In his latest book, America Agonistes, Dr. Os Guinness asks, “Is the Republic headed for redemption and renewal—or ruin?”

Across the ages, the decline and fall of nations and civilizations has left behind only ruins and vanished glories. Free societies are rare. Lasting free societies are rarer still. So, what are the prospects for the American republic at the 250th anniversary of the revolution? Is America approaching its expiration date?

Listen to Pastor Paul’s full unedited hour-long conversation with Dr. Os Guinness:

On Monday, October 6th, Paul Edwards returned to Detroit radio for a limited 8-week engagement on WMUZ AM 1200 with Talk From the Heart.

The reboot of Talk From the Heart can be heard weekdays at 11:00 am ET locally in Detroit on WMUZ AM 1200 or from anywhere in the world at wmuzam1200.com.

If you missed the inaugural reboot, you can hear it at the link below!

The first time I saw him, he looked every bit the standout football tight end he had been at Rice University. He was 39 years old, pastoring Grace Family Baptist Church in Houston, and had just released his book Family Driven Faith: Doing What It Takes to Raise Sons and Daughters Who Walk with God (Crossway, 2007). It was May 2008. Alistair Begg had invited me to broadcast my radio program from that year’s Basics Conference for Pastors at Parkside Church in Cleveland where Voddie Baucham and Jerry Bridges were the speakers. Alistair had arranged for Voddie to be my first guest on the first broadcast. He was a relative unknown to the evangelical world at that time. He was certainly unknown to me – and I to him.

Voddie was waiting for me. He wasn’t scheduled to go live with me until 4:20 pm, but at 3:30 pm, as I made my way up the stairs to the mezzanine where the broadcast table had been setup, Voddie was already there, sitting off to the side in the shadows – quiet, reserved, almost timid looking with a demeanor that said, “I’m not really sure why you even want to talk to me.”

I introduced myself. We talked about the questions I planned to ask him, how long the interview would go, how to control his headphone volume and mute his microphone, if necessary, how many commercial breaks we would take. And then he sat there and watched me prepare for the broadcast, never saying a word until we opened his mic.

The subject of the interview was family integrated worship – Voddie’s passion for seeing fathers and mothers take the lead in worship in their home and then bringing their family to church where the family would worship together intentionally without dismissing the children for their “own” time away from their parents and other adults. It was a concept that – as a pastor – I had never ever considered.

I would never meet or speak to Voddie again after that, though I would hear him speak in person at various conferences. During the 17 years since I first met him, his gospel influence under the unction of the Holy Spirit on his preaching and writing greatly increased, blessing, edifying, and convicting the people of God across the United States. From his early work on family worship, and the call for fathers and mothers to take seriously their spiritual responsibility for the protection of their children from godless ideologies advanced by the state in public education, to his more recent work challenging the woke “white guilt” nonsense that has infected the evangelical church, as well as taking on LGBTQ+ activists who equate their “right” to a perverse lifestyle with the civil rights struggle of African-Americans, Voddie’s voice was clear and prophetic – prophetic not in a “telling the future” kind of way but in a “repent or perish” kind of way. He spoke as one having authority because his message was the gospel. He applied the gospel to every issue he addressed. He recognized that the issue underneath every social and cultural issue was a depraved, unregenerate heart and that until the depraved human heart was regenerated through the power of the gospel, there are no remedies to the social and spiritual crises of our times.

Ours is a short, uncertain earthly life and pilgrimage. Voddie was called to the nearer presence of Jesus yesterday at the age of 56.  Pray for his wife Bridget and their beautiful children and grandchildren.

I was looking forward to hearing Voddie twice early next year: at the Clear Truth Conference in Toledo in March and at the Ligonier National Conference in Orlando in April. “A man plans his way, but the Lord orders his steps.”

I will miss him. We will all miss him. The church will miss his prophetic voice.

Pray that God would be gracious to his church by raising up others to fill the gap left by those godly men he has recently called to himself.

“Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise!” (Joshua 1:2)