Louder with Crowder - Can a Christian be a Zionist: Gerald Morgan vs. Andrew Wilson Debate

Aug. 22, 2025 - Louder with Crowder

01:21:50

Can a Christian be a Zionist: Gerald Morgan vs. Andrew Wilson Debate

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	The Jews.
	Well, now that we've got all of your attention, Israel is the third rail.
	I want to say new third rail, but I know it's not new.
	Israel has been the third rail for a very long time, and it kind of comes and goes, and it seems like right now, anything that you..
	do talking about the Jews makes you one of these two polar opposites.
	Either you're a Nazi and you hate all Jews and they're responsible for everything, including the death of JFK and aliens, or you're a Zionist shill and Israel can do nothing wrong in killing, including killing five-year-olds in Gaza right now.
	It doesn't really register on your radar.
	But there is a huge, huge piece of ground in the middle where a lot of good conversation can happen and where you can actually get at the truth, but not a lot of people are talking about it.
	And that's a very, very dangerous place to be.
	Historically, we've seen that when people run to extremes, it usually ends very in violence and I want to avoid that.
	I want to have conversations with people about Israel without having those slurs thrown at either one and I want to actually find some truth.
	We need to be able to have honest, very straightforward conversations about these issues that involve Israel and plenty of other subjects, but Israel seems to be the flash point right now and we just don't seem to have that ability.
	So that's what we're going to try to do today.
	Let me set it up really quickly with a couple of interviews that recently Tucker Carlson has performed.
	First was Mother Agapia, a Russian Orthodox nun, and if I'm mispronouncing that, I apologize.
	And the interview sparked a lot of controversy.
	We're not going to dive into everything that was said, but there was one topic in particular that I thought would be very helpful to address and to go in a little bit deeper and kind of try to figure out what it really means, where the church has gone wrong in some ways, the Protestant church, and where in some ways maybe they've got it right.
	And that is Christian Zionism and what it really means and if Christians even actually know what it means.
	So she kind of brought this term up in regard to end times eschatology, and I thought it would be a really good point of reference for us.
	So here, take a look at the interview with Tucker Carlson.
	Their belief tells them that that's okay.
	We want to have this Third World War because we're going to be taken away and we'll be okay and we'll come back later after all the fighting is done.
	That's sort of basically what their theology tells them.
	And in the meantime, all the Jews are supposed to convert to their brand of Christianity or die in the conflagration.
	And so I'm asking you this because you're a non.
	That's not a Christian that's not a.
	That's not a Christian belief, no, that or precept, and that's, yeah.
	Hm.
	Where any idea where that came from, that idea?
	The rapture?
	Yeah.
	Well, like I said, originally the idea of having the Thousand Year Kingdom is a, is an heresy that was in the early church.
	But the real push of all that comes from the 1830s.
	James Darby, Schofield, or John Darby, Schofield, it's sort of a new theology that has no basis in the foundations of Christianity.
	It has nothing to do with it.
	So that may not be a point that really stayed out to you, but it was that stayed out to me.
	And don't worry, we do have a very special guest with us.
	We'll get to him in just one minute.
	He is waiting very patiently, and we will dive into that.
	But I also wanted to play another clip from Tucker Carlson, because he's been getting a lot of flack as someone who seems to be one-sided in his reporting.
	You can have any guest on you.
	You can really conduct interviews, I guess, any way that you want, But a lot of people are starting to pick up on trends with Tucker and call him out.
	Sometimes rightfully so, sometimes not so much.
	This is one that he got a lot of flag for.
	And at the time, I thought this was actually a very, very fair exchange.
	This is when he was talking with Ted Cruz, and Ted Cruz quoted Genesis 12:3 as his reason for supporting Israel.
	Watch.
	Growing up in Sunday school, I was taught from the Bible, Those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be curse.
	And from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of things.
	Of those who bless the government of Israel?
	Those who bless Israel is what it says.
	It doesn't say the government of, it says the nation of Israel.
	So that's in the Bible.
	As a Christian, I believe that.
	Where is that?
	I can find it for you.
	I don't have the scripture off the tip of my.
	You pull out the phone and use it.
	It's in Genesis.
	It's in Genesis.
	So you're quoting a Bible phrase.
	You don't have context for it and you don't know where in the Bible it is, but that's like pure theology.
	I'm confused.
	What does that even mean?
	Tucker, I'm a Christian.
	I want to know what you're talking about.
	Where does my support for Israel come from?
	Number one, because biblically we're commanded to support Israel.
	But number two, hold on.
	No, no, no, hold on.
	We're commanded as Christians to support the government of Israel.
	We're commanded to support Israel.
	And we're told those who bless Israel will be blessed.
	But hold on, define Israel.
	This is important.
	Are you kidding?
	This is a majority Christian country.
	Do you define Israel?
	Do you not know what Israel is?
	that would be the country you've asked like 49 questions about.
	So that's what...
	The nation of Israel, yes.
	And so is that the current borders, the current leadership?
	He's talking about the political entity called Israel?
	He's talking about the nation of Israel.
	Yet nations exist, and he's discussing a nation.
	A nation was the people of Israel.
	Is the nation that he's referring to in Genesis, is that the same as the country run by Benjamin Netanyahu right now?
	Yes.
	The political entity of modern Israel.
	Yes.
	And that is a nation.
	You believe that's what God.
	was talking about in Genesis.
	I do.
	But that country has existed since when?
	For thousands of years.
	Now, there was a time when it didn't exist and then it was recreated just over seven years ago.
	But I'm saying, I think most people understand that line in Genesis to refer to the Jewish people, God's chosen people.
	That's not what it says.
	Okay, Israel, but you don't even know where in the Bible it is.
	So I don't even remember the scriptural citation.
	That was rough.
	Tucker seemed to have his questions well thought out, asked some very good questions.
	But look, is he right to, I mean, is Ted right?
	Do we need to support Israel, the modern state, as Christians?
	What is Israel and who makes it up?
	What is Christian Zionism?
	And is that the real reason that Christians support Israel in the first place?
	With me in just a second, we'll be Andrew Wilson to discuss this and many, many more topics.
	But this brings us to our latest installment of Gerald Apologizes Apologetics.
	Gerald Apologizes Apologetics.
	It doesn't mean that.
	It doesn't mean that, but whatever.
	Okay, it's fine.
	With me now, the man in darkness, shrouded in smoke, typically the Andrew Wilson.
	Hey, look, where can people, before we get started answering all of these questions, which I'm sure will draw zero controversy from the internet, where can people find you and support you?
	Yeah, you can find me on YouTube on the Crucible.
	Pretty easy, just type in the Crucible and you'll see my content pop right up.
	You can find me on Twitter at PaleoChristCon.
	You can find me over at Rumble where I'm going to start doing the extravaganza again this week starting at, I believe, the 5 p.mm.
	Eastern time slot.
	Yeah.
	So you can find me all over the place.
	Fantastic.
	You just said something.
	You can search you on YouTube and your content will pop right up.
	Must be nice.
	Fantastic.
	I'm not sure who you're paying for that, but you know, slide me a number.
	It would be great if our content was like that.
	Okay, so you saw the two different clips and they're two different pointing off points, but I wanted to kind of expand upon a conversation that you and I have had in very kind of brief detail, right?
	We you and I talk every now and then when these issues come up.
	Maybe sometimes you'll chime in to an ex post that I make or vice versa, and then we'll text or something like that.
	And what I have seen as a Protestant is that there is this really, I guess, bad theology that's floating around there about the state of Israel.
	And whenever I bring that up, whenever I try to have some clarification, I immediately get labeled a Nazi, which is really funny because the day before I'm a Sionist shill, which is really hard to do, but I take the hats off and get the checks wherever I can get them, I guess.
	And I just kept thinking to myself, there must be a better way to have these conversations.
	There must be a better way to try and figure out where the truth actually lies instead of all this extreme rhetoric and all the people just saying everything that Israel does is completely fine and everything that they do is absolutely horrible.
	And they're trying to completely subjugate every other government on the planet and everything else.
	And I'm just like, God, we're not getting anywhere with this.
	And I've just historically seen it not work out well.
	And one of the things I wanted to put to bed for Christians was what Christian Zionism actually is and what the Bible actually says about it.
	But you actually posed a really good starting point right before that.
	And that's kind of the crux of the whole issue is that does Israel actually protect Jews or that having the modern state of Israel or does that put them at more risk?
	And is that why people are mad?
	So what was your thinking with that, Andrew?
	And tell me what your opinions are.
	Well, I did a debate with a pretty well-known Christian apologist.
	Well, now Christian apologist.
	He's converting over to orthodoxy, I guess at some point, catechumen now, where we did this debate on Christian Zionism and went through all of this.
	So the first thing to point out is the reason that you have so much trouble having this conversation at all is because of organizations like Kofi, which have their tendrils in everything trying to make sure that all Protestant apologetics revolve around the Ted Cruz framing there.
	The Ted Cruz framing being that Christians have this kind of moral ought to support the modern state of Israel when in fact we don't.
	So tell people that Kofi, that's John Hagee, right?
	That's his organization that he leads.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So well, Kofi, Kofi has more members, I believe, than Israel has people in it.
	It's true.
	So that's true.
	I think it's over ten million people.
	Yeah, over ten million.
	And this kind of theology, there's lots of paychecks, uh, which are switching hands.
	You can find out a lot about Kofi.
	Anyone who wants resources on it, I can, uh, you can just DM me.
	We'll send it over.
	There's a kind of rabbit hole to dive into.
	Correct, yeah.
	And I would rather stay on the idea, I think where this begins is with eschatology.
	Now, Gerald and I kind of have a fundamental disagreement here, but I guess before we dive into that, why do you think eschatology is not kind of the crux?
	Because now you've got to I do, I do, you've got to bring it back.
	So I think there's just a fundamental misunderstanding from the views that I have seen.
	So I, as a Christian, don't believe that what she said, Mother, is it agapia, agapia?
	I don't want to mispronounce it, be insensitive, but the agapia, I believe.
	Agapia, okay.
	That what she said was completely accurate.
	She was asked a question.
	He's a nun, man, she'll forgive you.
	Perfect.
	Yeah.
	Well, I don't know.
	I might say something where she's like, you know, I'm not going to forgive you.
	That's, you know, I'm not going to hold it.
	I'm not going to send, but I'm also not going to forgive you or I'm going to do it in private, so you'll never know.
	No, what I'm saying is that she was asked a question about the harpazo, the, you know, the, um, uh, uh, uh, rapture.
	And so I then heard her pivot to the millennial kingdom.
	And I was like, well, hold on.
	Those two things are, are not connected necessarily.
	They don't have to be connected.
	They are, they're around the same time frame.
	They are eschatology, but you can believe in no rapture at all.
	and still believe in the millennial kingdom, right?
	So I didn't understand why she pivoted.
	So one I was like, well, that doesn't that seems like she was asked a specific question about where this comes from and she points out Derby.
	Well, she went to Derby after she went to the millennial kingdom and that being an heresy in the early church.
	And I know that that was that was said an heresy in like the three something's at one of the councils.
	And so I thought like, okay, well, I understand where that comes from, dispensationalism, right?
	So you start to see Israel in a different light, but I thought like that's not necessarily why Christians support Israel because a lot of times they point back to Genesis 12, 3 and it's completely disconnected from their eschatological views, right?
	But I don't really, but not really.
	Let me let me let me let me let me walk you through it at least from the logical basis.
	This was the argument that I presented primary argument against Christian Zionism.
	Would you agree with me that any No, because if I do, I'm screwed.
	I have no idea what you're going to say.
	Well, would you agree with me that any Messiah, which is named by Israel to be a new Messiah, is going to be in the spirit of Antichrist?
	It would be Antichrist, yes.
	It would be Antichrist.
	Not maybe not the Antichrist, but the spirit of Antichrist.
	Lowercase Antichrist, yes.
	Yeah, yeah, right.
	And is going to have to denounce Jesus as being a false Messiah, which puts them immediately against all Christendom, yes, for sure.
	All of them, all Protestant.
	There's no debate.
	All, yeah, yeah, no debate there.
	Even the Mormons, even the JWs, all of them, right?
	All of them are going to be like, okay.
	Everybody would be pissed off universally.
	It's a unifying thing.
	Yes, everyone's going to be upset.
	That's going to be the spirit of Antichrist.
	So then why would a Christian Zionist who knows that and knows that the Temple Institute there and Kofi are moving towards naming Messiah?
	Can Ted explain that to me?
	So my critique, and I saw that, I don't see that in their documents.
	So the Temple Institute has a spokesperson in 2010 that did say that they are looking.
	to do that, not as something that they are that they have to do.
	But so here's my understanding of it.
	Maybe correct me.
	Millions and millions of dollars.
	They get millions of dollars, but not to name a Messiah.
	So that's where I disagree with you.
	I think the Jews are still looking for Messiah.
	That doesn't mean that they're looking to name him immediately.
	And here's my proof for that.
	They've had many people come forward over the years and say, I'm Messiah.
	They've not opened arms to him, including the guy that actually fulfilled all the prophecies.
	And I'm like, okay, I don't think they're ready to do it.
	So they're just moving towards the spirit of the temple.
	No, I think they're moving towards creating a temple.
	But see, I think this is where it starts to get a little muddy because I agree with you that if they named Messiah., that would be a problem.
	Yeah, but they're but what's the purpose of building the temple, right?
	It doesn't have anything to do with the Messiah to them.
	Yeah, it does.
	Nothing to do with us.
	What about Christians?
	Christians, yes, but we already know who the Messiah is, and so that's their problem to deal with God.
	I don't care if they have a temple or not.
	They're still within our theology, this is a sign of what?
	The temple.
	The third temple being rebuilt, yes.
	What is that a sign of?
	It's really irrelevant to Christians, right?
	It doesn't affect how?
	Okay.
	When, when you So I want you to look at this in totality.
	Okay.
	So and why I think that this has to do with Eschatology.
	See, I believe that Christian Zionists and all Christian Zionists are accelerationists.
	They're trying to accelerate their eschatology.
	They're trying to accelerate the coming of excitation.
	So they're trying to anticipate the coming of excitation.
	Sorry, the second reason, if you ask them, why is it that you want to move towards naming Antichrist?
	Why is it that you want to support people who are moving towards naming Antichrist?
	Now you can say, Wait a second, Andrew, they're not naming one right now.
	So what?
	The entire religion and the entire state and all of the religious Jews are still moving that direction.
	They're not moving towards Christ, they're moving towards the Antichrist.
	So if that's the case, why would we support that?
	Well, what all Christian Sionists claim is that that's part of biblical prophecy for Christians.
	That stuff needs to come to pass in order for the events in Revelation to take place.
	And so what they're doing is they're trying to accelerate what you would consider Armageddon and the end times, right?
	So I would show how it's not so how it's not related to Eschatology?
	So I would I would disagree with So first let me let me split these things into just two pieces.
	One is the accelerationists and those who are not.
	I grew up in this church and I've never heard that before in my life, never, not one time.
	I know it exists though.
	So I'm not saying that it doesn't.
	But what I'm saying is, I don't know if there and maybe you might have some statistics on this, but who of the Christian Zionists, who would be accelerationists and who wouldn't be, right?
	Because for me, when I define Christian Zionism and we can get down to that, I think I have a segment on that here in just a moment.
	Well, what other reason could they give?
	So what other reason?
	It's not, it's not saying that.
	So I'll give you the reason that I would give in my current view of eschatology.
	The temple exists in my view of eschatology.
	The Jews rebuild the temple.
	There's a there's a peace treaty with Israel.
	The Jews rebuild the temple.
	There's the abomination that causes desolation and it's in the temple.
	Okay.
	I don't think it is my job or Christian's job.
	And the Bible doesn't give any indication that we are supposed to help hasten that at all.
	It just is.
	Agreed.
	That's the view of most people.
	But then what's the purpose of supporting a land which is moving?
	So if you're the idea here is God's blessing Israel, this is what Ted Cruz is saying, right?
	God's blessing Israel and blessing the people who bless Israel, right?
	But he's the spokesman for a lot of people with this view.
	God's blessing you because you bless Israel.
	Okay, but why are we supporting Israel if they're moving towards Antichrist, meaning moving away from Christ instead of towards Christ?
	I don't understand.
	Why would we do that?
	What would Ted Cruz's response be?
	We as Christians are moving towards that, right?
	Because that's what God commands us to do, and that's going to lead to the events in Revelation.
	That's going to lead to these events.
	He's not going to hurt himself as far as eschatology goes.
	But that's the listen, is it the view?
	Is it the only logical way it can go?
	What other reason would they have for doing it?
	Well, no, they would think, I think Genesis 12.3, if you misinterpret Genesis 12.3 to think that you are supposed to bless the current nation state of Israel, including its government, which I think is very troubling that people would think that necessarily, that in itself is enough.
	Like you don't have to have any other cause.
	to support Israel.
	Why are you supposed to do it?
	Because God commands you.
	It doesn't matter.
	It doesn't matter why God commands you to.
	It doesn't matter.
	He just said it.
	Why does.
	Yeah, but I think it does.
	But does baptism hold on, but does baptism save me?
	There are verses that make it seem like it does.
	There are verses that seem like it makes it not.
	You know what?
	I don't care.
	You know why?
	Because Jesus commanded me to do it.
	Therefore, I am going to do the same thing here.
	If they believe God is commanding me to bless Israel, I will bless them.
	It doesn't matter what that results in.
	It just matters that God told me to do it.
	I think twelve three is enough, but I understand that you can.
	So I'm trying to follow this logical step one, right?
	Premise one.
	God wants us to bless Israel from their view, right?
	Yeah.
	And Israel, according to Ted Cruz, is who?
	The modern nation state, modern government.
	He, he, he, he went ahead.
	He went ahead and acquiesced all those points.
	You agree with that, right?
	Yeah, for sure.
	Okay.
	So, he's saying, God wants us to bless this current nation right this second.
	Now, what does that mean?
	I can only assume that blessings mean support, whatever they need.
	Like if we could transfer that, by the way.
	Yeah, I don't think any of them can.
	No, right?
	But I think that we can make some inferences here which are rational.
	Blessing them probably doesn't mean, like, leaving them at the mercy of their enemies and things like that, right?
	Blessing them.
	Yeah, defending them against attacker and stuff.
	Yeah, something like that.
	Yeah.
	That makes sense to me.
	That would be the inferences that I would make there.
	And I think most people would make there.
	So what you're really saying is that God doesn't just want us to bless them, but to defend them, right?
	To assist them, to do all these various things, to move our power structure towards being in obedience and compliance with their power structure.
	That's what it essentially means by blessing them.
	I wouldn't go that far.
	I don't know that they believe that fully, but I'm trying to figure it out because I don't think it's, this is part of the problem.
	I don't think it's very well defined on their side.
	I don't think they could very well tell you, like like, okay, well, I can come to you right now and tell you you need to give money to the temple.
	But if Ted Cruz is sitting there saying we need to give a bunch of money to these guys, we need to assist them in any way possible, how is it?
	I mean, how is that idea of blessing not moving into compliance with the wills of Israel?
	Who gets to determine how they're blessed, right?
	I think that it's going to be Israel who gets to be the determiner under Christian Zionism as to how they're blessed.
	Maybe because the Bible does talk about what Christians' duty to bless, and we'll talk about Christian duties towards Israel here in just a minute.
	And I don't want to, I don't want to step on future topics in just a second, but it does.
	Listen, I understand that line of thought.
	I think it's very rational and I think it makes sense, but I don't think it's necessary.
	I don't think that's where people are right now.
	I don't think people are thinking like, I have to align the power structure in the United States with Israel to be able to bless the people of Israel.
	I think most people would think, well, if I give money to the support of Israel, just to the general fund or something like that, or if we help them militarily, if they get attacked by other countries.
	And some people would even say the three billion dollars a year is part of what we should do.
	I don't necessarily agree with that.
	I think we should probably pull almost all of that, if not all of it, back and from all of their enemies that we're supporting as well.
	That would be great.
	Keep that money home.
	But that's part of my problem.
	is that these things to me are disconnected.
	They're not necessarily flowing into each other just because they support Israel because of Genesis.
	Well, but I don't think we've made that case yet.
	I think we've made that case.
	Well, here, Let me try to make a better case.
	So okay.
	Do you agree with me that basically every six months Benjamin Netanyahu gives a big speech somewhere about how all the Jews in Israel are on the verge of annihilation.
	There is by the tendency.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Basically every six months they're always on the verge.
	Iran is about to nuke them.
	They're someone invaded.
	Someone's about to destroy Israel every six months, right?
	Right.
	What is he banking on there with that?
	What is Kofi banking on there by saying these speeches?
	Right.
	They want money to flow in, things like this to flow in, military aid to flow in.
	The idea here is you're not blessing Israel if you're not participating with Israel.
	You see, they're almost going to be annihilated.
	Yeah, but you almost went to Scripture.
	They were almost going to be annihilated last week and the week before.
	It doesn't, none of this is scriptural.
	It's all indoctrination.
	And we're talking about Christians.
	This sucks.
	Yeah, I know, but none of it's scriptural, but it's all indoctrination.
	But the thing is, when Ted Cruz says Bless Israel, he does mean that.
	He does mean if we need to send troops against our enemies, we will.
	If we need to send missile defense systems, we will.
	If we need to send treasure and blood, we'll send that too.
	But that's what he's saying.
	Yeah, so I agree.
	I agree with all that.
	That makes sense to me, right?
	My thing is that I think Ted could base his entire argument on his misunderstanding of Genesis, wherever it is, according to him.
	Somewhere in the Genesis, if you pull up the Google's and whenever you use the in front of something, you're an idiot.
	But the Genesis.
	The Genesis or the Google's.
	Right?
	So I think he would point to that and be like, that's it.
	And that's the kind of eschatology that I have heard of.
	It's not that the Christians need to do anything.
	I mean, that's almost like the view of Iran.
	Like they have this kind of apocalyptic eschatology where the conflict around the world globally will bring back the tw back the twelfth imam, right?
	So that's the beginning of their eschatological book.
	And people were like, well, you said they're a death cult, they're going to blow themselves up.
	I'm like, well, no, it's not they that's going to die, it's the world being in conflict.
	Like there is a connection there.
	I don't see that in Christianity though.
	Maybe we're putting the cart before the horse.
	Let's backtrack and kind of define some terms.
	Sure, right?
	So first, when you say eschatology, what do you mean by that?
	The study of the End times or the things of the End times.
	Okay.
	And you would include Revelation.
	Revelation, Ezekiel, a bunch of different places that have small references, large references, Thessalonians, things like that.
	Yeah.
	Okay, so got it.
	So now the audience knows that too.
	And then when you say Zionism, would a fitting definition of Zionism, at least in modernity, and I would even argue in its inception, be that the modern nation state of Israel, you support the existence of the modern nation state of Israel, that is Zionism.
	That's fair.
	I don't think there's any debate about that being kind of the basis.
	I know some people have additional things they throw in it, but yeah, absolutely.
	Okay.
	So if you're a Christian Zionist, you have to support the existence of the modern nation.
	So if somebody comes out every six months and says the existence of this thing is about to not exist anymore, right?
	Then you're under the obligation as a Christian Zionist to support the do what?
	Whatever the Bible tells you to.
	Well, if you're a Christian Sionist, though, by definition, you would be a Christian who believes that the nation state of Israel needs to exist.
	Not only has a right to, but needs to exist.
	So if that's the case, if they come out and say, Hey, every few months we're about to not exist, the Iran is about to nuclear us, the Turks are going to invade, the Muslims are, you know, blowing us up in the street, the Palestinians are stabbing our children in the face, whatever it is, right?
	The Christian Sionist, the Christian Sionist, though.
	The Christian Sionist, though.
	Yeah, the Christian Sionist says what?
	No, the, no, we have to support the right to exist.
	Blood, treasure, everything else.
	Now, I do think that that moves into the idea of eschatology, especially because I do think that they believe, Christian Zionists do believe that it's through this support that they're going to be blessed from God and that these things are necessary for the end times to come about.
	And I do think that they're trying to accelerate the end times.
	I think that the whole point of searching out these red heifers and doing all these things is for the purposes of the acceleration project.
	And that's what I think it is.
	Maybe.
	So I saw the red heifer thing.
	And for those of you who don't know, that's how they have to be able to burn a pure red heifer.
	I don't think they've had those for very long.
	They got them from Texas.
	Texas saved the wine industry when a phylloxera went through in France.
	You're welcome.
	Saved the world.
	Basically, yes.
	And apparently our red heifer are going to be used to conscribe the implements of the temple and the temple itself.
	So that's a really big thing.
	If they don't have that, they can't really build it.
	But I would say that none of this necessarily, and I really mean that, none of this necessarily means that Christians are trying to be accelerationists.
	Again, that's a very new thing for me to be Christians.
	Christian Zionists, I think that their only justification if I were to walk them through this logically, and I can tell you why I think this when I asked my debate oppononent in this debate, I said, so even if it's the case that one third of the nation currently supports movement towards Antichrist, we should support him.
	He said, yes, yes.
	Why?
	Because there's a preconditional there.
	These things need to happen for for, and Charlie Kirk, by the way, has said this openly, these events prophetically need to happen for the end times to be ushered in anyway.
	Well, but Charlie Kirk, I do think there's an accelerationist agenda.
	Sorry, I didn't mean to talk over you, but just because those events need to happen doesn't mean that I'm the one that's going to make them happen.
	Okay.
	So you can, you can.
	But you're not a Christian Sionist.
	But I would have said probably more so specifically at two churches ago.
	There was a church that I went to where I ran into this quite a bit.
	They support Israel even with, you know, people kind of splintering off and man, if you haven't had a prayer shawl and you haven't done these things, you really have never connected to God.
	And I'm like, well, hold on, let's talk about this a little bit because that's not really scriptural.
	I don't understand what you're talking about.
	But I would have said, I would have said what Ted Cruz said, Those that bless Israel will be blessed.
	Those that curse Israel will be cursed.
	And that's not what Scripture says.
	Just to be clear, twelve three says that if they bless you, he's talking about Abraham and he's talking about a people.
	That's very clear.
	Actually, this is a really good segue here.
	So let's explore this.
	When you were that person who would have answered the way Ted Cruz did.
	Yeah.
	If a guy like me said, Okay, what does blessing them mean?
	You would probably give the same answer of, Yeah, you got to support him and this and that.
	I would probably say mostly the prayer side of things.
	I mean, obviously, I couldn't move government, but I've never felt compelled to give financially to purely Israel related goals.
	Like missionaries in Israel, yeah.
	You know, I felt financially moved to give it to commercial.
	This is in support of movement towards Antichrist, movement towards the naming by a man.
	by Jews of what we would consider false Messiah.
	There's no if, answer, but about that.
	You'd have to cede that point.
	What would your answer have been from that, Gerald?
	Well, if someone had told me, because at the time I was very, very into studying Eschatology because I was, I was specifically teaching a class called The Christian's Response to Islam.
	And I was teaching how Islamic Eschatology and Christian Eschatology are actually incredible in that they overlap and they're exactly inverse, right?
	With the characters and their attributes and everything else.
	So I was into that.
	I would never have said that I thought that this would have been a push towards Antichrist.
	Supporting Israel would have necessarily meant that I was supporting a push towards Antichrist.
	I still don't believe that that's necessarily the case either because I don't think it is I don't think it is absolute that my support for Israel is going to push them to name a false Messiah.
	I see it as something that God has commanded me to do.
	So when I pray for the peace of Jerusalem as commanded in the Psalms or if I pray or if I live my life in such a way as Romans 11 says when Paul is telling you like make them jealous of who that's supporting Israel in my mind.
	It's not a financial thing and it's not pushing for any Antichrist or Temple or anything that can be misconstrued.
	So at that time, I probably would have told you like pushing for Antichrist or we pray for any other group other group that's moving towards Antichrist?
	I would pray for every single other group that's moving towards Antichrist.
	I would pray for all of them.
	What's special about Israel?
	Nothing.
	That's my whole point.
	Like, my whole point is like, I feel like Christians have kind of messed that up.
	Like, I pray for them like I pray for everyone else.
	Okay.
	You know, God, God is not done with them.
	So then there's no special, there's no special blood here.
	There's no special nothing here.
	I mean, God is not done with Israel is a very kind of vague term.
	And I've said it a number of times and I don't exactly, I haven't dived to the depths of what that exactly means.
	But my belief is that there's a reason that and this is where maybe we would disagree on eschatology.
	Is it safe to say that you probably hold more of an orthodox position on eschatology that most of the book of Revelation has been completed up to about the twentieth chapter or so?
	Well, look, I'm not a specialist in orthodox eschatology.
	That's a study all in and of itself.
	It is.
	The thing is, though, what I will say is this, and you can, there's people I would recommend actually to have discussions on eschatology.
	The things that I mostly focus on these days are mostly church history and the ideas that, especially now in the last year, have become very politically relevant to dive into what's going on with what church fathers said about who Israel is, who the people are of Israel are, what Christianity means, what our obligations are, especially when it comes to other nations, including any perceived Jewish nation, right?
	And no one anywhere in church history can you find anyone, any Christians anywhere talking about how if Jews establish a nation, then that's what Israel is.
	They always considered Israel to be us.
	We are the spiritual continuation, right?
	That's what Christians are.
	We are the spiritual continuation.
	You hear it from other than Galatians 3, you son of a gun.
	Most people don't know that, Andrew.
	Like that's, so listen, I'm telling you, I had this, so people that have pitched replacement theology as this word, I think have done a very effective job because there are a lot of people that think the Jews are responsible for every single ill that the world has ever heard of that would use replacement theology as, yes, the church replaced Israel to mean that God does not have any future plan to the Jews at all and that they were never special.
	Paul dispenses with that in Romans.
	Don't be arrogant.
	Are you kidding?
	The natural branch can be thrown off.
	Yeah, and we don't follow replacement theology.
	You don't.
	That's what I was going to say.
	Yeah, it's not.
	I don't think it's a fair kind of critique.
	It's not.
	It's not fair., but I understand what you're saying.
	But the idea here is just this question is old.
	It's an old question.
	It's very, it's a very difficult one to even ask, which is who are the Jews?
	Who are they?
	Well, but that's easy.
	And here's why I say that.
	Not the bloodline part of it.
	That's a little bit more complicated because that's harder, right?
	Yeah, it's way more, way more complicated because by the numbers, I believe more of the Palestinians that live there have more Jewish blood than maybe some of the Askenazi Jews or anyone else that might claim to be the Jews of that land.
	That's fine.
	Yeah.
	And you can have that conversation, but Galatians 329, I'll just read it.
	If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise.
	That makes it very, very, very, very clear.
	Like who is Abraham's seed?
	Who are the sons of Abraham?
	And I think what they were trying to say is like, guys, this isn't, we didn't start a new thing.
	This is the continuation of the thing, which means we were all a part of this.
	If, if you're God outside of time, the church is the church throughout the Old Testament too, right?
	It's not, it's not a new thing that we've created.
	It is just the thing.
	And well, I think you can also find this, it's not just there, but I mean, there are tons of references moving into it.
	You have Malachi 111.
	God promises his name shall be made great among the Gentiles who across the world will offer incense, the pure sacrifice to him, the church is the fulfillment of that sacrifice.
	That's what it is.
	So the thing is, though, is that you have to dispense with dispensationalism, right?
	And then you can't use words like that, Andrew.
	You're better than that.
	Yeah, but the but the but the idea here is this, Kofi will always be running, and so will probably Mossad, Israeli intelligence, everyone else will probably always be running counterpropaganda against both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Church because And only half of them deserve it, and we know which one.
	Yeah, well, because they don't.
	follow this Protestant form of theology.
	And this nun was completely correct when she pointed this out.
	We don't follow that form of theology.
	And so that is an existential threat to places like Kufi, as you see these traditional churches beginning to gain a lot of ground in the United States.
	Their percentages are beginning to increase.
	And as kind of support wanes for Israel, you're going to see a lot more of the kind of the megalopower preachers preaching more of this type of gospel.
	Because if they can't bamboozle you into support through victimhood, they're going to try to to bambooze you into supporting through your theology.
	And that's what's actually going on, I think.
	Yeah, and look, I don't feel like this is the driving, this might get me in trouble.
	I don't feel like this is the driving kind of problem with dispensationalism that a lot of people do.
	Like, let me say it the reverse.
	Is this the only problem that you have with dispensationalism?
	No, of course not.
	Okay, so I didn't think so, but I think that's why a strong piece of bad theology has a tendril which destroys all the branches of theology.
	So that's why having a strong root leads to good theological branches.
	Bad roots have bad theological branches because you have to reinvent the truth.
	You can get further and further away from the truth very easily.
	So I definitely agree with that.
	So in dispensationalism, that's a topic for another time.
	But I imagine that I would have grown up in fairly dispensational churches.
	But I was never guilted into giving to Israel.
	I was never guilted into supporting Israel.
	We never had Kufi representatives in any of the churches that I went to.
	And I was very heavily involved in some of these churches, some very big kind of mega churches by a lot of people's standards.
	But what I hope the audience so far, what I hope you guys have gotten is it's okay to talk about what the Bible actually says.
	It what Scripture says, but when you immediately go from, you know, someone like Ted Cruz, like, if you're just making an honest argument, well, I thought that Genesis 12:3 said that if I bless Israel that I'll be blessed.
	It's okay to correct and be like, actually, it's saying that if you bless Abraham and his descendants, and okay, let's look to the New Testament to see.
	Very Protestant point of view here, I know.
	I'm not going to look to tradition as much, though I don't hold tradition as worthless.
	I actually hold it as very valuable.
	But what does the Bible say about the people that are Israel?
	Okay, it's very clear.
	Okay, Paul helps us out here.
	Galatians, fantastic.
	Because they were wr resting on their Jewishness for salvation.
	And he's like, guys, that's not going to do it.
	Like, that is, you have to accept Christ, otherwise, nothing of it matters.
	So don't, don't go down that path.
	But if you go and if you don't have that conversation with someone and you immediately go to the synagogue of Satan, Revelation argument, that's like, well, okay, well, like, you're not going to convert anyone that way because aren't theoretically to some degree, everyone who denies Christ a part of the synagogue of Satan?
	Essentially, they may have a different branch that they got to it, but the root is Satan, right?
	And it may be the atheistic branch or it may be the, you know, I'm going to adhere to only the Old Testament Judaism branch or whatever.
	It's all the synagagogue of Satan.
	So why be sensational about it?
	Not you, but the people that make that argument.
	And it just, it derail the conversation before it can get started.
	Well, because this has great political power.
	So, you know, this type of theology itself has massive political power.
	Let's not hit ourselves.
	It does.
	If you want to get things like abortion moved and things like that, who are you going to tap into?
	You're going to tap into Christians.
	Women.
	You're not going to tap into a bunch of blue haired leftists, right?
	You're going to tap into Christians.
	And by the way, for women, there's like a bit more support on just all female polls for abortion than against, right?
	So you have to offset this with Christianity.
	So whenever these different places can politicize the religion and point to it as a you ought to do this thing and just so happens to coincide with exactly what I politically desire, right?
	You've got to be somewhat wary about that.
	And in this case, I see that the government of Israel has spent millions of dollars canaling to the Temple Institute that Kufi has used back channels and this is publicly available information.
	Though it's very difficult to prove how much they've sent, it's very clear that Kufi has sent tons and tons of money, which has ended up in the hands of the Israeli government.
	Again, I don't think that these things are even particularly controversial to say.
	No, no.
	The thing that is, the thing that is, though, controversial to say is to say this, that as a Christian, you have zero moral ought whatsoever to support a nation state, an ethnonationalist Jewish nation state, because they take the name Israel.
	That's a word concept fallacy.
	By the way, the original Sionists and the Sionist Congresses, they were debating multiple names for this land, not just Israel.
	They decided on Israel.
	And the whole thing is a word concept fallacy.
	You can't really think that Genesis is referencing the modern nation state and its current government with Benjamin Netanyahu at the head of it.
	There's no way there's no way to draw these parallels unless you're just really not paying attention.
	Yeah, and that's that's the it's so obvious.
	Like this is the part of the debate that's so obvious that I wanted to correct it early, right?
	Where people are having this conversation online, I'm like, we need to move past like the basics.
	The basics are Israel is not and Ted Cruz couldn't answer this.
	And Ted Cruz was, you know, when he said in that interview that he wanted to be the staunchest ally in the United States government for the state of Israel and I'm very loosely parafrasing, I got really close.
	He uses the Bible to justify it.
	And then uses the Bible to justify it, but he uses Genesis.
	to say this is why I support them, not any eschatology.
	And so that's why I think there's there's a little bit of a disconnect.
	We can dive into that maybe more another time or later today.
	Sure.
	But I do I do think that they're connected.
	I wanted to hold on, don't do real, but I think that's I think that's the problem that we have.
	That's and that's why I use that clip because I'm like, this highlights the issue right here.
	We can't have a basic conversation about this because Tucker is rightly pointing out and by asking questions maybe at this point that are a little sarcastic because they've been going at each other for a little bit.
	This is like fifty minutes into the interview and Ted couldn't answer them.
	Who is Israel?
	Did it say Israel?
	It didn't say Israel, by the way.
	If anyone had a Bible and showed it to him, it would have been like, show me Israel, the nation state that existed.
	Ted wouldn't really cede the point.
	Like, okay, fine.
	You know, it's not like the borders that are drawn here.
	It really is the people of God wherever they happen to be.
	So, for example, and I think this is the point that you're making, if after World War two, instead of the Jews fighting for a homeland in Palestine, uh, or that region, if they decided to go to New Jersey instead and set up like their own thing in New Jersey, and the United States government did it like the Indian Reservation said, here's some land, here's some sovereignty, then we would call that Israel to a degree.
	We would be like, that's the people of God.
	that the Bible is talking about, not a nation state, not a border, not even a name.
	They can call themselves something else, New Israel.
	I don't know, you know, like whatever it is.
	And I think that's the point that a lot of people don't understand.
	And it certainly had nothing to do with the political leaders.
	For example, if Israel tomorrow, Netanyahu decided to nuclear Paris, are we supposed to support that as Christians?
	Yeah, of course not.
	No, of course not.
	Yes, exactly, but it paints the picture for people, like, of course not.
	Okay, so there is some degree of support that maybe isn't.
	Well, I think some of this comes up with this idea of so I think, I think many on the political right.
	left are beginning to question something which is important here, which is, has Israel actually done a good job of protecting Jews?
	That's a great question.
	The idea, the idea here was that Israel itself needed to be established as a nation, uh, because of the atrocities that happened during World War II and the Holocaust.
	And prior, in order to protect, and prior, in order to protect, uh, this group from future persecutions which may happen to them.
	Yeah.
	It hasn't done that.
	Now, I don't know.
	I've never actually heard anyone make an objective case for how Israel has done anything to protect Jews.
	And I went back and I looked as a reference point before we had this conversation at some of the early congresses.
	And one objection that came up, which was interesting, a guy objected and said, look, Western nations are really starting to accept us now.
	They're starting to accept us in.
	They're starting to kind of, we're integrating now basically everywhere.
	And by the way, even right now, more Jews live outside of Israel than inside of it.
	And mostly inside of Western nations, right?
	And the United States is number one, I believe, right?
	Yeah, number one, sure.
	And then of course you have Western Europe that has tons and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
	But the idea here that he was saying was actually, I think if you wanted to put all the Jews in one spot, right?
	And it's established as sovereign that we're going to end up having to have to be a protectorate.
	We're going to have to have protectors for us, you know, in these places whereas if they stayed in the Western nations rather than congregating into a Jewish state, the Western nations have always prioritized their security just like all of their citizens, right?
	So the United States prioritizes their security as much as they prioritize mine, prioritize the security in England as much as they do their citizens, France, et cetera, et cetera.
	Why is it that this nation state actually makes Jewish people safer?
	And that's not a question that I think is easily answered and that leads to a lot of this stuff as well.
	I think a lot of the because God tells us we have to bless them is cope because they can't create a justification for how this state has actually protected Jews.
	I can, I can, I think.
	But I have to ask you a question first.
	Are you making this argument today or are you making this argument in, say, the early 1900s?
	Or I would even make it today.
	Okay.
	Well, I think today it's easier to make because I think you're right.
	There is a lot more acceptance and there are a lot more options for Jews today to be able to go to different countries.
	And I will let me just kind of lay this case out for you.
	So I did some, some research on this because I thought it was an interesting question that you posed.
	And I don't know that it's a question that I really gave a lot of thought to before.
	I've done a significant amount of research in the last month on this topic of the Jews and pre 1948 Jews.
	And I don't know if you're like this, where some, like, you get on a topic like this and you just watch every movie that you can watch, you read every book, you listen to every podcast, like everything that you can try to find to just kind of ingest information.
	And so sometimes you have to weed stuff out.
	But since 1948, I looked up there, the murder of Jews nation, not nationwide, sorry, worldwide has been approximately 25,000 due to pogrom style or like terrorist attacks right since the inception of the state.
	Just in the Ukraine pogroms in 1918 and 1921, 50,000 to 100,000 Jews were killed.
	So get rid of the Holocaust so there's no debate there, because I know there's a lot of people that debate numbers and I don't want to get into that.
	I'm not saying you do, I'm saying I know a lot of people watching this would, so just based on the numbers alone and the search that I did went back to 1848.
	I tried to I tried to do some kind of a comparison and I went like now Gerald, but that's not the only metric so I agree that now do American black people.
	American black people, how many black people were killed?
	Yeah, well, how many black people, traditionally?
	were persecuted just within the United States and various states as compared to right now, even though black people don't have an official state.
	Right?
	No, no, no.
	So that's fair.
	So isn't it actually the case that what's going on is that as time has progressed and tolerance has progressed along with, you know, our views in science and how humans interact with each other, the views of technology with correspondence of different races and culture, that people have become more tolerant towards other groups other than their own.
	Maybe.
	Even if Israel had not had a state, let's say, this established nation, which by the way, was at war.
	since its inception.
	Yeah, day one.
	Yeah, day one.
	Can you honestly say that you think that Jewish persecution would have risen or fallen?
	Because I would just argue that based on every other objective metric I can see in the West for every other race and group, that it still would have drastically decreased.
	Yeah, but that's the United States.
	I'm not just No, the West, the whole West.
	That would be Australia, Western Europe.
	It would even include Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union.
	But you couldn't predict those things.
	Like, you can.
	You can make the same predictive metrics based on how they treat other countries outlier groups, right?
	No, I that's fair.
	I'm not saying that.
	I'm saying that you couldn't in.
	That's why I asked you when you're making the argument.
	If you're making the argument today, it supposed it presupposes that Israel exists and all the impacts of Israel existing and having relations with 160 countries and being a UN recognized country has happened, right?
	And I think that's part of, honestly, what has led Israel to be, at least have more options, right?
	As a nation state.
	So my argument would be, yeah, I think generally speaking, you can make a pretty good case that we have become more tolerant, especially in the United States.
	In Europe, yes and no.
	I still see a lot of the problems.
	The numbers probably bear out that you're correct, though., as far as murders.
	Like if we're looking at what I was looking at, like just the murders that are happening based on Oh, it's not going to be.
	It's going to be night and day.
	Wouldn't you think it would be closed?
	Yeah, right?
	But can you bet on that when you're trying to figure out what to do in the early 1900s and you're living through the pogroms that are happening not just in Russia and Ukraine, but are happening in Poland and in France and in all these different countries and you're a Jew going, what the hell did you do?
	I think you can.
	I think you can because most of them, because most Jews didn't actually migrate to Israel.
	So they must not have thought that their safety was going to be determined by the state when they Yeah, that's correct.
	Most Jews globally did not migrate to Israel.
	Fair, but there's a reason for that.
	Then most, yeah, there is because most of them must not have thought that their safety was nearly as much in jeopardy as you seem to claim.
	I don't think so because at the time they seem to I mean, obviously it's not, they're not a monolith, right?
	If you're successful and you're in another country.
	So really what happened in the 1920s right after the freaking Ukraine pogroms right after pogroms, the 50 to 100,000, some some estimates are a little higher than that, but it was a Jewish website and I didn't want to be called a Zionist again.
	So right after, whatever numbers.
	Well, whatever the numbers are, but right after that, you have people all of a sudden doing financially better because of the roaring twenties, right?
	Right after that, you got the First World War out of the way, people are doing financially better, people have better things to do than worry about who's to blame for their problems.
	Right.
	Then things start to go south again and all of a sudden you've got people looking for someone to blame for their problems.
	There were tons of people who were doing well off that could stay where they were and thought it was better to do that.
	You're right, there was a lot, there was a lot of agreement on people staying where they were, but there were a lot of people pushing and fighting to create a homeland to some place where they could seek refuge in.
	So I don't think that would be dismissed.
	It was big enough.
	I'm not sure.
	I was all that big.
	I would, I would say somewhere around, uh, ten percent.
	were really pushing towards this idea who were indoctrinated towards it by early Sionist leaders.
	And the thing is, if it was really, like, in a negative way or Yeah, oh yeah, it was all well, there was tons of propaganda from the Jewish Congresses.
	There was tons and tons of propaganda.
	There were books, whole books written about No, for sure, but they they wanted a homeland.
	That's not, that's not a bad thing, right?
	I'm not saying no, no, no, I'm not saying that.
	I'm not saying whether or not sovereign peoples have the ability on land which they acquire through whatever means they acquired it to have rights to that land.
	I'm not making any disputes there.
	I guess my only dispute here is whether or not the land itself has done much to increase the security for Jews globally, which is what the Sionists promised us it would do, and what Christian Sionists still to this day demand that Israel be kind of raised up and whatever we need to do to make sure that they're doing well because that is a safe haven against the potential of future atrocities towards the Jewish people.
	I would just argue that that vision was not realized, that the nation state of Israel did not actually do anything to protect Jews globally, nothing.
	Well, and I rather it was just the march of progress of technologies and opening up the various spaces of communication between people groups, which began to erode many of those ancient prejudices.
	So I hope you're right.
	I hope the march of progress is the thing that we can point to, because if I were Jewish and I had grandparents that lived through some of the things that happened to Jews out of nowhere, like literally out of nowhere, like one day you've got a shop and maybe you're not the most popular person in town, but you're certainly not a pariah worthy of being dragged out in the streets and beaten to death, and the next day all of a sudden you are.
	Like the calculus for me would be a lot different.
	And I agree with you that not everyone felt that way because not everyone lived that experience, right?
	Especially at the time.
	So I can't say that Jews in the United States experienced that, though they certainly did experience a ton of anti Semitism here in the United States and a ton of mistreatment here in the United States.
	It wasn't just in Germany.
	This was around.
	Well, I don't dispute any of this.
	I'm just pointing out that we can look at other people groups in almost every European nation and inside all of what you would consider the Western nations.
	This would include Australia, right?
	Even just look at the Aboriginals in Australia.
	You can look at American blacks.
	You can look at even South America.
	and in Canada with the treatment of the natives there.
	You can look everywhere and see that the tolerance when it comes to the persecution of these various races and things like this was already on the turn by the mid forties.
	I mean, you have to remember that the military was already beginning its march towards desegregation inside the army inside World War two.
	This was already happening.
	So the idea also in Europe, you had under Mussolini, they were allowing miscegenation that was basically unheard of and they were allowing miscegenation all through Italy.
	So these types of things when it came to persecution.
	The barriers were already breaking down before there was ever an established state for Jews anyway.
	So I would just argue that we can look around at other marginalized peoples, right, if you want to call them that, and say, okay, you went through horrific experiences also.
	There was no nation state for your people to flee to.
	And yet still, it seems that many of these groups are far less marginalized or persecuted than they were once upon a time.
	So I'm not so sure how Israel did much for that.
	It seemed to put all or tons of Jews in one spot, and then that spot's just open for endless attack.
	It just seems so stupid to me.
	It does.
	It does.
	It does have some disadvantages, shall we say?
	For sure.
	Centralizing all those people.
	It's like when you get pedophiles together for a convention, you know where to bomb, right?
	Right.
	You know how to take things.
	So I understand the point and I'm not comparing Jews to pedophiles, by the way.
	Gosh, that's just going to set some people on fire, I know.
	And I understand that each group is going to have a different subset of experiences.
	Now, when you're playing the Olympics of Opression, right, I know that various groups are always going to say, I was more oppressed than this group, I was more oppressed than that group, et cetera, et cetera.
	But to discount the fact that there's the human experience is filled with two thousand years of this group oppressing this group, this group oppressing that group, et cetera, et cetera.
	And it's going to end up being that way.
	We're always going to match up tribe versus tribe.
	That just seems to be part of the human experience.
	But I would just argue that even before the state was established as a nation, it was very clear that many of these traditional prejudices were already beginning to break down as technology advanced and people groups were able to intersect with each other much more often.
	I don't I don't disagree outside of the experience of Jews in Europe, specifically.
	I think the Jews in Europe, what they were experiencing was a tightening and something that they probably never in their wildest dreams thought was going to happen.
	specifically in Germany, then Czechoslovakia, then Poland, then moving on, right?
	It was almost like a savior day when Russia comes in and kicks the Germans out, which should never be the case, right?
	But so that's, I guess, that's my point.
	I don't know that I agree completely.
	I understand where you're coming from.
	I do think the technology, I do think that other factors over the years have made it to where we are much more tolerant.
	But if you are a Jew in the early part of the 20th century and you're trying to figure out how to live life and you're starting to see these things happen, I understand why you would want a place of refuge.
	Because people are taking them in., including the United States.
	Like, good.
	I understand, I understand that too.
	I just also understand the early Sionist counterarguments within their own ranks from the Jewish culture.
	They wanted to have influence.
	They wanted to have influence.
	They also trying to say, like, look, we have homes and families and we've been established in some of these areas for several hundred years and we don't want to uproot and go.
	And we think that this will cause a brand new wave of anti Semitism where people can draw all their ire on a single place and then attack it.
	And they kinda have.
	Yeah, but they've defended that very well and their numbers have they haven't.
	We have defended it.
	The very same nations which people would claim were the biggest persecutors are actually the very nations which are providing all the security for the State of Israel.
	So it's like, how would they not have been safe just staying in those nations?
	Well, no, at the time that's not foreseeable is my point.
	Like, you can't look to the future and see that all of a sudden, I mean, maybe you could predict that Britain would, you certainly couldn't predict that France would, and you certainly couldn't even predict that Britain would, because at the time, whenever the Balfour Declaration was, I mean, I know that's a lot earlier, but let's say this, they set up the state, like they were attacking the British to get them the hell out of there.
	So they couldn't think.
	No, they had tons of security.
	They had tons of security and weapons agreements with Western nations.
	Where do you think they were getting their weapons and their tanks and everything else?
	I mean, they were getting them.
	I mean, I disagree, but they were getting them from Western nations.
	And the thing is, it's so funny, it's like the very same nations which they, which, which Jews fled out of in order to move into the nation of Israel are the very same nations that they are banking on right this second.
	Yeah, but they weren't worried about France and Britain.
	They were worried about Germany and Italy.
	They were worried about those people coming after them.
	And, and rightfully so, it happened.
	I mean, you said that they didn't see.
	the threat.
	That's one of the major kind of problems with what happened up to the Holocaust was that so many Hungarian and Polish Jews didn't perceive the threat.
	I have businesses here.
	I've lived here for two hundred years.
	I have family.
	I have prosperity.
	I have a successful, thriving business.
	Well, the next day they didn't.
	The next day they were herded onto a tragedy.
	That's true.
	I'm not disputing.
	I'm not disputing any of that.
	I'm just pointing out that the edge of your argument, while it's rational, it's a good rational argument.
	The idea is like, look, if you're in an era of rampant persecution, this would really seem like a good idea.
	In some sense at least.
	The only problem is that the argument has a double edge, which is if you can't determine the future for security inside of the nation states you're in and perceive that they'll lighten up against your people group, there's no reason for you to assume that they would lighten up against a state.
	Well, okay, so moving into this state, you would think would put a massive target on your back.
	And how would you defend the state, right?
	That's the question.
	So you must have some security agreements in place, some ways in which, you know, this state will be defended.
	So I would just point out like, I'll go ahead.
	I think the or part to that is, or you're at a point where I would rather fight for a homeland than be killed tomorrow in a pogrom.
	I'm at the point where I can't.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Like, I'm like, all right, I'm just going to go for it.
	But I do believe that you're correct in that the Jews had a very, very good strategy early on to get support from other countries, specifically Britain and the United States, but also other countries around the world to a lesser degree.
	And that was one of their main goals is to make sure that Jews in those countries would put pressure.
	In fact, that was one of the levering tools that they used against the British, don't make me make the Jews rise up against you in these other countries and you lose support in this war.
	Like, listen, I get it.
	But here's the thing, the United States did the same thing.
	We basically said, screw this.
	We don't, we have people like we had our own place.
	I get it that we weren't going to a brand new place, but initially we did.
	We went to a place and we said, screw it.
	We're done with this.
	There's no way we should be able to defeat them.
	And by the way, the only way we can possibly win this war is if we get the Native Americans to some degree on our side and the French to come over here with some ships and blow things up.
	We did the same thing.
	So I don't look at Israel as being some kind of this unique case in that regard.
	And the prosecutor is not disputing that.
	I agree with you that if the idea here is just to say whether or not sovereign peoples are allowed to create states and they don't need to give endless justifications for their state, then I agree.
	But they were dependent wholly on other people and so were we to protect them.
	Well, like we found this may be wrong, but if I ask, it was the United there to protect this group of people, right?
	Did it live up to its promise of protecting that group of people?
	I would say in the United States, the United States definitely lived up to its promise of protecting its citizens.
	I don't, I just don't, I don't think you can cut that any other way.
	It really did live up to its promise of protecting its citizens, at least to a large degree.
	Did Israel, though, live up to its promise of protecting Jews, especially Jews globally?
	That I think you can definitely make a case against.
	Yeah.
	So to steal man kind of what you're saying, you agree that the number of people murdered and the deaths.
	That metric would seem like it does, but maybe it's attributable to other things than having a state.
	Maybe the number of Jews globally murdered pre 1948 being so much higher than it is now, maybe that was attributable to something other than them having a nation state in the first place.
	Yes, I would I would just argue back that my guess the crux of my argument would be that I don't think that the nation state of Israel being established has reduced the number of deaths of Jews globally, but rather has likely exacerbated it over time more than the alternative.
	And while I agree that there was rampant persecution going on at the time of Jews, that's not even in dispupute.
	No.
	Along with many, many other groups, I would just point out that the reason that many of those other groups, this oppression is all but virtually gone, including in the Western nation against Jews individually.
	Now, I know that you get the, well, he put a fucking Nazi thing on my garage or whatever, shit, whatever, stuff like that.
	That's not, that's not like, oh, they lined us up and put us in front of ditches and pulled the trigger, right?
	These are different.
	We have different levels of this.
	Okay, we have different levels of this.
	So if, if that's the complaint, then it's like, well, okay, maybe you have to do something about that too.
	But I don't think that it's reaching these critical heights like we were, like we're discussing before.
	So did it live up to its idea of protecting and even right now in modernity, is it living up to the idea of protecting Jews or is it putting a target on their back globally due to what's going on with Palestine and due to what's going on with their intelligence working with MI6 and the CIA and many others, Mossad interference.
	American people seem to not be happy about it along with the peoples of the West.
	That does not seem like it's assisting with protecting Jews.
	So I think there's a good case to be made the other way.
	I mean, I I I I don't completely disagree, but I think I would lean more towards the state of Israel being a net positive for them and having an impact on that because I just throughout human history, for some reason, the Jews seem to be and it's not the oppression Olympics necessarily.
	It's just like, why do they keep getting singled out in these different countries historically?
	Are they really that weird?
	Are they that Jewish to some degree that they just are so off-putting to people, no matter where they happen to go, they end up being the scapegoat?
	I don't know.
	I really do look at it more of a spiritual battle than anything else.
	Like if they are in fact God's chosen people, anybody let's just, you know, without defining who God's people are, but anybody who wears the team jersey for being a Jew, if those are God's people, then if I was Satan, of course, I would go after them as well as Christians, right?
	I wouldn't exclusively go after them.
	I would do both, right?
	And try to maybe make the promises of God completely fail.
	That would be my target.
	That's what Satan tried to do completely in Scripture.
	It's like, I'm going to make God's promises be broken to these people.
	And it's going to completely shatter everything.
	So I do think that it has had a net positive impact, but I understand the case.
	What about this?
	If you do, do you think in the future it will continue to?
	That's actually where I was going.
	Yes and no.
	I think right now is a great example of no, right?
	Right now with what's going on.
	Now here's my argument.
	And we don't have know if I'm going to go into Gaza, but I'm glad to see that Dave Smith has come around to my point of view and he will hate that I said that, by the way.
	It's good for Dave.
	Dave.
	Yeah.
	So Douglas Murray actually gave an interview and I think it was with Piers Morgan where he said, one of the main problems in this conflict is that nobody has been allowed to win.
	Israel obviously would win in any war against Gaza or Hezbollah or any of these.
	They wouldn't even win.
	They would walk right in, completely destroy everything.
	And I think no matter which side of this you come down on, if you look at it objectively, Israel has taken extraordinary measures during a war to make sure they minimize civilian casualties.
	That doesn't mean that they have minimized civilian casualties though.
	Again, this is one of those places where people will immediately run to the extremes.
	And I'm like, listen, of course there have been crazy amounts of casualties of innocent people and I hate it.
	I think it's terrible.
	That's why I hate war, but I understand war's place in history.
	And so that's why you don't start war for no reason.
	Like you weigh the cost of doing something like this.
	But if Israel had been allowed to win, I don't know, in 2005 or in 2003 or pick a date, right?
	And actually win.
	And I mean win, win to the point of you've degraded the enemy so much that they have to come to the table and accept the terms that you.
	We now own your land and it's ours.
	We wouldn't be dealing with these problems.
	The problem that I have with this whole thing is that it's a pro, it is an extension of human suffering.
	You're prolonging it just like in Ukraine with Russia and Ukraine.
	There, nobody's going to win that war right now unless Russia goes to the nuclear toolbox.
	Am I correct in assuming then what you're saying is this?
	If I can just summarize, make sure I got it right.
	Yeah.
	If they went in tomorrow and they butchered one third of the Palestinians, but that led to an end of all conflict with Palestinians, are you saying that that would likely be preferable to an elongation?
	which actually led to the cost of a lot more life if they didn't actually do that.
	Potentially.
	So yeah, I mean, the hypothetical is that they'd have to butcher a third.
	And I mean, whenever any lives are lost in war, like I mean, there's a weight to that when you're talking about it.
	So yeah, I understand the caveats.
	I understand the caveat.
	Yeah, I mean, so, so, yes, because here's the alternative.
	The alternative is, okay, well, what do we do about the current situation?
	Well, just stop the war, stop the killing, let everything kind of go back to a neutral state.
	Okay, well, that's great as long as everybody wants to go back to a neutral state.
	The thing is they don't.
	And you can make the argument that the IDF doesn't want to go back to a neutral state either, right?
	So that's fine.
	But I know for sure Hamas doesn't.
	Their infrastructure is built on the fact that they are going to wage some kind of guerrilla style warfare against these people for all time.
	So really what you're saying is, I want you to stop killing people in Gaza and more Jews are going to die because of it.
	You're not saying that on purpose, not you, but the people making that argument.
	You're not saying it on purpose, but that really is what it leads to.
	So, you know, it is preferable to me to let this be finished.
	Hopefully it doesn't take killing one third of the people there.
	I don't think that would be a very good or moral thing to do.
	But I hope that we can finish this war and get to a place of peace.
	And right now and for decades we haven't.
	And I don't think we ever will until someone wins.
	a two-state solution for me will never, ever, ever in the history of the world now and forever on work, ever.
	Work, yeah.
	Well, I understand the, well, I understand the two points.
	I just think that, let's start with the first one.
	I think it kind of negates your, your kind of earlier framing of this.
	Well, crap.
	As like a, as like a positive.
	If it's the case you say, Israel is not being allowed to win, they're not allowed to win.
	This means other states are holding them back from winning.
	That would again point out that Israel as a state, itself, has not necessarily been advantageous towards the BRICS.
	No, it's still, it's still advantageous, but they've used what Israel's leadership has done.
	done has capitulated to the demands of the rest of the world in this regard.
	Then it hasn't really helped with the protection of Jews.
	It's leading to more Jews dying because fewer Jews have died.
	So it goes back to the number.
	So, yeah, it's it could be better, but it's not.
	Wouldn't they have anyway?
	Wouldn't fewer Jews have died anyway is the question.
	Well, but it's just kind of, yes, maybe.
	Yeah, it's just kind of cycling.
	It's just kind of cycling the question, but that's the first one.
	Okay.
	I guess to the second point though, the olive branch is like, I agree with you when it comes to warfare.
	And this is the ugly truth.
	I talked with Steven about this.
	I'll talk with you about this.
	It doesn't matter which general you read, whether it's Sun Tzu or MacArthur.
	It doesn't matter, right?
	They would, uh, completely agree with this take.
	If it's the case that right now you can end an elongated conflict which will cost one million lives by taking two hundred fifty thousand lives right now, including one hundred thousand innocents because that will lead to six hundred thousand innocents dying over time, then you should probably do that.
	Yeah.
	I get that.
	I understand that.
	It's just it's it comes down to a numbers game and not every choice you can make is a good one.
	No.
	So you try to go for the choice which is the most moral with the least conditionals, right?
	Yeah.
	And unfortunately, in this case, there may not be any good options, but the fact of the matter is that.
	all this only, only happens at all if Israel is established as an Israeli ethno Jewish state, an ethno religious state.
	And that's why the conflict is going on right now, period.
	And there's no kind of if and or buts about that.
	And so you say, well, there's no more wind conditions at this point.
	Maybe there's no more wind conditions.
	So what does that mean?
	I think there are.
	I do.
	I hope.
	Well, what are they?
	Well, if Israel goes, listen, I'm not advocating for this, but this would definitely be a win for Israel.
	Let's say that right now, for some reason, Egypt decided to take some of these people in and Jordan did too.
	That's not going to happen.
	They are not going to do.
	Why?
	Because they don't want them.
	Exactly.
	They want them to be a thorn in the side of Israel.
	Yes.
	They want them to be a thorn in the side of Israel.
	And so they don't care about the lives of those people.
	And this is why I get pissed off at people like Dave Smith.
	And I have a lot of respect for him more than other people do.
	And he's been right about a lot of stuff that I really appreciate.
	And I appreciate that he is anti war.
	I get it.
	I wish I lived in a world where that didn't exist, but unfortunately it does.
	They don't care about the lives.
	They want to prolong the conflict.
	I have a problem with that happening in Ukraine.
	Our politicians don't care about the lives of Ukrainian soldiers.
	They just want to degrade Russia.
	And they'll let them be propped up and killing each other for as many years as they'd like to and buy weapons.
	Fantastic.
	That sucks.
	To me, that's immoral.
	So what I would like to see is people like Dave Smith say, Israel, you should do a better job.
	Hey, Egypt, what the hell are you doing?
	Open the gates, let's set up an international camp.
	We won't even put them on your dole.
	We'll build a camp internationally and we'll move these people out of that into that region and we will let Israel take Gaza all the way to the sea and do whatever they want with it.
	That's not ethnic cleansing, that's not libertarian sovereignty, not that libertarian sovereignty.
	The idea there that these are sovereign nations and they're utilizing to their best of their ability political leverage to create a problem for their enemies.
	And by the way, that's that, that's it, it's working.
	Right.
	But I understand why you didn't want to do it in the region.
	And look, I hope people understand, like if you've done any research into the history of the formation of the state, you have to understand that Jews have been in that area for a long time too, and they lived in relative peace with the Arabs of the area.
	They did.
	And if I was going on for hundreds of years.
	Oh, yeah.
	And if I was an Arab, I would feel very much that I was in the right.
	I get it.
	I do get it, but it does come down to we won, you lost.
	The British made promises to the Arabs to try to throw the Ottoman Empire so the Ottoman Empire couldn't fight them as effectively in World War I. They were trying to, they were struggling to have a survival of their society.
	I get it.
	But they made the promises to the French and they made the promises to the Jews for that same land too.
	Britain was promising anyone anywhere anything if they would help them win this war in World War 1.
	I say it went off the rails.
	I know it went off the theological way.
	No, no, it's all pertinent.
	But it comes down to what people's view is.
	So let me get back to what I said.
	I would agree.
	If we let Israel win, if we let them push everyone out, and I feel like that's the worst case scenario, pushing everyone out, pushing every single person out.
	If you can't trust anyone, bulldoze everything.
	Israel now owns that land and we put Palestinians somewhere else in the world where they can live a life where they don't have to worry about their kids being blown up at a McDonald's.
	Isn't that better than the alternative that we're being presented with?
	And the reason I brought Dave Smith up is because when he was talking about Ukraine and Russia, he said.
	He said, listen, Russia came in and took some land.
	You said, give it back.
	He said, no, we have to deal with that reality and come to a negotiated agreement.
	Fantastic.
	Israel's going in and saying, we're going to just take this.
	The negotiated agreement was, hey, you've got to let the prisoners go.
	You've got to lay your weapons down.
	Hamas has to be completely decapitated.
	You guys can't have this thing anymore.
	That's the condition.
	They said, no, okay, we're going in.
	Well, let me say this.
	If it's the case, let's say that Israel struck a deal with, I don't know, twenty, twenty different nations, right?
	Or let's just say ten.
	Let's just make it easier.
	Ten different nations, Western, Western nations to disperse all Palestinian people between those nations.
	Keep the families intact, this and that.
	Now they're at it.
	And we set them up with some money.
	And let's say, yeah, they pay a bounty, right?
	They pay a bounty of like 500,000 per family.
	This way they could be relocated.
	Well, and there's all sorts of corruption watches on it, and they get all sorts of benefits.
	If you were those Palestinian families and you were moved into Western nations where there were now Jews who lived inside those nations, who would you take your ire out on?
	Maybe them.
	Maybe them.
	I get it.
	So the answer is like, one way or the other.
	Yeah, so but if it does, how did that really make the world safer for Jews, right?
	Listen, I get it.
	There's no great answer to this.
	And these, I think every, every one of the solutions that gets proposed has some kind of ripple effect problem.
	And even in my situation where I'm like, okay, just put them over in Egypt and build a camp until you can disperse them, like it doesn't mean that they're not going to come back and try to take their, you know, ancestral home back.
	I mean, maybe I would, too.
	I don't know.
	I'm hoping that they wouldn't.
	I'm hoping that they go, you know what?
	This isn't worth it anymore.
	I get ancestral homeland and maybe I'm an American and I don't have the same kind of tie to the land generationally that they do and I can't completely understand.
	I get that.
	But at the same time, maybe this is a better option.
	But the reason and I understand that.
	this isn't as theological, but it does have a lot of bearing on the current situation and conversation is that people start from the wrong points.
	They start from either 100% supporting Israel no matter what because of Christian Zionism.
	Or 100% hating them.
	Exactly.
	Or 100% hating them.
	And you can't have that very kind of nuanced conversation where you and I are trying to see.
	Geopolitics requires nuance because we have multiple people groups with multiple vested interests.
	It includes our people group in the United States, right?
	If it is the case that this relocation happens, and I tend that that's the most likely scenario.
	Yes, that too.
	Palestinians be relocated to another place.
	It's just.
	If I'm President Wilson of the United States, God willing.
	If I'm President Wilson, I thought you were Dylan Woodrow, like why would you?
	I'm kicking my feet up at my desk, right?
	Asking for my third Diet Coke of the day while doing as little as possible, while doing as little as possible as a good president should.
	And this comes across my desk, right?
	Okay, what do you think about 900,000 Palestinians coming into the United States to be dispersed all over the United States?
	The first thing that comes to my mind is they're going to start killing Jewish citizens.
	That's the very first thing that I would think of is that we're importing a massive terror cell who's going to start killing Jewish citizens.
	Put them in Arab nations then.
	Put them with their own people.
	And if they have a problem with the Arab nations.
	The Arab nations won't take them.
	That's their problem.
	Because they want them to be there messing with the Jews.
	Why are we playing the game then?
	Why are we playing that game?
	Well, we don't have a choice.
	We can't force them to.
	You know what?
	No, no, no, no.
	I don't mean that.
	You're right.
	We can't force them to.
	I mean, we could airdrop them in with parachutes and stuff and say, good luck getting them out.
	But nonetheless, that's impractical.
	Yeah, that's true.
	might kill them too.
	That's true.
	So there are not a lot I mean we could just be like all right Arab nations you care about your brothers in arms right you're gonna be sending them weapons and this is you're trying to save their lives okay here's the deal in two weeks the gloves are off.
	We will not only tell Israel that there will be no sanctions, no anything from any international body or any country, we will encourage them to wipe Gaza off the map and start fresh with some new concrete and new ownership.
	Two weeks.
	These people don't care, and I'm tired of hearing the moaning of, I can't believe they're killing Gazans from those same people that won't do a damn thing to help them.
	That's why I'm so disgusted at the United States in World War II, during the Holocaust not taking Jews and other countries not doing it.
	I'm like, what are we doing?
	You were saying this was happening and at the same time not taking any refugees in.
	Like this is ridiculous to me.
	But wouldn't the same criticism be levied from them to the United States and say, well then why don't you just take them?
	We have taken some.
	We're doing everything.
	Why not take them all?
	You have this massive land, a massive of the richest nation in the world.
	We won't like it here.
	Not the people there.
	They'll say the same thing, not our climate there.
	We don't have the proper infrastructure.
	I mean, I'm coming up with whatever excuse I could.
	But that would be the that would be the criticism.
	And the thing is that it's somewhat fair.
	I get it.
	But yeah.
	It is fair.
	It's a fair criticism.
	The thing is, as far as a geopolitical thing goes, though, I don't see, again, how this actually makes Jews.
	When I look at the history of Israel, right, I don't actually see how the state made Jews globally safer than if I envision a world where this nation was not established as a state, right?
	Would there be the same kinds of even blowback on the West from various Muslims who use it as a crux of, oh, you're, you guys worship the Zionists, so they have to change a lot of things.
	It would change a lot of things across the board.
	And so I'm not actually sure that it lived up to this promise, which I guess is the crux of what we're talking about.
	Well, that's what it's not, what we're not saying here.
	For any of you who might get upset because we're having a a real conversation, right?
	Turks.
	What neither of us are saying is that sovereign nations aren't allowed to set the policies that they wish.
	Very much so.
	Or that you're not allowed to set up your immigration policy, how you see fit, that you're not allowed to protect your land, how you see fit.
	Neither of us are saying, are saying that.
	All we're pointing out and arguing kind of in the nuance here is, if we envision a world where Israel itself never established as a nation, right, what would the distinction in society look like today?
	And the reason you introduce those hypothetical is because you can then use those to kind of launch forward and project your future.
	looks like, and also project on whether or not this whole experiment there was actually a great idea to begin with.
	And I think that those are important conversations.
	And bad theology led us to that.
	Yeah.
	That's something we should definitely address.
	And if bad theology is leading us astray right this second, and I would contend, as Ted Cruz rightly points out, that it is, right?
	He didn't make it up.
	He didn't make it up, but he did.
	His own, right?
	He points it out very well.
	Then I think that's something that's worth looking at.
	And this was just a ball, by the way, Gerald.
	I really enjoyed the back and forth here.
	And I feel like we got a lot of that out on the table.
	So agree with me or disagree with me, neither of us are advocating for negative consequences or negative outcomes for Jewish people.
	We're kind of just taking a narrow vision on theology and what its effects are in the world.
	Absolutely.
	And I think if you had to ask either of us, we're actually praying for the salvation of all who are apart from Christ.
	We want all who exactly, it doesn't matter who it is, Arabs, Jews, Palestinians, Israelis.
	We want everyone to come to faith in Christ.
	And so there are a lot of issues that we need to dive deeper in like this, Andrew.
	Maybe we should do this a little more often and kind of talk about some of these things because I think it would be helpful for people.
	You and I don't line up on everything on everything, and that's fine.
	We have a lot of mutual respect for each other, and I think we're all trying, you and I are sorry, trying to make Christ known, make his name known in the world.
	Well, I enjoy these conversations, especially with Gerald, because like me, he doesn't take anything, he's not offended by having a discussion with even someone who opposes the worldview or someone who is aligned.
	It's just like he says, trying to get to the heart of what is true.
	And so I love having these discussions and I'm happy to come back anytime you'd like so we can dive into more.
	That sounds fantastic and you're right.
	I don't take offense to anything because these people call me gay all the time and that is not true.
	Andrew Wilson, thank you for being with us this week.
	It's true.
	Gerald, apologize, apologetics, it's not true.
	Gerald apologizes, apologetics.

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