say for pastors?
[00:24:16] Speaker B: You know, making a living and making a life are not synonymous.
And we make a lot of times making a life equal your productivity and living.
The woods are full of successful disaster stories.
I have chosen to be illiterate in the area of computer machines.
I do not own a computer machine. I have a smartphone because it helps to travel. But I don't know how to work any of that stuff. I told my wife, she does. I said, if you died, I'd have to marry a 19 year old girl within a month or I would starve to death and get thrown out of my house.
But I would say because something is new, something is modern, something, something is innovative doesn't mean that it's better.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: So you don't. When you're writing sermons, do you handwrite
[00:25:10] Speaker B: them or what do you. I hand write them. I hand write them. I.
I do not have a computer. I go to my books, I hand write every day. I stop my day and I go to a gym seven times a week and I work out every day. I will go out and walk or I'll get an elliptical and just burn up. I have a Siberian husky named Varna that we love to play with. I love my grandchildren. I got six of them. I enjoy my two sons and so I learned how to keep it simple. You ever watch Andy of Mayberry?
Andy Griffith has got that simple little town with about five different personalities that enjoy each other.
Back before Andy, you had Gunsmoke. Did you ever watch Gunsmoke?
[00:26:04] Speaker A: He was from Alabama.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: You have Dodge City and you have Doc and Matt and Kitty and Festus and Chester.
And they have a nucleus of intimacy that helps them combat the what they have to face in the travail of the West.
Andy Griffith and his buddies, they all that little group of Andy and Barney and Gomer and Goober and Aunt Bee and Floyd the Barber Floyd and. And Opie.
They stick together with love and they navigate Mayberry. It's funny, but a show that parallels that is Seinfeld, that you had George and Cosmo and Elaine and Jerry and Newman and they're in a crazy New York City and the only reason they can survive is that group of people hangs together with relationships. Now, the funny thing is you're trying to find safety in Dodge City. You're trying to find sanity in Mayberry.
In Seinfeld, they're all trying to have sex.
And so it's funny. But Gunsmoke, Andy Mayberry and Seinfeld are three shows that are identical formats.
They're in dangerous places, crazy places.
Everybody in Mayberry is nuts. Everybody in Seinfeld is insane. In Don City, everybody's violent. But that little group of people finds relationships and they're close and they deal with life as it comes.
Nobody sat down and said, let's do a show like this. They are spontaneous. You ever read Robinson Crusoe where he's going to go make his living in slavery and slaving? And his father said, don't try to get rich.
Be in the middle. Don't be poor, don't be rich. Enjoy life and have a simple life.
The son runs off, gets marooned and finds what his father was talking about, about a simple life, and he, he gets out and he's a different guy.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: When you were building that throughout those 50 years, did you build it with people in your church or was it with people other pastors of other churches around you or what was your community?
[00:28:30] Speaker B: No, it was Denton, Texas is about a. Was about a 50,000 person community. It's grown.
But when I was converted, I was taken by Campus Crusade. Mel was taken by a guy that was Campus Crusade. I say Mel Sumrall. He was the oldest graduate in the history of Dallas Seminary, 52. He's 101 now. But we both grew up in the parachurch culture. The parachurch culture has an understanding sometimes of ministry, that the purpose of ministry is to take a small group of people, those that are baby Christians, and introduce them to ideas. Those that are older Christians to entrust them with ideas and to expect them to reproduce that. We're not just going to teach you. We're going to teach you to multiply. You're going to be that. So that's how Crusade Navigators, InterVarsity Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Youth for Christ. It's how they began with a group meeting and then small groups that anybody could do that, not everybody could do that, would introduce you and that would entrust you to make disciples. And those that wanted to, we would put them on staff and send them to missions. And that's the reason that parachurch groups began, Zach, is that the church was not doing that. The church was into getting great numbers of people. They weren't sure why.
I remember one time Howie Hendricks at the seminary that I went to, to Dallas, and he was a great educator. He said he'll say, pastor, how's your church? Oh, we got about 1500. To which he says, 1500 what?
Because that's the issue is 1500 what. What do you call success? You're trying to get a guy that's committed, a guy that's competent, and a guy that's creative that can flourish.
And so you've got to find a way to get them to that point.
Parachurch groups exist for that philosophy of ministry. They don't have buildings, they don't have a lot of money. They have to raise well, that everybody commits to give.
They're like Seal Team 6.
They're like Army Rangers. They're highly mobile. They can set up in a heartbeat and start their ministry anywhere.
Churches abandoned that. And so by the 20th century, certain Christians had to go outside the church to recreate that philosophy.
Youth for Christ, the ymca.
Dwight Moody was a YMCA employee.
Billy Graham was a Youth for Christ employee. And so Bill Bright was a seminary graduate that began Campus Crusade for Christ.
They just. They happened into them because the church wouldn't let them commit themselves to a few people.
Jesus had a great ministry.
But when you think of Jesus and his men, you think of individuals, the 12, Peter, Andrew, James, John, Paul, Titus, Philemon, and these individuals. When you think of church history, you think of movements, but you think of what's the oldest city in Florida, St. Augustine, good old St. Augustine, a good Calvinist before there was Calvin. And so you think of individuals out there that did things. And so that's where the real joy of your church comes, is you get a big group on Sunday, you sing with a big group, there's power. You all give together. You have capital, you can work with that's power. But in the final analysis, it's Peter, Andrew, James, and John.
For instance, I could take, like, if you went back in your life, Zach, who was a singular individual that got ahold of you?
[00:32:09] Speaker A: Steve McAllister.
[00:32:11] Speaker B: Steve McAllister. Nobody knows who he is. You know he is. And he shaped your life.
All of us can go back. Matter of fact, I have a question that I'll ask. How many of you, after you became Christians, had no one take you and disciple you? The hand goes up. I say, how long did it take you to grow? The answer is usually 14 years.
Take 14 years. How many times in that 14 years did you have to make the biggest decisions in your life? Yeah. And you're still paying for them. How many of you became Christians and had somebody take you and disciple you? The hands go up. How long did it take you to start growing? Generally, you have to explain the question to them immediately. Right then three weeks.
They don't understand that there's a period that you don't grow. And so the idea of becoming a Christian and having somebody take you, that's an ancient idea. In the Old Testament, you had what were called the sons of the prophets.
It was a parachurch group, a para Israeli group that simply would congregate around men of God to learn the Bible. Samuel had sons of the prophets.
Remember Amos, I'm not a prophet, nor am I a son of a prophet.
Basically, John the Baptist collected his disciples, sons of the prophets. Jesus had the sons of the prophets. And so every pastor has to preach well on Sunday, have a staff that runs that big organization, but down within it, there has to be a white water current where if you want to learn your Bible and learn to teach your Bible and share your Bible and win guys to Christ, we can help you. That's what we do.
It's not a secret deal, but it's a small deal. We spend a lot of money on a few people.
And so I always tell pastors, the next guy that you hire has got to be a guy that does nothing but small group discipleship so that the pastor doesn't have to always organize it. So, yeah, you had a Steve McAllister. I had a John Fleck that took me, got close to me, helped me and sent me out there.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: I look at so many things.
Had a man that was probably at the time older than me Now, I was 19.
And he said, I'm going to teach you how to do three things.
[00:34:26] Speaker B: I'm going to teach you how to
[00:34:27] Speaker A: meet with the Lord and Pray, have a quiet time. Daily. I'm going to teach you how to memorize, meditate on Scripture. I'm going to teach you how to share your faith. And I said, well, I've got a lot of other questions. You know, how do I stop lusting? How do I do all these things? He said, well, if you'll get faithful at these three things, you'll figure out.
[00:34:47] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:34:47] Speaker A: It was so true.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: Christianity is meant for simple people.
It's God to little creations. And the whole idea, if you will walk with God, if you will learn who God is, if you'll tell others about God, you're going to be a pretty happy human being because you're scraping the eternal. There's something about man that aches for the eternal. And the idea that I can have a word from God and a man who was God to show me how to live, and the Holy Spirit of God to come within me and enable me to proclaim God, that's intoxicating.
That I actually can touch the eternal, the face of God, and God can use me. Man is fascinated with God. That's why our present culture is so barren. When you get rid of God, supposedly scientifically, supposedly psychologically, now you start asking questions about what is man, what is conscience, what is the will, what is morality, what is right and wrong?
And you're like a guy on a spacewalk.
If you're on a spacewalk, you want to make sure you're tethered to the mothership.
If that tether breaks, you are sucked into the darkness.
Modern man has cut the tether, and as a result, he's not sure what a man is. A woman is a boy or a girl.
Sexuality. What is evil? What is not evil? He's lost in the dark.
Listen. God said to Adam, here's the tree of life. You eat of that and be in fellowship with me and live forever. This is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which means a tree that you think that you will know on your own good and evil.
You eat from that. He said, the day that you eat of it, you will surely die. You're a dead man when you no longer will draw upon God for good and evil, right and wrong, knowing what it is, and you think you will know it. All you had to eat was one piece of fruit to where you can make your break from God.
Now, all of a sudden, philosophy becomes bizarre. Psychology becomes bizarre. Sociology becomes bizarre. Politics becomes bizarre.
Marriage, sexuality, the arts become bizarre. The most important thing about a culture is what it thinks about God. When Adam was created, he saw one thing, and that was God.
And he understood God. And now he was ready for a wife, and now he is ready for a job. Eve, the first thing she sees is God. Now she's ready for Adam and she's ready for a family.
When you are alien to God, you are alien to everything that is out there.
[00:37:46] Speaker A: I want to step into a little bit of what's happening right now in what you just said.
So Dr. Mohler has taken some heat recently because he seemed to suggest that the next proper thing for our culture and our nation to do would be to define, when we say we're one nation under God, who is that God? So to define him explicitly as the Judeo Christian God. And he's identified with the Christian nationalism movement, and he's taking some heat for that.
He recanted some of his statements in that nature of saying that we needed to be distinctly Christian nation.
Where are you at on that?
[00:38:34] Speaker B: When you get the 10 commandments, the first commandments is, you shall have no other gods.
That there are a multiplicity of gods. And God says to his chosen nation, not for you.
It's me, it's Yahweh.
Now, you're not going to make an idol. And what you think I am, number three, you're going to revere my name, Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And then you're going to recognize the Sabbath, that I'm the Creator and everything you have is for me. And then Commandment 5, you parents better teach this to your kids. You kids, you better learn. And then we go, after we get cult or culture rules. Now we go into civic civility.
Don't mess with your neighbor's possessions, his wife, his name.
Don't steal from him, don't kill him. All right? And so you can't have a culture unless you have rules. You can't have a civilization unless you have culture. Israel gave us culture and civilization.
So, no, I'm sorry, to the Islamic world, to the Hindu world and their Vedas and all of that. But no, when we said one nation under God, the guys who said that were not thinking of Allah.
They were not thinking of anything else. They were thinking of these truths we find to be self evident. That's the sensei divinitas of Calvin.
They are self evident. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness conferred upon us by nature's God. They are inalienable that there is a God, that all humans have rights. And those rights are intuitive.
You have conscience and you know that you should not mistreat people you know, you should not steal. Now, that document, though it may not come out and say Jehovah.
That's who they're thinking of.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: Would you be in favor of an amendment that clarified that?
[00:40:34] Speaker B: Yes, I would.
Yes, I would.
[00:40:36] Speaker A: What about.
[00:40:36] Speaker B: Because all you're doing in an amendment is putting in writing what everybody understands anyway.
[00:40:41] Speaker A: I'm in agreement. I'm in agreement.
What about, let's just say Muslims running for office?
Should there be a faith test?
I don't know how I feel about that.
[00:40:55] Speaker B: And of course, in those days when they were started, Zach, there were no Muslims around. Of course.
[00:41:00] Speaker A: Right.
[00:41:00] Speaker B: So you didn't have to deal with that.
That is one of the.
One of the problems with our day, our multicultured day, is that you bring into ideas that were alien to the constituting of our country.
And so it's like, I'm sorry, you can be a Muslim. However, our ideas of truths that are self evident, of the dignity of man, those are truths given us by the Judeo Christian ethic. You are free to be a Muslim, you're free to be a Hindu, but you cannot bring in your own system of law. I'm sorry. Because we are founded upon these ideas that came from the Judeo Christian idea of God.
[00:41:50] Speaker A: You've been known, and you've referred to it several times in this conversation as a fan of Israel. Oh, yeah, you, you really speak up for the Jews, for Israel.
[00:42:02] Speaker B: The deepest pain I have had in a long time is what I see happening in anti Semitism right now. Tell me about that. You never saw anti Semitism except in the Aryan Brotherhood, the Ku Klux Klan and some others.
You saw them to see it at Harvard and Yale.
The only way you can have that is when you have it concurrent with a woke culture.
Woke meaning. The problem is not capitalism. The problem is white male, heterosexual Christians. The whole Judeo Christian idea has written history from the eyes of the victors. We need to get rid of that idea completely.
And that is what I have a problem with.
[00:42:45] Speaker A: So why this group, the Jews? Very small part.
[00:42:49] Speaker B: They're big as New Hampshire.
That's how big they are. Yeah, it's a small group.
[00:42:53] Speaker A: It's small. Real estate is small in population and it has the attention of the world.
[00:43:01] Speaker B: And you know, Hegel said the Jews were a constant source of confusion to him.
Hegel's idea is thesis.
The opposite is an antithesis. The compromise is a synthesis. And in the next generation, that synthesis becomes the next thesis.
So truth is always evolving it's dialectical. So there should be no absolute definitive truth except for Israel, and he couldn't deal with it. That you've got this idea of God, Ten Commandments, and this culture holds it, and yet they don't go the way of Greece, they don't go the way of Rome, they don't go the way of Persia, they don't go the way of the Sumerians. They are this. This force that has never left us. It's almost as if God made a promise to them, which he did. And so Israel is the one nation that's a lightning rod. I'll bless those that bless you. The one who curses you, I will curse.
Because your very name, Israel, is he that strives with God and prevails.
You're inseparable from God.
To curse Israel is, ipso facto with the cursing of God. To bless Israel is. You see guys in the Bible that show favor toward the Jew.
Ebed Melech, this Ethiopian eunuch, helped Jeremiah, and God counted him righteous.
[00:44:23] Speaker A: Rahab.
[00:44:23] Speaker B: Rahab the harlot. All of a sudden, God brings her into the family. Ruth. God brings her into the family. Tamar. God brings her into the family.
And so whenever you are kind to the people of God, you are kind to God. It'd be like you and your w.
Having somebody babysit your kids when they're kind. When your kids love that person and that person loves your kids, they're your permanent ally for the rest of your life.
You harm my kid, you harm my soul.
Israel is the only nation that God says out of Egypt. Did I call my son that is the son of God?
[00:45:04] Speaker A: What do you do?
My son is of the age, probably your grandkids. And so he's been raised. We've been to Israel many times. He's been to Israel. He's been raised in a family that celebrates the things that you're describing and the things that his generation have wrestled with would include, what do you do when we find out that Israel is spying on us, which I presume we're spying on everybody.
[00:45:30] Speaker B: Right.
[00:45:31] Speaker A: You know, my generation and your generation sort of took that for granted that there's nobody who's not spying.
But they wrestle with that. They wrestle with the money in politics through the PACs that they're putting so much money into American elections?
We know historically that Israel's not always right to say that we're pro Israel.
[00:45:54] Speaker B: Hey, they don't like Christians.
[00:45:55] Speaker A: No. And historically, there's been some very wicked leaders in Israel. So both of those things can be True.
To what degree do we champion and support these chosen people and simultaneously acknowledge when people have an issue with that sort of thing?
[00:46:14] Speaker B: Yes.
Jewish men who become Christians lose their inheritance rights.
Jewish men that become Christians can only go so far in the. In the military.
I don't like that.
If I hadn't gotten a call from Netanyahu lately, but I will tell him I don't like that. I had a kid that I was trusted, that I discipled, was a gold medalist in the Sydney Games.
And he would sign his.
His photographs. John put his name and put John 1:12. A kid came, brought it back to him, said, I'm Jewish. I can't take this.
That is wrong right there. That is wrong. Ms. Daisy sang to Hoke, we don't celebrate Christmas. I'm going to give you this book. It's not a Christmas gift. That is wrong right there. And so I can. There's all kind of things when you look at your Old Testament, Zach. The nation of Israel is from the time of Joshua on, is on a downward trend. The Judges were a disaster.
Saul was a disaster. David was great. Solomon was great and became a disaster.
Out of the 40 kings that followed them, only about 34 of them are bad.
They went into captivity. When they came out, Ezra and Nehemiah, the rebuilding of the people that they were taking, Canaanite wives. They messed up.
Christ came, they killed him, crucified him, tried to kill Peter, tried to kill Paul, killed James.
That's bad. That's bad. Bad.
However, I love those people because those people provided me the Christian worldview. The Bible, Christ's salvation, the New Covenant, all of our entire civilization is inseparable from the monotheism given to us by Israel.
[00:48:09] Speaker A: And I know how important eschatology is to you, but all of what you've mentioned have been from their past. Right, but you also believe that a day is coming when they are going to be grafted by God.
[00:48:22] Speaker B: Yes, there is. Israel, for the last 20 centuries, has been under a judicial darkness. Paul said a partial hardening has happened to Israel. Partial because it's not permanent. A partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the gentiles has come in.
Terry. What is that the name?
[00:48:40] Speaker A: Yeah, we. I like to say it came from Theodore the Great.
[00:48:45] Speaker B: Okay, it's good enough.
[00:48:46] Speaker A: Ostrogoths.
[00:48:47] Speaker B: You're an Ostrogoth. I'm a. I'm a Celt.
Nelson. I. Kelt. Irish.
We got our girl Delaney Cruz over here. She's something Hispanic.
[00:49:00] Speaker A: She says she's A Romanian.
[00:49:01] Speaker B: She's a Romanian.
So we all come from Gentile backgrounds, but we owe what we have to the Jews. We have been engrafted into the rich root of the olive tree. And so, yes, Israel for 20 centuries has been in the times of the Gentiles. And yet Paul says, if you've been grafted contrary to nature into a.
Into a wild. If you, a wild olive, have been grafted contrary to nature and to a cultivated olive tree, how much more shall these who are the natural branches be grafted into their own? You and I, Zach, became. We got the Judeo Christian idea. That was a long distance from your Ostrogothic ideas and my Celtic ideas.
How much more? If a Jew comes to faith, he comes home. And so Paul says, yes, there's a future for the nation of Israel because the calling and gifts of God are irrevocable. And when you look at, like, say, the Book of Amos, where you see these nations punished for their treating of Israel, that was treating of Israel, that was at a bad place. The Jews were not being faithful, and yet they were still held guilty for mistreating the Jews.
And so it doesn't matter whether it's spiritual Israel or just the geographic, historical, political Israel, that we are supportive of those people because we owe our life to them.
And if they ask me about is it wrong for a Jewish guy to become a Christian and lose his inheritance? Right, that is wrong. And you Jewish guys need to change that.
But whether you do or not, I support Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Jesse, David, Mary and Joseph, Jesus and the Christianity we have.
So, no, I don't see any difference.
[00:50:50] Speaker A: I reached out, we had a rabbi, so Orthodox rabbi, came to the islands, planted a synagogue here. And I reached out to him, wanted to take him to lunch. He couldn't go to lunch because it wasn't kosher. But I could tell there was a little bit of bewilderment. Why do I want to hang out with him?
And what I've found to be true. When I went to Israel for the first time and I'm seeing. I felt like I'm walking through the high school of my father. You know, my ancestors, I think of Elijah as Uncle Elijah.
I just feel that very much that these are people I grew up with. I've heard their stories my whole life.
And then I would meet somebody from a different religion who feels the same way about those people. There was a unique sense, it was bewildering to me that somebody who didn't know Jesus could love David.
It was so strange to hear that.
And so there's a curiosity and a fascination when I meet someone who is a serious Jew, that I just want to talk to them.
[00:51:55] Speaker B: I want to pick their brain.
[00:51:56] Speaker A: I want to, you know. And so I'm excited to see where that goes.
I've got a lot of questions. And, you know, I'm going to try to be a good friend before a good evangelist, but I do want to just see where the relationship leads.
[00:52:12] Speaker B: I know Paul, he called the Jew first and also the Greek. He'd go to a city and go into the synagogue because he wanted to let everybody know this. Christianity is not a cultic spinoff.
We are what? If David were here, he had become a Christian. If Abraham was here, he had become a Christian. If Jacob was here, he'd become a Christian. That we are those of the Jewish Christ that we hold to.
I know the feeling.
[00:52:40] Speaker A: So looking back over 50 years, any significant. There's always regrets. But anything that you wish you had done differently or focused on differently,
[00:52:50] Speaker B: well, I have to say, I would not have wasted time with people that were not sincere.
I wish I had back the time that I spent with guys that didn't end up faithful.
[00:53:19] Speaker A: Now, what do you mean by that?
[00:53:21] Speaker B: Guys that you get into what's called the killer Ds?
Guys that become deceived by error, guys that become disqualified by sin, guys that become distracted by money, guys that become discouraged and quit, Guys that become divisive. You ever get around Christian leaders that can't get along with anybody and they terminate their ministries because nobody likes them?
And then guys that, because of danger, are scared and don't go on.
Now, the problem is, Zach, we can't tell who those guys are when we start.
But I think about of all the time I have spent teaching guys that did nothing with it.
But I'm not sure that there's an alternative to that. You have to just simply play the hand you're dealt.
That when you get your church, that I'm committed to you. Paul would write letters to the Corinthians about his love. And they did Paul so wrong.
The Galatians turn from faith alone to faith plus law.
And you, foolish Galatians, who is bewitched you. And they broke Paul's heart.
And so Paul had to spend time. Gosh, Jesus, what a job to work with the 12.
Remember Josh McDowell saying, When you get to heaven, you're going to see Christ? Is the guy with a sloped forehead from always saying good night. What are y' all doing? What were y' all talking about on the way, well, who was the greatest? Okay, sit down.
And so I don't guess there's any way to get away from you Remember Moses saying, God, your people have gone astray. And God said, no, your people. Oh no, you bore them out. I didn't. They're not mad. Oh, yes they are.
[00:55:27] Speaker A: You know, I probably have heard you quote Howard Hendricks as much as anybody.
[00:55:32] Speaker B: He had quite an impact. Yes, he did. When I was a young. Oh, I went to a. It's called Solution bowl when I was 1973.
I was a 22 year old baby Christian in 73 and I was converted in 72. I went to Solution bowl in 73 and I saw as a 22 year old, Dr. Howard Hendricks.
He at the time was probably late 40s, 50s, and he stepped up in front of 2,500 college students and he held them all in his hands.
I had never seen a male do that.
He had a blue blazer that was fitted.
He had shoes that were shined. He had a tie that was a well looking tie. And I sat on the front row and watched him in a professional way. I learned what he was saying, but I said, who is this guy?
I'd seen coaches try to do it.
[00:56:36] Speaker A: Was he always a seminary Prof. Or was he.
[00:56:40] Speaker B: Yeah, he had been a pastor for a while and. But he saw that his greatest deal was in leadership training and in Christian education.
And so I watched him get up and lecture on the things of God.
And he held me spellbound.
And I would get there early. You couldn't get there 30 minutes earlier. They wouldn't let you in 30 minutes. You could spend, sit on the front for 30 minutes until this deal started. So I would get there right at the front of the pulpit for 30 minutes all by myself and then watch him when he got up. And I watched every mannerism, every head movement he made that he was just excellent in what he did.
And I listened to him and I learned from him.
And I found him one time at a conference, oh, out in East Texas. And I. He was out walking and I stopped the car and went out and I just shook his hand and choked up.
I've been there and said, I want to thank you for being you.
I said, you have no idea who was listening to you. I had grown up with all boys in the family. We were four of us, football, baseball, a lot of men, a lot of coaches, a lot of dominant men. But I had never seen one in an area of the intellect that could hold a crowd like this. Man, I had had educators in college, but I'd never seen anybody that knew his stuff so well and could articulate it so well. And so I said, he became a standard to say. I'd like to approach that.
[00:58:25] Speaker A: Do you have a favorite story from Howie Hendrix? I've got one.
[00:58:29] Speaker B: You know, one time he was talking to all of us and he said, talking about men going south morally.
Howard Hendricks is probably about 5 foot 7.
Probably at the time he was about 210. He was a little dumpy. He looked like a kind of like Danny DeVito a little bit, you know.
And he was talking to all those seminary grads and he said, fellas, someday there's going to be a woman that comes up to you and says, you know, you're the finest thing I have ever seen.
And he steps away from the pulpit and he goes, they say it to me, too.
[00:59:09] Speaker A: Probably my favorite.
[00:59:10] Speaker B: I never forgot that.
[00:59:11] Speaker A: This is close. This is close.
And you may have told this.
[00:59:15] Speaker B: I don't know where I heard it
[00:59:16] Speaker A: originally, but he was talking to a group of seminary guys, and he was in his 90s, I think.
[00:59:22] Speaker B: How old did he live till? 90.
[00:59:24] Speaker A: Okay, so he was approaching 90.
Let's say he was 89.
And they asked him, at what age do you no longer struggle with the lust of the flesh?
And he said, son, sometimes after 89, yes.
[00:59:38] Speaker B: It ain't 90. Yes, nothing is better than a professor that's honest with you and that'll say, yes, you're going to struggle, but it's worth it. This is worth struggling is not everybody can do it. It's worth struggling.
[00:59:55] Speaker A: Well, brother, I could flatter you. I could say whatever.
I appreciate your realness.
Over the years, you've been transparent in the pulpit.
I feel like I was able to see a pastor who not only had done what you had talked about, Dr. Hendricks had done, and could speak articulate truth effectively and eloquently, but also I felt like it's someone that I could know.
[01:00:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:00:26] Speaker A: You know. So when I met you, I'm very happy to say that you were who I thought you would be.
[01:00:32] Speaker B: That is the greatest compliment.
[01:00:34] Speaker A: Not really, man. And you've probably met some that you.
[01:00:37] Speaker B: And you're 50 years old, you're my son's age. And so when I see the Zach Terry's out there, I go, hey, I'll be dead here any day. You know, I'm 85, 75, but I see the Zach Terry's and I go, there's hope.
There's hope. So in 25 years. You're going to be my age. You're going to do so much stuff. It's going to be incredible.
[01:00:59] Speaker A: Well, you pray for us, and you've honored us greatly. Thank you today for coming on Code Red.
[01:01:04] Speaker B: Thank you, brother.
