Welcome to the Kingdom Crossroads podcast with Pastor Bob Thibodeau.

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Now here is your host with today's interview, Pastor Bob Thibodeau.

Hello everyone everywhere.

Pastor Bob Thibodeau here.

Welcome to the Kingdom Crossroads podcast.

Today we're so blessed you're joining us.

Welcome to today's show where we are going to dive into a critical and timely discussion with T.S.

wright, author of the God Centered Concepts Journal.

Together we'll be exploring the pressing topic of America and the culture war.

What is a culture war and are we in the midst of one right now?

From America's Christ centered foundations to the challenges facing the modern church, we're going to examine how these shifts actually align with Bible prophecy.

And is it too late for America to turn back?

Help me welcome back to the program our good friend, Scott Rice.

Scott, welcome back, buddy.

Good to talk to you again.

Hey, great to be here, Bob, and look forward to another fun, fruitful discussion.

Amen.

Well, my first question is what is a culture war?

That is a great, that's a great question.

I think to really understand a culture war, we have to understand what the term paradigm means.

And a paradigm is basically when something happens that creates a monumental shift in a philosophy or a way of doing things.

So those are what paradigms do.

And I, and I will tell you that the most prominent and probably the most consistent thing that has created these is technology.

Technology has created more paradigm shifts in culture, in society than anything else.

And obviously people invent things.

So but these inventions become that.

And it's funny, I teach, I'm also, you know, I've been a high school teacher and all that and I, I teach socio, I've taught sociology and we talk about paradigm shifts and that's actually a, we call it kind of a phenomena, cultural phenomenons that happen and that's really what paradigm shifts are.

So this culture war is, means what we really are in the middle of is a paradigm shift.

And we have been for the most part in our, in, in our short history, the United States and, and even back when it was the colonies, we've been a church culture.

We've been a culture that has been surrounded with community.

Everything has been community.

And the church has been the soul of a community.

Yep.

So usually school buildings and churches for so long were the, were those centerpieces and usually the town square.

So those were kind of those areas.

And usually the church was always a part of that in some way fashion or form.

And the, the soul of a community was its church, was its belief system in the church.

And that's.

And that's where it was.

Well, you know, America started.

Well, America started as a Christ centered nation, as a pilgrimage.

The reason they came over here, you know, they came here in the first place.

And the founding fathers and setting this nation up wanted to make sure that, you know, we were following biblical principles.

So when did all this begin to change?

That is.

And that is the thing.

And I was getting ready to mention that because what happened was, is in the 19, right after.

It was during World War I.

World War I is the change agent for everything.

It is the shift of the globe.

And the second that Archduke was assassinated, him and his bride and by Serbian nationalist called the Black Hand.

And then obviously a little over a month later, the all of Europe plunged into war.

And then it started just bringing in the world.

And eventually America would get involved in the last year of the war.

But it changed the globe in a profound way.

And what started to happen was, is we started to see individualism really explode.

Now I will tell you, that was not the start of individualism.

The start of individualism.

It was kind of like, you know, you kind of have to have everything put in place.

It's like a Chess game.

That was the first move.

And technology is at the center of this.

It's the first time we had mass transportation with railroads, steam engines for ships, telegram.

I mean being able or telegraph, being able to send messages in all kinds of directions very fast.

It completely changed the way people thought.

Queen Victoria and her husband, they would obviously the Queen of England, Queen Victoria, they would become the voice of the people.

That's what would happen.

And that was the first time a monarch had done that.

And you got to realize Britain was the biggest, most powerful nation on earth.

The sun never sets on the British Empire.

It's still the British and all its commonwealths is still home.

You know, they still call the British monarch and the Parliament that to them, that is still their head of state.

And for the most amount of people in the world, 2.4 billion is approximately.

So we have to keep that in mind.

So the impact was massive.

And it would, it would permeate culture.

And over a period of time, we would see all these little revolutions.

And then eventually that'll start to really take shape.

Right after World War I, the monarchy system starts to really die off.

We start being replaced by political systems.

And we'll see that through World War II.

And at the end of World War II, we'll have this kind of, I wouldn't say a dead period, but we have another explosion period of technology.

And then the impact of that will start happening in the late 60s and then the 70s.

And all the revolutions in the 70s are what caused this.

And they.

And people start shifting away from the church.

Now we will have the Jesus revolution in the late 60s, early 70s to help, I guess, fill a little bit of a spiritual void that had happened.

But the church itself will reform itself in many ways in America.

Let's, let's.

After all this church.

Because what happened to the American church that allowed all this to happen to begin with and why?

Well, first of all, if we go and we have to, we're going to have to get into the political landscape.

We still had a Christian foundation in our country.

We started getting away from the Christian foundation.

And it's almost like one party held on to it and one party didn't want anything to do with it.

And I have read article after article we've got.

And what's happened is this is a perception thing, not a factual thing, but it is a perception thing.

We got the one.

We got one party that is almost like it's based on what they call science and another party based on faith issues.

And I don't call it faith.

I call it faith issues because I still sometimes even have questions on the other side.

Okay.

And I'm not going to name the two political parties.

You can figure that out on your own.

But even I have questions even to that side with some of the things.

And I'll just leave it at that at this point because I don't want to get in a political discussion here.

But you have.

That's the perception of it.

And what happened was, is we got the religious right and then we got the.

Almost the amoral left.

Almost apathetic is the best way to put it.

I, I wouldn't necessarily call it atheist because I know people who are left wing Democrats and they're not necessarily atheists.

It's more agnostic.

I would say that agnosticism, deitism is probably the more prevailing way because I think most, most of those people are not what I'd call pure atheists.

Most of them are.

They believe something's out there, but it's just at a distance.

You know, it's just there and, and whatever, however they want to phrase it, they'll have their own.

And it's not something they give a lot of thought to.

I've actually heard some people say that we're, we're in a, what they call it a simulation that we're like in some computer and somewhere big computer and we're just, we're just part of a sim game or something.

Yes.

And what has happened is we've gotten this divide because of it.

And the breakdown started in the 60s and 70s.

The baby boomers are the ones was the generation that did this.

They revolted.

But what they were revolting against was traditionalism.

But they did not keep the faith.

Removing some of the traditionalism isn't always a bad thing.

And I'm not, I'm not one of those that say oh we got to hold on to every traditional thing.

I'm not into ritualism.

That's not something that appeals to me personally.

But the basis of faith should never change.

That should always be our foundation regardless of the other components of society as they change.

And the problem was is that part of their morality changed as well.

You know, you could still hold on to the Christian principles and just reshape the technologically ways that you do things.

The technical ways is probably the better way.

But the, the spiritual aspect and the moral principles should never change.

That's, that's the type of things that should happen.

The problem is, is with the technological and the technical changes, what has happened is the church has, the moral foundation has faded with it because of some of the.

I'll say and just trying to find the right words to phrase this is the unintended consequences of technological advancement.

Because look, here's the thing.

I think people put we and we all are guilty of this to some level.

Just saying.

And then we've got another piece that is like, no, we want this new agenda that's like it's never been.

Yeah.

And there's this revolt going on against the new way.

All right.

And, and that's what's.

What we're seeing because we're seeing that the new way is not necessarily a good way.

And I think we've seen some consequences of it already and of the, you know, some of the woke agenda and all that stuff.

And we're starting to, we're starting to feel some of those consequences, realizing this ain't working.

I mean, and it's not, this isn't just happening in America.

We're seeing this revolt in Europe as well.

And those nations are much more liberal than the United States.

But we're seeing governments literally change.

Almost Feels like overnight it feels that way because of pushing back against this.

We're, I mean, when let.

Look, I, I was listening to focus groups and stuff during, before the election when election season was going on, campaign seasons going on, and there were liberal left wing Democrat females that were voting for Trump because they were pushing back and they had said the left had gone too far.

Yeah.

That's the big analysis.

I guess that is a consensus of the pundits who are looking at what went wrong for the Democrats in the election and say we went too far.

Yes.

And America said enough's enough.

Exactly.

And in this disillusionment always occurs when something first takes hold.

The problem is people don't see both sides of it.

We've gotten in our culture this humanistic approach of all positivism.

And I'm like, here's the way I look at it.

And I used to be total optimist.

I mean, I remember I got an award for that one time back when I was a little bit younger.

Was it from the optimist club?

Yeah.

But here's the truth is that you really need to be real.

You don't want to be negative Nelly either.

You know the negative nellies they always call them and whatever, however you want to phrase it.

But I don't want to be negative.

But I don't want to be delusionally positive either.

I've got to be real is really the, the, the key of all this.

And being real means that we have to take everything and filter it through the word of God and through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Everything in your life and scaling this down to the individual, all the way out to societal, in, in the way the society functions, everything should be filtered through the word of God and through the power of the Holy Spirit.

That's it.

That's.

Those are our filters.

And the problem is as we try to remove those filters, that's what society's done.

And when you do that, the unintended consequences of that are not good.

I mean, look, look, you can look at the border issue.

We have no filtering system there.

I mean, even President Barack Obama deported a lot.

Five million people were here illegally.

Absolutely.

This is the, the administration in place is the only administration, Democrat or Republican, that has not done that.

And that, and this is just one example.

There's many things and it's not just.

But I use this one because it's a glaring example.

You have to filter things.

Everything has to have a filter.

I'm not saying that government needs to be totally in charge of every aspect of our lives and I don't want to be over dependent on government because that can be a problem too.

But government is there as a, is a regulator.

The Teddy Roosevelt philosophy still works.

It's, It's a regulator.

That's it.

That's what government is.

Softly and carry a big stick.

Exactly.

I mean, you know, that's what we're supposed to be.

We're.

It is a regulatory body.

It is not a body that's supposed to control you, but it's also there to not allow society to get out of control too.

And we've gotten out of control.

Yeah, let's swing this back around.

According to the Bible, is it too late for America to actually turn it all around?

So here's what I think.

And you and I were talking about this before the podcast and we were, we were talking, you remember, we were talking about some potential end time events.

And I think in some ways America will turn this around.

I think it's going to be a mixed bag is what I think.

We still are the leading nation that sends out missionaries all over the world.

We're still the country that God has used to promote his message because the wealth of our nation and that Christian heritage is still there.

And I almost feel like this last, I'm not going to say just election was totally this, but it was almost a test to see if we would at least grab onto some level of morality.

And we did.

Surprisingly, we did.

The country did that.

And it wasn't just.

And I'M going to say it wasn't just Democrats.

I mean, Republicans, there were a lot of Democrats that did this as well, you know, and.

Oh yeah, it was, it was not just Republicans.

That's right.

So we, we have to remember that.

And so to, to think it was just one party is absolutely not right.

There was a lot of people in the middle.

Independence that also leaned back to pull the country back into a, a little bit of a moral standard is really what it is.

Now, I'm not saying we're there.

The total moral standard.

Oh my word.

No.

Well, what would the answer be to, to continue us down the path?

Here's what I think is going to happen.

I think America is going to swing this way for a little while.

I don't think it's going to be permanent.

I think a window is going to be open.

And I'm going to just say this here now is that I believe that there is a great revival on the horizon.

I am.

And Bob, I'm looking for support to help spur that.

Right now I'm talking on your podcast, I'm talking on my podcast that I've got that we're getting ready to relaunch on YouTube.

We're already doing recordings and we're getting things in place.

And I'm, you know, if a church wants to hire me out and bring me in to speak, I'm ready to do that.

We're in a position and you know, I haven't promoted that on your show yet.

I'm now promoting that because we're ready to do that.

I'm ready to come in and start speaking.

So if there's a church out here listening and they, you want a speaker that will come in, you know, that want to speak about these type of things, I certainly will.

And what, what the biggest message is right now is that we need a revival.

And I believe that we're on the horizon of one.

I, I think this, I think we've got like a six year window here, a five to six year window that there's going to be a movement here.

And, and what I'm hoping to do is that with the podcast is to, to ignite the fires.

And it's, it's, it's just ignite the fire of the spirit to ignite the fire of revival.

We need it.

We're in desperate need.

We're in that moment.

And, and at the end of the day, the Holy Spirit's the one that does this, but he uses people to get it done.

And so I just say this.

Let the great harvest begin.

It's time.

We need to step up.

And I don't know why I have kind of had that sense in prayer, but it is time right here.

And, and we're, we need to have a time of prayer and fasting and we need to pray for this because there are so many people that are lost.

And what's going to, here's what's going to happen, here's the delusion is that, okay, Trump's going to come back in office and we had a pretty good period there with him as president after he had been in office for about a year.

We did.

And I know that's been the selling point of all this, but is that going to last forever?

No, I'm not going to put my faith in politics.

But what I do think is that we're going to have an environment where this is possible.

I think people are spiritually starving to death.

You talk about what's going on in Africa physically, and yes, we need to be helping those people over there that are struggling and can't feed themselves because, you know, they're just, they're in areas where food doesn't grow very good or people won't let things come in.

We need to, we need to do that too.

But I think here in America, I think people are lonely and I think they're spiritually in complete starvation, just like people are in physical starvation in other countries in certain areas of the world.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, Scott, this has been good and I wish we had more time, but someone has a question and they'd like to reach out to you.

Get in touch.

How can they do that?

How can they get in touch with you?

So you can simply email me at gcc God Centered Concept.

I've had some people send it to God Center Concept and forget the ed.

So, so I have to make sure I spell that out.

Centered.

God Centered.

GCC.

Amen.

Folks, I appreciate you joining us today for this eye opening discussion on America and the culture war with ts.

Right?

And as you heard, the challenges we face, they're great.

But so is the hope we have in God's plan.

Amen.

Amen.

To dive deeper into these critical issues, I encourage you to check out Scott's book, God Centered Concepts Journal.

Listen to the podcast.

It's packed with powerful insights that's going to inspire and equip you moving forward.

And be sure to check out again his God center concept podcast.

This thing is.

It's going to change America.

It really will.

Praise God.

Just drop down the show notes, visit his website, get in touch with him today.

Scott, I appreciate taking the time out of your schedule again to come on the program and share all this information with us.

Brother, I do appreciate it so much.

Hey, thanks, Bob, for having me on and I look forward to more future fruitful discussions.

Amen.

Well, folks, till next time as Pastor Bob reminding you to be blessed in all.

Thank you for listening to today's episode of the Kingdom Crossroads podcast.

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Until next time, be blessed in all that.