TNG with Bill Federer

Best-selling author, speaker, and advocate for Christian apologetics, Dr. Alex McFarland. Best-selling author and apologist, Dylan Burrows. Together bringing you truth for a new generation, this is TNG Radio.

You know the very famous saying, those who don't learn from history are destined to repeat it. And with that statement, we welcome you to today's edition of TNG Radio. Alex McFarland here along with Dylan Burrows. Dylan, great to be with you again, talking about worldview and apologetics and Christianity and culture. And Dylan, I cannot say enough about the guest that we have with us today.

This is a person whose scholarship I have admired for many, many years, and we are so honored to bring to the mic William J. Federer. Many people will know him from so many books that he's written and edited. I'm holding in my hands the America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations that my parents gave me back in the mid-90s. Dylan, do you have that book, America's God and Country Quotation Book?

Yes, we have that in our library, and it's one that we've referred to many times over the years. I was amazed when I heard that it had sold over a half-million copies in its history, and it's influenced so many people in terms of the background of our country built on the foundations of Scripture and of people who believed in God. It's still such a powerful resource to those today, so we're thrilled to have Bill Federer with us. You may have heard him on American Minute Radio or on TCT Television with his television program, but just a man of many talents, and we welcome you to the show today. Well, Dylan, Alex, great to be with you. I know I've seen you at so many things like the FRC, the Family Research Council events, and different Council for National Policy, and we've had you to speak in our own Truth for a New Generation conferences, and of course we want to have you back again.

But how did you get into this? I mean, just briefly, give us a little bit of your journey and your testimony and how God raised you up to do what I believe is the very, very important work that you're doing, the work of scholarship. Well, as far as history goes, my dad was an attorney historian and the head of several historical societies, those big metal plaques that you see along the highway of history stuff.

Well, he would write those, and there's several in St. Louis. Then every vacation growing up, we'd stop at every French fort, Spanish fort, Indian reservation, Civil War battlefield, and he had a big library in the house, and that was my first taste of history. Really it wasn't until I became a Christian as an adult that I turned the corner on the cornfield and you see the rose line up. It's like all of a sudden the same history stories made sense, and it was this progression of freedom spreading so that God could be everything that God made him to be and ultimately preach the gospel and have people come to know the Lord. But the first book I did was, come off the press in 1994, and it's a collection of the God and country quotes, took about four years to put together. But since then I've done about 20 different books on Franklin Roosevelt and all his mentions of God, another one on the history of St. Patrick and the history of Christmas and the Santa Claus traditions, another one on George Washington Carver, another one on history of income tax, sort of lots of different topics.

One of the ones that I just did not too long ago, Miracles in American History with my wife. It's a collection of stories from our country's past where there's a crisis they pray and things turn around, the Revolution War of 1812, Civil War, Barbary Pirate War, and the one on Islam's very popular. Another one is the Who is the King in America? I go through, again, the most common form of government, world history as a king. As the centuries go on, the kingdoms get bigger because with military advance that you can kill more people.

But it goes back to that same fallen nature of king, kill, and able, and ultimately the king of England had the biggest empire. He was like a globalist, and America's founders decided to flip it and make the people the king. And so we pledge allegiance to the flag and to the republic. We're basically pledging allegiance to us being in charge of ourselves.

Not to a king. And so when somebody protests the flag, what they're saying is, I don't want to be the king anymore. I protest this system where the people participate in ruling. It's like, okay, the only alternative is a king and a dictator dictating it. You can go to North Korea and see that.

But anyway. Well, how did you come to have an interest in the study of Islam? Well, in reading through one of my books is called The Prayers and Presidents.

I read through every address by every past president, and now this was prior to the previous president, and I would excerpt out all their references to God, religion, faith, and so forth. But I couldn't help but see you had Thomas Jefferson talking about the Muslim Barbary pirates and capturing our American ships and James Madison having to send in Stephen Decatur to fight the Muslim Barbary pirates. And then Grover Cleveland writing about the bloody butchery of men, women, and children in Turkey made martyrs to their profession, their Christian faith. And he says the outbreaks of fanaticism in Muslim Turkey happens without notice.

And many of our missionaries over there are killed. And then Woodrow Wilson wanting to come to the rescue of the Armenians. Matter of fact, the first thing that the League of Nations was going to do was to recognize Armenia, this little sliver of a country over there.

Obviously, we said no, and that's when they killed a million and a half Armenians between 1915 and 1922. Teddy Roosevelt, I'm reading through his addresses, he's traveling the country trying to get America to come to the rescue of Armenia, and we don't. And then you read all the way through Herbert Hoover.

He was put on, you know, Warren G. Harding had him on staff, Secretary of Congress, Coolidge did, and then he's president. And then afterwards, Truman puts him on and then Eisenhower to come up with, you know, plans because, you know, he helped to feed Europe after the wars. But he came up with a plan for the Middle East peace.

And it was real simple. Take all the Arabs out of the Holy Land and bring them over to Iraq and invest some money in getting their irrigation ditches fixed that the Mongols had destroyed. Because he says this fertile Crescent Valley at one point supported 10 million people, and it's still there anyway. But I'm reading through these presidents and all of their addresses.

Richard Nixon's last address after he announced he was going to step down from being president, he says in the Middle East, we have to be careful that the cradle of civilization does not become its grave. And then when Keith Ellison, and he's in the news recently, he was going to become the first Muslim congressman swearing to office with his hand upon a Quran. And the left media went nuts and said, this is wonderful. He's going to swear into Congress with his hand on a Quran. And it just happens to be Jefferson's Quran.

And this is great. Jefferson must have loved Islam. It's like, hello, doesn't anybody know anything about the Barbary pirate wars? You know, the green anthem from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. Thomas Jefferson, the day after his inauguration, got a demand from the Pasha of Tripoli for a quarter of a million dollars extortion tribute payment, unless, and if he doesn't get, he's going to declare war on America. And Jefferson said, I did the only reasonable thing.

I sent in a squadron of our ships and as a Mediterranean to escort our commerce. And so it's like, here, they're so totally ignorant of history. I decided I'd put together a book about this. And as I got into the research, it sort of hit a vein, like when you're mining for gold or something, and it just uncovered all kinds of stuff. And I've compiled it into this book, What Every American Needs to Know About the Quran. And Bill, we need to take a break, but we're going to come back in just a moment and talk more with Bill Federer about what every American needs to know about the Quran here on TNG radio.

Stick with us. For centuries, the Bible has inspired humanity and shaped the very world we live in. But how do we know this book is the Word of God and not merely the words of men? What we believe about the Bible is based on what we believe about its source. The God Who Speaks explores the evidence of the Bible's inspiration and authority through some of the world's most respected biblical scholars. We have essentially a dual authorship. So it's true to say that Paul wrote Romans. It's equally true to say that God wrote Romans. He says, We saw this.

And that sets the Bible apart from almost everything else in the ancient world and its religious pantheon of gods and goddesses. The God Who Speaks is a feature-length documentary from the American Family Association. Available now at thegodwhospeeks.org. Pope Peter 3.15 tells us to be ready always to give an answer for the hope we have. We're instructed to be prepared to defend our faith. This is Alex McFarland for the Life Answers Teams, students we train at North Greenville University, a leading Christian college in South Carolina. The Life Answers Teams are made up of students who will inspire and equip your congregation. These apologetics teams we train speak in churches to youth groups and train Christians of all ages to address key issues of our times from a biblical perspective. Like is there a God?

Is the Bible true? What about gender and moral issues? Call me at 864-977-2008 and we will arrange for the Life Answers Team to come to your church and give a presentation that will benefit your people for years to come. 864-977-2008 and always be ready. Welcome back to TNG Radio.

Alex McFarland here with Dylan Burrows and Bill Federer. And Bill, I want to thank you for taking time to be with us on the program and I want to continue talking about the book that you wrote. We had you speak on it not too long ago, a couple of years ago, what every American needs to know about the Koran.

Bill, speak to this. For a moment, if you would, how is it that Islam has become almost like a protected class where people really, most leaders, most educators, most elected officials, most clergy would not dare say anything negative about Islam, although the record of Islam's history is negative enough. But how is it that Islam has become just untouchable and nobody can really critique or say anything negative here in the West? Whenever Muslims conquer a country, the people they conquer are forbidden to insult them and the people are called dhimmi, D-H-I-M-M-I. It's a second-class citizenship where they no longer have free speech.

The dhimmi, the non-Muslims, have to pay the taxes to support the Muslims and so providing healthcare and welfare and free food and so forth. And so, I actually spent several hours on the airplane with a 30-year military intelligence officer and the plane was delayed, so we're going through my laptop and PowerPoint and he said, this is fascinating history. He says, we were only taught to read the kite runner about a little boy that gets raped and how that's normal in Islamic culture and you have to be really sensitive to their culture and so forth. He says, we were just taught you have to be careful not to offend them.

I said, we have to understand we're sending them mixed signals. So, for 1400 years of Islamic history, they have certain behaviors that the conquered has to act and the conqueror acts. And so, for these 1400 years, whenever Muslims conquer a country, the conquered people are forbidden to insult them. And so, when we are going over to the Middle East and we are really careful not to insult them, we're posturing ourselves as having been conquered and actions speak a lot of the words. And so, when we have, remember a few years ago in Afghanistan, some Marines were walking down the street, a lady runs out and yells help. They go there in the backyard, they have a boy tied up and these Muslims are sodomizing him and the US Marines throw those guys down and free the boy and President Obama court-martialed the Marines for not being sensitive to their culture. And the Marines said, look, we joined because we were told Saddam Hussein was not treating his people right and what are we doing over here if we can't stand up for somebody that's being abused so obviously. And so, we see that under, you know, the initial time we go over there, under the bushes, we were positioning ourselves with strength. In Islam, they have a concept, when your enemy is strong, retreat.

When your enemy is weak, attack. It goes all the way back to Mohammed. So, for those not familiar, Mohammed was born in 570 AD.

In 610 AD, he starts his faith. His whole life he could not read and write. The word Quran means recitation, it's an oral thing. And so, Mohammed and his original followers could not read and he would go to different cities and hear about the different religions. The Persians were Zoroastrian, they believed that paradise was filled full of virgins or it would fulfill all the guys' desires. Lo and behold, some of those beliefs are reflected in Mohammed's beliefs.

In Mecca, they had a square building called the Kaaba that housed 360 different pagan gods and the most popular was Hulal, the moon god. Lo and behold, some of those beliefs get reflected in Mohammed's beliefs. There are some Jewish communities and some of those beliefs get reflected in even some Christian communities. An encyclopedia of Britannica even says that gospel was made known to Mohammed through apocryphal and heretical sources. So, he thought the Trinity was the Father Mary and Jesus. And so, some heretical Christian beliefs are reflected in Islam. Anyway, he goes into Mecca and from 610 AD to 622 AD, he's trying to make converts.

He only makes 70 converts in 12 years. He gets confrontational. And the people of Mecca decide to chase him out of town.

He has nowhere to go. He is, in a sense, a Muslim refugee. And so, he goes 210 miles to the north to a Jewish city called Medina. The Jews are nice. They let him in as a Muslim immigrant. And he goes into the minority neighborhoods and he begins to find people who have grievances against the Jewish controlled city and he begins to organize them into a following.

We're familiar with the term of organizing in the community. When his following gets large enough, he and his followers go to the Jews and pressure them to accommodate them politically. The Jews do. They make a treaty. Now, Mohammed's a political leader. And then Mohammed's followers back in Mecca get confrontational. They get chased out of town.

They have nowhere to go. They are Muslim refugees. They go to Medina as Muslim immigrants and Mohammed allows his followers to rob the caravans headed to Mecca in retaliation for the Meccans chasing them out of town. So, where Jesus said, if they take your coat, give them your shirt, Mohammed's attitude was if they take your house, you retaliate, take their caravan. So, Mohammed has 300 warriors and they rob caravans. He actually gets a whole chapter of the Quran. It's Surah 8, chapter 8.

The title of it is Spoils of War. He gets a whole chapter on how to distribute booty from robbing caravans. There's a verse 3350 that says, Allah has given you the slave girls as your booty. And so, within five years of Mohammed coming into the Jewish town of Medina, there's not a Jew left in town. They were driven out, killed, or enslaved. Within five years of Mohammed's death, every pre-existing culture in Arabia is wiped out. Within the next 50 years, the Muslims conquer Egypt, which used to be Christian, evangelized by Mark.

They wrote the Gospel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Muslims conquered Jerusalem, which had been a Byzantine Christian city since Constantine. Muslims conquered Syria, which had been completely Christian for six centuries, evangelized by the Apostle Paul. There used to be 250 Catholic diocese along North Africa.

They're all wiped out. In the year 711, they conquered Spain. They're finally stopped outside of Paris at the Battle of Tours in 732 AD, exactly 100 years after the death of Mohammed in 632 AD. They go from Arabia to Paris in a 100-year military campaign. And since this is the first century of Islam, there are those that look to this as their example, the same way Christians look to the first century of Christianity as our example.

We're going to come back and talk more about that, not only some of the history, but Islam in the news today. This is TNG Radio. You're listening to Bill Federer, a very well-known author and scholar. Bill, before we cut away to the break, what is your website, and how can people find your books? Well, thanks, Alex and Dylan. My website is Americanminute.com. Americanminute.com. Stay tuned.

TNG Radio is back after this. Our country is falling apart. Political unrest, social upheaval, the breakdown of the family, the rise of atheism, the rise of Islam. Our religious freedoms are under attack. There's gender fluidity.

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That's afastore.net. Welcome back to TNG Radio. Dylan Burrows, Alex McFarland, our guest. Bill Federer has been giving us kind of a little bit of a history lesson, and Bill, talk to us a little bit about some of the rise of Islam in the latter half of the 20th century, because I think for a lot of people, Islam really wasn't on the map too much until the late 70s, but some of the 20th century contextual framing of the rise of Islam for us, if you would. So oil is discovered in 1859 in Pennsylvania, the Drake Oil Well, and then in Oklahoma, and then in Baghdad.

That's right. And so we see this Ottoman Empire that began in 1071 in the middle and late 1800s. It's the sick man of Europe. I mean, here's Sultan Abdul Hamid II. He's got 13 wives. He's totally in debt. He's got these kingdoms wanting to break away Greece and Armenia and Bulgaria and Albania.

They're all wanting to break away. And he's like just exhibiting weakness and the European powers are getting interested. Suddenly, oil is discovered in Baghdad. And so when World War I starts, half of World War I took place in the Middle East. And obviously, Britain and the Allies win. And so just like they took a knife and carved up Europe after World War I, created some new country, Yugoslavia and so forth. Well, they did the same thing in the Middle East. After World War I, they carved it up and you had France take Syria and Lebanon as protectorates. And you had Britain take Egypt, Iraq and Palestine as protectorates. They wanted America to take Armenia. And we said no after World War I. And unfortunately, a million and a half Armenians were killed. Russia took a little sliver.

Italy wanted a little bit. Anyway, but the Ottoman Empire was gone. And so the Muslim world said, okay, look, all this fundamental Sultan religion stuff's not working. So you had a secular leader in Turkey named Ataturk. And he said, Mohammedism may have worked for tribes in the desert.

It is no good for a modern progressive state. He says all Islam is, is Arab politics. And so he rules Turkey from 1924 to 1938. Ataturk outlaws the Arabic language, outlaws the fezzes and the burkas, and changes the weekend from Friday, the Muslim holy day, to Saturday and Sunday. He's the first one to educate women.

And he dresses in business suits. So then you have Nasser in Egypt. And he wants to secularize Egypt. And you see pictures of Cairo, Egypt in the 1960s.

It looks like Southern California and the Beach Boys and the women in their swimming suits. And then you have Iran. They had a democratic election of a guy named Mazadek, and he was becoming too friendly with Russia. And so Eisenhower America does the first CIA plan to overthrow a leader.

It's called the Ajax operation. They overthrow Mazadek, and we install the Shah. The Shah's family had been there, but America placed the Shah in power.

And so guess what? You had the Shah in Iran, who was pro-American. Nasser in Egypt was wanting to secularize his country. You had Ataturk in Turkey. And it was moving in a westerly direction because we had airplanes, telephones, televisions, and they had, you know, mountains of sand.

And so it was looking pretty good until two things. One, the Muslim Brotherhood. It was started back in the 1700s. It was this fanatical desert wandering group of chopping off arms and legs. Even Lawrence of Arabia, who had helped during World War One, organized the Arabs to overthrow the Turks. He called the Wahhabism a puritanical Muslim heresy. Anyway, the Wahhabis team up with the Assad family. And in 1924, they capture Mecca and they go on to capture all of Arabia. That's why we call it Saudi Arabia. So the Saudis got control of Arabia by melding together with the Wahhabi, the most violent version of Islam. And so here in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, they still chop off arms and legs every week in chop chop square.

And so, uh, but that wasn't a big deal. It was 1938 standard oil company discovers oil in Saudi Arabia and in one generation Saudi Arabia goes from the poorest Muslim country to the richest Muslim country and they become a magnet for fundamentalism. The rest of the Muslim world says, why should we be more secular to be blessed? Let's be more fundamental like Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia used its money and influence to help support fundamentalist groups that branched off not just Wahhabi, but Muslim brotherhood, Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, ISIS, Taliban, Al Qaeda, all these groups basically trace themselves back to Wahhabism.

And as long as we've been buying oil from them, it's been spreading. And so, um, anyway, uh, in Islam, they have a concept when your enemy is strong retreat, when your enemy is weak attack. So these fundamentals groups would target the secular leaders. They would, you know, target the Shaw target, target Sadat in Egypt, target, uh, Lebanon and blow up a Marine barracks over there.

And as each Jimmy Carter abandoned the Shaw Reagan, I loved him, but he had us pull out of Lebanon and president Obama, uh, abandons our ally Mubarak and then takes out Qaddafi who at least was afraid of us and was in our circle of influence. And what happened is America showed weakness, and this is an encouragement to the fundamentalists. And they get as excited when we show weakness as when 1948, Israel became a nation again, and this enthusiasm sweeps through Christianity. Hey, the end times are here.

Jesus is coming back. When they see the West showing weakness, this is very invigorating to them. They think, Hey, it's going to happen. The whole world is going to submit to the will of Allah. So the weaker the dilemma is the nicer we show ourselves of being really careful not to offend them. The fundamental Muslims view that niceness as weakness, and that's an encouragement to them to become more aggressive. Well, we're going to have to pull away right now, but this is, uh, stirring information.

It's exciting stuff. And, you know, every generation of Christians, um, has a series of assignments from the Lord. I mean, we're always to be about the Great Commission, making disciples of all nations. And we may not like the assignment that's been handed to us, but one of the assignments in this era is that we faithfully proclaim Jesus to the Muslim world. We don't capitulate. We don't say that Muslims and Christians believe the same thing or have the same message.

They don't. The Word of God is clear. There's no Savior but the Lord Jesus Christ.

And certain Christian concepts like the Trinity and the deity of Christ that Jesus is God incarnate, some of those things Muslims find repugnant, but nevertheless we are to proclaim that gospel, and we've got to speak the truth, but we dare not cave in socially, politically, spiritually. We can't capitulate on the truth because there will be consequences in this life and the next for those who do. Thanks for listening to Truth For A New Generation radio. Truth For A New Generation, in association with Alex McFarland Evangelistic Ministries, helps to equip Christians with a biblical world view through conferences and camps. For information about upcoming events, visit truthforanewgeneration.com or give us a call at 877-YES-GOD-1. That's 877-YES-GOD and the number 1. TNG radio is made possible by the friends of Alex McFarland Evangelistic Ministries, PO Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina 27404. That's PO Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina 27404. Or give online at alexmcfarland.com or truthforanewgeneration.com. Thanks for listening and join us again next time as we bring you more truth for a new generation on TNG radio.