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A compelling call for Christians to awaken, reclaim biblical truth, and confront cultural challenges, While We Were Sleeping urges believers to engage courageously with issues shaping families, faith, and the nation’s future.

While We Were Sleeping: A Wake-up Call for All Christians is my alarm clock to announce that we have been sleeping long enough. It’s time to wake up, get up, and take a stand. To return to biblical principles and to proclaim, Enough! We are taking back what the enemy has stolen. Thank you, Daily Declaration, for allowing me to launch my new book on your platform.

The book starts with marriage, family and education, and progresses to explore the social issues seeking to shipwreck the Judeo-Christian values of our society, concluding with spiritual warfare, Islam and Israel.

The tone of my book echoes that of Michael Yousseff’s. Here is a quote from his tome, The Hidden Enemy (2018):

As various leaders and authors in the church subtly move away from a biblical understanding of social issues, the church is being led into apostasy and error, while the nation is being led into secularism, moral relativism, and depravity.

The church has surrendered its role of influence in the public square and in the national conversation. The church has sidelined itself and made itself irrelevant at the very time that the world is in desperate need of God’s truth. (p. 145)

Similarly, my book seeks to translate Eric Metaxas’ Letter to the American Church (2022) into an Australian context. Eric introduces his book:

I have written this book because I am convinced the American Church is at an impossibly – and almost unbearably – important inflection point. The parallels to where the German Church was in the 1930s are unavoidable and grim. So the only question-and what concerns us in this slim volume – is whether we might understand those parallels and thereby avoid the fatal mistakes the German Church made during that time, and their superlatively catastrophic results. If we do not, I am convinced we will reap a whirlwind greater even than the one they did.

While We Were Sleeping is designed for Christians, church leaders and congregations alike. However, while directed to a Christian audience, it is also accessible to anyone anxious about the state of the world and concerned for the future of their children and grandchildren.

Each chapter is introduced by a personal testimony from an individual engaged with or experienced in the topic. I then introduce a range of perspectives to give us language for debate, and each chapter concludes with a section entitled, What Does God Say?

I want you to be encouraged by this selection of quotes from six of the fifteen chapters. While addressing dire situations, they offer hope — there is still time.

Culture Wars

Arguably, Lyle Shelton was Australia’s loudest advocate for the preservation of marriage as God intended against the drive for same-sex marriage. One of the fallouts from the loss of this fight has been falling marriage rates and birth rates.

We need people to get married! I would encourage young people to not worry about whether they can afford a house, or whether they have the right furniture, just get married and enjoy being poor together. Have fun! You will be more prosperous in the long term, don’t let economics stop you getting married. Marry young and stay faithful to the one person. Marriage is not try-before-you-buy, it’s not till we fall out of love, it’s in sickness and in health.
— Lyle Shelton, National Director of the Family First Party

Lindsey has mounted a grassroots campaign against screen addiction, particularly as it impacts the very young. She has taken on a school principal and an education minister to try to stem the spread of screen time in schools.

Talking about the connection between screen addiction and porn; I know that schools are one of the first places kids see pornography, and it’s usually by Year 4, either on the devices brought in from home or on the devices that the school provides, and schools fail to install effective filters, or the kids learn how to get around them. Then peer pressure forces each other to look at it.
— Lyndsey Fuchs, mother of three boys and one girl

The scourge of transgenderism that has devastated families and inflicted irreversibly harm on so many young people, often without their parents’ knowledge or consent, has been opposed by Kirralie Smith, who is still fighting in the courts for the right to acknowledge biological facts.

The church has to get back to the truth. I hear, heartbreakingly, so many testimonies from people in churches saying their pastors won’t talk about it and all they say is that we have to ‘love’ these people. Some have allowed transgender-identified men into their female toilets, they don’t challenge, they simply say we have to accept them. But this does not set these people free. It doesn’t bring healing; it doesn’t bring wholeness.
— Kirralie Smith, national spokeswoman for Binary

In the last year or so, abortion-up-to-birth has seen many outraged. But abortion at any stage of pregnancy is murder. Jodie Pickard has devoted her life’s work to enrolling churches as Houses of Refuge, places of refuge and safety for anyone dealing with an unplanned/crisis pregnancy.

I started going to our abortion clinic and offering help. Unfortunately, it was short-lived. Less than a year later (in 2020), the South Australian Parliament legislated a 150-metre exclusion zone, which outlawed any communication related to abortion around a facility that performs them. It also prohibited praying. What has become of our nation when praying is made illegal?
— Jodie Pickard, Founding Director of Love Australia, a leading pro-life organisation

Voices From the Front Lines

I would argue that John Anderson is one of the few remaining statesmen here in Australia. After a stellar career in federal parliament, his podcasts now reach millions across the globe. His argument is that Christians have left the public square of politics, but it is not too late to get back in the fight.

We have taken God out of our society and culture, and government has become our god. And this ultimately disappoints us as it’s only human government. Pride gets in the way. Gamesmanship is now played by so many people in public life that it threatens the very fabric of our society. There are honourable exceptions.

I would say to Christians, ‘Wake up, get behind people who are seeking to serve and are not seeking to be served. You’ve got a responsibility, they need you, so they can be strengthened and emboldened to carry on the battle.’
— John Anderson, six years as Leader of the National Party and Deputy Prime Minister

My own friend and pastor from my English days, Gordon Hickson, has led a remarkable campaign to see 30 million Muslims saved. This chapter, perhaps more than any other, shook my foundations. I now see the Islamic world in a new light.

God said to me very clearly, ‘Face the facts, don’t fuel the fear, find a friend.’ If we do those three things, we will find Muslims coming through to Christ. It’s love that never fails. Love has to work with faith, and faith comes through hearing God in prayer.
— Ps Gordon Hickson, co-founder of the ministry of Mahabba Network

So much of our western Christianity seems to routinely acknowledge the world is getting darker by the hour, but fails to call out the specifics with the warranted gravitas or to encourage and equip their people to take a personal stand against the tide of evil; or how, corporately, the church might take back the land that the enemy has stolen (1 Samuel 30:8). Let’s not be caught sleeping when the Master calls (Matthew 25:1-13).

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