When Pastors Become Celebrities + The Spiritual War Against Israel | Jim Scudder Jr.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
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He's just a regular guy with a cool job that God loves for some reason. Welcome to The Steve Marston Show, a daily journey in learning how to live more like Jesus, conversations with those that God is working through, and dad jokes. It's the most unique show you'll hear today. Now here's Steve. Yep, yep, Yahoo! Welcome. The Steve Marston Show is underway and I want to say a special thanks as always right off the top to those people
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Want to get started today talking about something that I have avoided the last couple of days because the news broke, guess it was just three four days ago about Stephen Lawson and his new book that is out. And I didn't want to talk about it because, well, a lot of reasons. First and foremost, there are so many of these fallen pastor stories to tell, unfortunately, that we would
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fill up a whole hour's worth of time practically every single day if that's all we talked about. And we all know it's a problem and we all know it's something that needs to be dealt with. But this is not the framework for which we dive into those things usually. But this one's a little different. This one, for those of you that are in Little Rock listening, may actually have had a personal interaction with Stephen Lawson because for about 15 years,
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He was pastor of the Bible Church in Little Rock. And then he went on from there to pastor, I think in Alabama, and then really became kind of nationally known, was kind of a, I don't know what the best word to say, I don't want to say disciple, Padawan, we will call him a Padawan, of John MacArthur, for those of you Star Wars fans. But a lot of people seem to have thought that at one point in time, if Dr. MacArthur,
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were to step down from his pastorate there at Grace Community Church or as president of the seminary that he ran there in Southern California, that Stephen Lawson might be the next guy up to run the program in Dr. MacArthur's absence. Well, none of that happened. Stephen Lawson, I guess it's been a year or so ago now, was found to have an affair with a much younger
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lady, obviously not his wife, and apparently from what the accounts were, it went on for quite a long time. His book is talking about the mercy that he found and how he fell hard from the highest of heights and all of that. Look, there's been lot of debate online and a lot of people talking about how they don't buy
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his contrition, they don't buy his repentance on this because if he truly were repentant, a lot of people were saying that, well, he would not make this a book to sell, but to just post it as a blog or as just kind of an open letter as an old school thing to let people know what has happened and why it all went down. Now, he's not...
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leading any kind of ministry. He is apparently in Tennessee now and is serving in a local church and has people helping him through the quote-unquote restoration process. And that's all fine and that's all good. And obviously, yes, prayers for him, but prayers for his wife and his kids and his grandkids because his mistake and behavior just ruined their lives as well.
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That's a burden he's going to have to bear for probably the rest of his life. And all that to say, I didn't really want to talk about it much because I don't know if there's anything more that we can say that we kind of already know. However, I think there are a couple of caveats that I can bring to the table that not specifically to Stephen Lawson, although he definitely is kind of a poster boy for this, but
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just celebrity pastor culture in general. mean, once you really stop and think about it, that ought to be an oxymoron, celebrity pastor, but it is the world that we're living in. And look, there are plenty of people who are on our radio stations who are phenomenal people behind the pulpit and away from the pulpit. They are doing their called work.
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by God, and He has opened doors for them to be taking other opportunities to speak and to write books and to maybe make social videos and different things like that. And they are doing it all within the confines of the guidelines that God has laid out and are doing a phenomenal job on it. So I'm not trying to bang on all pastors who choose to take a step
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toward more quote unquote ministry based versus church based work. However, I will say this, I think it's extremely dangerous when this starts to happen. It can be anyway. Here's what I mean. Let's take for instance your pastor. You know, in this day and age everybody's sermons are on YouTube now. So let's say your media team cuts up a sermon into some YouTube shorts.
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It gets posted online and all of a sudden one of them just blows up and just gets huge. And people love it in the church world. They're just talking about this communicator and how great a speaker he happens to be. And then that leads to other conferences and other things to be able to go to and to be able to preach the messages at. And then that may be leading to someone from an agency saying, hey, you know what? You would be great.
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as a radio ministry on a bunch of stations all across the country. We can make that happen for you. Then it goes on to where you maybe are invited to be an elder or a board member of different churches and on and on. And pretty soon you look up and your pastor is no longer there every Sunday morning. In fact, there's more Sunday mornings where he's not there than when he's there.
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All of a sudden, there are other people, leadership team members, that are doing more of the traditional pastorate kind of thing. And none of that's bad. None of that is bad on the surface. However, the more insulated the pastor gets, to the point where all he's doing is coming in once, twice, or three times maybe, in a six or seven week period.
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to be a teacher of the lesson on the stage and then nothing else, all of a sudden that just becomes another one of the side hustles that he has. Now I know nobody starts and intends for that to become something bad because after all it's our pastor and look the entire nation loves him because of
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how God has blessed him and how lucky are we and how blessed are we to have him right here in our church. But the more insulated the pastor becomes, that's when Satan comes at him incredibly hard. And you have to realize that. I think Stephen Lawson is just one in an innumerable group that has felt the temptation. And because he was so isolated from
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where he was supposed to be, I think, serving that one local community of believers off doing so many other things that Satan saw him as easy pickings. And the temptation came and he fell and he fell hard. And again, Stephen Lawson is the furthest thing from the only person that this has happened to. The list, as I say, is innumerable. The bottom line is you just have to be careful.
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The devil loves to get us isolated, especially pastors, because if he can get them to fall, the damage is enormous.
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Steve Marston Show continues. Discipleship has never been more fun. Thank you for listening. On Wednesdays, what we like to do is a little segment called Seek and Find, where we give you an overview, kind of a thumbnail sketch of one of the books of the Bible and kind of invite you along for the ride to find some nuggets of truth that are hidden in these scriptures for yourself.
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And with the idea being when Jesus talked about seeking and being able to find, it's not just, oh, you seek and there it is. It's a continual process. Keep on seeking and you will keep on finding. So that's what we're doing here on the program today. And for the last several weeks, we have been focusing on the minor prophets. And again, I say this every week because it's true and it bears repeating.
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that the minor prophets are called that only because of the length of their books, not because of their message or anything else. know, Isaiah and Jeremiah are two of the quote unquote major prophets because their books are like 50 something chapters each. Well, all of these minor prophets only have a couple of chapters. Like the case in point we're going to look at today is the book of Joel, which by the way, I thought we were
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finished with the Minor Prophets? I really did. I thought we'd gone over all of them, but this glaring one was not covered. And I was like, wow, we got to do that because Joel is an important book. It's only three chapters long, but it primarily focuses more than really any other of the Minor Prophets on the return of the Lord, on the great and...
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awful day of the Lord. And what does that mean? That's really meaning the end times. And Joel talks about how God reveals His power and His strength and His holiness, but also His wrath, and it's terrifying to His enemies. Now, it kind of has a deal where it starts out talking about kind of the end times kind of thing, and then switches in kind of the middle of
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the book where Joel uses the metaphor of a locust plague and drought to call the people to a repentance. And then it goes back to describing the day of the Lord and how we need to repent and how all of the prophecies of restoration are going to be happening then, whether it be physical restoration, spiritual restoration, and national restoration for the nation of Israel.
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All of that's tied up in the day of the Lord at the end of the book of Joel. Now, the book of Joel, more so probably than any of the Old Testament books, well, I don't know if that's true. I would say probably indicative is probably the best way to say it because all of the Old Testament foreshadows Jesus and the coming of the Messiah. But here's something that's really kind of cool that's kind of specifically
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you can look for when you're looking through the Old Testament. Anytime it speaks of sin, whether all the way back in the Garden of Eden, all the way up to the end of the Old Testament, that is a shadow of Jesus coming, because that's what caused the separation for us, right? And so Jesus will come and deliver us from
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failures and our rebellion against God. And the prophets of the Old Testament continually warned Israel to repent, and even when they did, their repentance was only limited to what was kind of the law and works. And then of course the temple sacrifices ultimately foreshadowed Jesus as well because the animals, and we've talked about this before, the animals that were sacrificed, their blood was only a temporary kind of
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fixed kind of a bandaid on a broken arm, if you will, that led up to this real blood that was spilled that was once for all time in the blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. So that's what you see in throughout the book of Joel. And then again, Joel really underlines that God's ultimate judgment comes on the day of the Lord. And one of the most famous, I guess, verses in Joel is,
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the great and terrible day of the Lord, who can endure it? Well, when you think of it from kind of a non-believer's perspective, nobody can. However, we as people who have placed our faith in Christ for the atonement of our sins and the forgiveness of our rebellion against God have nothing to fear in the day of the Lord, the day of judgment that's coming. We don't have to worry
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and be fearful at all. And then there's some practical applications to this book as well because again, repentance and judgment is something that has come from the very start of time and it continues to play out through to the end of time. And without repentance, judgment will be harsh, thorough, and certain is the way one scholar put it, which I was really pretty neat.
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says, the trust should not be in our possessions but in the Lord. God may use all kinds of things from nature to even personal tragedies and other occurrences to draw us closer to him in mercy and grace that he has provided a definite plan of salvation through Jesus Christ, exchanging his righteousness, his holiness for our unrighteousness and unholiness. And this book of Joel
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just underscores the point that there's no time to lose, that God's judgment, when it comes, will come swiftly and it will be taken as a thief in the night. Meaning, again, when you see things like, well, it's coming and it's going to happen, well, it hasn't happened in 2,000 years. That's true, it hasn't yet. But the inference is not that it's coming in a chronological quickness, but...
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when it starts to happen, it's going to be instantaneous and boom, it's going to hit people just right out of the blue. That is, if you're not ready for it. And those of us who are born again, saved people with the blood of Jesus, trusting in it, it shouldn't overtake us like that. We should be ready for the coming day of the Lord because again, it's judgment on the unbelievers and our final restoration. Of course,
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The book of Joel also reminds us that we can trust in God and that His mercy and grace is free for the asking. And that's again found all over the Old Testament as well. Also you'll find in the book of Joel why God's reason for doing the end times the way He's going to do them. In fact, it's in two places. Joel chapter 2 verse
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27 and Joel chapter 3 verse 17. So what's the reason? Well, that's where you come in. It's up to you to seek and find for yourself. So check it out.
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The Steve Marston Show continues. It's where faith and fun are both taken seriously. I wanted to bring back a conversation we had with Jim Scudder Jr. He's the pastor of Quinton Road Baptist Church in suburban Chicago and the Bible teacher heard nationwide on In Grace. I'm good, Steve. How are you? I am excellent. It's great to have you back. You're pastor there at Quinton Road Baptist Church in the Chicago area, and you're also an adventurer.
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You travel all over the world, in Israel, doing a lot of archaeological digs and being a part of seeing how history really does prove the Bible is true. And also you're an author. So you're, you're a man that does it stay still for very long. And again, we appreciate your time joining us. Thank you. Yeah. think, you know, God created us, I think all with a sense of adventure. Mine might be a little like turned up too high. I don't know, but I enjoy it.
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And listen, connecting the truths and the proofs of the Bible, you know, in Acts, it says we have many infallible proofs, you know, speaking of the resurrection, but I think it applies to archaeology and other things too. Like there's so much evidence for God and the truth of his word. So it's fun. And it's really a bit fun listening to, especially your Friday broadcast, because those are the ones where you kind of are on location and
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going through all of these different adventures. And I remember one that just pops off the top of my head is the one about Jericho and seeing the stuff that really happened there, proving that the walls did come down and that there was a section there where where Ray had the prostitute lived that was still standing and all of that. I mean, it just does submit your faith so much knowing that, yeah, this really happened. Yeah, not.
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And Jericho was kind one of our very first shows on from Israel. But how fascinating that is when you start to realize like exactly what you would expect to find if the Bible is true is what you find, including like full jars of grain that are burnt. And the archaeologists said like, that's unprecedented. You never find it because the plundering army takes the food. You don't burn it. You don't eat it. You know, but the Bible
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said, that's what you would find. They burned the city. They left everything for God. Jim Scudder is our guest here on the Steve Marsden show. And another reason I wanted to have him on is because you've got a new book called the spiritual war against Israel, defending biblical Zionism and understanding Israel's place in God's prophetic plan. So that's been in the news here a lot lately. I mean, we can go back to that Tucker Carlson interview with Mike Huckabee and
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so many other little mainstream people trying to figure out, why is this land still so important and why should Americans be praying for Israel? And should that even matter in 2026? I mean, this is what that book's all about. Yeah. And you know, it seems so odd to me that it's such a, a big news item all the time. Israel, little teeny Israel. It's like,
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It's like the third. It's it's smaller than New Jersey. It's like this teeny little country. But we're always talking about it. We're always criticizing it. You know it's. I think there's some evidence there that maybe this is special to God and you know, like exactly what the Bible says. Yeah, because when you really think about it, I mean. What I guess the the Genesis of it, if you'll forgive the pun, happens in Genesis.
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when God makes the covenant to Abraham saying, I'm going to give you this land and it's going to be for you and your descendants. And some people look at that as thinking, well, maybe that covenant has already passed and it's been fulfilled and no longer in use. But the Bible is, I think, pretty clear that God still has big plans for the nation of Israel. Well, those, covenant, and this is really neat, Steve, because
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You know, it starts in Genesis 12 three, but it continues on Abraham, Isaac and Jacob all get the same. the consistent promise is that land will be theirs and their seed and I think that almost the only way to read that is their, their ethnic their biological seed will have possession of that land forever. So I'm a Gentile I took the DNA I was hoping I had some Jewish but I don't
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but they have a promise. Now Christians, get to share in some of the blessings and things, but God has given them a unique and amazing blessing. Part of that covenant, if you remember when Abraham, God told Abraham to take some animals and birds and cut them in half and then spread them apart. And this was called a cutting ceremony where you'd, parties that were making this covenant would walk through it and showing like the seriousness of it. Like if I break this promise, if I break this covenant, you know, kill me.
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But then God makes Abraham fall asleep. So who's walking through the midst of those animals? It's God himself. So God is promising to himself that he's gonna do these things. So if God is true, which we know he is, and he is a promise keeping God, then he's gonna fulfill that promise to the ethnic descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
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Now, if he breaks that promise, we're in trouble, Steve, because he's promised me eternal life if I put my trust in his son, Jesus. He's promised me to never leave me or forsake me. Like, I'm in trouble if he's a promise breaking God, but that's why you find Romans 9 through 11 in the Bible. Why is it there? It's weird. You you have sin, justification, salvation, sanctification, and then Israel? Why is that there? It's because God is saying, hey, they haven't always done right. They rejected.
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Messiah nationally, not individually, the early church was all Jewish, you know, but nationally they rejected the Messiah, but God is not done with them. That's what Paul said, I'm Israelite, I'm a Benjamin, has God forsaken his people? God forbid. So I don't know how people can come up with any other conclusion, especially people that espouse the Bible or Christianity, then we had better be on the side of Israel. I'm not saying
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We're on the side of the current administration. I love America, even though I wasn't a fan of the Biden administration, but even during Biden, I still said, I support America. love America. So we're not saying you're supporting every last thing any leader does in Israel. saying you're supporting the idea and the promise and the people, the modern miracle of Israel. Absolutely. Zip Scudder is our guest here on the Steve Marston show. And we're talking about his book that's out.
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called the Spiritual War Against Israel, Defending Biblical Zionism and Understanding Israel's Place in God's Prophetic Plan. So let's define what biblical Zionism is because that is a term, again, in the secular world that's thrown around a lot. Maybe a lot of people don't realize it is a Bible term. So what exactly does it mean? know, Zion is one of the names that is used for
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Israel, the people of God, the people of Israel, but it's actually a spot in Jerusalem. One of the hills in Jerusalem is Zion, Mount Zion. We sing the song, you know, we're marching to Zion. So Zionism, it's just the word that they chose when, you know, late 1800s, when there's this yearning in the heart of Jewish people. And by the way, that yearning went all the way back, you know, they would always say next year in Jerusalem,
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It was always this yearning, Hatikva is the national anthem. It was a song before his national anthem of hope, let the hope of the return. But in the late 1800s, there was this like physical movement. And this was before the Holocaust. This was before World War I. And people, leaders, Jewish leaders in Europe and other places were starting to say, hey, we want our homeland back. God promised it to us and we wanna make that happen. So I believe it's a God.
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God movement on them and eventually that led to them miraculously being reborn. Steve, never in human history has a people been so dispersed for so long and yet to return to their land speaking the same language, which Hebrew wasn't a common language anymore. It was kind of a religious prayer language, but that was it. They resurrected the language. They worshiped the same God.
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It's unbelievable. It's unprecedented in human history. then that plus what we read in the Bible, every prophet except Jonah predicted the return of the Jews after a dispersal. Yeah. So how can you read all of those and then see what happened in 48 and not say this is of God? Exactly. Because when you really start to dig into the Old Testament, you're so right that every one of those prophets except for Jonah does mention that.
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that because that was such a rallying point for the hope that God will keep his promise that he made, like what we've been talking about all the way back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that the land will be his descendants, their descendants for all of eternity. And the son of David will reign and rule from Jerusalem. mean, those are the things that they held on to hope for when everything seemed dark. Yeah. And so you have these
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so-called Christian on the far right, they're really disparaging Israel. Any person that is a true believer, someone that has accepted by faith Jesus as their savior, the son of God who died on the cross and rose again, we will be worshiping a Jew for all eternity. So if you're anti-Semitic or anti-Jew, you're in for a miserable eternity because you're going to be worshiping a Jew. All of the writers of scripture are Jewish.
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Even if you don't have the same understanding of end times as I would, I'm a dispensationalist, I don't apologize for that. I think it's only kind of framework that really fits everything on all the prophecies. But even if you don't hold to that, fine. Who gave you, what family on the earth gave you your Messiah? What family on the earth gave you your Bible? Like for that alone, shouldn't we love them unconditionally?
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and be their friend and stand by them when the whole world is turning against them. So the reason this keeps coming up from Haman to Hitler to Maas, it's a spiritual war. I don't think you can explain what's going on today against the Jews and has gone on all these centuries outside of this being a spiritual matter. In other words, there's this group of people that God said, I'm going to bless the whole world with, and they have by producing the Messiah Jesus.
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Why would it be that the whole world is against that? Because there is a devil, there are fallen angels, the demons, and they hate God and they hate God's plan and God's promises. So they're always going to fight against that. And that's what I think we're seeing. And just to underscore that point, I came across this and I don't remember where I saw it, but they asked someone, well, how many Jewish people do you think there are in the world?
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The guy was like, Oh, I don't know. There's 8 billion people. So maybe what? A billion of them or half a billion people. And it was, no, it was like, I mean, 16 or so, what million or something. It's a tiny, tiny, minuscule of the population, which just goes to your point. Why is so many people so hostile to this one small little group of people? Because it's all biblical.
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And yeah, and they've been by and large, like a pretty lovely people, know, they're immoral. mean, I'm not saying everyone. Okay. So don't, I'm not painting with such a broad brush, but I'm saying by and large, the Jewish people in Israel and around the world have contributed to society immensely. They're good neighbors. They have good morals.
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I don't even know where this dislike for them comes from other than there are these lies that people hear and they believe, which are lies. So if we're listening to the father of lies, we're gonna start to treat God's earthly people wrong. And the only way that I know to share Jesus with my Jewish friends, Yeshua, is to love them. As a matter of fact,
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That's the only way I know how to show Jesus to anybody, somebody that it's Muslim or atheist because Jesus is changing my life and he wants me to love my enemy. And so we need to love the Jewish people unconditionally because of that. But also on top of that, they have been a blessing. have the incredible inventions are Jewish like medical and other like advancements in
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in our society are because of Jewish people. So there's many reasons that we should be supporting them and loving them and not, not the opposite. Absolutely. And what you said is so true in Rome, when you're reading the book of Romans, God's not through with them yet. So if God's not through with them and he's not through with us, we need to continue to support them. Again, the book is called the Spiritual War
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against Israel defending biblical Zionism and understanding Israel's place in God's prophetic plan. Jim Scudder is the author of it. He's also the Bible teacher on In Grace that you hear on most of these Salem radio stations. So when you give this book to someone, what's your kind of ultimate goal when they get through reading it? What do you what do you hope happens? the last chapter, Steve, is about my journey in this
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in this thought, in this practice of loving the Jewish people. I tell basically a kind of a three-year story where I was doing a lot of work in Israel with filming documentaries and things. So I was starting to develop a lot of Jewish friends that were Israeli. But I'm thinking like, I live in Chicago. We have a huge Jewish community and they're really close to us where we live in the Northwest suburbs. I don't know one. I don't know any rabbis.
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I started to feel really guilty about that. So I asked the Lord, and I wrote this whole thing out in the book, Lord, help me find a way to connect and just to show how much I care and support the Jewish people. And through a series of what I would almost call miracles, like these chance encounters that have to be more than just chance, I got quickly connected to the Jewish community. And then October 7th happened. And all of a sudden, I'm
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I think one of the only pastors they knew and all these people are coming out against them before Israel had even gone into Gaza, they were being accused of genocide and all this nonsense. So you have this pastor that's already befriended them and been to some of their events and who are they calling? They're calling me, they're calling on our church to do some public stuff in support of the Jewish people. So we've had, I would say 30 or more amazing opportunities, public opportunities.
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to be a blessing to the Jewish people. And since then, Steve, we got a brand new building donated to our ministry that will double the size of our Bible college and seminary. Hobby Lobby bought it and donated like, it's probably worth about $5 million. And like, I'm not saying that's because we're supporting Israel and the Jewish people, but I can't say it's not. Well, that's amazing.
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Pastor Scudder, we're going to have to leave it right there just because of time constraints, but thank you so much and may God continue to bless you and all of the ministry of InGrace. Thanks so much for joining us. Okay, more coming up. The Steve Marston Show rolls on after this.
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Thank you for being a part of today's festivities. Steve Marston Show is back. The Christian radio show and podcast that really matters. Let's catch you up on some stories that you may have missed. I found this one to be really extraordinary. This happened the other day in North Carolina, a multi-church site there, baptized, are you ready for this? 458 people in a single day.
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setting a record in the congregation's 137-year history. It's the Biltmore Church there in North Carolina. The pastor's name is Devin Goings, and he told the Christian Post that it's very humbling given that baptism represents lives being changed and God being at work. He said, see and celebrate all of this while being continually reminded that we do not invite God to be a part of our story, instead that
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He invites us to be a part of His. That is so well said, and I know that didn't originate with Him, but there's such truth there. We get to be so involved in our own bubble a lot of time that we think we're doing God a favor by accepting His grace and mercy. No, no, it's all His story, and we're part of it, yeah. He went on to say that while we baptize believers,
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Every week as a part of our Sunday morning worship, once a year we bring all of our locations together to celebrate those who are taking the next step as a disciple after coming to know Christ through salvation. He said in the days before the outdoor baptism, everyone interested, personally contacted our staff to confirm that they knew Christ as their savior and were ready to take this step as obedience as a Christ follower. So that's really pretty cool. I mean, that's a lot of folks.
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getting baptized. mean, that probably took a long time. I mean, that's over 450 people at once. Praise the Lord. It's good stuff. Here's another interesting story that you may have missed. Liberty University, which is there in Virginia, has gotten a grant from Boeing, you know, the big airline manufacturers, yeah, for a Samaritan's Purse DC-8 aircraft project. Okay, here's the...
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details. They've received this grant, it hasn't been disclosed the amount of money, from the aerospace company Boeing to build a public pavilion at the school's planned DC-8 Overlook. The project will feature the historic Samaritan's Purse DC-8 aircraft which the Evangelical Christian Humanitarian Aid Organization gave the school back last December. Now the DC-8 Overlook project
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is going to be located within Lynchburg Regional Airport, which is where the university is, Lynchburg, Virginia. And it sits right next to the schools of aeronomics at Liberty University. Now, raise your hand if you knew Liberty University had a school of aeronautics. No idea. The public education pavilion is expected to feature hands-on interactive exhibits on history of human aviation.
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as well as hands-on learning modules and a community space. That's cool. Boeing is proud to support Liberty's DC-8 Overlook project, which brings together the STEM education, the workforce department, and the community engagement in a meaningful way. Lacey Pittman from Boeing said in a statement the other day, she also said, by helping preserve this historic aircraft and creating hands-on learning opportunities, this initiative
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will inspire future aerospace professionals and honor the important role aviation's played in serving communities around the world." Yeah, that's something. I love that. And you know, there's a lot of people that I can remember reading about when the miracle of flight first began, that there were so many forward-thinking missionaries that were like, this is a game changer. This is going to be able to help us.
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take the gospel literally all over the world. They saw it as a wonderful gift of God from the very beginning that a lot of people took more time to see than some of the people like Hudson Taylor and people of that generation. They really bought into it quickly. And here's another story. This one kind of is personal to me because I have some members of my family
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that are deaf-blind, and I know how difficult it is for them to be able to find a community of believers to be able to worship with, because honestly, there's not a whole lot of them around, and churches a lot of times don't know how to reach a people group like that. Well, there's a new ministry tool that is going to make it the easiest it's ever been to share the gospel with deaf people.
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This research has been designed by Revelation Media in cooperation with the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board. The animated resource will present the Gospel of Luke word for word in American Sign Language, which is the language that most deaf people in the states use. It will also have characters themselves signing throughout the story rather than
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having a sign language interpreter at the bottom of the screen. So yeah, my major was communications. However, my minor in college was ASL in sign language. And one of the things we had to do, I remember, as class projects and as homework, is be able to watch like these little stories, whether they be nursery rhymes or fairy tales or whatever.
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being completely done in sign and not in English with a sign language interpreter. That's the way we were taught to be able to learn the languages, to be able to just kind of immerse ourselves in it. And this is such a brilliant idea. I don't know why it's taking this long for someone to think about this, but a word for word in ASL translation of the Book of Luke is gonna be phenomenal. Anyway, the ASL,
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Luke resource claims to help deaf communities know Jesus. The producers say that there is a significant need to reach more than 70 million people worldwide who are deaf. Although some estimates put the numbers high as 400 million, depending on how deafness and hearing loss are defined. Well, that's true. The community is considered to be one of the most unreached people groups. According to a joint news release from both of the organizations, only 2 % are considered reached with the gospel.
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Integrating ASL directly into the animation will allow deaf audiences to engage with scripture in a more meaningful and accessible way according to the producers. I think this is brilliant. Again, why it's taken us this long to come up with this, I don't know, but the time has come for sure. They say, we're excited to partner with Revelation Media to leverage innovative technologies to bring God's word to life and accelerate the translation of the Bible to deaf peoples, says Victor Hu.
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He is the Chief of Staff of the International Mission Board. Great, great news there. I love this.
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Here at the Steve Marston Show, we're serious about faith, but we love a good dad joke too. The dad joke of the day comes to us from the home office in Bryant, Arkansas. And it's another classic. I love the classics, but we've got to find these people at the home office to do better research, some new stuff, some fresh material. Okay, let's get to this one. Why did the math book look so sad?
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Well say it with me, because it had a lot of problems.
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So do we know who's in charge of the home office these days?
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We need to find out. Maybe, I don't know, send an email or something. Welcome back. The Steve Marston Show continues helping you live more like Jesus. And just before we get to faith between your ears, let's talk about our YouTube channel. We're getting close to the number 250 as far as subscribers go. And again, grand scheme of things, I know that's nothing, but it is something worth celebrating since we really have...
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stripped away everything on our YouTube page and really built it back from the ground up. We're getting close to 250 subscribers. Once we get to that point, it's going to trigger a prize. We're going to give away a John MacArthur study Bible in calfskin leather. It is so pretty. It's such a nice volume. You're going to love it. So get over there to youtube.com slash Steve Marston show and subscribe if you haven't already. And then once we
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hit that 250 mark, we'll put everybody in a drawing, let you know how to register to win that because there's some YouTube rules that we have to follow. Obviously, don't want to get cross ways with the YouTube people. we'll let you know, but just go ahead and make sure that you are a part of the YouTube channel there. Okay, let's get to faith between your ears. As I say, it's our Bible verse that we have every single week where we start on Monday learning it and trying to memorize it.
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And here we are at Wednesday and let's see how we're doing. The first is Isaiah 53 verse 5 and it says, was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon Him the chastisement of us all brought us peace and with His wounds we are healed. So Isaiah chapter 53 verse 5.
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And I know the first objection you have is, I can't memorize anything. Steve, I know who won the World Series in 1984, but I don't know how I can memorize something today. Well, listen, I get it. It's not as easy as it used to be for us, but it can be done. So however it takes for you to do that, writing it out long form, whether it's...
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voicing it over and over out loud, whatever it takes to get it between your ears, let's do so because it is that important. In fact, I feel like I don't know a better way to grow in our faith than this, to know what God's Word says, not saying, oh, you know, I know in the Bible somewhere it says something about... No, no. To know it is to understand it and to have it right there.
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in between your ears. Okay, we're finished for today. So here's your call to action. Your next step is to find out which way works for you the best in memorization so that you can learn God's Word with faith between your ears. Back on the radio at three o'clock tomorrow, I'll be hanging out at SteveMarstonShow.com until then. Adios.
