Ben Shapiro sits down with Franklin Graham, President and CEO of Samaritan's Purse and the son of World-famous evangelical leader Billy Graham, to discuss the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration, and the age-old question, Why bad things happen to good people? Franklin Graham is a Christian leader in his own right, meeting privately with five U.S. presidents and world leaders, and responding to global crises in over 100 countries through Samaritan s Purse, a non-denominational evangelical Christian organization providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world. On this Easter Sunday, we talk about the inspiring stories of hope from the Coronavirus Pandemic, Franklin s thoughts on how the Trump presidency has been going, his father's legacy, and how to deal with the idea that God causes bad things to happen to people who do good things. Ben Shapiro is the host of the Daily Wire podcast "The Ben Shapiro Show" and host of "The Daily Wire's Sunday Special" with Ben Shapiro. He is also a regular contributor to the New York Times, CNN, CBS Radio, NPR, and other media outlets. He is the author of the book, "Why God Does Good Things Happen to Good People: A Christian Opinions on God's Plan for the World." and is a frequent contributor to Christianity Today, Christianity Today and The Hill. and The Christian Post. - Subscribe to Ben Shapiro's newest podcast, "Out of the Box". Subscribe to "Out Of The Box" Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices and become a supporter of the show Subscribe on Audible Subscribe on Podcoin.fm Subscribe to our new episodes Subscribe on PODCASTLE PODCASMR Subscribe on Podcasts and other Podcasts on the Podchaser Podcasts and other social media platforms! Enjoy this episode of "Outro Music: "Good Things Happens" by Cracked's New Music by Suneaters: "The Good People Say" by John Rocha and "Good Morning America" on Soundcloud Subscribe on SoundCloud Download MP3 & Stitcher Subscribe on Spare Partsponders on Podchords Learn More About Meals on the Road to Your Day Offers by Tomatoes and Shout Outro Music on Your Story on Your Podcasts? Music by Jeffree Stars on Your Day Job
00:00:00.000God can use this to get our attention as the world, not just a nation, but the world, to look to Him and to put our faith and trust in Him.
00:00:10.000On March 20th, Italy had 47,000 COVID-19 cases with over 4,000 deaths.
00:00:15.000More than half of those deaths came from the Lombardy region, where the town of Cremona is located, just outside of Milan.
00:00:21.000That's the day Samaritan's Purse came to Cremona.
00:00:24.000Samaritan's Purse is a non-denominational evangelical Christian organization providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world.
00:00:32.000In 36 hours, Samaritan's Purse had a 68-bed field hospital set up in the Cremona Hospital parking lot, aiding the coronavirus relief.
00:00:40.000Then, come April 1st, they also set up a field hospital in the middle of Central Park in New York City, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States.
00:00:49.000My guest today is Franklin Graham, president and CEO of Samaritan's Purse, and the son of world-famous evangelical Billy Graham, who's considered to be one of the most influential Christian leaders of all time.
00:01:00.000Carrying on that legacy, Franklin has become a Christian leader in his own right, meeting privately with five U.S.
00:01:05.000presidents and world leaders from Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as responding to global crises in over 100 countries through Samaritan's Purse.
00:01:14.000He's also the president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelist Association.
00:01:17.000On this Easter Sunday, we talk about the inspiring stories of hope from the coronavirus pandemic, Franklin's thoughts on how the Trump presidency has been going, his father's legacy, and the age-old question of why bad things happen to good people.
00:01:29.000Franklin Graham, thanks so much for stopping by the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday specials.
00:01:44.000So I have a lot I want to get to with you, discuss your father's legacy and where you stand on President Trump.
00:01:48.000We'll talk politics, but obviously we have to start with the situation with regard to coronavirus.
00:01:52.000First of all, how's your family dealing with all of this?
00:01:59.000Doing the work God has called us to, Ben.
00:02:00.000We don't slow down, we just keep going forward.
00:02:02.000Well, I definitely appreciate your work, and we're going to get to that in just a second.
00:02:05.000I want to ask you, there are a lot of religious people in the United States who right now are deeply troubled by all of the calls by state and local governments to shut down churches.
00:02:13.000There are people who work with me here at Daily Wire who have been upset that the government has deemed churches non-essential for purposes of shutting them down and shutting down mass gatherings right now.
00:02:23.000As a religious person, what's your perspective on the government telling people to stay home from church?
00:02:41.000I think more people are attending online services than they did when you were meeting in person.
00:02:48.000There's something about this virus that has put fear and anxiety in people's hearts, so I think just more people are online, and they're participating that way.
00:02:58.000So the church needs to continue to be the church, but I just would encourage pastors across the country to obey those that are in authority, and I think that's what the congregations would expect us to do.
00:03:11.000Yeah, I mean, as an Orthodox Jew myself, I've been encouraging people to stay home from synagogue, which has been a tall order in some sectors, and it seems to me that actually it's a fairly large-scale desecration of God's name when there's video and pictures of people going en masse to religious institutions in violation of government edicts that are specifically designed to prevent massive loss of life.
00:03:33.000You know, and we do have to be careful, Ben, because this is a very infectious and it's a deadly virus, especially those that have underlying health issues.
00:04:13.000We just have to work a little differently than we're used to doing.
00:04:17.000So let's talk about some of the things that Samaritan's Purse is doing around the country and around the globe in order to combat coronavirus.
00:04:24.000What you guys have been doing in order to help people is truly incredible.
00:04:26.000What are some of the things that Samaritan's Purse has been doing, not only in the United States, but abroad?
00:04:30.000Well, about three weeks ago, we sent an emergency field hospital to Cremona in northern Italy, outside of Milan, about 50 miles out of Milan.
00:04:40.000This is the epicenter for the coronavirus in Italy.
00:05:59.000We make them a little different for our applications, but they have operating theaters, they have intensive care units, they have laboratory, we're able to do the sterilizations, everything that a hospital would do.
00:06:14.000But for the coronavirus, it's for respiratory, so we don't need operating theaters for the respiratory care.
00:06:21.000So we mix it up a little bit differently.
00:06:23.000We bring in, of course, more ventilators than you would normally.
00:06:26.000And that's what we've got set up in Corona.
00:06:29.000And then now in New York City, when they were asked this last week, we set a team up there.
00:06:36.000Over the weekend, we were given Central Park, right across from Mount Sinai, Hospital of the East Meadows, that's 98th and 5th Avenue.
00:06:46.000And so we've set up, and actually today, I mean the last three days we've been putting the hospital together.
00:06:51.000Today we received our first patient, so they believe that we'll be full maybe before the end of this day, I don't know.
00:07:00.000We're there to serve the people of New York, anyone who comes, it doesn't matter who they are, Ben, we're going to help them, we're going to love them, we're going to care for them, and we're going to give them the best medical care that we possibly can.
00:07:11.000We're not going to give anything less than best.
00:07:14.000I read an article, maybe you read it too, about a person there in New York who lost a loved one in the hospital, and the wife was distraught because she could not be in the hospital with her husband as he died.
00:07:28.000And so she said he died alone, and how sad and how much remorse she had that her husband died alone.
00:07:36.000Well, I hope and pray no one dies in our hospital, but if they do, I can promise you, Ben, they're not going to die alone.
00:07:41.000Our doctors and nurses will surround them, be praying for them, holding their hand until they take their last breath.
00:07:48.000And I just want all relatives to know, if they come to our hospital, we'll take care of them, and we're going to show them compassion and love, the same that the Lord Jesus Christ would.
00:07:57.000I mean, one of the things that's amazed me is not only the good work that you guys are doing, but also some of the reaction to that good work.
00:08:03.000So, naturally, Twitter, which is just a repository of all stupidity, known to man, there's a bit of an issue today and over the last few days about Samaritan's Purse being behind the hospital.
00:08:13.000people in New York shocked to learn, some radicals in New York shocked to learn that Samaritan's Purse is a Christian organization that has a Christian view of particular biblical edicts, including the fact that Samaritan's Purse believes that homosexual activity is a sin.
00:08:26.000And somehow they were suggesting that this invalidates Samaritan's Purse doing their work in New York.
00:08:31.000I just love for you to clarify that Samaritan's Purse is not, in fact, telling people who are gay, lesbian, transgender that they can't show up to the hospital if they have coronavirus.
00:08:41.000And if a gay or transgender person showed up at the hospital, we'd show them the same love and compassion and give them the same world-class health care that we give to anybody else that comes.
00:08:58.000The doctors and nurses, we're all Christians, and what motivates us is our faith in Jesus Christ, and that's what we have in common, and that's what makes us go forward.
00:09:12.000And so we use that compassion and that love and that concern that Christ showed for people, we use that to show the people that come to us.
00:09:20.000So, for anybody, it doesn't matter who you are, we're going to treat you the same.
00:09:25.000We do not discriminate as it relates to the people that we help.
00:09:28.000And we've been doing this, Ben, for 50 years.
00:09:30.000Samaritan's Purse is 50 years old this year, and there has never been an accusation that we refused to help anybody because they did not believe the same way we believe.
00:09:43.000Well, Franklin, I want to ask you about sort of the lack of tolerance for people who disagree with you, with many Christians, the Samaritan's Purse in just one second.
00:09:51.000But before we get to that, I want to take a moment to give a shout out to all our advertising partners who help make this show possible.
00:09:57.000We are super grateful that they decide to work with us, and we definitely appreciate our listeners going out and patronizing our sponsors and keeping all of this going.
00:10:05.000Really appreciate both our listeners and our advertisers.
00:10:07.000We're all trying to get through this together.
00:10:09.000You, me, my show's advertising partner.
00:10:11.000So let's stick together and get through this thing.
00:10:13.000There are things we each look back on and think to ourselves, how did I get it so wrong?
00:10:16.000It might be wearing multiple polo shirts, or booking that trip to the Fyre Festival, or dating that one person that one time.
00:10:21.000You know the person I'm talking about.
00:10:23.000Well, we're always going to get things wrong.
00:10:26.000But there are also things we can get right, like shopping for life insurance.
00:10:29.000And that's where Policy Genius comes in.
00:10:31.000PolicyGenius makes finding the right life insurance a breeze.
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00:10:42.000Once you apply, the PolicyGenius team will handle all the paperwork and the red tape for free.
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00:11:13.000So Franklin, I want to talk about the lack of tolerance that seems to exist on one side of the aisle.
00:11:17.000So you mentioned Samaritan's Purse is a Christian organization, that it has its viewpoint on biblical sin, and that that viewpoint hasn't changed, and that it has obviously very Christian views.
00:11:27.000This has led to a radical amount of intolerance from the other side of the aisle, which suggests that in certain situations you should be shut down.
00:11:35.000I noticed that there was a story that Prior to all of this, you had a book tour planned in the UK, and that you had a bunch of sites shut down for the book tour, specifically because you are, quote-unquote, discriminatory.
00:11:46.000What seems to be amazing to me is that there are a lot of people who seem to care very deeply about what you think of them, when, last I checked, there is no need to.
00:11:54.000You are not a person who is actually legislating morality.
00:11:56.000You're not a member of the government.
00:11:58.000You are just running a private organization.
00:12:00.000You're entitled to your religious viewpoints.
00:12:03.000Why do you think it is that there's so much blowback Whenever Samaritan's Purse does something publicly, whenever you do something publicly, based on your view of biblical sin.
00:12:12.000Well, I think, Ben, the blowback isn't really so much against me, I think it's against God.
00:12:18.000The view that I have is what the Bible teaches.
00:12:22.000And the Bible teaches that marriage is between a man and a woman.
00:13:05.000We're all going to have to stand before God one day and give an account to Him for how we've lived our lives.
00:13:10.000And so I just want to warn people, I want people to know the truth, but I certainly do not condemn anybody and I'm willing to help each and every person that comes across my path in life.
00:13:25.000So I want to talk a little bit more about some of the good actions that you've been taking.
00:13:28.000You founded the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team.
00:13:30.000Can you talk a little bit about the role of the team in the midst of this crisis and what they've been doing?
00:13:34.000These are chaplains, Ben, and this came as a result of 9-11.
00:13:39.000I was asked by Rudy Giuliani, the mayor at that time, to come to a prayer vigil at The Pile.
00:13:45.000Uh, the fire trucks still had, uh, the, uh, the water poured on the piles.
00:13:51.000You could still smell the stench of the rotting bodies and the smoke coming up out of the pile.
00:13:56.000And to me, it minded me a little bit, maybe what hell would be like.
00:13:59.000It was a terrible scene and they stopped everything for a few minutes to have a prayer, a vigil.
00:14:05.000And I realized while I was in New York that there were not enough.
00:14:10.000Pastors, doctors, chaplains, people who could pray with those that were suffering.
00:14:17.000You had 3,000 some people that died that day, and there were just not enough people to deal with the grief that New York was going through.
00:14:24.000There were not enough churches or synagogues to hold the funeral services.
00:14:29.000Some churches were holding five, six, one that actually did ten in one day.
00:14:33.000I don't know how they did it, but funeral services.
00:14:37.000So it was an incredible amount of grief, and there just weren't enough pastors there.
00:15:27.000And after that, I thought, okay, we need to find out how we can get credentialed.
00:15:30.000And we did the training with Homeland Security through FEMA and so forth.
00:15:33.000Went through all the boxes, checked all the hoops.
00:15:36.000And now we have hundreds, we have over a thousand chaplains here in the United States that have been credentialed, that have had special training for crisis situations like we're facing right now.
00:15:48.000So in New York, we've got chaplains with us that are alongside our doctors and nurses that are willing to pray with people that want it.
00:15:54.000We don't force somebody to listen to a prayer.
00:15:56.000But if somebody said, would you please pray for me?
00:15:59.000And we believe that prayer is a part of what we do, a very important part.
00:16:06.000As our doctors and nurses are trying to save life, But to have chaplains praying for the doctors and nurses and then to pray for the patients is very important.
00:16:18.000And so our work is, of course, it's a spiritual work.
00:16:22.000It's not just physical, but it's spiritual as well.
00:16:25.000Let's talk for a second about where this particular crisis stacks up next to other crises.
00:16:28.000So obviously, you've been doing this for quite a while, and you've dealt with a number of crises, not only in the United States, but abroad.
00:16:33.000How does COVID-19 stack up against the other crises that you've seen in your tenure?
00:16:37.000There's never been a crisis like this in my lifetime.
00:18:38.000But your parents cannot choose Jesus Christ for you.
00:18:42.000And it doesn't matter how much they loved me, that was a choice I had to make.
00:18:45.000And I was 22, and I think, Ben, I just got to the point in my life where I was sick and tired of just being sick and tired.
00:18:52.000You could go to parties, you could date, you could do things, you could have fun, but the next day you wake up, there would be an emptiness in your life.
00:19:01.000And you realize that you were searching for something, but you didn't know what you were searching for.
00:19:06.000And there was just this overwhelming emptiness.
00:19:08.000And one night I just got on my knees and I said, I've sinned and I'm sorry.
00:19:18.000I believe that he took my sins to the cross, that he died on that cross, he was buried for my sins, and that you raised him to life.
00:19:25.000And I would like to invite him to come into my heart and to my life.
00:19:30.000And if he could just take the pieces of my life and put it together and make sense of it, you can have it.
00:19:35.000I prayed that prayer, Ben, in a minute.
00:19:37.000And that night, God forgave Franklin Graham.
00:19:40.000I'm still a sinner, but I've been forgiven, Ben.
00:19:43.000And I know that one day, when I stand before God, He will welcome me Not because of what I did, but because of what Jesus Christ did on my behalf when he took my sins and died in my place, and I accepted that by faith.
00:19:59.000The Bible says, by grace are we saved through faith.
00:20:02.000It's not of works, lest any man should boast.
00:20:05.000If you could work for your salvation, people would brag about it.
00:20:12.000But when you come to God, it's by His grace and it's through faith, and there's nothing else.
00:20:19.000Let's talk about the fact that Easter is obviously about to be upon us.
00:20:24.000It's the Passover season in the Jewish community.
00:20:26.000It's a holy time of year for Jews and Christians alike.
00:20:29.000It's also the roughest time I've ever seen in my lifetime, and that holds true for Christians, Jews, and everybody else.
00:20:36.000The fact is there are going to be a lot of people suffering going into Easter, a lot of people suffering during the Passover season.
00:20:43.000What do you think people should be meditating on and thinking about during the Easter season?
00:20:48.000Well, first of all, there's no community that has probably suffered more in modern history than the Jewish community, and that they know what pain and sorrow and they know what suffering is all about.
00:21:02.000And this Easter season, much of the world is experiencing pain and sorrow like they've never seen before.
00:21:10.000The estimates for the people that may die in this country are staggering.
00:21:16.000And we know that in the months ahead, it's going to probably get worse, not better.
00:21:22.000And so I think this Easter season, it's a time for us to pause as a country, to pray and to ask God for his help, his mercy, his blessing.
00:21:35.000And I think it's important that we turn to God.
00:21:36.000As a nation, Ben, we've turned our back on God.
00:21:40.000We have thrown his laws out the window and they say they don't matter.
00:22:16.000For us as a people, as a nation, to turn to God and call upon Him and ask Him for help.
00:22:23.000I want to ask you in one second about the sort of correlation between people doing bad things and God's response to us, whether we can actually see that in day-to-day life or whether it's just incumbent on us to seek God regardless of the treatment that we're receiving from nature or from the world.
00:22:40.000I want to get to that in just one second.
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00:22:56.000Don't you wish that you were at the post office right now?
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00:23:58.000So, let's talk about one of the messages that you just talked about, Franklin, and that is the idea that we should be turning to God during times of crisis, that America has turned her back on God.
00:24:07.000I certainly agree with you in terms of a lot of moral standards, that we've become obviously a more secular, atheistic country.
00:24:13.000I think I, along with a lot of other people in modern life, are pretty uncomfortable with the idea that when bad things happen, that that represents God's punishment on us, just because there's not a one-to-one correlation.
00:24:22.000We see too often good things happening to bad people and bad things happening to good people.
00:24:26.000So I was wondering if maybe you could clarify on that a little bit.
00:24:28.000Do you think that, you know, we live in sort of a world where pandemics happen and that's a punishment from God?
00:24:34.000Or do you think that we live more in a world where it's incumbent on us to do the right thing regardless of whether we're receiving good or bad in our own eyes, not from God's eyes, but in our own eyes from the world around us?
00:25:28.000And so we're living in a broken world, a sin-filled world, and it's where we are.
00:25:35.000But that's why Christ died for our sins, so that we don't have to pay the debt of sin, which is death, He's willing to give us eternal life if we're willing to trust Him.
00:25:44.000But while we're here on earth, we're going to have pain, we're going to have sorrow, we're going to have death, but we can have that hope of eternal life with Christ one day if we'll turn and repent of our sins.
00:25:58.000So, yes, bad things happen, and this coronavirus Whether that's God's judgment or not, how do I know?
00:26:09.000But at the same time, I think maybe God can use this to get our attention as the world—not just the nation, but the world—to look to Him and to put our faith and trust in Him.
00:26:20.000So I wanted to ask you, since everybody is trying to hunker down right now, you've obviously seen an enormous number of inspirational acts.
00:26:27.000You've talked about some of them already from the folks who work for Samaritan's Purse during this crisis.
00:26:31.000I was wondering if maybe you could give me some instances of sort of inspirational things that people are doing right now to help out their fellow man in the name of God.
00:27:01.000And, again, a very wealthy guy, and he just came out to volunteer.
00:27:05.000It's people like that that just come from different walks of life, these doctors and nurses that are willing to put their life on the line to save the life of other people.
00:27:16.000And it's not just the doctors and nurses, but it's like this fellow, a young guy who had a lot of money, but he had some time on his hands, and he was bored sitting at his home.
00:27:33.000And America has some wonderful people, good people.
00:27:38.000And I think we, the media sometimes, we focus too much on the stars.
00:27:44.000We focus too much on the Hollywood people whose lives for the most part are empty and broken and have very little to give.
00:27:53.000But you take a young guy like that, that's just an example of one of many who have stood up and have said, here I am, use me.
00:28:04.000So can you tell us a little bit more about where Samaritan's Purse got started for folks who don't know the background of the organization at all?
00:28:09.000Well, it was started by a man by the name of Bob Pierce back in 70, excuse me, 50 years ago this year.
00:28:17.000And he just wanted to help Churches, he wanted to help people around the world that were less fortunate.
00:28:26.000And he ran it for about the first 10 years, and he had leukemia, and he asked if I would take it over.
00:28:33.000And at that time, the organization was very small.
00:28:59.000One thing I learned is hire people that are smarter than you.
00:29:03.000And at the end of the day, they're going to make you look good.
00:29:05.000So I've always tried to find people that are a lot smarter than Franklin Graham.
00:29:09.000And I'll tell you that that's paid off because we get the job done.
00:29:15.000And it's not Franklin Graham, but it's just this incredible team of people.
00:29:18.000So I wanted to ask you about your growing up.
00:29:19.000So you mentioned earlier, obviously, your father is the most prominent evangelist of the last century.
00:29:24.000So what was it like growing up in a home with Billy Graham?
00:29:27.000Well, I think the Billy Graham that the world saw on television or the big stadiums was the same Billy Graham.
00:29:34.000We, the children, saw at home there wasn't two Billy Grahams, there wasn't my mother Ruth Graham, there wasn't a different person when the cameras were turned off.
00:29:44.000And we saw that consistency in their life.
00:29:46.000And my father was a very humble person.
00:29:49.000If you approached him on the sidewalk, if he was walking down New York's Fifth Avenue Somebody recognized me and said, oh, Dr. Graham, can I shake your hand?
00:29:59.000He would be kind of, oh, shucks, you want to shake my hand?
00:30:21.000And God gave him an incredible What do you think distinguished the message that he was promulgating from some of the other messages that were being promulgated by different evangelists, or maybe the sort of new wave of evangelists, some of the televangelists that you see on TV?
00:30:40.000He was such a popularizer of the Bible.
00:30:43.000What was different between what he did and what so many others have tried to do?
00:31:18.000I remember when he went to Eastern Europe, there were a lot of people on the far right accused him of being used by the communists.
00:31:25.000And I remember my father smiling and saying, well, maybe I want to use them.
00:31:30.000And he was just very forceful, very strong, and he had a great team of people around him that supported him and helped him.
00:31:41.000And he certainly would want me to make sure people understood it was the team.
00:31:46.000It wasn't just Billy Graham, but it was the team.
00:31:48.000You mentioned earlier the phrase, sort of, simple faith.
00:31:51.000There are a lot of people in today's world who seem to think that they are too sophisticated for faith, or who have been told that faith is unsophisticated, that faith requires you to ask no questions, that faith is easy, and they find themselves struggling with faith.
00:32:05.000What would you say to people who think that faith is too simple?
00:32:09.000And what should the proper approach to faith be?
00:32:11.000What kind of questions are worthy of asking?
00:32:13.000Well, Ben, I mean, there are a lot of skeptics out there, and they think faith is a crutch.
00:32:21.000And, you know, I don't know what I can do to change their beliefs.
00:32:25.000But, you know, Ben, just take this whole notion of evolution.
00:32:32.000And that somehow we started off as a tadpole and got more and more and more sophisticated as time passed over the millions of years, and all of a sudden we are who we are today.
00:32:46.000And there are millions of people that believe that, and I think it takes a lot more faith to believe that.
00:32:54.000Uh, because there's no evidence whatsoever of, uh, of, of where we came from tadpoles or whatever, some lower species.
00:33:03.000But as a pilot, uh, I have a little, a single engine, uh, Piper Super Cub made in 1956.
00:33:10.000And I can park that out on the runway.
00:33:12.000And I can tell you right now, a million years from now, it's not going to be a 747.
00:33:15.000Uh, there are engineers behind it that developed it and, uh, put these things together.
00:33:21.000And there's a, uh, it goes by a design.
00:33:24.000And the human body has a design, and it's unique.
00:33:30.000When you look at our propulsion system, when you look at our electrical system, the pneumatic systems that our bodies have is incredibly designed.
00:33:40.000And there was a design, but it just didn't happen.
00:33:55.000And sometimes the people that have the most sophistication, the most expertise, the higher the PhD or the learning, sometimes it's those people that are the hardest ones to reach.
00:34:08.000It has always seemed to me that arguments like this sort of argument from design, it's a response to an argument that simply misses the point of God, which is that God can do whatever he wants, and that even if God wanted to evolve human beings from a tadpole, even if you believe that evolution happens through simply natural selection and random mutation, why wouldn't God be able to design it that way?
00:34:27.000There's sort of this bizarre disconnect where if There's a naturalistic explanation, therefore nobody stands behind nature.
00:34:34.000I've never fully understood the idea that if nature has laws, if nature has rules, that there can't be any designer for those laws or rules.
00:34:43.000That somehow nature operating according to certain constructs is somehow a disproof of God rather than a proof of His presence and a mind at work.
00:34:50.000The world in which we live, everything is set into motion.
00:34:54.000And our universe is set on a certain motion.
00:37:22.000Something that is eminently true and has been proved true over the course of the last several decades is that the decline in church in the United States, the rise in secularism has had some pretty dire social effects.
00:37:32.000I'm going to talk about that with you in just one second.
00:37:34.000First, let's talk about the fact that you're spending an awful lot of time online right now because you can't go outside.
00:38:38.000Franklin, we look at the rise of secularism, and non-affiliated is the number one group of millennials.
00:38:43.000We're watching younger people basically rejecting religion wholesale.
00:38:46.000We're seeing organized religion in decline by statistics.
00:38:49.000Why do you think that is, particularly given the fact that after several decades of an increasingly secular America, it is obvious that there are pretty dire social effects to exactly that sort of secularization, particularly in some of the more hard-hit Rust Belt areas, that when churches disappear, so does the social fabric, and we've seen Opioid epidemics and broken lives.
00:39:09.000We've seen epidemics of suicide, disconnection.
00:39:13.000But why has secularism been on the rise, despite the fact that there's been such obvious evidence of dire consequences?
00:39:23.000First of all, let's go back to talk about the decline of the church.
00:39:27.000I'm not sure the church is in decline.
00:39:29.000I think there are some mainline denominations that quit preaching the Bible for some time, and people just quit attending those churches.
00:39:39.000What you see is a rise of Bible-teaching churches, where pastors just get up and they open up the Bible and say, let's read today what God's Word says, and they start teaching the Bible.
00:40:00.000And secularism gives license for people to live just about any kind of wicked life they want to without any consequences.
00:40:09.000And, of course, that's very attractive, and a lot of people go that direction and say, oh, this is going to be fun, this is going to be great.
00:40:16.000But there's emptiness, and you're right, the suicide rate is just incredible, the problems that secularism brings, because it doesn't give answers.
00:40:27.000It gives them this license to be free, but at the end of the day, they're not free, and they're slaves to sin.
00:40:37.000They're searching and looking for something better, and they're not finding it.
00:40:41.000And I want people to know that what they're searching for is God.
00:40:45.000And if they put their trust in Him, He'll take that broken life, and He'll put it together just like He did mine.
00:40:51.000And He'll use you, and He'll forgive you, and cleanse you, Give you hope for the morning, hope for the next day, and how important we need today, we need that hope for the next day.
00:41:03.000Major media in the United States have basically blamed evangelicals for getting involved in politics.
00:41:09.000They're very upset with religious people being involved in politics.
00:41:11.000They say that this is religious theocracy.
00:41:13.000It seems to me that it's precisely the opposite of what actually happened.
00:41:17.000What actually happened is that there was a fairly wide social consensus on a wide variety of issues, and that the secular left in the 1960s basically broke those down.
00:41:24.000And evangelical Christians, like religious people of all stripes, basically stood up on their hind legs and said, well, no, you don't get to discard those social consensuses without any sort of evidence.
00:41:35.000When do you think it becomes incumbent on religious people to get involved in politics?
00:41:39.000Under what circumstance do you think religious people shouldn't be involved in politics?
00:41:43.000And how should they be involved in politics?
00:41:46.000Well, first of all, in 2016, I went to every state capitol and held a prayer rally on the capitol steps.
00:41:55.000I thought if I would have a few hundred join me in prayer, that would be important because I felt our country was in trouble and we needed to pray.
00:42:04.000Instead of hundreds, it was thousands.
00:42:08.000In some places, tens of thousands of people who showed up on the Capitol steps to pray.
00:42:14.000And they weren't there to hear me speak, but they were there to pray for our nation.
00:42:18.000And so these were people that cared for our country, that prayed.
00:42:22.000I never endorsed a person in the last election, and I just encouraged people to pray the way they felt God was leading them to vote.
00:43:37.000But I think we as conservatives have a right to be heard and to have a right to vote and to be part of the process.
00:43:44.000How should Christians think about the separation of church and state?
00:43:46.000Every time Christians get involved in politics, there are accusations that they're trying to establish a Christian theocracy, that this is the Handmaid's Tale or something like that.
00:43:53.000How should Christians think about their involvement in politics while respecting the boundaries between church and state?
00:43:59.000Well, I mean, I think we don't compromise.
00:44:03.000I think that's part of the problem we've had is Christians have compromised.
00:44:26.000And you know, if you take a hundred years ago, The political leaders in the communities were the pastors.
00:44:33.000If your house burned down and your family was desolate, you went to the local church and the pastor would find somebody in the community that would take you in.
00:44:44.000They would clothe you, they would feed you, they would care for you.
00:44:47.000But the government has taken Those type of social services upon themselves.
00:44:54.000And they don't do nearly as good as the churches used to do it.
00:44:58.000And what happened, the churches kind of, okay, we'll just let the government do that then.
00:45:02.000And we have slowly backed up and backed up and let the government take more and more and more control of society.
00:45:08.000And they're not doing a better job at it.
00:45:11.000They're doing an inferior job, not better.
00:45:15.000When a lot of the problems that we face today were handled at the local level, it was done with compassion, with love, and with the interest of the people that they were helping.
00:45:25.000Today, it's just clinical, and the government just writes out a check and thinks that will solve it.
00:45:30.000But the problems of this world need more than just a check.
00:45:34.000It needs people, one-on-one interaction, people that care, people that are willing to let their voice be heard, people that are willing to To go into a community and make a difference with your life.
00:45:46.000Invested in a community and make a difference.
00:45:49.000So Franklin, obviously we live in an incredibly vitriolic time.
00:45:52.000You've taken an enormous amount of abuse for expressing support for President Trump and some of the things that he's done as President of the United States.
00:45:58.000How do you rate his overall performance as President?
00:48:02.000But at the same time, I'm not willing to let him get away with sort of Some of the things that he says and does, and they make me deeply uncomfortable.
00:48:09.000How should religious people deal with the fact that, you mentioned he's a flawed character, we're all flawed characters, but how should religious people specifically deal with sort of the character flaws that are evident in President Trump without necessarily covering for those flaws, even if they are supporters?
00:48:23.000Well, a lot of the accusation has been of the President and his lifestyle 20 years ago.
00:48:30.000And he's not the same person he was 20 years ago, neither you and neither am I.
00:48:36.000He's changed, and now he tweets, and he will say things that a lot of people cringe at, but he's attacked every day by the media, every single day.
00:48:52.000And that is his one opportunity to fight back.
00:48:57.000He doesn't have to get filtered by somebody.
00:48:59.000He can go directly to the American people, and it's worked for him.
00:49:03.000The American people are behind the president.
00:49:06.000And I know a lot of the polls will show, well, Biden is ahead by two points, or, you know, someone else may be ahead by two points.
00:49:13.000I don't believe any of that by a second.
00:49:14.000I think if you had the election today, He would win overwhelming hands down.
00:49:22.000He's an incredible person, and I think people have trust and confidence in him.
00:49:27.000And so, again, I don't agree with everything he says or does, but at the same time, he is the president, and we just have to trust him and back him and help him all we can.
00:49:39.000Well, in one second, I want to ask you about an article that now seems forever ago from the December 2019 issue of Christianity Today, which apparently, you know, obviously claimed that President Trump should be removed from office.
00:49:50.000But if you want to hear Franklin Graham talk about that article, about Christianity Today and about the legacy of that magazine, you have to be a subscriber over at dailywire.com.
00:49:58.000So head on over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
00:50:00.000Well, Franklin Graham, thank you so much for stopping by the show.