In this special edition episode of Faith & Clarity, Dr. Mark Turman is joined by Dr. Jim Denison to discuss the somber implications of recent violent events, including the assassination of political activist Charlie Kirk. Together they wrestle with hard questions—where is Jesus when tragedy strikes, and how should Christians respond in times of grief and fear?
They talk about the rise of violence, the role of media, and the ways our culture is losing its ability to grieve well. Dr. Denison shares how Scripture anchors us in the reality of spiritual warfare while pointing us to the hope we have in Christ.
Mark and Jim close with Isaiah 61, urging believers to step forward with compassion, truth, and prayer, living as light-bearers in the midst of deep darkness.
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Topics
- (00:00): Introduction and somber reflections on 9/11
- (00:56): Discussing recent acts of violence
- (02:19): The role of media and technology in the perception of violence
- (04:10): Grieving with the heart of Christ
- (06:05): Secularization and its impact on grief
- (08:30): Remembering Charlie Kirk
- (14:01): The importance of speaking the truth in love
- (19:00): Speculating on the motives behind the assassination
- (24:59): The age of violence and darkness
- (27:21): Spiritual awakening and Satan’s response
- (30:21): Balancing sovereignty and free will
- (35:02): Living in light of eternity
- (39:04): Praying and serving in times of crisis
- (43:46): Closing reflections and prayer
Resources
- Ask Us Anything: [email protected]
- How has Denison Forum impacted your faith?
- Charlie Kirk fatally shot at speaking event in Utah
- “If not forgotten, they are not gone”
About Dr. Jim Denison
Jim Denison, PhD, is a cultural theologian and the founder and CEO of Denison Ministries. He speaks biblically into significant cultural issues at Denison Forum. He is the chief author of The Daily Article and has written more than 30 books, including The Coming Tsunami, the Biblical Insight to Tough Questions series, and The Fifth Great Awakening.
About Dr. Mark Turman
Mark Turman, DMin, serves as the Executive Director of Denison Forum, where he leads with a passion for equipping believers to navigate today’s complex culture with biblical truth. He is best known as the host of the Faith & Clarity podcast and the lead pastor of the Possum Kingdom Chapel, the in-person congregation of Denison Ministries.
Dr. Turman is the coauthor of Sacred Sexuality: Reclaiming God’s Design and Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters. He earned his undergraduate degree from Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, and received his Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He later completed his Doctor of Ministry at George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University in Waco.
Before joining Denison Forum, Mark served as a pastor for 35 years, including 25 years as the founding pastor of Crosspoint Church in McKinney, Texas.
Mark and his high school sweetheart, Judi, married in 1986. They are proud parents of two adult children and grandparents to three grandchildren.
About Denison Forum
Denison Forum exists to thoughtfully engage the issues of the day from a biblical perspective through The Daily Article email newsletter and podcast, the Faith & Clarity podcast, as well as many books and additional resources.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
NOTE: This transcript was AI-generated and has not been fully edited.
Dr. Mark Turman: [00:00:00] You’re listening to Faith and Clarity with Mark Turman, a Denison Forum podcast. We’re coming to you on nine 11. A very somber day made even more somber by recent events in our country that we’re gonna talk about. We have this podcast and we do our work at Denison Ministries to help you find hope in the midst of the headlines of the day so that you can think, live and serve in an intentional way as a follower of Jesus to make the world a better place to be the salt and light that Jesus has called and privilege each of us to.
In the context in which we live. But recent events, especially over the last 24 hours in our country, would indicate that in many ways we are not flourishing as a nation. We are characterized more and more by division, by deception, and by brokenness, and even by unbelievable acts of violence. And so we’re gonna talk today with Dr.
Jim Denison, our [00:01:00] cultural apologist and founder of Denison Ministries about. Where is Jesus in this moment and in this age of violence? And many of you are probably all aware of the assassination yesterday of the political activist, Charlie Kirk. That’s not the only expression of violence that we’ve seen in the last 24 hours, or the last two or three weeks, and stretching all the way back now, 24 years into the day of nine 11.
We’re gonna talk about those things and see if we can bring a perspective from Jesus, a word of hope, a word of help, a word of encouragement as we. Grieve together in these difficult days. Jim, welcome to the podcast this morning.
Dr. Jim Denison: Mark, thank you very, very much. I’m grateful to do this with you, although so very, very sorry for the purpose that brought us together today.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yes. Just really have seen some hard things over the last couple of days and even the last couple of months, my mind runs back to the Hill Country flood that mm-hmm. Took so many lives and just [00:02:00] seems like. There’s so many harsh and hard things that we see every day. And maybe that’s a place to start.
How do we not become numb to the, just the brokenness that we see in our own lives, but then see. On every screen that we have as well.
Dr. Jim Denison: The screens are part of the issue, aren’t they? You know, human nature doesn’t change. That’s part of the reason the Bible is still relevant because the issues that it addressed 20 centuries ago were still the issues that we face and that we feel today.
I remember that inside in seminary days, in a philosophy book, I was reading that God’s nature doesn’t change. Human nature doesn’t change, which is why the Bible’s still relevant. We don’t have to make it relevant. All we have to do is remove the cultural hindrances so that people understand the intended meaning of the text, and it speaks just as clearly today as it ever did.
So it’s not that we’re more violent as people than we’ve been, is my point. It’s not that we suffer. In a way that we’ve never suffered before. I do think that the proliferation of screens and digital technology and 24 [00:03:00] 7 news makes all of that more present to us than it’s ever been before. Mm-hmm. I mean, I, I’m, in fact, I recently read another book by Joseph Ellis.
I’m a huge fan of Ellis and his work on the founders. That sort of thing made the point that king George didn’t understand the beginning of the war for Independence for weeks, if not months. After it happened, ’cause it took that long for news to sail across the Atlantic right. And make its way up to him.
He certainly didn’t download it on his iPhone. And back in the day, they wouldn’t have known. About the things that we’re talking about today, nearly as quickly as is the case now. And then as has been widely documented, is the case that some of our media today exists primarily to generate clicks and likes and that sort of thing through violence.
Not that by populating violence, as it were, I, I should say, by publicizing violence, by describing it, by discussing it, by leading with that, by leading with the negative. If it bleeds, it leads as they say, that sort of thing. And so there’s some motive to make us more aware of this, or certainly the technology to make us more aware of this than [00:04:00] ever before.
And so more than perhaps ever before in human history, just being numb to it all. Is an issue that, as you say, we really do as believers need to address. If we’re going to have the heart of Christ, then we understand that Jesus grieves as we grieve. He weeps at our grave. He feels everything we feel we’re in his hand, and nothing can come to him without coming coming to us, without coming through him.
He knows that. He feels that. He sees that he’s omniscient. He’s omni benevolent. He loves because he is love. And so to have the heart of Christ, to have the fruit of the spirit, which is love, we just cannot be numb. To the things that happen as human, a reaction as that might be. I think the thing to do is to pray for the heart of God.
It’s to ask him for strength, to be able to manage the grief and the suffering of the day in a way that’s redemptive, rather than depressing. And look for positive ways to respond that that redeem even these tragedies in ways that can be to the greater good. And we can’t be numb to it, even though that’s a human reaction.
Yeah. The response rather, is to pray and seek the compassion, [00:05:00] the grace, the strength, the help of Jesus to respond to this in a way that honors him.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And, and it just makes me. Think about something we’ve talked about off and on over the years, which is this idea that Paul is inspired to talk about through the Holy Spirit about the fellowship of his sufferings.
Not many of us have probably ever prayed. Lord, help me to grieve the way you grieve. Lord, help, help me to carry in my own heart some sense of the same sadness, the same type of hopefully holy anger. Help me to grieve. We, we try to avoid grief at every turn. But in another place, Paul was inspired to write that we carry in our bodies the, the death of Jesus.
Mm-hmm. And, and we’re, we’re just we seem to be very avoidant of grief and we don’t see that as being a legitimate expression of faith. That faith. In its truest sense, sometimes we think it’s got to always be [00:06:00] joyful. And am I, am I thinking biblically in that way?
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah, I think absolutely.
There’s been a lot of research in recent years demonstrating that the more secular the culture has become. The more the culture has reacted to grief and death in different ways than used to be the case. A secular person doesn’t believe there is a life beyond this life, typically. I remember George Clooney saying, I don’t know if I believe in heaven or hell.
All I know is that I’m not going to waste this life, which is the only life I know I have. If I’m gonna live in that mindset, in that worldview, the last thing I want to think about is the end of this life. If this journey I’m on in this car is the only journey there is, and when we get to the destination, I have to leave the car, I’m gonna prolong the journey as much as I can.
I’m gonna focus on the end as little as I can. And so we euphemized death. People don’t die. They pass on that sort of thing. We are in a culture now where we don’t have to think about death as our previous generations did. People don’t die at home like they once did. They die in hospitals. They die in, in in medical environments where we’re not having to be as present to all [00:07:00] of that.
I was a pastor for 40 years, but I could count on one hand the number of times I was actually in the room with a person as they died. Even as their pastor. It’s just not a typical thing for us to face. We don’t face the same threats that were the case in previous generations of animals and injuries.
I mean, there was a day when a broken leg would typically end a person’s life, and so we just are at a place where we can put all of that off in ways that weren’t the case before. And yeah, I just think we’re at a place where we really don’t have the cultural tools to process grief, to process suffering.
We don’t have the same sense of community. Remember the book that Robert Durham did some years ago about bowling alone, the idea that we’ve lost community, and so we don’t have a people with whom to share our grief people with whom to suffer. And so we become internalized and grief becomes intensely lonely as an experience and isolating as an experience.
So one of the many reasons why the secularization of the culture is impoverishing us is it’s, it’s removing the tools. By which to respond to the [00:08:00] reality of death and to process grief in ways that are redemptive rather than isolating.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And so much, so much for us to think about in terms of how the church has been called by God to be an answer to so much of that, the isolation and giving back the, the holy tools.
Of what, what redemptive grieving could look like. Mm-hmm. And we’ll get to some of that in just a few minutes. Let’s talk. Like I said, we’re recording on the morning of 9 11, 24 years later. We’re also recording about eight 18 hours after this incredibly gruesome assassination of Charlie Kirk.
As we were talking offline, we both know a little bit more about Charlie Kirk than we did just 24 hours ago. I’ve been aware of him at a certain level and from yours and other people’s reporting realize that Charlie Kirk is exactly half my age, which is an interesting bit of trivia.
But some, some of the reporters, Jim, [00:09:00] have kind of hesitated to use the word assassination. And this is not obviously the only act of violence that happened yesterday. We’ll get to some of the others in a moment. But is that the right term? And what, what why would somebody either use or not want to use that term, do you think, to describe what happened in the killing of Charlie Kirk yesterday in Utah?
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah, that’s a good question. It’s obviously a murder at the very least. There’s no question. It was very intentional as all of this transpired. We don’t know the motives. Of the individual yet, which may be a thing to talk about as well. And so oftentimes motives when they’re intensely political in nature, get assigned to the category of assassination in ways that others wouldn’t be.
I don’t know that many people have considered for instance, the execution, the shooting, the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. Isn’t always called an assassination. Whereas the attempted murder of Ronald Reagan and of Donald Trump has been called an attempted assassination. So the word assassination is often ascribed to presidents and to [00:10:00] political leaders in ways that it isn’t always ascribed to other figures, political figures.
But I think the reason people are using it these days. It’s because they’re wanting to highlight the significance of Charlie Kirk. In the culture. Assassination is typically assigned to those individuals who have enormous cultural significance. If somebody were to murder me, I don’t know that that would be called an assassination, but if somebody were to attempt to murder the president, the governor Supreme Court Justice, somebody on that level of cultural significance, then you move more in that category, I suppose.
And I think people are trying to highlight the fact that he was from much of America. A person on that level of significance, of cultural impact, of cultural import and significance in their lives and in the broader political trajectory of the, of the culture in these days. So I think it is a way to try to emphasize his significance and therefore the significance of of the murder.
Dr. Mark Turman: Okay. Tell us you wrote on this in a special daily article that people can find on our [email protected]. Tell us a little bit more [00:11:00] about who Charlie Kirk is. Maybe a few things that you learned about him that you didn’t know until yesterday.
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah, I’ve been aware of his influence, obviously, like you, he’s much younger than I am and I just have not been in the same circles that he has been typically working, and I’ve seen what he’s done more.
I’ve seen his activities, especially on behalf of President Trump and as obviously as his engagement relative to the Republican party. His personal backstory, I didn’t know, found to be really interesting. He was a senior in high school. When he published an essay that was alleging political bias relative to some things going on at the time, and wound up on Fox Business as an 18-year-old, went to college but dropped out very quickly and started political activism.
Felt that there was the need for a grassroots conservative response to what he saw as progressive or liberal grassroots movements going on at the time, and founded a thing that now is by most reporting the largest. Grassroots conservative movement in America, especially mobilizing younger. Adults on a very, very significant [00:12:00] level I mean multiple millions of followers on TikTok and other social media.
He’s widely accredited with being perhaps a single most catalytic force behind a movement toward the Republican party and Donald Trump in the most recent election. He has been widely known for his willingness, his desire to debate political issues, cultural issues on college campuses. It’s what he was doing yesterday.
That was the first of a multi-stop tour on college campuses. One of the things that I found to be especially appealing about him was his desire to to debate people who disagreed with him in a very civil manner. He would get in front of crowds and he would ask them, if you disagree with me, get to the front of the line.
Come up here, be, be right here. Let’s have this conversation as directly as we can. He’d be very genuine about his beliefs, be very straightforward about them, but always in a very civil manner, always in a very conversational dialog. That was his purpose, was to advance dialogue, to advance common cause. In fact, [00:13:00] there’s reporting now about times when people in these conversations would want to move in directions that would be very pejorative toward moderates or progressives or whatever.
He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t let them do that. He would say, no, we need to be thinking toward common cause. We need to be thinking toward the greater good. And so while certainly there are those in America who disagree with a number of his political positions they can’t, I think as easily disagree with the spirit in which he desired to advance the, the dialogue in a movement toward a larger common good.
And he did that in a way that was extremely effective and that I think is certainly going to outlive him.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. It just, it just kind of is amazing, especially to see somebody at such a young age mm-hmm. Being being able to build the kind of platform that he built to be invited into the gr, you know, highest levels, the highest halls of power to speak at one of the parties, national convention.
Mm-hmm. It was pretty amazing by the age of 31.
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah.
Dr. Mark Turman: Jim, I think you’ve already pointed out some of [00:14:00] these things, but. It, it seems that he represents some expression of what we talk about all the time, which is attempting to speak the truth in love.
Dr. Jim Denison: Hmm.
Dr. Mark Turman: I’ve heard at times very controversial reports of people that strongly, strongly have disagreed with him.
Mm-hmm. And sometimes didn’t think that he was expressing his thoughts in the most loving way. Mm-hmm. But then last night when I was watching various news reports, I was, I stopped on a, b, c News and their Washington reporter, Jonathan Carl
Dr. Jim Denison: mm-hmm.
Dr. Mark Turman: Was asked about this. He, he said I knew Charlie Kirk pretty well.
I spent a, a fair amount of time talking with him. And he said, you know, he often had very harsh things to say to me about media about legacy media. Left-leaning media even about Jonathan Carl personally, he said, but he was always. As Jonathan Carl described it, respectful, he was always engaging.
He always had time to [00:15:00] stop and talk and, and speak with Carl directly. Never dismissed him. Mm-hmm. And I, and you could almost see an emotional reaction on Jonathan Carl’s face as he described him as, Hey, we were from very different worlds and had particularly different worldviews. But he was willing to have consistent, respectful conversation with me.
Can, you can tease that out a little bit more. We talk about speaking the truth in love all the time. How does Charlie Kirk. Express that how, how maybe he needed to grow in that. What do you think?
Dr. Jim Denison: There’s a faith story there as well, which I’ve not been able to get a lot of based on my research online.
But it is clear that at one point in his pilgrimage, he really did not have any kind of a professed public faith at all that he was, had, had a very secular mindset and worldview. And then over the years, that seemed to change. That toward the end of his life, he was very much a very public evangelical Christian very public about his faith and his desire to see his faith be a significant part of his [00:16:00] personal life and of his public work as well.
And we all grow. You know, one would think he was 31 when he died. You know, mark, there’s so many things I would not wanna be held to account to in my twenties that I might’ve said in my twenties or done in my twenties, or done at an earlier era in my own personal faith pilgrimage and that sort of thing.
I’m not sure I want to be held to account for things I said last week necessarily. We’re all fallen human beings, and in the heat of the moment, we can all see and do things that we regret later. A dear friend of mine once said at the funeral of a person who died by suicide, none of us wants to be most remembered for our worst act.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Dr. Jim Denison: For our worst mistake, you know? And so we’re seeing some of that now. We’re seeing people that are going back to old footage, going back to, you know, to old statements and that sort of thing. And with all he said, I mean, the enormity of his content out there, it’s not hard to find things especially taken out of context, but even in context that he would’ve said differently at a later stage of his life and of his faith pilgrimage, that sort of thing.
But the goal nonetheless. [00:17:00] Especially toward the later part of his life was I think Ephesians four 15 speaking the truth in love and it demonstrates the value of that. I think when a Jonathan Carl would respond to him as he did, I watched a lot of the coverage yesterday as well from across the political spectrum, those on Fox News that were moved deeply because they knew him best.
And they knew him on this personal level to be the kind of person we’re describing right now. To be so genuine, to be transparent to be a person who was very, very personal with other individuals, but then even those with whom he disagreed, like the Jonathan Carls who are responding this way. It does demonstrate then when we speak the truth, but we do so in love.
We can be persuasive. On a way that doesn’t happen if we speak the truth in hate or speak the truth in dnce, or speak the truth in antagonism, there’s just something about us. There’s a visceral reaction when somebody is responding to us in a hateful or offensive manner. They’re just a fight or flight thing that kicks in.
There’s just an an instinctive natural reaction to pull back and push [00:18:00] back against that. Whereas when a person responds to us in love. There’s a lowering of defenses. There’s a willingness to consider the position. There’s an openness to engagement that’s just natural. It’s biological, it’s psychological, it’s physiological, and so speaking the truth in love is the best way to speak.
The truth is what I’m saying just from a persuasive point of view. Not to mention, as we said, it most manifest. The character of Christ most demonstrates the fruit of the spirit. Obviously, when we speak in the love with which we are loved by Jesus.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And, and I’m sure Charlie Kirk, like all of us was on a journey to grow more and more into that.
Yeah. It’d be great if the Holy Spirit could just inject that into us all at one time, wouldn’t it though? But that’s part of the, of the journey of, of maturing faith and of growing. What does it mean to live both of those things out really well, because we’re not loving people if we don’t tell them the truth, and we’re not gonna communicate truth well if we don’t love them.
At the same time, and we have to pray that prayer over and over [00:19:00] again. Let’s come back a moment to what you mentioned a moment ago, which is what might have motivated this person to commit such a horrific act? From what I’ve been told, you can find this video of this shooting. I would strongly recommend that you not do that.
I have not looked at it myself. I
Dr. Jim Denison: refuse to do
Dr. Mark Turman: yeah, and, and we need to. You know, small side note here, but significant for us I heard a pastor just, just recently say that whatever we feed is what grows in our life, right? And if we feed our souls and our minds on violence in what we choose for entertainment and for what we see in news, the more we expose ourselves to that, the harder it’s going to be for us to have the heart of Christ, the harder it’s gonna be for us not to become numb.
To think that this kind of violence and the other kinds of violence that we’re talking about today are normative and and normal. That’s a good point. The more you feed [00:20:00] yourself on that, the more that, that’s going to grow in your life. So I would encourage you not to view the video if you haven’t already.
But Jim, we were talking, what do you, we are all assuming that this was a politically motivated killing that. If this person is found, and if they are questioned and discovered that what we’ll probably find is is they they hated Charlie Kirk because of his political positions. That may not be the case.
What do you, what are your thoughts when it comes to what might have motivated the killer?
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah, and knowing that is obviously key to the next question, which is what do we do about this to go forward? You know, it’s awfully hard to stop a disease if you don’t know where it started. Awfully hard to change behavior if you don’t understand the roots of the behavior.
And with the political violence of the day that this exemplifies, that’s I think, a key question to be asking. And it’s problematic in this setting in a way that isn’t typically the case. Typically when someone stages a [00:21:00] political, assassination or a murder, the ideology behind that’s made clear.
’cause that’s the reason they’re doing this. They’re doing this to propagate a position. They’re doing this to take a stand and they’re doing this on some level to illustrate a point or to make a point or something to this point. Anyway, at least at the timing of this conversation, we have none of that.
We don’t know the identity of the shooter, don’t know anything about the motives of the shooter. I really don’t have any story or backstory at all to this point. It may never. There are times that doesn’t happen. The person that attempted to assassinate President Booth Trump to this point does not have a motive that’s been clear to us.
For instance, the first assassination attempt. And so sometimes we don’t know. Sometimes we do know. Everybody knows why Booth assassinated Lincoln calling him a tyrant and doing this in revenge for the loss of the Civil War, and his belief that Lincoln was motivating this war against the South and violence against the south, that sort of thing.
We know why the nine 11. Terrorists staged what they did that they believed they were defending Islam from an attack on Islam. And as Osama Bin [00:22:00] Laden said in his letter to America, they thought they were going to drive America outta the Middle East so that then they could push Israel into the sea, as they said, and create a Middle East caliphate for global Islam was their reason.
So as highly political, they certainly weren’t. Personally opposed to the individuals they killed, it wasn’t as though they had an agenda against the Twin Towers specifically, or the Pentagon or whatever the other target would’ve been. So we sometimes don’t know. Sometimes we do know, in this case, there’s a whole wide range of motives that could be possible.
Perhaps this person knew c Charlie Cook personally. Perhaps there’s some individual angst here or something that’s in a story there. From a personal level perhaps it’s a political motivation. Perhaps there’s a distraction here. That’s something people are concerned about on nine 11 that perhaps this was done in part to distract the FBI and distract authorities so as to make possible something else that could happen today on this anniversary that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
We obviously don’t know that. Hopefully we’ll find that not to be the case, but at this point in the [00:23:00] day, that’s a possibility as well. So much we just don’t know as regards why this happens. What we do know is this. Whatever the motivation was, if it was to silence Charlie Kirk, it won’t work. He is better known now than he was yesterday.
There’s already just a widespread movement toward how do we make this movement even bigger and stronger? How do we let his voice not be silenced? More people have heard of him, more people have heard his word. More people are aware of what he’s doing now than was the case, and I predict. That the movement that he was about is going to be even stronger as a result of this.
So if the person was trying to silence him and his movement, that won’t work. As is almost always the case, the killing of a, of a significant leader of a movement typically makes the movement stronger. It was wasn’t it? Ian said the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church. And one of the reasons John was exiled rather than martyred is that the Romans had learned that martyring, the apostles wasn’t accomplishing the purpose.
They wanted to [00:24:00] exile him, to silence him. And of course, that didn’t work either with the revelation, but nonetheless that was the attempt to do a different thing here because it hadn’t worked. So we ultimately won’t know until the person’s found, if they’re found, if their motives are ever. Made clear.
We can speculate to this point, but what we can know is that political violence only begets further violence and does not accomplish the purpose for which it was intended.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, and that’s, that’s what I was thinking about as you were talking, that if, if this if this killing, this assassination angers you and motivates you mm-hmm.
It should motivate you to be the best person you can be. That’s right. The person who does speak the truth in love rather than the person who seeks revenge. Because if, if we adopt that revenge mindset, then as you said, it just cascades into more and more violence. That’s right. And, and it’s been proven over and over again that that will ultimately not lead us to achieving the kind of peaceful and flourishing lives that, that God would have for us.
It [00:25:00] just is a scheme of the devil to help us destroy ourselves. Which is really one of the things I wanted to bring out in this conversation, like I said. This is the 24th anniversary of nine 11 2,900 and 76 victims on nine 11. And as you wrote in your daily article today, many, many more involved in the Global War on Terror for the last 24 years.
But it’s, yesterday was just a really vivid example of the age of violence and darkness that we’re living in that stretches back even beyond nine 11. Just a few weeks ago, there was another school shooting in Minnesota at virtually the same time that the assassin was aiming at Charlie Cook. There was another shooting in a school in Evergreen, Colorado, just a few miles from Columbine, which so many of us of a certain age.
Kind of date the reality of school shootings. Back to [00:26:00] Columbine. This on top of a Ukrainian refugee arena, Zara Kuka, who was brutally murdered on a commuter train. And then here in Dallas where our ministry is best or, or based a really, really horrific kind of murder on the streets of Dallas yesterday afternoon.
Again, at about the same time Jim, is it. Is it that we are sinking into deeper darkness and it is becoming more violent or we’re just more aware of it? Or, and how do we, how do we blend the reality that we hear positive signs that God is moving in some significant ways, in particular places where we thought there could never be revival there in the global south or mm-hmm.
In closed countries like North Korea or China. Iran. In Iran where some of the fastest growing churches in the world are happening today.
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah.
Dr. Mark Turman: How do we think about how all of these things mix [00:27:00] together on a day like today?
Dr. Jim Denison: One thing to understand those two things, the rise of violence, at least our awareness of violence, as we were saying, human nature hasn’t changed, but certainly the means of violence are more plausible.
More propagated now than there were in the communication of the results of that is on the one hand with the strong movement of the Holy Spirit in some really remarkable ways. How do those two things go together? Some years ago I was doing a a conference with a dear friend of mine, Tom Doyle, relative to Islam in the Middle East.
I’d written a book on radical Islam and and the history of that and the worldview behind all of that. And Tom’s a longtime missionary in the Middle East, had written a number of books and had a, at that point in time, a recent book out on Awakening in the Middle East, spiritual Awakening happening in the Middle East, the remarkable movement of the Holy Spirit in the Muslim world, signs and dreams and visions and wonders and just New Testament stuff happening in the, in the Muslim world.
And Tom said something I’ve never forgotten. He felt like the spiritual awakening happening in the Muslim world, obviously authored by the Holy Spirit [00:28:00] of such a powerful movement was responded to by Satan with nine 11.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Dr. Jim Denison: That Satan wanted us to fear Muslims and hate Muslims at the very time when the Holy Spirit was moving in the Muslim world.
So we saw nine 11 as Satan’s response to a spiritual awakening in the Muslim world. That makes sense. Biblically. Jesus said that Satan came to steal and kill and destroy. Anytime you see stealing and killing and destroying, you know, Satan is at work. That’s just what he does. That’s his job description.
We know that he hates our Lord, but he can’t attack our Lord, so he attacks his people. That’s just what he does. He’s a roaring light seeking whom he made of our, so maybe an answer to the question is to see those two things in a causative form. That it is Satan’s response to spiritual awakening to bring about stealing and killing and destroy.
But on the other hand, the Holy Spirit redeems what Satan does by using that as a catalyst for greater awakening. Tom, if he were talking to us today, would say to us that in the years [00:29:00] after 9 11, 1 of the reasons he thinks there’s this ongoing awakening in the Muslim world is that so many Muslims are looking at nine 11 and saying, that’s not who I am.
Mm-hmm. They’re looking at RA radical Jihadists, they’re looking at ISIS beheading victims, and they’re saying, that’s not Islam. As I understood that, that’s not who I am, and they’re much more open to the gospel. Than had been the case before. And so here’s the Lord. Advocating and, and advancing and awakening.
Here’s Satan responding with violence. Then here’s the Lord. Using that violence to advance the awakening even more. Hmm. That’s how God works. That’s how he redeems what he allows. And that’s so much of the hope we have even in these hard days.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And it’s just really important for us to think through that that we are a part of a much bigger story mm-hmm.
Than just our own lives. Yes. That this is, this is God’s eternal kingdom. And that we are, we are a part of a very big cosmic battle between God and Satan. We know we know ultimately [00:30:00] how the story ends, which is another question I want to bring up to you. I is, we sang this in church this past Sunday.
This idea that I know how the story ends,
Dr. Jim Denison: you’re not gonna sing right now, are you?
Dr. Mark Turman: I’m not gonna sing right now, that that will not bring hope and help to anybody in this moment. But good. That
Dr. Jim Denison: would be neither faith nor clarity, I would think so, certainly if I were to join you. So
Dr. Mark Turman: I gotta tell you, I have a, a theological tension in me, in me when I hear, when I hear this song and when I think about this, about, I gotta, it somewhat demotivates me when I think about some aspects of this truth, that I know how the story ends. That almost sounds like my life, my choices, and everybody else’s life and choices really don’t have significance because the end is already determined. Can you help me with that? Let’s just solve
Dr. Jim Denison: that.
As you know, mark sovereignty and free will right? In about two minutes. Yeah. In about two minutes. Yeah, exactly. As you know. But no, it really does relate to this conversation and to the hope [00:31:00] that we offer by telling people we know how the story ends. I love Billy Graham’s statement. I read the end of the book and it turns out okay.
You know? Yeah. That janitor that was reading his Bible as some seminary students were playing basketball nearby, and one of ’em walked over and said, what are you reading? And he said it’s the Bible. He said, what part? He said, revelation. The student said, you understand it? The custodian said, sure, I understand it.
And the student said what does it mean? And the custodian said, it means we win. Yeah, really like that story, and I’m glad it’s true. So glad it’s true. But if that is the case that we win, then do we have any agency between here and there? If, if the test has already been graded, why take the test?
You know? Yeah. If the, if the end is predetermined, then why are we on this level? Even thinking toward persuading people to do something today that would exercise free will, that doesn’t exist. So the balance to me is this, that God honors our freedom. I think the Bible makes that clear. Whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Choose you this day whom you will serve. I mean, the Bible consistently speaks of [00:32:00] freedom. God made us in his image, and part of that is freedom. Free will. God has given us that freedom, but God is so sovereign. That he can honor the freedom he chooses to give us.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Dr. Jim Denison: God is not bound by time. See, as Lewis says, if you think of time as a line on a page, God is the page.
So God sees tomorrow better than I see today. God is able to watch me choose my lunch tomorrow as though it were today. But watching and determining are not the same thing. When I taught at the Southwestern Seminary and you and I met back in all those days, as you know, I never had seating charts because I didn’t need one.
It would’ve been good to do that, to learn the names of the students, but by the third day, everybody had chosen their seat and you couldn’t blast ’em out of it. That was their seat, and they were gonna sit in that seat for the rest of the semester. I don’t know why human nature does that, but we do. I watched them sit in their seats, but I didn’t choose those seats.
Watching and determining don’t have to be the same thing. The fact that God can watch my decisions [00:33:00] tomorrow and what I call tomorrow ’cause he is not bound by time, doesn’t mean he’s making that choice. He’s just aware of that choice. And now I don’t understand that because I’m bound by time, readily admit that the Spain’s time continuum, I’m stuck in it.
I can’t understand in my little P brain how God can see tomorrow like I can see today. But that’s what scripture says. And so the way it works for me is to say God knows what I’m going to choose. God knows the end. He gives me freedom to make the choice. He honors that freedom. If I give my kids the keys to the car and they wreck the car, they didn’t violate my sovereignty.
Now, if they stole the keys, that’s different. But if I give them the keys and they use the freedom I honored in a bad way, that’s their fault, not my fault. So God can honor our freedom and still be sovereign. He can know our choices because he’s not bound by time. And at the end of the day, last point, he can redeem all of that for his greatest ultimate good.
He redeemed Judases betrayal of Jesus by using it to bring Jesus to [00:34:00] the cross and our atonement. Now, Judas missed the good of that obviously. He redeemed Pharaoh’s heart and heart by using that heart and heart to bring the Jews through the Red Sea and the Exodus. Now, Pharaoh, at least his troops died in the Red Sea.
I’m not saying that we get to benefit from our misused freedom. Oftentimes that isn’t the case, but God redeems, even our misused freedom for the larger good, for the ultimate, we win. Good for the ultimate. It all turns out okay. Good. God does that. We may miss out on that personally. Because he honors the freedom he gives us, but then he redeems that for the ultimate cosmic good that he is about as the king of kings and Lord of lords.
So that’s my seminary long course on sovereignty and freedom in about three minutes. Yeah, there will be no test even though I like giving tests.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. So yeah, I’m glad there aren’t gonna be any tests. ’cause I’ve had a few of your tests before. You know, people
Dr. Jim Denison: called them thorough. They had other words for the new world.
But [00:35:00] we’ll go with thorough.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But you know, it’s, it is one thing to say that God wins, but you only share in that victory. Sir when you commit your life to him and favor and follows, which is kind of where I want to take the last few minutes to talk. We talk about thinking biblically living holy serving intentionally.
And I would even add to that, praying passionately and continually. On this, on the idea of thinking through this conversation and through these very hard realities that we’re experiencing together. Jim, the one thing that keeps coming back about back to my mind is that comment about CS Lewis. I know you’re a big fan of CS Lewis, where he says, I’m not likely to stop believing in God.
I rather him disturbed to come to the conclusion that this may be the kind of God he is. The way that kind of has formed up in my brain in the last few weeks has been, you know, it just seems like Jesus has a, a, an enormous [00:36:00] tolerance for our sin. You might call patience, but I’m trying to reconcile that with all that the Bible says about the holiness of God.
And you’ve, you’ve already alluded to some of these truths already, but why do you think Jesus is waiting so long to culminate this story?
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah. Isn’t that the question? You know, because we’re supposed to be praying, I think along with John. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus, you know, no, we should be living every day an expectation of his return.
One thing nine 11 teaches us is that tomorrow was promised to none of us. There were nearly 3000 people that had a nine 11 and no, nine 12. You and I are not promised to nine 12. None of us is. He could come back today or we could go to him today, and that’s a reality in which we live, and that actually makes today a better day.
If I knew I only had another day to live, what would I change today? Who would I ask to forgive me? What forgiveness would I offer? What would I change? What would I stop doing? What would I start doing? That’s the best way to live anyway. If I knew I had another 30 years, it’s still better to forgive today [00:37:00] than tomorrow and seek forgiveness today than tomorrow.
So living in light of eternity is the best way to live. Today is one of the takeaways from all of that. But the reason I think the Lord is tearing that we have biblically to us is he is not willing that ancient parish, but all should come to repentance. And so he’s giving us another day to give us another opportunity.
To give us one more chance to preach the gospel. One more chance for the world to know. One more chance for all nations to hear, but he does say in Matthew 24 14, that one day all nations will hear, in the end will come. Now, I don’t know all that. I wish I knew about all of that and what that means, but we do know that he is coming back and we’re one day closer to eternity than we’ve ever been.
He’s not waiting because he’s lackadaisical. He’s not waiting because he’s not aware of our sins. He is not awai, not waiting because he’s changed his mind about judgment. He’s waiting to give us one more day for more people to hear, for more people to repent, for more people to respond back to c. S Lewis who said, some say to God, thy will be done to others.
God [00:38:00] says, thy will be done. Hmm. And it comes to that when the playwright walks out on the stage, the play is over. As he said, it would’ve been no good for the French to stand up to the gustapo after the war was over.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Dr. Jim Denison: It does us no good to turn to Jesus after he comes back. The day is today to be ready, and he’s given us one more day to be ready.
Today is the day of salvation, as scripture says. And we only have this day to preach that and only this day to live that.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And that’s, that’s true for us if we’re followers of Christ or if we’re not yet followers of, of Christ. That’s right. The violence of our day and the fragility and the brevity of our lives is an urgent call for all of us.
To search our own hearts, to ask God to search our hearts and to confess and repent and renew our following of Christ. And that includes our witness for Christ in every possible way in the midst of the brokenness of the violence and the darkness. That that are, [00:39:00] that is around us, that seems to immerse us and just swallow us at times.
Jim, what, what word of encouragement would you give to our audience relative to how they might serve and how they might pray in these moments of just enormous brokenness?
Dr. Jim Denison: On the praying part, obviously for Erica Kirk and for their children. A three-year-old daughter, a one-year-old son that will not know their father.
Hmm. For their family, for everybody directly affected by this grieving with those who grieve. Praying for those who need hope today. Praying for those that are directly affected by this tragedy. Praying for this individual to be apprehended before they commit further crimes. Which would, one would assume, would be very plausible as well.
Praying for good to come from this, for there, be redemption on the other side of this in ways that will outweigh even the suffering of this toward a greater common good, not relative to their family, of course, but relative to the larger common good. Praying for that, for God to redeem. In those ways, praying for believers [00:40:00] to utilize this moment, to speak into this culture in the context of mortality, in the context of urgency, to redouble our efforts to pray for our lost friends, and to share the gospel, be the answer to that prayer by sharing God’s love with our lost friends, knowing that tomorrow’s promise to none of us.
So all of that is, I think ways that we can pray. Relative to the personal side of this we don’t ever wanna lose sight of the fact that then in the midst of the suffering we see on the news, we all have our personal grief. We all have our personal hurts, and sometimes those things are overshadowed.
The shooting in Colorado, overshadowed by the shooting of Charlie Kirk, and yet for those that are affected by that, obviously the existential issue of their moment. And so we want to be asking the Lord for sensitivity to the pain that our neighbor is facing that we haven’t discussed today to the things going on in their marriage or their children or their health or their finances, or whatever the issue in their life might be, and asking God for wisdom and discernment.
To be able to speak the truth in love, even in those situations. Quick [00:41:00] story before we’re done, if I could in the first church I pastored when I was teaching at the seminary on a fifth Sunday, we used Sunday night to do a q and a four or five times a year. Depending on the calendar, there’d be a fifth Sunday.
So instead of having a sermon on that Sunday, I just did a. Q and A instead. And I will alway, this is back in the early eighties, mark. I mean, I must have been in kindergarten at the time or something, right? I don’t know. But anyway, I, but I remembered that clearly we were doing the this q and A thing, and always somebody will ask a question about evil and suffering.
Why does God allow the difficulties and the pain and the suffering of our lives, innocent suffering? And that happened in the midst of this. There was a woman about my age, a good friend of mine in the church that raised her hand and said, why does God allow? Pain and suffering that’s in the world. At that point in time, I’d been teaching philosophy for a few years at the seminary and I knew some textbook stuff to say and I started to launch into that.
Started to kind of talk about Augustinian free will and irony and soul building models and existential hope and future help. And you know, some of the [00:42:00] stuff that’s in the academic all and the Holy Spirit just stopped me in my tracks. He just stopped me from doing any of that, and he prompted me to say to my friend, to ask my friend, why are you asking us that question tonight?
I’m just curious. With tears in her eyes. She then explained that that afternoon they had taken her mother to an Alzheimer care unit.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Dr. Jim Denison: And that night she didn’t need Augustinian, free will and iron a and soul building. She needed to be heard and seen and loved.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Dr. Jim Denison: By God’s grace on that Sunday night, we got to be the family of Christ for her.
We got to be the arms of Jesus for her. And we stopped and we prayed for her, and we prayed for her mother, and we prayed for her family. And we got to be participants in the love and the redemptive grace of Jesus. And like I said, that was decades ago and I’ll never forget it. The Holy Spirit will do that if we’ll let him.
Yeah. My point is [00:43:00] he’ll give us discernment. And to the needs and the griefs and the pain even of our neighbors and our family members and our own hearts. And so that while the nation is thinking about this larger, massive horror, horrific issue, we can be in the personal issues in ways that God can use for his glory and our good as well.
The Holy Spirit will do that if we’ll ask him to.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, and the stuff we’re talking about and the stuff that we’re all living through personally and collectively is really big and oftentimes very complex and. We yet, at the same time, we know that we are following a savior who became a part of it and came to redeem it.
And I, I hope that these words. Are helpful. I hope our conversation is helpful to our audience as we close. I, I wanted just to read a passage that Jesus read in his own hometown from Isaiah 61. And Jim, if you’ll let me, I’ll read this and if you’ll close us in prayer, of course, and ask God on this very somber, [00:44:00] sad and very difficult day for many and at some, in some way for all of us.
But this is Isaiah 61. Jesus would read this. Years later in his own hometown and apply it to himself. The spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me. For the Lord has a anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to comfort the broken hearted, and to proclaim that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed.
He has sent me to tell those who mourn, that the time of the Lord’s favor has come. And with it the day of God’s anger against their enemies. To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing. Instead of mourning festive praise instead of despair in their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the Lord has planted for his glory.
Jim, would you lead us in prayer today? Of course,
Dr. Jim Denison: father God, [00:45:00] how grateful we are to you for that promise which Jesus fulfilled and that he continues to fulfill today. Lord, we’re so grateful that Jesus is just as active in our world as when he walked physically in our world. He just does that now through us, through billions of little Christs hands and feet and eyes and ears and hearts to love us.
He loves. So Father, help us. To be that presence of Christ today, give us discernment, wisdom, passion, compassion grace. Father, for the people we know that we see who are grieving on this day and on each day in ways that we may know and may not know. Father, give us discernment to be able to feel and to speak your word into their hearts and lives.
And Father, to be an instrument of your grace, to bring them to the grace that you have for them. Lord, help us to pray. For our nation on this dark day, this anniversary, and especially in light of this horrific shooting and all that, it means, father, give wisdom to our leaders, to our directors. Father, we pray for the apprehension of [00:46:00] this individual, this horrific act that was done.
We pray for your grace and strength somehow, for Erica and their children and their family, and for all those that are grieving personally and directly on this hard day. God. We pray for your strength and help and encouragement for them and for those that would pastor them and would serve them and stand alongside them in this, in this difficult day.
Father God. And then Lord, we just ask you to redeem all of this as a means to the awakening. We need so desperately, father, use it to show us our mortality again, to teach us to number our days that we might get a heart of wisdom and it’d be catalyst for the great movement that we need to move our nation to yourself before it’s too late.
God, we know that one day is nine 11. For all of us, even perhaps today in our own hearts, help us to be ready. For that eternity, which is waiting on the next moment, on the next breath, beyond the next day that you’ve given us as father. We trust ourselves to you, and we thank you in advance for your grace, your goodness, and we manifest your glory, we pray in the name of Jesus, our Lord.
Amen.
Dr. Mark Turman: Thank you, Jim. [00:47:00] Thank you for the prayer and for the conversation and for the ways that you help us to understand how to walk with Christ in these moments. I wanna thank our audience for tuning in with us as well. We hope that this has been useful and helpful to you and that you’ll share this with others who may need a good word on these difficult days.
We’ll see you next time on Faith and Clarity.
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