You're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abadan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. My name is John Galantis, and we have got a great conversation on board for you today. But before we get into anything, I want to introduce our host. You know him, you love him.
You can't live without him, Dr. Abadan 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 studio. It's good to be here.
You know what's really funny is there's the there it is. I don't know what's going on. Thomas, Thomas will tell you, we tested every single sound effect on this soundboard. No, this is a real audience. They just are in our hearts and our minds.
They're in our hearts and our minds. On this show, they were out getting coffee. They were out for a coffee break. They brought us one. They brought us one.
They just did not. Get the cue. And then when they got the cue, they were a little delayed. They had to put the coffee down and then clap.
So I'm going to press the sound effect now so maybe it'll come in a little bit later. But Dr. Shaw, I do want to ask you for $1 million. I'm getting good at timing these delayed sound effects. I think that computer's on its way out.
All right, Dr. Shah, this is a segment of our show called Million Dollars. But I'm going to ask you this. This is sent in from Brian P from Michigan. Brian P from Michigan.
So he suggested this? Yes, he suggested it. He sent this one in. Dr. Shah, you get $1 million, a million buckaroonies, but you.
Yeah. I haven't actually.
Now I'm picturing it in my mind. You also get an audience with the Pope. But you have to accidentally spill tomato soup onto his white roast. Like, no disrespect. You don't have to, like, you know, the people from PETA that throw the suit.
It's not like that. It's just, you have to just. Accidentally spill a can of tomato soup onto the post. Oh, I can. Oh, yeah, I can do that.
Yeah, you could be like, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I could do that. Yeah, you could do that. It's just, you have to accidentally do that.
Like, I could be eating salad, like I was doing this afternoon at lunch. I was eating salad and went and took one of those small, what do you call those cherry tomatoes? Yeah, yeah, the little cherry tomatoes. Yeah, and one was true ripe. And I, when my mouth went to chew, and it just.
Splattered tomato juice all over my shirt.
So I could do something like that. Yeah, you could just do that and just-I'm so sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As long as you just get the tomato soup onto his robes, you're good, and you get the million. And there's a new pope too.
He's a much younger guy. I think he's probably going to be cool with it. Francis might not have gone for that. I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know how. I guess that's the other thing, too. Is like, I don't know how seriously Catholic people take the Pope these days. Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, it's things have changed a lot. I know a lot of Catholic people who have felt like the church sort of betrayed them and they haven't been on top of things when it comes to the abuse scandals and other things and taking some of the stances regarding the Homosexuality or transgender movement that they felt like something was not right. And if you were to look at the history going back to Vatican II about that time, you know, things have shifted in the Catholic Church. Again, I'm not Roman Catholic. I believe there are Roman Catholics who are saved.
I truly believe they get the gospel and they understand it. The other stuff with Mary and all that, I don't know how that pans out. It's just some bad doctors. I disagree with that. But do I revere the Pope?
No.
So you wouldn't be personally opposed to spilling some tomato soup on the guy from Rome. I just know I will get in trouble. It'll be like a national scandal. But the guy would be banned from Rome. The whole city?
I don't know. I'm sure they would.
So for that reason, for that reason, because I want to go visit Rome, I want to go see Italy. I want to see all the historical sites. I probably wouldn't take the money. I understand. I don't think I would do it either.
I think there's a good portion of people who were like, who would be like, hey man, it's just the Pope. It's just tomato soup. It'll wash out. But then there's other people who are like, That's more or less illegal. But it's not because I revere the man.
It's because I just don't want to get in trouble. What about this? Would you rather spill tomato soup on the Pope or on the Mona Lisa? Oh, definitely not the Monolith. Really?
I don't think I'm going to do that. There are people, you know, there are people protesters. They had to put it behind glass because there's protesters who would go and thrust it. Yeah, those people, I am so done with them. Yeah, that's crazy.
They need to do something with their lives. I agree. They need to give their lives to Jesus. There you go. There you go.
That's what they need to do. Speaking of which, Dr. Shah, verse of the day is coming to us from Psalm 27 and verse 3, one of my favorite Psalms of all time. It says, Though an army may encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. The war rise against me, in this I will be confident.
And I think we've been talking a lot about these Protestant roots in America. You know, if we truly believe this nation is built on Judeo-Christian values, then we ought to have some desire to understand how we got into the position we are today. And I think of a verse like this, it's like we. Typically, we think of the army against us as an external force. We don't think about it as coming from within our own nation.
Right. Right. And I would say in the past. A few decades, the problems are not out there. The problems are right here.
Yes. The corrosion that is happening in the American culture, especially against the Judeo-Christian Foundation, has been very, very detrimental to our future. But praise God, there's a shift that has begun with the coming of President Trump in the second term that I am shocked. I shouldn't be because we prayed for this. We prayed for a revival.
We prayed for an awakening. And this pendulum has swung back. And I am praying that we as Christians in America will not take this for granted. That's right. That we will do whatever we can.
To keep fanning the flames of revival. In a sense, revival has begun. Yes. Now, I know people right now who are going to bring up things like immigration issues that are going on or something like that to say, oh, that's not true. That's not true.
Look at how you can say that. I do agree. I do understand. There are some things some people may not agree with, but just know one thing. And I won't get into that right now because there are other things we need to talk about.
A society cannot function without law and order. Yes, that's true. Without truth and justice, you cannot function. And so if we are saying In the name of mercy let's do away with justice. or in the name of kindness just do away with truth.
A society cannot function like that for very long.
So, yes, there is a place for mercy. In fact, truth and mercy, truth and mercy are found together throughout scripture. You want to have favor with God and men, truth, and mercy. But truth. And mercy, not just mercy.
Truth means there are things that you cannot compromise. There are laws you cannot you cannot just keep ignoring. If mercy was all that was needed, then um God could have shown mercy right up in heaven. Yeah, there'd be no need for the cross. No need for the cross, but someone had to die.
That's the truth. That's right. We certainly live in a culture today that has traded. Mercy that has traded truth for mercy. Meaning that if you have to pick, it's this, it's this sort of False understanding that you have to pick one.
You either be truthful and you be just and you have boundaries or you be merciful. And the two are somehow separated. And I wonder if that separation is really at the cause for all this stuff. Because you mentioned on, I think it was yesterday's show or either it was a show last week that all of the time where Protestantism, I can never say that word right, Protestantism was weakening and becoming watered down. But it wasn't the people who were actually immigrating here that were doing it.
It was the ones from within. Right. And I wonder if that's when that started, when this whole, we're just going to be kind, we're just going to be merciful, we're going to let everyone in and start embracing their culture and fighting for them at the expense of our own truth. Yeah, immigration was the problem, but not immigration of people. It was immigration of ideas.
The ideas that came from Europe, especially the liberal side of Europe, like German scholarship, English Enlightenment type. Deist. Scholarship that began to infiltrate not only their universities and there too, people stood up and said, This is wrong. We're going to pay for this. This is going to destroy our culture.
And about the same time, simultaneously, if you will, Charles Darwin and his Darwinian ideas were also infiltrating the British. Culture.
So German. Thoughts and ideas regarding against the miraculous, and then English scholarship that was very skeptical. Those things not only impacted their culture and their countries, but they also came across the Atlantic into American universities and colleges and seminaries. And that brought liberalism, that brought a distorted Christianity.
So yes, immigration came to America, right? We see Roman Catholics coming in in the 1870s and all. You see Jewish people coming in. You see Eastern Orthodox to some extent coming in. But they're all coming from a Judeo-Christian foundation, basically.
They're coming from the same family of convictions.
Well generally speaking. Right. But the shift in the culture from Protestantism as a de facto national religion to becoming more of a post-Protestant pluralistic America. That happened because of ideas more than just people.
So how did this pluralistic vision, how did this pluralistic Uh Mindset take root? Like, how did it start spreading?
Now, once again, I want to clarify, there's a lot of clarifications here. Definitely, ideas came across. Into our educational institution, but also people did too.
So I don't want to say that people didn't matter, but these were not people who just got off the boat and immediately went to protesting against our American way of life.
Some may have. But Much of that happened over time, where people came here and they began to bring those ideas that they had back home, or they learned it in their university classrooms, or they read about them and they espoused those ideas and they began to spread them. Looking back on this problem, like we're looking back, I'm assuming this is in the 50s, 60s when all this is happening. Do you think it was as obvious then what was happening as what's happening now is obvious to us? I believe so.
When you read the literature, you see people are concerned about the future of America.
So let's talk about the revivalists. There were a lot of revivalists coming from the fundamentalist backgrounds because modernism doesn't have revivalists because they're more about taking care of people, social gospel kind of stuff. But fundamentalists felt like revival means you need to revive your heart. For a love for God, for a love for Jesus Christ, for the love for the truth, for the gospel. That's where revival comes in.
For a love for holiness. That's not in the modernist world. Right. Okay.
So these were revivalists, names like Billy Sunday. He was a baseball player that became a preacher? Yes. Okay.
Yes. And he would use. A lot of witty statements, okay, in getting people to respond to the gospel. But one thing he was against, and that was also a lot of fundamentalists were against, was alcohol.
Okay, this is when prohibition, temperance, prohibition, all this is coming from, because they saw how much alcohol was destroying American society. Right. Yes. They saw its impact in the average American home, in the children's lives, and they saw the devastation. And so they spoke out against those kinds of things.
Nice. Yeah. Yeah. So. The reviv revivalists definitely tried to bring America back to the second and the first Great Awakening type period.
But it was never successful now because, of course, immigration. But then also the fundamentalist and modernist debates And because of those debates, the church is not as active.
So it did not make the impact. that they were hoping it would make like comprehensively every home in America being touched by the gospel. It didn't happen for those two reasons, immigration and the breakdown of Protestantism. Do you think there was even breakdown within the church? Maybe not breakdown, but like new movements are starting to come up Like the Pentecostal movement and holy stuff happening.
So, like, now there's, I don't want to call it division. That's not the right word, but you're seeing splintering even within the church. Absolutely. Absolutely. A lot of denominations and these parachurch movements are born.
And I'm not against parachurch movements because I think they have their place. What is a parachurch movement? Parachurch movements would be like the Samaritan's Purse.
Okay.
Oh, like Campus Crucifix. Like Salvation Army. Salvation Army was. It's maybe a parish church, but it was really a church. Got it.
Samaritan's purse. Campus Crusade for Christ. Um let's see. Uh There are so many other movements like that. Life action.
I mean, these are. These are parachurch movements that are coming alongside the church to help. the church in reaching the world, Their community with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so then, so now you've got splintering within the church. You've got these other movements that are coming in.
There seems to be less clarity, I'm guessing, less focus, less drive, less ambition. And then you have like other things that are coming in, like outside the church that either the church isn't speaking on, I guess, or the church just is now too divided or too fractured to really make an impact in society. Like, I'm thinking of like Islamic, you know, immigration, immigration coming in. Keep in mind, and I mentioned this last time, I believe, in that 1950s, or really 1965, the heart seller immigration law reopened the doors to immigration from non-European and Asian countries. Yeah.
Until 1924, immigration laws stipulated that non-Western and Asian Asian country s were sort of Prohibited, or at least limited, I would say that's the correct way to say that, very limited in the immigration. But 1965, the doors are open and man. People began to come. That's only like eight years before you were born, right? Yes.
Wow. I was born in 1973.
Okay.
I remember. And I'm going back to. Good grief. Nineteen seventy eight seventy nine. Uh-huh.
Hearing about Young people coming to America.
Now, keep in mind, there are a lot of Americans coming to India at the time. The hippie movement and all that. You saw those in your church. Oh, yes, yes. My dad was known.
I mean, known far and wide, not just in our city, but in our state and far and wide, that that's a pastor there. You go to him and he'll help you, he'll take care of you. It's so funny because, like, you've told me that story so many times: how there's always hippies in your home and in your church and staying in your home. I would never associate hippies with Christianity. Never.
Well, they got saved, they came looking for. Nirvana or some enlightenment, and then they were disillusioned. And many of them were um very talented people. I I still see them. I still see their faces.
I'm sure they're up in age now, probably sitting at like seventies now. But I remember seeing them and they would have these bell-bottom pants and these long hair vests and long hair and afros. Was your dad cool with it? Like cool with like the stuff? No, he didn't care about that.
It didn't bother him. My dad was very much like. His hairstyle was very the the sixties, you know, slit back hair that's how he was. But they would come and they would sit and listen to him and he would house them because they had become Christians. Right.
And uh and he would house them and then feed them, take care of them. And even have them speak in the church and sing. At one time, we had 32 Americans. That descended upon our church. Rich Mullins' type is kind of who I'm thinking with the real long hair and the like baggy clothes and stuff like that.
This is going back to the 70s.
So, even before that.
So, you're not having baggy clothes, you're having tight clothes. Oh, they're real tight. I got you, got you.
Okay.
Yeah. And they had the tambourines and all that. They brought them in the church. Oh, yes, yes. Guitars.
And I remember seeing them all like long beards and all that.
So, kind of going back to it, like, I didn't realize before 1965, if your dad had wanted to immigrate to the United States, he couldn't have. They could come here. But not immigrate. But immigrate as in. Or it would be difficult.
It would be difficult. Gotcha. Depends on how educated you were. Because people were coming to America.
Okay.
But the immigration was sort of limited. To people from non-European and Asian countries. But starting in 1965, where the floodgates were open. and I remember from our own home town. From our own church, I would say, not a hometown church, a couple of individuals, young men, came to America.
And I was like, wow, this is in the late 1970s. I'm talking about 1978, 79. And then I remember In the eighties. My dad talking to my brother about coming to America. Was that a big deal in your hometown that a couple of young men went to America?
Was that unheard of? Absolutely. Wow. Huge.
Okay.
Huge.
What did they go for? To first studies? For studies and then for work.
Okay.
So then your dad wanted to send your brother to America?
Well, he sent him to England.
Okay.
Yeah. For education.
Okay.
Now, keep in mind, going overseas from India to study or do things was not uncommon. A lot of Indians went to the Gulf countries to work.
Okay.
Work in the oil fields, work in construction, work in management. A lot of these Arab countries, they hire Asian, especially Indian workers, men and women, in the hospitals. All the doctors and nurses are from India. Yeah. But coming to America was a new thing.
Gotcha. Yeah. And so, anyways, so that began to bring a lot of people here. In fact, between 1960. In 1990, this is even before I came to America, 15 million immigrants came to America.
And many of them are from non-Christian countries. Right. So they're bringing that upbringing, they're bringing those ideals, those word views. Because you came and your brother came as Christians, but I'm guessing that was extremely rare. Uh right.
I won't say extremely rare, but it is rarer. Christians Asians Asian people bringing Christianity Rarer, not unheard of. Not unheard. Definitely not. There's a lot of people who are coming from Christian background from Asian countries.
Gotcha. Now, something else to say here. It does not mean that these people who are coming from Non-European Asian backgrounds are immediately marching to defend with their flags. To the contrary, They want to be Americanized.
Okay.
But they are bringing Pluralistic values.
So, what do you mean when you say pluralistic values? It means, I mean, of course, some of them are Hindus. They're going to keep their Hindu faith alive.
Some of them are Muslims, some of them are Sikh, Buddhist. They're bringing their faiths with them. But does not mean that in the public squares they are fighting for their rights. Right. They just have this new faith.
Now, all of a sudden, there's a new. faith element in the American Seen besides Christianity. Does not mean that, yeah, exactly. It does not mean that they are immediately the people who are. I mean, Ma Madeleine Mo Murray O'Hare was not from European non-European Asian country.
She was born and raised here. Right. And she was fighting against Christianity. I mean, if you never heard her name, I mean, she was one of those. Those wild atheists back, I think we're going back into the eighties.
I mean, she was everything was anti-Christian. Wow. Yeah. So. Those Things do make a difference because when the people here coming out of Universities where they are being indoctrinated into anti-American social Marxist.
Philosophy. They use these immigrants as their Case in point. Like America is not a Christian country. We shouldn't be saying that because look at all these immigrants. Immigrants are not necessarily saying, I just want to live here.
I just want to be here. And many of them come here, they maintain their culture, but they want to be Americanized. What we're seeing in America now, where people are waving the flags of their home country. It's a new phenomenon. Right.
That was not happening back then. Not the way.
Now, at an Italian restaurant, they'll fly the Italian flag. At a Mexican restaurant, there may be a Mexican flag. At a, I don't know, Indian restaurant, there may be an Indian flag, but it's not done to. It's a decoration. It's a decoration.
It's like, hey, this is who we are. I hope you enjoy our food. It's not like, this is who America is now. Yeah, it's not a mark of defiance. against no theory defiance that here's our culture here's who we are yeah feel free to come in and share with us on st patrick's day people are walking around with irish flags does not mean that they are saying this is i'm sick and tired of america right and america is a is a racist country and we want to make it irish right they're just saying like proud to be an irish this is the month to drink right i was about to say nothing wrong with that and then well oh well yeah okay no i don't agree with the drinking yeah yeah but anyways so that's what's happening And then of course Supreme Court didn't help matters because several things were passed.
Starting with the big one in 1973, Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in America.
So that was a big one. And then over the years, several laws were made. I mean, in 2015, the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. I mean, these kind of things made. America not just A post-Protestant America, but a post-Protestant pluralist America.
Yeah, and I think we're seeing the logical next step of that now. Even though things are on an upswing, and maybe we can talk about that upswing maybe on the next episode. We're seeing how all of this has sort of. Do you consider this and maybe these last four years as this situation coming to a head? Like, are we seeing the.
the outcome of all of this stuff now, do you think? I think in the past four years, there has been a wicked, evil infiltration in America. Mm-hmm. And I'm not just saying it's because it's all coming to a head. I think bad elements got into America behind some of those antifab protests that were happening, burning of the cities, organized rebellion with masks on their faces.
Calling for the destruction of American cities. I mean, that was not just coming to a head. This was a very concerted effort. With evil countries and powers behind it to destroy America. That's a good point.
But. For the past few decades. It has been coming to a head, but this was like a capstone. From a whole different place. This was someone intentionally lighting a mat.
Like we're pouring powder into the keg, but you're saying this is someone intentionally lighting a match and saying, I'm gonna blow this thing up. I don't think it was just uh I think it's a good illustration, but it was not just throwing it was like. Putting, there's already got powder in there, and somebody takes a piece of dynamite and then throws it in there. Pours out some gasoline on that. Yeah, it was not just setting it on fire, it was a dynamite.
Gotcha. Yeah, that's top of that. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, um, it's kind of funny, and maybe we can talk about this on the next show as well because we're short on time, but it's kind of funny how with all this stuff happening, everybody's got an opinion, everybody's got a voice, and we all want to cry out. And everyone seems to be allowed to, except for Christians, the one people who I feel like the one group that this is most affecting, right?
Because this was, like you said, the de facto national religion, right?
So it seems to me that Christians, if anybody, should have a say in how this country is being run. But now there's a concerted effort, like you said, to silence that, to shut that down. Everyone can have an opinion except for Christian. Not right now. And right now, the tide has changed.
Sure, sure, sure. Praise the Lord for that. But prior to this, If I were to talk like this, I would have people telling me, Hey, you know, you need to tone down because, man, somebody's going to shut you down. You know, did that happen? Did people tell you that?
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
So many times people would tell me, Hey, thank you for your bravery. I know there's going to be some backlash coming. I'm like, really? What are you talking about? What are you talking about?
Yeah. I mean, so we try to silence each other. And if somebody has a backbone, we tell them, uh-uh, you're going to get in trouble for that. Yeah. You're going to get in trouble for that.
And maybe I will. I would have back then because I don't think now, but I would have back then. But praise the Lord, we didn't back down. We were not belligerent. I don't think we were ever belligerent, but at the same time, we were never tame either.
Yeah, I think you just said what was true. Right. And if people didn't like it, it was like, well, I'm not going to rub your face in it, but I'm going to keep saying it. Right. And you don't have to like it.
You don't have to be part of this, but you. Giving me a friendly warning is not going to stop what the message of Jesus Christ actually says. We saw that in the four years of the pandemic, or at least three years, where people would tell me, like, after the service.
Some came to me with very negative, you know, you shouldn't be. And that's from other Christians, by the way. That's not from people outside saying, hey, we don't like what you're saying. Oh, no. Outsiders most of the time didn't say anything to me.
Sometimes they were so-called Christians who were trying to silence me and silence us and silence other churches that were being. You know, doing their job, which is like the church is also essential. They were trying to silence us. And it was very disheartening to hear that, but we didn't listen to them. But then you also have Christians who are just scared.
And they also come to you and say, Hey, I appreciate that. And you know, well, thank you. And I know there's going to be some backlash for this. I know you're going to face some problems. And I had to tell them, it's like, I don't really care because somebody needs to speak out.
That's right. We cannot keep living in fear We have to speak out. That's right. We have maybe one more minute. What is the message that you would have Christians today speaking out?
Like, I know it's like, hey, you should have done it back then, but let's say today you've got a platform, you want to speak out to Christians. What would you have them say? I would say, hey, listen, just know history. Just know the past. And as Mark Twain said, history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
Amen.
So let's not let history rhyme. The negative history where our culture became anti-Judeo-Christian values, where we were silenced so much. Don't let that rhyme again. That's right. Which means go out there, spread your faith, stand up, speak out, educate yourself, talk to young people, talk to other people, talk to people who are different from you.
And win them over to the gospel, number one, but also win them over to what it means to be an American. That's right. I love it. I love it. Dr.
Shah, thank you so much. Thank you guys for joining us online today. 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.
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I think we can do it together. We love you guys, and we'll see you tomorrow on Clearview Today.
