Latest / Salem Podcast Network / The Greg Laurie Show - Does Archaeology Prove the Bible Is True? | Dinesh D’Souza

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The Greg Laurie Show - Does Archaeology Prove the Bible Is True? | Dinesh D’Souza · Salem Podcast Network

• 0:11
  Speaker 1: If the historicity of the Bible can be validated, even
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: down to its minor details, that actually adds to the
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: credibility of the whole. I'm also happy to report that
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: in 150 years, there is not a single important finding
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: of biblical archaeology that contradicts the Bible.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast as I welcome my
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: friend Dinesh D'Souza. Dinesh, my goodness, Dinesh, you do a
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: little bit of everything. You're a speaker, you're an author,
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: you're a filmmaker, and you have so many gifts and
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: talents and you've been applying those lately. In fact, the
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: last three years of your life, if I'm not mistaken,
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: to a brand new book that is titled The Stones
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Cry Out. And we're going to be talking about that today.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: But you're also the author of a lot of other books.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: And the first book I became aware of that you
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: wrote is titled, What's So Great About America? And I
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: think in this time in which we're living, as we've
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: celebrated 250 years as a nation, and we've reflected on
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: our remarkable history, there's really no country like us. You
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: wrote this book, and it seems like a whole new
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: generation would benefit from reading that book, but maybe just
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: in a nutshell, what is so great about America?
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Well, I think what's great about America is not merely
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: that it provides a surprisingly abundant life for the ordinary guy.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: That's one of the first things that struck me when
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I came as a teenager at the age of 17.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: I was I realized that the rich guy lives well
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: everywhere in the world, but I was quite startled to
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: see how well the ordinary fellow, the common man, so
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: to speak, lives in America. But then as I went
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: to college in the United States, had a career in
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: politics and journalism, later making documentary films, I realized that
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: the idea of America is bigger than that. I think
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: the core of it is the notion of the self-directed life.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: In other words, in America, we have a chance to
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: be the architect of our own destiny. It's almost like
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: your life is a work of art, and you are
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: the artist. You're in the driver's seat of your own future.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: And I think this is really why young people all
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: over the world are magnetically drawn to America.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: It's this sort of sense of possibility, not just.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Of having an American dream, but being able to convert
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: that dream into something real. And I've done that myself
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: in my own life.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Yes. You know, and what is amazing right now, especially
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: among our college students and younger people in general, there
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: is a renewed interest in communism, socialism and communism. Why
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: do you think that has become so prominent and popular?
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: I have a perhaps surprising answer to this question. It
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: is that the capitalism that is the rival to communism
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: has become somewhat twisted.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: And disfigured in America.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: Think about it this way.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: You know, you have congressmen who are making laws about
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: things that they have prior knowledge of because the law
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: is being made by them. And yet they have relative
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: freedom to invest in stocks involving things that they're making
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: decisions about.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: That's kind of an insider advantage, right?
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Banks get an insider advantage because they get money from
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: the Federal Reserve, which prints that money out of thin air.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: You have defense contractors and other types of industries that
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: have lobbyists.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: So whenever Congress has money to.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Appropriate, they're able to get their industry to have a
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: favored status. So I think the problem here is this,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: that we are dealing with a capitalism that isn't a
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: sort of honest capitalism. Some people call it a crony capitalism,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: a kleptocratic capitalism.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: I think all of that.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Makes it easier for the socialists to say, well, guess what?
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: The capitalists are practicing favoritism. They are redistributing money their way.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: So we're offering a different kind of redistribution, and you
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: might at least get something out of it.
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: So I think it's harder to argue.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Against communism when you become a defender of a capitalism
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: that is really not capitalism in the true sense.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Well, that comes back to the roots of our country,
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: our very distinct Christian roots. I think it was John
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Adams that said something along the lines of, this Constitution
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: was made for a religious and a moral people. Today
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: we might upgrade that or change the wording and say,
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: It was made for Christian people. I mean, people who
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: believe that the Bible is true. We have an agreement
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: on what is true and what is not true. And
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: we've lost sight of that. So it's capitalism devoid of
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Christianity or devoid of a moral base. They need to
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: know more about it. Our country isn't just about capitalism,
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: though that is certainly better than communism in general, but
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: not when it's abused, as you've just pointed out. But
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: they need to get the bigger picture, don't you think?
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: To give just a small example that I'm plucking out
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: of my memory from history, when the banker J.P. Morgan
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: bought the companies of Andrew Carnegie, the two of them
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: met for lunch.
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: And J.P. Morgan said to Andrew Carnegie, I'd like to
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: buy your companies. What are they worth? Andrew Carnegie pulled
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: out a.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Sheet of paper and wrote down the value of his companies,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: which he estimated from his head, added it up and
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: showed the total to J.P.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Morgan.
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: And J.P. Morgan goes, I agree. I agree to pay
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: that sum. Think about this.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Think about the level of trust and honesty it takes
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: to make a transaction worth this. Hundreds of millions of dollars,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: billions of dollars in today's money. And these two men
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: had so much confidence that each other could be completely
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: trusted that J.P. Morgan didn't demand any kind of audit.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: He's like, Andrew Carnegie, you're a man of your word.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: If you say your company is worth X, I'm going
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: to pay X.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: Amazing. Yeah. Your word is your bond. We've certainly drifted
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: from that, among other things. Well, you have a brand
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: new book out. that is titled The Stones Cry Out.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: So what is this book about, Dinesh?
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Well, as you know, Pastor Greg, I've written books in
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: the past on Christian apologetics, but I wasn't exposed to
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: biblical archaeology until I went to Israel for the first
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: time the end of 2022. I was very charmed to
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: be kind of in the land of the Bible. These
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: are places I had heard about and sort of dreamed
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: about since I was a kid. But then I was
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: exposed a little bit to the artifacts that had come
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: out of the ground, some of them in the last
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: 50 years or even more, but some of them just
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: in the last 10 years. And they are authenticating or
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: validating the historicity of the Bible, the Old Testament and
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: the New. And I was like, I turned to my
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: wife and I said, wow. why isn't this information being
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: shouted from the rooftops of every synagogue and church? And
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: part of the reason we came up with was that
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: the archaeologists are secular. Most of them have appointments in universities.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: They don't want to be seen as proving the Bible,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: even though they're doing so-called Near Eastern Archaeology. So I thought,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: this is truly fascinating, because if the historicity of the
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Bible can be validated, even down to its minor details—
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: that actually adds to the credibility of the whole. So
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: I embarked on a kind of three-year project to really
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: learn the field. Biblical archaeology has been around for about
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: 150 years, since the second half of the 19th century.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: It's made hundreds and hundreds of discoveries in the areas
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: that relate to the Bible.
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: And so this book is a kind of summary of.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: What we now know from biblical archaeology that corroborates the Bible.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: I'm also happy to report that in 150 years, there
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: is not a single important finding of biblical archaeology that
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: contradicts the Bible.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: Wow. So is your next film going to be titled Indiana, D'Souza,
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: and the Lost Ark?
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: I really do like the comparison. I'm sort of missing
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: the Indiana Jones hat, and I haven't yet located the
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Ark of the Covenant, to be sure.
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: And, you know, I got to tell you, Greg.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: A lot of archaeology, as I've now experienced it, I've
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: actually been in some of these digs, is very …
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: sort of painstaking work. And not only that, but it
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: doesn't always excavate big things. You know, we think of
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Agatha Christie's novels, which are set against the spectacular backdrop
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: of the pyramids. Or we think of Indiana Jones and
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: these sort of great cities coming out of the ground.
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: Sometimes what will come out of the.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: Clay seal. These seals were used to seal correspondence. They're
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: made of clay. The clay impressions and the correspondence is lost,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: but the seal hardens.
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: The clay hardens and remains. So the clay.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Seal will have a guy's name on it. And the
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: archaeologists won't even know who that guy is. They'll stick
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: the clay seal somewhere in a museum or an academic
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: storage facility.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: And then three years.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Later, somebody looks at that seal and they go, whoa,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: that guy's in the book of Isaiah or that guy's
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: in the book of Jeremiah. And that guy might be
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: a cameo appearance in the Bible, not an important figure.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: He's mentioned in two lines and never again. And yet,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: once you're looking at that clay seal, you realize that
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: this guy, you know, Jehukal, son of Shalamiah, has now
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: jumped into the pages of history via the pathway of archaeology.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, I remember when it was said by some, well,
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: the Bible's not true. It talks so much about Pontius Pilate.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: There's no historical record of a Pontius Pilate. But then,
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: of course, they found the Pilate stone. And it seems,
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: do you know Jeremiah Johnson? Of course. Yes. It seems
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: like he mentioned something about a pilot ring that's been
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: discovered more recently. And you alluded to the fact that
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: some recent discoveries have been really significant. So what are
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: some of those recent discoveries?
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Well, just in the last several days, archaeologists have confirmed
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: the location of biblical Bethsaida, which is a location where
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Jesus did miracles. What happens is sometimes these biblical places
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: get lost. I mean, obviously, biblical places don't come with
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: name tags. You know, you've got to correctly identify a location. Now,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: I'll give an example. Since you mentioned Pontius Pilate, you know,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: my mind flashes to the great trial scene of Jesus.
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: He's arrested. He's taken to the home of the high priest.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: And so the major figures here are King Herod, Pontius Pilate,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: the high priest Caiaphas.
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: And of course, the accused man, Jesus.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Now, there's really interesting archaeology on all four of these men,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: But I want to focus for a moment on Caiaphas,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: because the Bible just gives one name.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: He's Caiaphas.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: But the Jewish historian named Josephus tells us that his
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: first name is Joseph Caiaphas.
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: Now, if we.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: If we fast forward 2,000 years, they were recently digging
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: in the aristocratic or priestly quarter of Jerusalem. And out
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: of the ground come a bunch of these, they're called ossuaries,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: they're stone boxes. And in the first century AD, if
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: you died, your bones.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: Were taken out of the tomb.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: You were buried in a tomb, but then when your
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: body decayed, they would take your bones out and put
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: in a box and put your name on it.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: So that's the ossuary.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: So these archaeologists are looking at about 20 of these ossuaries,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: and one of them is particularly ornate, and it stands out,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: and they look more closely, and the name on it
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: is as follows. Yehoshaph Bar-Kayapha. So, Yehoshaph is Joseph, Bar
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: is son of, Caiaphas, Caiaphas. And you look inside the box,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: and it's the bones of a 60-year-old man. And the
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: bones are then dated, and they date to the first
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: century A.D., So it's Caiaphas.
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: Think about it.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: You've preached about these great scenes where Caiaphas is stirring
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: up the Sanhedrin, and then they go to Pilate, who is,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: of course, reluctant to crucify Jesus, but Caiaphas is insistent.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: This man, this villain of the Bible, we're not just
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: talking about his name popping out on a stone inscription
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: or some sort of a writing on the wall. You're
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: actually looking at his bones. So this is what archaeology
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: gives you, this chilling feeling. These real people and places
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: and events kind of spring to life. And I think
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: it's a great encouragement to the believer and a little
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: bit of a bafflement or it confounds the skeptic.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Yes. On my last trip to Israel, they took me
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: to a site that had at that point not been
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: made open to the public yet. the Pool of Bethesda.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: And what was so exciting to me about that is
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: here's this narrow pathway that they said Jesus would have
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: walked across on his way to the temple. Now, you know,
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: people always want to know where did Jesus walk? And
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: the problem is there's layers of civilization in Jerusalem. You know,
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: the Crusaders built over this, and someone else built over that.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: And so a lot of what Jesus— the places where Christ
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: actually walked are 30 feet below. But there's a couple
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: of spots of southern steps. We know he would have
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: been on those steps somewhere. But when you walk past
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: the Pool of Bethesda, you are on the actual path
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: that Christ himself would have walked. Have you seen that
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: one in particular? And do you have anything you've discovered
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: about that site?
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: Yes, I want to.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: There are really two famous pools that have been that
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: were lost to history and have been discovered very recently.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: The pool of Bethesda and the pool of Siloam.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Now, both of these are highly significant because Jesus performed miracles.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: At each one.
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: The Pool of Siloam is huge.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: It's the size of an Olympic swimming pool. And for
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: a long time, historians thought that these pools were going
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: to be small places for ritual bats. But it turned
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: out that these pools were huge and out-of-town Jews, which,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: by the way, is including Jesus, right? Jesus lived in
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: the northern part of Israel. He would come to Jerusalem
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: for worship. holy days or holidays. He would bathe in
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: the pool of Siloam or cleanse himself ritually, and then
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: he would walk the pilgrimage road about 500 meters and.
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: To the temple.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: So, like you said, there are certain places where people
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: don't know exactly where Jesus walked. They'll say, well, the
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Via Dolorosa is over here, or no, we think it's
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: over there. But it seems beyond a doubt that he
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: would have bathed in this particular pool and walked this
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: pilgrimage road to the temple, because that was standard for
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: out-of-town Jews in Jesus's time.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: One of your thoughts on the garden tomb? Do you
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: believe that? What do you think? How would you rate that? Like,
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: I think 90% that's a tomb Jesus was buried in, 50%, 40%,
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: or I just don't know.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: No, I think that.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: For some time there was a kind of a legitimate
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: dispute about the site of Jesus' crucifixion. Is it at
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: the site of the garden tomb or the site of
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre? Now, the best argument
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is that in
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: the second century, by the way, just a few decades
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: after Jesus' death and after the apostles lived in the
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Roman emperor Hadrian decided to stamp out all the Christian sites.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: And he knew what they were because there were Christians
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: at that time alive who had known the apostles. So
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: what does Hadrian do? He goes and he builds pagan
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: monuments on top of those sites.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: And ironically, this kind of despiser of Christianity unwittingly ends
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: up marking some of those sites by doing this. So
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: in the 4th century when Constantine converted... to Christianity. He
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: sent his mother to Jerusalem. She just knew where to look, right?
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: She went and found all those pagan sites. She took
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: them down, and she usually built churches right on top
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: of that. Now, that's the side of the Church of
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: the Holy Sepulchre, which has been for centuries the traditional
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: side of the crucifixion. In the 20th century, some people
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: began to doubt that because They thought that the Church
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: of the Holy Sepulchre was inside the city of Jerusalem.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: And as you know from the Bible, Jesus was crucified
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: outside the city. So this was the kind of serious
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: objection to that particular site. But subsequent archaeological work, more recent,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: has confirmed that Jerusalem was obviously much smaller in the
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: old days than it is later. So as it turns out,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: in Jesus's time, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, that site,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: was indeed outside the city, just as the Bible says.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: And for that reason, I think that is the most
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: likely spot for Jesus's crucifixion.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: Fascinating. You have written, and I quote, there's only one
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: nation in the world whose identity and very existence is
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: based on a book. That nation is Israel, and that
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: book is the Bible. You believe that the modern state
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: of Israel, if I'm not mistaken, is a fulfillment of
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: Bible prophecy. When the Jews returned to their homeland and
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: established a nation in 1948, you believe that was part
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: of God's plan. Am I right?
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: I think that it is predicted more than once, several
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: times in the Bible, that the Jews will be scattered
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: to the ends of the earth and and they will return. Now,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: in the past, the Jews have been scattered, but not
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: to the ends of the earth. After the Assyrian invasion,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: some Jews were relocated into Assyria. After the Babylonian invasion,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: some Jews were relocated to Babylonia and later Persia. But
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: the notion of Jews being scattered to the ends of
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: the earth, taking that kind of literally and returning, that's
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: only happened once. And not only has it happened once...
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: It's never happened to any other people. So I think
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: it is of great biblical significance. Now, I realize there
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: are some people today who say, well, you know, the
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Jews went to Europe and they intermarried and so on.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: And all of that may be true.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: But nevertheless, I think that for these people who were
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: scattered 2000 years ago to come.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: Back, Yeah. Yeah.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: Extremely unlikely.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: For most of the centuries, you would have said, there
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: is really no way for this to happen.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: But it did happen.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: And so, yes, I do think that not only is
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: it a fulfillment of prophecy, but it surely has to
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: be taken as the single most important indicator of the
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: last age or of the end times. In other words,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: we've kind of come full circle with the Jews.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: Yes. And You know, there's no doubt that there's a
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: connection to the Holocaust because after the loss of six
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: million Jewish people, I think they understood that we need
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: our own homeland. And it was as if on cue.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: And I believe they were on cue because actually, according
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: to Ezekiel 37, 38, 39, it's a sign of the
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: last days. He even says repeatedly that this will happen
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: in the last days. So it seems to me that
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: this is an indication or a fulfillment of Bible prophecy
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: that Christ is coming back.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: You know, there's an archaeological tie-in to this, which is
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: that the greatest discovery of biblical archaeology in the 20th
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: century is the Dead Sea Scrolls. And what does the
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: Dead Sea Scrolls do? Well, they basically confirm the accuracy
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: of the Hebrew Bible. The oldest Hebrew Bible prior to
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: the Dead Sea Scrolls was from about 1000 AD. So
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: think of it, more than a millennium after the events
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: that it's talking about. So a lot of skeptics were like,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, the scribes could have made changes, they
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: could have made additions and subtractions. How do we know
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: that the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament that we're reading now,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: is like the same one that Jesus read? Well, the
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Dead Sea Scrolls, which were dated back to somewhere between
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: the 3rd century BC, before Jesus— to about the first
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: century B.C. or even A.D., they confirmed that the Hebrew
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Bible had not been altered, had not been changed in
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: any meaningful way.
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: And guess what? What was the year that the Dead
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: Sea Scrolls were discovered? Answer is.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: 1947, one year before the founding of the state of Israel,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: the nation of Israel. So it's almost as if the
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: ancestral history, the presence of the Jews in their ancient homeland,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: the kind of great charter of the Jews, namely their
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Hebrew Bible, is validated 12 months before Israel is reconstituted
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: as a nation.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Wow, it's incredible. So if you were talking to a nonbeliever, Dinesh,
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: and you were going to argue the reliability of Scripture
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: on archaeology alone, what archaeological discovery would you refer to
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: that you think is one of the more compelling?
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Well, if I had to just pick an example, you know,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: just right off the top of my head, and I
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: picked this one because it is one that the skeptics.
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: Were gloating over for a long time.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: When the Israelites are crossing over from Egypt through the desert,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: they're coming to the Promised Land, they have to go
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: through Jordan, which is at that.
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: Time Moabite territory.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: The Moabites are the enemies of the Israelites, and the
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: king of Moab, Balak, He rounds up a fortune teller
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: named Balaam, or Balaam, son of Beor, and he tells
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: this guy, you need to curse the Israelites.
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: It'll give them all kinds of problems.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: And this Balaam guy is ready to do it, but
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: the Bible says that God stops him. God prevents him
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: from cursing the Israelites. Now, In the Bible, this Balaam
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: has a donkey. It's a talking donkey. So you can
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: just imagine the skeptics are like, this is ridiculous. This
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: thing is all made up. It's obviously some kind of
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: preposterous legend. Except, let's come to a few decades ago.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: They're digging in Jordan, and these are secular archaeologists, and
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: they find an old plaster inscription.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: And it says as follows, the.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Warnings and sayings of Balaam, son of Beor. So number one,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: it's Balaam, same name. And you might say, well, there
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: could be two Balaams or three Balaams, but it's Balaam,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: son of Beor, same dad. Not only that, it's in
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: the right location, which is Jordan, Moabite territory.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: And finally, what's his job?
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: The warnings and sayings of Balaam, son of Beor, indicates
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: he's some sort of a soothsayer.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: He's some sort of a fortune teller.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: So this Balaam, again, this preposterous character with the talking donkey,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: is now historically validated. And so my argument to the
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: skeptics goes something like this. Look, You cannot, with archaeology,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: prove the theology of the Bible. I'm not trying to
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: prove the miracles. But guess what? If the archaeology is
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: true down to its minute detail, stretching over the entire
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: 2,100-year history of the Bible, all the way from the
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: patriarchs to the book of Acts, if I can show
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: you 100 archaeological artifacts that that corroborate the Bible, with
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: not a single one going in the opposite direction, doesn't
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: that enhance the credibility of the Bible.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: As a whole?
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: Yes. Our mutual friend, Frank Turek, you know, who'd go
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: out on college campuses and take questions from students, and
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: he told me recently that atheism is is not as
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: prominent as it once was, that now it's kids asking
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: questions more about personal lifestyle choices, and he poses a
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: question to them. And Frank will ask the students, if
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: I could prove Christianity is true, would you believe it?
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: And he said many of them say no. So it's
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: not always an intellectual issue. It's not always convince me
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: with archaeology or convince me with something else. It's simply
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: that They don't want to live by the teachings of
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: what the Scriptures say. As Jesus said, people don't come
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: to the light because they don't want their evil deeds
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: to be exposed. So there comes a point where we
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: can make the intellectual arguments, and I recommend people get
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: your new book, The Stones Cry Out, to help with
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: those intellectual arguments which have their place. But ultimately, it
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: comes to the person willing to turn their back on
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: sin and put their faith in Christ. I agree.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: The most that archaeology, the most that Christian apologetics can
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: do is remove the rational obstacles to belief. Years ago,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: I not only debated Christopher Hitchens about a dozen times,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: but I got to know him quite well. And I
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: had known him for years before our debates. And I
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: noticed that both during our debates and sometimes when we
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: would chat afterward, it wasn't so much that he didn't
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: believe in God.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: He sort of hated God.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: And the way he put it was he's like, I
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: don't want to live under the tyranny of God, by
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: which he meant the moral supervision of God, the accountability
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: of God. And so I got the idea that his
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: was not even so much atheism in the classic meaning
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: of the term as as it was anti-theism, or even
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: in some cases, a kind of wounded theism. Someone who
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: feels that they've been kind of hurt by God, and
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: their atheism is a form of revenge.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: You know, it seems to me that when I've heard
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: people speak out and say they're atheists, it's often because
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: something happened in their life, a tragedy, the death of
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: a loved one, something else. Maybe they, as a younger person,
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: prayed and God didn't answer their prayer as they prayed it.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: And so they feel God has failed them. So now
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: they develop, you know, a belief system to substantiate that reaction.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: But do you find that that is often the case
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: with people who claim to be atheists? Or do you
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: find that some people actually arrive at that conclusion because
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: they've just studied, you know, and researched it, and this
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: is the conclusion they came to?
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: I think in 99 out of 100 cases, it's the former.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: You know, it's some experience with God.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: I agree.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: You know, my wife, Debbie, said that when she was younger,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: her dad died at a young age, and she blamed God. Now,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: as you know, Pastor Greg, in the last few weeks,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: I've been doing some swordsmanship and dueling with the Calvinists.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: And what I told my wife as we were thinking
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: back about this is I said, you know, you were
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: rebelling against the God of Calvinism because you thought— wrongly
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: that God did this to you. You thought that God
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: decreed it. You think that God wanted the suffering and
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: evil in the world. But for God to allow something
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: or to permit it is a And I think that's
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: a very important distinction. And, you know, my own adult
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Christianity was formed in the Calvary churches of California. And
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: I'm very much committed to the idea that God gives
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: us freedom to respond to him in the way that
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: we choose.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: And also, God is not the author of evil.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: God is, in fact, someone who designed the world in
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: a manner that permits evil. And he's sovereign over it
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: in that sense. but there is a certain Calvinist understanding
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: of Christianity that, in a way, gives ammunition to the atheist,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: because the atheist can then say, God intended that this
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: evil thing happen to me.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly right. You know, here's a little word of advice
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: or suggestion to you that'd be a great topic for
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: you to tackle in your next book and or film,
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: because Calvinism, Reformed theology— It seems to be having a resurgence,
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: especially among younger people, and I'm sorry to say among
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: younger pastors. And in fact, you made this statement, and
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: I followed your comments on this topic, and I so
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: appreciate it and agree with what you say, but you
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: made this provocative statement, but I cannot argue with it.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: You said, and I quote, if the Calvinist doctrine of
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: predestination is right, then atheists are right to reject God,
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: because God has rejected them first. They don't believe because
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: they can't. God didn't give them the grace to believe,
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: so God is to blame for their damnation, not their
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: own free will. You want to elaborate on that?
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's bad enough to say that God predetermined all
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: the evils in the world today, the evils in the
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: world that we experience in the world. It's a whole
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: different level to say that God predetermined. at the beginning
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: of the world, before creation itself, essentially created two books,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: the book of the chosen or the elect and the
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: book of the damned. And he put the names of
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: all the elect in one book, and obviously everybody else
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: by exclusion falls into the other book. The point being
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: that since we need grace for salvation, God has decided
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: that I'm not going to give my grace to many
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: and maybe most people people in the world. I'm not
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: even giving them— Jesus didn't actually die for them. It's such
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: a shocking and scandalous thing to say, and of course
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: it makes this, I think, a Christianity that you can't
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: go out and preach to the world. Imagine standing up
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: and telling an audience of unbelievers, guess what? I'm actually
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: reaching out to those of you that God has put
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: in the book from the beginning of the world, and
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: the rest of you don't need to get up, sit
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: where you are, because Jesus didn't die for you. I mean,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: what could be a more distasteful, shocking, and abominable message?
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: 100% true. Sometimes it's summed up in what is called tulip,
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: that breaks it down, T for total depravity, U for
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: unconditional election, L for limited atonement, I for irresistible grace,
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: and P stands for the perseverance of the saints. So
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: starting with total depravity, I mean, we would agree that
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: So when someone says, well, we're totally depraved, we wouldn't
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: dispute that if we understand what is meant. But if
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: you really dive a little deeper into what A Calvinist
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: believes when they say we're depraved, they're effectively saying you
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: don't even have the ability to believe even if you
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: wanted to. In other words, preaching to a totally depraved
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: person would be like going to a graveyard and preaching
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: to dead people. Well, yes, we're dead in trespass, in sin,
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: but God has given us the ability to choose. And
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: John 3.16 is so clear. For God so loved the world,
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. So for starters,
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: I don't even really agree with the Reformed definition of
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: total depravity. What are your thoughts on that?
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: No, I agree entirely with what you said.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: The Calvinists love the example of Lazarus, and they basically
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: act as if that is an accurate representation of.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: What it means. You're kind of dead, literally dead.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: And obviously, Lazarus can't believe he's a corpse.
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: Jesus has to revive him.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: So that's their model for understanding total depravity. I think
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: one of the things that I've discovered in these skirmishes,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: if you will, is that the Calvinist redefines pretty much
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: all the key words of the Bible. We don't have
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: a problem with these words. We would agree, for example,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: that the people who are saved are God's elect. I
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: don't have a problem with the term elect. Elect is
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: in the Bible. Even the term predestination is in the Bible.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: But predestination is in the Bible in the so-called golden chain.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: And the first link in the chain is foreknowledge, right?
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: So if God at the beginning of the world, and
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: God does know everything, and he does know the future,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: God is standing outside of time. So if God knows
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: who are those who are going to believe and trust
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: in him, Well, those are the guys who go in
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: the book.
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: Those are the guys who are predestined.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: So if you understand predestination in that sense, that God
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: has advanced knowledge of those who will believe, I don't
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: have a problem with predestination either. But the way the
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Calvinists understand these terms is alters their normal meaning. And
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: it's that interpretation, I think, that creates a lot of problems.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: Well, what I've found from experience is people I've met
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: who are Reformed, most cases were not raised in Reformed churches.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: They came to Christ through what we would call an
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: evangelical church. And then they were, I'll use the word loosely,
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: evangelized by Calvinists. It seems to me that Christians, evangelicals,
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: we want to evangelize nonbelievers and bring them to Christ.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: But often Reformed people want to evangelize what they call
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: Arminians and and bring them to Calvinism. And I don't
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: consider myself an Arminian either. I'm not a Calvinist. I'm
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: not an Arminian. I'm a Biblicist. I land where the
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: Scripture says, because there are things that the teachings of
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: Arminius I would disagree with as well.
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: I feel the same way.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: You know, some of the Calvinists are pressing me to disclose, like.
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: Am I a Molinist or an Arminian?
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: They want me to take sides in various historical, or
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: now these days there's a new word, provisionism.
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: And again, loosely speaking, the idea.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: That God provides, God in a way gives the grace
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: to all to have the power to believe.
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: Obviously, I agree with that. I think you would also.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: So....
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: I've tried to avoid.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Dropping myself, parachuting into any particular camp and simply saying, listen,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe you Calvinists are right. And maybe there's
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: certain things about you that I don't object to. And
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: there's certain good things about you. You want to emphasize
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: the sovereignty of God. Nothing wrong with that. You want
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: to give God all the credit and put man in
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: a position of complete humility in the face of salvation.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: I'm on board with that.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: But there are certain implications of the things you say,
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: which I think distort the central teachings of the Christian faith.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: That's right, because the fact of the matter is, as
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: you pointed out, predestination and free will are both taught
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: in the Bible. I think with Spurgeon, who is approaching
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: this topic, how do you reconcile predestination and the free
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: will of man? And he said, why do I have
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: to reconcile friends? You know, they are taught sometimes side
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: by side in Scripture. And, you know, God is the
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: one that chooses. God is the one who decides. I'm
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: the one who is called to proclaim. And, you know,
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: I like that passage in the book of Acts that says,
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: as many as were ordained unto eternal life, they believed.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: So I have no way of knowing that. All I
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: know is I'm called by Jesus— we all are, as a
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: matter of fact— to go into all the world and preach
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: the gospel. You know, and we leave the results— in
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: the hands of God. I heard this illustration from Harry Ironside.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: He used to be the pastor of Moody Memorial Church.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: This really helped me as a younger Christian to understand it.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: He said, you're walking down a street and there's a door,
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: and on the outside of the door it says, whosoever will,
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: let him come. You walk by that door every day.
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: You don't open the door. Then one day you stop,
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: you think about it, and maybe the next day you decide,
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go in that door. Whosoever will, let
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: him come. You open the door, you walk through, you
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: shut it, and on the other side of the door,
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: it's written, chosen in Christ from the foundation of the world.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: That works for me. It's a simple way to understand it,
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: but both of these things are taught in Scripture.
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: I agree completely.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: And I think at some level, if someone were to
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: say to you, well, Greg, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: you stood in front of the door. what is it
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: that caused you to enter on Thursday, you'd be hard-pressed
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: to say, we all would be. Why did you propose
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: to your wife on one day and not the day before?
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: In other words, the only point I think I would
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: hold on to is that in the end, it is
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: your choice to go through that door. Because if you
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: remove that, you're essentially removing the relational aspect of Christianity.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: God is relating to us, and we have to be
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: able to respond to him individually.
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: In some way.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: And I think that's really the central issue here.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: Great thoughts on that. I'm glad you're tackling that subject.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: I hope we continue to speak up publicly on it. Okay,
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: now just questions that are a little lighter. So when
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: you're hungry, what is your go-to meal? Maybe comfort food
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: or guilty pleasure?
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: Well, I like fried bananas for a snack. I ate
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: those as a child in India, and I still like
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: them today. So that's a sort of unusual delicacy.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: I don't think I've heard that one. I asked Marco
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: Rubio what his favorite go-to food was. I think he
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: said chicken, Parmesan, and pizza. I asked Chuck Swindoll. He
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: said his wife's chili. but then he admitted he loved
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: In-N-Out Burger too. But no one has said fried bananas,
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: so you own that category, Dinesh. Now, you're a filmmaker,
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: so I've you've worked behind the scenes crafting films. What
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: are maybe three of your favorite films that you love?
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: Well, my first one was called Obama's America, and it
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: is a sort of journey into the world of Obama
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: and It was quite controversial at the time, although I
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: think if you watch it today, you'd say it's dead
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: on accurate because it revealed things about Obama that were
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: not known at the time, but are known today. Subsequently,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: I did Hillary's America, which was also a secret history
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party. And it went into the history
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: of slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, a
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: lot of stuff that people don't know. They come to
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: realize the actual history of the Democratic Party, which is
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: somewhat camouflaged in the history books and also in the textbooks.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: And then most recently, my last film was called The
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: Dragon's Prophecy. It was based on Jonathan Cahn's book, and
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: it talks about Israel, Hamas, radical Islam, and the Bible.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: So it is the first film of mine that veers
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: beyond the territory of the political and the historical and
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: the cultural issues into the domain of the spiritual. So
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: I'm very proud of that film. You can watch it
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: on the Angel Studios platform. There are also other ways
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: to watch it, Salem Media and so on.
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: So those are three films I'm very proud of.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: So are you working on anything right now?
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: Prager University is going to release a documentary on biblical
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: archaeology that's a kind of companion piece to my book,
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: The Stones Cry Out, and it'll have the same title.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: It's going to be released soon. And then for next year,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: I'm working on a film project.
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: On Islam in America.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: And I'm very excited about that.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: That's such an important topic right now. Such an important topic.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: It seems so strange to me that there has been
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: this strange marriage, or maybe it's a marriage of convenience
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: for the moment, of Islam and maybe trans people or
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: gay people, when if you're honest, if you were a
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: gay person in Gaza, you might get thrown off a rooftop,
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: but yet they think there's some alignment. And what do
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: you think is going on with all that?
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Well, I think that there is a unity based upon
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: a common enemy or a common hatred, right? Think about
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: the Iranian parliament where they burned the American flag. Where
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: else did they burn the American flag? On the left-wing campus.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: So the Iranian mullahs and the left-wing students have the
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: same view of the American founding and what the flag represents.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: And so I think what it is, is that... Islam
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: has an argument against Christianity, and the secular left has
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: an argument against Christianity. And so, you know, the guy
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: who's at Columbia University doesn't worry about what happens in Gaza.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: He doesn't live in Gaza. Nobody's going to throw him
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: off a roof. So he's making common cause with the
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: Muslims here in America to essentially dismantle the principles of
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: Christianity and Western civilization.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: A common enemy. It's like when they When Jesus was
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: tried and crucified, the Pharisees and the Sadducees worked together.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: They were normally enemies of one another, but they were
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: in agreement in their mutual hatred of Jesus Christ. So
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: coming back to movies again, on a personal note, so
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: what are movies you like that you've seen in theaters?
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: I define one of my favorite movies as If I
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: saw it on television, I wouldn't flip the channel till
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: the commercial came on, even though maybe I've seen the
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: movie 20, 30 times. I just like the movie so much.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: I'll watch that. Do you have movies like that?
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: I'm a very tough candidate for humor, but I think
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: My Cousin Vinny is one of these movies that makes
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: me laugh every single time I watch it. I know
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: all the jokes that are coming and I laugh at
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: them anyway.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: I would have never thought you'd say that, but that's funny. Yeah. Yeah.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: There's a now there is a film, an Australian film,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: not quite as well known as the ones I might
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: normally name.
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: It's called Breaker Morant.
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: And it's about the Boer War.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: And it is a beautifully conceived, beautifully shot, deeply moving film.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: I think that's another one that I could watch again
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: and again and sort of get a little bit more
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: out of it each time.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: Now, those are not the films I would expect you
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: to choose, but those are fascinating choices. So music, what
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: kind of music do you listen to?
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: Well, my wife, Debbie, is a former worship leader and
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: a singer. And so I've been introduced to a wider
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: scope of music than I would otherwise follow. I'm not
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: particularly a music guy, but I've learned to appreciate certain
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: types of classical music.
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: I like country music.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: And once in a while, I even hear a pop
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: song that I can kind of tap my feet to.
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: That's good. Okay, so if you could sit down. and
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: have a meal with, say, three or four people from history.
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: We won't include Jesus because he would be our first guest,
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: but you could have dinner with them. Historical figures, maybe
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: they're alive, maybe they're from the past. Who would you
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: like to sit down and have a conversation with?
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, very weirdly, you're describing an actual situation
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: in which a group of us, Dartmouth graduates who had
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: all come to Washington, D.C., to be part of the
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Reagan administration. We sat down one day and said, who
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: is the one person that more than anybody else alive
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: we would like to have breakfast with? And on our list,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: we had Reagan, we had Pope John Paul II, we
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: had Gorbachev, but the guy who came out ahead was
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: Richard Nixon. Right. And so we wrote a letter to
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: Nixon and invited him to have lunch with a Dartmouth
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: breakfast club that we constituted just for that very purpose.
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: He actually agreed.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: And so we had an extremely interesting conversation with this
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: very strange and complex man, Richard Nixon, who isn't my
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: favorite president, but nevertheless was an extremely mystifying character and
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: and very interesting to sit down with for an hour
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: or two.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: That's fascinating. You know, I read recently that young people
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: are sort of discovering Nixon for the first time, and
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: he's sort of grown in popularity. I interviewed Shannon Bream
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: recently at the Richard Nixon Library, and as you walk
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: through the library, you realize this man has really been misrepresented.
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: He's been defined by Watergate, but actually he was a
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: very intelligent man, and in and did many good things.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: And yeah, he messed up. But I look at modern
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: scandals of today, and I think Watergate would be relatively
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: minor comparatively. So, you know, I look upon Nixon with
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: a certain degree of favor. But that's so cool that
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: you sat down and had a meal with him. Did
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: you tell me you actually worked with President Reagan as well?
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: In my early 20s, after I graduated from Dartmouth, I
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: came to Washington. A bunch of us did. I wasn't alone.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: And all of us ended up in different parts of
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: the administration. In fact, my classmate, Peter Robinson, wrote Reagan's Mr. Gorbachev,
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: take down that wall speech. And so we have the
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: great experience, which we'll never forget, any of us, of
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: having just It's not that we were that high up
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: on the totem pole. I got to stand in the
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: back of the room and watch Reagan with the senior staff.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: It's just something that will never leave me.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: Oh, he was a great president. Have you ever been
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: to his ranch in Santa Barbara?
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: I have, and it's, again, an indelible impression on me
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: because for two reasons. One is the humility of the man,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: you know, having been there in such a simple abode.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, my wife was pointing out to me that
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: Reagan and Nancy had these two single beds that are
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: physically tied together. They're too cheap to buy a king bed,
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: you know. But for me, it was really interesting to
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: thumb through Reagan's books, which are still sitting there on
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: the bookshelf. And you can see Reagan's handmade notes, which
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: shows you that the guy was a reader. He was
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: a man of ideas. And we haven't really had that
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: so much since then. So even though Reagan, I wouldn't say,
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: was himself an intellectual, he was genuinely interested in ideas.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: Well, one of the fascinating things in that house I
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: noticed was the remote control. Maybe there are multiple remote
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: controls with handwritten directions from Nancy on how to operate
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: the television. So here's the man who had the nuclear football,
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: the leader of the free world that still needed help
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: operating his television set.
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: Isn't that the truth?
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: No, that venue, that ranch, I mean, the Reagan Library
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: is wonderful in its own way.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: But the ranch has the stamp of lived existence, right?
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: And one of the things that the Young America Foundation,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: which maintains the ranch, they have not altered it, right?
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: So if you look in the closet, it's like, there's
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: Reagan's shirt. You know, there's his cowboy hat. And so
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: there's a kind of authenticity about that that I think
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: hits you hard. So it's very meaningful. If anyone ever
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: gets to go, it's very well worth doing it.
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: It really is. Also, here's the ports that Reagan actually
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: built himself. He liked to get out and work and
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: chop wood and ride his horses. And he always, of course,
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: looked great doing it. He's a movie star. And he
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: was a fantastic president. You look at the universities of today,
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: there's a rise of anti-Semitism on these university campuses. There's
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: just liberal woke ideology being pushed on our young people.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: And you yourself have gone to university. I would consider
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: you an intellectual. What would you recommend that Christian parents
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: send their children to what we would call secular universities today?
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: No, I say that that's not the answer I would
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: have given 20 years ago, maybe even 10 years ago.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, I sent my daughter to Dartmouth, but the
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: moment she got there, I realized that the place is
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: like a minefield. Now, it was already leaning to the
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: left when I was there, but there was about... eight
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: or nine prominent conservatives on the campus. So there was
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: at least some modicum of a balance. But that was
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: starting to disappear even in the years 2014 to 2017
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: when Danielle, my daughter, went there. And so I had
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: to almost like choreograph her journey through college saying, take
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: this professor, avoid this department.
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: So these days it's like that.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: It's like walking through a minefield And unless you have
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: some navigation tool, I would say, I mean, the least
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: I would say is be very, very careful.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, good advice. So what would an older Dinesh say
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: to a younger Dinesh? You mentioned you came from India.
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: How old were you when you came to the United States?
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: I was 17.
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: So how old are you now, Dinesh?
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: I'm 65.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: You know what, Dinesh? You don't age. I've noticed this.
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: You literally look the same as you looked when I
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: met you maybe, I don't know, was it 15, 20
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: years ago?
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: That's because, Pastor Greg, you're not really looking at me,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: you're only looking at an AI version of me.
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: I need this program then for myself.
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: No, thank you. I appreciate that. Look, age catches up
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: with us all in the end.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: I think your question is, how am I different, perhaps, than,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: you know, what would I say to younger Dinesh?
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: Is that where you were going with this?
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: That's it. That's it.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say that it was a great blessing
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: in my life to have a chance to make my
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: life in America.
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: It needn't have been that way.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: And it has given me the scope to do all
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: kinds of things with my life that would be completely
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: impossible had I stayed in India. And quite frankly, would
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: be impossible pretty much anywhere in the world. So, you know,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: America is... undergoing a lot of serious problems now. There
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: are a lot of young people who think that the
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: American dream isn't available to them the way it was
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: for their parents. But I do think that that spark
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: of the old America endures. And so when I hear
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: someone like Trump say, make America great, again, what it
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: means to me is bringing back the foundational principles of America,
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: the spirit that built America in the 19th century, the
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: spirit that I experienced in the 20th century, And one
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: that I think can still be not only the protection
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: of this country, but will continue to be an example
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: to the world.
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: Well, through your writings and your films and your son-in-law
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: now and all the other things that you do, you've
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: contributed so much to strengthening our country. You're a real patriot.
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: And we're so proud of all that you've done. And
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: thank you for giving us some time. And I want
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: to encourage everyone. to go out and get a copy
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: of Dinesh D'Souza's brand new book, The Stones Cry Out.
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: And how would you sum your book up, maybe just
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: in a couple of sentences, this book is about?
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: The book surveys 150 years of biblical archaeology. you know,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: when I finished it, it's almost like I created a
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: tapestry right above the Bible in which I put in
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: all the dates and I drop in all the artifacts.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: So the Bible springs to life as an historical document.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, to me, it's so important that God didn't
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: choose to reveal himself just by like stamping his name
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: on the moon or putting the 10 commandments in the sky.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: He chose a particular people. He chose particular places and
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: times to unfold his story. And this is the archaeological
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: footprints of the Bible.
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: And don't you have some QR codes embedded in it
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: that people can scan and actually see videos of you
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: on location? Absolutely.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: I've got maps and timelines and lots of color photographs
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: and also these QR codes. You basically get to, you know,
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: it's obviously best to go to all these locations yourself.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: But the second best thing is to experience them through
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: the book. You don't just learn about them. You actually
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: can see them for yourselves.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: Great. Well, thanks for being on the podcast today. God
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: bless you, Dinesh.
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: Thank you.