October 6, 2025 • 56 mins
This week, Granger and AntMan revisit a decades-old prediction that’s resurfacing online — an MIT study from 1972 claiming society could collapse by 2040. The two dig into what that actually means, what the researchers got right and wrong, and how changing population trends might be shaping the future faster than we realize.
From the idea of socialism as a global “solution” to declining birth rates and the rise of technology, the conversation moves from history to the present day. Granger shares stories from his travels, including a talk with a Venezuelan Uber driver, as they unpack why grand theories about saving the world always seem to ignore human nature.
But the heart of the episode isn’t fear — it’s faith. Granger points back to Scripture, reminding listeners that no matter what predictions come true, God’s plan doesn’t change. Whether the world lasts another fifteen years or a thousand, our mission remains the same: to live for Christ and share His gospel in the time we’re given.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Interesting topic today, something we've actually aunt Man and I
have been wanting to discuss and dig into, and then
we've had other things that we needed to cover because
of things going on in the world, and so today
we're kind of circling back.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
And so.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
This spurred from a series of lectures and videos that
we came across of MIT predicting the collapse total collapse
of society by the year twenty forty. This study came
out in nineteen seventy two. So ant Man and I,
(00:49):
you and I started kind of diving into this and thinking,
a couple of twofold one, what does this mean for society?
And when you see and the reason I see stuff
like this all the time, but when you see something
like MIT, you go, these guys are pretty smart. You know,
I have I have a couple at our church, both
I'm graduated MIT. Really their sons att now brilliant. You know,
(01:14):
they don't mess around.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
That's Massachusetts Institute of Technology, right. Yeah, So.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
MIT predicts through computer modeling, which in nineteen seventy two,
before either were born. Yeah, computers had about as much
computing power as a tea kettle in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Two, So this is actually a really big deal.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
I was.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
You can imagine the guys in the in the rooms,
just full of the servers everywhere, and.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
One computer was the size of this room.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Your one computers this room, and the screen was, you know,
like a window on an airplane.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
But what they did was, let me back up. The
reason we're discussing it is because it's Mit. We wouldn't
just take a random a random guy that's making a prediction.
We're kind of looking at if Mit said this in
nineteen seventy two, where does that leave us today as
we record this in twenty twenty five. And what the
(02:15):
computer was doing was modeling different scenarios of civilization, one
of them being business as usual. We're just going to
continue at the path are going now, considering population, natural resources,
(02:39):
considering agriculture. You know, there's like six or seven of
these categories, and one of them was if we continue
on the path we're today, we're on today, and society
collapses between twenty twenty and twenty sixty. And then it
was like, well then there was like a business as
usual model too, and that's if that in nineteen seventy two,
(03:03):
they weren't counting for a technological advance like in agriculture, say,
now you could grow crops in the desert. Yeah, an
advancement they wouldn't have known in nineteen seventy two. Let's
run that model.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Or without soil, right, or without.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Soil, let's run that model collapses in twenty forty you know, Okay,
Now let's run a model that maybe there's something else
or not. Think maybe there's a there is a fix
for the pollution problem. That was one of their models
or one of their the scenarios was.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
It felt like that almost was the driving force. A
little of the underlying was pollution. Pollution was always the
thing from nineteen seventy two when they gave the full
full explanation of it, it felt like, oh, this is
what we're looking for. Here is a way to curb
the pollution that we currently are seeing. At least that's
what it felt like.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah, yeah, which seems like you remember as were kids,
there was a lot more talk about pollution than there
is now.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Now it's climate change.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
And those type of things, but not global warming. It
wasn't necessarily like plastic.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
And a lot of things have been put in place
since nineteen seventy two that have has curbed you know,
industries from just throwing pollutants out in the air. Not
only industries, but also just what we drive. What we drive,
I mean, you know this from correct driving buses out west,
like like bus had to stop before you get to
California because that bus couldn't drive in California sometimes, you know.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Right, So pollution, you know, what if we could fix
pollution and recycle everything. They were thinking this nineteen seventy two.
That model also crashed by around twenty fifty ish, So
then they're thinking, well, what if, what if we fix
(04:50):
the population problem because once again another problem in nineteen
seventy two was that the population was growing too quickly
and they were using they were kind of continuing a
model of the since the Industrial Revolution and the growth
up to seven billion people, how could we basically, how
can we sustain enough food for that many people?
Speaker 2 (05:12):
And it was always crashing, crash and crashing.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
And.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
This is this didn't that this didn't have any kind
of radar on social media obviously of course or AI.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
There was no virus tied to the you know, factored
into this either. There was no COVID, there was no
any kind of health issue other than what was currently
going on, right.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
So that, yeah, so that the it's all doom and gloom,
and that's not what this podcast is about. You know
me by now, if you've watched this before, if you
heard us be talking before, we will never leave you
doom and gloom. We will always leave you with hope
on this podcast. You will never turn off a video
here and go we're shrewd.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Never.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
You will never say that with one of the unless
you just turn it off in the middle, unless you
turn it off right now in the middle. So, yeah,
that's not what this is about. But the MIT study
was very doom and gloomy because the best scenario they ran,
which might show a little bit of an influence, an
(06:17):
Eastern influence, the best scenario they ran was socialism.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Yeah, right, if.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Everyone in the in the world switched to socialism.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
On the same page, we could.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
All we could all get rid of all the rich
people and everyone's poor.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
And then they.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Saw that the model would extend past twenty forty, which
which is absolutely impossible for one through my pen.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
That's how mad I am about this. Absolutely impossible because.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Even if that was the right answer, communism not everyone's
going to do it. Not every country is going to
do it. You can you can't get countries to agree
on flavor.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Of apple juice.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
You can't get them to agree on a model of government.
And they were saying some of the some of the
lecturing people, you know, these doctors from the seventies, they're saying, well,
you have to do it very slowly. Countries have to
slowly give away their sovereignty one, you know, like a
little piece at a time, which obviously hadn't happened at all.
(07:27):
No one is giving up sovereignty, you know. I was
in Nashville yesterday with the Amber and one of my
drive my Uber drivers, was from Venezuela. And I love
talking with Uber drivers. It's like a top five hobby
of mine hunting fish and you know, making music and
(07:50):
preaching and talking to Uber.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Drivers and sometimes you'll ride with them for four or
five six hours, you know, from from Atlanta to that.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
I'm kidding about the hobbylist, but I do enjoy talking
with Uber drivers. And and this guy was talking about Venezuela,
and I said, I'll be honest with you, I don't
know a lot of people from Venezuela.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
I know they're communist. I travel a lot to Cuba.
They're communist. And so we're kind of going through all
the similarities of Cuba and Venezuela, and he was he
was talking about how hard it was like Venezuela was
also has a lot of crime.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
He said, the gangs are really really bad.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Interesting. I could see that though.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
And that model is never successful.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
They've tried it several times. They've tried it, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
And it is. It is horrible.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
It oppresses people so much, and it doesn't take into
account that people are just different from each other, you know,
like this guy is different than the guy next to
who's different than the guy next door. Meaning you have
one guy that's super motivated wants to get up early
and work, and you have another guy that's just lazy,
(09:09):
and neither one of those guys could really be trained. Otherwise,
you can't take a lazy guy and train him to
be ambitious. You could maybe curb a little bit, like
he could maybe get a little bit more interested in working,
but not really. And you can't take the super ambitious
guy and say, be lazy man, stop working all the time.
(09:30):
It's just who you are in an essence, So that's
what that government model doesn't take into account. You get
certain people in Russia that when this was happening, they
were they decided to just kill farmers that were too ambitious.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
What do we do with this guy?
Speaker 1 (09:47):
This guy's like taking all everyone else's crops, you just
plowing all the time. Well, I guess we just kill him.
If we just end up killing the really successful farmers,
then it'll just equal.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Out, and then the that are ambitious will see what
we did to this one and stop being as ambitious.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah, and then what happens is you have a whole
bunch of lazy people that don't like to farm, and
people start starving. Anyway, that's a tangent, but that's what
Mit predicted could actually help us.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
I do think it's interesting. And I know we don't
have their model pulled up here and we're relaying to
you stuff that we had watched. But one thing I
did notice was there was there were only they would
leave everything the same as it currently was, but would
change one thing, which is kind of how you would
do a study. You imagine, don't change too many factors
(10:41):
because then you don't know which factor to lead you
to what you were. So everything needs to be consistent.
So it's in nineteen seventy two, living would be consistent
all the way through twenty sixty and being that you
use the same electricity, that you use the same gas.
Remember in nineteen seventy two, the only thing I think
(11:03):
there was was leaded gas. I don't even sure there
was unleaded gas. And think about the mileage that you
would get on a car. The best mileage might have
been I'm just guessing here ten ten miles a gallon. Yeah,
maybe compared to what we do now, that changes what's
being put out into the air. So what I thought
(11:24):
was interesting is how when you're doing a study, I know,
you want some constants and then you want one variable
so you can see what that variable does to everything.
But that's not how the real world works. We change
little things all the time, day to day, even in
our own lives, much less of society. So I think
that just looking at it, I understand why you do
(11:46):
it that way. But to make a real educated prediction,
I think is tough because there's way too many variables. Yeah,
a lot of things, I mean, day to day, minute
to minute, hour to hour change where you're you're holding
in this study it being a constant and I don't
think you can really get anything accurate out of that
(12:07):
because everything adapts to what you do. It's the butterfly effect.
You know that we've taught you. I don't know we've
talked about it before, but we've had the discussion before
you and you've heard it probably in the past. Is
you know, butterfly flats, it swings in China and it
causes tsunami in Hawaii or whatever. You know, that type
of that saying. But that's true. Little things, if you
(12:27):
take yourself and your discipline, little changes are what lead
to the result that you're looking for. Not big giant ones.
Hey I stopped eating all sugar and all processed food yesterday.
One that's probably not gonna happen. You're gonna cheat and
you're gonna fall in your give up. But if you
make little changes every day is where you end up
(12:48):
finding success. And I think we it feels like we
press maybe a little bit versus what that study showed,
which was decline.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Which is why those scientists we're saying, if every country
would just get a little bit more communism.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
There yeah, we would get a little worse, everything would
be better. That doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
No, I think exactly right.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
And one of the one of the examples of what
you're talking about is that they were not accounting at
all for the idea that people would want to stop
making babies. Right, That was unheard of in nineteen seventy two. Right,
but now we recognize that that might be the leading
problem worldwide, is that people are not having babies. In
(13:29):
nineteen seventy two, the problem was how do we stop this?
How do we feed all the babies? And now we're thinking,
how do we have enough people that will even make
food at all.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
I remember having a discussion and I wanted to say
elementary school that in Japan you could only have two kids. Yeah,
and if you had a third what happened?
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Shout out to Kintaro who listens to these episodes our
dear brother, his posts and.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Watching his journey in the Lord and in the words
been awesome.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Especially China.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
China was China has kind of reeled back in the
the one child law.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
They realize what it was. They brought it into two
child law.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
I'm not sure, but I think they might be to
three now where you could have You used to be
able to know more than one, and then they changed
it to no more than two, and they I think
they might have moved it the three this But guess what,
people are not having three because you have already changed
this this cultural construct in their minds. So you grow
(14:30):
up with no siblings, and say you're in China, grew
up in those siblings and the mentality of more babies
are bad and it just gets ingrained in you. So
why are you going to now go let's have three?
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Babe? You're used to living a life that's not you.
You grew up with only either no siblings or one sibling,
and now you're you've you're carrying out this life with
no kids and maybe you'll have one at some point,
but are you going to have three? That's going to
take a while.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
So was the solution? What Elon must thinks that we
should just have nine?
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Isn't that he's well on his way right like you
have like ten to fifteen.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Yeah, he's helping.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Speaking of Nashville, we are at the airport yesterday and
they are boring a tunnel. Elon is from Nashville Airport
to downtown Nashville to downtown to downtown and they're going
to use the new autonomous Tesla's that will take you
from downtown Nashville through the tunnel to the airport. I
(15:31):
don't know the completion date on this, but I was
with not the Venezuelan driver, but another driver who was
showing me like here they I mean, they this is
not everything's approved.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
And it's going like they're boring.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
It's not just an idea, They're like, the trucks are
out there and they're working.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
I have so many questions about this, not necessarily that
you know them off the and you may know some
after having this conversation. How do you I mean, I've
I lived to Nashville. You lived to Nashville. I've seen
it go from a few buildings downtown to cranes all
the time. How do you bore under that city and
the foundation still be Okay, no idea.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
I mean they must be. It must be deep enough
where it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
I have to be Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
So that's another point of this whole conversation is like,
how is something like somebody like Nashville or Austin where
we are growing seem to be growing so much, And
I guess I guess the answer to that is, well,
it hasn't.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
This hasn't taken effect.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Yet because the lack of babies takes decades to kick in,
of course. So I think the Far East will start
seeing it first, that they're kind of the first ones
in this race of population decline. Other other factors that
MI t did not take into account was AI.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
We have no idea what's happening with AI.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
We might have.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
That model might have come up to we only have
two years left if they had taken account of escalated things. Yeah,
so they they definitely a lot in that study, But
I don't think they were too far off. Like I
don't look at the study and think way off, way wrong.
(17:11):
From nineteen seventy two computer modeling with you know, tons
of different models coming up with we have seventy years left.
It's basically what they're saying, seventy years left if things
don't drastically change. Your argument is things do drastically change,
just in incremental steps that carries out seventy years. But
(17:33):
I don't look back at the MIT study and go
I think I think they were totally wrong. I look
at it and go that actually might be exactly right. Yeah,
I could think of I think I could think of
a lot of ways that society can completely crash by
what fifteen years and fifteen years from right now as.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
We record this, you could see it crashing in.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
That oh yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
And what do you think the driving factor would be?
Speaker 1 (17:59):
I think think I think AI right now and population
implosion are the two kind of critical matters right now
that it could do. What we talked about this before
the podcast not necessarily talking about world destruction. We're talking
about population population or no, we're talking about societal fall,
(18:26):
which MIT was predicting that by twenty forty. It wasn't
saying humans will be extinct. That's not what they're saying.
They're saying catastrophic societal collapse, meaning population would go back
to nineteen hundred levels year nineteen hundred levels, which was
two billion. So right now we're at seven billion. Then
(18:49):
MIT was predicting by twenty forty we would be back
we would have lost five to six billion people, we'd
be back to two billion. That is where I say, yeah,
I don't think that's too far off. Okay, what about
you and we're going to once again, we're not leaving
this podcast with doom and glue.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Well, and I don't know if I have a have
a an answer to that yet, but I want to
throw out some other factors. What do you think that
the there may not be enough people doing this yet?
But what do you think about the people who are
leaving the city life to homesteading And what I mean
by that is doing you know, getting some land, growing
(19:28):
their own crops, having some cattle, chickens, what have your goats?
And would you think that there's not enough people doing
that yet to be able to sustain enough people with food.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
No, I don't think so, because you know, I have
thought about that that that's such an individualistic mindset, mindset
that it's only going to take care of your family,
and most people don't have the means to do to
go and move out to the country.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Most people couldn't take care of their own family.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
And of the that's true, I mean ninety nine point
nine in the world proper relation can't make a decision
to move to a less populated area and homestead.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
So if that were a growing trend, it would have
that could sustain it would need the growth of that
trend would need to be astronomical.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Here's I thought. When I was in Cuba one time.
This last time was in Cuba, I was in a
kind of a remote village, and I mean there might
be there might have been fifty people in the village,
and it was in the mountains, and it was like
the most picturesque beautiful mountain scene with streams coming through
(20:42):
the mountains, waterfalls, crystal clear water, beautiful. I mean, it
looks like a Marriotte resort in Hawaii or something, right,
you know, like these beautiful tropical trees, beautiful flowers everywhere,
rocky rocky terrain down into these these all these streams
that kind of all met each other with boulders that
(21:06):
looked like you were at bass pro shops, with waterfalls
and crystal clear water, and then meadows that were that
could be farmed with sugar cane. And I was sitting
at a house, like on a front porch with some
people that live there and just looking at this, and
I was just like, why, if this exists, why don't
(21:28):
people from Havana or e one E are just stuck
in those cities, take their families and move out here,
and they said, because you would have nothing. You would
the government wouldn't be able to give you any help,
and you wouldn't have schools for your children, and you
(21:49):
wouldn't you know, you wouldn't have anything. So like the
home setting idea in Cuba is ridiculous. An American might think, oh,
we could, I could farm, I could take water, I could,
but but you don't if as long as you're in
that communist system, the government gives you what you need
if you need schools or food, like rations. There's a
(22:11):
guy that drives a cart around with bread every day.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
It's free.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
You know, you're communists, so it's everything's free, everything shared.
You get like stale bread on this guy with a
cart and he has a whistle and he blows his
whistle every morning and you go out there.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
And get your ration of stale bread.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
You know, but you can't get that in the mountain,
right so no one, no one thinks, like you're saying,
what if we all did that?
Speaker 2 (22:37):
They just don't.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
No one wants to do that, okay me, you know,
I'm like, this would be a This is why I
build a house right here and raise a family.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
And Cubans are like, what why would you do that?
Speaker 3 (22:49):
And what you're thinking is, man, look at that. This
is beautiful. I could do or have what I currently have,
but I could have it here, and they're going, you
can't have that here.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, it just doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. And so
so anyway, what do we do?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
I mean, the do you? First of all?
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Do you?
Speaker 2 (23:13):
You don't agree with you?
Speaker 3 (23:14):
No, it's not that I don't. I'm not convinced that
it will by then, And a little bit of me
thinks that if I do believe that I will, it
will be a doom and glube thought. And I, you know,
I don't want to go there yet. I don't know
that it will or not. I think what we've touched on,
especially on past podcasts is a lot of what we
(23:35):
heard when we were young is like, Okay, a lot
of that's silly, or it's or I've been educated since then,
or we have dug into the word way more since then.
So we know what you know, the Lord, how the
Lord's sovereignty reigns over all of this. So whether it
does or doesn't, I don't know that that's necessarily my
(23:59):
fault or concern do it. But if I just had
to say yes or now I'll be like probably fifty
to fifty. You know, I think there are some things
that would turn.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Which is crazy that you're saying that. I mean, you're
saying there's a fifty chance this society will collapse.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
I think we are. We are. Let's let's let's take
the thought first and we will get back into this.
You take the the I can't really can't separate it.
I was gonna say, take take our spiritual thought process
out of it, okay? Is that just as humans? This
is going to be wrong when I say it. I
understand that is that we are resilient. We find a
(24:38):
way to get through, and they agree. But I don't
think we're resilient on our own. I don't like I'm
not resilient because I did something. I'm resilient because the
Lord smiled and and and gave me another day to
wake up and breathe. So I can't I say, on
one hand, I say, let's take that out of it,
and you really can't. But if you, if you look
(24:59):
at it, I don't know about a collapse like of
going back to two billion people versus seven or eight
billion people.
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to whoever you want me to say it to.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
I send it to you and you give it to them.
It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Go to cameo dot com slash granger Smith. Well, if
we do go back to two billion, you and I
are probably dead. I don't know if we're going to
make it too, but I don't if we're going to
make the percentage. But what we should what we should
do now is we'll take this podcast and start heading
down a new path of how would a Christian think
through these type of things. Now, we're also coming to
(27:33):
a head with two matters that we would like to
discuss in the future. So you're producing this show, so
I'll just in real time, I'll just shoot these out there.
Christian nationalism, Okay, we're gonna we want to address this
at some some future.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Doesn't mean what are the benefits? What are the dangers?
Speaker 1 (27:50):
And then we had a good discussion with the CEO
of Focus on the Family and one of the questions
we had we've already recorded this and we're going to
ask it to one.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Of these podcasts.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
But one of the questions that came up in that
one that podcast was, or that episode or that segment
was with everything we've said, especially with what we're talking
about right now, what about the couple out there that's
like thinking about having a baby.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah, and you say I.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Just listened to this podcast in Granger's saying, there's like
a fifty chance that everything's going to collapse by in
fifteen years. Do I want to have a baby, And
yet he's also saying that part of the problem is
not enough people are having baby, right, But do I
want to contribute to that problem or do I want
to protect my family and say I don't want to
(28:41):
bring a baby into this world?
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Yeah, with only.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
And what in fifteen years that baby's going to see
mass extinction of the human race.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Death and destruction. That sounds awful.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Well, we answered that question already with the CEO of
Focus on the Family, Jim Daily. So I don't know
when we're going to bring that in or if we
go down any of these paths, but regardless, I'll let
you lead us. But regardless, let's let's just think about
how a Christian would and how the Bible could inform us,
(29:15):
because as a non Christian I thought very differently.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
About these type things. Sure, yeah, And as a Christian.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
I'm on a completely different spectrum. And one way I
would think about it is as a non Christian, I
would have been the one all in on the prepping
and the homesteading and the getting out of society. Get
me in a valley in Colorado, that's not inhabited, and
(29:46):
let me get on a completely off the grid, self
sustaining farm.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
A place that looked like that place that you saw
in Cuba.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Yeah, let me replicate that place in Cuba in some
mountaintown though in the Appalachians, or in the Rockies where
we have endless water and game and farming, and let
me do that. But as a Christian, I go. I
don't leave the people. I can't leave God's people because
(30:19):
they're my mission field. And as long as I have
breath and a beat in my heart, the Gospel must
be spread to the ends of the earth. And if
one of the ways, I either get to the end
of the earth on an airplane, or I get to
the end of the earth because they're coming to me,
or I'm on foot, or I'm in a neighbor I'm
(30:39):
in a neighborhood. But either way, people must know the gospel,
which is God created the world and it was perfect,
and we as humans have rebelled against them ever since
we broke our relationship in the Garden of Eden, and
we could not reconcile ourselves to God. Every other religion
(31:02):
says you try to get to God and Christianity says
God came to us the incarnate son, the son named Emmanuel,
which means God with us. God came into his own
creation as a man, is as the son Jesus, to
live the life worthy of a sacrifice which he became
(31:24):
himself on the cross, died on the cross, was resurrected
by the Father, and then looks to the world and says,
anyone who believes in me will be forgiven, saved, counted
as righteous. No one goes to heaven unless you're righteous, yep.
And none of us are righteous. We are bankrupt in
that area. Christ looks at mankind to those who follow
(31:47):
him through those who trust him, and says, count I
credit your bankrupt account with my righteousness, not yours. Welcome
to my kingdom, Welcome to Paradise. That is a message
that must go out. If I have fifteen years to
say it, or if I have this is my last
day on earth, or if I live a nice, fruitful
(32:07):
life till about eighty eight years old and die of
pancreatic cancer. Whatever my future is, I don't know. It's
none of my business, but I do know I must,
in obedience to our Lord, tell of this good news.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Amen, John fifteen sixteen, You did not choose me. I
chose you. That's got to make you comfortable, right, that's
gonna be so comfortable.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Compels you. I chose them be obedient into that calling
that choosing.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Yeah, okay, great, what do you have for me?
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Yeah? What what do you have?
Speaker 1 (32:46):
So I we always think about these things in Matthew
twenty four. This is when we talk about the signs
of the end of the age, and we see all
these things. We see the earthquakes, we see the wars
with the rumors of wars, the false prophets arising, we
see all things that we've talked about on the on
(33:07):
the the podcast when we talk about the end of times,
and and and and Jesus's point always in these things
is look to Him, Yeah, look to Christ.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Be you ready?
Speaker 1 (33:25):
How how would you be ready? By being equipped with
the gospel. Let that gospel that what I just told
about God coming into humanity take root in you. And
what you said, John fifteen, I chose you. Take take
these ideas and let them, let that take roots so
deep in you that you fear the Lord. I've been
(33:46):
I was talking about this morning in my family worship
with my kids about fear of the Lord.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
The fear of the Lord.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
And that's that's such an interesting thought because the idea
of teaching children a fear of the Lord is quite
is quite controversial, like why would you.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Teach your kids to fear God?
Speaker 1 (34:14):
The in Proverbs Proverbs one seven, the fear of the
Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.
We see, we see all all in the Bible, the
fear of the Lord. Well, think of it this way.
If you think about teaching your kids the look look
at uh. I'm saying, look as if you have it
(34:36):
in front of you Proverbs one twenty nine. Because they
hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord,
and none would have my counsel and despised all my reproof.
Therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way and
have their feel of their own devices the fear.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Of the Lord.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
As we choose the fear of the Lord, it's not
like we're I was telling my kids. It's not like
we're inventing a fear. We're saying, yeah, go create a
fear of God. No, what I was telling my kids
is instead, think of it this way you already fear.
It's a fear that already exists. Choose whom you will fear?
(35:20):
Man are God? And this is easy for kids to
understand because they go into school. They think about if
they're if they're dressed the right way, if their shoes
look fine, or or or what will people think of
them when they answer a question in class? These are
This is all fear of man and what the Bible
(35:41):
talks about with fear of the Lord. This is a
reorientation of your fear. I choose to fear the Lord
over the already existing fear that I have of what
everyone else thinks of me, or what they what they
will do to me?
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Like we'll they hurt me? Would they kill me? Would
they throw me in prison?
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Will they will I not be able to eat because
I don't comply fear of man, fear of man, reorient
it to fear of God. And when that happens and
you hear about the end times, you don't start thinking,
I better cock my pistolah, I better go get a
little farm off the grid and protect my little bubbles.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Instead, you say, Lord, I fear. I don't fear that
I don't.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Fear losing food or people thieves coming and stealing what
I've protected in my little silo. Instead, Lord, I fear you,
and so because of that, I look to your word,
and you say the Gospel must go to all nations.
So Lord, I trust you, and I want to obey you.
(36:50):
And because I fear you, not man. Now it's almost
impossible to have complete loss of fear of man, of course,
but you want to fear the Lord more, follow him,
be sanctified by his word, and every day reading the Bible,
and through that we start to think of this study.
And in my team we go, Yah. Maybe that all
(37:11):
that means for me is that my time is more urgent. Yeah,
And I have less and less time to do anything
else that is in self indulgent. For me, going to
go take a vacation with my wife in a beautiful
tropical island. That sounds great. I don't know how much
(37:31):
time I have. I don't know how much time I
want to waste on myself. Now, I'm not I have
to be careful with what I'm saying. I'm not saying
that we should wear ourselves out working, working, working, and
not not ever take time with our wife that's not
what I'm saying, But I am saying that in every
decision I make, I want to I want to make
(37:53):
sure I fear the Lord over. I fear the Lord
over Elon Musk population implosion, fear the Lord over Bill
Gates and whatever he's doing. I fear the Lord over Ai.
I fear the Lord over whatever else that might be
the next election or the a public murder, or a prosecution,
(38:15):
or a disease or COVID or what.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
I fear the Lord over.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
All of those things, all of it, and and the man.
I have no, absolutely no fear of a society collapse, right,
I don't.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
I don't at all.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Yeah, And maybe that's maybe that's the hesitation of my
answer to you.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
You keep wanting to say something, and I keep no, no, no.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
I enjoyed listening, But I think to you asked me
that question, and I feel like I haven't answered it.
But I think that that's where that that I don't
really I don't really have any fear of it. I don't.
I don't want to say it doesn't concern me, but
it doesn't concern with me. With what plans I proceed with, Yeah,
(39:12):
it doesn't concern with the mission that he has us on.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
It doesn't It doesn't change your death date. That's already
it's already said, not at all.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
Not at all, And that's why it doesn't. That's what
it doesn't you, I think you And that's it feels
like that I was going to say something. Now you're
just hitting on on on thoughts that I've I've had
as we've continued this conversation, is that that's not my fear,
so I haven't thought that much about it. My fear
is in the Lord and you know, doing his will
(39:46):
and making sure that I'm in you know, waking up
and getting in his word and and uh right, I've
got this Bible that I always use, and it's easy
for me to understand in LT, but I want to
dig deeper. So I've got an E. S V. That
I'll read the same passages from to see how they that.
That's what I'm more concerned about, not not what date
it is. And oh, we're getting closer to that date
(40:07):
that m I T said we're going to drop the
two billion people. So something happens between now and then, Okay, great,
then that means I'm one day closer to him.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
Yeah, So you know what's interesting about that is I
Caleb but cuts my hair at the forum. Yeah, messy
on it jew okay, And he was sometimes he actually
watches this podcast in their in their barbershop, which is cool.
He sent me pictures before of this podcast. But I
(40:39):
think I think it came up the other day. I
was going to speak at some conference and he was like,
does this whole Charlie Kirk thing. Does it make you
fearful of going out and speaking? Do you think twice?
And I immediately was like, I don't fear man like that.
It doesn't change anything from me nothing. I have zero
(41:00):
fear of that.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
The Lord.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
I trust the Lord will provide and will protect. Now,
when I left there, I was like, man, I should
have given more clarity. I spoke so fast, like, no,
I don't fear, I don't fear man, I should have
given more clarity in what I mean, because he was like,
he was like, yeah, I get it. That's noble of you.
(41:25):
He didn't say it that way, but but it's kind
of the whole idea of we could be reckless with
that idea and just go be careless and get ourselves killed,
you know, and so I should have given myself more clarity,
because when I say those things, this is what I mean,
(41:46):
Hebrews says. The author of Heterbrews says that solid food
is for the mature, for those who have their powers
of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
You know, we've said on this podcast many times that training,
in many ways comes right here from the Bible, all
scriptures breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof,
(42:09):
for training and righteousness, that the Man of God may
be complete equipped for every good work. And so in
order to train our discernment, we live in the scriptures
every day and we're trained, and that grows our discernment
of good from evil, so that I'm at a conference
(42:30):
one day and they say, hey, Grangeer, we want you
to speak, and I go, I just felt evil. I
felt something here. My power of my powers of discernment
have been trained to distinguish good from evil, trained from
the word of God. So when I say I trust
(42:51):
the Lord, I'm not saying that in a flipant. I
don't care. I'll just go anywhere I'll be. I'll walk
into a line of fire and just well, it's a
fly by me. I don't care the Lord, pretend it's
not what I'm saying. I'm saying. The more and more
I'm trained in my discernment, the more I could trust
that the Lord will go Stop, don't do that, don't
(43:12):
walk in that room this man, don't trust this man.
Don't take this event. Stay in your seat, don't say
a word. Speak now now, don't speak all those things
that the Spirit gives you, these promptings when you go
I feel an evil presence here. I think I'm going
to go home, or I think I'm going to say something,
(43:35):
or I think I'm gonna keep my mouth closed right now.
These are This is discernment that we get from the
Holy Spirit through training in his word. That's what's promised
to a Christian, and we can gain more and more
of that discernment.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
So that's what I mean.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
That's what I meant to Caleb when I said that, sure,
I don't care, I trust the Lord. What I mean
is I know the Holy Spirit will start guiding me.
I could still deceive myself. That's why being alongside other
believers who have a similar trained discernment is so important.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
Well, and you also know that, just like previous episodes
that we talked about of this podcast, that the Holy
Spirit does lead you into a place that you get shot.
You already know, yeah, that was your day, that was
your time. That's exactly and this leads to something so much,
so much bigger and so much. It leads to something else,
(44:31):
not just to the end of Grangersmith's life. The end.
Oh it's over. That's not how it ends.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
Yeah, yeah, one day I will meet my end. As
Elisha in the Bible was, you know, a healer of
so many and then one day the Bible says he
caught the illness of which he was to die.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
So sometimes you catch the illness that was always meant
to get you, or the bullet that was always meant
to get you. Yeah, this is the way it was
always going to end. But up until that point, you
gain this discernment of this feels evil. I'm going to
walk away from this or I've you know, when when
(45:17):
the first day I met Travis, I met him and
everything in me was like, go with him, yep, go
with him, He's mine. I felt that I didn't I
didn't hear a magical voice. I didn't. I just felt
go with him. He's mine. He's mine, like in other words,
he's good, right. And the more we are trained in
(45:38):
this word, the more we could discern these type things. Yeah,
so that would be the encouragement of whatever you hear
from m I t Or or Elon Musk or the
President of the United States. We need to be trained
every day in the Word of God. We need to
have a we need to have some kind of disciplined
(45:59):
system way of moving through scripture. Do you have your
you have your finger about forty.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Yeah, right now, just what you said, I think Matthew
twenty four thirty six. I want to get your translation
over there too. However, no one knows the day or
the hour when these things will happen, not even the
angels in heaven, nor the son Jesus himself. Only only
(46:26):
the Father knows.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Yeah what versus that.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
That's Matthew twenty four thirty six.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Yeah, Yeah, did you hear the story of that that man,
that man that was predicting the end of the the
the rapture was going to happen. This is like, uh,
the most recent one September twenty third September twenty third,
(46:51):
the rapture is gonna happen. I think this guy's like
an Africa or something like a I guess he was
a prominent pastor because there were thousands of people outside
like looking.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Up at the sky waiting to be taken, waiting to
be raptured. You know, well as we right as we
record this, right now, it's Yom Kapoor, the day of atonement.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
And that was the feast of trumpets.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
That was yes.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
And so he was saying, like all over social media,
which is so ridiculous to think about being on TikTok
and saying these things. But you said, the Lord told me.
That's why just a few seconds ago I was hesitant
to say. The Lord didn't speak to me to say
go with him. I just felt it in the in
the discernment within me. This man said the Lord spoke
(47:33):
to him and sayd September twenty third, I'm a rapture
of the people. And so he's guard going all over
the all over the news saying this, and then what happened.
They didn't leave the earth. Everyone stayed there.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
Well that's that's what I Then, I'm concerned with a
pastor who says stuff like that, because it says in
Matthew read your verse that Matthew says, not even the
sun knows this. However, no one knows the day or
the hour when they these things will happen, not even
the angels. These dudes hang out with him, all around
him all day, singing praises to his name. They don't know.
(48:08):
And the son doesn't know. Only the father and you.
I'm gonna tell you, didn't say that. Didn't say and you,
or and a pastor in Africa or whatever it is this, No,
only the father knows only that's one, one single, not
a pastor in Africa. They didn't say any it didn't
(48:28):
didn't mind. That's why I ask you to read yours too.
Just make sure that it wasn't in the ESV that way.
This is twenty four to thirty six. Matthew twenty four
to thirty six said, I did. That's that's comforting to
me though. So comforting is that, Okay, you don't worry
about it. And I think you understand this more when
you have kids, is he have Hey, don't worry about it.
(48:52):
I'll let you know when we get there. Are we
there yet? I'll let you know when we get there,
stop worrying about it. Play your Nintendo switch, play on
your right. I don't know, but stop asking me. Yeah,
so I'll know when we get there, and I'll tell
you so.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
Speaking of children, and for the you know, the comment
that should anybody even have a baby? You know, if
if this all these predictions are right, and I'm not
saying that they are, We're just saying you and I
are saying from a human perspective, outside of the sovereignty
and providence of God, we could look at these models
(49:27):
and go, yeah, I can see, yeah, fifty to fifty,
we've got fifteen years last, that's the way things are heading. Sure,
nobody wants to have a baby. AI is about to
take over everything. It looks like, yeah, it looks like
maybe we got fifteen years until we dip down about
six billion people. Why would we have a baby. Well,
then we go to the most famous part of the
(49:49):
Book of Esther. That's which is just a beautiful, what
a beautiful, little tiny book.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
It's ten short chapters.
Speaker 1 (49:59):
If anyone wants to read the Book of Esther, it's
right before the Book of Job and the Bible, and
it is just such an encouragement. The book of Esther
does not mention the word or a name of God
at all. It never mentions prayer or the law of
(50:22):
God at all. Esther chapter what I'm going to go
to actually the most famous part, which is chapter four.
But it's ten short, very short chapters. No God, no prayers,
but it's still all that stuff is implied because it's
a story about God's people, and I don't I want
(50:43):
people to read it to hear the story from themselves.
But I'll just kind of butt into chapter four. They're
the people of God, the Jews are about to be
wiped out, and by by a corrupt adviser of the king. Basically,
(51:05):
Esther is a is a beautiful woman who has taken
the place of a queen. The king has taken favor
to her and loves her and will basically do anything
that she desires. He will give or do for her.
So when they find out that the people of God
the Jews, are going to be wiped out, she's thinking,
(51:31):
should I escape? Should I get out of here? Should
I should I flee? Should I go warn everybody? Should
I should I kill the king?
Speaker 2 (51:41):
What should I do?
Speaker 1 (51:42):
She's asking all these questions, and Mordecai, who's with her, says,
we'll go to the chapter four, we'll start at twelve.
And they told Mordecai what Esther had said. Then Mordecai
had told them they're they're, they're going back and forth
through mediators told them to reply to Esther. Do not
(52:05):
think to yourself that in the King's palace you will
escape any more than the other Jews, For if you
keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise
for the Jews from another place, basically saying, you can
keep silent, God's gonna save his people regardless. God knows
his people, he will save them regardless. But you and
(52:26):
your father's house will perish. And here's the key. And
who knows whether you have not come to this, to
the kingdom for such a time as this man. Okay, Esther,
you could flee, you'll probably be killed. God's gonna save
his people anyway. But what if you are the way
that God's going to save them? What if you're here
(52:48):
for this reason? You could advise the King's he's got
your ear, he listens to you. You could say whatever
you want. Now, granted, God's going to.
Speaker 2 (52:58):
Save his people. You might die.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
But what if it's you, Esther, What if what if
you're here for this reason to save God's people, The
Lord will use you in this position that he gave
you to save all the people.
Speaker 2 (53:15):
And this has happened many times.
Speaker 3 (53:16):
In the bottle.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
God used Daniel for the same purpose. A lot of
people came in for one purpose. And so to think
that the society is collapsing, oh no, Mit predicts that
they're so smart. And Massachusetts, what are we gonna do?
We're not the first society to think that. We are
far from the first society to think it might all
(53:39):
be over in about fifteen years.
Speaker 2 (53:41):
That is not new.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
Our problems with AI and society collapsing, they might seem
like they're huge problems, but they're unique to us and
they're relative to our life. But back here here in
the days of Esther, there was there were more problems,
and they thought everything was going to and all the
people are going to die. And when Daniel got taken
to the exiles, to the as an exile to the
(54:05):
Babylonians and the North got taken to Syria, the Assyrians,
everyone thought at that time society is collapsing. And Mordecai says, rightly,
who knows if you've not come to the kingdom for
such a time as this. That's the same to all
(54:26):
the listeners right.
Speaker 3 (54:27):
Now I was talking about earlier. They didn't. They only
had a couple of variables. Right. One variable they didn't
think about in that seventy two to twenty forty or
twenty sixty, and it halfened in twenty forty was a
butt god. They didn't have a butt god variable. Psalm
(54:48):
thirty three, verse ten. The Lord frustrates the plans of
the nations and towards all of their schemes. But the
Lord's plans stand firm forever. They fact, they didn't factor
God into any of that. That's why I say it's
fifty to fifty. Do does God come in the middle
of that and say no, I want it to go
a little longer. Then it goes longer. Maybe he comes
(55:11):
in the middle of that and goes, no, now's the time.
Then now's the time, amen? And I like that.
Speaker 2 (55:18):
I do too.
Speaker 1 (55:19):
I think that's a good way in this conversation. So
in the future Christian nationalism discussion.
Speaker 4 (55:24):
Yep, let's all about that. Define it. What is it
Jim Daily are you one? And then CEO of Focus
on the Family. That's great converce. We'll build the conversations
around those two. Bud, There's so much to talk about.
We could talk for hours.
Speaker 1 (55:38):
Yeah, but until then, we'll see y'alle. Thank you so
much for hanging out with me on this episode of
the Grangersmith Podcast.
Speaker 2 (55:46):
I appreciate you being here.
Speaker 1 (55:47):
If you're listening right now, go ahead and rate today's podcast.
It helps more folks find the show. And if you're
tuning in on the iHeartRadio app, you could actually set
this podcast as one of your presets, which is cool
that way. I'm just one tap away. If you're watching
on YouTube, don't forget to hit like and subscribe so
you don't miss any new episodes. And if you've got
a question you want answered right here on the show,
just email me podcast at grangersmith dot com.
Speaker 2 (56:09):
I'd love to hear from you. Thanks again for being here.
We'll see you next time, ye ye
Interesting topic today, something we've actually aunt Man and I
have been wanting to discuss and dig into, and then
we've had other things that we needed to cover because
of things going on in the world, and so today
we're kind of circling back.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
And so.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
This spurred from a series of lectures and videos that
we came across of MIT predicting the collapse total collapse
of society by the year twenty forty. This study came
out in nineteen seventy two. So ant Man and I,
(00:49):
you and I started kind of diving into this and thinking,
a couple of twofold one, what does this mean for society?
And when you see and the reason I see stuff
like this all the time, but when you see something
like MIT, you go, these guys are pretty smart. You know,
I have I have a couple at our church, both
I'm graduated MIT. Really their sons att now brilliant. You know,
(01:14):
they don't mess around.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
That's Massachusetts Institute of Technology, right. Yeah, So.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
MIT predicts through computer modeling, which in nineteen seventy two,
before either were born. Yeah, computers had about as much
computing power as a tea kettle in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Two, So this is actually a really big deal.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
I was.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
You can imagine the guys in the in the rooms,
just full of the servers everywhere, and.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
One computer was the size of this room.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Your one computers this room, and the screen was, you know,
like a window on an airplane.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
But what they did was, let me back up. The
reason we're discussing it is because it's Mit. We wouldn't
just take a random a random guy that's making a prediction.
We're kind of looking at if Mit said this in
nineteen seventy two, where does that leave us today as
we record this in twenty twenty five. And what the
(02:15):
computer was doing was modeling different scenarios of civilization, one
of them being business as usual. We're just going to
continue at the path are going now, considering population, natural resources,
(02:39):
considering agriculture. You know, there's like six or seven of
these categories, and one of them was if we continue
on the path we're today, we're on today, and society
collapses between twenty twenty and twenty sixty. And then it
was like, well then there was like a business as
usual model too, and that's if that in nineteen seventy two,
(03:03):
they weren't counting for a technological advance like in agriculture, say,
now you could grow crops in the desert. Yeah, an
advancement they wouldn't have known in nineteen seventy two. Let's
run that model.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Or without soil, right, or without.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Soil, let's run that model collapses in twenty forty you know, Okay,
Now let's run a model that maybe there's something else
or not. Think maybe there's a there is a fix
for the pollution problem. That was one of their models
or one of their the scenarios was.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
It felt like that almost was the driving force. A
little of the underlying was pollution. Pollution was always the
thing from nineteen seventy two when they gave the full
full explanation of it, it felt like, oh, this is
what we're looking for. Here is a way to curb
the pollution that we currently are seeing. At least that's
what it felt like.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah, yeah, which seems like you remember as were kids,
there was a lot more talk about pollution than there
is now.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Now it's climate change.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
And those type of things, but not global warming. It
wasn't necessarily like plastic.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
And a lot of things have been put in place
since nineteen seventy two that have has curbed you know,
industries from just throwing pollutants out in the air. Not
only industries, but also just what we drive. What we drive,
I mean, you know this from correct driving buses out west,
like like bus had to stop before you get to
California because that bus couldn't drive in California sometimes, you know.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Right, So pollution, you know, what if we could fix
pollution and recycle everything. They were thinking this nineteen seventy two.
That model also crashed by around twenty fifty ish, So
then they're thinking, well, what if, what if we fix
(04:50):
the population problem because once again another problem in nineteen
seventy two was that the population was growing too quickly
and they were using they were kind of continuing a
model of the since the Industrial Revolution and the growth
up to seven billion people, how could we basically, how
can we sustain enough food for that many people?
Speaker 2 (05:12):
And it was always crashing, crash and crashing.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
And.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
This is this didn't that this didn't have any kind
of radar on social media obviously of course or AI.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
There was no virus tied to the you know, factored
into this either. There was no COVID, there was no
any kind of health issue other than what was currently
going on, right.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
So that, yeah, so that the it's all doom and gloom,
and that's not what this podcast is about. You know
me by now, if you've watched this before, if you
heard us be talking before, we will never leave you
doom and gloom. We will always leave you with hope
on this podcast. You will never turn off a video
here and go we're shrewd.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Never.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
You will never say that with one of the unless
you just turn it off in the middle, unless you
turn it off right now in the middle. So, yeah,
that's not what this is about. But the MIT study
was very doom and gloomy because the best scenario they ran,
which might show a little bit of an influence, an
(06:17):
Eastern influence, the best scenario they ran was socialism.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Yeah, right, if.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Everyone in the in the world switched to socialism.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
On the same page, we could.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
All we could all get rid of all the rich
people and everyone's poor.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
And then they.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Saw that the model would extend past twenty forty, which
which is absolutely impossible for one through my pen.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
That's how mad I am about this. Absolutely impossible because.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Even if that was the right answer, communism not everyone's
going to do it. Not every country is going to
do it. You can you can't get countries to agree
on flavor.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Of apple juice.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
You can't get them to agree on a model of government.
And they were saying some of the some of the
lecturing people, you know, these doctors from the seventies, they're saying, well,
you have to do it very slowly. Countries have to
slowly give away their sovereignty one, you know, like a
little piece at a time, which obviously hadn't happened at all.
(07:27):
No one is giving up sovereignty, you know. I was
in Nashville yesterday with the Amber and one of my
drive my Uber drivers, was from Venezuela. And I love
talking with Uber drivers. It's like a top five hobby
of mine hunting fish and you know, making music and
(07:50):
preaching and talking to Uber.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Drivers and sometimes you'll ride with them for four or
five six hours, you know, from from Atlanta to that.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
I'm kidding about the hobbylist, but I do enjoy talking
with Uber drivers. And and this guy was talking about Venezuela,
and I said, I'll be honest with you, I don't
know a lot of people from Venezuela.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
I know they're communist. I travel a lot to Cuba.
They're communist. And so we're kind of going through all
the similarities of Cuba and Venezuela, and he was he
was talking about how hard it was like Venezuela was
also has a lot of crime.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
He said, the gangs are really really bad.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Interesting. I could see that though.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
And that model is never successful.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
They've tried it several times. They've tried it, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
And it is. It is horrible.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
It oppresses people so much, and it doesn't take into
account that people are just different from each other, you know,
like this guy is different than the guy next to
who's different than the guy next door. Meaning you have
one guy that's super motivated wants to get up early
and work, and you have another guy that's just lazy,
(09:09):
and neither one of those guys could really be trained. Otherwise,
you can't take a lazy guy and train him to
be ambitious. You could maybe curb a little bit, like
he could maybe get a little bit more interested in working,
but not really. And you can't take the super ambitious
guy and say, be lazy man, stop working all the time.
(09:30):
It's just who you are in an essence, So that's
what that government model doesn't take into account. You get
certain people in Russia that when this was happening, they
were they decided to just kill farmers that were too ambitious.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
What do we do with this guy?
Speaker 1 (09:47):
This guy's like taking all everyone else's crops, you just
plowing all the time. Well, I guess we just kill him.
If we just end up killing the really successful farmers,
then it'll just equal.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Out, and then the that are ambitious will see what
we did to this one and stop being as ambitious.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah, and then what happens is you have a whole
bunch of lazy people that don't like to farm, and
people start starving. Anyway, that's a tangent, but that's what
Mit predicted could actually help us.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
I do think it's interesting. And I know we don't
have their model pulled up here and we're relaying to
you stuff that we had watched. But one thing I
did notice was there was there were only they would
leave everything the same as it currently was, but would
change one thing, which is kind of how you would
do a study. You imagine, don't change too many factors
(10:41):
because then you don't know which factor to lead you
to what you were. So everything needs to be consistent.
So it's in nineteen seventy two, living would be consistent
all the way through twenty sixty and being that you
use the same electricity, that you use the same gas.
Remember in nineteen seventy two, the only thing I think
(11:03):
there was was leaded gas. I don't even sure there
was unleaded gas. And think about the mileage that you
would get on a car. The best mileage might have
been I'm just guessing here ten ten miles a gallon. Yeah,
maybe compared to what we do now, that changes what's
being put out into the air. So what I thought
(11:24):
was interesting is how when you're doing a study, I know,
you want some constants and then you want one variable
so you can see what that variable does to everything.
But that's not how the real world works. We change
little things all the time, day to day, even in
our own lives, much less of society. So I think
that just looking at it, I understand why you do
(11:46):
it that way. But to make a real educated prediction,
I think is tough because there's way too many variables. Yeah,
a lot of things, I mean, day to day, minute
to minute, hour to hour change where you're you're holding
in this study it being a constant and I don't
think you can really get anything accurate out of that
(12:07):
because everything adapts to what you do. It's the butterfly effect.
You know that we've taught you. I don't know we've
talked about it before, but we've had the discussion before
you and you've heard it probably in the past. Is
you know, butterfly flats, it swings in China and it
causes tsunami in Hawaii or whatever. You know, that type
of that saying. But that's true. Little things, if you
(12:27):
take yourself and your discipline, little changes are what lead
to the result that you're looking for. Not big giant ones.
Hey I stopped eating all sugar and all processed food yesterday.
One that's probably not gonna happen. You're gonna cheat and
you're gonna fall in your give up. But if you
make little changes every day is where you end up
(12:48):
finding success. And I think we it feels like we
press maybe a little bit versus what that study showed,
which was decline.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Which is why those scientists we're saying, if every country
would just get a little bit more communism.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
There yeah, we would get a little worse, everything would
be better. That doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
No, I think exactly right.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
And one of the one of the examples of what
you're talking about is that they were not accounting at
all for the idea that people would want to stop
making babies. Right, That was unheard of in nineteen seventy two. Right,
but now we recognize that that might be the leading
problem worldwide, is that people are not having babies. In
(13:29):
nineteen seventy two, the problem was how do we stop this?
How do we feed all the babies? And now we're thinking,
how do we have enough people that will even make
food at all.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
I remember having a discussion and I wanted to say
elementary school that in Japan you could only have two kids. Yeah,
and if you had a third what happened?
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Shout out to Kintaro who listens to these episodes our
dear brother, his posts and.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Watching his journey in the Lord and in the words
been awesome.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Especially China.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
China was China has kind of reeled back in the
the one child law.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
They realize what it was. They brought it into two
child law.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
I'm not sure, but I think they might be to
three now where you could have You used to be
able to know more than one, and then they changed
it to no more than two, and they I think
they might have moved it the three this But guess what,
people are not having three because you have already changed
this this cultural construct in their minds. So you grow
(14:30):
up with no siblings, and say you're in China, grew
up in those siblings and the mentality of more babies
are bad and it just gets ingrained in you. So
why are you going to now go let's have three?
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Babe? You're used to living a life that's not you.
You grew up with only either no siblings or one sibling,
and now you're you've you're carrying out this life with
no kids and maybe you'll have one at some point,
but are you going to have three? That's going to
take a while.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
So was the solution? What Elon must thinks that we
should just have nine?
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Isn't that he's well on his way right like you
have like ten to fifteen.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Yeah, he's helping.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Speaking of Nashville, we are at the airport yesterday and
they are boring a tunnel. Elon is from Nashville Airport
to downtown Nashville to downtown to downtown and they're going
to use the new autonomous Tesla's that will take you
from downtown Nashville through the tunnel to the airport. I
(15:31):
don't know the completion date on this, but I was
with not the Venezuelan driver, but another driver who was
showing me like here they I mean, they this is
not everything's approved.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
And it's going like they're boring.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
It's not just an idea, They're like, the trucks are
out there and they're working.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
I have so many questions about this, not necessarily that
you know them off the and you may know some
after having this conversation. How do you I mean, I've
I lived to Nashville. You lived to Nashville. I've seen
it go from a few buildings downtown to cranes all
the time. How do you bore under that city and
the foundation still be Okay, no idea.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
I mean they must be. It must be deep enough
where it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
I have to be Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
So that's another point of this whole conversation is like,
how is something like somebody like Nashville or Austin where
we are growing seem to be growing so much, And
I guess I guess the answer to that is, well,
it hasn't.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
This hasn't taken effect.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Yet because the lack of babies takes decades to kick in,
of course. So I think the Far East will start
seeing it first, that they're kind of the first ones
in this race of population decline. Other other factors that
MI t did not take into account was AI.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
We have no idea what's happening with AI.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
We might have.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
That model might have come up to we only have
two years left if they had taken account of escalated things. Yeah,
so they they definitely a lot in that study, But
I don't think they were too far off. Like I
don't look at the study and think way off, way wrong.
(17:11):
From nineteen seventy two computer modeling with you know, tons
of different models coming up with we have seventy years left.
It's basically what they're saying, seventy years left if things
don't drastically change. Your argument is things do drastically change,
just in incremental steps that carries out seventy years. But
(17:33):
I don't look back at the MIT study and go
I think I think they were totally wrong. I look
at it and go that actually might be exactly right. Yeah,
I could think of I think I could think of
a lot of ways that society can completely crash by
what fifteen years and fifteen years from right now as.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
We record this, you could see it crashing in.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
That oh yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
And what do you think the driving factor would be?
Speaker 1 (17:59):
I think think I think AI right now and population
implosion are the two kind of critical matters right now
that it could do. What we talked about this before
the podcast not necessarily talking about world destruction. We're talking
about population population or no, we're talking about societal fall,
(18:26):
which MIT was predicting that by twenty forty. It wasn't
saying humans will be extinct. That's not what they're saying.
They're saying catastrophic societal collapse, meaning population would go back
to nineteen hundred levels year nineteen hundred levels, which was
two billion. So right now we're at seven billion. Then
(18:49):
MIT was predicting by twenty forty we would be back
we would have lost five to six billion people, we'd
be back to two billion. That is where I say, yeah,
I don't think that's too far off. Okay, what about
you and we're going to once again, we're not leaving
this podcast with doom and glue.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Well, and I don't know if I have a have
a an answer to that yet, but I want to
throw out some other factors. What do you think that
the there may not be enough people doing this yet?
But what do you think about the people who are
leaving the city life to homesteading And what I mean
by that is doing you know, getting some land, growing
(19:28):
their own crops, having some cattle, chickens, what have your goats?
And would you think that there's not enough people doing
that yet to be able to sustain enough people with food.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
No, I don't think so, because you know, I have
thought about that that that's such an individualistic mindset, mindset
that it's only going to take care of your family,
and most people don't have the means to do to
go and move out to the country.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Most people couldn't take care of their own family.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
And of the that's true, I mean ninety nine point
nine in the world proper relation can't make a decision
to move to a less populated area and homestead.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
So if that were a growing trend, it would have
that could sustain it would need the growth of that
trend would need to be astronomical.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Here's I thought. When I was in Cuba one time.
This last time was in Cuba, I was in a
kind of a remote village, and I mean there might
be there might have been fifty people in the village,
and it was in the mountains, and it was like
the most picturesque beautiful mountain scene with streams coming through
(20:42):
the mountains, waterfalls, crystal clear water, beautiful. I mean, it
looks like a Marriotte resort in Hawaii or something, right,
you know, like these beautiful tropical trees, beautiful flowers everywhere,
rocky rocky terrain down into these these all these streams
that kind of all met each other with boulders that
(21:06):
looked like you were at bass pro shops, with waterfalls
and crystal clear water, and then meadows that were that
could be farmed with sugar cane. And I was sitting
at a house, like on a front porch with some
people that live there and just looking at this, and
I was just like, why, if this exists, why don't
(21:28):
people from Havana or e one E are just stuck
in those cities, take their families and move out here,
and they said, because you would have nothing. You would
the government wouldn't be able to give you any help,
and you wouldn't have schools for your children, and you
(21:49):
wouldn't you know, you wouldn't have anything. So like the
home setting idea in Cuba is ridiculous. An American might think, oh,
we could, I could farm, I could take water, I could,
but but you don't if as long as you're in
that communist system, the government gives you what you need
if you need schools or food, like rations. There's a
(22:11):
guy that drives a cart around with bread every day.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
It's free.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
You know, you're communists, so it's everything's free, everything shared.
You get like stale bread on this guy with a
cart and he has a whistle and he blows his
whistle every morning and you go out there.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
And get your ration of stale bread.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
You know, but you can't get that in the mountain,
right so no one, no one thinks, like you're saying,
what if we all did that?
Speaker 2 (22:37):
They just don't.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
No one wants to do that, okay me, you know,
I'm like, this would be a This is why I
build a house right here and raise a family.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
And Cubans are like, what why would you do that?
Speaker 3 (22:49):
And what you're thinking is, man, look at that. This
is beautiful. I could do or have what I currently have,
but I could have it here, and they're going, you
can't have that here.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, it just doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. And so
so anyway, what do we do?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
I mean, the do you? First of all?
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Do you?
Speaker 2 (23:13):
You don't agree with you?
Speaker 3 (23:14):
No, it's not that I don't. I'm not convinced that
it will by then, And a little bit of me
thinks that if I do believe that I will, it
will be a doom and glube thought. And I, you know,
I don't want to go there yet. I don't know
that it will or not. I think what we've touched on,
especially on past podcasts is a lot of what we
(23:35):
heard when we were young is like, Okay, a lot
of that's silly, or it's or I've been educated since then,
or we have dug into the word way more since then.
So we know what you know, the Lord, how the
Lord's sovereignty reigns over all of this. So whether it
does or doesn't, I don't know that that's necessarily my
(23:59):
fault or concern do it. But if I just had
to say yes or now I'll be like probably fifty
to fifty. You know, I think there are some things
that would turn.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Which is crazy that you're saying that. I mean, you're
saying there's a fifty chance this society will collapse.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
I think we are. We are. Let's let's let's take
the thought first and we will get back into this.
You take the the I can't really can't separate it.
I was gonna say, take take our spiritual thought process
out of it, okay? Is that just as humans? This
is going to be wrong when I say it. I
understand that is that we are resilient. We find a
(24:38):
way to get through, and they agree. But I don't
think we're resilient on our own. I don't like I'm
not resilient because I did something. I'm resilient because the
Lord smiled and and and gave me another day to
wake up and breathe. So I can't I say, on
one hand, I say, let's take that out of it,
and you really can't. But if you, if you look
(24:59):
at it, I don't know about a collapse like of
going back to two billion people versus seven or eight
billion people.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
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idea what we were doing when it came to selling.
You know, we had all the ideas and the imagery
for what the brand should be and what the brand
should say, and the messaging behind it, and of course
the products themselves, but we didn't know how to sell
it as far as what do you do with the
checkout and how do you set it up on your website,
(25:34):
and how do you make sure that people are clicking
on it, are actually being followed up with, and they're
actually buying that stuff. None of that happened until we
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you're trying to get a gift for someone that you
think has everything, how about a special video message from me.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
It's easy to do.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Go to cameo dot com slash granger Smith and you
put in the prompt what you want me to say.
I get that message on my phone. I'll say happy birthday,
happy anniversary, whatever personalized message you want me to say
to whoever you want me to say it to.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
I send it to you and you give it to them.
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Speaker 1 (27:10):
Go to cameo dot com slash granger Smith. Well, if
we do go back to two billion, you and I
are probably dead. I don't know if we're going to
make it too, but I don't if we're going to
make the percentage. But what we should what we should
do now is we'll take this podcast and start heading
down a new path of how would a Christian think
through these type of things. Now, we're also coming to
(27:33):
a head with two matters that we would like to
discuss in the future. So you're producing this show, so
I'll just in real time, I'll just shoot these out there.
Christian nationalism, Okay, we're gonna we want to address this
at some some future.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Doesn't mean what are the benefits? What are the dangers?
Speaker 1 (27:50):
And then we had a good discussion with the CEO
of Focus on the Family and one of the questions
we had we've already recorded this and we're going to
ask it to one.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Of these podcasts.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
But one of the questions that came up in that
one that podcast was, or that episode or that segment
was with everything we've said, especially with what we're talking
about right now, what about the couple out there that's
like thinking about having a baby.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah, and you say I.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Just listened to this podcast in Granger's saying, there's like
a fifty chance that everything's going to collapse by in
fifteen years. Do I want to have a baby, And
yet he's also saying that part of the problem is
not enough people are having baby, right, But do I
want to contribute to that problem or do I want
to protect my family and say I don't want to
(28:41):
bring a baby into this world?
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Yeah, with only.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
And what in fifteen years that baby's going to see
mass extinction of the human race.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Death and destruction. That sounds awful.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Well, we answered that question already with the CEO of
Focus on the Family, Jim Daily. So I don't know
when we're going to bring that in or if we
go down any of these paths, but regardless, I'll let
you lead us. But regardless, let's let's just think about
how a Christian would and how the Bible could inform us,
(29:15):
because as a non Christian I thought very differently.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
About these type things. Sure, yeah, And as a Christian.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
I'm on a completely different spectrum. And one way I
would think about it is as a non Christian, I
would have been the one all in on the prepping
and the homesteading and the getting out of society. Get
me in a valley in Colorado, that's not inhabited, and
(29:46):
let me get on a completely off the grid, self
sustaining farm.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
A place that looked like that place that you saw
in Cuba.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Yeah, let me replicate that place in Cuba in some
mountaintown though in the Appalachians, or in the Rockies where
we have endless water and game and farming, and let
me do that. But as a Christian, I go. I
don't leave the people. I can't leave God's people because
(30:19):
they're my mission field. And as long as I have
breath and a beat in my heart, the Gospel must
be spread to the ends of the earth. And if
one of the ways, I either get to the end
of the earth on an airplane, or I get to
the end of the earth because they're coming to me,
or I'm on foot, or I'm in a neighbor I'm
(30:39):
in a neighborhood. But either way, people must know the gospel,
which is God created the world and it was perfect,
and we as humans have rebelled against them ever since
we broke our relationship in the Garden of Eden, and
we could not reconcile ourselves to God. Every other religion
(31:02):
says you try to get to God and Christianity says
God came to us the incarnate son, the son named Emmanuel,
which means God with us. God came into his own
creation as a man, is as the son Jesus, to
live the life worthy of a sacrifice which he became
(31:24):
himself on the cross, died on the cross, was resurrected
by the Father, and then looks to the world and says,
anyone who believes in me will be forgiven, saved, counted
as righteous. No one goes to heaven unless you're righteous, yep.
And none of us are righteous. We are bankrupt in
that area. Christ looks at mankind to those who follow
(31:47):
him through those who trust him, and says, count I
credit your bankrupt account with my righteousness, not yours. Welcome
to my kingdom, Welcome to Paradise. That is a message
that must go out. If I have fifteen years to
say it, or if I have this is my last
day on earth, or if I live a nice, fruitful
(32:07):
life till about eighty eight years old and die of
pancreatic cancer. Whatever my future is, I don't know. It's
none of my business, but I do know I must,
in obedience to our Lord, tell of this good news.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Amen, John fifteen sixteen, You did not choose me. I
chose you. That's got to make you comfortable, right, that's
gonna be so comfortable.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Compels you. I chose them be obedient into that calling
that choosing.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Yeah, okay, great, what do you have for me?
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Yeah? What what do you have?
Speaker 1 (32:46):
So I we always think about these things in Matthew
twenty four. This is when we talk about the signs
of the end of the age, and we see all
these things. We see the earthquakes, we see the wars
with the rumors of wars, the false prophets arising, we
see all things that we've talked about on the on
(33:07):
the the podcast when we talk about the end of times,
and and and and Jesus's point always in these things
is look to Him, Yeah, look to Christ.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Be you ready?
Speaker 1 (33:25):
How how would you be ready? By being equipped with
the gospel. Let that gospel that what I just told
about God coming into humanity take root in you. And
what you said, John fifteen, I chose you. Take take
these ideas and let them, let that take roots so
deep in you that you fear the Lord. I've been
(33:46):
I was talking about this morning in my family worship
with my kids about fear of the Lord.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
The fear of the Lord.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
And that's that's such an interesting thought because the idea
of teaching children a fear of the Lord is quite
is quite controversial, like why would you.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Teach your kids to fear God?
Speaker 1 (34:14):
The in Proverbs Proverbs one seven, the fear of the
Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.
We see, we see all all in the Bible, the
fear of the Lord. Well, think of it this way.
If you think about teaching your kids the look look
at uh. I'm saying, look as if you have it
(34:36):
in front of you Proverbs one twenty nine. Because they
hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord,
and none would have my counsel and despised all my reproof.
Therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way and
have their feel of their own devices the fear.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Of the Lord.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
As we choose the fear of the Lord, it's not
like we're I was telling my kids. It's not like
we're inventing a fear. We're saying, yeah, go create a
fear of God. No, what I was telling my kids
is instead, think of it this way you already fear.
It's a fear that already exists. Choose whom you will fear?
(35:20):
Man are God? And this is easy for kids to
understand because they go into school. They think about if
they're if they're dressed the right way, if their shoes
look fine, or or or what will people think of
them when they answer a question in class? These are
This is all fear of man and what the Bible
(35:41):
talks about with fear of the Lord. This is a
reorientation of your fear. I choose to fear the Lord
over the already existing fear that I have of what
everyone else thinks of me, or what they what they
will do to me?
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Like we'll they hurt me? Would they kill me? Would
they throw me in prison?
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Will they will I not be able to eat because
I don't comply fear of man, fear of man, reorient
it to fear of God. And when that happens and
you hear about the end times, you don't start thinking,
I better cock my pistolah, I better go get a
little farm off the grid and protect my little bubbles.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Instead, you say, Lord, I fear. I don't fear that
I don't.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Fear losing food or people thieves coming and stealing what
I've protected in my little silo. Instead, Lord, I fear you,
and so because of that, I look to your word,
and you say the Gospel must go to all nations.
So Lord, I trust you, and I want to obey you.
(36:50):
And because I fear you, not man. Now it's almost
impossible to have complete loss of fear of man, of course,
but you want to fear the Lord more, follow him,
be sanctified by his word, and every day reading the Bible,
and through that we start to think of this study.
And in my team we go, Yah. Maybe that all
(37:11):
that means for me is that my time is more urgent. Yeah,
And I have less and less time to do anything
else that is in self indulgent. For me, going to
go take a vacation with my wife in a beautiful
tropical island. That sounds great. I don't know how much
(37:31):
time I have. I don't know how much time I
want to waste on myself. Now, I'm not I have
to be careful with what I'm saying. I'm not saying
that we should wear ourselves out working, working, working, and
not not ever take time with our wife that's not
what I'm saying, But I am saying that in every
decision I make, I want to I want to make
(37:53):
sure I fear the Lord over. I fear the Lord
over Elon Musk population implosion, fear the Lord over Bill
Gates and whatever he's doing. I fear the Lord over Ai.
I fear the Lord over whatever else that might be
the next election or the a public murder, or a prosecution,
(38:15):
or a disease or COVID or what.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
I fear the Lord over.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
All of those things, all of it, and and the man.
I have no, absolutely no fear of a society collapse, right,
I don't.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
I don't at all.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Yeah, And maybe that's maybe that's the hesitation of my
answer to you.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
You keep wanting to say something, and I keep no, no, no.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
I enjoyed listening, But I think to you asked me
that question, and I feel like I haven't answered it.
But I think that that's where that that I don't
really I don't really have any fear of it. I don't.
I don't want to say it doesn't concern me, but
it doesn't concern with me. With what plans I proceed with, Yeah,
(39:12):
it doesn't concern with the mission that he has us on.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
It doesn't It doesn't change your death date. That's already
it's already said, not at all.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
Not at all, And that's why it doesn't. That's what
it doesn't you, I think you And that's it feels
like that I was going to say something. Now you're
just hitting on on on thoughts that I've I've had
as we've continued this conversation, is that that's not my fear,
so I haven't thought that much about it. My fear
is in the Lord and you know, doing his will
(39:46):
and making sure that I'm in you know, waking up
and getting in his word and and uh right, I've
got this Bible that I always use, and it's easy
for me to understand in LT, but I want to
dig deeper. So I've got an E. S V. That
I'll read the same passages from to see how they that.
That's what I'm more concerned about, not not what date
it is. And oh, we're getting closer to that date
(40:07):
that m I T said we're going to drop the
two billion people. So something happens between now and then, Okay, great,
then that means I'm one day closer to him.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
Yeah, So you know what's interesting about that is I
Caleb but cuts my hair at the forum. Yeah, messy
on it jew okay, And he was sometimes he actually
watches this podcast in their in their barbershop, which is cool.
He sent me pictures before of this podcast. But I
(40:39):
think I think it came up the other day. I
was going to speak at some conference and he was like,
does this whole Charlie Kirk thing. Does it make you
fearful of going out and speaking? Do you think twice?
And I immediately was like, I don't fear man like that.
It doesn't change anything from me nothing. I have zero
(41:00):
fear of that.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
The Lord.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
I trust the Lord will provide and will protect. Now,
when I left there, I was like, man, I should
have given more clarity. I spoke so fast, like, no,
I don't fear, I don't fear man, I should have
given more clarity in what I mean, because he was like,
he was like, yeah, I get it. That's noble of you.
(41:25):
He didn't say it that way, but but it's kind
of the whole idea of we could be reckless with
that idea and just go be careless and get ourselves killed,
you know, and so I should have given myself more clarity,
because when I say those things, this is what I mean,
(41:46):
Hebrews says. The author of Heterbrews says that solid food
is for the mature, for those who have their powers
of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
You know, we've said on this podcast many times that training,
in many ways comes right here from the Bible, all
scriptures breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof,
(42:09):
for training and righteousness, that the Man of God may
be complete equipped for every good work. And so in
order to train our discernment, we live in the scriptures
every day and we're trained, and that grows our discernment
of good from evil, so that I'm at a conference
(42:30):
one day and they say, hey, Grangeer, we want you
to speak, and I go, I just felt evil. I
felt something here. My power of my powers of discernment
have been trained to distinguish good from evil, trained from
the word of God. So when I say I trust
(42:51):
the Lord, I'm not saying that in a flipant. I
don't care. I'll just go anywhere I'll be. I'll walk
into a line of fire and just well, it's a
fly by me. I don't care the Lord, pretend it's
not what I'm saying. I'm saying. The more and more
I'm trained in my discernment, the more I could trust
that the Lord will go Stop, don't do that, don't
(43:12):
walk in that room this man, don't trust this man.
Don't take this event. Stay in your seat, don't say
a word. Speak now now, don't speak all those things
that the Spirit gives you, these promptings when you go
I feel an evil presence here. I think I'm going
to go home, or I think I'm going to say something,
(43:35):
or I think I'm gonna keep my mouth closed right now.
These are This is discernment that we get from the
Holy Spirit through training in his word. That's what's promised
to a Christian, and we can gain more and more
of that discernment.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
So that's what I mean.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
That's what I meant to Caleb when I said that, sure,
I don't care, I trust the Lord. What I mean
is I know the Holy Spirit will start guiding me.
I could still deceive myself. That's why being alongside other
believers who have a similar trained discernment is so important.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
Well, and you also know that, just like previous episodes
that we talked about of this podcast, that the Holy
Spirit does lead you into a place that you get shot.
You already know, yeah, that was your day, that was
your time. That's exactly and this leads to something so much,
so much bigger and so much. It leads to something else,
(44:31):
not just to the end of Grangersmith's life. The end.
Oh it's over. That's not how it ends.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
Yeah, yeah, one day I will meet my end. As
Elisha in the Bible was, you know, a healer of
so many and then one day the Bible says he
caught the illness of which he was to die.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
So sometimes you catch the illness that was always meant
to get you, or the bullet that was always meant
to get you. Yeah, this is the way it was
always going to end. But up until that point, you
gain this discernment of this feels evil. I'm going to
walk away from this or I've you know, when when
(45:17):
the first day I met Travis, I met him and
everything in me was like, go with him, yep, go
with him, He's mine. I felt that I didn't I
didn't hear a magical voice. I didn't. I just felt
go with him. He's mine. He's mine, like in other words,
he's good, right. And the more we are trained in
(45:38):
this word, the more we could discern these type things. Yeah,
so that would be the encouragement of whatever you hear
from m I t Or or Elon Musk or the
President of the United States. We need to be trained
every day in the Word of God. We need to
have a we need to have some kind of disciplined
(45:59):
system way of moving through scripture. Do you have your
you have your finger about forty.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Yeah, right now, just what you said, I think Matthew
twenty four thirty six. I want to get your translation
over there too. However, no one knows the day or
the hour when these things will happen, not even the
angels in heaven, nor the son Jesus himself. Only only
(46:26):
the Father knows.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Yeah what versus that.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
That's Matthew twenty four thirty six.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Yeah, Yeah, did you hear the story of that that man,
that man that was predicting the end of the the
the rapture was going to happen. This is like, uh,
the most recent one September twenty third September twenty third,
(46:51):
the rapture is gonna happen. I think this guy's like
an Africa or something like a I guess he was
a prominent pastor because there were thousands of people outside
like looking.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Up at the sky waiting to be taken, waiting to
be raptured. You know, well as we right as we
record this, right now, it's Yom Kapoor, the day of atonement.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
And that was the feast of trumpets.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
That was yes.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
And so he was saying, like all over social media,
which is so ridiculous to think about being on TikTok
and saying these things. But you said, the Lord told me.
That's why just a few seconds ago I was hesitant
to say. The Lord didn't speak to me to say
go with him. I just felt it in the in
the discernment within me. This man said the Lord spoke
(47:33):
to him and sayd September twenty third, I'm a rapture
of the people. And so he's guard going all over
the all over the news saying this, and then what happened.
They didn't leave the earth. Everyone stayed there.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
Well that's that's what I Then, I'm concerned with a
pastor who says stuff like that, because it says in
Matthew read your verse that Matthew says, not even the
sun knows this. However, no one knows the day or
the hour when they these things will happen, not even
the angels. These dudes hang out with him, all around
him all day, singing praises to his name. They don't know.
(48:08):
And the son doesn't know. Only the father and you.
I'm gonna tell you, didn't say that. Didn't say and you,
or and a pastor in Africa or whatever it is this, No,
only the father knows only that's one, one single, not
a pastor in Africa. They didn't say any it didn't
(48:28):
didn't mind. That's why I ask you to read yours too.
Just make sure that it wasn't in the ESV that way.
This is twenty four to thirty six. Matthew twenty four
to thirty six said, I did. That's that's comforting to
me though. So comforting is that, Okay, you don't worry
about it. And I think you understand this more when
you have kids, is he have Hey, don't worry about it.
(48:52):
I'll let you know when we get there. Are we
there yet? I'll let you know when we get there,
stop worrying about it. Play your Nintendo switch, play on
your right. I don't know, but stop asking me. Yeah,
so I'll know when we get there, and I'll tell
you so.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
Speaking of children, and for the you know, the comment
that should anybody even have a baby? You know, if
if this all these predictions are right, and I'm not
saying that they are, We're just saying you and I
are saying from a human perspective, outside of the sovereignty
and providence of God, we could look at these models
(49:27):
and go, yeah, I can see, yeah, fifty to fifty,
we've got fifteen years last, that's the way things are heading. Sure,
nobody wants to have a baby. AI is about to
take over everything. It looks like, yeah, it looks like
maybe we got fifteen years until we dip down about
six billion people. Why would we have a baby. Well,
then we go to the most famous part of the
(49:49):
Book of Esther. That's which is just a beautiful, what
a beautiful, little tiny book.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
It's ten short chapters.
Speaker 1 (49:59):
If anyone wants to read the Book of Esther, it's
right before the Book of Job and the Bible, and
it is just such an encouragement. The book of Esther
does not mention the word or a name of God
at all. It never mentions prayer or the law of
(50:22):
God at all. Esther chapter what I'm going to go
to actually the most famous part, which is chapter four.
But it's ten short, very short chapters. No God, no prayers,
but it's still all that stuff is implied because it's
a story about God's people, and I don't I want
(50:43):
people to read it to hear the story from themselves.
But I'll just kind of butt into chapter four. They're
the people of God, the Jews are about to be
wiped out, and by by a corrupt adviser of the king. Basically,
(51:05):
Esther is a is a beautiful woman who has taken
the place of a queen. The king has taken favor
to her and loves her and will basically do anything
that she desires. He will give or do for her.
So when they find out that the people of God
the Jews, are going to be wiped out, she's thinking,
(51:31):
should I escape? Should I get out of here? Should
I should I flee? Should I go warn everybody? Should
I should I kill the king?
Speaker 2 (51:41):
What should I do?
Speaker 1 (51:42):
She's asking all these questions, and Mordecai, who's with her, says,
we'll go to the chapter four, we'll start at twelve.
And they told Mordecai what Esther had said. Then Mordecai
had told them they're they're, they're going back and forth
through mediators told them to reply to Esther. Do not
(52:05):
think to yourself that in the King's palace you will
escape any more than the other Jews, For if you
keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise
for the Jews from another place, basically saying, you can
keep silent, God's gonna save his people regardless. God knows
his people, he will save them regardless. But you and
(52:26):
your father's house will perish. And here's the key. And
who knows whether you have not come to this, to
the kingdom for such a time as this man. Okay, Esther,
you could flee, you'll probably be killed. God's gonna save
his people anyway. But what if you are the way
that God's going to save them? What if you're here
(52:48):
for this reason? You could advise the King's he's got
your ear, he listens to you. You could say whatever
you want. Now, granted, God's going to.
Speaker 2 (52:58):
Save his people. You might die.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
But what if it's you, Esther, What if what if
you're here for this reason to save God's people, The
Lord will use you in this position that he gave
you to save all the people.
Speaker 2 (53:15):
And this has happened many times.
Speaker 3 (53:16):
In the bottle.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
God used Daniel for the same purpose. A lot of
people came in for one purpose. And so to think
that the society is collapsing, oh no, Mit predicts that
they're so smart. And Massachusetts, what are we gonna do?
We're not the first society to think that. We are
far from the first society to think it might all
(53:39):
be over in about fifteen years.
Speaker 2 (53:41):
That is not new.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
Our problems with AI and society collapsing, they might seem
like they're huge problems, but they're unique to us and
they're relative to our life. But back here here in
the days of Esther, there was there were more problems,
and they thought everything was going to and all the
people are going to die. And when Daniel got taken
to the exiles, to the as an exile to the
(54:05):
Babylonians and the North got taken to Syria, the Assyrians,
everyone thought at that time society is collapsing. And Mordecai says, rightly,
who knows if you've not come to the kingdom for
such a time as this. That's the same to all
(54:26):
the listeners right.
Speaker 3 (54:27):
Now I was talking about earlier. They didn't. They only
had a couple of variables. Right. One variable they didn't
think about in that seventy two to twenty forty or
twenty sixty, and it halfened in twenty forty was a
butt god. They didn't have a butt god variable. Psalm
(54:48):
thirty three, verse ten. The Lord frustrates the plans of
the nations and towards all of their schemes. But the
Lord's plans stand firm forever. They fact, they didn't factor
God into any of that. That's why I say it's
fifty to fifty. Do does God come in the middle
of that and say no, I want it to go
a little longer. Then it goes longer. Maybe he comes
(55:11):
in the middle of that and goes, no, now's the time.
Then now's the time, amen? And I like that.
Speaker 2 (55:18):
I do too.
Speaker 1 (55:19):
I think that's a good way in this conversation. So
in the future Christian nationalism discussion.
Speaker 4 (55:24):
Yep, let's all about that. Define it. What is it
Jim Daily are you one? And then CEO of Focus
on the Family. That's great converce. We'll build the conversations
around those two. Bud, There's so much to talk about.
We could talk for hours.
Speaker 1 (55:38):
Yeah, but until then, we'll see y'alle. Thank you so
much for hanging out with me on this episode of
the Grangersmith Podcast.
Speaker 2 (55:46):
I appreciate you being here.
Speaker 1 (55:47):
If you're listening right now, go ahead and rate today's podcast.
It helps more folks find the show. And if you're
tuning in on the iHeartRadio app, you could actually set
this podcast as one of your presets, which is cool
that way. I'm just one tap away. If you're watching
on YouTube, don't forget to hit like and subscribe so
you don't miss any new episodes. And if you've got
a question you want answered right here on the show,
just email me podcast at grangersmith dot com.
Speaker 2 (56:09):
I'd love to hear from you. Thanks again for being here.
We'll see you next time, ye ye
Host
Granger Smith
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