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Jimmy Swaggart’s death and the gospel in America’s future · The Daily Article

• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's Thursday, July the third, twenty-twenty-five.
• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Dinnison forums, Daily Article Podcast.
• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Chris Elkins, narrator, voicing today's Daily Article, written by Cultural Theologian and our CEO, Dr. Jim Dinnison.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: But Jimmy Swagger dies at ninety.
• 0:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Passionate Tel Avangilist was ousted by scandal.
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is how the New York Times headline its coverage of the well-known evangelist's death this week.
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Other outlets similarly linked his passing and the moral failures that plagued him in his ministry.
• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, here's a part of the time story that caught my eye.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was written by a reporter who died five years ago.
• 0:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: David Stout is listed as the author of the article.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: But at its end, we read David Stout, a reporter and editor at The New York Times for twenty-eight years died in twenty-twenty.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And a fetalman contributed reporting, in quote.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Clearly, the latter merely updated in article written at least five years ago by the former, so we know that the Times has, for several years, planned to run a profile of the evangelist that was written years before his death.
• 1:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: The good news is that with God, our story is never over, until it's over.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: My purpose is not to minimize Jimmy Swagger's faults.
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Rather, it is to point to the transforming grace of Christ whereby no sinner is beyond the reach of repentance and redemption.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: This amazing grace is the foundational hope of our nation as we approach our two hundred and forty-nineth birthday.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our system of governance as enlightened as it was when it was forged and as it remains today cannot change a single heart or transform a single soul.
• 1:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: If America is to be what Americans pledge to be, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all, we must truly be under God.
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: We can be indivisible only if we are united in a cause higher than ourselves.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: We can selflessly and sacrificially offer liberty and justice for all.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Only if our sinful and selfish hearts are transformed by God's grace.
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: As my wife noted in her blog yesterday, Ronald Reagan was right, quote, if we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under."
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: John Quincy Adams would have agreed.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our sixth president and son of our second was the most intelligent man ever to serve as the chief executive of our nation.
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Modern experts put his IQ at around a hundred and sixty-five, in company with Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was fluent in seven languages and could read in several more.
• 2:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: As the young child of one of America's most instrumental founders, he had a front row seat to the birth of our nation.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: He later explained its greatness this way.
• 3:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: The highest, the transcendent glory of the American Revolution was this.
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It connected in one indesoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the precepts of Christianity.
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, if Adams was right, these precepts are as vital to our future as they were to our founding.
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Put yourself in God's position for a moment, as Audacious as that sounds.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: From first John IV verse eight, you love all people equally because God is love.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: But as a father, you can bless only that which blesses your children.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your holy nature requires you to judge sinful nations and to elevate nations that elevate your word and will referencing Deuteronomy thirty verses fifteen through twenty.
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Psalmist declaration in Psalm thirty three first twelve is therefore only logical.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.
• 3:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: As a result, any nation that ignores biblical truth and rejects biblical morality places its
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: in peril of losing God's favor and incurring his judgment.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Conversely, any nation that embraces biblical truth and practices biblical morality places itself in position to experience his best for the people and through them to the world.
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our family once hosted a pastor friend from Cuba for dinner.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: During our conversation, he told us that he had been studying American history and had decided why God had blessed America so fruitfully.
• 4:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: His explanation, God has blessed America because American Christians seek to bless the world.
• 4:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: His assertion is both reasonable and biblical.
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, any nation as populous and disparate as ours will comprise both those who embrace and share God's word and those who ignore and even reject it.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was so at the founding and remain so today.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: In Psalm eleven verse three, the Psalmus asked, if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: The answer simple.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Rebuild them.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: How?
• 5:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Two responses are obvious, but nonetheless vital.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: One, make Christ our personal king each day so fully that our lives display his glory and draw others to him.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: It should be our humble aspiration to be able to say to our fellow Americans what Paul said of himself in first Corinthians eleven verse one, be imitators of me as I am of Christ.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: To, intercede, fervently for the Holy Spirit to advance spiritual awakening across our nation in humility and repentance, so that God will hear from heaven and will forgive our sin and will heal our land from second chronicle seven verse fourteen.
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: also referenced by Psalm eighty five for six, and Habakkuk chapter three verse two.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: From Psalm one hundred and eighteen verse eight, the Psalmist advised, it is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is because the Lord offers transforming grace, found nowhere else according to Isaiah fifty seven verse fifteen.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.
• 6:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Conversely, in verse twenty one of Isaiah fifty seven, there is no peace says my God for the wicked.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: The old Maxim is therefore the principle that frames American history from our founding to this moment.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: No God, no peace.
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: No God, no peace.
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Which will be true for you and the cause of you today.