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Fun fact, no. I have to make my own with McDonald's Sprite, and you guessed it, Texas Pete. I am genuinely horrified to hear that.
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Where's my Mountain Dew? You're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abaddon Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Ryan Hill.
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We're going to go ahead and leave you some links right there in the description, so you can do just that. We are in The Clearview Today studio with Dr. Abaddon Shah, who's a PhD in New Testament textual criticism. Dr. Shah, welcome to the show. It's good to be here. Absolutely.
It's good to be here. That's right. You know, it's September 11th, and every year we do an episode dedicated to the terrorist attacks that happened on September 11th in 2001, 23 years ago at this point. Yeah, that's crazy to think about.
It is. It's crazy to think about how much time has passed, and yet we've kind of held true to those words, never forget. And we want to do this every year, where we kind of take a look back and see how far we've come as a nation, how we've unified ourselves, but also how terrible and tragic this event was and how it shaped us as a nation. Yeah, I remember very distinctly, and that's what most people will talk about. You know, they remember where they were when 9-11 happened. And I remember being at home. My dad was visiting from India, and he was in the living room. And I think Nicole had just returned from taking Rebecca, our oldest one, to school. And Nicole's mom was there with us because she came over from Georgia just to help cook and help out since my dad was there. So Nicole's mom was there and your dad was there at the same time.
Nice. And then as we were sitting there watching, he would watch the news every morning and night. And as he's watching the news on TV, it was something about a plane hitting the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.
And I didn't think much of it. And then another plane hit the South Tower, and all of a sudden you hear a lot of noise and people talking. And that's when we heard the voice of the TV anchor saying, ladies and gentlemen, I believe we are under attack. America is under attack. And those were very chilling words because prior to this, yes, there have been terrorist attacks and this and that happened. Even at the World Trade Towers, there were a little bomb go off or something like that. But it was never enough to say, we are under attack.
Right. But this one was very different. And then to hear about, you know, another plane hit the west side of the Pentagon about 9.37 a.m. and then to hear about another flight, Flight 93, that was, we're not sure it was headed to the White House or was headed to the Capitol building, but it crash landed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. And that's when it was, what else is going to happen? What else is about to happen? Kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Right. At that point, yeah, there had been so many attacks and so many flights that were, you know, either hit their target or, you know, because of the actions of the passengers were, you know, thankfully driven into the ground, just waiting on what's coming next. There were so many planes in the air and nobody knows which one, which else has been hijacked. If already we have now know about four, are there, you know, hundreds more up there and they are going to every city in America.
I mean, it's like a movie. And I'm thinking about like in 2001, like how information traveled, like people didn't have iPhones, you know, telling them what happened. So I imagine landing at a connection gate, hearing the news and then having to board a plane.
Right. Well, a lot of planes were grounded immediately. At that point, everyone was forced to the ground. Air traffic stopped and the ones that were in the air were being informed, go ahead and land.
This is where you go. So that was already happening. Right. Right.
It was already kind of in motion. I think one thing about that story that always stood out to me is you're dead instantly knew what was, because at the time, like we can look back on it 23 years later and be like, of course Osama bin Laden was behind that. But yeah, at the time, nobody had really heard. Nobody knew that name.
Nobody knew that. I mean, that typically people saw terrorists as these crazy, wide-eyed, fanatic people who were very poorly educated and just wanted to blow themselves up. But here, you see them flying planes and, you know, going into hitting a building is not easy. Right. You can do that after you learn how to fly and all that. But doing that is not easy. Right.
I mean, you're flying and trying to come down at a certain angle and hit the building at just the right angle, at the right height. I mean, a lot has to go into play there. Right. Right. So this was new. This was new to the Western world. Wow. We didn't expect this.
Right. I also think about like the state of the people who were alive, because I was only in fourth. I was nine years old when that happened. You know, the concept of being attacked, being thrust into war was sort of lost on me.
But I also think about like the generation, like my parents and people in that generation, and me, even you and Nicole, like between, and I don't know this to be true. I'm just, based on what I do know, between Pearl Harbor in 1941 and 9-11, were there any attacks on American soil, like to speak of, or was this something that for a lot of people was just completely foreign, completely new? There have been terrorist attacks. I mean, even at the World Trade Towers, if you do a little Google search, you'll see it. Even prior to that, there was like a little bomb set off in the basement of the trade tower, trying to blow that up. But I mean, it was like, have you been to the trade towers? I mean, I've seen the trade towers.
Okay. And let me back that up. I didn't see it like in person, but I saw it on news or older videos and movies. And it's like, wow, this thing is humongous to take that down? We're not talking about a little skyscraper. I mean, this is, these are huge.
They're like, seem like cities. It was like, no, that's not coming down just with that. Well, it's coming down with a plane, right?
That was a whole different level of damage. People, you know, coming out with guns and firing at people, stuff like that. Yeah. Knife attack. Yeah.
There might've been here and there, but nothing like this to this level. How did your father know instantly who this man was and that he was behind this? My dad was one of the most aware people that I knew when it came to world news, local news, very aware.
I mean, we would have loved to have him on the show because he can talk. He can talk about names and people and dates and who is doing what right now and who did what a hundred years ago or 50 years ago in the news and know the names and policies and were very, very aware. I remember as a little boy watching him in the morning before I left for school, he'd be out there reading the newspaper, standing in our garden. We had a garden outside the house and he was standing in the garden with his newspaper.
The newspaper would come at five, six o'clock in the morning and he would be looking in the newspaper, reading it almost cover to cover and then having his breakfast. And then I remember even earlier than that, sitting every night to listen to the eight o'clock news on the radio. This is before we had television. Television came in the eighties.
Now it came much earlier in India, but it went to the big cities. In our home, television came in the eighties. Radio was what I remember listening to in the seventies when I was seven, eight, nine years of age. And I remember listening to the radio news. And then with the coming of TV, it was morning television news and evening television news. It was like a good hour long deal. So international conflict was not something that was foreign to him or to you guys.
That was something kind of regular. Very, very aware of that. I mean, he was a lawyer too.
So I mean, he was very educated, very well read. And I'm not saying everybody oversees this, but on an average, people on the other side of the world are more aware of current events than people on this side. So that was sort of what I was referencing, because I'm thinking about like all the international conflicts between Pearl Harbor specifically, because that was in Hawaii, that was on American soil. But then you had stuff like Vietnam, you had stuff like the Cold War, you had stuff like the Korean War, but it's all happening somewhere else. But then 9-11 happens and it's right here in New York City.
That changed a lot. And that brought a level of fear that we're not safe because we're so far away. The ocean was no longer our protection.
That we have an ocean, we have Canada to the north, Mexico to the south. But you know, Mexico, we're kind of okay. There's no problem. We're fine.
No beef. Yeah. I mean, yeah, they may be weird at times, but overall we're good. They'll drink their maple syrup and be okay. Yeah, we're okay. Atlantic Ocean on one side.
Yeah, no problem. Pacific on the other side, we're far removed. If there isn't anything, it'll be a nuclear attack. But you know, we are in a different place than the Cold War, so everything is good. But this was like, no, this is going to happen on your soil. This can happen in your cities. That changed what got us unprepared.
Our sense of security. Yeah. And I remember you in your book, 30 Days to Praying for America, you and Nicole write about this, kind of walking through what that was like as a family, as individuals, especially the story with your dad, listening to him talk about, you know, this is the work of Osama bin Laden and seeing these events unfold. What was that like? Because you were pastoring at the time. I was right here, same church.
What was it like from a pastoral perspective? It was a little tough because at first you have everybody looking over with suspicion because now everybody who is brown-skinned is looked at as like, what are you up to? I was thinking through a tactful way to ask, did you get any, not pushback, did you get any sort of negative impact from the community?
I did. Not from our community necessarily, but elsewhere people look at you funny, like, what is your angle? Are you one of them?
Especially at the time I was in my twenties. So that is sort of the age group where terrorists were coming, although coming from a very different side of the world. But they were young men, right? Young, non-white, brown men.
Right. And so it's like, what is going on? And then the shootings began where this black gentleman and I think his son, I think it was, they were shooting up and down the I-95 from Washington DC down and somewhere in that area and randomly killing people. So it was like, wait a minute.
So you have brown folks and you got black folks. I mean, what is happening? People just scared, just in a panic. And then of course, well, I mean, then you see the attacks in the school. Those are the white folks. I mean, it's like, what's happening? Who do I trust?
Who do I be mad at? Yeah. I mean, it was the early 2000s were strange times. Then the Iraq war began, which I still feel like was justified. I think, you know, whether people say there were no stockpiles at the time, the best, you know, it seemed like something had to be done. There had to be a response.
You know what I mean? Like, there's no way that something like 9-11 happens and then there's no response at all. You know, there's, there's got to be some sort of response, some sort of, even if it's defensive or it's, if people say that it's overreactive, I a hundred percent agree. I think that, you know, you have to, given the situation, you have to react and you have to respond wisely. Right. So there was, there was some strange times and yeah, overall, I think people, I'm grateful for America.
I think it's a wonderful country. I remember this was in 2002 and we were going, going to visit our family, Nicole's family down in Georgia. And this is like almost a year after 9-11 and we got stuck on the side of the road. This is like at nine o'clock at night, somewhere near Augusta, Georgia, and something happened. Our Chrysler New Yorker had something and it just, just engine locked up and I had to pull over to the side of the road, dark, pitch dark. And, and I'm like, oh my goodness, what am I going to do?
I have Nicole, I have our two kids. So I walked in it, thank goodness it was near an exit. So I walked down the exit to a gas station to call for help. Right.
Okay. I had a cell phone, but I was like, who am I going to call? Let me go down and see if there's somebody who can come and help. And by that time, an off duty police officer pulled up. He didn't have to pull up, but he pulled up behind Nicole and she told him, she said, my husband, he's an Indian man. He's, he's down over there. He's like, he walked down by himself. So he calls up one of his buddies. He said, hey, there's, there's this young Indian man who's walked down over there. Make sure somebody go and make sure he's okay.
Cause this is not a safe area. Right. Right. So, and he is a white police officer. So, so just when you think it's like, man, you know, I'm sure you went through a lot of prejudice because I'm like, here's, here's the proof that America is different. Right.
Very true. And so, so I'm at the gas station and this other police car comes up like, oh boy. And he's like, hey, sir, what are you up to?
What what's going on? I'm like, I'm here because my car broke down. Okay. You're the one. Hey, I have him here. So like, oh no, have me. And he said, I'm going to take you back over there.
Your wife is waiting and we want you to be out here by yourself because it's not a safe area. Like, thank you. And they took me up there in the same place.
I say a white because, you know, people quickly accused people of being racist, just like that. And I'm like, you know, let's tell the whole story. And this is right after 9-11 and he takes me up there, takes us to a hotel room and we were able to get a hotel room and all that. But I mean, amazing how people treated us.
So God, America is still a great nation. And you know, you write about that in your book, 30 Days of Praying for America. These are daily devotions to heal our nation.
We talk about this on the show. It's a 30 day devotional written by Dr. Shah and Nicole, but there's an entire chapter, like Ryan said, dedicated to what happened on 9-11. And there's a really great speech by Billy Graham that that in fact, Ryan, if you wanted to kind of read it, because I know we were kind of talking about it before the show. Sure. Absolutely.
Yeah. It says, Today we say to those who masterminded this cruel plot and to those who carried it out that the spirit of this nation will not be defeated by their twisted and diabolical schemes. Someday those responsible will be brought to justice. I've been asked hundreds of times why God allows tragedy and suffering.
I have to confess that I do not know the answer. I have to accept by faith that God is sovereign and that he is a God of love and mercy and compassion in the midst of suffering. A tragedy like this could have torn our country apart, but instead it has united us. So those perpetrators who took this on to tear us apart, it has worked the other way.
It has backlashed. We are more united than ever before. I think this was exemplified in a very moving way when the members of our Congress stood shoulder to shoulder and saying, God bless America. There's also hope for the future because of God's promises. As a Christian, I have hope not just for this life, but for heaven and the life to come. And many of those people who died this past week are in heaven now and they wouldn't want to come back.
It's so glorious and so wonderful. That is the hope for all of us who put our faith in God. I pray that you will have this hope in your heart. For the Christian, the cross tells us that God understands our sin and our suffering. For he took them upon himself in the person of Jesus Christ. From the cross, God declares, I love you.
I know the heartaches and the sorrows and the pain that you feel, but I love you. The story does not end with the cross for Easter points us beyond the tragedy of the cross to the empty tomb. It tells us there is hope for eternal life for Christ has conquered evil and death and hell. Yes, there is hope.
I've become an old man now and I've preached all over the world. And the older I get, the more I cling to that hope that I started with many years ago. Yes, our nation has been attacked, buildings destroyed, lives lost, but now we have a choice whether to implode and disintegrate emotionally and spiritually as a people and a nation or to choose to become stronger than all of this struggle to rebuild on a solid foundation. And I believe that we are starting to rebuild on that foundation. That foundation is our trust in God. Amen.
Amen. You know, Billy Graham went on to live another 17 years. That's September the 14th, 2001. And he died in 2018. So he went on to live 17 more years. And I'm sure he saw things decline in America even worse than it was back then. But still, I believe his faith in God and his assurance that God is still in control and that he will turn this tragedy to something good.
I believe he still had that right up to his dying day. And I think that's one of our, that's our heart here on the Clearview Today show is even as we're seeing the decline, not only in America, but in the world, that we still hold on to that hope that God is going to be true to his word. Dr. Shaw, one of the things that I think we were talking about this a little bit before the show, that one thing 9-11 did, I think, was open the average American's eyes to the conflicts that have been going on in the Middle East and have been going on really all over the world, but especially in the Middle East. And I think especially with what happened last Monday, you know, with Hamas executing those Israeli hostages, all of our eyes have sort of been open to this conflict that's been there. But I think we've been blinded to it. And for the last 20-something years, we've started to see what's actually happening. Yeah.
Chris Cuomo, who is a news anchor, brother of Andrew Cuomo, who was a one-time governor of New York until, I think, 2021. But Chris Cuomo gave a little speech, I guess you can say, which was quite powerful. I think it's worth hearing.
I don't agree with everything he said in this speech, but I think most of what he said is so applicable to where we are today. Absolutely. Yeah. Let's hear it. I'll be honest with you. I'm not really sure what to say.
And that had me laboring all Labor Day weekend. How can it be hard to discuss why the murder of six Israeli and American hostages matters? Six young people stolen from the Nova Music Festival by Hamas on October 7th. Then just as the IDF was close to rescuing them after almost a year of searching, they were reportedly executed. And now I'm left with nothing but questions. But there are questions we all have to answer. The first one is, why don't these faces unify us, at least here at home? Carmel Ghat, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Serussi, Master Sergeant Ori Danino, young people that could have been part of the solution lost to the problem. And there is one face we know more about, Hersh Goldberg Poland, 23-year-old Israeli-American taken and now murdered along with the others. His smiley punum has been the poster for the hostage crisis. I remember it when I first saw it all over his parents' house in Tel Aviv just after October 7th, when I was blown away by John and Rachel's love and commitment. Their hope in mind was that telling their story would help more connect to what is so wrong here, to what matters.
Now I have to wonder, did I help anything at all? I wonder in part because of how this news has been received. First, why are all these lost souls merely called deaths?
So many media accounts put it this way. Did they die in an accidental crash or from cancer in that tunnel? No, Hersh and the others were assassinated. Targeted murders performed by terrorists remind- Can't believe how young they are.
They want no one saved from them. A reaction was sent to me by a friend of Hersh's family and they asked some hard questions. Listen to this. Before he was murdered by Hamas in those final moments, was he aware of his parents' anguished pleas, quite possibly at the same moment, broadcasting at the Gaza border another chilling plea for him to just survive? Did you hear Hersh's mother last Thursday?
It's mama. I love you. Stay strong.
Survive. Was he able to hear that? Was he able to hear the footsteps of the battle-hardened Israeli soldiers who were finally closing in after almost a year of trying to save them? You can feel how you want about the Middle East. It's one of the longest running conflicts in history.
It's going nowhere. But Hamas will never be remembered as freedom fighters in any context except one. For them to be free to carry out Iran's extreme Islamist wishes. They want Gazans free?
Yeah. Only to follow their caveman ways or die. There you go. For Jews to die no matter what.
And for us to die as well. That's it. That's what I wanted us to hear because that's what needs to be said.
That's what needs to be said. And more, you want to be the media. You want to be, are we going to report news? Start reporting it and report it objectively and courageously. All this other agenda-driven stuff that media has been doing for so long.
I'm sick of that. And I'm a broadcast journalism major, okay? So it's time you start just like doctors who are taking oath to save life. Media people, you may not have taken an oath, but your job is to report the truth instead of conjuring up all this stuff about the election and one party that you don't like, one person that you hate so much. Let's start doing what news media should be doing all along. That's right.
That's right. You know, as broadcasters ourselves, we, the three of us sitting around this table and the two of us behind the desk here, we, we feel the weight and the burden of responsibility. It's a fun show and we have a lot of fun on the show, but at the same time, you know, I'm starting to see more and more that people are counting on us.
People are counting on you. And it takes a while. We've, we've only been doing the show for two years.
I mean, that's really not a long time. We've produced a lot of episodes cause it's a daily show, but the more you start to see that people are counting on you, relying on you, you start to feel the weight of that responsibility. Cause there's, there's such a dearth for objective truths out there and, and people are not hearing that and they're frustrated. It's not like I just want to hear what will make me happy.
Just tell me what I like to hear. No, people want to hear the truth and then no, most of what is being peddled in the media right now is just an agenda, an agenda to defeat a certain party or to defeat a certain person. That's all they're obsessed. I believe that's devilish obsession is what is happening.
That's right. We've talked about a lot on today's episode and in the final minutes before we close, do you have any final thoughts you want to leave with our listeners and our viewers? Absolutely. I want to leave us with some scripture. You know, when you see the depravity of human beings and the evil that is in this world, sometimes we are so focused on that, that we cannot see God. And so I want to bring us back to scripture and in the process, bring us back to the living, true triune God.
That's right. So Proverbs chapter 10, verse 28 to 30. John, if you want to read that for us, this is coming towards the end of our devotional, which is a devotion 27. And at the end of that chapter, right after Billy Graham's speech, we decided to put this scripture here, which is Proverbs chapter 10, verse 28 to 30.
Amen. It says the hope of the righteous will be gladness, but the expectation of the wicked will perish. The way of the Lord is strength for the upright, but destruction will come to the workers of iniquity. The righteous will never be removed, but the wicked will not inhabit the earth. I mean that right there, all these evil organizations can take it to the bank.
That's right. That this is what's coming their way. And there's only one hope. And that hope is Jesus Christ. That hope is that God became man for them.
And it's not through any of this garbage that they have been doing. This, this hurt and pain they were causing to other people is by submitting to the one who took their sin upon themselves, upon himself, gave his life on the cross for their sins. And that's how they can be saved. And that's how they can be set free. Amen.
They need to be set free. That's right. The thing, I think the thing that strikes me about scripture like that is that, you know, coming from Proverbs, these are not feel good platitudes. This is the word of God.
That's right. And, and it's easy to forget that sometimes when you read through Proverbs, but I also, what strikes me is that God is a loving God. He's a merciful God, but he's also very just. Yeah. And, and things that happen like 9-11 happening or Hamas executing these Israeli hostages is God is not going to forget them.
He's not going to sweep them under the rug and everybody we're going to come in for a group hug, hug at the end, there will be justice. Yeah. Right.
That's a good reminder. I mean, and we talked about this in Billy Graham's speech too. You know, it's hard for people to sometimes wrap their heads around how could a good, loving, all powerful God allow bad things like this to happen in the world. And you know, that verse reminds us that God is sovereign over everything. And he, no, there's no act of wickedness. There's no active evil that's going to go unpunished. We have to trust that God is sovereign in all things and that his plan is not thrown off by evil that happens in the world, but that he, you know, God, even in the evil, God can bring good from it. That's right.
And, and I think he is already. I believe people are coming to know Jesus Christ, even through what the enemy means meant for evil people. God meant for good. That's right. And that he is using this and that's what he does.
That's, that's the way God works is that he turns the enemy's sword against himself, try to use the cross to end Jesus, to end the son of God, but he didn't realize in the process he was simply doing what God was going to do anyways, which is give his life for us. Amen. A hundred percent. So important for us. Dr. Jha, thank you for sharing that with us today. Hopefully today was helpful for you.
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That's right. Lots of great content coming your way the rest of this week. Make sure you guys tune in. We love you guys. We'll see you tomorrow on Clear View Today.
