David: One of the following statements is true, and one is not. Listen closely. Joe Biden won the 2020 U.S. presidential election by over 7 million votes. Or Donald Trump won the 2020 U.S. presidential election by a landslide but was denied his victory because of massive voter fraud.

Karen: Okay, I agree with you. Both of these statements can’t be true. So, one is basically accurate, and the other is not.

Intro: Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author, Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David: Someday, according to scripture, the eternal destiny of millions of people around the globe will be dependent upon their ability to distinguish between what’s true and what’s not.

Karen: So just to let people know this Before We Go discussion will not be about presidents of the United States but about a global leader who has not yet emerged on the international scene.

David: It his Paul’s second letter to the church in Thessalonica. The apostle Paul wrote about the return to planet earth of Jesus as what’s called his second coming. I’m reading now from 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, starting at verse 1, which begins to clue us in as to this man of sin or Antichrist. Paul writes, “Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, report or letter supposed to have come from us saying that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed—the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God. The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan, displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. And for this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.” Very strong passage.

Karen: It’s a very strong passage, and that theme kind of winds in and out of the New Testament. In Revelation chapter 13, the apostle John writes about this same evil personality, the Antichrist. John refers to him as a beast, uses that word. Then, starting with verse 11, a second beast is revealed. So let me read that portion for you. This is Revelation 13:11. “Then I saw another beast coming out of the earth. He had two horns like a lamb,” kind of a disguise, right? “He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon. He exercised all the authority of the first beast on his behalf and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. And he performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to earth in full view of men.”

David: So, it’s deception again. This is a religious figure. So, there is the ruler figure, the Antichrist, and then this second figure, which is kind of a false religion, which goes along with what is going to come. They’re very scary passages in a way. Let me put into a sentence where we’re going so people will get a feel for the direction we’re headed. Present and future Antichrist forces make it important that Christ’s followers speak the truth, seek the truth, and embrace the truth.

So, we’ll come back around to that again, but I just want to say that John, who’s writing—as you just read from Revelation—he writes about the Antichrist often in his epistles. This is just one of those verses to give you a feel of what he’s saying. It’s not just the Antichrist but there are many Antichrists. He says, “Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ is coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the Antichrist. Watch out that you don’t lose what you’ve worked for.” So again, there is that warning to say the times are filled with people who are not following the truth, and it can lead to terrible destruction. Okay, let me pick up on those three phrases that I put into our key sentence. Okay, we should be people who speak the truth, which means that it’s very important for us to be conscious of whether or not what we’re saying is true or not, because it’s easy to fall into that pattern, just twisting the truth a little bit if we’re not careful. Remember when you were being raised, how important it was—you were raised in a Christian family—that we not tell lies?

Karen: Well, I think it’s kind of a common theme in most families, whether they’re faith-based or not.

David: Lies are a bad thing.

Karen: I think most parents try and teach their children to speak the truth, to not tell lies, and that of course is continued in schooling because unless you have a baseline of truth, of not telling lies, then who can judge what’s right or what’s wrong? So, I think that’s still common in our society even though we’re in a very different world now than the one in which I was raised. I do have the memory of a lie I told when I was a little girl. Do you want me to?

David: Well, if you tell one, then I’ll probably have to.

Karen: Let’s make this real. Okay, so I was an only child until age seven, and then my sister came along. So, this was pre-my sister, so I must have been around five or six years old, and my mother had a new sewing machine in a cabinet, which was kind of rare in a lot of ways. All the furniture in the home I was raised in and in our home now is all used furniture. Grabbed from resale shops and whatever, but this was a new cabinet. There was a high value of sewing and making clothes in my family, and somehow, I guess I’d had a wound, and I dabbed Mercurochrome on this, or someone had done it for me, and I set it down on the new sewing machine cabinet, and it tipped over and it spilled, and I could see as a child that it was immediately eating into the enamel on the top. So cleverly, I thought everything was sort of covered by a cloth that had embroidery. I took that to hide, and of course that liquid just immediately seeped through it and stuck the cloth to the top of the sewing machine cabinet, and my mother discovered it and she said, “Karen Sue, did you do this?” And that was the lie. I denied as best I could. My hand hadn’t been playing with it. I hadn’t spilled it, and I hadn’t tried to hide it.

David: Did she know you were lying?

Karen: Of course, she knew I was lying.

David: Isn’t it funny? I have no idea. This memory just came back when we were talking about this. I don’t remember many times lying, but one time I did. My dad was traveling a lot, so he would come home, and my mom didn’t like to spank us, so she would wait till he came.

Karen: Poor Daddy.

David: I had done something bad.

Karen: Do you remember what it was?

David: Oh, I don’t know. Let’s just leave that alone, but I said that I didn’t. My brother did it.

Karen: Your older brother.

David: My brother came home, and my dad said, “You did such and such.” He took him down and spanked him in the basement.

Karen: But Doug didn’t do it. Why didn’t he protest?

David: Well, Doug did enough bad things that I think he thought maybe he had. I don’t know, but when I heard his wails coming upstairs, it just broke my heart.

Karen: Oh, David.

David: I had lied about it, and he had to take the consequences. So anyway.

Karen: So, what we’re trying to say to our listeners is that we need to have a baseline of truth-telling in our lives.

David: When you get older, nobody spanks you. You don’t get spanked, but the Holy Spirit has this ability.

Karen: And there is, in a general knowledge of a clear conscience. Scripture does speak of that, but there is a general knowledge in our culture that we have a conscience that will remind us when we have done something wrong, and in this case, when we tell lies. Unless we obliterate that conscience by not paying any attention to it or refusing to acknowledge its guidance, that will speak to us when we tell lies.

David: Well, and you can kind of go against your conscience, and over a period of time, you’re not nearly as sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s work on your conscience. And then you become a person who exaggerates and more and more tells what isn’t so and gets used to it, and that’s a very bad place to get into.

Karen: The danger is that you begin to believe your own lies and you can’t tell…

David: What do they call that, Karen?

Karen: Well, there’s a pathology, talk about pathological liars, who really don’t any longer know…

David: They can’t tell the difference.

Karen: They can’t tell the difference, and they do believe their own lies. I mean, it’s a pathetic place to be.

David: I would say that the danger for believers is probably more they desensitize their conscience and the spirit working on the conscience. “Lord, did I speak the truth today?” I find that I’m still… I don’t tell whoppers or that kind of thing, but I can shade the truth, and I don’t want that to happen. I want to continually be a person who speaks the truth in this kind of a day.

Karen: And in the Christian structure, one of the great prohibitors is the fact that when we tell a lie, we need to confess that we have told that lie and to ask for forgiveness or to make remedial action for our tongue. That cements it. That kind of action really cements the need for that and the need not to do lying with our tongue.

David: Let’s move to the second one. I said that Christian followers in this day, they speak the truth. That’s very important, and then they seek the truth. What do we mean by that?

Karen: Well, there are some people who feel like we are living in a post-truth culture, and part of that is because of the multiple news outlets we have now. It used to be that we had two or three, and we trusted the news commentators. I mean, they were voices of authority, and there was a standard in journalism that you were objective and you tried to report the truth the best you could know about any circumstance, and it was basically done without much commentary and very little opinion on the part of the newscaster. And of course, those who are older can name some of those names.

David: Well, you’re talking about radio figures.

Karen: Radio figures and earlier television.

David: I remember just radio.

Karen: So now we have multiple outlets that report the events of our time, and it’s up to us then as people who listen to those outlets, or watch them, or read. Print is also included in this to do the work of discerning what is true and what is not true, because we can’t really trust that those outlets are without opinion and that their commentary is not slanted for a particular political position, for instance.

David: And it may not be slanted in a bad way. You know, this person feels strongly what is being said. Then we have to say, “Does that agree with where I am? Do I think that’s the truth that is being stated?” Okay, let’s walk through a minefield here.

Karen: Well, let’s just underline again that this is something we are saying is the role of the believer now. It’s different today than it has been in the past in its degree. We must work, intentionally work, to find the truth in everything that we hear and see.

David: Okay, so let’s—I say it’s easier to begin with—let’s be quite open in terms of, say, magazines. I’ve stopped reading certain magazines because I felt they were slanted. We get more magazines in our house because of you than because of me. Why don’t you explain, and we’ll get you off the hook that way.

Karen: I feel very strongly that for years I’ve had a desire—and I think it’s a Holy Spirit-directed desire because it hasn’t left me—to publish out in secular periodicals with a Christian consciousness, and that doesn’t mean a piece that’s Christian propaganda, but represents in true Christian perspective. And that would be things like mercy and justice and those sorts of issues, to speak that out, and to do the best I can to do that in secular periodicals, which meant that I had to order those periodicals and study them. And I’ve gone through them and then pulled the articles that do have some sort of a Christian basis that they have published. So that’s the work that I’m doing personally as a journalist.

David: Okay, so you have a reason other than just saying, “Okay, what are these magazines saying?”

Karen: Yeah, no, I’m studying them. Right.

David: Okay, I will say the magazines I read. One of the magazines I read is called The Week. It says what the issues of The Week were and what different periodicals or whatever said about it.

Karen: Yeah, what different viewpoints it meant.

David: But I read it and I get a feel for what’s going on. What was good about what, say, the President Biden did this week? What was not good? In fact, in this last issue, I read a good part of the magazine said this was his first big mistake. You know, so it’s interesting, and that kind of jarred me at the time, and then I read it. I think I kind of agree with that. But anyway, The Week is a magazine that I kind of like. It’s not long, but it basically gives me two sides and it puts it in front of me and then lets me decide which one of those I like. In terms of longer articles, this one could get me in trouble because of the name of the magazine. It has a huge reputation for fair reporting and picking articles. In fact, almost every time there’s a feature article, we say the reason we did this article was because. So, there is the rationale as to why they actually wrote the article. It’s The Christian Science Monitor. If I just said the Monitor Weekly, which is…

Karen: Well, that’s the name that they go by because they don’t really propone Christian Science as such, but it’s coming out of them.

David: They have articles about it, but they’re obviously set apart as articles. I’ve found that has been a very good place for me to hear more in-depth reporting. So now let me ask if you can divulge.

Karen: Well, yes, I can. I mean, because I’ve done the same kind of research that you have done. One of the periodicals I look at because I’ve researched myself, which ones have a high fact-finding standard, is The New York Times. And I don’t…

David: Now you’re into newspapers.

Karen: This is a newspaper, but I receive their opinion page in my email. Okay. And there are websites that you can go to that will say this is more liberally slanted or more conservative, but then this one has a high value for facts. And The New York Times has that reputation for that. So, I get its opinion page.

David: I would say that’s fair and it corrects itself.

Karen: It does. If it makes an error in statement, then it will correct itself.

David: And I would say The New York Times is probably more liberal than conservative as far as what most people would say.

Karen: Right, exactly. And then the other one that just has a rigorous standard of fact-finding and fact-reporting is The Atlantic Monthly. I don’t know where it lands, but it is excellent reportage, excellent writing. And so, I subscribe to The Atlantic Monthly for years just because of that fact-finding ideal. So, all we’re doing on this is we’re not recommending these periodicals, but we’re just saying this is what people have to do today in order to be folk who look for the truth, value the truth, and live by the truth.

David: Let’s talk about television.

Karen: Okay, right.

David: Because now you’re talking about large numbers of possibilities one could watch. And I would say that people would say to the left, you’re probably talking about MSNBC. To the right, you’re talking about Fox News. And then there are a lot of them that lean a little bit one way or the other. And it’s hard to find ones in the middle. In fact, it’s hard sometimes to find a news reporter that isn’t opinionated.

Karen: Or isn’t commentary news reporting as commentary.

David: I have been watching lately ABC with David Muir. It goes a half hour. I get most of what is happening, and he’s pretty careful not to lean one way or the other. But I would say that Lester Holt is that way as well. You know, there’s just so many names. I would even say, in my opinion, say PBS on the NewsHour, they work at trying to be fair. I would say they would slant more left than they would right. And it doesn’t mean I don’t watch Fox News and I don’t watch MSNBC or CNN. You know, you do those, but you’re aware that you’re hearing commentary a lot of times more than just the reporting effect. Does that seem fair?

Karen: Yeah. We were taught when we took journalism classes that every periodical has an editorial policy. And sometimes those were just written right out. It was a paragraph or so in the masthead page that gives all the information about where this piece is printed. Now that’s harder to find these days, but that’s what our role now is as viewers and consumers of news is to say, “What is the editorial policy of this particular entity?” And so that’s work. That requires work. David, one of the things we want to be cautious about ourselves, and this has been documented so much, is that we often choose to view or read the things that confirm our own prejudices or our own opinions or our own positions.

David: That’s a very important point.

Karen: So, with that kind of awareness—and I’m as prone to do that as anyone is—but I understand that about myself. And so, I deliberately attempt to read things that are more conservative. I would say that I’m a little bit leaning toward the liberal, but I am still conservative. So, I attempt to read those things that are more conservative than what my natural bent is. And I find myself often saying, you know, I don’t particularly agree with this, but oh, thank goodness I’ve read this because it helps me to understand where these people are coming from. And I need to understand where they’re coming from because not understanding one another is what causes this extraordinary distress we’re experiencing in our public discourse, in our family discourses. So, we need to hear one another in order to understand why people are landing where they’re landing in their opinions.

David: I have found, Karen, that a little rule that has helped me a lot and is not just as a reminder, it’s something I deeply believe is that I’m at an age where I need to talk less and listen more.

Karen: And you are good at that. You really are good at that. I want to give you open credentials here as far as you really are beautiful at doing that.

David: Thank you.

Karen: I want to be that way, but I’m too much of a talker sometimes. I just forget to listen as much as I should.

David: I think it would be helpful before we move on to the last of these three that’s in my key sentence to say that it is much harder for people in other countries—China, Russia, some of the places where there is a very strong dictator—it’s very hard for them to be able to get at the opportunity to see differing opinions. I’m so grateful that I live in this land where we can say.

Karen: Well, we do have a diversity of opinions, and it exists.

David: It’s very helpful because it’s been said many times in these last months that if you say a lie long enough, people will begin to believe it. And I think that’s true. And put yourself in a position, say, if someone in Russia where they’re hearing lies over and over and over, or where you’re hearing the communist statements over and over and over again, to the place where sometimes you think, “I’ve gotten so used to it, I’ve just adapted to it.” That’s not where we are. We are in a free society, and so we’re in a position where we have the option to process it all and hear one another’s thoughts. In the course of all that, as Christians, I believe we are individuals who need to continually seek the truth. What is the truth here?

David: I will never have all the truth, but I can try at least to say my objective is to find what is truth from my friends who vary in many different ways. The last thing that I was saying: Christian followers speak the truth. Why we’re in this world where the Antichrist forces are rampant around the world, even in our own country. It’s not just the word you speak. I think this culture has spoken lies, say about the joy of premarital sex. “It doesn’t have any consequences. It’s just good.” That’s a lie that has been perpetuated in this culture over and over again to the degree that most people don’t even question that. It is one of those areas where I think as Christians we need to say, “That’s not really true. That’s a lie. It has consequences,” and so on.

Karen: But I think the warning that you’re wanting to interject in this discussion is the fact that if we are not seekers and lovers of truth, we put our whole culture at hazard. And we are at a tipping point, David, I think in our culture because of this multimedia exposure that we have. And if lovers of truth don’t make this a high standard in our personal lives, we will lose a truth culture. And I think many people who observe our culture now are afraid that we are quickly losing a truth culture, a culture that values truth, seeks it out, works to find it, partly because of, again, I’m being redundant, of all of these media outlets both in print and in film and in social media and in television. So, when we lose that truth culture, and we’re people who follow the lies, then we get to the point that is described here in the scriptures that we read. Where that man of evil, where that Antichrist or Antichrists, can arise and there’s nothing to check their power. So that’s really where we’re going with this podcast to say we need to be wary of where our truth-telling, or lack of it, is taking us.

David: So, we’re careful to speak the truth, to continually seek the truth, and then to embrace the truth. And those truths which we need to embrace are related in my mind to the figure, not of the Antichrist, but the figure of the Christ. I believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. That may seem strange to some people, but I believe he came and lived here on earth to demonstrate for us how we should live, taught us so that we would understand it in our head, and made it possible for us to be totally transformed by his Holy Spirit coming and living inside of us and making us the kind of people that the world needs and that we want to be as well.

Karen: Well, not only people as singular individuals, but of communities of faith that represent on earth what his kingdom of heaven is like. And this is the truth that you and I will die for. If we had to choose life or death in a culture that was challenging that belief, which many Christians through the centuries have had to choose, we would choose to die for that truth. It’s such a powerful truth to us. If someone demanded that we recant on that truth, we would choose to die instead of recanting.

David: We’ve been doing a lot of podcasts about aging. And when you say that, I go back to the second century. This is Polycarp.

Karen: Who is Polycarp?

David: He was the Bishop of Smyrna. Okay. And Smyrna’s in the… Well, you’re talking about the biblical city in the book of Revelation. They burned him at the stake. His body didn’t catch right away, so they went up and stabbed him.

Karen: But he was trying to burn him at the stake. And according to history, his body didn’t burn. Oh my goodness.

David: Well, it did, but it didn’t catch right. His words were these, “I am 80 plus six years. I have served him, and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King and Savior?” Those are beautiful, beautiful words, aren’t they? But I think that’s what we have to say. I embrace this truth as above all other truths in terms of the world, that I am a follower of the King, Jesus, and he’s coming back. I’m looking forward to that day. I pray it every day. Lord, I have nothing in these, says, “Don’t make it today.”

Karen: Don’t come back today.

David: Yeah. I’m forward. The sooner the better. That’s where I’m coming from. Let me go back again, because I think that we’ve said a lot of things, and for me, it helps to encapsulate a sentence. And we’ve started by talking about this Antichrist force in the world already. And eventually it will be personified in an individual, just like the personification of good and godliness was by Jesus. Present and future Antichrist forces make it important that Christ’s followers speak the truth, seek the truth, and embrace the truth. So, it’s just a word for our people today, and I would say a word for you and a word for me, people who have told lies in the course of time, but have been changed in a very beautiful way by our Lord and Savior.

Outgo: You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address: hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all lowercase letters, hosts@beforewego.show. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2021 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.