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Oct. 25, 2020 - The Charlie Kirk Show
01:01:49
A Moral and Spiritual Defense of President Trump with Theologian Wayne Grudem

The legendary theologian and evangelical intellectual, Dr. Way Grudem joins The Charlie Kirk Show to explain his journey to becoming a staunch and vocal supporter of President Trump. In one of the most consequential discussions of why Christians...

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Christian Influence on Government 00:14:51
Thank you for listening to this Podcast 1 production.
Now available on Apple Podcasts, Podcast 1, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.
Hey, everybody.
Happy Sunday.
Today on the Charlie Kirk Show, we have the amazing Wayne Grudem, legendary theologian.
He has written numerous books, including Politics According to the Bible, and he is a theologian supporting President Donald Trump.
You are going to love this conversation, especially in response to many other pastors that are not putting their name behind Donald Trump.
This is a legend of the theologian community that loves the Lord, loves the Bible, and he's supporting Donald Trump.
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Wayne Grudem is here, theologian for Trump.
Buckle up, everybody.
Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
That's why we are here.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
I am just so honored and thrilled to be joined by a legend, Dr. Wayne Grudem, who's a theologian and is just one of the most clear thinkers in all of Christianity when it comes to every aspect of life, interpreting the Bible correctly.
But also, your book, Politics According to the Bible, is amazing.
You gave it to me, I think it was a year and a half ago or two years ago when we first met in Arizona.
I've learned so much from it and from your, I guess I could call it a Bible commentary.
Is that fair?
On politics and government.
I also gave one to President Trump.
Well, I hope he read it.
I hope so too.
I don't know.
So for some people in our audience that don't know you, you are a living legend in the Christian world, and you are really an authority figure in the modern era on the Bible, on the inerrancy of scripture, on understanding the harmonies of the scriptures, and also interpreting it, applying it to today's time.
I first became aware of you when you wrote a piece, and then I think you went back on it and then wrote again with Trump in 2016.
Am I misremembering that?
Yes, I wrote something called Why Voting for Donald Trump is a Morally Good Choice.
And then this Excess Hollywood material came out, and I said, I wrote a second piece saying I think he should withdraw because of what was in those tapes.
But after four or five days, I realized I was helping Hillary to win.
And so I wrote a third piece called, If you Don't Like Either Candidate, Vote for Trump's Policies.
And that's where I ended up, and that's where I am today.
Well, no, I wouldn't say I don't like either candidate.
I don't like Joe Biden as a candidate.
I do think President Trump is doing a fantastic job as president in spite of the incredible, unfair hostility of the press.
Absolutely.
And so let's start to unpack this.
We get a lot of emails from young Christians across the country that listen to our political commentary.
And we do talk about Christianity every so often on this podcast, and we have pastors.
However, there is a significant push to try and persuade young Christians to vote for Joe Biden.
Can you just help build out first and foremost, before we even get into Joe Biden versus Trump, how should a Christian approach government?
What kind of framework should they be working from a biblical worldview?
Well, we live in the United States in a unique situation, Charlie.
In ancient history and even more recent history, there were kings that ruled over governments, and the only way you could influence government was become a friend of the king or an advisor.
Daniel was that, Nehemiah was that, Mordecai was that.
But today, we have a much better way to influence government.
We vote, we campaign, and we can help different campaigns.
We can talk to each other because we have a government that is ultimately determined by the people of the United States.
An amazing government, an amazing constitution.
But I think our goal as Christians should be to influence government for good.
Charlie, I went and looked in the Bible to see if there were any examples of God's people influencing not the government of Israel, any examples of God's people influencing secular government.
And there were quite a few.
In Genesis 41, there was Joseph second in command over all of Egypt, reporting only to Pharaoh.
Go forward a little bit, and we have Daniel as a high advisor to King Nebuchadnezzar.
I'm sorry.
Darius is who sentenced him to death.
Right.
And Nehemiah was an advisor to the king.
Esther went in before King Ahashuaris and risked her life to protect the Jewish people from destruction.
And Esther's relative Mordecai was second in command over the kingdom.
So those are the narrative of scripture views those examples with approval.
And they're examples of God's people influencing government for good.
And I see another example in the New Testament where John the Baptist in Luke 3.19 rebuked Herod, who was the Roman ruler, rebuked Herod for all the evil things he had done.
And that had to include a number of public policies.
So I see this, Charlie, as examples throughout history of God's people influencing nations in a positive way.
I see that as an outworking of God's promise to Abraham in Genesis 12, where God told Abraham, In you shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.
And I think throughout history, Christians have brought blessing to nations through their influence.
And there's a book by Alvin Schmidt called How Christianity Changed the World, which gives a lot of examples I could go into, but I don't know if you want to go that way.
I would love to, and it's similar to a book we've talked about.
And I guess we've had the book that built your world by Vishal Mengal Waldi.
I don't know if you're familiar with that.
I've heard of him and heard of a similar piece of literature.
He comes at it from an Eastern perspective, Indian, looking into our experiment.
Please build that out for us, though.
Yes, some of the examples that influenced me, way back in the Roman Empire, Christian influence led to the outlawing of abortion and infanticide and child abandonment in 374 AD.
So say that again.
So in 374, that was after Constantine turned the Eastern Roman Empire into a Christian.
And Christian influence did what?
No more abortion.
Led to laws outlawing abortion, infanticide or murder of infants, and child abandonment, and the gladiator contest as well.
Wow.
Where the loser was put to death.
And that was the Christian influence.
Yeah, not to set up the gladiators to end the practice.
And we don't have sports teams today where the losers are put to death.
Thankfully.
We do still have abortion, unfortunately.
Yes, we do.
Going forward, throughout history, in various places and times, Christians have been responsible for women gaining voting rights and property rights and other protections, education, because of a conviction that both men and women are created in the image of God and deserve equal rights.
In the 1830s, in the United States, there was an abolitionist movement seeking to abolish slavery.
Two-thirds of the leaders of that abolitionist movement were Christian clergymen preaching politics from the pulpit saying that slavery was immoral and needs to be abandoned.
And they eventually had an influence on the nation that succeeded.
Going over, oh, the War of Independence from Great Britain, in the 17, I think it was 1750 in Boston, a pastor preached a sermon called Discourse on Unlimited Submission, where he was saying unlimited submission to George III, King of England, was morally wrong from the Bible and its teachings about freedom.
And that sermon was reprinted many times in 1750, had a great influence on the American thinking that normally Christians should submit to government, but when the government becomes tyrannical and oppressive and doing more harm than good, then Christians have a responsibility to escape from it, as Moses and the people of Israel did from Egypt.
So the American pastors had a great influence on the Declaration of Independence, ultimately, from Great Britain.
Overseas, other countries, in India, there was a terrible practice of burning widows alive with their dead husbands, which the widows didn't have a very good experience at their husbands' funerals.
But Christian influence led to the outlawing of that practice in India.
And in China, there was a practice of binding, that was outlawed, the burning of widows alive with their husbands was outlawed in, I believe, 1829, but I have to check.
In 1912, Christian influence led to the banning of the cruel practice of binding women's feet, crippling practice of binding women's feet that was outlawed.
And then, in our more recent history, my memory, not yours, Charlie, a Baptist pastor named Martin Luther King began preaching from the Bible, saying that segregation and discrimination are morally wrong and the laws need to be changed.
And that led to the civil rights movement and changing our laws and in our society.
So Christians throughout history have influenced government for good.
And I think you are doing that same thing today.
Well, that's very kind of you.
And so some of the pushback I get, and I'm not alone in receiving this criticism, is that some Christians believe that we should not be in the public square, that we as Christians should stay away from politics, that the church has no role in politics.
And this has now been almost the prevailing and dominant viewpoint of many of the biggest churches in the country.
Your incredibly, incredibly effective point of mentioning Joseph and Nehemiah, Esther, I missed all the names, but they're phenomenal.
Mordecai.
Mordecai of Daniel of people in the Bible who are looked at favorably.
Yes.
We're influencing secular government.
Yes.
And so is it your position that we as Christians are called to do whatever part we can, small or big, to try and influence public policy or elections or for the welfare or the betterment of the nation that we're in?
I believe so, Charlie.
Now, different people are called to different things and different occupations and different callings.
But, you know, Christians are in the New Testament, we're viewed as exiles from our true homeland.
Our true homeland is in heaven.
And so there's a tendency to think, well, we shouldn't have anything to do with the earth on which we are exiles.
We're not here forever.
This world is not my home, that kind of thinking.
But I go back to Jeremiah the prophet, who spoke to the exiles, the Jewish exiles who had been taken away from Palestine, their homeland of Israel, and they were carried away 800 miles to Babylon.
And they were in a foreign land.
And you'd think they would be praying to God to destroy the Babylonian Empire.
But Jeremiah said, seek the welfare of the city where God has called you into exile.
That word welfare is the Hebrew word shalom.
It means well-being.
Or peace.
Yeah, peace.
It's commonly peace, but peace and a positive everything is right in relationship with God and you and the world.
Seek the welfare, well-being, the good of the city where God has sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf, says Jeremiah, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
So Jeremiah is telling them to bring blessing through their prayers to the kingdom of Babylon as long as they are there and in exile.
So we should influence civil government for good while we're here on earth as exiles.
And the other answer to that is, what do we do with 1 Timothy 2, where Paul says, Pray for those in authority that you might live quiet and peaceable lives.
Right, we're to pray for good government.
I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way.
So if we're to pray for good government, pray for change in government, isn't it right also to work as God calls us for good government?
Biblical Command for Good Governance 00:03:14
So some pastors will say, I don't get involved in politics because of Romans 13.
Why don't you preach on Romans 13?
Tell me why they're wrong.
Romans 13 is where it's the longest passage in the New Testament, Romans 13, 13.
Really?
No, no, on government.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Okay, yeah.
But it's used all, as you know, it's cited so frequently.
I think incorrectly.
So for listeners who may not have their Bible app open, let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
And then in Romans 13, 4, Paul says the civil authority is God's servant for your good, God's servant for your good.
Well, if people who work in government are God's servant for our good, we should do what we can to help them and encourage them in their work.
But that's part of God's work on earth, is to call people to some to work in business, some in medicine, some in education, but some in government.
And so some Christians say that, what's the point?
Why should I vote?
I think you've just outlined a very compelling argument that we are commanded biblically to, as you mentioned, want good government and want the betterment of the nation.
Pray for it.
Pray for it in Jeremiah and Babylon.
Pray for 1 Timothy 2, the New Testament.
Pray for kings and those in authority.
And then I would say to pastors, Charlie, there are many passages in the Bible that talk about government.
Romans 13 is one of them.
When are you going to teach your congregation what that passage means and what it says?
When are you going to preach on Romans 13?
You can't stop with chapter 12.
When are you going to preach on 1 Timothy 2 or 1 Peter 2, which talk about government?
Or how about Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes?
The word king or kings occurs 112 times.
Wow.
I think God has some things to tell us about how he wants government to work.
So that is a perfect transition.
So now we've established, I think, a really good foundation.
And I'm sure listeners are now convinced.
Okay, I'm a Christian.
I want to get involved.
So now what do we do?
And let's just say we're here in 2020, and many of the criticisms that are thrown at President Trump are: I don't like his lifestyle.
I don't like his style.
I don't like his tone.
There is a multi-million dollar effort to try and persuade Christians to vote for Joe Biden.
Why should a Christian support President Trump?
Because he's doing a good job as president.
I have on my website, WayneGrudem.com, WayneGrudem.com.
I have on my website an article called List of 30 Good Things President Trump Has Done for America.
And the list could go on beyond that.
I have a summary of it there.
Supreme Court Separation of Power 00:07:33
I love it.
Can I take a look at it?
Yes.
You have it here.
Protecting unborn babies, building a stronger U.S. military, historic tax cuts and deregulation.
But let's talk about number one.
And I think you put it there for a reason.
And it's similar to a piece you just wrote where your title was The Threat of Judicial Tyranny is the case to vote against Biden, but you have number one as judges.
Yes.
Why should Christians care about judges?
They're powerful.
They have immense power in our political system.
But this is going to take a little bit of explanation, Charlie.
Take all the time you need.
Okay.
In starting the government of the United States, the founders of our country were able to start from scratch and construct a government as they thought best.
And there were what I heard somebody say is the greatest collection of political geniuses ever assembled in one place.
And they had different views, so they argued back and forth, but they came to compromise on many issues and they came up with a U.S. Constitution, which is amazingly wise.
Here's the situation: government has to have enough power to govern the country so we don't have anarchy.
But then how is government going to be itself restrained?
And how are we going to keep government from becoming a tyranny, dictator, An evil emperor.
The answer that the founders of the Constit and the authors of the Constitution came up with was: we're going to divide power or separate power in various areas.
We're going to separate national from local power.
So states and cities have a lot of power.
I think states in the United States have more power than any regional governments in any country that I know of on earth, and I've been to a lot of countries.
And then at the national level, power is separated between the Congress, which is legislative, the president, which is the executive branch, and the judicial, which is the judges.
There's a separation of power.
And then there's a separation of power from the government to the people because we have protected the right of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom to petition the government for grievances, right to bear arms.
And there's freedom of the press.
So, and then we have regular periodic elections.
People who make the laws, the senators and congressmen are accountable to the people.
Now, that is key.
People who are making the laws have to answer to the population.
And then the powers with the separation of power is among the various states.
50 states all have some power.
So power to govern is scattered throughout all these different branches.
The essence of the separation of power, the heart of it, is judges are the final rulers who the final determiners, the final evaluators of whether someone is breaking the rules or not.
Because over the Congress, over the president, over the Supreme Court, over the states, over the national government, over all those branches of government is the Constitution.
And the judges are to say: if you step outside the bounds of the Constitution, your law is no good.
We nullify it, we strike it down.
So now we have a liberal idea that came along a few decades ago.
Judges can invent new laws and say that they're part of the Constitution when they're not.
So in 1973 in Roe v. Wade, we had the judges of the Supreme Court, the justices, say there's a right to abortion in the Constitution, where the Constitution has not one word about abortion.
And then Obergefell recently, there's a right to same-sex marriage in the Constitution.
Well, the authors of the Constitution would have been astounded to think anybody could see that.
Well, here it is right here in this phrase, due process of law.
It's not there.
So the judges are all of a sudden making laws and laws respecting freedom of religion as well.
Charlie, imagine a football game where the referee comes and picks up the football and runs it to the end zone, to the red team's end zone, giving the blue team a touchdown.
And the red team protests and says, referee can't carry the ball into the end zone.
And the referee says, look at the NFL rule book, Rule 15.2.3.
The referee shall be the final determiner of the position of the ball.
And then the red team says, that doesn't mean you can pick up the ball and take it into the end zone.
It's not what it meant when it was written.
And the referee said, I say that's what it means.
And there it is what it means.
And the blue team's touched on stands.
Kick off.
Next play.
He does the same thing over and over again.
And there's nothing anybody can do to stop him because he's the final determiner.
So that's what's happening, what's happened with our Supreme Court.
When they stopped judging laws and started making laws, the separation of powers, there's two great powers to make laws and to judge laws, evaluate, that separation of powers was destroyed.
And now the Republicans, if Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed, which I think she will be.
She's phenomenal.
There will be a six to three conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
That will protect, and that's six to three, the six conservatives will not make laws.
They will only evaluate them.
And she was very clear in her hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee that that's what her job would be.
So it's restoring the separation of powers that protects us from tyranny because the people who judge the laws are just judging whether they're according to the Constitution, which protects us, protects our freedom or not.
So the answer of the Democrats, many Democrats has been, and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have not disavowed this.
They won't answer questions about it, has been, well, that's simple.
We'll just add six justices to the Supreme Court, more liberal ones who can start making laws again.
That's adding more referees who can make touchdowns for their favorite team.
But what that does is it takes the power to make laws and the power to evaluate laws in the same body.
And that concentration of powers among a small group of people is what James Madison called in the Federalist Papers the essence of tyranny.
Because they could enact the whole liberal agenda, and we couldn't do a thing about it.
And the president has the best record on judges that we have seen.
Amazing.
200 federal judges.
More.
More.
Yeah, it's not headlines, but they keep there may be 300 by the end of his term.
It's incredible.
The first term.
Yeah, by the end of his first term.
And then you have Amy Coney Barrett, Gostrich, and Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.
The Ninth Circuit has almost been completely flipped.
That's where we live.
Yeah.
Jeez.
And you get all the most extraordinary rulings out of that.
Protecting Unborn Children's Lives 00:07:13
You also, you have protecting unborn babies.
Right.
So one of the complaints that some Christians have about President Trump and Republicans is that they only care about being pro-life and then they don't care about anything after that.
Well, how about wages going up?
The lowest 10% of wage earners in the United States had the greatest gains from the Trump tax cuts and deregulation.
The lowest 20% or 25% had the greatest percentage gains in wages.
And 6 million people came out of poverty.
6 million people came out of poverty.
And unemployment went to record lows, lowest ever for black men, and perhaps a record for Hispanic workers as well.
Lowest unemployment ever.
That's caring for poverty.
So I'm going to ask you an obvious question for you, but it's not so obvious for every Christian out there.
Right.
Why should Christians be pro-life in the sense that you and I are preventing abortion?
Because the unborn child is a person, is to be treated as a person.
When after Mary, the mother of Jesus, got the announcement that she was going to bear a son, she went to visit her relative Elizabeth, who was six months pregnant.
And Elizabeth said, when your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.
That's John the Baptist before he was born.
He was just in a six-month pregnancy.
But he leaped for joy.
Now, that's a human activity.
Psalm 139, the psalmist says, You knit me together in my mother's womb.
David or the psalmist thinks of himself as a person that God put together.
More persuasive, ultimately, than those passages, which are important, is Exodus 2021 or 22.
I have my Bible here in my briefcase.
You have your Bible in your head.
You know it better than anyone I've ever met in my life.
It's amazing.
It's a law in the laws of Moses that says if two men are fighting and they strike a woman with a child, a pregnant woman, and then literally the Hebrew text says, so that her children come out, that is, there's a premature birth or miscarriage.
The penalty is, now this is accidentally causing premature birth or miscarriage.
If there's no physical harm to the mother or the baby, then there's still a fine to be paid because they endangered human life.
But if there's any harm to the mother or the baby, you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, arm for arm.
That is, includes life for life.
Now, when you go through the other laws that God gave through Moses, accidentally killing someone, like you're chopping wood and the axe head flies off and hits somebody in the head, that isn't punished with capital punishment.
There's no death penalty.
You just flee to the city of refuge until the death of the high priest.
Then you're free to go again.
So there's a punishment for accidentally killing another human being, not being careful, but it's not death penalty.
But if you do this with a pregnant woman or her baby, it causes death to either one of them, you lose your life.
That is, there's a stronger punishment for the harm to an unborn child, for the death of an unborn child, than for any other crime in any other accidental wrongdoing in Israel's history, or Israel's laws.
So I think that means, Charlie, that God is putting a higher premium on protecting the life of the unborn child than on protecting the life of any, and his mother, than on protecting the life of anybody else in Israelite society.
Plus, there's just the fact that any woman who's pregnant knows there's a person in there.
Our son and daughter-in-law recently had a wonderful little baby girl.
And when the pregnancy was moving along, they got an ultrasound.
It was so funny that they were trying to decide from the ultrasound whether the baby looked like the dad or the mom.
But they were thinking of names, they were thinking of him as a separate person.
The mother knows.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Amen.
And unlike other parts of the mother's body, unlike parts of the mother's body, not other parts, every cell in the baby's body has a different DNA than the mother.
And I don't know how many cells in a baby's body, but we have over 30 trillion cells in our bodies as adults.
Not just a clump of cells.
30 trillion.
If it's not your DNA, it's not your choice.
Frequently say that.
Yeah, good.
I had never heard that before, but good.
Exactly.
So these evangelicals for Biden, I've seen the headline, Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden.
That's deceptive because when you go to the website, what they're saying is pro-life means, yes, we're concerned about abortion, but they won't say we need laws to prevent abortion.
They'll just say help unwed mothers carry their pregnancy to term and things like that.
But pro-life, they say, also means relief of poverty, health care, insurance, health care, opposition to smoking, opposition to racism, and prevention of climate change.
So pro-life, which has been in English, has had one standard definition, meaning in favor of laws against abortion.
These pro-life evangelicals for Biden are dishonest because they're taking the word pro- or the phrase pro-life and making it mean something it has never meant in American political discourse.
No one previously has said, I'm pro-life, which means I'm for government increase in government welfare payments, overcoming smoking, overcoming racism, national health insurance, and climate change opposition.
No one, if you say, to an ordinary conversation I'm pro-life, that doesn't mean you're opposed to climate change.
It's dishonest.
And it's intentional wordplay, which is typical of the left.
They do this quite often.
Yes, they're trying to change the meaning of the historical meaning of the phrase court packing.
Jerusalem Embassy and Restoration 00:04:48
Same.
They call it depoliticizing the court now.
That's what the Associated Press is calling it.
Which means we should have all originalists on the court.
Because justices who are independent referees are absolutely not political.
They're returning the power to make laws to the legislatures and the president, the Congress and the President, or the state legislatures and the governors.
That's depoliticizing the court, is electing conservatives to the or nominating and confirming conservatives as justices.
I love it.
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.
Which verse is that?
I don't know.
I was hoping you were going to tell me because I don't know.
I could find it, but it's probably in Proverbs somewhere.
Yeah, or Psalms.
Yeah.
There's a great - there's actually a really, really great verse in Job, Job 5:12.
And I'm paraphrasing, but it's God will confuse the wicked of their corrupt ways, something of that.
And it always comforts me when I see some of the people that are pushing for such darkness like we're seeing right now.
Yeah.
And they just seem to get kind of confused as it kind of gets down to the end.
So anyway, that's a side point.
I hope.
I pray.
I pray.
So you have here number six, standing with Israel.
Yes, President Trump moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, which many previous presidents had promised to do, but they haven't followed through.
That's a characteristic of President Trump.
He gets things done that others haven't been able to finish.
His life is a story of achieving impossible goals.
He's a doer, incredibly energetic worker who doesn't stop until he gets a solution.
But not just moving the embassy to Jerusalem, which is amazing and I think very right.
He has negotiated Historic agreements now to normalize diplomatic relations between Israel and Bahrain, Israel and the United Arab Emirates, which is where Dubai is.
This is a history-changing accomplishment, which the press is ignoring, but it's monumental because I think other countries will follow, other Arab countries will follow and ultimately isolate Iran.
Iran is the bad bad player in the Middle East right now.
Yes.
Why should Christians care about Israel?
Because someday Romans 11 says God's going to bring a restoration of the people of Israel to trust in Jesus as Messiah.
That is, they will be grafted back into their own olive tree, is the image that Paul uses.
Now, here it is, Charlie.
A partial hardening has come upon Israel, Romans 11:25, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, and in this way all Israel will be saved.
Romans 8:28, as regards the gospel, this is key.
They are enemies for your sake.
So they don't believe they're not trusting in Christ as Messiah.
As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake.
Now, what is they?
It's the people of Israel who have rejected Christ.
But as regards the election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers.
God has a special plan yet for the Jewish people where I think they will be grafted back into their own olive tree.
If their trespass means riches for the world, if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean?
So I think that God has planned that eventually the great revival, Christian revival, is going to come to the Jewish people.
And I think their gathering into the land of Israel as a nation in 1948, 72 years ago, is God's preparation for that.
And President Trump is the most pro-Israel president.
He is.
Yeah.
I saw the Jerusalem Times say that.
They've said that more than once.
He's the most pro-Israel president in American history.
Recognizing the Golan Heights, moving the embassy to Jerusalem.
Yes.
And negotiating peace.
Israel and the United Arab Emirates is incredible.
The art of the deal.
So you have here number 11: withdrawing from Paris Climate Accord.
Wise Use of Earth Resources 00:03:32
Well, that was expensive.
That was an incredibly costly agreement that would have made us more and more dependent on expensive sources of energy, solar energy and wind power, which are unreliable and very expensive.
It's all based on an idea that carbon dioxide, which is a harmless and necessary gas, carbon dioxide is what comes out of the can when you open a coke and the fizzes.
And we exhale carbon dioxide when we breathe.
It's not a poison, it's not a pollutant.
But the political left has become convinced that the use of coal, oil, and natural gas, releasing carbon dioxide, is going to overheat the earth.
But my thought is this.
Do you think that God put these abundant energy sources in the earth, coal, oil, natural gas?
They're easily easily transportable once we have them and they're very powerful energy sources.
Do we really believe that God put those things in the earth so that we would use them, but he booby-trapped them so that by using them we would destroy the earth?
I just don't think God has done that.
A big push amongst some young Christians is an environmentalist streak in them.
Right.
And we are called to love God's creation.
However, can you tell us how we are supposed to theologically approach our interaction with the environment?
Are we here to, I don't want to use this word worship, but to be subservient to the earth, or are we called to dominate the earth?
I ask because some young Christians almost act as if we are the ones that are contaminating the earth and that we're visitors here.
Can you help clarify that?
Yeah, that well, I think the position I would advocate is wise use of the earth's resources.
Not use the earth's resources and pollute the waters of our country, the lakes and the streams, and not raise crops and leave the land unsuitable for future cultivation.
But wise use of the earth means cutting down trees and planting new ones so that more, ever since 1921, every year there have been more board feet of timber growing in the United States than the year before.
Because when forest lumber companies come into a wild forest, they cut down the trees that are scattered in random places throughout the area and they plant rows of trees which can get a lot more trees in the same acreage.
So we keep getting more and more.
100 years ago, 30% of the earth's surface was covered with trees, and now the percentage of the earth's surface covered with trees is 30%.
Wow.
So it's greener than it ever has been.
No, it's the same.
Oh, it's the same.
30 and 30.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Amazing.
So you also have on this list persuading European nations to pay more for NATO, protecting against false accusations on college campuses, protecting freedom of speech on college campuses.
Which you know.
I know a little bit about that.
Yeah.
And we need it.
Oh, boy, do we ever.
Defining the Right President 00:05:06
It's essential to the functioning of democracy.
Why should Christians care about freedom of speech?
Because eventually what will happen without it is you can't preach the gospel publicly.
China is just cracking down on the church violently, prohibiting the printing of hymns or printing of Bibles.
Can you make the argument why you think the best form of government is not a theocracy for the Christian biblical worldview?
Well, Jesus said, render to Caesar that which is Caesar's and render to God that which is God's.
So he made a distinction between areas of life that are rightfully governed by civil government.
That is paying taxes to Caesar because Caesar's inscription was on the coin that he held.
But and render to God the things that are God's indicates that there are some areas of life which the government has no right to control, and that would be certainly our worship and our obedience out of our conscience, obedience to the dictates of our conscience.
And this is where conservatives or Republicans and Democrats differ.
The dominant view in the Democratic Party is we should force people to people in creative professions, we should force them to affirm a same-sex marriage, which is contrary to their conscience.
It's compelled expression.
And that's coercion.
And driving people, it'll drive people out of many photography, bakers, florists, Drive them out of those occupations and they'll have to find new work after their lifetime has been given to that occupation.
And forcing doctors and nurses to participate in abortion for sacred licensing, those kinds of things.
A lot of the feedback I get from swing voters, because we have a lot of people that listen to this podcast.
Right.
Despite our very outward Christian and conservative position, there's a lot of people that enjoy just listening.
I found that, which is really interesting that you can still build a big audience of a diverse viewpoint without pandering.
Well, you are interesting yourself.
Oh, that's very kind.
I don't know about that.
That's very kind.
But we definitely have some people that are spectators and people in the middle.
They say about Trump.
I'm a Christian, and I wince when he gives one of those tweets.
I can't stand the lifestyle that he lives.
He's braggadocious.
He's all these sorts of things.
How could I, as a Christian, possibly put my name behind something like that?
How do you help unpack that?
There's no perfect candidate.
There are only two choices.
We're going to either have Joe Biden as president and all the Democratic policies that come with him, which I think are very destructive to the nation, and 4,000 appointments that the president gets to make in the federal government.
We have package A, Biden, or we'll have package B, Trump, with the policies of the Republican Party, which I think are very helpful for the nation and consistent with biblical teaching.
And 4,000 appointments that the president gets to make.
That's the whole package.
Now, in package A, you get Joe Biden's personality, his moral standards, what seems to be his use of government influence for the benefit of his financial benefit of his family.
Certainly seems that way.
Right.
And if you get President Trump in that package, you get President Trump's abrasive personality and his insulting of people.
And I wish he wouldn't do that.
But he's not perfect, Charlie.
But if I'm going through a hostile crowd and I have a bodyguard, I want a bodyguard who's tough.
I use the same description.
No, I think I did.
I think you said at the Republican Convention.
You did.
Okay.
Thank you because I've been using that illustration.
Thank you.
Well, I call him a bodyguard for a reason because having to deal with the left as much as I do, I've had my fair share of bodyguards.
And the bodyguards that make me feel the most safe, that I can live my life, do what I need to do, they're the meanest, toughest dudes you'll ever meet.
And they know how to fight.
And they turn to me and say, don't worry, I got it.
We go through that crowd, and they're six foot eight, and they got shoulders that could fill the whole door.
And I think it's just clear that just we have to kind of understand that what kind of president do we want in this time that we're in in our country.
Right.
And we're in a place, it's a democracy, yes, a special kind of democracy called a republic.
But we're in a conflict.
Path to Citizenship Debate 00:10:22
There's a conflict between those who want to allow babies' lives to be snuffed out and those who want to protect babies' lives.
Between those who want a strong military and those who want a weak military, between those who want a strong economy and those who want high taxes and government control of business, which is a weakened economy, between those who want spiritual freedom, freedom of conscience for Christians, and those who want to suppress Christians and have us p express moral convictions only inside the walls of the church.
Those who are promoting the validity of homosexuality to be taught in public schools versus those who say as Christians, we don't want our children taught those moral standards.
There are conflicts at many levels in many policies.
Those who want us to be able to use their resources for our benefit, use them wisely, and those who want to restrict and forbid us to use the earth's resources.
Those who think that the best solution to poverty is jobs that allow people to support themselves and give the dignity of work, versus those who think the success is increasing the number of people on welfare, not increasing the number of people, increasing the amount of welfare that is distributed, yeah.
So they're very different.
I think of political liberals as those who think that they know better than we do how we should run our lives.
And the Bible places, as I read it, the Bible places a very high value on individual personal freedom and personal responsibility.
There's another difference.
Do we think that individuals who riot and commit looting and arson are responsible for their actions?
Or do we blame the society that brought them up and influenced them?
And we talk about this often on our program, which is just going back to the roots of social contract theory of Rousseau versus Lobbs.
Rousseau versus Hobbes versus Locke, which is, are we, who are we in our natural state?
Are we flawed and in need of a savior such as Jesus Christ?
Yes.
Or anything that you see that is less than, is it because of the system?
And Rousseau would hold that view.
Rousseau would hold the view that any sinful nature is not that at all, or any activity that you might deem to be impermissible, it's because of the system around you, and you have to change the system.
Right.
So that shields people from personal responsibility for their actions.
Yes.
But the whole history of the Bible is people are held accountable for their own actions.
The son shall not suffer for the father's sin or the father for the son.
And it changed that.
I mean, that changed all of, you know, civilization up until that point where there was an idea of blood guilt and an idea of just being group accountability.
Yes.
Group culpability for moral wrongdoing.
Yes.
Which is a retreat to tribalism, which is what I'm afraid.
It is.
And then there's no accountability for individual wrongdoing.
And crime and violence and murder increase rapidly, as we're seeing in Chicago, in New York, in other cities controlled by liberal Democrats.
So I have to ask you about this one.
It just caught my eye.
Number eight, actually building a border wall.
Yes.
I am told by Christians that are pro-life.
Yeah.
They are anti-socialism.
Yeah.
But they say, why don't we have looser borders?
Why don't we have a more generous immigration policy?
I don't like the wall.
It's un-Christian.
What do you have to say about that?
I was in a taxi.
I don't know if it was India or Brazil, someplace talking to a taxi driver.
And I somehow said to him, would you like to come to America?
And he said, you know, he was talking about coming to America.
I said, you'd like to come to America?
He said, everybody in the world wants to come to America.
I think that was a taxi driver's wisdom to realize.
But the population of the world is 22 times the population of the United States.
And we have limited resources, obviously.
Yeah.
When I fly to the United States from a foreign country, I can't just walk off the plane into my car and go home.
I use this example all the time.
I have to go through border control.
And customs.
I have to go through immigration and customs because the United States has an interest, as every other nation on earth does, in controlling who comes into the country.
So we.
Oh, I just let's see.
Just let me gather my thought here.
I would encourage people who think a border wall is a bad idea to take a concordance or a Bible app and search for the word wall in the Bible.
There are many examples of walls being a blessing.
When the wall around Jerusalem was completed, it was a blessing from God, a sign of God's favor.
And there's a proverb: a man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.
That's a shameful thing for a city to have.
Now, cities had gates so people could come in, but there was a control over who came in.
Wasn't it Nehemiah that helped rebuild the wall?
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Whole books about that.
Yeah.
But there are other passages in Psalms and Proverbs about the blessing of a wall.
You were secure within the walls of the city.
So I think we need to build a border wall.
Now, I think we should have a big gate.
I think we should let Lott in.
It's a big country and we can accommodate many more people.
And I'm thankful for immigrants.
We should be thankful for immigrants.
We're a nation built on immigrants.
But we need the right to control, the ability to control who comes in and who is admitted.
It's a harm to the country, but it's a harm to those who come in undocumented and secretly and live in a subservient or subordinate class or group that is unknown to the system, but then they can be robbed or beaten and they're afraid to report the crime to the police.
They're taken advantage of because they don't want it known that they're here without documentation.
It's a harm to them as well as a harm to the society.
I think we should let in many, many, many immigrants.
We let in a million a year legally, which is more than any nation in the world.
I think we could do more.
But the American people will not, there will not be a popular will to come to a reasonable solution about immigration until people feel the wall is secure, the border is secure.
Then, what do we do with people who are here illegally?
I think there should be a path to citizenship.
It should be a humane solution.
Now, the details of it would have to be worked out in politics.
But I think, Charlie, and this is my own opinion.
I think that there's a difference in the political parties.
The Republicans want a comprehensive immigration reform plan that would allow a lot of immigrants in legally.
But the Democrats don't want any deal at all because they think it helps them politically to keep on letting more and more undocumented immigrants come into the country because eventually they think they'll become Democratic voters.
That is their strategy.
So, in closing, I want to talk about why you think certain churches have remained silent on the political issue and why other churches have embraced kind of critical race theory and BLM Incorporated.
And so, why do you think that the church does not see these issues as clearly as you do?
Now, a majority of Christians do, actually, but some of these institutions seem as if they have wavered on some of these issues.
Is it that they're not teaching proper theology?
They're afraid of losing membership.
What do you attribute that to?
I am hesitant to explain what people's motives are because I don't even always know the motives in my own heart for my own actions.
So, I'm reluctant to say with much conviction what I think the reasons are that pastors sometimes don't preach about political issues.
My own pastor does.
He gave a very good sermon a couple weeks ago.
And you're a tough grader.
Yeah.
I wouldn't want to give a sermon to you.
But there's a natural fear.
I'm going to alienate people in the church.
I'm going to drive away visitors.
I'm going to, some people will walk out and be mad at me.
And my answer is to say, look, your responsibility is to proclaim all of the Bible's teachings.
What Paul says in Acts 20, 27, I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole council of God.
That means everything the Bible teaches.
So I don't think we're responsible.
I don't think we're responsible for no one ever leaving our church.
People walked out on Jesus.
People stoned Paul and drove him out of city after city.
Iconium Lystra, Antioch, Iconium, Lystra.
He was driven out of Thessalonica, Ephesus, ultimately.
But he, at the end of his life, could say, I've fought the good fight, I've finished the race, I've kept the faith.
Compelling Election Arguments 00:04:30
So I want to be able to say that too.
I want to be able to say I've been faithful in teaching everything that God wanted me to teach and everything his word said.
Jesus, in fact, said this is something that pastors could think about.
Woe to you when all people speak well of you.
That's good.
If you're not being criticized, you're probably not doing something right.
Yeah.
Amen.
Well, we're right up against the selection.
I think you've made a very compelling argument.
I want to list all 30 very quickly.
I talk very fast.
You said 30 good things President Trump has done for America, and this is from a Christian biblical worldview.
It's on my website, Wayne Grudem.
WayneGrudem.com.
It's judges, tax cuts, building a stronger U.S. military, protecting unborn babies, expanding educational freedom, standing with Israel, negotiating a historic agreement between Israel and the UAE, building a border wall, comprehensive immigration reform proposals, religious freedom and freedom of conscience, withdrawing from Paris Climate Accord, energy production, energy independence, waterways of the U.S., halting the increase in corporate average fuel economy standards, defeating ISIS, persuading European nations to pay more for NATO,
protecting against false accusations on college campuses, my favorite, protecting freedom of speech on college campuses, 18.
Protecting boys and girls' bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams, very important.
Negotiating new trade agreements that are more favorable to the U.S., streamlining environmental reviews for major construction projects, sending weapons to Ukraine, standing up to China and Russia, withdrawing from the Iran deal, a wise COVID-19 response, reforming the Department of Veteran Affairs, criminal justice from reducing prescription drug prices, protecting federal property from rioters, and welcoming evangelical Christians in positions of influence.
And you say the context, refusing to waver in the face of the most biased reporting in American history.
And you say for every one negative statement of Biden, there's 158 negative evaluations of Trump.
That's evening news, NBC, CBS, and ABC during June and July.
I remember that because 158 is the number I see when I step on the scale.
That's funny.
You're right.
Those three major networks when the Media Research Center counted the negative evaluative statements made about Biden and Trump.
For every one statement that was negative about Joe Biden, there were 158 negative statements about President Trump.
Now, people say, I don't like his character.
Well, he's been subject to character assassination for three and a half years.
And I think that people who say that think that he's much worse, much, much worse than he is.
I agree with that.
That's a great point.
I think his contact, I agree, his previous contact, his previous conduct.
I agree that his previous conduct regarding marriage has not been stellar, has not been faithful.
It's been contrary to God's moral law.
But people change.
And while he's been in office, he's been exemplary in his conduct, not always in every word he says.
And I'm not going to defend all his words.
But in his conduct as president, he's shown dignity and strength of resolve and patriotism and love for the country and courage.
And I think he's doing a good job.
Well, it's been amazing, Dr. Grudem, WayneGrudem.com.
And I encourage everyone to check out your politics according to the Bible book.
It's phenomenal.
And you have some articles that have been written about the election.
They're all on my website.
And I encourage everyone to check them out and circulate them to friends and family.
And I hope that this episode helped clarify why you should get involved in politics.
The five examples that you named of people in the Bible that were influencing secular government.
You said Joseph, Nehemiah, Esther, Daniel, Mordecai.
Right.
I don't think that's an exhaustive list, but that's a pretty good one.
John the Baptist.
John the Baptist.
Jeremiah.
Jeremiah.
See, I just keep adding this.
And then Paul, 1 Timothy 2.
Peter, 1 Peter 2.
And then you mentioned how Christians have helped build the modern world.
And so we had that framework.
Right.
And then we built up from there what we should actually do in this election, which I think is a very compelling argument from a biblical worldview to re-elect President Trump.
So thank you, Dr. Grudem.
Good to be with you.
God bless you.
Thank you.
Okay.
What a great conversation that was with Wayne Grudem.
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Re-elect Trump for America 00:00:36
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Thank you guys so much.
God bless.
Talk to yourself.
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