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You can use promo code T-O-D-A-Y at checkout to get 10% off your next order. It's going to save you money and it's going to support all of us here at the Clearview Today show. So stay hydrated, stay healthy and without further ado, let's start the show. You're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abbadan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Ryan Hill. I'm John Galantis and welcome to the Clearview Today studio. We've got a great conversation planned for you today, but first got to introduce the host of the show. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Abbadan Shah, who is a PhD in New Testament textual criticism, professor at Carolina University, author, full-time pastor and the host of today's show, Dr. Shah. Welcome to the show.
We've got a studio audience. Good to be here. Thank you.
Great job, everyone. Dr. Shah, as always, we're going to start off with the word of God coming from Deuteronomy 4 30. It says, when you are in distress and all these things come upon you in the latter days, when you turn to the Lord, your God and obey Him.
Wow. You know, when God gave them those commandments, as He was bringing them into the promised land, He gave them some warnings because every commandment comes with a warning because then it's not a commandment. Then it's just a suggestion. So commandments come with a warning that if you do this, there is promise and there is a great and a blessed life. And in time, you're going to meet the Messiah who's going to save you and your progeny from their sins. But if you don't, then all the things, all those plagues that the Egyptians were afflicted with, all the wickedness that the Canaanites and the other nations around them were enduring are going to come upon you.
See, I was on board with the first half. Like I want the blessed life. The obedience or else part, not really. Not what I'm struggling with.
It's not sitting really well. Because we want them and we want that blessed life, but we don't want the obedience. We don't want the submission and we definitely don't want the threat is sort of a strong word, but we don't want the consequence of our disobedience. Right. Yeah.
The warning portion that comes along with it. And unfortunately, that mindset also enters into the church where people assume that those who are coming to hear the message or attending the services didn't want to be preached at. Right. Didn't want the commandments. They simply want suggestions.
And at the most, just platitudes to keep you happy and satisfied and settled. Right. That is no different than somebody having a sickness, a fatal sickness, going to the doctor and the doctor saying, well, I don't want to hurt your feelings by giving you commandments that come with a warning that if you don't get this checked and you don't get this biopsy done by the end of the week or by the end of the month, this may be a bad situation. So you need to call and make the appointment. Now I can get my secretary to get this going. I can get the nurse to help you out. I'm good.
I'm good. You know what? That's one reason I don't go to the doctor. They always give me the bad news and tell me what I need to do or else. I know it's a silly example, but I know adults who are like that.
That's like, I do not like another girl, man, or a woman telling me what to do. Well, we can laugh at that on the show, but I mean, that is powerful when you translate it to your spiritual life. Absolutely. I think it's much, much, much, much, much, much, much worse than physical sickness. Yeah, absolutely. And the, and the, and the word is very clear. It's when you're in distress. Cause a lot of times we wait till the last possible moment. We wait till things are so dire before we say, okay, I'll, I'll try this obedience thing. Clearly, clearly you want me to start with obedience up top. I know that's right.
I have to live that. So many times in my life, if I could have applied that start with obedience, man, it would have saved me so much trouble. Unless it's a church where people just like to fuss at you and they think fussing at you is spiritual. Most of the time, I believe pastors who are Bible believing, preaching the truth, the gospel of Jesus Christ, they want to tell you those things and give you those warnings and those commandments to help you live a life of holiness unto God, to help you live in Christ and demonstrate before a watching world, what a life that shuns sin and draws closer to Christ looks like.
What the life of power over sin looks like. That's all they're trying to do. So don't fuss at them and don't be angry with them because they're telling the truth. That's right.
That's right. Fellas, I got a great game for us today. This is something that Ryan has turned me on to. Ryan, do you want to explain today's game? Cause this is sort of your, I know you said you gave credit to someone else for inventing this, but in my mind, in my heart, you're the progenitor of this. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. So today's segment or today's game is called pick it up and preach.
And in the, in the game, in the segment, we're going to do exactly that. You guys are going to, I'm going to hand you two objects and you're going to pick it up and you're going to preach. You don't know what these objects are. They're mysterious.
You've never seen them before. But you're going to have a limited window of time. I'll say, I'll give you maybe five seconds to rattle it around. Five seconds to think and then to deliver an object lesson or a powerful truth that can help us grow in our spiritual life or our walk with God.
I feel as though there's an unfair advantage. Dr. Shaw has been preaching for 30 years, 31 years. Well, it's even worse or even better for me. My exposure to expository or not expository preaching, extempor preaching. That's what it really is. I remember talking about this actually began when I was maybe seven or eight years of age.
So you, so you, you would dominate a little bit of a leg up. But here's, here's another something. My first extempor preaching was not really extempor. We were given the topic, which was why I am a Christian.
And that is topic to a seven, seven, eight years old. I was like, I think third or fourth grade, I think it ended in disaster. I started and then I began to cry and then ran out of the church crying.
Oh yeah. Oh, that was my first message. What happened with the service? Do you even know how the service did?
It was not a service. It was during the Christmas time. Dad used to have all these competitions to bring the church together in America or in the West. Christmas time is like, stay home, be with your family overseas.
It was just the opposite. Christmas time. You come together as a church, you do things with your family, but then you come together. And one of the things we did was a night of competitions among the church family, especially the kids and the teenagers, things like singing.
And of course, extempor speaking. But since I was very young, our group was already given the topic, which was, why am I a Christian? And then my dad helped me with that topic. So dad sort of wrote it out and I memorized it instead of like really learning it. I memorized it and got up there. And it was, I mean, dad had given me things like Karl Marx went to seminary. I never heard of a seminary.
Karl Marx went to seminary, but since he did not know Christ as his savior, he, I mean, somewhere between Karl Marx and the lights just got real bright. And I ran out. I'm confident there will be no running out and crying after today. I believe in you guys. Let's do it too soon. Here we go. All right.
Let me grab the items real quick. Okay, go ahead. Okay. So item number one is going to go to Dr. Shaw.
It's this snazzy pair of blue shades. Okay. All right. All right.
There we go. And then item number two is this bright pink spray bottle with something inside of it. It's like a blossom bubble. Some mysterious liquid. So five seconds. Get your thoughts together.
Think about how this object can give us a powerful truth that can enhance our walk with God or our spiritual life. So I'm going to say Dr. Shaw, if you want to go first and then. Yeah, maybe that would be best. I think he has a harder task with a spray bottle than I do with a pair of glasses.
I mean, this one, there's so many things immediately come to mind. So can I begin? Yes, absolutely.
Okay. So just like these pair of glasses that I have in my hands, it makes a difference how we see our world. So if you are wearing a set of glasses that are, let's say pink, then you will see the world with that pink tint.
But if you have a pair of glasses like this, kind of like dark gray, then you'll see the world that way. So also when it comes to seeing the world around us, we have to see things from God's perspective. So don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And so I would say put on the glasses of faith, the glasses of Christ, the glasses filled with the Holy Spirit, the word of God, so you can see the world the way it needs to be seen. And more than anything, I hope your vision is on Christ.
Look to Jesus. I got to give it to him. That's how you do it.
That's how you do it as a gentleman. All right. You want to let's move on to the next section?
No, it's your turn now. Okay. So this, you see this bright pink spray bottle, like I'm trying a lot to get it to squirt, but it won't actually squirt. It's not functioning the way that it should. I'm tapping it and I'm tapping it very gently, but no water's coming out. It doesn't function. All it takes is a little bit of pressure and all of a sudden it functions.
It's also in the Christian life. When you apply the appropriate pressure in life, you find that the things that you... Hold on. Close the door.
He's about to run. Someone get in the door. Now, when you apply the appropriate pressure to your life, you find that it actually functions much better than you thought it did when things were easy and didn't have the right pressure.
So God will put pressure in your life to show you how you can be functioning at a higher level. I squirted a lot to kind of improve my point. Hold on. We used to have booze. I think if I were to judge that one, I think John did a better job because it's harder to use that object than to use glass. I mean, glasses, you could have done even better than what I did. A spray bottle, that's tough.
The spray bottle, you want to call it a tie? How about two successful sermons? Sure. We'll do that. And that's picking up on preaching, ladies and gentlemen. You should definitely take that to your youth group or your student group.
Our students have had a lot of fun with it. And we do even more off-the-wall things than this. I mean, they'll have a giant cuckoo clock and a plate of spaghetti and all kinds of crazy stuff. Ryan has brought some... And I'll say this.
This is a testament to Ryan because Ryan's leadership... In my youth group, everyone would have been too cool to play. They would have been like, I don't know.
Now, we have some of those that feel that way. I've never seen it. I'm sure you're right, but I've not seen it. The teenagers get into it and they come up with some of the... And they actually kind of make sense. Yeah. It's not silly off-the-wall stuff. Like, at a lot of youth groups around the world, people would be like, I mean, it's just like a spray bottle and God gives it to you. No, our teenagers go hard on picking up on preaching.
Yes, they do a good job. That's one of our favorites. The reason I love that game is because giving your students the opportunity to come up with object lessons helps them share the gospel.
That's right. And so I would say, definitely use it in your youth groups. It also kind of feeds into our next segment, which is updating everyone on our weekly wisdom. Dr. Shah, if you remember, on Monday, we started a new segment called The Weekly Wisdom with Dr. Shah.
And your weekly wisdom was, learn to say yes. Don't shut things down immediately. There's a big problem where people will see a problem, they'll see an obstacle, and they'll say, ah, this can't be done.
The couch is soaking wet, by the way. I messed up. They'll see a big problem and they'll say, let's just stop. Let's not do it. Because if we do this, this is going to happen. Or here's another way.
We can see very clearly all the ways that it will fail. And so your wisdom was, learn to stop doing that. Learn to say yes. So I just wanted to see if there was there any ways that we were able to do that this week, like with you guys or with like, for me, one of them was, it was a small thing, but it was just getting the kids to bed on time. You know, there was like, well, we still have to do this and still got to brush teeth and they still got to. I was like, look, we can do it one step at a time rather than listing all the ways that we can't get them in bed by nine o'clock. Let's just cook dinner a little bit earlier. Go ahead and have it ready. When I come in or when I get home, I'll feed them. You go and do your thing.
Go start getting and just come up with a plan. We've gotten them in bed by nine o'clock every night this week. So I know that's a smaller thing. It's not like a big risk, but it was one way that we were able to say no, this can be done.
And we will. Yeah, well, I think that that's an important point that yes, and the small things can lead to yes, and the big things. For me, it's been not just this week, but in the weeks leading up to this, it's been in rehearsals for our spring play West of Pecos. One of my favorite things to do is to listen to the actors and the suggestions that they come up with for their characters for blocking for what if I do this, what if I try this, you know, as we have a great team of directors, we have a great team of people working behind the scenes, but it can be easy as a director to be kind of narrow minded and and sort of short sighted on what you want the show to be.
But there's a whole host of other people that are in the show bringing these characters to life and oftentimes, their ideas are great. So what I try to do is every suggestion that the actors bring is to say yes, everything that they bring to the play to to me like what if we did this? What if we tried this? Or what if I stood and said this differently? I try to say yes. Now sometimes I might have to say yes. And let's also think about this. But I try to say yes, because then that gives them creative freedom.
And it gives them ownership of the outcome of the show. One of the things that you taught me, Dr. Shah, and I've seen this, the more that I've traveled is you really see this whole shut it down principle. Most when you travel, right, you travel a lot. And we travel a lot along with you.
But I never really noticed it. How much people love to say no until you start traveling. It doesn't matter if it's the TSA, doesn't matter if it's people like on site where you're trying to do something creative. People love to say, yeah, you can't do that. And some some things are understandable. Some things make sense and are important. Like you don't want to say yes to carrying some explosive material onto the plane. You cannot say yes to that.
So I get it. But then there are some things that are not a big deal. Like, for example, filming at certain sites, it's not a big deal.
But people make it a big deal. Even if you're not doing professional filming, they will stop you. And you're thinking, I'm not here with a crew. There are no massive lights. There's no track set up for a moving camera.
Nothing like that is happening. It's just I'm standing here with a camera in front of me or a phone in front of me. I'm just just recording something.
And it's if anything is going to give your institution, whether it's a museum or it's a site, a historical site, it's going to give you publicity, free publicity. Unless I'm talking bad about it, then maybe you can stop me. But even then, it's kind of like freedom.
You can you should be allowed to say that. But overall, I think sometimes people just like a little bit of power. Oh, yeah.
Did you run into that when you were traveling? Not as much. Sometimes it can happen. But I don't do anything anyways. That's kind of over board or crossing the lines. Most of the time I'm standing somewhere where it is out in the open or in front of a building that I can talk about it and nobody really cares. But there were some places that can be but they have signs there. So I usually just obey those signs. But if they're not, then I will film.
What contributes to that kind of culture, either on a national level or maybe in a smaller community level of just this? No, you can't do that. Or no, you can't film here.
No, you can't say that. I think it comes from a bygone period where people controlled a lot of this information. And they controlled how people made money off of this. In many, many, many ways, our world has changed radically with the coming of social media, with the coming of smartphones, that world doesn't exist anymore. Okay, so you're still operating by principles of a whole different world, like a world that was 30 years earlier, of Oh, you cannot film, but I'm filming on a phone. It's not filming in the sense of setting up a studio. Right, there's not a whole crew that's coming with lights and all this craziness. None of that is happening. So this should be okay.
And also, if you go on Google, everything is out there. Right. The idea or the mindset that if we allow you to film, then you're going to put it out there and then people won't come to see the real thing.
That is a very, very old mindset that needs to be just stopped. But at least you were able to film. You didn't have a whole lot of trouble in Europe this year. Yeah, usually nowhere I have trouble. Europe is no different than Asia or Middle East.
I mean, most times they're fine. How was the trip just in general? I've realized you've been back for a week and we haven't really even talked about the trip at all. Oh, the trip was awesome.
Of course, I was there for a conference in Birmingham. And so we arrived in London. And I spent a day just kind of going around London, some of the places I wanted to visit, which I was not able to do last time.
I've already seen most of the sites in London, like St. Paul's Cathedral, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, I've seen all these things. So I wanted to go by certain places and we did for a for a day. And then we decided to leave London and go elsewhere.
There were still places in London that I could have seen, but we felt like it's time to go see Wales. So we drove out towards the west of London, like two hours away to a city called Bristol. There's Bath, which is named after actual Baths, Roman Baths. So the city is called Bath. So we were going to go to Bath and see some of those Roman Baths, but time was not in our corner there.
So we bypassed it and went to Bristol. And the reason to go to Bristol was to see the George Muller Museum. Who was George Muller? George Muller was a German man who came to England back in the 19th century and he saw the plight of children on the streets. I mean, it was bad.
It was really bad. They were orphans and nobody was taking care of them. They were barely surviving out on the street like like stray animals, like home, just homeless, homeless children surviving on the streets of England. And so he came and he decided to build this museum, this orphanage for children. And in doing so, he saved the lives of thousands of children over the years. So this was George Muller. And we went to his museum, which is right on the site of those homes. And we were able to film in front of the homes and film a little bit in the museum and even film in front of his Bible. His Bible is in that museum.
It's really marked everywhere. Now, what was very unique about George Muller is that when it came to asking for money, you know, you need money for an organization to make it, whether it's a church or an orphanage or some nonprofit like Samaritan's Purse or whoever, you need money. He would never ask for money. He prayed and God answered his prayers. Wow.
If we were to calculate the amount of money that was sent in during his whole time in ministry, it would be in the millions, millions upon millions. No fundraisers, no asking for donations. No chicken plates. No spaghetti dinners. No chicken plates. People gave.
And he prayed. There were times that it was so difficult that it was lunchtime, no food. And his staff came to him and said, you know, we don't have any food. What do you want us to do? The children are hungry.
It's getting close to lunchtime. He said, go ahead and get them all to take their seats in the dining hall. And they did. And still nothing. Imagine that.
There's nothing. And then he prayed. And as he was finishing that prayer, there was a knock at the door and this local grocer, I believe, I may be wrong a little bit on the details, but a local grocer had donated tons of food for them to eat.
And the food came in and they were able to serve the children and they all ate. That's incredible. That's a life of prayer.
Yes. I can personally attest to that kind of faith because when I was a principal of a Christian school, I was there for four years. There were many, many times that it was just like that. The day before payroll went out, my finance secretary would come to me and say, Mr. Shaw, how are we going to pay them? I mean, it was not like once or twice. It was month after month. And even eventually we became stable. Right. Right.
Because I was there and I was helping the school to grow, getting students in there. But in those early days. And even then it was the whole ministry in my heart was built on prayer. Right. And I remember praying. I was like, God, all these teachers, we have like 20, 25 of them.
They're waiting for their salaries and there's no money. And at the last minute, the money would come in and we were able to sign those paychecks. Wow.
For all these people. That's incredible. So you saw, I mean, you saw God come through just like George Mueller would do. Did you, did you already know his story? Did you know his example? Oh, absolutely. I read his biography years ago.
I would say 20 years ago. That's incredible. That's amazing. So we have this this hero, George Mueller, I mean, and others like him. He's not the only one from European history. How do we get from there to the Europe we have today? Because that's not this life of spiritual vigor and closeness with God and prayer.
That's not how we would describe. And I can give you tons of examples of similar situations of people who walk by faith or people who were theologically uh, walking biblically and where Europe is today or where England or even Britain is today, it's just far, far away from that life of faith or that life of biblical integrity or any of that. They are so far away from that. Do you think it all just migrated to the west with, with, when it came, when they came to the new world, like all the Christian values came with it or? I don't think so, because even after the colonies were founded here, you had John Wesley, you had George Whitfield, you had, if you want to jump ahead, George Mueller, you had Charles Spurgeon.
So no, I don't think that happened that way. But I think in time, England or let's just say Britain, Great Britain, because Wales is in the same boat, and so is Scotland, they have forgotten the source of their blessing. They have forgotten where and how much God has blessed them. And they have begun to rely on their own strength and their sophistication and their culture. And they have tried to, in a sense, sift out Christianity. So the Christian values sorta are still undergirding Great Britain. But it's no longer that they believe that it's coming from the Word of God.
They believe that it's coming from the Bible, or they believe that Jesus Christ is the source of all the blessings they've received. Do you feel like there are Christians out there who maybe are sticking their head in the sand and think that what happened there can't happen here? Like God's just going to keep America afloat no matter what?
Oh, yeah. And I think that's a huge mistake. I would say if you want to know where America is headed, look to Europe, especially to the United Kingdom, because where they are, we will be in maybe 30 years from now, if things don't change. And I think things are changing. In America right now, there's a lot of good that is happening.
In many ways, when people talk junk about our current president and say things about this, that, and the other, I'm thinking to myself, either you are just horribly biased, or somebody's paying you to say these things, or you're just foolish and naive that you don't understand the good that is happening. And maybe you don't understand and maybe you don't understand the biblical values that are being brought back. And so I think God is giving us more time. Amen. And maybe it's a result of all the prayers that people have prayed over the years and the gospel messages that have been preached and people have stood for biblical values that we're seeing a turn in the tide. Thank God for that. Thank God for that turn. So encouraging.
It is. Guys, if you want to join us tomorrow, we're going to be diving into another great topic here on the Clear View Today Show. We'd love for you to be a part of that conversation. Thanks again to our sponsors for making today's episode possible. And don't forget that you can support us by subscribing to the show on iTunes. And you can always support us financially at ClearViewTodayShow.com.
John, what do you want to plug as we close today? Definitely want to plug Dr. Shaw's new series, Discerning Doctrine, that is live right now on Pray.com. But it is an exclusive series. So if you want to dive deeper into Christian doctrines and bolster your faith, make sure you sign up for the Pray.com app. It's 100% free. You can get it on Apple. You can get it on Android.
You can get it on any app or any smart device that you have. But that series is exclusive to Pray.com. Lots of great things that are coming out. New original music coming from Clear View Church. Our play West of Pecos is happening this week by the time you listen to this. This weekend.
Absolutely. So you can still get tickets. Yes, you can still get tickets May 3rd and 4th. The show is at 7 p.m. and May the 5th. The show is at 10 a.m. Tickets are still on sale.
They're $5 apiece. If you'd like yours, write into the show, 252-582-5028. We love you guys.
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