The December 2025 Website Update

The December 2025 Website Update will be based on Charlie Kirk’s conversation with a college student where he: Unpacked Jesus’ Message of Love and Truth.

Charlie said: “John 8 best embodies both Christ’s mercy and love but also his commitment to truth and sometimes in the modern gospel we overemphasize the grace, and we underemphasize the truth and so we are far to willing to say hey Jesus loved everybody, but we don’t get to the second part of the conversation that says Jesus doesn’t want you to live in sin. What Jesus said to the prostitute after those there to stone her for adultery had dropped their rocks and left was, go and sin no more. This was a great example of Jesus showing both love and truth to a condemned woman.”

John 8:7, 10, 11 And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.’

In this update we will discuss in what ways we tend to underemphasize the truth as found in the New Testament.

I can remember a time in my early years as a Christian reading the Sermon on the Mount where I kept wanting those hard commandments to not be relevant today. But, of course, they are totally relevant today.

I certainly agree with Charlie that many churches that call themselves Christian do not talk about sin and Satan being real. They don’t teach that we are in the midst of spiritual warfare where Satan and his demons are trying to groom people for hell, while God’s Holy Spirit is working to counteract Satan’s efforts. And, of course our worldly culture seems to be helping Satan.

In my new book: Bringing Heaven to Earth & The Intermediate Heaven, on page 22 I quote my good friend Pastor Taylor who writes about “…a shift in the content of the Sunday morning message.” She says, “The gospel offered today is centered on the individual. A few months ago, I visited a church. Not once was the name of God or Jesus mentioned…The Gospel of Jesus was substituted with live streaming life coaching. The Gospel has been replaced with cosmetic self-improvement talks. The contemporary mental health crisis has also contributed to a gospel that focusses on the individual.” One has to ask: How can a church like this even call itself Christian? I feel sorry for the people going to a church like Pastor Taylor described and thinking they were going to a Christian church. But I think that more and more churches are compromising with our worldly culture, and they are ignoring the truth of the Bible.

Brant Hansen in his wonderful book, Unoffendable, on page 149 says, “By the way, I’ve learned it’s worth remembering that extending grace does not mean, and has never meant, that there is “no such thing as sin,” or that there’s no such thing as right or wrong, or that God smiles on all of our actions. There is sin, there is right and wrong, and God, like any loving father, of course cares about what we do and who we are.” I love this quote by Brant Hansen. And it is a shame that many so-called Christian churches do not teach these simple truths.

In my September Website Update I discussed what the Gospel of Christ Jesus is. I repeat it here to demonstrate what our churches need to be preaching and teaching about that Gospel:

We hear pastors often refer to the importance of the Gospel, but they don’t often then go on to explain what exactly the Gospel is. Several months ago, I sought to briefly define the Gospel. I am not at all sure I got close to a really accurate statement of the Gospel, but I am happy with the result and more than willing to have others correct me. The first paragraph of what follows is my attempt to define the Gospel and the next two paragraphs seemed to be important enhancements.

This is the Gospel of Christ Jesus!!

Father God sent his only Son to earth to be fully God and fully man. Then, that Son, a totally innocent and perfect Jesus, was convicted, mistreated, crucified and died for our sins. He died in our place and made us righteous in God’s eyes. When God now sees us, he sees Jesus. To be saved we must choose to believe in Jesus and in choosing to believe, we must repent of our sins. None of this is our doing, it is all a gift to us from God. After his crucified death on the cross Jesus rose from the dead on the 3rd day. After forty days with his disciples, he then ascended into heaven, and he now sits on God’s right hand on his throne in heaven.

If we believe in Jesus, we will be indwelt by the Holy Spirit. According to Colossians 3:12-14: there are seven virtues that Christians are to follow: compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, and most important of all is love, which binds things together in perfect harmony. I firmly believe that those virtues are what the Holy Spirit is focusing on in his lifelong effort to sanctify us.

Once saved we need to focus on developing a relationship between ourselves and Jesus. Then, while on this earth our role is to help bring heaven to earth as taught in the Lord’s prayer. That is often done by sharing a kindness with a neighbor.

When we lived in Texas, we went to church at the Restoration Church of Southlake TX and we were blessed to have a Senior Pastor and primary preacher Ryan Welsh, who  preached directly from Scripture. I can remember when he preached the entire gospel of Luke, and that took him a year and a half. He preached every verse including all the verses  in Luke 6 that included the ‘truth’ verses 27 to 36 that teach us to love our enemies. We must all admit that it is very difficult today to love our enemies, but nonetheless Jesus requires that of his followers.

I think one way to recognize the truth in the Bible and to quit ignoring it or bypassing it as unimportant, is to pray to God for insight and help in following his commandments where we exercise his truth.

Our churches need to acknowledge the sin nature that we all have and the need for all of us to fight temptation. Our churches also need to acknowledge the spiritual battles between Satan and his demons and God and his angels that are constantly taking place all around us where Satan is trying to undermine our faith and God is fighting to help us maintain and grow our faith.