Born To Win Podcast - With Ronald L. Dart

Nearly everyone knows the story of the Exodus. Between Charlton Heston playing Moses in the movie The Ten Commandments and the animated Prince of Egypt the story has been thoroughly told to the masses. But there is an aspect of it that continues to trouble a lot of people who read the Bible. Pharaoh had no choice. God hardened his heart again and again. It would be one thing if Pharaoh were Hitler: a thoroughly bad man who himself was hard-hearted, started hard-hearted, and stayed that way. But the scriptures don’t say that. There is little doubt Pharaoh was a bad actor, but the Scriptures say categorically that God hardened his heart so he would not let Israel go.I can still remember the first time that I ever encountered this idea. It was in Paul’s writings, and I was just a teenager. I read in Romans 19, verse 17:For the scripture says unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Th

The world can be a very confusing place, can’t it? It isn’t always easy to know the right thing to do, the right road to take, or the right decision to make. And most of us, most of the time, want to do the right thing. At least we want to think we want to do the right thing. But it seems that, in the modern world, the right thing to do keeps shifting ground on us. There is no constant standard—no absolute truth—some people tell us.The problem is that life and death really are absolutes. When the chest pains come upon you, when they have yelled, Clear!, and tried to shock you back into life, and have failed, when they have pulled that sheet up over your face, you are absolutely dead. Sickness, poverty, slavery, disease, hunger; these are real absolutes in the world. So how come we hear people telling us there are no absolutes, when we know better?Why should anyone be so stupid as to believe there aren’t rules of life somewhere that make the difference between life and death, sick

What would happen to you if you were down and out and there was no one to help? Where would you be if you were sick and broke in a strange city with no place to sleep and nothing to eat; no money, no credit cards, no checks; no one to accept a collect call, no one to send you bus fare home, no one to send you money for a meal, and no home to go to; no father, no brother, no sister, no one?You know it doesn’t take long to start looking like a tramp. It doesn’t take very long before you start smelling bad—about two days. It doesn’t take long for your clothes to start looking very dirty and very worn. Do you realize how short the distance is between an executive—walking along the street with his briefcase in hand, and his necktie, hair combed, clean-shaven—how short the distance is between that man and a man lying on a grate in a gutter, if you take away from that man all of his money and all of his support?You know, families have obligations. They have obligations that should

In all of the Bible, who is the greatest example of leadership (apart from Jesus, of course)? Without a doubt, it’s David. When you speak of David in a Biblical context, the name needs no modifier. You don’t have to call him King David for a Bible reader to know exactly who you are talking about. His name occurs more than 1,000 times in the Old Testament alone.A curious fact: No one else in the Bible was ever named David. This is, I think, very unusual given the very human proclivity for naming kids after famous people. Yet, with David, it didn’t happen. It is almost as though God intended for David to be, and always be, one of a kind. Names in Hebrew mean something, and until recently, I had never looked at the meaning of David’s name, nor had I ever thought much about the characteristics of this man that made him such a great leader.He is easily the most influential and dominant figure in the Old Testament. He was the youngest of eight sons. His brothers thought he was arrogant. The

There was a time when we knew what terrorists wanted. When they blew up something, they identified themselves and made their demands. We knew what they wanted and why they wanted it. All that has changed. Now terrorists don't identify their cause, nor do they make demands. What do they want? At the time, I concluded that what they wanted was Americans dead, in large numbers.On the surface, this is a religious war. But like a deadly iceberg, there is a lot more below the surface than above it. Europe's great religious wars ended 350 years ago. That's plenty of time for us to forget that it is possible for people to slaughter one another over a matter of religious faith.It is frightening, isn't it? And we do well to be frightened. There is great evil afoot in the world. What makes the perpetrators of this evil dangerous is that they don't care who they kill, and they don't care if they die in the process. And it is only natural to wonder if we are approaching some of the terrible events of the end time describe

We need to talk about Haiti. I know you’ve probably had more Haiti on your television than you’d like to see for some time; you’ve had enough. My question, though, is, “What more could Christians have done for that poor land?”Haiti is actually a largely Christian country, with Roman Catholicism professed by 80% of the Haitians. Protestants made up about 16% of the population. And then there’s Haitian Voodoo, which is practiced by roughly half of the population. Now it’s in that demographic that you get a hint of the problem, don’t you? Did you see it?How can you have a population that is 96% Christian and 50% practitioners of Voodoo? Something is not quite right in Haiti, and it’s a hard thing to say. Is there anything that we Christians might have done that we left undone?Several years ago, I read a book entitled White Man’s Grave. It was the story of the search for a missing son in Sierra Leone, Africa. The title was the name given to Sierra Leone

Does anyone know where we went wrong? It is impossible to deny that we have gone wrong somewhere. I hear voices on every side telling the government what to do, but I am left with the sinking feeling that no one knows what to do. We have been sailing happily on our way, looking for all the world like the richest nation the anyone has ever seen. And then we find that it is all debt, all borrowed money. And when we found out there was no collateral for all that stuff, everything comes unglued.If we had a prophet show up in our streets, the day after tomorrow, what would he say was the root of our problem? I am not sure God would even speak to us, but if a Jeremiah showed up somewhere and laid it on the line from God, what would he say? Jeremiah went day after day to the most public place he could find. I don't think he would even speak to the proximate causes or our financial mess. He would go deeper than that. Because you can't cure a disease by merely treating the symptoms.So, if we had a real prophet show up

Years ago a friend told me what I was. Most of us have had that experience at one time or another. (If not who we are, at least where we can go.) My friend told me that I was an apologist. I would have been flattered if I’d known what that meant. It was somewhat later I encountered one of the greatest of Christian apologists, C. S. Lewis. And then recently I came across a quotation from C. S. Lewis that explained a vague disquiet that follows me around. Apologists can be saved only by falling back continually from the web of our own arguments into the reality—from Christian apologetics into Christ Himself. Lewis was remarkable in this regard. He was an intelligent, highly educated, well-read man who also had the good sense to doubt himself, to examine himself, which one cannot do without self-doubt. Lewis understood the spiritual dangers of vanity and he also understood what a thin web is woven by a good argument. He said, No doctrine is dimmer to the eye of faith than that which a man has just su

I don’t suppose there has ever been a man on the face of the earth who had the power at his beck and call that Jesus had. But there was never a time when he abused it. He tried to make this lesson clear at the last supper when he got up, took a towel, laid aside his outer garment, got a basin of water, and began to wash his disciples feet. He said, If I have washed your feet, you should wash one another’s feet. The whole idea is that we are all servants. We’re not emperors, lords, nothing of the kind; we are not masters, we are servants.It seems odd to me when I think about it, but of all the things that Jesus might have said, of all the instructions he might have left us, these are his only words about church governance. He forbade his men from exercising dominion over, or authority upon, the people. It’s that simple. And Jesus, it seems, also taught that he is governed best who is govern least—that old principle still applies. And if you trace the grief that has befallen the ch

It seems like it’s very hard for the servants of God to keep their act together. The worst thing that can happen to us is good times. For the Israelites who returned to Jerusalem from exile, the times had indeed been very hard for a while. They had started rebuilding the temple, then they had to stop because of political pressure. Then, under the prompting of the prophets, and with God’s protection and blessing, they set to work again and finished it. Two men played a major role in all of this: Joshua the high priest and Zerubbabel the governor. They were good men and they wanted to get the job done, they had prophets along that were stirring everybody, up and the work got done.But there is another danger all of us face. When God has blessed us, we assume we have his approval in more areas than are really justified. In other words, we think that since we built the temple—we got it done—we are really good people. There is yet another danger when any long-term goal is finally realized. A

When you begin pondering the last days (as the Bible presents them) and you read what the prophets have to say about that time, you’re inevitably drawn to the Book of Revelation. And what I find fascinating is how commonly the Old Testament prophets are cited in Revelation. If you have one of those Bibles that have marginal references in it you can easily find where so many things that are said in Revelation originally come from. It shouldn’t be surprising, in a way, because all the prophets had a sense of a judgment day—a time when God would tie up all the loose ends and bring history to an end.I don’t know that they could have looked at the world and have imagined how things would end, but they knew all too well that God had a special place in his heart for Israel. They knew the history of the things he had done to judge those who had afflicted Israel, along with Pharaoh and others. And knowing God’s love of judgment, his love of mercy, his forgiveness, they were not entirely s