This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program originally aired on Sept. 10, 2020. To listen to the program, please click HERE.
Keith Wiebe: Good afternoon. Welcome to Stand In The Gap Today. I am Keith Wiebe and, along with pastor Gary Dull, we will be your two hosts for this program today.
Wherever it is that you’re listening, across a network that encompasses more than 425 radio stations, all parts of our beloved US of A, and probably we have some in foreign countries that pick us up on the internet as well. Welcome so very much.
I’m going to jump right into our guests today instead of some usual setup comments. I am very honored to introduce to our audience Penny Nance. Penny is the President of Concerned Women for America, which is the largest women’s public policy organization in the country. They are passionate about applying a biblical worldview, not just to women’s issues, but to all of the issues that have an impact on us in our country. She has been declared one of the four leading female pro-life leaders by Christian Post. Newsmax listed her as one of the 100 leading evangelicals in our country. She has appeared on all of the major news networks. She serves on an advisory board to President Trump, is frequently involved in those discussions. In fact, she is today on a Trump team bus in Iowa, helping out with the presidential campaign there. Penny welcome so much. Thank you for taking time to join us.
Penny Nance: Well, it is just a great honor, Dr. Wiebe to be there with you and Pastor Gary. I just love what you do and support you over the years, the many things that you’ve done. I was really excited and eager in between stops here in Iowa. Believe it or not, I’m taking vacation time. I’m volunteering on Women for Trump. I’m on the Advisory Board for Women for Trump and also on the president’s Advisory Board on Life. [crosstalk 00:02:07]. I had some extra time and this is just such an important moment for our country.
Keith Wiebe: It is.
Penny Nance: I feel like that we are making a decision about the future for our children and our grandchildren, perhaps our great grandchildren, and the trajectory of our nation, whether we’re going to descend into chaos and anarchy, whether we’re going to force the [inaudible 00:02:33] anytime, any reason, any number. Whether our religious freedom is going to remain intact. Whether socialism is the prevailing orthodoxy of the country. Whether our foreign policy is going to support Israel. There are so many key issues.
Keith Wiebe: There really are.
Penny Nance: The president has so strongly supported the issue of life, over 200 judges and two Supreme Court judges has supported the ethic of life.
Keith Wiebe: That’s a tremendous record. We are so grateful for that. Would you give us just a brief, maybe two or three or four sentences, thumbnail sketch, of Concerned Women for America? I’m sure many of our listeners are familiar with it, but I’m sure also there are a number who are not. Just a brief thumbnail sketch.
Penny Nance: I’d be honored. We, as you said, are the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization. I didn’t start it. It started in 1979. We’re 40 years old. We’re grown up. By Dr. Beverly LaHaye. She was a pastor’s wife who had never thought about being in the public eye ever, and one day she’s watching Betty Friedan declare that all women, and by the way, they still do this, all women support abortion and support the ERA.
Mrs. LaHaye literally stood up, a quiet spoken pastor’s wife, stood up from her sofa and said, “You don’t represent me.” That was the beginning of Concerned Women for America. She and some friends in Southern California got together and held a rally. It grew from there, until today we have over half a million members around this country. We’re a strong organization that are active on the local, state, and federal level.
Gary Dull: Penny, you folks have done a great job. I’ve been a follower of the Concerned Women for America for years. I thank the Lord for what you folks do. We’re facing a very important election coming up in just less than two months, November the 3rd, that of course is our presidential election. As the leader of the CWA, from the 30,000 foot level, what’s driving you as we anticipate this upcoming election?
Penny Nance: Well, it’s what I said before. It’s about the future of our country. I have two children. I have a 19 year old son, a 23 year old daughter. I pray that someday I have grandchildren. I really believe, Pastor Gary, that we are at an [inaudible 00:05:17] moment in this nation. We face an existential threat to our country. I am not overstating that. Whether we are the same strong America that has the right to life, the right to freedom, the right to support, to live out our faith, whether we support Israel or not as a nation, all of that’s at stake in this next election. I am doing everything I can do. We laugh that we can sleep after the November election. We’re going around the country though, and this is where I’m putting on my Concerned Women for America hat and taking off my Trump volunteer hat and saying, we are doing a national prayer campaign called, She Prays, She Votes.
We’re asking everyone to set their alarms at noon and pray for our nation. We’re doing local events every Thursday. It’s Thursday, go on our website, concernedwomen.org and you can see what time. Usually it’s either at noon or 6:00 in the evening, depending on where we are. We’re bringing local leaders together in key battleground states and women owned businesses and then people around the country joining us, and we are praying for our country. We have to fight this spiritual battle on our knees. Then we have to get up off our knees and we have to go vote.
Keith Wiebe: Penny, that is so very well stated. Second Chronicles 7:14, such a familiar text to all of us. “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray.” I’m really encouraged by many organizations, like yours, that are putting an emphasis on prayer. We’re doing the same thing with the American Pastors Network. Every Tuesday in our broadcast, the final fourth segment is devoted to prayer. We call it our 52 Tuesdays of prayer. We started that 52 Tuesdays before November the 3rd and we make an emphasis on that every week.
I felt in the last election that God showed mercy on us. The Book of Ezra describes God showing a little time of grace to his people. I think God did that for us in that last election. I’m praying that he does so again. That he will enable us to again see strengthening of strong judges.
We have so many areas of concern in our country that can be addressed only by God, only by his power, only by God’s people coming before him in prayer. Penny, it’s just been a brief segment. We will have you back again one day when you’re not on a campaign bus and have more time for us, but I want to thank you for taking time out of your very, very busy schedule. We pray with you that God enters those efforts.
Folks, we’re going to take a brief break. Stay tuned, we’ll be right back.
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Thank you so much for joining us today for Stand In The Gap. I’m Keith Wiebe, joined in hosting responsibilities by Gary Dull. We were very privileged to have Penny Nance with us on the first segment, the President of Concerned Women for America. We are now privileged to have part of her staff with us. I’m going to introduce her to you in just a moment. We’re going to lower the altitude of our discussion just a little bit and go down from the 30,000 foot level, you might say, to where life really meets reality. We’re going to discuss, largely from a women’s point of view, because Concerned Women for America, as we mentioned in the first segment, is the largest women’s public policy organization in America. The NOW crowd does not even begin to speak for all women, as they like to claim.
I need to tell you just a little bit about Doreen Denny, as we welcome her. She is a wife and the mother of two, the part of her life I’m sure that she is the most proud, but she serves as Vice President of Government Relations for CWA. In that role, she oversees their policy engagement. She’s an opinion writer. She’s a commentator on cultural and women’s issues, appearing on many major television and radio networks and programs. She was on the Laura Ingram program just recently and Fox News. Her work has been featured in the Washington Times, the Hill, the Daily Signal. She brings broad experience in policy strategy and communication. I think, most important of all, and you’re going to really sense this as we talk with her, she brings to what she does with the Concerned Women for America, a heart that is passionate for God, for a biblical worldview, and for his principles.
Doreen, I want to welcome you to Stand In The Gap today and ask you just to start off with us by telling us, in a broad sense, what drives your heart in your role at CWA?
Doreen Denny: Well, thank you, Keith, and thank you, Gary. It’s a delight to be with you today. I came back into this world of politics after being on the bench for about 20 years raising my children. The Lord really led me back to CWA, or into CWA, for a real purpose. Penny spoke about being a part of something at such a time as this. We are in this spiritual battle and this organization is trying to expose to the light a cultural trend that really denies the truth about God and about him as creator and us as his creation. It’s becoming so much more evident as we even get into this election season.
Our work is about affirming our humanity, our identity, and really our God given rights. We’re a voice almost of warning. There’s a little bit of a prophetic voice as We’re trying to speak out into the culture. It takes a lot of courage, but I’m one that’s here for this season and this time, I don’t have big objectives for my future in terms of my professional life. I think that many of us feel that we just have to be in here for God’s work right now and really wake up what is now being presented as a woke culture.
Gary Dull: I’ll tell you what, these are very interesting times in which we live, Doreen. I am glad that you are doing what you’re doing with Penny and the others there at the Concerned Women for America. It’s a delight to have you with us on the program today.
Let’s go down this line here just a little bit more. There is much talk about equality for women. That talk has been going on for a long time. For several generations. It is of such a level that Congress is even deliberating on what is being called the Equality Act. Certainly as we study the scripture, we understand that the word of God tells us that both men and women are created in the image of God, but does the Equality Act that Congress is debating really offer equality from the biblical perspective?
Doreen Denny: Well, thank you for giving an opportunity to talk specifically about this, because the Equality Act, we’ve called it the inequality act, actually. What it is doing is redefining the very essence of what it means to be distinctive based on our biology, our biological sex. By redefining sex to include both sexual orientation, which is an orientation, a conduct based question, and then your gender identity as being anything you can decide at any point you want to feel, we’re moving away from the immutable God given characteristics of our humanity.
That’s really dangerous. God created us male and female, and that’s a fact, not a feeling. But any laws that are based on perceptions that can change and anyone can claim that as a right, that’s no longer having a foundation of civil rights that recognizes us for how we’re designed, who we are, things that we can’t change about ourselves, whether that be our race, ethnicity, disabilities, our sex, those have been the foundation for our civil rights and they need to continue to be.
Keith Wiebe: That’s very well said, Doreen. I was intrigued to notice on Laura Ingram’s program, you call the inequality act, you said that it was erasing women. I thought that was very well said. It stuck in my mind. In that same general arena, we come across the term gender dysphoria. I remember the first time I heard that. I had to look the word up and once I looked it up, I understood its meaning and where it came from. It made sense in the way it was being used, but that enters into a discussion about the identity of children. I know that’s an area where you and your colleagues at CWA, an area for which you do a lot of thinking, where you do a lot of work. What about gender disquality? What about all of this discussion about children’s identity?
Doreen Denny: Well, that’s such an important area because the threat to our children is really in molding their minds and hearts right now is what’s stake. Going back just briefly to the issue of erasing women, whenever we deny or erase the protected category based on our maleness or femaleness, we do erase protections for women. Women have had to have elevated protections in our society. We just had the 19th Amendment of course, and celebrated the right to vote. But again, in places and spaces and facilities, that’s so important.
What’s happening now in our schools with our children is we’re affirming their notions of themselves that depart from their true biology. Children are getting confused today because of curriculum in the schools. Some of them have dysphoria because of things that they may have experienced in their home lives or other things that are going on, their traumas in their own childhoods. But also we’ve got a lot of social media and other messages coming to them.
Gender dysphoria is really a psychological reality of a strong feeling that’s incongruent with your biological sex. But what we’re doing today now is instead of treating that as a psychological condition, we’re suggesting that it requires medical treatments of your physical body. That’s the harm, the danger, and the real threat that we see marching toward the future on these issues.
Gary Dull: Doreen, one of the areas that is really tied into gender dysphoria is in the area of sports today, especially with trans women. Of course, if our listeners are not familiar with that term, that talks about those who are really biological men. But with trans women participating in women sports. My question to you is that, from the biblical worldview, what is the right approach and who is it that has the most to lose in this, the men or the women or children, or who else in society?
Doreen Denny: Well, I think we all have a lot to lose, but you’re exactly right. You’re pointing out the importance of recognizing that our sex-based distinctions, physiologically, biologically, things that are immutable, that they’re really unchangeable, every chromosome in your body is defining your identity, your physical anatomy, and your sexual identity.
When we get into the area of the consequences, and these are not hypothetical consequences with the possible passage of an Equality Act, which would throw open our facilities, spaces, public spaces to saying any man could walk into women’s restrooms at any time if he says he’s a woman, but these are actually looking at the consequences right now that are happening in our culture, and they include the sports fields.
We have girls in high school and college levels who have been forced to compete against biological men identifying as women. These are individuals that previously, in just the years prior competed as the men that they were, on men’s teams. By maybe taking a few hormones, in some cases, there’s not even a standard to take anything. It’s just, this is the way I feel. They’re now saying, well they’re entering into rostering them on women’s teams in female athletics. This is patently unfair for girls.
Female bodies are designed differently physiologically. Even a year of hormone treatments for a male body does not mitigate the differences that come through puberty, through just the lung capacity, the bone density that is natural, that starts really in the womb. We’re working very hard. In fact, we’re working with a lot of women, not on a faith basis. Many of them are radical feminists. Many of them are in sports. We’ve just sent a letter with over 300 athletes to the NCAA saying that they need to change their policy.
We can’t really deny girls today the idea that they have a fair playing field or a fair shot at their goals and their dreams, because any male could come in at any point and say that he’s feeling like a female, or maybe he’s taken steps that he truly identifies this way, but that doesn’t change the advantage that would happen in sports. We have got to reclaim the rights of Title IX for female athletes.
Keith Wiebe: Doreen, that sounds incredibly defying common sense. Folks, if you think that sounds bad, stay tuned, because we’re getting ready to tell you about some people that say that if we do not cater to this dysphoria with the physical medication, we may cause our kids to become suicidal. You heard that right. You stay tuned, we’ll be right back.
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Keith Wiebe Thank you so much for joining us for Stand In The Gap today. We are a ministry of the American Pastors Network, a network of pastors who commit themselves to boldly proclaiming the principles of the word of God, the entire counsel of God, across their pulpits, into the public square. There is no greater time than this has been needed before. There is no greater need, I don’t think, in our culture, then for pastors to take a bold and courageous stand in their declaration of the word of God across their pulpits.
It’s been our privilege for these two segments, the last segment and this one, to have as our guests, Doreen Denny, she is the Vice President for Governmental Relations with Concerned Women for America. Doreen, we were talking about gender dysphoria just a moment ago, and talking about some of the outrageous actions that are being taken and equally outrageous claims that are made. Parents, for example, are being told that if they deny giving in to this dysphoria on the part of their child, they may cause that child to actually be suicidal. Is that true? How should a Christian, from a biblical worldview, look at that?
Doreen Denny: Well, I think it first would be important to understand and recognize that a child that’s facing this kind of dysphoria actually has issues. There are underlying issues there that need to be addressed. You can’t just deny that. It’s important to do it in a way that affirms the truth of who they are. Affirming a lie in their life is not loving them. Yet, there are major things that need to happen in a situation.
Right now, we have social media and other things driving these ideas in children, and unfortunately school curriculum doing the same, suggesting that they need to decide for themselves if they’re a boy or a girl.
The first thing to recognize is that there is something going on there. Will they then commit suicide if you don’t allow them to change? There’s reliable evidence that suggests that. In fact, what we do know in a longitudinal way from a study in Sweden was that 20 years after individuals went through those transitions, they were more suicidal. It increased it by almost 20%.
It’s super important that parents understand that they don’t start taking actions that are irreversible, that cause irreversible harmful damage to them. In fact, a child that starts out taking puberty blockers immediately arrests bone development, brain development, the other kinds of things that those hormonal changes allow for. In fact, if you start giving them cross sex hormones, which some doctors are prescribing as young as eight, nine or 10, they are sterilized for life.
The idea that they could then come back and regain who they are in their normal sex is denied them. We have got a lot of reckoning to do with the truth here. It is dangerous to be going down a road that’s denying the realities of what’s happening to a child. They have no capacity for informed consent. We have to recognize that.
Gary Dull: It’s absolutely dangerous, Doreen, when truth has put aside. I appreciate that. One of the things that we strive for here at Stand In The Gap Today is the truth in all things. We want to try to stand in the gap for truth.
Unfortunately, what is being taught out there in the public school, in the government school, maybe I should say more specifically, is not truth. It’s very, very concerning to most of us, particularly those of us who believe the word of God and want to stand on biblical truth.
We are right now in the time of the year when schools are resuming and they are being faced with a host of challenges, challenges that relate to the COVID pandemic, as well as other cultural trends and pressures. I’m just wondering if you could share with our audience today, what kind of pressures does the school present for children and for their parents today. Maybe pressures right now, September this year, that perhaps were not even faced September a year ago.
Doreen Denny: You’re right on it that COVID-19… Around our area, many of our schools aren’t even open for business. They’re doing everything remotely. In some ways, maybe that’s a protection for certain children that might face pressures that otherwise the school would push on them, but I’m not sure that they won’t be teaching these kinds of things anyway, even if it’s remotely.
One thing for people to be aware of, the anti-bullying curriculum, or the anti-bullying campaign, has brought in this curriculum around gender orthodoxy that is their way of getting it into the schools. It’s saying that you can’t bully, you need to be mindful of somebody’s feelings and how they see themselves, and so forth. All that’s fine and good, but you can’t use that as an excuse to then affirm Johnny, who thinks he’s Susie, as Susie in school, and then not tell the parents. But this is happening in our schools. Kids are being confused.
In fact, Abigail Shrier wrote in a very important book, has a whole chapter or more on this issue of the school curriculum. It’s called Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. She gives a very good account of the kinds of ways in which schools, through their curriculum, are introducing this and why students now are faced with these ideas and new pressures, and giving them ideas they may never ever have on their own.
I had two kids in the public schools. I was a very involved parent. That’s why I stopped working. This wasn’t around five years ago. But it’s out there now and it’s only increasing. I would just encourage people to be very aware that it’s coming in in ways that seem to be harmless in some regard, or recognizing the need for acceptance, but it’s quickly gone into a position of affirming, suggesting that if you do anything other than gender affirm a child’s, any ideas that they have. We’re not going to affirm them to be Superman and jump off the school building, but apparently we’ll affirm them in saying that now that they think that they feel like a girl, a young boy, then he goes into the girl’s bathroom.
Keith Wiebe: Doreen, That’s very well said. I really hope folks that we take all of this to heart. One of the things I really liked that you emphasized, Doreen, from your own experience, was being very involved as a parent in the education of your children. I’ve been heavily involved in education, both on the K-12 and higher levels throughout my entire ministry. I will tell you that that is one of the most significant things.
This is an area too, where I think I would really be encouraging our parents to look at varying possibilities of Christian education for their children as well.
One of the other areas, switching tracks just a little bit, Doreen, is in the area of the courts. That’s a big deal in the presidential campaign. President Trump, just yesterday, gave us another list of people that he would look at nominating from that list for additional places in the federal judiciary. He has filled over 200 of those in his first term, including two Supreme Court appointments.
Doreen, how have court decisions affected these areas that we’re discussing now with children, with identity? What court decisions in the news have an impact on this today?
Doreen Denny: You’re really hitting the nail on the head with this, because we had what is now going to be a landmark decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia that has, for the first time under Title VII of the Civil Rights Law, which is the employment discrimination laws, recognized that transgender status cannot be a basis for hiring or firing an employee.
There were six facts around that case. It was a narrow case. But we were out of the Supreme Court on the day it was argued, discussing the true implications that would be brought on if you granted the idea that a person’s gender identity could therefore give them protected status that overrules somebody else’s protections based on sex.
In fact, that’s what’s happened. Unfortunately we had a six, three decision. But I have to tell you that Justice Alito’s dissent will give you all the reasons why this was a bad decision, including legislating from the judiciary, which we consider just judicial activism.
But as a consequence of that, courts now have held back some cases that are related to this and are now starting to suggest that Title IX is overruled in it’s understanding sex and grants gender identity claims for any schools in policy in bathrooms and locker rooms in sports. Now the Department of Education, and actually the Department of Justice under this administration, has made a very clear declaration just recently that Title IX, which has been the sex discrimination, civil rights law is not overruled. In fact, the Supreme Court said that this shouldn’t touch that. But courts are going to do what they’re going to do and you have Justices there, unfortunately, that are activists.
Thankfully President Trump has appointed a lot of good judges. We still have more to come and more that needs to be done there. But this is going to be a battle ground in the courts. In fact, we have two court cases right now in women’s sports that are at the federal district court level. We have two circuit court level cases now regarding schools and locker rooms or facilities. This is a very important thing for people to be watching. We’re going to see this continue now for quite some time.
Keith Wiebe: Thank you, Doreen. I want to thank you for taking time to be with us today. I would encourage you to go to the website of Concerned Women for America. You can go to concernedwomen.org and you’ll find resources there. Your heart will be really encouraged to see what they are doing as an organization in support of a biblical worldview to help move us in the right direction. Doreen has to leave us today. Thank you so much. When we come back, Pastor Gary Dull and I are going to talk about two vitally important principles that must be articulated across our pulpit, that have direct bearing on the very things that we have been talking about today. This is Standing In The Gap Today. I’m Keith Wiebe along with Gary Dull, your hosts for today, and we will be right back.
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Welcome back to the final segment of Stand In The Gap Today. So delighted to have you here. I trust that you’re having a good day and that you are truly enjoying the program. In this final segment, Gary Dull and I are going to talk together some and just apply some of the things that we were hearing in that last segment.
Gary, you and I are both pastors. We are both committed to what may well be the theme verse for the American Pastors Network, the text in Ezekiel 22 Verse 30, where God declares that he is seeking for those who will stand in the gap. You and I would both agree that there has never been a time when it is more necessary for pastors to boldly stand for truth, and to declare the truth into that gap.
Let me just ask you first, how your heart responds to everything that we heard in the last 45 minutes from Penny Nance and Doreen Denny.
Gary Dull: Well, I am so glad that we’ve had them on the program today, Keith. I’ve been following the Concerned Women for America for many years, I guess they were formed back in what, 1976 or 77, as she said by Bev LaHaye. They’ve been doing fine work down through the years. I’m so thankful for what they’re doing now, because they’re really on the cutting edge of what’s going on as it relates to education and other subjects across the board.
I want to encouraged all of our people to go to the Concerned Women for America site and learn more about them, pray for them, support them. Because when you take into consideration, Keith, the issues that they are dealing with on a day by day basis, I can believe that there’s a spiritual attack on them. They need our prayer. They need our support. They need our encouragement.
Keith Wiebe: They certainly do, Gary. While I was listening to them, and in fact some of the preparatory conversations that I was able to have with both of them for today’s broadcast, I was always thinking about our pastors and the responsibility that they have in their pulpit to boldly, plainly, and with the authority declare the principles of God’s word, the whole counsel of God.
I think sometimes of the person who, I don’t remember who I heard say it, that it may be the two most important people in America are the sheriff and the pastor. The sheriff, because he’s the highest elected law enforcement official in the land and the pastor, because he’s the highest called official in the land. The sheriff is responsible to uphold the laws of the land, the pastor responsible to proclaim and declare God’s truth.
I’d like for you and me in just the few final minutes that we have to focus on two principals in particular that are on my heart today, that we could focus on in his closing segment that I think are supportive of what’s going on in our country and what is needed from pastors.
One, and I’ll ask you in just a couple of minutes to comment on the principle of authority. Now we come back to that frequently on this program. Just before you do that, I’m going to reflect for a moment on the principle of God’s design, because when it comes dysphoria, when it comes to gender identity, when it comes to any one of us asking the question, who am I? Well, we can go to God’s word and find out exactly who we are. It’s stated there. It’s not up to how I feel. It’s not up to what somebody else tells me I ought to feel like. It doesn’t depend on how I think I compare with other people around me that maybe I admire and think they have it better than I do. But who I am sexually and every other way, is dependent upon the word of God.
First of all, God’s word says that God made them male and female. Those are the only two choices that are on the shelf and they’re not our choice, they’re God’s choice. He designed us that way. David reflected in Psalm 139, he said, “I will praise thee for I,” David said, “am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are thy works.” Now Psalm 139 reflects on some of the great works of God, but in the immediate context, I have to wonder if David might not say, “Lord, I am fearfully and wonderfully made. That is a wonderful work.”
God has designed us as men and women, God designed families, God designed and instituted the church. God has instituted human government. All of it. One of the principles of the word of God that pastors need to emphasize in the process of their expository ministry across their pulpits. We indeed are fearfully, awesomely, and wonderfully made.
Now, Gary, I think the principle of authority would rank alongside of that. It certainly is one of the key issues. Talk to us about for just a minute and tell us why that’s so.
Gary Dull: Well, certainly authority is a very significant subject. Here at Stand In The Gap and the American Pastors Network, we believe that our ultimate authority is the word of God. I think that one of the problems today, even as it relates to the pulpit, Keith, is the fact that pastors have not really been teaching the word of God with authority.
I think of Second Timothy 3:16 that says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness.” That is where God’s authority is. It’s based in Biblical truth, the inspired word of God.
When we get to a place, even in the pulpit, where we preach opinions and thoughts and ideas that are not necessarily Biblically based, that creates a great danger. Our authority is God’s word. The pulpit must be strong on that. Then, of course, that must be passed down into the lives of the individual people in the pew, as well as families and beyond.
I was thinking earlier, Keith, and I throw this back to you for a thought, if pastors were preaching the authoritative word of God and preaching it with authority, there may not be a need for Concerned Women for America, or Focus on the Family, or some of these other organizations. Have you ever thought of that?
Keith Wiebe: Well, you know, I have.
Gary Dull: That if the pastors at the pulpit were preaching the authority of God, I think things would go a lot smoother in the world.
Keith Wiebe: I believe you’re absolutely right, Gary. That if pastors were doing their job in the pulpit, there would be a lot of things going on by way of government programs, by way of some of these para church organizations, like CWA, doing a great job, but they would be unnecessary.
I guess the tragedy that we face, Gary, and George Barna points out to us, that only about 30% of all pastors actually believe in the authority of scripture. That staggers my mind, frankly. I don’t know why the rest of them are in this. I often quip that there probably are easier ways to make a living. But even of those, Barnett goes on to tell us, that many, if not most of those, do not really have a Biblical world view.
If our pastors across the pulpit will be serious about the expository preaching of the word of God, take it book by book, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, word by word, however you choose to do it. Along the way, I think the spirit of God will give ample opportunities to make applications one after the other into the culture. Speaking truth into the culture. If the people in our pews do not get the truth about how God’s word applies to the culture from their pasture across their pulpit, they really don’t have any place else where they can get it. That’s the only place.
Folks, let me ask you to pray for your pastor. Pray that God will give him wisdom as he prepares. Pray that God will give him power. Pray for organizations like Concerned Women for America. Like the godly ladies, like Penny Nance and Doreen Denny, and so many others who are really standing for truth. Pray for us here at Stand In The Gap Today. We desire more than anything to please, God. Thank you so much for listening. I trust God will richly bless you.
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