All Episodes
Previous Next
Oct. 13, 2024 - Huckabee Today
40:39
SHOCKING! Are These Christians ABANDONING America in 2024?! | Huckabee
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Did you know that Benjamin Franklin was famously asked in the early days of our nation by a lady who said, Mr. Franklin, is our new country a democracy or a republic?
His reply carried a warning that we're feeling today.
He simply said, a republic if you can keep it.
Well, there are days I'm simply not sure we will.
And if we don't, it will largely be the fault of self-described evangelical Christians who either sat in the cheap seats and watched from a distance or who hid from the entire process like Joe Biden cowered in his basement during the 2020 election.
40 million.
40 million evangelicals.
Don't vote even in a presidential election in this country, and that is disgraceful.
So what is wrong with those who comfortably sit on their blessed assurance and assume that someone else will go to the battle for the soul of the nation in its future?
Well, some of it's this false and foolish belief that, well, politics is just too dirty.
You bet it is.
Having been in the belly of the beast for over 30 years, I can attest to that truth.
But if the people who consider themselves too clean to engage, if they run from the battle, the battle to create a culture of biblical values, then rest assured our country will not go into self-cleaning mode.
You see, a major mistake from the petrified pew warmers is that false belief that Christians shouldn't be involved in politics.
Truth is, we already are involved.
See, when your 13-year-old daughter or granddaughter is forced to undress in front of a biological male who pretends to be a female, and the biological male undresses in her presence in the locker room, she is denied her privacy, modesty, and dignity at a point of her being most vulnerable as an adolescent.
And that situation is the direct result of the so-called redeemed but reluctant.
Hey, let's be blunt.
The real crisis in America is not political, financial, social, or even ideological.
It's spiritual.
And while most people see the conflicts in America as horizontal, the left versus the right, the Democrats versus the Republicans, the liberals versus the conservatives, the reality is that we are no longer a nation divided horizontally.
We are a nation whose conflicts are vertical.
It's up versus down.
It's heaven versus hell.
It's right versus wrong.
That's the battle.
Now, in my lifetime, there was a time when Republicans and Democrats were different, but they weren't that different.
I mean, there really were pro-life Democrats and pro-Second Amendment Democrats.
There were military hawks and tax cutters in the Democrat Party.
And frankly, there were Republicans who were pro-abortion, I'm sad to say.
And some Republicans had real disdain for the working class.
In all of it, there was often room for consensus and, frankly, legislation could pass that made America better and functional.
But the divide today is far beyond the once-defined horizontal boundaries.
We have people arguing for the annihilation of Israel, for the killing of a baby up until the moment of birth, and the belief that there are over 100 genders and that a person can simply identify as a person different than one's biological birth, and then expect that taxpayers like you and me should pay for irreversible chemical castration or the surgical mutilation of 13-year-old children.
Arguing for such insanity is bizarre.
When we think a child is too young to get a tattoo, buy alcohol or tobacco, get married, entered into a contract or buy a gun.
But we think that same immature child ought to be able to surgically or chemically change his or her gender.
That's crazy.
I mean, I pray we become a nation that repents of our national sins and humbles ourselves before a holy God and will stand firmly on his word as the foundation of truth and the template for our civilization.
I hope we do.
But I want to be clear as I can that that will never happen if self-described Bible believers won't even vote.
And that unwillingness to engage in the affairs of our culture and country, well, they're failing to see that our issues are really not political.
They're spiritual.
And spiritual people can't be taken seriously if they don't engage in the most important spiritual issues of our day.
Dr. Kevin Roberts runs the premier conservative think tank in Washington, a group that's committed to helping Americans live the good life.
The Heritage Foundation proposes sound policy and model legislation that puts power in the hands of everyday Americans.
Would you please welcome the president of the Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action for America, Dr. Kevin Roberts.
You know, the Heritage Foundation has such a wonderful history.
It was started back during the time of Ronald Reagan as a way to get policy that could be adopted into legislation.
But to put it in a think tank meant that people could be a little independent of all the politics of it and focus on would it work?
Would it be helpful?
So it's quite an extraordinary organization that you get to be part of and lead today.
It's a great privilege.
We've been around 51 years, and even though we're nonsectarian, almost every one of us at Heritage has a very deep Christian or Jewish faith.
And I think in addition to the point that you make about our independence from the politics, especially given the contrast that we have right now, As you like to say, Governor, between up and down.
Bringing that voice to Washington, D.C. at this time of really hyper-secularism, at least for me as a man of very deep faith, married nearly 30 years, four kids, 11 years of homeschooling, Being in D.C. at this time, the only way that I think we can be cheerful about the work that we do is because of our faith, but also because we are in Washington, but not of Washington.
And I think that's really crucial.
I love the way you put that, and I think it's probably a very apt description of heritage.
I remember through the years, when I was governor, we would sometimes find Excellent ideas that would come from Heritage.
Things that would be involving school choice.
It might be involving healthcare options that really empowered private sector capacity, more choice for the consumer, just a host of issues around the gamut.
But this year, Heritage has been labeled as sort of the bad guys because...
I've noticed that.
Yeah, you know, and I want to get to that because Project 2025 is a Heritage Foundation product.
The press has said, oh, this is Donald Trump's thing.
It's like, what, 700 pages or something like that?
922. 922 to be exact.
So it's a lengthy thing.
And they obviously would excerpt little pieces out, the press would and the Democrats and say, oh, look, this is what Trump said.
Trump came out and disavowed and said, look, this isn't my platform.
I didn't write it.
I wasn't the one who put it out there, but they still say that it's his.
Let's give your side of it.
What is Project 2025 and why, Kevin, is it so dangerous?
Well, this is something that we've done at Heritage since 1980. As you know, Governor, we were called Reagan's think tank, not because Reagan took every policy proposal we ever offered or every personnel recommendation we made, but because there was a certain synergy there.
But we exist in the policy lane.
President Trump, any conservative candidate, even though we might have some ideological synergy, exists in the political lane.
So it just by definition, because of our work, is going to be candidate agnostic.
But what this project is, and I think it gets into why the left has turned it into the boogeyman this season, is that we've taken policies in the 922 pages.
We've also recruited nearly 20,000 people into a personnel database.
Now, whether those people are hired by the president, the vice president, cabinet secretaries, is 100% up to them.
You know as well, we don't operate with any presumption.
Going back to our opening exchange about our faith, even in a nonsectarian organization, we exist to be in service to the American people.
But I'll also mention this about Project 2025. The left doesn't yet understand that that personnel database isn't going anywhere.
Yeah.
Because I've had a half dozen governors, as you would appreciate, come to me and say, Kevin, when all this blows over, we would love some recommendations from these 110 organizations who've come together to do this.
But it's never been done on this scale.
And we've got 110 groups that are part of it.
We have 20,000 people in this database.
And frankly, what we were trying to do is insert some policy conversation.
Yeah.
Into a political discourse that, frankly, has been kind of vacuous.
I dare say we succeeded in doing that.
We don't look for that kind of attention, and next time around, figuratively speaking, when the left does this kind of attack, we will, of course, correct the record.
And one of the reasons that it is such a narrow path forward is because the radical left has taken over nearly every institution in this country, namely, and most importantly, the administrative state in Washington, D.C. So, just to put it bluntly, There's no way that we have any hope in this life of taking back power from Washington, devolving that power from Washington, giving it back to the American people, to governors, to states, if we don't first attack the power that's been accrued in Washington.
You have to have people who have the experience, who have the virtue, frankly, who have the spine to withstand all of the attacks that the left is going to assail them with.
Ultimately, it's up to the boss, right?
The president, the vice president, the governor.
We know that.
We operate in that service.
But I'll also tell you this, governor, we're not going to roll over.
We care too much about this country.
We love this country.
And there have been far too many Americans who've said, we're inspired by what you want to do.
Keep fighting for us because there aren't enough people in Washington who do.
That is for absolute certain.
Well, Kevin, stay with us.
We're going to have a lot more to talk about with Dr. Kevin Roberts.
Keith Bilbrey is going to be telling us about what's coming up on the rest of the show.
So, Keith, it's all yours for a minute.
Well, don't go away.
Get ready to laugh with funny man, Phil DiTomaso.
And later, go back in time with Bobby Wilson, the son of legendary singer Jackie Wilson, right here on Huckabee.
Go to MikeHuckabee.com and sign up for his free newsletter.
And follow AdGum Mike Huckabee on X. And we've come back to the music of I'm a Believer from the Monkees in the 1960s.
Most of us in this room remember that song and remember it fondly.
We're back with Heritage Foundation President, Dr. Kevin Robertson.
Kevin, before we were talking about the administrative state, some people will call it the deep state, but it is the unit party, the donor class run Washington DC cabal.
I mean, I think a lot of us recognize if we've ever dealt with it, that that's really the problem.
It is a deeply rooted problem.
Give us some specific things that Heritage has maybe identified that need to change in Washington That could bring power back to the people and away from a handful of donors and a handful of powerful corporate interests who don't really care about the rest of us.
Boy, how much time do we have?
We have 922 pages of ideas.
But starting with a couple that are really important, the first and most important, and it's the one thing, Governor, that the radical left gets right in its mischaracterizations of Project 2025, is that we do want to end, once and for all, the U.S. Department of Education.
Yes, good.
Like you, I'm a public school guy from the Deep South.
I'm also a fifth-generation educator.
I care very deeply about the most noble ideal that we've ever had in this country, which is that we promise every child, regardless of their background in this pluralistic country, equal access to the greatest education in the history of man.
We're not doing that because of the Department of Education.
But think about the link between the poor education that we're providing and the ability of elites in Washington, frankly, to lie to us.
And it would be better if it was just Democrats who were doing this.
But I can tell you from my three years of experience in D.C., it's far too many Republicans.
But the second thing we need to do, if you think about what the Chinese Communist Party poses as the greatest existential threat to us, I think, and certainly our lifetimes, we need to end once and for all that you can be a lobbying firm on K Street and lobby for the CCP against our interests.
Absolutely.
That shouldn't be hard to stop.
I mean, it's hard for me to believe that that's even tolerated.
And third, thinking about the importance of this tragedy of illegal immigration to this country, which isn't just about breaking the rule of law at the southern border.
It isn't just about...
Receiving benefits from a very generous people, it's the signal that that sends.
But to your point about the Uniparty, there are Republicans who haven't been vocal enough about this.
Now, thankfully, the vast majority of them are.
I want to be really clear.
But if you gave me a policy magic wand, and I was able to use that for one change on the first day of a conservative administration, we would close the southern border, we would end benefits for illegal aliens, and through self-deportation, they would go back home.
Thank you.
And I think that most Americans, in fact, there's an overwhelming majority, both Republican and Democrat, who agree with that.
That's really one of those issues.
It's not horizontal.
It is vertical.
And that's why I don't understand why the political people of Washington don't join together and say, this is crazy.
We can't have a country if you don't have a border, if you don't know who's here.
This election, we always say every year, every election, most important one in our lifetime.
Kevin, I really believe this is by far the most important one because the difference between the candidates and where they will take this country, so very different.
What would be the greatest fear you have if Kamala Harris is elected and the greatest hope you would have if Donald Trump is elected?
My greatest fear if the vice president is elected president is that we lose our religious liberty.
I started a K-12 Christian school in South Louisiana.
I led a Christian college which decided under my leadership To tell the Department of Education to keep its federal student loans and grants so that we could continue our religious mission.
That was 10 years ago, Mike.
And fast forward, I never would have imagined even in my lifetime that we would see the radical left explicitly say that if they're back in power, your ability to worship however you would like, mine and my family's, is gone.
That's what's going to happen.
And as I tell agnostic and atheist friends, I have a few remaining, in spite of my faith, that if they come after our religious liberty, They're going to come after everything.
And the Democrat vice president and governor of Minnesota are explicit about that.
Now, I'm supernaturally hopeful.
I'm also hopeful in this life because I trust the American people as Ronald Reagan would remind us.
And I think what both Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance have offered in their own policy achievements is a revitalizing of the American dream.
And they have different personalities.
They might say things in a different way than I would as a policy leader, although I admire them.
And I will say that the best hope that I have for this country, if they happen to prevail in terms of policy, from education to immigration to the economy, is that Americans are going to wake up a year, two years, five years later and say, boy, we hit a really low point at the beginning of the 2020s, but we're taking our country back and we believe in the American dream.
What a great, great analysis.
I hope people take that seriously.
Kevin, thank you for joining us here tonight.
If you want to learn more about the work of the Heritage Foundation and what they're doing, find out more about his upcoming book.
It's going to be released next month called Dawn's Early Light.
You can go to Dr. Robert's guest page at Huckabee.tv.
Find out how to get the book.
And you can also even find out how to read for yourself Project 2025 and see if it's as scary as Kamala Harris thinks it is.
Well, Keith Bilbrey, he scares me to death, but he's going to step up to the microphone with some news on what we have coming up on the show.
So, Keith, take it away.
Well, the laughs are coming with comedian Phil DiTomaso.
And you don't want to miss New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Cahn.
He's here to bring insight on events unfolding in Israel with his new book, The Dragon's Prophecy.
That's all to come on Huckabee. - Samaritan's first mission is to bring life-saving aid and supplies in the midst of horrible disasters like we've been seeing in places like North Carolina and Florida just the past few days.
These powerful hurricanes, Helene and Milton, have done devastating damage to so many of our friends and neighbors.
But you have an opportunity to be part of that mission by praying for Samaritan's Purse and also by helping to support their work through your financial gifts.
Here's what I'm asking you to do.
Call them today or visit their website by scanning the QR code that's right there on your screen.
I think you can look at your news on TV every day and know that never has there been a need quite as overwhelming in such a short period of time.
And your assistance can make a real difference in the lives of your fellow Americans.
Sometimes you look at the tragedy and you say, what can I do?
Here's what you can do.
You can just open your heart and then make a significant difference by saying, I'll pray for Samaritan's Purse and I will give.
And I hope you'll do just that.
Well, comedian Phil Di Tommaso was born in Italy and raised in Brooklyn.
His terrific impressions of mafia movies and stories of his Italian-American upbringing make audiences laugh all over the country.
But he also delivers a message of faith, both in his act and with the prison ministry called Behind the Walls.
Would you please give a really nice welcome to the very funny Phil D. Tomaso?
Thank you.
Thank you.
How you doing?
Good.
Yeah.
I'm fine, thanks.
Yeah.
Anyway, I'm from Italy.
Grew up in Brooklyn, New York.
No gangsters here.
Nobody from Brooklyn.
Oh, good.
The striped shirt.
I love it.
Yeah, I've been living in Florida for 10 years, and they actually stereotype New York Italians.
Now, my neighbor comes up to me one day to talk to me, and let me tell you, I don't feel like talking to my neighbor sometimes, you know what I mean?
It's just you have one of those days.
I know the Bible says to love your neighbor as yourself, but I don't talk to myself.
Why do I have to talk to him?
So, thank you.
So I'm thinking, you know what, I should go over there and share Christ with him, talk to him about the Bible, you know, see, you know, maybe he's going to hell.
I don't know.
You know, I should talk to him, you know.
So after two minutes, he changes the subject because he's more fascinated with the fact that I'm an Italian from New York because he starts to ask me these stupid questions.
Now I'm a comedian.
You ask me stupid questions, Right, you're getting a stupid answer, but I'm also a Christian.
But I'll repent tomorrow.
Right now.
You're going to get a sarcastic answer.
So we got all excited.
He goes, Phil, you're Italian from New York.
Do you know anybody in the mafia?
So I thought I'd have a little fun with them, you know?
Well, actually, the reason I had to move to Florida...
You heard of the witness protection program?
And he got nervous.
You know, he believed me.
He got all nervous.
He goes, should you be telling me this?
He goes, am I supposed to know this?
I said, no.
Now they'll probably try to kill you too.
Would you like to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?
Thank you.
Thank you.
I mean, I would.
Let me tell you, I won't go start my call tomorrow morning without saying a little prayer, you know?
But I grew up with that.
I grew up with the mob, you know?
My uncles, my cousins, you know?
And my Uncle Tony, he's the one that worried me.
Sometimes I think the mafia had tryouts and he didn't make it.
And he would always call me over to tell me these kids' jokes and these nursery rhymes, but twist the endings and make them violent, because he wanted to toughen me up to, you know, recruit me.
So he calls me over one night.
I'm 10 years old.
He goes, Phil, come here.
I want to tell you a little joke, all right?
You know why Italians gangsters look around?
They're not looking for cops.
They're looking around for mothers, because they're more afraid of women, mothers, than they are of cops.
Right?
Thank you.
You guys, Phil, come here.
I want to tell you a little joke, all right?
Why did the chicken cross the road?
I'm like, I don't know, Uncle Tony.
That's right.
You don't know.
You don't know nothing, okay?
You didn't see no chicken.
You know nothing about this chicken.
And besides, it's none of your business why this chicken's crossing the road.
He could be going to whack another chicken, alright?
Thank you.
And what if this chicken owes him money?
It's none of your business.
Can I go to bed now, Uncle Tony?
No.
I got one more for you, alright?
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
was an accident.
Nobody push nobody, all right?
I mean...
And then all the king's horses and all the king's men took care of the body and kept their mouths shut, you understand?
Yeah, thank you.
And don't tell your mother we had this little conversation, alright?
Because nobody likes a rat, okay?
I mean, everybody was afraid of my mother.
I mean, my mother's four foot tall standing on a ladder.
My mother takes a bath.
She needs a life preserver.
Because my mother was the religious one of the family.
And everybody respected her.
But nobody would go to church.
You know, all the gangsters in my house, they would sit around on Sunday and eat pasta.
She couldn't, so know what she did?
She brought church to us.
She would make us watch those religious movies, you know, every year.
You know, and even whether we liked them or not.
And her favorite was The Ten Commandments.
Remember with Charlton Heston?
You remember that movie, right?
And my Uncle Tony hated that movie because there were no Italians in that movie.
I said, what are we watching this for?
There's no Italians in this movie.
Of course not.
It's like 4,000 years ago.
You know, the mafia wasn't created yet, you know.
God bless you guys.
I'm Phil DiTommaso.
Thank you.
That was great, Phil.
Thank you so much.
Hey, if you want to see more comedy from Phil DiTomaso and to book him for your venue, your church, or event, and I have a feeling after tonight you want to do that, visit Huckabee.tv.
We will get you connected.
All right, Keith Bilbrey, why don't you make us an offer we can't refuse and tell us what's coming up next on the show.
Well, I'll tell you, that's right.
You don't want to go away.
We have author Jonathan Cahn.
He's here to share with us the mysteries behind events unfolding in Israel right now.
That's next here on Huckabee.
One of the reasons I tell people they ought to come to the show and be here in person and be part of our studio audience is because you get to hear a lot more of some of the most incredible music in America, all provided by the incredible musicians Trey Corley and the Music City Connection.
Give them a big hand, would you?
Well, my next guest is the author of nine bestselling books.
He's recognized as one of the most influential spiritual leaders of our time.
I want you to welcome the bestselling author of this brand new book called The Dragon's Prophecy.
You've read his books before.
Please welcome Rabbi Jonathan Kahn. - What a pleasure having you, Jonathan, you wrote a book a few years ago called The Harbinger.
All of us that read that were just mesmerized.
I mean, it was so filled with connections of spiritual things going on in the rest of the world that we had never thought about.
You documented it very carefully.
I'm thrilled the impact that that book has had on this country and people's spiritual lives.
You've come out with a brand new one, The Dragon's Prophecy.
I'm going to cut right to it.
You say that what happened a year ago, October the 7th, Really was prophesied in the Bible.
So explain that to us.
Tell us how there's a connection.
Yeah.
First of all, I didn't plan on writing this book.
You know, I was writing another book and the Lord interrupted me.
And there is a whole, you know, there is more to this world than meets our eyes.
There are spiritual realities, prophetic realities.
I'll put it this way.
It was a Friday night.
At the congregation I lead in New Jersey called Beth Israel.
And I'm led to share a mystery.
And this mystery from the Bible ordained, when you take it, I'm not saying I know all these things, but when you take it, it ordained that there would be an attack on Israel.
It would take Israel by surprise.
What happened in the year 2023. What happened in the month of October, what happened on a Saturday, a Sabbath, what happened on a Hebrew Holy Day, altogether what happened on the first Saturday of October of 2023. That came out to October 7th.
Now, I shared that on Friday night.
The next morning, it happened.
It happened.
And so this is the mystery that really began the Dragon's Prophecy.
And this is one of those things that may even enable us to know future events and when they're going to happen.
But that's really the genesis of this book.
Well, it's always been amazing to me because when I read The Harbinger, it was that you saw things that were happening before they happened.
I'm not a mystic.
I don't see things like that.
But clearly God gives you some insights that a lot of the rest of us just don't have.
How do they come to you?
It's all God.
I take no credit for anything, and I don't know how that will happen.
I could never reproduce how I do a book, but the Lord just really leads me, and he puts something in my mind, and then I will check to see, okay, I'll go on the web, and then it's real.
You know, sometimes I'm sleeping next to my wife, and I wake up, and there are three things that have come to me.
I go to the web, and it's real.
And then he keeps leading to the next and the next and the next.
I never could reproduce it.
From the harbinger, that's how that came.
That's how the dragon's prophecy came.
Same thing.
It's all his leading.
Well, I, again, find that you take actual events.
So these aren't things you're just making up.
It's not fiction.
I mean, you have names and dates and places and addresses and things that have happened that anyone can check out so they can read your book.
And if they say, oh, it's a bunch of junk.
Well, then they can check it out and look for themselves.
But then you tie it to scripture, which gives it even a more powerful validity.
I think that's part of what is so, I guess, mesmerizing about the book.
God is, because God is who he said, you know, and the Bible is what it says.
You know, the Bible says there's a war again, you know, in Revelation there's a dragon and there's a woman with 12 stars, Israel.
This is an ancient war.
What we're watching October 7th and onward This is an ancient war that's been going on for thousands of years.
The devil is real.
The Lord is real.
And even when, you know, where October 7th happened, how it happened, so many things behind it replaying.
And even there are things that even match up with what is going to come, the Bible says in the book of Revelation.
And even end time prophecy.
I've never written a book with all that I've written.
I've never written a book that specifically opened up end time prophecy in Israel.
But so much has happened just in this last year that are crossing really red lines in end time prophecy.
What do you think is the most powerful truth that those of us who are people of faith should be aware of and should be even looking for?
Yeah, well, you know, one thing is Jewish history bears witness that God is real.
It would not exist today if God wasn't real.
But it also bears witness that the enemy is real.
Because if you look at why are they the most hated people?
Why does the world come again?
Why does the United Nations condemn this nation more than any other?
There's a real war going on.
And the thing is, yet, you know, the other thing is that, for instance, I'll give you an example.
In Revelation 12, it says that the dragon spewed a flood out of his mouth to wipe away this woman who represents Israel.
Well, do you know, October 7th, you know what Hamas called it?
Hamas, the name of it is Operation Tufan, which means Operation Flood, literally as the flood of the dragon.
Not that they knew it, but the enemy knows it.
So in every generation, that's the case.
The world is focusing on Israel just as the end time prophecy said it would.
You know, Ezekiel speaks about specific nations that are going to come against Israel in the last day.
Now we can identify some of them.
But the amazing thing is that when I looked, every single one that we can identify We actually had a part in October 7th.
You know, it says that they're going to take part in an invasion of Israel.
It will come.
But, for the first time ever, they actually were behind Hamas and all that.
We actually crossed the line.
It mentions Iran.
I mean, specifically, that Iran is going to be an arch enemy of Israel.
We'll attack Israel.
Has never happened until this year.
So we are moving forward.
Keep your eyes on Israel, because that's the center of what God is doing, and that's where the Lord's coming.
I think people, if they don't understand, better do what you just said.
Keep your eyes on Israel.
Don't bet against them.
Because, you know, the good news is, for all of the anxiety that we see...
We've read the end of the book and we win in the end.
And that's the great message of all of it.
It just is so powerful.
Well, I want to tell all of our audience, you can pick up your very own copy of The Dragon's Prophecy.
You can also follow Jonathan Cahn on social media by visiting his guest page at Huckabee.tv.
Folks, you're going to want to get this book.
You're going to want to connect to him.
It's absolutely amazing the insights that I believe God has given him.
So please check it out.
He is just amazing to me.
Keith, maybe you have some prophecy.
Maybe you can give us a prophecy of what's yet to come on the show.
Give it a shot.
Well, I know for a fact that you won't want to miss Judy Isaac Elias.
She's founder of Heroes to Heroes, bringing hope and encouragement to our veterans.
Let's find out how when we return next on Huckabee.
Christmas is just around the corner.
Go to Huckabee.tv and get your very own Made in the USA. Huckabee buns, t-shirts, hats, and more for all the Huckabee fans on your shopping list.
Welcome back.
As the granddaughter and daughter of Army combat veterans of World Wars I and II, Judy Isaacson Elias was raised to be a patriot, and she is.
And that's why, as the founder of Heroes to Heroes, she took on as her mission saving the lives of veterans of all faiths.
Her book is called Letters to God, Stopping Veteran Suicide Through Reconnection to God, Faith, and Values.
My wife, Janet, and I visited Israeli hospitals with Judy in 2014 during the last war with Hamas, and we were able to connect Israeli soldiers with U.S. soldiers.
It was some of the most absolutely powerful experiences of my life, and it is a real honor to welcome Judy Isaacson Elias.
Judy, welcome.
It's good to have you here.
It's an honor to be here.
When we were with you in Israel in 2014, that's the first really experience I had with Heroes to Heroes.
The connection that those combat injured IDF soldiers from Israel were having with American soldiers who were combat injured from Iraq and Afghanistan.
We just stood back and let them connect because there was no way that we could get in the way.
There was a bond.
Even if they didn't speak each other's language, they understood each other in a way that was just powerful.
The connection is so strong.
And from the first journey we had, we have had over 450 American veterans and 150 IDF veterans go through our program at this point.
And from the first time that the strength, the connection, and the need For that healing from each other.
When the organization was started, when I first started it, I thought, why wouldn't this work?
When I was 16 and going down a really bad path, my parents sent me to Israel.
When I put my hand on the Western Wall, my life got back together.
I reconnected with God.
I was able to find myself.
And I thought, why not do this for us?
And so for the past 14 and a half years, we have developed this program where we take them from values.
We help them learn their values.
It's a values-based program.
It's a 12-month program.
We prepare them to atone.
A big issue our vets have is just tremendous guilt.
You know, we forget that our soldiers are human beings.
You know, we train them intellectually, we train them physically, but we don't train them spiritually to go to work.
The average person has an eight-year-old's understanding of their faith, which means they understand black and white.
These are the Ten Commandments.
Okay, if I'm bad, you know, I transgress the Ten Commandments.
And there's a particular commandment.
In Hebrew, it's, which means thou shalt not murder.
It's now translated to thou shalt not kill.
But we don't train our soldiers to understand the difference.
And when they go to war, their job, it's kill or be killed.
And we think they can go to war, they can do what they do, come home, and they're fine.
Get back to civilian life.
What's wrong with you?
Well, if I believe, like 80% of the vets who we take care of will say, God wishes I were dead.
If I believe that, how do I get up in the morning?
Over 10,000 veterans organizations are working on the suicide problem.
What, 22 veterans?
Up to 22 a day.
A day?
A day.
In this country alone.
And we have been.
The VA has been working on this program.
Veterans organizations, people do good things.
Yeah.
But to heal.
Heal from moral injury.
You've got to heal the soul.
You've got to reconnect with God.
You know, we are in, I'm Jewish, we are in our days of atonement, and we prepare.
You know, we're going to ask our king for forgiveness.
We're going to ask God for forgiveness.
That's vital.
But for many of our soldiers, for our vets, there's no path to that forgiveness.
There's no path to atonement.
So Heroes to Heroes, we actually use the Hebrew Bible, the Torah, to teach them that path to atonement.
They work for four months.
Then we put them on a plane to Israel.
And they're actually taken to the Holy Land.
They walk where Jesus walked.
They get baptized in the Jordan River.
They go to Bethlehem.
They walk the Stations of the Cross.
They have that opportunity and they're prepared to atone.
And what we find is it's miraculous.
We have had 450 veterans, as I mentioned before, have gone through the program and no suicides from those victims.
Very powerful organization.
Judy, I've seen it firsthand.
I've listened to the testimonies of these veterans who have gone to Israel with you.
It changes their lives in such a profound way.
I have a feeling many of you would like to know more about Heroes to Heroes.
It is an extraordinary organization.
If you go to Huckabee.tv, we will connect you to Heroes to Heroes website, as well as to the book, Letters to God.
You can support them by buying the book or making a $100 tax-deductible donation to Heroes to Heroes, and you get a copy for free.
▲
Export Selection