What's going on guys? It's David here, the world's best radio engineer and the most humble, and I'm just here to let you know that today's episode of Clearie Today Show and today's secret word is brought to you by Lebleu Ultra Pure Water. Unlike other bottled waters, Lebleu's Ultra Pure filtration system provides water that's free from contaminants and infused with only the essentials your body needs. Make the smart choice today and experience the difference of Lebleu Ultra Pure Water.
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That's right. We want you guys to help us keep the conversation moving forward. You can do that by supporting the show. You can share it online with your friends and family. Leave us a good five star review on iTunes or Spotify, anywhere you get your podcasting content from. Link in the description right down there below. Dr. Abbadan Shah, welcome, welcome, welcome to the show.
Welcome. Vigorously. Yeah, vigorously. Vigorously. Vigorously.
Vigorously. If you join us for the first time, we're here with our host, Dr. Abbadan Shah, who's a PhD in New Testament textual criticism, professor at Carolina University, author, full-time pastor, and of course, the host of today's show. I also noticed you- The host of the most. The host with the hostess. No, the host with the most.
From coast to coast. There you go. I like that.
I don't mean to boast. You want some toast? Hey, uh- I prefer some roast.
I like the, uh, the shaven beard. Yeah. It looks good. Yeah. Yeah. Are you going to keep it off? No. You got to grow it back?
I should start from, start from zero. Cause he, I mean, yeah, I had the chops, so you can't take the chops all the way down. So I just took everything off and then we'll- No, he's not in the refined gentleman's club like you would myself. No. Yeah.
No. He's- A wild man. One of the- Wild barbarian. One of the, one of the, one of the, um, one of the street people.
Living in the- Is that what it is? It always flummoxed when I see that you don't like, you don't like, don't do it. What did he say? Flummoxed. Was that it for real?
It was it. Okay. Flummoxed, flummoxed. Flummoxed. Like you can, like, I'm confused. I'm baffled. I'm confused, baffled. Not, never heard.
Flummoxed. That, that was one, that was one I knew. Yeah.
Well, I wasn't quite sure because, you know, it's outlandish, but it's not totally off the horizon. Right. Right. Um, well anyway, I, I liked the, I liked the clean shaven look. Dr. Shauna, I've been in that club for a while.
I wish you'd stick around, but I just, I don't like it. Dr. Shauna, I do have one question for you. Okay. Would you take a million dollars, my friend? Yes. Here comes the money. All right. So simple answer.
Yes. Dr. Shauna, I'm going to give you a million dollars. You can take as long as you need to, but at some point you have to put a hundred different items down the toilets here at Clearview Trader and like flush them.
Like, like they're going to clog, they're going to break. As long as you don't get caught, you'll get a million dollars. Now, if you get caught, if people find out that you're doing this, that you're the one like putting... How long do I have to do this? It doesn't matter how long you take.
You can take as long as you want. I just have to clog the... You have to just put a hundred different items down the toilet. So like, how big do they have to be?
So different, not the same item. They don't, I mean, they just have to fit. They just have to be able to flush down. I would say like if you do a cough drop, you can do that, but then you can't do a cough drop again. Like, like, like you have to put a hundred different items and flush them down the toilet. If it breaks, nobody has to know that that it was you doing it.
But if you get caught, you don't get the money and everybody just knows you did this really weird sneaky thing. That creep. This, yeah, this is brought to you by the way, while you're thinking of your answer, this is brought to you by my son Holden who put toys down the toilet and we had to call a plumber this morning and have him go take the toilet out of the house into the yard and dig the toys out. Oh, he was in big trouble. Yeah.
Yeah. He was in big trouble. We had a feeling that that had happened, but then he, um, the, the plumber came back in and showed Ellie.
He said, Hey, here's a, here's what I found in the toilet. I'm going to show it to you here in a second, but, but million dollars. Would you do that? Oh my goodness.
A million dollars. Yeah, I can, I can, I can do that. Yeah, you do it. I'll do it.
You can take as long as you want. He put that in the toilet. He put, he flushed those down the toilet. This is Holden or Gavin Holden. Oh, no, no. I was like, Gavin, don't like, did he get it? No, Gavin knows better than that. Gavin. Gavin will watch his brother do stuff and keep silent because he thinks it's fun.
You don't think it's funny. He, I'm sure that Gavin was there when Holden was doing Holden's perspective. Like he's just set out in his mind. This is the mission that needs to happen.
He's utterly bumfuzzled that he's in trouble. No man. Did you have the secret word too? I did. You had the secret. Why did two people have the secret word? So once you instantly got flummoxed wrong, I was like, let me see if I can get Ryan to get another confused word. It means confused or perplexed. I knew about bumfuzzled, but I was like, you're not ever going to say that. You knew bumfuzzled but didn't know flummoxed?
I knew flummoxed but had never heard bumfuzzled. That's crazy. That is crazy to me. So Ryan million dollars and Dr. Sean million dollars, but you have to just, and no one ever has to know it. In fact, it's better that they don't know it's you, right?
But if you get caught, you get no money. I don't think I would tell everyone just thinks you're weird. I think my conscience just, I would just like toss and turn it. And I don't think I could do it. So imagine like, okay, imagine we have to, like the toilet gets broken, a plumber has to come fix it and they're like, Oh, Hey, it's a lot of sticky notes.
And then Dr. Sean was like, all right, who flushed the sticky notes down the toilet? And you're just going to keep silent. He'd be like, I mean, lying is involved in this, in this equation. I mean, that's without lying. You cannot, cannot do any of this. Yeah. Yeah.
That's what I'm saying. I, I couldn't, I don't think you could do it. I would instantly be a bum-fuzzled.
I would be bum-fuzzled old. I would instantly break because then I feel like if someone were to actually come in, I was going to try to save it because if you kept silent, we would just have to pull up the cameras. We just have to pull up.
There's no way you're going to escape. I would just, I would break. I'd be like, yep.
It was me. I think I would. Yeah. I think I would try.
I don't know. I did it. And then you would be like a befuddled. What was it? Bum-fuzzled bum-fuzzled. Oh, I thought it was like befuddled. All right. You said that twice now.
What do you mean? All three of us had a secret word. I was like, no, surely not. Again. I was like, wait a minute.
Wait a minute. Befuddled. So I had flummoxed. We all had very similar words too. Did you just wake up synonyms for confused? And once you got it wrong, I was like, maybe I can get it.
And then once he got it wrong, I was like, maybe Dr. Shaw can get it. I did it three times. You did.
I would say you should get it. You should, you should, you should hit the ground. I only caught it on the second or the third time. The first time I did it.
And then that TV came on automatically. Convenient distraction. That was pretty, that was pretty clever.
Cause I thought you were saying befuddled, trying to make us think that you were getting his word wrong. Is that what you were doing? That was pretty clever. I'll give you that. I think that counts.
I think that counts. All right. So, so we're all nevermind. Yeah. Let's just get to that. Let's get into that.
That's the only way you can do these words anymore. Maybe I have to like rethink. We got it. We need to rethink the, our association like, like tombstone. Here's, here's what I think. Nobody's better at coming up with games than Ryan.
Maybe, maybe you should take the secret word and get, and get a structure in place. No, I mean, David is great. I'm not, I'm not talking about David. It was just that we're not able to pass it through.
David's doing fine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's like the word assignment is fine. The, the, how we get this word. It was like, we're so aware of each other's lingo moment of befuddled comes in and like, wait a minute.
I'll say the whole giving all of us one. That was pretty slick. I didn't expect that at all. That was pretty cool. I saw my phone go off.
I was like, wait a minute. Hmm. Okay. Was it for different days or did you just all want us to have one? He just sent me one. I just wanted everybody to have one. Okay. All of the confused language. That's funny.
We need to, we need to go into ad. What did the verse of the day? Oh yeah.
Do the first of the day. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't never want to cut off God's word, man.
Especially not for an ad read. You're right. The verse of the day is coming to us from Hebrews chapter 12 verse 11. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful. Nevertheless, after it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. That's where they get the phrase, man, no pain, no gain, but no, for real, like, like you always, when, when you're disciplined by whether it's by someone in your life or by God himself, you know, of course it doesn't feel good. It's not there to feel good. And I think that's something that I've learned the more that I've grown up in the more of matured is that the things that feel good typically are not very good for me. That's true. The food I eat or the things I watch or the things I put in my mind or my body, they're not those things that feel good. Aren't good for me.
It's usually the things that hurt that end up being for my benefit. Right. Right. That's right.
That's right. God, God knows exactly what we need when we need it. And even things that we may not enjoy in the moment. I look back at my life. There are many situations that I went through that in the moment I was like, this, this is the worst thing that can happen to me, or this is not helping me. How is that?
Is this going to be good? But now looking back is those very things that have made me into a better person or a more person focus and vision and determination, and especially a Christ-like person. That's right. Those, those trials help tremendously.
I love it. Yeah. So important for us, you know, knowing that when, when we are encountering those difficult things in life and those things that kind of are, are, are standing off the rough edges of our sin nature, that's going to be painful, but it ultimately serves to make us more like Christ. And even the people that God puts in your life, you know what I mean? Like the, those people are there and you don't even know, they may not even be authority figures in your life, you know, but at the same time, God has put them there to refine you. And sometimes that discipline comes in the form, it doesn't come in like a finger wagging way. It just comes in the form of those tough conversations, but those honest conversations that you need to hear and are so needed for growing up. Yeah.
Especially growing up in Christ. That's right. Yeah.
That's right. So good for us. We're going to go into a short ad break, but don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with more Clear Read Today. Hey, Clear Read Today listeners. If we can find a timeline.
I'm just looking for the Assyrian thing. So maybe we can bring people up to speed on the timeline. We believe in the mission we're on. We invite you to partner with us through your financial support. That's right. Your giving helps us keep the message of the gospel reaching more hearts and minds every day. And when you give for the gospel, that's not an act of generosity. That's an act of worship.
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That's right. We appreciate every single one of you. Now let's get back to the show. Welcome back to Clear View today with Dr. Abadan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
You can visit us online at clearviewtodayshow.com or if you have any questions or suggestions for new topics, send us a text to 252-582-5028. That's right, Dr. Shah. We are seeing a lot of good news in the world today. You know, last week we put, if you guys were listening to the show live, you know that we put out an episode kind of chronicling the Middle East conflict, especially between Israel and Hamas, Hezbollah. It's hard to keep up with everything that's going on.
I think it's both. I think that's what you said, Dr. Shah, like they're fighting on two different fronts, but a bit of good news in the Middle East conflict today. Yeah, we've been, since 2012, we've heard about Assad's regime in Syria and how oppressive it was towards their own people, also towards Christians, and then especially towards Israel. It was like a proxy for Iran right on their northern or northeastern border. And so now finally that regime has fallen.
And, you know, there was a time back in the day when we thought this was going to happen. And as you know, the Syrian revolution that took place years ago and it didn't quite materialize. You had Iran, you had Russia propping up Syria, giving them all that they needed. And it really, all that resulted was a mass exodus of people. At one time, I think there were like 1.5 million, some Christians in Syria, only 300,000 left.
So a lot of Christians left too. But now finally that regime has fallen. Yes, in some ways it's a good thing. It's a great thing, I would say, especially with regards to Hezbollah, this terrorist organization right on Israel's border, constantly harassing them, firing missiles at them, drones, I mean, all that kind of stuff.
Can you imagine living in that kind of a war zone? So in that sense, good things have come. But now who's going to be in charge?
What happens next? Because you have sort of these unaffiliated jihadist rebels who are in power. If they continue to be in power, then we need to really step in. And I'm so glad that President Trump is at the helms of our country. I'm so glad Netanyahu is on the helms of his country. And hopefully, if the wrong elements get in power, this vacuum, if the wrong elements get in, at least we have some sensible, strong, courageous, wise people who will step in and put an end to it. Right. Previously, that was not the case. I would be very concerned right now.
So at least that sense of assurance is there that in case this train goes off the rails, which may look like it is, at least we have some safety nets. Assad, you know, he was okay with minorities. It's a Alawite regime, which is like a branch of the Shiites. You have Sunnis and Shias.
These are the two branches of Islam. It's all based on the succession of who followed Mohammed kind of thing. So the Sunnis are the majority. Sunnis are more on the conservative side of things. So that's where you find Saudi Arabia, you find Jordan, you find Egypt. All these are major Sunni strongholds. But then you have Iran, you have Syria. They were more on the Shiite side of things.
And then if you go towards Iraq and Iran, Iraq was ruled by Sunnis, but it has a lot of Shiites as well, right on the border of Iran. So it's kind of a tough situation, political gridlock. But hopefully now at least that Shiite radicalism of we want to blow Israel out of the map or something like that, or constantly propping up terrorist organizations, at least that part will come to a close.
But that by no means means implies that conflicts are over. How soon do you think that window closes? So like a regime falls, now I want to say insurgents, but like rebels, like the freedom fighters, they take over. They start implementing methods of, all right, now we've won. Now it's time to start controlling this government, this people. What do you think that window of opportunity is to where we'll know whether or not this is going to be a good or a bad thing?
Right away. I mean, some of the images we already saw by some of these jihadist rebel fighters is on to Jerusalem. It's like, really? You just got your country back from a dictator. And the first thing you think about is declaring war on Israel.
Like, come on, what's wrong with you? Why? Why don't you just work on building your people? Why don't you work on creating trade and negotiations and education and opportunities and, you know, improving the standard of living? Right. Like, is this a revolution or is this conquest that you're now wanting to take over more? That's my question.
Is it we want to gain ground and expand our own nation or is this we hate this other nation? Right. Probably the latter. And that's where you have to go, OK, lesser of two evils. We have the lesser of two evils now. So Bashar al-Assad gone, really evil, but does not mean that all of a sudden we have the good guys in there.
Right. Was he killed or is he? No, he escaped to Russia. Oh, he escaped? Russia gave them asylum. So he and his family, I'm assuming they all escaped. Interesting.
And went to Russia. Interesting. So what what do you see on the horizon now? What do you see happening in the next few months? In my experience and my studies, I would say there will be turmoil. There will be turmoil. Usually it's the louder, the more violent, the not thinking types usually are the ones who, you know, who spearhead things like this. So that's what's going on in Syria. I mean, entire government has fallen, which means the really radical, violent crazies have spearheaded this. Gotcha.
Can they last? I hope Israel and others will make sure that those don't last because they don't help their people. Right.
Right. So I would say that is my concern right now is usually the radicals are the ones who spearhead, but hopefully soon we can now shift gears and say, okay, among these people, are there reasonable or reasoning, educated, caring people who will help their people, not just, you know, push some religious agenda or personal agenda? Because that will happen. You will have people shuffling in and shuffling out. That's part of putting a democratic system or a good, healthy system of government into power. You will have people shuffling in and shuffling out. That's going to go on. I would say, again, I'm not a Middle East expert or anything, but I've studied current events in politics for a long time in history as well.
I would say looking for the next five, six years of shuffling in, shuffling out. Wow. But the goal is to put democratic systems in place in Syria. Or at least people who care about their people.
Gotcha. Not just replacing one dictator with another. Or some radical party or personality who, you know, with a bandana on their head, wants to destroy Israel or something weird like that. Wow. Come on. Have there been nations that have followed a similar trajectory where there's been like freedom fighters that have gone in and they've either put people in power that care about their people or gone the opposite direction and things have... Half the Middle East. That sounds like a lot of stories you hear coming out of that region. Yeah.
So I mean, of course, in Europe too, I mean, Europe is not that far behind. I mean, look at some of the situations in World War II and even during the falling of the USSR, the Soviet bloc. Same thing. Initially, you have the old agents back in. One bad guy is replaced by another not so bad guy.
And then you have to get them out, shuffling in, shuffling out, shuffling in, shuffling out. Then you have somebody comes, like a Gorbachev, who kind of hangs out. Well, Gorbachev was before the falling of the USSR, but similar people like that.
They come in, they're reasonable, they care about their people. Or think about Afghanistan. And for a while it seemed like, okay, okay, we're moving somewhere.
And then the bad guys came in again and then it kind of fell apart. What do you think this... Afghanistan really is not a Middle East, but similar mindset. True. What do you think this means for Christians? Not only Christians living in the area, but just the church overall. Oh, great question.
Great question. It's always tough for Christians. I mean, Syria had such a massive, massive Christian population at one time. I mean, Antioch in Syria, right? This is where Christians were first called Christians. I think I could be wrong, but didn't this announcement that the regime failed, didn't it take place in Damascus or like at least outside of Damascus? Yeah. Paul was on the road to Damascus when he met Christ.
And then he went into Damascus and that's where he learned who Christ was in the Old Testament and all of that. And to know that this is the country we're talking about. This is the country we're talking about. Still there, still there to this day.
Still there. I mean, there's so much history there. Can you imagine what tourism would do for them? Can you imagine what would happen to Syria if they actually said, you know what, we can all straighten up and we're going to work towards building archeology, tourism, all that. My goodness.
They're sitting on a treasure trove. Yeah. Game changer. Oh my goodness. Oh yeah. All that biblical history there.
And oh, just world history. Yeah. True.
True. I mean, Abraham came through there, right? Yeah. The great point. I mean, Eliezer of Damascus. I mean, Abraham was a king outside of Damascus.
Do you think they can pinpoint that road, like the road that Paul was traveling on to Damascus? Yeah. Yeah.
Like pinpoint the spot where he was- You can go there. You can go and, you know, and visit Christian sites. You can do that. One may not right now, but at one time, yeah. And, and people do that. I had thought about doing it. It just is, is risky. So I was like, well, maybe, maybe wait.
Hopefully with everything settling down, maybe there will be some opportunity for us to make a trip one day. I remember, I remember the whole Syrian refugee thing. That was, this was, that was from this civil war, this whole conflict, right? 2012, I believe it was.
And it was, it just went really bad. It was a huge talking point, right? The whole Syrian refugees coming over. What did you do with the refugees? Yeah. I remember that being a big thing. Many went to Europe, some came to America and it, it became a humanitarian crisis. And it's, it's many times, you know, you, you would think women and children would be the first in line to be sent to a better place, but you see young men of, of you know, when we were in Greece. Okay.
So this was back in 2017. Nicole and I went to Greece and we were in Athens and Athens has this center square where, you know, a lot of big statues and things like that are there. And you have to walk through there if you're walking, at least where we were staying in the hotel, you have to walk through the center of the city and then go up towards the, the, the, the Acropolis. Okay. So Areopagus. Areopagus. Areopagus? Yes. Marsil? No. Areopagus, you can see.
Marsil, we can see. This is the Agora, the marketplace, the old marketplace. So you had to go to the center of modern day Athens to get to the Agora. And it was just crowded with people. And then later I learned these were all the Syrian refugees.
And guess what? They were all men. Really?
All men, young men. They fled to Greece. Yeah. Wow. I mean, they pretty much took over Athens. Wow.
And so Greece had a tough time with that because crimes were being committed, rapes and this and that was happening. And these were not like poor battered women and little children with nothing to eat. These were men. Men.
Wow. Grown men or like young? Grown men. Yeah. 30s, 40s, that age? Yeah.
And even teenagers. Wow. So it was kind of like, what is happening here? Yeah. How do we help people?
Because if we're helping them, why are they committing crime? Right. That's what you always think.
You think of the, like you said, you think of the refugees as what you described, like battered women, little children in rags with dirty hands and gloves and stuff. Yeah. But here you see, you know, I mean, we were told. The police saw us. This was like at seven o'clock in the evening, right? You could see the Parthenon up there, the Acropolis up there.
I mean, it's way high. Okay. Now I'm not like, like a couple of stories, like way up high. And well, you were there with us because we were there down there. We walked through the marketplace there. I remember. Exactly there. I remember.
Where we stop and ate and all that stuff. Yeah. Well, anyways, so the police saw us walking around and they walked up and said, it's no safe, no safe. Wow. And I was like, oh wow.
The police are telling us it's not safe. That's significant. Yeah. That's only cause I think we need to go back to the hotel and we had to walk right through the center of the city and back into our hotel. We had to make our way there quickly. Yeah.
That was, that was crazy. But I think even with this like Syrian, with this fall of Damascus, that has a really epic legendary ring to it. Because that's usually where the story ends, right? Like, like you see that, like the Star Wars rebels, they've, they've conquered the empire.
It's gone. And so now they raise the flag in victory and then cut to black. That's the end of it. You don't really think about the fact that now we have to put a government in place and what we do in these next few weeks is really going to shape this conflict.
That's right. And the common people, the everyday people, they just want a good life. They want their children to go to good schools. They want them to have a good meal, a good roof over their head, have a future. I think this could lend itself to a really great conversation. I know we don't have time to do it today, but like, how do you, even in the, I don't want to use the word power because it has a bad connotation, but just in the, in the case of this here, you know, I would assume that the tools you use to, to obtain power is not the same tools used to keep it.
And so maybe even that has like, maybe if we, even if we just say influence, you know, how do you establish influence versus all right, now that I have this influence, how do I keep it or this impact or whatever? I would say it's in Israel's great interest, but also it's in the interest of all the neighboring Arab countries to do something good with Syria, to help Syria, to not take advantage of this nation now. They've been through enough already. Help them, help them get on their feet, help them have a good ideology, create more of a secular society where everybody's welcome and not, not have to go through some radical crazy coming in and trying to destroy lives again.
A hundred percent, a hundred percent. What is your encouragement for Christians listening to this episode? Uh, Christians all over, I'm going to say, please pray, pray for your brothers and sisters in Christ, not just in Syria, but all over the world who go through some very difficult times. And they're very peace loving people, very productive, very, uh, that contributes so much to society, to help people, their neighbors.
They're always great workers, hard workers, efficient, top ranking people in, in, in the armed forces of those countries or in the government and all that, you know, but sometimes we get beat up on. So please pray for all your Christian brothers and sisters and just never take for granted the freedoms we have in America. Amen. Amen.
That's right. I hope you guys join us tomorrow. Same time, same station. We're going to be diving into another great topic here on the Clear View Today Show. Thanks again to Le Bleu Ultra Pure Water for sponsoring today's episode. And don't forget, you can support us by subscribing to the show on iTunes.
If you want to re-listen or share any of those episodes with your family and friends, you can always support us financially at ClearViewTodayShow.com. John, do you want to plug as we end today? Yes, of course we've been talking about, we're going to be going live on January the third from seven to 9 PM for our 24 hour prayer vigil. Make sure you join us at that time. You can join us when we're streaming online.
You can call into the show, 2525825028. We will pray with you live on the air. Also, you can grab Dr. Sean Nicole's book, 30 Days of Praying for America, as well as our debut album. I was going to say our daily devotion Heaven Here and Now, but it's our debut album, Heaven Here and Now, available on iTunes, Spotify, and anywhere digital music is sold. Make sure you guys jump into the conversation tomorrow. Lots of great stuff coming your way. We love you guys. We'll see you tomorrow on Clear View Today.
