Born to Win Podcast - with Ronald L. Dart

Real prophets do not read tea leaves. They do not tell the future by looking at your palm. And you’ll never catch a real prophet studying astrological charts for insight. Well, then, how do they do see the future? The answer is simple: they don’t. A real prophet just minds his own business until God speaks to him. And when God speaks to him, it is a transforming experience. There’s a classic example of this in one of the truly great writing prophets; his name is Isaiah. There’s a distinction, you know, between the oral prophets and the writing prophets. Elijah, as far as we know, wrote nothing. His prophecies were for the time and the people who were at hand. But there’s a group of prophets who not only spoke to their generation, they wrote the prophecies down. And when you realize the significance of that fact, you begin to see that these were written for posterity—for succeeding generations—because they had a message, they had something to say to the generations that were to come. Isaiah wrote down his experiences for us, and his first encounter with God is found in Isaiah, chapter 6. Isaiah was in the temple when it happened. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. I cried. Lord Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, And I said,

Do you suppose it’s possible that we would ever have a real prophet show up in our country? You know, like Elijah, Isaiah, or Jeremiah—one of those guys. Someone who would tell us the truth about what we are doing, where we are going wrong, and where it would finally take us? If a prophet really came, would we pay him any mind? I don’t mean will the politicians in Washington pay him any mind. What about you and me? Of course, for a man to be a genuine prophet, he has to have a reputation as a prophet. He has to be recognizable. He has to be believable. People who claim to be a prophet are a dime a dozen. How can you know for sure? Well, it can’t be a matter of guesswork. It has to be based on something real. Take Elijah, for example. Why should anyone have paid attention to Elijah? It certainly wasn’t his appearance. He was a hairy man and wore a leather girdle. I expect he would have looked right at home on a Harley Davidson motorcycle. And it wasn’t elegance of speech. It is hard to imagine a preacher with fewer words. But what words they were. Let’s hear his message to King Ahab in 1 Kings 17.

I suspect the months leading up to the year 2000 saw more prophecies than any comparable period since, well, the last time they moved into a new millennium. But they weren’t really prophecies; they were just predictions. What’s the difference, you may ask? Well, predictions are not expected to be perfect—they are made on scientific data, like weather predictions or stock market predictions—and they can be wrong. Prophecy (at least, by real prophets) is made under divine inspiration—they speak on behalf of God. They are supposed to be infallible. Now, how are you supposed to tell if a prophet is telling you the truth or not? How can you tell if he’s a real prophet or just a false prophet, or a predictor, astrologer, or whatever else it may be? Well, if you’re talking about God, then the place to go is the Bible, obviously. There are two interesting statements in the Bible (in the Law of God, specifically) dealing with how you answer this question I just asked: How do you know if a prophet is telling the truth or not? With all the modern-day prophecies we are hearing, these could be useful bits of information. The first one is found in the 18 chapter of Deuteronomy. Here, Moses speaking on behalf of God warns: But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die. And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.

We were eating in a Chinese restaurant some time ago, and I noticed something funny about my fortune cookie. On the back of the fortune (which, I think, said I was going to have a good year) it had a series of numbers. It was only the second or third time I saw those numbers there that I realized what they were. There were six, two-digit numbers—lottery numbers. How exciting! Here, within my fortune cookie, are the winning numbers for this week’s lottery. And I’ll bet a lot of people actually go out and buy a lottery ticket based on those numbers, given to them by a cookie. There were eight people at my table that night, and all eight of us had different numbers. All 80 people in the restaurant probably had different numbers. I can’t think of anything, really, that better illustrates the stupidity of fortune-telling. You know, somewhere, someday, by the sheer weight of probability, someone is going to get a winning set of numbers out of a fortune cookie—and they will forever believe that they won because the fortune cookie told them what was going to be. They’ll tell their friends. It may never occur to them that the cookies were wrong five million times and right once. The people who make fortune cookies know that they are nothing but entertainment. We’ll get a laugh out them and pass them around to fit a fortune with a person—but they usually fit everyone in some way. All around the country, you’ll find astrology columns in the newspapers. Try to pin down the truth from any astrologist and they’ll tell you it is all for entertainment, as well. None of you really take it seriously, do you? The hunger to know the future is so strong that people make real-life decisions based on the star charts and readings of astrologers, and based upon the predictions of psychics and others. Do you remember when Orange County, California—one of the richest counties in America—went bankrupt? You may or may not have heard what happened: the man who was investing their money was consulting a mail-order astrologist and a psychic for interest rate predictions—losing $1.6 billion of public money. He was not alone in wanting to know the future; we all want to know it sometimes. Last year, Americans spent over $300 million calling psychic hotlines. But there is one thing that is very important for you to know about the future. And if you know it, it will save you a lot of money, heartache, and frustration—and probably from making some bad mistakes based upon other people’s advice.

Is God a time traveler? How does God know the future? I know the question sounds a little silly. After all, God is God and he knows everything, right? But hold on a second; let’s develop that question a little bit. It may not be as silly as it sounds. In fact, this question is one of the most important questions you can ask about the future. Is God a time traveler? Does he run forward in time and see all the things that are there and then return and tell us mortals what there are? Or does he merely see the future on something like a cosmic television set. Someone once said that Is that true? Well, let me see if I can explain the problem connected with it: if God is a time traveler, or if he merely sees the future, or if prophecy is history written in advance, that means that the future already exists; the timeline is all written out. Otherwise, how could it possible be known? So the future is all there and written out. Every one of your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren are already known. Isn’t that interesting? It sounds good, doesn’t it? However, along with that is the fact that one of your grandchildren will get drunk one night, load five of his friends into his car, and then drive head-on into an 18-wheeler…well, that’s all written down, too. And there’s not a thing in the world that you can do to stop it—if the future already exists. The fact that the Nazis would create death camps in Eastern Europe and then gas millions of Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and mental defectives was all written in advance—and there was nothing anyone could do about it. When you think about it this way, it’s really a small wonder that some people become angry and disillusioned with God. They want to know why God wrote the future that way when he could have written it another way. It’s just another way of saying, And if prophecy is history written in advance, then what’s the point of all this? Don’t you think it gets a little boring for God knowing exactly what’s going to happen? And since it is already written out, well, there’s nothing he can do about it—nothing we can do about it. And why should we worry about the decisions we make? If we make a bad one, it wasn’t our fault—it was written in advance. The whole idea of divine forgiveness becomes a mockery: it was written that we should sin, and if it wasn’t our fault why would we need forgiveness? But what if it is not that way? What if the future does not exist? What if the future is being written, one day at a time, by the choices that human beings make?

Unless you have just recently arrived from outer space, you have probably heard of Nostradamus. The odds are you don’t know very much about him; you may have heard that he made a lot of predictions or prophecies and that some of them have come true. And the presumption is that those that haven’t come true—well, those must be somewhere out in the future and have yet to take place. Let me see if I can get you into the picture on Nostradamus. He was born in France, of Jewish parents, in 1503. In his lifetime, the Inquisition was active and very hard on Jews. The approach to trying to convert the Jews in those days was fairly simple: you brought them in, showed them the instruments of torture, threatened to burn them at the stakes, and gave them the choice to accept Catholicism or die. It’s a very effective technique of evangelism; the Muslims used it throughout the known world, in their day. And so, Nostradamus’ Jewish parents converted to Catholicism when he was nine. He became a highly intelligent, well-educated man and a physician. In the process, he also became an astrologer and a clairvoyant. He’s been called a prophet by some writers, but that’s an inexcusable bit of ignorance on their part. There is a wide gulf between a prophet on the one hand and an astrologer or clairvoyant on the other. Nostradamus will serve us well as an example of the latter two. His work exists in collections of ten sets, each containing 100 four-line poems. His predictions are written in highly symbolic language. They are also in archaic French, with a number of other old languages mixed in—so they are very difficult to translate and just as difficult to interpret. With all the peculiar metaphors, figures of speech, and even unknown terms that are in them, the interpreters have a lot of latitude in expounding one of Nostradamus’ quatrains. For example, the following could have any number of possible meanings: The sloping park, great calamity, Through Hesperia and Lombardy; The fire in the ship, plague and captivity, Mercury in Sagittarius, Saturn fading. So, through sometimes rather creative interpretation, some of Nostradamus’ predictions have come to pass. So is he a prophet? What are we to make of astrologers, clairvoyants, and the like? Well, not much. First, let’s consider Dart’s First Law of Prediction…

Years ago, in watching the three memorial services for Ronald Reagan, and all the formality that went with them, I found myself strangely touched. There were several moments when I had a lump in my throat. I thought it was altogether fitting and right to have such a memorial for one of the great presidents of the greatest and most powerful nations the world has ever seen. People will argue about Reagan’s place in history. Frankly, I think it is folly to try to rank all the presidents. Washington and Lincoln had to face utterly unique situations, and so they were utterly unique presidents. But what I’m talking about in my message today is not about the presidents. It is about the greatest, wealthiest, and most powerful nation in history. I know, in their own days, Greece and Rome were great and powerful. And the British Empire at its peak was indeed a great empire on which the sun never set. These were nations that created empires. There is no American Empire, however, because Americans have never wanted one. In our history, Americans have mainly wanted to be left alone. Left alone to build families and businesses. Left alone to live and enjoy life. Fortunately (or unfortunately) history has not left us alone. And, as I watched the greatest nation bury one of her greatest presidents, I was overwhelmed with an awareness of how great and powerful this nation has become. And some questions grew in my mind: To what do we owe our greatness as a people? Are there any obligations that go with that greatness, that power?

We have two sources of information about God. First, we have his revelation of himself in the Bible. Second, we have God’s revelation of himself in the creation. From those two witnesses we have a glimpse into the entirety of God’s plan—from now all the way back to . Let’s think the unthinkable for a moment. The first words of the Gospel of John tell us that in the beginning, the Word already was. It did not come into existence in the beginning, it just simply was. What I want us to think about today, though, is the time before the beginning. (I warned you that I wanted us to think the unthinkable.) So, is there anything from these two witnesses that we can use to better understand what happened before the beginning?

In any age, and under all conditions, men and women of God have serious responsibilities. In sickness or in health, in poverty or in wealth, we have a job to do. Perhaps you don’t think of yourself that way—as a . But if you take his name upon you—if you are a Christian or a Jew—you are his man, his woman, and you are where you are for his purpose. Jesus, in his first recorded sermon, told his listeners: You are the salt of the earth: but if the salt has lost its savor, how shall it be salted? it is thereafter good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a lamp, and put it under a bushel, but on a lamp stand; and it gives light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. I don’t know if you’ve thought about it, but this is a serious responsibility he has laid upon us. We’re not just here for ourselves. We’re not just going through this exercise for ourselves. We’re going through it for him and for the light we shine toward other people. I would think that our age is far from the most challenging that men of God have ever faced, but it may be more pivotal than we might think. I think we are standing on the cusp of history—a knife edge between two worlds. What, then, must we do?

Sometimes, when I am studying the Bible, I find myself faced with a mystery. What on earth was God saying or doing on this occasion and what does it mean? Someone once complained about this wondering why God hid things from us. , he wanted to know, I have two things to say about that: One: How plain does God have to be? What part of do we not understand? The truth is, the Ten Commandments are a plain, unambiguous statement of how we should live our lives. Two: When you have found your own way to an answer to a difficult question, you are far more likely to remember it. And I could add a third: God loves a mystery. We should understand that well enough. There are people who take great pleasure in designing crossword puzzles that drive us crazy. But there may be a more serious side to this. There is a rather difficult passage in Paul’s letter to the Romans that reveals something unexpected. Here, Paul is trying to sort his way through a vexing problem. Let’s take a look beginning in Romans, the 11 chapter.

Like every American I have read and heard the Gettysburg Address more times than I can recall. I had the singular misfortune not to be required to memorize it when I was in school, because was right when they featured a brand new book about the Gettysburg Address and called it . And, in one of the truly great ironies of speeches, it was only two 272 words. Seven sentences—the greatest speech in American history. The book U.S. News was featuring is titled , by Gabor Boritt. The title is another irony. How can the Gettysburg Address be the Lincoln speech that nobody knows? Sometime ago I watched the movie and was riveted by the story, the battle, how it was fought and I was sickened at the tragic loss of life. Why, I wondered, do these march in straight lines across an open field with no cover, under Union cannon fire. It made no sense. And then when they came within rifle range, the Union soldiers were cutting them down like wheat and they just kept on coming until finally a few of them got through. I didn’t learn until I watched the extras that came with the DVD I was watching, that I was witnessing an effect that is now understood by military planners: tactics and strategy (that is the way you go about war and fighting the battles) always lag behind technology. The South was following a tried-and-true tactic for advancing against musket fire. You know, a musket was a smooth-bored gun. The bullets came out of there, not spinning, but just static in terms of that and it buffeted as it went out into the air. The result of this was that you could hardly have any idea of where the thing was going to strike when it finally did strike. Well, maybe a little bit, but not much. And, of course, it would not have had the impact. But the Union soldiers were using guns with rifled barrels. That meant it gave the ball a spin coming out of the barrel which extended both the range, the accuracy, and the impact of the ball when it got where it was going. So, the South was marching out with musket tactics against rifles. But I still had very little feeling for what really happened on that day. I could see it in a movie; it was sickening in the movie. But Boritt begins his book, not with the battle, but with the aftermath in the town of Gettysburg.

When the framers of our American constitution first gathered, they faced a fundamental question. The question was not merely, The question was, remain Those men knew their history, and they knew that history was against them. The first step in gaining freedom was past—it was the American Revolution. They had step two before them—writing a constitution. But the biggest challenge lay beyond their horizon—sustaining freedom. And law is not enough to sustain it. We believe in the rule of law in this country. It is carefully drawn as a distinction from the rule of a king. What we haven’t really considered is that the law can become just as tyrannical as a king. How does it happen? Well, just look at how the courts are interpreting the law nowadays. We are no longer being governed by all the people, but by the law as interpreted by a few judges. And what is guiding the judges—the constitution, or the customs of the time? According to Os Guinness: [The framers] knew their history in a way many modern political leaders to their shame don’t. If you have a corruption of customs […] the Constitution itself will be subverted. People will follow the same laws, but with a different rationale, and you’ll see a steady decline. What was the Framers’ solution to this? Many people think it’s the Constitution and law. It isn’t. That’s only half the answer. The other half is quite clear and incredibly overlooked today, even among scholars. It’s what I call the

I remember first seeing the movie in the theater over 50 years ago. One of the things I remember from the film was the stentorian voice pronouncing: I recall thinking how awkward the King James English was in the picture at that point. I knew it was a citation from the Bible. What I did not know at the time was that the sentence was engraved on the Liberty Bell, cast in 1753. But I think those writing the script of the movie knew it well enough—and the connection was deliberate. The dominant theme of the movie was liberty. And, while one might not pick up on it at first, it is plain enough: You can’t just free the slaves and guarantee liberty for them. It was the Ten Commandments that formed the foundation and pillar stones of liberty for those newly freed. That’s why James writes this in the New Testament…

The founding fathers stated in the first official document of our nation that our rights and our freedoms are granted, not by men, but by God. And we laid the foundation of the laws of this nation on those rights. In a way, we made a covenant with God in our founding. Through the years of our history, we have become the wealthiest and most powerful nation the world has ever seen. And unlike the great empires of the past, our nation has a commitment to freedom and the rights of man—rights we declared were given by God. We need to consider the obligations that fall to us with the wealth and the power we have in our hands. When you have the power, the means in your hand to do something about the freedom of a people, how can you withhold your hand from giving it?

What’s really going on in the world? And what is this really about. When you get to the basics, what people call terrorism is actually a war against the spread of freedom. The war is being waged by the enemies of freedom. Their motive? They are mortally afraid. What are they afraid of? Well, freedom of course. They think we are the problem, and that’s why they struck the World Trade Center. They want us to stop the invasion of what they call into their world. But we can’t stop it. We aren’t the cause of it, merely the harbinger. We are no more the cause of freedom than the first robin on your lawn is the cause of spring. We aren’t the cause of Freedom—God is. And their own people are beginning to demand freedom and the enemies of freedom are deathly afraid. The criminals who are behind all the death and destruction in the name of Allah are afraid of liberty in the same way, and for the same reason, that the Jewish establishment feared Jesus. Here was a man who could step up to a man born blind and make him see; a man who could heal a withered arm, could heal a woman of a flow of blood that no one else could stop, could even bring back to life a man who had lain dead for four days; a gentle man, soft spoken, harmless. And the Jerusalem establishment wanted to kill him. Why?

If power corrupts (and we know it does) and absolute power corrupts absolutely, how is it that God has not been corrupted? This is one of the old and popular challenges that unbelievers like to toss out to Christians. Actually, it is a perfectly legitimate question, and the answer to it opens the door to understanding and resolving a wide range of issues relative to God and the Bible. It was Lord Acton who coined the statement about power, and I am beginning to understand why it is so. And perhaps why the founders of this country were so dedicated to the balance of powers, and preventing the centralization of power. There is now, and long has been, a struggle between power and freedom. I think it is fair to say that there is enmity between power and freedom. Freedom is a threat to power, and power is a threat to freedom. It has always been so. Why, then, does God not become corrupted by power? The answer is relatively simple, but for some reason, people don’t see it. God has a goal in mind that requires freedom for all concerned. Surely we can all understand how having an over riding objective tends to diminish every other consideration. So what is that objective? Before I answer that question, I want to talk about the issue of freedom. It has been very much on my mind of late, because I fear a considerable loss of freedom is in the works for mankind—if present trends continue. To explain this, at the risk of boring you, I have to go back to the beginning.

As I watch the way our government is changing, I can’t help thinking back to a time when man enjoyed maximum freedom under God. The story is in the Bible, of all places, and it describes, of all things, a theocracy. Many nowadays worry that Christians want to establish a theocracy in this country, but they needn’t worry. You can’t establish a theocracy in a country that doesn’t recognize God. In the Bible, the story of the theocracy (and its end) is told through the books of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel. It began, ironically, with another freeing of slaves—in that case, the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. If you think about it very long, you’ll know that you can’t just grant men Liberty by setting them free. Merely freeing the slaves leads only to anarchy. To really be free requires an internal commitment to the rule of law, and the only law that can guarantee Liberty is the Law of God. So, God brought Israel out of Egypt and 50 days later, spoke to them all from the slopes of Mount Sinai. What did he have to say? He gave them what the Bible calls his —Ten Commandments. The people were frightened beyond measure at the display of power, but they agreed to the words of the Ten Commandments and voluntarily entered covenant with God as their king. It was this law, and God, that guaranteed their liberty, and that is why James, in the New Testament, calls it the . It is a long and difficult story through the conquest of Canaan and the establishment of the nation. But fundamental to the nation and the economy were the same principles that guided the fathers of this country.

Is there such a thing as ? It’s a disturbing idea—that there might be something I could do that could never be forgiven. And, since I have had the question in last day or so, I thought I might tell you what I know about it. It is, I think, rather more complicated than a set of a few proof texts commonly quoted and explained. Let me start with what God is really like. The images people carry around in their heads about God often bear little resemblance to the real God of creation and the Bible. To some, God is a kind of grandfather in the sky. Not really a Father, because a father is more immediate and judgmental. No, a grandfather is better, because they let you get away with more stuff. I might despair of really understanding God if it weren’t for some revealing statements in the Bible. Take this quote from Jeremiah, for instance. Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the Lord.

The conscience is the inner sense of what is right and what is wrong in our conduct and our motives. It’s supposed to be that guiding light that says, thisthat It’s that sense which impels us towards the right kind of actions. It’s that complex of moral and ethical principles that controls or inhibits our actions and thoughts. And, when that’s gone or corrupted, how are you going to live your live? It is possible that we’ve brought up a generation of kids with no conscience, no shame? Let’s talk about this for a minute. A generation with no conscience will be governed by what? Well, it won’t be governed by any sense of right and wrong. What’s left is that they will be governed by what they can get away with. If nobody will find out about what we have done, it isn’t necessarily wrong. If it doesn’t hurt me, cause me any problems, or get me in trouble than it isn’t something I have to be concerned about. All rules are then external. If we can get around them, to our benefit and without getting caught or punished, it’s okay for us to do that. Right and wrong conduct, then, will be directed by the odds of getting caught against the possible gain from the crime—a simple punishment/reward ratio. Is that what we’ve come to? No conscience—just a question of what works and what doesn’t.