Listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abadan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm John Galantis, and I'm here in the Clearview Today studio this great Thursday afternoon with our host, Dr. Abaddon Shah. If you're listening for the very first time, Dr.
Shah 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. We're back one more time. Good to see you in the studio today. Good to see you here.
Again, I miss Ryan. Still do miss Ryan, but I think you're doing a great job. Thank you, thank you. I felt like yesterday. I went back and listened to yesterday's episode.
It was a very, very smooth takeoff. Just skies were very clear. The landing was a little bumpy. You never really know. It's kind of funny.
And I don't know if maybe you feel this way in some of your creative ventures or in your writing or whatever. It's hard to end it. If you start right and you get all the body right, but then you fumble the ending, it's really difficult. Like, do you feel that when you're writing your books and stuff? Oh, yeah.
And sermons every week. The last part is very critical because sometimes in the early years, I used to struggle with that. Man, great opening. Initially, I struggled with the opening and the conclusion, but then I sort of learned the art of maybe a joke or a statistic or a story that happened the other day and then the message. But then the ending was like.
Like you got really good at the hook, hooking them in, but then how do I bring it home? Do you find this? And I know, I know you do, but I want to see if any other pastors out there ever feel this. The hook, the introduction, everything goes really, really well. Everybody's locked in.
Message, everybody's like, oh my goodness, this is great. They're paying attention. Invitation time comes. All of a sudden, everybody needs to get up. Air condition starts going off.
Tech starts being bad. Ushers don't know where to go. For some reason, the invitation is where everything wants to fall apart on you. That has happened. And praise God for the past, I would say, a couple of years, we have really emphasized the importance of getting the invitation right.
And so we are doing better and better. That's right. You know, better and better. But I know there are pastors out there who are like, I can't nail this invitation for the life. Whatever you focus on expands.
That's true. And John Maxwell said that. That's right. And we actually did an episode a while back on how to nail your invitation every single time. That was one of our hard.
Hitting episodes on BuzzSprout. It didn't do great on YouTube. Maybe we'll revisit it a little bit and do another episode on it. But I remember on BuzzSprout, how to get the invitation right every single time was a great one. Dr.
Shah, I do have a check-in from Portugal. Portugal? Yeah, Portugal, believe it or not. This person did not leave their name. They left their username on YouTube, but I could not pronounce it.
But it said, I am Portuguese and I just found your channel. I'm sorry. I am Portuguese and I just found your lovely and great channel. Congratulations. My heart and soul goes always towards Jews and Israel unconditionally.
I can't write in a good English, but I am able to understand almost everything you talk about. Warm wishes from Portugal. Wow. Thank you so, so much. You know, just that.
That note from this person from Portugal, whoever they are, hopefully we get to meet them one day, is evidence that this is not just some dispensational heresy, like somebody had said. This is how people across the globe. I'm not saying every single person, if that were the case, we wouldn't even have to talk about it. But I believe most people feel, especially believers. They feel that this is the right view to support Israel.
100%. Yes. And they are, again, very much behind what has taken place and supporting Israel and praying for God's people. It's not that they're anti-Arab. It's not that they hate other people.
It's just that they feel like we need to stand behind God's people. That's right. A lot of people think that this is just something that Americans have dreamt up in this little bubble, especially in the Bible Belt and all the rest of the world really gets how it is. But it's really just the opposite. Right.
I mean, look at me. I didn't grow up in America. I came here. And it's not a view that I came here and then decided to espouse. I grew up believing this because I had parents who understood what was at stake.
Just about to ask that. Was your dad big on supporting Israel? Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.
I mean, you know, he often talked about 1948 and how Israel won the battle and or the war and how Israel began to build their homeland back and again come back as God's people and how in some ways, in some ways, it's a fulfillment of certain prophecies. I'm not saying the ultimate fulfillment, but at least in a sense of a foreshadowing of a lot of fulfillment. And so he often talked about that. See, the reason I asked that is because I. I haven't been to many churches before Cleaview.
Maybe. Four or five, but I've never heard it. It wasn't like, hey, we shouldn't stand with Israel, Israel separated from the church, but it just wasn't talked about at all. It was never, it was always, and again, I didn't go to like really big, impactful churches, just little local, small country churches, but it was always just, this is what Jesus said. Jesus is good, listen to Jesus.
And that was about as far as I ever went. But standing with Israel, national issues, politics, those were never, ever anything that I ever heard from a pastor, much less from the pulpit. And so that's why I wanted to know: is that something that it's not an American thing? It was something that even your dad in the, I'm guessing in the 70s, 80s was big on, was standing on. Even earlier, you know, and he came from a Muslim background.
So think about what a radical change in his life that he was supporting Jewish people. Yeah. But when you come to Christ and you truly understand what the word is all about, you realize: wow, there is a promise that was given to Abraham, that was given to Isaac, given to Jacob. There are things that Jesus said. There are things that Paul said, especially Romans 9 through 11.
How can we ignore them? Yeah, it's wild that people today have taken such an anti-Israel approach. And that's one of the things that we kind of want to be in prayer for our nation. You know, today's verse of the day is actually coming from Psalm 33 and verse 12. It said, Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people he has chosen as his own inheritance.
And I'm like, wow, what a prayer for our nation. You know, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. You know, David wrote that Psalm. Even though that Psalm does not have that preamble like Psalms have, Psalm 32, a Psalm of David. Psalm 34, a Psalm of David.
Psalm 33, there's nothing there. But if you've heard this message before, you know, I preached on Psalm 33 before, it is, in a sense, a continuation of Psalm 32. When you compare the rhyme, the rhythm, the words, it's really an extension of Psalm 33. 32. I was just about to ask: is it significant that there's no preamble?
But really, it's just kind of understood that Psalm 32 is just going to keep going. Right. And also, if you look at some of the Qumran documents, it gives a pretty solid indication that Psalm 33 really was an extension of Psalm 32. The whole point is this. David is the author of Psalm 33.
When we read those words, Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people he has chosen as his own inheritance. This these are the words of I would say the rightful king of Israel at the time. Saul became the king, but as you know, he was horrible at the job. Yeah, Saul's whole story was kind of a horror story. Yeah, he messed up royally, and David became the man after God's own heart, the king that God was.
Pun intended on that? Yeah. Definitely. That was very nice. And so when he's saying those words, what he's really saying is: even though I'm the king, I.
I'm not the source of their blessing. The source of the blessing behind these people, known as the Israelites, is. Is God. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. That's right.
And So definitely This is for Israel. But if you read Psalm 32, Remember what we just said. Psalm 33 is a continuation of Psalm 32. If you read Psalm 32 and then read Psalm 33, it becomes very clear: David is not just talking about Israel. You know, his nation, he's talking to all people.
That's right, every nation. Right. So he is talking to Israel, his people, but he's also saying, he's kind of like throwing out that invitation. For example, if you read Psalm 33 and verse 8, let all the earth. Uh fear the Lord.
Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.
So, all, this is not just for Israel only. Of course, it's for Israel first and foremost. But it's for all nations. Anybody can claim this promise. Isn't it great that that was all the way in the Old Testament?
We tend to, and we talked about this on the show a million times as well, but people tend to separate the Old and the New Testament. Like the Jewish people thought it was all for them, and they man, they really messed up and then they rejected Jesus. And now Jesus says, okay, now it's for everybody. Back in David's time, he was saying every nation can have this. That's right.
If a nation has blessed the Lord, then God is going to bless them. I mean, if you keep reading this same Psalm 33, and let's see, we read verse 12, but let's see if we can read verse. Fourteen, sure. It says From the place of his dwelling, he looks on all the inhabitants of the earth. He fashions their hearts individually.
He considers all their works. No king is saved by the multitude of an army. A mighty man is not delivered by great strength. A horse is a vain hope for safety. Neither shall it deliver any by its great strength.
Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him. Think about it. On the dollar bills, you have that eye inside the triangle. The Illuminati symbol that everyone says is nothing to do with the Illuminati. It's really, they're quoting the founders and our nation's leaders.
They believed that Psalm 33:18 is a must. For the American Republic to succeed. People are so, people, I agree with you 100%, but it's funny how people are so quick to, and this kind of goes along with what we were saying. I was bringing that up as a joke, but it is kind of funny how people will do anything to take it away from the Bible, to take credit away from the Bible and put it on some secret society. They'll make stuff up rather than saying, no, that's the eye of God.
His eye is on our nation. That's right. That's all it is. Oh, there's a pyramid here, and this is a design. But the heart behind it is Psalm 33 and verse 18.
Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him. Means the founders wanted our nation to be a nation that feared God. That's right. A nation that acknowledged God. And also, if you keep reading in verse 21, it says.
For our hearts shall rejoice in him because we have trusted in his holy name, because we have trusted. What is our slogan as a nation? In God we trust. That's right. I mean, you find that statement on the south entrance of the Senate chamber.
You find that in God we trust in the house chamber. If you ever see the president giving his State of the Union address, look behind him. On that seal, you will see. One in God we trust, and also in our money, in God we trust. And if you ever go to the Washington Monument, I don't know you have.
The capstone way up on top. Has the words in Latin laus deo. Laos deo simply means praise be to God. Amen. Praise be to God.
I love it. If you think about our east doorway in the Capitol building, the East doorway of the Senate chamber, the words are in Latin, annuit cueptus. Anuit Cueptes means in Latin, God has favored Our undertakings. Means God is the one who is guiding with His providential hand. as we are embarking upon being a good nation.
A a city on a hill. A nation Chosen by God. Of course, we're not replacing Israel. But as David is saying, any nation can claim this. And guess what?
The founders. chose to claim This promise. We talked about that a little bit yesterday, and I think it was funny as well the way you and went by funny. I really mean interesting, but the way that you were reading that psalm where it said, A horse is vain safety. You know, there's not really kings have no strength in their armies.
And we talked a little bit yesterday about Rome and Greece and all these different Persians, all these empires that came in strength, Babylon, all these empires. And how they didn't have God. They weren't founded on God.
So, of course, yeah, they're invincible for a time, but eventually they fall. But the nations that we've seen who have put God first, Israel, And America are still here. And I think one of the ways that you said it, I don't know if you said it from the pulpit or if you said it in our Sunday night Bible study, but you said, you know, if America keeps God at the center and we get off this road that we've been going down these past few decades, America could last forever because that's God's promise. Right. You know, America does not have to fall.
Right. It doesn't. We were very close to have been done with. If things had gone differently in the last election, I really don't know where we would be right now. I agree with you.
I I I mean I prayed And I truly believe that it would go the way it did. But there was that little thought in the back of my mind. What if it doesn't? Yeah. Same.
How will ministry look like? What things are going to change? How will they change? Will they change rapidly or will they change over time? I think you're exactly right.
And it's weird because. A few years, maybe a few elections ago, I wouldn't have cared one single bit. But I've become convinced listening to your preaching, talking to you, getting to know your heart, look, just getting older, looking at America, I'm convinced more and more and more that what you're saying is true. And if the Bible, if God is not at the center of what we do, if he's not on the foundation, man, we're doomed. You know, it really, and I'm starting to see more and more.
It's not that I'm super passionate about politics now, but I just care. Right. You know what I mean? And I think that's the, the, I think that's the bare minimum that any American can do. And you seem like many don't.
Partly I believe you care is because you have a family now. You know, when you have family, when you have children, all of a sudden it shifts your focus away from self and the moment, and you start thinking. What about them? That's true. How will life be for them five years, ten years, twenty years from now?
Will they be able to handle the world, the changing world, the world that is not the same as you were growing up? Not that it was a perfect world back then. But it is changing. Will they be able to survive in that world? You're right.
Because when you're young and you're in your 20s, like you have these hypothetical children, but then I've got this real baby, and now my son is starting actual school. You know, do I want grown men in lingerie reading books to my son in school? I don't, I don't think so. You know, exactly. And that's crazy because.
Maybe 10 years, 10, 15 years ago, that would have been an absurdity. It's like, just like, oh, yeah, they're crazy, man. People are crazy these days. All right, so what are we eating? Yeah.
Now it's actually happening. And I can see these horrendous videos that people are putting online and applauding. And thankfully, that's not really the case these days, but maybe two, three years ago. And I'm like, what if that was Gavin sitting there? Right.
How would I react? How would I, how would I even get to be the point where he's there? Exactly. You know, I use that illustration of a bus, a transportation bus to represent America. and I mentioned last show how this nation uh was established on a Judeo-Christian framework.
with Protestantism as the established church. Right. And again, my Overarching Understanding of history is coming from an essay I read some time back in a book called Church, State, and Public Justice: Five Views. It was edited by P. C.
Kemney. Church, State and Public Justice Five Views. And in the introductory essay right up front. Kemney lays out the history of religion in America and he divides it in three stages. The first stage we sort of covered yesterday, which is that Protestantism was the established church.
People came from different backgrounds: Congregationalists, Anglicans. Presbyterians Quakers But still, at the end of the day, they were Protestants.
Okay? That was. the first stage of American religious history. We're talking about arriving here, let's say in the fifteen nineties, if you want to mention the Roano colony, all the way to maybe seventeen ninety one. We're talking about a time after the Revolutionary period.
After the Declaration of Independence. This period. Protestant Protestantism was the established church.
Now comes the second stage. Keep in mind. A lot happened in that first stage.
Okay, you have all these different people coming to America from Protestant background. You have the First Great Awakening happening, which reinforced Protestant values. Uh Even though people went Outside the church to find spiritual wisdom and growth and salvation. Nonetheless, at the end of the day, they were still Protestants. There was a law that was passed in England.
This is we're going back to about 1689. It's known as the Act of Toleration.
Okay. In this act of toleration said No longer will you be persecuted. if you are from a Trinitarian background.
So 1689.
So this is pre-America. Pre-America, but colonies. Colonies are here. Um Immigration is still happening in the sense of like migration. And in England, the law was passed that as long as you're a Trinitarian, which means this is not for Jewish people, this is not for Roman Catholics.
Trinitarian Protestant, you are able to worship according to your conscience. Quakers No problem. Presbyterians, no problem. Anglicans, of course. Congregationalists, of course.
No problem. those ideas began to sort of head towards America too. Welcome to this country. Things R Very loose. But still on a Protestant framework.
So that's what was happening. um in America. But beginning with um I would say post-revolutionary period, going all the way into The early part of the 20th century. is the second phase of Religion in America. This is where Protestantism became the de facto national religion.
De facto national religion. Is that a, is that a, because that sounds like a good thing. It sounds like that's a positive thing, but does that lead into this sort of anti-Christianity that we see today?
Well, the Founding Fathers made sure that. There would not be any state religion.
Okay. Okay. So first great uh First Amendment was very clear. Congress shall esta uh make no law establishing uh a religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, right?
Somewhere like that. Um so no state religion, which means Anglicanism will not be the religion here. Or now it's the Episcopal Church. But They can Be who they are. But the Baptists can also exist, and the Methodists can also exist, because the Methodists were now coming up.
The Presbyterians are also welcome. The Quakers are also welcome. Whoever you are, even Jewish people are welcome because there are Jewish people there in the colonial period. All of you are welcome. I would say more in the revolutionary period.
All of you are welcome. But at the same time We're still from a Protestant worldview. But no state religion.
So it was not a state religion. It was not codified into law that this, we are Protestant. But Protestantism sort of took over. It became the de facto. That was the second phase where it was not the state religion.
I mean, how can it be? Protestantism. is Baptist, but Baptists are not the only Protestants. Right, right. Protestantism is Anglican, but Anglicans are not the only Protestants.
So it became the de facto national religion.
So, who are you? Oh, I'm Protestant. Oh, okay. Who are you? I'm Bapt.
Oh, I'm Anglican. Oh, okay. Who are you, I'm Baptist? No problem. Right.
So now. Starting after the Revolutionary War, it sort of became the de facto national religion. This is about the time when the second great awakening was born. This is talking about in the early 1830s, 1840s, where people were concerned about the soul. or the souls of our nation's uh uh people because Very quickly, I mean, Revolutionary War, you saw the hand of God in the first part of the 19th century.
people were again drifting away from God. Things were going downhill.
So the second Great Awakening was an effort to save people and to sort of Christianize the American society. This is about the time period where revivalists were trying to fight the evils of society.
So there was a it didn't just happen, there was a push to make Protestantism the de facto religion. Yeah, but it's not like people came together and said, let's push Protestantism. But that's who they were.
So when they are. Fighting against the ills of society, they're still fighting from a Protestant understanding.
So, Protestantism as the established religion, second phase, Protestantism as a de facto national. Religion. Because that's just who they were. Right. So it was sort of inevitable.
It's sort of there, yeah. Yeah, nobody said let's make Protestantism because There's no such thing. It's a movement. That's really a conglomeration of different denominations who are. Not Roman Catholics, but Trinitarians.
But across time, I guess over time, that started to wane. Because now I would never. I mean, I guess I would say people would still say that Christianity is. I don't know if they would say America is a Christian nation. But I mean, even then like when you came to America, America was known as a Christian nation, or at least where Christianity is Yeah, it's known as a Christian nation, still has been over the years, but increasingly There has been an anti-Christian bias.
How does that manifest? Where do you think that comes in? I mean, it comes in because, again, I would say immigration.
Okay. Right. So let's go back to that period. Mm-hmm. The pre-Civil War period, you know, civil war happens, by the way, it's where.
There is an there is Disagreement over how to study the Bible. And again, I'm talking about only from a religious perspective. Right, right. What does the Bible have to say about slavery? And people took different views.
Some said the Bible is against it, some said the Bible. is neutral.
Some said the Bible is for it.
Some said the Bible doesn't have anything to say about it. And nonetheless, they were all operating from a somewhat of a Protestant worldview. And so there was a war, and the bloodiest war in our nation's history. That's right. so many died over this matter.
And again, this is about the time period when immigration began. This is about the 1850s, 1860s. When once again people from Europe were coming. But they were not from Protestant backgrounds. They were Catholics?
They were Roman Catholics. I mean, there's a famine in Ireland. Yeah. The potato famine? Yes.
Yeah. And who are the Irish? Many of them are Roman Catholics. That's right. So they came and then they brought their value system.
Mm-hmm. There was also Jewish immigration because Jewish people, as always, were persecuted again in Europe.
So they began to head this way.
Some Eastern Orthodox people came. They came maybe for persecution or maybe to find a good life. Nonetheless, there was immigration and in a sense It was okay. And it was not okay. Like, it didn't start anti-Christian.
No, because. Even though they were Roman Catholics or Jewish or Eastern Orthodox, they still had the the Judeo-Christian, loosely, the Judeo-Christian foundation.
So it was like. Yeah, they are different. But at the end of the day we're sorta Christian, maybe? Christian? Yeah.
And So It was not, the society did not radically change. Right. It was, it was still. Like you would say, Catholics are quote unquote Christian. You know what I mean?
They're still, like you said, they're still built on that same framework.
So immigration, do you think immigration is the main number one cause of it, or at least that's just how it got started? I mean, that's where the hold of Protestantism. in America began to sorta weaken. And then, of course, there's World War I, World War II. And again, I'm not covering every aspect of American history.
We're just focusing on religious history. But World War I and World War II, again, more immigration. But still, it was mostly from a Judeo-Christian background. But then other things began to happen, like liberal theology was coming into America. Especially from Europe, especially from Germany.
And so that liberal theology began to infiltrate our seminaries and our universities.
So, the dominance of Protestantism, that's hard to say, the Protestantism. The the dominance started to slacken a little bit.
Well, I would say it became more fragmented between fundamentalists and the modernists. Fundamentalists were Protestants. Modernists would also claim they were Protestants. But fundamentalists were more focused on seeing people get saved. Modernists were more into the social gospel type movement.
Let's get everybody together. Let's help society. Let's lift society from poverty. And ignorance. Let's help people get better.
I can start to see the seeds of where this is going to go. And it didn't go to a good place. Yeah. And there was a big battle between fundamentalist and modernists. And of course, about the same time, not only liberal theology is coming into America.
Again, I hope you see how We went from a Protestantism as the established religion to Protestantism as a de facto national religion to now Protestantism is kind of losing its grip on society.
So European liberalism, but then also what followed was. Darwinian evolution was coming this way too. the scientific way of seeing the creation of the world. And so you heard of in the 1920s, there was a Scopes monkey trial. And even though conservatives sort of won.
But in a way they're lost.
So Slowly but surely. The dominance of Protestant worldview was shifting. And you're starting to see, I'm definitely starting to see the seeds of what would become like the liberal movements today. Because when you said that's the goal is like we're going to lift everybody out of poverty, we're going to make sure that we take care of people here at the expense of sharing the gospel. Yeah, it's pretty easy to see how it became the liberal movement that it is today.
And I really wish we had time to keep talking about it, but I think we're going to have to cover it on tomorrow's show. But Dr. Shah, thank you so much for being here with us today. Thank you guys for listening online and on the radio. Make sure you join us tomorrow, same time, same station.
We're going to be diving into another great topic right here on the Clearview Today show. Big thanks again to our sponsors for sponsoring today's episode. And don't forget, you can always support us online by subscribing to the show on iTunes or Spotify if you ever want to re-listen. And you can support us financially at Abadanshah.com. Don't forget to follow us on Pray.com.
We are getting even closer to 30,000 followers. We're going to have a big celebration when we do, and then we're going to push to 35 and eventually to 40. Dr. Shaw. Eventually, we're going to take the world by storm for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Amen. Amen. All right. We love you guys. We will see you tomorrow on Clearview Today.
