Ask Sam – Connecting the Headlines: Episode 84
Sept. 25, 2026
Host: Dr. Isaac Crockett
Co-host: Hon. Sam Rohrer
Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 9/25/26. 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.
Isaac Crockett:
Well, thank you so much for tuning in. And I just want to give a shout out and a thank you to all of our station managers and even those local sponsors who keep the different stations going that you’re listening to this program on. Thank you for the honor of letting us be on your radio station. Thank you for listening. Those who are tuning in or even listening on a podcast or an archive, thank you for giving us your time to listen to our program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett. And with that, joining me today is the regular host of this show, the honorable Sam Rohrer. And normally it’s Sam that you hear asking the questions, but today is a Friday Ask Sam edition and we’re going to turn the tables a little bit as we like to do. From time to time, we’ll put Sam in the hot seat and he gets to answer the questions instead of asking them.
So Sam, thank you very much for being willing to let us pepper you with all these questions.
Sam Rohrer:
Isaac, it’s always good to be with you and to have this little bit of a role reversal, but you and I have worked together a long time on both Standing App TV and this program. And it’s very nice to be able to go back and forth as we’re doing today. There’s so much happening. I know you and I talked before this program began and where should we go? And there’s a lot of places that we could go. So anyways, put it back to you now.
Isaac Crockett:
Well, that’s the hard part. So we are going to try to go pretty far away to a long, long standing conflict looking at Gaza and the Middle East. And then from there, look at artificial intelligence or super intelligence, whatever you might be wanting to call it. And then also get just down to the kitchen table economy, interest rates, inflation, all of that good stuff. So lots of different topics, lots of important questions. All of these, even right now with the meetings that have been going on at the United Nations and then China sending Xi over to the White House this week, all sorts of questions. But Sam, let’s go over to the Middle East. Let’s go to Israel. It’s actually all the way to Gaza. I’m reading some reports that almost two and a half billion with the B dollars for recovery plan and it’s mind boggling.
I don’t know that I can fully wrap my mind around that much money for that small of a place, but this recovery plan has been unveiled to begin this rebuilding of Gaza. We’ve been hearing a lot about this and it includes dozens of programs, all kinds of stuff that they’re going to get to. And yet we still have major questions. Is there a real longstanding ceasefire? What’s going to happen to Hamas? Will they surrender completely? What about Israel and the security forces? And ultimately, who is going to be in control of Gaza? So Sam, this is an area of the world that you have been to, to Israel. The Gaza and the Middle East part is something we’ve done a lot of programs on. As you look at things as they stand right now, what are some of the most important things that we need to know and understand about what’s happening in Gaza?
Sam Rohrer:
Isaac, okay, let me go here quickly if I can, because there’s a lot. First of all, from a biblical perspective, Gaza, Judea Samaria, which is also in the news, which is what goes up in borders of the Golan Heights and up into Lebanon and the Hezbollah area where Israel’s involved, all of that land is land that was given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by covenant promise of God that goes all the way back into the Old Testament. So from a Jewish perspective and the Orthodox, those who are practicing, those who are alive today and they’re in Israel, they know that those territories have been given by God to Israel. So you have some who will say, “We want it all now and therefore we want to get it.” So within Israel, particularly when Hamas attacked Israel a couple years ago from out of Gaza, Israel said, “All right, we’re done with you.
We’re going to go in and we’re going to take all that ground because ultimately God gave it to us and we’re going to clean out all of those enemies who keep harassing us and killing Israeli citizens and others.” So that’s what’s behind that. So that’s on one hand. On the other hand, in Gaza and in that area are what we call the Palestinian people. The Palestinians have never had a homeland. They claim that they do, but within the larger picture pushed by the United Nations and others, there are those who say those Palestinian people cannot be kicked off their land. And in fact, it’s wrong for Israel to do so. They don’t care about any covenant promise from God. And they blame Israel for extermination if they try to do anything and they say there needs to be a Palestinian homeland, a Palestinian state. Now those are the two sides.
Into that comes the whole concept of peace. There has been, since Israel came back in the land, there’s been nothing but fights going on there. And it’s because the Palestinians and the Arabs say to Israel, “You have no right to exist.” Israel says, “No, we are here. We do have a right to exist.” And there are some in Israel who say, “Really, wait a minute, we understand what God said in the covenant promise and we know what belongs to us.” And they say, “We need to take it now.” And that gets into the larger question, which we’re not going to deal with now. Does the state of Israel right now have a right to actually go in and take the land that is around them from people that are there? Or should that wait for when Christ comes back and actually does his work in the tribulation period at the end and then all of that land then comes back to Israel in the new kingdom?
And there’s a lot of places we could go on that, but into that steps, the president, Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, his son-in-law. Every president, Isaac, since 1948, since Israel was the land, have all viewed themselves as a peacemaker in Israel trying to do that, which is the impossible. Donald Trump said took a different approach. He and Jared, both of them real estate developers said, “Ah, let’s come up with a new way to do it.” Out of that came what is called the Gaza Peace Accords. And in that, the United Nations sanctioned this concept of the Gaza Board of Peace whose purposes are to theoretically rebuild Gaza. And if people remember, it was Donald Trump who said, “We’re going to make of the Gaza a riviera of the Middle East.” So their whole idea is to take and make a lot of money off of a piece of ground that doesn’t belong to them, that they’re taking from the Gaza, and ultimately really from Israel.
And in so doing, they’ve set up this commission. They have gotten some billions of dollars, 2.45, they say 2.45 billion. At least a billion of that came from Saudi Arabia because Bin Solomon’s a friend of Jared Kushner. So he gave him a billion dollars. Some of the other members of the committee have put in money. So they have some money. Donald Trump is chairman for life. The board is unaccountable to anybody. Donald Trump, by the order of the agreement of the United Nations Security Council would set it up. He is chairman for life and he can appoint any successor and he can appoint and remove board members. It is a board that has never existed in the history of the country, of the world, Isaac, governance, not accountable to anybody, having a revenue stream. And it sits in the middle of actually now telling Israel what to do.
There’s a whole lot involved. I’ve given maybe too much and gone too long, but that’s why this issue is so big.
Isaac Crockett:
Well, it’s a really big issue. It’s one of the oldest ones, but it’s going on right now. It’s a current event. We want to go from that one of the oldest issues that’s been around for a long time to one of the newer issues, artificial intelligence. You want to ask Sam about super intelligence. You don’t want to miss this. We’ll be right back after this brief timeout. All right. Well, welcome back to the program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett and today we are turning the tables on my co-host, Sam Rohrer, putting him in the hot seat with one of our Ask Sam Friday editions. Well, Sam, artificial intelligence is one of these things that we’re hearing about. It’s everywhere. We’re hearing about it all the time. There’s a lot of things going on with it that seem pretty good, but then there are people coming out of the artificial intelligence community warning us that some really bad things, catastrophic stuff could happen.
Speaking at the United Nations this week, President Trump talked about artificial intelligence and he says that he wants to start referring to it as super intelligence or SI instead of AI. And he says he believes that super intelligence is a more accurate description of this technology. And so there’s a lot of concern. We’ve seen so much happen even with social media, how that has changed whole generations of younger generations. So Sam, let’s get into AI, SI, whatever people want to call it. But let’s talk about the name, whether we’re talking about artificial or super intelligence. What do you think about it? It seems like people are more and more describing this technology, this machine-based technology with giving it almost something similar to human intelligence. And so I’m wondering, does the name actually matter?
Sam Rohrer:
I think it’s a great question, Isaac. And of course you and I have talked about it many times. I talk in the program. We got to define terms, define the term. So when the president, which he brought this before the entire UN assembly, the whole world’s listening, it’s kind of like, “What are you talking about? Artificial intelligence now becoming super intelligence?” All right, so not a lot of people doing certain things, but this is what I did. I went and I looked and I said, “All right, what’s the definition of artificial?” Now we know we’re calling what’s happening out of the computer system and all of that’s the algorithm driven knowledge that’s there as AI, artificial intelligence. But by definition, and this is an interesting thing, some are using, and I think the president has almost by calling super intelligence and then artificial, he in some other settings has tried to take and make that artificial imply that it’s fake, almost like fake news, fake intelligence.
But by definition, on one hand, it can mean that, but it’s not really that in its actual sense because artificial also means made by human skill rather than occurring naturally. That’s a definition of artificial. Just for instance, like artificial light, it’s real, but it’s made by man. Artificial hearts, well, what are they? It’s not a real, genuine, original heart, but people are living because there’s an artificial heart. So it’s artificial snow, artificial limbs, that kind of thing. So there’s artificial in that sense, and that’s really what we’re talking about, artificial intelligence, but in the definition of a tool. So whether we call it artificial intelligence or superintelligence, that question that you’re asking, I’m going the direction, it’s not fake, it’s a tool. And super when the president used it or anytime he used it implies superiority. So historically, I think Isaac, people have tended to elevate human inventions beyond their proper place.
It’s human nature to take something that which I think we would say by God’s grace allowed to develop, however that may be, that when something happens, man ends up turning around and taking credit for it and raising and it elevates it above wherever it was supposed to be. But scripture reminds us that wisdom, that it’s not wisdom, wisdom begins with the fear of God, not with computational power. So trying to establish a concept of superior intelligence to me, first off, immediately strikes out as in a counter biblical direction. It’s an elevation of something that which is made by the hands of man, but is being established as being superior to all that exists. And we could go further on that, but I think that’s where I go first on that. I’m saying we got to consider very, very carefully what’s taking place. Now in the AI world, superintelligence is already being used for some other definition of something that already happens out there.
So I don’t think what the president then is going to stick. I don’t think what he did is going to automatically rename AI to SI, superintelligence, but he’s on a track I think that’s not a good track, but a dangerous track.
Isaac Crockett:
Well, let’s dig into it just a little bit more here. I remember when I was a kid, and many of you could probably relate to this, I used to have a lot of phone numbers memorized in my head, my friend’s phone number, my family member’s phone numbers, church, school, different things. And now I know a lot of people who they don’t know any phone numbers. It’s all in their smartphone and they don’t even know their own phone number sometimes or directions. You used to know how to get different places and I know people who rely on their GPS of their car or on their phone and they don’t really even know how to get around anymore. And sometimes this is called, I think they call it cognitive offloading where basically technology does more and more of our thinking and our remembering for us. And you were talking about this, Sam, and you were talking about the difference between information or even knowledge and actual wisdom.
And this is something a number of our guests have addressed the same thing. I want to get into this, I want you to get into this from a biblical worldview, Sam, why is this so important that we develop as Christians discernment or biblical wisdom rather than just looking for more information?
Sam Rohrer:
Well, when I did some further research on this, Isaac, I mean, there’s that part that we’re talking about, I try to answer, but within the context of this whole word cognitive offloading, which you used, it is out there. That is a word that is used. And the sense is that the greater the perceived intelligence of the machine, the tool, the artificial, the tool, what we’re talking about, that the greater the perceived intelligence of that tool, that machine, that the greater the temptation there is to transfer our own responsibility to think and to discern and to evaluate and to judge. And that in reality, I think is the very real connection and the bridge between what the president continued push for acceptance of AI as superior as he says, “We have to stay ahead of this or we’re going to lose our competitive edge with China.” AI databases and all that he’s pushing and what he’s pushing is also in regard to it, government should not have any control over it.
It needs to be allowed to develop that further, all of those things are further elevating to the superior aspect of it and is putting it in a position that it is our lone savior. It is our economic savior. It will make us and bring us into the new golden age.
When in fact, Isaac, it’s not because it replaces man and godly wisdom with human wisdom and it equates superiority to something that’s made of man’s hands rather than that which comes from wisdom that is ask of God and knowledge that is found only within the pages of scripture that we would call absolute truth. It’s an alternative form. I believe that underneath what we’re witnessing all the way through is a deception and a slight of hand, Isaac, and leading people to think that this thing, artificial, a tool, manmade, now holds the key for our answers, for peace, for financial security, because of the way it’s being integrated into everything from health and replacing our doctors and finances and dictating our money and our currency and algorithms that are generating when to place bids on stocks and when to sell and when to buy and in the military choosing the targets that our military is using to send missiles into Iran or Israel’s using, or frankly, Russia’s now using and China too, using this thing that supersedes human wisdom.
And there’s no consideration for what is right or wrong. It’s the pragmatic, well, if you do this, you’ll get your task done. That’s why I’m saying I think this is where it’s going and I fear the elevation of this to something that is above and beyond. Well, because they don’t refer to God’s word and refer to truth, it clearly is a God that’s being developed, I believe.
Isaac Crockett:
You’re really bringing up some amazing points here, Sam, because we need to be looking out for spiritual discernment. We know that the Bible tells us there’s spiritual wickedness, there’s powers in these dark, wicked places and there’s spiritual warfare out there. So just because we have more information through computers and through internet and now through artificial intelligence with supercomputing, it doesn’t take the responsibility away from us as true believers of knowing the word of God, following the word of God and seeking genuine spiritual discernment. I know as a parent for you, Sam, as a parent and grandparent, there’s a lot we’re concerned about for the next generations, especially for children or grandchildren or others even in our church. And so as we listen to this and as we see AI develop, we want to keep an eye to what the word of God says and we want to know his word and hold truth and trust in the Lord with all our might, not leaning to our own understanding or any human understanding that goes beyond the word of God.
Well, when we come back from this quick timeout to hear from some of our partners, we want to talk about something that I think most families in America are talking about. I know my wife and I talk about it a lot and that is the cost of living, inflation, interest rates, all the things that are pushing that. We have a lot to ask Sam about when we come back right after these messages.
All right. Well, welcome back to the program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett and I’m interviewing my co-host, Sam Rohrer. I’ll say interviewing kind of in brackets there. We’re doing an Ask Sam program. So instead of Sam asking some of our guests more questions, we’re asking Sam to answer some of the hot topics and we’re about to get into inflation, which I think we’ve all been thinking about that or seeing that around us. But before we get into that and ask Sam about inflation, I’ll ask our behind the scenes guy, Tim Schneider, program producer, if he could come and tell us some of the neat things that we have and offers that we have going on at Stand in the Gap Media or the American Pastors Network.
Tim Schneider:
Yes. Good afternoon. Thank you for that introduction, Isaac. I am the behind the scenes guy. If you pull back the curtain, kind of like in the Wizard of Oz, I’m the person that’s behind the scenes, the producer that gets everything accomplished so that I always say these guys can sound better. I always try to do my best to make them sound better. But I want to ask you guys a question out there in the audience. Do you ever find yourself too busy to listen to the whole Stand in the Gap Today show? Well, did you know that we have shorter audio segments of somewhere between two and 11 minutes covering various topics discussed on our Stand in the Gap Today radio show? We call these podcast Q&As. These are podcasts which are good for listeners who desire to hear a short segment on a certain topic.
We have lots of different podcast Q&As on topics like finances, current events, cultural issues, biblical worldview, the constitution, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Lots of stuff. Over 3,000 podcast Q&As currently are in existence. So if you want to find the whole show, first go and listen to the podcast Q&A. And if that show intrigues you and you didn’t get a chance to listen to the full show, go back and check out our archives on our app and check out those podcast Q&As and then check out our website at standingapmedia.org. Also, we are available on a lot of the podcast streaming platforms, a lot of the big ones, Apple Podcasts, we’re on TuneIn, Spotify, iHeartRadio. If you are on one of these or your phone subscribes to one of these, you can subscribe to our podcast, sign up and you’ll get it downloaded to your smart device every time a new podcast is released.
And so if you do that, if you listen to a lot of shows or subscribe to shows on your phone, please consider doing that for us. It’s a way to listen to us. Obviously we have an app, but if the app doesn’t work or you want to do something a little bit differently, because I think on our app, we can’t speed up the show two to three times faster, but from my understanding, you can do that on a podcast on one of these sites if it gets downloaded there so you can listen to something super-fast, which I know Isaac and Sam have talked about in the past doing themselves, but you can do that also. So consider signing up for that if that’s something that works out for you. And once again, every time a new podcast is released, it’ll get sent to your smart device.
Additionally, if you’re a subscriber to these podcasts through one of these platforms, please make sure you rate us. Ratings allow other like-minded individuals to find us as they search for podcasts through this thing that they call the algorithm. And thank you in advance. Also, consider checking out our two websites. We’ve got two great ones, americanpastorsnetwork.net and standinthegapmedia.org. Please consider going on over there and checking out a lot of articles, other content, past archives of TV and radio programs, a lot of different things. One of the things you can do while you’re over on our AmericanpastorsNetwork.net website is sign up for our e-newsletter. We won’t inundate your inbox with spam, but we’ll send you information that you might find useful about the American Pastors Network and the things that we have going on around here, which tends to be a lot. So that’s some things I’ve got, Isaac, and I will go ahead and send on back to you.
Isaac Crockett:
Well, thank you for that, Tim. And if you are listening on the radio right now and you say, “Well, I don’t know about all of that,” maybe you have friends or family that do podcasts or streaming, let them know, look for us. And maybe you are listening right now via podcast. Let other people know about it. And like Tim said, please give us a good rating and that way it helps others know about us. Well, Sam, let’s talk about something that we’re all hurting from, I’d say, and that’s inflation. Just recently, Federal Reserve raised interest rates again, and they are signaling, it seems, that this might be something they have to do again. Another raising of the rates might be in this near forecast. And at the same time, I hear from certain outlets that our economy is strong or it’s stronger than most or the dollar is strong compared to other currencies.
And yet for me in my home, for many families I know, especially parents with children and others in fixed income brackets and things, it feels hard just going to the grocery store. The dollar doesn’t seem to buy as much as it used to. The receipt, either I have less groceries for the same price or really long, the receipt has this huge number on it. So let’s just talk about the practicality of this, Sam, and then see how much time we have to get into as we work it through with the biblical worldview. But what does it mean when the Fed raises interest rates? How does that work its way down? How does that impact the average person or family listening today?
Sam Rohrer:
Okay, Isaac, I think probably the most simple way to understand it is that interest is paid to someone. Interest is paid to someone for the use of their money. Now, for instance, used to be that when you put your money in savings at a bank, you would get a few percent interest, like a CD, that’s why we do it. If you want to save, you put money in a bank and then the bank takes and uses your money and they loan it for whatever they loan it for, but they say, no, for the use of your money, for you loaning your money to us, we’re going to give you a certain amount of interest.
On a governmental level, as our government spends money that it does not have, which it does very well, $40 trillion now in debt, somebody has to buy that money. Somebody has to loan or invest their money to the United States, to the Department of Treasury so that our government can function. And in exchange, those who loan that money say, “I want to be paid something for the use of my money.” That’s the interest rates. All right now, when our government did not borrow much money, meaning that it spent no more than it brought in from tax dollars, there was, well, the Federal Reserve, they could charge, they could give a fairly good interest rate for those who would want to put their money in a treasury bill or something and all was well. But the problem now is that because we have $40 trillion in debt more than any nation in the history of the world has ever had, frankly, every previous nation, you put them all together, wouldn’t equate to what we have now.
So $40 trillion, well, that money’s got to come from somebody someplace, and it’s been coming from other nations and they buy our bonds and we pay them an interest rate. Federal Reserve sets that rate. So that’s what it comes down to. So why is the Federal Reserve, why did they have to raise that rate? They said to control inflation, which I’m going to define, but in reality, they had to raise the rate because the countries like Japan, our biggest buyer of our debt, China and other nations that have bought our debt, bought our dollars, bought our debt over the years, which have allowed us to take and spend more than we’ve ever been able to generate by taxes, are now saying, “Wait a minute, you can’t even pay back the money that you have. We’re not going to loan you any more money. We’re not going to buy any of your debt, your treasury bills in America, unless you pay us more money for the use.” That’s why the Federal Reserve had to actually increase a quarter of a percent and they’ve telegraphed they’re likely going to do it again in their October meeting.
So that’s the real reason people are demanding that they get paid more if they’re going to buy our debt. All right now, let’s turn it around. The Federal Reserve is saying that they’ve got to do it to control inflation as if inflation is something that just comes on you like a virus. It’s not. And you use the aspect correctly. When you go into a store, it seems like we got to spend more money to buy the same things we used to buy. So there were many who would say, “Well, it’s because the price of things are going up.” It is, but in reality, and here’s the definition, inflation is not that things become more valuable. Inflation is that our money becomes less valuable.
And in reality, in the last 20 years, Isaac, here’s a number, in the last 20 years, Americans have lost 40% of the dollar’s purchasing power. Put it differently. What cost a dollar to buy something 20 years ago, it now requires a dollar and 65 cents. And if I go back to the time that I was born approximately, the dollar now is only worth about 10 cents. So that’s what we’re talking about. So the raising of the interest rates discourage people from borrowing money, theoretically that forces down prices, but it’s also rewards those who do buy our debt, other nations, because if we don’t, we go bankrupt because we don’t have any money to spend. So this is a complicated thing. I would like to advise people, encourage people to go back and listen to the program that I did with David McAlvany on August the 13th.
And I can find it in our archives, but that program was on deflating the myths of inflation, deflating the myths of inflation where we really go into depth talking about what I just tried to summarize there in a few minutes.
Isaac Crockett:
Well, thank you. That’s actually very good, Sam. Well, I don’t think we actually have time left. I was going to ask you another quick question just about how it seems that as inflation goes higher, it’s harder and harder for everybody, but at the same time we’re hearing, “Oh, we have a strong economy.” So it’s interesting, you and I have talked about that just a little bit, but we’ll get into some of this when we come back. I’m going to take another quick timeout, a little break to hear from some of our partners. But there’s a lot of misinformation and there’s a lot of maybe partial truths being told that it makes it hard to know who to believe and what to trust. And as Christians, we know that we can stand firm on the word of God and we need to be taking things back to that.
So when we wrap up our last segment, Sam, I want to ask you how we can go back to a biblical worldview, even in these times of dubious truths or maybe lack of truth that are all around us. We’ll be right back.
All right. Well, welcome back to the program. I’m Isaac Crockett and I’ve been asking questions of Sam Rohr. And Sam, we’ve covered a lot of ground. We’ve gone from Gaza in the Middle East and updates on that to artificial superintelligence and then talking about inflation at home. And again, it’s so confusing because it’s like, oh, we have this great economy. But it doesn’t feel great to me. And you explained how inflation means that the dollar doesn’t go as far. It doesn’t mean that necessarily the price hikes, it just means that the dollar doesn’t buy as much. So a lot of really good information. But Sam, sometimes when we hear all of this, it can feel overwhelming. We kind of have this picture of the ostrich putting its head in the ground, which I believe that actually ostriches, their heads go in the ground because they’re tending to their eggs.
They’re kind of flipping them over and inspecting them. And sometimes they put their head down against the ground, but not burying it when they are sensing if there’s something coming towards them. But there’s often this kind of cartoon stereotype of an ostrich getting afraid, so it just buries its head in the ground and its big body is sticking out. And I think sometimes that maybe is a picture of the church or of Christians in America sometimes as we say, I just don’t want to hear it. I just don’t want to talk about it. And so I want to ask you, Sam, how do we deal with this? Because everything that we’re talking about today is such a big picture that it’s not something that you and I can just go out there and we can change it. These are things that we have to trust God and his sovereignty and we have to stay biblical.
But how do we keep from becoming overwhelmed with the fear of these things that we see in the headlines, like even some of what we talked about today?
Sam Rohrer:
Well, one of the things, Isaac, I think is that as we talk about regularly, having a biblical worldview comes to bear in this regard in that learning to evaluate what we see around us, the circumstances that come into our life, what we may see on the news of the day. Years ago, it used to be the newspaper. Now we’re seeing it on a thing called TV and now you’re on the internet, whatever. I mean, that aspect has changed. Sometimes that used to be somebody who would come down the road. Wherever that news would be, we evaluate those things through the filter of the word of God.
That is like even in the spot that ran on the break that most nations probably heard, the being able to identify the counterfeit, the deception, that which is not genuine, that which is not true really begins with how well can we identify that which is the genuine, the true, the real. And in every application, whether it’s a dollar bill, real, counterfeit to ideas, deception, truth, it all comes back to we make our interpretations from the word of God. So as a believer, Isaac, I think that we should understand scripture well enough to be able to see that which is of a deceiver, the wolf that’s dressed in sheep’s clothes that’s wandering about, the false prophet that stands up and says, “I’m telling you the truth,” but you say, “Wait a minute. No, you’re not.” I mean, the scripture is full of that. Jesus said, “Watch out for all these things.” So the only way we can do that, and to put it this way, we can have that discernment is we pray for wisdom, the ability to determine the false from the true, and we seek discernment to be able to discern and choose the best choice.
That is what and how we as believers in any age, the Noah in his days, the Enoch in his days, the disciples in the days of Christ, the true remnant in our day. It’s never been different. There’s the world, the world system led by the devil, not true, always deceptive, always leading us astray and thinking that we’re God, not God, his God. And we who know the truth say, no, God is God. And the word of God is the written word of God and Jesus Christ has come and he was the truth in the flesh. That is a biblical worldview. So that’s where I’d start and then go back to you. But we start with the word of God. If we do not start with the word of God, we have nothing else to do other than fear, be driven to some conclusion that the world would like us to come to, but that’s exactly opposite of what the Lord has put us here for to be salt and light and he’s given us the word of God to guide us and it will in fact guide us if we choose to do what I just said, which is what the word of God tells us to do.
Isaac Crockett:
You’re going down something, Sam, that I think is very interesting because as you point us back to the word of God, we have the written word scripture. We call it the Bible inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit opens our hearts and our eyes to see and understand his words. But in that we have God revealed, God put on flesh, Jesus Christ, Yeshua of Nazareth was the Christ, the Messiah. And the Bible says that he is the living word and it really compares him in many ways to the Old Testament, what describes as wisdom, biblical wisdom. And what we’ve been talking about today, Sam, there’s a lot of counterfeit information, knowledge out there, double talk going on. How do we as Christians use what you were just talking about, the word of God? How do we use it in a way to really come out with true wisdom, spiritual discernment, biblical wisdom, as opposed to just human understanding, which can change on a dime?
Sam Rohrer:
Well, two things. One, James says, if any of you lack wisdom, and the assumption is you all lack wisdom, we all do, let him ask of God and God will give to all of them and upbraideth not. So we need to pray for wisdom, but I need to start before that because James’ assumption was that he’s talking to a true believer. So in these days when we know from talking with our friend like Dr. George Barna, and you and I have talked with him regularly, when there are so very, very few who actually indicate that they know the God of heaven through faith in Jesus Christ, a true, genuine believer, a very small percentage, maybe 6% of those who say they are Christians, these days should cause every person to make sure that their relationship with God through Jesus Christ, God’s son, through faith in Jesus Christ alone is secure and that they’re not trusting in themselves or in something else and just fooling themself into thinking that’s what starts there.
But if that is established and we have been adopted into God’s family, we’re a child of God, then we can pray for wisdom and God will give it to us. And then what do we do in order of response from that? Well, then we look the passage like Romans chapter 12, one where the apostle Paul says, “Be not conformed to this word, but be transformed through the renewing of your mind.” Recognizing that we’re in this world, but we’re not of this world. The world and the devil is extraordinarily successful in pulling people away and deceiving them. And the only way not to be conformed, to be looked like the world and believe what the world says is to be transformed how through the renewing of our mind. How does that happen? Through the reading of the word of God, having our mind directed by thinking as the word of God would think, being Christlike, responding as Christ would have us think and speak and act, our motives in our heart, our actions towards other people.
All of that is all a part, Isaac, of how we can be in this world but not of it and not respond in fear to what we see, but actually in greater faith because we know that God’s word is being worked out and we can see it unfold before our eyes for those who have wisdom and discernment.
Isaac Crockett:
Sam, this reminder of faith over fear, it’s perfect timing and it’s wonderful. And even before we went on air, you were praying that the Lord would use our words and the work we’ve done in putting this program together and those who’ve given towards this and made this possible, that it would use it to draw God’s people closer to him to help us seek first the kingdom of God and that if there’s anyone listening today, our prayer is that you will accept Christ as Savior even now and find true faith in everlasting life through that. Well, thank you again so much for listening. Please share this program with others and until next time, I ask you to stand in the gap for truth today wherever you are.
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