Transcript

Jenna Ellis: America's Real Crisis is Biblical Illiteracy

 : Jenna Ellis in the morning on American Family Radio.

Jenna Ellis: I love talking about the things of God because of truth and the biblical worldview. The U.S. constitution obligates our government to preserve and protect. The rights that our founders recognize come from God our creator, not our government. I believe that scripture in the Bible is very clear that God is the one that raised up each of you and God has allowed us to be brought here to this specific moment in time.

 : This is Jenna Ellis in the morning.

Jenna Ellis: Good morning. And I am so excited for the show today because occasionally, as regular listeners know, we like to take a sort of 30,000 foot perspective on topics and do more of a deep dive overview into topics that concern civil government. Of course, because that's the regularly scheduled programming is news of the day, politics, culture, things that are going on in our community. And we want to have truth in community, which is a definition that was actually provided to me by our special guest today, my Colorado pastor, Gino Gerace, who's the former pastor of Calvary Chapel South Denver and FBI chaplain. And we want to have truth in community because we know that the civil government is necessary in order to maintain a moral and upright society necessarily. We have to interact with each other outside of just our immediate families. We have to interact with each other in the context of family in the church. And so, we have to have morality, and truth that governs us inside the home, but also inside of greater society. And so when we look at truth in society and we look at the difference of what society used to be with the foundation of biblical truth, of morality, with this common basic assumption that truth is discoverable, that our rights come from God, our creator, that God is, exists as the divine lawgiver, has a purpose and plan for our life. I mean as we're celebrating America's 250th anniversary, those were basic assumptions at the founding of this country. And yet when we look at the secular pluralism and the post truth society that has taken over this kind of what, what we would call standpoint epistemology, basically, that whatever my particular viewpoint is, is just as valid as your different perspective. And we can argue and debate perspective and reality, that's just not true. Truth exists. And we may have different perspectives, we may have different opinions, but certain things are not negotiable. the, it's not negotiable that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. we have discovered that we labeled it, we labeled east and west. But as far as, ah, how the universe operates. There are certain things and fundamental truths, including truth about morality, that is discoverable, it is objective, and it simply is, regardless of our opinion. And so, recently my friend Troy Miller, who is the CEO of National Religious Broadcasters, wrote a really amazing piece you need to go back and read in World, magazine and so you can get it@wng.org as well. And the title is America's Real Crisis is Biblical Illiteracy. And I think he is so spot on in this diagnosis because he says our country lacks the theological vocabulary, discernment necessary to sustain the republic. And he writes, the symptoms of a deeper disorder, biblical illiteracy, are real. The nation finds itself here. As America approaches and celebrates our 250th anniversary, the nation finds itself preoccupied with familiar concerns. Political polarization, civic deterioration, institutional distrust, and cultural fragmentation. Those are serious realities, but they are not the ultimate ones. I have become increasingly convinced that the central problem confronting both church and culture is not merely moral rebellion against biblical truth, but widespread unfamiliarity with it. And biblical illiteracy is not a peripheral church problem. It is a civilizational crisis. That is absolutely true.

Gino Geraci: Postmodern relativism undermining biblical truth

So I want to welcome in Gino Geraci to talk more about this because for years, beyond shepherding his church, being an FBI chaplain, Gino has for years been part of not only a network, got questions that answers questions about, biblical literacy and topics of theology, but also hosted a radio program where you could call in and and you can call in and ask questions, questions about the Bible. And and Gino, you know, I, I want to get overall your take on this because as a pastor I'm sure through the decades you've seen the cultural shifts and where the church at large has failed to truly disciple and, and act as a church, which one of the prime and key components of being the church and discipleships. Churches should be seminaries, they should be educating their members in systematic theology. This isn't just, you know, a mom's group. It's not a playgroup, it's not a, you know, association that you come to. It's not a gym membership, but often anymore. churches in America treat membership in churches that way. And biblical illiteracy, I think, is a huge problem

Gino Geraci: indeed. Jenna, you know, we could talk about this. And what I want to do in part is to jump to the solution. And jumping to the solution is what you hinted at. It's a return to the scripture. It's biblically based, scripture centered discipleship, reading, studying, memorizing, applying the word of God to daily. So part of the challenges, I think is what you also hinted at is this departure from belief that the Bible is what it claims to be and what it says about itself. So this has resulted in a number of different things. neglect of personal and corporate scripture reading. Imagine we're living in a culture and a society that has opted for entertainment, or comfort. And I have no problem with hope and comfort. What I have a problem is that when hope and comfort is offered as a substitute for biblical reality, biblical teaching. And so there are cultural distractions, there are misplaced priorities. You hinted at the postmodern relativism undermining the truth. And so all of this has sort of, I'm going to use the term pooled like a cesspool. And it's weakened doctrinal teaching in the churches. And we see this evidence. There's little, what I would call almost like eruptions. You see it in like the campaign of Talarico down in Texas, who basically, positions himself as a Christian and then goes on to neglect historical biblical essential Bible teachings. So imagine we, we live in a world where you can identify as a Christian, which is understandable, but you don't have to adopt historical biblical essential beliefs. And so that's where it becomes a real problematic. But it's sort of what your program is dedicated to. imagine you begin by refusing to think logically or biblically, and you have this compilation, distraction, entertainment, saturation, postmodern relativistic thinking. And then all of a sudden, here we are.

Jenna Ellis: And what's so tragic about all of that is that the church is the one with the answers. And the church should be far more important to society than even civil government. And, and this is where this lie of a separation between church and state in the sense that the church should not influence the state and they shouldn't come from the same basic assumptions on reality and truth and God and religion and biblical truth and all of those things. this has led to what we are seeing in a completely chaotic culture that can't agree on what kind of society we want to live in. And that's what we're seeing, I think, even among the, the Republican base where we have so many different internal struggles and battles because we are no longer coming from the same set of basic assumptions. I mean, imagine, in a relationship, if two people fundamentally do not agree on what a marriage should look like, what a family unit should look like, and the rules and the, the roles and the biblical identity of those things it's never going to work because you just come in with a completely different, not only perspective, but a different basic assumption of your roles and responsibility, what the ideal should be. And that's where I think we're also at in our civil government, where we got 250 years ago, in 1776, we got a unanimous declaration that truth is, it is discoverable, and our rights come from God, our Creator. Then we debated within that context how best to go about achieving that goal. But we agreed on the goal. We agreed in coming to the table on what that looked like. We don't agree on that in American culture anymore. We don't have those basic assumptions. And I agree with Troy Miller, that it's because we are no longer substantively versed, even generally as Christians in theology. We are cultural Christians. We're nominal Christians. We're Christians in name only. we think that, you know, Jesus was this, love everyone, be kind, affirm. You know, Jesus would never, disagree with anyone, would never make anyone feel bad or offended. And so we have this false view of Jesus. And therefore our basic assumptions of how family, church, and then civil society should look and operate are completely distorted.

Gino Geraci: You know, there's a couple of things. one is, remember this is supposed to be Bible reading. The president read from the Bible. You know, there's this idea that we're going to read from the Bible. And I get that there is a neglect of scripture reading and teaching. Many people simply don't read the Bible. And if they. So imagine you're not even a believer, but you're a person who understands the implications of this book. It's civilizational impact. You know, where does the idea of law and, the dignity of humanity and freedom and justice. Where does all of this stuff come from? Where does the idea of government come from? I think it's from Genesis, chapter nine, where God establishes government to, number one, promote righteousness and to prevent wickedness. But guess what? You have to now know what righteousness is and wickedness. And to the earlier illustration that you just used on marriage, imagine we define the problem in terms of the goal. What is the goal of marriage? According to the Bible, it says a man will leave his mother and father cleave to the woman, and the two shall become one. And so imagine you go, okay, so the goal of marriage is unity. we could joke and say, well, which one are we going to be? Are we going to be me or are we going to be you? Or we can think about it biblically and say, hey, Unity is based on trust and respect and affection. These are the ingredients that make unity possible. And so again, daily engagement with the scripture, this is important. Jenna is rare even in the Christian community. M and so in Joshua 1:9, or actually it's not 1:9, it's 1:8. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night. The psalmist in Psalm 1, verse 2 says, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. So the psalmist is basically saying when he's talking about the law of the Lord, David is using it as a way of speaking of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the revelation of God. And of course Paul writing to Timothy says the Scripture is given by inspiration of God. It's profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction and righteousness. But imagine again, a growing group of Christians say not so much.

Jenna Ellis: And that's what's so sad is that people think now that you can call yourself a Christian without agreeing with what the Bible teaches and with the fundamentals of Christianity. I mean it would be like calling yourself a vegan and still eating meat. I mean you're just not practicing what that name and that title and that identity indicates that you should believe and conform in terms of your behavior. And somehow we found that this is acceptable in 2026 to call yourself a Christian and yet not be substantively educated in the knowledge of God. I mean it would be the same as if I called myself a lawyer without having gone through law school and earning my Juris Doctor degree. I couldn't call myself a lawyer until I have been sufficiently educated in the knowledge of the law. I mean there are many, and I wish that it was the same for pastors. there are far too many people that call themselves biblical teachers that have never gone through substantive theology. And I see this all over social media, these so called pastors that are teaching things just fundamentally contrary to the word of God and, and people are believing them. I mean, and this is where, when you talked Gino about lacking in 2026 the understanding of the authority of the Word of God. I've seen that even recently on social media on things, when people are talking about, you know, the institution of the family and the definition of marriage between one man and one woman, the right of the child to have, their parents and you know, to not have a child, commodification and you know, one, one person on social media responded to me, well, where does it say that?

Gina Ellis: Social media has led to a substitution of truth for authority

And I said, well, what sources would you consider authoritative? And that person didn't reply because that was the trap. They wanted me to say, well, you know, Genesis 1:27, and then say, well, I don't believe in the Bible. Right. And that's, that's the problem, right?

Gino Geraci: Well, in part. A part I would push back even a little bit and I would say, you know, imagine that where you go, well, cite your sources. Well, this is what the Bible says. I don't believe the Bible. And then that's where I would say, help me understand what you do believe. What do you believe? What, where do you anchor, tether, your source? in other words, how do you ground your ideas in any given subject? whether we're talking about morality or justice or the nature of the family. And to your point earlier about pastors, imagine, imagine you have a pastor who doesn't really believe the Bible's true, has never really studied the Bible. Well, guess what? Their sermons become shallow. they impart a faith, but it's not a biblical faith. It's a faith based on emotion or culture rather than truth. And so you have this. It isn't just a subtle substitution, Jenna, it's a blatant substitution. So again, imagine as a lawyer where, lawyers now say, hey, you know what? I'm not going to go to law school. I'm going to go to ChatGPT or Claude Mythos or whatever, the latest AI and it hallucinates citations of law that don't actually really exist. And then a group of lawyers actually believe that the mythical citations are real. What happens to law in general at that point?

Jenna Ellis: It's, it's utter chaos and it lacks authority and

Gino Geraci: laughing because you get it.

Jenna Ellis: yeah, yeah. I mean that's exactly what we're experiencing in our culture.

Gino Geraci: Yes. And so, Jesus actually talks about this. So, so imagine here we are, you talked about social media entertainment, constant information overload. And so, so you're getting social media where people, everybody, everybody becomes a self described expert on whatever given subject. And Jesus In Mark, chapter 4, verse 19, he says the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, the desire for other things, entering choked the word and it becomes unfruitful. He's talking about the parable of the soils, you know, and how people receive information or receive knowled or receive revelation. And so the Bible talks about the problem of. The Bible's not the problem. The word of God is not the problem. The Soil is the problem. The soil of the human heart. And so, again, what do you do when you have a hard heart? You like the metaphor of the soil? You plow it. You plow it. You break up that hard soil. And to me, the thing that breaks up that hard soil is the confrontation that takes place when you're confronted with what the Bible says on any given subject. But for whatever reason, in our culture and society, like if I cite John 17:17, Sanctify them by your truth. Your word is truth. Some people are actually put out. They go, you know, that guy Gino, he. He keeps quoting the Bible. He gives the location, he cites the address. Psalm 119. The entirety of your word is truth. That's verse 160. And every one of your righteous judgments endure forever. So, imagine you go, you know, but I don't believe that. My job is to say, but you know what? I do believe that. I believe that, and I think I have fairly good reason to believe it based on Jesus, his life, his ministry, his death, his subsequent resurrection, where he points to a kind of reality that's disturbing to most people. because remember, the Gospel isn't just about reliable information. It's reliable transformation, Jenna. As you know, it has to be a kind of a way of thinking and truth that changes your heart, that changes your life, that changes the way you begin to process the world around you.

Jenna Ellis: Just truth fundamentally. And we've got to take a break here, but Gina, Geraci will be with you. Me in this full show because this is such an important topic and so much to say, even an hour isn't enough. But we will be right back with more here on Jenna Ellis in the Morning.

Jenna Ellis welcomes back Pastor Gino Geraci on American Family Radio

 : Welcome back to Jenna Ellis in the Morning on American Family Radio.

Jenna Ellis: Welcome back. And I'm here with my special guest, Pastor Gino Geraci, who. Who has been my pastor for a really long time from Colorado. And actually, in the break, we were just talking about, lo, those many years ago that I first went to hear Nancy Pearcey, who's the author of Total Truth, Francis Schaefer's scholar. Ah, she was speaking, and I went to his church to hear her and then was talking to both of them after and asking all of my questions as, a new law school graduate and saying, okay, well, how do I reconcile that, you know, the law is so secular with the clear morality of the Bible? And you had answers, Gino, and you. And you were willing to speak with me about truth. And that was really the inception of my Ministry because Nancy, encouraged me to write the book that I had been thinking about and wanting to express of basically an apologetic of the law and civil society. And, I couldn't have imagined back then, being able to do what, What I get to do in ministry now, which is what we're doing together today. And God is so good. but the point is that the Bible has the answers. And this is where Christians in every facet of life, civil society, family problems, you know, churches, how they should run, right down to, you know, how we need to behave in our own lives and confront difficulties that we have, you know, instead of going to, you know, secular therapists or turning to medication or turning to your feelings and emotions or, you know, the new thing now is neurodivergent. Well, my brain is just wired differently. You know, God doesn't have. Well, here is how the Christian life, the human life ought to be led. And you can have joy and purpose and fulfillment and truth. Except for these neurodivergent people, like, you know, there's not exceptions. I mean, this is the reality and the truth. And if we want to harness the truth and to truly live the life that God has planned for us, it won't be without difficulty, certainly, and the Bible's replete of those examples. But to have joy anyway in spite of those things, to turn to truth anyway, in spite of, the sin that infects, this present world. This is why we have to be substantively grounded in, in the truth of theology.

What do you think are the key deficiencies in Christian biblical literacy today

So this gets me to my next, question for you, Gino, because you have, you know, for years been on radio listening to the questions and answering them from callers who ask you their most pressing questions on biblical truth. So first, what do you think overall? And this is a generalization, obviously, but overall, in our culture, in America, what do you think are the key deficiencies. Theology that Christians just don't know today?

Gino Geraci: Yeah. Ah. One of the ways that I think I would answer that question is to preface it by saying people aren't thinking like Jesus when it comes to the Bible. And so imagine there are people who are reading the Bible but. Or they're reading it through that lens that we talked about earlier. It's a lens that is inconsistent with the Christian worldview. So we talked about biblical illiteracy in the first segment. And so even among scholars or people who understand theology or Hebrew or Greek, the issue isn't understanding Hebrew or Greek. It's illegitimate inferences, faulty reasoning about what the Scripture means. You know, I have my, own nonprofit called Scripture Says. What does the scripture say about a given subject? So Jesus talking, he'll say, he'll ask the question, hey, you read the Bible? Or what does the scripture say about this? And so Jesus is urging people to train their minds, to think clearly and logically. Now, you talked about the Fall. And, the way I like to think about this is, yes, we live in a broken world, a fallen world, but we also live in a redeemed world world. And in the redeemed world, yes, the Fall has affected the way we reason about things, but it hasn't affected the revelation itself. So the problem is with the person reading the Bible. And so what do we do? What do we do about that? And so back to your. The theology question. It goes to the issue of the authority of the Scripture, the identity of God, the identity of Jesus, the means of salvation, and then what the future holds. And so if I were to put it in that kind of a succinct way, that's the way that I would think about it. It is, tell me what you believe about the authority of the Scripture. Tell me about the identity of the God of the Bible, about the person of Jesus, of what it means to be saved. And, and how do you, how do you go into the future? So those are the, to me, the most imperative things. But oddly enough, those aren't the questions that are most asked me. Most of the questions just surround kind of things like, hey, what about the problem of evil? Or, hey, how can I trust the Bible? Or, hey, can women be pastors? Now, don't get me wrong. as you know, I love answering questions and want to take the question seriously, but sometimes we have to build up to the question.

Jenna Ellis: Yeah, absolutely. it's, it's, similar in my line of work when I was still, representing clients. And they just wanted, you know, the answer without. And then it didn't make sense because, you know, they didn't have the full context of the legal analysis that you have to explain and provide first. You have to have that foundation. and obviously, you know, way, way, way more important to understand, the foundation of Scripture. And I want to hone in for a moment on the issue of the authority of the Bible because, that obviously, and knowing the person of Jesus, who he is, we're, seeing that as a major, major problem in the, anti Israel, pro Israel, you know, Jews versus Christians, you know, that whole debate going on today, there is a misrepresentation of who Jesus is. And also that, you know, Islam somehow. Well, you know, we revere Jesus just as m much as you do because we think he's a prophet. Well, no, we know that he is Lord. Very different. but setting that one aside for a moment, and we'll hopefully circle back to it, the issue of the authority of Scripture.

People often misunderstand the authority of the Bible in the civil government sphere

this is one, Gino, that I see just in practical terms every day in the civil government sphere, where people don't believe that the truth of reality and morality and the revelation of God is authoritative. And people also don't believe that for their own individual lives. They think, well, you know, the Bible is just a suggestion book maybe. or it's just, you know, a book of a lot of different, kind of fortune cookie statements. like everything is proverbs in the Bible. You know, that's the one book they're used to referencing. and they don't understand in the context of the family or the civil government or even the church, unfortunately, the authority of the Bible. How should Christians understand that?

Gino Geraci: The way that. The simple way to think about it is to begin at the beginning. It's the word of God himself. So imagine if you ask the question, well, is it the product of church tradition, human approval? Is this just simply the, imagination of people writing over time? But that's exactly the opposite of what the Bible says about itself. So the Jesus basically refers to the scripture as being God's word. Paul talks about all scripture is God breathed or breathed out by the author, by the Creator. And so it's the source of the authority. Now, again, in law, we might cite authority, right? We might say, this is what the Constitution says. So imagine you believe that the Constitution, silly you, is an authoritative document. Or, imagine you believe in the Bill of Rights. You know, I think I had a conversation with you, and I talked about the Bill of Rights. And I said, jenna, how much stronger law can you get about freedom than the bill itself? How can you create a new law that's more authoritative, that's stronger than the Bill of Rights itself?

Jenna Ellis: Mm.

Gino Geraci: And why do we even have to do that? And so imagine if you say, well, what's more authoritative than the Bible? Now, we need to be careful because obviously my interpretation of the Bible or my application of the Bible isn't authoritative. But what God says in the divine revelation is something that God says. I might misunderstand it, I might misapply it, but it doesn't change the authority. And so now we look at the streams of Authority, human invention, tradition, church, these are layers of authority. And so imagine you're growing up in a world where you happen to be, I can't remember. Jenny, you're the older sister and you have younger brothers, right?

Jenna Ellis: I have one older and one younger.

Gino Geraci: Okay, you have one older and one younger. So imagine your younger brother says, you're not the boss of me. You can't tell me what to do. You're not the authority in my life. And so, so we have to, we have to ask and answer the question, how do we approach the authority of the Scripture? And then are we willing to submit to it? We, we receive a sufficient argument or a plausible argument that, that you say, well, it claims to be authoritative. Jesus believed it was authoritative. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, they all believed it was authoritative. But you don't. So again, you know, we're back to the people. I don't believe the Bible for the people who say, I don't believe the Bible's true. Right. And, and we say, well, what do you believe is true? I believe what I think is true. So do you believe in reason or rat? So as you, as you already know, intelligibility and reason itself is premised on the reality of what the Bible says about a creator and that you're made in the image of God and that you live in a created universe that is intelligible because God made it that way.

Jenna Ellis: Right.

Gino Geraci: How could you possibly trust what you think about anything?

Jenna Ellis: Yeah, and there is a, I forget who to attribute this quotation to, but I love it. and I've, and I've referred to it actually a lot that anyone who is arguing against the truth of Christianity is borrowing from the truth of Christianity to argue against it. Because they're borrowing reasons, rationality, human intellect, I mean, all of the things that God has given us and the tools to reason and understand in order to argue against Christianity.

Gino Geraci: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So, C.S. lewis obviously made this very, very famous and other people have written about it, including Francis Schaefer and Nancy Pearcy, that, that we have to borrow Christian currency in order to spend our own foolish ideas.

Jenna Ellis: And, and what's so sad is that for people you know, like this, this guy who was asking me, you know, well, where is that written? And wanted to trap me in that he couldn't even respond to my question, well, what sources would you consider authoritative? Because obviously he didn't include the Bible based on, you know, the nature and the context of the question, but he wasn't willing to come up with any other alternative. And that's the thing that is really shocking to me as well is that even for some Christians who don't understand how authoritative the Bible actually is and how truthful and how sufficient it is to address, the, the problems of humanity and to give us how we should live and civil government and policy and all of that, they don't actually have an alternative. When you ask them the question, well, who do you consider the authority, as you said, Gina? They just say, well, I mean, they think their opinions and, or, or maybe, you know, some book they read or they go, well, you know, the. Our founders had some good ideas, maybe, but I disagree with them. I mean, they, they don't actually. The nature of authority itself, and that's a huge problem. And why we're seeing rebellion against parents, why we're seeing lack of discipline in the family, I mean, in the church, there's definitely a lack of spiritual discipline and authority. Nobody considers anymore, unfortunately, their church authoritative over, you know, marriage and family and membership. And increasingly, with the rise in violence and crime and all this, nobody even thinks that civil government is authoritative. And that becomes then, ah, totally untenable. And we're barreling down to chaos because I think the issue is authority. And we have to take a break here. but I want to come back to this after the break with Gino Geraci, and we're talking about the need to understand substantively truth theology, become biblically literate, and how that influences our worldview. We'll be right back.

Jenna Ellis: Gino Geraci discusses biblical authority on American Family Radio

 : welcome back to Jenna Ellis in the Morning on American Family Radio.

Jenna Ellis: Welcome back. And I'm here with my special guest, Gino Geraci, a, former pastor of Calvary Chapel South Denver, FBI chaplain, and the answers of the Bible that, that he prolifically gives on radio and in person, and, thankfully answered my questions and still answers my questions over the years, which I so appreciate. because we need mentors and we need, people who are willing to disciple us and help us think rightly and truthfully about the Bible. And we were talking in the last segment about how, the mindset of not only America in general, and I think actually the world population right now in general, but among Christians even, is a lack of understanding of the authority of Scripture, the delegated authority of God to the institutions he's ordained, the church government, the family government, the civil government, the lack of individuals understanding our own authority and how we're responsible for it like parents, like statesmen, and, like pastors. And you also mentioned, Gino and I. And I do want to circle back to this as well, the lack of understanding of who Jesus actually is. Because I think if we as Christians truly understood the God that we serve and who Jesus is and understood fully why, substantive knowledge of truth and the person of truth, who is Jesus Christ, we would live differently.

Gino Geraci: Yeah. And there's an actual relationship between what we've been talking about, authority, and what you just said. Jesus himself says in the NewSong Testament, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. What an amazing statement. All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. And so this idea Jesus is making, an. An amazing claim. Now back to the authority. And then Jesus. The Greek word for, translated Authority in Romans 13 is exousia. It means delegated authority. And then there's another kind of authority, Dunamos. You know, the, the ability to compel compliance. So imagine in the law, as you know, here's, a judge, and the judge hammers her gavel down and says, I'm holding you in contempt of court. Does that judge have the authority to incarcerate you?

Jenna Ellis: Unfortunately, yes. Yes. Unless they are abusing or illegitimate authority. But, but that's a different topic.

Gino Geraci: Yes, so it is. It is possible for judges to abuse their legitimate authority. Now imagine a judge abuses his or her legitimate authority and then compels, through the use of force, a restriction. They take money from you. They take property from you. They take your liberty from you. Now, we assume that Jesus has both legitimate authority and righteous authority and that he's incapable of abusing the authority. So when we ask and we answer the question, where does Jesus authority come from? It's in his identity. He is the person who came from heaven to save us. He is the person that God has, invested all authority concerning who gets to go to heaven and who doesn't. He's the one who's been given the authority to forgive your sin and reconcile you to the Father. He's the one who's been given authority, authority to cleanse you, wash you. think of all that happens when you become a Christ follower and a lover of Jesus and a believer of Jesus. And, and then because you, you are created by God, you are, held accountable by God, and then you are rewarded by God. So imagine what kind of a person has the ability to come from heaven, die for your sin, rise from the dead, ascend into heaven. What kind of a person is that. And that's why we think about, not just from a theological standpoint, although we do that the second person of the Trinity, Jesus acquires a second nature, a human nature. He's one person with two natures. His identity is what makes it possible to embrace. And then I'm going to use the term, substantiate all of his claims of authority.

Jenna Ellis: And you know, what an incredible truth. And this is where.

Gino Geraci: Isn't that amazing?

Jenna Ellis: It is. And for the people who are so frustrated with the abuses of civil government, the lack of use of legitimate authority, the abuse of authority and the illegitimate use, we have and serve a divine king that one day will come literally and reign forever and ever in a perfect, perfect government. And I can't wait for that day because we can't possibly replicate that. we live in a sinful, fallen world that's run by sinful, fallen people. But that's the point of recognizing truth and recognizing God's authority, is that we can try to emulate him. And that's the call of the Christian, is to be daily more conformed to the image of Christ. We are image bearers. We're not just work doers. We are image bearers with work to do. And we should, to the best of our human ability, emulate that wonderful, perfect king in our civil society and our government today. And that, you know, what a wonderful way to, Because we're only a few minutes from having to conclude the program.

Gino Gino says biblical illiteracy is systemic problem in our society

What a wonderful way to kind of wrap this together, to say that the, the problem that is systemic in our society is illiteracy of the person of truth, of our perfect king. And that's the problem in our civil government, in our church, in our families, is that we are not understanding who God is and we are not trying often to be daily conformed to that image of Christ.

Gino Geraci: I'm thinking of Psalm 115. 3. Our God is in the heavens, he does all that he pleases. Imagine you have to read the Bible all the way to the book of Psalms to come to that passage. Our God is in the heavens, he does what he pleases. Now again, we might complain about elected officials. They're in Washington, they're in name the state capitol, and they seem to do what they please. But in the end they're going to be accountable. They're going to be accountable for what they've done. And what a blessing that, God isn't accountable to anybody because he's incapable of abusing his perfect authority.

Jenna Ellis: M what. And what an amazing Realization that is difficult as life gets. As frustrated as we are at politics, news of the day, Democrats and Republicans, you know, along the whole spectrum, as frustrated as we may get, in our personal lives and things that are difficult, in our lives, we can look forward to the day that we will be with Christ and that we will live with him in perfection and in, in resurrected, ah, perfect bodies and in, in a, in an amazing presence of the Lord where there will be no more sin, there will be no more tears, and there will be no more, lawfare or illegitimate abuse of authority. But a wonderful, perfect king. I just, I love that, Gino. And as, as Pastor John MacArthur used to say, I yearn for heaven because I'm just so tired of sin.

Gino Geraci: Yes. And of course, what a blessing and what a, what a wonderful man of God he was and what a, an amazing gift he was to the body of Christ. And you know, I'm reminded again of Ephesians 1:22. God has put all authority, all things under the authority of Christ and has made him head over all things for the benefit of the church. And so it makes perfect sense, you know, in this age of biblical illiteracy, to remind people, read your Bible, read your Bible, read it regularly, and then believe it, and then live your life as if it's true.

Jenna Ellis: Amen. And that is the solution. And that is why I love these 30,000 foot perspectives, because that is the solution. And we need to be daily conformed to the image of Christ. We need to recognize that all scripture is given by inspiration of God, is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness. Why, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished under to all good works. And that includes the work and the good work of the civil government as well. So, Gino, I so just love and appreciate you so much. And thank you for giving your hour to us, this morning. We love you here at American Family Radio. I love you so much. I appreciate you and your ministry and as always, you can reach me and my team JennaAFR.net.