Professor John, last time you talked about the changes you have watched develop in the racial landscape in America over the last 50 years, since you were a boy in South Carolina. Do you have any predictions or longings as you look into the future? Well, I don't have as many predictions as I do longings, but let me make a go of it.

When it comes to ethnic diversity, we should never forget one massive certainty. This gospel of the kingdom will be preached through all the world as a testimony to all the ethnicities. And then the end will come. Ethnic reality should be thought of globally, not just in narrow, local ways alone.

And this certainly is true about the Great Commission, and the certainty of the success of the Great Commission is there because Jesus bought it with his blood, according to Revelation 5. Now, you were slain, and you bought people from every tribe and tongue. So that's going to happen. That's the first thing I think we should say about the future.

All the ethnicities are going to bow their knee to Jesus someday. Number two, I see the continual unraveling of the historic, traditional overlay of biblical morality in America. For years, there was an external conformity with significant biblical convictions left over from Christian influence in this country. This is collapsing, and will continue to do so, I think, so that true Christians who submit to the authority of God's Word in the Bible will feel increasingly alien.

This collapse, it seems to me, is being accompanied, however, by profound renewal and reformation of many churches and schools and movements and families. Many, many will give way and show their true colors of compromise, and many others will grow stronger and clearer in their allegiance to the Lord Jesus.

So the dark gets darker, and the light gets lighter. That's going to happen, I believe. Number three, there will be an ongoing increase of globalization and multi-ethnic, multicultural reality here at home. We will feel ourselves increasingly part of a global reality near and far that 50 years ago was almost inconceivable for our insulated American mindset.

And that increase of global diversity at home means that by 2043, according to the census predictions after 2010, America will not be a majority white country. And that is something that should be celebrated as the gospel works here, not feared. Number four, alongside all this diversity, will continue the outbreaks of evil from the human heart.

Nothing has changed about the condition of the human heart. A lot of times people think with changes in society and changes in culture, people are getting better or worse. They're not. People get better through conversion to Christ. Apart from Christ, no one seeks for God. No one does good.

There's just variations on the way our corruption expresses itself. The lynchings that happened 50 years ago come from the same heart that exists today. There is as much innate depravity as ever. It is constant. What changes is the kind of constraints society applies to inner sinfulness. So Eisenhower would have been impeached and removed from office for the immoral sexual behavior of Bill Clinton.

And Bill Clinton would have been impeached and removed from office for the racial slurs that presidents got away with 50 years ago. What's changed is not their hearts, but what Americans will tolerate. Sinfulness doesn't change. Social restraints and tolerances change. But they can't restrain racism completely. And it will break out one form or another.

That's who we are globally. Just a couple more. Alongside lukewarmness and open immorality and apostasy in the Church, the true bride of Christ will grow in conformity to Christ. She will be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. So the glory and praise of God, Philippians 1, 11.

And that will include beautiful expressions of racial and ethnic togetherness and harmony, with many Christians globally and at home taking concrete steps to move toward differences in love, not away from them. And the last thing maybe to say would be, like Brian Lawrence and the Kainos movement that we've talked about before, I think many initiatives of thousands of pastors and ministry leaders and churches will give themselves to prayer and to study and to public effort to pursue Christ-exalting, God-centered, Bible-saturated, gospel-shaped ethnic diversity and harmony.

It's a difficult, strategic time to be alive. And I pray the Lord keeps us faithful. Yes, and amen. Thank you, Pastor John, for that. This reminds me of an episode in the Ask Pastor John podcast series we released not too long ago titled "Churches Pursuing Ethnic Diversity," episode number 315.

There you explain some very concrete ways a church can pursue racial diversity in their own community. And tomorrow is Friday, and we will wrap up the week by wrapping up this little four-part series of episodes on race. And we'll conclude by looking at Martin Luther King, Jr.'s most powerful words.

I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you tomorrow. you