Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. We're going to interview an author right now who says that the church is in a DEFCON 1 emergency, needs 200 proof truth. This is Kevin Swanson's new book called strong and urgent call to strengthen the things that remain. I hope you enjoy the discussion. So Jason, Kevin Swanson just wrote a new book.

I just finished reading it. It's called Strong, An Urgent Call to Strengthen the Things that Remain. So I read this book and I'm thinking this book was born out of a man's anguish of his soul for the purity of the church. I thought of what Jesus said, zeal for thy house has consumed me, that there was something really burning in this man's soul. And I'm reading through sections and I'm just being carried along, I thought, by this, this urgent, passionate plea for the purity of the church.

So if you've never read a Kevin Swanson book, I think our charge to you is you're overdue, so pick up Apostate or pick up this one. Yeah. Thank you for writing, Kevin. Yes, Well, you're welcome. As Scott said, I had something in my heart that was weighing heavy and I had just get it out of there, you know, get it out, express it.

And I trust that the Lord is giving us something of that urgent call to our day. You know, there are books and there are songs that men have written very quickly, you know, very profound, very high impact, and they write them very, very quickly, like Handel's Messiah, just flowing out, bam, like a, you know, like a tidal wave. I felt there were sections in that book. That's how I felt when I was reading it. Yeah, that came quickly within two, three months.

I did most of it during my sabbatical month, January of this year. Yeah. Yeah, I was just on my heart and wherever I went with my family, I just sat there typing and it just kept coming. Yeah. So why did you write this book?

Well, I'm as the church is a crying need for the Church of Jesus Christ, and to me it's a surviving time. It's a time to just cry out for the mercy of God upon our churches. The Western Church, as you know, is pretty much collapsing in so many different areas, and this is a time for a renewal, a reformation. We need it. It's reform or bust.

It's revive or bust. One statistician said, okay, what's going to happen to the Church of the UK? By a certain day 2038, the Reformed Church in the UK is non-existent. By the 2033, the Welsh Presbyterians are gone, the Church of Scotland will be completely wiped off the map by 2042, the Methodists will be non-existent by 2045, etc., etc. I mean, just because of the retrograde and the breakdown.

So what we need in America, I think something similar is happening. Church attendance has dropped off significantly from like 46%. I believe we're somewhere around 23 to 26% and that's just the last 15 years. But the fire is burning right now. The first Corinthians 3 fire is burning, and the gold, silver, and precious stones will remain, and We're just going to fight for every piece of gold, silver, and precious stones we can get as the fire continues to burn.

I think right now is the time at which every pastor, every God-loving Jesus-embracing Christian in America is going to be saying, we want to see the church thrive, survive, come out of this stronger than ever, but we really need the real church to please stand up. What is it? What is the reforming agenda? What are the non-negotiables in a new Reformation? We want to see real faith, real church emerge where truly we've got a return to the gospel which is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe.

We absolutely need this. And yeah, I put on the back cover, I mean, we're just two months away from publishing, but back cover I said, this book is not for people who do not see a need for revival. I mean, this is not for people who go, everything's just fine. This is people who just have this aching anguish, the stabbing heartache over a sick and dying church. And it's for every Christian from all sorts of different Christian communions, but it really is, I think, hopefully a tonic.

It's to address the lukewarm, the effeminate, the nothing-burder faith in the modern church. We want to see an amazing revival in the churches of Jesus Christ. I really think there's a lot of people out there going, yeah, amen, amen, amen. We want to see revival. As the great revivalist once said, it's a revival or a bust.

This church will have a funeral or a revival, and that's it. And we cannot accept anything less than a reviving, a reforming of the church right now in the Western world. Kevin, you describe the Western church as lukewarm, compromised, in crisis. It gave us root causes. How did we get here?

Well, I think it's ultimately been a breakdown of the doctrine of the church. Absolutely, a man-centeredness has been a real, real big problem. I'd say there's just a general lack of piety, there's a lack of love for God, there's a lack of the Holy Spirit being amidst our churches. I mean these are obvious, you know, where there is no real on-fire prayer meeting in the church, men packing out upper rooms, where there's no real evangelism happening on every street corner and thousands of baptisms, hundreds of workers, younger men throwing their lives on the altar, standing in line to be the next generation of godly fathers, deacons, shepherds for the churches. I say, wow, we need a return of the Holy Spirit to the modern church.

And even among our conservative denominations, I mean our heart aches for all the scandals, and I don't need to go through all of them, brothers. You know what I'm talking about here. There's a lot of disunity. There's breakdown of relationships. There's a tenuous, tenuous, tenuous love, even amongst some of the Reformed churches.

A love for the world, I think really what it boils down to amongst so much of our Reformed and conservative churches is they're drawn into a love for the world, love for the worldly categories of thought, worldly pagan forms of education, a fixation on worldly entertainments, even at times, an appreciation for obscene gestures and perverted culture very much drawn into the popular culture. They love the world, but they don't love their brother. This unity in the churches, a lack of love for brethren, there's not that on fire love for the brothers and sisters such that they would throw their lives on the altar for their brothers and sisters, rather they just are in love with the world and worldly culture. So this I think is at root the problem. And of course doctrine is the issue as well.

A watered down view of God, of God's grace, of God's sovereignty. There's almost no fear of God before their eyes. I think that's one of my first chapters. There just isn't, you hardly ever hear churches say, you know, the fear of God is the beginning of our worship. The fear of God is our beginning of knowledge in every area of life, including education.

There's just, it's just an insipid religion in which there's almost no fear of God before their eyes. Faith is weak. The love is tenuous. All of these things indicate that we need a strong, strong reviving in the churches. You describe the church as being in a DEFCON 1 emergency.

What did you mean by that? Absolutely. I mean, it's just a revival or a bus, brothers. It's a critical time in the history of the Christian church in the Western world. I mean, we see that in the stats.

Everybody can see the statistics. We're losing the next generation. I just think if you did a survey of pastors in your community, you're going to find many, many, many of them are losing their kids to the world. This is where we are today. The women are sometimes leading in the churches.

That's increasingly happening. And the men are not showing up for prayer meetings. There are almost no baptisms in the church. There's hardly any reproduction happening. I mean, you know, in terms of just, you know, having babies, for example, that's just kind of an obvious thing.

Now, granted, there are some of us who are, you know, throwing all the flags in the play. We're crying out to God. We're starting to see some reviving works. I trust it's happening in the Church Family Life Organization and our little tiny church out in the eastern plains of Colorado. I mean, I'm hoping for that.

We're seeing signs of hope and light. So I'm not saying that there isn't just the beginnings of some reviving, but while the church's birthrate is 1.72, Christianity Today did a study of this and found that the average evangelical conservative church has a birthrate of about 1.8, which is only, only, only marginally above what the national average is which is like 1.72 right now. So the evangelical church is not doing well in terms of raising up another generation and of course of that generation the 1.8 birth rate So many of these young children are being taught and discipled in the temples of Baal and they're given the wrong worldview, perspective, and education. So you're losing the next successive generation out of the church. So all of this I think indicates a breakdown, a weakness.

There are very few signs of life and revival. There's a little bit here and there and we're starting to see some things. And I think, I really think a book like this resonates. I honestly think people see this and go, okay, I'm done with the anemic, the lukewarmness, the stuff that just causes Jesus to throw that church just out. No, no, we want to see an on-fire, resilient, strong, steadfast, immovable, on-fire, hot-for-Jesus sort of church in our generation.

And we're going to be praying for that. Kevin, you talk about fathers falling to escapism and to apathy. Can you unpack that and just help fathers who are watching identify that, just marks of those things in their lives and how do they fight it off? Yeah, Jason, I have a chapter on mighty men of God or strong men of God. I mean, it's strong faith, strong grace, strong gospel, strong men of God.

I mean, we need strong everything. Oh, strong families. I like that. See that in the background in your studio. Brothers, amen and amen.

I think you're resonating to what we absolutely need. This is so core to strengthen the things that remain, to be stronger in faith, having a stronger grace, a stronger gospel, stronger ministry, stronger churches. I've got chapters on those things too. But yeah, strong everything. And I honestly think this resonates with the part of the church that still remains.

This is the message for the church, is stronger men of God. And yeah, just the weakening of manhood has been extremely difficult. It is, that's what's breaking down the church and the family sociologically. As you know, brothers, strong families, strong churches absolutely need mighty men of God, mighty men of faith, not men who is counting on themselves and looking to themselves for strength, but looking to Jesus for strength. We need men of stalwart faith.

I was in a church, a tiny church in England about six, nine months ago, reforming Baptist kind of church, and they had a prayer meeting before the afternoon service, and it was packed out with 25, 30 men. They're all praying, crying out to God with true faith and conviction and reverence and passion. And these were fervent prayers. It was amazing to me. And their meeting hall was packed out with people that come in from the streets just to hear the gospel, the Lord Jesus Christ.

I mean, so this kind of thing, I know, can happen. It's out there. There are men of God who are becoming men of faith, men of prayer. They're showing up at the prayer meetings. They're taking on responsibility.

They're not, you know, checking out and taking the 1, 000 exit ramps off the highway of reality. At one time, you did that with alcohol, but now you can do it with the internet, with YouTube, with your games, with sports. There's a thousand different ways to escape the reality of God, of his judgments, his mercies, his gospel, the heaven, hell, ultimate stakes that are out there for their own family, for their friends, their churches, their communities. They're aware, they're waking up, and they're aware of the spiritual realities that are around them. And they're sober men who are really engaging in terms of thinking, their ministry life, and their family.

They're just awake, they're awakened. Isn't that what we're after? More than anything, I mean the bottom line is when people are seeking escapism, whether it be alcohol or drugs or the modern media forms, the bottom line is they're dying or they're dead and they're not really seeking some sort of awareness of the spiritual realities that surround us and the bottom line important doctrines concerning God, concerning sin, concerning Christ, the gospel atonement, the need for faith, repentance, and spiritual warfare. They're not aware, They're not awake to spiritual warfare. They're asleep in the garden and they're not, you know, putting on the whole armor of God and ready to engage in spiritual prayer life for their families and for their churches.

And Therefore, I'll tell you what happens. Satan has a full run on that house. He's got a full run on the church. And the end result is absolutely devastating. Absolutely devastating.

So it's time for men to wake up. I need an amen about right now, guys. Amen. So yeah, I'll give you an amen. And then also another question.

Well, you started this book out focusing on faith. In your preface, you say, a faithless generation is submerged under the drag of demonic strongholds and ministry is prevented by lack of faith and by little faith. So I want you to just talk more about this, the heart of the matter that you present in this book right from the beginning, faith. Well, yeah, brothers, I think the issue always boils down to faith. You're saying things are broken.

There's a weakening. We need a strengthening of what? Faith. I think that's it. I mean, if you've got bad preaching, bad teaching, bad churches, weak family life, weak marriages, etc.

Etc. I mean you've got to say there's got to be stronger faith. We absolutely need strong, strong faith for our churches, which means that we need resilient, tough, strong faith. And one of the best ways to point it out is to say, yeah, the faith of John Knox, Martin Luther, William Tyndale, John Wakelip, people willing to go to the stake for their belief in Christ. The great missionaries, William Carey, Adderheim Judson, C.T.

Studd, John G. Payton. I mean, this is the age of the pew warmers where there's no foes for me to fight, no citadels to bring down, no more blood left in the cadaver to shed for Jesus. That's a problem. That's a problem.

What we need, we overcome by the word of our testimony, by faith. We overcome the world by faith. So I think what we need is a stronger faith, which means a stronger faith in the object of our faith and a stronger quality of that faith. So those are the two aspects. I have an entire chapter on stronger faith and I, you know, Trying to drill into the core matters.

What is it? What is it the Spirit is saying to the churches? And if anything, it's I think first and foremost a stronger Jesus, and I've got an entire chapter on that as well. We need a stronger Jesus, and there are all these counterfeit Jesuses that are presented in the churches and we're not seeing him as the mighty Savior and once we see him as the one who has come to crush Satan at the cross, overcome our sin and to beat death, we see Him as the mighty Savior. That's, I think, the first thing.

We need to see our Lord Jesus Christ as the very Son of God, the Son of Man, the powerful conqueror at the cross. And that needs to be something that just undergirds our faith and presents the great objective of our faith. The great message of the Old Testament I believe is that man cannot save himself. Jesus came down. God would come down to crush his enemies.

And I like to quote Isaiah 63, who is he that comes from Edom, dyed garments from Bosra. I have trodden the winepress alone and of the people, there was none with me. I tread them in my anger for the day of my vengeance is in my heart, the year of my redeemed is come. I look there was no one to help, I wondered that there was no one to uphold, therefore my own arm brought about salvation to me and my fury it upheld me etc. So the idea that we find throughout scripture is that Jesus is the true Joshua of God, the Yeshua of God.

He is the mighty Savior of God and until we restore Jesus as the mighty Savior and we trust in him with this strong faith, then I think we're going to continue to see a broken faith. I thought that chapter was a great corrective to Gavin Ortland's book, Gentle of Jesus, Meek and Mild, where he says that Meek and Mild is the central quality of Jesus Christ. Your chapter blows that to smithereens. Well, I understand that Jesus is approachable, He is merciful, He's got a gentleness that is like the warhorse under restraint, you know, that idea of gentleness being the warhorse under restraint is typically the way in which those words, praus, are translated. But he's the warhorse.

Don't forget, he's the warhorse. He's the warhorse under restraint. Yes, gentle and approachable, etc., etc. But fundamentally, He's the great and mighty warhorse of God. The powerful Savior of God has come around to save us from our sins.

So that to me is something we've got to bring back into our hymnody, our worship, our preaching. Kevin, you give a very important compare and contrast of cheap grace and strong grace. Can you develop that for people who are listening or watching? Of course, I'm not the first one to address the problem of cheap grace. Remember, Bonhoeffer has an entire section on that in one of his classic books.

But yeah, I mean, we look at grace in scripture, you're going to find that the words used in the modern American evangelical world are not the adjectives used in scripture. We find that grace is a powerful grace, raises the dead, it brings about a life for us. Ephesians 2, 4 through 10, people tend to forget that, you know, that God, because of his great love, wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead and since have raised us up together by grace he are saved. So the grace that saves us is the grace that raises us and it gives us this new life and therefore of course in verse 10, we are his workmanship now created in Christ Jesus unto good works because we have been raised from the dead. So grace is an active grace, a powerful grace.

It's a grace that brings about salvation. And we talk about salvation, but salvation is an amazing, life-giving, transforming, powerful work of God in our lives. And that segment's been largely lost, I think, in much of American Christianity and American hymnody. So we're looking for a strong grace, not this weak grace. I think though typically the way in which most people think about grace is grace kind of pats us on the back of the head and says, now, now, I realize that you're a sinner, forgive you of those sins, but there's nothing more I can do for you, so just keep on sinning.

But that's not the way in which grace is presented in scripture. Practically every reference to grace in scripture presents grace as this powerful working grace of God that gives us life and strength and power, and it infuses us with the hope and the joy that sustains us in trial. You think about, you know, my grace is sufficient for you, Paul, in the midst of your trials, as you head through the fire, this grace has this power that will sustain you through this. That's not the weaky kind of grace picture that you get, I think, in the modern evangelical world. Yeah, biblical grace is transforming.

Amen. Amen. Okay, well, Kevin, I hope a lot of people read this book. I'm really glad you wrote it. And can you just leave us with a parting shot on why people should read this book?

Well, I tell you what, the squishy faith that we are absorbing in these days is given to doubt and that doubt is given to apostasy. I believe we're in an age of apostasy, So really the warnings to the seven churches in Revelation are precisely what we need to receive as the American church today. Remember five out of seven of those churches were not doing well, and I think there is a great deal of Ephesus with us. Ephesus is the church in which they were conservative, they were opposed to the deeds of Nicolaitans, the abortionists, and everybody else, but they had lost their first love. And so you have a church that's good at hating but bad at loving, And that's very much the conservative church in America today.

We need to go for this core faith where it produces that core love for God, this passionate love for God with heart, soul, mind, and strength that results in throwing our lives on the altar and obeying his commandments and following through on his instructions and just being willing to be a living sacrifice for Jesus. Then you also have the Church's Artists, which was the church that was dead and dying, and this is the church that must strengthen the things that remain. And this is, I believe, the evangelical church in America today. The book is very much directed to that. But then there's also the Laodicean church, the late Luke Warm church, which Jesus is about ready to pull out of the candlestick, which means he's cutting off his relationship with that institution, that organization.

So we're right at that edge, and so much of this book is really directed towards the American church that is so absorbed in this weakness and this brokenness. Our response is I think mostly to call out to God, to cry out to God for his revisitation of His grace and the outpouring of His Holy Spirit upon our elders, our pastors, our evangelists, our families, and a return to the true gospel of Jesus Christ, the good gospel, the strong gospel, the strong grace with strong faith, and that itself will produce strong churches and a strong ministry for the years to come. Okay. Kevin, thank you so much. I really appreciate you joining us.

So good to see you. Yep. Thank you so much, brothers. Thank you. Okay.

And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. I hope you can join us next time. And I hope you can also come and be with us at Ridgecrest next year for our national conference, Manhood and Womanhood, Declaring the Glory of the Creation Order. See you next time. Dot com.