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The Greg Laurie Show - The October 7th Attacks at 3 Years: Johnnie Moore · Bott Podcast Network

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Life Audio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Our faith is rooted in the Middle East.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Jesus was Jewish.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: He didn't grow up in Nebraska. Everyone who wrote the Bible,
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: with the exception of maybe one or two, depends on
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: who you ask, was Jewish.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm here with my friend, Johnny Moore. Johnny, welcome.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: This is the first time to have you on the podcast.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Someone asked me the other day, what does Johnny do?
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: It's like, what does Johnny not do? You've been involved
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: in so many amazing things over the years since I've
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: known you, and you've done them all so well. But
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: for someone that has never heard of Johnny Moore, tell
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: us who you are and what you do.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: Well, first of all, I'm so happy to be here.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: I have been so ministered to over so many years
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: by you, by your teaching, by your films, by your books,
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: by your friendship. And so it's, it's, it's amazing to
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: be here. Um, I have done a lot of random
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: stuff and, but there is like a thread that there
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: are a couple of threads that run through it. And,
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: and one of them is that I just fundamentally believe
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: that you don't actually care about something unless you do
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: something about it.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Hmm.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: And so that has taken me through these circuitous paths.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: It's not enough to care about the persecuted church if
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: you're not going to do something about it. It's not
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: enough to care about the Middle East if you're not
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: going to do something about it, whether it's education or
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Hollywood or business.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Were you always this principled as a little kid? Were
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: you this way, or is this something that came later?
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Because I know that you went to a Liberty University,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: and Jerry Falwell Sr., and you developed a friendship, and
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: he took an interest in you, and you were already
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: in a position of leadership at a very young age.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Does this go way back to your childhood?
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: I've always been a doer, but I'm also one of
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: the most unlikely people to be sitting in this chair.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: I grew up in the deep south in small towns.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: My parents went through an unbelievably traumatic divorce when I
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: was a kid. We moved over 20 I think it
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: was 12. No, it was almost like 20 times before
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: I was 12 years old. Like lots of different houses,
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: always on the move.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Were you with one of your parents only?
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: I eventually ended up with my mom. And then every
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: other weekend I would see my dad.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: So I'm already seeing a pattern because it reminds me
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: of my life where I was with my mother and
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: I had to grow up fast. I had to learn
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: to fend for myself. And in my case, I had
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: to help take care of my mother. So you develop
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: this resourcefulness as probably a defense mechanism and as a
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: survival mechanism.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think very, very much so. That's also my story.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: And then I had these amazing people in my life
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: that helped me though. So like, you know, right after
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: the divorce, we were in the local mall in our town.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: And funny enough, there was this person in the mall
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: that every weekend he made balloon animals and he sold
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: them for a dollar like to kids in the mall.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: And I went up to the guy and said, well,
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: you teach me how to do that.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Wow. I should have brought some balloons in. Can you
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: still do it?
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: I could probably still make some dog or something. But
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: this guy, you know, he could have just shooed me off.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: But he didn't. And he said, yeah, why don't you
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: come back next Saturday and, you know, spend a half
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: hour or so and I'll teach you.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: And you were in your 20s when this happened? No, no.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: I'm like 12, 13 years old.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: You're a little kid.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: I'm a kid. And this person basically taught me how
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: to be a business person. And he taught me how
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: to make balloons. And he told me every balloon that
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: I sold, I could keep the money, but I had
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: to do something. He said, you have to take a sock.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: And at home, you have to put $ 1 for every
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: $ 10 in that sock. And then at the end of
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: the year, you give that money to your church. That's like,
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: that's your, that's, what you get back to God. And
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: then he took me to like the local bank account
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: and he helped me open a bank account. And, you know,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: and there were a lot of people in my life
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: like that. But it's like I had, you know.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: So this man was a Christian.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: He was a Christian.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Now, had you heard the gospel at this point of
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: your life?
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: I had. And, you know, I grew up in church, like,
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm a Baptist in the South. Like, we
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: were in church three times a week, every time the
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: doors were open.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Were there snakes handed around in your– No.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: But people don't know this about Baptists in the mountains
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: in North Carolina. They are charismatics.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: They're like– Oh, interesting.– like, women would, like, have a fit,
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: and they'd start running around the church and.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: All these things.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: But, no, I grew up in church, and that actually
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: created kind of a crisis in my life because we
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: were in church every time the doors were open. Yeah.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: And yet, you know, the church wasn't, you know, able
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: to hold my, as a little kid's mind, like wasn't
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: able to hold my parents' marriage together. And I think
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: people go in different paths in a situation like that.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: But my church had done this like whole Bible study
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: based upon like Josh McDowell's curriculum. And I was like
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: this curious kid. And instead of running away from the church,
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: I ran into finding answers to my questions and And
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: about six months before my parents' divorce is when I
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: really got saved. And I started, you know, about a
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: year before they divorced and about six months before, I
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: started reading the Bible every night from 9 to 9.30
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: every night. I would like read the Bible, write what
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: I learned. And I really think God intervened.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: How old were you at this point?
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: This is all when I was like 11, 12, 13
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: years old. Yeah.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: This is all preparing you. You know, everything in life
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: is preparation. And we go through things that don't make sense.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: but later we look back in them and even though
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: they may have been bad things, I mean, having parents
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: divorce is a bad thing, but like Joseph said, you
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: It helped make you into the man that you are.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: But you do grow up, you do grow up fast. And, and,
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: you know, and I, in hindsight, like I, you know, my, my,
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: my parents were doing their best in a very, very difficult,
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: difficult situation. But, um, but that's what led me eventually
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: to Liberty. So, uh, Liberty, um, sent uh scholarships in
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: the mail to people all over america to um if
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: you want to move to lynchburg virginia and go to
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: bible school and my mom received one of those scholarships
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: in the.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Mail and were you a good student was i good
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: student yeah.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: I you know i was i was the type of
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: student that um didn't apply myself you know so i
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: was i you know the famous example is like in
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: my in my own life is uh i was in
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: like this later on i was in like this ap
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: english class and i had like a d in the
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: class And then I went and took the exam and
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: I got like the highest grades and I.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Got college credit. You didn't like the structure necessarily. I
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: was very bored. But when you found what you're passionate about,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: then you become a quick study and learn about it.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: And I've always been all in. So if there's something
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: I'm focused on that I care about, I just can't help, but,
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: but lean in, lean into it.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Was Jerry Falbo a bit of a father figure to
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: you when you met him? Yeah.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, he, he transformed my life. So as I
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: was about to say, my, my, my mom went to
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: the mailbox one day we were in Florence, South Carolina.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: We had reached the end of our rope and she
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: had the scholarship if she wanted to attend Liberty. And
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: so as an act of faith, she like got a
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: U-Haul the day they cut our power off. We moved
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: to Lynchburg, Virginia and we showed up in Lynchburg, Virginia,
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: just showed up on campus. No plan. They let us
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: live in the dorms till we could figure it out
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: that summer. Even your mother, even my mom.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: And, um, She was never able to go to the
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Bible school because she had to work to take care
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: of us. But that was like God's hook to get
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: us to Virginia and to get me into Liberty. And
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: then just amazing things happened. Someone anonymously scholarship my sister
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: and I to go to the private school there. I
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: eventually sort of gave in to the Lord and I
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: started preaching sermons as like a 15, 16-year-old kid.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Did you think at one point, maybe I'll be a
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: pastor one day?
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: I felt called to ministry. Yeah. But I was a
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: little bitter about it.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Why is that?
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: I think because of what I experienced as a kid.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: In fact, I remember in our public school taking a
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: speech class, and I kind of had a bad attitude
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: about it. I was like, I'm going to take this
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: speech class because I guess I'm going to have to
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: learn how to speak if I'm going to be in ministry.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: But even that was like the beginning of sort of
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: the diverse plan that God had for my life because
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: I took that speech class. The speech teacher recruited me
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: to her forensics team. you know, I got last place
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: in the first competition. She took me under her wing.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: I ended up the champion forensic speaker in Virginia. And
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: on one weekend at some random conference in Virginia, a judge,
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: when you do forensic speaking, you have to do seven
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: minute speech. You have 30 minutes to prepare to do
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: a seven minute speech. And then the judges ask you questions.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: I was on like the weekend regional, whatever in Virginia.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: And this judge asked me if I advocated for the
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: 10 commandments in the classroom. And I said, Yes, if
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: they're in the Supreme Court, why can't they be in
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: the classroom? And the judge gave me like last place.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: And I didn't like that answer.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: I didn't like it at all. And he was foolish
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: enough to like write why. Like he literally discriminated against
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: me because of my faith. And you know, I'm a
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: kid in Jerry Falwell Sr. 's church in Lynchburg, Virginia. Like,
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: I don't really get who Jerry Falwell Sr. is. He's
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: just my pastor. And I wrote him a note, pastor
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: at trbc.org, just like the random address, like telling him
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: what had happened to me. And the next day in
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: the church service, he read part of my email on
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: national television. He stood up for me because I was
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: a kid in the church. This is who he was.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: And on another occasion, my grandfather actually was a country
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: preacher in the mountains of North Carolina. He was a
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: godly man. And I used to go preach for his friends.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: And one of these churches I preached at, I think
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: it was in northern Georgia, there were not more than
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: 20 people in this church. And yet, someone in that
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: church took cassette tape of my sermon that weekend. And
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: this person watched Jerry Falwell on TV and sent it
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: to Jerry Falwell, Thomas Road Baptist Church, Lynchburg, Virginia in
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: the mail. And Falwell got hundreds of thousands of letters
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: a week. Somehow, that single piece of mail made it
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: to him at the church. He listened to the tape.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: And I came home from my public school one day.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: He had found my phone number It left me a
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: message on the old voice recording machine to encourage me
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: as a young preacher. And, you know, it was just
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: the providence of God.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, Jerry, I got to know him a
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: little bit. I went and spoke at Liberty years ago
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: when he was still there. And, you know, I saw
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: a side of him that a lot of people didn't see,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: the fun-loving jokester Jerry Falwell. Like, I'm just standing there
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: on the stage. He runs up behind me and, ah,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: it scares me. And I'm, what's going on? That's Jerry Falwell?
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: And I was driving with him in a Suburban, and
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: there would be the students, you know, on the sidewalk.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: And he'd act like he was going to drive the
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Suburban over into the sidewalk. He'd laugh, and they'd laugh.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Everybody knew him, you know, as a warm person. you know, joyful,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: happy guy. Because when he watched him preach, he had
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: a certain way of coming across, a very authoritative, very certain,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: which is fine. But there was a real light side
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: to him. And he obviously took an interest in a
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: young Johnny Moore. So let's talk about some of the
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: things going on in the world. It's been three years
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: since October 7th. People tend to gloss over this event. Well, yes,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: was it around 1,200 people were murdered on that day?
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: and people taken hostage, but they don't go into the details.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: And I remember Franklin Graham had a copy of the video,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: some of which was taken by the terrorists themselves. He says,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: do you want to see this? I said, I actually don't.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: And then he said, watch a little of it. And
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: I watched just a little, maybe four minutes. It's still
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: in my mind. It was so horrifying because it was
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: taken from the viewpoint of one of these men murdering
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: an innocent Jewish man And you saw how barbaric it was.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: And sometimes I feel like, have we glossed over that
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: too much? Do we need to just pause for a moment?
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Because next to the Holocaust, this is one of the
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: most horrific things that has happened to the Jewish people.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: And it happened in their homeland, where they have this
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: very strong military and state-of-the-art intelligence and everything else that
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: they have to have this happen to them. I mean,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: if it happened in America, to compare, because we also
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: just had the anniversary of 9-11, it would be like
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: 40,000 Americans slaughtered. I think that would get our attention.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: Having 3,000 murdered certainly got our attention, rightly so. How
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: about 40,000? Proportionately the size of Israel. That's what happened
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: to them. Talk about that event, what actually happened on
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: that day, and why it was so devastating to Israel.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: And also the hostages, including the children. They took kids hostage.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Babies. Babies.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: They killed babies.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: They killed babies.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: They put a baby in an oven.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: People want to dispute that one point. Well, there's no
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: evidence to support that, but it actually happened.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of evidence. And, you know, you're right.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, October 7th was the single biggest attack against
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: the Jewish people since the Holocaust. I remember that morning.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: I was supposed to fly to Israel that night. I
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: was literally getting an award on Wednesday for my work
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: building bridges between Arabs and Israelis. And then I was
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: going from there to Saudi Arabia. That was my plan
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: that week because we were on the edge of peace
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: between Saudi Arabia and Israel. And this is part of
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: what Hamas was doing and with Iran's support to try
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: to derail these peace plans. But it was a singular
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: event of terror. And And what makes it even worse–
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: everything about it is terrible– what makes it even worse
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: is that the people who lived in those kibbutzim, those
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: little villages next to the Gaza Strip, many of these
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: were the people most committed to peace. I mean, they
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: were the people who lived there for that purpose.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Those were the people at the music festival.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: These hundreds and hundreds of young people. It was a
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: peace festival. And in fact, some of the Hamas operatives
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: from that day that broke through and killed all those
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: people in such horrific ways– they actually were actually employed
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: on a, on a regular basis by those kibbutzim. They actually, they,
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: they crossed over and they allowed them to work. And
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: while they were working, they were collecting intelligence in order
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: to prepare for this, for this horrible attack. And, you know,
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: that we are very much living in a pre-October 7,
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: post-October 7 world. And, you know, I, I, that, that week,
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: instead of going to Israel, I ended up going to
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: the EU parliament. And I, I, um, I spoke about
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: the hostages for the first time there, and then we
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: led a rally a few weeks after that in Geneva
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: with evangelicals in front of the UN human rights infrastructure
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: to call for the release of the hostages. It just
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: went on and on and on from there. And there
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: are all kinds of obvious things that October 7th revealed.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: The less obvious things that it revealed was just the total–
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: moral corruption of so many of our institutions and so
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: many of our leaders who could not see good and evil.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Because people forget that on October 8th, when many of
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: our churches were praying for our friends in Israel, on
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: October 8th, 2023, protests erupted in all of our democratic
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: capitals and all of the major cities in the world.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: You would think there would be protests in favor of Israel,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: and it was the very opposite.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: They were protesting in support of Hamas. And it just
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: shows what had grown up underneath.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: They were celebrating it all. And they were celebrating it
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: all as before Israel had retaliated in a war that
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Hamas started that day. And that's what it was. It
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: was a war that they started. There were thousands and
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: thousands of Hamas operatives.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: What do you think the objective of Hamas was? Like,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: we hope... that this war accomplishes this goal.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, they wanted to wipe Israel out. I mean, what
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Yahya Sinwar was doing was he was, number one, he
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: was concerned that if there's going to be peace between
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Israel and Saudi Arabia, that it would reset the entire region.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Number two, and Iran was involved in all of this.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Iran was, the Iranian IRGC dreamed up all the tunnels
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: and all the infrastructure. They trained the operatives. They smuggled
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: the weapons. But what Yahya Senwar thought was that they
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: would break through in Gaza, by the way, sometimes using paragliders.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: And the paragliding training actually came from Europeans that were
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: trying to help with tourism, oddly enough, in the Gaza Strip.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: But Yahya thought that evil, evil man, they were going
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: to break through and then Hezbollah was going to join
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: from the north with 150,000 rockets. And it would be
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: the destruction of Gaza. And for whatever reason, Hezbollah did
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: not join in. And there have been the reasons for
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: all of that, some of which was Sinwar was really
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: operating on his own timetable and wasn't coordinating with all
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: of the Iranian proxies and all of these things. But
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: it was not inconceivable that had that plan actually been
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: implemented as he imagined it, with an attack from the south,
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: an attack from the north, Iranian proxies in Syria, and
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: maybe even Iran itself joining. It was an existential moment
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: for Israel. It was a shock that with all of
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: their technology and all of their innovation, that they could
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: still be vulnerable.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: You know, it's ironic. I was on a phone call
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: with a number of other pastors and Christian leaders orchestrated
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: by Mike Evans. And Prime Minister Netanyahu was on. And
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: he was telling us how safe and secure Israel is,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: how advanced they are technologically. They've never been stronger. He
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: was talking about this peace treaty or this, you know,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: new relationship with Saudi Arabia. And it was so optimistic.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: And it was only a couple of few days after
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: that that this happened. So clearly he did not see
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: this coming. How could there be a breach of this
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: kind without israeli's intelligence massad their military knowing.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: About it i mean all of that will be will
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: be studied and analyzed but i think it's a lesson
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: for all of us yes that even the most powerful
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: sophisticated countries in the world can have can have blind
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: spots i mean the united states has some blind spots
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: some of which i know about which i will not
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: say on this microphone right because you know you don't
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: want other people to know about them but every country
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: does yeah um And one of the things that Israel
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: lost in the October 7th attack was that sort of
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: like mysterious deterrence and invincibility, which they steadily. gained back
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: as they prosecuted the war with the Pager operation in Lebanon.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: And now you're seeing the Middle East just totally, totally,
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: totally reshaped in front of our eyes. And I think,
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: you know, the net effect of it will be This
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: is not actually the beginning of a period of more–
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: another generation of war and terror in the Middle East.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: It's actually the last gasp of the extremists. And I
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: believe there will be a different Iran. I believe these
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: proxies will be defeated. I believe you will see a
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: wave of peace all across the region. But it was
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: a shot, you know, not only to Israel, it was
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: a shot to all those who love peace and freedom,
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: you know, around the world, that there really is evil
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: in the world. And we have never in our lifetimes
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: seen evil like we saw on that day on October 7th, which,
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: by the way, wasn't just an attack on Israel. The
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: victims of October 7th, both the hostages and those who
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: were massacred, were citizens not just of Israel. They were
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: citizens of 40 different countries, including virtually every country in
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: And yet we watched in front of our eyes as
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: the victims of that attack were treated as the criminals.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: And it's been insane, insane to watch even our own
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: politics in America.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Well, and then so Israel's responded. And of course, they're
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: accused by some of genocide. I don't even think people
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: who use the word genocide know what the word means.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: If Israel wanted to commit a genocide, they could do it,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: and they could do it in short order, but they've
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: done nothing of the kind. But their response, you know,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: there's innocent children that have been killed, but we don't
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: even know how accurate some of that information is that's
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: relayed through a very compliant and cooperative press with this
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: sort of agenda, this anti-Israel agenda. So tell me what
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: you think about the response of Israel and maybe bring
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: clarity to what's going on in Gaza, because you know
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: a lot about that in particular.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there was obviously not a genocide in Gaza.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: And the shocking thing is, even as we're speaking, we're speaking,
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: you know, after the UN General Assembly took place in
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: New York, and the absolutely horrible Secretary General of the
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: United Nations concluded in his remarks that the worst thing
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: he's seen as a Secretary General of the United Nations
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: is what happened in the Gaza Strip. While he's been
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: Secretary General of the United Nations, like literally millions of
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: people have died under his watch. What did happen in
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: Gaza was Hamas started a war.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: And to your point, if there was an attack like
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: that on the United States of America, like we would
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: respond and the Israelis would, responded to that war. And
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: all wars are horrible. And civilians die in wars. And yet,
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: on the same token, it's not only a compliant press,
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: it's that what we've been experiencing is actually the first,
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: what I call the first global information war, where we
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: have seen basically everything Hamas said, the global media and
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: many governments took at face value, and everything Israel said
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: they treated it as a lie. And it should have
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: been the exact opposite. So why is it this way?
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: And I think it has a lot to do with anti-Semitism.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: We have a long history of blood libels against the
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Jewish people. We have a long, long history of anti-Semites
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: coming out of the woodwork in these types of moments.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: And by the way, the data is just undeniable at
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: this point. I mean, even Hamas itself, they have– their
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: statistics are like 75,000 to 85,000 people died over the
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: course of that war in the Gaza Strip. And yet,
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: Hamas has, you know, a few months ago, they had
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: a list of over 50,000 Hamas operatives whose families would
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: receive funds because they died on the Hamas side of fighting. Like,
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: the whole time during this whole war, like everyone who
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: died in the Gaza strip was treated as a civilian, uh,
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: by the information ministry in Hamas, by the press, not as,
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: not as fighters. And so, you know, it's just the
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: whole world was upside down. The whole thing is twisted around. And,
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: you know, it reminds me of that, that verse in
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: the Bible, um, in the old Testament where it says like,
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: truth is just fallen in the streets. And, and it,
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: it just, and I can tell you, you know, I, I,
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: I spent last summer, um, uh, helping feed the people
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: of Gaza. The U S government asked me if I would,
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: if I would run this humanitarian operation, the Gaza strip,
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: or we delivered over 200 million, about over nearly 200
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: million meals for free to the people of Gaza that
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: Hamas could not steal because what Hamas was doing was
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: every piece of food or whatever else that was coming
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: in the Gaza strip from the big international UN agencies
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: was and other humanitarian agencies, they were stealing it, they
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: were hoarding it, and then they were selling it to
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: the poor people in the Gaza Strip, and they were
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: using the revenue to fuel their war. And yet, when
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: we were doing this effort, you would expect the world
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: to celebrate it. We're getting food directly to the people
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: of Gaza for free. No one can steal it. There's
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: no diversion of aid. And yet, because it was a
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: threat to Hamas continuing to exist and continuing to control
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: the people of Gaza, We were treated as the worst
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: people in the world for refusing to let Hamas use
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: food as its weapon of war.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: So we have the Houthis, we have Hamas, we have Hezbollah,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: all funded by Iran. And we've been in a prolonged
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: conflict with them. Do we call it a war? It
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: is a war. And you've met President Trump. I've been
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: in the Oval Office with you, with him and others.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: What advice, if you were sitting with the president, would
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: you give him about the current conflict in Iran? Elevate
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: it militarily? De-escalate it militarily? Continue on the path he's
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: already on? What would be the solution?
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: First of all, Iran has been at war with the
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: United States for decades. They killed 250 of our Marines
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: in Beirut. They facilitated countless terrorist acts around.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: The world targeting- The hostages under Carter's.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: They attempted to kill the president of the United States
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: on multiple occasions.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: And they're still threatening to do it, this president.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: And they have done incredibly insane, crazy, irrational things in
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: the last couple of years.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: So imagine this country with a nuclear weapon.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: They cannot have a nuclear weapon.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: And the president, he has that as his North Star,
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: and that's exactly- Right. And he has to keep it up.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, what's happening now is actually having a profound
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: effect on the Iranian economy. You know, not a single
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: ship of oil has gone into Iran. Iran hasn't been
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: able to export any oil. The sanctions regime is basically
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: squeezing the economy of Iran, you know. The Iranian people
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: have to decide the future of that country, and we
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: need to pray every single day. And we have a
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: lot of Christians in Iran, evangelical Christians in Iran, one
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: of the fastest growing churches in the world. These people
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: have suffered so, so much. But why are they suffering?
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: They're not suffering because of the United States. They're not
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: suffering because of Israel. They're not suffering because of the West.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: They are suffering because of this horrible, horrible theocratic authoritarian
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: dictatorship that has made them hostage to an apocalyptic idea
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: that is fueled by hate of America and hate of Israel.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: And the president refused to pass this problem down to
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: another generation. The president refused to allow Iran to rush
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: towards a nuclear weapon. This is– he doesn't want war.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: The president whose biggest achievement was in the first administration
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: was the Abraham Accords. It was peace in the Middle East.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: Up until this conflict with Iran, one of the favorite
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: things that he was doing and that he talked about
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: constantly was like achieving eight peace deals. And I know
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: about some of these peace deals. Like these are really–
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia is– is like the hardest
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: thing in the world to do. And the president made
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: that a priority and worked on that and achieved, you know,
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: a clear step in that process. He didn't want to
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: go to war, but it is the obligation above all
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: other obligations for the head of state of the United
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: States of America to keep the country safe. And he
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: didn't choose the time in history that he would be president,
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: but history chose In God's providence, he is the president
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: that was at the moment where we were reaching a
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: point of no return on this maniacal regime having the
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: world's most powerful weapon, aside from everything else that they had.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: And so it's not a should he or shouldn't he,
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: could he or couldn't he. Objectively speaking, this had to
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: be dealt with. And one of the worst things about
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: this period in American history, I'm sad to say, is
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: that What we should have seen is we should have
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: seen people, regardless of their political affiliations, regardless of who
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: they vote for in elections, they should have rallied around
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: this just cause. And instead, you know, it's the first
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: time in my lifetime where we haven't seen that. But
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: it doesn't change the fact that this had to be
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: dealt with. Sooner or later, it had to be dealt with.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: And we had to pray for him. And by the way,
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: all these things are complicated.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: You know, there are some things that are true and
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: some things that are false and some things that are
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: black and white, you know, just very, very clear. And
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of really, really hard stuff in the middle.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: And that's the work of policymakers. You know, that's why,
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: you know, so much of my life is like now
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: educating and training a new generation of policymakers. And it's
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: dealing with those really, really complicated gray spaces. But the
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: president's doing the right thing and we should pray for him.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: But it's not an easy thing. It's a really, really
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: hard thing. And by the way, it's not politically useful
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: for him. He'd much rather have not had to do
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: this leading into an election because it's very, very easily
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: used by political opponents, especially with gas prices and things
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: like that. But, you know, it's what he said. He
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: has to do what's right. And this was the right
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: thing to do.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Now, you have interesting friendships and relationships around the world
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: with Jewish rabbis and and Muslim leaders. I remember you
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: introduced me to, was it the crown prince of Bahrain?
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean, so it's amazing to me because
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: you're really a bridge builder, you know, and this is
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: a gifting I think God has given you. And I
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: wonder in all of these relationships and all of your
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: travels all around the planet, you know, if you've had
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: opportunities to share the gospel with some of these people
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: behind the scenes, and maybe you could give us a
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: little advice on two things. How do you share the
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: gospel with a Muslim? How do you share the gospel
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: with a Jew? It's a bit different, isn't it?
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: First of all, the gospel always begins for us with
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: showing the gospel.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: You know, I think we have to preach the gospel.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: But we have to also show the gospel.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: And one of the reasons why I feel so called
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: to the Middle East is It's because our faith is
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: actually a Middle Eastern faith.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: That's very true. Okay. Jesus was Jewish.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: He didn't grow up in Nebraska. Born in Bethlehem from Nazareth.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: His ministry in Jerusalem, that whole part in the Galilee.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: The Bible that I read, I call it the Old Testament,
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: but it's actually originally the Hebrew Bible.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: Everyone who wrote the Bible, with the exception of maybe
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: one or two, it depends on who you ask, was Jewish.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: Jewish.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: Our faith is rooted in the Middle East. And so,
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: sometimes I feel like the gospel, the Christian message, my
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: Christian testimony actually kind of fits contextually much better when
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: I'm in the Gulf or in Israel or in some
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: of these other countries. And also, we have an incredible
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: history in these places. And our history isn't just about
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: preaching the gospel, it's about showing the gospel. So, for instance-
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: If you go all across that part of the world,
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: many of the homes of people you know, when they
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: have staff, some of these really, really wealthy, famous people
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: in that part of the world, many of their staff
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: are Christians. And they're Christians from, you know, from, yeah,
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: the Philippines and the United States, these Christian countries. Many
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: of these, like, nations, the first hospital, the first university
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: was started by evangelical missionaries. Yeah. You know, in the UAE,
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: one of my favorite places, the UAE is, I think,
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: 55 years old, which is remarkable. I mean, this is
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: one of the wealthiest countries in the world. It's incredibly innovative,
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: a huge partner of the United States of America in
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: AI and other things. But 10 years before the UAE
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: became a country, when it was just like Emirates villages
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: spread all across that arid part of the Arabian Peninsula,
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: a Christian missionary couple that graduated from Wheaton College– traveled
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: to the UAE with a mission of starting a maternity hospital.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: They got in their car. They landed in Dubai. They
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: got in their car. They drove 17 hours. Now it
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: takes about an hour and a half to a place
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: called Al Ain in the middle of the desert. And
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: they meet some random Arab guy in the middle of
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: the desert. And they asked this guy if they can
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: start a maternity hospital. And he let them do it.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: And this maternity hospital, by the way, was the first
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: hospital in that whole part of the world. And at
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: this point in the UAE, half of children and a
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: third of mothers were dying at childbirth. And this leader
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: allowed them to start this hospital. And the person who
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: allowed them to start the hospital ended up, this guy,
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: his name was Sheikh Zayed. Sheikh Zayed became the founder
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: of the UAE. One of the first kids that was
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: born in that hospital was the current president of the UAE,
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: Mohammed bin Zayed. The first hands which held the president
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: of one of the most wealthy, successful, innovative countries in
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: the world, the current president, the person who signed the
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: Abraham Accords, by the way, making peace in that part
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: of the world. The first hands that held that little
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: baby were the hands of a Christian evangelical missionary woman.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: Who came to serve those Arab people. And he wasn't
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: the only one born there. The foreign minister was born there.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: The ambassador of the United States was born there. A
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: full third of the royal family was born there. And today,
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: if you go to the UAE on a Friday, and
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: you have the privilege of being invited to the modulus
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: with the president of the UAE, and you ask him
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: about this hospital and this family, the Kennedys, he will
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: tell you the same thing. He said, those Christians... They
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: loved us before we discovered oil. Because now everyone goes
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: there with their handout, right? It's rich country, oil rich country.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: The funny thing was, I actually was at Wheaton two
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: years ago. I spoke at their missions week. They didn't
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: have it for a while. They brought it back. So
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: I spoke in chapel for like three days. And on
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: the last day, I told Wheaton College about this missionary couple.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: And actually, everyone I talked to at Wheaton College, no
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: one knew this story. But a random Christian couple who
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: went and served. And I think that's our story all
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: across the region. And when it comes to talking about
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: the gospel, like, there's just so many things to talk about.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: You know, Jesus is actually a revered figure in Islam.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: He's the second holiest prophet in Islam.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: In Islam.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: Like, you can just talk about Jesus. You know, it's
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: not like a strange thing. You talk about Jesus. And
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: that region's changing. Like, people, you know, they're not bothering
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: people having church in their house and, you know, these
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: sorts of things, you know, anymore. But I think we
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: need to be smart about the way we do it.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: You know, sometimes I used to think that Paul was
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: the least likely person to change the world, right? Because he,
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: you know, he was, like, rough around the edges. He was, like,
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: literally imprisoning Christians. Like, you know, he gets, the road
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: to Damascus happens when he's like on a mission to
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: persecute Christians. But who was Paul? Paul was born in Tarsus,
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: which is the center of Greek culture. He was a
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: Roman citizen, which is a strange thing for a Jewish
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: family in Tarsus. But the best theory I've ever heard
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: was that he made tents. He was a tent maker.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: So maybe his family at some point made tents for
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: some Roman garrison and they were awarded citizenship.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: And he was trained under Gamaliel, the most famous rabbi
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: of the time. His parents sent him all the way
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: to Jerusalem to learn his Judaism. And if you want
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: to understand the world of Jesus, what do you need
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: to understand when you read your New Testament? Greek culture,
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: Roman politics, and the Jewish religion. And Paul embodied all
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: of it. When Paul went to Athens, which was the
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: most important city in that part of the world for
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: centuries and centuries and centuries, and he goes on the Areopagus.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: And he says, men of Athens, as I was passing
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: through and considering the objects of your worship, I even
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: found an altar to an unknown God. This God whom
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: you worship without knowing, I proclaim to you, the Lord
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: of heaven and earth doesn't dwell in temples made with hands.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: It's amazing passage of scripture. And Paul quotes their poets
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: in his sermon. He loved those people. He knew what
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: they believed. He understood their story. He met them on
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: their terms. And I think That's the way we be
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: a light in so many parts of the world. And
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: I actually think it's a historic time for the gospel
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: all over. You know, Greg, there are more Christians in
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: China than there are members of the Communist Party in China.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: I mean, it is an amazing time to be a follower.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: And I can tell you In all the sort of
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: like random stuff I've done, you know, in my life,
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: you know, I think some people think you'd be like
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: less Christian in order to fit in. And that's like
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: your way of being a light. I found it to
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: be the exact opposite. Wow. see right through that stuff.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: You just got to be who you are.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: And keep your shoulders up and your head high with
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: humility and be good at what you do. Right. You know,
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of people, if you grew up
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: where I grew up, grew up, like people think like Hollywood,
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: by the way, they think like Hollywood is like anti-Christian
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: and when I, when I, you know, did my stint
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: working for Mark Burnett. One of the things that was
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: very apparent to me, it was like, Hollywood isn't like anti-Christian.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: Hollywood was just pro success. Like, you know, it's a
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: business if it works and it's world-class. Like, and that's
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: one of the things Jerry Falls senior taught me at Liberty.
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: It's like, if it's Christian because it's Christian, it ought
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: to be better. And, and I just think the world
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: is open to us and, and, Everybody listening to us
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: can have a lot more diverse relationships and friendships, but
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: you just got to lean into it.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: I think our Jewish friends also are really seeing more
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: than ever that we truly are their actual friend, and
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: we really care about them. And we show it in
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: tangible ways. Recently, we raised money, $ 300, 000, to buy an
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: armored ambulance for the state of Israel. which we did
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: it with Franklin Graham and Samaritan's Purse because Franklin had
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: a conversation with the president of Israel. And he said,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: what do you need right now? We need armored ambulances
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: because the enemy Hamas and others were targeting ambulances. So
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: these are basically like tanks with medical supplies and the
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: functions of an ambulance. And so we raised the money
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: and I went to Jerusalem and we had a dedication ceremony, uh,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: Huckabee was there, our ambassador, and some Israeli officials. And
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: so I was asked to give a little talk, and
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: I told them, you know, I'm giving this to you
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: in the name of Jesus Christ. We're a church. On
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: the side of it, it says, given to you by
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: your friends at Harvest Christian Fellowship. We have Jeremiah 29, 11.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: the Lord. Thoughts of peace, not of evil, to give
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: you a future life. And I told him my testimony.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: I was a confused young kid using drugs, going the
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: wrong way in life. And I heard about Jesus. But
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: when I became a Christian, I began to read the Bible.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: And I began to learn the history of the Jewish people.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: And I began to learn how Jewish of a Bible
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: this is and our culture is, our roots are. And
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: so I think they're seeing we really care about them
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: so much. And we're showing this to them more and more.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: And it does open the door for conversations about how
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: they too can come to Christ. I know a lady,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: she's Jewish, and we had many conversations. And she just
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: could not bring herself to ask Jesus to come into
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: her life. She felt it would be a betrayal of
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: her mother. And so, tragically, this lady got COVID, and
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: she was dying in the hospital. I wanted to go
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: see her, but I couldn't get in to see her
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: because I hadn't had a COVID test in the period
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: of time required. So a wonderful nurse held a phone
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: up to her face, and I had a conversation with
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: her on FaceTime. And her name was Frankie. And I said, Frankie,
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: we've talked about this many times. And I could see
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: the fear in her eyes. She was facing death. And
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: I said, would you like to ask Jesus to be
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: your Messiah and ask him into your life? She said, yes.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: And I led her in a prayer, and she went
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: to be with the Lord shortly after that. But we'd
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: done all the conversations and bridge building prior to that,
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: and she was ready to make that decision. But, you know,
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: we just want our Jewish friends to know. I met
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: some guys that work over at the university in Haifa,
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: and there are teachers there in the Jewish university. And
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: I said, I think sometimes you may think that the
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: only reason we support Israel is we want Armageddon to come,
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: or we want the apocalypse to come. I said, nothing
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: could be further from the truth. We pray for the
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: peace of Jerusalem, and we care about you. And yes,
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: we believe Christ is coming one day. We don't deny that.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: We believe you being in the land is a fulfillment
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: of Bible prophecy. We don't deny that either. And yes,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: we want you to believe in Jesus, nor do we
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: deny that. But we love you, and you're God's chosen people,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: and we've been crafted into the promises of Abraham, Isaac,
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: and Jacob as non-Jews, Gentiles. And I think, I don't
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: know if they'd ever heard that before.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: You know, I get asked so often, like, why is
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: it that evangelicals, 700 million of us around the world,
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: why we stand with a Jewish community? And especially now,
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: because if you've ever asked yourself, what would you have
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: done had you been alive during the Holocaust? And that
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: was some like interesting thought exercise when you were a
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: student in school or maybe you had the privilege of
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: going to Israel and visiting Yad Vashem or the Holocaust
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: Museum at DC. It was like an interesting thought exercise. Well,
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: that question requires being answered now in the world we're
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: living in. I mean, anti-Semitism is surging back and it's
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: not just surging on the far left and the Islamist left,
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: it's surging on the far right. Right. And people that
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: people used to listen to and thought that they could
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: trust and all of these things, like it is coming back.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: And we are the great firewall between 15 million Jews
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: around the world and this surging evil hate that's emerging
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: again in history. And there are 700 million of us
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: and about 80% of us will stand with the Jewish community.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: And we have stood when the whole world ran away
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: in recent years. So I get asked all the time, why?
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: And my answer is always the same. We're just so grateful.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: Everything good in our lives, we can somehow trace back
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: to you, to your story, to your book. And the
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: best way I know how to describe it is your
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: book is our book. Your heroes are our heroes. We
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: teach our kids about your heroes.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: And while we interpret them differently very often, your values
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: are our values. And it is time, by the way,
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: for our relationship with the Jewish community to move from
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: being sentimental to being much more substantive because there's a
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: cost to it now. I'm a very prominent Christian Zionist.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: I support the right of the Jewish people to live
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: in their historic homeland. Am I Christian Zionist? I'm has
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: caused threats to my life. This is a moment that
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: we have to decide where we're going to stand. And
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: we're going to have to, and I'm very proud that
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: when so many institutions are like failing and declining, that
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: our institutions are strong and we're passing this to the
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: next generation. But what people should understand is like this
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: anti-Semitism is not just an attack on the Jewish people.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: It's attack on Judeo-Christian people. It's a whole superstructure, Western
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: civilization of the United States, of our story, of our
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: origin story in the Jewish community and our shared values.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: And this plan will take– the way to taking down America,
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: the West, everything we stand for, the goal is to
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: eliminate the Jewish community as part of that or along
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: the way. And we just have to stand up. We
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: cannot vote– I don't care if it's your cousin that
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: you've known the rest of your life. You cannot vote
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: for anybody, left or right, that signals anti-Semitism at all whatsoever. We,
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: as the evangelical community, have to draw a line in
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: the sand and say, like, no, we will not stand
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: for hating the people that the Bible calls us to
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: love and to bless. And I'm afraid we're going to
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: face more and more of those tests. And these same
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: forces are coming after our children on social media, on TikTok,
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: on all of these ecosystems. They want to take over
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: the education of our children. And we can't let it happen.
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: And it begins with the pulpits in America. It begins
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: with our educational system. And it requires courage to speak up.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: And I hope it isn't true. But most of history
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: for Christians– has been the story of sometimes our faith
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: having a cost that goes with it. It happens with
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: many persecuted Christians around the world. And we need to
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: count those costs. And one of the requirements now is
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: that we stand up for our Jewish neighbors as this
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: hate surges back.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: Well, you mentioned social media. A lot of this anti-Semitic
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: rhetoric is amplified there. And we've had conversations about this
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: you know, organized bots that just appear. You'll post a
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: certain thing. I mean, if I post anything about Israel, hey,
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: I'm leading a tour to Israel. All of a sudden,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: all this opposition, all of this heated, inflammatory rhetoric, like
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: what on earth? Who are these people? And then you click,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: you're scarce. Who is this person? Three followers. Tell us, like,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: are these bots? Are these bots that are organized? and orchestrated,
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: and then are there certain phrases or topics that trigger them?
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: Are these real people? Explain this to people who may
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: not know about this.
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: It's a combination of all of it. I mean, we are,
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: you know, the technical term for researchers who study this
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: is called inauthentic online behavior. And why is that the term? Because, yes,
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: sometimes it's bots and it's bot farms that are in
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: a very sophisticated way fueled by adversaries of the United States.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: So define a bot farm. A bot farm is?
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: A bot farm is like, you know, it could be
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: servers operated in Pakistan or China or some country at
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: Iran that are spinning up fake accounts in order to
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: target certain content online. But it's not just that. It's
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: influencers that are being paid to promote certain ideas in
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: places like TikTok. It's also the manipulation of algorithms by
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: certain countries. It's all of it together. It's real fake
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: news where news stories are produced.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: In a way.
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: This is one of the things that happen in Gaza
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: a lot. You would have There was enough suffering to
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: report in Gaza, but that wasn't enough. They had to
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: take a cinematic approach. One of the famous examples was
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: on the front page of the New York Times. There
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: was this mom standing next to an emaciated child, and
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: they were accusing Israel of forcibly starving the people in Gaza.
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: And it turns out that that photo was a cropped photo.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: And the photo, which was distributed by a foreign news agency, actually,
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: if you scan the photo out, there was a really
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: healthy brother of the kid, I think, next to them,
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: who was fine. The mother seemed healthy. The kid actually
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: had a debilitating disease, right? But it was meant to
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: enable a political narrative, right? I think we're living in
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: a time where everyone is trying to sell us something
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: in order to advance their agenda. And it's happening a
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: lot online. It's happening entirely online. The problem is, is
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: people actually do eventually, eventually start believing these things and
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: people aren't educated on stuff. People don't know history either.
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: They don't know how the country works. They don't know.
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: They don't, they don't know about separation of powers and
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: the electoral college. They don't know. They don't know that,
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: you know, the prime, one of the primary propaganda, um,
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: efforts of the Soviet Union during the Cold War was
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: to promote Zionism as racism. You can go back to
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: the 1970s, look at the South African prime minister or
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: president speaking in the UN General Assembly. He gave a
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: speech saying that Zionism was racism, calling for the elimination
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: of the state of Israel. This is in the 1970s.
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: He receives a standing ovation. The United States ambassador, who
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: is a Democrat, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, condemned it as the
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: as the most the the most morally awful moment in
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: the united nations and then what did the united nations
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: do instead of condemning it they held a banquet in
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: honor of of of this person on on the same
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: evening so like if you know history and you watch
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: all this zionism is racism propaganda pop up again you
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: know all the anti-zionism fueling political races the united states
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: and all these places you're like huh that sort of
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: rhymes with something It kind of looks like the last
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: time a foreign adversary tried to divide our democracy on
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: foreign policy a generation ago. And so there's also very
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: sophisticated propaganda, and it leads to a place. And the
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: whole purpose of this is– it has two purposes. One
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: purpose is to intimidate us, to cause us to fear
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: to speak our mind. And I can tell you, as
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: someone who's– I've had my house graffitied in the middle
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: of the night. I've had– One time I had over
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: 60 protesters show up at our home. I've had countless
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: threats on my life for my fighting against anti-Semitism on
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: the right and the left. I spent months under 24-7
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: protection a year ago. It's meant to intimidate us, to
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: cause us to be quiet. It's meant to stigmatize us.
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: And we just can't do it. God has not given
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: us a spirit of fear, but a power and love
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: and of a sound mind. Every one of those words matters.
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: The first one puts fear off the table. And we
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: have the power of the Holy Spirit that has stared
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: down a lot of really, really hard situations in history.
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: Balanced by love, we have to also love even our enemies,
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: which is hard to do sometimes. And rational sound thinking
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: yeah what are the facts yes and if you just
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: hear there's a genocide in gaza again and again and
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: again and all of a sudden it's the cause du
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: jour of the moment but no like genocide means something
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: yeah okay and was what was this and you study
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: it and you so it's meant to intimidate us yeah
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: and and i'm sorry to say but like many pastors
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: are the most intimidated people on the planet what do
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: you think that is i i think it's uh that
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: that I think it's in the book of Colossians where
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: Paul writes that if you care about the opinions of people,
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: you cannot be a servant of Jesus. And I just
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: think there's a lot of cultural pressure to just be
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: accepted in society, to be like, you know, to not
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: be controversial. It's not fun being controversial. But if you're
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: going to decide what you believe or who you are
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: based upon whether it's controversial or not, you like, number one,
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: you can't follow Jesus. Number two, you know, you're going
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: to be nothing, believe nothing and do nothing with your life.
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: And also the fruit of the spirit balances all that.
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: Like that doesn't mean you have permission to be a jerk.
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: In fact, quite the opposite.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: You know, you're going to have the fruit of the
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: spirit and that's what people get wrong on the other side.
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: It has to all be in the pipe, but it
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: is meant to intimidate us. And the second thing is,
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: you know, the reason why this stuff happens is that
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: it's also meant to deceive us. It's harder to deceive
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: you and I, right? Because like we're well read on
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: all these things and we, and we, you know, we
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: know stuff. So they don't really try to deceive us. They,
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: and this is sinister, they try to deceive our children.
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: And that should be causing all of us to be
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: doing everything in our power to make sure that we're
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: protecting our kids.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: And that might mean starting a school in your community
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: because you don't have any good ones. It might mean
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: that you're pastor of a church, you lose a certain
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: percentage of your people because you're not tickling everyone's ears
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: all the time. It might mean that you stand up
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: against the prevailing winds and whatever political, whatever you're involved in.
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: It might mean you get criticized online. It might sometimes
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: mean it gets dangerous. I didn't choose when I was alive.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: This is my time That's right. And we have to
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: rise to our moment.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: That's right. Now we have AI. Okay, add that to
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: the mix. Okay, with all of this weaponization online, we
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: have AI. And we hear, well, right now you hear
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: some of the leaders of some of these companies saying,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: telling us that anthropic open AI meta, hey, this could
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: destroy the world, and we need government intervention. I'm thinking, really?
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's the answer? Have you been to the
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: DMV lately? You want the government to manage? Do they
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: even know how to set up their Facebook page? I
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: don't know. Okay, so that's one extreme. And then the
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: president recently said that AI is bigger than the industrial revolution.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: We need to lead the way on this, etc., So
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: talk a little bit about, cause I know you, you've
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: met people who are leaders in these fields and, and
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: I know you're aware of what's happening. How should a
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: Christian react to AI? Is this a good thing? Is
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: this a bad thing? Is it both at the same time?
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: What is it?
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: Um, it's a blessing. Let's start there.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: There's a, um, there's a famous story in early American
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: history where, um, uh, Benjamin Franklin.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: I knew him personally. I'm quite old now.
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod.
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: Yes. Okay.
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: Which is really important because lightning was striking houses and
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: ships and church steeples because they were the highest thing
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: in the city, like burning churches down. And by the way,
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: creating all these conspiracy theories because lightning was viewed as
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: an act of God.
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Okay.
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: So Benjamin Franklin creates the lightning rod and then he
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: calls it a gift from God. Hmm. And then a
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: couple of years later in Philadelphia, there was a big
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: earthquake and it ransacked the city. And there was a
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: pastor who said it was God punishing Philadelphia for creating
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: the lightning rod to defy God's power. And then another
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: famous preacher, John Winthrop from Harvard, a very different Harvard
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: than Harvard we know today. John Winthrop said, no. He said,
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: when man discovers something like this, it is a compliment
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: to God. It is an admiration of his creation. And
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: I think we're in a very similar moment where we are,
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: you know, what is AI? What is a large language model?
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: A large language model is like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Claude's Anthropic,
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: you know, NewsClaud. It is a word predictor.
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: It literally, they literally put all the words they could
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: possibly get everything on the internet, all these books, everything.
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: And it predicts the next word. That's the oversimplified version.
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: It just predicts the next word. Okay. That's what these
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: things are. And with more compute, they can do more
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: and more, more and more things. And it's also kind
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: of amazing because the super intelligence, if you ask the
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: president of the United States or or artificial intelligence, what
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: is it? It's like holding a mirror to every word
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: ever written in human history. And we're seeing things about
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: intelligence that we didn't understand before. And we're solving problems
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: we couldn't solve before because we could put like.
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: What would be an example of a problem that's been
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: solved with AI technology?
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, uh, just, just, uh, a few weeks ago, um,
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: there was a mathematical problem that was thought to not
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: be solvable.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: Yes. I heard about that.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: They, they used a hundred and I think 180 billion tokens.
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: That's like, that's like a human being working eight hours
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: a day for 4,000 years.
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: And solve the problem in a weekend.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: Huh. Okay.
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: We are, we are, we are in the process of
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: curing diseases or making diseases matter. We, we are, we
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: are on the precipice in a few years. Um, It
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: will very likely be in a few years that almost
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: all cancers can be managed as not life-threatening, but like
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: managed health, you know, for the rest. These are all
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: things that are going to happen. Like this is a blessing.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: But there are two schools in this conversation. The school
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: of the alarmist and the school of the accelerationist. So
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: the alarmist are the world is going to end. We
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: have to watch out. And you know what? They're not wrong.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: Cyber security is an issue. You can lose control. You can,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: adversaries can hack into things. Like there are all kinds
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: of bad things. You put this technology in the hands
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: of an authoritarian power. Yeah. And it's almost impossible to defeat.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of things to be scared about. And
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: then the accelerations, and they say like, we got to
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: win and we got to win at all costs. The
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: U S has to beat China. And it is exactly
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: right because we're going to live in a free world
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: or an authoritarian world. Cause whoever wins AI wins the future.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: And they want you to be on either side. And
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: what I say is I'm on both sides. Mm-hmm. We
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: have to accelerate and we have to win. And that's
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: been the story of America, this blessed country. And by
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: the way, Israel too, like, you know, so much of
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: our technology comes from Israel. And we have to do
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: it in a way where we're not going to break
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: the world. And that's where moral voices are really important.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: And that's where so many people in Silicon Valley that
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: you never imagined would care about hearing from Christians. They're
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: calling us all the time. Because science has collided with
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: the questions.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, because I know from our own conversations that We
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: don't have to identify what company it is. One of
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: the major players. You've been talking with them. Is this
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: an illustration of that? They're actually saying, how should we
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: approach this? Because I think of the words of John Adams,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: which he said to me personally. I'm joking. But John
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: Adams said that our Constitution was made for a moral
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: and religious people. So if we were to update that today,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: we might say it's made for a Christian people. They
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: would use the word religion interchangeably. you know, with Christianity. So,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: in other words, we built this country on certain principles.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: We call them Judeo-Christian. This is why they work. This
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: is why our Constitution is unique. This is why our
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: nation is unique. This is why it's worked so well
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: for so long, and why people are attacking those very foundations,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: because that is what gives us our strength, our parameters,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: et cetera. So it almost seems like these guys, they
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: need that moral and spiritual foundation.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: They're asking for it. I mean, you might say there's
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: a peace treaty between religion and science. And how did
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: it happen? I'm sorry to say it's not because of us.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: It happened because of the science. The science of AI-
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: with the questions that were left to the theologians, the pastors,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: the philosophers. What is a human being?
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: What is intelligence?
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: What is agency? Not what can I do? What should
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: I do? And yeah, that's what's happening. And it's not
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: just one company. It's all of the companies. And they're
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: like desperate for, and what I say to them is like,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: you know, you don't have to be religious like me
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: to think of religion like mine, Christianity. It's like wisdom
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: compounding through the centuries.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: And there's a lot we have to say about all this.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: And also, Greg, I think we have an advantage. Because
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: remember I said that these models are word predictors. By
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: the way, when the original AI scientists, they thought they
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: would come to artificial intelligence through images. So you can
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: go read and study about that. And it turns out
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: that it was all about words. You just put enough
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: words in the system, give it enough compute, and it
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: gets smarter and smarter and smarter and smarter. And I
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: don't quite know how to interpret it yet. But all
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: I can think of is John chapter 1, verse 1.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: with God, and the Word was God, and the Word
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: became flesh, and it dwelt among us. We are a
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: Word-based religion. In a time where words, it's like the
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: incredible apologetic, like affirming the first verse of the New Testament,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: of the book of John. That it actually is words
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: that hold it all together.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: I love how you summed this up, Johnny, when you
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: said the folks who are leaders in AI development, it's
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: not so much what can they do, but what should
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: they do? Yeah.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: And also it's what should we be doing?
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: And I think the people listening to us, like, don't
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: fear AI.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: Use AI. Right.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: I actually don't think it's going to be a jobs apocalypse.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: I think it's the exact opposite. I think we're going
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: to see more jobs. I don't think this is a
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: threat to the future. I think it's a blessing that
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: God has given us. And what I always tell people
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: is just like, use it. And another way, it's a blessing.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: Like if, again, if you were a kid like me
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: growing up in a small town with limited access to information,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: like if you were curious about something or wanted to
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: do something with your life, you had to go to
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: the library and to find the books, you had to
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: read things. Like what AI is doing is it's allowing
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: any really, really smart kid in any small little place
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: anywhere in the world to have immediate access to all
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: the information. in the world. It is a great equalizer.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: And I think we have to use it.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: Use it.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: Ask it questions. Get it to help you with your finances.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: Think through your career decisions. If you're a little entrepreneurial,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: ask it to give you ideas on how to start
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: a business and create the business plan. If you're a pastor, yes,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: it's an amazing illustration machine. And also, let me warn you,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: it's called cognitive offloading. If you start using AI for everything,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: Then somehow you become part of the machine. Yeah. And
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: so we have to also keep writing and keep thinking
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: and keep studying and keep the human part in the equation.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: And the good news is for the church is more
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: and more of the future becomes digital. More and more
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: becomes artificial intelligence.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: Then the real human interactions are going to become more valued,
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: more desired, more popular. This is a grand moment for
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: the church. And by the way, business is already noticing it.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: That's why all the most successful business people in the
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: world are all of a sudden buying concert venues and
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: sports teams and all of these things, because they know
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: people are going to be with people again.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: Right. I heard that the number one use of AI
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: is therapy and companionship. So unfortunately, some people are expecting
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: AI to do perhaps something what only God can do
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: and what community with other humans can do. And I
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: think this is where the church comes in. It's like
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: we're here offering you a community, real people talking to
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: real people, not everything online or bots even talking to
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: us or AI giving us counsel that we really should
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: be seeking from God because ultimately our standard of truth
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: is the Bible. Everything submits to the Bible. That is
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: God's revealed truth to all of us. And so that
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: includes AI, that includes the decisions of life. And, you know,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: sometimes people may be going that direction when they should
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: be turning toward the Lord who will give us supernatural wisdom.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: You know, the Bible says, if any man lacks wisdom,
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: let him ask of God who will give it generously. Okay,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: so Johnny, thanks so much for your insights and wisdom today.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: You have so much to say on so many important topics.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: So how old are you now, Johnny?
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: 43. Okay, 43.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: So what would an older Johnny, let's just say you're
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: sitting there, you're an older, wiser Johnny, but you're still
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: a very young man, by the way. I remember when
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: I was in my 40s, I thought, wow, I'm really
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: getting old now. But now I'm 73, and I look
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: back on 40s as I was still a version of youth.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: Maybe I was a younger, older person. I think somewhere
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: there's a French proverb that says, 60 is the youth
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: of old age and 50 is the old age of youth.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: You know, that kind of works more or less. But
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: you're still a relatively young person. If you were sitting
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: across from a younger version of you, what advice would
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: you give yourself?
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: I would say take more risks earlier.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: Like not the, like good risks.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: You know, I discovered, I would say... 10 years into
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: my career that I, or my ministry, depending upon, I
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: view it all as my ministry, but it's a bit
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: of both. I discovered like later on that God wired
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: me to like start things, you know? And why didn't
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: I start things earlier? Because I was afraid. I was
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: afraid of failure. I was afraid of, you know, because
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: of my childhood and other things. So I, I think like,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: you know, do more earlier. And I, Yeah, I think
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: that's one thing. There are a lot of things.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: And even if you're young and you try something and
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: it fails, even that can be a learning experience.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: Actually, the best learning experience.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Okay, so if you could trade places
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: with any person for one day, who would it be? Oh, wow.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: That's such a hard... You could have their job. You
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: could have their life.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: I would like to be Marco Rubio for one day.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: I think Marco Rubio is the single most amazing person
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: on the planet. I mean, this guy... There are a
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: lot of amazing people, but someone that's so principled, so
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: effective at his job, so willing to kind of not
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: be in the limelight at all, just quietly doing the work,
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: clearly a person of deep Christian faith. I just think
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: he's incredible. So on that sort of side of my life,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: I would love to be Elon Musk. for a day
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: just to know what it's like to be on musk
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: i mean this it's an amazing thing this guy comes
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: from south africa you know he's basically saving america in
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: many ways i mean the um if you really understand
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: spacex and what all these things are like it is
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: the it is so much the future of like our
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: security oh i think he's amazing um someone i'd love
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: to be uh uh like you know i i I
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: love like Chuck Swindoll. I love, I've never met Chuck Swindoll.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: I've met all these like really, really, you know, famous,
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: interesting people. I watched you, you interviewed him and like
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: to just be with him like for a day when
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: he's like studying or writing a sermon or something like,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: how is he?
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: You know, how is he?
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: No, there are a lot of, there are a lot
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: of people I'd like to be for a day.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: I interviewed Marco Rubio and the funny thing is he
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: said he wanted to be you for a day.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: No, I think, you know, he's just like a, He's
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: an amazing, he's an amazing, I think he's a one
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: of one leader. It's just like, in many ways, I felt,
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: you know, I felt like Donald Trump was a totally
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: original human being when I met him. It's like nobody else,
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: like uniquely gifted. Again, a lot of people agree, disagree
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: with his style, his rhetoric, his policies, like all these things.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: but he's a one of one person. And I think
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: Marco Rubio is another one of those. It's just like,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: he's just one. There's no other Marco Rubio.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: I completely agree with you about the president and about
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: Marco Rubio. What would surprise people to know about President Trump?
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: Because you've been with him in smaller settings for a
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: person that only has seen the president on television, where
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: he's often in a combative stance because he's He's facing,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: you know, intimidating reporters asking absurd questions or whatever it
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: is he's facing. Maybe we see him with a world leader.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: But like you've been around him. What would surprise people
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: to know about him?
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: Aside from the fact like he's really, really funny.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: Really, really nice. Like you really, really love being around him.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: Like fascinating guy. I think he has a solid moral core.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: Okay. A solid moral core. If you look at, you know,
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: when I met him in 2012, like four years before
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: he ran for president, I called the 1-800 number at
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: the bottom of the Trump org website in order to
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: invite him to speak at Liberty University. And he called
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: me back like within an hour, accepted the invitation personally.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: And that was the first time he ever spoke to
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: a large evangelical crowd. And if you go back and
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: you like, Listen to him talking then compared to now.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: And again, put aside the style and all of this. Obviously,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: you have a very different style than the president. But
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: he's a remarkably consistent person. And I can tell you
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: the amount of political forces that I've witnessed, that you've
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: witnessed on him to not make the hard decisions. and
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: what I always tell people when people get nervous as
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: to whether he's going to do something, you know, whether
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: he's going to go, go weak on the Iranian nuclear
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: program or like, or, or go weak on the, on,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: on antisemitism on the right or something like this. Like
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: I always say like, it's going to be fine because
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: he's going to, he's going to land exactly, you know,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: in the, in the right place. And he, and he just,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: at least on the things I know about that I'm,
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: I don't do economics, but in the foreign policy, national security,
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: in so many areas that are good for the American people,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: he just has a reliable moral core. And he really
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: respects pastors. He does. That's the thing. He has an
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: old-school deference to spiritual leaders. It's almost as if he
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: envies pastors. you know, something about them.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: Um, yeah.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: And, and there's never been a moment where, uh, we
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: wanted or needed to talk to him, uh, when, when
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: that door wasn't open to us. And, uh, and we've
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: been respectful for him as the president of the United States.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: He's our friend in many ways. Uh, and so like
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: all my friends, uh, I keep my criticism private. And
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: I take great joy in giving public praise when they
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: do something that makes me proud.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I remember I was having a conversation
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: with Mike Johnson, and he said, you know, a lot
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: of people miss the fact that, you know, Trump was
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: in the hospitality business. And when we've been at the
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: White House, he's so hospitable. And on a couple of occasions,
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: he'll have a group of pastors. And he'll say, would
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: you like to go up to the family quarters? It's
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: in the Lincoln bedroom. Who wouldn't like to go up there?
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: And so you go up, and the president's giving you
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: a guided tour, explaining every painting. And then he takes
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: you into the Lincoln bedroom, and he's telling you all
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: about it. And he likes to make people feel welcome
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: and at home. And another thing I would say, yes,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: he's very funny. And then the other thing is, he's
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: a good listener. People don't think that about him.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: He asks questions constantly of everyone.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: And he listens.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: And I think that's part of why he understands the
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: everyday American. I've seen him ask random, just the most
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: random person you can imagine. He's the type of person
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: that if the door dasher came to my house when
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: I was deliberating over some big national security thing, if
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: I were door dashers went to the White House. Would
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: I ask the door dasher who's on the run about
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: foreign policy? Probably not. He has a job to do.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: I got a job to do. President Trump asks everyone
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: questions all the time about whatever it is he's thinking about.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: And he collects all that information and goes into his
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: decision-making process. People don't realize about it. He's a very
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: good listener.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: It's a bit of Jewish wisdom actually, uh, from, uh, uh, uh,
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: a book called ethics of our fathers. And I, I
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: was ready to quit. Like I just had reached my limit. Um,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: it was just, uh, it was, it just totally overwhelmed with,
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: it'd gotten very hard and, and all kinds of critics
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: and all these things. And a rabbi friend of mine, um, uh, who,
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: you know, uh, rabbi Cooper from the center. He said, uh, um,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: in this book, ethics of our fathers, it says, it's
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: not up to you to finish, to complete the task,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: to finish the job, but neither are you free from it.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: Or I think it says, it's not, it's not up
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: to you to finish the task, but neither are you
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: free to desist from it. So, so it's not up
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: to you to finish it, but nor are you free to,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: you know, step out of the game. And I think sometimes, uh,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: one of the downsides of, uh, The visionary culture that
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: animates the Christian church is that we can sometimes think
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: it's actually up to us to reach the world in
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: our generation, to finish the job, to finish the task.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: But actually it isn't. It's up to us to, you know,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: it's that verse about King David that he completed what
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: was in front of him and then he, you know.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: In his generation.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: In his generation. And that's what we do. We do
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: our part with what we, we take what we have
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: and we do what we can. And then we pass
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: it on. And that's what we've been doing for generations
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: and generations and generations. And because the Bible is our priest,
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: you know, I always explain to people like, why do
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: evangelicals have consistent beliefs all over the world about Israel, about,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: you know, the Bible and everything else? Because we don't
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: have priests and high priests and archbishops and thank God,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: no Pope. Pope's fine. He's an American. I'm sure he's
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: a nice guy, but thank God we don't have any
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: of that stuff.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: The Bible.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: The Bible is our Pope. And we read the Bible. And-
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: The church all around the world reads the Bible. And
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: that's what we choose. We choose to believe what that
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: book says. And so I think in that moment where
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: I was ready to give up, it was because, you
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: know what? I couldn't finish the task at that moment
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: if I wanted to. And in the providence of God,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: it took a rabbi calling up some Jewish wisdom to
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: remind me that I am, and we all are, we're
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: the junior partner in this equation. God is... is our guide,
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: and he'll always be with us.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a relay race, you know. It's not
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: a solo race. It's like one generation carries a baton,
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: they hand it off to the next one. I remember
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: Billy Graham said, and that's a loose paraphrase, but something
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: along the lines of, we're not responsible for the last generation,
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: nor are we responsible for the next one, but we
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: have our generation. And so we do what we can
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: in our generation and carry that baton until our part
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: of the race is done, and then someone else carries
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: it on. But like Paul, I love what Paul said.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: I fought the good fight. I kept the faith. I
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: finished the course, his course. Henceforth, there is later for
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: will give to me in that day. Not to me only,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: but to all who love his appearing. So, you know, Johnny,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: thank you. On behalf of the church, let me speak
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: for the whole church right now. Pope Gregory. Thank you
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: for all that you've done. Thank you for the bold
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: stands you've taken. Thank you for being a courageous and
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: sane and loving voice to every community, the Jewish community.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: the community of Islam. Anybody, everybody, I've been with you
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: in many settings, and you're a deep thinker, and you
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: manage to take these things and articulate them in a
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: very effective way. And God, you're a unique person. I
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: don't know anybody like you, but a very gifted person.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: And thank you for all that you do. And we
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: pray that God will continue to bless you and lead
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: you and use you for His glory.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Pastor.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: Thank you.