Revisiting the Scopes Trial: 100th Year Anniversary

Revisiting the Scopes Trial: 100th Year Anniversary

May 15, 2025

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Co-host: Pastor Matt Recker

Guest: Bodie Hodge

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 5/15/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Sam Rohrer:

Hello and welcome to this Thursday edition of Stand and the Gap Today. And it’s also our monthly emphasis on creation, biblical worldview and apologetics. And joining me and co-host Pastor Matt Recker, who is pastor of Heritage Baptist Church in Manhattan, New York City. Joining us is recurring guest Bodie Hodge. He is the President and the CEO of Biblical Authority Ministries, one of which you should become aware. Formerly he was with Anders and Genesis as a lead speaker and writer and researcher. And with that in mind, as anyone with eyes to see, can behold the rapid advancement toward Global Antichrist government is coalescing at Prophetical, I’m going to say it, prophetical God speed payon by evil leaders as well as national leaders of all types, professing to be defenders of freedom and pursuers of peace and prosperity. And I’d say that in a general sense, you say, what are you talking about?

Well, there are a lot of things that could apply to, but it’s a general observation. The events of the last days alone with our president Donald Trump’s historic visit, for instance to the Middle East with startling announcements in announcements coming forth out of that is just the latest reminder to me that though man thinks he is in control, ultimately it is God who directs the heart of kings. And as we know scripture says like rivers of water, God moves them the hearts of those kings whenever and wherever he God wants them to go. Now I’m going to discuss some more of this in relationship to things that have happened in the Middle East just happening now and just happened on tomorrow’s program with Dr. Isaac Crockett as he and I are together. So you may want to tune in for that. But where we are as a world and where we are as a nation today is the result of course of many individual and collective decisions of our citizens and past leaders.

How we respond to those things today is not just a sum total of what we’re thinking today. These things accumulate over time. From time to time though as I look at it, there are historic events that arise that turn the direction of history. One for good, I can think of an example is the Declaration of Independence declared on July 4th, 1776 and whose 200th anniversary we’ll observe just over a year from now in 2026. Other events like the one we’ll be discussing today, which occurred just over a hundred years ago on May the ninth, 1925, were frankly disastrous becoming a turning point in our nation and leading to the official and cultural rejection of truth and Christianity and biblical authority. This May 9th event established a foundation and a beachhead, I’m going to say for the godless, arrogant and demonic religion of secular humanism and revisiting this event, having just observed its hundredth anniversary is the focus of our conversation today. So as we are instructed throughout scripture to learn from the past, I trust that today we’ll all learn from the past apply right principles to our lives today the title I’ve chosen for today’s program is this Revisiting the Scopes Trial 100th Year Anniversary with that Bodie Hodge Bodie, thank you for being back with Pastor Matt and I today.

Bodie Hodge:

Hey, it’s great to be back on the program

Sam Rohrer:

With my title. I already kind of let the cat out of the bag more or less. The theme is the Famous Scopes Trial. Many of our older audience would recognize the name of the Scopes trial, but likely not all of the essential details. And many of our younger listeners may not even recognize the name and therefore not understand at all the significance of this event. And I’m glad that you’ve taken the time to revisit this event, its significance and in fact, you’ve written a short article about it from which we’ll refer today. So first in this segment, I’d like for you to set the stage for our focused discussion and we’ll get into details later in the program. But for instance, this, how did the name Scopes trial come about? For instance, who was involved and where did it take place and when? Just some of those basic things first.

Bodie Hodge:

Yeah, about a hundred years ago, well as of May 9th in Dayton, Tennessee, John t scopes was arrested for teaching human evolution. There was a law in Tennessee called the Butler Act where you could not teach human evolution, you could teach animal evolution and so forth, but you couldn’t teach human evolution. So John t scopes taught it even though he wasn’t a biologist or anything like that. And that led to a massive trial that was actually aired on radios went all over the world, but it became a huge event that everybody was listening to. And so of course the name Scopes trial comes from John t Scopes and it was over the Butler Act and it really became a trial over Christianity versus the secular humanism, which is where evolution comes from, and that’s what the battle was over.

Matt Recker:

Thank you Bodie for joining us today. And I enjoyed your article by the way. Maybe you could share with listeners how they could find your article on this hundredth anniversary of the scopes trial. And then can you also answer who filed then the charge against the public school teacher John Scopes, and what was the specific accusation that caused this to go into court?

Bodie Hodge:

Yeah, they can find this article. It’s actually on biblical authority ministries.org. Again, that’s biblical authority ministries.org and just type in scopes or scopes trial on the search. I’ve got a link to it at the very top, but it’s the May 9th article so they can read about there and get an understanding of what all occurred. But yeah, what happened in Dayton, Tennessee, he decided to go ahead and teach a little bit about evolution. And so the ACLU stepped in and I worked with him to, they really wanted this to go forward, so they wanted to be able to challenge this law. And so it was the A CLU that got involved to do this right off the start. And one of the most famous players in this whole thing was Clarence Darrow. He was a leading defense attorney. He was also very well known to be a skeptic and an agnostic, which is the type of secular humanist and naturalist. He was an evolutionist basically. And so he wanted to represent John t scopes in this and he wanted to put Christianity on the stand.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. So you were suggesting like many things that go to court today that you’re saying the teaching by John Scopes was an intentional violation of the law then in order to create a circumstance to go to court. Is that what you’re saying?

Bodie Hodge:

That’s exactly right. And he was involved in that from the word go. And as people look back, it’s openly recognized that yeah, he was definitely on site. He wanted to have this challenged as well.

Sam Rohrer:

So ladies and gentlemen, as we proceed into the program, we’re just about up to break right now. Our guest today is Bodie Hodge. He’s the president and CEO of Biblical Authority Ministries. Our focus is creation, biblical worldview and apologetics, and these things will be blended together. This is our monthly emphasis on that theme. He has a website@biblicalauthorityministries.org and we’re talking about the famous Scopes trial took place a hundred years ago in Tennessee. And from that, well a lot came and it changed what changed a lot in America and you may not be aware of, but we’re going to get into some of those things. We come back revisiting the Scopes trial. This is the 100th year anniversary. We’ll be back in just a moment. Well, in your article, Bodie on this famous Scopes trial, ladies and gentlemen, you have just joined us, we’re looking and revisiting an event well known by our older audience, maybe unknown by those of you who are maybe in your twenties or thirties perhaps, and that is the Scopes trial.

Do you know what that is? Well, Bodie, you went back and you revisited that and I think it’s a really good thing that we’re doing that today, a lot to learn from it. But in your article, you started appropriately with a bit of background and you gave a little bit of that in the last segment with Matt, and I ask you to lay out some of the players and so forth, but the background to any event, there are elements of that that contribute to what and what precipitated the actions, and in this case, the teaching of teacher John scopes about human evolution, which you said was the problem, which he intentionally did to create an issue so they could go to court. But you said it led to the accusation and the actual trial. So let’s talk about the culture then and the conditions that set the stage, if you don’t mind for that trial. There were several that I’d like to get to and let’s do this first one and that is this, the area of science, he was a science teacher scopes was to what extent did the attitude of the broader, I’m going to say it this way, the broader scientific community impact perhaps the attitude of John’s scopes and his teaching of what you said was human evolution. Was that just out of nowhere or did he have some basis to go there?

Bodie Hodge:

Right. If you understand what had been happening in the 18 hundreds leading up to 1925, there was a shift going on. There was a shift in geology, there was a shift in biology where people were actually throwing the Bible out. They were rejecting the Bible, and they were taking man’s ideas about say, the geologic rock layers. And they were assuming these rock layers were not from the flood, which is what the Bible talks about. And they were assuming these rock layers came as a result of slow, gradual accumulations over millions and billions of years. That’s called geological evolution, by the way. And so they were rejecting God and his word as a result of this new secular scientific understanding of the geologic rock layers. Well, along comes people like Charles Darwin who builds on that and says, oh, well, if these rock layers are evidence of millions of years, then we should expect to see all these different animals changing in it as they all evolve from some single cell organism into what we have today.

So he published that in his book, the Origin of Species in 18 59, 18 71. He wrote a book called The Dissent of Man, where he is arguing for human evolution. Well, it takes time when these guys write some of this stuff, it takes time for it to get battled out in academia and then it starts to make its way into colleges and universities. In the 1870s, millions of years in evolution had started to really just become a commonplace by the 1920s. Now it’s all trickled down to the high school level. And so now you’re starting to see all this millions of years and all this evolution in some of these different curriculums and to try to counter that people put laws in place. And one of those laws was that Butler act to say, Hey, okay, you guys can talk about this other stuff, but we’re not going to allow human evolution to occur here. So all that had been leading up to this. So by the time John Scope says, Hey, I’m going to go ahead and teach human evolution anyway and I’m going to try to challenge this law, well, they’d already set the stage with what was going on in the background and the culture.

Matt Recker:

Yeah, this is such a great subject, Sam and Bodie, and I remember a few years ago I was actually to see the play Inherit the Wind on Broadway. They even gave me free tickets. So my wife and I went, and two things stood out to me about the play. One, the most obnoxious person in that play was the pastor, Jeremiah Brown. He was presented as so angry and intolerant. And then two, the creationist position was presented as non-thinking, bigoted, intolerant that rejected science and halted progress. So that I think too was kind of like the cultural background that brought this whole thing to the forefront, but to the extent that you can as well, Bodie on what was the attitude of the government and law at that time that created the circumstances for a charge to be made against John Scopes, who my understanding wasn’t even the regular teacher, right? He was a substitute teacher at the time.

Bodie Hodge:

Yeah, that’s right. He was the substitute teacher. But yeah, there was a lot going on. I’m actually glad you mentioned that movie Inherit the Wind. That was a play and they turned it into a film as well. And you’re right, they tried to make the creation position look bad. The pastor, the Christian side, they tried to make look bad. Now that is actually highly inaccurate. Dr. David Minton, he was a world’s leading anatomist, by the way, used to teach anatomy at Washington University School of Medicine, won teaching awards and so forth. But he did a lot of study on the scopes trial and has published significantly on as even spoken on the subject. He died a few years back. He was actually a good friend of mine, but one of the things that he pointed out was the movie, the film Inherit the Wind was incredibly inaccurate.

And one of the things that we had done for years at Answers and Genesis, we used to sell the world’s most famous court trial, and I still have a copy of that. I don’t think it sold there any longer. And I’ve got a whole copy of this transcript and as you read through it, and I’ve been through this thing a number of times, particularly the day seven of all the proceedings where they’re really getting into the meat of everything. But the Christians were extremely nice, and one of the things you start to see is a lot of belligerence actually on the secular side from certain people, particularly Clarence Darrow, and we’d see that come out during the trial, but nobody was really criticizing people like John t scopes and arguing him down. Pastors weren’t doing that sort of thing. In fact, the court opened in prayer.

That’s how different the culture was. It really was a much more Christianized culture in those days. So things were massively different, but the film is very inaccurate and it kind of reminds me of the vanilla film, if you’re familiar with the Noah film, it’s just not accurate to scripture at all. And that happens in Hollywood when people have an agenda behind the scenes. When people watch those kinds of things, they get a false perception of what actually happened at the time of these proceedings. So a lot of those things were happening. I know the culture too, like I said, it was much more Christianized. And you have to understand at that time the Bible was still used in the classroom. It was used for logic and history and science and so forth. And I think a lot of people were very familiar with accounts and scripture. They were very familiar with the morality not to lie and so forth. So I think there was a much different attitude going on in Dayton, Tennessee than what we’ve been led to believe in movies like Inherit the Wind. So yeah, it was much different. So I think we sometimes have to have a reminder here that when Hollywood put something out there, we got to be really careful of it. So always go back and check it.

Sam Rohrer:

And Bodie, as you’re talking, and Matt just asked a question about the change in law, ladies and gentlemen, we know things were different back then. Can you imagine any state today saying that you cannot teach evolution in the school? No. It’s flipped now by standards, federal government standards. You have to teach evolution in the schools. And of course since then, I mean 10 Commandments have been thrown out of the school. There have been major, major things, and we’ll talk about some of those impacts, but this was back in 1925. To what extent, to the extent that Bodie, what was the attitude of the church in America generally at that point? Culturally, things were still very Christian as you talked about. Our laws were quite representative of that. But were there things happening within the church as we know at that point that was giving an indication that the response within the church towards biblical authority perhaps was already shifting or moving?

Bodie Hodge:

It really was. The 18 hundreds was actually a very difficult time for the church. I mentioned earlier about Charles Liel and the millions of years in rock layers. It surprised me that by the year 1900, a vast majority of churches had already bought into millions and billions of years. It actually surprises me when I look back and I see these commentaries at that particular time and they’re arguing that there was no global flood, that they’re arguing that the days of creation are long ages as opposed to say six normal length days. But that’s what was happening, and we saw this early on when this idea millions and billions of years was still being promoted. We had people start to throw out ideas like gap theory. A Scottish theologian named Thomas Chalmers came up with that. He didn’t know what to do with all this alleged millions of years people were talking about.

So he said, Hey, let’s just put it between Genesis one, one and one two and lets just, let’s just forget about it. Just put it all right there. We had other people try to say, let’s take the days of creation, stretch them out to be millions and billions of years long, and then we end up with Bible commentaries like scope, sorry, Dake and Scofield. Scofield’s Bible was actually referenced in this court trial. It was actually brought up on the seventh day, so during the proceedings. So what happens with those? They were arguing for things like gap theory. Hey, let’s put all this millions of years into the Bible. So yes, this idea of geological evolution and even to a certain degree, certain amounts of biological evolution had infiltrated the church.

Sam Rohrer:

Isn’t that interesting, Bodie, when you think about it, because on this hand, it seems like government, the law at that point was actually holding to a more biblical position longer than the church. What you’re saying probably is a surprise for a lot of people. That’s amazing, isn’t it?

Bodie Hodge:

Yeah, absolutely it is. I think you hit the nail on the head with that and because you had this loss that was still trying to oppose some of this evolutionary stuff, and yet you have the Christian that’s sitting here going against Clarence Darrow and going against John Key scopes is William Jennings Bryan, and for those who don’t know, he actually ran for president three times. It wasn’t like he was a nobody. He was a very popular Christian, and he was well known to be a solid Christian, and he was very well outspoken against human evolution.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay, well just hold it right there. Bodie. We’re about out of time in the segment. Ladies and gentlemen, stay with us because in the next segment we’re going to move into the primary highlight events within the trial, and in part of it, it is the defense attorney and it is the prosecuting person. We’ll talk about that. Again, this will be very enlightening, I’m sure. Well, Bodie Hodge, president and CEO of Biblical Authority Ministries, thanks for being with us today. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re just joining us, our theme today is this Revisiting the Scopes trial. The Scopes trial. I hear that happened a long time ago, matter of fact, a hundred years ago, just a few days ago on May 9th, 1925, but it was a trial from which came significant impacts where we’ll get into them are still felt and observed today. Now, with the actual start Bodie of the Scopes trial, I think it actually began in July, 1925.

You’ve already said Dayton, Tennessee, the abbreviated summary of this trial that most people may read about it doesn’t adequately at all address the numerous key elements of the trial. For instance, who really won. If I’d asked most of our listeners right now who won that trial, they may or may not know who was involved in it. They may or may not know, and we’ve already talked about why it came about. A substitute teacher in effect named John two scopes, as you talked about, was beginning to teach in his public school classroom the concept of human evolution. All right, so that’s what got it there. Okay. Now, okay, let’s get into the actual aspect of the trial. What was the charge again? Lay it out. I’ve actually said it for teaching human evolution. You may want to distinguish that between what you laid out earlier. In other words though, what was actually on trial here? Who represented the prosecution? Who represented the defense, and how long was the actual trial from beginning to end? Put some of that together and then we will go further into detail.

Bodie Hodge:

Right? Well, first and foremost, what everybody needs to understand is what was put on trial was actually Christianity, and that should come through loud and clear as you go through this court trial. That’s what was put on the stand was Christianity. It wasn’t just that, oh yeah, this guy was teaching evolution, human evolution. That is no, it was more about let’s challenge Christianity and some of these major players, Clarence Darrow was the agnostic, the secular humanist, the atheist, if you will, soft atheist against William Jennings, Brian and William Jennings. Brian was a very popular Christian and something strange, very odd actually occurred in this court case, something that you would never see today. The defense attorney, Clarence Darrow, actually called the attorney William Jennings Bryan to the stand. I mean, who does that? That’s very odd. He brought him on the stand to defend a Christian worldview, and they put him on the stand.

And of course, that opened the door to just criticize Christianity. All you could, while he was on that stand, and that’s really what happened, Darryl got up there and started asking him questions about the Bible over and over again to see if he could actually defend it. And he did all right on some things. But then they started diving into Genesis, and at that stage, William Jennings, Brian had started to falter. Now here’s why. You know how I said earlier that much of the church had already started to buy into the millions of years in the Long Ages, even some of these evolutionary ideas, well, the same thing had happened to William Jennings. Brian. Brian had bought into long ages. He essentially had denied a global flood. He struggled with the days of creation. And so when Daryl got there and he started asking him questions like, Hey, where did King get his wife?

He had no idea how to answer. Could these days have been long ages? Yeah, they could have been long ages. In other words, what he was saying was totally going against what the Bible actually said in Genesis, and that sent shock waves out to the church. It sent shock waves along the radio waves all around the world. They’re like, look at this leaning Christian. He doesn’t even believe the Bible when you get down to Genesis. He had already bought into some of those long ages, and it caused a massive tidal wave from that particular point. And that is one of the main reasons that the Scopes trial is so significant. It was an attack on Christianity. And even though John t Scopes technically lost the case and was fined a hundred dollars, really what happened was Christianity lost in the public’s view.

Matt Recker:

Yeah, that’s great, Bodie, because really most people would think that Scopes won the trial, but he actually lost the trial. But the trial ended up, as you wrote in your article, your excellent article on the Scopes trial, a hundred year anniversary, that the trial ended up undermining biblical authority and then paved the way for secular philosophy to pervade the culture and educational system and really then opened the door for evolution to be taught in the public schools. So perhaps you already hit upon it, but again, what was the most convincing strategic decision that scopes made in his defense or that Clarence Darrow made in his defense in the John Scopes trial?

Bodie Hodge:

Well, I think one of the biggest things that he did to kind of secure his victory, if you will, at least in the public perception, was to be able to openly put Christianity on trial, question them and see where they’re actually compromising. And then when theoretically you’re going to do it through the other side. Did Clarence Darrow take the stand? No, no, no. They immediately said, Hey, we’re going to lose. I think that was one of his wisest decisions from a secular viewpoint. In other words, let’s put the Christian on the stand, attack them until they can’t answer. And then when it’s their turn, oh no, we lose because there’s no way they could have been able to defend a secular worldview if they got put on the stand and somebody could have actually got up and said, Hey, let’s see you try to prove the evolutionary worldview, they wouldn’t have been able to do it.

So I think that was one of the strategic points that he made that I thought he did a good job on, even though I disagree with him entirely on all that. But at the same time, I don’t think William Jennings Bryan should have ever taken the stand because as soon as he did, he put and allowed Christianity to be put on trial. And what we need to do as Christians is step back and go, hold on a second here. We should never put God in his word on trial, and we should not be the ones trying to judge God in his word because that’s going to come back to bite us.

Sam Rohrer:

And

Bodie Hodge:

That’s really what happened.

Sam Rohrer:

That’s an interesting thing, Bodie, probably most people listening we’re not aware that that happened in that case because it is highly unusual to have the attorney put on the stand. Yeah, that was a shrewd move for sure. But there was another one that Darrow made as well, and that was in regard to did not he advise John scopes to admit guilt and close down the meeting.

Bodie Hodge:

Yeah, that was immediately after they got done with Brian. So yeah, it was quite the move basically, yeah, okay, we’re going to admit we’re guilty, we’re wrong. That way the evolutionists don’t have to take the stand and get up there and try to defend their worldview.

Sam Rohrer:

And Bryant therefore by so doing or by that being done didn’t or avoid it or was what they prevented from giving his final arguments, which may have been frankly very good, but it was never heard because of the strategic move in the courtroom. This was something that from an overall perspective, God was aware of all of this. Clearly this was a fact, this was a major event which turned things in America and no question about it. But when it comes to Briant, William Jennings Bryant who was there, he took the stand and you said he should not have done it. I would agree, but what else did he do that was right? And what other costly errors again did he commit that permitted this humanist religion to win?

Bodie Hodge:

Well, I think some of the things that he did right, he was questioned quite a bit about the Bible and there was a number of things that he actually did get right or he was appealing to scripture. I still think that his biggest downfall was the way he tried to answer questions. When it came to Genesis particularly, he was directly asked, what about the 24 hours, the days of creation? And he did not affirm that he’d already bought into the Long Ages when he was asked about Kane’s wife, which just so that listeners understand, you have Adam and Eve, you have Cain, Abel, Seth, you have Cain’s wife in there. Genesis five, four says that Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters, so originally brothers and sisters had to marry. Now, could Cain’s wife have been a niece? Yeah, it’s possible, but either way, brothers and sisters had to marry.

That’s not a problem. We actually see that quite often in founding populations of people get left on islands and so forth. But Bryant had no idea how to answer that question because he had actually compromised a bit on that. So when it came to issues of the flood, the age of the earth, just a number of things there in Genesis, he just waffled. And because he waffled on that, really what that did is it just told the world saying, Hey, look, this leading Christian doesn’t actually believe Genesis. And that set the stage to start yanking the Bible out of classrooms, start pulling the Bible out of logic, pull the Bible out of history, pull the Bible out of science that set a trend that we feel all the way up into today.

Sam Rohrer:

All the more reason Bodie in that spot that was in the break, ladies and gentlemen, that was just before this segment here where we are referencing and helping and to encourage people to memorize scripture that is part of it. Thy word have I hit in my heart that might not sin against you by not knowing scripture, ladies and gentlemen, William Jennings, Brian or ourselves. If we don’t know scripture and aren’t firmly grounded in what it says, then when the time comes to give an answer for the hope that is within us, we will fail. And that’s basically what Bode you’re saying about William Jennings. Brian, was that he had moved on aspects of scripture. The church largely had moved before him, which set the stage. And instead of believers believing in the truth, changing the culture, which then reflected in the law, it went the other way around what lesson.

So when we come back, we’re going to apply what we can learn and what we can do from this, what we know. Well as we go into the final segment. Again, thank you for being with us today. I hope that you’ve enjoyed this focus on revisiting the Scopes trial, the 100 year anniversary. It occurred starting in July of 1925, and as you’ve just joining us, I want to go back and listen to this program again, which you can find on Stand in the Gap radio.com or on our app Stand In the Gap. If you’ve not downloaded it, please do. And also to know, I’ll give a site here again, our guest today been with me before, but this is in a creation, biblical Worldview and Apologetics emphasis program, which we try to do in this fashion once a month. But our guest is Bodie Hodge.

He is the President and the CEO of Biblical Authority Ministries, which has a website, and to which you can find the article on the subject we’re discussing today, you can find there@biblicalauthorityministries.org, biblical authority ministries.org. Okay, now, Bodie, now that a hundred years has passed after this scopes trial, which we’ve given the highlights of here today, so much has changed in our culture. We’ve talked about that the culture has dramatically changed from what it was in 1925. The scientific community has changed. The church was changing at that point, as we’ve talked about, changed further, I’m going to submit government and law, which really at that point reflected a very strong understanding of biblical truth, and that has certainly changed anyways. As you would look back, as you’ve studied and gone back and looked at this, what areas do you think have been most notable relative to do this? Anything that has changed for the better because of the scopes trial and or those things that have changed for the worse, not for the better as a result of Jennings failure to respond with knowledge. And I’m going to say complete understanding of the scripture, particularly biblical authority and the biblical account of creation. So give us the good and the bad that came out of the, you think from the scopes trial.

Bodie Hodge:

Oh boy, the list of good is very short. I don’t know a whole lot of things that came out of the trial that actually made society better, made the culture better as a result of the Scopes trial. There was a lot of negative and bad things I think that came out of it. And when you think about really what happened is there was this perception now that, oh, well, we need to throw Christianity out. And so as they start to throw the Bible out, they throw Christianity out, the prayer, the 10 Commandments. Well, you didn’t just throw Christianity out, you replaced it. You replaced it with the godless religion of secular humanism. Think atheism, agnosticism, naturalism, materialism. And that’s the religion that started to take over as of the 1925 scope trial. And you lead all the way up in the 1940s and fifties. You have logic being taken out by the 1960s.

You don’t even have the Bible in the classroom anymore. The Bible’s been yanked out of all these other courses, literature and science and history and so forth. It’s been replaced then with a secular worldview. A secular worldview. You have no hope. Just think about that for a moment. There is absolutely no hope. There’s no God, there’s no future. Ultimately, nothing ultimately matters. It is a purposeless religion where meaning just absolutely dies a miserable death. We’ve seen the secular worldview, not only the schools, but like you said, it’s invaded politics. It’s invaded law. It’s also invaded just our general culture, the morality of what’s going on in our society. I mean, we see rampant drugs and rape and murder and all sorts of terrible things. Those are not the kind of things that were largely occurring back in Dayton, Tennessee over a hundred years ago. Those are the products of a secular worldview.

Things like logic are thrown out the window. People want to say, oh, well, I’m involved in critical thinking, but actually in a secular worldview that doesn’t make sense. Those are Christian concepts, logic, critical thinking. Those are concepts built on the Bible. Think of it this way, in an atheistic worldview, which is materialistic, does logic even exist? Because logic’s not made out of matter. It’s not made out of energy. You don’t go trip on it in the night. It’s not made out of atoms or corks or anything. You see, those are conceptual. And in a materialistic worldview like this, secular, humanistic and atheistic worldview, those things can’t really exist. So here’s people trying to borrow from a Christian worldview. They still like logic, they still like morality. They still don’t want people to lie to him. They still want people to be truthful with them. But those are Christian concepts.

And yet here we are in a culture that’s chock full of a secular worldview all around us. And yet we see people still crying out for the truth of the Bible, whether they realize it or not. And I think that’s a powerful way to sum this up. Yes, we’ve lost a lot of ground, but at the same time, Christ still sits on the throne. He is the king of kings. He is over all things. He’s sovereign over all matters. And I want people to understand that even though there was this massive influence by the secular side of the hopes trial, Jesus Christ still reigns. And for those of you who have not received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, now’s your time to step back and repent. And I want you to understand something too. Our culture, what you’re learning so often in the state school systems and the government schools, not just in this country, but even in countries around the world, you are learning a secular worldview. You are learning a secular religion. And most likely they’re not telling you that it’s time to challenge that religion. Step back, get back to the authority of the Word of God, get back to the gospel, founded in that same Bible, and get back to the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Matt Recker:

Thank you, Bodie, on your website, biblical authority ministries.org, which has a lot of great information and articles. And in your article on the John Scopes trial, you wrote that John scopes was not being attacked at all. Rather it was he who was on the attack as he joined ranks with the A CLU to really attack Christianity. And really we’re still living in that kind of era and attack against our biblical worldview. So can you comment on this? And then as we close the program, share please, what other principles can believers learn from this trial? What has resulted from it and how can we apply this trial to our lives even today and going forward?

Bodie Hodge:

Yeah, let me talk to the Christian specifically out there. When John t Scopes joined up with the A CLU to attack this particular law, to attack a law, really that was built on the Bible, it was an active attack. We need to recognize the Bible’s coming under attack. Christ comes under attack all the time in a lot of different ways. And what we need to do is we need to be discerning about these different types of attacks so we can see through them and see how to refute them and how to go against them. And that’s why earlier, one of the things between the segment was talking about memorizing scripture. That is such a big deal. We need to know the scripture. One of the things that I do almost every year is I go back and I read Genesis 1, 2 11, the very foundation I’m trying to read all throughout scripture, just different passages.

I want to hide those words in my heart so that when I hear people going against God in this word, I go, oh, that’s a red flag. Hold on, let me go back here. I can double check this against scripture. And really, I can dive into those arguments and see what’s wrong with it. We need to be discerning in culture. We have to be discerning as Christians. So yeah, I want to put a charge out there to Christians. Let’s get into God’s word. Let’s be spotting these false worldviews out there and let’s know how to refute them.

Sam Rohrer:

And with that Bodie brother, Matt, can I ask you just to pray? You only have just a few seconds left here before we go, but close this program in prayer because we need God’s help in this matter.

Matt Recker:

Yes. Thank you, Sam, and thank you Bodie for joining us today. So Father in heaven, we ask for your mercy upon us and upon our nation we pray, God, that we would as a nation return to you, revive us again, that we as your people would rejoice in you. Lord, will thou not revive us? Oh Lord, in the midst of these years and your wrath, remember mercy, use biblical authority ministries with a Bodie as the leader of it God, to be able to really encourage people to believe the Bible, to be grounded in truth and to understand a biblical worldview, and continue to bless Stand in the gap radio as well. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Sam Rohrer:

Amen. Amen. Thank you, Pastor Matt Recker and Bodie Hodge from biblical authority ministries.org. Thank you for being with us. God bless you and your wife and all that you’re doing. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being with us. Take this information, listen to it again. Share it with a friend. They will be blessed as well. See you back here tomorrow. The Lord.