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Sept. 4, 2025 - Dinesh D'Souza
52:24
NEW MOVIE PREVIEW Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep1161
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Coming up, big news certainly from our end.
I'm announcing today our new film, The Dragon's Prophecy, and I'll give you details about it.
We're also gonna play for the first time on the podcast, the trailer.
Bill Randall, a retired veteran who specializes in meteorology, joins me.
We're gonna talk about the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and I'll review Rick Warren's commentary on my own book, Life After Death, The Evidence.
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This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
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I am absolutely delighted, guys, to announce a new film, our new film.
I often say my new film, but we have a film team.
Debbie is a critical part of it.
My partner, Bruce Schooley.
So we have a gang of four or five of us that are at the helm of putting this stuff together.
And we do it Um we do it jointly.
The new film is The Dragon's Prophecy.
And um I uh released the trailer um today, this morning.
It's out on all platforms.
I put it up on X, it's on Getter, it's on Truth Social, YouTube, uh Rumble, uh Facebook.
So I want you to watch it, but I also want you to share it.
Because part of my way of getting things out is to getting them to you so you can get them out to others.
And so if you don't mind, put it on your Facebook page and let your friends know about it.
It's an exciting film and it's a little different than my earlier films, in that my earlier films are very America focused, very much about the meaning of America.
The Dragon's Prophecy is about Israel, it's about the Middle East, it's about Hamas, it's about radical Islam, it's about understanding anti-Semitism, but it's also about Biblical archaeology and a hint of biblical prophecy.
So all those things are woven together into a kind of beautiful tapestry that enables you to look at October 7th.
The film, by the way, is timed for release to correspond with the second anniversary of October 7th.
Now it'll be in theaters October 6th and October 8th.
Select theaters around the country and movie tickets will be available on the film website, and the website is the Dragons Prophecy Film dot com.
The Dragon's Prophecy Film dot com.
You can also go to Dinesh D'Souza dot com and it will link to that movie website.
But the movie tickets are not available yet.
They'll be available mid-September, so be a little patient.
It's really fun to watch this in the theater, but you can get your tickets um really in about uh in about ten days.
But what you can do is on October 9th, the very next day after the theater, the film is available.
DVDs will be shipped a few days earlier to arrive on October 9th.
And the film is also available in streaming.
You can purchase and you can uh you can stream and you can you can watch.
And you can sign up now for the streaming.
You can sign up now to get DVDs.
Um this is a film that's going to um uh in in some ways I think it's gonna be kind of mind-blowing, but it's also uh it's a deeply political film.
It's historical, it's also spiritual.
I've never attempted a combination of these disparate elements in quite uh this way.
Uh, because part of what we're doing is we are we are transcending a very a little bit of a stale existing debate, a debate that comes to some degree, you get critics of Israel from the left, you get critics from the right, and there's a standard narrative.
And from the left, of course, the standard narrative is colonialism.
Uh and from the right, the standard narrative uh is um that um the um that Israel um uh owns the US.
Uh why is in our interest to support Israel?
Are the Jews of today really the same as the Jews of the Bible?
All of this is frontally engaged uh in the film, and in a manner that lifts the debate to a whole new level.
Now, at the end of this segment, um we're gonna I'm going to play the trailer so you can see for yourself.
It gives you some glimpses, a kind of window uh into the film itself.
Uh and um we've tried to create a trailer and a film that's going to give you chills uh that you're going to find not only illuminating but but very edifying.
And a film that um now the film is is based, the title, The Dragon's Prophecy, comes from Jonathan Kahn's book of that title.
A brilliantly inventive book that I think offers a blazing insight, an insight that says that the battles that we see now between Israel and the Palestinians are not just an echo, are not just a recollection,
but are a revival and indeed a resurrection of an ancient longtime struggle recorded in the Bible, recorded in the Bible between the Israelites or the Jews and the Palestinians.
And the there's a very intriguing connection between the Philistines who fought the Israelites, the Philistines, and the Palestinians.
Even the name is really the same name as just transformed through through time.
What Jonathan Kahn brings to this movie is the past and also the future.
Uh what we bring to the movie, in addition to Khan, is a um exploration of biblical archaeology.
You are you can see it in a sense for yourself, and it settles important questions.
It doesn't just settle the question of can we trust the Bible?
Is the Bible really an historical document?
But also, what can we learn from archaeology about whose land this is?
In the end, isn't that what this issue is all about?
Whose land is it, really?
And uh I think we're able to, to a large degree, settle that, settle that question, and in a very dramatic way.
The film has a one-on-one interview with um Benjamin Netanyahu, the current uh prime minister of Israel.
Uh, by the way, we have small uh we have parts of the interview in the film.
Uh, and I did a full-on conversation with him, which I'll release as a special podcast right here on this podcast, uh, close to close to October, October 7th.
I also have uh conversation with the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, also with the commentator and analyst Eric Stackelbeck, who's an expert on radical Islam, Eric Mataxis, who's written a book on biblical archaeology.
There are all kinds of uh interesting sources in Israel itself.
This is a movie not to be missed.
Uh, I think you will find it.
Well, I I hope I don't exaggerate When I say transformational.
This whole experience has been for Debbie and me exactly that.
So once again, the movie website is the Dragon's Prophecy.
By the way, prophecy is P R O P H E C Y, the Dragon's Prophecyfilm.com.
And here, just to close out this segment, is the trailer.
Then another sign of turn.
An enormous red dragon.
revelation 12 3.
Once again, an armed attack in the Middle East.
But this time it's different.
October 7th was the devil's home.
It's very hard to believe what happened.
Even though I was there and seen with my own eyes and seen them laughing and killing and having fun with it.
Because if you don't open the door, they are going to kill you and they are going to kill me, so please open the door.
So who are the Jews?
Who are the Palestinians?
And whose land is it really?
Could the fate of the world of humanity itself be somehow tied to this place?
The nation of Israel is a resurrected nation.
So what if there was gonna be a resurrection of another people, an enemy people of Israel?
The Bible speaks about this whole war as a dragon representing the enemy, attacking a woman representing Israel.
The civilian deaths on both sides represent victories on the part of the dragon.
They mastered everything within their ability to maximize the civilian casualty.
Came back to a land that was largely barren and empty, and we brought it back to life, and we're good to keep it.
The devil hates the Jewish people because they represent the existence of God.
Because without that Jewish foundation, there is no Christianity.
If we're approaching the end of time, God will reveal himself more and more dramatically.
Speak back through the stones.
The story that they've been telling is that Israel is a colonial project.
The problem with that is the city of David.
We are an inconvenient truth.
Are you aware of any significant archaeological finding that contradicts the Bible?
No.
God's word stands firm.
The dragon will not prevail.
Your message here is become a dragon slave.
based on Jonathan Cahn's number one international bestseller, The Dragon's Prophecy.
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Guys, I'm delighted to welcome to the podcast a new guest.
It's Bill Randall, and he is a Christian evangelist.
He's also an MBA, he's a small business owner, and he's a 27-year U.S. Navy veteran who specialized in earth science, which is meteorology as well as oceanography.
And he's here to talk to me about Hurricane Katrina.
We're at the 20th anniversary, and also the issue of climate change.
By the way, the website is just called Restoring Hope 365.
So restoring hope 365.com.
Bill, thank you for joining me.
I really appreciate it.
Can you tell us?
I remember Hurricane Katrina.
There was, of course, a massive controversy around it.
People were pointing fingers of blame at George W. Bush as if he had personally orchestrated the hurricane.
And of course, there was the inevitable uh talk about this is what happens when you have man-made climate change.
This is a topic that you have studied, you're very close to, you are knowledgeable about.
Uh, how should we reflect back on a hurricane Katrina?
And what do we need to know about this climate change issue?
Okay, um, again, thank you for having me, uh, Dinesha.
I appreciate the opportunity.
As far as uh climate change is concerned, well, let's back up a bit.
You asked about Hurricane Katrina and the ramifications.
Hurricane Katrina uh was uh very significant in New Orleans.
As a matter of fact, um my family uh were we had a home in the lower ninth ward, and Hurricane Betsy hit almost 40 years to the day before Katrina did.
It devastated the Lower Ninth Ward, and uh my dad was only about three months away from paying off the home, paying off the home, and financially it really was uh uh a blow to him, and it took them a while to rebuild and come back, but they did, and so did many of the residents in the lower ninth war.
Fast forward to 19 to 2005, and Katrina hits, and you have different circumstances, more of a political football that they used, and uh it's really a tragic thing that happened.
And the thing that um I could go in a number of directions, but one of the things that was disappointing and a lot of people don't know about is that uh the residents were encouraged to come back and rebuild, with the exception of the Lower Ninth War.
Uh, they were even told that uh uh you should come back and take a quick view to bring closure to this part of your life.
Now, if everybody else is being told that they can come back and rebuild, but then you tell the people in the Lower Ninth Ward, you're gonna bring closures to this part of your life.
Uh there's something that's a dis there's a disconnect there.
And the people were devastated.
They were fighting and petitioning to be able to come back to their homes and their uh properties, and it was it was stonewalled.
They were prevented, they said it was because of some um uh health reasons and this, that, and the other.
But the truth of the matter is they were prevented from coming back, and they had another residence that they were living in, maybe in Houston, maybe in uh Atlanta, or maybe even in Batroge, Louisiana, but they can't maintain two households indefinitely.
And so they dragged their feet before they could let the people before they let the people of the Lord Ninth Ward come back, and that was well into 2006, almost a year later, really.
And then by that time, they had to commit to another place.
And so I had petitioned, I don't know if you want me to go into the thing that I alluded to before, but Go for it.
I petitioned the uh city council in New Orleans with ideas that I had for rebuilding the Lower Ninth Ward.
And at first, they had they were receptive to it and this, that, and the other.
And even the uh representative for the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans East, she invited me up to her office.
And then when we started talking, she um got to talking about politics out of the blue.
She said, Well, you know, what political party do you belong to?
And I'm not gonna lie to her.
I said, Well, I'm a conservative Republican.
And the countenance on her face changed, and uh the the conversation wound out real quick.
I was out of her office in less than 10 minutes from that point, and uh the president of the city council earlier, before she invited me to her office, and if you could go back to the video uh if of that day, which was the 17th of November 2005,
he invited me, he had personally invited me back to come and address the uh city council with more details of my plan and ideas for for rebuilding, and uh he said come back on the 15th of December, which I made arrangements for coming back and I did, and then uh when I came back, I wasn't even on the docket.
Uh they just had no inkling of putting me on, and they had no uh intention of having me come forth, and I I don't understand why they wouldn't, but then I do because it's probably because they didn't want anything coming from a conservative perspective,
you know, and I think it's really sad and tragic that that happened because I was not able to bring forth the ideas that could have been beneficial uh to the people and to the city, and um, you know, it's it's disheartening.
You know, I I wonder, Bill, if a big part of the motive here was that uh we don't actually want to solve this problem as quickly as possible because there is so much political leverage to be gained against the Bush administration.
If there's one thing I remember from Katrina, it was the fact that it was a media festival of blame, all pointed at Washington, D.C. And I wonder if the local authorities were like, listen, you know what?
This is proving to be a political bonanza against the Republicans, and so we're willing to take some hardship and heartache down here because we're scoring some major political points.
Do you think that that's part of what was going on here?
Uh, without a doubt, the uh candidates for president uh came down there because the ones that were going to run in 2008, they came down there and really everybody from uh Barack Obama and uh you know Hillary Clinton, uh I don't know the other names, but you could you could look it up.
But they came there, made a media event out of it, and you know, conservative Republicans hate poor black people, and uh the narrative went on and on and on.
Um look, I am not trying to say that there's not racism in the United States.
I'm not living in a fool's paradise.
I was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Uh I am old enough to have gone up To a white and colored water fountain and have to make a decision on which one to drink out of.
You know, I know that Jim Crow did exist, and I know that we've come a long way.
And I know that we still have a long way to go.
But when you have something like that, where the uh powers that be want to make it like you say of political football, it's really reprehensible.
And as a matter of fact, the president of the city council back then in 2005 is Oliver Thomas, Oliver Thomas.
He is today on the City Council with a brief hiatus or hiatus of a few years.
He actually went to prison, but he's back on the city council.
He could attest to this if he's, you know, would be straightforward about it.
And uh, like I said, freedom of information uh would show you if he gave you access to the videos that were made, it would show that.
And when I came back in uh and I came back in December, they did not want me to do the presentation.
They waited me out uh all day long into the evening when it was time for them to adjourn, but I was determined I was gonna stay there.
And then when I stayed there in the end, just before I did, uh John King and his CNN group uh actually had uh a guy that came up to the city council and was yelling and screaming about you're not gonna take my blankety blank property.
John King, how I knew it was staged because they were standing on the side waiting for this guy to do his thing, and then the camera started rolling, and then they filmed that, and then uh after that was done, it collapsed the cameras and everything, and they left.
John King might deny that he talked to me because I told him I came here, came there to bring ideas.
Again, this is the second time that I came.
Uh he I told him that I was there for that reason, and I thought that he would maybe deny it in the future.
So I actually got him to sign a piece of paper saying uh hello to my wife, who really uh was a fan of his on CNN, and I said, write her a short note and sign, and he did.
So I have that, and he can deny it all he wants, but I think it's it's it's really tragic.
If CNN was there, and you have somebody that's from the Lower Ninth War to bring ideas, you could at least you know do a video of what his presentation was going to be, but he wasn't there, he wasn't interested in that, and they just left.
And I could go on with more and more things, but uh the narrative against George Bush and Republicans was put forth, and I'm not here to be an apologist for any political party.
I believe that you just need to be straightforward and honest to the facts.
And uh that was not done back there in Katrina when Katrina happened, and it was definitely used as a political football.
You know, Bill, not a lot of people are witness get to be witness to this, but I think just by being there, you were witness to what you could call the news manufacturing business, the way in which these incidents, you know, when I say they're staged, probably the way John King thought about it is he thinks the essence of this story is that people are angry because they've lost their homes, and so he finds a guy who fits that profile, and he's like, go out there and cry a little bit on the camera, we'll get the shot, and then we're out of here.
And you know, it makes you cynical when you're there because you go, oh wow, all the stuff I've seen all these years on the news, this is how they get it.
That's what happened, and uh it's a really a crying shame.
Uh Danes, there's so many other things I could talk about, but I'm just gonna let it wind down for whatever questions you may have right now, and maybe we could pick it up at another time.
Very interesting guys.
I've been talking to Bill Randall, Christian Evangelist, MBA, business owner, and also uh U.S. Navy veteran specializing in earth science as um, as you've been hearing, the website is Restoring Hope 365365.com.
Thank you very much, Bill.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you, Denish.
All the best to you.
And uh, may I say one thing real quick?
I hope your listeners and viewers would go into the remarks and say a big thank you to Dinesh for all he's been through, especially with the persecution he did when a certain administration tried to make an example out of him.
Dinesh, you're a true patriot, and thank you for that and other things you're still doing.
Hey, means a lot.
Thank you very much.
Okay, now guys, I'm delighted to welcome to the podcast Harlan Accala.
He's the National Reverse Mortgage Director for Movement Mortgage.
He's also the author of a fascinating book, Home Equity and Reverse Mortgages, The Cinderella of the Baby Boomer Retirement.
Harlan, welcome.
Thank you for joining me.
You know, when you guys with Movement Mortgage talked to me for the first time, and I heard this phrase reverse mortgage.
I admit I didn't know a whole lot about it, but I had kind of a big frown on my face, like, oh, that doesn't sound like a very good idea.
And then we talked it through, and I'm like, whoa, I haven't quite thought about it this way.
So can you tell people what a what a reverse mortgage is?
And uh then let's talk about how something like that can actually be a very helpful tool.
Well, yeah, it's it's really glad to be here, Dinesh.
It's it's really pretty simple when you think about it.
You put money into your Social Security and you take it out when you get older.
You put money into a 401k, an IRA, take it out when you get older.
All that a reverse mortgage does is allow you to safely take money out of your house without selling it and without creating a payment.
And it's uh obviously a payment that eventually gets paid back.
You're using some of your equity just like you use money in your 401k, or you use money in your IRA or your savings account, uh, then you would have less from there.
But on an overall basis, it's something that consistently, over and over allows you to use it safely throughout your retirement without losing control of your house, without changing the ownership of your house without endangering whether or not you can live in it for the rest of your life.
I mean, this to me is such a novel idea.
I think we need to put this into slow motion so people can kind of see some kind of use scenarios for what we're talking about.
You're talking about people who, by and large, over time, have built up a lot of equity in their house, right?
They might own the house outright, or they may have a, they may have some um some outstanding debt, but on the other hand, they've built up all this equity.
And now they've reached a position in life when they're thinking about their investments and they'd like to invest in something, but they don't have the money.
Or they find that most of their money is in their house and they're now uh their normal basic lifestyle is being crimped because they don't have enough loose cash.
Or they owe a tax bill and they don't have the money to pay, and then they're saying, okay, well, we'll make you a loan at a high, you know, confiscatory rate of interest.
And what you're saying is, guess what?
There are lots of people who have a considerable amount of equity in their homes, and it is rational to consider that when you have other needs for money and you've got money already there.
Yeah, once you reach uh close to retirement or in retirement, I'm not in retirement, but I'm over 62, so I have my own reverse mortgage.
And when I got to be 62, I was part of the first group that stopped making a mortgage payment.
So I no longer had to send money to my house because I had more than enough equity and I was over 62, so I qualified, and then I just stopped making a mortgage payment, which was about 3,000 a month, and started instead sending it to my investment advisor, which put me into a better situation for not only my retirement, but also my kids later because of what I was able to put into my other investment side.
There's another group of people that have their houses paid off completely, and they can then use that to uh have some additional tax-free income so they have a better retirement, or if they have a lot of money in all areas, they can use it to defray their taxes by using that money to pay for Roth conversions or for being able to have a larger deduction.
So whether you have a mortgage or you don't have a mortgage, it works either way by simply not concentrating so much of your wealth into a house.
I mean, think about Dinesh.
If I have a million dollars in IRA, I don't put it all in one stock.
If I have a million dollars, I don't want to put it all into one real estate stock called my house or 500,000 or 200,000 or whatever my house is worth.
It's a lot of concentration of wealth in one area.
We simply allow people to be able to diversify that and use some of that money inside the house without risking being able to live there.
Yeah, in my experience, people spend a lot of money, I mean, not a lot of money, but it spend a lot of effort, earning money and relatively little effort thinking about what to do with the money that they've earned over their lifetime, right?
And so they end up, I think, somewhat carelessly in a situation where in the abstract, you might be convinced, all right, I should have about a third of my money in my house, a third in stocks, let's just say a third in in safe assets, right?
Uh, but the truth of it is the way things evolve, you're making your mortgage payment, and so you suddenly take a look at your portfolio and you realize like 70% of your net worth, and I think this is I'm probably not far off, is in people's homes.
Uh, and that may not be the most rational balance for you or for your family.
I think what you're saying is, you know, you don't have to be a victim of this inevitability that there is this option available to you.
I mean, what I like about this is that you're essentially educating people to think about this in a fresh light, right?
Let's let's talk a little bit about like why do people have this negative idea of a reverse mortgage?
Is it because the stereotype is you're like stripping your home of its value, you're you're wasting the cash, and basically your kids will get nothing.
Is that is that what's behind the fear?
Well, well, that's that's without a question a big part of it.
But uh, you know, I in my book, I one of my chapters is drugs, sex, and reverse mortgages.
And for some reason people turn to that right away.
But excellent title.
Drugs can be a great thing, it can save your life, or drugs can uh you can overdose and die.
Sex can obviously be good or evil.
Uh, so can reverse mortgages, so can any type of investing or whatever is out there, it can be used incorrectly.
And and so many times it was used incorrectly and and seniors uh were taken advantage of and ripped off, and then we got a bad name uh by association.
And there's bad products out there that actually take over ownership of the house.
And that is dangerous when you are letting somebody else into the ownership of your house because that owner might say, you know, you've lived long enough, let's kick you out.
Uh that's not what we do at movement mortgage.
These are actual safe FHA reverse mortgages that we take no ownership in the house at all.
You never sign over the deed or anything like that.
That's where a lot of the problems come from.
But yes, as you mentioned, it even goes deeper.
It is a cultural thing.
My dad took me to um mortgage burning parties uh back in the uh uh 60s.
And we are told that the best thing you can do is pay off your house.
That was true before 1988 when Ronald Reagan came out with the reverse mortgage scenario, which was safe.
And so it was a better idea to have your house paid off because there wasn't a good alternative.
After 1988, the rules changed.
And a lot of people have just simply knocked out the memo and realize that, oh, okay, now based on this new information, it makes sense for me to use some of the equity in my home and I can do it safely, and I can look at it as any other asset, and it does not have to be illiquid.
That's the key, Dinesh, is illiquidity in retirement is a dangerous thing.
Because if your house is worth a half a million dollars or 200,000 or a million and you can't use it, what good does it do when you want to take care of health issues or you want to go on a Viking River cruise or you want to help your kids or your grandkids, it's all excuse me, it's all locked up.
And if you can't use it, what good is that wealth?
I mean, this is uh, I think a key point, which is that you can look at wealth in two forms, right?
There is wealth that is liquid or illiquid.
And what you mean by illiquid, I just want to spell it out, is that it's all tied into the physical property called your house, right?
You can't move it.
Of course, you can sell it, but you can't sell it in pieces, right?
You have to either sell the house or don't sell the house.
But, you know, unlike, for example, with other assets, if I've got some Apple stock and I want to get rid of it, I can sell a third of it and keep two-thirds of it, but houses don't work like that.
They're just one big chunk of concrete and it's a yes or no transaction.
I think what you're introducing is sort of financial flexibility uh for people who are very often locked into rather large capital outlays that might not make sense for them, right?
And your book is a way of opening their mind to other possibilities so that they can think of guess what?
I have a better use for the money than where it's sitting now, and this is a way for me to avail myself of it.
I it it's so true, Danish.
If you sat down and made a plan for retirement, and you did not consider your savings account, you did not consider your 401k, your pension, uh you know, whatever it is, even if people have a lot of money or a little bit of money, they put the Social Security Play and say, What when should I draw Social Security?
How should I do this?
When should my wife draw Social Security?
That's all part of the plan.
But so few people say, well, let's look at my housing wealth also.
How should that be employed?
How should that be used?
Because it's not only about when my wife and I made our plans, it's not only about Brendan I. It's also about our four sons and our seven grandchildren.
Uh, and when we take a look at all of that, to not use housing wealth is foolish in our overall planning because it's a very significant part of our assets.
Anybody my age, any of the baby boomers, have uh received a lot of increase in their uh housing wealth, a huge amount.
There's 14 trillion dollars in housing wealth, the largest asset class uh in uh larger than any uh single asset class in the history of any country in the world.
Shouldn't that be managed?
Shouldn't that be considered as part of our baby boomer's plan as to how to get through the next 10, 20, 30 years?
That's what we're trying to get the news out about, because it is crucial for a better retirement and quite frankly, better inheritance for the next generation.
Guys, check it out.
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I've been speaking to Harlan Accala.
Harlan, thank you very much for joining me.
Thanks for the opportunity, Denish.
Looking forward to talking further about the very important topic.
I'm beginning the discussion of my book Life After Death, The Evidence, and I'm going to start by going through some key points made by Rick Warren.
This is Pastor Rick Warren, one of the most influential pastors in the country.
And uh, the author, by the way, of the purpose-driven life, which you might remember was just a mammoth bestseller uh several years ago.
And Rick Warren is also connected with a vast network of other churches.
Uh this book, he writes by my friend Dinesh D'Souza is a brilliant investigation of the fascinating and crucial issue of what happens when we die.
It is an inquiry conducted on the basis of scholarship and reason, and it provides a convincing answer that is explosive in its impact.
So this is a correct identification of what this book is doing, deploying the tools of reason.
He continues, it's often been stated we are not ready to live until we are prepared to die.
This is a very uh profound idea and it goes back to the ancient Greeks.
The ancient Greeks had this enigmatic uh proverb or saying, call no man happy until he is dead.
What a seemingly odd thing to say, right?
But what the Greeks meant by this is that you can have somebody whose life seems to be going great, and you declare them to be a marvel of human existence and a model for everybody else, and then their life takes an incredibly sad or shipwrecked or nasty turn.
You discover things about them you didn't know before, and suddenly the beautiful life turns into a complete disgrace and is never mentioned again.
So the Greeks were like, listen, don't make premature judgments about whether this person had a great life, whether they were happy.
Let's wait till it's all over.
Let's wait till the movie is finished, then you can decide if it's a great movie or not.
It might seem to be a great movie, and then suddenly the producers lose track of the plot and the movie is really leaves you like, what did I just watch?
Because the ending was completely botched.
Debbie and I are all too familiar with this uh experience.
But this is really what Rick Warren is getting at.
The truths in this book, he writes, are not meant simply to prepare you for eternity.
They are the foundations on which you can build a meaningful life of purpose.
Another interesting uh point here, because what he's getting at is we often think that discussions of the afterlife are about the afterlife.
And Warren is saying, yeah, that's true, but not only, meaning they're also about something else, which is the restructuring of the way that you live now.
The um, because think about it.
If your life didn't have a postscript and afterlife, you would in fact live differently now than if life does.
So what comes after makes a big impact, a big difference on how you think about it today.
In the purpose-driven life, writes Rick Warren, I pointed out the Bible teaches that our time on earth is a preparation for eternity.
We were made to last forever.
This life is like a warm-up actor dress rehearsal for the real show in eternity.
Once we fully grasp this, it makes all the difference.
We reorder our priorities.
And he says, So, where can we learn the truth about the afterlife?
Here he's coming to the two ways that one can pursue this kind of an investigation.
We have two choices, speculation or revelation.
Uh, I think this is an excellent uh fork in the road here.
And he says throughout history, philosophers have conjectured, but even our brightest minds are just guessing.
The better alternative, he says, is to look at holy scripture.
And he says, but what we've seen today is the rise of a kind of secular atheism or atheistic secularism, as he calls it, that denies revelation.
And he says, uh the objections to the afterlife raised by these so-called new atheists, he's thinking of Dawkins, Hitchens, the philosopher Daniel Dennett, Michael Shermer, the editor of Skeptic Magazine, um, Sam Harris, many others.
He goes, they're not new.
They've been discounted, they've been discredited by scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, even theologians.
But he goes, many people don't know the classic apologetics.
He goes on to say, that's why this book is so important.
It clearly and boldly boldly exposes the fallacies that are often accepted today without question.
If this life is all there is, there is no basis for meaning, hope, purpose, or significance to life.
Now, this is something the atheist would deny.
The atheist say it doesn't matter if there's hey, and Christopher Hitchens would say the actual opposite.
He'd say to me, Dinah, he goes, you know why I value this life?
Because it's all I got.
I don't have another life.
So, in other words, I attach more meaning and more significance and more importance to my decisions in this life.
Hitgens even one time went on to argue to me that he was a moderate pro-lifer, believe it or not.
Here you had a man, and then at that time Hitchens was very much on the left and certainly a kind of vociferous atheist, but he was also to a certain degree pro-life.
Why?
He goes, Because this life is the only life there is.
So I don't think we have the right to cancel out somebody else's life.
And uh, and I found this a very intriguing kind of, you can almost call it secular atheist argument for pro-life.
Let's continue with uh Rick Warren.
He goes, he's now operating on the premise that there is no afterlife.
He goes, moreover, we can forget about being decent or ethical with no basis for human dignity, rights, or liberty.
Now, again, I want to highlight that this is a controversial statement.
Uh, atheists and secularists would deny it.
They would say, guess what?
No, human dignity doesn't necessarily come from God.
Human dignity is something that we confer on our fellow human beings.
In other words, values don't derive from some external source, they are inwardly generated.
Values are not something that we simply perceive in the world.
They are things that we as human beings create.
And so human dignity, rights, liberty come out of this human project of assigning value or values to our political system, our culture, and so on.
Um, whether or not this atheist argument holds water is something we will subsequently look at.
But I just want to raise it here now to show that this is some of the disputed territory we're going to get into.
And then Rick Warren goes On to say, even the American Constitution points out that our uninalienable rights, Constitution actually says unalienable rights, but minor difference, same meaning, are quote, endowed by our Creator, not by the government or any other human source.
So you can see here Rick Warren knows he's familiar with the argument that our values and rights are humanly generated.
And he correctly points out that Thomas Jefferson, who was in some ways pretty skeptical, Thomas Jefferson had his own kind of Christian Bible.
He he took the Bible, he cut out all the miracles, he cut out all the uh implications of divine revelation.
He essentially admired Jesus as a kind of good man and he admired the teachings of Jesus, but he had a very narrow or truncated view of the Bible.
And yet, this same Thomas Jefferson, perhaps the most skeptical of all the founders, perhaps the least uh orthodox and maybe even devout of all the founders in terms of Christianity, this same Thomas Jefferson, when he's asked, when he is when he puts pen to paper, what is the source of our unalienable rights?
Well, he can only think of one.
The creator.
That is the only source he gives, even though he is very familiar with the debates of the enlightenment, the debates about whether or not rights come from man, whether they come from nature, whether they come from history, whether they come from society, or whether they come from God.
And Jefferson goes down the list and he goes, Oh, yep, they come from really only one place, and that is in fact the creator of man and the creator of the universe.
My friend Dinesh Jesus is an outstanding thinker and first-rate scholar.
For most of his career, he was a secular policy maker and influential think tank intellectual.
His previous book, What's So Great About Christianity, follows in the line of other great thinkers like C.S. Lewis, very nice compliment.
In this book, he has turned his considerable talents to an even deeper issue.
Even atheists like Christopher Hitchens have acknowledged that D'Souza is a world-class advocate for theism and the Christian faith.
This is also a book, he says, for genuine seekers of the truth.
Now, this is a this is a very striking phrase because all of us think of ourselves, we're a genuine seeker of the truth.
Who isn't a seeker of the truth?
But you notice that most people actually are not seekers of the truth.
Most people are very dug in.
And if you say something to them that they that goes against uh their existing uh dug-in opinion or in many cases prejudice, they become very annoyed and they they uh they dig in further.
Uh they kind of grab their intellectual shovel and the hole that they're already in, they go becomes even deeper, because the last thing that they want is to take one of their kind of built-in assumptions and turn it into a question.
So even though you're able to show them, hey, guess what?
Your everything you just told me is based on a premise, and let's look at that premise.
And when you look at the premise, you suddenly realize that that premise is actually very, very shaky.
It doesn't really make a lot of sense at all.
And uh, and the person even knows that, but far from saying, oh, well, you know what, I'm gonna have to really rethink how I look at all of this, they say, basically, that's nonsense.
I don't want to hear it.
This is appalling.
I'm surprised you even brought it up.
So what Rick Warren is getting at is that the number of people who are genuine seekers in any society is not all that large, smaller than we think.
Now, obviously, it is the hope that there are such people that drives you to, I mean, why else would you make arguments?
Why would you write books?
Why would you make films?
Why would you advocate in the public square if you didn't think that there was at least some space for people to make up their mind?
But there's just a whole lot of dogmatism out there.
You might realize, and some of us have this, you know, even in our family or in our extended family, you'll have a relative, and they they're just, for example, they've got Trump derangement syndrome.
You try very patiently, with lots of examples, and you're close to the situation and they're not, and you tell them things that would make a normal person go, huh?
Well, that, you know, Trump is supposed to be a complete narcissist.
Well, narcissists don't Normally show a lot of interest in other people, but Trump does.
How do you explain that?
And you, you know, if you see, if you see a perk of interest, then you realize that the person is listening.
It's gotten through to them.
They they feel the need to at least give an explanation for what the point is you just made, which is completely valid.
But if you see a blank stare, and if you if they march out of the room, then you realize that person doesn't, in fact, want to know the truth.
They're not a seeker of truth at all.
Uh, their mind is completely shut.
In fact, it's shut and they've locked it and they've they've got a padlock on it.
The word prejudice means to prejudge.
I hope as you read this book, says Rick Warren, I hope you will lay aside all your prejudices.
And with an open mind, consider the facts, the evidence, the logic, and the implications of life after death, not just for our culture as a whole, but for you personally too.
Now, the reason this is critical is that normally religious believers tend to hang their hat on the issue of faith.
And in some ways, well, and there's a certain aspect of this that is completely legitimate, right?
Jesus himself says it's important to believe based on faith.
Why?
Because faith in some senses uh implies more trust in God uh than if you have evidence.
If Jesus is going to show you the wounds in his hands and then you believe, well, big deal.
Obviously, you're like it had to have happened that way.
But if you believe without seeing, that's Jesus' point.
So faith is in fact very important.
But I also think that for some people, faith can be a crutch or even an excuse to avoid using their mind.
Uh and so when you bring up ideas and history and arguments, uh, they go, why are you telling me any of this?
I I don't need any of this.
I uh I believe it, it's in the Bible, that's it.
Don't tell me anything else.
Uh and so this is a mindset I think that Rick Warren here is arguing against.
What he's actually saying is that God wrote two books.
He wrote the book of Scripture, but he also wrote the book of nature.
Uh and God gave us this great gift of faith, the ability to believe things and to trust in God, even though we haven't we don't see God in the same way that say, you know, uh Adam and Eve saw God or Noah saw God.
Um we don't see God in that way.
Uh and so faith is in fact essential.
But at the same time, God gave us brains, he gave us minds, he gave us the ability to decipher even the hidden clues and the hidden truths about nature.
That's a lot of what science does.
So if you can bring God's two books together in kind of uh consonance with one another, the book of scripture, the book of nature, that then becomes just a wonderfully exhilarating affirmation of your faith.
And that's really what I'm gonna try to do in this book.
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