Standing Strong in Faith Amidst Chaos and Change - Episode 10

Is the battle between good and evil more subtle than we've been led to believe? Join us as we dissect the profound spiritual struggle permeating our world today, drawing insights from Mormon theology, biblical prophecies, and the intriguing perspectives of figures like Tucker Carlson. We'll explore how the freedom to choose becomes a pivotal tool in this existential conflict, challenging the insidious influence of ideologies like fascism, socialism, and communism. As we stand at what many consider the cusp of the last days, the divide between followers of Christ and the rest grows ever sharper, leaving society at a crossroads with no room for neutrality. Yet, amidst this backdrop, a spark of hope emerges: the resurgence of religious interest among younger generations, possibly heralding a spiritual awakening.

Navigating faith in today's world is no small feat. We'll discuss the importance of personal responsibility in spiritual development, emphasizing the crucial role of prayer and active engagement with faith. Recognizing the unique spiritual paths each of us must take, we'll delve into the challenges of forgiveness, repentance, and resilience against societal pressures. As misinformation and the shadow of AI distort our perception of truth, personal revelation becomes our guiding light. Inspired by parallels to films like "The Matrix," we stress the importance of building a personal relationship with God to discern reality and stand firm as witnesses for Christ. Fear and anxiety may loom, but by embodying visible examples of faith, we can inspire a world that often opposes spiritual conviction.

Chapters

• 0:13 The Fight Between Good and Evil
• 7:39 Personal Responsibility in Spiritual Development
• 14:17 The Search for Truth

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:13

day late seems to be my standard lately, and I'm not too happy about that, but I gotta live with what, uh, what I can do as opposed to what I can't do. So I know this is a couple days late, but I've been listening to a lot of different podcasts and a lot of news. A lot of things have been going on lately and I'm sensing a trend or seeing a trend, and the trend is what I want to talk about today. As you know, especially if you're listening to this, this world is a fight between good and evil, and in the spiritual realm it is truly a fight between good and evil. I was listening to Tucker Carlson and he's become a very big proponent of talking about spiritual things, about how there is an actual fight between good and evil going on in the world, and it's a fight in the unseen realm, as we call it, the spiritual realm, right, and this fight has been going on since the creation of the earth, since Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden and, if you know Mormon theology, since before the creation of the earth, when Lucifer and a third of the hosts of heaven were kicked out of heaven because they essentially wanted to force God's children into obeying so that he would force everybody back to heaven. But God chose Christ, who would sacrifice himself to help others, so that everyone would have the freedom to choose, the freedom to choose right from wrong. Okay, and that's the key. Okay, that's the key.

Speaker 1: 2:32

This fight, this spiritual fight, is a fight between freedom and slavery. Call it what you will Fascism, socialism, communism they all have one key element is elites who know better forcing you to live a certain way. That's what it boils down to you being forced to do what you're told, whereas freedom, the ability to choose, the ability to choose the path for yourself, whether it's good or bad, is at the core of why we're here on earth. So this fight, this fight, this fight between good and evil, has been going on forever, and I find it funny how Satan is always depicted as this ugly monster with horns and he's red and he presides over hell, when the truth of the matter is that my guess is he would be a very good-looking man that is extremely well-versed in speech, because he's able to talk people into doing the most insane things that go against their own good. So this fight between good and evil has been going on forever, and it's your choices that you make on a day-to-day basis that determine which direction you're moving towards good, towards evil? You see, we're very rarely stagnant. In fact, as we get closer to the second coming of Christ, as we acknowledge we are in the last days, based on Revelation and based on the prophecies in the Bible, etc. As we are in this last time period before Christ comes, there's going to be a greater schism, a greater separation between those that follow Christ, those that know truth, and those that do not, and that schism is going to be so much worse as the world gets worse and the world gets darker, and you have to decide which side you want to be on. And you have to decide which side you want to be on.

Speaker 1: 5:29

I remember, years ago, hearing the prophet talk about the fact that there is no more room for fence sitters. The fact is that good and evil wage this constant battle and for many, many years, millennia even, there were fence-sitters, people that didn't want to be seen as too holier-than-thou, didn't want to be seen as too evil, and just kind of lived their life and didn't really do much in the way of good or evil. They were just there, figuring that they'd be good enough, and I like the phrase good enough for government work, right. You know I like the phrase good enough for government work, right, you know they'll get by. But the way the world is going, if you've noticed and your eyes are open, things are getting worse and worse on the morality front, on the spiritual front, and at the same time you have more people, I believe I've heard statistics that this younger generation, more young men, are going back to church, finding Christ than has happened in a long time, and this is a good thing. We want this to happen. And this is a good thing we want this to happen. We want you to find your way back. You know my generation. I'm Gen X and my generation we're known as the lost generation, and so many people that I knew growing up left the church, left religion, basically for one reason or another, because we were unsupervised and just life kind of happened and you get, I know, you know this.

Speaker 1: 7:39

Your life gets busy, you're working, you're raising the family and sometimes that can get in the way of you developing a relationship with your Heavenly Father and with Jesus Christ. If you let it and push to develop that relationship, then you're more likely to go off the deep end off, into the unspiritual, into the secular, into the secular, into the craziness that has things going on that are just disgusting right. So you have to actually take steps moving forward to develop your own relationship with God and Christ. It's not a passive thing. You can't just let it happen to you anymore. We have to actually make attempts. That's why I've done episodes about prayer. You know you have to develop habits and rituals that will keep you moving forward, because no longer can you be a passive follower of Christ, participant, in order to hold off the fiery darts of the evil one that are being thrown constantly.

Speaker 1: 9:34

Look at the constant political turmoil, the societal turmoil, where it went from. You know, marriage is between a man and a woman, to gay marriage, to. I just saw somebody pushing recently that pedophiles are people too, and it should be. It's just a sexual urge that should be legalized. Can you believe the depravity of that? And yet people are trying to normalize these things. The world is trying to normalize depravity, and so it is incumbent on you, on me, on all of us, as followers of Christ, to develop that relationship with our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, so that we can stand as a bulwark against that world.

Speaker 1: 10:32

It can only be done by you. Nobody else can build your testimony. Nobody else can build your testimony. Nobody else can strengthen your faith. Nobody else can take the steps necessary to build that relationship that you need. You can't even do it for your wife, your husband, your kids. You can show them the road, you can set the example, but each individual has to walk this path on their own.

Speaker 1: 11:10

That's why they say wide is the path that leads to destruction and narrow is the way that leads to eternal life. It's an individual path Each one of us has to walk, and here's the key, or not the key? Here's the kicker. We're all going to fall off it at times and have to get ourselves back up. We're all human, we're all sinners, we all make mistakes, and that's what forgiveness and repentance is for. The Lord doesn't expect us to be perfect. He expects us to be striving towards Him, repenting when we make mistakes, getting up when we've fallen down.

Speaker 1: 12:01

You ever been bucked off a horse? You got to get back up. Get back on that horse, otherwise you may be scared too scared to ever get back on. Fear, anxiety, anxiety is rampant. Have you noticed that Fear is one of the primary methods of control that is used by Satan, by politicians, by the world at large to try to control you, to try to make you afraid of standing out, of doing something different, of being a light set on a hill. There's a reason Christ said not to hide your light under a bushel, under a basket. A city set on a hill cannot be hid, and when you strive to do what is right, strive to do what is right, strive to improve yourself. Guess what? You will invite attacks. You may get bullied, it may be hard. Life is not easy. As Sylvester Stallone said in Rocky, life will knock you down, but it's how often you get back up. That's what matters, because your life, my life, all of our lives are improved when you get down, get back up. I should say dust yourself off and keep moving forward. Keep moving forward. When you can't go to work, when life is looking bleak, keep moving forward.

Speaker 1: 14:17

We're getting to a point in another episode I'm going to talk more about personal revelation where that will be the only way to determine truth. With the advent of AI and everything else, you have to have that relationship with God so that he can let you know what is real from what is false, what is part of the matrix and what is the real world? You know, I just rewatched the Matrix and the discussions between Morpheus and Neo, where he's talking about the Matrix and the program that was used to control the minds and how. Until we are shown the real world and have our eyes opened and are awake to what is actually happening, then we are in bondage. Most people are in bondage because they can't tell truth from lie. They're told misinformation, disinformation, all these other things are lies, and yet the truth is something totally different, totally different.

Speaker 1: 15:54

You have to be able to find out the truth for yourself and I'll do another episode on personal revelation to be able to find out truth, because it is so important in this day and age. The prophet has said that you have to develop that relationship with God in order to have that knowledge and that ability to discern truth. I'm going to leave it right there. What I want you to get out of this episode is that there is a fight between good and evil and it's up to you. You can't wait. It's the gospel and the Lord's. You need to build this relationship with God and with Jesus Christ, because it is paramount in today's society that you be able to have that relationship, because it is a fight between good and evil. There is a schism and a chasm between the world and the followers of Christ and you need to be able to stand as a witness in all times, in all places, and I'll leave that with you and I hope that you have a blessed day. Stand as a witness, don't be afraid. God is watching over you.