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Absolutely nothing less. Link is in the description. We're here in The Clearview Today studio with our host, Dr. Abbadan Shah, who's a PhD in New Testament textual criticism. Dr. Shah, welcome to the show.
Welcome, welcome, welcome. There's my studio audience. They're there. They're a little delayed. They were like, they were sleepy on a Monday. They were texting on their phone.
They were like, you know, when you text and you look up and the light is green. Oh, everyone's clapping. I gotta clap.
Here's my cue. Our verse of the day today is coming to us from First Peter, chapter two, verse twenty four, who himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness by whose stripes you were healed. Dr. Shah, you've preached plenty of sermons on this, but there's one that always comes to mind. I can't think of the name of it right now, but it was it was basically saying that we don't return to our sin.
You can't dig up that dead man that you used to be and put that skin on and wear it. We like to think of it as, oh, I relapsed. I fell into a pattern of behavior. But it's really that you are trying to become a dead man again. You've died to your sin. And that has changed the way that I think about sin in the Christian life.
Yeah, that's right. And these truths, I mean, everything you said is 100 percent accurate. I don't want to add to that.
Well, I got it from you. I mean, what I want to say is these truths have to be reminded. You know, these have to be emphasized and we have to choose each day to live in them. So if you forget them, go back and remember this verse, read it, you know, print it out, put it on your mirror in the morning so you can look at them, you know, have it in your Bible, put it in your car, your truck, whatever, you know, laminate it, because you need to be reminded that the old things are gone, new things have come. Start living in the new.
Absolutely. Live as the new man. Don't stop. Don't try to be a zombie. Don't try to put on the dead flesh.
And that's right. It's gross, man. It's gross.
What's the word you used? Zombie. OK, no, I cannot be zombie. Yeah, if it's zombie, if it's zombie, I'm going to be really upset with David.
It works on the walking dead, but it don't work here. No, zombification, zombification. I'm not going to I'm not going to disqualify myself to her. That's ludicrous. Ludicrous. I'm flabbergasted. This is a bunch of chicanery.
Hey, that's that's pharisaic. So, look, it's Monday and you know what the best part about Monday is, right? You're going to give us a million dollars. I'm going to give y'all a million dollars! Thank goodness. This is Million Dollar Monday.
It's the segment we do every single week. I like money. Oh, money, money, money, money, money. All right, Dr. Shaw and Ryan and all of our listeners, million dollars. This one has two payoffs. You get a million dollars and you get to slash have to lead the next great awakening. Can we do one thing? Can you shorten this music? It's like halfway through the show is still going.
Song's still going. It's like playing into the ad. You get one billion dollars and you get to slash have to lead the next great awakening for America.
America gets back on track. And you give me a million dollars for that? Yes, yes.
Here's the here's the here's the problem. I knew there was something coming. I was like, yeah, I'll take that.
Gotta be. Do you know who Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is? Yes, she gets credit. She goes down in history as leading that next great. I'll give it to I'll take. You'll take it?
Absolutely. I'm hoping she'll get saved. Yeah, that's that's what I'm saying. Like like hopefully she becomes a Christian and I'm not going to like it, but I'll take it.
It's a million dollars and there's a great awakening, a revival. You are leading it like you're leading it. Yeah, you're the one you're the one. You are like she gets a credit for it. No problem.
No problem. Hey, look, in heaven, both of us will get credit. Amen.
There you go. That's a great way to think about it. I posted this to the team. I posted this to Nicholas and David before we started recording. And they were like, does God think that or like when I get to heaven? I was like, no, no, you get your crowns. You get it. But like this life, this life, I'm fine with that. Wow.
I, I AOC. I hope you live for the world long enough to live for Jesus. I think that I would do it, but I don't know if I'd be okay with it. I think I would, I think I would like, sure, Lord. I'd be happy to do that.
There'd be like holes in my wall. I'd take it. I'd take it. I think I would take it, too.
The payoff outweighs the drawback. But the drawback is kind of like, how many great awakens have we had? Would this be the sixth if we had another? Sixth? Yeah. I mean, we only had two.
Well, we only had two. Yes. Oh, OK.
Yes. I mean, there have, OK, I know what you mean. There have been other prayer revivals and other awakenings that have come through.
But they have they have not been on the grand scale. And that's the first and the second great awakening. So only two great awakenings. Great Awakenings. Yes. But there have been smaller awakenings that have come through the past 200 years. Yes. This would definitely be like the third great away. Oh, oh, hey, look, I look, I'll say this right now.
The positive decisions that are being made in America with regards to family, with regards to life, ethics, morality. I mean, come on. Right. I was just about to say this isn't a fantasy. Like we could still see the third grader.
We may see it in the next couple of years. That's right. Amen.
Guys, don't go anywhere. We're going to take a quick break and be right back with more Clearview today. Hey, Clearview today, family. Thank you so much for tuning in to the show. We're having a great time so far. Listen, if this show has been a source of encouragement and insight for you, we want to take a second and just ask you to consider supporting us financially.
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You can visit us online at clearview todayshow.com or if you have any questions or suggestions for new topics, send us a text to 252-582-5028. Dr. Shah, many, if not all, of our founding fathers recognize, as I'm sure you know, the necessity of having Christianity, Judeo-Christian values at the foundation of their new nation and this nation that we love. And it seems like there's a vocal minority who says that's a doggone lie.
And I don't know- And have been for some time. It's not like tons of people at all times in history, but here and there, there have been people who've said that. I've been seeing a lot on social media these past four years and even beyond that, where people are like, you know that America is not a Christian nation. And so I was thinking that, you know, the church at least would have the good sense to step up and say, hey, guys, this isn't right. You know, America is a Christian nation and always has been.
That's that's the whole point of it being founded. Turns out people in the church are like, you know what, that sounds right to me. You sent me a video. Now, I'm not going to lie, the blatant heresy is only the second most disturbing thing in the video.
I got to tell you, if you're listening on the radio, you're not going to be able to see it. But it's a video of, I guess this is a priest or a priestess, a priestess. Yes, this this older woman with a red puppet that I'm not going to lie, looks like it came right out of somebody's nightmare. It looks like you ordered Elmo off of Wish. What is that? You know, Wishes?
No. Wishes is like where you like a discount website where you order things, but they they often show up wrong. Like it'll be a stuffed animal with like an eye in the wrong place. Or like you are a large T-shirt, but it's like a large for like a Barbie doll.
It's like things that are absurdly incorrect. It's like that Big Bang Theory episode where Howard and Raj ordered action figures of themselves and they were just like completely. Yeah.
So this is like Elmo off of Wish. OK, OK. Do you want to listen to it? OK. All right, let's hear it. Does Jesus want America to be a Christian nation? Bad puppet work, by the way.
No, no, no, no. I'll tell you what I mean by that. What do you mean? Jesus wants America to be a loving nation and an open nation, a nation that is open to all religions and to diversity. And Christian is one of those. And Christian is great when Christian is a loving religion. And so when we are a Christian in America, those of us who are Christian, Jesus wants us to be loving. But we also may be Jews, so we may be Muslims or we may be Buddhists or we may be Hindus or we may not be anything at all. We may just try to love our neighbors ourselves.
And that is a very wonderful thing to be. And that's really what God cares about and what Jesus cares about. Jesus has never wanted America to be a Christian nation and only a Christian nation.
Not at all. I think Jesus wants America to be a loving nation. Exactly what Jesus wants.
Yes, loving, loving, loving and just and kind and good to welcome all people who are who are good people, who are loving people. That's what we want to be more of here. Yeah, that's what God wants.
And that's what Jesus wants. I will fight for that. Good. Me too.
OK. That's what my life is about. Yay! We won! And is still here.
It really was. Thank you. Thank you. Well, look at the wristband.
I was just about to say rainbow wristband right there. So Dr. Shaw, I'm sure you have a lot you have a lot to say on this. I want to say this before we get too far away from it. I don't want to discourage nobody because there's lots of good puppet ministries that are sharing the gospel of Jesus. So I don't want to I'm not talking to you. Right.
But man, I think we got to objectively. That was bad puppetry. That was that was bad. Also, I also just really can't stand puppets.
I mean, so I don't know what it is. I've been terrified of them ever since I was a little kid. I did puppets like growing up in church. I was a part of the puppet team. I was going to say I was going to say, can we just be done with the puppets? But then I was like, there's lots of good puppet ministries that are that are shared in the gospel of Christ.
I want to show you respect. Me personally, I was really uncomfortable watching that video. Well, the discomfort is not just over the the unsightly puppet named Te amo. Yeah.
You know, sorry, all Spanish people speaking people. Yeah. But here the whole premise. Does Jesus want America to be a Christian nation? This is not to say, hey, America is welcome to all people, right? This is to say Jesus and Christian is not part of America.
OK, so there. Just a tone in which this lady is saying what she's saying is to purposely attack Christians, right? Because because she says he doesn't want America to be Christian. He wants America to be loving. Meaning the two American Christians aren't loving.
Right. She says in the video, she says Christian is one of those religions that is welcome in America and Christian is loving. But God is more concerned with America being welcoming to all religions. And that's what God would want.
I'm like, no, we are welcome to everybody. I mean, that part is true. But the foundation of our nation is on Judeo-Christian values, right?
That's right. The reason our whole system of government and people works in America is because the values that are drawn to build this nation. Going back to our founding fathers, they were not just a bunch of white men in wigs trying to create something where they could take advantage of all the people, whether it's Native Americans or black people or or Asian people and just gather all their wealth.
You don't understand. You need to take the time to read the Constitution, to read the Declaration of Independence, to read the Bill of Rights. They wanted everybody to have the good life. But they also knew this, that unless it's built on Christian values, it will not stand.
Right. Allowing people to practice their own religions within a Christian nation does not mean that this is no longer a Christian nation. You know, it's it's like if I come into your house in one of y'all's homes, you know, I'm a guest in your home and I'm allowed to think and say and do what I want. But it's not like your home suddenly becomes beholden to my value. You know what I mean? Even if they're different, I'm in your home, whether for a period of time, whether for a temporary period of time or a permanent period of time, it's still your home.
Well, go ahead. No, I was just going to say, even if it becomes my home, we don't then suddenly start changing the parameters of what this home is and what it's built on. Yeah. Well, is it too far to say that the fact that people can come to America and practice their own religion and have the freedom of religion that points to it being founded on Christian values? That's right. That whole idea comes from Christianity.
And I know in history past, there have been so-called Christian governments that were, you know, they were horrible and they went against sects and denominations among the Christians and all that. I know that that's not right. Doesn't make it right. But still, this nation was founded upon Judeo-Christian values.
Just because someone does it wrong does not mean everybody is wrong. Right. OK. So the premise that this person has that Jesus does not want America to be a Christian nation is not only insulting to Christians because it implies that Christianity is not really loving, but it also is ignorant of history.
Right. And I wonder where this idea comes from that Jesus was so inclusionary. You know, Jesus wants us to love and to accept everybody, to love everybody.
Sure. Love your neighbor. I understand. But to accept everyone, to include everyone when really didn't he say the exact opposite? Right.
Didn't he say no one comes to the Father except for me? But in the nation context, just because someone comes to America does not mean we make them a Christian. Right.
Right. I mean, Christianity is a choice. You choose to receive Christ as your savior.
You choose to follow Christ. OK. At the same time, those people who are coming in, whether they're Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, whatever, should understand that the foundation is built on Christianity. Right.
Right. And more specifically, the Judeo-Christian values. So, yes, let's just say somebody is a Muslim coming from, say, in the Middle East somewhere. When they come here, they need to recognize that and say, yeah, I'm Muslim, I'm not going to become a Christian unless God lays on my heart and somebody witness to me and I choose that. And people do that, by the way, a lot of Muslims have become Christians. But this nation is a Christian nation. You know, that's kind of funny because I think a lot of people it's interesting you say that because I think a lot of people would balk at the idea that I could go to a Muslim nation and practice Christianity and be completely allowed. Let's say that Muslim nation actually allows me to do it. The idea that if I bring enough Christians over that I can make it so to where that's no longer a Muslim nation. I think these same people would say, well, even if we said that was true, you shouldn't do that because then that the fact that that's a Muslim nation should be celebrated and that should be protected. Right.
But not here in America. Yeah. Years ago, about 15 years ago, a book titled The Godless Constitution, A Moral Defense of the Secular State. This book came out and in this book, the writer said, the nation's founders, both in writing the Constitution and in defending it in the ratification debates, sought to separate the operations of government from any claim that human beings can know and follow divine direction in reaching policy decisions. So this book was kind of in line with what this lady is saying here.
Now, she is in my opinion, wacko. But she is not only ignorant of history, but also, you know, purposely attacking Christians. So there's a whole different agenda going on there. But here the focus was more on the founding fathers. Did they or did they not turn to the Bible when they were founding the American government? Well, some people say, oh, the Enlightenment, they were turning to the Enlightenment thinkers. They were turning to the Whig theorists or classical philosophers or, you know, some somebody else.
You know, in other words, somebody like Montesquieu, the French judge and philosopher, or William Blackstone, the English jurist and professor, or John Locke, the English philosopher, or David Hume, the Scottish philosopher, historian, skeptic. They turned to all those people, guys, when they were writing the Constitution Declaration Bill of Rights. The question is, is that really true?
Yeah. Is there any evidence that they actually turned to them? Well, Daniel Driesbach wrote a book titled Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers. And in this book, he said, we know this, for example, by looking at probate records, the records, the catalog of what people left behind when they died.
And they reveal that if a family owned a single book, it was most certainly going to be the Bible. Doesn't mean everybody in, you know, pre-revolutionary time was a born again Christian. No, but Christianity was the, I guess, the environment in which they were operating. Does not mean they were perfect. Does not mean they didn't have their bad behavior and bad ideas. But overall, they were operating from that. It was the template.
It was the template that they were building from. And even if they strayed from it, they had it as their foundation. They had it as their their cultural source. And you can see that in the freedoms that we have and the freedoms that are protected here in America. You don't find that in other nations that are built on different sets of values that points to a foundation upon biblical principles. We like to pretend that America is really different from all other nations because of this woke ideology that was all somehow just always there. Even in the indigenous peoples, it was somehow just kind of always there. And now it's reached its fruition.
Right. Rather than just say it was the Christian values that America was founded on. Back in the 1980s, Donald Lutz, who was a political scientist, a professor. He also did some research on on and he he went through scores of documents, OK, private and public.
And he's he he went to the pre-revolutionary time period. And this is what he found. When all the citations are compared, the Bible is quoted 34 times.
Wow. 34 percent of the times. Enlightenment writers, 22 percent of the times. Whig writers, 18 percent. English common law, 11 percent. Classical writers, nine percent. And miscellaneous six percent. So almost half of all the citations are from the Bible. A little less than half.
One third of all the quotations in these documents from this time period that led to the foundation of the United States were coming from the Bible. Wow. Yeah, I love it. So, you know, it's a lot. It is a lot. And you see that people are blatantly mischaracterizing our history. Yeah, I mean, like not only is our history not that what you just laid out, but it's some sort of tyrannical conquest of colonizers and people who have built this nation on blood. Somehow we're going to ignore the fact that we're all we're all benefiting from that. Yeah. But at the same time, there's a a deviant like misdirection away from scripture.
That's right. And I don't know why that is, because everybody benefits from it, even non-believers. I'm also confused as to the ideology that, you know, we see in this video where this woman is, she's, I mean, is it Episcopalian? Anglican. Anglican. I mean, it's the same thing.
A priest. But she's, you know, God doesn't want America to be a Christian nation. We see people who are Americans, but they're trying to do away with American history. When did this ideology of like, this is this is my identity, but it's bad. Like, I'm an American, but I'm sorry that I'm an American.
I'm a Christian, but I'm sorry that I'm a Christian. Like, where did that ideology come from or where did that mindset start to take hold? I would say after the Industrial Revolution, when a lot of skeptical ideas were coming from Europe, because they were talking about Germany, England.
A lot of those ideas, like, you know, you have Charles Darwin over there talking about the origin of the species. And so a lot of those kind of ideas began to come this way and they began to challenge the Christian foundation of our nation. And they all of a sudden were revising history and making all these founding fathers just like, man, these were just people of their time. They were not really Christians. They, you know, if anything, they were nominal Christians and all that. And then, of course, Civil War. And past that point, he had all the the feminist movements that were happening and some of them were great in the sense of women's right to vote.
Wonderful, wonderful things. But then also there were other voices that were challenging this and mischaracterizing the Bible. Like, Bible is responsible for the suppression of women. The Bible is responsible for the racism in America.
So how can we then deal with this? Well, the Bible is bad. Christianity is bad.
Jesus may be good, but the Jesus today that these Christians have is horrible. How are we supposed to deal with these problems? Don't worry about that. The Bible is bad. Yeah. It's like, I know, but what do we do about that?
Say it's bad. And the biggest one, of course, is regarding sexual immorality. You know, the Bible, Judeo-Christian values tells us to live in a way that you are standing. You're going to have to stand before a holy God on a day of judgment. And so when the world says live as you want, sleep around, and then you have pastors and evangelists come and say, no, the soul that sin shall die and Jesus died for you and you can repent right now.
Well, that does not feel good. Yeah, I always feel like, and I know you've said this as well, but it always seems to come at me, like you pointed out, the biggest thing was that rainbow armband and there's like a rainbow emoji. It always comes back to sex. Like, I think the culture's biggest problem with Christianity has to do with sex. Right. And I just, I don't know, I guess I don't see that.
It's like they use that and then they disagree with Christianity across the board, no matter what the American conservative policy is. It's farcycle. Farcycle? Yeah. What is farcycle?
It is, it's ridiculous. Oh, was that it? That's it. Farcycle? I thought you said pharisaical for a second.
I did say that earlier. Farsicle? Like it's a farcycle. I should say farcycle.
Farsicle. Yeah. Okay. I probably would not have even got it if you'd said, like it's a farce.
Yeah, it's a farce. Got it. Okay, okay.
In a sense, it's crazy, it's absurd. Gotcha, gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. What is your secret word for the day? Yeah, farcycle.
Shout out to farcycle. But no, I mean, it's true. It's like it always is going to come back to sex. But then because these are the people who diminish my sexual desires, my deviant sexual desires.
They tell me what to do. Right. And I can't agree with them on any other stuff.
You cannot tell me how to change, live my life. Right, right. And so all this other stuff that I might actually end up agreeing with, like the sovereignty of like a human life or the preciousness of a human life or all this stuff, I can't because that's the Christian perspective. Right, I disagree here, so I have to disagree wholesale. Yep.
Yeah. And it's sad because people are destroying their lives. But overall, I would say this, statements like this and videos like this need to be challenged.
People need to speak up. And so the way we're doing it today on this radio show, on this podcast, on this YouTube video is by telling you, number one, historically, that is an inaccurate statement. That's right. But also in a contemporary, you know, for our time, that's a mischaracterization, right, mischaracterization of who Christians really are.
That statement by itself implies that Christians are not loving. Right. And think about this. I just thought about this.
I'd wish I'd said it earlier. Why the puppet? Who are you targeting? Yeah, I think that's the third point. Yeah. You're targeting children. You're targeting our children. 100 percent. There's a reason that's the agenda because the agenda of the enemy has always been go against women and children.
Yep. It's always been attack women and children. And so if you can prey on children and sway them away from biblical values, sway them away from conservative Christianity, you're going to, you know, you're going to raise up a generation who, like we hear about in the book of Judges, who grows up and don't believe the things that their fathers told them about God. And they go and do their own thing. And children.
They would do what's right there in their own eyes. And children are not stupid like that. Like my son could pick up the context for what she's saying. 100 percent.
If my son watched this and she said, Jesus doesn't want America to be Christian. And he's how old? Four. Right. I mean, he will definitely repeat that.
100 percent. He does not want America to be Christian. He wants America to be loving.
He will. He's smart enough to walk away with Christians aren't loving. Right. That's it. That's exactly.
I mean, they know exactly what they're doing. Absolutely. So great, so informative for us and so helpful in framing this conversation. Guys, make sure you join us tomorrow.
Same time, same station. We're going to be diving into another great topic here on the Clear Read Today show. Thanks again to our sponsors for making today's episode possible. Don't forget that you can support us by subscribing to the show on iTunes. If you want to re-listen or share it with a friend, you can always support us financially at ClearReadTodayShow.com. John, the rest of the shows this week are going to look a little different.
Dallas, Texas. We're going to be there tomorrow in NRB 2025. We're going to have all of these books, Dr. Schaus and Nicole's book, 30 Days of Praying for America, especially after what we just talked about today. This book needs to be in your Amazon cart right now. This is actually book three in our 30 days catalog. Book four is coming out very soon.
We're going to be announcing that probably in the next week or so. We've got some brand new music that is out right now. It's called Great and Awesome. I could not think of the name of the title at all.
I was so used to saying heaven. It's called, and let's just say I've listened to it. It's pretty awesome. Fantastic song. It's going to be available on iTunes, Spotify, for your church and for your worship team. Make sure you get that along with our debut album, Heaven Here and Now, which is what I wanted to say originally, but I'm going to save it for you.
That's right. Make sure you guys join us tomorrow, same time, same station. We love you guys. We'll see you tomorrow on Clear Read Today. Bye.
