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America’s Coming Christian Persecution (Audio FIXED) · Man in America Podcast

0:02
Seth Holehouse: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Man in America. I'm your host, Seth Holehouse. So if you've watched this show at all, you probably know I talk quite a bit about the battle of good and evil. And I think that for those of you that are paying attention, it's hard to deny there's something very significant happening. Well, my guest today is an author and the bureau chief of Breitbart Rome, and he has a book coming out soon called The Coming Christian Persecution, which is a topic that I think that we should be really focused on that's not getting enough attention.
0:33
So joining me will be doctor William Thomas. So I hope you guys enjoy this interview. Before we get started, folks, make sure you're following me on social media. On all places, it's just Maninamerica, and on Twitter, it's Maninamericaus. Also, every show is done as a podcast as well.
0:50
So if you wanna listen instead of watch, just go to your favorite podcast app and search for Man in America, and you'll find me there. If you really want to make me happy, leave a five star review because it helps me to reach more people. Alright, folks, let's jump into this interview. So Doctor. Williams, thank you so much for joining us today.
1:07
It is a pleasure to have you and you're coming all the way from Rome, is that correct?
1:13
Speaker 2: Yes, I am. It's a little later here than it is there, but it's still within the waking hours. So it's good. Thanks a lot for having me on your show, Seth. Is Absolutely.
1:23
Seth Holehouse: Well, and you're also you're the bureau chief for Breitbart Rome, is interesting because Breitbart, well, was a big fan of Andrew Breitbart, but then you know, Breitbart's one of the couple of news websites I feel like that has done a pretty good job of just sticking to the truth and not getting pulled into a lot of the cat fights, it seems. You guys are doing a fantastic job over there.
1:45
Speaker 2: Well, I've really enjoyed these, what it's, eight years? No, this is my ninth year with Breitbart in Rome. Steve Bannon hired me many years ago because he really, really wanted a Rome bureau. He thought it was very important at the heart of the Catholic church, which is significant for all of Christianity. At same time, Breitbart was founding a bureau in Jerusalem, and the idea was to kind of go to the old world and have that idea of culture driving politics really even visibly evident by where Breitbart was.
2:19
Seth Holehouse: Yeah. It's yeah. I couldn't agree more. It's a very important place. And it's not just for Christians.
2:24
I mean, it's, you know, the The Vatican is the center of so much that happens in our world, you know, is affected by decisions coming out of there. So you have a book coming out, which when I came across it, I was really kind of blown away by the the title of it. And it really made me want to talk to you. So you have a book coming out, which is out in March, on March 20 called The Coming Christian Persecution. And it's interesting because no one talks about this.
2:54
I mean, you look around, you can see it. It's like there, you can see so many different agendas that obviously seem to be targeting, you know, really it's, you know, white conservative Christians. Like that seems to be the target and not just in America, though. And this is it's a global phenomenon. And so I'm really looking forward to this discussion.
3:15
But why don't you go and start and just say, like, what is okay, what is the coming Christian persecution? What do you foresee happening?
3:26
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, somebody asked me the other day, why the title and do I not believe that Christian persecution is already here, that we have to wait for it. And that's not the point at all. The point is that it's very much here, but every indication is that it's getting worse and not better. And that's why this kind of dire title about the coming Christian persecution is that it's around us, we're in the midst of it right now, but there's no signs of it letting up.
3:52
And there's no signs of the West, the formerly Christian West putting up any sort of resistance to the growing intolerance toward Christianity and towards Christians in public life, Christians who are trying to make a stand on moral issues, Christians who want to in any way allow their faith to influence their decision making, their speech, their way of framing arguments. This is something, and it's the weirdest thing in the world because as you mentioned, Seth, this is something that's happening in the West. It's happening all around the world with many different drivers of this persecution. But the fact that it's happening in the West, it's the matrix of Christianity. This formed by Christian belief and Christian understanding of the world.
4:42
It's a very, very strange phenomenon. But again, every indication is that this is just getting the intolerance is growing and Christians are being more and more portrayed as bigots, as themselves intolerant, simply for holding on to traditional beliefs that were actually a patrimony of mankind up until just a few years ago.
5:03
Seth Holehouse: You know, you're right because you're making the point that it's like, okay, even America, which was really founded on these Christian values, is now turning and attacking Christians. And so and you may okay. You also make a point of saying it's already here, but it's gonna get worse. I mean, with it getting worse, what does that look like? And what is it I mean, do you think that we could expect, say here in America where we, you know, you really I grew up believing America was land of the free and home of the brave.
5:34
You know, America was the place where, you know, you could worship a cat if you want to, let alone worship God as a Christian. And so and what what do you how do you see that that potentially going and not not gonna be kind of dire and doom and gloom, but how bad do you think it could get here in America?
5:54
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I was really it was kind of a cold shower for me a couple of years ago when they had the confirmation hearings for a dear friend of mine, 25 year old 25 years friend, Amy Coney Barrett, when she was being brought in for the district court. And Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin and the other just raked her over the coals. And it was all completely faith based hazing. It was something that I've never seen before. And I found it really shocking the fact that there wasn't more public outrage.
6:28
I found it, you know, very scary for what will happen. In other words, if people who take their faith seriously are not considered to be qualified for public posts, what does that say about the future for America? If you have to either leave your faith at the coat check outside or be a person of no faith at all and have no record of ever being a person of faith, That's really scary indeed when, as you mentioned, all our founders were people of faith, obviously in different ways. There was some deism, there was some Christianity of different forms, etcetera, but they were all people who believed in God and believed in a morality that was based also in religion. The fact that that can be thrown out is very scary, I think, for the future of the West.
7:14
The fact that this can be something that is looked upon as now a hostile force rather than something that we embrace as really our patrimony, something that really gave birth to the greatness of our nation. Because a big part of that was the place we gave to faith and religion in the country. I mean, think of the first pilgrims who came here. They came because they were driven out of England in the first place and in other countries because of their beliefs. They were not accepted by, you know, the confessional state that they were living in, and they came to a place where they could worship freely.
7:48
And the thought that America could ever become a place where not only can you not worship freely, but your faith is actually seen as a detriment to you being a good citizen, you know, that's something I find it appalling and I find it really scary. So I think that the need to push back and especially to reassert the importance of religious freedom and religion as a value for society, I think these are things that are paramount right now.
8:15
Seth Holehouse: Oh, I couldn't agree more. And I spent a lot of my adult life working and fighting back against communism with the CCP specifically. I was with the Epoch Times for many, many years, because I believed in, you know, their mission of just reporting the truth, but they also had a very strong perspective on exposing the crimes of the Communist Party. Now, it's, you know, a lot of people know that, okay, if you see all this religious persecution in China, they say, Oh, yeah, of course, right, they know it. But as I've dug into what's behind it and understanding communism in general and getting into Marxism and Marx saying Marx was a Satanist.
8:54
A lot of people don't don't realize that, but you know, of his poetry, he openly pledged his soul to Satan and made a commitment to destroy God. And if you look at, you know, even tracing what's happening with the communists, and not just, you know, the CCP, but the Soviets, etc, there it was a significant part of their agenda to infiltrate the church in America and destroy the church from within. I mean, I've interviewed Trevor Loudon numerous times who's an expert on the subversion infiltration of the church. And so I would have, I mean, is the kind of coming persecution, I guess, where do you see those two relate? This Christian persecution we're seeing and the push for communism and the spread of communism around the world.
9:41
Speaker 2: Oh, think they are extremely closely related. I think in The United States, there's been a concerted effort for decades now to kind of poo poo anybody who talks about the evils of communism and the way that communism infiltrated the entire world. But in the West, in The United States in particular, was a real effort to work communist ideas into entertainment, into academics, and the curriculum in our schools, into the presuppositions. And I think that that is hugely important. I mean, as you say, if you look at places like communist China, if you look at North Korea, if you look at places communism still reigns, and forms of it in places like Nicaragua, which is extraordinarily hostile to Christianity, Cuba, which is still fundamentally a communist state.
10:32
I mean, are places where religious persecution is overt. Right? This is a place where you can throw priests and nuns and preachers and pastors into jail for the simple fact of espousing the faith. Right? They are seen as enemies of the state.
10:48
And in one sense, even though that's horrific and it's a terrible thing you have to deal with, at least you know what you're dealing with because it's overt. I think that the danger in the West is that this is a concealed threat. And I think that people don't admit the ideologies that they're working for, the ideology they have espoused. They do this in a more hidden way, but they still continue to see religion, in particular Christianity, as the enemy.
11:17
Seth Holehouse: Folks, the world is going through a process that experts are calling dedollarization, and China and Russia are leading the charge. So what's this mean? You see, the US dollar is a fiat currency, meaning it isn't backed by anything of value. The only thing that gives our dollar value is its demand around the world, which is primarily because of its petrodollar status, meaning that nations are forced to buy and sell oil in USD. But now, the world is losing faith in the dollar and it's very close to losing its status as the petrodollar and world reserve currency, especially now that the oil producing nations are abandoning The US for China, Russia, and other BRICS nations.
11:56
But what happens if the dollar loses that sacred status? Well, the value of our dollars, our life savings, IRAs, four zero one k, stocks, bank accounts could literally be wiped out in a matter of months, weeks, or even overnight. And to make things worse, Biden and the Fed are currently working on a secret project Hamilton, a new form of digital currency that'll obliterate your freedom and privacy. Now look, folks, I'm not a financial adviser, so please do your own research. But I believe that now more than ever, time to consider transferring at least a portion of your wealth into physical gold and silver, real world assets that have survived every currency collapse and every empire collapse in history.
12:39
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12:58
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13:19
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13:50
The phone number and the link are also in the show description.
13:53
Speaker 2: Because the way Christianity has undermined totalitarianisms ever since the Roman Empire is a matter of factual historical record. And so I think that the Communist Party has always had a special, special fear of Christianity knowing how this allegiance that is higher than allegiance to the state, which is obviously the great threat to totalitarianism, wants to be the only true allegiance of your heart and your mind. This is something that for them is completely pernicious and something that has to be stamped out. So, yeah, I think the two are completely intertwined. And I think that very few people understand how Hollywood today, how the academy, how the higher education in The United States, and also the curriculum all the way down to the lowest of education, all the way down to kindergarten, is infiltrated also by a lot of communist ideas.
14:42
It just is. And this is not overtly necessarily working specifically for the KGB, but those ideas behind Marxism especially look at things like simply The Us versus them, the oppressor oppressed narrative that is applied to so many different aspects of life. And this is something that we get directly from Marxism. This is not something that just grew out of the humus Western civilization. This is something that came out of Marxism.
15:11
Seth Holehouse: And you've mentioned, I think that there's six different, you know, factors that are driving this, and one of those being Satanism. And that's what, you know, to me, it's actually I look at communism as being just it's just Satan's political branch. Like, that's how I look at communist. That's how I frame it. And so if we're framing this because I really, you know, in my own within my own belief, you feel like that we are in a significant kind of time period of mankind where there is a major battle of good versus evil playing out here.
15:43
And that this is part of it, you know, it's the same kind of battle of good and evil I think that was playing out when Christ was on earth, that there's significant forces that the devil really has his hand in things, and God has his hand in things as well. And so with the where we're at today, it's interesting because you can see that in so many areas, they're tearing down the old, they're tearing down the righteous, you know, they're burning the Bibles, yet at the same time they're promoting satanism. And I'm, I am absolutely shocked at how much satanic agenda I'm seeing just in the mainstream, whether it's, you know, I saw there was a very popular rapper. I saw a video from his concerts recently where in his giant I mean, he had a stadium full of tens of thousands of people in his giant, you know, digital backdrop, it was flashing the word Satan. Right?
16:35
There was a I think it was one of the Disney cartoons recently that they had something about it, said, we love Satan on some of the children's blocks that were arranged in there. You've got then the the art performances or you have the media where it's it's it's really in your face. Then you on the flip side, you've got, in addition to that, you have them, you know, I'm seeing, you know, on social media talking and people talking about how they're doing these, you after school satanism for kid for children. You know, so introducing it to children. They're the satanic temple is doing satanic ritual abortions.
17:12
Like, I never would have ever imagined that this would become a part of our society. And so what role do you think satanism has in this coming Christian persecution?
17:29
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's a great question. And those are excellent examples, Seth, of what is going on. And I think that the two go hand in hand. Kind of the lessening, the diminishing of Christianity, of Christian faith, and we're seeing a terrible drop off not only on things like prayer and attendance at Sunday services, but in actual affiliation and belief, the lowest it's ever been in American history.
17:55
And it's going at such a dizzying pace that it's very frightening. And I think this is the work of a very strong, powerful, radical, secularizing effort in The United States to really kind of drain that vital force of Christianity. That hand in hand with this very bold, very in your face Satanism, something that the old guard of Christianity, it would have never been put up with in The United States. People would have said this is not healthy, this is not good, this is not righteous, this is not something that builds our society, it's something that tears us apart. Everything associated with Satan is anti society.
18:34
It is anti human. It is anti common good. There's nothing about that that is redeeming or virtuous or uplifting or building in solidarity and bringing people together. So I think that in every way, and we know very well, and many of your viewers are Christians, St. Paul talking about the war we face is not flesh and blood.
18:58
It is a spiritual warfare. It is something of principalities and powers. This is good versus evil, truly on the spiritual level. And you cannot engage in this kind of warfare. You cannot engage in the problem of Christian persecution without engaging that level, without understanding that there are spiritual forces at work trying to undermine people's beliefs, trying to undermine people's relationship with God, undermine the state of their soul and their conscience and their heart, and undermine the society that has been really one of the great societies in history to be able to be kind of a blockade against all the evil in the world.
19:38
You know, one that really stood for amazing great value, something that was a light shining in the world. And we see that, you know, it's scary the way that that kind of hangs in the balance that this might not be the future. You know, great civilizations have fallen in the past and there's no guarantee that ours won't be falling sometime in the future. The only way for that to happen is for, you know, America to be drained of its vital faith. Because I think this is something that has been Tocqueville said this, you know, one hundred and fifty years ago, this is the source of America's cohesion.
20:16
This is a source of America's greatness, is its understanding of the importance of religion even in the public square. And at the front and center of that has always been this Christian understanding of equality. I mean, don't get that from nowhere. We don't get that from Hinduism. We don't get that from even from the ancient Greeks and Romans.
20:36
Don't get that. That's a uniquely Christian proposal that all men are created equal. You know, Jefferson could say it's self evident, but it hasn't been self evident to any other society except Christian societies. You know, you don't find this in African tribes. You don't find this in Buddhism, you don't find this in ancient China.
20:56
This is something that is very specific to the Western world built on Christendom. So I think that's got a very roundabout way of responding to your question about Satanism. I think the two are completely related. And I think that one of the scariest things that you say is that the satanic church will come out, satanic temple will come up and have ritual abortions. But then you have people who claim to be Christians who are fighting for the other side, who are pushing for abortion.
21:23
We have a president who claims to be a Catholic Christian whose, you know, whose agenda is really built around platform is really built around the defense of abortion, And he has said he will veto any attempt to restrict abortion on a national scale. He is committed wholeheartedly to defending this practice. And you can't not see, I don't think, a link between these two things.
21:48
Seth Holehouse: Oh, I couldn't agree more. And if you look at the modern church and just how the scripture has been so distorted and that this, you know, love is love, you know, it's like they've taken this word love. And even I'm driving through my local town, I see the church with these these big signs like love like God loves. And it's like, what are they saying? Because it's almost like, we're gonna like, we're not gonna there's no rules anymore.
22:13
It's like we love you so much that we're gonna let you mutilate children. I mean, wouldn't be surprised if you start having churches that you say, well, you know what? We should even love the Satanists too. So Satanists can come worship Satan in our church also, because we love everybody. And there's, there's really, it's, there's no line.
22:32
Right? There's there's no line. I think this has been very intentional. I think that I've even seen videos of pastors talking about how the 10 commandments don't really apply to us. You know, there's, you know, all the rules of the Old Testament don't apply to us.
22:45
They're really stripping us from that because, you know, they they understand that the strength comes from that. You mentioned the quote, I think you said, was it from Churchill talking about the strength of America?
22:58
Speaker 2: No, Tocqueville. Alexis de Tocqueville. He was a Frenchman, but he spent time in The U. S. And he wrote this fantastic book about his experience.
23:06
He was blown away by American society. Anyway, yeah, it's called Democracy in America was the book that he wrote, and he wrote it in the in the nineteenth century, but it just fantastic about how that was at the core of what made America great.
23:20
Seth Holehouse: And so that's interesting because there was I was doing a show maybe six or eight months ago on, you know, China and the CCP in America. And the the CCP, they had commissioned a study within one of the organizations, I forget which one it was, that was basically is a very long study to understand where America got its strength from. Right? They're looking at is it, you know, the the economic, you know, World Financial Center? Is it because of you know, looking at all the different fundamentals of why America was such a strong nation because, you know, the art of war, know your enemy.
23:55
Right? They concluded in this that the single factor that gave America its most important strength was actually its spiritual foundation and specifically within the Christian values. And so it's obvious it's very obvious that it's like, well, is there a goal to get rid of Christianity, say from the perspective of the CCP, or is there a goal to get rid of America? Because they don't want America as a competing, you know, you know, superpower. And then then then realizing, well, the best way to get rid of America is to destroy Christianity and destroy the moral fabric of our society.
24:33
So do you think that's a strong factor in this?
24:37
Speaker 2: Oh, 100%. And think that it's hard to say, you know, the chicken or the egg which comes first is the real long term goal to destroy America or to destroy Christianity. I think the two go completely hand to hand. And I think that depending on who you talk to, their understanding of things will, it'll vary. And I think for a lot of them in communist China, the CCP, I think the understanding is America is the enemy.
25:01
But they also understand how potent Christianity is. And you can see it by the crackdown of Christianity in their own countries. Xinping, as you know better than I do, has been ruthless. And it just gets worse and worse with the surveillance state that he's installed and the way that the Christians are hounded. It's all about control.
25:19
It's about keeping them in their place because this force, if it's released, you know, there's talk of being over a million Christians in China right now. That starts to become a critical mass that is very scary. Think if you are a totalitarian and you believe that the state is everything, that's a force to be reckoned with. And I think that he understands that they're in his own country. The CCP understands it.
25:44
But they also understand how important it is for The United States. And really the freedom of The United States, freedom in the biggest sense, freedom which is also personal freedom which depends on also self control and self mastery and these different things that Americans, the virtue that Americans have always proclaimed as so important for the integrity of our nation. That kind of freedom that comes with, you know, people really being in control of themselves is something that's also very, very much based on that Christian practice and Christian belief that undergirds the founding of this nation. For so long it's been the case. And I think right now there's a concerted effort to stamp that out.
26:24
I think all this talk about the enemy of Christian nationalism, you mentioned that before, if you're white, if you're Christian, you're I mean, they try to put these things together as if you're somehow, you know, tied into Nazism or something just because of a Christian belief, and they tied to Christian nationalism as if you're trying to get rid of everybody else, but it's actually Christianity that made The United States so pluralistic. This openness to religious freedom is also a Christian idea. It's the antithesis of totalitarianism. We welcome that, you know, ability of people of different faiths to live together and practice their beliefs, and we fight for that. And we uphold it, and we fight for people even whose beliefs are not what ours are.
27:11
But we do that because of fundamentally Christian principles. And whether people like to accept that or not, if you look at the American founding, that is the fact, that's the historical fact of it. And so I think that, you know, making Christians look like the enemy when Christians have actually been the backbone of The United States is a very insidious way of trying to attack America itself at its root, at its core. And that's why things like the 1619 project, it's all about kind of shifting the founding. It's about shifting the bedrock upon which America is built and make it into something evil, make it into something different, twisting it, and teaching young minds who don't really understand enough about our history, giving them all this confusion so they don't really know is America good, is America bad, and what do we really stand for.
28:00
Seth Holehouse: Yeah. And and you said that towards the beginning and talked about how when you're naming the book that actually your your your belief is that the persecution is really already here. And if you look across America and look through the churches in America, I would imagine that a large portion of the Christians would look around and say, Here? No way. Like our church has become more open and we're now more accepting and we're taking anybody in with any sexual orientation or any belief system or anything that they might say, there's no persecution.
28:30
It's the opposite. There's just love everywhere. But there's also a portion of the Christians, and these are the ones I interact with the most, that understand what's happening, they understand the threat of communism, and these are the ones that are the parents being targeted by the FBI. They're the people that are being you have their accounts canceled on social media. A good, you know, friends of mine, they have a podcast called Flyover Conservatives.
28:52
They got kicked off a YouTube, their final strike was a prayer, because they just had a prayer on their show. That was it. And that was the final strike that got there. They had a big channel that was shut down. And so I imagine there's a lot of people, there's a lot of Christians here in America that have this feeling that something isn't right.
29:12
And maybe that's just the beginning of it, maybe some people that they know exactly what's going on. But what can they do to resist this? Right? Because it seems like we're in a situation where if we just sit back and let whatever happened happen that the communists, saintedists, whatever you want put them, they've got a very clear mission to destroy Christianity and to destroy America. And I believe that if we don't do something that they would just bulldoze us over and we'll look back, say ten, twenty years from now and say, oh my gosh, I never imagined it could get this bad in our country.
29:51
Or maybe there's even, you know, public lynchings of Christians. Maybe there's, they bring back the lion, you know, the lion's den. And they, you never know. I mean, look, this is, that could become the Super Bowl halftime show for all I know. You have no idea where it could get to.
30:07
But what can we do to stop it? What can we do to prevent that from happening?
30:13
Speaker 2: Well, think that we have to allow the great loves in our heart. And I know that you're a patriot. I know you love your nation. I think love for America, love for Jesus, love for our fellow man, our fellow citizens have to drive us to do something. Because maybe it's not affecting me personally.
30:32
Maybe in my life I'm comfortable. I've got good friends. It's not encroaching on me too much. All of us have the duty to get out there because it is hitting a lot of people who are on the frontlines and it is real. It is something that very, very scary.
30:48
And the scenarios that you just painted are very plausible. Unfortunately, they are extremely plausible for the not so distant future. And you mentioned, you know, we feel like love is love and everybody's being inclusive and diverse and all these different things. The problem is this, that that is the only tolerated form of Christianity. If you are willing to go along with modernity, if you are willing to embrace all the different principles of secularism, if you're willing to deny biblical tradition, if you're willing to deny biblical morality and say, know, love is love, then you're a good Christian.
31:23
You're an accommodated Christian. You're a Christian that can survive, and we will let you, and we'll even praise you for that. But if you're one of those hardcore Christians that actually believe that traditional marriage is the way that God intended, that boys are boys, girls are girls, if you believe that abortion is killing a child in the womb and that evil, that is wrong, then we are not going to tolerate it. We are not going to put up with you. So I think that, you know, this core understanding, Christians, we have a core set of beliefs.
31:54
It's in the Nicene Creed. It's in our scriptures. We know what we stand for, and we can't allow that to be watered down by this version of Christianity that is truly false. As Paul says, if you preach a different gospel than the one you've received, and that is a different gospel. That is not the gospel we received.
32:14
And I think that, you know, holding fast to that, being willing, and also quite frankly, Seth, being willing to take the hits. You know, part of our mission I think is, you know, an awareness that it could be me. If stand up, I could be the one. You know, the target could be painted all of a sudden on my back, and that's something that we have to be willing to do I think as Christians, because, you know, as Jesus said, if you're not with me, you're against me. This is a time to take sides and to say, I'm with Jesus.
32:43
And love is love, but love only if it's real. And love if it's real means that you only want true good for people. You don't want fake good. You don't want to approve and affirm things that are self destructive. You know, if you love your children, you still make them eat their spinach.
32:59
You still make them go to school because these are things that they might not like at that moment, but they're really good for them. Love is like that's the way God loves. God loves us and He's tough with us. And He guides us along the right path even when we can't see that it's the right path, even when it doesn't necessarily feel good in that moment. And I think loving our fellow men is not just approving of anything they do, it is actually helping them to be on the right path that leads to their salvation and leads to their happiness, you know, and approving things that are bad for them.
33:30
You know, it's like destroying your kids by giving them garbage. And, you know, we don't do that for the people we love in our families. Why would we do that for our brothers and sisters, you know, the nation and around the world?
33:43
Seth Holehouse: Absolutely. When around the world, this is one of the questions I did have is, you know, where are where is the persecution the worst around the world? Because I would say yes, okay, we're seeing things here in America. But, you know, it's not communist China where if you get caught with the wrong Bible, you're whisked away to a black jail and then you're put into their organ harvesting network. Right?
34:05
You know, where where are the pockets of persecution that are the worst places in the world?
34:13
Speaker 2: Well, the communist nations are among the worst for sure, especially China and North Korea. North Korea, if you look at the Open Doors World Watchlist that they publish every year of the place where it's most dangerous to be a Christian, North Korea was number one this year for the simple reason, as you say, if you're caught with the bible, if you're caught saying a prayer, let alone trying to teach somebody else a prayer, you will be put into a labor camp at best, shot on the spot at worst, and this is stuff and they will torture your family. You know how terrible these things get in these totalitarian communist states. Another extremely bad place right now where you're most likely to die as a Christian is the country of Nigeria. Nigeria where there's it's basically 51%, forty nine % Muslim Christian, but the Christians sorry, the Muslims completely have the upper hand.
35:05
The Muslims that control the North, but they also control the government, and the Muslims that are also willing to do things that Christians don't do. And there scores of Christians killed every month in Nigeria simply for the fact of being Christian. And there's a concerted effort of Islamization of that country believing that Nigeria is destined to be an Islamic nation where pastors are hunted down, Christian villages are set afire, people are killed with machetes. It's a really horrific place to be a Christian. It's very, very, very dangerous.
35:39
So, you know, a way we in the West, we have it good. It's a softer form of white martyrdom, if you will, rather than the red martyrdom of blood. But it's a martyrdom nonetheless. And I think if we don't stand up, white inevitably leads to red. And if you don't stand up for the principles of our founding, the principles of our history, and the principles in particular of religious freedom, And I think even the positive good that Christianity has done, that's another thing.
36:07
We have to recapture the historical record of good of Christianity. I mean, so many things we have today, hospitals, schools, universities, all these care facilities, these were all started by Christian organizations throughout history. These were never state run. They became products of the state much, much later on when the state moved into social assistance, moved into some of these things, But these were always the domain of the church. In all centuries past, these were all the invention of the church, educating the poor, taking care of the sick, taking care of the blind and the homeless.
36:45
This is part of the mandate of Christianity and something Christians always took very, very seriously. We need to recapture that narrative as well to hold up the historical record. You know, when people want to denigrate great Christianity, all they talk about are the wars of religion. They'll talk about certain bad apples. They'll talk about the crusades.
37:05
They'll try to look for and the crusades even is a much more mixed bag than people even understand. But the point is that they look for very specific things, but the overwhelming history of the contribution of Christianity to society is remarkably positive. In every way, even from the most humanitarian secular viewpoint, this has been an immense good for the human race, and this is something that people have done with nothing coming back simply because they have the love of Christ in their hearts and have wanted to live out His mandate to love one another as He loved us and to treat everyone as another Jesus.
37:43
Seth Holehouse: And you know, when you're talking about Nigeria and the the bloodshed that's going there, couldn't help but thinking it's like, that's, that could be coming to America. Like that could come you could have terrorist attacks targeting Christians in Europe. This is already starting to happen here. And I think that one of the greatest threats to America, or say we, one of the greatest obstacles is the comfort here, Right? I think America is the slow boiling frog.
38:11
And for a lot of people, they, they don't believe that like this could even happen. They don't believe that America could become that bad, or they don't believe that there is a threat like that. And it causes, I think for a lot of them to just kind of ignore it. They say, well, that's communist China, but it's not going to come here. You know, look, I mean, I've done a lot of human rights work.
38:33
And I can tell you that people are starting to really, I guess, wake up to these things. But you know, say ten years ago, if I was talking to somebody about, you know, persecution in China of, know, religions in China, the common response was like, well, you know, that's China. This is America. Like, that'll never happen here. But I think that we have to realize, this I think is an important part in breaking out of this, is that this is a war.
38:57
And you mentioned earlier, this is a spiritual war. And if if we looked out on the horizon and we saw, you know, Nazi planes dropping bombs or, you know, we saw troops with guns, we would be acting very differently if we really understood what was at stake. But I think that actually that's part of the war is it's like you could kind of putting opium into the water stream of the enemy. So they're all so doped up. They don't realize that they're under attack.
39:27
And I think that's what's happening in America is that it's like you see it. Like, that's why I was like, okay, this guy gets at the coming Christian persecution, but so many folks here, it's it's a form of cognitive dissonance. They just they don't want to accept that there's a threat because life was so comfortable before and ever since COVID, they just want to get back to that normal. They want to just want to get back to how things were before COVID started. And they have these memories of that, but they don't realize what's coming.
39:56
And that I think is one of the greatest threats that we have in America.
40:00
Speaker 2: You know, is such a good image, the slow boiling frog. And I think it's so true. And I think that comfort is, can be like a drug that keeps us from seeing the reality we have around us. You brought up earlier, Seth, a really important contemporary drama that's happening. When we see FBI forces arresting a priest and arresting people praying outside an abortion clinic or for praying in public, you know, that has to be a wake up call.
40:25
When you see public security forces that we as Americans have always looked to with esteem and we've always trusted them and we've seen them as our defenders and we see them being actually hostile toward and singling out and targeting people of faith, that's a really, really scary scenario. And I think it's one that has to be a wake up call. If that's the way those government forces can be used, that, you know, that just because we have an administration right now that's particularly, I think, hostile to a certain sort of believer because they see that as working against their agenda, that's terribly scary. And I think that, you know, your example too of this opium in the bloodstream or in the water supply, it's so true also. It's very interesting.
41:12
In Wikipedia, there's actually an entry, you can look this up, a whole entry on Christian persecution complex. And it talks about how some Christians have this imaginary idea that they're persecuted in society. And they like to talk about this because it makes them somehow better Christians than persecuted. Can you imagine for a moment if you put
41:35
Seth Holehouse: in
41:35
Speaker 2: Wikipedia Jewish persecution complex or Muslim persecution complex, you would be assailed by people saying this is a violation of the most basic human rights. How can you possibly do this when anti Semitism is so real, when anti Islamic sentiment is so real and there's so much violence. They be an outrage. But you can actually put an entry in Wikipedia Christian persecution complex as this is just a Freudian neurosis of people who are living in some delusional land where they think they're persecuted, but they're not. That's the way unfortunately a lot of our contemporary, you know, brothers and sisters and colleagues, this is the way they believe.
42:21
They think this is all just a product of group hallucination or this is a delusion that we somehow want to be prescriptive so we pretend we are. And they fail to look at the facts on the ground that we see every single day. It gets worse and worse. This is a reality. This is not something that is in somebody's mind.
42:42
This is something that in the newspapers because it's happening in schools, it's happening in universities, it's happening in businesses, and it's happening in politics.
42:51
Seth Holehouse: How do you think we can get more people to understand what's happening? You know, you are working in the media, which I think is one of the most important functions, having people in the media, reaching people. That's also one of the big reasons why I started this show is because I wanted to have a venue to reach people and help give people information that can, I think help them wake up from that kind of opium slumber? But, you know, how can folks that are watching or listening to say, gosh, I got to do something. You know, what are the steps you'd recommend them to take to really help wake more people up to this?
43:28
Speaker 2: Well, I think I think we need a lot of fellowship and camaraderie among believers in the first place, because I think some people can feel very much alone and they don't really feel the vocation to be John the Baptist, you know, voice crying in the wilderness all by themselves. And I think that backing each other up and sharing our stories and sharing our understanding of what's going on so that we really can draw from other people's experiences as well, I think that's really important. The Christian community has always found strength in its unity. It's always found strength in this communion of saints and praying for one another, supporting one another. So I think that's one thing.
44:04
Another thing is keeping informed. I think you're not going to get it on CNN. You're not going to get it on NBC. You need to look for alternative media. You need to follow these things.
44:14
And there are great, for example, Christian watchdog sites that monitor Christian persecution in different places. You know, it doesn't take a huge amount of effort to follow that and just make it part of our staying up on the news, make sure that we're aware of those things. So it doesn't come as a complete surprise when people say, oh, do you know 120 Christians were killed in Nigeria? Oh, I didn't hear that on CNN. Of course you're not going to.
44:40
You have to look for where you're going to get that kind of news because you're not going to get it from mainstream media. So I think that's another big part. And thirdly, I think we have to so there's the fellowship aspect, inform ourselves and keep ourselves up on what's going on aspect. And then what we can do to actually build a counter narrative and actually, you know, reinforce religious freedom and its importance in our society. And I think we need to stand up to the forces that are acting against that, whether it's, you know, the radical LGBT agenda that's trying to say Christians have no right to have these Christian beliefs that believe that homosexual sex is evil, that it's sinful, without hating obviously the person.
45:22
But they will try to paint that as bigotry, and we have to stand up and say, You know what, that's not bigotry. What's bigotry is you not accepting the fact that somebody can find your behavior objectionable. When I do things that are wrong and people say, That was wrong, they have every right to do that. And we have every right to say, you know, I love you very much, but there are certain things that's objectively wrong. That is not good for you, it's not good for our nation, and it's certainly not pleasing to God.
45:52
And nothing you can say or do is going to make me change my understanding of that because that's something that, first of all, I've received from revelation, but also which we see from experience, that this is something that destroys people's lives. This is not something that builds up and makes people better and more virtuous.
46:11
Seth Holehouse: No, it isn't. You're right. It does absolutely destroy their lives. So knowing all this and seeing all this, and this is what I find to be one of the difficult things of being in this profession of just really understanding what's happening in the world is that it's a pretty dark outlook sometimes. I mean, look at the the strength of the evil and the sophistication and the planning and the financing and everything, it's can be quite overwhelming.
46:35
But do you still have hope? And do you still find hope? Do you think that enough good people will stand up and say, we're not going to allow this to happen?
46:47
Speaker 2: I'm not gifted with prophetic foresight. I don't know. I do believe it's possible. And because it's possible, I think we have the duty to fight to make that a reality. I don't know the way things will turn out.
47:02
I think that, you know, as Christians, our fundamental true hope is in eternity. It's something that's in God, it's in salvation, it's in his ultimate victory, a victory that he's already won and that we already share in. But at the same time, it's incumbent upon us to fight for our society, to fight that other people are allowed to share in those freedoms that we have lived and that we have loved. I mean, they've allowed us to flourish in our faith as a nation. And it's been a great gift.
47:35
And it's why other people have also come to the nation looking for that, looking for that freedom, looking for that ability to freely profess faith in the public square. I think this is something that We owe to our children. We owe it to our brothers and sisters. We owe it to the future generations that are coming to find an America that is as beautiful as the one that we were born into. And I think that regardless of what the outcome will be, you cannot stop fighting.
48:02
We can't know the outcome. Do not know. And, you know, God never promised that we're going to be ultimately successful here. Jesus said, you know, when the son of man returns, will he find any faith on earth? He left it as a question.
48:14
He left it as a challenge I think to us. Let's make sure that there is. Let's make sure that when he returns, there is faith on earth, you know, and at least he'll find it in me. At least he'll find it in my family. At least he'll find it in those people that my life is able to touch so that he will have the consolation of seeing that that flame of faith is still alive.
48:36
Seth Holehouse: And I think it's really on all of us that are aware of this to have, you know, to become the center of that, to help strengthen those around us and help keep that flame alive. So, brilliant, brilliant words about the future. And there's a lot of wisdom in that. So I just want to bring your book up for folks to check out before we conclude here. So you can preorder it, right?
48:58
It's available on March 20. The Coming Christian Persecution. And again, it's by, you know, Doctor. Thomas, excuse me, Doctor. Thomas Williams.
49:09
Okay, you can follow him on there. And do you have any final closing thoughts for everybody?
49:16
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I'd like to just go back two seconds to your aspect of hope. I think we need to have hope. I think we need to be realists and so we need to be fully aware of all the evil that is going on but not so overwhelmed by it that we lose our ability to fight and to keep our head above water and to really to believe again in Christ's ultimate victory, because that is what gives us strength. It's not by seeing, you know, things turning out all rosy around us, but it's seeing things very, very grim and very, very dark. But knowing that we are on the side of the light and knowing that we have, you know, the Holy Spirit emboldens us and gives us his gifts and his grace and his strength.
49:57
And in the end, it's not we who are fighting, it is Christ who's fighting in us. And I think that we need that hope in order to be strong, in order to be pushing forward and not to be overwhelmed by the evil that's around us.
50:11
Seth Holehouse: Very, very important to remember that. And I know it's, after remind myself of that also that, okay, I need to make sure that I'm balancing out the dark research into the, you know, agenda 02/1930 with, you know, watching Little House in the Prairie. Make sure that they keep that balance there. So, well, Doctor. Williams, thank you so much for joining us today.
50:30
It's been a pleasure speaking with you. And I hope that a lot of folks go out and get your book because we have to know more about this topic here.
50:39
Speaker 2: Well, I'm very grateful, Seth. I'm grateful to you. I'm grateful to your viewers. Thank you so much for allowing me into this this beautiful program here, this beautiful apostolate, if I may call it that, this mission you have as a patriot and and and as a man of god. So thank you.
50:53
Seth Holehouse: Absolutely. Thank you. Have a wonderful day.