Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 232 ｜ 'Tiger King' and the End Times

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. I hope everyone is having an okay week.

00:00:04.320 Today we are not going to dedicate this episode to the coronavirus because I

00:00:08.200 asked a bunch of you on social media if that's gotten tiring for you

00:00:13.000 hearing over and over again about this virus and the policies that are being

00:00:16.820 enacted in order to fight this virus and the vast majority of you said yes, I am

00:00:22.120 tired of it. Please talk about literally anything else. And so because so many of

00:00:26.040 you asked for more lighthearted content, I am going to give you that but it's

00:00:30.940 going to be substantive because this isn't a podcast where I just talk about

00:00:35.040 vapid things that have no meaning or relevance to your life. I am going to

00:00:39.960 give you a more personal lighthearted update just about what the Stuckey

00:00:43.580 family has been doing during this quarantine. And then I am going to talk

00:00:47.840 about Tiger King, that crazy documentary that everyone's talking about. Not just

00:00:51.940 commentary though, but how it represents parts of human nature and teaches us

00:00:58.480 lessons that I think are pertinent, especially right now. And then we are

00:01:01.940 going to very lightly, I would say shallowly answer the question, are we in the

00:01:07.700 end time? So we're going to do a little Bible matter segment. And then if we have

00:01:11.340 time, we'll talk about some other things. I might answer some questions, but I will

00:01:15.520 give a coronavirus update at the end of this because a lot of you are curious

00:01:20.620 about that. If you're not, like if you have no stomach for coronavirus news, you

00:01:24.580 don't want to hear my thoughts about the things that are going on, some of the

00:01:27.340 problems that are cropping up, not just because of the virus, but because of the

00:01:31.120 policies that have to do with the virus and stopping the virus, then you might

00:01:35.900 just want to end it right before I talk about it. I'll give you a warning and

00:01:39.040 say no, that's talked about coronavirus. If you don't want to hear that, then

00:01:42.000 don't listen to it. But if you're interested in knowing what's going on and

00:01:44.640 some of my thoughts about that, then you can stick around. Okay, so starting this off,

00:01:48.960 just a personal update about how the Stucky family is doing. We have basically

00:01:53.160 been self-quarantining for three or so weeks now. My husband, his company has

00:02:00.980 been working from home for about three weeks. And so we have been doing this for

00:02:07.160 what seems like an entire year. Like it feels like it should be fall already and

00:02:11.280 like we're gearing up for the holidays. Now it's been really good. It has allowed us

00:02:16.220 to spend a lot of quality time together. We already spent a lot of time together,

00:02:19.720 especially on the weekends, but now there's a lot of quality time. It reminds me of

00:02:24.280 maternity and paternity leave right after our baby was born last summer, where we

00:02:28.560 were working together and trying to figure out a new normal. Now we are obviously a

00:02:35.340 lot more experienced as parents. And so it's not quite as chaotic as it was when she

00:02:41.240 was first born. And we were just all trying to figure out, all three of us trying to

00:02:44.540 figure out how to survive. But there are new variables now, like both of us are

00:02:49.140 working. He is, he has a different job. I have a lot more flexibility. And so we are

00:02:54.880 working together to, to make it work. And it's fun. It really is like, I will kind of

00:03:00.460 be sad when we have to go back to our normal routine and he has to leave home. And we are

00:03:06.060 just learning how to not just to work together, but also relate to one another. And you think,

00:03:10.820 okay, you've been living together as long as you have been married and you've been

00:03:15.220 married for almost five years. Shouldn't you know how to relate to one another? Yes. But

00:03:20.080 anyone who has been married also knows that it is a continual learning process to figure

00:03:26.320 out how to best love and serve and respect the other person and communicate to the other

00:03:31.120 person effectively. And for all of the inconveniences and the struggles and the

00:03:36.840 burdens that come with this time, that has been a silver lining that we have. And I

00:03:41.800 talked about this on Monday. If you haven't listened to Monday's episode, go listen to

00:03:46.100 that. It's 10 ways to make sure that this quarantine time counts so that we don't look

00:03:50.840 back and say, well, I wasted all of that time. Well, one of the ways that I think that time

00:03:56.260 is being redeemed, not just for us, but hopefully for a lot of couples is that we are learning

00:04:02.400 how to be even quicker to forgive, to be slow to speak, to be very slow, to become angry,

00:04:09.340 quick to listen, quick to extend grace, to be less, less critical ourselves, to try to

00:04:15.480 give the benefit of the doubt. And we fail at that every day, quarantine or not. But I

00:04:20.700 think that we have realized an important lesson during all of this, that if you are in close

00:04:25.300 quarters with someone continually, something that makes that even harder is a held grudge,

00:04:31.380 is resentment, is bitterness, is constant nagging and criticism and the feeling that you can't ever

00:04:38.440 do anything right. And so we have, by the grace of God, tried our best to extend as much grace as

00:04:46.060 we can to the other one and realize that we are both trying to do the very best we can to take care

00:04:53.800 of our family and to weather these times and to trust God. My husband, thank goodness, something that

00:04:59.400 has made this a lot better is that he is an amazing cook. He's an amazing cook. So over the weekend,

00:05:05.980 he grilled or I think it's smoked. For some reason, I'm supposed to say smoked, he told me. I said that

00:05:12.220 he grilled brisket and grilled ribs the other day, but he told me it's smoked, but it's on a grill. So I

00:05:18.880 was a little confused about that. But I mean, through the night, he was very dedicated to his brisket and

00:05:24.680 to his ribs. He made two different kinds of ribs. He made sweet ribs and mesquite ribs. He'd never

00:05:29.520 made ribs before, but he really is just a naturally very good cook. I can cook too, but it doesn't come

00:05:35.720 as naturally to me and I'm just not as good at it. I do cook. I can cook, but he's just a lot better

00:05:42.500 than I am. Not just the grill, which he is good at obviously, but also just like normal dinner cooking,

00:05:49.120 breakfast cooking. He's just good at it. So I am very thankful to the Lord for that. We had some

00:05:54.320 good ribs. We had some good brisket and we're still eating that brisket. I am so thankful. I'm so

00:06:02.320 grateful for a husband that can cook well. We have been at nights. If we've had to catch up on work,

00:06:08.900 we've been doing that, but we've also just been watching The Office, which we watch a lot. I also

00:06:14.600 mentioned that on Monday that we've both probably together watched it all the way through 20 times,

00:06:20.560 but it's one of those comfort things. It's just so familiar and it's so funny. I still laugh out loud

00:06:27.500 at certain scenes that I know that I've seen a bajillion times, but it's just this, I don't know,

00:06:35.440 this feeling of, okay, at least, you know, the world is falling down around us, but at least we have

00:06:41.800 The Office. At least we can trust The Office to make us laugh and to make us forget about some of

00:06:47.420 the chaotic and stressful things that are going on. But we also watched, well, one, we watched Love

00:06:52.380 is Blind a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure that I can necessarily recommend Love is Blind,

00:06:58.280 but it was an intriguing show. Very cheesy, but an intriguing show. I mean, it'll make you roll your

00:07:06.220 eyes. It'll make you say, oh my gosh, this is, people are so crazy. I can't believe that we're

00:07:10.980 watching this, but I mean, it does tell you a lot just about how people are and how petty people are

00:07:18.760 and, oh man, I, like I said, I don't know if I would recommend it, but it made for some easy

00:07:25.900 mind-numbing TV if you're looking for that. And then we watched Tiger King. Tiger King is a documentary

00:07:33.240 on Netflix about this guy who runs a wildlife zoo in Oklahoma. His name is Joe something. I don't

00:07:42.060 even know his last name, but he goes by Joe Exotic. Um, and he is a gay polyamorous redneck

00:07:53.140 from Oklahoma. I don't think that he would take offense to that description. That's literally what

00:07:58.120 he is. He owns this tiger zoo. People can come in. They can pet tigers. They can see other wildlife.

00:08:04.220 You see in this documentary, again, this is one I'm not sure that I would actually recommend it.

00:08:10.420 Like, I don't think that I would recommend this and I'll tell you why, but I do think that I

00:08:16.600 learned something from it. Even though after I finished the series, I was very sad and it felt

00:08:22.780 very heavy and dark to me because you see the cavernous, this cavernous industry that is filled

00:08:31.440 with all kinds of depravity, all kinds of deceit, all kinds of trickery and extortion. This industry

00:08:37.580 that you and I probably really never paid any mind to, never paid attention to, but it's just like

00:08:44.980 any other industry that is hungry for power and hungry for profit and doesn't care at all about

00:08:52.220 its clients or its people or the animals in this case, but filled with the human depravity that

00:08:59.740 unfortunately is pervasive in all areas of society. It's like the wildlife version of the Sopranos.

00:09:07.820 These are like redneck mobsters and it's not just Joe Exotic and his zoo in Oklahoma that we see. We

00:09:14.180 also see other places that are similar to this in like South Carolina and Florida, but the show itself,

00:09:21.060 it shows how hungry human beings are for glory and for power, how much we long to be gods. And we've

00:09:28.500 talked about this before, but how much we demand to be worshiped when our ego goes unchecked, we will do

00:09:34.880 absolutely anything to make sure that we remain on our throne. However insignificant in the grand scheme

00:09:42.420 of things that throne may be like Joe Exotic really thought or thinks he is the king of the universe

00:09:49.300 just because he is the head of this tiny zoo that the vast majority of the world has never heard about

00:09:55.660 and will never hear about. Now, a lot more people know about it thanks to this Netflix documentary,

00:09:59.860 but an industry and a zoo and a place that is so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. And yet

00:10:05.780 his ego got so inflated to the point that he was willing to do absolutely anything, no matter how

00:10:13.300 corrupt in order to stay in power. And really all of us at our darkest are the exact same way. We have

00:10:18.620 a very inflated sense of self and the book club, book club, I think it's book club with Ali Stuckey,

00:10:24.860 ladies book club with Ali Stuckey, women's book club with Ali Stuckey. I don't even remember what

00:10:28.480 it's called. But the first book that we read was the freedom of self forgetfulness by Tim Keller.

00:10:32.120 And he talks about this, how our feelings never get hurt. It's our ego that that actually gets hurt

00:10:38.680 and drives us to act out of anger, out of defensiveness, out of embarrassment, because we will do anything

00:10:45.060 to protect our ego. And this show Tiger King proves that that is absolutely true. It is the perfect

00:10:51.300 embodiment of total depravity. So as a reformed Christian, I believe in total depravity, which means

00:10:57.860 that we are not the worst that we can be like, we're not, not every single one of us is going to

00:11:06.140 be apart from Christ is going to be the absolute worst that we could possibly be. Not everyone who

00:11:12.200 is not a Christian is going to be a murderer is going to be Joe exotic, but that without Christ,

00:11:19.000 we are completely dead in our sin. We cannot do anything good outside of the power of God. And

00:11:27.120 ultimately we can do nothing to save ourselves. But in the case of Joe exotic, it's not just that he is

00:11:33.680 like everyone else and that he is dead in his sin apart from Christ, just like everyone else is. But

00:11:38.440 we see in a lot of the characters in this, uh, in the show that they are really the worst of the worst

00:11:45.820 kind of depraved that you could even imagine. I think that's why this was such a sensational

00:11:51.220 and shocking documentary because the evil and just the perversion that we see is, uh, the kind that we

00:12:00.980 couldn't probably even come up with most of us in our own minds. It is the perfect embodiment of

00:12:07.100 Romans one and verses 21 through 25 came to mind in this documentary for, although they knew God,

00:12:14.540 they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile and their thinking and

00:12:18.660 their foolish hearts were darkened claiming to be wise. They became fools that exchanged the glory

00:12:23.020 of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

00:12:29.580 Therefore God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their

00:12:34.400 bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worship a worshiped

00:12:39.400 and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. Which just goes to show,

00:12:45.980 obviously the book of Romans was written a very long time ago, but it goes to show that there's

00:12:50.700 nothing new under the sun. And Romans one applies to a lot of different groups, a lot of different

00:12:54.780 kinds of people today, but it's also a little bit comforting to know that this kind of corruption

00:12:59.640 and depravity isn't new. People have been inventors of evil for a long time. It also shows that

00:13:07.460 existence of this documentary shows our love, the audience's love, the entire world's love of the

00:13:13.840 bizarre, the sensational, the dark, the twisted and corrupt. Like we want to watch the invention of

00:13:19.560 evil. And I'm talking, obviously I'm indicting myself because my husband and I watched it like

00:13:24.860 in the same way that we as humans crane our neck to see a car wreck. We lap up documentaries that put

00:13:32.920 man's depravity on full display. Like we have a morbid curiosity about it. And I'm always very

00:13:39.080 conflicted about this. Like I said, I'm indicting, I'm condemning myself as I'm talking about how not

00:13:45.620 redemptive a show like this is. And I've talked about redeeming our time on quarantine. And here I

00:13:51.020 am talking about this awful documentary that was so fascinating, but also so dark. I'm just very

00:13:56.700 conflicted about it. On the one hand, I really like to know the content that's shaping people's public

00:14:02.360 conversations and consequently is shaping our culture. So I can comment on it. So I can critique

00:14:07.760 it like I'm doing right now. So I can point out the lies and then replace them with truth. I think

00:14:12.480 that's important. That's something that a lot of you ask me to do. They say, Oh, have you seen this

00:14:16.140 documentary or, Oh, have you seen this meme going around? Can you comment on it or this video or

00:14:21.680 whatever? On the other hand, I know that Christians are called to only dwell on that, which is lovely

00:14:27.580 and pure. That's what Philippians four calls us to think it's Ephesians four that calls us to be

00:14:34.200 children of light, to not even speak of the things that they do in secret, but the children of light

00:14:39.980 are characterized by what is good and right and true. And tiger King and other documentaries like

00:14:46.020 that certainly do not qualify as what is good and right and true. What is pure and lovely and

00:14:51.460 excellent. The bachelor isn't that there are a lot of shows that are not that, and it's hard to see

00:14:56.980 how spending hours that we spent watching something like tiger King, isn't just a waste of time,

00:15:03.000 or at least that our time couldn't be better spent doing something else. Um, if I could go back,

00:15:09.760 I probably wouldn't watch it to like weighing those two sides of it. I probably wouldn't watch it. I

00:15:16.560 would probably read about it. I'd probably maybe watch a few clips on it so I could talk about it,

00:15:21.860 but I probably wouldn't watch it because when I was done, like I said, a few minutes ago,

00:15:25.560 I was really sad. I felt heavy. I felt really gross about it. I felt kind of guilty.

00:15:31.920 And that is what consuming sin and watching sin and a glorified version of sin does to you.

00:15:40.120 And honestly, I don't need to watch a show like that to be reminded that man is totally depraved.

00:15:46.400 I already know that. Just look around, just watch the news. We love deceit. We love power. We love

00:15:51.840 manipulation. And the only remedy to all of that is we know is Jesus. But for the record, yes,

00:15:57.940 Carol Baskin did kill her husband. I mean, that's just obvious. Now moving along to our Bible matters.

00:16:05.640 Are we living in the end times? Uh, this has been a question that has been circulating on social

00:16:10.140 media a lot. A lot of you've been asking me about this and asking me to comment on the prophecies

00:16:15.080 that people are making on social media. I'm a very skeptical person. I am very slow to believe

00:16:22.640 in conspiracy theories. I am very slow to believe in theories period. Part of it is because like,

00:16:27.740 I just don't have the time to go down that rabbit hole and it just creates anxiety in me. I feel like

00:16:33.440 I can't control it. Even if it were true that everything that we see is some giant conspiracy theory,

00:16:39.240 I don't have the, I don't have the power. I don't have the resources and the responsibility to track

00:16:46.000 that down and solve the grand mystery. And so instead I can look to God's word and I can say,

00:16:51.520 okay, no matter what conspiracies might be happening in the upper echelons of our government,

00:16:56.320 the deep state, whatever it is, I know that there is a very real spiritual battle going on.

00:17:03.700 And I know that God's word is true, that he is coming back one day and that until then we will

00:17:10.200 have trials. We will have tribulation. We will have persecution. We will have pestilence. We will

00:17:16.040 go through very hard things. There will be people that are falling away. There will be people that

00:17:20.900 are coming to Christ. The Bible is the realest reality that I can go to when I look around and I

00:17:27.920 don't know who to trust. I don't know what theories to believe. I don't know what's really going on.

00:17:32.840 I don't know the underlying truth that everyone says is there in a million different directions.

00:17:38.720 The realest, most concrete, most trustworthy reality that I can go to is the word of God.

00:17:45.140 So that even though I don't know who to trust, I don't know who's telling the truth. I don't know

00:17:49.580 what numbers to believe. I don't know what statistics I should be relying on. I can go to

00:17:54.180 the word of God and say, okay, I don't know what's happening in all of these areas, but I know this

00:17:57.780 is happening. I know Ephesians six is happening. I know that we are struggling against the prince of

00:18:02.360 the power of the air, which is actually Ephesians two. Ephesians six says that we are in, we're

00:18:09.180 fighting against spiritual powers, that this is a fight against darkness, no matter what situation

00:18:14.600 that we're in, pandemic or no pandemic, that Satan is always working, but God is always working much

00:18:21.300 harder. And he is the one that sovereign Satan is not. Satan does have power, but he has no power

00:18:26.200 that God has not allowed him. And God is in control of all of it. And his plan is moving forward every

00:18:33.580 day, every hour, every millisecond, his plan is unfolding. He is in complete control. He is totally

00:18:42.320 sovereign. And we can look to the word of God and say, okay, I don't know when, I don't know how, I don't

00:18:46.980 know where, I don't know through whom, but this is happening. Now, the question is, is the coronavirus

00:18:54.620 a sign that Jesus's return is imminent? Is this a surefire way that we can look at the timeline of

00:19:03.680 eternity and say, okay, end times are coming. Well, the fact of the matter is we have been in the end

00:19:11.180 times technically for a while. I mean, the Bible talks about saying that the end is near, it is

00:19:18.740 imminent. So in a way it has been imminent for a long time. Now, are there signs that have been

00:19:25.520 fulfilled that point us in the direction of saying, okay, maybe it is soon? Yes. The Bible has what might

00:19:35.160 seem a little bit contradictory to the human eye, but isn't actually contradictory. On the one hand,

00:19:40.740 the Bible makes clear that, uh, it will, that the end will come as a thief in the night that no one

00:19:48.320 knows the day that no one knows the hour. But at the same time, there is an appointed time and there

00:19:53.640 are signs and there are prophecies that have to be fulfilled before that actually happens. Now I did a

00:19:59.080 whole very thorough episode titled in times that I encourage you to go listen to. It was from July of

00:20:05.040 last year. I think it was July. And I also on Instagram, if you go to my highlights, if you go

00:20:14.640 to my highlights and you see, uh, the first little bubble that says, uh, that says it should say

00:20:22.040 podcast categories, you can go, I categorize all of my podcast episodes by the subject, the broader

00:20:30.940 subject that they are talking about. And so under, I think it's under other theology, I think is the

00:20:37.200 category you will, uh, you will see in time. So that should tell you exactly the episode number that

00:20:44.220 it is. So did an entire podcast episode on this, just type in relatable in times on your podcast.

00:20:51.380 That's another way that you can find it should come up. Uh, so if you need a crash, a crash course

00:20:57.400 on eschatology, the study of the end times and the different terminology and which eschatological

00:21:03.100 eschatological, that's hard to say eschatological position, the Bible supports, you can go and listen

00:21:08.780 to that, but I am going to give you a bit of a refresher now, but for a more thorough explanation,

00:21:14.560 you can go back and listen to that. So number one, what we know about the end times is that Jesus

00:21:19.640 is coming back. This is what first Thessalonians five calls the day of our Lord. Revelation 1 7 says

00:21:25.380 this, behold, he is coming with the clouds and every eye will see him. Even those who pierced him

00:21:30.820 and all of the tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen. Uh, the question

00:21:36.200 is when first Thessalonians five two says for you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord

00:21:42.360 will come like a thief in the night. Matthew 24 also tells us about this, um, about the tribulation

00:21:50.200 and the things that have to happen before Jesus's return, like wars and rumors of wars and nations

00:21:55.940 rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom. Every nation will hear the gospel. Lawlessness

00:22:01.060 will increase. The abomination of desolation will occur via the Antichrist who will make a covenant

00:22:06.660 with Israel for seven years. There will be a great tribulation like no one has seen before.

00:22:11.220 Then Jesus will return. Uh, here is what verse, uh, verses, uh, 29 through 31 say immediately after

00:22:20.200 the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light

00:22:24.600 and the stars will fall from heaven and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then will appear in

00:22:29.900 heaven, the sign of the son of man. And then all the tribes of the earth will mourn and they will see

00:22:34.520 the son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his

00:22:39.240 angels with a loud trumpet call and they will gather his, and they will gather his elect from

00:22:43.940 the four winds from one end of heaven to the other. So there are prophecies that must be fulfilled

00:22:50.080 before Jesus returns. But Jesus also says, but concerning that day and hour, no one knows not

00:22:55.800 even the angels of heaven, nor the son, but the father only. There are several other passages that tell

00:23:01.340 us, like I said, that, uh, the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. So what we conclude

00:23:06.100 from that is though, there are tangible signs that we can see and will recognize as pointing to Jesus's

00:23:12.380 return. We don't know exactly how much time will pass between the last sign that is fulfilled and

00:23:19.800 Jesus's return. So that's why it's hard to say, okay, it's going to happen now. So we still ultimately

00:23:25.400 will not be able to predict down to the day and the hour, uh, when Jesus will return.

00:23:31.280 I want to read you though, a sermon from John MacArthur that talks about the signs of the end

00:23:37.360 times. One of them being lawlessness, as the Bible says, as that passage that I read to you says,

00:23:42.380 lawlessness will be unleashed on earth and the antichrist will come. He will establish one world

00:23:47.880 government. That's what the Bible says. So here's what John MacArthur has to say. And I would play you

00:23:53.120 the audio, but I can't do that. And I will tell you why. So here is what, here's what the sermon says.

00:23:58.660 The Bible says, when you start seeing lawlessness on a worldwide scale, look ahead. The end is near.

00:24:04.500 You see, there's only one way to deal with lawlessness. There's only one way that's to

00:24:09.060 create a police state. Ultimately it drives itself to a police state. And that's exactly what happens.

00:24:14.920 And you see, that's what the antichrist has. When he comes, he sets up a total world rule and why he'll

00:24:21.660 be such a hero. Evidently from the word of God is that with all the lawlessness all over the world,

00:24:27.060 lawlessness on a national basis and on an international basis is that he is evidently

00:24:31.840 going to be able to resolve this and get control of everything. And I believe what the world is

00:24:37.580 going to exist under, according to the Bible, this is John MacArthur speaking, is a tribulation that is

00:24:42.660 a police state. Why? If you don't take the mark of the beast, what happens to you? You get killed.

00:24:47.820 That's the only way he can control lawlessness. And that's what's going to make that great hero out

00:24:52.780 of the antichrist, possibly the fact that he can resolve the lawlessness into a controlled

00:24:57.240 situation. Let me give you another general sign. Not only is lawlessness a general sign of the coming

00:25:03.000 Christ, but also is a false religion. In the last days, false religion sponsored by demons is going

00:25:08.280 to reign, says John MacArthur. Typical demon work can be seen in the pseudo-Christian literature,

00:25:12.900 for example. And then he lists some people. All over America, we have witch's covens. All this to an

00:25:18.400 extent never known in the history of the world. And the Bible says that in the end times, watch it,

00:25:22.860 the doctrine of devils. It's all over the place. And the doctrine of devils in an organized religious

00:25:28.000 way will come to a head in Revelation chapter 17 in that false world church. Apostasy. Not only

00:25:34.360 lawlessness and false religion, but apostasy. Religious liberalism, the rise of liberalism in

00:25:39.420 colleges, seminaries, and churches gives abundant evidence that men are departing from the faith

00:25:44.340 faith. And then he talks about some more specific signs that we're going to see. But here's the

00:25:51.720 thing. Here is why I can't show you the audio or have you listened to the audio of that. He said that

00:25:57.760 in 1972. This is a John MacArthur sermon from 1972. He pointed out to, he pointed to the fact that

00:26:07.540 lawlessness was abundant and that we might see a police state. Now, what's comforting about that is

00:26:13.740 that all of the things that he lists in this particular sermon from 1972 sound very pertinent

00:26:19.720 and sound very real today, which means that, as I've said, there's nothing new under the sun.

00:26:25.200 A lot of the corruption that we think is novel, that we think it's innovative today has actually

00:26:30.000 been around for a lot longer, a lot longer than a lot of us have been alive. But it also,

00:26:35.480 it applies to what we're seeing today. If he thought that we were close to a state of lawlessness,

00:26:40.360 then just think about what's going on now with prisoners being released from prison for,

00:26:45.220 we don't even know. There's no good reason why prisoners are being released from prison and why

00:26:49.660 judges are saying, okay, I'm not actually going to prosecute this person or this person isn't going

00:26:54.760 to be prosecuted because of coronavirus, which again, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. We're

00:27:00.080 already seeing looting. We're already seeing crime abound. We're already seeing violence abound.

00:27:04.740 So if John MacArthur thought that we were close to that in 1972, I'd be interested to see what he has

00:27:12.020 to say to that today. Now there's a lot more that we could go into. We could talk about the Mark of

00:27:17.460 the Beast, the Antichrist, the millennial reign, but we don't have time for all of that. You can

00:27:21.840 listen to my full episode in times. I am for now until I am proven otherwise, which is a possibility.

00:27:29.940 I am a post-tribulation pre-millennialist. So that means that that refers to when I think Christ will

00:27:38.520 return. I believe that Christ will return after the tribulation. So Christians who are alive now

00:27:43.440 will actually endure the tribulation. Now, John MacArthur, according to the sermon, doesn't believe

00:27:47.480 that. He believes that Christians are going to be taken out of the tribulation. I believe that

00:27:51.980 Christians are going to endure the tribulation, that he will call believers to himself after that,

00:27:57.200 that we will reign with him during the millennium while Satan is bound and many more come to Christ

00:28:02.380 and the final judgment occurs and we will enjoy the eternal state in Christ. I am friends with a lot

00:28:08.140 of post-millennialists. Post-millennialists tend to believe that the world is going to conform more and

00:28:13.080 more to the law of God before Christ returns. They believe that we are currently in the millennial

00:28:18.160 rule of Christ. I've had quite a few post-millennialists on my show and they've really, they've made me

00:28:24.860 think about a lot of things. Like I said, I'm open to being proven and correct, but right now I don't

00:28:29.600 see how the Bible supports that. I don't see the world headed in that direction. There are a lot of

00:28:36.420 smart people, like I said, who disagree with me, people who know a lot more about the Bible than

00:28:40.420 I do, but there are also people who know a lot more about the Bible than I do who have the same

00:28:44.740 position as me. To me, Matthew 24 makes it clear that Christians will suffer through the tribulation

00:28:49.660 and that Jesus will not call us up before that. But I do know, here's, so I don't know, saying all

00:28:57.420 that said, could we be in the time that is leading to the imminent return of Christ? Yes, we could be

00:29:05.780 in that stage. What we know for sure is that God is doing something, that he is calling people to

00:29:12.020 himself, that he is calling people to repentance, that he is calling us to humble ourselves, that he is

00:29:17.300 doing a mighty work through his church, and that we should want to be a part of that, and that we

00:29:23.460 should be watchful. We should be sober-minded. We should be looking for the signs that the word of

00:29:29.960 God tells us to look for. Now, when people give you extra biblical signs, when people take you down

00:29:34.960 an extra biblical rabbit hole that has nothing to do with what the word of God says has to be

00:29:39.440 accomplished before Christ returns, you need to ignore that. Because the Bible also talks about,

00:29:43.960 like I said, false religion, which we see in abundance with the new age. We see apostasy.

00:29:49.920 We see people preaching a false gospel, preaching false prophecies. We've talked about these false

00:29:56.220 prophecies on the podcast. Last week, we talked about fear God, not trouble. And that was the title,

00:30:02.040 I think, of last Monday's episode that you should go listen to about how God loathes false prophets

00:30:07.260 and false prophecies, and that we should reject those. If we want to know the answers, we go to the word

00:30:12.100 of God. But the bottom line is, we don't know the day, we don't know the exact hour, but we are called

00:30:17.520 to be watchful, to be ready, to be bold. And I am praying that God would fill me with a sense of

00:30:23.620 urgency. That's why it's important also to study the end times, because we need to be filled with

00:30:28.560 a sense of urgency. We need to make sure that we are doing the things that God has called us to do.

00:30:34.040 And I have kind of woken up in the past few days, I would say, realizing that I have allowed my mind

00:30:42.120 to be filled with a lot of noise from Twitter, from social media, from news, from YouTube videos,

00:30:46.940 rather than being filled with the realist reality that's out there, which is the word of God.

00:30:52.800 And I've realized that the reason why I'm doing that, the reason why I feel even more of a draw

00:30:59.300 towards Twitter, towards Instagram, towards these things, towards watching the news is because

00:31:04.860 I feel isolated, even though I'm with my wonderful family, and I want to be connected to something in

00:31:12.640 real time. I want to be connected to other humans that are doing the same thing I am, even if it's in

00:31:17.900 a way that just drives up anxiety and outrage. I want to be reminded that there are other people

00:31:24.120 out there. And so I watch the news and I make sure it's live. And I'm on Twitter to make sure that I

00:31:29.540 realize that there are other people doing the same things as me and that they're, you know, that they're

00:31:33.940 alive too. And I realized that maybe I need to cut out that noise and take a look at what God is

00:31:42.360 actually, what God is actually doing. I was thinking about this metaphor the other day, as I was talking

00:31:47.620 to my husband, I was saying, I'm really sad that, you know, March Madness isn't happening and we're

00:31:54.800 not going to be able to watch the Masters and baseball games aren't going on. Now, I'm not

00:31:59.860 someone who even cares about sports. I don't really watch sports. My husband loves sports. And of course,

00:32:04.260 he's really sad about all those things, but I'm sad too. Why? It's not because I really care who

00:32:10.060 wins the Masters, honestly, or who won March Madness or any of that stuff. The reason why I care is

00:32:15.460 because all of these things for my entire life, for our entire lives have served as background

00:32:20.040 noise, noise that make us feel comfortable, that put us into context, that let us know what season

00:32:25.820 it is, what stage of life that we're in. And without it, I feel like I'm in a vacuum. I feel

00:32:31.760 like nothing is real. I feel like I'm in some alternate dystopian universe and I really don't

00:32:36.860 like it. And it reminds me, the analogy that I have is that if any of you sleep with a noisemaker

00:32:42.100 at night, like we sleep with a white noise machine, that when it goes off, it wakes you

00:32:46.040 up. The silence wakes you up. So it's not a noise that wakes you up. It is the silence.

00:32:52.400 And it kind of freaks you out. And you lay there before you turn the white noise machine

00:32:57.060 back on. You lay there in the total silence and you can hear a pin drop. You can feel and

00:33:01.440 sense the slightest move. And you turn it back on because it freaks you out and you want to

00:33:05.020 go back to sleep. In real life, like our white noise machine has turned off and we're sitting

00:33:12.040 there in silence and we're desperately looking for something else to fill the noise so we can just go

00:33:16.640 back into our lull. But maybe, maybe God is trying to turn off all of the noisemakers that are in our

00:33:25.120 life so that we can listen, so we can pay attention. So we can, like when I'm asleep at night and my

00:33:32.880 noise machine goes off and I can hear a pin drop and I am aware of everything that is going on in

00:33:39.340 my house because I'm so not used to this silence and it startles me and it wakes me up and I'm more

00:33:44.160 alert than ever. Maybe in another sense, that's what's happening in our real life. Maybe all of

00:33:50.800 these noisemakers are supposed to be off right now. Maybe we're not supposed to be searching for

00:33:56.300 the noise in our phone or on the news. Maybe we're supposed to be cutting all of those things off and

00:34:01.820 we're supposed to be paying attention to the things that are going on. So what I have done

00:34:07.020 as I've just started to pray that I would take notice of the things that God is doing and the

00:34:13.040 things that he's saying. Now I'm not talking about some extra biblical word. I'm not talking about some

00:34:17.420 extra biblical sign. I'm not talking about some new age feeling thing. I'm talking about what the God of

00:34:24.060 the universe is really doing right now on this timeline of eternity wherever we are on it. However

00:34:30.200 close we are to Christ's return, I want to make sure that I am paying attention, that I am watchful,

00:34:35.860 that I'm not constantly looking for new ways to numb my mind and to busy myself and to feel connected

00:34:41.180 to other people via the news or Twitter. Because like I've said, the realest thing that's going on

00:34:46.540 is what the word of God says is going on, which is that one of these days, whether it's in a hundred

00:34:54.400 years or a hundred seconds, Jesus is coming back and that we need to be ready. And I want to pay

00:35:02.840 attention to those things. Now, coronavirus updates. Um, there's not a whole lot of good news. So if

00:35:10.940 you're looking for good news, this particular part of the podcast probably isn't the place to get it

00:35:17.300 because things are looking, things are looking, I don't want to say they're looking completely bleak

00:35:22.640 because in some ways, I guess there is some good news in that we were going off a model just a

00:35:27.900 couple of weeks ago that said that if we didn't do anything, 2.2 million people were going to die. And

00:35:31.940 if we did something, 1.1 million people were going to die. And that was really scary. Now we're hearing

00:35:37.520 from Dr. Anthony Fauci that it's going to be a hundred thousand to 200 thousand people in the United

00:35:43.340 States. But Dr. Deborah Burke said, that's only if we do absolutely everything perfectly, which is a

00:35:49.780 little bit troubling. Like that's still a lot of people. It's a very small percentage of the population,

00:35:53.380 but it's still a lot of people from swine flu back in 2009, only 12,000 people died. And we are

00:36:01.420 certainly going to surpass the 12,000 mark, I believe, because right now we've got 3,300 deaths.

00:36:09.580 And what the experts are saying is that we are, we haven't reached the peak yet,

00:36:12.860 that the peak is still a few weeks off. President Trump extended the social distancing guidelines

00:36:18.140 to April 30th. And what I am hearing is that it's actually going to be longer than that,

00:36:23.560 that it's still probably going to be a few weeks even after that, that it's going to be June 1st.

00:36:27.920 And there's a possibility that they're just telling us April 30th because they know they have to tell

00:36:32.480 us things in doses or else we're going to freak out thinking about eight weeks. And as we talked about

00:36:37.380 last week, last Wednesday, we did a podcast called Save Lives and Livelihoods, where we talked about the

00:36:42.680 importance of voluntarily doing what we can to make sure that we are protecting the most vulnerable

00:36:48.440 among us and that we are slowing the spread of this virus. I think that that is so important.

00:36:54.120 I am not someone who takes this lightly, who takes this virus lightly, who takes the weight on our

00:37:00.260 hospitals lightly. I want to do whatever we can to flatten the curve and to listen to the experts.

00:37:06.740 Of course, like I said, we have been in our home almost exclusively for three weeks, except for

00:37:11.780 absolutely having to go out and get groceries or something like that. So I am absolutely taking

00:37:17.660 this seriously. I also am taking seriously the economic, the social implications of all of this,

00:37:23.800 of people losing their jobs, not being able to feed their children, losing their businesses,

00:37:28.500 being absolutely weighed down in very real and tangible ways by shutting down the entire economy.

00:37:34.560 These are two things that I'm thinking about. For some reason, in this stupid binary that we have

00:37:42.260 created on Twitter, you can either care about the economy or you can care about people. What do you

00:37:48.380 think makes the economy go? What do you think the economy affects? It's people. It's people. And I am

00:37:54.100 also concerned about the suspension of our liberties. If we don't have liberties in a crisis,

00:37:59.980 what are liberties good for? What is the Bill of Rights good for? So I'm concerned about all of

00:38:05.060 these things. And contrary to popular stupid media opinion, it is possible to be concerned about all

00:38:12.400 three of these things. My opinion hasn't changed. I still believe that a way to love your neighbor

00:38:17.380 during this time is to socially distance. That's what we've been doing. That's why I encourage other

00:38:21.260 people to do. I don't believe having a glib attitude about this and pretending like,

00:38:25.540 oh, this is no big deal. I'm just going to continue to live my life and you can't tell me what to do

00:38:30.060 because I'm independent. I still think that's the wrong attitude to have. I also think that it is

00:38:37.500 wrong for the government, Bill de Blasio, for example, the mayor of New York City, to say,

00:38:42.880 if you continue to meet as a church, we will close down your building permanently for people to not be

00:38:48.600 able to purchase a gun. Like, I think that that is also troubling. I want people to voluntarily take

00:38:54.460 responsibility and to be as cautious and to be as compassionate as we possibly can, understanding

00:38:59.720 that some people still have to go to work. Some people don't have the option to just stay at home.

00:39:07.220 And I completely understand that. But if we can to limit our public exposure as much as possible,

00:39:12.700 but I still don't want the government suspending our First Amendment rights, for example, because we're

00:39:19.600 in a crisis saying that I'm going to close down a church and you can't buy a gun because a pandemic

00:39:24.860 is happening. I'm not for that. So I can hold those two thoughts together simultaneously. Some

00:39:31.460 people said that some people said that me making a joke about the fact that, oh, we're getting our

00:39:38.340 free trial of communism and I really want to cancel after 30 days, but they already have my payment

00:39:42.900 information. Some people are saying that me saying that is hypocritical to what I said earlier of

00:39:47.820 loving your neighbor means at, in many points, staying inside. I don't think so. I'm talking

00:39:54.380 about voluntary versus compulsory. I am not excited about the compulsory actions that are being taken.

00:40:02.460 Now, some of it, I think it's necessary. State governments are in a tough position. President

00:40:06.300 Trump is in a really tough position. I don't fault all of the people who have pushed these policies.

00:40:11.420 I think they're trying to do what is best, but I do still think that we have to have some sort of plan

00:40:17.560 and more of a tangible concrete light at the end of the tunnel that makes way for actual recovery.

00:40:24.520 Congress passed this so-called stimulus bill, this recovery bill that does send checks to people,

00:40:31.060 that does help certain businesses, and that's going to do something, but people are going to have to be

00:40:37.420 sustained longer than that in a more formidable way than what this bill actually offers. And it gives

00:40:43.860 millions and millions and millions of dollars to places that don't actually need our money,

00:40:47.460 like the Kennedy Center. I mean, it's just absolutely crazy. And Representative Thomas Massey,

00:40:52.660 who I have had on this podcast before, he was against it. And President Trump said that he needs

00:40:59.340 to be thrown out of the Republican Party. I cannot disagree with that more. Thomas Massey,

00:41:03.860 the representative is extremely principled. It wasn't a publicity stunt, and I completely sympathize

00:41:12.540 with his concerns. Unfortunately, this was the position that Congress was in, and they had to get

00:41:17.940 it done, and they did. And hopefully, I do hope that it offers a lot of relief to a lot of you. But

00:41:24.780 unfortunately, I think that it's a band-aid on a much bigger problem that we are going to see from

00:41:29.660 shutting down our entire economy. Just a numbers update. Right now, we've got 174,410 confirmed

00:41:38.940 cases. We're going to see that number go up as we get more and more tests. We've got almost 6,000

00:41:44.740 people who are recovered. We've got 3,300, almost 3,400 people who have died, which is not great. Now,

00:41:53.740 there are, unfortunately, there are people in the media who are extremely excited about the fact

00:42:01.560 that America is leading the way, apparently, in deaths. So we have coronaviruses overtaking us,

00:42:11.360 apparently, more than other countries. But of course, we cannot trust the numbers coming out of

00:42:16.080 China at all. But you have media who really do just want to see the country in devastation. They are

00:42:22.860 giddy about the fact that we have so many cases, and then our death number is climbing. Now, I don't

00:42:30.260 think they actually want people to die, but they want Trump to look bad, and they want the United

00:42:34.500 States to look bad so much that they are willing to be at least deceitfully celebratory about the

00:42:42.860 fact that we have so many cases. Of course, we can't trust the numbers coming out of China. We can't

00:42:47.780 trust anything that the World Health Organization says because they are in bed with China. China is a

00:42:52.460 communist country. They are always going to lie. And so if indeed the numbers that they have reported

00:42:58.320 to us are drastically lower than the reality, if they really have had tens of millions of people die,

00:43:03.680 obviously, that's not very good for us either. Now, there are a lot of private companies that are

00:43:11.460 doing amazing things, like MyPillow. He is retrofitting his factories to make more than 50,000 masks a day.

00:43:19.420 That's a big problem right now. I know you're seeing probably a lot of conflicting reports,

00:43:23.560 but I've talked to a lot of people around the country who say they're not overwhelmed yet.

00:43:28.320 Some hospitals are saying that their hospitals are empty right now. That's because they've canceled

00:43:32.940 elective procedures, and people are scared to go to the emergency room because they don't want to get

00:43:37.720 sick unless their lives are actually being threatened. But a lot of hospitals are saying,

00:43:43.900 we are low on supplies. We're low on masks. We're low on protective gear. We are low on the tools

00:43:48.660 that we need. And it's really crazy because we constantly hear about millions of masks and

00:43:54.780 equipment being in circulation right now. And yet so many hospitals are not getting them. Apparently,

00:44:00.620 there's a lot of red tape. Regulation is just a killer, man. There's a lot of red tape

00:44:05.340 that are preventing these masks from actually getting into the hands of nurses and doctors at these

00:44:10.980 hospitals. But MyPillow is a business that is trying their best to help these workers get the

00:44:18.500 masks that they need. And what happens? The MyPillow guy, he talks at a press conference

00:44:22.780 with President Trump in the Rose Garden just the other day. And what happens to him? Well,

00:44:27.700 you've got all of blue checkmark liberal Twitter making fun of him for talking about God and for

00:44:32.740 saying that this is wrong, that President Trump would bring this guy up there. What have you done?

00:44:38.220 celebrities, blue check marks that are making fun of this guy for sacrificing his own profits,

00:44:43.980 by the way, to make sure that hospital workers have the mask that they need. What have you done,

00:44:48.940 except for sit on your butt and twiddle your thumbs for the past three weeks and make fun of people who

00:44:52.900 are actually helping? See, this is one of the many problems with leftism. There are problems with

00:44:59.180 conservatives, obviously, as well. They have their own conservatives have our own issues and our own

00:45:05.000 people who are problematic and stupid. But the problem with leftism as an ideology is that as

00:45:11.400 Dan Crenshaw has said before, it doesn't actually function as a way to govern. It functions as a way

00:45:16.920 to gin up outrage. So it doesn't actually accomplish. Leftism never accomplishes anything. It is very good

00:45:24.760 at igniting emotion and igniting passion. But every time it tries to execute something,

00:45:31.080 it fails. And that is why all of the heroes that leftists hold up aren't people that have done

00:45:39.560 anything productive or have done anything good. They are people who have complained the right way.

00:45:45.160 So those are leftist heroes, people who complain the right way, not people who actually accomplish

00:45:50.280 anything good. So that's why they have a hard time with Mike Lindell, who owns and created MyPillow,

00:45:55.880 because he's not the virtue signaling type of hero that they bow down to. Anyone who actually does

00:46:03.640 something productive and good for people themselves rather than just extorting taxpayers to do it or

00:46:10.040 just ginning up outrage, they are scoffed at. That is what leftism does. Okay, that's the whole podcast

00:46:17.800 for today. We covered a lot of bases. Thanks for listening. I will be back here on Friday. Have a good day.

00:46:25.880 Time for today.

00:46:31.640 If you'd like to know me.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - April 01, 2020

Ep 232 ｜ 'Tiger King' and the End Times

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