The 77-year-old acclaimed Christian apologist urged 30 pastors and ministry leaders on Wednesday to hit the issue of pornography and sexual abuse head-on while speaking at the office of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) in order to protect youth from experiencing a lifetime of guilt and shame.

“[As] a sexual abuse survivor, [McDowell] recounted that about eight or nine years ago, he felt as though there was a mysterious destructive phenomenon going on in culture that was fundamentally altering the belief systems of young people,” The Christian Post reported. “[I]t was affecting their relationships with their parents, the church, and with God. The phenomenon, he would determine, is ‘pervasive Internet pornography’ and as an apologist for the Christian faith, he felt compelled to speak to this.”

America swimming in porn

The head of Josh McDowell Ministry – which is a Cru ministry (Campus Crusade for Christ) – discovered research indicating that if a person printed the data from a particular unnamed website, the amount of pornographic material it would produced could fill the entire Empire State Building every day for an entire year.

“Porn sites produce enormous amounts of new data each day,” CP’s Brandon Showalter noted from McDowell’s findings. “And parents – particularly homeschooling Christian parents – are delusional if they think they can somehow completely protect their children from porn. The sad reality is that they will see it, and they are seeing [it] at alarmingly young ages.”

The ministry leader referred to the phrase often used when addressing how to combat pornography – “Fight the New Drug” – which serves as a warning that viewing the sexually graphic content powerfully affects people psychologically, similar to using cocaine and heroine at the same time.

“Cocaine is a stimulant – you shoot it up – and it stimulates you, [while] heroin [on the other hand] is an opiate, which means it brings you down,” McDowell informed.

An uphill battle

When asked if he believed there would be a cultural shift turning away from pornography with all the scientific information revealing its detrimental effect on the human brain – compiled with secular Leftists and feminists speaking out against it in mainstream publications, McDowell was optimistic about the strides NCOSE, Enough and Enough and other groups have made to combat it.

“I think we are seeing the results of many organizations – not just Christian organizations – many organizations that have taken this on,” McDowell told CP. “[Today,] 10 times as many pastors [openly talk about porn than they did 10 years ago] being given the freedom to address it, and how to deal with it in their own lives.”

Despite the strides being made, he says America still has a long way to go before it can start to be freed from the clutches of pornography.

“I don’t see a great wave yet, but I think it’s coming,” McDowell expressed. “If I have anything to do with it, it’s going to come. When you talk about a cultural change, the only cultural change I am seeing now is to do with truth.”

He went on to talk about how gender identity issues make it more difficult to combat porn and share the truth about sexuality.

“One example he pointed to was gender being self-determined – rather than biological,” Showalter explained. “He recalled telling his son – who has a Ph.D. and is a professor at Biola University – that this was the first time that ‘feelings trumped science.’ Other manifestations of this phenomena include Duquesne University students saying they felt threatened by the presence of Chick-Fil-a on campus, and U.C. Berkeley students opposed to hearing the views of conservative speakers, he said. The most outrageous example he knew of was a news item he saw on television that morning where Harvard [University] reportedly decided to scrap late fees on overdue library books because the costs were stressing out its students.”

Sexual abuse a serious matter

McDowell’s passion to combat pornography comes from not wanting others to go through the pain and suffering he experienced as a child as a result of sexual abuse.

“In my life from six to 13 years of age – for seven years, every week – I was homosexually raped,” McDowell told CBN News. “It almost destroyed everything in my life.”

McDowell, who authored the autobiography, Undaunted, still vividly remembers the damaging experience and wants parents to realize how vulnerable their children can be to sexual predators.

“Wayne began molesting me within weeks after he started working for my family,” he recalled. “The first time it happened I was six years old, and I had no idea what was going on. I remember feeling confusion and shame, then excitement and pleasure, and later seething anger and a deep sense of guilt. Wayne’s abuse and emotional manipulation would continue for the next seven years.”

Only through Jesus Christ was he able to claim victory over the painful experience and forgive his abuser.

“Once I became a Christian, God gave me the understanding, and by faith I forgave the man,” McDowell shared with CBN News. “I wanted him to burn in hell, but I forgave him.”

A local pastor took McDowell through God’s Word, where he found healing and freedom.

“…for six months, I would meet with him,” he continued. “He would listen to me. I would share some of the deep hurts I was going that week. I mean, when you’re walking through a dark valley and there’s not light at the end, that can lead to suicide. That can lead to desperation and no hope, and a life without hope is desperation.”

An ear to hear, God’s Word, prayer and the moving of the Holy Spirit then did miracles in McDowell’s life.

“Then he would first listen to me,” he continued. “He’d open up the Scriptures and in relevant passages to what I was going through that week, he would speak the Word of God into my life in a way that I understood it, and he prayed for me and I believe in all this the Holy Spirit had to be working, but in that over six months I – literally, before my eyes – I saw my life changing, my feelings, my emotions, my behavior, my attitude, little by little started to change. And now I’m able to cope with it, to live above it. [I speak] on how to heal the past pain.”

Yet the process took time.

“But it takes a long time, and it takes relevant Truth from the Scriptures and the Body of Christ around you,” McDowell asserted.

The cold facts on porn

Numbers do not lie, and some of the statistics the Josh McDowell Ministry offers helps youth to understand the seriousness of the pornography epidemic in America.

“As many as one out of four online searches are for porn,” McDowell’s website divulges. “Every second, 30,000 people are viewing pornography. The average age of first exposure is just 11.”

Pornography has a detrimental effect on marriage, making those abusing it become incapable of having meaningful intimate relationships.

“Pornography use increases the marital infidelity rate more than 300 percent,” McDowell reveals on his site. “In 56 percent of divorce cases, one party had an obsessive interest in porn sites.