Will the US “Own Gaza”? and, Mis-ordered Love and Western Civilization

The United States will own Gaza? And how mis-prioritized love has contributed to the decline of Western civilization? Those are the topics we'll discuss today right here on the Christian Worldview Radio Program, where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. I'm David Wheaton, the host. The Christian Worldview is a listener-supported radio program. Our website is thechristianworldview.org, and the rest of our contact information will be given throughout today's program.

As always, thank you for your notes of encouragement, financial support, and lifting us up in prayer. On Tuesday, February 4th, 2025, President Trump, in a joint press conference at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, made a stunning declaration, and I quote, The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip. We'll own it.

I'll play the soundbite in just a minute. Not only did he say the U.S. will take over Gaza, but that the Palestinians there would be relocated, the U.S. would clean up the destruction from the Israel-Hamas War that has basically razed Gaza, develop the area into a kind of Mediterranean Riviera, and bring peace and prosperity to the Middle East. Sounds like a plan, truly the most audacious foreign policy plan or move by the U.S. in decades. We're talking about a portion of the historic nation of Israel, the one that God Almighty promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their descendants thousands of years ago, the one that is the epicenter of God's own plan for the end times. Will the U.S. really own a portion of Israel, or is this just a negotiating tactic on Trump's part? We'll discuss more in the opening segment today in the program.

Then, Jamie Bambrick, a pastor from Ireland and editor-in-chief of Clear Truth Media, will join us to discuss something called Ordo Amoris, which means Order of Love, and the misapplication of this biblical concept that has led to the decline of Western civilization in the United Kingdom and in the United States as well. But let's start with Trump's stunning announcement about Gaza. I just happened to turn on the news on Tuesday evening, February 4th, at 6 p.m. Central Time. And there I saw President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu holding a joint press conference at the White House. And I could not believe what I heard as Trump announced this plan for Gaza. The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too. We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous, unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area. Do a real job.

Do something different. Just can't go back. If you go back, it's going to end up the same way it has for 100 years. Now, in case you think that Trump was just being a little fast and loose with his words, as can be his tendency once in a while, he went on. I do see a long term ownership position and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East and maybe the entire Middle East.

And everybody I've spoken to, this was not a decision made lightly. Everybody I've spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent in a really magnificent area that nobody would know. Nobody can look because all they see is death and destruction and rubble and demolished buildings falling all over. Just a terrible, terrible site. I've studied it. I've studied this very closely over a lot of months and I've seen it from every different angle. And it's a very, very dangerous place to be.

And it's only going to get worse. And I think this is an idea that's gotten tremendous. And I'm talking about from the highest level of leadership, gotten tremendous praise. And if the United States can help to bring stability and peace in the Middle East, we'll do that. Well, all you can say is, whoa, quote, long term ownership position for the US in Gaza. Everybody loves the idea of the US owning that piece of land and developing it. Does that mean like a US territory in Israel?

Does this go on in perpetuity? And another sound buddy talked about how Palestinians are going to be relocated to other countries like Egypt and Jordan, who at this point apparently don't want them. So unless Trump is just flat out bluffing here, how else can this be interpreted than what he's actually saying? Many people anticipated that Trump would make significant moves in the Middle East. But no one saw this one coming, that the US would take ownership of Gaza, a portion of Israel in the southwest.

That is, except for perhaps Israel. I'm assuming Benjamin Netanyahu knew what Trump was going to say. And perhaps those inside Trump's own family knew this was in the works. After all, Trump's son in law, Jared Kushner, who was Jewish and married to Trump's daughter, Ivanka, who has converted to Judaism. He said similar things Kushner did about the relocation of Palestinians in Gaza and the value of the real estate there in an interview he did last year in March.

Listen to this. In Gaza's waterfront property, it could be very valuable to if people would focus on kind of building up livelihoods. You think about all the money that's gone into this tunnel network and into all the munitions, if that would have gone into education or innovation, what could have been done?

And so I think that it's a little bit of an unfortunate situation there. But I think from Israel's perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up. But I don't think that Israel has stated that there are real fears on the part of Arabs. And I'm sure you talk to a lot of them who think once Gazans leave Gaza, Netanyahu is never going to let them back in. Maybe, but I'm not sure there's much left of Gaza. So that was Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law, who said this back in an interview in March 2024, that Gaza's waterfront property is very valuable. We need to move the people out and clean it up. Then he was challenged by saying, well, will they let the people back in?

Long delay and said, well, maybe. Now, there's one more hint about this move in Gaza that has been going on for actually a couple of years now with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his speeches at the U.N. Back in September 2023, this is just shortly before Hamas pulled off this incredibly murderous rampage into Israel on October 7, 2023. So just shortly before that, Netanyahu was speaking at the U.N. where he held a map in his hand of the Middle East. And with a red marker, he drew a proposed trade route that went from India and the Indian Ocean right through Saudi Arabia, across the Middle East, directly through the southern part of Israel, right near where Gaza is, out into the Mediterranean Sea and then over into southern Europe. Here's what Prime Minister Netanyahu said in that speech to the U.N. in September 2023. We'll build a new corridor of peace and prosperity that connects Asia through the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel to Europe.

This is an extraordinary change, a monumental change. Notably, the map that he was holding in his hand had no mention of Gaza, just Israel there. And then in September of 2024, so just several months ago, he spoke to the U.N. again, and this time he brought two maps with him.

And he repeated again the proposal to create this trade route from South Asia going through Saudi Arabia, through Israel, across the Mediterranean into Europe. This is the map I presented here last year. It's a map of a blessing. It shows Israel, Israel and its Arab partners forming a land bridge connecting Asia and Europe between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.

Across this bridge, we will lay rail lines, energy pipelines, fiber optic cables, and this will serve the betterment of two billion people. Now look at this second map. It's a map. Look at the second map. It's a map of a curse.

It's a map of an arc of terror that Iran has created and imposed from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean. Again, that was Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech to the U.N. in September of 2024. This is before the election of Donald Trump. So putting this all together, clearly there have been some ideas about what to do with Gaza, because Israel doesn't want to continue to have to deal with their attacks. And when Trump won the presidency, the door of opportunity swung wide open to do something major, and hence the press conference we saw at the White House earlier this week. Now on the optimistic side, this move could be interpreted as the United States helping Israel. And the blessing that would go with that, according to God's promise to Abraham and Genesis, that those who bless you will be blessed and those who curse you will be cursed, referring to the Jewish people. The U.S. and Israel, I'm assuming together, would clean out and transform Gaza. It becomes a secure, livable tourist center, trade and economic destination. And Israel doesn't have this constant thorn along its southwest border.

That's the optimistic side. But on the skeptical side, the other possibility is that the United States owning Gaza actually puts ownership of some of Israel's God-given land into another country, our country, the United States, which would be against God's decree for the land not to be divided. Remember, God promised the land to Israel, not to the United States. So it would be one thing for the U.S. to help Israel to do what is in their interests going forward. After all, to the victors go the spoils. It's been the pattern of all of history that the victorious military decides what to do with the conquered and their land. But the fact that Trump is talking about this in terms of ownership and peace and security, but also in terms of development, leads me to believe that he views this as an economic opportunity for our country and perhaps an economic opportunity for his own family of real estate developers.

That's their business. And he may see it as an opportunity to be lauded and awarded as, quote, one who brought peace to the Middle East. So this is a monumental and risky move for President Trump to make, especially with the perceived conflict of interest, if his family is involved in development of Gaza. Now, again, this may be nothing more than Trump's tendency to negotiate this way by starting off by saying something grand, stating something radical in order to get Jordan and Egypt to accept the Palestinians from Gaza being relocated in those countries.

And then he can back off the U.S. owning Gaza later. But I'm not so sure about that. He was not coy with his words in that press conference.

He was very clear. And only time will tell. But here's what makes me very concerned. Is this even constitutionally legal? Do our representatives get the opportunity to vote on this? Owning Gaza was never mentioned as a policy platform in Trump's campaign. Will we as U.S. taxpayers be paying for the cleanup and development and security of Gaza?

Now, there are huge natural gas reserves waiting to be tapped in the Mediterranean Sea. There's economic potential in Gaza if it's redeveloped. And this could be payment for the U.S. to do this work of cleaning up and developing Gaza. Another concern is if the Palestinians don't go into neighboring countries, would they be brought to America? I certainly hope not with the way they've lived in a culture of hatred and death for generations.

Another concern. This seems like the U.S. getting involved in another attempt at nation building in the Middle East, especially nation building in Israel itself. This is a long term project to do something like this. Probably 15, 20, 25 years. Trump may not have all this power even in two years from now, let alone four years when he'll be out of office. What happens if and when Democrats get back in power? How will this huge initiative go on from there? Or what about the violent resistance that is sure to come over the U.S. being involved in the Middle East in this way? The enemies of Israel and the United States are not going to take this sitting down. The claiming of what Muslims consider to be their land, especially with the Palestinian cause being the top cause of all Muslims around the world. Even though they don't want to take the Palestinians in, it's all about hatred for Israel and Israel's destruction. And the Palestinian problem is a useful tool for them to hold against Israel at all times, to have this Palestinian problem. And once U.S. troops and once U.S. citizens and military get over there, I can just see the suicide missions, cars and trucks blowing up at the security gates in Gaza, killing our troops, taking hostages.

Trump may say there won't be any U.S. troops in Gaza, but how is that believable? If we own it, we must be able to defend it. Frankly, it's eerie to consider the U.S. owning Gaza, one of the five cities of the ancient Philistines, the intractable arch enemy of Israel, as in the giant Goliath. The Philistines were the ones who gouged out Samson's eyes and brought him to Gaza, where Samson pulled down the pillars of their temple, killing their leaders and himself.

The term Palestine or Palestinian, that's derived from the word for Philistine. This is land God gave to the Jews, not to the U.S. Now, if Israel wants to take over and develop Gaza with U.S. support, I think that's very justifiable. God promises to protect the Jewish people, despite the fact that they are in a current state of rebellion against God now.

He doesn't promise to protect the United States, though. Scripture does say, in Ezekiel 38 and 39, which Soren Kern, the managing editor of the Christian worldview journal, writes about in the upcoming February issue, Scripture says that there will be prosperity and peace in Israel before this Gog and Magog invasion. Like, there'll be unwalled villages in Israel where Israel feels secure. But then this invasion happens and Israel has no chance, but then God miraculously saves Israel and they finally turn to him because that's the only answer why they weren't annihilated.

So this ownership of Gaza plan may lead to some short-term peace and prosperity because the other Arab countries who will sign the Abraham Accords want the economic benefit as well. But I can't see Turkey and Iran, sworn enemies of Israel, or even Russia and China, they're not going to want to see an ascending Israel in the United States. And they will try to do things to hinder this and subvert it. And Satan himself is not going away. He hates the Jewish people and is going to try to destroy them as he has throughout history.

Just one final word on this. It's interesting to watch the reaction by the media, just by regular people and also Christians. Some of the media think this is just another news story and don't realize the huge implications with Israel in the Middle East in light of the end times. But of course, how could they? They're not reading the Bible. They're not saved. This isn't on their radar. But it's also interesting to read the posts of many Christians who are totally in favor of the U.S. owning and developing Gaza. What a great idea!

Go Trump! And the reason this is, is because Christians have widely different understandings or interpretations of the end times. People who are post-millennial in their eschatology think the world is going to be Christianized before Christ returns. So this move in Gaza would be a great step to push back against Islam in the Middle East and build Christian America's influence around the world. Amillennialists believe we're in the millennium right now, kind of a spiritual millennium where Christ is reigning, and that the church has replaced Israel. So amillennialists think, let's not waste our money and energy in Israel because there's no significance there, or just do whatever you can so there's peace over there.

The situation in Israel is not much different than any conflict anywhere else in the world. Now we at the Christian worldview are premillennial. That means we see that Christ is going to return before a literal 1,000 year reign on earth. And we see that there's a seven year tribulation before that millennium, and also a rapture of the church. And we see Israel as God's chosen nation that Christ will save when he returns. Israel, according to those with a premillennial view, Israel is the centerpiece of God's end times plans. And that's why we see this as so significant, and that's why we pay close attention and we pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

So buckle up. It looks like the end times will be coming in sharper focus ahead. We'll take a two minute break for some ministry updates.

Stay with us because next segment, Jamie Bambrick will join us all the way from Ireland to discuss how misprioritized love has contributed to the decline of Western civilization. I'm David Wheaton and you are listening to the Christian worldview radio program. We are excited to announce our new monthly print publication called the Christian worldview journal.

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Jamie Bambrick, pastor in Ireland and editor in chief of Clear Truth Media, joins us now to discuss how misprioritized love has contributed to the decline of Western civilization in the UK and the US. Jamie, thank you for coming on the Christian worldview radio program today. Tell us about your background, how you became a follower of Christ and what your life is like now. Thank you so much for having me.

It's a pleasure to be with you and to be able to speak with your audience as well. So I am from Belfast, Northern Ireland, very proudly so. I grew up in a Christian home, came to faith really in my teenage years.

I think like a lot of people who grew up in a Christian environment. Yeah, I had a little wobble there, you know, in my early teenage years, but I came to faith in a meaningful way at about the age of 16 years old. And very early on then in that journey, since the call to pastoral ministry and church leadership, then went to Sweden actually and trained there and ended up living out there for a few years. Also met my wife.

We met there, but she's actually from Bulgaria, so all very international. Then we moved back to Northern Ireland. I've done a number of different pastoral rules like associate pastor, site pastor, things like that in different churches, both here in Belfast and then over in England. And then when 2020 happened, I really sensed that the church needed to speak into some of the issues that were happening in our culture in a more direct and clear way. So I ended up doing a couple of things.

One of them was joining a church were free to do that and that was taking some of those stances. And I've been on staff there for a couple of years. And I've also been producing then content that I've been putting out onto the Internet in the form of primarily YouTube videos and interacting with culture from Christian perspective, as well as being part of Clear Truth Media, which is an online media sort of organization slash website that does something similar more on the articles side of things. So that's my day to day.

I've got two boys as well as my lovely wife. Jamie, you brought up the videos that you make, and I think that's where I first heard about you when you made a variation video of the He Gets Us campaign ad that aired in the Super Bowl in 2024 that portrayed Christianity as about feet washing and not quote unquote hate, sort of this social justice version of the faith. Well, you did a variation on this 60 second ad, and we have both videos linked side by side on our website, theChristianrealview.org.

I really encourage you to watch both of them. But your video didn't portray Jesus' top priority to be a foot washer, but to be a savior. Tell us about the genesis of that video and what the result has been. Unlike a lot of Christians, I think it was frustrated by the message that that ad portrayed and the reflection that it also gave to the world of Christians as being the sort of judgmental, nasty people, but that the only sort of real biblical version of the gospel was to then compromise and to say that, well, when it comes to the sins of our age, Jesus' only response is to basically give it a thumbs up. So I wanted to give a message that I felt was much more reflective of both scripture, but also the attitude of Christians, which is that we want to see people save from their sins. So I did a version where it had images and rather than reflecting a sort of social justice, you could say culturally Marxist or left wing mindset, I showed images of people that had come out of different sinful lifestyles and it was former this, former that, former the other, all true testimonies as well.

So there was someone who was formerly transgender, a former abortionist, former KKK member, a former lesbian activist, a whole bunch of different formers. And that just took off. I think it resonated with Christians. And I think it gave a much clearer presentation of the gospel than the original did. So by the grace of God, that ended up being something of a response, I think, for a lot of people. And it was just one of those things that I put together quickly and didn't expect to go anywhere near to the level that it did.

But it did end up making a little bit of a splash, which was wonderful to see actually. Yeah, it was wonderful to see, not just because the video had a lot of views, but the fact that it was, like you said, representative of really why Jesus came to save sinners and the transformation that he makes in a born again life. Again, you can see both 60-second ads on our website, thechristianrealview.org. Jamie Bambrick is our guest today here on The Christian Real View.

He is the associate pastor of Hope Church in Craigavon, Ireland. Let's talk about the changing culture in the UK. Now, the UK is made up of four entities, you know, of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Ireland's a separate country, but maybe all part of the British Isles, you could say.

I'll just read what you actually posted online. It said, one of the biggest scandals in the history of the UK with an estimated, and this is an incredible number, 250,000 white girls falling victim to systemic abuse has been ignored and covered up. The media, the police, the government, even the church don't seem to care. Maybe you could explain more about this cover-up scandal and the rape of young British girls and why it's an important story to understand about what's been happening in the UK. To give context, in many UK cities, there are significant Islamic enclaves. This is a relatively new thing that really began in the mid-90s as we saw mass immigration and an effort to produce what they termed as a multicultural society, which basically means mass immigration without integration. And so what we have seen, and it's been uncovered over a long period and slowly has come to light the extent of what has gone on, but there are a lot of towns and small cities throughout the UK, particularly in England, many of them in the north of England, which is the sort of more impoverished working class area of England, so the equivalent to an American audience. It would be more like your flyover country versus your coastal elites.

The equivalent of the UK is London and the south, and then your lesser culturally elite regions would be the north. And these areas experience this extraordinary amount, I mean truly terrifying, of essentially mass sexual assault by, yes, Pakistani grooming gangs. And grooming gangs, I think, is a sanitizing term, actually.

I don't know if I can be as graphic as this, but the term rape would really be what happened there, where these girls were being assaulted at an enormous scale. About 83% of those involved in the grooming gangs were Muslims, 80% were of Pakistani origin in that entire time period. And so you have these various cities such as Rotherham, you have Rochester, Telford, and the numbers are staggering. For a certain period there, if you were in, for instance, I believe it was Rochester, no sorry, Rochdale, sorry, easy to get those two mixed up, a white British girl of her teenage years had about a one in three chance of being sexually assaulted by these men. When it comes to the Muslim populations of these towns, in Rochdale it was one in every 280 Muslim males was prosecuted for this, in Telford it was one in 126, and in Rotherham it was one in every 73. So this was an extraordinarily well-known thing that was happening in the communities.

Everybody in those Pakistani communities knew about it. And what perhaps is most startling about all of this was the response of the police and the government. The police did not investigate what happened for fears of being called Islamophobic or racist. They actually on many occasions arrested fathers who were trying to get their girls out of these homes where this was happening. They accused men who were trying to rescue their daughters of racism and of harassment, and many times also ignored the girls. There's a horrific story of a girl who was accosted in a police station after having reported this, and was taken out to a car outside and assaulted further out there multiple times by multiple men. The government likewise has done absolutely nothing about it.

The government had the opportunity to do an inquiry into all of this, and overwhelmingly rejected the opportunity to do so. And very interestingly, the head of prosecutions in the UK at that time was our current Prime Minister, Keir Starmer. So this has been one of those things where these girls were offered up on the altar of liberalism and multiculturalism, and no one would do anything about it. And more and more has come out over time, which is why it's been back in the news cycle, particularly with the government being under pressure to have an inquiry and rejecting the chance to do so.

But it's really been stunning just how truly evil and how widespread this was. What this is representative of is something even much bigger about a worldview change that's taken place in the UK that wants to look the other way at the really unwise ideas of bringing a completely different culture and basically changing your own nation. You mentioned earlier in your answer there about just the changing demographics, how many Muslim immigrants are now in England. Jamie, do you think it's sort of inevitable now that there's going to be a cultural change forever in your nation from a standpoint of, you hear that there's Muslim mayors, I think even in London, a lot of other towns. Has England been changed forever at this point?

I think the most popular baby boy name is Mohammed in the country. What do you see as the future here for England? It certainly is getting to that point, yes.

It's hard to tell exactly if it could be returned. It certainly could not be returned to anything like its former state without extraordinary measures being taken and ones that perhaps would not be pretty and would look something alike. And I'm not suggesting this should be the case but would look something like a civil war. It truly is startling what has happened. As you said, yes, the mayor of London is a Muslim. The first minister of Scotland for the last couple of years up until about six months ago was a Muslim. We've seen extraordinary growth of Islam. So the Islamic population between 2001 and 2009 was growing at ten times the rest of the population. So it has got to the point at the minute where it's about six and a half percent Islamic.

Now that might not sound that enormous. But to put it into context, the current Labour government won a landslide victory despite having only received votes from 13 and a half percent of the population. The Islamic population in the UK votes as essentially one bloc.

They all vote together. So we do what we have done and we see growth that looks like that for another ten years. There is a very realistic possibility of having something like a Sharia-based Islamic political party running the country. So it is certainly something that I think the population is unlikely to recover from, barring some, number one, an extraordinary revival and or some extraordinary political action.

Probably both. I think without that the UK will never be the same again. As an overtly Christian nation in the history of the UK and in England and just during the Reformation and everything else, it's almost incomprehensible.

I'm going to ask you in a second, Jamie, the worldview that's led to that, to dive into that a little bit more. But there's one other issue besides the immigrations of Muslims that has been welcomed and allowed in the UK. There's actually been a strong, you could almost call it a persecution of Christians. Christians being arrested for just praying on a sidewalk outside of an abortion clinic over in England, or even criticising the government. I know there's some recent uprisings, there's some unrest over there. It sounds like people who don't have the same constitutional liberties we have in our country for free speech, but this is something that was previously not really well known or happening in the UK, where Christians were really arrested and persecuted for just praying or speaking freely.

What is going on with that particular dynamic in the UK? So there were two particular incidents that are probably of most note, which were people being arrested for praying in their heads in the vicinity of abortion clinics. So one of those was a woman called Isabel Oakeshott, I believe.

Am I right in that? Anyway, I may be incorrect, but I'm pretty confident that's her name, who is a pro-life activist and was standing near an abortion clinic, praying silently in her head. So no intimidation, no harassment going on, just simply standing there and praying against the evil of abortion, completely silently, and was asked by the police if she was praying in her head.

And she said, well, I might be, in which case they did go on to arrest her. And similarly, another man, Adam Smith Connor, was having a child with a woman and encouraged her to have an abortion, has since repented of that and was standing outside that abortion clinic and praying for the souls of children in there. And once again, arrested and prosecuted, fined for doing so. So what we have functionally in the UK now is thought crime.

You're not allowed to think certain things in the vicinity of an abortion clinic. So, yes, there's been an enormous push against free speech and even free thought within the UK. Just literally two days ago, we had a man arrested for burning a Quran in solidarity with a man in Sweden who was assassinated by Muslims for burning a Quran, a Christian Iraqi, actually, who had done that.

And this man was likewise arrested here in the UK for doing that. So the clampdown on free speech and in particular, I would say in particular, Christian free speech, the ability of Christians to voice their opinions, that's been something that has really picked up and particularly under this current government who have no regard for freedom of speech or freedom of expression at all. It really is very, very concerning for Christians and I think it should be concerning for everybody. Jamie Bambrick is our guest today here on The Christian Real View, the Associate Pastor of Hope Church in Craigavon, Ireland. He's also the Editor-in-Chief of Clear Truth Media.

We have links to him on our website, thechristianrealview.org. Just one more question on this particular issue of what's going on in the UK. And it has to do with the worldview that has allowed these developments to happen. What exactly changed, do you think, in the psyche of the leaders of the UK or the people that has moved in this direction of, like you mentioned just early on in our conversation, of multiculturalism, the idea that that was going to be a net positive for your country, and now where it's led to the clampdown on not only freedom of speech but freedom of thought. What got your country there? We know we have a lot of this in America as well, so I'm not like, what's wrong with you guys? What led you to the place that it is today?

It's hard to put it down to just one thing. I would say that ultimately this at its root is a manifestation of what you might call cultural Marxism. That's what I would put it down to, which is really the idea that rather than Marx's sort of original idea, which some of your listeners may know, we'll not get into all the weeds, but the idea that society can be divided up into the economically wealthy and the economically impoverished and that really the impoverished are on the side of the good in all of that. It's dividing it up into these different areas of culture where you have the oppressed and the oppressors. And within the oppressed category, you would have things like Islam.

You would also have within that LGBTQAI plus all of the acronym that goes on forever and ever various other things. You know, ethnic minority status and so on all receive this sort of morally upright position of being considered oppressed. And contrary to that, then you would have the oppressor categories, which would be straight, white, male and Christian. And I think that on a massive scale, our culture and in particular also our elite institutions, and I would include within that our media, our universities and our government.

They have really bought into this narrative. And so what that has meant is, well, that everything that has been built by quote unquote oppressors is worthy of being torn down and denigrated. And similarly, those who maybe fit in that oppressed category, they can't really be criticized. So, you know, Islam, whilst being really throughout the world today and a very extremist religion in many ways, that doesn't mean every Muslim is an extremist, but it does persecute people of other faiths at a rate unlike any other religion.

It has a history of doing that. The beliefs of Islam and the actions of Mohammed and even his relationship with Aisha, who was his six year old bride, make things like what we've heard happening in that community somewhat plausible. Actually, again, it doesn't mean every single Muslim is guilty by association. But nonetheless, it is a religion that harbors these things.

People have been very reticent to criticize anyone from that community. So I would say that's probably one of the main areas where people have bought into this idea of oppressed and oppressor and have therefore sought to fight those who they think are in the oppressor categories, even if they themselves have done no actual oppressing. So that would be probably one of the starting points. I think that's a very accurate starting point. And I think it also has to do with this next subject. We're going to discuss this idea of a misplaced empathy. All right, Pastor Jamie Bambrick from Ireland is our guest.

And after this short break, we'll get into what's called Ordo Amoris and how misapplying the biblical basis for ordering our love leads to all manner of problems. I'm David Wheaton. You are listening to the Christian worldview radio program. David Wheaton here to announce that registration is now open for the Overcomer Course for Young Adults, June 20th and 21st at Stonehouse Farm in Jordan, Minnesota. In eight interactive sessions over two days addressing life's most important issues, the Overcomer Course is designed to help young adults gain clarity and conviction on God's plan and their purpose in it. Pastor Matt Morrell, Pastor Ace Davis and I will be the speakers. To foster personal interaction, the course is limited to 40 young adults with meals, activities and free time between sessions. Stonehouse Farm is just 40 minutes from Minneapolis Airport.

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In Matthew 24, Jesus called for his disciples to be discerning, watchful, endure persecution and be prepared and faithful in the lead up to his return. This is what The Christian Worldview Journal will aim to do each month in three articles on current events and issues of the faith, including by Christian geopolitical analyst Soren Kern, who is the managing editor of the journal. You'll also find featured resources, ministry news and more in this 12-page full-color publication. Everyone on our mailing list will receive The Christian Worldview Journal through the February 2025 issue. Starting in March, all Christian Worldview partners will receive it. To sign up for the journal, go to theChristianworldview.org or call 1-888-646-2233 or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. Welcome back to The Christian Worldview. I'm David Wheaton.

Be sure to visit theChristianworldview.org where you can sign up for our weekly email, The Christian Worldview Journal monthly print publication, order resources for adults and children and support the ministry. Our topic today is how misprioritized love has contributed to the decline of Western civilization, and Pastor Jamie Bambrick from Ireland is our guest. Jamie, recently our Vice President J.D. Vance did an interview where he said something that seemed so common sensical but caused all sorts of outrage.

Here's what he said. There's this old school, and I think it's a very Christian concept, by the way, that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that. They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside their own borders. That is no way to run a society, and I think the profound difference that Donald Trump brings to the leadership of this country is the simple concept, America first.

It doesn't mean you hate anybody else. It means that you have leadership, and President Trump has been very clear about this, that puts the interests of American citizens first. In the same way that the British Prime Minister should care about Brits and the French should care about the French, we have an American president who cares primarily about Americans, and that's a very welcome change.

What he said there was very interesting, after what you've told us in this first part of our conversation. People have this empathy, this love, so to speak, for those who are outside their countries and those who aren't close to them, poor Muslims or poor whoever, and they don't prioritize the very people within their own families, their churches, their communities, and so forth. It's a misplaced empathy. Now, Christ Himself said, when He was asked in Mark 12, one of the scribes came and heard them arguing, He recognized that, He answered, He said, What commandment is the foremost of all? Jesus answered, The foremost is, Hero Israel, the Lord our God, is one, one Lord, and you shall love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.

And so, knowing these are the greatest commandments, it's a summary of the law, of course. This debate started to arise, mainly on social media and elsewhere, about something called the Ordo Amoris. In other words, that's the order of love.

So Jamie, explain what J.D. Vance was saying there in terms of that concept of Ordo Amoris. Where did that actually come from, that concept? And is it a biblical concept to actually focus your main priority and love on those, and your family first, and then your church, and then your neighbors, and then work outward from there? It is definitely, I think, a biblical concept, and he is right when he says it's a Christian concept.

So the idea originally was formed, we'll get into scriptures that back this up, but to give a little bit of history from the church history side, Augustine of Hippo was probably the first one to outline this idea. He said, in the first place, therefore, he must care for his own household, for the order of nature and human society itself gives him readier access to them and greater opportunity of caring for them. So he's very explicit there, Augustine, that you actually have to love and prioritize your own family and your own household.

First, Thomas Aquinas developed this further, saying the same thing. We ought to love one neighbor more than another. And similarly, even John Calvin talks about this, saying that if unbelievers, essentially I'm not giving the whole quote, but he says, you know, if unbelievers are able to love their own family and their own people, first and foremost, we would be monsters if we do not do the same. So this has been the broad teaching of the church. It has been the teaching of both the Catholic and the Protestant Church, that actually you do have a primary responsibility to people near you.

And then that responsibility diminishes as people get further from you. And there are a number of scriptures that I think very, very clearly express this. First Timothy 5, it would be one of the most prominent ones where Paul says, if anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

So there's that idea of you have to especially provide for your own household. In Galatians 6, 10, we see that idea of the church maybe being the next ring outside of this, where Paul says, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, especially those who are of the household of faith. And even this idea of prioritizing your own nation, this is something Paul does very explicitly.

Actually, there's a lot of examples of this. Paul himself says, I wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. The Israelites, he then goes on to make that very clear that that's who he's talking about. He has a particular love and a particular affection for his own people, even Jesus. What does Jesus say?

He says, you know, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, even in his human nature, the finite limitations that his human nature, not saying that he was finite in his divine nature, but in his human nature, he was sent and prioritized his own people and his own nation first and foremost. So this is an extremely biblical and very common sense doctrine. Actually, there's very few people that are saying, no, you shouldn't do this. We're willing to give me any of their children's inheritance money, I find, to pay my mortgage, which, you know, whilst I would like that, is right. They are correct in not wanting to do that. They should prioritize their own children over me.

But yet when J.D. Vance says this and says, well, actually, that's also how we should function as a nation, that we have a priority for our own nation first and foremost, he's getting a lot of criticism, which I think is entirely unjust and inconsistent, both with their own actions, but also with the Bible. People are probably thinking, well, that sounds reasonable. You take care of your own first and then your church and then your neighbors and then you kind of go out in concentric circles in your country first before you care about other places around the world. Not that you hate them or don't like them or don't wish them well and don't help when you can, but there's an order to it. That's not the reaction, as you just mentioned, that was all over social media and even the news that people were just outraged that you would love your own because God loved the whole world and everyone's our neighbor. Look at the parable Christ gave of the Samaritan who goes along and the Jewish clergy don't help the man who's been beat up, but the Samaritan does.

That just shows you that we can't focus on those closest to us first. As a matter of fact, I'm going to play just a 30-second sound bite from a man who you actually posted a video of who made a video on this in objection to what J.D. Vance has said.

Dr. Krishkendiya, I think is maybe the way you pronounce it. He had a much different take on this. I'll just play 30 seconds for you and get a follow-up from you afterwards. All right, we're running out of time, but next week we'll play that sound bite about loving everyone in the world in equal measure and hear how Jamie responds to that. We'll also get into how some notable conservative influencers like Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson are investigating the claims of Christ in Scripture. We'll play the audio of a Christian apologist that Joe Rogan recently had on his program. Also joining us next week is podcaster Natasha Crane who has a new book about Christians living in a hostile culture. She also has an article in the February issue of the Christian worldview journal on quote, the vibe shift taking place in our country right now with Trump as the new president.

I think you're also going to really benefit from reading Soren Kern's column on the prophesied Gog and Magog invasion and I contributed a column titled Remarkable Trump, Omnipotent God. Our entire mailing list will receive the February issue of the journal which is being sent out in about a week or so. Then for the March issue, the journal will be sent to just Christian worldview partners. So if you'd like to become a Christian worldview partner, just go to thechristianrealview.org or give us a call at 888-646-2233. Just a reminder to tell the young adults in your life and church about the Overcomer Course, June 20th and 21st here in Minnesota.

The course addresses eight foundational topics about life and the faith that are critical for young adults to understand and apply. Details at thechristianrealview.org. Thank you for joining us today on the Christian worldview and for your support of this nonprofit radio ministry. I also want to thank the staff of the Christian worldview who do so much and are so dedicated from Brody to Rich and Rosie to Kelly, Alicia and Soren and Monica to Ben and all the various and important roles you perform.

Thank you. In closing, let's remember to pray for the situation going on in Israel and pray and look for opportunities to proclaim that Jesus Christ is the way and the truth and the life and that no one comes to the Father except through Him. So until next time, think biblically, live accordingly and stand firm. The mission of the Christian worldview is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. We hope today's broadcast encouraged you toward that end. To hear a replay of today's program, order a transcript or find out what must I do to be saved, go to thechristianworldview.org or call toll-free 1-888-646-2233. The Christian worldview is a listener-supported nonprofit radio ministry furnished by the Overcomer Foundation. To make a donation, become a Christian worldview partner, order resources, subscribe to our free newsletter, or contact us, visit thechristianworldview.org, or call 1-888-646-2233 or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. That's Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. Thanks for listening to The Christian Worldview.