We Need More Truth Preachers

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Finding Teachers Who Handle the Word Correctly

It is getting harder to find good, solid Bible teachers these days. That's a real problem, especially for the new believer trying to figure out who to trust.

Freshroadmedia.com, and specifically the Salvaged by God teaching platform, has always had a plan from the very beginning: bring other solid Bible teachers together, give them exposure, give them a platform. That expansion is happening now, and the goal is simple. Give people access to teachers who actually handle the word of God correctly, so there's a real standard to measure everything else against.

How do you find someone who truly teaches the true word of God? Start by finding a teacher who really teaches the word of God. That sounds like an oxymoron, but it isn't, because the more you're exposed to good teaching, the easier it becomes to pick out bad teaching.

There's no interest in sitting here and listing out all the bad teachers. There could easily be twenty names of people with a platform in America worth steering clear of. Instead, here are names worth watching: Voddie Baucham. John MacArthur. Adrian Rogers. James Kennedy. Worth noting that all of these men have already passed away, which means their messages will stand the test of time and their testimony won't get tarnished by what happens later in life.

Gramster Rant: When Platforms Get Bigger Than the Message

And that points to something worth getting worked up about, because those three names are an exception to a broader pattern.

The majority of larger platforms, especially in today's world, soften their message as they grow. Popularity brings other influences, other people whispering in someone's ear, and it can change a person and change their message. Things used to work differently. Good teaching would organically gain ground, starting within the church itself. That formula has changed. Now people get handpicked, and money gets thrown behind them to push them into the public eye. That's not good.

Freshroadmedia.com wants to be about the stone cold truth of Bible apologetics, of Bible truth, of Jesus as the only way to salvation. And most of that solid preaching comes from smaller venues, from faithful shepherds out there exegeting the text and giving it in good, solid form, even without the big production value. If there's no big production value, people immediately assume the content is lesser. That might be exactly the problem worth fixing. Sermons on audio can sound just as good as anyone else's, and that's the whole point behind putting Salvaged by God out everywhere: for people to listen in their car, in the garden, on long walks with the dog, however they consume sermons. If a platform is faithful to the text, the production budget shouldn't be what decides whether it gets heard.

Introducing Jay Johnson

The first step in this expansion is Jay Johnson, and before his sermons start rolling out regularly, it felt important to sit down with him so the audience could get to know him as a fellow brother in the Lord, a co-laborer, and someone who handles the word of God correctly.

Jay and his interviewer have been in radio together for decades. They met in Arizona, where Jay came on right at 9:00 for the 9-to-noon shift after the morning show wrapped. From there Jay moved to Westwood One, then landed a radio gig in Kansas, and eventually the two reconnected to start an internet radio station together in 2013 that ran until 2018.

Jay got his start in secular radio in the early 80s. After moving his family to Tennessee for Bible college, he found a new Christian radio station starting up and landed a job there, kicking off a career in Christian radio that ran from 1984 all the way to 2006. That year he left the network in Arizona to work for Westwood One, back out in secular radio, and it wasn't fun. He'd forgotten how bad it was.

He was the only Christian on his shift. There was so much ungodliness, people cursing constantly, making fun of God, people who just didn't understand anything about the Lord Jesus Christ. It was a good job, but hard to stomach after so many years in Christian ministry. Every day on the 30-minute drive to work, the prayer was the same: God, please get me back into ministry. And the same prayer on the 30-minute drive home. I'm desperate. I'll do anything. I'll be a janitor in a church. Just let me get back into ministry. I'll go anywhere.

God has a sense of humor about that kind of prayer. The answer was Salina, Kansas. Out in the middle of nowhere.

When Discontentment Is From God

There's something worth sitting with in that season, the darkness that comes from being pulled out of ministry and back into the world. It's not perfect working in Christian ministry, but at least everyone's of one accord. You can open the Bible around people who want it open. Being outside of that for a stretch opened a fresh set of eyes to just how different the world actually is. The desperation that followed, the I'll be a janitor, just get me back kind of prayer, came out of that darkness. And God answered it by getting Jay back into Christian radio, which ultimately led into pastoral work.

Working on air for three hours a day requires a lot of prep work, and that prep work ends up teaching more than seminary sometimes does. While on air in Kansas, opportunities for pulpit supply kept coming up. If a pastor needed someone to fill in, he'd call the radio station, and Jay ended up preaching all over southwest Kansas. In 2010, an operations manager position opened at the sister station in Abilene, Kansas, and Jay moved to take it. He started attending a church there, and the pastor knew he was looking to get more involved, maybe as an associate or teaching pastor.

That church was Zion Brethren in Christ Church, and it needed a pastor. Jay's pastor suggested he put his name in the hat. He figured, at most, they'd bring him on as an associate. Instead, after the previous pastor left, they had him come preach one Sunday, and the board interviewed him afterward. Things went well enough that they asked him back to preach again. That second visit got delayed. Jay's daughter was dying, and he had to go to Tennessee to take care of her, telling the board he'd come back in a month to preach. He did. After the second sermon, they interviewed him again and eventually offered him the position of lead pastor. He stayed for the next 15 years.

A Total God Thing

What made it work? A total God thing, by Jay's own account. Working in Christian radio prepared him for pastoral ministry in ways that weren't obvious at the time. Some of the stations he worked for played programs from preachers and Bible teachers, and on his shift he'd sit and listen. Charles Stanley. Chuck Swindoll. John MacArthur. All of these great Bible teachers, absorbed over years of listening, combined with a lot of personal prep work and study.

When the offer came to be lead pastor at Zion, Jay didn't feel qualified. Somebody told him God doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the called. That's what carried him forward. When he arrived, a lot of people had already left because of what happened with the previous pastor. Numbers were down to 60 or 70 on a given Sunday. The prayer was simple: God, what do I do? How do we get the numbers back up? And the answer that came back wasn't about numbers at all. Focus on seeing them grow spiritually. I'll take care of the numbers. For the last couple of years at that little country church in rural Abilene, Kansas, they've been running 150 people.

Radio prepared Jay to be a pastor, and then being a pastor kept teaching him, year after year.

The Teaching Side and the Shepherding Side

There's an honest admission worth including here: teaching pastor work comes easily, shepherding is the part that's harder, especially for a personality wired toward radio-style bluntness, the kind that says things that probably shouldn't be said in the way they're said. During two years together in Abilene, Wednesday wing nights at Ike's Bar (Eisenhower's hometown, appropriately enough) became a regular thing, along with Thursday night football gatherings limited to other pastors where everyone could let their hair down and just be normal. More than once, a pastoral spanking was needed, and God laid it on Jay's heart to deliver it straight.

One moment stuck. Sitting around a table at a little clubhouse, talking about this and that, a comment slipped out: "Well, at my church..." Jay doesn't get excited often, but when he does, it's worth paying attention. He slapped the table and said it plainly: don't you ever say it's your church. It's not your church. It's Jesus's church. It's not about us. It's the Lord's church. We're just privileged to work there.

How does a radio guy, a pretty passionate guy by nature, learn to shepherd instead of just broadcast? Through reading, studying, and praying. It didn't come naturally. It took the first few years to learn how to be calm, careful about what gets said and how it gets said. Gradual growth into shepherding, built in part on sharing experience with someone a few steps further down that same road.

Salvaged by God Deep Dive: Testing the Spirits

So what's the state of the visible church right now, and even parts of the evangelical church that used to be squarely about Jesus? Where is it falling down, and what's the hope going forward?

An old guy's perspective matters here. Even as a child, before becoming a Christian, even in a secular Catholic school setting, there was a general sense of morality in the culture. Even unbelievers carried a reverence for God. Over the past 50 years, that's changed dramatically. There's no sense of morality left, no sense of reverence. Comedians today build entire careers on irreverence. Things have changed, and not in a good way, here in America. The darkness is prevailing. God remains in control of everything, but the growing darkness in this country is visible and real.

With that darkness comes deception, and it's inside the church now too. You cannot accept someone at face value just because they say "I'm a Christian" or "I'm a Bible teacher" or "I'm a pastor." Scripture says to test the spirits and see whether they are of God, because even Satan can appear as an angel of light. Listen to what people actually say. If it's false teaching, run, and run fast.

The book of Thessalonians says that in the last days, God will send strong delusion so that people will believe the lie. It's going to get worse. That lie, at its core, seems to be the claim that Jesus isn't enough, or that he can be reshaped into whatever someone wants him to be.

Part of the lie is the claim that there's no absolute truth at all. Unbelievers used to hold some reverence for the Bible even without following it. That's mostly gone now. It gets dismissed as an ancient book, written by men, not reliable. But seriously studying the scriptures reveals it as the true word of God, absolute truth, useful for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that anyone who holds it can be adequately and thoroughly equipped for every good work. The things God calls abominable are now broadly acceptable. There is no "your truth" and "my truth." There is one truth, one spirit of truth, the word of God as truth itself.

With that many voices out in the world, and most of them lying, a standard and a foundation become non-negotiable. That foundation is Jesus Christ and the word of God. That's how believers are meant to live.

Global News Christian Views: Two Pivot Points

There's a practical way to trace how that darkness grew. In the old days, meaning the '80s and '90s, there was a general morality the country shared, even while Satan never took a day off. Two moments stand out as pivot points.

First, 1992, when a political wife went on national television and defended standing by her husband despite infidelity, a moment that effectively told the country adultery was survivable and excusable at the highest level. Four years earlier, a presidential candidate's campaign had been ended entirely by a single affair. That shift mattered.

Second, 2014, when the White House itself was lit up in rainbow colors, another visible marker of the cultural turn.

Now, saying anything from a scriptural perspective, that's not what Jesus taught, that's not what the Bible actually says, that's not what Christianity is, gets met with "well, that's your truth, that's your interpretation, that doesn't have to be mine." Everyone sorting through and constructing their own version of truth, good for them, leaving room for whatever's good for someone else. And sitting back and saying no, there is a singular truth here, makes a person deeply uncomfortable to say, and uncomfortable to hear. Telling someone they need to repent because of how they think and what they believe, because they're not walking in the light, turns the messenger into the enemy. The authority that used to sit behind "the Bible says" has been drowned out and marginalized, even while people still claim to "stand on the Bible."

Final Thoughts: No Retirement in Time of War

Writing a sermon has a way of convicting the writer first. That's the nature of shepherding, the nature of teaching as an ongoing calling. Jay is retired from the pastorate now, opening up his archives to the Fresh Road Media and Salvaged by God audience. His first message aired this past Sunday, covering a "3:16 roadmap," tracing how many different chapter-3:16 verses across scripture, not just John 3:16, have made a lasting impact.

Retirement is hard for pastors, because the drive to keep sounding the alarm for sin and the need for salvation doesn't retire along with the title. Jay used to work for Kay Arthur at Precept Ministries. Kay went to be with the Lord last year, and she used to say there's no retirement in time of war. She was right. Even retired from being a pastor, there's no retiring from teaching the word of God, because that's a gift from the Holy Spirit, meant to be used for God's glory. In the face of all the darkness, all the lies, the goal is simple: share the truth, and maybe through it, somebody gets saved.

Years of partnership stand behind this new chapter. An internet radio station once ran 24 hours a day with exactly two personalities filling every slot, one show and "Journey with Jay Johnson," each stocked with hundreds of evergreen scripture-nugget breaks woven between contemporary Christian music. Now that same partnership continues in a new form, with Jay's archived sermons joining the rotation on Salvaged by God alongside new messages, as the hope is to grow this into a steady source of sound teaching for anyone trying to sort the real from the counterfeit.