Raymond Arroyo Spider Who Saved Christmas America Must Return to God Faith Knowledge Biblical Values110421

You can support Chosen Generation and make a tax deductible donation by visiting www.chosengenerationradio.com. And now back to Chosen Generation with Pastor Greg.

And welcome back to Chosen Generation Radio where no topic is off limits and everything filtered through biblical glasses. Well, folks, there are, gosh, there are just people I could probably spend the rest of the program talking about what this gentleman has done and his accomplishments. You can most find him on Fox News. He is a regular with Laura Ingraham, but you can mostly find him at the Eternal Word Television Network where he is the news director and lead anchor of EWTN News.

And he is also the creator and host of the news program The World Over Live, author of the Will Wilder series for young readers as well. It's my sincere pleasure to welcome Raymond Arroyo to the program. Raymond, welcome. Pastor Greg, what a pleasure to be with you. Thank you for having me. Delighted.

It's my pleasure. Well, we've got to unite and stand together, my brother, because our belief system, our Christian belief system, which I believe is what has made America great, is under gigantic attack. Well, you know, Pastor, I always say and I spend a lot of my time when I'm not doing television. And the reason I write for children, you know, spend time writing literature, visiting schools is because the founders of this country believe that there were two foundations that undergirded this experiment. And that's what they considered this an experiment in liberty, an experiment in self-government.

They didn't know if it would work or not because it was predicated on two things that they had no control over. And that is an informed people and a moral people. And to be informed, you have to be literate. You have to be able to read so you can shape your own mind and your own ideas and critically think. And to be a moral person, you also have to read the word of God and to and to be open to the possibility that there is a moral code outside of yourself. And whatever you think is right in the moment, that there's an objective truth. Those two things, it seems to me we have lost in America.

We're watching it get pulled away. And if you lose an informed populace and the moral people, you lose America. And I think we focus a lot on political races and political personalities and Supreme Court. And none of that is nearly as important as those two foundational principles, because you're only going to get representatives and Congress people and presidents that reflect the information and the knowledge of the people and the morality of the people. And sadly, we've seen both manifest itself. And that's why we're in the dire straits.

You know, I regularly tell my audience, if you don't like if you think when I say the word politician, if you think, you know, liar and thief and someone who steals and someone you can trust and so on, if that's what you think, then you better go into the bathroom and look in the mirror and ask yourself, is that me? Because our nation was created as a representative government. We are governed by the consent of the people. We keep giving power to the guys in D.C. We've given them it. And we know what is the saying, right? Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts. Absolutely correct. We want to act. Yeah, we we we have we have given that up. And Raymond, so I guess the question then is, how do we get it back?

Because I think a lot of people I mean, Virginia. Right. Told us. Right. You know, Mama Bears woke up and said, hey, wait a minute, you're messing with my kids.

Something you hit on right as we began this conversation. Yeah. I mean, just to put a bow around that entire thought that that's correct. Look, we lived in Loudoun County for 11 years faster over there. Our children were in that public school system when they were very, very small. I'm talking pre-K kindergarten. And my my wife, who was a teacher, started volunteering and said, wait a minute, you don't know what they're teaching these kids. We're going to pull them out of the school.

And we did. We pulled them out of the Loudoun school because of this curriculum. And at that time, those schools were regarded as the best in the nation past scary, the very best in the nation. And now you see they are ground zero for this backlash, this revolt against teachers unions and these teachers trying to cram a curricula that does not reflect anything in the natural order. Forget, forget what the parents want. And so parents are actually striking back. And that runs right back to what I always said.

People will follow ideology and a narrative for only so long, even if it means their own financial detriment and pain to themselves. But when it affects their child, yes, as you know, Pat, oh, given your witness and background, when it affects your child, all bets are off. And you only have one thought.

Protect my baby. That's it. That's what happened here. You are seeing. But it's a shame to come to this.

You know, agreed. They let their community get destroyed. They see compromise.

Well, taxes go through the roof. And now curricula is what triggered them. The church fell asleep. Look, I mean, for the first hundred and fifty years, it was the church. If an editor came into town and printed lies, it was the pastor that went to that editor and said, listen, I'm calling you out. And Sunday's sermon is going to be all about you, buddy. So if you don't want Sunday's sermon to be about you, you retract your lies.

You retract your lies. They would sit down and have lunch. And at lunch, dad would stand up and have to recite what the pastor had talked about in the sermon.

And they'd have a discussion about it so that they understood the moral foundings that that you are speaking of. I was in Loudoun County, actually, about a month ago. Jonathan E. Moore's house. Jonathan hosted an event about CRT, and we had members from Loudoun County, from the school board, parents and so on and so forth that were there.

And I heard, you know, their stories firsthand, my friend and I. Oh, my goodness. It didn't surprise me, this uprising that led to a Glenn Youngkin and a Winsome Sears duo as governor and lieutenant governor and the attorney general that just won there as well. Mayaris, I think, is the name.

Yeah, yeah, Mayaris, yeah. The attorney general, Cuban-American. Again, this is, first of all, the idea that it's racially driven, which is what I hear that narrative makes me laugh. I mean, the fact that you see an African-American lieutenant governor and an Hispanic attorney general kind of undermines the idea that it was racially motivated.

Also, you had a bigger Hispanic and African-American percentage of the vote going for Youngkin than went for Trump. So that's a that's such a false flag and a false narrative. But this is what happens when people just start listening to themselves and they kind of repeat the echo. And and so many in in the media apparatus.

That's what happens. As I said last night, look, they were all shocked by this Virginia story. We weren't shocked.

We've done town halls with Loudon parents and these are these parents throughout the last year and a half. So when you monitor actual movements and reactions from the people and you're reporting that honestly, the results don't surprise you. But when you ignore that or say they're just a bunch of Cretan races in the woods. Now you've poked the bear. You poked the bear is what you did. Right.

I mean, they poked the bear. You know, Charlie Kirk had an article on human events that that talked about infragile. And it was basically saying, listen, you know, we've got and it's it's a it's a grassroots movement, but it's not like Tea Party. I know against nothing against Tea Party.

I've been involved in Tea Party movement, but this is different. This is more organic because you have a parent group that's gathering, talking about CRT. You have another parent group that's gathering, talking about the transgender issue and forcing boys. I mean, look at what happened to that father. You got a father whose daughter is raped. The school district refuses to even acknowledge that it took place.

And he's the guy that they're going to tackle and take down in the meeting. I mean, as a dad, as you like I shared with you, you know, I laid my life down for my daughter literally died four times. Laid my life down for my daughter. Don't mess with my kids. OK, right. There's a reason my gate posts are painted purple out there, folks. OK, that's your warning here in Texas. Don't come on my property and mess with my family. This big bear.

You don't want to tangle with me. Yeah, no, no. This is this is what I think is happening. And I look, as I said, this is the critical race theory. Part of this is only the latest manifestation of a very distorted idea of human dignity that doesn't comport with anything found in Christian morality or Christian notions of personhood. And and what people have been taught for generations.

The school has consistently undermined that in these curricula, particularly the modern curriculum, whether it's environmentalism, replacing God. You know, the the interchangeable pronouns that have no end. You know, I'm half Latin. So when I hear Latin, I don't know what Latin is.

Nobody does. This is just a make-believe. There's no Latin. You're a Latino or you're Latina, feminine ending or masculine ending.

That's all Spanish permits. So the rest of this is just kind of a faculty lounge make-believe. And I'm thrilled to see even my friend James Carville, who I agree with almost nothing on. But, you know, we are both New Orleans boys.

And, you know, Barry Madeline is a dear friend. When I heard him last night say these people have just fallen into this cult of woke-ism and they need to go into a detox for woke-ism. He's 100 percent right. They have departed and left mainstream America. And whatever this is, it's not reality.

And you saw that's what you're seeing in the polling. No question. No question. Don't go anywhere, please. Raymond Arroyo is my guest. We'll be back. We're going to take a quick break when we come back.

More with Raymond Arroyo, founding news director at EWTN TV. And we'll be back with more. We're going to talk about Christmas.

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For the best night's sleep in the whole wide world, visit MyPillow.com. Now back to Chosen Generation with your host Pastor Greg. And don't forget you can get more Chosen Generation at www.ChosenGenerationRadio.com. And welcome back to Chosen Generation Radio. I'm your host Pastor Greg and my very special guest is Raymond Arroyo, founding news director at EWTN-TV. And you're on a book tour.

Let's talk about that because my folks, I want to say good morning. Tomorrow morning this will re-air from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. on Noble Radio, 12 regional stations all across South Texas. And so we're right in the neighborhood.

You're going to be coming right through. I'm coming to Texas in the middle of December. I'm in Houston. I'm in Dallas.

And they can go to RaymondArroyo.com which is my website and the dates are there. I'm at Barnes and Nobles I think there. But it'll be fun. I'm going to tell a few stories. We're going to talk a little bit. I'll sign books. And I'm on the book tour for a Christmas book, a picture book I wrote called The Spider Who Saved Christmas. And it's, you know Pastor, I consider it a family read. All the books I write are family reads. And I do that because to me it's really important that generations read and go on these imaginative journeys together because the media isolates. People watch their one program in their room or in their car or somewhere else. They're watching it alone.

They're not sharing it together. And I wanted an experience that first of all focused us on the mystery and the wonder of Christmas, the real Christmas, the focus of the season. Not Santa or Frosty or the reindeer, all of which are sweet and lovely but it's not what the season's about. And so I wanted people to kind of see that. And I stumbled across this wondrous tale, kind of an enchanting thing that I'd never heard before. When I traveled in Eastern Europe, the trees in Eastern Europe at Christmas time, they decorate them with more tinsel than a Trump Tower hotel. You know, it's covered in tinsel from top to bottom. And they have spider ornaments in the trees. And I thought, what's the deal with the spiders in all these trees? And they're very ornate, kind of, you know, jeweled spider ornaments. Interesting. And I didn't ask. I thought, I don't know if they're recycling Halloween. I don't know what's happening here.

But I just kept going on about my business. Years later, I stumbled across the story of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. When they're on the flight to Egypt, they hide in a cave and they cross paths with this spider. And she performs a service to them, gives them a gift that only she can.

And it ends up being the most amazing gift at just the right time. And I thought, why have I never heard this story? And it turns out it is this legend, this story that inspired the Eastern Europeans to create tinsel.

That's not to replicate icicles, but it is supposed to be a representation of this spider's web. Interesting. And they keep this legend alive and the story alive. And we all do, unknowingly. Who hasn't seen tinsel or put it on their trees?

Sure. So it's an interesting tradition we continue, but we've never either passed the story along or knew the story. I certainly didn't. No, I've never heard it.

Never heard it. So it goes back to the second century and it's a very sweet tale and it's a part of the gospel that's quiet. You know, we hear Joseph was told, get up, take the child and the mother and go to Egypt for safety.

Go clean up. And then they go and next thing we know, he's told, okay, go back home. We don't know what happens in between there. It's a dark spot in the gospel.

Gotcha. It fills that little place in. You see them go into the cave. Naturally, at the very beginning of the picture book, in my telling, Joseph raises his staff and tries to kill the spider. I mean, if a big spider and these golden orb spiders in the Middle East are pretty big, you know, they're the size of your fist. You know, if you saw a spider hanging over your child and your wife, you'd be like, let me clear this thing.

You bet. And she stops him and she says, no, she sees that there's a stack of little spiders up in the corner and the mother's trying to protect those spiders. And she says, you know, all are here for a reason. Yeah.

Let her be. And there's a neat reflection there between Mary trying to protect her baby and this spider trying to protect hers. We do each other a service that's really, it's heartwarming, it's touched a lot of people that I didn't expect, frankly, to be touched, even many, many non-Christian people have been touched by it. But it brings us back to the centrality of what this is all about, Pastor, what Christmas is about.

And I didn't know it when I started writing this story a year and a half ago, this was before COVID, but who knew that we would really be like Mary and Joseph and Jesus at Christmas time. Yeah. In our own caves, hiding out, trying to protect our families from sudden death outside, which is what they're going through.

They're running from Herod's guards. Yes. And if you have the eyes of faith and if you have the love of family, God will provide miracles in unexpected ways through unexpected vehicles.

And that's what happens in this story. And it's really about using your gifts and offering them to Christ when they are most needed, and no matter how small or insignificant you might think they are, or how people ignore you, or even a fear to view, that gift is needed now. More than ever.

More than ever. And it may have importance not only for you, but for all of humanity. Well, and I think about, you know, the proverb, right, trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding, but in all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path, right? This is about, you know, leaning on understanding that naturally, Joseph or Mary might not have had, and this is about trusting God completely, fully on the journey that they are on. You know, and acknowledging that He is in the midst of this encounter, because God gives us divine encounters, you and I, today, I mean, think about this, Psalm 139 says that He wrote out the days of our lives before we drew our first breath. So that means that every experience that you and I have had was so that we could come together today and have this unique encounter.

In this present moment, no, it's so true. It's so true. And that's, you know, I've always been fascinated, I guess, by two things about Christmas, and I love Christmas. It's my favorite time of year.

You know, I live in New Orleans. We're a place that externalizes every season and every expression. And, you know, we live large here. And, you know, there's smells and sounds and visuals that go along with every turn of the seasons, and particularly the religious seasons, religious celebrations and festivals. Christmas I love, but the two things I love about it is, and we often overlook it, which is why I wanted to include it in this story. We often think of Christmas in America and, you know, the big retailers tell us it's all about sparkly lights and sunshine and, you know, tinsel and all the external things.

Right. Christmas for the Holy Family. Christmas for Christ was God made man coming into a very dark world and running.

And at this point in the story, literally running for his light from dangers, but the light did not fail. And the supernatural power of God endures. That's the light of the season.

That's the power of the season. And I don't think we spend enough time thinking about that. Light conquering darkness. God and Christ's power conquering evil. There's this stamping out of evil.

We rarely think of that. It's the rest of John chapter 3, my brother. It's the rest of John chapter 3.

Everybody stops it for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, whoever believes in him. But the rest of it talks about light came into the world, but man preferred darkness over the light. That is the world that Christ encountered when he's explaining to Nicodemus the significance of the born again experience that must happen. If I tell you of things in the natural and you don't understand them, how are you ever going to understand the things in the realm of the Spirit? And, you know, there was so much of that in the first century church that they understood, you know, when you think about Christ walking on the water and coming in and he's coming out to the boat. And the first thing that they say is, you know, they're afraid because they think it might be an evil spirit. That should clue us in. That should clue us in that the first century Christians understood that there was a realm that was not operating in the natural but was as real as the natural.

And we have lost track of that and it's to our detriment, in my opinion. Raymond O'Rourke, go ahead. That was part of what I wanted to do with the spider who saved Christmas. Awaken us all again to the supernatural and the power of the Spirit. Amen. Amen. Folks, please, go to the website, RaymondOroyo.com, RaymondOroyo.com.

And I'm going to beg and plead with him to think about maybe making a stop here at the cowboy capital of the world because I think we would love to have him. At the end of the day, when I stand before my God, I do not want him to ask me, what did you do with the world that I sent my son to die for and redeem? How did you fight the good fight to share the good news and keep evil in check?

How did you shine your light and be a beacon of truth in the darkness? Did you shrink back in fear when they demanded you change my message? Did you call evil good and good evil? Did you forsake my love for that of another, lying with the adulterer and setting up a new idol in your life? Have you defiled yourself through compromise and tolerance of that which I call an abomination? Have you innocent blood on your hands for the children murdered on your watch and the young ones perverted in their way by evil men, seeking their own comfort and reviling me?

No. At the end of the day, I want him to simply say the evidence is in. Well done, thou good and faithful servant. I love my God and I love his creation. And I will go to my grave telling the world that evil is evil and only God is good. And Jesus came to save the world. That no matter the evil in the world, I will never give up and in spite of the hate, I will love in truth. God bless you all and may love remove the veil so you all might enter into his rest.