The Sunday Special with David Limbaugh, author of Jesus is Risen, about how he got his start in journalism and politics, and how he became one of the most influential men in American politics. He s also the author of the best-selling book, Jesus Is Risen. And he s a frequent guest on Fox News and CNN, and is a regular guest on the network s flagship conservative talk show, Rush Limbaugh Live. In this special, he tells the story of how he and Rush first met, how they became friends, and what it was like to be on the Supreme Court with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He also talks about why he decided to write a book, and why it s so important to him that he did so. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE on Apple Podcasts and leave us a rating and review! You can also join our FB group, and use the hashtag on that hashtag , and tag to be featured on the next episode of . Thanks for listening and share the podcast with your friends and family! Timestamps: 5:00 - How I got my start as a journalist 6:30 - How to become a writer 7:40 - How much money I earned 8:15 - Why I m a Christian 9:20 - I m not a racist 10: What does it take to be a Christian? 11:10 - I don t need to be religious 13:00 16:30 17: How I m going to win 18:15 19: What s the best thing I veered away from religion? 21:40 22:10 27:50 - My path to get a job 26:00 | How I ve always had a different path 29:30 | How to write about religion 32:40 | What s going to be the best part? 33:00 My path? 35: How do you have it? 36:00 How did I get here? 37:00 What do you think I m gonna be a better than you re gonna win? 39: What are you going to get there? 40: What would you like to see me in the future? 45:00 Is it possible? 47:00 Do you have a different point of view?
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00:01:31.000So for folks who don't know, and this means nobody knows because I haven't told the story before.
00:01:35.000The way that I got started in political commentary was at least partially due to David Limbaugh, who I met for the first time in person today.
00:01:42.000So we have been talking and corresponding for legitimately 17 years.
00:01:46.000And this is the first time we've ever met in person, actually.
00:01:49.000So the way that this started is I was writing a column for the UCLA paper.
00:01:53.000I applied to Creator Syndicate, which was your syndicator for your column.
00:01:57.000And I applied cold, and they picked me up.
00:01:59.000And then I had to get blurbs for the column so we could send it off to various newspapers.
00:03:08.000And I don't take any credit for it at all, but I just love having been present as this thing develops.
00:03:14.000Well, you should take some credit for it, because David was one of the people who, when I felt like crying because I wasn't actually progressing at the speed at which I was hoping to, David, you were always one of the people who was telling me that stick with it, everything's going to be okay, people will eventually come around.
00:03:29.000Yeah, and our mutual friend Ann Coulter wanted to get you on the Supreme Court.
00:03:34.000Okay, so let's talk about ways that the church and synagogues have screwed up.
00:03:39.000Because if you look at religious observation in the country, it's been markedly declining since the 1950s.
00:03:45.000The number of people who are affiliated with an official religion is much lower now than it used to be.
00:03:50.000People say that they are spiritual but not religious, which is the most empty phrase that I could possibly think of.
00:03:54.000It's like you get to say that you believe in God without actually having to do anything about it.
00:03:59.000But it seems to me that there are three problems, three various approaches that have been taken, all of which have their problems.
00:04:05.000Approach number one is the approach that you mentioned, which is the let's have pizza and a guitar and come to church for the pizza and the guitar.
00:04:23.000They want to know why they're here and not in a movie right now.
00:04:26.000They want to know what it is that makes church special.
00:04:28.000What it is about our 3,000 year history in Judaism and 2,000 year history in Christianity that makes it worthwhile to give up your Sunday morning when you could be out playing video games.
00:04:37.000Do you think that the churches are doing a good enough job of leaving behind that sort of soft approach?
00:04:43.000Because I think that too many of them are falling into this in an attempt to fill the pews in short order without actually getting to the root of the matter.
00:04:51.000And it worries me that, for example, a pastor, a preacher, has got to be willing to talk about sin from the pulpit.
00:05:01.000If he's afraid to turn people off, then he's doing a disservice.
00:05:05.000Now, I don't think I don't want pastors to inject politics overtly.
00:05:12.000I want them to advocate values that are consistent with the Bible and that may be consistent with conservative political values, but not do it in a political or partisan way.
00:05:25.000I just mean preach the Bible and preach Christian values.
00:05:28.000But some of them are afraid and they stay away from these issues.
00:05:32.000I visited one church where the pastor said, right after Trump won, we're going to pray for the people here who weren't in favor of Trump's...
00:05:42.000And I was so turned off by that because what about...
00:05:49.000I don't want pastors to be political conservatives or political liberals.
00:05:55.000I want them to leave all of that out and just preach the gospel, preach the Bible.
00:06:01.000But some of them are afraid to do that.
00:06:03.000And even if they do get people in the door, I think ultimately they're not going to keep them in the way that they want to keep them because they're not going to fill them with what they need.
00:06:16.000So we agree on Problem number two is something you mentioned a little bit earlier, which is a feeling that you get from a lot of people who don't have a lot of familiarity with church or maybe they do with the wrong churches when they're young.
00:06:26.000This feeling of incipient theocracy, you know, the folks who think Mike Pence is going to reinstitute the Handmaid's Tale because he's a religious person, and they think back to their youths when they had a priest or a pastor or a rabbi who used to feel very oppressive.
00:06:40.000I think it's important for, you know, religious communities to point out, look, we're here to help guide you and provide you the social fabric so that you can do the right thing, but we're not interested in grabbing the reins of government and then cramming down our version of life on you other than protecting life, liberty, and property.
00:06:56.000And while you can look at world history and say, well, they did.
00:07:01.000We did dabble a lot in theocracy and intermixing church state in that sense.
00:07:06.000But I think our framers were very clear.
00:07:09.000They wanted to prohibit the establishment of a national church.
00:07:13.000And the reason they wanted to do that is because they knew that if you have one church that's mandated, then you don't have religious liberty.
00:07:21.000They wanted religious liberty for everyone.
00:07:24.000And you can argue about whether it's ultimately about Christians and all denominations being whatever, but I don't care.
00:08:42.000It's supposed to be a much more direct relationship between people and God without this sort of intermediary cramming things down from the top.
00:08:49.000It's supposed to be a relationship between God and his children as opposed to somebody who's actually the enforcement mechanism for God from the top.
00:09:01.000And that theocracy existed in a different setting and at a different time, obviously.
00:09:06.000There are many rabbinic responses to specifically this issue because Jews have never been in control of land for a couple of thousand years up until 1947-1948 again.
00:09:14.000So then there's the third issue with church and synagogue And that is, I think, the most troublesome one for a lot of conservatives and Republicans.
00:09:26.000And it gets into some pretty dicey political territory, which is, of course, what makes this fun.
00:09:30.000I see it a lot among young people, which is the feeling that, OK, so you don't want theocracy, and you have values that you're preaching.
00:09:39.000What are you willing to say about politicians who are doing good stuff for you, but may not share your values?
00:09:45.000And this, obviously, I'm referring to President Trump.
00:09:46.000There's a lot of controversy over how the evangelical community has treated President Trump, with some people saying that the evangelical community has acted unfaithfully, in a certain sense, by green-lighting his bad behavior.
00:09:58.000Other people saying, well, you have to back him.
00:09:59.000I mean, the opposition is legitimately anti-life.
00:10:02.000I mean, not Pro-choice, but affirmatively celebrating abortion.
00:10:07.000So how do you separate out the various strands of how Trump should be treated by Christians, if they want to reach out particularly in an intellectually honest way to young people?
00:10:17.000I think that obviously it was a dilemma going in for me when I didn't support him during the primaries and there are a lot of things about him I didn't like, as you well know.
00:10:27.000I see Trump as kind of the general in a culture war and in a war for our salvation of the country.
00:10:37.000Secular salvation, I don't mean literally.
00:10:40.000I see the left as so crazy and so Antithetical to our views and our vision of America.
00:10:52.000Now, I don't like all the things he does, obviously.
00:10:56.000And I don't want to lose my credibility or intellectual honesty by defending things that he does that I don't think are right.
00:11:05.000But since he's been in office, as opposed to before, I don't see him misbehaving that much, no sexual dalliances, none of that kind of thing.
00:11:15.000He hasn't been accused of any of those kinds of things.
00:11:17.000Everything that's come up is about what has occurred prior to being in office.
00:11:22.000I think Trump, one of the reasons I was for Cruz and not for Trump originally, I didn't believe he was a conservative.
00:11:30.000And I think I was rational in believing that when you look at his past.
00:11:33.000I don't believe I'm selling out by now saying I'm supporting the fact, the welcome fact that he has changed, at least he's changed in terms of his policies.
00:11:43.000What we anticipated and what he's doing.
00:11:45.000He's governing for the most part as a conservative.
00:11:52.000Yeah, I don't like the tone of some of them, obviously, and you've mentioned some of them, I won't even say it, but I do like the fact that he's fighting.
00:11:59.000See, I think one of the reasons we have this problem, Trump is a symptom of, to me, we have a perception that the Republican Party wasn't fighting, that they were squishes, that they wouldn't ever fight Obama on budget battles, that they're always catering.
00:12:14.000Every time there's a compromise between Republicans and Democrats, The, the ball of socialism is marched a little bit incrementally down the field.
00:12:23.000You never see it go the other way when there's a compromise.
00:12:26.000It's only when we win and we force it down their throats.
00:12:29.000I mean, not force it, but we do it democratically.
00:13:48.000But I don't, I just don't take, see Trump as some sinister guy.
00:13:52.000I think he's really working for the good of America.
00:13:55.000And I mean, I really, of all the things he believes, I really believe he loves America.
00:13:59.000And, and I don't see a lot of evil in him.
00:14:02.000And I think as a Christian, I have a duty to support him because he's the guy that's standing in the way of, he's standing athwart the advance of leftism.
00:14:11.000Okay, so I want to ask you in a second about the response to that.
00:14:14.000And this is coming from somebody who said I'm much more likely now to support him than I was in 2016.
00:14:18.000But first, I want to talk to you about your Second Amendment rights.
00:15:31.000So the response to that, particularly when you talk to young people, is that some of the language that you're using to describe President Trump is pretty flattering.
00:15:39.000So you say that he's the general in the culture war, for example, or that you think that he's doing what's best for the country.
00:15:45.000And the other way of saying it, sort of the other side of the coin is...
00:16:24.000He's going to soul suck the Republican Party.
00:16:26.000I think he hasn't really done that to too much of an extent.
00:16:29.000But when you say to young people, particularly, that he is a The feeling that he's a great leader, or that he's a good man, or that he's even a decent fellow.
00:16:41.000I don't think that he's a particularly decent fellow.
00:16:43.000I wouldn't want him as a business partner.
00:16:46.000I wouldn't want him around my wife, unsupervised.
00:16:50.000But as a vehicle for my political viewpoint, which is a reflection of my values, I would certainly prefer him in the White House, too.
00:16:59.000To Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat that they are willing to run at this point or probably in the near future.
00:17:06.000So with that being the case, you know, we're both coming at it from the perspective of people who are going to vote for Trump in 2020.
00:17:12.000But I do wonder if it undercuts the message of people who are value centric to lead with the, like, to what extent do you feel the need to defend Trump as a human as opposed to defending your vote for Trump as a politician?
00:17:28.000Well, it depends on the charge against him.
00:17:33.000I think the facts ought to speak for themselves on a case-by-case basis.
00:17:37.000I do believe that he has become more conservative, substantively.
00:18:42.000But I might give him some slack on things that I don't take him that seriously about.
00:18:47.000So, if he says, I want to wrestle somebody to the floor, or he talks about it, I don't want him to curse in public, obviously.
00:18:55.000But, if he's combative, that doesn't bother me.
00:18:57.000I want him to be combative, because that's what we've missed, and that's why the base is so, that's why there's a rallying around him, because they see, I really believe this, that the conservatives thought, the Tea Party thought, that we weren't, that there were no leaders standing up for our values, and our ideas.
00:19:18.000I'm probably as idealistic as you are.
00:19:21.000I consider myself a constitutional conservative.
00:19:23.000I was for Ted Cruz because I saw him as the vintage, pure constitutional conservative.
00:19:31.000I know Trump isn't that, and he isn't the kind of guy that can give me goosebumps about someone who will read constitutional law and all that.
00:19:40.000And I didn't agree with these people who I argued with during the primaries that we need somebody who's going to come in and break everything to fix it.
00:19:48.000Because I believe what we needed to do was return to our principles, our constitutional principles.
00:19:53.000But since he's been in office, I've had a rethinking even of that.
00:19:59.000I've come to believe, and it may be rationalization, I don't know.
00:20:04.000I've come to believe that we did need somebody to really shake things up because I see, if Ted Cruz had come in, and I still love Ted and I'm friends with him, I don't know that the country would have allowed him to do what Trump has done.
00:20:15.000Trump is so unorthodox, whether you give him credit for it, just say that his nature as being so unorthodox has resulted in some things really happening.
00:20:25.000I don't agree with the people who have now analyzed it.
00:20:28.000I think they got it right for the wrong reasons.
00:20:30.000But I think in retrospect, they were right, that we needed to have things just broken, not our system.
00:20:37.000And you're going to say, well, not you, but I say to myself, then how do we restore the purity of our system and the constitutionality and all that stuff?
00:20:47.000Well, I think we can look to him as honoring the Constitution.
00:20:50.000I don't agree with the people who say he's so authoritarian.
00:20:52.000Yeah, he likes Putin because Putin liked him.
00:20:55.000He might admire tough guys, but he's not doing anything that's a threat.
00:21:00.000In fact, the only thing he really did, the only executive order that he ever did that I thought was blatantly unconstitutional was when he reversed himself at the pressure of liberals on the border thing.
00:21:12.000Now, there are probably other examples.
00:22:00.000So where do you think that the shaking things up has really benefited the country and the conservative movement?
00:22:06.000When I say, I don't want to make the statement that he could have done it better than Cruz in the sense of Uh, I don't mean he would have advocated better.
00:22:16.000I just think because of his personality and his charisma, he's able to get things done that Ted might not.
00:22:22.000Ted, they had so demonized Cruz, uh, that they, I think they would have neutered him politically.
00:22:28.000I don't think he would have backed down one bit.
00:22:30.000I just don't think he would have, and I don't want to say he might, he's the one exception.
00:22:35.000I don't want to say anything negative about him.
00:22:37.000Uh, cause I don't regret my support for him.
00:23:27.000My theory is that no one showed up to vote for Hillary Clinton.
00:23:29.000My evidence for that is that he won fewer votes in Wisconsin than Mitt Romney did, Trump did, and won the state.
00:23:34.000Hillary Clinton lost the state because no one likes Hillary Clinton.
00:23:36.000And the dirty little secret of 2016 is that it was not, in fact, a referendum on President Trump.
00:23:40.000It was a referendum on the worst candidate in the history of the Republic who everyone despised, including Democrats who voted for Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders in the primaries.
00:23:47.000So 2018 comes around and we get shellacked.
00:23:50.000I mean, it looks now like we're going to lose 40 seats when all is said and done in the House, which is a shellacking.
00:24:12.000I'm not optimistic, but I'm not pessimistic.
00:24:15.000I thought we were gonna make it closer in the House, but I don't think we got shellacked in historical, from a historical perspective, but we lost way worse than we wanted to, and that looked like we were going to before.
00:24:29.000I do think that Trump has something that other people didn't have that contributed that contributed to his victory.
00:24:34.000He can really rally his base, like nobody I've ever seen.
00:24:39.000He came to Cape Girardeau for the Hawley rally, and you can't believe the way he energizes people.
00:24:46.000He gives a good stump speech and gets people motivated.
00:24:51.000We've talked about whether Not we've talked about, but I've been reading.
00:24:55.000Trump can do this with his base, but he has to go beyond his base.
00:24:58.000I think Newt just says, and nobody can deny Newt Gingrich's brilliance, and especially as a strategist, if he really gets the base multi-hyper expanded, we will win anyway.
00:25:13.000But I believe, again, that what the left will probably do in the next two years will reveal them more and more for How unreasonable they are and how extreme they are.
00:25:25.000They might get smart and not be extreme.
00:25:27.000But we, Trump, we have to have a good economy.
00:25:33.000He was and he wasn't running in this election.
00:25:35.000But these elections weren't nationalized.
00:25:38.000And the presidential election will be, obviously, by definition.
00:25:43.000And they're all voting for one candidate versus the other, as opposed to 450, 435 different districts.
00:25:51.000I think that he has a very good chance of winning, but it depends on... I saw Steve Dace write a column the other day saying, I'll tell you right now whether Trump's going to win.
00:26:01.000It's whether the Democrats put up somebody likable.
00:26:04.000If they put up somebody that's not likable, he'll win.
00:26:17.000But I think that the economy is going to make a big difference, and who the Democrats put up, obviously.
00:26:24.000But I don't think likability is all there is to it.
00:26:27.000These people who purported to know what was going to happen a year out, to me that's just folly.
00:26:33.000Things can change overnight, and we've seen it literally change overnight.
00:26:38.000I think we've got to do much better messaging going forward.
00:26:43.000And Trump has, I wish there was a way that Trump, you could have the good Trump without the bad Trump.
00:26:48.000When I say the bad Trump, I'm talking about the shooting himself in the foot on certain of his tweets.
00:26:53.000And, but, but I like a lot of his tweets.
00:26:56.000He can, like I say, he could be combative without being personal.
00:26:59.000I mean, he can even be personal as long as he isn't.
00:27:02.000Um, rude and insulting in ways that he shouldn't be.
00:27:06.000I mean, I've, I've suggested that we actually create a fake Twitter app and we put it on his phone and then we can actually screen his tweets.
00:27:12.000He thinks that it's real feedback and then he goes around the rest of the day all happy and it never sees the light of day outside of the White House.
00:27:19.000Because obviously I agree there, there are a lot of great benefits to a guy with as much charisma, as much magnetism.
00:28:16.000But he doesn't need to gratuitously put that in.
00:28:19.000Like a lot of people on Twitter, you know the urge to be rude and funny.
00:28:23.000And then you wake up the next day, I wish I hadn't done it.
00:28:26.000And what I try to do on Twitter is to live a good example and try to be nice to people, even people that are mean to me, but I'm biting my tongue the whole time. - You're much nicer on Twitter than I am.
00:28:48.000But I just, with young people, I think young people have got to be, we've got to educate young people to what we face, how they're going to lose their liberties and everything that was built for them if the left continues to win.
00:29:04.000Well, so this seems like a question as to what the future of the Democratic Party you would hope to see looks like.
00:29:11.000Because in the one sense, it sounds like you would like to see the Democratic Party reveal their full-scale radicalism for everybody, so that way we have a better chance of victory in 2020.
00:29:19.000At the same time, if that full-scale radicalism wins out, then you have a full-scale radical Democratic Party in charge of the government.
00:29:25.000So which direction would you like to see the Democratic Party take?
00:29:43.000But if you had your druthers, would they run in 2020 a more moderate candidate who appeals to the Rust Belt because you want two viable parties?
00:29:52.000Or would you prefer they run somebody completely radical so that the country can see, and then we risk whether that person wins or not?
00:31:01.000The difference our calculation is I think I think that Hillary was so bad and I think we're closer to the precipice to losing this country.
00:31:09.000I don't know about you, but I think I see Tom Nichols.
00:31:12.000I've been friendly with him on Twitter, but he advocated voting for all Democrats.
00:31:18.000I can't understand how you could be a conservative and advocate because they think that if you do that, you'll ultimately bring the Republican Party back to its census.
00:31:29.000I don't think we have the time and I think we're already back to our census.
00:31:34.000I think we are in a desperate war with the left to preserve America and Trump's the guy leading the charge right now and he's just the one doing it and we're supporting him for that reason.
00:31:46.000But I don't think they see the gravity of the threat, the existential nature of the threat, and the immediacy, the urgency of it, to the extent that I do.
00:31:53.000I may be wrong, but I don't see that we have a lot of time left.
00:31:56.000Okay, so I want to ask you in a second about your book, Jesus is Risen, which, as I say, contrasts sharply with the Jewish version of this book, Nope.
00:32:05.000But I do want to talk about your religious writing.
00:32:09.000But first, when the Founders crafted the Constitution, the first thing they did was make sacred the rights of the individual to share ideas without limitation by the government.
00:32:16.000The second right they enumerated was the right of the population to protect that speech and their own persons with force.
00:32:21.000You know how strongly I believe in these principles?
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00:34:00.000She told me, she was an author for Regnery at the time, and she said, just start writing and all of a sudden your organization will be a byproduct of that.
00:34:10.000And I really think that was simple but profound advice.
00:34:13.000Once you start writing, you necessarily become organized, because you have to focus on what you're writing about.
00:34:20.000So what was your family like growing up?
00:34:21.000Because obviously there's you, you're obviously very political, your brother is Rush Limbaugh, your father was a judge, correct?
00:35:09.000In fact, when Rush first got into radio, I mean, he always wanted to be a radio guy.
00:35:17.000And that didn't surprise me, but when he started talking about politics, I couldn't believe how insightful he was and how knowledgeable he was, because he didn't talk about it that much.
00:35:27.000He moved away when he was 18 or 19, and we got closer the older we got.
00:35:32.000But he left, and once I first saw him make a speech at the Lions Club when I came to visit him in Sacramento, and he had a radio show out here, which was his forerunner to his national show.
00:36:27.000I believed in God, but I didn't believe in the God of the Bible.
00:36:30.000But it wasn't that I'd ever investigated the God of the Bible.
00:36:34.000I just negligently and recklessly rejected Him without ever studying it.
00:36:40.000Once I began studying it, I came to the conclusion that the Bible is the Word of God.
00:36:47.000It kind of hit me like an epiphany, and I wanted to inhale everything I could about it.
00:36:52.000So I started writing a book about the Old Testament, the first three books, and I submitted that to a Christian agent.
00:37:01.000He said it's a little highfalutin for a person with no credentials.
00:37:06.000And it's not informal enough for the other, so basically, buzz off.
00:37:11.000And so this was when I was in my 30s, and I was a little bit discouraged, so I thought, okay.
00:37:17.000But I still continue to study for the next 20 years.
00:37:20.000I've continued to study pretty intensely Christianity and theology.
00:37:25.000And it was only after, and by the way, at that point I had no platform.
00:37:28.000I had no columns, written no books, and done nothing along these lines other than practice law.
00:37:35.000And so, after five political books and a syndicated column for 15, however many years it was, I decided to revisit this.
00:37:44.000I still didn't know if I had the credentials.
00:37:47.000I mean, I knew I didn't, because I'm not a pastor and all that.
00:37:50.000But I felt like there are so many people that are not They don't hear the message of theologians and pastors.
00:37:57.000They don't have access to some of the great writings that I do, and they don't read apologetics.
00:38:04.000I thought, well, I can bridge this gap for the lay people, and I can introduce them to all this research and all the things that finally convince me.
00:38:13.000So I wrote the first book, Jesus on Trial.
00:38:16.000As a chronological history of my faith journey, and also as a book on apologetics.
00:38:23.000And then I continued after that into the Emmaus Code, and then the last book before this one was The True Jesus, which is about the Gospels, where I just consolidated all four Gospels into one running narrative and had commentary along with it.
00:38:37.000This book, Jesus is Risen, It's a history of the church insofar as it tracks the Bible.
00:38:41.000Acts was the history of the early church, and six of the Apostle Paul's 13 epistles.
00:38:46.000So it's really not a history of the church.
00:38:50.000It's a history of the church insofar as it tracks the Bible.
00:38:52.000What this book does is track those books, every verse in the Bible, either stated or paraphrased, and then a commentary with some of the great Christian thinkers, and then my own insights.
00:39:03.000So where do you think the real gap, since obviously you're very familiar with the Old Testament and the New Testament, where do you see the real differences philosophically coming in between Old Testament, the religions of Judaism, and the New Testament?
00:39:16.000Because there seem to be a couple of different views about this.
00:39:18.000One is that Jesus radically shifts kind of the narrative of the Old Testament in a different direction.
00:39:22.000One is that he comes to complete the law, and so it's more of a newer and more complete gloss on the Old Testament.
00:39:27.000But where do you see the differences between Old and New Testament?
00:39:30.000Okay, I believe that the Christian theology believes, and I believe, that the New Covenant supersedes the Old Covenant, but the New Testament doesn't supersede the Old Testament.
00:39:42.000It is the second part of a two-part story of God's salvation history.
00:39:48.000And, you know, I'm amused by all these secular critics who say, Jesus is all salt and light and love, and he never got mad, never reprimanded anyone.
00:39:58.000And what they don't realize is, if Christian theology is true, the God we worship is Triune.
00:40:06.000And so Jesus was with the Father and the Holy Spirit at the creation.
00:40:10.000So of course he embraced everything in the Old Testament.
00:40:15.000And the Jews were the chosen people, are the chosen people.
00:40:19.000Of course, the Christian view is that they're the chosen people to bring the gospel, ultimately, to the rest of the world.
00:40:25.000They anticipated a Messiah who would be a political deliverer, a military deliverer, and they, according to Christian theology, not through their own fault, but misapprehended what the Old Testament Scripture was saying.
00:40:40.000What it was really saying is Christ would be a suffering servant, and he would die for his sins.
00:40:44.000So when he died, Not only did he not deliver a political victory, he was humiliated and didn't even lift a finger to defend himself, and he died.
00:40:53.000And even some of his disciples at that point, Peter denied him after he died, even after having lived with him and seeing all his miracles.
00:41:00.000It wasn't until they witnessed his bodily resurrection that they were transformed from cowards and skeptics to bold proclaimers of the gospel.
00:41:08.000But I believe that the Old Testament is absolutely true, absolutely the word of God, every bit inspired.
00:41:19.000Now, as to whether the Mosaic Law is still valid, I mean, obviously, the Apostle Paul talks about Christians not having to be circumcised and all that because it's about faith in Jesus Christ.
00:41:58.000So this is one of the descriptions I'd heard between Judaism and Christianity, is that Judaism is much more acts-based, whereas Christianity is much more faith-based.
00:42:04.000So one might say, OK, if you're a Christian, some people say, why is in Christ there's liberty?
00:42:13.000People say, you know, get rid of your chains, you're a Christian.
00:42:16.000And then other people say, no, because you Christians are skulls.
00:42:20.000You have to live to a higher standard.
00:42:25.000Christians believe that we do not have to follow the law as a matter of following them in terms of some strict requirement, but that when you're under the law of Christ, the law of Christ isn't really a law, it's a matter of love and obedience, and you even hold yourself to a higher standard, supposedly.
00:42:47.000But we believe that you can't fulfill the Ten Commandments on your own strength.
00:42:54.000It's impossible for any sinful human being, and we're all sinners, to live up to that standard.
00:42:58.000God can't allow sin in his presence, so there's got to be a way to cancel out that sin, and that's Jesus.
00:43:06.000We don't believe that, I don't believe, that all these laws have been eradicated.
00:43:10.000The Mosaic Law, in fact, all of them are still in force.
00:43:44.000So in this view of Christianity, is it better to be a sinner with faith or a saint without?
00:43:48.000So you're a person who fulfills as many, you're a good person, you fulfill all 10 commandments better than most people, but you don't believe in Jesus.
00:43:56.000What is What does that mean in the Christian faith?
00:44:00.000The Christian faith is that salvation is only through Jesus.
00:44:04.000Now when you say better, I think there's a lot better acting people that aren't Christians.
00:44:08.000A lot of non-Christians are better acting than I am.
00:44:12.000I don't like this judgmental stuff that some Christians have.
00:44:16.000One of the things that turned me off originally was the scold aspect.
00:44:21.000The theory is that when you accept Christ and you're converted, you're justified.
00:44:28.000Upon that moment, you're freed from the penalty of sin.
00:44:33.000For salvation purposes, when God looks at you, He doesn't see you.
00:44:41.000Spurgeon, one of the great British pastors, wrote about this.
00:44:45.000God can't help, but when he looks upon you and you've accepted Christ, all he can see is his son.
00:44:52.000That's for salvation purposes, but also something happens when you accept Christ.
00:44:56.000And that is, you're also freed from the power of sin, meaning the Holy Spirit begins to indwell you and empowers you to combat sin on a daily basis.
00:45:07.000Doesn't mean that you will ever overcome sin as a practical matter, but you will become holier, you will become more Christ-like, more sanctified the more you avail yourself of the Holy Spirit.
00:45:18.000And so you will become a better person in that sense, in an active sense, but you'll never be sin-free this side of eternity.
00:45:25.000I want to ask about a misapprehension that seems to be had by a lot of folks, particularly in the Jewish community, about the evangelical Christian view of Israel.
00:45:33.000The misperception seems to be the only reason that evangelical Christians care about the state of Israel and the Jews generally is because the goal is to get all the Jews back to Israel, at which point Jesus makes his reappearance, the rapture happens, and everything is great from then on in.
00:45:48.000But if it weren't for all that, then Israel, screw them.
00:46:29.000And they, I can't wait for Jesus to come back.
00:46:31.000I don't get that because if you believe you're saved and if you believe you're going to spend eternity with God, Anyway, what difference does it make if he comes back and exacts revenge on your enemies or whatever?
00:46:58.000I believe that it has not been eradicated.
00:47:00.000I don't agree with the covenantal theologians, as opposed to the dispensationalists or whatever, who believe that the church has been substituted for Israel.
00:47:11.000And when I think about The Jews returning to Israel in 1947, 1948, that gives me goosebumps about the validity of the Bible and God's superintendence and sovereignty.
00:47:22.000That's just too unbelievable that that happened, for God not to be behind it.
00:47:27.000And I believe that those who bless Israel will be blessed, those who curse Israel will be cursed.
00:47:37.000My allegiance to Israel and to Jews isn't because I'm afraid I'll be smacked down.
00:47:53.000The idea that we want to usher in I know there's some looney tunes out there that have that, and some people I guess, but I don't know anybody, nobody that I respect wants to do it for that reason.
00:48:09.000They want to do it because they're so sick of how crazy the world has become, and that I can understand, but not for the sake of ushering it in for any other reason, and not for utilitarian purposes about the Jews.
00:48:22.000But I know I'm not saying you're Sennacline, that's true.
00:48:24.000No, no, there are a lot of misapprehensions about all of this and I think that it's really important to elucidate that because when I say it, people don't believe it the same way they would from somebody who actually studies this stuff.
00:48:33.000So we've spent a lot of time talking about sort of the divisions between Christianity and Judaism, but it seems to me that right now in the United States and more broadly, The grave division is between believers in the Judeo-Christian value system and everybody else.
00:48:47.000Right now, there are a group of people who believe that essentially the values of the Bible are the correct values as filtered down through thousands of years of thought, history, and evidence, and that that is what has created Western civilization.
00:49:00.000And there's a whole other group of people who believe that Judeo-Christian civilization basically stands in the way I totally agree.
00:49:06.000and that all of the hallmarks of Judeo-Christian civilization have to be obliterated in the name of that progress.
00:49:12.000And this seems to me to mirror a lot the division between right and left.
00:49:16.000What do you make of that generalized thesis?
00:49:19.000I think that the Judeo-Christian tradition is what has given rise to this unique system that we have, this unique country, the freest, most prosperous, most benevolent nation in the history of the world.
00:49:34.000And if I had to, I mean, We could go in and we could talk about how the majority of the Founding Fathers were strong practicing Christians.