A Christian Perspective from Saudi Arabia; and African Guide to the Bible

Imagine leaving America for 20 years, living in Saudi Arabia, and then coming back. What does the world look like to you? It's time for the line of fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Michael Brown is the director of the Coalition of Conscience and president of Fire School of Ministry.

Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34 Truth. That's 866-34TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome, welcome to the Line of Fire.

We've got a great broadcast today, 866. Three four truth. The number to call 866-348-7884. Uh last week A little over a week ago. Got a call from a gentleman who had worked and lived in Saudi Arabia for.

20 years. and came back to the States and was shocked to see The state of America. I didn't have time to talk with him, so we set up a time to reconnect today and get his perspective. I mean, it's almost like he was in another world. He was in another world, and he came back to the United States.

And when he came back to the United States, he was shocked by what he saw.

So we're gonna talk with him, get some perspectives also. about Saudi Arabia, about what the world looked like Through his eyes, and we'll have a fascinating conversation about that in North Carolina. There has been some compromise. By Governor McCrory, he stood strong on other issues, but there has been some compromise which is negative and harmful. And I've said for many years, the unspoken mantra of gay activists.

Is we will intimidate and we will manipulate until you capitulate. And we have seen some level of capitulation already, but in other ways, a standing strong.

So much going on, so much attack on. Conservative moral values. My letter, my open letter to Bruce Springsteen, my God's grace has gone viral. Just on the stream website alone, it's been Shared a streamed Facebook 178,000 And I did six radio interviews in the last twenty four hours just on that subject. People wanted to talk about it across the country.

Rachel Dalizal now is going to be writing a book. She is transracial. She wishes she had come out as black earlier because that's how she identifies It is a time not just of relative morality, but of relative reality. And that's why I put out a video about the man who first believed he's a woman and now believes he is a mythical dragon, a female dragon, and is leaving his humanness behind. You can watch that by going to YouTube, askdr Brown, ASKDRBrown.org, or just go to my YouTube channel, Ask Dr.

Brown, ASKDR Brown, there, and watch the video. If you haven't, trust me on this. You want to. Yeah, you'll pity this guy and you'll pray for him. But trust me.

You'll want to do it because this is going on. On our watch. This is the society we're in now.

Some of you might say, well, that means Jesus is coming any minute. It's all over.

Well, we're still here. I heard he was coming any minute when I came to faith over forty four years ago. We're still here.

So Let us make a difference while we're here. Yeah, it's dark, so what do we do? Shine more brightly. How about that? Shine.

more brightly. Get closer to the Lord. Spend more time with Him. Get His Word in your heart, in your mind. Stand up and make a difference with your life as you have opportunity.

Share the gospel with someone who doesn't know the Lord. Give a helping hand to someone in need. Show the love of God. Pour into your kids and your family. Support your local assembly and say, hey, let's get into the community and make a difference.

All we need to do is activate believers in America and the nation will be shaken. That means you and me. How about it? 866-34TRUTH. We'll be right back for a fascinating discussion.

Shake the nation. Change the world. Gains the world. Send it along. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr.

Michael Brown. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34TRUT. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome back to the line of fire.

This is Michael Brown. Author David Myers some years ago, believe a psychologist, Said if you fell asleep in the year 1960 and woke up in the year 2000. In America, you'd wake up to the divorce rate doubled, teen suicide tripled. Reported violent crime up four times, prison population up five times, children born out of wedlock up six times, people living together out of wedlock up seven times. You know, the proverbial frog in boiling water.

The frog is boiling and doesn't know it until it's too late. My guest, Robert. was in Saudi Arabia for 20 years. and recently came back to America.

So he has had his own eye-opening, shocking experience. Robert, welcome to the line of fire. Thanks so much for joining us. Good to be with you.

Now I understand I may ask you certain questions and you may tell me You can't answer that. for various reasons, and that's perfectly fine. But uh what brought you over to Saudi Arabia. Um the more I studied Islam uh in my early Christian life, um The more Astonished, I was by the misrepresentations about Jesus in the Koran. and about God in general.

And as I grew in my Christian faith, I kept learning more and more about the God in the Bible. and along the Koran And By the time I was in my mid-thirties, and to be frank, I couldn't really find my calling in my uh civilian career. at that time. I'm in banking. And uh By the time I finished putting down the Koran, I was so angry and obsessed with what was going on inside of Islam that I had to get moving on that.

And when I went to Saudi Arabia, um I finally found my calling. Yeah, I found that every every cell in my body was focused For the first time in my life. And once I reached that level of commitment and involvement, Uh there was no looking back. All right, and you lived in Saudi Arabia for how long? No, twenty years.

And and you were there the entire time? Did you come back and forth to America a lot? No, just once when my father died and then again when my sister passed away. All right.

So obviously, you were not in Saudi Arabia doing outward Christian work, but you lived in the midst of the country there. Paint a picture for us of what Saudi Arabia is like.

Well, it's being pulled in so many different directions socially now. that the facade is beginning to fall apart. It is, of course, an absolute monarchy. But there are so many things happening since especially since twenty eleven at the beginning of the Arab Spring. That the Saudi royal family is essentially circling the wagons.

They have to. uh appease the Wahhabi religious establishment on one hand, because that's where half the power lies in the country.

So they've had to demonstrate their they have to demonstrate their piety to the Wahhabi religious establishment constantly. and that's the stress that the royal family is facing.

So to appease them in twenty eleven, at the beginning of the Arab Spring, they had to roll back their restrictions on the nation's religious police, known as the Matawa. And they went further by curtailing any unflattering news coverage of their doings in the nation's newspapers. On the other hand, they have to appease millions of unemployed Saudi youth. who hate the Matawa. by increasing their their housing subsidies and trying to find them work.

And if the royal family doesn't find these kids some jobs soon, there's going to be another Arab Spring over there, one that they can't buy their way out of. Mm. What about the overall morality of the country? The safety of being on the streets. We understand that there is strict Islamic law there.

We understand that, say, repeat offenders who've stolen can have a hand chopped off. That adulterers can be beheaded and things like that. And you even have this as an event on Friday afternoons where people will gather together on the Muslim Sabbath and these things will take place in major city squares. What about the overall feeling of morality Obviously there's an enforced morality, but How would you explain that to a Westerner?

Well, twenty years ago, you could walk down the darkest streets in the darkest back alleys at two o'clock in the morning with one hundred dollar bills hanging out of your pocket with nothing to worry about. simply because there was an atmosphere of fear and retribution. The Saudi courts are very quick to take their capital punishment. and corporal punishment.

However, since twenty eleven, the situation has fallen apart to the point where People are looking for meaning in their lives in so many different ways, either through drugs and alcohol or alternate sexual lifestyles. that the average salary youth today is less afraid of the Saudi royal family and the interior ministry because they really don't have anything else. They are at their wit's end. They have no jobs over there.

So what you're seeing is an increasing level of public disobedience. which I can talk about a little later on in the broadcast if you wish. Yeah, just get just give me a glimpse of that because you really don't hear it reported much in the West.

Well, first of all, there is a growing gay population in Saudi Arabia. And I'm not talking about foreign workers who are gay. I'm talking about Saudi Muslims who are gay. this is a very real phenomenon. Uh and uh in What I am concerned about, actually, is how the Saudi royal family is going to respond to this.

because the Saudi gaze are becoming more open and more defiant.

So what we're seeing now is a A Mexican standoff, basically, between the gay the gay population. and the authorities.

So, and this is basically why I called last week because I Well, I found out um the state of naivete in the American public. especially in regard to how Apple Computer and Starbucks, of all people, are pretending to stand up for gay rights over there. over uh over here over this law to keep men out of women's bathrooms. What most people don't understand is both that Apple and Starbucks both do a huge amount of business in Saudi Arabia. And you need to know just what kind of gay rights abuses they're happy to tolerate in that country.

for the sake of making money.

Well give me an example. What happens if someone is you said they're getting more defiant, but you still have a Sharia law.

So let's say someone is found to be guilty of practicing homosexuality.

So two men in a in a sexual relationship. Maybe they're found out, it's known. What could happen to them?

Well, let me answer that in just one second, but let me just bring this issue of American companies in Saudi Arabia and the inherent hypocrisy of what they're doing here. These companies have countless stores across Saudi Arabia. from Damam and Kobar on the Persian Gulf. to Jeddah and Mecca on the Red Sea. Starbucks even agreed to remove the female face from inside their logo just to appease the Saudi religious establishment over there.

to gain permission to do business there.

Now I can tell you from firsthand knowledge that the Saudis routinely arrest and humiliate and beat gay people as a matter of policy. And just recently, the Saudi Interior Ministry officially refused to stop it.

Now Apple and Starbucks know full well what's going on here because it's been celebrated on the front pages of the Saudi newspapers for years. It takes only twenty seconds to look up the word gay rights and homosexuals on ArabNews.com, and yet their CEO still happily chose to set up shop over there.

Now what's even more bizarre, Michael, is that some ninety seven Starbucks stores in Washington recently joined the Seattle Police Department's Safe Haven Program. to train their employees to help gay victims of violence and how to report hate crimes to police.

Now how is it that Starbucks is making such brave noises about reporting hate crimes in Seattle. while they're playing dumb about the unbridled persecution of gays under their very noses in Riyadh. Yeah, I don't think it's playing dumb. I think it's making conscious choices. One thing, you don't mess with Islam.

And the other thing, we could make big money there.

So, in America, where they can be the bullies. And be politically correct and face down those with conservative moral values, they do it, and they're the heroes. And when it comes to Islam, they're not going to bully Islam, and they can make a lot of money. Why not do it since that's the greatest goal? Honestly, In America, If it was going to be costly for For Apple or for Starbucks or for PayPal or these other companies, if it was going to be costly for them to take a stand for quote gay rights, you have to question whether they would if money is not the almighty one that they're serving.

All right, we will be right back. When we come back, I want to ask Robert questions. And we'll find out more about Saudi Arabia a little bit later, but. I want to find out what America looked like out of the country basically for 20 years, except when his dad died. coming back in.

Obviously he was not completely unaware of what's happening in America, but it's kind of a time warp.

So let's see what the country looked like when he came back. Shake the nation. Change the world. Change the world. Give us strict to always do what's right.

It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome back to the line of fire.

I'm speaking with Robert, who lived in Saudi Arabia for 20 years, only coming to the States once during that time. Robert, when you called me a few days back, this is what I was so fascinated to hear. what America looked like to you. Having been out of the country twenty years, and obviously you still knew some things that were happening here, but what's happened? What what was the culture shock like for you?

And what can you tell us as those who've been here the whole time to help wake us up to reality? Are the most startling thing uh for me uh was um to see that the media here in America has essentially changed from being a simple source of information to being an outright an outright source of indoctrination. And we all know what's happening But so far, I haven't heard anyone been able to articulate precisely why it's happening. And I think I have some input as to why it's happening. If I may, I'll just chat about that for a moment.

Please. A few weeks ago, I was in the car and I was listening to NPR on the radio. And they broadcast a very slick piece of propaganda in which they interviewed an author who wrote about Islam. and about some oddball Christian cult which handles snakes of all things. The innuendo the innuendo, of course, was that every religion has its cooks.

And therefore, there can't be anything in the Koran that's any more dangerous than what's in the Bible. Uh And I almost drove the car off the road when I heard it. It was the most upsetting and outrageous thing I've heard. And believe me, in the past 20 years, I've heard a lot of outrageous things in Arabia. Uh now The reason the media isn't concerned about crimes against gays in Islamic countries is because they have this reflexive tendency to cease their investigations precisely at the point where they can blame their own culture.

The media today is essentially suffering from a kind of adolescent personality disorder. in which they blame their parents for all the country's ills. And since the sales aren't part of their parents' bourgeois culture, They essentially let them off the hook scot free, no matter how dreadful their behavior. Uh And I see this across all the major networks.

Okay, CNN, ABC, NBC, and of course the print media. Uh So This um this blaming your parents' bourgeois cult culture for everything and then stopping at that point. explains why Starbucks experiences no guilt whatsoever in compromising their ethics for market share, in one of the most unrepentant regimes on earth. while at the same time, they shed crocodile tears over Gay Right Seattle. And it's because the hypocrites in the media are letting them do it.

Now, are the hypocrites, in your view, hypocrites in the media letting them do it or joining together in doing it? You know, Michael, I don't even think they know they're doing it. That's how bad I think it's gotten. When I was a kid in the sixties, you knew who the extreme viewpoints were. It was us kids.

It was the hippies. I was a hippie myself. I mean, I had a hair hair. Same here. Same here.

Hair here down my middle of my back. But what happened in the in the seventies is that so many of the hippies who didn't want to go out and get work in the commercial establishment wound up getting professorships in the universities. Yes, sir. And they've turned around and and and when they couldn't and another indoctrinating of the current crop of kids. But they're also have moved so thoroughly into the newsrooms.

that the news media itself cannot even detect its own bias anymore. And that's what shocks me the most after coming back to the state: is that the news media is essentially tone deaf. to their other to their own hypocrisy. I don't personally believe they're trying to be hypocritical. I think it's happening reflexively.

and they don't know it. All right, well what what about though the There was a certain view. We've already seen the shift in the 60s with the sexual revolution and the moral decline in America in many, many ways. What looked or felt different coming back to America, watching T V, movies, listening to the news, just in terms of the overall sexual morality and the overall view towards homosexuality in particular?

Well, in my view, there's been a complete loss of touch with common sense and reality. Um things that We were at face value ridiculous, dangerous. uh uh socially backward When I was being raised as a child, today are being viewed as virtuous, progressive, inclusive, and tolerant. the thing that disturbs me so much is the corruption of our vocabulary. It's gotten to the point where not only are we diluted in our mind, we're diluted in the language that we use.

Uh so I I just I I I think I think our biggest challenge right now that we're facing the West is that we need to bring the media out of its enfantilism. especially with regards to Islam, And anything that uh uh that threatens their value system. For example, one thing that disturbs me the most that I really have been upset about recently. is that I can't tell you how many times I've heard NPR, CNN and the major networks describe Islam as one of the three great Abrahamic religions. And in fact, it is nothing of the sort.

What most people don't understand is that Islam couldn't make up its mind about Abraham for the first two centuries of its existence. While Islam said it insists that Abraham offered up Ishmael for sacrifice, Fully half of Islam's early scholars, including the great Al-Tabari himself, actually believe that it was Isaac.

Now this is no small matter. It wasn't until the 9th century that Islamic scholars turned away from Isaac under the tutelage of the Abbasid Caliphate. which demanded a more ethnically acceptable candidate named Ishmael.

Now, while the Arabs are an Abrahamic people through Abraham's son Ishmael, Islam itself is not an Abrahamic religion. because it rejects the three essential prophecies that are wrapped up in Abraham. And while these prophecies are well known to the church, They're practically unknown to the media. And this blows my mind, that how the media across the board could be so fundamentally ignorant. about the most basic Old Testament characters.

So, and very briefly, I don't want to get into the Bible discussion right at the moment, but let me just touch on these three prophecies very quickly. Tell you what, stay right there because we have a break coming up. And by the way, Robert is a pseudonym. We're using this name to protect the identity of others as well. And so he can speak as freely as he can.

But we've got some bonus coverage. I'm going to continue to speak with Robert in the next segments. And you'll be able to listen to all of this later today by going to my website, AskDr. Brown, ASKDRBrown.org, clicking on latest broadcast, or you can subscribe by podcast and never miss a show, even if you're driving and out of town or working and can't listen.

So you can do all that through the website, askdrbrown.org. Also, remember, we're extending last week's special resource offer. My brand new book, The Grace Controversy. The first printing we'll have in less than three weeks. It'll be ready in our Hands to ship out to you, and the first 50 or 100 or 200 copies, whatever the number is, that we have special pre-orders for, this is just for this special printing, signed and numbered.

So, we only do that with the first printing, the first few hundred that request it.

So, to do that, to get your signed, numbered copy of the Grace Controversy, go to my website, ask Dr. Brown, A-S-K-D-R-Brown.org. It's the line of fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution.

Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome, friends, to the Line of Fire broadcast. I'm speaking with Robert, pseudonym we're using today.

He worked in Saudi Arabia 20 years. Got to understand Islam from the inside. In a country which has a relatively strict version of Islam, Wahhabi, Wahhabism, which has Led to some of the extremism. There's a reason that the 9-11 bombers were primarily from Saudi Arabia. That was a breeding ground for Osama bin Laden as well.

866-34-TRUTH, if you have a question, although there are only certain things that Robert's able to speak about freely for a number of reasons. By the way, a quick question, Robert, before you get to these prophecies you wanted to deal with. Were you allowed to go to Mecca, or as a non-Muslim, was that forbidden? No. If you try to drive to Mecca on the highway, there will be a number of signs saying last exit for non Muslims.

Uh and if you If you show up past those signs and you get pulled over by the police, Uh your your passport uh will indicate um uh you will have well I meant your passport, your employer will keep your passport. He'll give you a residency visa. a residency permit, and that will state your religion. And if you don't have if you show up past those road signs going into Mecca without a Muslim residency visa, you'll be spending the night in the local Saudi prison. Amazing.

Amazing. All right, so the the the three prophecies you wanted to discuss briefly. Yeah, very briefly. I mention these prophecies because this is fundamental to how the media is misrepresenting Islam. Otherwise, I wouldn't bring it up at this point.

But let's talk about these prophecies in terms of the media's ignorance of Abraham and what it means to be an Abrahamic religion. Prophecy number one describes Abraham walking Isaac to Mount Moriah to sacrifice him as a burnt offering. Genesis twenty two clearly shows Abraham putting the firewood on Isaac's shoulders. Isaac carried his own wood up the hill. just like Jesus did at Calvary.

Mm-hmm. The second prophecy describes Abraham arriving at Mount Moriah after a three-day journey. where he looked afar off and said, God will provide the sacrifice.

Now afar off in Genesis 22 is the Hebrew word rakok. which means to look ahead. but also to look ahead in time. as though he were looking into the future.

something we would certainly expect from a great prophet like Abraham. That's why Jesus said centuries later that Abraham saw my day and was glad. And the third prophecy shows that when Abraham raised the knife, He saw a ram with its head caught in a briar bush. and Jesus' head was wrapped in briars at his crucifixion.

Now the media reflexively portrays Islam as an Abrahamic faith. in order to claim that it can't possibly contain teachings that are inherently dangerous. But what they don't understand is that when Islam turned its back on Abraham's prophecies in the ninth century, Under the Abbasid Caliphate. it turned its back on Abraham at the same time.

So, the next time the media tells you that Islam is an Abrahamic religion. Put them over your knee and give them a good spanking because it just isn't true. All right, and by the way, just from the perspective of one involved with Jewish apologetics over the years, the Genesis 22 account called in Hebrew the Al-Kedah, which speaks of the binding, specifically the binding of Isaac. The interesting thing there is that Abraham says God will provide a lamb. For the burnt offering, God will provide a lamb, but then there's a ram instead.

So the question is, where is that lamb? that was spoken of. And of course, that is our Messiah, Jesus Yeshua. All right, I've got a couple more questions for my guest who labored in Saudi Arabia, worked there, lived there for 20 years about Islam from the inside. We'll be right back.

Shake the nation, change the world, change the world. God of light, hear our cry, send the fire. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Here again is Dr.

Michael Brown. Thanks for joining us today on the line of fire, 866-348-788. Yeah. Uh my guest uh using the name Robert on the air. Worked in Saudi Arabia for twenty years.

So, Robert, first. I know you said things have changed since the Arab Spring of 2011. But generally speaking, Where there's still five times a day where throughout Saudi Arabia, people stop what they were doing, whether they're driving their cars or whether they're at business, for the men to prostrate themselves in prayer, or is that an exaggerated picture? It's by no means an exaggerated picture, and it doesn't even tell the half of it. uh you can be driving down the highway at 100 miles an hour And at prayer time, they'll pull over to the shoulder on the highway and they'll find these tin shacks.

filled with Korams and dusty oil carpets. out in the middle of nowhere in the desert. And and they will park their cars and thirty or forty uh Saudis will get out who don't even have never even met each other before. They'll go to a tin shack to shield the sun. They'll unroll their prayer carpet and what they call the mustala, their prayer place.

and they will prostrate themselves towards Mecca. They will do it in office buildings, hospitals. Matter of fact, if you're waiting for a doctor's appointment in the hospital, which is where you always go for a doctor's appointment, they don't have private offices over there. Uh there will be uh uh An Islamic cleric in the hallways of a hospital of yelling out the prayer call, even though the sign on the wall says, you know, please be quiet, there are sick people here. Yeah.

Alright, and what about, okay, the. younger generation which is fighting back against the strict Islamic laws and customs and things like that. What do the young men do? Do they just go along with this? Is there a penalty if you don't?

Well, um There's a lot of peer pressure amongst Southeast law agents.

So if you're a doctor in one of three offices, and and and the other two doctors are Muslim. They will visit, one doctor will go to each office and say, Aren't you coming to prayer? The same thing for office workers in every venue in college campuses.

So there's a lot of peer pressure. And if you don't immediately get up and go to the washroom and wash your feet and get ready for prayer, you're going to stand out like a sore thumb. But the thing is, even with the young people who are in public at the point, they still tend to conform. But after hours is a totally different situation. There's an emerging gay population in Saudi Arabia, as I've mentioned before.

What these kids do when no one's looking is a completely different matter. Which, of course, speaks to the fact that Islam cannot change the inner man. It can only change the outer man. There's a famous Egyptian cleric. He has a major TV broadcast and he's considered to be one of the leading Sunni Islamic thinkers or authorities in the world.

And he had once made the comment that without the death penalty for apostasy in Islam, Islam wouldn't be here today.

So, that's your experience living within Saudi Arabia that it is a religion enforced. By fear of punishment as opposed to by the free devotion of the people? Go. I would say 50% of that is true. The people who are, let's say, over 25, or 30, who still subscribe to their parents' idea of worship and religiosity.

They actually believe what they're doing. But the thing is today, fully half of the Saudi's population of 0.8 million people is under 25. Right. And there's been some recent polls out that show that today's young Saudis feel increasingly disconnected from their parents' austere Islamic values. And to make it worse, the average age of the king and the crown prince is about 74.

So and all their parents and their parents' generation can do is tell their kids to go to the mosque more often and spend more time reading the Koran. But that's not washing anymore. These kids are finding other outlets for their energies, and eventually the place is going to explode. Yeah, I mean, it's throughout the Muslim world that you have a disproportionately high number of young people.

So the exact opposite of what you have, say, in a country like Japan, where you have an aging population, and countries like Yemen, or in areas like Gaza. or now you're saying Saudi Arabia, you have a disproportionately high number of young people. And just like in the 60s, the baby boomers, there's a lot more rebellion. There's a lot more anti-authority mentality generation gap when you have this disproportionate number of young people. And then young men in particular tend to get into fights more.

So you end up having more violence in the cultures, as you can see in radical Islam. Are the young ones who are being disaffected Are any of them being radicalized that kind of going the opposite direction and being more radical? Or is it primarily a secular direction that they're going? You've got everything under the sun. It's, you know, the place is so demonically oppressed, Dr.

Brown. That Satan will do anything and everything to mess up a group of people. We do have a small segment of people who are young people who have become more radicalized. They are essentially this will sound a little funny, but they are now playing ping pong. In the country's deep programming centers after they were rescued from Al-Qaeda.

But uh So they were pulled back into these re-education centers. Saudi Arabia. And now they're showing increased proclivities to go and join ISIS.

So the same strict Wahhabi propaganda that the Saudi government has been pumping into these kids' heads has been coming back to haunt them. And now the Saudi establishment essentially is afraid of its own youth. Mm-hmm. Uh and uh within Within Saudi Arabia, obviously you can't. What would happen if you openly?

tried to preach the gospel. You did street evangelism. uh in a city in Saudi w uh Saudi Arabia, what would happen?

Well, you would immediately be thrown in jail. And I can't talk about if you want to discuss this further, I can get into details offline. Give me a call. I'll leave my phone number. Got it.

But if It's it's a a common almost everyday occurrence that the Matawa will spy on apartment buildings where they believe that there are uh house worship uh going on, which which technically is not illegal in Saudi.

However, the Saudis talk out of both sides of their mouth constantly about policy. For example, they will arrest you if they find a Bible in your possession.

However, up until a few years ago well, just recently, Saudi Arabian Airlines Was listing Bibles and crucifixes under the same list of banned items as drugs, alcohol and weapons.

Well what about our what about our military serving in s in in the country? Can they have Bibles used them freely there? It's funny you should mention that. During the First Gulf War, Uh they were corralled to uh uh having their worship services uh on a military basis only. Military women were allowed off base only if they wore the abaya.

Okay.

So, and there's a whole lot there's a whole list of rather sick stories about how the U.S. military has had to essentially hide its Christianity in order to save the lives of people who are trying to dump out Christianity. And then you have folks like Osama bin Laden and years past and others who look at the American presence in a country like Saudi Arabia as defiling. and and imperialistic and defiling uh holy lands.

So here we are trying to serve and and look for international security, and that's how we're being viewed. What about Behind the scenes, in the midst of the midst of the turmoil, are young people actually looking outside of Islam for answers? There's two but basically we see it happen more in the younger generation, especially the college age adults.

Now let's say, for example, the Saudi women who almost exclusively are educated inside the country because their parents don't want their young ladies going abroad. especially unescorted.

So the Saudi women who are in colle of college age, who are searching for a more authentic experience with God than Islam's stale rituals, do convert, but the thing is that they are essentially housebound. In their parents' home, because they can't leave the home permanently until they have a husband.

So for a Saudi woman to come to Christ, she's going to have to hide her uh her conversion from her parents and her brothers and her male cousins. Because if she doesn't, well you can imagine what would happen. Yeah. And we just had we just had a woman just oh, I think it was two years ago, if I recall correctly, who had her tongue cut out and she was burned alive to death. Because she told her father that she had become a Christian.

Her tongue cut out and she was burned alive to death. This happened recently? By her own father. And and I'm not making this up, this is in the Saudi zone newspapers.

So I understand, sir. That's why I wanted eyewitness testimony. All right, I've got a couple more minutes. I appreciate Robert spending so much time. A couple more questions to give you a picture.

Of Saudi Arabia from the inside, and hopefully, to increase your burden, to pray for the Muslim world. Shaking it down, change the world. Change the world. Oh, God of burning, cleansing flame, send the fire. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr.

Michael Brown. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome back to the line of fire.

I hope you are finding this interview. Instructive. And burdensome in that you understand a little bit more. What it's like to live in a strict Islamic country, and how it's our prayers that can make a great, great. Difference.

Robert, there is a fellow I met many years ago. Who had worked in Saudi Arabia, I think in the oil fields, but worked there, of course, in a secular capacity for years. and told me about what was called Chop Square. Where people were herded together on a Friday afternoon, and penalties were Were inflicted for various crimes.

So it could be some international working there who had. been uh caught three times stealing and his hand was chopped off. One man told me about witnessing someone being beheaded for adultery.

So is this still a a public event on a weekly basis where these types of punishments are meted out? Yes, and it is increasing in frequency Um as a matter of fact, um Yeah, in the various cities, like in Riyadh, for example, we we call it Chop Chop Square or Aldira Square. We've had some of our colleagues who were foolish enough to go down there on their lunchtime just for the experience of seeing what. What being chopped looks like, and these people came back to the office completely shaken.

So, your listeners might want to know that just recently, a few years ago, the Saudis ran out of skilled sourcemen that properly beheaded their criminals.

So they let the courts choose their own form of capital punishment. What they do today is they shoot their convicts first and then nail their bodies to crucifixes and display them in public for three days. And this is why I'm so upset about people like Apple and Starbucks because. Uh if if If people are being uh uh crucified and put on public display for three days, What's a company like Apple and Starbucks doing over there anyway? It's just total hypocrisy.

So let's just. I want everyone to hear this. This is graphic. This is painful. But this is.

So this is a weekly event, correct? Yeah, that's correct. And it's in is it in one city or in several locations? Every city. Every city, so Friday afternoons there's Muslim Sabbath.

and and people come together and watch this publicly. That's correct. what will happen is that they'll they'll take the sometimes you know sometimes Saudi and sells our our our our shop. A lot of times it's Filipino laborers. A lot of times it's Indonesian maids.

And so forth. What they'll usually do is they'll drug the victim first with a narcotic.

Okay, usually it doesn't even drink. After they are not putting up any resistance, they'll lead them out to the square. They'll bring out a swordsman who will do the job from behind. And then what you'll see is the Saudi clerics walking up and shaking each other's hands, congratulating each other for their piety. All right, so so what uh Let let's let's go from the least harsh to the the most severe penalties.

Some people be flogged publicly, correct? Correct. This is happening more frequently in the case of homosexuals. All right, and and so what what would get you flogged? Uh would public drunkenness get you flogged?

It could. Certainly, any kind of alternate sexual lifestyle could. Any kind of online activity through a popular media where you criticize the government. That's an easy way to get yourself flogged. And let me assure you, this idea of being whipped with a thin little piece of cane There's nothing nice about it.

It is a permanently disfiguring disease injury. and the number of lashes start at one hundred and go up to one thousand. And sometimes it's it's measured out over a period of weeks. Right. Okay, and you're permanently disfigured and it's it's a horrible way to be punished.

All right, and then what what about having uh a limb? amputated or a hand amputated, something like that. Of course the Quran is explicit, you know, those that fight against Allah that that you know one punishment is to chop off the alternate hand and foot, so the right hand, the left foot. But just on a a normal week, what would someone be getting their hand chopped off for?

Well, they would be they would be chopped off for for theft usually. As far as any other crimes like rape, I don't know and rape is common in Saudi Arabia. I don't know exactly how they decide when to go for a head job, okay. Uh but one thing I can say is that uh uh Well, just four months ago, the Saudis beheaded 47 people on one day. for various crimes, mostly political.

like political dissent. And right now, they're currently scheduled to behead and crucify a seventeen year old boy for anti-government dissent. Mm. So they'll they'll behead him and then they'll they'll in a beheaded state, hang them on a cross. That's right, and it'll be left in public for three days.

If you were to look on YouTube and and and Google Google images, you would be able to see lots of photographs. There's less photographs recently about um A public crucifixion, I don't know why, maybe they've taken a lot of them down. Last year at this time, there were hundreds of shots of different people hanging on crosses and found. But there's still a few out there.

So, friends, this is uncomfortable. But this is reality.

Next time you do business with Apple, or Starbucks With all their stores throughout Saudi Arabia, they are fully aware of this And yet, they want to come against Christians for having basic moral values as if they're taking the moral high ground. But more importantly, This should burden you to pray for the Muslim world. Think of how difficult it is to share the gospel there. How difficult it is to hear the gospel, and how difficult it is to follow Jesus because of this, not just in Saudi Arabia. But in numerous other strict Islamic countries.

And here you have Bono, the front man for you two, actually saying this. He says, it's like you speak violence, you speak their language, but you laugh at them when they are goose-stepping down the street and it takes away their power.

So I'm s suggesting that the Senate send in Amy Schumer and Chris Rock and Sasha Baron Cohn. Thank you. Whatever is behind those words, he actually said them. That's kind of the madness of trying to find a solution to this. There must be a supernatural gospel intervention.

And yeah, he's obviously joking about the characters sending them in, but it just reminds us there must be a supernatural gospel intervention. And Robert, we've got to go. We're out of time. I'm really hoping that the things you've shared, with the sobriety with which you've shared them, will open many hearts and minds to the reality. of Islam.

So that there can be much more fervent prayer for the Muslim world held in bondage. to a false religion. And Robert, may God use your testimony and give you wisdom in terms of getting it out. Thank you. All right.

Thanks so much. For joining us on the broadcast again, Robert is a pseudonym, and even talking these generalities, he still has to use that pseudonym. to protect others And to use wisdom in getting his message out. And um. I'm aware of all the things he spoke of, but it hits me so hard.

to hear him convey it with such detail. My bottom line to day The Muslim world is kept captive. in darkness and fear. Pray for the light of the gospel to shine. My guest, Dr.

Harold Felder, has written a book, An African American Guide to the Bible. It's time for the line of fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Michael Brown is the director of the Coalition of Conscience and president of Fire School of Ministry. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34 Truth.

That's 866-34TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Oh, this is great. I'm holding in my hand the African-American Guide to the Bible.

My guest, Dr. H.C. Felder, Harold Felder, sitting in the studio with me. We are going to have an amazing show today. You are going to want to get this book and the number to call with questions: 866-348-7884-866-3434.

For Truth. Harold, great to have you on the air today.

Well, thank you very much, Dr. Brown. Now, it was a few years back, I was on your TV show. Yes. All right.

And at what stage was this book at that point? Uh probably Just in the thought phase, I was probably just thinking about it. I was going back and forth between, it's actually my dissertation that I put in the book. I was probably going back and forth about dissertation ideas, and some were getting shot down by my readers, but probably, yeah, probably in its infant stage. All right, so you were getting a doctorate at Southern Evangelical Seminary, which is one of the world's top apologetic schools.

I have the privilege of being an adjunct professor there, the schedule permits. And you got, okay, so you're an African-American. Yes. Is there a lot going on in terms of the African-American church and apologetics?

Well, not as much as I would like. There are some churches that are definitely waking up. My church, New Beginnings Community Church in Matthews has provided me a great platform for apologetics. I'm hoping that my book will open up some more doors for apologetics. It hasn't made a lot of inroads yet, but I'm thinking that this may be the catalyst to make more inroads into the African American church.

Yeah, why do you think it is that with each group, you know, we have strengths and weaknesses, each ethnic group, each denomination and things like that?

So there are many strengths that the African American church has that maybe the white evangelical church doesn't have, but apologetics has not historically been a major focus. Why do you think that is? I think, now let's go back historically, and I think it has to do with history. And historically, what has happened with the African American church is that they weren't allowed into some of the more conservative. Seminaries, say for instance, your Dallas Theological Seminaries.

So a lot of them didn't get the training that a lot of the uh some of the white counterparts have gotten. And as a result of that, Without some of that training, a lot of it was involved in more emotionalism than actual intellectualism.

So now we're starting to see, hopefully, a change in that. But I think that goes back to the root of the African American church in America.

Now, when you say that some of our fine seminaries did not allow African American students? Absolutely. To try to be a African American student 20 years ago and trying to get into somewhere, someplace like Dallas. As a matter of fact, one of the things I do is I quote from Bob Jones University where an African-American actually tried to get in. He was.

It was actually a white person married to an African-American, and he was told that he could not get in because God has separated the races, and He meant for them to be separated, even in seminary, even in Bible colleges.

So, there were a lot of conservatives that had that idea that. The black church, the oh, blacks weren't really part of God's plan. I mean it's I'm aware of much of this, but every time I hear it, it's just so embarrassing. It's so mortifying. It's so shameful.

And that was not that long ago.

Now, there's a lot to talk about. We'll talk about this book. We'll talk about why you got into this whole subject. And then even some of the rise of kind of a black-centric mentality that if it's not black, it's not God. You know, kind of the opposite extreme.

But when we come back, I want to ask you this question. Uh we're often told, Christians, today, that We were on the wrong side of slavery. We were on the wrong side of segregation. We were on the wrong side of women's rights.

Now we're on the wrong side of homosexual rights and transgender rights and things like that.

So we'll take that up. We come back. Are conservative Christians misusing the Bible now as we misused it to keep black Americans out of our seminaries? My guest, Harold Felder, the book, The African American Guide to the Bible. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr.

Michael Brown. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Black kids date white kids.

Because you you didn't take black kids for a long time, right? 50% of American colleges as late as the mid-1960s still didn't take rax schools. Mm-hmm. You know, we are not exclusive in this and by any means. But do you will you admit, as Jerry Fall has said, you were wrong?

You should have taken them. Yes, we we do. We do, of course we do. Why explain this, why they can't take you? Being a Bible-believing institution, Larry, we try to base things on Bible principle.

The problem we have today is that our principle is so greatly misunderstood. People think we don't let them date because we're racist. In order to be racist, you have to treat people differently. We don't. We don't let them date because we were trying as an example To enforce something, a principle that is much greater than this.

We stand against the one world government. against the coming world of Antichrist, which is a one world system, a blending of all differences, a blending of national differences, economic differences, church differences, into a big one ecumenical world.

Okay, the Bible is very clear about this. Oh boy, that was March 3rd, 2000. Dr. Bob Jones III speaking with. Larry King.

I'm sitting here with Dr. Harold Felder, his book, The African American Guide to the Bible. Harold, How does that sound to you when you hear? I mean, it's, I know how it sounds to me as a white evangelical Christian. How does it sound to you as an African-American Christian?

It's disheartening. But I think the saddest thing about it is that that mentality is not gone. Yeah, yeah. It is definitely not gone. And it is so unbiblical.

That is that is what strikes me. I think.

So that's what surprises me the most about some of the institutions that. Ow. Promote racism and their biblical institutions, yet, for some reason, when it comes to this particular topic, they seem to throw the Bible out or they tend to interpret it in a way that is completely taking things out of context in order to pursue an agenda that's completely unbiblical.

So, it sort of fascinates me at the same time. Yeah, I mean, look, it's one thing that they said, well, we believe in the separation of the races, right? Which some held to.

Now, it's one thing to say Israel was separate from the nations for holy purposes, but Israel was mixed in races itself.

So, you could say God's people, believers, should be separated from worldly practices, or believers should marry an unbeliever, but that doesn't do with race, that has to do with spiritual practice and background. But now, of course, they've since retracted that policy at all Jews University. But to come up with this idea that it's fighting a one-world government under the Antichrist, come on. I mean, that's just. That's actually, this is something that I really, really deal with in my book.

And it's really bizarre because you just you just mentioned I think one of the main points that I think people don't get because and believe me or not, believe it or not, there are a lot of people in the African American community who believe that, that supposedly the Jews were white and everyone else was w were black. And so when we have all these These laws of separation, that the laws of separation must have been based on race, when in actuality, When we look at the children of Israel coming out of Israel, we see before they were established as a nation, they came out with the mixed multitude. I mean, and consider that, and consider the fact they were in Egypt for 400 years.

So, when the nation of Israel was started, they were a mixed multitude. Of some of everything under the sun. Yeah, and and even though you clearly have the the Semitic roots, Mesopotamia, and all of that, which would have been, you know, Middle Eastern peoples, and the Egyptian, you know, is northern Africa as opposed to Central and Southern Africa, so there's still differences there. But you have Moses marrying an Ethiopian woman.

So so she would she would be, from everything we know, an African woman.

Well, yes. And not only that, you had two of the tribes of Israel where you know Ephraim and Manasseh was from an Egyptian woman as well. Right. And when you also look at the um The surprise. The place that when we look at the Bible, the place that that um That is, we would consider black people that we have today, you know, that when we look, like we look at people walking down the street, would be Cush.

And Cush was very prominent in the Bible. But not only that, I. don't like to make the arbitrary uh Distinctions on what black is because there's no such thing as black. If you line up everyone in Africa or everyone in the world and say, okay, Show me where black people begin. And you couldn't do it.

So I know some people say Northern Africa, some people say Southern Africa. And I just tend to say Africa because. There is no such thing as a African colours. Color. I understand.

I understand. Right. And even facial structure. You can see, you know, I've got a, I was in D.C. the other day.

I knew my cab driver was either Ethiopian or Eritrean. I knew the cab driver was not Nigerian. You know, so even there, there are distinctives, darker color, lighter color, lip structure, things like that. And the same, of course, with Caucasians and the same with Asians. All right, but let's get back to this issue of the accusation that just as the church misused the Bible to sanction slavery, misused the Bible to sanction segregation, misused the Bible to sanction the oppression of women, it is now misusing the Bible to oppress homosexuals, bisexuals, transgender-identified individuals.

As an African-American Christian, how do you respond to that?

Well, I respond that there are always going to be Christians who will. use the Bible to further their own Means or their own beliefs. I mean, and it's not just the Bible, it is whatever authority is in, is considered the authority at the time. I mean, the Bible was used to promote slavery just like science was used to promote slavery. We have now scientism actually is.

racist but One of the things that we need to look at is not what Christians It's a big difference between Christians and Christianity because Christians can do all kinds of things, but Christianity is a completely different thing. It's what Jesus taught, it's what the Bible teaches.

So the Bible never teaches that. And as far as homosexuality, homosexuality is an act, it's not a person. It's not, you cannot identify someone in the Bible. It's an activity that you do. It's not who you are.

You are not what you do.

Now, when it comes to African Americans, Inherently, Our color is part of who we are. In other words, you did not decide to come out as black one day. No, absolutely not. And I couldn't change it if I wanted to. Exactly.

So it's scientifically born that way. Scientifically can't be changed.

So immutable. and and and uh and innate, right? Right. Whereas that's skin color and there's no behavior associated with being white or black or yellow. Whereas there there are romantic attractions and sexual desires that define homosexuality.

So you're saying, though, that what about the biblical misuse? Are there differences? And how the Bible was misused to sanction slavery. Maybe you can give me an idea of how the Bible was misused to sanction slavery or the separation of the races versus the Bible clearly prohibiting certain practices.

Well, we see in the Bible that one of the things that is used a lot is that. Noah's curse. Supposedly. When Noah became drunk. And uh One of his sons uncovered his nakedness.

And two of his other sons covered him up. And supposedly, God cursed Canaan, which is supposed to be the son of Ham, African nations. And what Noah said to him is that you shall be cursed, and your descendants shall be cursed.

So a lot of. Early Christians took that as a mandate. That All blacks now should be slaves because this was God's curse on Noah. This was Noah's curse.

Well, actually, God was sanctioning the curse on all African Americans. And I deal with that in my book. First of all, I say Canaan has nothing to do with Africa. Yeah, the Canaanites, that was where Israel is today. Right.

So they had absolutely nothing to do with that. And to take something out of passage, you know, something so out of context is. Pretty ridiculous because When we look at slavery in America and what happened here as compared to what was going on in Israel, They are so completely different. And I think one of the challenges we have is that when we think about slavery, we are automatically thinking about what happened here in America, which was a whole nother world away from what was actually happening there. Exactly.

Yeah, so you're talking about. In ancient Israel, slavery as it was instituted, the vast majority of cases was more of kind of a servitude for debt. You'd rest on the Sabbath like everyone else. If you were mistreated in any way, you'd be freed. The seventh year, you could be released unless you said, No, I want to serve my master, you know, long term.

So more of an extreme indentured servitude, as opposed to going to another country, taking people who have been kidnapped, shipping them overseas, where God knows how many hundreds of thousands or millions are going to die, then selling them as chattel to be mistreated and so on with no recourse. It's night and day difference. And what is important, another thing I think we fail to miss is that. That slavery in the Old Testament had nothing, and actually slavery probably isn't even the word because the word slavery didn't even exist. Yes.

But it had nothing to do with race. It had nothing to do with the color of someone's skin. Completely. Race is not a biblical concept. You don't find race in the Bible.

There's no way that God talks about black people or white people. God talks about the Hittites and He talks about the Jebusites and He talks about the Israelites. But God never talked about the black people or the white people because race hadn't even been invented yet. Race is not a biblical concept. When we look at the Bible, we tend to impose race on a society that didn't even know what race was because it wasn't even around.

All right, we're going to unpack that. Race. It's not to say that you didn't recognize skin color, but the concept of race not being found in the Bible. To get more information on this, get the book. Dr.

H. C. Felder, The African American Guide to the Bible. Can you get this online, Amazon? Absolutely.

All right, The African American Guide to the Bible. We'll be right back. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Here again is Dr.

Michael Brown. My guest, Dr. H.C. Felder, the author of a book that I don't know any other book like this, especially from a conservative Christian position, from an African-American author and scholar, The African-American Guide to the Bible. A couple minutes, I'm going to go through the contents of that book with Dr.

Felder. But Harold, we know in the Bible there's a reference in Jeremiah, can a leopard change its spots? Can an Ethiopian change its skin?

So there is certainly recognition of skin color. You have in Song of Solomon, the woman saying, I'm dark or black, but beautiful. And I've been Darkened by the sun, but whatever.

So, you know, dark complexion, more darkened with the sun. And then in Lamentations 4, it mentions your princes were white or were ruddy.

So, I mean, there can be observations like this, but. There's nowhere in the Bible where distinctions are made. Based on race, it was basically Jew or Gentile. Right. And then you had the different nations.

And so in the New Testament, you deal with male, female, Jew, Gentile, slave-free. But you're actually saying that in the biblical mentality, that there was not a concept of, okay, we got Jew-Gentile, male-female, black-white, the black-white with nothing categories. Absolutely not. When we look at the Bible, we see, like if you, for instance, talk about the Ethiopian change in the spots, God acknowledges that there are differences in skin tones because he designed us that way, that we can have different skin tones.

However, there is nothing in the Bible to indicate that God classifies people based on skin tone or that there is such a thing as black or there is such a thing as white. There are some people who may be a little whiter or lighter skin or darker skin, and God just notices that as a characteristic, but he doesn't classify people by that. Yeah, that's a really important thing to take hold of because the whole world divides over that. Look, there are distinctions between male and female that are undeniable. And there are distinctions between nations.

If you live in one country, you think differently. You know, different worldviews, values, and sometimes, especially in the ancient world, you worship different gods versus the one true God. But to make distinctions based on skin tone is completely arbitrary, it is completely arbitrary, and that is one of the most important things I think that a person can think about. Because what happens is, I deal with a lot of fallacies in my book, I deal with a lot of the arguments used to support that people use to support racism. And if you can get through the fact or get through your head, like sort of like four principles, you can deal with a whole lot of the arguments.

And one of the main principles is understanding that race is not a concept.

So when you see God talking to the Israelites and Israel, Ezra, about keeping separate from the people, then you'll realize he's not talking about race. And especially if you read it when he says, because their practices are detestable.

So when you first understand that, then you understand that. You can't support anything with racism in the Bible. You can't, and when you understand fundamentally, We are all from Adam and Eve, who were made in the image of God. We are all made in the image of God. Each and every person, God loves no one person more than He loves another person.

So I don't care how white a person is, how black a person is, that person is made just as much in the image as anyone else.

So, from a gospel point of view, we are all equal because we are image bearers of God. Yeah, and and. If we jarred ourselves with certain things, let's just say you had a picture. My picture's not going to be accurate, all right? Because I'm going to bring Caucasian into the Middle East, ancient, but let's say it's 2,500 years ago, 2,600 years ago, the days of Ezra, right?

And let's say Ezra and Nehemiah, and they're saying you've got to separate from your foreign wives.

Now, let's picture that the Judeans, the Israelites, are black and white and Native American and Asian, right? Let's just picture, and now they separate, and the people they separate from are also black and white and Asian American.

So it's got nothing to do with race. Nothing.

Now let's think of this. And of course, many African Americans, this is a more normal thought process. I've been in churches where I've seen a mural of Jesus and his disciples, a black church, and they all look black. And if you go to China, you know, you'll see ancient depictions of Jesus looking Chinese. And of course, all the European art where Jesus is made into a European Caucasian, blonde hair, blue.

But white Christians, to use the race construct for the moment, need to picture a black Jesus and black disciples to see if it rocks their world a little bit. Because it shouldn't. And it's all human beings. And this is one of the things that's really, really important in my book as opposed to. As everything else in the book is, but is that when I was growing up, Is that All of the pictures I saw of people in the Bible were white.

Yeah. And there is a white white. I'm talking about blonde hair, blue eyes. Yep, got it. And so what's happened before, and what's starting to happen even more, is that more and more African Americans are starting to see Christianity as the white man's religion.

And they are turning away from Christianity because they can't find themselves in the pages of scripture. Exactly.

And that's what my friend said when I went to his church in Brooklyn. He was a fellow I met at college. And he went to a well-known church there.

So I showed up for a service. It was a great service, really liked it, really loved the preaching. But I saw the mural there, and I just said, you know, is that accurate? And he said, hey, look, when you go through your high school yearbook, whose picture do you look for first? You look for your own picture.

How do I look in that? Oh, the old yearbook. And then you look at others.

So it's that idea of finding yourself in that. And look, I was in India preaching one time to a hostile crowd. They ended up taking over the meeting, shutting the meeting down. It got life-threatening for a bit. But someone yelled out, you know, white man's religion.

So, the same perception in India, because white missionaries brought it there, even though it came initially with Thomas. You know, one of the first apostles. But you're saying that's some of the fuel behind the fire of the black. Hebrew-Israelite movement? Absolutely.

I think that is not only fueled behind them, but I think it's fueled behind the Nation of Islam and a lot of black nationalist groups. Because what is happening is that they have felt alienated because they have, and I quote Elijah Muhammad, I quote Malcolm X, where they talk about, you know, how can you worship a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jesus? You know, you have slave masters who brought you over on. on a ship over to this land. They serve that God.

that commanded them In some of their eyes, to go to get you, and you're going to worship that same Jesus? How can you possibly worship that same Jesus that enslaves you? Yep, exactly. And it's it's obviously a powerful argument. And then for many Jewish people, Jesus has been a Gentile.

And again, that separating him from his roots. All that being said, just got a minute before the break. The title is The African American Guide to the Bible.

So you are recognizing there are certain cultures, backgrounds.

So What's the overall purpose? We come back, we'll get into the contents more. But why did you write the book? I wrote the book to let people of color know. That Yeah.

When they see scriptures, they are part of scriptures. And there is nothing incompatible with the Bible and people of color. Got it. Alright, friends, to get a copy of this book, look, it's eye-opening and useful for everyone to read.

So I, as a. Again, using our terms of race and identification. As a white evangelical, I read this with interest and to learn and to understand. But, in particular, for my African-American listeners, it's a great introduction to the Bible. It will lay out foundations of the reliability of the New Testament, evidence of inspiration, are there mistakes in the Bible, and then take up these issues: what is race, answering objections to race.

So, super useful guide. You can get it by going to amazon.com, Dr. H.C. Felder, F-E-L-D-E-R, the African-American Guide to the Bible. Shit.

It's the line of fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34TRUTH. Here again is Dr.

Michael Brown. Yeah. When I write a book, I want that book to be special. I want that book to fill a void. I want that book to...

stand out because there is nothing else like it. And I'm holding in my hands a book which fits that bill. by Dr. H. C.

Felder, The African American Guide to the Bible. This was initially written as a dissertation, a doctoral dissertation at Southern Evangelical Seminary outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, one of the world's premier apologetic seminaries. And it fills a particular void, in particular in the African-American community, to write from a conservative Christian viewpoint. and to write with sensitivity to African-American perspectives and to not only introduce you to the Bible, but to deal with some of the major objections, race, slavery, things like that, to take them on biblically and logically. Harold, what was your motivation?

I know this is a dissertation project, but why did you feel that this would fill a void writing this book?

Well I was an atheist. Before becoming a believer in nineteen ninety seven. And I was shocked at No one shared the evidence for Christianity with me. And I was living in DC. I was a software engineer at NASA.

And once I became a believer, I was. I was bent on sharing The evidence for Christianity.

So I quit my job, I sold my house, I moved here to Charlotte to attend Southern Evangelical Seminary for the reason that you mentioned it is the number one or premier apologetic seminary in the nation.

Now, Once one Saturday, While I've been in my newly adopted home in Charlotte, which I love, I attended a Juneteenth celebration. For those of you who don't know the Juneteenth celebration, I know you all think that, well, African Americans were free by the Emancipation Proclamation.

However, There were a lot of whites who said, We don't care what the Emancipation Proclamation says.

So they still held blacks in slavery. Until The Union troops actually marched down the streets in Texas, for instance, to say, Blacks, you're free.

So we call that Juneteenth celebration because it is actually the time the blacks went actually free, regardless of what was written on the paper. And I went to this Juneteenth celebration and I was there with a lot of African-American citizens. I mean, it was an African-American celebration, and it was like good food, music. But I saw this picture. And the picture struck me.

It was a picture of a little black baby. He was being fed a big giant spoon And in the spoon was A cross a Bible And change, and the spoon was being held by a white hand. The imagery was clear. It was striking. It was that Christianity is the white man's religion.

We have been forced-faired Christianity. It is not our religion. It is something that we have been told to believe in, but it's not something that's indigenous to us. And based on, and I have a YouTube channel as well. If you've been to my show, I've done shows on Hebrew, Israelites, the Nation of Islam.

And there is this belief that, like I said, Christianity is the white man's religion.

So I was basically dealing with those arguments, demonstrating that. That is all wrong. It is not the white man's religion. It is far from it. It took a while before it got to the white man, actually.

Yes, actually, right. Actually, and that's one of the things I talk about in my book. You look at some of the first and the greatest theologians. They were all black. You look at Athanasius and Origen and people like that.

And you look at how the fact that it actually began in African countries, the first seminary was in Clement. And that's in Africa. And just all of these different things. And you look at the Ethiopian eunuch, God went out of his way to perform a miracle to get the Ethiopian eunuch to hear the good news, which he took back to Africa. By the 4th century AD, Africa was primarily Christian.

So, this idea that white people brought Christianity when they came, when missionaries came from Europe. And on the slave ships is just unfounded and is just not true. Yeah, you know, there was a thriving African Christianity that Islam really decimated at a certain point in history. And, friends, if the idea with Origin, Clement, or maybe Augustine, if they were dark-skinned, if that messes with your world, then you need to exhaust your old 'cause the skin color doesn't matter. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr.

Michael Brown. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. My guest, Dr.

Harold Felder, author of the book, The African American Guide to the Bible, has said that some of the great theologians of the early church were African. And he prefers to use African as opposed to making skin tone the difference because, as he argues in his book. The Bible does not distinguish based on race. The Bible doesn't know the concept of race. Knows the concept of different nations and ethnicities.

Harold, In this book, just give us a real quick overview of the contents.

Okay.

The book is divided into four separate parts. The first part deals with the inspiration of scripture, because if I can't demonstrate to you the Bible is the word of God, then what do you care what it says about anything else? And I go through a lot of different things. I go through the manuscript evidence. I go through a lot of the arguments to demonstrate that it's the word of God.

I talk about the fact that it claims to be the word of God, but unlike what a lot of other books do, I show how it demonstrates to be the word of God. And one of the ways that I do that, two of the main ways I do that, is through the archaeological evidence that corresponds to the Bible, which I'll take secular sources and I will. compare them to what the Bible says. And and I think my number one Argument is from prophecy. I'll take prophecies hundreds of years that were made in the Bible, hundreds of years before the event, and I will show through secular sources how they actually were fulfilled in the exact same way that the Bible predicted them hundreds of years beforehand to demonstrate that the Bible and only the Bible is the Word of God, only the Bible is the despot.

Is divinely inspired because all were all books can't be divinely inspired because they say contradictory things.

So, I make the case for the Bible being that way. That's the first section. The second section, I deal with the black presence in the Bible, and I deal with the fact that there were people in the colour of color throughout the book. Throughout the Old Testament, how basically the Old Testament landscape were people of color. There were no European.

white people when we look at the Old Testament opening up, that The whole European thing is something that came a long, long time later. And not only that, but I demonstrate people who were clearly not just African, but very black, like Kushites and those types of people, to demonstrate how some of the famous people in the Bible were of African origin. And the third part of the book, I actually deal with the. But racism in the Bible. And I deal with a lot of the arguments that people use to justify racism by claiming that, you know, that blacks are inferior to white using the Bible, that, you know, that God wanted us to be separate, that Christianity is the white man's religion.

I deal with all those arguments. I respond to all those arguments by those exact same scriptures. interpreting them in context. And the fourth part of the Bible, I just, or the fourth part of my book, I talk about the unity of man. And I talk about how God's view of man is.

I talk about how God created man in his image and how we all come from those two people. And we all have that image of God. I talk about how through, I go through the Old Testament from the beginning, all the way to Revelations. To demonstrate to you what God's view of man is and how God not only talks about All nations coming under his umbrella, but he specifically at points called out African nations. He will call out Ethiopia.

He will call out Egypt. And he will talk about how they will serve him, how they are his beloved.

So, and I did, and I end with what we see in Revelation is what. With John the Revelator talks about how at the throne of God, we see every tribe, nation, and tongue. And it was never God's idea to have a segregated heaven. That makes no sense. If you understand the nature of God, that makes no sense.

Is that God's view has always been. All the encompasses of all humanity, because that's how God sees us as one. And everything else is man-made in sin. Got it. All right, so let's focus.

On the man-made and sin issues. Right now, it seems that racial tensions are rising in America. I had concerns when President Obama was elected because of certain of his policies and ideologies that rather than having a unifying effect on the nation, which was certainly the hope. Having her first African-American president, that it could actually have a more separating effect.

Now, there are a lot of other factors going on, but it seems pretty clear, regardless of whose fault it is, why this is, that seven years into the presidency, That race relations are getting more frayed. There's more tension there.

So you have the rising Black Lives Matter movement. You even had former President Clinton having a conflict with a heckler over that. Then you have the whole argument about white privilege. Then you have the pushback against these things.

So, what's the church answer? How do we respond?

Someone reads African-American Guide to the Bible. How can we respond in a constructive way rather than take sides? Because you and I, I'm light-skinned, you're dark-skinned, we're on the same side. We're totally on the same side, same family, same spiritual origin, same ultimate natural origins. We're on the same side, yet the world is dividing over these exterior things.

And obviously, there's cultural background. It may be that people of color. Live more in certain neighborhoods than others at certain times, et cetera. And maybe something has to do more with inner city, it's got nothing to do with color, but everything gets blurred. And then all the rhetoric comes, and we talk past each other.

So, how do we respond in a redemptive way? If I read your book, what's it going to equip me with? What kind of principles that'll help me to deconstruct what's happening? Yeah. When I took your class, because you actually taught a class in Judaism.

Yeah, introduction to answering Jewish requests. When I was looking at my doctorate, you said something that struck a chord with me. And I actually put it in my book. You say that And Israel Although they were God's chosen people, they were the mechanism through which God was going to bless all the nations of the earth. Yes, sir.

And you made this comment. That every year the nation of Israel sacrificed 70 bulls for the 70 nations. Yeah. At tabernacles. Yes.

Those 70 nations were all the nations. They were the black nations. They were the white nations. They were all the nations.

So God's view He didn't have him sacrifice for the white nations. He didn't have them sacrifice for the black nations. He had him sacrifice for all the nations.

So, God's view is that we are all one. That No one person is more of an image bearer of God. Than anyone else, and I personally think that the church needs to take the lead on this. And the reason why I say that is because I think the church sort of took the lead on leading us in the wrong direction by. Promoting some of these arguments as far as the separation.

However, in my book, If you get nothing else from my book, you will get that we are image bearers of God. I don't know how many times I said this: that each and every person is an image bearer of God. Whenever you. Look down upon your brother, in a sense, you are looking down upon God because that person has the exact same image of God in them that you have in you.

So, if we can understand that. There there is much we have much more in common Then when we have the divisors That can be the beginning. Because there's with What divides us Is I think maybe like 1%. Genetically, and that is just what you see in the outside, but we are. The same.

Ah. I I look at it this way. I can imagine them. You know, this is typical in an African-American family. I was the darkest one in my family.

I had a brother who was very light-skinned, I had a brother who was in between. Can you imagine? Yeah. me going to my parents was going to our parents and saying that I'm a better son because I am of a different color than your other sons. You should love me more because I am lighter.

That would make no sense to my parents because they're all They were all their sons. We're all their sons. That's exactly the same way that God looks at. God must be heartbroken when he looks and sees his sons divide over things so trivial. Yeah.

You know, when Joe Lewis, the boxer, it was once said of him that he was a credit to his race, the human race. Yes. And because you hear it, and you're, no, no, he is a credit to the human race because of the way he conducted himself and the honor with which he conducted himself, even as a prize fighter and things like that. Yeah, so we. Look, if you put us in a room with a tiger and a lion and a snake and a gorilla, we realize, okay, we're all human and they're not.

Right. So, what we have to do is come back to that. It's in the Bible, it's explicit in Paul's words in Acts 17, right? That of one race, you know, one people, we've all come. And I've been writing on that as well in terms of.

The liberating truths of scripture. And one of the truths that has changed the world and brought care for the poor and the needy and things like that is that every human being is created in the image of God, beginning in the womb. And the handicapped person and the elderly person that's too old to contribute, they all have dignity and honor because they're all created in the image of God. We've just got. Listen a minute before the break, but give me one of the biggest objections that you tackle in the book.

race related, slavery related, one of the biggest things you tackle. I think slavery is the biggest one, probably, because they will say that then God condoned slavery. Because if you look at the Old Testament, because of the Because of the the laws that we were talking about before. Yeah, yeah. Not understanding the laws themselves.

Right. And by the way, the Hebrew word Eved. Means slave/slash servant. And it's the same, the root avad is the word for worship or for serve.

So even the slavery part of it does not have the idea of someone in shackles being whipped. That's absolutely not part of the biblical foundation. All right.

We come back. I want to ask a couple more questions to Dr. Felder, but need to get the book, The African. American Guide to the Bible. It'll take you through the authority of Scripture, the reliability of Scripture.

Are there mistakes in the Bible? It'll lay out these issues. What is race? Does race exist? What's the biblical perspective?

People of color in the Bible. Give us strict to always do what's right. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Here again is Dr.

Michael Brown. All right, my guest this last hour, Dr. H.C. Felder, Harold Felder, The African American Guide to the Bible. We'll find out where you can connect with him online.

He's got a TV show. You can watch it on YouTube. But here's one of the questions. You've got some great objections that you tackle here. Chapter 20, so we'll just get the short version of what's in your book.

Does the Bible teach that black people are inferior to white people? Absolutely not. And what I do with each section and each chapter, like that, is I will give the evidence that has historically been used to demonstrate. the the opposing position. And then I go through and I explain why that is not the case.

And they're basically, they are. J Bird. J-Bird is what I use to basically counter the arguments of any argument of racism. J-Bird. J-Bird, Jews were not black for the J.

Um Biblical interpretation, usually the problems have to do with biblical interpretation, taking stuff out of context.

So that's B I Ah, race is not a biblical concept. Indeed, the difference between Christians and Christianity. If you understand those, you could pretty much answer all the arguments against racism in the Bible. All right, you're talking to a young African-American. He's grown up and seen, in his view, injustice.

He's seen What in his view is unfair court systems. Unfortunate sentences handed down. In his view, Mistreatment by the police and things like that. He associates that with white America. He's angry.

He's bitter. This is his perspective.

Okay? And you're going to talk to him now. You're gonna sit down and talk to him. You meet him in your neighborhood. Obviously, you wanna talk to him about Jesus.

How can you help him through the gospel? And through the truth of your book, to it's not that he hasn't seen injustice. We're not saying certain things may be exaggerated, but certainly he's going to have a perspective. There was a reason that the black jurors at the OJ trial thought, or the black audience, thought he was innocent because they did mistrust the police, and the whites mainly thought, of course, he's guilty. And I thought there's got to be a reason for both perspectives.

In other words, we've both grown up in certain worlds, broadly speaking, at the risk of stereotyping, broadly speaking. What do you say to that man? He's angry. He's seen injustice. How do you?

Turn this in a redemptive direction. Uh One of the things that I do when I Yeah. to African-American audiences is that We have to understand that no one can have a better or a higher idea of themselves than they believe that God has of them. Mm-hmm. So if someone believes that they are of little or no worth.

in God's eyes, then how can they be that way? How can they view themselves that way?

So, the first thing I would like to tell them is that God, from a, from a, from a, From a God perspective, He loves no one more than you. He loves n not The president not Whoever running for president, there is not one person on this earth that God loves more than you. You are that precious to Him. And Jesus died for that person. For that person, he died for you.

Men do bad things. Unfortunately, we have free will and we could do bad things. But Jesus came to release us from The sin that we, the sin nature that is inside of us.

So, so when, just because men do bad things does not mean. that you have to View yourself. Based on what you see around you. You don't have to, when you see injustice, doesn't mean you have to feel. That you are less than because of what you see around you.

Because your value is not given to you by what man gives you, your value is given to you by God because God is the creator, and only He can tell you what your worth is. And He's told you that He loves no one more than you. I've had someone tell me this before: if God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. And that's how I would respond to that one. Got it.

Now you're talking to a an older white Christian Who was on the wrong side of segregation issues, but has grudgingly accepted the way things are. And has a blind spot still in terms of equality or in terms of, hey. I I have no problem if my daughter A married African American, I have no problem. No, he would have a problem.

So it's the same message, but the flip side of it, what do you say to him? Mm-hmm. When Jesus gave the Great Commission, Jesus did not say go unto all the white nations. Jesus did not say go unto all the black nations. Jesus said go into all the nations of the world and make disciples.

Of them.

So Jesus views us each and every one Equally. But not only that Because we read Acts 17, we all come from the same parents. We are Actually, blood brothers. If you go back enough, grandparents, we are blood brothers.

So we should treat one another as blood brothers because actually we are blood brothers. And God sees us as blood brothers.

So we should see one another the same way. And even through the years, there's been lots of intermarriage. Absolutely, there's been a lot of intramural.

So the idea that there's any, quote, pure race, I mean, we're we're all impure from sin, that's the big thing, but that there's any pure race, you know, ethnically, that's it's a complete myth anyway. Felder is actually a German name because my great-grandfather had this thing for his maid. But that's very common in the African-American community. But when I did my Ancestry.com, I mean, I'm Nigerian, I am German. I am um Uh Gold Coast, I have I mean, there are like three African nations that I have, but I have a lot of German and European as well because that is what the Africa.

The average African American looks like now. My poor daughter, she not only has my. Heritage, but her mother's Filipino. Her grandparents on one side were Spanish, on the other side, Chinese.

So No one's pure anything. Yeah, we're pure human. We're pure lost without Jesus. And we're pure saved with him. Yeah.

And we've, one of the neatest things, we got into it in the first half hour of the hour, in case you missed it, but was just the discussion about race and how it's a concept that doesn't exist biblically. And it's one that we don't want to see the world through those eyes. It can really change you by taking that in. It's all in the book. It's beautifully produced.

It's very, very readable, nicely great quotes from others to back things up. And you'll find it super useful as a white evangelical, again, to use race distinctions here. I highly recommend it to my white evangelical friends to understand better and to maybe rock your world a little bit. And to all my African-American listeners, absolutely, this book is written for you. You, the African American Guide to the Bible.

It was years of hard work and effort to put this together.

So, Dr. Felder, thanks for writing the book and may God cause it to be widely distributed. Thank you for inviting me. All right, if folks want to find out about your ministry, watch on YouTube, where do they go? I have a YouTube channel called Giving an Answer.

I have a website called givingananswher.org. All right, giving an answer. Right, all right, and then on YouTube, giving an answer. While you're on YouTube, be sure to check out some of my latest videos on our YouTube channel, Ask Dr. Brown.

If you have not yet seen the man who became a woman, then a dragon, you won't believe your eyes, but you'll see it on the video. And to check out this week's special resource offer, the pre-order of signed-numbered copies of my newest book, The Grace Controversy, go to askdrbrown.org. My bottom line today: God sees us as one family, one people for whom Jesus died. Let us unify ourselves. around the cross and speak to the divisions in the world.