Tucker Carlson's latest interview with Mother Agapia, a Russian Orthodox nun, sparked a lot of controversy. What does Christian Zionism have to do with it? And what does it teach us about Christian Zionism?
00:01:02.000Well, now that we've got all of your attention, Israel is the third rail.
00:01:07.000I want to say new third rail, but I know it's not new.
00:01:10.000Israel has been the third rail for a very long time, and it kind of comes and goes, and it seems like right now, anything that you..
00:01:17.000do talking about the Jews makes you one of these two polar opposites.
00:01:20.000Either you're a Nazi and you hate all Jews and they're responsible for everything, including the death of JFK and aliens, or you're a Zionist shill and Israel can do nothing wrong in killing, including killing five-year-olds in Gaza right now.
00:01:35.000It doesn't really register on your radar.
00:01:37.000But there is a huge, huge piece of ground in the middle where a lot of good conversation can happen and where you can actually get at the truth, but not a lot of people are talking about it.
00:01:47.000And that's a very, very dangerous place to be.
00:01:50.000Historically, we've seen that when people run to extremes, it usually ends very in violence and I want to avoid that.
00:01:57.000I want to have conversations with people about Israel without having those slurs thrown at either one and I want to actually find some truth.
00:02:05.000We need to be able to have honest, very straightforward conversations about these issues that involve Israel and plenty of other subjects, but Israel seems to be the flash point right now and we just don't seem to have that ability.
00:02:17.000So that's what we're going to try to do today.
00:02:20.000Let me set it up really quickly with a couple of interviews that recently Tucker Carlson has performed.
00:02:26.000First was Mother Agapia, a Russian Orthodox nun, and if I'm mispronouncing that, I apologize.
00:02:32.000And the interview sparked a lot of controversy.
00:02:36.000We're not going to dive into everything that was said, but there was one topic in particular that I thought would be very helpful to address and to go in a little bit deeper and kind of try to figure out what it really means, where the church has gone wrong in some ways, the Protestant church, and where in some ways maybe they've got it right.
00:02:52.000And that is Christian Zionism and what it really means and if Christians even actually know what it means.
00:02:59.000So she kind of brought this term up in regard to end times eschatology, and I thought it would be a really good point of reference for us.
00:03:06.000So here, take a look at the interview with Tucker Carlson.
00:03:09.000Their belief tells them that that's okay.
00:03:11.000We want to have this Third World War because we're going to be taken away and we'll be okay and we'll come back later after all the fighting is done.
00:03:19.000That's sort of basically what their theology tells them.
00:03:22.000And in the meantime, all the Jews are supposed to convert to their brand of Christianity or die in the conflagration.
00:03:30.000And so I'm asking you this because you're a non.
00:04:14.000He is waiting very patiently, and we will dive into that.
00:04:18.000But I also wanted to play another clip from Tucker Carlson, because he's been getting a lot of flack as someone who seems to be one-sided in his reporting.
00:04:27.000You can really conduct interviews, I guess, any way that you want, But a lot of people are starting to pick up on trends with Tucker and call him out.
00:04:33.000Sometimes rightfully so, sometimes not so much.
00:04:36.000This is one that he got a lot of flag for.
00:04:37.000And at the time, I thought this was actually a very, very fair exchange.
00:04:42.000This is when he was talking with Ted Cruz, and Ted Cruz quoted Genesis 12:3 as his reason for supporting Israel.
00:04:50.000Growing up in Sunday school, I was taught from the Bible, Those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be curse.
00:04:58.000And from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of things.
00:05:01.000Of those who bless the government of Israel?
00:05:04.000Those who bless Israel is what it says.
00:05:05.000It doesn't say the government of, it says the nation of Israel.
00:07:40.000With me now, the man in darkness, shrouded in smoke, typically the Andrew Wilson.
00:07:51.000Hey, look, where can people, before we get started answering all of these questions, which I'm sure will draw zero controversy from the internet, where can people find you and support you?
00:08:01.000Yeah, you can find me on YouTube on the Crucible.
00:08:05.000Pretty easy, just type in the Crucible and you'll see my content pop right up.
00:08:09.000You can find me on Twitter at PaleoChristCon.
00:08:12.000You can find me over at Rumble where I'm going to start doing the extravaganza again this week starting at, I believe, the 5 p.mm.
00:08:30.000I'm not sure who you're paying for that, but you know, slide me a number.
00:08:34.000It would be great if our content was like that.
00:08:36.000Okay, so you saw the two different clips and they're two different pointing off points, but I wanted to kind of expand upon a conversation that you and I have had in very kind of brief detail, right?
00:08:48.000We you and I talk every now and then when these issues come up.
00:08:51.000Maybe sometimes you'll chime in to an ex post that I make or vice versa, and then we'll text or something like that.
00:08:57.000And what I have seen as a Protestant is that there is this really, I guess, bad theology that's floating around there about the state of Israel.
00:09:07.000And whenever I bring that up, whenever I try to have some clarification, I immediately get labeled a Nazi, which is really funny because the day before I'm a Sionist shill, which is really hard to do, but I take the hats off and get the checks wherever I can get them, I guess.
00:09:22.000And I just kept thinking to myself, there must be a better way to have these conversations.
00:09:26.000There must be a better way to try and figure out where the truth actually lies instead of all this extreme rhetoric and all the people just saying everything that Israel does is completely fine and everything that they do is absolutely horrible.
00:09:38.000And they're trying to completely subjugate every other government on the planet and everything else.
00:09:41.000And I'm just like, God, we're not getting anywhere with this.
00:09:44.000And I've just historically seen it not work out well.
00:09:47.000And one of the things I wanted to put to bed for Christians was what Christian Zionism actually is and what the Bible actually says about it.
00:09:53.000But you actually posed a really good starting point right before that.
00:09:58.000And that's kind of the crux of the whole issue is that does Israel actually protect Jews or that having the modern state of Israel or does that put them at more risk?
00:10:23.000He's converting over to orthodoxy, I guess at some point, catechumen now, where we did this debate on Christian Zionism and went through all of this.
00:10:32.000So the first thing to point out is the reason that you have so much trouble having this conversation at all is because of organizations like Kofi, which have their tendrils in everything trying to make sure that all Protestant apologetics revolve around the Ted Cruz framing there.
00:10:52.000The Ted Cruz framing being that Christians have this kind of moral ought to support the modern state of Israel when in fact we don't.
00:11:01.000So tell people that Kofi, that's John Hagee, right?
00:11:04.000That's his organization that he leads.
00:11:36.000And I would rather stay on the idea, I think where this begins is with eschatology.
00:11:42.000Now, Gerald and I kind of have a fundamental disagreement here, but I guess before we dive into that, why do you think eschatology is not kind of the crux?
00:11:50.000Because now you've got to I do, I do, you've got to bring it back.
00:11:53.000So I think there's just a fundamental misunderstanding from the views that I have seen.
00:11:59.000So I, as a Christian, don't believe that what she said, Mother, is it agapia, agapia?
00:12:06.000I don't want to mispronounce it, be insensitive, but the agapia, I believe.
00:12:42.000They are, they're around the same time frame.
00:12:44.000They are eschatology, but you can believe in no rapture at all.
00:12:49.000and still believe in the millennial kingdom, right?
00:12:50.000So I didn't understand why she pivoted.
00:12:52.000So one I was like, well, that doesn't that seems like she was asked a specific question about where this comes from and she points out Derby.
00:12:58.000Well, she went to Derby after she went to the millennial kingdom and that being an heresy in the early church.
00:13:03.000And I know that that was that was said an heresy in like the three something's at one of the councils.
00:13:07.000And so I thought like, okay, well, I understand where that comes from, dispensationalism, right?
00:13:13.000So you start to see Israel in a different light, but I thought like that's not necessarily why Christians support Israel because a lot of times they point back to Genesis 12, 3 and it's completely disconnected from their eschatological views, right?
00:15:03.000They've had many people come forward over the years and say, I'm Messiah.
00:15:07.000They've not opened arms to him, including the guy that actually fulfilled all the prophecies.
00:15:11.000And I'm like, okay, I don't think they're ready to do it.
00:15:14.000So they're just moving towards the spirit of the temple.
00:15:17.000No, I think they're moving towards creating a temple.
00:15:18.000But see, I think this is where it starts to get a little muddy because I agree with you that if they named Messiah., that would be a problem.
00:15:26.000Yeah, but they're but what's the purpose of building the temple, right?
00:15:30.000It doesn't have anything to do with the Messiah to them.
00:17:23.000But what I'm saying is, I don't know if there and maybe you might have some statistics on this, but who of the Christian Zionists, who would be accelerationists and who wouldn't be, right?
00:17:33.000Because for me, when I define Christian Zionism and we can get down to that, I think I have a segment on that here in just a moment.
00:17:39.000Well, what other reason could they give?
00:18:58.000What other reason would they have for doing it?
00:19:00.000Well, no, they would think, I think Genesis 12.3, if you misinterpret Genesis 12.3 to think that you are supposed to bless the current nation state of Israel, including its government, which I think is very troubling that people would think that necessarily, that in itself is enough.
00:19:14.000Like you don't have to have any other cause.
00:20:38.000That would be the inferences that I would make there.
00:20:40.000And I think most people would make there.
00:20:42.000So what you're really saying is that God doesn't just want us to bless them, but to defend them, right?
00:20:48.000To assist them, to do all these various things, to move our power structure towards being in obedience and compliance with their power structure.
00:20:57.000That's what it essentially means by blessing them.
00:21:01.000I don't know that they believe that fully, but I'm trying to figure it out because I don't think it's, this is part of the problem.
00:21:06.000I don't think it's very well defined on their side.
00:21:08.000I don't think they could very well tell you, like like, okay, well, I can come to you right now and tell you you need to give money to the temple.
00:21:15.000But if Ted Cruz is sitting there saying we need to give a bunch of money to these guys, we need to assist them in any way possible, how is it?
00:21:22.000I mean, how is that idea of blessing not moving into compliance with the wills of Israel?
00:21:27.000Who gets to determine how they're blessed, right?
00:21:30.000I think that it's going to be Israel who gets to be the determiner under Christian Zionism as to how they're blessed.
00:21:36.000Maybe because the Bible does talk about what Christians' duty to bless, and we'll talk about Christian duties towards Israel here in just a minute.
00:21:43.000And I don't want to, I don't want to step on future topics in just a second, but it does.
00:21:48.000Listen, I understand that line of thought.
00:21:50.000I think it's very rational and I think it makes sense, but I don't think it's necessary.
00:21:55.000I don't think that's where people are right now.
00:21:57.000I don't think people are thinking like, I have to align the power structure in the United States with Israel to be able to bless the people of Israel.
00:22:04.000I think most people would think, well, if I give money to the support of Israel, just to the general fund or something like that, or if we help them militarily, if they get attacked by other countries.
00:22:13.000And some people would even say the three billion dollars a year is part of what we should do.
00:22:40.000Do you agree with me that basically every six months Benjamin Netanyahu gives a big speech somewhere about how all the Jews in Israel are on the verge of annihilation.
00:24:06.000So I think he would point to that and be like, that's it.
00:24:09.000And that's the kind of eschatology that I have heard of.
00:24:13.000It's not that the Christians need to do anything.
00:24:15.000I mean, that's almost like the view of Iran.
00:24:18.000Like they have this kind of apocalyptic eschatology where the conflict around the world globally will bring back the tw back the twelfth imam, right?
00:24:25.000So that's the beginning of their eschatological book.
00:24:28.000And people were like, well, you said they're a death cult, they're going to blow themselves up.
00:24:31.000I'm like, well, no, it's not they that's going to die, it's the world being in conflict.
00:25:02.000And then when you say Zionism, would a fitting definition of Zionism, at least in modernity, and I would even argue in its inception, be that the modern nation state of Israel, you support the existence of the modern nation state of Israel, that is Zionism.
00:25:45.000Well, if you're a Christian Sionist, though, by definition, you would be a Christian who believes that the nation state of Israel needs to exist.
00:25:53.000Not only has a right to, but needs to exist.
00:25:55.000So if that's the case, if they come out and say, Hey, every few months we're about to not exist, the Iran is about to nuclear us, the Turks are going to invade, the Muslims are, you know, blowing us up in the street, the Palestinians are stabbing our children in the face, whatever it is, right?
00:26:10.000The Christian Sionist, the Christian Sionist, though.
00:26:20.000Now, I do think that that moves into the idea of eschatology, especially because I do think that they believe, Christian Zionists do believe that it's through this support that they're going to be blessed from God and that these things are necessary for the end times to come about.
00:26:39.000And I do think that they're trying to accelerate the end times.
00:26:42.000I think that the whole point of searching out these red heifers and doing all these things is for the purposes of the acceleration project.
00:27:15.000If they don't have that, they can't really build it.
00:27:17.000But I would say that none of this necessarily, and I really mean that, none of this necessarily means that Christians are trying to be accelerationists.
00:27:26.000Again, that's a very new thing for me to be Christians.
00:27:31.000Christian Zionists, I think that their only justification if I were to walk them through this logically, and I can tell you why I think this when I asked my debate oppononent in this debate, I said, so even if it's the case that one third of the nation currently supports movement towards Antichrist, we should support him.
00:27:51.000Because there's a preconditional there.
00:27:52.000These things need to happen for for, and Charlie Kirk, by the way, has said this openly, these events prophetically need to happen for the end times to be ushered in anyway.
00:28:03.000Well, but Charlie Kirk, I do think there's an accelerationist agenda.
00:28:06.000Sorry, I didn't mean to talk over you, but just because those events need to happen doesn't mean that I'm the one that's going to make them happen.
00:28:16.000But I would have said probably more so specifically at two churches ago.
00:28:23.000There was a church that I went to where I ran into this quite a bit.
00:28:26.000They support Israel even with, you know, people kind of splintering off and man, if you haven't had a prayer shawl and you haven't done these things, you really have never connected to God.
00:28:34.000And I'm like, well, hold on, let's talk about this a little bit because that's not really scriptural.
00:28:38.000I don't understand what you're talking about.
00:28:39.000But I would have said, I would have said what Ted Cruz said, Those that bless Israel will be blessed.
00:28:43.000Those that curse Israel will be cursed.
00:29:40.000What would your answer have been from that, Gerald?
00:29:42.000Well, if someone had told me, because at the time I was very, very into studying Eschatology because I was, I was specifically teaching a class called The Christian's Response to Islam.
00:29:52.000And I was teaching how Islamic Eschatology and Christian Eschatology are actually incredible in that they overlap and they're exactly inverse, right?
00:29:59.000With the characters and their attributes and everything else.
00:30:02.000I would never have said that I thought that this would have been a push towards Antichrist.
00:30:07.000Supporting Israel would have necessarily meant that I was supporting a push towards Antichrist.
00:30:11.000I still don't believe that that's necessarily the case either because I don't think it is I don't think it is absolute that my support for Israel is going to push them to name a false Messiah.
00:30:23.000I see it as something that God has commanded me to do.
00:30:26.000So when I pray for the peace of Jerusalem as commanded in the Psalms or if I pray or if I live my life in such a way as Romans 11 says when Paul is telling you like make them jealous of who that's supporting Israel in my mind.
00:30:37.000It's not a financial thing and it's not pushing for any Antichrist or Temple or anything that can be misconstrued.
00:30:43.000So at that time, I probably would have told you like pushing for Antichrist or we pray for any other group other group that's moving towards Antichrist?
00:30:50.000I would pray for every single other group that's moving towards Antichrist.
00:31:09.000I mean, God is not done with Israel is a very kind of vague term.
00:31:14.000And I've said it a number of times and I don't exactly, I haven't dived to the depths of what that exactly means.
00:31:19.000But my belief is that there's a reason that and this is where maybe we would disagree on eschatology.
00:31:26.000Is it safe to say that you probably hold more of an orthodox position on eschatology that most of the book of Revelation has been completed up to about the twentieth chapter or so?
00:31:35.000Well, look, I'm not a specialist in orthodox eschatology.
00:31:43.000The thing is, though, what I will say is this, and you can, there's people I would recommend actually to have discussions on eschatology.
00:31:53.000The things that I mostly focus on these days are mostly church history and the ideas that, especially now in the last year, have become very politically relevant to dive into what's going on with what church fathers said about who Israel is, who the people are of Israel are, what Christianity means, what our obligations are, especially when it comes to other nations, including any perceived Jewish nation, right?
00:32:18.000And no one anywhere in church history can you find anyone, any Christians anywhere talking about how if Jews establish a nation, then that's what Israel is.
00:32:28.000They always considered Israel to be us.
00:32:31.000We are the spiritual continuation, right?
00:32:43.000Like that's, so listen, I'm telling you, I had this, so people that have pitched replacement theology as this word, I think have done a very effective job because there are a lot of people that think the Jews are responsible for every single ill that the world has ever heard of that would use replacement theology as, yes, the church replaced Israel to mean that God does not have any future plan to the Jews at all and that they were never special.
00:33:42.000That's a little bit more complicated because that's harder, right?
00:33:44.000Yeah, it's way more, way more complicated because by the numbers, I believe more of the Palestinians that live there have more Jewish blood than maybe some of the Askenazi Jews or anyone else that might claim to be the Jews of that land.
00:34:34.000God promises his name shall be made great among the Gentiles who across the world will offer incense, the pure sacrifice to him, the church is the fulfillment of that sacrifice.
00:34:57.000Yeah, but the but the but the idea here is this, Kofi will always be running, and so will probably Mossad, Israeli intelligence, everyone else will probably always be running counterpropaganda against both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Church because And only half of them deserve it, and we know which one.
00:35:20.000follow this Protestant form of theology.
00:35:23.000And this nun was completely correct when she pointed this out.
00:35:28.000We don't follow that form of theology.
00:35:30.000And so that is an existential threat to places like Kufi, as you see these traditional churches beginning to gain a lot of ground in the United States.
00:35:38.000Their percentages are beginning to increase.
00:35:41.000And as kind of support wanes for Israel, you're going to see a lot more of the kind of the megalopower preachers preaching more of this type of gospel.
00:35:51.000Because if they can't bamboozle you into support through victimhood, they're going to try to to bambooze you into supporting through your theology.
00:36:00.000And that's what's actually going on, I think.
00:36:02.000Yeah, and look, I don't feel like this is the driving, this might get me in trouble.
00:36:09.000I don't feel like this is the driving kind of problem with dispensationalism that a lot of people do.
00:36:20.000Okay, so I didn't think so, but I think that's why a strong piece of bad theology has a tendril which destroys all the branches of theology.
00:36:28.000So that's why having a strong root leads to good theological branches.
00:36:33.000Bad roots have bad theological branches because you have to reinvent the truth.
00:36:36.000You can get further and further away from the truth very easily.
00:36:41.000So in dispensationalism, that's a topic for another time.
00:36:44.000But I imagine that I would have grown up in fairly dispensational churches.
00:36:50.000But I was never guilted into giving to Israel.
00:36:53.000I was never guilted into supporting Israel.
00:36:55.000We never had Kufi representatives in any of the churches that I went to.
00:36:59.000And I was very heavily involved in some of these churches, some very big kind of mega churches by a lot of people's standards.
00:37:04.000But what I hope the audience so far, what I hope you guys have gotten is it's okay to talk about what the Bible actually says.
00:37:14.000It what Scripture says, but when you immediately go from, you know, someone like Ted Cruz, like, if you're just making an honest argument, well, I thought that Genesis 12:3 said that if I bless Israel that I'll be blessed.
00:37:30.000It's okay to correct and be like, actually, it's saying that if you bless Abraham and his descendants, and okay, let's look to the New Testament to see.
00:37:37.000Very Protestant point of view here, I know.
00:37:39.000I'm not going to look to tradition as much, though I don't hold tradition as worthless.
00:38:04.000But if you go and if you don't have that conversation with someone and you immediately go to the synagogue of Satan, Revelation argument, that's like, well, okay, well, like, you're not going to convert anyone that way because aren't theoretically to some degree, everyone who denies Christ a part of the synagogue of Satan?
00:38:21.000Essentially, they may have a different branch that they got to it, but the root is Satan, right?
00:38:25.000And it may be the atheistic branch or it may be the, you know, I'm going to adhere to only the Old Testament Judaism branch or whatever.
00:39:01.000And by the way, for women, there's like a bit more support on just all female polls for abortion than against, right?
00:39:08.000So you have to offset this with Christianity.
00:39:11.000So whenever these different places can politicize the religion and point to it as a you ought to do this thing and just so happens to coincide with exactly what I politically desire, right?
00:39:25.000You've got to be somewhat wary about that.
00:39:27.000And in this case, I see that the government of Israel has spent millions of dollars canaling to the Temple Institute that Kufi has used back channels and this is publicly available information.
00:39:39.000Though it's very difficult to prove how much they've sent, it's very clear that Kufi has sent tons and tons of money, which has ended up in the hands of the Israeli government.
00:39:50.000Again, I don't think that these things are even particularly controversial to say.
00:39:55.000The thing that is, the thing that is, though, controversial to say is to say this, that as a Christian, you have zero moral ought whatsoever to support a nation state, an ethnonationalist Jewish nation state, because they take the name Israel.
00:40:24.000And the whole thing is a word concept fallacy.
00:40:27.000You can't really think that Genesis is referencing the modern nation state and its current government with Benjamin Netanyahu at the head of it.
00:40:34.000There's no way there's no way to draw these parallels unless you're just really not paying attention.
00:40:38.000Yeah, and that's that's the it's so obvious.
00:40:42.000Like this is the part of the debate that's so obvious that I wanted to correct it early, right?
00:40:46.000Where people are having this conversation online, I'm like, we need to move past like the basics.
00:40:49.000The basics are Israel is not and Ted Cruz couldn't answer this.
00:40:53.000And Ted Cruz was, you know, when he said in that interview that he wanted to be the staunchest ally in the United States government for the state of Israel and I'm very loosely parafrasing, I got really close.
00:41:17.000But I do I do think that they're connected.
00:41:20.000I wanted to hold on, don't do real, but I think that's I think that's the problem that we have.
00:41:25.000That's and that's why I use that clip because I'm like, this highlights the issue right here.
00:41:29.000We can't have a basic conversation about this because Tucker is rightly pointing out and by asking questions maybe at this point that are a little sarcastic because they've been going at each other for a little bit.
00:41:38.000This is like fifty minutes into the interview and Ted couldn't answer them.
00:41:56.000You know, it's not like the borders that are drawn here.
00:41:58.000It really is the people of God wherever they happen to be.
00:42:01.000So, for example, and I think this is the point that you're making, if after World War two, instead of the Jews fighting for a homeland in Palestine, uh, or that region, if they decided to go to New Jersey instead and set up like their own thing in New Jersey, and the United States government did it like the Indian Reservation said, here's some land, here's some sovereignty, then we would call that Israel to a degree.
00:42:23.000We would be like, that's the people of God.
00:42:25.000that the Bible is talking about, not a nation state, not a border, not even a name.
00:42:28.000They can call themselves something else, New Israel.
00:42:30.000I don't know, you know, like whatever it is.
00:42:33.000And I think that's the point that a lot of people don't understand.
00:42:35.000And it certainly had nothing to do with the political leaders.
00:42:38.000For example, if Israel tomorrow, Netanyahu decided to nuclear Paris, are we supposed to support that as Christians?
00:43:14.000The idea, the idea here was that Israel itself needed to be established as a nation, uh, because of the atrocities that happened during World War II and the Holocaust.
00:43:24.000And prior, in order to protect, and prior, in order to protect, uh, this group from future persecutions which may happen to them.
00:43:36.000I've never actually heard anyone make an objective case for how Israel has done anything to protect Jews.
00:43:44.000And I went back and I looked as a reference point before we had this conversation at some of the early congresses.
00:43:52.000And one objection that came up, which was interesting, a guy objected and said, look, Western nations are really starting to accept us now.
00:44:14.000And then of course you have Western Europe that has tons and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
00:44:19.000But the idea here that he was saying was actually, I think if you wanted to put all the Jews in one spot, right?
00:44:26.000And it's established as sovereign that we're going to end up having to have to be a protectorate.
00:44:32.000We're going to have to have protectors for us, you know, in these places whereas if they stayed in the Western nations rather than congregating into a Jewish state, the Western nations have always prioritized their security just like all of their citizens, right?
00:44:45.000So the United States prioritizes their security as much as they prioritize mine, prioritize the security in England as much as they do their citizens, France, et cetera, et cetera.
00:44:55.000Why is it that this nation state actually makes Jewish people safer?
00:45:01.000And that's not a question that I think is easily answered and that leads to a lot of this stuff as well.
00:45:06.000I think a lot of the because God tells us we have to bless them is cope because they can't create a justification for how this state has actually protected Jews.
00:45:24.000Well, I think today it's easier to make because I think you're right.
00:45:27.000There is a lot more acceptance and there are a lot more options for Jews today to be able to go to different countries.
00:45:34.000And I will let me just kind of lay this case out for you.
00:45:37.000So I did some, some research on this because I thought it was an interesting question that you posed.
00:45:41.000And I don't know that it's a question that I really gave a lot of thought to before.
00:45:44.000I've done a significant amount of research in the last month on this topic of the Jews and pre 1948 Jews.
00:45:54.000And I don't know if you're like this, where some, like, you get on a topic like this and you just watch every movie that you can watch, you read every book, you listen to every podcast, like everything that you can try to find to just kind of ingest information.
00:46:05.000And so sometimes you have to weed stuff out.
00:46:06.000But since 1948, I looked up there, the murder of Jews nation, not nationwide, sorry, worldwide has been approximately 25,000 due to pogrom style or like terrorist attacks right since the inception of the state.
00:46:21.000Just in the Ukraine pogroms in 1918 and 1921, 50,000 to 100,000 Jews were killed.
00:46:27.000So get rid of the Holocaust so there's no debate there, because I know there's a lot of people that debate numbers and I don't want to get into that.
00:46:32.000I'm not saying you do, I'm saying I know a lot of people watching this would, so just based on the numbers alone and the search that I did went back to 1848.
00:46:41.000I tried to I tried to do some kind of a comparison and I went like now Gerald, but that's not the only metric so I agree that now do American black people.
00:46:49.000American black people, how many black people were killed?
00:46:52.000Yeah, well, how many black people, traditionally?
00:46:55.000were persecuted just within the United States and various states as compared to right now, even though black people don't have an official state.
00:47:05.000So isn't it actually the case that what's going on is that as time has progressed and tolerance has progressed along with, you know, our views in science and how humans interact with each other, the views of technology with correspondence of different races and culture, that people have become more tolerant towards other groups other than their own.
00:47:37.000Can you honestly say that you think that Jewish persecution would have risen or fallen?
00:47:44.000Because I would just argue that based on every other objective metric I can see in the West for every other race and group, that it still would have drastically decreased.
00:48:15.000That's why I asked you when you're making the argument.
00:48:16.000If you're making the argument today, it supposed it presupposes that Israel exists and all the impacts of Israel existing and having relations with 160 countries and being a UN recognized country has happened, right?
00:48:27.000And I think that's part of, honestly, what has led Israel to be, at least have more options, right?
00:48:34.000So my argument would be, yeah, I think generally speaking, you can make a pretty good case that we have become more tolerant, especially in the United States.
00:48:57.000But can you bet on that when you're trying to figure out what to do in the early 1900s and you're living through the pogroms that are happening not just in Russia and Ukraine, but are happening in Poland and in France and in all these different countries and you're a Jew going, what the hell did you do?
00:49:29.000Then most, yeah, there is because most of them must not have thought that their safety was nearly as much in jeopardy as you seem to claim.
00:49:36.000I don't think so because at the time they seem to I mean, obviously it's not, they're not a monolith, right?
00:49:41.000If you're successful and you're in another country.
00:49:43.000So really what happened in the 1920s right after the freaking Ukraine pogroms right after pogroms, the 50 to 100,000, some some estimates are a little higher than that, but it was a Jewish website and I didn't want to be called a Zionist again.
00:49:57.000Well, whatever the numbers are, but right after that, you have people all of a sudden doing financially better because of the roaring twenties, right?
00:50:07.000Right after that, you got the First World War out of the way, people are doing financially better, people have better things to do than worry about who's to blame for their problems.
00:50:16.000Then things start to go south again and all of a sudden you've got people looking for someone to blame for their problems.
00:50:22.000There were tons of people who were doing well off that could stay where they were and thought it was better to do that.
00:50:27.000You're right, there was a lot, there was a lot of agreement on people staying where they were, but there were a lot of people pushing and fighting to create a homeland to some place where they could seek refuge in.
00:50:33.000So I don't think that would be dismissed.
00:50:45.000I would, I would say somewhere around, uh, ten percent.
00:50:47.000were really pushing towards this idea who were indoctrinated towards it by early Sionist leaders.
00:50:54.000And the thing is, if it was really, like, in a negative way or Yeah, oh yeah, it was all well, there was tons of propaganda from the Jewish Congresses.
00:51:02.000There was tons and tons of propaganda.
00:51:04.000There were books, whole books written about No, for sure, but they they wanted a homeland.
00:51:08.000That's not, that's not a bad thing, right?
00:51:10.000I'm not saying no, no, no, I'm not saying that.
00:51:12.000I'm not saying whether or not sovereign peoples have the ability on land which they acquire through whatever means they acquired it to have rights to that land.
00:51:24.000I guess my only dispute here is whether or not the land itself has done much to increase the security for Jews globally, which is what the Sionists promised us it would do, and what Christian Sionists still to this day demand that Israel be kind of raised up and whatever we need to do to make sure that they're doing well because that is a safe haven against the potential of future atrocities towards the Jewish people.
00:51:51.000I would just argue that that vision was not realized, that the nation state of Israel did not actually do anything to protect Jews globally, nothing.
00:52:02.000Well, and I rather it was just the march of progress of technologies and opening up the various spaces of communication between people groups, which began to erode many of those ancient prejudices.
00:52:17.000I hope the march of progress is the thing that we can point to, because if I were Jewish and I had grandparents that lived through some of the things that happened to Jews out of nowhere, like literally out of nowhere, like one day you've got a shop and maybe you're not the most popular person in town, but you're certainly not a pariah worthy of being dragged out in the streets and beaten to death, and the next day all of a sudden you are.
00:52:40.000Like the calculus for me would be a lot different.
00:52:42.000And I agree with you that not everyone felt that way because not everyone lived that experience, right?
00:52:47.000So I can't say that Jews in the United States experienced that, though they certainly did experience a ton of anti Semitism here in the United States and a ton of mistreatment here in the United States.
00:53:00.000I'm just pointing out that we can look at other people groups in almost every European nation and inside all of what you would consider the Western nations.
00:53:19.000and in Canada with the treatment of the natives there.
00:53:22.000You can look everywhere and see that the tolerance when it comes to the persecution of these various races and things like this was already on the turn by the mid forties.
00:53:34.000I mean, you have to remember that the military was already beginning its march towards desegregation inside the army inside World War two.
00:53:43.000So the idea also in Europe, you had under Mussolini, they were allowing miscegenation that was basically unheard of and they were allowing miscegenation all through Italy.
00:53:53.000So these types of things when it came to persecution.
00:53:56.000The barriers were already breaking down before there was ever an established state for Jews anyway.
00:54:03.000So I would just argue that we can look around at other marginalized peoples, right, if you want to call them that, and say, okay, you went through horrific experiences also.
00:54:12.000There was no nation state for your people to flee to.
00:54:15.000And yet still, it seems that many of these groups are far less marginalized or persecuted than they were once upon a time.
00:54:24.000So I'm not so sure how Israel did much for that.
00:54:27.000It seemed to put all or tons of Jews in one spot, and then that spot's just open for endless attack.
00:54:47.000So I understand the point and I'm not comparing Jews to pedophiles, by the way.
00:54:50.000Gosh, that's just going to set some people on fire, I know.
00:54:53.000And I understand that each group is going to have a different subset of experiences.
00:54:57.000Now, when you're playing the Olympics of Opression, right, I know that various groups are always going to say, I was more oppressed than this group, I was more oppressed than that group, et cetera, et cetera.
00:55:06.000But to discount the fact that there's the human experience is filled with two thousand years of this group oppressing this group, this group oppressing that group, et cetera, et cetera.
00:55:17.000And it's going to end up being that way.
00:55:19.000We're always going to match up tribe versus tribe.
00:55:22.000That just seems to be part of the human experience.
00:55:24.000But I would just argue that even before the state was established as a nation, it was very clear that many of these traditional prejudices were already beginning to break down as technology advanced and people groups were able to intersect with each other much more often.
00:55:40.000I don't I don't disagree outside of the experience of Jews in Europe, specifically.
00:55:45.000I think the Jews in Europe, what they were experiencing was a tightening and something that they probably never in their wildest dreams thought was going to happen.
00:55:55.000specifically in Germany, then Czechoslovakia, then Poland, then moving on, right?
00:56:00.000It was almost like a savior day when Russia comes in and kicks the Germans out, which should never be the case, right?
00:56:05.000But so that's, I guess, that's my point.
00:56:10.000I understand where you're coming from.
00:56:11.000I do think the technology, I do think that other factors over the years have made it to where we are much more tolerant.
00:56:19.000But if you are a Jew in the early part of the 20th century and you're trying to figure out how to live life and you're starting to see these things happen, I understand why you would want a place of refuge.
00:56:31.000Because people are taking them in., including the United States.
00:56:46.000They also trying to say, like, look, we have homes and families and we've been established in some of these areas for several hundred years and we don't want to uproot and go.
00:56:58.000And we think that this will cause a brand new wave of anti Semitism where people can draw all their ire on a single place and then attack it.
00:57:13.000The very same nations which people would claim were the biggest persecutors are actually the very nations which are providing all the security for the State of Israel.
00:57:24.000So it's like, how would they not have been safe just staying in those nations?
00:57:28.000Well, no, at the time that's not foreseeable is my point.
00:57:31.000Like, you can't look to the future and see that all of a sudden, I mean, maybe you could predict that Britain would, you certainly couldn't predict that France would, and you certainly couldn't even predict that Britain would, because at the time, whenever the Balfour Declaration was, I mean, I know that's a lot earlier, but let's say this, they set up the state, like they were attacking the British to get them the hell out of there.
00:57:58.000I mean, I disagree, but they were getting them from Western nations.
00:58:00.000And the thing is, it's so funny, it's like the very same nations which they, which, which Jews fled out of in order to move into the nation of Israel are the very same nations that they are banking on right this second.
00:58:16.000Yeah, but they weren't worried about France and Britain.
00:58:18.000They were worried about Germany and Italy.
00:58:21.000They were worried about those people coming after them.
00:58:27.000That's one of the major kind of problems with what happened up to the Holocaust was that so many Hungarian and Polish Jews didn't perceive the threat.
00:59:02.000The only problem is that the argument has a double edge, which is if you can't determine the future for security inside of the nation states you're in and perceive that they'll lighten up against your people group, there's no reason for you to assume that they would lighten up against a state.
00:59:17.000Well, okay, so moving into this state, you would think would put a massive target on your back.
00:59:23.000And how would you defend the state, right?
00:59:44.000Like, I'm like, all right, I'm just going to go for it.
00:59:45.000But I do believe that you're correct in that the Jews had a very, very good strategy early on to get support from other countries, specifically Britain and the United States, but also other countries around the world to a lesser degree.
00:59:57.000And that was one of their main goals is to make sure that Jews in those countries would put pressure.
01:00:01.000In fact, that was one of the levering tools that they used against the British, don't make me make the Jews rise up against you in these other countries and you lose support in this war.
01:00:23.000There's no way we should be able to defeat them.
01:00:25.000And by the way, the only way we can possibly win this war is if we get the Native Americans to some degree on our side and the French to come over here with some ships and blow things up.
01:00:34.000So I don't look at Israel as being some kind of this unique case in that regard.
01:00:37.000And the prosecutor is not disputing that.
01:00:40.000I agree with you that if the idea here is just to say whether or not sovereign peoples are allowed to create states and they don't need to give endless justifications for their state, then I agree.
01:00:54.000But they were dependent wholly on other people and so were we to protect them.
01:00:57.000Well, like we found this may be wrong, but if I ask, it was the United there to protect this group of people, right?
01:01:08.000Did it live up to its promise of protecting that group of people?
01:01:12.000I would say in the United States, the United States definitely lived up to its promise of protecting its citizens.
01:01:17.000I don't, I just don't, I don't think you can cut that any other way.
01:01:21.000It really did live up to its promise of protecting its citizens, at least to a large degree.
01:01:26.000Did Israel, though, live up to its promise of protecting Jews, especially Jews globally?
01:01:31.000That I think you can definitely make a case against.
01:01:34.000So to steal man kind of what you're saying, you agree that the number of people murdered and the deaths.
01:01:40.000That metric would seem like it does, but maybe it's attributable to other things than having a state.
01:01:47.000Maybe the number of Jews globally murdered pre 1948 being so much higher than it is now, maybe that was attributable to something other than them having a nation state in the first place.
01:01:56.000Yes, I would I would just argue back that my guess the crux of my argument would be that I don't think that the nation state of Israel being established has reduced the number of deaths of Jews globally, but rather has likely exacerbated it over time more than the alternative.
01:02:14.000And while I agree that there was rampant persecution going on at the time of Jews, that's not even in dispupute.
01:02:20.000Along with many, many other groups, I would just point out that the reason that many of those other groups, this oppression is all but virtually gone, including in the Western nation against Jews individually.
01:02:32.000Now, I know that you get the, well, he put a fucking Nazi thing on my garage or whatever, shit, whatever, stuff like that.
01:02:39.000That's not, that's not like, oh, they lined us up and put us in front of ditches and pulled the trigger, right?
01:02:48.000Okay, we have different levels of this.
01:02:50.000So if, if that's the complaint, then it's like, well, okay, maybe you have to do something about that too.
01:02:56.000But I don't think that it's reaching these critical heights like we were, like we're discussing before.
01:03:01.000So did it live up to its idea of protecting and even right now in modernity, is it living up to the idea of protecting Jews or is it putting a target on their back globally due to what's going on with Palestine and due to what's going on with their intelligence working with MI6 and the CIA and many others, Mossad interference.
01:03:21.000American people seem to not be happy about it along with the peoples of the West.
01:03:25.000That does not seem like it's assisting with protecting Jews.
01:03:28.000So I think there's a good case to be made the other way.
01:03:32.000I mean, I I I I don't completely disagree, but I think I would lean more towards the state of Israel being a net positive for them and having an impact on that because I just throughout human history, for some reason, the Jews seem to be and it's not the oppression Olympics necessarily.
01:03:47.000It's just like, why do they keep getting singled out in these different countries historically?
01:03:56.000Are they that Jewish to some degree that they just are so off-putting to people, no matter where they happen to go, they end up being the scapegoat?
01:04:02.000I really do look at it more of a spiritual battle than anything else.
01:04:05.000Like if they are in fact God's chosen people, anybody let's just, you know, without defining who God's people are, but anybody who wears the team jersey for being a Jew, if those are God's people, then if I was Satan, of course, I would go after them as well as Christians, right?
01:04:52.000And we don't have know if I'm going to go into Gaza, but I'm glad to see that Dave Smith has come around to my point of view and he will hate that I said that, by the way.
01:05:02.000So Douglas Murray actually gave an interview and I think it was with Piers Morgan where he said, one of the main problems in this conflict is that nobody has been allowed to win.
01:05:11.000Israel obviously would win in any war against Gaza or Hezbollah or any of these.
01:05:18.000They would walk right in, completely destroy everything.
01:05:21.000And I think no matter which side of this you come down on, if you look at it objectively, Israel has taken extraordinary measures during a war to make sure they minimize civilian casualties.
01:05:32.000That doesn't mean that they have minimized civilian casualties though.
01:05:35.000Again, this is one of those places where people will immediately run to the extremes.
01:05:38.000And I'm like, listen, of course there have been crazy amounts of casualties of innocent people and I hate it.
01:06:34.000If they went in tomorrow and they butchered one third of the Palestinians, but that led to an end of all conflict with Palestinians, are you saying that that would likely be preferable to an elongation?
01:06:48.000which actually led to the cost of a lot more life if they didn't actually do that.
01:07:25.000Their infrastructure is built on the fact that they are going to wage some kind of guerrilla style warfare against these people for all time.
01:07:33.000So really what you're saying is, I want you to stop killing people in Gaza and more Jews are going to die because of it.
01:07:42.000You're not saying that on purpose, not you, but the people making that argument.
01:07:44.000You're not saying it on purpose, but that really is what it leads to.
01:07:47.000So, you know, it is preferable to me to let this be finished.
01:07:52.000Hopefully it doesn't take killing one third of the people there.
01:07:55.000I don't think that would be a very good or moral thing to do.
01:07:58.000But I hope that we can finish this war and get to a place of peace.
01:08:02.000And right now and for decades we haven't.
01:08:05.000And I don't think we ever will until someone wins.
01:08:08.000a two-state solution for me will never, ever, ever in the history of the world now and forever on work, ever.
01:09:25.000They would, uh, completely agree with this take.
01:09:28.000If it's the case that right now you can end an elongated conflict which will cost one million lives by taking two hundred fifty thousand lives right now, including one hundred thousand innocents because that will lead to six hundred thousand innocents dying over time, then you should probably do that.
01:11:29.000We'll build a camp internationally and we'll move these people out of that into that region and we will let Israel take Gaza all the way to the sea and do whatever they want with it.
01:11:38.000That's not ethnic cleansing, that's not libertarian sovereignty, not that libertarian sovereignty.
01:11:44.000The idea there that these are sovereign nations and they're utilizing to their best of their ability political leverage to create a problem for their enemies.
01:11:53.000And by the way, that's that, that's it, it's working.
01:11:56.000But I understand why you didn't want to do it in the region.
01:11:59.000And look, I hope people understand, like if you've done any research into the history of the formation of the state, you have to understand that Jews have been in that area for a long time too, and they lived in relative peace with the Arabs of the area.
01:12:18.000I do get it, but it does come down to we won, you lost.
01:12:22.000The British made promises to the Arabs to try to throw the Ottoman Empire so the Ottoman Empire couldn't fight them as effectively in World War I. They were trying to, they were struggling to have a survival of their society.
01:12:52.000If we let Israel win, if we let them push everyone out, and I feel like that's the worst case scenario, pushing everyone out, pushing every single person out.
01:12:58.000If you can't trust anyone, bulldoze everything.
01:13:01.000Israel now owns that land and we put Palestinians somewhere else in the world where they can live a life where they don't have to worry about their kids being blown up at a McDonald's.
01:13:08.000Isn't that better than the alternative that we're being presented with?
01:13:11.000And the reason I brought Dave Smith up is because when he was talking about Ukraine and Russia, he said.
01:13:16.000He said, listen, Russia came in and took some land.
01:14:09.000Well, and there's all sorts of corruption watches on it, and they get all sorts of benefits.
01:14:14.000If you were those Palestinian families and you were moved into Western nations where there were now Jews who lived inside those nations, who would you take your ire out on?
01:14:37.000And these, I think every, every one of the solutions that gets proposed has some kind of ripple effect problem.
01:14:43.000And even in my situation where I'm like, okay, just put them over in Egypt and build a camp until you can disperse them, like it doesn't mean that they're not going to come back and try to take their, you know, ancestral home back.
01:14:58.000I get ancestral homeland and maybe I'm an American and I don't have the same kind of tie to the land generationally that they do and I can't completely understand.
01:15:11.000this isn't as theological, but it does have a lot of bearing on the current situation and conversation is that people start from the wrong points.
01:15:18.000They start from either 100% supporting Israel no matter what because of Christian Zionism.
01:16:11.000Okay, what do you think about 900,000 Palestinians coming into the United States to be dispersed all over the United States?
01:16:20.000The first thing that comes to my mind is they're going to start killing Jewish citizens.
01:16:24.000That's the very first thing that I would think of is that we're importing a massive terror cell who's going to start killing Jewish citizens.
01:16:55.000So there are not a lot I mean we could just be like all right Arab nations you care about your brothers in arms right you're gonna be sending them weapons and this is you're trying to save their lives okay here's the deal in two weeks the gloves are off.
01:17:09.000We will not only tell Israel that there will be no sanctions, no anything from any international body or any country, we will encourage them to wipe Gaza off the map and start fresh with some new concrete and new ownership.
01:17:25.000These people don't care, and I'm tired of hearing the moaning of, I can't believe they're killing Gazans from those same people that won't do a damn thing to help them.
01:17:35.000That's why I'm so disgusted at the United States in World War II, during the Holocaust not taking Jews and other countries not doing it.
01:18:18.000The thing is, as far as a geopolitical thing goes, though, I don't see, again, how this actually makes Jews.
01:18:25.000When I look at the history of Israel, right, I don't actually see how the state made Jews globally safer than if I envision a world where this nation was not established as a state, right?
01:18:40.000Would there be the same kinds of even blowback on the West from various Muslims who use it as a crux of, oh, you're, you guys worship the Zionists, so they have to change a lot of things.
01:18:50.000It would change a lot of things across the board.
01:18:52.000And so I'm not actually sure that it lived up to this promise, which I guess is the crux of what we're talking about.
01:18:56.000Well, that's what it's not, what we're not saying here.
01:19:00.000For any of you who might get upset because we're having a a real conversation, right?
01:19:12.000Or that you're not allowed to set up your immigration policy, how you see fit, that you're not allowed to protect your land, how you see fit.
01:19:20.000Neither of us are saying, are saying that.
01:19:22.000All we're pointing out and arguing kind of in the nuance here is, if we envision a world where Israel itself never established as a nation, right, what would the distinction in society look like today?
01:19:34.000And the reason you introduce those hypothetical is because you can then use those to kind of launch forward and project your future.
01:19:41.000looks like, and also project on whether or not this whole experiment there was actually a great idea to begin with.
01:19:49.000And I think that those are important conversations.
01:20:33.000And I think if you had to ask either of us, we're actually praying for the salvation of all who are apart from Christ.
01:20:39.000We want all who exactly, it doesn't matter who it is, Arabs, Jews, Palestinians, Israelis.
01:20:44.000We want everyone to come to faith in Christ.
01:20:46.000And so there are a lot of issues that we need to dive deeper in like this, Andrew.
01:20:50.000Maybe we should do this a little more often and kind of talk about some of these things because I think it would be helpful for people.
01:20:55.000You and I don't line up on everything on everything, and that's fine.
01:20:58.000We have a lot of mutual respect for each other, and I think we're all trying, you and I are sorry, trying to make Christ known, make his name known in the world.
01:21:08.000Well, I enjoy these conversations, especially with Gerald, because like me, he doesn't take anything, he's not offended by having a discussion with even someone who opposes the worldview or someone who is aligned.
01:21:22.000It's just like he says, trying to get to the heart of what is true.
01:21:27.000And so I love having these discussions and I'm happy to come back anytime you'd like so we can dive into more.
01:21:32.000That sounds fantastic and you're right.
01:21:34.000I don't take offense to anything because these people call me gay all the time and that is not true.
01:21:39.000Andrew Wilson, thank you for being with us this week.