FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Scott Dawson Evangelistic Association - Jeff Poor Show - Tuesday 7-30-24.
[Music] Welcome back to the JetPort show, and if I'm talking about 065, they should stay with us on this Tuesday morning. Text line is still wide open, 2513430106, that's how you get touched with the program. If you so choose, text is preferred, still waiting James, the unofficial troll of the JetPort show, we will get to you in the next segment or perhaps beyond. Joining us now from the Scott Dawson Evangelistic Association, you may remember him from 2018, ran for Governor Scott Dawson on the line with us. Scott, good morning, are you? Good morning, Jeff, it's good to be back with you, I'm doing well, I hope you are. Doing well, doing well, thanks for making time for us, we do appreciate it coming on this program. Like I said, it's been a while, and we're talking a little offline, but what have you been up to since, I guess, wow, you believe how long it's been, over the six years, right? Seems like a lifetime ago, but made some great relationships, and I still believe in the calls in which we ran. But then, you know, our Evangelistic Association is still booming, our student conferences average about 16,000, so I'm passing with the time to the next generation. Just finished up in Knoxville, hard for an Alabama fan to be up in Tennessee, but man, I tell everyone, we interviewed Rick Barnes, the head basketball coach, solid follower Christ, Drew McCoy, who called the pass that led to the field go to beat Alabama a year and a half ago, and then Kirby, the pitcher for the National Championship, all of them are solid followers. It's hard for someone like me to pull against them, but being in true Alabama fashion, Jeff, I will find a way. You know, there is, when there's a will, there's a way, we will still pull against them. Well, I will always cheer for the Tennessee Volunteers over Alabama. That's Steve Bitter, little brother Auburn speaking in me right there. I understand. Just, I'm sorry, I'm a flawed human being. I will never be able to be in the role tied stuff. I can stand. That's the reason we're all still under construction, man. I'm still under construction. SBC Sports will still control. I like going to Tuscaloosa. Some of my best friends are Alabama fans, but I will never be able to, I just can't do it. So anyway, let's talk about a few things here. And the reason I asked you on, I heard you on JT's radio show yesterday up in Birmingham, and I thought it's just really appropriate. Give it what we saw Friday night. But Scott, how much, how many more times do we have to go through this like shock value sort of campaign against Christianity? We're trying to, everybody's trying to outdo each other. And it's always, it's always faith in like traditional sense, right? It's never, it's never another faith. It's Christians who seem to be targeted with this stuff. They've tried to explain it away today, but it's clear what was going on there. I mean, drag plus last supper. Ha ha, we got you again, you silly Christians. I'm so tired of that narrative. Yeah, and unfortunately, you know, now they try to explain it, like they're trying to be inclusive. And not safe. And if you're going to be inclusive, why didn't you mock the pilgrimage to Mecca of the Islam faith? I mean, you would never see. In fact, I think as a follower of Christ, I would be the first one to be outspoken about them doing something like that because I'm calling on all world religions to denounce this. Because it just seemed like they picked Christianity out of the bunch. Because one, I mean, it is a religion, a way, you know, you think about it like this, yeah. To me, everybody got mad and understand I'm not trying to douse those flames with water. It is upsetting to all of us, but as I fall through it, it kind of gave me a validity of my faith because they intentionally mocked Jesus Christ. And so if you look at Jesus, if he says he's the Son of God and he's not, he's a liar. If he thought he was the Son of God and he wasn't, he was crazy. But if he is the Son of God and he went to the cross and resurrected on the third day, and sent it to the Father, one day he promised to come back, then he is Lord overall creation and scripture reveals in John chapter 3 that light came into this world and they chose to reject it. So what we're seeing live out before us as a follower of Jesus Christ is as relevant as the scriptures are on that page, that it is the, it is the, it's not a religion, it's that God wants a relationship with us. And we've tried to dumb God down into an idol and making what we want him to be. And my statement is Jesus will never meet you in a conference room and negotiate with you. We come down under his terms, under his provisions, or we don't come at all. He is the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. And so sorry, I got on my soapbox, but understand the world brought this to our front door. I'm just opening it up going, God understands you can't be neutral with Jesus. You need to receive Him for who He is, or you're acting just like what we saw on Friday night and you reject Him. Well, here's what it looks like to be a, this has been kind of my take on it for a while. I mean, we hear separation of everything and religion, right? Not just separation of church and state, but it's, it's, it's every, every asset, every facet of American culture, anything like, no, no, no, you can't talk about this. But what I think the secular, maybe it's the left or maybe it's other elements politically, but then it doesn't really matter who they are, where they are politically. It's like we want the separation of everything in morality and Christianity to them represent some kind of morality or some kind of moral code that is rejected. But I mean, I could, and that's where this like a lot of this behavior, or a lot of this sort of anti-Christian attitude or sentiment is coming from to me. Yeah. Well, and understand, Jeff, as a follower of Christ, I do understand there are some thou shalt not in scripture. But I think for the Christian faith, we should be on the offense right now of going, look, we're, you, you don't really have a problem with us. You got a problem with Jesus, and you got to force people to either receive or reject Jesus, and not the political Jesus, not the social Jesus, not the environmental Jesus, but the redeemer Jesus, the one who went to the cross because scripture says, God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made to righteousness of God through Jesus Christ, that he paid the debt that I owe. We have bad news in this world. The bad news is we're sinners. The worst news is there's nothing we can do about it. But the good news is Jesus paid that debt for you and you can change your life. And so as the church, I tell everyone right now, let's just take a breath. Let's get our feet back under us. But let's start now by making sure our family knows the real Jesus, our neighbors know the real Jesus, our friends know the real Jesus, and as the world begins to see that Christians should not be known for what we stand against. Christians should be known for who we stand for. And that's Jesus Christ because Jesus is the one that changes your life. The Holy Spirit is the one that reveals to us what is sin and what is not sin. And as He leads us, I just believe we've almost made a mistake here of building Christianity around a set of morals, which we understand there are guidelines for a follower of Christ. But Jeff, lost people act like lost people. But you saw Friday night where lost people acting like lost people. Well, I tell you one thing that is at least a little of the silver lining here is that watching that there are people that just shrugged us off. They were bothered by what happened on Friday night. And I know that's kind of, but sometimes it does feel like you're alone in this journey. And I mean, sure, we have our church family and whatnot, but especially in my business where everything is so secular and they're trying to replace like your higher power from your faith and church to the government. But, you know, one of the things that's just seeing people really upset by this at least tells me that, hey, at least I'm not alone here with this. Well, think about this. How many more times do we have to see it? We've already seen the crucifixion depicted by under the guidelines of, quote, "art," unquote, being in urine. We've seen the movie several years ago depicting Jesus as a man of lust. We've seen so many mockery of this that we have to come back and understand in America for 240-plus years, we've had really just freedom. But go to our brothers and sisters across this world. And there's a lot of persecution. In fact, all you have to do is read Hebrews chapter 11. It's the chapter of faith. And you see the phrase, and some were burned at the stake, and some were with knives, and some were hung. I mean, we have to understand persecution of the church that's been around since the New Testament because I believe it is a matter of people choosing their sin over... Do you think it's under threat here? What does that look like? What do you foresee or what are the possibilities of that maybe not being around much longer? Well, I tell everybody, there's a reason the Andy Griffith Show was on six decades ago. I don't think it would make it today because society has changed so much. And I guess because prior to my focus being on America, I remember being in South Africa, Jeff, and a pastor looked at me before I went out and spoke, and he said, "There's not a person in this audience that wants to go to Iran, wants to go to Russia." He said, "There's not even but a few that want to go to London. Everybody wants to go to America because, as America goes, so goes the world." And I started thinking about that. As America goes, so goes the world world. I was in Egypt during the Muslim Brotherhood uprising, and I met with pastors, and they gave me a word. They said, "Don't pray that the persecution stops. Pray that our boldness increases. Because as you study church history, you find the church flourishes during persecution. So we all pray for revival. You go to any church in the South especially. We're all praying for revival. But there was a church figure named Vance Habner that had a quote he said, "If Christians knew what revival costs, they'd probably stop praying for it." Because we want to see only the good thing that no one's going to hurt. I'm not going to lose my job. I'm not going to lose income. I'm not going to lose status in the community. But I remind you to read the New Testament. I think in 2025 and beyond, the church in America may look more like Acts chapter 2 than it does look like the church of 1980. We're going to find that it is going to cost you to stay. It may not cost you your life, but it will cost you maybe some friendships or even some reputations. Again, I go back and reiterate, you'll never die for your preferences. But if it's a conviction, you'll stand for it, whatever it costs. Joy by Scott Dawson of the Scott Dawson Evangelistic Association here on the program. Let's talk about this election cycle, Scott. Even when Obama was at the top of the ticket running against McCain, we talked about these sort of faith issues. I don't know what we thought of Rick Warren and Saddleback. But at least it was in the real house. We were talking about these things. I think this election cycle and a lot of these people, especially among some of my listeners, they're lined up on the left. Well, Donald Trump is a boy scout. He's a center too. But you look at this and we're not really even -- this isn't even being brought up in our discussions of public policy and what role faith plays at all anymore. It's so out of the mainstream to them, especially the news media. They just outright reject it. That seems to be a major problem here. Absolutely. And to me, I go think about all the advantages. Everybody wants to think about all the problems associated with religion. And you can't ignore those. But I do go -- if you're going to talk about the problems of religion in society, you better talk about the advantages of having religion in your society. That's who developed our schools. That's who developed our hospitals. You go back to the origins and it was the church being the church going, "We've got to reach our fellow man." There's two hands. There's good words on one hand and there's good deeds on the other hand. And if you remove -- if you don't want to have anyone preaching and no one talking about, you know, the safeguards of morality and civility, then you're also losing the good deeds of love your neighbor as yourself. I'll tell everyone. Without Jesus being in my life, you don't expect me to love my enemies because I can't even love my brother. And what you're seeing in society play out is when you remove the guardrails of absolute truth, then all of a sudden you're on a windy road, it's raining, and you're just moments from going off the cliff. And think about it. What was wrong is now right. What was right is now wrong. I just ask anyone listening to you. If you think America is on the right track, you've got to explain yourself. I'm tired of trying to explain why we're not on the right track. I want someone out there going, "Oh, America is on the right track." How? Our families are disintegrating. We've never said this surgeon general had to declare an epidemic of loneliness. Right now, you see all the failures of education, of government, of medicine. Even religion has fit -- where is America on the right track? You've got to convince me of that. I'm tired of trying to convince America that you're not on the right track. Somebody explain to me, "How do you honestly believe we're on the right track?" Scott, we're out of time. We've got to leave it there, but folks want to find out more about your organization, more about your mission. Where can they do so? Sure, man. Thanks for having me. It's good to talk to you and catch up. I really enjoy getting a friendship with you during that run. You can just reach out to ScottDalton.org. S-A-O-T-T-C-A-W-S-O-N dot org. Love to get with us. Scott, we appreciate your time. We'll talk to you again soon. Thanks, Jeff. All right, guys. We've got to get a break here. Be right back. This is F.M.