Dennis Prager and Alistair Begg Clarifying the Only Two Religious Options, Part 2 of 2

Today's program was previously aired. While the content is relevant, some of the announcements may be dated. For current ministry news and offers, go to thechristianworldview.org The Christian Worldview.org The Christian Worldview.org The Christian Worldview.org The Christian Worldview.org The Christian Worldview.org The Christian Worldview.org The Christian Worldview.org The Christian Worldview.org The Christian Worldview.org The Christian Worldview.org The Christian Worldview.org The Christian Worldview.org The Christian Worldview.org The Christian Worldview.org The Christian Worldview.org The Christian Worldview.org And he thinks that I just showed up at halftime and asked a lot of irrelevant questions.

If I'd only shown up for the first half, we could both have had a really good evening. But no, yeah, the default position would definitely be there. Incidentally, Dennis, I don't think it would be an accurate statement.

I certainly wouldn't want to make it the way that you posed it—i.e., if you would only look at this and you were sensible and you were logical, then like me you would conclude that. That is not what the Bible says. In fact, what the Bible says is that God is unknowable, that he is beyond the realm of our intuitive radar, that we can access him on our own terms or in our own time, that he is the one, the God of revelation, who has spoken the world into being. We agree about this on the doctrine of creation—that he is the one who has called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees. It's miraculous what he did. And it is to Abraham that he made the promises of the covenant, which run all the way through the Old Testament, so much so that by the time you get to Good Friday, you've got Jesus saying, This is the blood of the covenant. This isn't some new-fangled idea. This is Christ reaching back into what his friends knew and understood.

And so there are a lot more lines that run through that you could consider and I could suggest. But at the end of the day, only God opens blind eyes, and all of our eyes are blind—Jewish eyes, Protestant eyes, every kind of eyes. Only God opens them, and only God softens hard hearts. Okay, that was Alistair Begg at this event with Dennis Prager. And so Hugh Hewitt, who is another radio host, syndicated radio host, is the moderator of this debate. That's who you heard at the beginning ask the question about if Jesus, if he's not liar, lunatic, or Lord or something, do we revert to Judaism? In other words, if he isn't who he said he is, is Judaism correct? Well, Begg went into the fact that logic alone doesn't arrive at God. And he said that God is unknowable just in our own human understanding.

And that's very true. In other words, you can put all the evidence in front of someone, you can look at creation outside and just think, wow, there had to be a creator. We don't look at a book or a painting and think, oh, no one did that. You look at creation, you look inside yourself at your conscience, how you know just some fundamental things is right and wrong.

Everyone knows murdering someone intentionally, killing someone intentionally is wrong. How do we know that? Animals don't know that, but we do. Are we just smarter than they are? Is it just purely intelligence?

No, it's not just intelligence. You can be really smart, like Dennis Prager, and many people are very highly educated, but somehow their eyes are just blinded to what the gospel is, what it says. They're not approaching God in the way he's revealed himself in his special revelation of Scripture. Only God can open blind eyes. Only God can soften hard hearts.

This is what it says, what Beggs said in his answer. The follow-up question to this is, Dennis Prager, with all he knows, he knows a lot about Christianity. He probably knows more than 99% of Christians about what Christianity is about. You're going to see in some of his answers today, some of his comments, he knows a lot about the Christian faith.

He's not ignorant about it at all. But I don't think he's very close to being saved, actually, for knowing as much as he does, because it's not purely a mental transaction. Like, oh, then I see the evidence here, I believe this, and this is the way it is. No, there must be a humbling and a repenting in the heart. It must be a surrendering, getting under the authority of God and realizing you're a sinner, and you can bring nothing to this equation. You can't bring your own good works, because then you're saying that Christ's work wasn't good enough. When you're self-righteous, when you're trusting in your own self and your own righteousness, as Dennis Prager is doing, you just can't have any of that to be saved. God doesn't allow us to bring one shred of our supposed goodness to him, because it's not good in his eyes. All our righteousness is as filthy rags when it's compared to the holiness of God.

You can only trust in the righteousness of Christ, not in any of your own self-righteousness. So then let's go on to the follow-up soundbite where Dennis Prager talks about the importance of works in being right with God. He talks about the analogy here of an atheist, that a good atheist has a better hereafter than an evil Christian, what he calls, here's that soundbite.

Dennis Prager I just want to go back to a point you made earlier, and this will probably strike you as, I don't know if odd is the word, but I plead 100% guilty to the charge that God keeps a scorecard of our ethical behavior. That's what I believe. I believe that God wants us to be good, and that a good atheist, a kind and sweet atheist, who does not advocate for atheism, advocating for atheism is a terrible sin, not on religious grounds, on moral grounds, because there is no hope for the future of humanity with a godless morality. These people are fools who believe it. Charles Krauthammer, who was a completely secular man when I asked him about atheism on my radio show, he said it's the stupidest doctrine he is aware of. A man who's a thoroughly secular, agnostic man, and I agree with him, it is the stupidest doctrine possible, but it is possible to be a kind, just there were kind people who believed in Zeus, we all agree with that. There were kind pagans, so I believe that the kind pagan has a better hereafter than the evil Jew, evil believing Jew, or evil believing Christian.

Do you or not? No, I don't believe that. So an evil Christian has a better hereafter than a kind non-Christian? No, I don't believe that. You've posed it as an alternative, as if there are only two ways to view that.

All right? So the expression, to your point, the idea of fruit. So when Paul, who himself was a very convinced, self-righteous Jew, able to testify to his own background, to his training, to his teacher as Gamaliel, and so on, he finally realized that all of that was for him just like rubbish. And when he wrote concerning the nature of the grace of God, he says, you know, "'For it is by grace that you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourself, it is the gift of God, so that no one should boast.'" And then he says, "'For you have been created in Christ Jesus to do good works which he has foreordained for you to do.'" Now, religion says—if we could caricature it in this totality—religion essentially says, Do good things, and God will accept you. Christianity says, You could never do enough good things.

You are accepted in Jesus. Therefore, do good things. So, from the one perspective, the good things are the basis of acceptance. From the teaching of the New Testament, the good things are an evidence of the fact of your acceptance, that you have actually embraced the free gift which is on offer to us in and through the work of Jesus. That was a very, very important thing. Good work are not the basis of saving faith.

They are the evidence of it. And by the way, there's no such thing as an evil Christian, the Bible says. No one who practices evil or unrepentant sin is truly saved.

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Thank you for listening. Today's program was previously aired. For current ministry news and offers, go to thechristianworldview.org. All right, welcome back to the Christian Worldview radio program. I'm David Wheaton, the host. Just a reminder, the speaker series event is this coming Friday, May 10th, 7 p.m. Central Time, University of Northwestern, St. Paul.

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We're praying that this would be a really good event and hope you can come. And today in the program, we're going with part two that we started last week of this very stimulating, interesting, clarifying conversation between Dennis Prager and Alistair Begg as they talk about all these various theological issues. And we just heard from Prager talk about he thinks a good atheist is a better hereafter than an evil Christian. We won't rehash that again, but basically there's no such thing as an evil Christian. If someone's evil, they're not really a true Christian.

And that's where people often make a mistake. They can say, well, you're born in a Christian country, so therefore you're a Christian, or you were christened as a baby, or you were married in a church, and therefore you're a Christian, or you consider yourself a Christian. That does not make you a Christian.

Not at all. Matthew 7, Jesus says, Many will say to me on that day, judgment day, Lord, Lord. So there's people who call him Lord, call Jesus Lord.

Many. He says, not just some, many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, didn't we not prophesy on your name, and in your name cast out demons, and in your name perform many miracles? These were not nominal professing Christians either. These are people who were thinking they were doing works, good things, miraculous things, because they're Christians. And Jesus said, I never knew you.

Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. And there's the word, practice. So no Christian can be evil. You cannot practice sin and be a Christian. If you're practicing sin, something you habitually do over and over the Bible says you should question whether you're truly saved. If you're unrepentantly practicing sin, now does this mean that a Christian can't sin? Of course not. Does it mean a Christian can't do an evil thing?

Of course not. We still have that sin nature and can do it. But there'll be a fairly soon recognition of the evil thing that was done, and there'll be a repentance of it, and there'll be a turning back to God, and a return to the narrow way. Let's go on to the next sound bite where they start talking about hell. This is a provocative question that Hugh Hugh asked. Is there a hell and is Dennis going to it?

Well if we are going to again, if we're going to take Jesus at his word, the answer to the first part of the question is yes, and the answer to the second part of the question is not yet. And if I'm right, Dennis, your answer is I don't worry about it. My answer?

Yes. Well first let me explain. I defend Christians a great deal on this issue. You have no idea how often in Jewish life, in which I am very involved, Jews will write, Dennis is so naive. That's when they're sweet. Dennis is so naive, you know, he does all this work with Christians, and he's a Christian lover, and they think he's going to hell.

What the hell is wrong with him? Really, I get that a lot, and I answer back, I don't care where people think I'm going, I care where people, how people are treating me here. Christians treat me beautifully. That they believe that I have a that they believe that I have a dark future is painful to them.

If I believed it, I'd convert to Christianity, obviously. So it isn't painful to me if one thinks that. The way you treat me, and the world, and my fellow Jews, that's how I judge you. There are people who don't think I'm going to hell who make life hell for me.

My fellow Jews. So I understand that, and I do believe there is a hell, I just believe that you go to hell for your works. But I just want to make it clear, I think that a lot of Christians sell Christianity short, because you, if your works show your faith, which is your position, then you ironically, or maybe not ironically, but you really have as much emphasis on works as I do. If bad works show no faith or bad faith, and then you go to hell, it's why is that different from mine, that bad works alone?

Okay, again, another interesting question here. And you'll notice that seems like all the questions, whatever topic they're discussing, always comes back to what the topic we're discussing today is clarifying the only two religious options. There's religions that are based on man's works, determining where you spend your afterlife, then there's biblical Christianity based on faith alone. And then works are the evidence of true saving, good works are the evidence of true saving faith. So he said, I don't care where people think I'm going, I care about people who treat me here on earth. It isn't painful to me that Christians think I'm going to hell, it's painful for you. And the way you treat me and the Jews is how I judge you. I believe you go to hell for your works, he said. And he said, included by saying, if your works show your faith, how is that different than mine? Well, in every way.

It's a huge difference. The difference is between the power of works versus the purpose of works. In biblical Christianity, works don't have the power to save you, only God has the power to save you based on Christ's work. In other words, how can good works offset the sin that we've already done?

How can that be? It would be like, if you murdered someone, but you did all kinds of good things the rest of your life, everything you did the rest of your life was wonderful and charitable and so forth. Would that offset the fact that you took someone's life and you killed them?

Of course not. Once you've sinned against the king, that's God, you're guilty. You can't become unguilty. So even if you do good all the time, what's going to make you unguilty? It's the grading on the curve once in a while.

It's the grading on the scales. My good outweighs my bad. That's how I think humans, we, all of us, even Christians can sometimes think that, I know I do some bad things.

We need to change that worldview, change that thinking. There should be, no, I can't do anything good in myself apart from the Spirit's work in my life. In me, there is no good thing. Paul said that in Romans chapter 7. A just God has to punish every single sin. If he sort of overlooks some and sort of says, well, this person did quite a bit of good and that outweighed that, there would be all kinds of injustice. Sin would be dealt differently by God, and then people would have reason to complain. But God is perfectly just. Every sin is perfectly accounted for and punished for, and we can't offset sin by good works. So that's the point of Christ's coming. You have the perfect God-man, lived a sinless life, offered himself on the cross to pay the penalty that we deserve to pay God's required penalty for our sin so that God could justly forgive us for our sin because Christ paid the penalty for it. Now we have all sin paid for, all your sins paid for, and God's wrath over our sins, not just justice, it's wrath over our sin could be satisfied. Like we talked about last week, we're saved from God's wrath, we're saved by God's grace by sending his son, and we're saved for God's glory. Prager is not able to see the difference.

He's a very intelligent man, respect him tremendously, he's very helpful in certain ways in conservatism and politically and so forth. But unfortunately, he can't see the difference between grace and works. There's a huge difference to the way Christians see works as the way he does. Works are not the basis of saving faith, God's grace is, his gift to us is, but works are the purpose of saving faith. This is Ephesians 2, 8 through 10. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works.

Period. So we're saved by faith but through God's grace. Even faith is a gift from God. Getting the faith to believe is even an act of God. It's God who opens our blind eyes, it's God who extends the grace of Jesus Christ to us to forgive us, it's God who gives us the faith to believe. It's all based on faith, there's no works there so that we can't boast.

But then there's verse 10, the next verse. For we, Christians, are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. And God prepared beforehand, he prepared those good works beforehand too, so that we would walk in them. So there's no discrepancy between what the Apostle Paul says in Romans and what James says in his epistle. Faith without works is dead.

They completely work together. Works are not the basis of saving faith, faith is, but works are the evidence of true saving faith. Okay let's see, we have a couple minutes here before the end of this segment, and this is a longer soundbite, so why don't we just get started with it. We'll stop it partway, and this is where they're talking about degrees of sin, where they have an interchange with each other. Well, because of the person of Christ in the middle of it all. I mean, it comes back to that every single time.

We're not dealing here with a conceptual idea philosophically. We're dealing, if we want to talk about the Jew and the Christian, we're dealing with the fact that I have to do something with the fact that the message of the cross of Jesus Christ—not Jesus the religious leader, Jesus the guru, but Jesus on a cross—the message of the cross, which is at the very heart of Christianity, is, says Paul again, foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God. And so if you want to go to hell, you have to step over the cross of Jesus Christ. Let's put it that way, that that stands blocking our route to hell. He stands there, as it were, with open arms, saying, You don't have to go there because of what I have done for you. So there is a fundamental difference. Okay, we'll stop it there and hear the rest of that interchange between Alistair Begg and Dennis Prager right after this break.

If you want to go to hell, you have to step over the cross of Christ. It's there. He's presented himself. He's told us who he is. What are we going to do with it?

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While the content is relevant, some of the announcements may be dated. For current ministry news and offers, go to thechristianworldview.org. All right, so many soundbites, so little time today here on the Christian worldview radio program.

If you just joined us, we are playing some audio clips of an event. It was a friendly discussion. I wouldn't call it a debate between Jewish radio host Dennis Prager and Christian pastor Alistair Begg, two of the sharpest minds. And I respect both these men. Of course, I totally believe that Alistair Begg gets the correct understanding of what scripture teaches, but both of their worldview is instructive, I think, here to sharpen your own. Hopefully, if you have a biblical world, this will help sharpen your own biblical worldview, clarify some things in your mind. And so we were before the break, we were hearing from Alistair Begg, and then there's going to be an interchange with Dennis Prager here talking about the degrees of sin and the effect of works.

Let's get back to that soundbite. About what you're asking. No, no, there is a fundamental difference. I only wanted to point out, though, that you emphasize works as much as we do.

You just don't think it's enough. Fair enough. But you emphasize its importance, because to you, evil Christian is an oxymoron.

Is that correct? Yes and no, because the reality of the gospel message is that we are saved sinners. Okay, so here we really may have our first what-matters-to-me difference, and that is, I don't believe everyone is equally moral or immoral.

There are gradations where all sinners is unhelpful. That's like saying, we all get sick, but we're not all sick. Everyone gets the flu. Everyone gets a cold, but not everybody gets cancer.

There's a big difference between cancer and a cold or the flu. So yes, none of us is perfectly healthy, but everybody in this room knows that some people are much healthier than others. All of us are sinners, but some people are much greater sinners than others. A concentration camp guard who tortured people to death is not the same as the guy who took a stapler from the office. Do we agree on that?

No, no, I'm not kidding, because there are callers to my show who said, That's not true, Dennis. In God's eyes, concentration camp guards and people who take staplers from the office are equal sinners. Well, I think I know why those people are trying to argue that, because they want to preserve the doctrine of total depravity, and they're doing a poor job of it by addressing you in that way, from my humble estimation. Surely there are gradations of and expressions of evil that are represented in the difference between the thoughts of our minds, the expression of our words, and the actions of our hands. Now, what the Bible is actually saying, if I understand it correctly, is that there is no part of our existence that is unaffected by the reality of sin. It doesn't mean that we're all as bad as we could possibly be, but it does mean that sin—our rebellion against God or indifference towards him—has affected every part of our lives—our emotions, our intellect, our wills, and so on.

The way in which that is worked out in an individual life varies. To flip it around—though let's put it the other way for a moment, if I may—if you say, We're going to have to jump from this edge of the platform over to the other edge of the platform without touching the platform, because the prize is only if you get to the other side. If you go and you get to stage two, and I go and I get to stage one, and our fair friend here, he almost makes it to the end, guess what? None of us got there.

None of us got the prize. We were all equally unable to bridge the chasm. That's why, when the Bible says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, it's saying that we are in an equal condition before God in terms of our alienation. It doesn't mean that we have all expressed the gravity of that to the same extent as others have. Okay, we'll stop it there on that particular soundbite.

That's very helpful to understand. Yes, we're all sinners. We're not as bad as we could be. Yeah, everyone's not an equally bad sinner. But it's like the old example he gave of, you know, they used to say in California, the island of Catalina, 20 miles offshore, or jumping across the Grand Canyon.

Maybe that's more understandable by most people. Everyone can jump off the Grand Canyon and try to get to the other side. Some are going to do better than others. But everyone's going to end up in the valley below. And that's the same way with trying to earn salvation.

Some are better people, some are worse people. But we're all sinners, and we all can't make it on our own. That's why we need God's grace, which was manifested through him sending his son, the gift of his son, to pay the penalty we couldn't pay. And then not only that was it a payment of substitutionary sacrifice for our sin, but there's also the often undiscussed side of the Atonement is that God credits us with Christ's righteousness. So once all our past, present, and future sins were paid for by Christ, and we put our trust in that, our trust in what Christ did, God sees us as having Christ's righteousness. Because in God's eyes, all of our sins past, present, and future have been paid for. So he sees us as having the perfect righteousness of Christ, although we're not perfect yet. We're still going to commit those future sins, but we're not perfect yet.

But God's going to see us as having that righteousness of Christ, which is really is the basis on which God can welcome the believer into heaven someday, because the believer is perfect in God's eyes, because all the sins have been atoned for. Okay, moving right along to the next question for Dennis Prager by Hugh Hewitt is about, why don't Jews proselytize? If it's so big, why are Jews indifferent to proselytizing? I mean, you don't really care if anyone becomes a Jew, right?

Don't really care is a little overstating it. I have no interest in a committed Christian becoming a Jew. I am very happy if someone committed to neither Christianity nor Judaism becomes a Jew. My first rule is, explore what you rejected. If you came from a Jewish home, explore that before you reject it. If you came from a Christian home, explore that before you reject it. That's my rule of thumb, because I also want people to continue having a bond in that way with their family.

Let me just jump in here real quick on this one. Explore what you rejected, even if it's a false way, even if it's Islam or Buddhism. And he obviously thinks Christianity and Judaism are two viable ways. But even if it's people who worship wood idols and speak to the planets, I mean, again, there's the universalistic worldview of Dennis Prager. There's not one way to God. Let's continue. But yes, obviously, I would rather somebody be reading Maimonides than the New York Times editorial page, which is the current Bible in the United States.

And it is an unhealthy and morally troubled page. But you will know, and by the way, Paul said this, that Jews would sail across oceans and cross continents to make a convert. A tenth of the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus was Jewish. The first thing that was done when the Roman Empire became Christian was to ban conversion to Judaism. And Jews from then to this day knew you convert, you risk your life, let's get out of the conversion business.

And that's what happened. I didn't know that. I know people don't, Jews don't know that. Jews think, oh, we don't see converts. Well, we don't see converts in the sense that Christians do, because if you don't become a Jew, you don't have a salvation. We don't have that theology.

But we did seek it when it was open for us to seek. But given my belief in the word Judeo-Christian in terms of values, if a non-Jew returns to church, I am thrilled. Okay, this really says a lot about his worldview. It very much says a lot about his universalistic, works-based worldview. It's again, not about specific doctrines or specific revelation from God that you have to believe. It's just about your works. You go explore what you rejected, whatever religion you come from.

I just want you to be a moral person. But what he says about the proselytizing, why Jews don't proselytize is because during the Roman Empire, Christianity became the official religion that was banned and they were persecuted for doing so. So he quote unquote, let's get out of the conversion business, which is the decision of Jews.

Well, think about that. I mean, Christians are willing to die, to go places, leave the safety of their homes and their countries, to go to other parts of the world or wherever they are in the world, to peacefully share the gospel of Jesus Christ. Just compare that to a Muslim who's also willing to die for their proselytizing, so to speak, but they do their proselytizing through trying to blow people up and forcefully convert people to Islam. So if they're going to die, they're going to take others with them so they can, Islam can take over a country and then you're by Allah's dictum, you're Muslim, because you live in that country, you're born a Muslim.

Again, externalism religion. But Christians are willing to die to peacefully share the gospel. But here's the thing, if you believe, you know the way to heaven.

That's been shown to you. And if you understand that, if people don't follow that way, that they're going to hell, and then you are not willing to tell others about this one way, how unloving and how uncaring are you for your fellow man? And that's why Christians proselytize or evangelize, because we know what's at stake. If the Bible is true, what it says about who God is and what's going to happen in the afterlife, if you reject God's offer of forgiveness by rejecting what his son did for you, and you're going to be judged justfully and rightfully for your sins, every sin will be judged. Either we can pay for them ourselves or we can accept God's offer to have Jesus pay for them for us.

Those are the two options. That's why Christians evangelize, because they care about other people's souls. So if you're someone out there who's an unbeliever and says, he doesn't like Christians for trying to share the gospel with you, think of this way, they're not trying to make money off you, at least they shouldn't be, tele-evangelists.

They're trying to tell you something that they believe in their heart can help you in this life, but especially in the one to come. More on the Christian worldview after this. The Christian worldview radio program airs live Saturday mornings at 8 a.m. Central Time. But did you know you can also listen according to your own schedule? One simple way to hear past programs is at our website, thechristianworldview.org.

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Okay, this will be a final reminder. If you just joined the program today, the Christian Real View Speaker Series event is this coming Friday, May 10th. So there's no more radio programs between now and the event. 7 p.m. Central Time, University of Northwestern St. Paul.

No cost, no registration. Just come streaming on Facebook. If you're not from the area, just search for the Christian Real View or my name on Facebook and you should be able to find the page there.

7 p.m. Central on Friday, May 10th. Curtis Bauer speaking on how socialism is impacting the worldview. It's a worldview. How that's impacting the country and the church. There's a lot of material there on that particular topic. We can see it in politics and we can see it in culture.

We can see it in the church as well, unfortunately. He'll be talking about that. We'll do a follow-up with a Q&A afterwards.

But today we need to get to a few more sound bites of this conversation between Dennis Prager and Alistair Begg. And this next one has to deal with interpretation of Scripture. We're to accurately handle the word of truth and you're going to see how Alistair Begg does that in this challenge by Dennis Prager. Jesus is fully man and fully God in the New Testament. It's to the New Testament's credit that it kept the line in there, oh God, why did you abandon me?

Because if they just wanted to whitewash the whole thing, they could have. So I consider that a very important line. But at the same time, I want you to recognize, if Jesus had a moment of doubt that he was God's Son, allow other people to have that moment of doubt too.

Well, we must allow the Scriptures to say what the scripts say. It doesn't say that he doubted his identity. It says that he recoiled from the reality. No, if God, you've abandoned me, that means this was not your plan. Elie Elie lama sabachthani is God, why did you abandon me? So you abandoned me means this was not the plan. No, it doesn't necessarily. Okay, you abandoned me means you were going to protect me and you're not protecting me.

Or anything, what else could it possibly mean? This is not what, this Jesus the man is lamenting, I didn't know this was the plan, God. No, that's—you get that from Jesus Christ, superstar, rather than— No, no, no.

I get it. This is not—no. There is no—tell me what why did you abandon me means. It is the cry of alienation, which is, as I say, was on account of the fact that he was entering into something that he had never before experienced. The issue of our lives is that we are alienated from God on two counts—one, on God's side, because of his holiness and his wrath against sin, and then, on our side, on account of our rebellion against God and the fact that we are lawbreakers and sinners. Therefore, in the atonement, both the wrath of God and the love of God have somehow or another to be expressed and satisfied.

If God did not punish sin, then he wouldn't be true to himself, and justice would not be served. If God did not provide in himself the answer to that, then his love would have been impaired. So it is in that moment when Jesus realizes, I'm entering into this experience of alienation, the natural recoil is, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And the answer, of course, is, I have forsaken you, because that's what we agreed on.

I'm so thankful for someone like Alistair Begg, who can divvy up that question and answer it in an accurate way, because it does so. Didn't God forsake? How did God forsake his own son?

That's not possible. Is Jesus doubting, as Dennis Prager was saying there? He said it wasn't a cry of alienation.

No, it was a cry of alienation. In other words, something that Jesus had never experienced before. As a God and man, something that's very difficult to understand and explain, granted, Jesus had always been just he and the Father are one. But at this one moment, God was going to take his wrath, and he was going to forsake his son and pour all the sin of the world, of those who would believe actually, on his son and make his son pay that price. And that was going to feel like being forsaken. And so you could also potentially look at this as saying that why have you forsaken me is not so much as a question, like a doubt, as a cry. For instance, if a tornado was coming at your house, and it went over your house and completely destroyed it, you might cry out, why is this happening to me?

Well, it's happening to you because there was a natural disaster, and things happened in the atmosphere, and there's a spinning storm cloud that came out, and there's a perfect explanation for it. But you'd still cry out, not necessarily questioning the facts of why it happened. You knew that, but you'd be crying out because you've been, in that moment, so disturbed by the destruction of your home.

You cry, why is this happening? Well, there's reason for it. And I think Alistair Begg explained that it was a cry of alienation rather than a moment of doubt. Okay, a couple more sound bites here.

We'll try to get them all in. Let's see if we can find this one here. A couple of concluding remarks by Alistair Begg as he sums things up.

Here's Alistair Begg. When we introduced the issue of eternity, it's all very well on a sunny, sunny afternoon sitting here. But I mean, when I go home Tuesday, I have a funeral on Thursday for one of the members of my congregation who was on a business trip out of town and died in his bed at sixty-four. Now, he died and went somewhere, and so will we. Therefore, I believe this or I believe that has to be grounded in something.

And that's why I'm staking my case not on myself or on my endeavors, but on the promises that have been made in the one who I believe to have been the fulfillment of the promises of the Old Testament. It doesn't really matter what you or I believe at all. It doesn't matter what I say in this program.

It really matters what we're saying. What is it based on? And is that foundation reliable? It's will I trust God at His revelation? Is there a reason to do so? Is there a good basis to do so?

And absolutely there is. And he summed up the end of the conversation with Dennis Prager by saying, this. The summation for me, I'm back where we start. And that is to say, as I read my Bible—and this takes me back to my roots in Scotland—if you take your eyes off Jesus, you lose your way around the Bible. The Bible is actually—and incidentally, if you refuse to read the Bible, you can't understand history. You can't understand the history of the world. That's why secular historians manifoldly miss the point again and again, because they refuse to accept either the doctrine of creation or the fall of man or whatever else it is. So in the Old Testament he is predicted, in the Gospels he's revealed, in the Acts he's preached, in the Epistles he's explained, and in the book of Revelation he's expected. Okay, we've got to stop there.

There's a few more minutes, but he's right. If you take your eyes off Jesus, you lose your way around the Bible. If you don't have the Bible, you have no understanding of history.

If you reject the Bible, you have what we are experiencing in our country today. All manner of chaos, people doing what's right in their own eyes, no peace, because there's no Christ. We need to share the good news, because that's the only thing that can bring people back for the purpose for which they were created, to know God and to make Him known and to live for His glory. Thanks for joining us on the Christian Real View. Hope to see you Friday night at the Christian Real View Speaker Series event.

Until next time, think biblically and live accordingly. We hope today's broadcast turned your heart toward God, His Word, and His Son. To order a CD copy of today's program, or sign up for our free weekly email, or to find out how you can be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, go to our website, thechristianworldview.org, or call us toll-free at 1-888-646-2233. The Christian World View is a weekly one-hour radio program that is furnished by the Overcomer Foundation and is supported by listeners and sponsors. Request one of our current resources with your donation of any amount. Go to thechristianworldview.org, or call us toll-free at 1-888-646-2233, or write to us at Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. That's Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Thanks for listening to The Christian World View. Until next time, think biblically and live accordingly.