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April 12, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show
50:38
Franklin Graham | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 90
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God can use this to get our attention as the world, not just a nation, but the world, to look to Him and to put our faith and trust in Him.
On March 20th, Italy had 47,000 COVID-19 cases with over 4,000 deaths.
More than half of those deaths came from the Lombardy region, where the town of Cremona is located, just outside of Milan.
That's the day Samaritan's Purse came to Cremona.
Samaritan's Purse is a non-denominational evangelical Christian organization providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world.
In 36 hours, Samaritan's Purse had a 68-bed field hospital set up in the Cremona Hospital parking lot, aiding the coronavirus relief.
Then, come April 1st, they also set up a field hospital in the middle of Central Park in New York City, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States.
My guest today is Franklin Graham, president and CEO of Samaritan's Purse, and the son of world-famous evangelical Billy Graham, who's considered to be one of the most influential Christian leaders of all time.
Carrying on that legacy, Franklin has become a Christian leader in his own right, meeting privately with five U.S.
presidents and world leaders from Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as responding to global crises in over 100 countries through Samaritan's Purse.
He's also the president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelist Association.
On this Easter Sunday, we talk about the inspiring stories of hope from the coronavirus pandemic, Franklin's thoughts on how the Trump presidency has been going, his father's legacy, and the age-old question of why bad things happen to good people.
Franklin Graham, thanks so much for stopping by the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday specials.
So I have a lot I want to get to with you, discuss your father's legacy and where you stand on President Trump.
We'll talk politics, but obviously we have to start with the situation with regard to coronavirus.
First of all, how's your family dealing with all of this?
I hope that you're doing okay.
We're all doing fine.
Doing the work God has called us to, Ben.
We don't slow down, we just keep going forward.
Well, I definitely appreciate your work, and we're going to get to that in just a second.
I want to ask you, there are a lot of religious people in the United States who right now are deeply troubled by all of the calls by state and local governments to shut down churches.
There are people who work with me here at Daily Wire who have been upset that the government has deemed churches non-essential for purposes of shutting them down and shutting down mass gatherings right now.
As a religious person, what's your perspective on the government telling people to stay home from church?
Christians ought to do.
I mean, we're approaching Easter season.
Well, first of all, I think we need to obey those that are in authority.
That's what the Bible teaches, and so I think it's very important that we do that.
The churches are not shut down.
I think more people are attending online services than they did when you were meeting in person.
There's something about this virus that has put fear and anxiety in people's hearts, so I think just more people are online, and they're participating that way.
So the church needs to continue to be the church, but I just would encourage pastors across the country to obey those that are in authority, and I think that's what the congregations would expect us to do.
Yeah, I mean, as an Orthodox Jew myself, I've been encouraging people to stay home from synagogue, which has been a tall order in some sectors, and it seems to me that actually it's a fairly large-scale desecration of God's name when there's video and pictures of people going en masse to religious institutions in violation of government edicts that are specifically designed to prevent massive loss of life.
You know, and we do have to be careful, Ben, because this is a very infectious and it's a deadly virus, especially those that have underlying health issues.
This could be a death sentence.
And so we just have to be extremely careful.
But I don't think we should stop doing the work that God has called us to do.
But we do need to be careful.
I think practicing social distancing, these types of things, is wise.
Of course, as Samaritan's Purse, we're at work.
Some of my people are working from home.
The essential people have to come to the office.
So we're still working.
We haven't missed anything.
We just have to work a little differently than we're used to doing.
So let's talk about some of the things that Samaritan's Purse is doing around the country and around the globe in order to combat coronavirus.
It really is an amazing organization.
What you guys have been doing in order to help people is truly incredible.
What are some of the things that Samaritan's Purse has been doing, not only in the United States, but abroad?
Well, about three weeks ago, we sent an emergency field hospital to Cremona in northern Italy, outside of Milan, about 50 miles out of Milan.
This is the epicenter for the coronavirus in Italy.
And we've got a 68 Bedfield Hospital.
We're working in conjunction with a local hospital.
But we have about 70 personnel there right now.
These are doctors and nurses and technicians that are working in that hospital trying to save life in Northern Italy.
And that is a very important place for us to be, because the Italians were not getting any assistance from anybody in the world.
And I think when we showed up, it gave them a ray of hope that somebody's listening, somebody cares, and they're here helping us.
And so, of course, as a Christian organization, Ben, we always feel that we should respond in Jesus' name.
That's what we do.
And as Christians, we want people to know that God loves them, that God hasn't forgotten them.
He hasn't turned his back on them.
And then just last week, we got a call from New York City asking if we'd be willing to put a hospital there.
And we've always kept two hospitals in stock in our warehouse.
These are the same hospitals that the U.S.
military, basically the same, that the U.S.
military uses.
We have military, former military doctors that work for us.
So we go to the same vendors.
And we buy the same hospitals that the U.S.
military does.
We make them a little different for our applications, but they have operating theaters, they have intensive care units, they have laboratory, we're able to do the sterilizations, everything that a hospital would do.
We can do it.
But for the coronavirus, it's for respiratory, so we don't need operating theaters for the respiratory care.
So we mix it up a little bit differently.
We bring in, of course, more ventilators than you would normally.
And that's what we've got set up in Corona.
And then now in New York City, when they were asked this last week, we set a team up there.
Over the weekend, we were given Central Park, right across from Mount Sinai, Hospital of the East Meadows, that's 98th and 5th Avenue.
And so we've set up, and actually today, I mean the last three days we've been putting the hospital together.
Today we received our first patient, so they believe that we'll be full maybe before the end of this day, I don't know.
We're there to serve the people of New York, anyone who comes, it doesn't matter who they are, Ben, we're going to help them, we're going to love them, we're going to care for them, and we're going to give them the best medical care that we possibly can.
We're not going to give anything less than best.
I read an article, maybe you read it too, about a person there in New York who lost a loved one in the hospital, and the wife was distraught because she could not be in the hospital with her husband as he died.
And so she said he died alone, and how sad and how much remorse she had that her husband died alone.
Well, I hope and pray no one dies in our hospital, but if they do, I can promise you, Ben, they're not going to die alone.
Our doctors and nurses will surround them, be praying for them, holding their hand until they take their last breath.
And I just want all relatives to know, if they come to our hospital, we'll take care of them, and we're going to show them compassion and love, the same that the Lord Jesus Christ would.
I mean, one of the things that's amazed me is not only the good work that you guys are doing, but also some of the reaction to that good work.
So, naturally, Twitter, which is just a repository of all stupidity, known to man, there's a bit of an issue today and over the last few days about Samaritan's Purse being behind the hospital.
people in New York shocked to learn, some radicals in New York shocked to learn that Samaritan's Purse is a Christian organization that has a Christian view of particular biblical edicts, including the fact that Samaritan's Purse believes that homosexual activity is a sin.
And somehow they were suggesting that this invalidates Samaritan's Purse doing their work in New York.
I just love for you to clarify that Samaritan's Purse is not, in fact, telling people who are gay, lesbian, transgender that they can't show up to the hospital if they have coronavirus.
No, everybody's welcoming.
And if a gay or transgender person showed up at the hospital, we'd show them the same love and compassion and give them the same world-class health care that we give to anybody else that comes.
But we are Christians.
We are not equal opportunity employer.
We don't do that.
The doctors and nurses, we're all Christians, and what motivates us is our faith in Jesus Christ, and that's what we have in common, and that's what makes us go forward.
And so we use that compassion and that love and that concern that Christ showed for people, we use that to show the people that come to us.
So, for anybody, it doesn't matter who you are, we're going to treat you the same.
We do not discriminate as it relates to the people that we help.
And we've been doing this, Ben, for 50 years.
Samaritan's Purse is 50 years old this year, and there has never been an accusation that we refused to help anybody because they did not believe the same way we believe.
We just don't do that.
Well, Franklin, I want to ask you about sort of the lack of tolerance for people who disagree with you, with many Christians, the Samaritan's Purse in just one second.
But before we get to that, I want to take a moment to give a shout out to all our advertising partners who help make this show possible.
We are super grateful that they decide to work with us, and we definitely appreciate our listeners going out and patronizing our sponsors and keeping all of this going.
Really appreciate both our listeners and our advertisers.
We're all trying to get through this together.
You, me, my show's advertising partner.
So let's stick together and get through this thing.
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So Franklin, I want to talk about the lack of tolerance that seems to exist on one side of the aisle.
So you mentioned Samaritan's Purse is a Christian organization, that it has its viewpoint on biblical sin, and that that viewpoint hasn't changed, and that it has obviously very Christian views.
This has led to a radical amount of intolerance from the other side of the aisle, which suggests that in certain situations you should be shut down.
I noticed that there was a story that Prior to all of this, you had a book tour planned in the UK, and that you had a bunch of sites shut down for the book tour, specifically because you are, quote-unquote, discriminatory.
What seems to be amazing to me is that there are a lot of people who seem to care very deeply about what you think of them, when, last I checked, there is no need to.
You are not a person who is actually legislating morality.
You're not a member of the government.
You are just running a private organization.
You're entitled to your religious viewpoints.
Why do you think it is that there's so much blowback Whenever Samaritan's Purse does something publicly, whenever you do something publicly, based on your view of biblical sin.
Well, I think, Ben, the blowback isn't really so much against me, I think it's against God.
The view that I have is what the Bible teaches.
And the Bible teaches that marriage is between a man and a woman.
That's what I believe.
And so I hold to my religious beliefs.
I don't compromise those.
I'm not going to change them.
That's just what the Bible teaches.
And so that's what I believe.
And again, for the gay community out there, I love them and care for them.
I want them to know the truth.
I want them to know what God says.
I want them to know what His Word has to say, because it's important that we live our life in accordance to His Word.
So, I don't condemn anybody.
God is the one who condemns.
We're all going to have to stand before God one day and give an account to Him for how we've lived our lives.
And so I just want to warn people, I want people to know the truth, but I certainly do not condemn anybody and I'm willing to help each and every person that comes across my path in life.
That's who I am and that's what I do.
So I want to talk a little bit more about some of the good actions that you've been taking.
You founded the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team.
Can you talk a little bit about the role of the team in the midst of this crisis and what they've been doing?
These are chaplains, Ben, and this came as a result of 9-11.
I was asked by Rudy Giuliani, the mayor at that time, to come to a prayer vigil at The Pile.
Uh, the fire trucks still had, uh, the, uh, the water poured on the piles.
You could still smell the stench of the rotting bodies and the smoke coming up out of the pile.
And to me, it minded me a little bit, maybe what hell would be like.
It was a terrible scene and they stopped everything for a few minutes to have a prayer, a vigil.
And I realized while I was in New York that there were not enough.
Pastors, doctors, chaplains, people who could pray with those that were suffering.
You had 3,000 some people that died that day, and there were just not enough people to deal with the grief that New York was going through.
There were not enough churches or synagogues to hold the funeral services.
Some churches were holding five, six, one that actually did ten in one day.
I don't know how they did it, but funeral services.
So it was an incredible amount of grief, and there just weren't enough pastors there.
We put together a team of chaplains.
And went up there and just went out to Chelsea Piers where they had the makeshift memorial.
People were there putting pictures and flowers and we just started talking to people and praying with people.
Then we went to the hospitals, people standing outside looking for a loved one, started praying with them.
And we had a tremendous ministry, but we went down to the pile and we wanted to go have a prayer with the first responders.
No, if you can't come in, you're not credentialed.
And credential, how did you get credential?
One of our chaplains was an FBI chaplain.
I had no clue that the FBI had chaplains.
And he had a badge, FBI.
So he showed that to the guard at the gate.
Is this credential good enough?
Oh yes, you can come in.
And after that, I thought, okay, we need to find out how we can get credentialed.
And we did the training with Homeland Security through FEMA and so forth.
Went through all the boxes, checked all the hoops.
And now we have hundreds, we have over a thousand chaplains here in the United States that have been credentialed, that have had special training for crisis situations like we're facing right now.
So in New York, we've got chaplains with us that are alongside our doctors and nurses that are willing to pray with people that want it.
We don't force somebody to listen to a prayer.
But if somebody said, would you please pray for me?
Absolutely.
We're right there.
And we believe that prayer is a part of what we do, a very important part.
As our doctors and nurses are trying to save life, But to have chaplains praying for the doctors and nurses and then to pray for the patients is very important.
So we've got chaplains there with us.
And so our work is, of course, it's a spiritual work.
It's not just physical, but it's spiritual as well.
Let's talk for a second about where this particular crisis stacks up next to other crises.
So obviously, you've been doing this for quite a while, and you've dealt with a number of crises, not only in the United States, but abroad.
How does COVID-19 stack up against the other crises that you've seen in your tenure?
There's never been a crisis like this in my lifetime.
This has changed the whole world.
The whole world, Ben, is on lockdown.
Every country in the world is right now locked down.
And it's frightening.
No question about it.
There's something, it's a tsunami of virus that has swept the globe.
And we don't know the answers to this.
We don't have an antidote.
We don't have the vaccine.
And the fear that is in people's hearts is incredible.
And I just, as a Christian, I don't fear.
I'm not worried about what's going to happen tomorrow.
I gave my life to Jesus Christ when I was 22 years old, when I confessed my sin and I asked Christ to come into my heart.
And that night God forgave me, not because I'm a good guy.
I'm not.
I'm a sinner.
But I confessed my sin and turned from those sins.
I invited Jesus Christ to live in my life.
And I don't fear what's before me.
I don't fear that.
If God wants my life to end today, so be it.
My life is in His hands.
I gave it to Him.
He can take me, spin me, use me however He wants me.
But the world right now is gripped in fear, and I've never seen anything like it.
Not only is it a pandemic, but it's a worldwide crisis.
We've never seen this in my lifetime.
You mentioned your own sort of journey to faith and your faith experience at 22.
What prompted you to move toward conversion to Christianity or embrace of Christianity in your early 20s?
Well, of course, Ben, I grew up in a Christian home.
Right.
And my father, of course, an evangelist.
My mother grew up in a missionary family in China.
And so we went to church every Sunday.
We were involved in the church.
We did those types of things.
But your parents cannot choose Jesus Christ for you.
And it doesn't matter how much they loved me, that was a choice I had to make.
And I was 22, and I think, Ben, I just got to the point in my life where I was sick and tired of just being sick and tired.
You could go to parties, you could date, you could do things, you could have fun, but the next day you wake up, there would be an emptiness in your life.
And you realize that you were searching for something, but you didn't know what you were searching for.
And there was just this overwhelming emptiness.
And one night I just got on my knees and I said, I've sinned and I'm sorry.
Forgive me.
I believe Jesus Christ is your son.
I believe that he took my sins to the cross, that he died on that cross, he was buried for my sins, and that you raised him to life.
And I would like to invite him to come into my heart and to my life.
And if he could just take the pieces of my life and put it together and make sense of it, you can have it.
I prayed that prayer, Ben, in a minute.
And that night, God forgave Franklin Graham.
I'm still a sinner, but I've been forgiven, Ben.
And I know that one day, when I stand before God, He will welcome me Not because of what I did, but because of what Jesus Christ did on my behalf when he took my sins and died in my place, and I accepted that by faith.
The Bible says, by grace are we saved through faith.
It's not of works, lest any man should boast.
If you could work for your salvation, people would brag about it.
It's just part of human nature.
You know, let me tell you what I had to pay.
Let me tell you what I had to do.
But when you come to God, it's by His grace and it's through faith, and there's nothing else.
Let's talk about the fact that Easter is obviously about to be upon us.
It's the Passover season in the Jewish community.
It's a holy time of year for Jews and Christians alike.
It's also the roughest time I've ever seen in my lifetime, and that holds true for Christians, Jews, and everybody else.
The fact is there are going to be a lot of people suffering going into Easter, a lot of people suffering during the Passover season.
What do you think people should be meditating on and thinking about during the Easter season?
Well, first of all, there's no community that has probably suffered more in modern history than the Jewish community, and that they know what pain and sorrow and they know what suffering is all about.
And this Easter season, much of the world is experiencing pain and sorrow like they've never seen before.
The estimates for the people that may die in this country are staggering.
And we know that in the months ahead, it's going to probably get worse, not better.
And so I think this Easter season, it's a time for us to pause as a country, to pray and to ask God for his help, his mercy, his blessing.
And I think it's important that we turn to God.
As a nation, Ben, we've turned our back on God.
We have thrown his laws out the window and they say they don't matter.
And our politicians have done that.
People have been idolatry.
God hates idolatry more than anything else.
And our country has been consumed with idolatry.
And sports becomes idols.
Musicians become idols.
Our hobbies become our idols.
Our work becomes our idols.
And we have just shoved God back into a closet.
And it's like we don't want him unless there's a crisis.
And this is a great time.
For us as a people, as a nation, to turn to God and call upon Him and ask Him for help.
I want to ask you in one second about the sort of correlation between people doing bad things and God's response to us, whether we can actually see that in day-to-day life or whether it's just incumbent on us to seek God regardless of the treatment that we're receiving from nature or from the world.
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So, let's talk about one of the messages that you just talked about, Franklin, and that is the idea that we should be turning to God during times of crisis, that America has turned her back on God.
I certainly agree with you in terms of a lot of moral standards, that we've become obviously a more secular, atheistic country.
I think I, along with a lot of other people in modern life, are pretty uncomfortable with the idea that when bad things happen, that that represents God's punishment on us, just because there's not a one-to-one correlation.
We see too often good things happening to bad people and bad things happening to good people.
So I was wondering if maybe you could clarify on that a little bit.
Do you think that, you know, we live in sort of a world where pandemics happen and that's a punishment from God?
Or do you think that we live more in a world where it's incumbent on us to do the right thing regardless of whether we're receiving good or bad in our own eyes, not from God's eyes, but in our own eyes from the world around us?
Well, first of all, God loves us.
He cares for us.
And that's true.
If someone can't remember anything else we say on this program, I want them to remember that God loves you, and He does.
And bad things do happen to good people.
We live in a fallen, broken world.
When Adam and Eve, the first couple, God put them in a perfect world, the Garden of Eden.
And he didn't want bad things to happen, but he set down the rules, and man chose to disobey.
And Adam and Eve disobeyed God, and as a result of that, sin came into the world.
And that's the fall of man.
And so we're living in a broken world, a sin-filled world, and it's where we are.
But that's why Christ died for our sins, so that we don't have to pay the debt of sin, which is death, He's willing to give us eternal life if we're willing to trust Him.
But while we're here on earth, we're going to have pain, we're going to have sorrow, we're going to have death, but we can have that hope of eternal life with Christ one day if we'll turn and repent of our sins.
So, yes, bad things happen, and this coronavirus Whether that's God's judgment or not, how do I know?
I mean, I'm not—He hasn't told me.
But at the same time, I think maybe God can use this to get our attention as the world—not just the nation, but the world—to look to Him and to put our faith and trust in Him.
So I wanted to ask you, since everybody is trying to hunker down right now, you've obviously seen an enormous number of inspirational acts.
You've talked about some of them already from the folks who work for Samaritan's Purse during this crisis.
I was wondering if maybe you could give me some instances of sort of inspirational things that people are doing right now to help out their fellow man in the name of God.
Well, there was a man in New York.
A very wealthy fellow, young guy, and he saw us outside on Central Park working.
He just came back.
Can I help you volunteer?
He picked up a shovel.
He started shoveling mulch to help.
We had to have some walkways because the grass was turning into mud.
And he worked 13 hours shoveling.
And, again, a very wealthy guy, and he just came out to volunteer.
It's people like that that just come from different walks of life, these doctors and nurses that are willing to put their life on the line to save the life of other people.
It's incredible.
And it's not just the doctors and nurses, but it's like this fellow, a young guy who had a lot of money, but he had some time on his hands, and he was bored sitting at his home.
He said, can I help?
And he picked up a shovel.
And that's, those type of people inspire me.
I'm just so thankful.
And America has some wonderful people, good people.
And I think we, the media sometimes, we focus too much on the stars.
We focus too much on the Hollywood people whose lives for the most part are empty and broken and have very little to give.
But you take a young guy like that, that's just an example of one of many who have stood up and have said, here I am, use me.
So can you tell us a little bit more about where Samaritan's Purse got started for folks who don't know the background of the organization at all?
Well, it was started by a man by the name of Bob Pierce back in 70, excuse me, 50 years ago this year.
And he just wanted to help Churches, he wanted to help people around the world that were less fortunate.
And he ran it for about the first 10 years, and he had leukemia, and he asked if I would take it over.
And at that time, the organization was very small.
He had three secretaries.
And when I took over the organization, the three secretaries quit.
So for a while, it was just me.
And God has brought an incredible team of people over these last 40 years that I've been running it, an incredible team of men and women.
And I've learned one thing.
I went to business school.
One thing I learned is hire people that are smarter than you.
And at the end of the day, they're going to make you look good.
So I've always tried to find people that are a lot smarter than Franklin Graham.
And I'll tell you that that's paid off because we get the job done.
And it's not Franklin Graham, but it's just this incredible team of people.
So I wanted to ask you about your growing up.
So you mentioned earlier, obviously, your father is the most prominent evangelist of the last century.
So what was it like growing up in a home with Billy Graham?
Well, I think the Billy Graham that the world saw on television or the big stadiums was the same Billy Graham.
We, the children, saw at home there wasn't two Billy Grahams, there wasn't my mother Ruth Graham, there wasn't a different person when the cameras were turned off.
They were the same.
And we saw that consistency in their life.
And my father was a very humble person.
If you approached him on the sidewalk, if he was walking down New York's Fifth Avenue Somebody recognized me and said, oh, Dr. Graham, can I shake your hand?
He would be kind of, oh, shucks, you want to shake my hand?
OK, well, what's your name?
And he'd stand there and talk to him.
And that's just the way he was.
And so I'm very grateful for that.
But he had a very deep faith.
He believed the Bible and he'd be the first one to say, I don't understand it all, but I believe it all.
And he had just a very simple faith.
And God gave him an incredible What do you think distinguished the message that he was promulgating from some of the other messages that were being promulgated by different evangelists, or maybe the sort of new wave of evangelists, some of the televangelists that you see on TV?
He was such a popularizer of the Bible.
What was different between what he did and what so many others have tried to do?
Well, I can't speak for other people.
My father certainly wouldn't want me to.
My father just took the calling that God gave him, and he used that to the best of his ability.
Before he did anything, he would pray about it.
If he felt God called him to go to England to preach, or go to Eastern Europe to preach, go to Russia to preach, he prayed about it.
And if God laid something on his heart, he did it.
And he would be criticized.
I remember when he went to Eastern Europe, there were a lot of people on the far right accused him of being used by the communists.
And I remember my father smiling and saying, well, maybe I want to use them.
And he was just very forceful, very strong, and he had a great team of people around him that supported him and helped him.
And he certainly would want me to make sure people understood it was the team.
It wasn't just Billy Graham, but it was the team.
You mentioned earlier the phrase, sort of, simple faith.
There are a lot of people in today's world who seem to think that they are too sophisticated for faith, or who have been told that faith is unsophisticated, that faith requires you to ask no questions, that faith is easy, and they find themselves struggling with faith.
What would you say to people who think that faith is too simple?
And what should the proper approach to faith be?
What kind of questions are worthy of asking?
Well, Ben, I mean, there are a lot of skeptics out there, and they think faith is a crutch.
And, you know, I don't know what I can do to change their beliefs.
But, you know, Ben, just take this whole notion of evolution.
And that somehow we started off as a tadpole and got more and more and more sophisticated as time passed over the millions of years, and all of a sudden we are who we are today.
And there are millions of people that believe that, and I think it takes a lot more faith to believe that.
Uh, because there's no evidence whatsoever of, uh, of, of where we came from tadpoles or whatever, some lower species.
But as a pilot, uh, I have a little, a single engine, uh, Piper Super Cub made in 1956.
And I can park that out on the runway.
And I can tell you right now, a million years from now, it's not going to be a 747.
Uh, there are engineers behind it that developed it and, uh, put these things together.
And there's a, uh, it goes by a design.
And the human body has a design, and it's unique.
When you look at our propulsion system, when you look at our electrical system, the pneumatic systems that our bodies have is incredibly designed.
And there was a design, but it just didn't happen.
There's a creator.
And the Bible says that God created the heaven and the earth and everything in it.
And Ben, I just believe it.
But you have to accept it by faith.
You just have to believe it.
And I just believe it.
And sometimes the people that have the most sophistication, the most expertise, the higher the PhD or the learning, sometimes it's those people that are the hardest ones to reach.
It has always seemed to me that arguments like this sort of argument from design, it's a response to an argument that simply misses the point of God, which is that God can do whatever he wants, and that even if God wanted to evolve human beings from a tadpole, even if you believe that evolution happens through simply natural selection and random mutation, why wouldn't God be able to design it that way?
There's sort of this bizarre disconnect where if There's a naturalistic explanation, therefore nobody stands behind nature.
I've never fully understood the idea that if nature has laws, if nature has rules, that there can't be any designer for those laws or rules.
That somehow nature operating according to certain constructs is somehow a disproof of God rather than a proof of His presence and a mind at work.
The world in which we live, everything is set into motion.
And our universe is set on a certain motion.
We're so many miles from the sun.
If we were just a few miles further or closer, we may not be able to live on this planet.
We live in a very delicate sphere of atmosphere.
And if you go Five miles straight up.
I don't know where you live, but I'm sure you could have a vantage point somewhere where you can look and see five miles.
It's not that very far.
And you go straight up five miles, you're not able to sustain life.
You can't breathe at 25,000 feet.
We live in a fragile envelope here on Earth, and we need to preserve it, take care of it.
God made it.
He created it.
And I just have to believe Him by faith, Ben.
I don't believe that somehow we just appeared out of nowhere.
God designed us, and He designed this world, and He designed this whole sphere in which we live, and He put the stars in place.
And all of that was a part of God's handiwork, and I just believe it.
And I know that He loves us, and He made us And He knows everything about us individually.
He knows our life.
He knows our problems.
And the amazing thing is that we can talk to Him anytime, anyplace, anywhere.
I can talk to God.
And He wants to hear our concerns.
And I think it's perfectly fine with God for us to call Him in the middle of the night.
He's not asleep.
He's not some God that has to have sleep.
He's there.
Just call His name.
He's there.
And He will hear.
If we put our faith and trust in His Son, Jesus Christ, He's going to hear us.
Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life.
No man comes to the Father but by me.
There's not multiple roads to God.
There's only one path to God.
And that goes through the cross because Jesus is the only one in history to take the sins of mankind.
No other person ever claimed to say, I took your sins, I died in your place.
Nobody's ever claimed that.
Only one, that's Jesus Christ.
He said, I took your sins and I died in your place.
And I laid my life down and I took it back again.
And he's alive and he's alive forever.
And the Bible says he's coming back.
And I believe that could be soon.
Something that is eminently true and has been proved true over the course of the last several decades is that the decline in church in the United States, the rise in secularism has had some pretty dire social effects.
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Franklin, we look at the rise of secularism, and non-affiliated is the number one group of millennials.
We're watching younger people basically rejecting religion wholesale.
We're seeing organized religion in decline by statistics.
Why do you think that is, particularly given the fact that after several decades of an increasingly secular America, it is obvious that there are pretty dire social effects to exactly that sort of secularization, particularly in some of the more hard-hit Rust Belt areas, that when churches disappear, so does the social fabric, and we've seen Opioid epidemics and broken lives.
We've seen epidemics of suicide, disconnection.
But why has secularism been on the rise, despite the fact that there's been such obvious evidence of dire consequences?
Well, secularism.
First of all, let's go back to talk about the decline of the church.
I'm not sure the church is in decline.
I think there are some mainline denominations that quit preaching the Bible for some time, and people just quit attending those churches.
What you see is a rise of Bible-teaching churches, where pastors just get up and they open up the Bible and say, let's read today what God's Word says, and they start teaching the Bible.
Those churches are full.
They're packed.
People are hungry today.
They want to know the Word of God.
And secularism gives license for people to live just about any kind of wicked life they want to without any consequences.
And, of course, that's very attractive, and a lot of people go that direction and say, oh, this is going to be fun, this is going to be great.
But there's emptiness, and you're right, the suicide rate is just incredible, the problems that secularism brings, because it doesn't give answers.
It gives them this license to be free, but at the end of the day, they're not free, and they're slaves to sin.
And they want to be free.
They want answers.
They're searching and looking for something better, and they're not finding it.
And I want people to know that what they're searching for is God.
And if they put their trust in Him, He'll take that broken life, and He'll put it together just like He did mine.
And He'll use you, and He'll forgive you, and cleanse you, Give you hope for the morning, hope for the next day, and how important we need today, we need that hope for the next day.
Major media in the United States have basically blamed evangelicals for getting involved in politics.
They're very upset with religious people being involved in politics.
They say that this is religious theocracy.
It seems to me that it's precisely the opposite of what actually happened.
What actually happened is that there was a fairly wide social consensus on a wide variety of issues, and that the secular left in the 1960s basically broke those down.
And evangelical Christians, like religious people of all stripes, basically stood up on their hind legs and said, well, no, you don't get to discard those social consensuses without any sort of evidence.
When do you think it becomes incumbent on religious people to get involved in politics?
Under what circumstance do you think religious people shouldn't be involved in politics?
And how should they be involved in politics?
Well, first of all, in 2016, I went to every state capitol and held a prayer rally on the capitol steps.
I thought if I would have a few hundred join me in prayer, that would be important because I felt our country was in trouble and we needed to pray.
Instead of hundreds, it was thousands.
In some places, tens of thousands of people who showed up on the Capitol steps to pray.
And they weren't there to hear me speak, but they were there to pray for our nation.
And so these were people that cared for our country, that prayed.
I never endorsed a person in the last election, and I just encouraged people to pray the way they felt God was leading them to vote.
So I encourage people to vote.
And then I also encourage Christians to run for office.
We need the Christian voice in state politics, in the statehouse.
We need them in the local politics.
We need them on school boards, how important school boards are.
And if we could have Christians on school boards and have their voice heard, how important that would be.
And so I encourage Christians not only to vote, But to get involved politically, because the gays and lesbians have their candidates.
Muslims have their candidates.
So many people have their candidates.
And I think it's important for Christians to have candidates out there that can run and win.
And we need the Christian voice.
This is America.
This is democracy.
And we certainly have the right to have a voice at the table.
So that's kind of what we're doing, Ben.
We encourage people to vote.
Again, I don't try to tell people how to vote.
I'm a conservative.
I have conservative values, just not only politically but spiritually.
I have conservative values.
But I think we as conservatives have a right to be heard and to have a right to vote and to be part of the process.
How should Christians think about the separation of church and state?
Every time Christians get involved in politics, there are accusations that they're trying to establish a Christian theocracy, that this is the Handmaid's Tale or something like that.
How should Christians think about their involvement in politics while respecting the boundaries between church and state?
Well, I mean, I think we don't compromise.
I think that's part of the problem we've had is Christians have compromised.
We shouldn't compromise.
We should hold to what the Bible teaches and hold to those standards.
And if we have a majority, I think we have an opportunity to pass some good laws maybe in this country.
So we have that right to be a voice.
And you know, if you take a hundred years ago, The political leaders in the communities were the pastors.
If your house burned down and your family was desolate, you went to the local church and the pastor would find somebody in the community that would take you in.
They would clothe you, they would feed you, they would care for you.
But the government has taken Those type of social services upon themselves.
And they don't do nearly as good as the churches used to do it.
And what happened, the churches kind of, okay, we'll just let the government do that then.
And we have slowly backed up and backed up and let the government take more and more and more control of society.
And they're not doing a better job at it.
They're doing an inferior job, not better.
When a lot of the problems that we face today were handled at the local level, it was done with compassion, with love, and with the interest of the people that they were helping.
Today, it's just clinical, and the government just writes out a check and thinks that will solve it.
But the problems of this world need more than just a check.
It needs people, one-on-one interaction, people that care, people that are willing to let their voice be heard, people that are willing to To go into a community and make a difference with your life.
Invested in a community and make a difference.
So Franklin, obviously we live in an incredibly vitriolic time.
You've taken an enormous amount of abuse for expressing support for President Trump and some of the things that he's done as President of the United States.
How do you rate his overall performance as President?
Well, Ben, I support the President.
He's our President.
We don't have another President.
He's the only one we got.
And he needs our prayers.
He's had a very difficult, when he ran in 2016, most of the Republicans were against him.
I'm talking about Republican leadership.
Of course, the Democrats were against him, and somehow he won the election.
And people ask me, how did he do it?
I think it was God.
For some reason, I think God just picked Donald J. Trump.
And you say, well, he's flawed, he's a sinful person, he's this or that.
Well, we're all flawed and we're all sinful.
But somehow God chose him to be the president at this particular time in history.
And I think he's done an incredible job.
No question, the economy is the best it's ever been.
We're in the middle of the coronavirus.
We've got a lot of people out of work right now, but this is temporary.
And the economy is still very strong, and I think the president has done an incredible job with the coronavirus.
I would just shudder to think if someone else was president this time.
You know, the mess that we'd be in, but he's just...
He knows how to get people working and he's got the industry right now, uh, General Motors and people like that building, uh, ventilators.
He put the hospital ships in New York and California where the, the opposition said it would take him six weeks to do it.
He did it in one week.
Uh, he knows how to, he knows how to push buttons and make things happen.
And he is the commander in chief.
And so I certainly give him an A plus plus.
So there was a lot of controversy, obviously, in 2016, specifically surrounding President Trump's character, his personal character.
There are a lot of people, including me, who are very critical of a lot of his conduct.
I've continued to do what I call the sort of good Trump, bad Trump model.
Overall, I'm a supporter of the president at this point.
I support his re-election.
But at the same time, I'm not willing to let him get away with sort of Some of the things that he says and does, and they make me deeply uncomfortable.
How should religious people deal with the fact that, you mentioned he's a flawed character, we're all flawed characters, but how should religious people specifically deal with sort of the character flaws that are evident in President Trump without necessarily covering for those flaws, even if they are supporters?
Well, a lot of the accusation has been of the President and his lifestyle 20 years ago.
And he's not the same person he was 20 years ago, neither you and neither am I.
He's changed, and now he tweets, and he will say things that a lot of people cringe at, but he's attacked every day by the media, every single day.
And that is his one opportunity to fight back.
Twitter is his newspaper.
He doesn't have to get filtered by somebody.
He can go directly to the American people, and it's worked for him.
The American people are behind the president.
And I know a lot of the polls will show, well, Biden is ahead by two points, or, you know, someone else may be ahead by two points.
I don't believe any of that by a second.
I think if you had the election today, He would win overwhelming hands down.
He's an incredible person, and I think people have trust and confidence in him.
And so, again, I don't agree with everything he says or does, but at the same time, he is the president, and we just have to trust him and back him and help him all we can.
Well, in one second, I want to ask you about an article that now seems forever ago from the December 2019 issue of Christianity Today, which apparently, you know, obviously claimed that President Trump should be removed from office.
But if you want to hear Franklin Graham talk about that article, about Christianity Today and about the legacy of that magazine, you have to be a subscriber over at dailywire.com.
So head on over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
Well, Franklin Graham, thank you so much for stopping by the show.
I really appreciate it.
And thanks for all the amazing work Samaritan's Purse is doing for people all over the world.
Really, thank you, sir.
Thank you.
God bless us.
The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is directed by Mike Joyner and produced by Mathis Glover.
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The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire production.
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