Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / Jeff Schreve: Fake News, The Father Of Lies & ‘The Devil’s Newsroom’
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events,
- 0:10defending biblical Christianity.
- 0:13No topic, off limits.
- 0:16And now, here's your host, David Fierazzo.
- 0:20Friends, family and Christ, thank you so much for tuning in.
- 0:22Another great guest here to introduce you to in another excellent book to tell you about.
- 0:27First of all, it's called the Devil's Newsroom.
- 0:31It's by Pastor and author Jeff Shrieve.
- 0:35And we're just excited to talk about the book, the topics in here.
- 0:38He is the pastor of First Baptist Church, Texarkana.
- 0:42And he's got a ministry degree, he's got several ministry degrees.
- 0:47He's been at this for many, many years and he's got a podcast with his wife, his main
- 0:52website from hisheart.org.
- 0:56There it is, from hisheart.org.
- 0:59Jeff Shrieve, welcome to World View Matters, good to see you brother.
- 1:02Hey, thanks David, I appreciate you having me on.
- 1:05Well, thank you for your time and for writing a great book, the title, very provocative,
- 1:10drew me in right away, because man, the father of lies and the fake news today is off the charts.
- 1:20In every aspect of our culture, not just the media, government, public schools, Hollywood,
- 1:27oh my goodness, is there any part of culture where the fake news and the lies haven't been
- 1:33really kind of headlining?
- 1:36What do you think about that in all of our culture?
- 1:39We're just swimming in lies.
- 1:42So David, the premise of the book is because the devil is not just a liar among liars, he's
- 1:48the father of lies, Jesus said that in John 844.
- 1:52So every lie is going to trace back to him, because Jesus said there is no truth in
- 1:57him.
- 1:58Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he's a liar and the father
- 2:02of lies.
- 2:03And so in the devil's newsroom, we want to expose this one known as the devil, how he
- 2:10became the devil and how he works to deceive, to keep people from heaven and then to deceive
- 2:17Christians from enjoying the abundant life that the Lord promised for us to have.
- 2:24So the book website, friends, you can go directly to it.
- 2:27It's called thedevilsnewsroom.com, thedevilsnewsroom.com.
- 2:33So Jeff, did I, I think I saw somewhere, do you do a podcast with your wife at from his
- 2:38heart?
- 2:39Well, I'm on the radio with the American Family Radio every, every weekday morning
- 2:45from 8.05 to 9 a.m. central time.
- 2:48She's on there sometimes with me, but daily radio is, it's very daily.
- 2:53Oh, yeah.
- 2:54You got to give me on your toes and keep up with that.
- 2:57By the way, I love, love, love American Family Association.
- 3:01I love AFA, the work that they've done over the years, the Tim and Don Wildman and so praise
- 3:08God.
- 3:09It's a great opportunity to be there.
- 3:11So congrats on that.
- 3:13It's a great platform and great organization.
- 3:16So I think the question is, are the answers quite obvious, but because of all that's going
- 3:22on in our culture, in America, but also kind of in the church with the lies, the quote,
- 3:29fake news, false teachings, that's, is there anything other than those things that led
- 3:34you to write this book at this time?
- 3:37Well, you know, the impetus for this book came about many years ago when Donald Trump
- 3:44was running for president and he, the first time, and he kind of made famous the little
- 3:50phrase fake news, your fake news, you know, called out different news organizations.
- 3:55And so I preached a series of messages called fake news exposing the lies of the devil.
- 4:01And so that was, I think in 2013.
- 4:05And so we, we kind of took some of that and, and expounded upon it and, and massaged
- 4:10it some.
- 4:11And we didn't want to use the term fake news in the book title as far as the main title.
- 4:16So one of the girls in our office came up with the devil's newsroom and really exposing,
- 4:23you know, we're trying to shine the light on the devil's lies.
- 4:25So that, that Christians will be able to discern, hey, what, what is the truth here?
- 4:30And how do I, how do I keep my senses as the Bible says in Hebrews 514?
- 4:35My sense is trained to discern good and evil, very critical in the days in which we live.
- 4:41Yes, that's good.
- 4:42And by the way, friends, you know, God bless president Trump for calling out the lies,
- 4:46the hypocrisy, the bias, the corruption in the mainstream progressive liberal media.
- 4:51I, that's what started me writing and getting into this kind of work years and years ago.
- 4:56I couldn't believe what the media was getting away with and the fact that too many Americans
- 5:02were believing it and falling for it.
- 5:04And the church, we're just, we're human, we're Bible-believing Christians, we're human.
- 5:08We get affected by the lies also.
- 5:10Let's go back to one of the original lies.
- 5:12Did God really say, that doesn't, Jeff, doesn't a lot of it kind of, isn't a lot of
- 5:18it spun from that original lie of the enemy?
- 5:21Yeah, so the enemy is, as I said, he's not just a liar, he's the father of lies and the master liar.
- 5:29And so when you analyze Genesis 3 and his interaction with Eve, we know that's the devil
- 5:35because it tells us in Revelation 12, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan.
- 5:42David, sometimes we have skeptics that'll say, well, you Christians believe in talking snakes.
- 5:48Well, I believe in a talking devil and that was who came to Eve and he got her all twisted
- 5:55and he, if you look at how he does it, he does it in an economy of words.
- 6:00He doesn't say a lot to her that's recorded in Scripture.
- 6:03There may have been more that's not recorded there.
- 6:06But he takes the first thing out of his mouth.
- 6:08He takes the word of God and twists it and adds a question mark and gets Eve to start questioning
- 6:15the goodness of God, the character of God, can God really be trusted?
- 6:20And then from there, once she kind of starts falling in line with his line of questioning,
- 6:26then he starts to deny the word and then he twists it to say, you eat of this fruit and
- 6:32guess what?
- 6:33You're not going to die, which is a blatant lie, but you'll be like God knowing good
- 6:38and evil.
- 6:39And David, the thing that is so terrible about that is God wants us to be like him.
- 6:47First John 3 says that when he appears, we shall be like him for we shall see him as
- 6:51he is.
- 6:52But the devil wanted Eve to not depend upon God, be independent of God, eat of this fruit
- 6:58and you can be your own God and you won't need God.
- 7:02And that's really the heart of sin when we're tempted to sin.
- 7:05It's because we want to be our own God, we want to be our own boss, call our own shots.
- 7:10And that's really at the heart of every sin.
- 7:11Amen, brother.
- 7:13Good explanation.
- 7:14By the way, I want to mention the four word was written by U.S. Ambassador to Israel,
- 7:19Governor Mike Huckabee, author, pastor, he's a former governor of Arkansas.
- 7:23And he said, Jeff Shrieve is one of the most gifted biblical communicators in America.
- 7:27How did you connect with Mike Huckabee?
- 7:31So Mike used to pastor before he went into politics.
- 7:34He used to pastor here in Texarkana, he was on the Arkansas side, I'm on the Texas side.
- 7:38So he's had a connection to Texarkana and comes back periodically.
- 7:43A lot of people in our church are friends with him.
- 7:46And so Mike's been to first Baptist Texarkana, he's preached for me before and we've just
- 7:51developed a good friendship.
- 7:52He was very kind and gracious to write that very nice forward.
- 7:57Yes, yes, what a blessing.
- 8:00Also, we just want to mention some of the endorsements before we dive into the meat of the book
- 8:03a little bit more.
- 8:05Kurt Cameron, Jeff Kinley, who we've had on the podcast, Bishop E.W. Jackson, Jackson,
- 8:11we've had on the podcast, Alex McFarlane, we've had, it's just blessing.
- 8:15This great men of God endorsing the book.
- 8:20So let's get back to how Satan is using the misinformation crisis to spread lies as part
- 8:29of his agenda.
- 8:31Well, he, you know, he'll play off of things.
- 8:35One of the chapters in the book, David, is I call it spinning your circumstances and
- 8:40the devil loves to take negative circumstances that hit your life, that hit my life.
- 8:46It's just part of the deal here in a fallen world.
- 8:49But he takes those to try and give us misinformation, disinformation, blatant lies.
- 8:56God's not good.
- 8:57God can't be trusted.
- 8:58God doesn't love you.
- 9:00Your prayers don't go anywhere.
- 9:02Things aren't ever going to get better, you know, all that kind of stuff.
- 9:06And sadly, so many buy into that lie.
- 9:10And one of the things I mentioned in the book, and I think this is just something that I learned
- 9:15over the years, the reason why the devil's lies are so easily swallowed is because they
- 9:24tend to always match up with our feelings.
- 9:27And when we sin terribly, when the bottom drops out of our lives, when we get the phone
- 9:33call that says you have cancer or your loved one has been in a serious accident or you get
- 9:39a pink slip at work, whatever it might be, you can feel very abandoned.
- 9:44You can feel like God has, you know, left you in the dust and the devil, he emphasizes
- 9:52that and says, that's right.
- 9:53God doesn't care about you, God doesn't love you, see your circumstances, and he's constantly
- 9:58trying to get us to take our eyes off Jesus and onto the circumstances, kind of like what
- 10:03Peter did when he was walking on water.
- 10:05He was doing well until it says seeing the wind, he became afraid and beginning to sink
- 10:11he cried out, Lord, save me.
- 10:13So if we get our eyes off Jesus and put our eyes on our circumstances, we're dead meat.
- 10:18And his lies will come in like a flood and they will sound so true and so real.
- 10:25Just like David with Goliath, I mean, you can't, it's all told him, you can't fight him,
- 10:30you're a youth and he's been a warrior since he was a kid, you know, everything from the
- 10:36physical, from the natural says no, but we're to walk by faith and not by sight.
- 10:42I love the example you gave of Peter and how in our lives there is so much more than
- 10:49just a storm and waves of water that vie for our attention and distract us and get our
- 10:56eyes off of Christ, especially with all the technology today.
- 11:01Do you touch on that as well, Jeff, as some of those things that, you know, because it
- 11:05can take you down a road that's not going to help your walk with Christ?
- 11:10Yeah, the book that we don't really go into that in the book, but that is a, that's a real
- 11:14problem. The distractions in the Christian life are probably out in all time high.
- 11:20I'm 63 years old, David, and you know, when I was growing up as a kid, we had like three major
- 11:27channels and two UHF channels and we played outside a lot and there, you know, I mean, the biggest
- 11:33video game was pong or pinball, you know. So the distractions that kids have today and the
- 11:41opportunity for them to get into major league trouble before they're even 15 years old is just
- 11:49astronomical. And so parents need to be vigilant. What's going on with their kids and need to be
- 11:56praying and praying hedges of protection around their kids just as Joe prayed about his kids.
- 12:02But that the book doesn't talk as much about that. Well, you know, we're dating ourselves,
- 12:08but I remember Pac-Man and actually played that and other things. That was a while back. And when
- 12:13there were actually arcades, but so Jeff, what is it that make the devil's lies so believable?
- 12:22Is it the fact that maybe there's a little bit of truth or something that sounds good?
- 12:27Yes. Yeah, the devil. So that there's a there's a rule in aviation, David, that says it's called
- 12:36the one in 60 rule and it says for every one degree you're off your flight plan as you travel 60 miles,
- 12:43you'll be a mile off course. And so one degree is not a whole lot. And so the devil really
- 12:52specializes in that one degree off. So he'll give things. I think it was Charles Spurgeon that says
- 12:58that the the challenge is not between good and evil. It's between what is right and what is
- 13:05almost right. And so we have to be discerning because what he'll tell us will sound good.
- 13:14It seems plausible. For instance, I have a chapter in the book about the world's most believed lie.
- 13:20And the world's most believed lie is that good works somehow fit into our salvation. And you know,
- 13:29in whole or in part either yet saved completely by good works or it's Jesus plus your good works
- 13:34that get you to heaven. And the Bible's very clear. It has nothing to do with works. It has to do
- 13:39with what he did on the cross. Now good works are a result of salvation, but they're not the
- 13:44product of salvation. They don't produce salvation. We're going to take a brief pause here, Jeff,
- 13:49but I want you to repeat what you just shared about. I love that Spurgeon quote right or almost
- 13:56right. And could you repeat that about the pilots, the aviators one out of six. Could you repeat
- 14:02that again? I think that's very profound and very applicable. Yeah. So the one in 60 rule. So for
- 14:08every one degree that you're off your flight plan, traveling 60 miles, you're going to be a mile
- 14:16of course. So if you go across the country, you know, from JFK to LAX and you're one degree off,
- 14:23that's a difference between landing at the airport or landing in the ocean. It makes a big
- 14:27difference. Wow. That's huge. And I'm thinking about applying that, you know, when you apply it to
- 14:32the Christian life and in the word of God, if we're off the word of God and we're just just one
- 14:37degree, oh my goodness, it can take us in a completely different direction. Got to take a brief pause.
- 14:42We're with author and pastor Jeff Shrieve. The book is called The Devils Newsroom. We'll be right
- 14:46back. Today's show is brought to you by Harbinger's Daily. World news biblically understood. Stay
- 14:54informed at Harbinger's Daily dot com.
- 15:05So Jeff, I love for you to elaborate on something I read. I believe it was on inside the book.
- 15:12Or in the description anywhere, the back cover perhaps. These lies are as old as time.
- 15:19And yet how readily we still believe them to this day, believing the lies of Satan leads to a life
- 15:25of defeat and despair, but it doesn't have to be this way. And one of the lies is lies. God isn't
- 15:34really good. So elaborate on that a little bit more for us.
- 15:39Yeah. So that's in my chapter, liar, liar, where I talk about Genesis 3. You know, the
- 15:47question that the serpent, the devil poses to Eve, indeed, has God said, you shall not eat from
- 15:53any tree of the garden. Question mark. The devil is coming at her from the standpoint of saying,
- 16:00it doesn't make sense that God would make all these fruit trees and then tell you, uh, uh,
- 16:05you can't eat from every tree of the garden. And the reality is God didn't say that. He said,
- 16:11from any tree of the garden, you may freely eat, but there's one tree that you can't eat from
- 16:15from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Uh, if you eat of that tree in the day, you eat
- 16:21of it, you will surely die. So he paints God in a negative light that God would make all this and
- 16:27then say, you know, it's almost like a putting a carrot on a stick and say, oh, you can't have that.
- 16:32But God said, hey, I made this for you. I want you to enjoy yourself, but there's one tree you
- 16:38can't eat from. So it's very subtle how the devil lies. And that's why it says that the serpent
- 16:43was more crafty than any beast of the field, which the Lord God had made. He's always going to come
- 16:49very subtly. He doesn't hit us head on with, hey, here's a big lie. Get ready. Uh, it's always
- 16:56going to sound good. It's always going to make us question. Uh, and then once you start questioning
- 17:02the goodness of God, the word of God, the character and nature of God, he's got you on a path where he
- 17:08can twist you around like a pretzel. I mentioned this to somebody the other day, David. Uh, you know,
- 17:14the devil is such a good liar that he can make you think that up is down and right is wrong and black
- 17:20is white and a woman is a man and a man is a woman. And that's that's the world we're living in today.
- 17:28People actually argue that a biological male can be a female and vice versa. It's just ludicrous.
- 17:36Well, that was my next question. Thank you for setting that up, Pastor Jeff. Because I was thinking
- 17:42about that. I'm thinking, well, this is one of the illogical conclusions that you, here's how do
- 17:48you respond to this? How could God allow you to be born in the wrong body? Because some people
- 17:54really believe that. And the question I wanted to ask was these cultural movements and deceptions
- 17:59like gender, neutrality and fluidity, they so confusion and they cause people to doubt or even
- 18:06resent God, but they're based on lies, right? Right. Right. It's a total lie. And so once you start
- 18:13down that road, there's no off ramp. It's like, well, you know, I say this a lot, David. So the fear
- 18:20of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It's the beginning of knowledge. The Bible tells us that
- 18:25the fear of the Lord is like the first button in your button down shirt. If you get that wrong,
- 18:31I don't care how else you do the rest of the shirt. It's off because you miss the first button hole.
- 18:37And so the fear of the Lord is understanding that God is God and you're not God. You give him
- 18:42his rightful place as king and you take your rightful places, do us as servant. And then when
- 18:49then the world makes sense because, okay, God, this is how you set it up. This is what you said.
- 18:55You are good. You love me. The cross proves that you love me. And I can trust you even when I
- 19:01don't understand what you're doing because you understand it. And if you get that off and you
- 19:07start to question God in how He did things and how He created you and then you're just barking
- 19:14up a tree that's going to lead to misery. So you mentioned, we talked about Genesis, which if we
- 19:20get that foundation wrong, the book of Genesis, let them, Genesis 1 through 11 in particular,
- 19:27the whole thing. It's like the airline analogy again, you're way off if you get Genesis wrong
- 19:32and creation wrong. But you talked about the serpent from the book of Genesis, but what can we
- 19:37learn about it from the book of Ezekiel? Yeah. So when people read the Bible, they typically start in
- 19:44Genesis. It's the beginning of the book. And so it goes pretty well until you hit Genesis 4 and 5
- 19:50and it's a bunch of Hebrew names and it sounds like a Hebrew telephone directory and they get bogged
- 19:56down. But you know, we are introduced to the serpent, this creature that comes on the scene in
- 20:04Genesis 3. It's like, well, where did he come from? When did God make this devil? Well, God didn't.
- 20:10And you have to go into Ezekiel, the two passages in the Old Testament, Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14
- 20:18that give us the backstory, how the serpent became the serpent and how the devil became the devil.
- 20:23God didn't create a devil. He created a beautiful creature, an angelic being named Lucifer,
- 20:31that name means light bearer. And that one was the leader of the angelic host and the greatest of
- 20:38all the angels, but he couldn't handle being the greatest of all the angels. That wasn't enough for
- 20:44him. And so I have a chapter in the book of how he became the false, you know, false newscaster,
- 20:53the original, the OG of lies. And it was because he rebelled against God and he said, well, I will,
- 21:00I will be like the most high God and I'm going to overthrow God. And I tell you, David, he's such a,
- 21:06such a prolific and persuasive liar that he got a third of the angels to go with him in the
- 21:12rebellion. And so they all became demons. The good news is there are two thirds more holy angels
- 21:19than demonic spirits. But that is how the devil became the devil and Lucifer, the son of the
- 21:26morning became Satan the father of the night. That's really amazing. If you look at the world
- 21:33today in America, to think that only there's only a third of the angels that became demons that
- 21:39are having this, this, I guess, impact is really astounding to me. But you know, this is kind of
- 21:47go ahead. We don't know how many angels there are. So even a third could be a huge amount.
- 21:53Yeah, that's true. Okay, I don't want to get off topic. I'm going to get right back to the
- 21:57book. I think you alluded to chapter three already. The world's most believed lie. Did you
- 22:04share what that was or were you talking about something else in the chapter? Yeah, no. What that
- 22:09is is believing, you know, the Philippian jailer asked the question of Paul and Silas,
- 22:14sirs, what must I do to be saved? Right. And so we have in our minds that if I'm going to be,
- 22:21if I'm going to get to heaven, it's because of something that I do. And so works are just kind of
- 22:26baked into our mindset. And really when you boil it down, every religion outside of Christianity,
- 22:35biblical Christianity, every religion is spelled D-O. What must I do? I have to pray. I have to
- 22:42fast. I have to go to church. I have to give money. What do I have to do? And Christianity is the
- 22:48only one spelled done D-O-N-E. It's already done. All you do is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
- 22:55turn from sin and self and believe on Jesus. He did it all. I don't do anything. I just trust him
- 23:03to save me. It's kind of like I'm man drowning in the ocean. What did you do to be saved?
- 23:09I didn't do anything. The rescue team came and I lifted up my hand to say I'm here and they
- 23:16rescued me. That's all the Lord does for me. I mean, that's all we do. We don't contribute
- 23:20anything to our salvation. He saves us. We just have to cry out, Jesus, son of David, have mercy
- 23:25on me. Yes. And as believers in Christ, who people that listen to you, people that watch our
- 23:31podcast, you know, we have, we are messengers of reconciliation. We are ambassadors for Christ.
- 23:37It's not up to us to get people saved, but it is up to us to speak and share the gospel so that
- 23:43they can make a decision, right? Share a little bit more about maybe the church and the believers'
- 23:49responsibility to continue to share, no matter what, speak the truth because there are so many
- 23:56lies out there that seem to be prevailing in our culture today.
- 24:00Yes. So that's, you know, we're commanded in Scripture, Ephesians chapter four,
- 24:05we're to speak the truth in love and to grow up into all aspects into him who's the head even
- 24:10Christ. So it's incumbent upon Christians to grow in our knowledge of the Lord. It says in Hebrews
- 24:185, 14, solid food is for the mature who because of practice have their senses trained to discern
- 24:24good and evil. And so when you are born again, just like in the physical, you're born a little baby,
- 24:31you're born a spiritual infant, you long for the pure milk of the word that you may grow
- 24:36with respect to salvation. And then we hopefully get off the milk and then we're on to the meat
- 24:41of the word and we can feed ourselves and we can have our senses trained to discern good and evil.
- 24:48But if we don't have that David, then as Ephesians says, we're like children tossed here and there
- 24:54by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine by the trickery of man by craftiness and
- 24:59deceitful scheming. And so I think I think that's the way the devil really works. So he's trying to
- 25:06keep us from Christ so that you die and go to hell. And if he fails in that realm and you do become
- 25:12a Christian, then he's going to try and keep you from enjoying your Christian life and experiencing
- 25:18the abundant life. And the way he does that, he'll keep you away from the Word, he'll keep you
- 25:22away from prayer, he'll keep you away from the church and the fellowship of believers. All those
- 25:27things are critical for us to grow. There's an expression that I don't remember exactly what the
- 25:33quote or that idea is, but it goes something like, if Satan can't keep you from God, he'll keep
- 25:39you busy. So you won't be effective or productive for God. And that's another one of those lies.
- 25:46And that might lead to the idea of works again. I've got to be busy. You've got to do all this,
- 25:50do, do, do, like you said earlier, right? Right. Yeah, I think a lot of people fall into that trap.
- 25:55It's kind of a performance trap, you know, if I do a lot, then God will love me. But if I'm not doing
- 26:01a lot, God's not going to love me. And I don't know if you did this. When I was a kid, we would have
- 26:07like a girl that you liked in school and you'd pick up a flower. You know, she loves me. She loves
- 26:11me not. She loves me. She loves me. A lot of people do that with, they think that's how God does it.
- 26:16And God loves me when I'm doing well. And he doesn't love me when I'm doing poorly. And the reality
- 26:22is, and it's just a great truth. God loves you when you're at your worst. He still loves you. He
- 26:28doesn't love you because of of what you do. Adrian Rogers used to say this. God doesn't love you,
- 26:36or you're not valuable. How did he put it? God doesn't love you because you're valuable.
- 26:43You're valuable because God loves you. And everything flows back to God.
- 26:49You know what I thought of when you just shared that. By the way, I love Adrian Rogers. But I
- 26:53thought of Amago Day. If people just could grasp that truth that every human being, we're not,
- 26:59everyone is not a child of God, but we are all created in his image. We are valuable no matter
- 27:05who you are. There's an nugget to take away. But Jeff, we ran out of time, went by very,
- 27:10very fast. I just love to give the websites again from his heart doc or the ministry website.
- 27:15But the book website, thedevilsnewsroom.com. It was so great to connect with you,
- 27:21get to know you a little bit, Jeff, and appreciate the book and all you do and what you shared
- 27:25today. Thanks for your time. Thank you, David. I appreciate it. Thanks so much.
- 27:29Friends, God bless you. And as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.