Join Rick Hughes as he navigates the murky waters of leadership failure and spiritual neglect in modern-day America. By drawing parallels between a physical fog and the metaphoric one that engulfs our society, Hughes challenges listeners to recognize and confront the spiritual peril we face. Learn how returning to biblical principles and understanding the mechanics of spirituality can dispel the darkness, offering hope and guidance to a nation at crossroads.
Welcome to the Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, you’ll be inspired, motivated, educated, but never manipulated. Now, your host, Rick Hughes.
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Good morning and welcome to the Flatline, F-L-O-T, the Flatline. This is your host, Rick Hughes, welcoming you every morning, every Sunday morning, same time, same place. We’re always here to give you this information. Not speculation, not human speculation, not that, but biblical information that will help you verify and identify God’s plan for your life if, in fact, you’re even interested in that. But if you are, you can orient and adjust to the plan once you listen to what I have to say. But, you know, we don’t hustle anybody. We’re not trying to raise money. We’re not trying to sell you something. We’re not going to ask you to join anything. We would like to ask you to listen. Listen up. Just pay attention because it’s very critical times in which we live. It’s always a great honor and a great privilege for me to bring this radio show to you. We’re broadcasting in over 100 cities this morning across America, and what a great privilege it is, what a great challenge it is. And so thank you for a few minutes of your time. I promise I won’t bore you. I love to fish. I don’t know if you do, but I love to bass fish. And some of the most interesting times that I’ve had on the lake, I’m thinking about one in particular when I took a newspaper writer out that wanted to go fishing with me. happened to be a foggy morning and we were out on the lake in the fog. And, uh, this was pre GPS days before we got GPS on our bass boats today, we have debt finders that have GPS mapping systems. And even in the midst of a night, middle of middle of the night, you can see where you are on your map on your GPS and follow your cursor back to the boat launch. But this was a really foggy day and we got turned around in the fog. I tried to go from one side of the lake to the other. and never made it. I mean, I got out of the middle of the lake and somehow wound up turning around and coming right back to the side I left from. And I thought I knew where I was going. And after that, I put a compass on the boat so that I could follow the compass heading. But fog is a really tough thing to navigate. I don’t know if you’ve ever been out in a really thick fog at night with your headlights on shining bright, but there was a wreck that occurred back in 1990. Terrible, terrible wreck indeed. Between Chattanooga and Knoxville on Interstate 75, a road I’ve driven many times going up that way, that direction. And on this particular night, December the 11th, 1990, there was a series of multiple vehicle collisions causing by fog, terrible fog. 99 vehicles crashed into each other. 12 people killed, 42 people seriously injured. in this fog because people wouldn’t slow down, people pressing on in the fog, trying to get where they got to go, got to go, got to go. Somebody said, why you got to go? He said, well, I got to get back. Fog is horrible. In a serious fog issue, no one’s safe to go speeding down the highway. No one’s safe to assume there’s no obstruction ahead. And that’s what happened that night. People sped down I-75 towards Knoxville and towards Chattanooga, not thinking there was anything ahead that was wrong, and there was something wrong. It’s also true that in heavy fog, bright lights don’t work very well, do they? You know, you put on your bright lights, all you see is more fog. Thus, you have the need for lower-pointing fog lights on your car, your vehicle, your truck. Well, in Matthew 5, 14, the Lord Jesus Christ tells those that are following him these words. He says, you are the light of the world. You are the light of the world. And I want to emphasize you, Y-O-U. Wherever you are this morning, if you’re listening to me, in whatever city you might be in, if it’s in Albuquerque, if it’s in Cheyenne, if it’s in Dallas, if it’s in Houston, if it’s in Green Bay, if it’s in Sacramento, San Francisco, Tampa, you, you, Y-O-U, not me, not your neighbor, you are the light of the world if you’re a Christian. And your job is to illuminate the Lord Jesus Christ and point people to him. You have the same task today, except there is a heavy fog across this land that can quench your light. There is a heavy fog across this land that can quench your light. I want to talk to you about this fog and use it as an illustration. Because I believe that America is in a serious fog right now. And I think the results will be catastrophic if we don’t get off this road we’re on and if we don’t get to safety soon. I call it the cosmic system, the cosmos, the cosmic system, the devil’s world. It operates best in the fog, the fog of confusion and the fog of chaos. And the longer that Satan can keep people confused and keep your light from penetrating the darkness, the more disillusioned and the more distracted people become. So let me give you the acronym for FOG, F-O-G, and talk about it. F stands for failure of leadership. O stands for open rebellion. And G stands for God’s word being rejected. Failure of leadership, open rebellion, God’s word being rejected, F-O-G. That’s the fog across America that I’m talking about today. The elf talks about failure of spiritual leadership and political leadership, and this failure is what got us in this condition to begin with. Many of our pastors that we put our faith and trust in are turning into performers. Of course, not all, but many are seeking to fill large auditoriums with emotional worship service, and they’re not teaching mechanics. And so many, many believers, many Christians, just like yourself, never really learned the protocol plan of God. And that simply means that a right thing has to be done in a right way. That’s why we teach the 10 problem-solving devices. That’s part of the protocol plan of God, how you are to operate as a Christian. If a person doesn’t understand the difference between spirituality and maturity, then he can’t ever grow as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and do what the Bible says, grow in the grace and knowledge of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. You have to understand some terminology. Even as a fisherman, I understand the difference between spinnerbait, crankbait, chatterbait, Carolina rig, drop shot, something like that. These are all nomenclatures for certain ways that you fish. Well, the Christian life, you have to learn what certain words mean, and spirituality is very important. Fellowship is very important. And it’s very possible that you are a believer in Jesus Christ, but you’re not in fellowship with God because you don’t understand the mechanics of spirituality. The first thing that’s important in the flatline of your soul is rebound. This is not taught in a whole lot of churches. Very seldom does any pastor stop and say, before we begin our worship service this morning, we want to rebound. Now he might not use those words, but does your pastor ask you to do this? Does he say, I want you to bow your head and pray and make sure there’s no unconfessed sin in your life? Because if you’re sitting in the auditorium of a church with unconfessed sin in your life, You have quenched and you are grieving the Holy Spirit and you’re not gonna get anything out of the message. I don’t care how good he is. If he’s not a performer, if he’s a good solid Bible teacher, you’re not gonna get anything out of it because the Holy Spirit can’t do his job. Does your pastor ever say before we worship, let’s bow our heads and make sure we’re all in fellowship? That means that you are under control of God the Holy Spirit. that you’re not out of fellowship by unconfessed sin in your life. This is what I’m talking about. This is why we got into this position to start with, because we have abandoned the basic principles of the Christian life, and we’ve gone into this emotional worship. jeremiah the prophet of the old testament warned the spiritual leaders of his day with these words from god and it really sounds a lot like he could be talking to us listen to jeremiah 23 verses 1 and 2. woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of my pasture You have scattered my flock and driven them away and have not attended to them. Thus I’m about to attend to you for the evil of your deeds. A pastor is a shepherd. The members of the church are the sheep, are the flock. And it’s his job to shepherd you and protect you and feed you and make sure you’re cared for. And that doesn’t mean come hold your hand when you get the flu. That’s not what it means. It means that he prepares you to be spiritually self-sustaining, that you can stand on your own two feet in the middle of the adversity that you’ll face as a believer in Jesus Christ. So failure to feed the flock of God is one of the reasons we have a fog in America. And this is the failure of spiritual leadership, failure to feed the flock of God. It’s a serious mistake for any person in the pulpit. The pastor teacher is to watch over his flock, protect his flock from what I call the canine clergy. Who are the canine clergy? The Lord Jesus Christ talked about these dogs of religious canine clergy that sought to devour people. The canine clergy wants to devour you by luring you away from solid, sound biblical teaching, getting you into some sort of emotional appeal that doesn’t mean anything. Emotional appeals and social agenda can be fine, but it’s not the Christian life. This is called in the Bible doctrine of demons. Demons have doctrine. The Bible says Satan has his own communion table, and he has doctrines that he teaches, and one of them is social media change, that you can change the world. You can’t change anybody’s sin nature. You can change your actions, your deeds. The Bible says your flesh wars against the spirit and the spirit wars against the flesh. If you can stay in fellowship, if you can grow in the grace and knowledge of your Lord Jesus Christ, if you can become a mature believer, your light will shine brilliantly through the fog and illuminate the cross of Christ. Listen to Jeremiah 23, 16 about not feeding the flock. jeremiah 23 16 listen not to the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you because they make you vain they speak a vision of their own heart and not out of the mouth of the lord their message is some feel good emotional message encouraging their listeners to buy into what is called fake christianity One of the writers that I’d like to quote calls it a moralistic therapeutic deism. That’s Rachel Bratton, a writer for the Western Journal, and she claims that this worldview of moralistic therapeutic deism has quickly gained prominence across America. And that it’s a theology that looks nothing like historical Christianity, despite what people may claim. And I agree with Ms. Rachel. And it would point out that this is exactly what happens when preachers become performers, when they worry about what they wear, when they worry about how they look, when they worry about how they deliver, when they try to perform and try to get people in the auditorium, pack it out. God proclaimed through Jeremiah 23, 21, I did not send these prophets, but they ran. I did not speak to them, but they prophesied. If they had stood in my counsel, they would have announced my words to my people, and they would have turned them back from their evil ways and evil deeds. And no one’s turned anybody back. We keep sliding deeper and deeper and deeper into sin in this country. People that should know better, people that are believers in Jesus Christ are not executing the Christian life. Their light is not shining. They’re not attracting anybody to the cross of Christ. And I’d like to ask that of you. Have you been that sort of person that attracts people to the Lord Jesus Christ? I’ve said it before, and I’m gonna say it again. Listen carefully. If your song service is longer than the teaching service, you’re getting gypped at church. And this is one of the problems. We’ve got so many people in music, and I love good music, but they demand to have all this time. You go to church not to listen to the singing. You go to church to be fed God’s Word. That’s how you grow. Fed God’s word. If you want to listen to the saying, buy the tape and put it in your car and drive down the road. Listen that way. But when you’re in that auditorium and that pastor can teach you the Bible. I mean, I’ve been in churches where music leaders got mad at me. Because I asked him to cut one or two of the songs out of the service and quit going for 30 minutes. Nobody wants to stand there and sing that long. In regards to leaders who are liars, whether they be politicians or preachers, listen to what God’s word says. Proverbs 12, 32, lying lips are an abomination to the Lord. So the first letter of the fog illustration stands for failure of leadership politically and spiritually. You don’t need me to tell you about political failure in this country because you can see it for yourself. You can see the slide that we are sliding into evil socialism and humanism. We’ve turned away from the very thing that we are established on, and that’s freedom of religion in this country. So that now it’s even against the law to put a cross up in the middle of the town square. It’s against the law to mention Jesus in the school. It’s critical, pitiful, pitiful. The second letter of the fog stands for open rebellion to authority within the nation. Open rebellion to authority within the nation. When the rule of law is ignored and rejected, both God’s laws and man’s laws are violated. For example, in America in the year 2019 and the year 2020 combined, there were more than 37,000 murders, 37,000 murders, almost 100,000 cases of rape, over one million stolen automobiles, almost one every minute, And this crime rate is staggering. Crime rate is staggering, and it’s much worse even than some third-world countries. You know yourself. You’re afraid to go to the mall, afraid to where you park. You have to be parked where you can keep an eye on things. People in my city that go to the mall get shot at the mall, and their cars get stolen, especially at Christmas or Thanksgiving when thieves prey on older people. Listen to Hosea 4, 1 and 2. This is what’s going on in this country. Hear the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel, for the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land because there is no truth, no mercy, no knowledge of God in the land. Now listen to verse 2. By swearing and lying and killing and stealing and committing adultery, they break out and blood touches blood. That’s us. That’s exactly what’s going on. This is what Hosea wrote as the fifth cycle of discipline came upon the nation Israel. And it’s coming upon us too. I don’t have time to go into all of it, but God is disciplining America, I assure you of that. And I assure you that unless we wake up and respond and turn around, we will not exist much longer as a free nation. Because we fit this bill right here. Swearing, lying, killing, stealing, committing adultery. They break out and blood touches blood. Hosea 14.9 said, Who’s wise? And he would understand these things. Who’s prudent? And he would know these things. For the ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them, but the transgressors shall fall therein. These trends in history that I’m talking to you about are indications that we are a sick nation. America is a sick nation, and the vaccine is not something that you can put in a needle. The vaccine must come from the pulpits of churches across America where the word of God is taught and honored. It must come from the heart of the believers that will listen to it and abide by it because 2 Chronicles 7, 14 says, if my people, my people who are called by my name, the answer is believers. As goes your spiritual life, so goes the future of your nation. Have you forgotten your God? Have you been so preoccupied with the gifts that you forgot who the giver is? Have you fallen into being a casual Christian that goes to church on Sunday like, hello God, goodbye God, see you next week God? Do you think God is a genie in a magic eight ball that’ll pop out when you get in trouble and make all your troubles go away? These trends in history are indicators, we’re sick. We’re not gonna survive as a free nation much longer if we continue down this path. This fog is so thick in America, no one can see what’s going on. And I don’t see any indication that things going on around me are gonna change for the better. Because when good becomes evil, and evil is recognized as good, you can bet it’s a slippery slope on the road to destruction. And that’s where we are today. We’re on the slippery slope of the road to destruction. How can we change it? What can we change? Oh, we have to go back to failure of leadership in spiritual pulpits, failure of leadership in political positions. What’s wrong with asking for God to bless our nation, asking for God to heal our nation? No politician can change it. No politician can make it go away. I don’t care who you elect. The only thing that can save us is the grace of God. Only God’s word in the hearts and the minds of those people that live in that nation can deliver that nation from the coming disaster. But we’re not gonna do that because the last part of the acrostic is that God’s word is rejected. Political leadership failed. You know, that’s exactly what we said. What’s the synonym that we’re going through now? The acronym, excuse me, is fog, failure of leadership, open rebellion, God’s word rejected. Finally, here we have it. God’s word is being rejected in this nation today. The Bible says in Proverbs 12, 15, the way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise. We have a lot of fools running around today who think they know better than God. They justify right in his own eyes, that’s justification, self-justification. Remember the three stages to arrogance are always self-justification, self-deception, self-absorption, eventually self-destruction. So self-justification is someone justifying why he’s right and why God is wrong. And the way of a fool is the person who says, I’m right, God is wrong. The way of a fool is right in his own eyes. He justifies why he does what he does. But he that listens unto the counsel, and I’m saying the counsel of the word of God is wise. There are many arrogant fools in America. The arrogant person makes up his own rules, justifies his actions. If he wants to commit adultery, he’ll justify it by saying, oh, we love each other and my spouse has not given me the attention that I need, so it’s okay if I have an affair. If he steals, he’ll justify why it’s okay to steal. If he murders, he’ll justify why it’s okay to murder. He’s a fool. He thinks he’s okay, he thinks he’s right, he thinks it’s okay to steal from you because you got it and he doesn’t have it, even though you worked hard to get what you got. He makes his own rules and justifies his actions. The arrogant person does not recognize the consequences for his sinful ideology. What are the consequences? Proverbs 14, 16. A wise person is cautious and turns away from evil. but a fool is arrogant and careless. Who’s the wise person? That’s the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ who has some scripture in his mind, who understands the plan of God. You know, this is called wisdom in the Bible. And when you have wisdom, you have insight and discernment and understanding. The wise person is the person who understands what this bad decision could do. The wise person may be like you who knows what’s going on in this country and doesn’t know how to fix it. I’m telling you how to fix it. It has to start with you and your personal life getting serious about spiritual growth and spiritual relationship with your father. The wise person must be you because you must be cautious and you must turn away from evil. What does that mean? Does that mean sins? Does that mean bad things? No. That’s the chaos of the cosmic system. The evil is Satan’s plan. Satan’s genius. God’s genius is grace. It’s always been grace. For by grace are you saved through faith, the Bible says. That’s God’s plan. But evil always twists grace and distorts grace. And Satan can get you involved in human good schemes, trying to change the face of this country by some sort of works or crusader arrogance, and it won’t work. Only the gospel can change a man’s heart. But Proverbs 14, 16 says a wise person, the mature believer, I would say, is cautious and turns away from evil. He recognizes it when he sees it. He recognizes it when he hears it and says, oh, no, you’re not sucking me into that garbage. But this verse goes on to say a fool is arrogant and careless, justifies why he’s right and the rest of the world is wrong, and careless about the way he cares for himself. In Psalm 14, 1, the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. And there are many people like that today. They don’t think there’s ever going to be, that they’re ever going to have to answer for what they’re doing. Every politician is going to have to answer for these decisions they’re making. Every pastor is going to have to answer for not doing the job. When you have corrupt politicians and corrupt pastors, they’ve committed detestable acts. The Bible says their fool has said in his heart, there is no God. They’re all corrupt. They’ve all committed detestable acts and there’s no one that does good, no, not one. Did you know the Bible says all of our good is like a filthy rag in God’s eyes? Even the best stuff you can conjure up doesn’t impress God because God is perfectly righteous, perfectly just. He’s the essence of holiness. And so your good works is like a filthy rag to God. You’re not going to work your way to heaven. You’re not going to earn God’s forgiveness. It only comes through the cross, through the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s why the Bible says he that knew no sin was made sin for us so that we could be made the righteousness of God through him. The breakdown starts in the home where no biblical standards are taught. Proverbs 22, six says, train up a child in the way he would go. And even when he grows older, he won’t abandon it. In Deuteronomy 6, 6 and 7, these words I’m commanding you today, they shall be in your heart and you shall repeat them diligently to your sons and speak of them when you sit in your house, when you walk up the road and when you lie down and when you get up in the morning. You have to teach your children the word of God. Ephesians 6 says don’t hurt your children. Ephesians 6, 1 through 2, children obey your parents. Honor your father and mother, which is right in the Lord. Fathers, do not abuse your children, the Bible says. Don’t discipline them unfairly. But it has to start in the home. If you have children or grandchildren, this is where it has to start. You have to give them enough information so that they know what’s coming down the road. The cosmic system is in a fog. Confusion and chaos in America like never before. And unless somebody does something, we are in serious trouble. Only the grace of God can deliver us. It starts with your spiritual life, and it can start with you preparing your children and you preparing your grandchildren for what’s coming down the road so they’ll at least see it and recognize it. Before we get away today, I want to tell you about something that you might want to take advantage of. We have completed the 2020 transcripts of all the Flatline broadcasts, so those are available for you if you’d like to have them. 52 radio shows taught in 2020, all in print in a book. All you have to do is write and ask for that book, and we’d be glad to send it to you free of charge. Also, we’ve completed a book called Christian Problem Solving, which is a list of radio shows, a transcript of radio shows that deals with each of these 10 problem-solving devices. If you’d like to have Christian Problem Solving transcript book, or you’d like to have the 2020 transcripts of all the radio shows taught in 2020, just let us know. We encourage you to go to the podcast venue and check out our podcast. Spotify, Apple iPod, Anchor, some of these podcast venues. If you go there and look for The Flotline, you’ll find us there, and you can listen to The Flotline anytime, anywhere, anyplace across America, even across the world by just going in to do that. I’m grateful that you’ve given me a few minutes of your time. I hope I haven’t bored you. I’ve tried to be specific. I’ve tried to be tough. I hope you’re listening, and I hope you understand like I do. We’re in terrible times. There’s a fog across America. A fog. The cosmic system is fogging us in. The leadership is failing us. There’s open rebellion, and God’s word is being rejected. All this is a fog. And unless something changes, you can say goodbye, America, because it’s headed that way. I hope you’re listening. You’re the answer. You’re the solution, not me, you. Pay attention. Put your life the right way as it should be in the Lord Jesus Christ. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flotline.
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Thank you for listening to The Floodline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
