Ralph Reed Speaks

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Share it. But most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Ralph Reed. When I say that name, you know, it conjures up all kinds of cool stuff. You hope so, at least, right Ralph?

I hope so. I've been very privileged and honored to be a part of a lot of great things from the Christian Coalition to the Bush campaigns in 00 and 04 and now helping President Trump and then I'm also head of faith and freedom. So I've had a lot of great opportunities and I don't think that as believers we have the option, biblically, at least in my understanding and reading of the full counsel of the scriptures, to check out of citizenship. You know, we essentially, as believers in Jesus Christ, we carry two passports.

One is for a heavenly kingdom that is both here today and is yet to be fully realized and that is our ultimate home and our ultimate citizenship. But while Jesus tarries, we carry another passport which is our earthly citizenship and we are called upon as believers to exercise that citizenship in a muscular and a robust fashion. And lest anybody think that I'm saying that just because I'm a political activist, I would point them to Acts 22 where Paul was arrested for inciting a riot while preaching the gospel in Jerusalem. He's about to be flogged by Roman soldiers and examined by scourging and he turns around to the Roman centurion and he says, is it legal for you to do this to a Roman citizen? And they immediately untie him. They immediately treat him with deference and respect and the Bible says that the Roman soldiers were afraid because they had violated his rights. Now, did Paul do that because he was afraid to suffer for Christ?

No. Look and read in his epistles where he says, I've been shipwrecked. I've spent a night at sea.

I was stoned nearly to a point of death. He ultimately was martyred for the gospel. But isn't it interesting that he was not willing to surrender his rights as a citizen of Rome? If he wouldn't do that, then we surely shouldn't surrender our rights as citizens of the United States because they're not ultimately given by the constitution or by the founders or by congress or a president. They're given by almighty God. They're human rights. They're inalienable rights. They're inherent to our very humanity.

They come from the very throne of God and he has simply established civil authority to safeguard them. So one of our most controversial episodes of Truth Talk and I'm Stu Everson and that's the voice of Ralph Reed. Wow, that's some heavy stuff. I'm gonna have to listen to this myself to unpack all that from Acts 22. I'm actually studying the book of Acts right now. I love that.

I haven't gotten that far yet. One of our most controversial topics was, questions was, is it a sin for Christians not to vote? So I'm gonna lay that one on you right now.

I'm glad you're here. I'm gonna ask you that tough question. Is it a sin for a Christian, I'm talking about in America, not to cast their vote, not to vote?

I'm not sure that I would say it was a sin unless you define sin as falling short of the mark. Okay. And as I said, I think that the Bible makes clear in both the Old and the New Testament that we have a responsibility as earthly citizens in whatever domain or whatever kingdom we're in, which for us means the United States of America, to defend our rights, to assert the full exercise of our citizenship that we're granted under the laws of that country, and to do everything that we can to resist evil and to establish the common good while we're here in our capacity as citizens. Now, why do we do that? We do it for two reasons. Number one, because we resist evil and advance good, and we're called upon as Christians to do that while we're here in our physical bodies in whatever form it takes, including in the civic arena.

So if that means combating human trafficking or combating abortion on demand or combating racism or combating discrimination in the criminal justice system, we're doing everything we can to establish justice for the poor, for the left behind, for the marginalized, and to resist evil. The second reason why we do it is to carry the gospel to the very highest levels of our government. The Bible records in the New Testament that as a result of Paul appealing his case to Caesar, which was the most sacred right of a citizen of Rome, many members of Caesar's household came to Christ. So if we're not effective citizens, think how many people of influence in our society won't get exposed to the gospel, and that's the ultimate reason why we do it. You think about this fellow over here we interviewed just a little bit ago, Governor Mike Huckabee, how he loves the Lord. Southern Baptist pastor, turned politician, but he never took his heart for Christ out of that.

In fact, he's been a light to a lot of politicians. They need the gospel too, but also when you're voting for someone, there's this misnomer maybe, I think, that if this guy is going to have it all together, I'm not voting for him, but we're not voting for a pastor, we're voting for a politician. So I think there's also people that maybe over venerate the person that's running to say, well, if they're not a Christian, I'm not voting for them.

That's the other extreme, I guess, isn't it? Yeah, I think that is the other extreme, but again, that is an inaccurate reading of scripture. I think if you look at the Caesar that Paul was appealing to, it was Nero, who was a bloodthirsty tyrant. If you look at the Caesar to whom Jesus paid taxes when they came to him in the famous question of, is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar? Remember that the Jews were an occupied people.

They were under the subjugation of a brutal regime, and the Caesar whose inscription was on that coin was Caesar Tiberius, who was a bloodthirsty tyrant, a sexual deviant, and a child molester. So just because a person who's in civil authority is not necessarily a moral person themselves does not anyway abrogate us of our responsibility as citizens to advance the greater good. Now, what I get sometimes is I have people say, well, you're just advocating that people vote for the lesser of two evils. You know, Donald Trump is not a pious man. You know, they don't like the way he insults his opponents.

They don't like some of his tweets. I couldn't disagree more strongly. When I vote for a candidate who is defending the sacred right to life of the unborn, the elderly, and the infirm, that is not a lesser evil. That's a moral good. When I vote for a candidate who's pro-Israel, and in the case of Donald Trump, kept his promise to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognize Jerusalem as the sacred and eternal capital of the Jewish people, that's not a lesser evil. That's a moral and biblical good. When I vote for a candidate who promises to appoint pro-life and pro-religious freedom judges, that's not a lesser evil. That's a greater good. So that's what we should be doing as Christians.

Okay, that's Ralph Reed. Now, what is your website? How do people find out more about you in your ministry, your speaking, your zigzag in this country, man? You've got a breakneck schedule.

I got tired listening to your schedule, just you telling me I've got to fly here, I've got to get a charter here, I've got to go over here, I've got to get into here. But what's the way they find out more about you? Well, they can go to my organization's website, which is Faith and Freedom Coalition.

They can Google that, or it's ffcoalition.com. I also have a new book out called For God and Country, The Christian Case for Donald Trump, which is on Amazon and wherever books are sold. That's a controversial topic.

I mean, that's a wow. It is, but every question you ask me in this interview, I directly address in the book. And I talk about why Christians not only did the right thing politically, they did the right thing morally in 2016 by supporting Donald Trump.

So you haven't changed that position, you're still... No, and I think they're going to vote for him in even bigger numbers in 2020. And I lay out the reasons why that is the case in the book. Wow.

Okay, that's heavy right there. Okay, Ralph Reed, thanks for being on with us here on Truth Talk. Folks, you listen, you make up your own mind. We don't come out endorsing candidates on this show, but you're hearing his passion, and he's using the word, but think through it, discuss it. But I think it's good to have conversations like this. I mean, I think it's good to...

I met with a pastor who hates Trump, will never vote for a million years, but we had a conversation. We didn't beat each other up, we didn't cuss each other out. And we need to have more... Wherever you're coming from, we need to have more diplomacy in our country. What's happened?

Why are people throwing bricks at people as opposed to just having good conversations? Well, because there's a lot on the line. If Donald Trump is re-elected and he's able to appoint one, two or three more Supreme Court justices, and if he's able to change the direction of public policy in a way that protects innocent human life, safeguards religious freedom, puts America first and gets rid of some of these bad trade agreements that cost so many manufacturing jobs and hollowed out our manufacturing base and outsourced jobs to China and Indonesia and Mexico. There are a lot of special interests that lose in every one of those. So there's a lot on the line.

It's a very intense time, but I'm an optimist. I believe that as Winston Churchill said, democracy is the worst form of government ever conceived, except for all the rest. So we're imperfect.

So democracy's imperfect, but this is the best single system that has ever been devised. And we should celebrate that. All right. Ralph Reed has spoken. Thank you for being on. God bless you, man. Thanks. This is the Truth Network.