This General Session was recorded live at the Shepherds 360 Church Leaders Conference in Cary, NC on October 19, 2022. For information about the next conference, please visit shepherds360.org.

I have to say that it's a wonderful conference. I found it very frustrating because there were so many different workshops I wasn't able to make. Maybe I'll be able to take them in next year. But what a marvelous opportunity for us to get together. And you know, we often hear from David, he's thanking everyone, but we ought to thank him, we ought to thank Pastor Davie, of course, and even secretaries, you know what church? I'm thinking of Karen, for example, who put a lot of this together. What church could function without a good secretary?

There was a secretary in Iowa. A man called the church and said, I want to talk to the chief hog of the trough. The Secretary said, you should really be more respectful of her pastor than that. He said, Yeah, I guess so. But I do plan to give the church $50,000. And she said, Oh, just wait, just wait, Porky just came through the door. Thank God for quick thinking secretaries. But let's give a hand to the whole staff here at the church.

Now, I'm going to ask you to write something. Grab your pens right now. I was the graduate of a well-known seminary, the world's best seminary. And this was before of course, Shepherds began. And I was taught homiletics, how to preach but I became a pastor of a small church in Chicago. And I just struggled with outlines. You know, you study this, you study that, here's an illustration. But how do you preach with coherence? How do you preach with unity, order and progress? And a man from another seminary, said, Erwin, let's have coffee. In 10 minutes, he changed everything. I'm so deeply, deeply grateful for him and the instruction that he gave. And I have said, whenever I have the opportunity, I want to pass that along to pastors. Here's what you can do. Go to Google, not now but write this down: go to Google, type in my name, and then type in sermon preparation made simpler. Sermon preparation is never simple, but it can be made simpler. Sermon preparation made simpler for three or four videos of less than 20 minutes each, so that I pass that along to you. A man in Canada who retired, a pastor, said, I wish I could begin my preaching all over again. I hope it'll help. If it doesn't, that's fine, but pass it along to you.

Well, my topic is When Darkness Becomes Light, And Light Becomes Darkness. The Bible says in the book of Isaiah, “woe to those who say darkness is light and light is darkness.” You must admit that we are in a revolutionary period here in America when things are changing so rapidly. The first part of the revolution is this: that which is darkness must be called Light. We're past that part of the revolution. It is not yet complete until the next part is the fact that light must be called darkness. It used to be in America that darkness was a choice, you voluntarily chose darkness. Today, it is being imposed upon us by laws, by cultural streams, where we are being forced to call light darkness. I need to emphasize that we did not go looking for a culture war. We didn't say to ourselves, “Well, you know, we'd really like to take on the culture.” No, the culture war has come to us, and it cannot be avoided. So what I'm going to do in the next few moments, is to give you five ways the darkness is being called light and light is being called darkness: five ways. And then at the end we'll talk about the errors of this particular point of view and our culture which is collapsing. But also, then, of course, remind ourselves of the cure. So that's where we're going. It is my responsibility to speak. It's your responsibility to listen and I have been praying that we shall end at the same time.

The first way that we see this happening is moral darkness, moral darkness. I intended here to emphasize, for example, not only abortion, but transgenderism. But it was handled so well yesterday, by Denny Burk. If you weren't here, be sure to get that lecture. But I'm not going to say much about transgenderism at all except to say that when your child comes to you and says, “you know, I think I'm trans, remind him or her that self-perception is not always an accurate evaluation of who you are.” A young woman who has anorexia may look into the mirror and see herself as overweight, when in point of fact, she is starving herself to death. And as was pointed out, it is a brain problem. It's not a body problem. But I'm going to skip anything else because that was dealt with so well. But I do want to refer to this. Do you remember in George Orwell in 1984, Winston was taken into a room and there he was taught that two and two is equal to five. Sometimes it's equal to three. And sometimes it's both. I've often thought about that passage of Scripture, did the passage I should say from Orwell. Big difference between the two. I've often thought about it and said to myself “now does Orwell really think that you can convince somebody that two plus two is five?” I think they were trying to convince Winston of that, but I think of something else. They were trying to get him used to living with lies. And our culture wants us to live with lies. Everybody knows that men can't have babies too, or that a woman can’t father a child. We know that but we're asked to be sure to live with lies. And that's why Solzhenitsyn in his last speech before he left Russia, warned the Russian people to not live by lies. So the first thing is moral darkness. And we've heard about that in multiple sessions in this conference.

The second is legal darkness, legal darkness. That which was canceled yesterday, is being criminalized today. The ACLU, for example, filed a lawsuit against the federal government against Moody Bible Institute and a number of other Christian institutions saying that their students should be denied Pell grants and so forth, because, after all, they aren't showing equality, to same sex attracted persons, to the transgenders, and so forth. What they are saying is Christian Ed's education and institutions should not be allowed to live by Christian principles. I don't know if you know what happened at the School of the Ozarks. They filed a lawsuit against the federal government, the ADF, the Alliance Defending Freedom, because you see, the government was beginning to say if we have equality between men and women, and those that are trans, that means that even trans students should be allowed in dormitories. To make it clear, let's suppose that you have a daughter, you send her to a Christian school, and her roommate was born Bert, but now he goes by Bertha, because he says, “I'm trans.” And after all, you need equal rights. How does that make you feel? That's where we have come. And the law is being used by those that are aggressive, where you have judicial activism, which cuts off the law from any stability in previous laws, as everybody begins to legislate according to their own will, and according to their own desire. Well, we could go into that more, and I think Al Mohler referred to that and so forth.

So let's hurry on. Third: verbal darkness. I took an interest in propaganda because of my studies of Hitler. Some of you know I've written two books about it, you can read either one or the other without dependence upon one or the other. But the thing about it is this, you wonder how a cultural stream can develop in a country like Germany, and actually captivate a nation and you can't stand against it? Goebels, who was Hitler's assistant and propaganda manager said this, what you always have to do is, facts have to be bypassed. Facts are not really relevant. What you need to do is to go to the emotions, and one emotion is hate. You cannot have propaganda unless you have a group to hate. And the other is fear. Fear that if you go against the cultural narrative, you will be in huge trouble. Hitler believed that if you had a stadium with 100,000 people gathered, actually two or 300, in Nuremberg––where Rebecca and I have been many times—he believed that if he filled that stadium with 100,000, or 200,000, all chanting the same thing, when people came back, even if they disagreed, they would either remain silent, or they would be convinced they would put their convictions on hold. And say, we don't know how to process this. But the cultural stream is so powerful. And of course, what you do is, actually, if we had time, we'd go to Genesis chapter three, where you say what people want to hear.

But then you give them what you want them to have. For example, when Hitler starved children, he called it putting them on a low calorie diet, because you cover up your actual agenda. And I know that Wayne had a problem seeing that clock. I have the same problem. There was a pastor who was preaching too long. And God bless any pastor who knows that he has preached too long. And finally he said, “does anybody have a clock around here?” And somebody up in the back row said, “no Pastor, there's no clock here. But there is a calendar on the wall over there”. So I'll have to look at my clock here. But what happened is this: that the cultural streams, because remember what the purpose of propaganda is, the purpose of propaganda is to so shape people's view of reality, that even when confronted with a mountain of evidence, they will not change their minds. It creates a herd mentality, almost an alternate universe that is so powerful, that people fear to speak against it. Speak your mind today, and you will be vilified on social media, which actually contributes to the kind of propaganda we have today on social media. People will be mad, people are angry, because anger sells. And that's the world in which we live. I want to say to parents today that parents today don't raise their children. Even Christian parents don't raise their children. The culture raises their children, and the culture continues to feed them. These issues that have to do with cultural streams, which are antithetical to Christianity. Now in the book that you have been graciously given—and isn't it wonderful that at this conference, you get a whole bag of books? Some of you that's the only library you have. You come here every year, but in the book that you've been given, I list six different ways that language is used in propaganda. Let me just give you two. One is to have speech codes at university. For example, Brandeis University posted a list of banned words, words that students should not be using. Because potentially oppressive language was posted on the school website. All kinds of different words should not be used. And by the way, it says, if you have a barber shop in the area don't say that he takes in walk-ins, because you might offend those who can't walk. After all, there are some people in wheelchairs as a matter of fact, there's some here, and we welcome them. But don't say that they take in walk-ins. All right, let's take a deep breath. What in the world is going on here? Is the purpose of these speech codes intended to elevate the discussion? Of course not. The purpose of the speech codes is to silence the discussion. You have no idea what is right to say. A sentence that sounded perfectly fine a couple of months ago might be banned today. By the way, can you still go into a restaurant and ask for a “men-u”? Is that okay? Can women get a “man-icure”? Nobody knows. That's why a majority of conservative Christian students in our universities say today that they basically self-censor themselves. Because the intention is to so narrow the realm of thought, that pretty soon you won't even be able to object to anything, because you'll have no vocabulary for it. Because after all, we do need words also, in order to think clearly and to express ourselves. And so students are intimidated. You're not free to make a straightforward sentence. For example, you're not supposed to use the word, you know, “Master”, because that triggers people, okay? But is it okay to say that you master a subject? Nobody knows. And so you don't say anything. And that's why, by the way, and then I should mention also another way, and that is that you take the issue off the table in terms of ideas, and you're translated into shameful psychological states, for example. You're a pro-life?—you hate women. You believe in strong borders, like I do. And by the way, the Bible justifies borders and citizenship and all that, but you believe in strong borders?––You know, you're a racist. You believe that? You're opposed to same sex marriage?––You know, you're just plain a bigot. So what you do is you vilify people who disagree with you, you don't discuss the issues. And that's why some of your students who go to universities today will not be talked out of their faith, they will be mocked out of their faith, because you believe that old book that is so repressive, and so that's where we are today. I can't help, because I was born in Canada, to refer to the trucker strike in Ottawa, which I watched very carefully. And there was one man furling, a Nazi flag, so all of them were condemned, as Nazis. In fact, someone in the Canadian Parliament if you can believe this said that the honking of the trucks represented Heil Hitler in Germany. Now, there were no cars that were overthrown, no buildings were burned, no statues were destroyed. But still, they were Nazis. And by the way, whether it's conservative, or whether it's liberal media, everyone picks and chooses, and cherry picks what they want. And then they promote that now. How do we handle this? Parents, you have to teach your young people that there's a big difference between information and wisdom. We live in an information age when everybody has information. The question is, do they have wisdom? I'm gonna give you a quick example of how you have to peel back the labels, because labels are used. Black Lives Matter. Do black lives matter? Absolutely. Do all black lives matter? Yes. But then you peel back the labels and you discover that it's really a Marxist organization. Follow the science. Great idea. I love science. I'm not anti Vax. I'm not pro Vax. I know I picked my battles very carefully. But the fact is this that you don't have to have a settled opinion about everything. But let me tell you a story. In Chicago at the Moody Church, there was a young couple who were having their first baby. And the father was in the delivery room, and suddenly there's panic. And the reason is because the little baby had its shoulder caught in the birth canal. Now you see this panic, the young father is there, and he is totally panicked. Until a doctor came over to him. And she looked him square in the eye, and she said, I want you to know something. In a minute, there are going to be 20 people in this room, there's going to be a lot of buzz. But I want to assure you of two things. We've been here before, we know what we are doing, and everything is going to be okay. And he listened to that voice, and was relaxed. And yes, everything was okay. My dear friends, you can listen to CNN from early in the morning until late at night, you can listen to Fox News from early in the morning till late at night. And your soul will not be fed. There are times when you have to just back off and say among all the shouting, and all the back and forth. You need to hear from God. There are times when you just have to get away, read the word and hear from God. And you know what God says, “I know what I'm doing.” And everything is going to be okay.

Well, there's a fourth kind of darkness. And that is economic darkness. I don't think that we can spend our way into prosperity. At least that didn't work for Rebecca and me when we were first married. Spending our way into prosperity was not exactly a workable formula. Let me talk about socialism briefly. If you have a pie, and you divide it up very, very accurately, and everybody gets the exact piece of the same size. What happens when you have no more pie, the only thing you can do is to print more money to cover for the pie. And eventually, of course, that will not be a good idea. Now, here's the question I want to ask. You know, there was a kibbutz, by the way, in Israel that I'm told was running by socialist principles, you could sleep in late and get the same wage as those who got up early. And you could take your dog to the dining room, because everything was free. Eight people left on their lights. And they discovered, you know, this isn't working. They said we became a paradise for parasites. And that's what socialism does. You say, Well, why is it so attractive after the fact that it's been used so many times, and always failed? Well, I think it was Thomas, and I'm forgetting his last name. It's a mental slip here, Sowell, I believe tha,t that's who said, “ideas don't have to work in order for them to survive. They only have to sound good.” And we have ideas that sound good. And they continue to survive. You say, well, Pastor Lutzer, why would you be interested in economic theory? Only because of this? Of course, it's not true, as the popular notion has it that capitalism is based on greed, socialism is based on need. Obviously, we have a lot of greed in capitalism, because greed exists, the seeds of it exist in every human heart. But all that greed goes away when you have socialism in place. I don't think so. But the reason is because of this. As I've traveled in different countries of the world, and I haven't traveled that extensively, when you think of mission work around the world, it is really fueled by American dollars. You think of mission work in India and Africa, out in the Far East? Perhaps not all, but many of those ministries are fueled by American dollars because America through its capitalism has become a wealthy country. And what we need to do is to realize that if we have an entire financial meltdown, a lot of ministries are going to suffer around the world, but I must hurry.

Number five and most importantly: we must understand that there is spiritual darkness. We talk about economic darkness, spiritual darkness. If you read Carl Trueman's book on how the lie of Eden has slithered through history, and it's the triumph of the self, which has reached its apex in America, you begin to understand what's happening in our culture. Because Trueman shows that you know the lie of Eden, “you shall be like God, knowing good and evil,”—that lie has permeated all of our culture. And he goes through various philosophers showing how it will work out. Karl Marx came along, and he saw all of the oppression that was happening, and there was no oppression. But this plan that he had to end the oppression has been an evil that has encapsulate the entire world. And I might say this, that Karl Marx, though he is dead for many years, he still rules much of the world from the grave. Karl Marx said that the real problem with human beings is oppression. If you stop oppressing them, they will flourish. They won't even need laws eventually, because, you know, the proletariat will take over from the bourgeoisie. And everybody's going to be happy, everybody's going to wake up every morning excited to work for the state. And there's going to be the only reason why you commit crimes is because of oppression. So let's take away the oppression. He and Lenin spoke specifically about the destruction of the nuclear family because they said, family is an oppressive unit, men who oppress their wives, parents who oppress their children, they take them to church, God is the ultimate oppressor. And therefore what we need to do is to get rid of God and to get rid of all oppression. Then, of course, you get to Freud, who believed the same thing from this standpoint, that the highest good and the highest pleasure is sexual pleasure. And the big liberation of humanity is to take away all restraints, all restraints, so that the individual can flourish, and get rid of all the oppression of Christianity and laws and the church and parents to liberate the individual. And that's where we certainly are today. You know, John Stonestreet makes this statement. It's a beautiful illustration. He says, imagine the modern person. Think of a university student or a teenager. If you are in a city, and you have a compass, you at least know that this is North versus south. And you can figure out where you are. You know whether or not you've moved in which direction you've moved. But he said, let's suppose that you have a magnet in your backpack. And the magnet always points toward you. You have no idea whether you're going in circles, you have no idea whether or not you're making any progress in one way or another because the magnet is always pointing toward you, and you have only yourself to rely on and the only person who gives you advice is you. Because after all, expressive individualism says that you control your own destiny, you can choose your own gender, you can do this. And that's the liberation of the individual. So what does it result in? Well, the destruction of the family as I've already mentioned, spirituality instead of religion. I'm into spirituality. People say what they mean is a cosmic kind of spirituality. That really is where Christ is in everyone. I spoke about this briefly during the seminar, where Christ is in everyone that Cosmic Christ. And people are buying this. One of the greatest writers today that influences the culture is Richard Rohr. And he talks about how you know Christ is in everybody. God is not a God of judgment. What he is, is in everyone and he doesn't care about your lifestyle. Now, the only reason I mentioned him is this, that his publisher said that the largest demographic of those who read his books are young Christian evangelicals who are deconstructing their faith and what they're doing is, they're coming up with their own faith that they believe is just right for them. And so they pick and choose whatever it is they want to believe. What about the issues of justice? You know, it says in the book of Judges that every one did what was right, in their own eyes, their own view of justice. No term today is as misconstrued as the word justice. Now, every Christian should be involved in justice, “what does the Lord your God require of you, but to do justice?” And we have to do justice together: biblical justice. But when justice is cut off from the scriptures, that's where you have marriage justice, which of course, is same-sex marriage, you have reproductive justice, which is, you know, women's health care. And that has to do with abortion, you have economic justice, which is socialism, you have environmental justice, when people call something a justice issue, it's very hard to argue against it, because who wants to be in a position of arguing against justice? Are you in favor of unjust injustice? So you have words like this that are cut off from the biblical view of justice. And as a result of that, you can go into critical race theory, you can go into all kinds of different disciplines. And you can see here why, because everyone believes what is just in his right eyes. One of the most important passages about this that you need not turn to now, but I want you to read it later, I think is Isaiah chapter 29. I'm only going to quote verse 14, where it says this, “justice is turned away. And righteousness stands a far off, because truth has stumbled in the public square.” So if you don't have truth in the public, square, if truth is whatever I think that truth is, and I internalize it, and I am the arbiter of truth. There is no real biblical justice by the way. Speaking of social justice, which is a whole constellation of these issues often put together. Did you know that social justice is even being applied to mathematics? If you believe that mathematics has only one right answer, you are racist. Now, a professor who is opposed to that wrote an essay, which is online, entitled, there's no such thing as white math. And what he's arguing for is––now he's a professor from Romania––He said, I feared these woke ideas more than I did the communists, because the communists at least believed that two plus two is equal to four. They believed that there was some objective truth outside of themselves. And people had a different view as to what it was, but there was truth outside of them. Today, it's my truth versus your truth. Now, you know, we can say this with a smile. Some graduates from Princeton, come to your community, and they want to begin the Princeton University woke bank. So you put money in the bank, and then you might have withdraw it and suddenly you discover that they have their truth, and you have your truth. You say, “that's absurd.” Of course, it's absurd. But you have to understand we live in a culture in which absurdity is no longer an argument against anything. And also Orwell, if I might quote him again. He said, there are some ideas that are so absurd, that only intellectuals believe them. So we're living at a time when absurdity abounds everywhere. So that's what happens when you begin to think about education, by the way education of young people in this new liberated generation, it is believed that the education of young people is too important a test to be left to parents. So what you have to do is to have the state raise them. This of course also is one of the things about cultural Marxism that says that the parent has to be cut off from the child because the Front child has to be properly educated. Now, what about all this? What is the central error of everything that I have mentioned today, in this flyover of 60 or 30,000 feet high, quick tour. The central problem is a defective view of sin, which of course leads to a very defective view of redemption. You see, sin according to Marx, sin is external, you only commit crimes because you're oppressed. Defund the police. Defund the police is like termites: these ideas enter into our culture. Because after all, the police are the oppressors. Let's open the jails and let the criminals out because the only reason they're criminals is because they are oppressed. Just stop the oppression and all will be okay. A police officer in Chicago recently said that the attorneys there are not looking to prosecute criminals, they are intending to find a policeman that they can prosecute, so that they really do have a lot of attention on the news. But the Bible is so accurate. The Bible talks about the depth of our sin. It is not simply external. There are plenty of people who aren't oppressed, who do evil things, very evil things. “The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked who can know it?” So the Bible not only talks about the depth of our sin, but the universality of our sin. The fact is that all have sinned. And this also helps us as we heard earlier today about the racial issue, the way the Bible speaks about racism and solves the problem is not by accentuating our differences and our different ethnicities, but rather our unity. We are unified in the fact that we're all, the Bible says, All have the image of God, and we are unified in our sin. So we come together to the foot of the cross, to receive the forgiveness and the redemption that God is only able to provide. And we don't spend our time shouting at one another across all of these ethnicities and all of these fences.

Look at this Colossians chapter three, verse 11. In Christ, you're all one “whether Jews or Greeks, bond or free, Scythian, barbarian”––you're all one in Christ. Paul didn't say to the Jews stop being Jews, Greek, stop being Greeks. Scythians stop being Scythians. But he is saying that there has to be a transcendent unity in Jesus Christ, as we heard about this morning, in Jesus Christ, a transcendent unity that despite the different ethnicities, we are unified in Jesus Christ, but that can only happen if we understand that sin is found in every ethnicity, we are all under condemnation. And Jesus actually came to redeem sinners. Now, today, salvation is I am my salvation. Given expressive individualism, the way I earn my salvation is to express myself and to authenticate myself in the eyes of the world. So I go online and say, I am gay, I am trans. I am this. And now the whole world is supposed to affirm me. And that's the way redemption happens. The Bible is so accurate to speak to these issues. So it's not just a matter of a defective view of sin. But of course is a defective view of God. A couple of months ago, The Atlantic, which is a very important and influential magazine, had an article entitled, “Nearer My God to Me.” And what the article said is this, that America's God is no longer the God of the Old Testament where God is judging sin and He's angry with the wicked and all that. No, our God is just as inclusive and as accepting as we are. He is an inclusive God. And guess what? He no longer punishes sin. And the God of the Old Testament, I mean, he's past, the God of the New Testament is more loving, more like Jesus, whom they misunderstand, of course, because the Bible does talk about the wrath of the Lamb. But those passages are left out. And so we have a new god. And if you look at it carefully, that God is really ourselves. Because we are the ones who determine our gender, we determine how we're going to live, we determine our morality. And we have a state that supposedly is to take care of us, while we express ourselves. Many people look into the mirror, and they don't realize that in looking into that mirror, they are really looking at your god, at their god. Now if you discover that the god whom you worship agrees with you about everything and fulfills every one of your desires, you've made yourself god and the lie of Eden has permeated your life.

As we go back to our churches, what I want to leave with you and by the way, you know, Richard Nieburh who described liberal theology better than I've ever heard it, described a God without wrath brought man without sin into a kingdom without judgment, through the ministrations of a cry of a Christ without a cross. So we're just one big happy family, all knowing God, all interacting with each other, and all expressing our individualism, and being allowed to do so and you'd better affirm me. As we go back to our churches. We need to preach with humility and brokenness, not a judgmental spirit. But we need to be willing to affirm number one, the absolute holiness of God and His anger and wrath against sin. We need that God to be preached again. But along with that God, we also preach a God of love, who sent His Son into the world to redeem us. And therefore, we have a redeemer who keeps us from the wrath to come. The Bible says that to fall into the hands of the living God is terrifying. Have you preached on Hell? At the Moody Church, I think twice in 36 years, I preached an entire message on Hell. And I have to say this, I could scarcely sleep the night before. When you think of how terrifying that is, you can't get your mind around it. But there it is, in God's book, or do we just always emphasize those positive aspects of Christianity, and have no interest in really balance in our preaching. But don't ever preach that way, preach about Hell, unless you also preach the wonder, and the beauty of God's grace, and the wonder of His redemption, but help people to see that you can't get saved until you know you're lost. And so we have this privilege of preaching the gospel. Someone has well said that evil never retreats on its own. Evil only retreats when it is confronted by a greater power, and that greater power is the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is bringing men and women to repentance, to humility, to prayer, and to understand that we are indeed subject to an awesome, unbelievable God. But thank you that Jesus shields us from His wrath. This morning I woke up and an old song came to mind. We used to sing it in Canada. Some of you perhaps remember it, you're old enough to remember it. Maybe you sang it in your churches too. I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore, very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more. But the master of the sea, saw my despairing cry, and from the waters lifted me, now how safe am I? We have a Savior who can rescue us from the depths and the greatness of our sin. And he's the Savior that we must proclaim, I mean to the whole world, because apart from that, we are under the wrath of God. You know, during Hitler's era, if I might refer to that one more time, Martin de Moeller, it was going to spend his time in a concentration camp and he knew it, because he broke the muzzle decree. Now Hitler told the pastors when he gathered them together, preach the pure gospel, he shouted, but don't criticize the Reich. And he asked me Moeller and so you know, the pastor's all filed out he said, peace is all that I want. Peace because the church wasn't submitting as quickly as he thought it would. When he was over knee, Moeller chose his words and said to Hitler, you know, you said that you're going to take care of the German people, we are only to take care of the church, but we also have an obligation to the German people. Hitler turned away without a word. He was angry that night and Moellers office was ransacked and all those interesting things, but now Moeller knew that he was going to be in a concentration camp. So this is part of his last sermon. And I'm reminded of what Al Mohler said, he said, we have a brief period of time when we can still express our views and exercise our rights before we go to jail. I think I heard him say that. A little bit scary, but probably right. Moeller said we have all of us the whole church and the whole community. We've been thrown into the temperature sieve, and he is shaking and the wind is blowing, and it must now become manifest whether we are wheat or chaff. We must see that the day of calm, meditative Christianity is over. It is now springtime, for the hopeful and expectant church, it is testing time. And God is giving Satan a free hand so that he may shape us up that we might be shown what manner of men and women we are. Satan swings his sieve and Christianity has thrown hither and thither. Now get this. And he who is not ready to suffer, who calls himself a Christian, because he cannot hope to gain something good. He is going to be blown away, like the chaff. God has called us to this culture, to this moment, to this willingness to proclaim the Gospel, and consider all negative consequences a sign of victory and joy that we can be identified with Him.

Let me pray for you. Father, thank you for this great conference. Thank you for all that we've learned. Thank you, Father, for all the presenters. Thank you for this church for the seminary, and the privilege of being together with your people and still being able to preach your word. And Father, we pray that you might give us broken hearts, for a culture and for children, and teenagers and adults who are groping in darkness. Trying to find their way. Help us to shine the good news in the light of the gospel, through word and deed. Bless all who have listened. Oh, Lord, encourage us. Help us to see the beauty of our calling. We pray. In Jesus name, amen.