PBD - Patrick Bet-David - “All Out War on Christ” - Cliffe Knechtle on America’s Problem With Christianity & God

July 24, 2024 - PBD - Patrick Bet-David

01:45:32

“All Out War on Christ” - Cliffe Knechtle on America’s Problem With Christianity & God

Patrick sits down with Pastor Cliffe Knechtle to talk about Christianity, moral relativism, and the role of faith in modern society. He emphasizes the importance of a personal relationship with God, critiques materialism, and addresses the cultural shift away from Christian values. The conversation also touches on AI, abortion, and the complexities of religious beliefs. --- 🇺🇸 Represent Valuetainment! Get Some of the Limited Edition U.S.A gear - https://bit.ly/VTTEAMUS 🏦 Purchase tickets to The Vault Conference 2024 featuring Patrick Bet-David & Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson:https://bit.ly/VAULT2024 🎟️ Purchase tickets to PBD Live - "Reagan" Movie Screening & Live podcast w/ Dennis Quaid on Friday, August 2nd: https://bit.ly/3xNPhCS Follow Cliffe Knechtle : https://www.youtube.com/@givemeananswer https://www.Instagram.com/Stuart_knechtle https://www.Tiktok.com/stuartknechtle https://www.Facebook.com/givemeananswer Meet Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson! Join the Minnect League Championships for your chance to win a meet-and-greet with The Rock at The Vault 2024 | Sept 4th – Sept 7th | Palm Beach Convention Center: https://bit.ly/4aMAar8 Connect one-on-one with the right expert for you on Minnect: https://bit.ly/3MC9IXE Connect with Patrick Bet-David on Minnect: https://bit.ly/3OoiGIC Connect with Tom Ellsworth on Minnect: https://bit.ly/3UgJjmR Connect with Vincent Oshana on Minnect: https://bit.ly/47TFCXq Connect with Rob Garguilo on Minnect: https://bit.ly/426IG0R Purchase Patrick's new book "Choose Your Enemies Wisely": https://bit.ly/41bTtGD Register to win a Valuetainment Boss Set (valued at over $350): https://bit.ly/41PrSLW Get best-in-class business advice with Bet-David Consulting: https://bit.ly/40oUafz Visit VT.com for the latest news and insights from the world of politics, business and entertainment: https://bit.ly/472R3Mz Visit Valuetainment University for the best courses online for entrepreneurs: https://bit.ly/47gKVA0 Text “PODCAST” to 310-340-1132 to get the latest updates in real-time! Get PBD's Intro Song "Sweet Victory" by R-Mean: https://bit.ly/3T6HPdY SUBSCRIBE TO: @VALUETAINMENT @vtsoscast @ValuetainmentComedy @bizdocpodcast @theunusualsuspectspodcast Want to be clear on your next 5 business moves? https://bit.ly/3Qzrj3m Join the channel to get exclusive access to perks: https://bit.ly/3Q9rSQL Download the podcasts on all your favorite platforms https://bit.ly/3sFAW4N Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Your Next Five Moves” (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. ——

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	You know, when you criticize Christians, I hope you know who you're criticizing.
	That kind of message was being given.
	Oh my God, do you know what would happen?
	The ultimate solution to America's problems is not the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.
	Rather, it's the kingdom of God.
	Will there be a time where AI will be the new God?
	Some guys can write their sermons using AI.
	That's right.
	So hopefully at some point, we're going to realize because we have consciences and rational minds, this moral relativism that we bought is bankrupt.
	No one's even come up to me talking about this.
	Boy, oh boy, did he ever twist some of the teachings of Christ, not the least of which is polygamy?
	I mean, you can't read the Bible and walk away saying polygamy is good.
	Every and any major thing that's ever happened in my life goes back to the role that God played in my life.
	He looks a minister in the face and he says, no, we're not going to pray that God is on our side.
	We're going to pray that we are on God's side, for God's side is always right.
	You've seen today's guest clips go viral on TikTok, Instagram, all over the place.
	He's got a very engaging way of communicating with the audience.
	We talk about a lot of different things.
	Pastor Cliff Connectly, I asked him about the difference on how he views Christianity, Muslim.
	We talked about the Quran, Prophet Muhammad, some of the stuff that he said, you got to watch for yourself.
	We talked about even the influence of Israel, AIPAC, and U.S. politics.
	And then from there, we went into Andrew Tate leaving the Christian religion to being a Muslim.
	He had a unique angle he took with that.
	What is it to be a complete man today?
	What is it to be a complete leader today?
	What were some of the strengths on the way Jesus communicated that the average person can also apply into their day-to-day?
	Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this thing as much as I did as well.
	With that being said, here's Pastor Cliff Connectley.
	Why would you bet on Goliath when we got bet David?
	Value payment, giving values contagious.
	This world of entrepreneurs, we get no value to hated.
	I'm the one.
	All right, today we have a special guest.
	You've probably seen him on TikTok.
	He's one of the most viral preachers, pastors out there who you'll see him on campuses.
	They'll ask him different questions varying from, you know, the Quran against the Bible or if God is there, why does, you know, so many bad things happen to people?
	And he addresses these issues openly with many others.
	You've seen the clips.
	And, you know, I talked to the crew.
	I said, you know what?
	I'd like to have him here to have a discussion with them about what's happened with faith in America.
	And with that being said, today we got Cliff Connectly here with us.
	How you doing?
	Good, Patrick.
	Thank you for having me.
	Yes, I looked up your because a lot of time when somebody becomes a pastor, I'm like, okay, so your son is usually, you do something with him, right?
	I think it's Stuart.
	Stuart.
	And then your father, is it Emilio or Emilo?
	Emilio.
	Emilio, who was married to your mother 56 years, six kids, I believe, right, if I'm not mistaken.
	But a lot of the stuff that I tried to listen to, it was not in English.
	It was either in German or what language is he preaching in?
	He spoke five languages and preached in all of them.
	Which languages were they?
	They were English, German, Italian, French, and Switzerland.
	Got it.
	Okay.
	And then was he a seven-day or was he apologetic like you?
	Was he an Adventist?
	Was he a Seventh Adventist?
	Yes, he became a Seventh Adventist.
	He became a Seventh Adventist.
	Yes, he sure did.
	And then at one point, did you say, this is not me, I'm going to go a different direction?
	Or what happened with you?
	Or did he also evolve and then your faith evolved based on his?
	I never was a Seventh Adventist.
	He raised us in a basic Bible teaching church.
	And then he became a Seventh-day Adventist.
	And after studying it, I just couldn't go that path.
	So I stuck with basic Orthodox Christianity.
	Non-denominational position that you have.
	Got it.
	And you guys have very similar voices, by the way.
	Like what I'm listening to is he also has that strong voice.
	Okay, I got a bunch of things I want to go through with you.
	We'll get into the topics.
	But did you watch the presidential election last week?
	The debate?
	Yes.
	Yes, sir.
	I'm sorry, the debate.
	Yes, June 27.
	Do you think anytime in the future we're going to have the likelihood of a pastor running for president?
	Interesting question.
	I do not know.
	What do you think?
	Do you think America would be open to that idea?
	And if yes, what would need to happen for us to get to a point to say, you know what, babe, I just, I don't think it's a bad idea to have a pastor run for president.
	I think that means, because, you know, it's kind of like, well, you know what I like about Trump?
	I like the fact that he's a business guy.
	Well, you know what I like about him?
	I like the fact that because, you know, Barack Obama, I like him because you know what I like about Bush, you know what I like about this?
	We are able to convince ourselves.
	Do you think we'll get to a point where we'll say, you know what I like about him?
	Man of faith.
	He's preaching.
	Probably we need a little bit of God today in America.
	Yeah, I'll give him a shot one time.
	Will we get there?
	I don't know.
	Maybe.
	Everybody has a worldview, though.
	And so whenever anybody says to me, well, we're not allowed to have our religion influence our politics.
	I agree separation of church and state, which I'm very grateful for.
	But everybody has a worldview.
	And our worldview determines who we're going to vote for, what are our important issues, what are our priorities.
	So every atheist, every agnostic, every Christian, every Muslim, every Buddhist has a view of reality that deeply impacts the way they're going to vote, the way they're going to order their lives.
	What's more likely?
	Is it more likely for America to vote for a politician who was a congressman or women senator, maybe even a governor that eventually chooses to run for office as a president, but they're a Muslim?
	Or is it more likely to have somebody that runs for office that's a full-time preacher, pastor, of a church, Christian?
	Which of those two things is more likely?
	Well, because of where our country has been headed, I really can't answer that question.
	You know, there's been such a rise in secularism.
	There has been so much anti-Christian bias that it's hard to figure out what people are going to exactly do.
	But I'm praying that we're going to have a revival of faith in Christ in this country.
	I'm convinced that the ultimate solution to America's problems is not the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.
	Rather, it's the kingdom of God.
	I think America is great when America follows Jesus Christ, and America turns ugly fast when we depart from Jesus Christ.
	Why do you think we departed?
	Why and when?
	Why do you think we departed?
	I was preaching in a Korean church in Dallas, Texas a few years ago, and Korean believers are very intense usually.
	They have the largest missions movement outside the United States of any country.
	And after I preached there, I had lunch with a bunch of the leaders of that Korean church.
	And I said, you know, guys, I am so impressed with the vibrant Christian faith in Korea.
	They said, well, don't be too impressed because it's really cooling off.
	I said, why?
	And they said, for the same reason the church here in the United States is cooling off, materialism.
	If you have all the money you need, you don't need God.
	And that's why Jesus said, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
	Why?
	Because I think money feeds my ego, my pride.
	It feeds my self-sufficiency, my feeling of autonomy.
	And I don't need you.
	I don't need God.
	I don't need anybody.
	I'm a self-sufficient autonomous all-American.
	And that's a very dangerous path to walk down spiritually.
	I'm afraid that our culture has gone down that path, and therefore God is irrelevant.
	And science and money, that's the way we're going to go.
	Yeah, and I think Billy Graham was it, right?
	When he preached in Korea, one and a half million people showed up, if I'm not mistaken.
	That's right.
	Right?
	I mean, that's one of the most fascinating pictures to look at.
	Yep.
	If you can pull this up, Rob, which one?
	That's it.
	Look at that.
	That's insane.
	Yeah.
	That's it.
	Yeah.
	So, okay.
	So you're saying money as one.
	Do you think that's the only reason?
	Because, all right, maybe when would you say it was a time where our faith in Jesus was something where, you know, a president maybe even would get up and be thankful and maybe even pray.
	And it was an open discussion where we were comfortable with it and we were praying in school and it wasn't a big deal to pray in school, maybe even take Bibles to school.
	We would even read from it sometimes.
	When did that stop and why?
	Because I know you're saying materialism.
	I get that.
	But materialism is on the other end of those who defend the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the values and principles that this country was founded on, right?
	One has to agree to make it secular.
	Who was that?
	When did it happen?
	What was the reasoning why we shifted away from God?
	Well, after speaking on campuses for 42 years, what I have observed is a growth in moral relativism.
	And that growth in moral relativism has gotten to the point today where choice is often God.
	And don't you dare tell me what I'm going to choose.
	My choice is my business and choice is God.
	And that defines then, it misdefines freedom as being, I do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it.
	And don't you or God or anybody else tell me what to do?
	Because that's the antithesis of freedom.
	So there's a misdefinition of freedom and yet it's very attractive to me as a human being because I love to do what I wanted to do when I want to do it.
	And God, I don't want you telling me what to do.
	I want to determine that.
	So, okay, so we got materialism as one.
	You got choice is our God.
	I get to do whatever I get to do.
	You don't tell me anything.
	It's my choice.
	And, you know, how much of that is, you know, phases that a kid goes through where they become a teenager and they're kind of like, don't tell me what to do.
	You know, I know what I'm doing.
	You know what?
	I realize, dad, you don't know what you're talking about.
	All you care about is this and all these things that you have.
	And then eventually, you know, 10 years later, it's that three phases of father-son relationship goes through where you first idolize, then you demonize, then you humanize.
	And you're like, you know what?
	My dad is a human being like, me, shit, I like this guy.
	My God, I've been pretty bad to the guy the last 10 or 15 years, right?
	Do you think a population or a generation is going through that where they're convincing everybody else that they're right because there's so many of them and they have access to this tool called social media that everybody else is sitting with?
	If this person here, this 16-year-old kid got 17 million views, she must know more than I do about God and she must be right.
	Do you think it's the rebellious phase we're going through where it's just a phase?
	Or do you think this could be permanent and it's a direction we'll end up staying at?
	Well, I pray we're not going to stay there.
	But relativism has definitely grown.
	And the illustration I often use is, if the professor at the beginning of a semester says to the students, you're going to be taking tests and I'm going to be grading these tests.
	And then he pauses and says, but wait a second, do you think truth is relative?
	And everybody raises their hand and says, oh, yes, truth is relative.
	And he says, fine, when I grade your tests, I'm going to grade them according to height.
	And everyone goes, whoa.
	And he says, the tall people are going to get the Fs and the shortest people are going to get A's.
	And everyone erupts by saying, oh, that's not fair.
	That's not fair.
	He says, wait a second.
	You told me everything's relative.
	If everything's relative, there's no such thing as fairness as an objective value.
	It's all relative.
	Well, it's that type of thinking that people have adopted.
	You can't live it out.
	Because if everything is relative, then the pedophile and the victim of the pedophile are equal.
	And there's really no difference.
	Because it's all relative.
	We can't live that out.
	So hopefully at some point, we're going to realize because we have consciences and rational minds, this moral relativism that we've bought is bankrupt.
	And it's leading to total chaos.
	I'm not surprised by what's going on in Washington, D.C. I'm not surprised by the animosity in our culture today.
	It's a logical result of relativism.
	If you and I are just hunks of primordial slime evolved to a higher order, then I can denigrate you because you had the audacity to disagree with me.
	And my opinion is king.
	So it makes a lot of sense where we are now, unfortunately.
	I root so much of it in moral relativism.
	And I'm sorry, the Ten Commandments are not the 10 suggestions.
	They're God saying, I'm sorry, human beings have innate value.
	So you don't lie to people.
	You don't steal their property.
	You don't murder them.
	You don't covet what they have.
	Instead, you learn to thank God for what they have and you thank God for what you have.
	And I think you've got a great definition I saw on the wall there about gratitude and being grateful for what God has given you.
	Yeah, well, that's foundational to an accurate view of life and of people.
	Yeah, last week we're having dinner with the family.
	And I said, so guys, you know, we always, when we have dinner, it's always a debate.
	We're always debating something because that's just what I like.
	So we're always debating initially.
	I'm like, so let me ask you guys, what do you guys think is the ugliest quality a human being can have?
	And they start.
	I got a 12, a 10, an eight-year-old, and my three-year-old has to sit next to me because we're taking her to restaurants now.
	But if she sits around anybody else, she'll run around.
	But if she sits next to daddy, she's good.
	Her and I have a very good understanding together.
	So one says, entitled, you know, blame, complaining, ungrateful, and this, and you're just going one by one by one by, I'm like, my gosh, there's a lot of that going on right now in America today with how people are, you know, selling America.
	But, you know, you set faith, okay, money is one.
	Truth is relative.
	This is my truth.
	That's your truth.
	That's my truth.
	How could you tell me?
	But this is my truth, right?
	I know what my truth is, right?
	All these lines that we live with.
	And then, you know, you also said one other one, which was what?
	You said choice.
	Choice is my God, right?
	I can do whatever I want to do with my body, my life, my this, my that.
	Okay.
	Cool.
	Like a libertarian type of a position to take where as long as you do your thing, do your thing, don't bother me, we should be happy, right?
	So why is, if that's the case in Christianity, why is the religion of Islam growing the way it is?
	Why are they exponentially growing?
	Why is it that, God forbid you say anything about them, you have to be careful.
	I mean, we had Bishop Marmari here.
	He flew from Australia to be on a podcast of Syria, man.
	I had George Enko here.
	George Enko, you and him did a phenomenal podcast together.
	And we had a panel of four Assyrians, right?
	Vinny, Assyrian, myself, George, and Bishop Marmari.
	He gets up there and he says, let me tell you the difference between your prophet and my prophet, right?
	And he explains Muhammad against, you know, Jesus, goes back and preaches.
	A young boy shows up to the church, grabs a knife, stabs his eye, and he's blind.
	He's gone.
	He lost his eye, right?
	Why do you not hear stories when people make fun of Christianity and Jesus?
	You don't hear stories like that.
	Why do you have, why is the fact that when someone in Hollywood becomes a Christian, they're demonized, they lose jobs, and they're publicly praying.
	In the NFL, one athlete, the guy that's the Houston, what's the Houston something?
	What's the Houston Texans?
	The young guy who had a very, very good season.
	Stroud, I think something Stroud.
	He says, I want to thank Jesus Christ.
	ABC cuts that part, right?
	Then they show everything about the interview except the part that he thanked Jesus Christ.
	But if somebody thinks Muhammad or Muslim, they protect it, they celebrate it.
	Why the difference in the way they treat Christians versus Muslims?
	This past spring, I was at Ole Miss University, and a young woman stepped out of the crowd, and with tears coming down her cheeks, she said, my professor told me that God is Santa Claus, and the Bible is totally irrelevant.
	So there has been an incredible leaning towards secularism in the faculty on the major university campuses around this country.
	And it has had horrible consequences as Christians' faith has been minimized, ridiculed by some of the most intelligent people in this culture, our university professors.
	Now, there are many tremendous Christian faculty, and I get to meet them regularly.
	But there has been an all-out pedal-to-the-metal war against faith in Christ.
	It's been pictured as arcane.
	Ignoramus would follow it.
	Science is the way to go.
	And the whole issue of science and faith, that's a straw man.
	Science and faith don't contradict each other.
	Faith is answering the question, who created?
	And science is answering the question, what's the process that goes on in creation in nature?
	There's no contradiction.
	And yet even that has been used to minimize the Christian position.
	Good gracious.
	Charles Darwin, one of his best friends was a guy named Asa Gray, who taught, who was a botanist and who taught at Harvard University.
	And they corresponded.
	Asa Gray said 300 letters to Charles Darwin.
	And Asa Gray says, Charles, you don't have to reject your faith in Christ just because of evolution.
	There's an intelligent mind behind this amazing process of evolution.
	And Charles Darwin couldn't buy it.
	I personally feel that Charles Darwin rejected Christ because of his daughter who died and because of his uncle who was not a believer in Christ who died.
	So I don't think it was because of evolution really, if you go down to the fact.
	But once again, science is used in our culture to minimize faith in Christ.
	And so it's hard.
	Now, let's compare the growth of Islam with the growth of Christianity.
	Christianity is booming around the world, not necessarily in the West, but in Asia, Africa, and South America, faith in Christ is growing like leaps and bounds.
	That's why when all these new atheists say, oh, religion is on its way out, that's baloney.
	Not only is Islam growing, Christianity is growing.
	Christianity is still the largest religion in the world.
	And if the trends continue the way they are going today, there will be more followers of Christ in China than in any nation in the world.
	It's incredible the growth of the underground church in China.
	Yeah, but why is it that, you know, if you're scared of allowing you to talk about Christianity, but Islam is protected?
	Why is there a level of fear of criticizing Islam and Prophet Muhammad, but none about criticizing Jesus and Christianity?
	Well, at times I feel like it's an overreaction to colonialism.
	Obviously, colonialism has occurred, and Christian nations did colonize, and there was a lot of evil that went on.
	But that does not change the fact that there have been thousands of Christian missionaries who loved Christ and served people and gave out of their backside and their head to help people get well.
	I have a younger brother who's a transplant surgeon, and he spent a summer in Nepal helping people.
	He wasn't there to rip people off or to bring the American flag.
	He was there to introduce people to Christ and to love people as best he could.
	But there's been quite a reaction to colonization, and I think it's hopefully run its course.
	For instance, in this vein, Stephen Carter is an African-American professor at Yale Law School.
	And Stephen Carter does a great job asking, you know, when you criticize Christians, I hope you know who you're criticizing.
	The demographic with the largest numbers of followers of Christ in the world is women of color.
	And the demographic with the largest number of followers of Christ in it percentage-wise in the United States is African-American women.
	So be very careful when you start criticizing Christians.
	And yet so many professors and so much thinking in the press in our country has basically said, oh, Christianity is a white Western man's religion.
	A young lady said that to me at the University of South Carolina.
	I was just about to answer her.
	A tall black gentleman steps out of the crowd and says, excuse me, I'm a grad student here and I'm from Ethiopia.
	Our Ethiopian Christian church is far older than any Christian church here in the United States or in any part of Western Europe.
	And this idea that Christianity is a white Western religion is totally false.
	You could have heard a pin drop.
	But that is the antithesis of what a lot of anthropology and humanities professors are teaching that, oh no, Christianity is a white male religion, which is baloney.
	You know the demographic with the largest number of atheists?
	White men, white Western men.
	Wow.
	So atheists, large demo, is white male.
	Yep.
	Christians is African American women.
	Correct.
	In the United States.
	That is wild.
	That is wild to have that breakdown.
	So, okay.
	So, you know, you said everywhere it's growing.
	In the West, it's not, right?
	There's something that's going on in the West that's different than everybody else.
	If there's anywhere where you can show the proof that it's worked and it's produced the best society, that you can raise kids, you know, safe, grow, do your thing, build a good family, prosperity, you name it, it's America.
	Why, even though we have a case study to show how the right values and principles made America the greatest nation in the world, why not go back and, you know, focus on teaching those values and principles to kids?
	That's a great question.
	That's one of the reasons I'm so grateful to God for you, brother.
	You're a successful businessman.
	You understand the principles of doing business well and putting together companies well, and you are committed to Christ.
	Well, we need more of you who are in the marketplace living out what it means to be a follower of Christ in the practical nitty-gritty details of everyday life.
	And this whole idea that if you're really committed to Christ, you're going to be a minister or a priest or a monk or a nun is baloney.
	It's not biblical.
	In Colossians 3.23, Paul writes, whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as serving the Lord rather than people.
	And that's what you as a Christian businessman are trying to do.
	That's what I as a pastor and apologist on college campuses are trying to do.
	We're using whatever personality and gifts that God has given us to glorify him by pointing people to him and by living out a life of Christ honoring integrity, compassion, hard work, and using the brains that God has given us to do the best we can.
	But why is it here?
	Why is it when we're looking at here, America specifically, where we have the proof that it's worked, why is it becoming popular to demonize it and step away from it?
	Why are more institutions more comfortable celebrating and dedicating an entire month to LGBTQ, Pride Month, in the month of June, but we're not willing to dedicate an entire month to the role God and faith has played in America?
	Why are we giving that much attention?
	The other day we pulled up the number of days we have that we dedicate to LGBTQ.
	There's roughly 145 days a year that are dedicated to that.
	If you didn't know, we even have a Gay Uncle Day in America.
	I don't know if you knew that or it's very specific for you to know that because it's important facts, life-changing type of facts.
	You know, there's Gay Uncle Day.
	When is the Gay Uncle Day?
	There, August 14th.
	It's actually coming up, you know, in the next five weeks, Rob.
	If you to all the gay uncles out there, we're going to celebrate you on August 14th.
	Why do we have all of these days?
	Okay, why are we so comfortable with politicians being like, Yeah, you know what?
	Put another one here, Pansexual Pride Day.
	You know, you know, let's do World AIDS Day.
	You know, December 1st, let's do a November 20th Transgender Day of Remembrance.
	November 13th through the 19th, let's do a Trans Awareness Week.
	You know, November 8th, let's do the intersex, you know, a day of remembrance.
	You know, May 19, yeah, let's do a gender pride, you know, day.
	All of these days, right?
	And then faith, no, we can't mix them up because that's you're you're you're forcing it down people's throat.
	Don't do it.
	You don't want to put what makes you separation from church and state?
	Don't put God, don't bring faith.
	We got to kind of do your own thing.
	You're a little bit too much.
	You're too religious for me.
	Why has that been unattractive in America?
	I think there are a lot of different reasons.
	But why don't we have an adultery day?
	Why don't we have a fornication day?
	Why don't we have a pornography day?
	Why don't we have a bestiality day?
	Why don't we have whatever sexual temptation you want to put out there day?
	I mean, you're right.
	It's a sad state of affairs.
	Now, what I am very grateful for is we don't get into gay bashing.
	Why?
	Because the Bible teaches that the value of a human being has nothing to do with their sexual practice.
	It has to do with the fact that we all are created in the image of God.
	And I have to apologize to my gay friends for the gay bashing that has gone on in our culture.
	So we despise that and we stand for the dignity and value of all human beings.
	But good gracious, I hate the part of me that is sinful.
	I affirm my value as a human being, created in the image of God, but I hate the part of me that violates God's moral laws.
	And when I disagree with someone about human sexuality and how they practice it, it doesn't mean that I'm minimizing the person.
	No, I probably love the person more because I know that my feet are of clay, their feet are of clay, and self-righteousness stinks.
	When you read the Gospels, you'll notice how Jesus attacked self-righteousness because it's religious pride.
	It's religious arrogance.
	So we have to be very, very careful that we teach people that all human beings have equal value because we're all created in the image of God.
	The ground at the level of the cross of Jesus Christ is level.
	We all need his grace.
	We all need his forgiveness.
	And just because my sin doesn't happen to be the practice of homosexual sex, just because my sin has more to do with lust and that type of heterosexual sin, doesn't make me inferior or superior to anybody else.
	We all are in desperate need of Jesus Christ, his grace, his forgiveness, his love, and his power to change.
	So it's a complex situation.
	There's no question about it, no simple answers, but there's so many different ingredients that go into this.
	It's incredible.
	And I'm still convinced that Satan is having a heyday in our culture, just ripping people away from Christ and ripping them away from the scriptures and having them buy into moral relativism, secularism.
	I mean, if you just think about the results of living a life without God, it's meaningless.
	That's why Albert Camus, the great French atheistic existentialist philosopher, said the only question modern man must answer is why not commit suicide?
	I mean, if your birth is an accident and your death is an accident, then the only thing that lies between these two accidents is another accident, your life.
	So why continue to suck wind?
	Why not just end it all?
	And his point was, if you don't think about that, you're being intellectually dishonest.
	And the good news of Jesus Christ is, no, your birth is not an accident and your death is not an accident and there's eternal life out there.
	So you better handle life very wisely and very carefully.
	And you better use the talents that God has blessed you with to make this world more like heaven will be.
	And that's really understanding and coming to grips with the purpose of life.
	Yeah.
	So would you, I know you said gay bashing.
	So define gay bashing when you say, you know, I'm also not a fan of gay bashing.
	This is when we do what?
	When we minimize a human being because of their sexual practice.
	We make jokes about them.
	We start getting even some, in some cases, violent.
	And that violence has been deplorable at times.
	When we denigrate a human being created in the image of God just because they're gay or bisexual or whatever.
	No, all human beings have value.
	It comes from God.
	It doesn't come from me.
	It doesn't have anything to do with their sexual practice.
	But we all are perverts.
	I am a pervert.
	I have perverted the beautiful gift of life that God has given me.
	And that's what sin is.
	And therefore, we all need God's help to become the beautiful people that he created us to be initially.
	So do you think the only reason I'm asking that question is because I think there's an element as well of I used to pray for four things.
	I used to pray for courage, wisdom, tolerance, and understanding.
	I stopped praying for tolerance.
	And the reason why I stopped praying for tolerance is because I think way too many Christians became so tolerant with any kind of behavior that it's kind of like, yeah, it's okay.
	Listen, we can't, we can't upset them because we can't, because it's their truth.
	You're flirting with the, you know, it's my truth, his truth, all this stuff, truth, right?
	You're almost getting very close to it where you're giving them ammunition to come back and say, you see, that's why, because your history of this, and then they impose the guilt.
	And they're like, well, let me apologize on behalf of my ancestors and what they did and all these words they use.
	Oh my gosh, what else can I do to make you happy?
	Give me 145 days of holidays and days that we can remember for the pain that I have to deal with and the trauma that I have to deal with.
	Oh, crime me a flippin' river is what I so to me.
	I think the process of going through that leads to the opposition abusing that power.
	And, you know, do you know what he did?
	When siblings fight, you know, your kids when they fight, he did this.
	And it's like, oh my God, I'm so sorry.
	You know what?
	Let's give you ice cream.
	He also did this here.
	Let me take you out somewhere, baby.
	You just screwed up that kid because that kid now knows every time how to get stuff from you.
	Because to me, I think the LGBTQ has become its own religion today.
	And people are using it as a church in the name of whoever, you know, baptized in the name of all these other folks.
	So I think we're flirting with that.
	What goes in the mind of a society to think the direction we're going with LGBTQ is a good idea?
	Like, how do you even sell that?
	If you were to be a devil's adult.
	How do you sell it?
	I think you sell it by doing exactly what's been done on almost every major university campus and by the press in our country.
	You misdefine tolerance.
	You used the word tolerance, a very important word in art culture.
	All right, what is tolerance?
	Tolerance is not me looking into the face of an atheist and saying, you and I agree.
	I'm tolerating you.
	No, no, no, no.
	That's not tolerance.
	That's being brain dead.
	An atheist and I do not agree.
	Tolerance is me looking you in the face and saying, all right, you're an atheist.
	I'm a theist.
	We disagree.
	But guess what?
	I still love you and I still respect you.
	And we're going to disagree and we're going to communicate why we disagree.
	We're going to have an intelligent discussion, which is what the liberal arts education in the United States and Western Europe was based on.
	A free discussion where we disagree, but we do it respectfully.
	Now, if I'm going to follow a guy who, as he's bleeding and dying on a cross, prays for his enemies.
	Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
	That is the essence of tolerance.
	Jesus did not say, oh, give me more persecution.
	Stick another nail in my side.
	No, but he loved and forgave those who hurt him.
	That is tolerance.
	It's not saying, oh, we all agree.
	No, we don't agree.
	I do not agree with the atheist.
	I do not agree with the agnostic.
	I do not agree with the Muslim or the Buddhist or the Hindu.
	I'm a follower of Jesus Christ, and this is why.
	But I will tolerate you in terms of respecting you in spite of our disagreements.
	Yeah, I think when I'm so curious, like I want to know how we got here, and I want to know who thinks this is a good idea.
	Stats are against us.
	You know, our birth rate is as low as it's ever been, 1.6.
	People are not having kids.
	The more you increase the population of gays and lesbians, the less kids are going to be born.
	And, you know, the more, if you even look at the data of what year we stopped.
	Rob, can you pull up the data you were shown about faith in 1964 and how it matches the single mothers to where we are today?
	And 1964 is also where Lyndon Johnson came out with his new policies where, you know, almost, we're going to take care of single mothers over a lot of kids.
	And 4% of kids were being born in single mother households.
	Now it's 40%.
	Skyrocketed, right?
	And then if you look at, zoom in right there, Rob, Americans are less likely to say religion can answer today's problems.
	If you go to 1964, look where it's at right there.
	Look how high it was.
	And then you can go lower and lower and lower and lower and lower, right?
	It's a way of getting me to have less faith.
	Religion considered important, 72%.
	It's getting me to have less faith and that there's a higher power that's going to protect me and take care of me.
	But there has to be a motive to this.
	There has to be a reasoning to do this.
	What would the motive be to do that?
	You know, as Christians, is it the devil's work?
	Is the devil using men to do this?
	What is the long-term motive?
	Is the enemy trying to find a deceptive way to divide America, to destroy it?
	And the enemy is on the outside?
	Is it on the inside?
	But none of these things make any logical sense that it's a good thing for society.
	So why do you think this is happening?
	Do you think it's an institution?
	You think it's an individual?
	You think the adversary, who do you think is behind it?
	I think you're being very biblical.
	It's all of the above.
	The Bible talks about the world, a world system that's anti-God.
	It talks about the sinful nature that we all are born with.
	Oh, no, no, Cliff, we're not born with sinful nature.
	We're all born good.
	Really?
	Then you haven't worked in a daycare center.
	You know, children can be precious.
	And when I was a little kid, playing in a sandbox, my buddy infuriated me, so I picked up a metal truck and dropped it on his head.
	I'd never seen that behavior modeled.
	But I'm a sinner.
	I was a sinner from birth.
	So you've got the world system.
	You've got my sinful nature, what Dallas Willard, the USC philosophy professor, described as the readiness to sin factor that every individual has.
	And thirdly, you've got the devil.
	M. Scott Peck, the great Connecticut psychiatrist, wrote a book called People of a Lie.
	And in his book, he argues, you know something?
	In American psychiatry, we should include a branch called evil.
	Demonic.
	Because when you look at something like a Meli massacre, you're not just dealing with human beings getting confused.
	You're dealing with an incredible power of evil.
	And that's exactly what Jesus talked about, about Satan, a personal power of evil.
	So we're dealing with all of that, unfortunately, in our culture and our country today.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I'm wondering if it's deeper than that.
	I'm wondering if this warfare that's going on, there's a bigger reasoning behind it that we still haven't even figured out that's happening.
	I don't have the answer.
	That's what I'm wondering.
	You're always out there talking to people.
	So maybe you've had so many different questions that people have asked you that's forced you to do the research to get back and better improving the arguments, et cetera, et cetera.
	Okay, let's go back to basic fundamentals.
	See, I'm undecided, okay?
	And I'm in a market.
	I'm watching Andrew Tate.
	Goes from being a Christian to being a Muslim.
	Okay.
	And believe it or not, he's got a lot of influence with young men.
	So, hey man, I love what this guy has to say.
	I agree with him.
	Why would a guy as great of a communicator as him and as many followers as he has, why would he become Muslim?
	I'm curious.
	I'm willing to bet he influenced a lot of other young men to also become Muslims.
	Cool.
	Let's put that there.
	Christianity, okay?
	Catholic.
	We can put these together, right?
	Judaism, you're seeing what's going on here.
	How do you differ?
	If you were to, in a very basic way, as a professor, as a pastor, what is the difference between being a Christian, between being a Jew, between being a Muslim?
	All right.
	So Jews believe that Jesus was not the Messiah and was not a good prophet.
	And he obviously wasn't God.
	Muslims believe that Jesus was a very good prophet.
	And a typical devout Muslim has far more respect for Jesus than the typical American.
	Because a devout Muslim believes that Jesus was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life.
	And because he was such a good prophet, God would never allow him to die on a cross.
	So he took him to heaven.
	So the cross and the resurrection are wiped out.
	But a devout Muslim believes that Jesus is going to return a second time.
	So they believe in Jesus as a good prophet.
	Repeatedly in the Quran, Muhammad says Jesus is not God.
	But in the New Testament, the eyewitnesses who saw and heard Christ insisted Jesus claimed to be God by both his words and his actions.
	Mark chapter 2, he forgives the sins of a man who's lowered on a mat from the ceiling, never having even seen the guy before.
	And all the religious people say that's blasphemy.
	Only God can forgive sin.
	Yeah, by claiming to forgive the sin of that guy, Jesus is claiming to be God.
	And in John 8, 58, Jesus says, before Abraham was born, I am.
	And the Jews did not call God G-O-D.
	They called him I am, Yahweh.
	And Jesus very intentionally took the name of the eternal pre-existent God, applied it to himself, and they picked up stones to stone him for blasphemy.
	So, you see, the basic issue is who is Jesus?
	And Judaism, Islam, and Christianity disagree.
	Now, here's my problem with Islam.
	I have a lot of respect for the fact that one of the five pillars of Islam is give alms to the poor.
	I respect that.
	Obviously, Jesus taught that.
	I appreciate that Muhammad had a very high view of Jesus as a good, good prophet.
	But here's some of the problems with it.
	The miracle of Islam is not a person, it's a book, the Quran.
	In order to know that revelation, the clear revelation of God, the Quran, best you have to learn Arabic.
	In other words, God is revealing himself in Arabic most clearly.
	The miracle of Christianity is not a book.
	It's not the Bible.
	It's Jesus Christ, the person who is God in human form.
	So, am I going to be attracted to a religion that says Arabic?
	That's what you got to go.
	Or no, Jesus loves the world and gives his life for everybody.
	Second difference is, Muhammad came with a sword.
	And let's be honest, it was not pretty for North Africa and for Europe, what the Muslims did.
	And one of the largest churches in the second and third century was in Egypt, and that church got slaughtered.
	So Muhammad came with a sword.
	Jesus came with a towel, and he served people.
	And I am convinced that the reason that more people are followers of Christ than any other religion is because of his love, his serving, as well as his truth that he outlined very, very clearly.
	So those are two of the reasons that I think it's very difficult to be intellectually honest and to go down the path of Islam.
	Because there are some real contradictions.
	The third one is this.
	Muhammad was born in 570 AD, lived till about 632 AD.
	So obviously he never met Jesus.
	He insisted that Jesus never claimed to be God.
	Sorry, the eyewitnesses who saw Jesus, who heard Jesus, clearly wrote, he claimed to be God.
	Now, who am I going to trust?
	Am I going to trust a guy who was born 570 years after the fact, who obviously never met Jesus?
	Or am I going to trust the eyewitnesses?
	Well, that's a no-brainer.
	Every single time I want to find out about any historical figure, I want to press the information back as far as I can, hopefully to the eyewitnesses.
	So Jesus clearly claimed to be God, which is a fundamental philosophical and religious mistake that Muhammad and the Quran are making when they deny the deity of Christ.
	Okay, so the, okay, within Christianity, let's kind of break that down.
	Biggest difference between Christian, non-denominational Christians versus Catholicism versus LDS Mormonism.
	All right.
	Catholicism and non-denominational Christian churches hopefully stick to the Orthodox Christian faith.
	One God, three persons, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, deity and humanity of Christ, sinless life, atoning death on the cross, resurrection, ascension to heaven, he's coming back a second time.
	Now, I've got a lot of wonderful Mormon friends, but I'm sorry, Joseph Smith made some big errors.
	And one of the biggest errors he made is, once again, the identity of Christ.
	Mormonism, in its fundamental teachings, teaches that Jesus and Lucifer are brothers.
	What?
	No.
	Jesus is the eternal God.
	Lucifer is a created angel who fell, who rebelled against God.
	They are not brothers.
	And there are other reasons that I think it's very hard to follow Mormonism for intellectual reasons.
	You've got to be intellectually honest.
	And Joseph Smith, nice guy in many ways, but boy, oh boy, did he ever twist some of the teachings of Christ, not the least of which is polygamy.
	I mean, you can't read the Bible and walk away saying polygamy is good.
	When Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines, the Bible's not saying, oh, that was good.
	When David had a few wives and some concubines, the Bible's not saying that was good.
	That polygamy that's recorded in the Old Testament is not saying, oh, polygamy is good.
	No, right at the beginning in Genesis 2.24, we read, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother, be united to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
	Not the ten become one flesh.
	The two become one flesh.
	So God's purpose in creating us male and female is, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother, be united to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
	That's not polygamy.
	That's monogamy.
	In these uncertain times, if there's anything we need is we need people to believe the future looks bright.
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	Place your order and represent the VT and the PBD podcast gear.
	Got it.
	Okay, so within Islam, go to Islam.
	When a Muslim sells the benefit of becoming a Muslim, what are the benefits?
	If you become one, here's what's going to happen.
	Christianity, you know, you accept, you're going to heaven, salvation, great.
	What is it with becoming a Muslim?
	I think the best reason for a secular American to become a Muslim is because it provides structure.
	We started off this wonderful time together, Patrick, talking about relativism.
	Well, if you think about relativism enough, you begin to realize that you can never look into your spouse's face and say, you should not have said that.
	There's no should.
	There's no ought.
	And you can't look into your child's face and say to them, that was wrong what you did.
	No, if you're a moral relativist, it's all just a matter of choice.
	It's all relative.
	Well, you see, you try and live that out enough.
	You live in a family, in a neighborhood, in a school.
	You play on a ball team.
	You live in a culture.
	You watch a government go in that direction.
	And it is stinking meaningless.
	Life is a stinking crapshoot.
	And then Islam comes in saying, here's structure.
	Here's structure for every area of your life.
	And I think those Americans who have become Muslims have done it largely often for that reason.
	I yearn for structure.
	I yearn for order because this is chaos, moral relativism.
	It's totally chaotic.
	Well, I would say, you know, Muslim Catholics and Jews probably have more structure than Christianity does.
	There's a system on what you do.
	There's rituals.
	There's certain more sacrifice to be one.
	If you want to be a Jew, there's a lot of sacrifice you're making.
	If you want to be a Muslim, there's a lot of sacrifice you're making and certain habits you got to follow.
	And I would even put Mormonism in there because there's services longer.
	There's certain things you do on Monday, certain things you wear, you know, certain structures you have to have financially.
	It's not just 10%.
	It's more.
	There's certain ways you go about it, kids, go in two years, learn a language, go to a different place, go to your, what do they call it when you're going on your two-year missions trip that you go on, right?
	Okay, so that's fine.
	That's the structure part.
	Yep.
	But that can't be it.
	What else are they selling for one to say, yeah, I think that makes sense.
	I'm open to the idea.
	Well, I think obviously the Mormons bang away on family, which is great, obviously, tremendous.
	And Muslims, I think, do a very good job talking about devotion.
	You pray five times a day, face in Mecca, buddy.
	So get down on your knees and pray to God.
	So, you know, there are some points there that are legitimate, I feel.
	Very legitimate.
	But remember, Patrick, read the gospels.
	And it was some of the most structured people that gave Jesus the most difficulty.
	They were called Pharisees.
	And they had everything structured.
	And they had all the rules down and they crossed all their T's and dotted all their I's.
	And they were dead in their structure.
	Jesus comes to cause a revolution of the heart where we are overwhelmed by God's amazing grace and that changes us at the root of our being.
	So yes, structure is good, but watch out for structure because structure can, especially in religion, be deadly.
	Legalism, Pharisaism.
	It can be lethal.
	Got it.
	I saw one of these exchanges you had with one of the students, Rob, if you can play this clip.
	I think I saw this on TikTok where, you know, he's going back and forth with you about Prophet Muhammad, about Muslim, and then you're going back at him and you're walking away.
	I just want to get your reaction on this.
	And if you can unpack this for me, that'd be great.
	Go ahead, Rob.
	To tell you the truth about God, because the Quran is factual in many places.
	It's an ambiguous assistant.
	And I believe that, because I see the authenticity of the Quran.
	You can't show me two different versions and say these are both from God.
	I only see one version.
	When I see 10 different versions, I question it.
	How do we have 10 versions?
	Did God write this or did the believers of God write?
	They changed it?
	But when I only see one version, I can show you the change of authenticity that I believe in.
	Come on, you're smart enough to have heard about Za'id bin Thabit.
	You know very, very well why there's one version of the Quran, I hope.
	Okay?
	You know what Uthman did, Caliph Uthman did.
	What did he do?
	He destroyed all the forms of the Quran that disagreed with the one that he chose through Zaid bin Thabit.
	Are you going to put that?
	What's historical fact to study history?
	You know very well, the third caliph, Caliph Uthman, had all the different Qurans that weren't identical gathered together, and he said, Zaid bin Thabit, you are the one to decide what is the real thing because you're the best source of information.
	Why?
	You bet.
	Once again, you saw what he did.
	He went right to his great miracle, the book, the Quran.
	And he said, look, the Quran is so much more reliable than the Bible because the Bible has errors in it and the Quran doesn't.
	It's a perfect book.
	Okay, so that's his argument.
	That's one of his fundamental beliefs.
	All right.
	But the interesting thing is, when you study how the Quran was put together, Za'id bin Thabit did a great job.
	And yet there were different versions that came out of it.
	And the third caliph, Caliph Uthman, said, Zaid bin Thabat, I'm hiring you.
	We're going to destroy all these variants of the Quran, and you're going to put together the one true Quran.
	And that's what Zaid bin Thabit did.
	So that's why we had just one particular thing.
	Now, I had to debate a gentleman named Bart Ehrman, who was head of the religion department at UNC Chapel Hill.
	And he wrote a book that became a New York Times bestseller.
	And in this book, he points out there are 200 to 400,000 manuscript variants in the New Testament.
	So therefore, you can't trust that book.
	Well, you've got to read the footnotes.
	Those 200 to 400,000 manuscript variants are occurring in 25,000 manuscripts.
	So that means we're talking 8 to 16 variants per manuscript or fragment of manuscript.
	The Bible is the word of God.
	That does not mean that God guaranteed that there would be no variants as the Bible was passed down.
	And when you read those variants in the Greek manuscripts and in the Latin Vulgate, in the Syriac and Armenian and Gothic manuscripts and the Latin Vulgate, they don't change anything.
	They are so small, so inconsequential, it's incredible.
	Is the word singular or is it plural?
	Is it a definite or indefinite article?
	In Matthew chapter 1, an overly enthusiastic scribe sees that Matthew wrote, Jesus was the son of Mary who was a virgin.
	And this scribe got really enthusiastic about the virgin birth.
	So he repeats it a second time.
	That doesn't change anything.
	And then in the footnotes of John chapter 8 and Mark chapter 16, it's very clear.
	This is not found in the earliest Greek manuscripts.
	So John chapter 8, verses 1 through 11 and the end of Mark chapter 16 are not in the earliest Greek manuscripts.
	Well, I'm excited about that.
	It shows that we have such a plethora of manuscript evidence that we really have what was written in the first century.
	It's embarrassingly wealthy.
	Yeah, so the argument is what?
	Is he making the argument that there's King James Version, NIV, New International Version?
	There's this.
	Is that what the argument that the fellow was making?
	Which is so scary because, of course, a translation of the Greek New Testament done in the 1600s by King James Greek scholars is going to say, How art thou?
	When was the last time, Patrick, someone came up to you and said, How art thou?
	So the NIV takes the New York Times-style English, takes the same Greek manuscripts, and translates it into the English we speak today.
	That's the only difference.
	Got it.
	So the individual that did this, is this the person who we're talking about, Zaid?
	Yes.
	Yes, correct.
	So who was he?
	He was a guy who Muhammad trusted to put together the Quran.
	Chief recorder, serving as a chief recorder of the Quranic text.
	Yep.
	He hailed from Ansar, the Ansar, later joined the ranks of the Muslim army at the age of 19.
	After Muhammad's passing in 632, he was ordered to collect the Quran into a single volume from various written and oral sources.
	He was noted expert on the Quran and spent much time reciting it.
	Keep going a little lower, Rob.
	Completion of the Quran.
	Keep going lower, keep going lower, keep going lower.
	I wonder if Wikipedia will give what you're saying.
	Go lower, Rob.
	Death.
	Sources differ about his death.
	However, the fact that he died in Medina 665 is taken as authentic.
	Said stated, I attended the funeral of Zaid bin Tabid after he had been buried.
	Ibn Abbas said, oh, you people, whoever wishes to know how knowledge leaves us should know that like it is, it is like this knowledge leaves.
	I swear by Allah that a great deal of knowledge has just left us today.
	So this has been documented.
	What you're saying, this has been documented by who?
	That that event actually took place?
	I don't have the footnote on that one.
	That's a good question, Patrick.
	I can get that for you, though.
	Yeah, no, because you said it, and I'm wondering what he was responding to it, where he's like, you know, because you said, you know what, you know who this is.
	You know what story I'm telling you, right?
	So that's been documented by other people.
	Oh, yeah.
	And other students like him, after I say that, they get together and they say, yeah, it did happen that way.
	And so we don't have an argument.
	But I should get the footnote.
	That's a very good point, Patrick.
	Yeah, I'm just, you know, when it comes back to the real.
	And by the way, there was a number about it.
	How many Americans have become Muslims?
	Rob, can you go pull up the number?
	It's actually not a big number.
	I think it's like 25,000, 20 or 25,000.
	Of which 75% are women, by the way.
	25% are men.
	I don't know if you know that number or not.
	If I'm not mistaken, can you pull it up?
	What percentage of Americans have converted to Muslim?
	Yeah.
	Rob, if you can pull that up.
	So let me let me see here what how many there it is.
	Yeah, with some saying that as many as 20,000 have been, of which, if you look it up on the pew research on the left one, right there, Rob, yeah, click on that.
	I think 75% of them are women.
	you can click on that what uh how many americans do you see it where it says what percentage is uh women versus men Yeah, I think it's 75.
	It's 20,000 converted to Muslim, and of which 75% are women.
	If you find that, Rob, if we can show it.
	So that number is not a big number, right?
	When you see 20,000 in a nation of 340 million, is it almost as if in order for those values to be accepted, you have to be born into it less than you can get another person to see it and say, yeah, you know what, I'll convert into Muslim.
	Why do you think that is?
	Because, you know, Christianity, it's going to be a different number to be converted.
	They can go to other countries and convert, but still they got 1.9 billion and Christianity is 2.3 billion, give or take.
	Why do you think it's only 20,000 Americans that have converted into a religion of Islam to become Muslims?
	I don't know.
	But I can promise you, Patrick, I have no understanding why a secular woman would ever convert to Islam in light of the Muslim view of women.
	That's beyond me.
	And I think I read an article about the fact that they liked that Muslim men were more family oriented than Christian men.
	They were more about the traditional way of having a family than today's Christian men were.
	That is the argument that was made.
	Where they want to have a family, they want to have kids.
	They give me protection.
	I feel a sense of community.
	Yep.
	And I want to be part of that community.
	That makes sense.
	That was the argument.
	Is this the one according to American Convert to Islam for the right reason?
	Okay, there you go.
	A sense of identity and alignment with cultural views on gender roles and ethnic diversity, and appeal to Muslim moral values and dissatisfaction with their former faith, marrying a Muslim or other family factors.
	Attraction to Islam is women's rights, conference and satisfaction with the comprehensive Islam.
	Yeah, well, you know, that makes sense to me.
	That makes sense to me here.
	This is why I opened it up with asking a question to see if America, if we're going to see a president.
	I went to one of my pastors.
	I think you and I were talking about this offline.
	And I went to him, the one I was telling you about.
	And I flew into LA and I went to his church and we sat in a corner and I said, do you know why I'm here?
	He says, yeah, he's just here to visit me.
	I said, no, I'm here.
	I think you need to run for office.
	He says, what?
	I said, yeah, I think you need to run for office.
	He says, what do you mean run for office?
	I said, why don't you run for office?
	He said, I don't understand this.
	I said, why don't pastors in the Christian community encourage two, three, four, 500 pastors to run for office?
	Why don't you encourage it?
	So no one's even come up to me talking about this.
	Well, I am.
	I'm having a conversation with you.
	Why don't you think about it?
	Why would God want me to be in church?
	And this is what I said.
	Well, what if you take those values and principles in there?
	And as a governor, as a senator, as a mayor, as a congress, as a president, you can share some of those values.
	Like, can you imagine if, you know, the president is on TV and he says, well, America is going through challenging times right now.
	Whether you're on the left, the right, or in the middle, whether you agree with me or don't agree with me, I would ask you to pray with me.
	You don't have to repeat it if you're not comfortable, but I'm going to pray.
	And if you can bear with me while I'm going through this prayer, I would kindly appreciate it.
	But if not, I also respect your values and principles.
	Having said that, Heavenly Father, and then what if that actually happened?
	And then what if when we're going through these difficult times, somebody said, when I'm going through it, I lean on faith and I lean on God and I lean on his judgment.
	What if we went back to selling the dream about at one point, you know, we got what we wanted with these founding fathers and all we're doing is sometimes sitting there and bashing what they did and we forget what things we've done.
	Some of us act like we walk on water this next generation.
	I know I don't walk on water.
	I know you don't walk on water.
	Why are we treating everybody like they walked on water?
	Why don't we give them the same grace that you want to have from us?
	Why don't we do that?
	What happened to us, right?
	What if that kind of a message was being given?
	Oh my God, do you know what would happen?
	100 million people would be sitting there.
	They would get off TV and say, what just happened right now?
	What just happened right now?
	You know, the fear of God comes back in, encouraging people that night to say, if you can do this, please, tonight, take five minutes, take 10 minutes.
	Even if you haven't prayed, pray.
	Why don't you do that?
	I remember when I was an atheist, 25 years of my life, and I'm in the army.
	I had one of the higher PT scores, so they allowed me to get away for the weekend with this man.
	And the only agreement that they had is I had to do Bible study with him for one hour per night.
	was like 30 of us or whatever and this is 97 which at that time it was okay to do so we go to this man's house he's probably in his early 70s and we would do the whole thing and he was on a lake so we would jump in the water and we would play pool and i would always be in the corner billiards all the way in the back i don't want to hear any of it like stop you know i don't trust pastors i don't trust churches i don't trust any of this stuff and he's doing what he's doing and at the end of the three days he gives me his Bible and he says,
	hey, my parents gave this to me December 24th, 1974 as a gift.
	He says, I think you need this more than I do.
	I said, trust me, you're wasting your time giving it to me.
	So I'm telling you, I think don't keep it to yourself.
	It's a gift from your parents.
	He says, no, just take it.
	Do whatever you want to do with it, but I'm going to give it to you.
	Give it to me, right?
	And then a few years later, going through the process, and then I'm 24 years old, 25 years old, doing Bible study from 6 p.m. to 2 o'clock in the morning in Pasadena, California.
	Wow.
	And then eventually I'm in Pasadena, Old Pass, on Colorado, standing outside of nightclubs holding a sign John 3.16 at 25 years old.
	And in 2003, Rob, can you type in 2003 Rose Bowl Billy Graham?
	Billy Graham came and preached at the Rose Bowl for four days.
	It was Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
	I went every single day except for Saturday.
	And I went and that's it.
	I was there every single day.
	I was there.
	And they eventually called it the Billy Graham Day.
	In Pasadena, they created a Billy Graham Day.
	And you're standing there and you're watching him do his thing.
	And Rick Warren brought him up and guys were performing and singing.
	And it was a beautiful thing.
	But then slowly but surely, this idea of fear of the Lord and wanting to have the favor came in.
	And every and any major thing that's ever happened in my life goes back to the role that God played in my life.
	I mean, if it wasn't for that, I don't, I don't, my confidence comes from there.
	My confidence doesn't come from anything.
	I don't have a Harvard degree to have my confidence on.
	Let me tell you, I have a degree.
	You know, I don't have a family that, you know, we come from a very well.
	No, my confidence came from that part.
	And I think I'd love to see more where we stop acting like gods and we give credit to a higher power where we're being held accountable.
	And we encourage kids, parents, mothers, fathers to see their jobs as a, you know, responsibility to do something with it.
	We don't have that right now.
	And yeah, I mean, even look at the debate last week, June 27th.
	How many conversations came about God?
	What did you see about God?
	It's not even a topic anymore.
	We don't even think about it anymore.
	Just kind of like, hey, you know, do what you want to do and go about it the way you want.
	But yeah, that's why I'm curious if there's going to be a movement of pastors running and what that would look like.
	What that would look like.
	Why not?
	You're a great storyteller, pastors.
	Good ones are great storytellers.
	They know how to tap into history.
	You have an element of historian.
	You can tap into previous times where we screwed up as a nation to, you know, a lesson.
	Help us become better fathers, better husbands, better family men, better sons, okay?
	Better citizens to society.
	There's a lot of different qualities that that would bring.
	But you, you know, maybe just for a case study side, I'm curious to see what it would look like.
	Fascinating.
	What it would look like if we got there.
	Yeah.
	Your favorite people to debate.
	When you're going out there, you're talking to kids.
	What's your favorite conversation when you're having with them?
	What is your favorite where you actually enjoy?
	You said, okay, we disagree.
	We're not on the same page.
	Yeah.
	But I enjoy kids on campuses who do XYZ.
	You bet.
	What I really enjoy is talking to someone who has totally dismissed God, was an atheist like you were at one point, totally dismissed Christ.
	And I love to begin to pile up the evidence that God exists, a lot of evidence that God exists, a lot of evidence that Jesus really rose from the dead.
	A lot of evidence that the New Testament gospels are historically reliable.
	And when I begin to see the eyes change and the facial expressions change, and when I begin to watch them realize, oh gosh, I can't dismiss God as a fairy tale.
	I cannot dismiss Jesus as a fairy tale.
	Instead, I'm going to have to take him seriously.
	Oh, Patrick, that just lights my fire.
	Yeah, I bet.
	You know, when you're out there having these, is there a common thread you notice that comes up where you can sit there and say, yeah, I can tell, you know, from this university, Ole Miss, you guys were all bringing this up.
	From this university, they said this.
	From that university, they said this.
	Where you notice a common thread amongst what professors are telling kids where they said, my professor said this, my teacher said this.
	Do you notice a trend and a pattern?
	Yeah, there are different academic levels on different campuses.
	The Ivy League schools at Stanford have a reputation that they've earned.
	There are other schools where it's very difficult to have an intelligent conversation where you go point counterpoint and what's the evidence for what you believe.
	So there are some differences academically, intellectually, but coming to faith in Christ is not primarily an intellectual thing.
	It's primarily an issue of the heart.
	I'm a follower of Christ because of God's love that was shown to me through my dad and my mom.
	And there is nothing that's going to dissuade me about Christ because I have experienced his love in my life.
	But then as you grow, you have to think it through in terms of is this the truth or was I just cleverly hoodwinked by my parents in believing this?
	So you've got to be a skeptic.
	And there's a place for that.
	And I was just reading the Gospels with the question, how many times did Jesus ask questions?
	Do you know he asked over 290 questions?
	And he asked the question, what do you think?
	What do you think?
	A man had 100 sheep.
	One wandered away.
	He leaves the 99 on the hills and he goes looking for that one lost sheep.
	What do you think?
	And he's challenging us to think clearly through the issues.
	So that's why it's such a privilege to talk with people and ask, what do you think?
	I was speaking after doing open air at Columbia University.
	I had the privilege of joining a class that was studying the difference between Calvin and Zwingli's view of war.
	And the teacher, the professor, was a postdoc grad from England.
	And it was a brilliant class.
	After the class, I'm walking out with a professor.
	I said, professor, that was an amazing discussion.
	Thank you for treating me to that.
	Now, let me ask you, sir, what do you believe?
	Do you believe in God?
	Do you believe in Christ or what's the option?
	And this brilliant guy looks me in the face and says, I am not a good person for you to ask that question of.
	That's scary.
	That's an unexamined life.
	You don't know what you're living for?
	You haven't analyzed what motivates you through life?
	Did he tell you why he's not the right person to ask that question?
	He just said, I can't answer you.
	It's sort of, it's this big myth of agnosticism, that you can live your life not knowing, and that's intellectually acceptable and intellectually respected.
	Patrick, it's impossible to live an agnostic life out.
	You have to decide, is this person valuable or not?
	If so, why or why not?
	You have to answer the question, what's the purpose of my life?
	What's my ambitions and goals?
	You have no choice.
	You have no choice but to make ethical decisions every day.
	Do you cheat the IRS or do you pay your taxes?
	You have no choice but to, you have to answer the question every day, am I going to lie or tell the truth?
	Am I going to cheat and steal or am I going to respect another person's property?
	And then, by golly, you're going to have to sit in funerals of grandma and grandpa and mom and dad.
	And I'm sorry, if you don't ask the question, is there a life after death or not?
	You're brain dead.
	Am I going to see this person again or not?
	So you have to answer those questions.
	All of them.
	Everybody does.
	And that's why this idea of, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, you can't live that out.
	You have to say, no, I'm never going to see this person again.
	Yes, I am going to see this person again.
	Why?
	Why?
	Yes, there is a purpose to my life.
	This is it.
	Why do you believe that?
	Yes, I think there are some moral absolutes.
	Maybe not many, but at least a few.
	Why?
	Who defines those moral absolutes?
	Who defines the purpose of your life?
	Who sets the ambitions that you are following?
	I mean, if you're a halfway thinking person, you've got to examine what's going on inside.
	What are you doing with your life?
	You can't live agnostic.
	If you ask me, hey, Cliff, you like Coke or Pepsi?
	I can say, I don't know, I'm agnostic.
	You're right.
	I don't know whether I like Coke or Pepsi.
	And guess what?
	It really doesn't matter.
	But when it comes to God and the question of human value, human purpose, ethics, and is there a life after death?
	You have no option but to face those questions.
	Could it be because folks who say that they're so logical and everything has to be proven now, where the idea is no matter what I do, I will never get a 100% answer to those questions.
	So why put my energy into something that is either faith or it's never going to be 100%?
	Why would I do this?
	Now what do you do on that?
	You're absolutely right.
	And here's what's wrong with that.
	You and I have beautiful wives, don't we?
	Do you know your wife 100%?
	No.
	No.
	And I don't know my wife 100%.
	Does that mean you and I can't have a relationship with our wives because we don't understand them 100%?
	No.
	We have a wonderful relationship with our wives.
	In other words, you've got to live with mystery and I've got to live with mystery.
	And if I can't learn to live with mystery, I'm going to have a horrible relationship with my wife and you will have a horrible relationship with your wife.
	To demand that our wives tell me everything there is to know about them, they could never do that.
	And I couldn't grasp it.
	Well, if that's true about our relationship with our wives and our children, how much more true that is about a relationship with God?
	Where on earth do I get off of this intellectual arrogance that says, unless God answers every question I've got, unless I can understand everything about God, I can't believe.
	If you do, if you get a PhD in biology, do you know everything there is to know about biology?
	No.
	If you do post-doc work in biology, do you know everything there is to know about biology?
	No.
	Does anybody know everything there is to know about any area of life, be it biology, chemistry, history, psychology?
	No.
	We have partial knowledge.
	And you better learn to live with mystery.
	Well, if that's true about every branch of knowledge, it's going to be true about God.
	You better get used to living with mystery.
	Yep.
	Because that applies to kids.
	Yep.
	That applies to spouse, friends, people you hire.
	You don't have a choice.
	You hope to be somewhat intuitive, be able to read at least a little bit to say this guy's full of it or not.
	Yep.
	To live with that.
	Okay.
	So, you know, there's a Bill Maher.
	You know who Bill Maher is.
	Okay.
	He's 69, I want to say, single, no kids, hates kids, doesn't want to get kids.
	Yeah, 68.
	Asked me questions and says, so, you know, what's your story?
	Why do you like kids?
	And I said, what's the purpose of life?
	He says, oh, give me a break.
	Oh, give me a break.
	I mean, this thing with kids, there's plenty of purpose to life outside of having kids and all this stuff, right?
	This is one I was on.
	All right.
	So I sit there.
	What is the purpose of being 68 years old, super wealthy, famous, no wife, no kids?
	Okay.
	Yeah, maybe, oh, because he's a liberal.
	Then let's go to the other guy.
	Who's the other good-looking guy that we had?
	I want to ask the question, Rob.
	You know, why are you not married?
	The guy that he would do the makeover of the house is, and what's his name?
	Mike Rowe.
	Mike Rowe.
	Mike Rowe is here.
	Can you pull up Mike Rowe's age?
	Good-looking guy, right?
	I mean, this guy is American as apple pie, right?
	Tall, handsome, strong, firm, conviction, great communicator, incredible voice, good looking, not married, no kids.
	Yeah, that's a decision I made, right?
	And we even had one other one where I asked the same question as well.
	Larry Elder.
	I don't know if you know Larry Elder, right?
	You know, Larry Elder, do you know who he is?
	Commentator?
	Commentator, Larry Elder.
	Same thing.
	No kids, 72 years old, right?
	The three couldn't be more different.
	Yep.
	Right?
	But they chose to live a life not having a kid.
	The argument on one person could be like, you know, well, I just don't want the responsibility and I wasn't going to be a good father.
	If I would have had a kid, the life I was living, I wanted to be a, you know, a father that could give time, but I was not going to do anything else but that.
	You have five kids.
	How many kids do you have?
	Those three boys.
	Okay.
	So one of them is a doctor, right?
	That's a brother.
	The brother's a doctor.
	What do the three do?
	Two of them are ministers.
	They work with me at the church and on campuses, and one is in financial services.
	Financial services.
	Yeah.
	Really?
	Oh, yeah.
	Okay.
	In Connecticut.
	In New York City.
	Okay, fantastic.
	Well, good for him.
	I was in it for 20 years.
	It's a great business to be a part of.
	So what have been some of the greatest highs you've ever had in your life?
	Greatest highs you've ever had?
	Well, moments where you go to and you say, Patrick, I cannot even tell you what I felt like on the day when, da, da, da.
	You bet.
	First greatest high is when I first experienced the presence of God, which meant God is real now.
	I'd been taught it at church by my parents.
	But that first time when I was nine years old and I experienced the presence of Christ with me, that was incredible.
	Second one was my wife.
	When she said yes to me and we got married and she committed her life to me until death parts us, wow, that was amazing.
	And she's been an amazing partner and wife to me.
	And then thirdly, I got to be there when our three boys were born.
	Oh my goodness.
	The doctor was a hoot.
	He was a Jewish gentleman.
	And, you know, I was just standing, I was just sitting there going, oh my goodness.
	And he says, you know something for a minister, you're awful quiet.
	I said, well, what does that mean?
	He said, well, the last minister I delivered his child and the guy was lying out on the floor praising the Lord.
	And I said, I'm sorry, doctor.
	You're right.
	I guess I'm not that type.
	But I do want to thank three people.
	First of all, I want to thank God for the birth of this child.
	Secondly, I want to thank you.
	And thirdly, I want to thank the nurse.
	And this gentleman looks me in the face and says, in that order?
	And I said, yes, sir, in that order.
	God, you, and the nurse.
	But it was just overwhelming to see those little boys brought born.
	It was just incredible.
	And they have brought so much delight to my wife and me.
	It's just, I can't describe it.
	What would you consider the life of a complete man?
	Like, what is it to, you know, I'm a 16-year-old boy.
	I'm a 20-year-old man.
	I'm a 25, 30-year-old man.
	I don't know if I want to give up the Playboy lifestyle.
	I'm enjoying myself, you know.
	I don't want to get married.
	Too many risks of getting married and family.
	And what if she does this?
	And what if she lies to you?
	What if she takes half of everything you got?
	And, you know, you got a kid and you're living a divorced life and you got to go back.
	Why would I want to do that?
	Why not just live a regular life?
	And maybe in my 40s, 50s, 60s, I can always have kids later on in my life.
	You know, what would you say is the life worth living for a man and why?
	You have just done a very good job describing why so many guys don't want to get married.
	And it's tragic.
	And some of it I understand.
	They've watched their parents go through a messy divorce.
	There's been pain off the charts.
	And yes, that is tragic.
	But I think here's the challenge.
	Life is not perfect.
	We all get hurt.
	Now, the question is, how are we going to deal with the hurt?
	And I'm tempted to wrap a cocoon around me to protect myself from ever getting hurt again.
	But that often leads right into bitterness, cynicism, loneliness, and that's tragic.
	So the challenge is to experience the love of Christ, the love of God, his healing, and allow Christ to be the security in your life.
	And then based in that security of his love and his truth, his presence with you, to then heal and reach out and begin to make commitments to people, which leads us into the second point.
	Marriage is a commitment.
	And in our culture, commitment is a dirty word.
	I don't want to commit to you.
	I want to leave my options open.
	The problem with that is it leads to loneliness.
	It leads to superficial relationships.
	It leads to trivializing life.
	When you make a commitment to a person, you bring security into their life by telling them, I'm going to be with you till you die.
	Do you know how much security that brings into another person?
	Do you know how much strength that brings to another person?
	And then when you bring little children into the world and love them with the love of God and celebrate them and get to know them and watch them develop, it is absolutely incredible.
	It brings so much joy, so much delight to life.
	But it's scary how many people say, no, I'm going to have sexual liaisons.
	I'm not going to make a commitment because I'm scared and because I've also been hurt and I don't want to go through the mess that my parents went through.
	So therefore, I'm not going to get involved.
	That is a tragic decision.
	Somebody may say, come on, Cliff.
	You're the son of a pastor, man.
	I mean, your father and your mother set a great example.
	56 years married, six kids.
	Your dad spoke five languages.
	My dad only spoke one language.
	Shut up and get the hell out, right?
	You don't know my life.
	You don't know what I lived.
	You don't know the stuff that I had.
	If you had lived my life, you would also never get married and never want to have kids and da-da-da-da-da, right?
	What do you say to him?
	First point is, no Christian's perfect and my mom and dad were not perfect.
	My mom and dad had a lot of pain in their life.
	And we six kids growing up in their home experienced some really stony, quiet times, as well as some verbal barbs that were pretty mean.
	And if anybody tells me we're not sinners, I'm going to say, I'm sorry.
	That couldn't be further from the truth.
	Because my mom and dad were devoted to Christ, but they struggled in their marriage big time.
	Now, I'm not going to base my life on my mom and dad.
	I'm going to base it on Jesus Christ, on the living God.
	You know, I've been thinking about this, Patrick.
	When I'm about to die, God could say to me, Cliff, if you have built your security on anything or anyone other than me, you're going to lose it right now.
	Cliff, you're going to lose everything except me.
	And that's what real faith is.
	My security, my identity is found in Christ and in God.
	Therefore, I don't have to be afraid.
	I don't have to live a life responding to the pain I've experienced growing up.
	Instead, I can be secure in Christ, strong in him, and then reach out and, yes, take risks.
	And of course, marriage is a risk.
	You bet it's a risk.
	But it's a risk well worth taking, I would argue.
	Okay, let's transition to a different topic.
	Abortion.
	Topic of abortion.
	Kai.
	What are your thoughts on birth control pills?
	My thoughts on birth control pills are because it is not terminating a fertilized egg, if we're talking about birth control, is preventing the egg and the sperm from coming together.
	Not morning after pill, but birth control pills to prevent from one getting pregnant.
	Right.
	I support that.
	You support that.
	I would argue that's bringing order to nature.
	So I saw something the other day, Rob.
	I don't even have this prepared.
	If I find this clip, I saw this guy explaining this.
	Let me see if I can find it.
	The guy does such a great job.
	I'm not going to be able to find it.
	No.
	So he says, the reason why women became more promiscuous is because of the birth control pills.
	Because that got you to say, well, guess what?
	I'm good.
	I'm not going to get pregnant.
	So it made people not think about their body count, his words, because he was making the argument about the fact that whether you've been with 50 men or 100 men or 10 men, whatever it is, who cares?
	I'm not getting pregnant anyways.
	Right.
	You know, that's the argument he made, where then eventually, you know, a man, when he finds out the true number or whatever it is, yeah, I'm not interested.
	The guy that you want to marry may not be interested in wanting to marry, you know, somebody like you.
	You think a birth control pill was a net positive or net negative to society?
	Oh, I think there's a little bit of positive, but there was a lot of negative.
	I agree with what he's saying.
	It definitely helped people think, oh, well, I'm not going to get in trouble here so I can live a sexually moral life.
	And that's sad.
	But you're saying there's some net positive to it as well.
	Yes.
	From what standpoint?
	Bringing order to nature.
	I think that for some of us to have 12, 15 kids would be, wow, that'd be a lot to handle.
	That'd be a great day for me.
	I'll have 20 more kids if I quit.
	My wife.
	Well, good for you.
	She's done.
	So you're saying order.
	Order.
	Bringing order to nature.
	Isn't that a form of playing God, though?
	Isn't that a form of playing God to have birth control pills?
	And that is the excellent Catholic argument.
	And I respect them highly.
	But I would say, no, it's not an issue of playing God.
	The same way my younger brother, who's a transplant surgeon, is not playing God when he transplants kidneys and livers.
	But he is using the mind that God gave him to bring order where there is destructiveness and death.
	So what do you think about gene editing?
	Have you heard of CRISPR?
	I haven't heard of CRISPR.
	Okay.
	Rob, if you go to CRISPR is short for clustered, regularly interspaced, short, palindromic repeats.
	You ask your brother, he would probably know what this is.
	It's a technology that research scientists use to selectively modify the DNA of living organisms.
	So they call it gene editing.
	So, you know, where they can, there was a clip about gene editing where a person can go in, husband and wife, and doctor asks, so how tall would you want your son to be?
	6'4.
	All right.
	What color eyes would you want him to have?
	Green, skin tone, a little bit of, you know, a little bit right here shit.
	Okay, color hair.
	Okay, muscular development.
	How about this?
	How about that?
	Where you get to do gene editing to pick and choose what your future child could potentially look like.
	How would the relationship of God and faith and Christianity, would there be a contradiction with gene editing?
	I think there could easily be, yes.
	And I think there was a real contradiction when it came to eugenics and basically doing away with Jews, African Americans, through horrendous medical practices.
	And obviously the abortion issue was figuring in there as well.
	And that was racism up the wazoo.
	Pathetic.
	Racism.
	Sure.
	Let's wipe out African Americans and just abort little black babies right and left in the name of well, I won't go any further.
	But embarrassing, totally embarrassing.
	And I think that there were some Americans who were part of influencing Hitler when it came to Aryan supremacy and helped him justify what he did to the Jewish people in the Holocaust.
	And there was some of that type of thinking going on in certain leaders' minds in the United States, unfortunately.
	And that's unacceptable for a follower of Christ.
	You seem to be a man who maybe would have an opinion on this.
	You know, October 7th, Hamas attacks Israel.
	Okay.
	They come in, bomb, you hear the stories, turns into this war that's been going on since then.
	Protesting in America, school, you're seeing naked girls in streets wearing a shirt that says pro-Gaza or free Palestine with literally nothing on.
	And they're saying for Palestine, free Palestine.
	And then on the complete opposite side, you're seeing an argument coming up where Thomas Massey, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, it says, why is it that everybody in DC has somebody that they sit down with and they talk to, they meet with an APAC representative.
	What kind of influence does Israel have in the U.S.?
	This is a Christian nation.
	Why does Israel have so much influence over this nation?
	Where do you stand with the whole Israel-Palestine war and the stories that we keep hearing about?
	A thug is a thug.
	I don't care if they're Hezbollah, Hamas, Israeli, Palestinian, American.
	A thug is a thug.
	And Jesus Christ calls us to be peacemakers.
	That does not mean that we put down our arms.
	I am very grateful for your service to our country and the 101st Airborne.
	And why do I support military?
	I do not support American troops killing people in order to keep gas prices low at the pump.
	I encourage ROTSI students to become conscientious objectors if America ever asked them to do that.
	But to prevent the slaughter of innocent people is good.
	Really, really good.
	And it's not murder.
	It's killing, motivated to protect the innocent from being slaughtered.
	Now, one of the most conservative Christian groups in the United States, the Amish people, are total pacifists.
	And they take the teaching of Jesus.
	So someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to the other also, and they apply it to across the board.
	I think that's a misinterpretation of scripture, but I would never try and change their opinion.
	I have great respect for them.
	But when it comes to Israel, Palestine, Hezbollah, Hamas, Ukraine, Russia, China, North Korea, a thug is a thug.
	And Christ calls us to be peacemakers.
	And unfortunately, I think that at times that requires we use force as we're able to.
	I mean, if you and I go into a restaurant, a guy pulls out a machine gun and starts blowing people away.
	If you hit him high and I hit him low and we break his neck in the process, that is not murder.
	That is killing, motivated by a drive to preserve the innocent from being slaughtered.
	And I would argue that that is just.
	Why do you think on so many campuses, the arguments being made of this is not fair, this is a genocide, why are you letting this happen?
	Why does Israel have an open permission to go do whatever they want to do to anybody else?
	Why do they have such wide influence where they control so many different powerful institutions?
	Why do you constantly bow down to Israel and allow them to do whatever?
	I mean, this is said by a lot of different people.
	And it's to a point where guys who went to Harvard, billionaires who gave money to these institutions, $100 million, $200, it's like, listen, I'm done with you guys.
	I don't know what the hell you're talking about.
	Where it's almost causing many Jews who historically have always been Democratic because that's been the party that's been kind of like, you know, been on protecting, making them feel safe.
	They're like, listen, I don't even think the Democratic Party is for me anymore.
	I kind of got to look at other options for myself right now.
	We've never gone through that before.
	What do you think about this movement that's happened specifically the last seven, eight months?
	I have to be very careful, Patrick, because I have not thought it through well enough.
	But that's why I answered you the way I did it first.
	A thug is a thug.
	I don't care if they're Jew, Arab, Hamas, Hezbollah, American.
	You know, during the Civil War, a minister came up to Abraham Lincoln and said, President Lincoln, let's pray that God is on our side in this horrible conflict.
	And I love Abraham Lincoln.
	He looks a minister in the face and he says, no, we're not going to pray that God is on our side.
	We're going to pray that we are on God's side, for God's side is always right.
	And it's far too easy to take God and use God to baptize my particular cause, my particular passion.
	And we've got to exercise humility and be careful of that.
	Very well put.
	We've got to make sure that God's on our side, but the fact that we are on God's side, it's pretty wild.
	By the way, you talked about Jesus earlier, the fact that he asked over 290 questions, right?
	What made him a great communicator?
	Like, what can the rest of the world learn about the way he, you know, was that good of a communicator?
	First of all, his authenticity.
	John the Baptist, why did he have John the Baptist be the predecessor?
	I mean, that dude was weird.
	The authenticity of John the Baptist and the authenticity of Jesus Christ were off the charts.
	And I think all of us long for authenticity.
	We're sick and tired of hypocrisy and insincerity and what's your angle and how can you use me and manipulate me?
	No, the authenticity of Christ was incredible.
	Secondly, he went right for the heart.
	He spoke to issues that were so relevant, so important for all of us.
	Thirdly, he spoke very clearly.
	He used analogies right out of nature, right out of everyday life.
	The parable of the sower in Matthew chapter 13, a farmer went out to sow and some seed fell on the path, other seed fell off on the rocky soil and other seed fell among the thorns and other seed fell in the good soil and it grew and produced a great crop.
	So he was in touch with his culture.
	He was in touch with his father and he spoke in ways that people could understand.
	Authenticity went to the heart, spoke clearly, analogies And metaphor.
	And apparently he asked a lot of questions.
	He sure did.
	And his question was, what do you think?
	I like that.
	What do you think?
	It's probably one of the most common questions we ask here, right?
	You know, what do you think about this?
	What do you think about that?
	Do you follow Neuralink?
	Are you close to what Elon Musk is doing with Neuralink?
	I'm not.
	The chips to put in your head.
	Have you heard about that?
	I've heard about it, but I don't know.
	You don't have an opinion.
	What are your thoughts about AI and what direction it's going?
	Is AI going to get us to be closer to God?
	Or is AI going to get us to say, hey, man, the new God is going to be AI, technology?
	I think we're making so much progress that I don't know if we're going to need.
	Maybe people are going to be saying this.
	I don't think we need it as much as we did before because AI is the new God.
	Will there be a time where AI will be the new God?
	For some people, yes.
	And that'll be tragic.
	But that's been true all along.
	We live in a culture where science is God for a lot of people, for far too many people.
	And of course, the irony is that modern science began in the Christian West.
	It began in an environment that said there's an intelligent creator who created an orderly creation and gave us minds, rational minds, that we can use to understand the order of creation.
	I mean, I love what Einstein pointed out when he said, you know, the real miracle?
	The real miracle is that my mind can understand reality around me.
	I mean, why is there this connection?
	It's a great point, Einstein.
	And the point is, God created this reality in an orderly way.
	He created nature, and he gave us rational minds that we, by exercising in a responsible way, can unlock the secrets of the universe.
	That's why Johan Kepler, the father of modern astronomy, as he peers out under the stars at night, exclaims, Oh, God, I am thinking your thoughts after you.
	See, that's good faith, and it's good science.
	I'd be curious to know how much AI is being discussed from stage by pastors today.
	You know, because in the financial industry, you would always see what's the new thing, you know, big insurance companies and financial firms are afraid of.
	At one point, it was all cybersecurity.
	They stole 86,000 social security numbers of clients.
	I don't know, oh my God, we can't have that.
	That's a lot of risk.
	You know, what does your cybersecurity insurance look like?
	And everybody was getting cybersecurity insurance, right?
	Today, ChatGPT comes out.
	How are you using ChatGPT?
	And, you know, are you getting the enterprise software of this thing and that thing?
	And, you know, what is AI going to do to disrupt the industry?
	I wonder how AI is going to disrupt the church as an industry.
	You know, the industry of religion, if you can say that.
	And when I mean religion, I mean all of them, combined all of them that are out there.
	Are you at all concerned about it or not really?
	It's just not a real topic.
	I mean, when you guys, I'm assuming you have other pastors you're friends with, other senior pastors and you talk to.
	Does that even come up, the concerns about AI or no?
	Some guys could write their sermons using AI.
	That's right.
	So that has come up.
	And no, I have no desire to do that.
	That's for sure.
	It doesn't come up a tremendous amount.
	And my attitude towards it is it's no different from the atomic bomb.
	It's no different from these incredible weapons we're inventing.
	It can be used for good, and it sure is easy to use it for evil.
	It's the same issue.
	At the heart of it is the same issue.
	What am I going to do with the talents, the mind, the reason that God has blessed me with?
	Am I going to do good with it or am I going to do evil?
	Okay.
	So it doesn't seem like it's something that you're too worried about AI.
	Although your church looks like it would be a headquarters campus of Apple when they were smaller.
	I don't know if you guys.
	Rob, have you seen the church's pictures?
	Go to images and go, well, that's the sickest campus there, but I'm not even saying that.
	Go a little lower.
	Look at that.
	Keep going lower, Rob.
	There's a whole picture of what it looked like.
	The one right there in the middle, to the left.
	No, one down, right there.
	Look at that.
	That's the campus we're talking about.
	That looks like an AI company's headquarters, right?
	We're going to find AI to get you in contact with people in heaven.
	Imagine if I wouldn't be surprised if a pastor gives a sermon like that here sometime soon.
	Are you familiar with Billy Carson?
	No.
	Okay.
	What are your thoughts on aliens?
	Do you think aliens exist?
	Well, obviously the Bible says they're angels, so they're other beings that exist.
	But I'm totally open to aliens, but I don't see enough evidence at this point to believe in him, but it's possible.
	Okay, so we have Billy Carson on, and here's what he had to say two weeks ago.
	Go ahead, Rob.
	You're right.
	You think Jesus was an alien?
	I think Jesus was half human, half alien, and I'll tell you why.
	When you look at the apocrypha texts, you discover, first of all, in the regular Bible, you discover he's born of a virgin birth, right?
	But then in the apocrypha text, you discover that his grandmother was also born of a virgin birth.
	So it seems like this establishment of a bloodline there specifically.
	When you read the Animal Tablets of Thoth, you discover that he talks about he developed the ability to incarnate at will on and in any plane that he desires.
	That's pretty powerful stuff.
	He's saying he can come back however he wants and when he wants and in any dimension that he wants.
	He even talks about having rejuvenation chambers, which is what I believe the Seropeum is located in Saqqara in Egypt is one of his rejuvenation chambers where they would actually create bodies and put bodies in these gigantic megaton stone boxes made of granite and diorite, which are still radioactive, by the way.
	You can take your Geiger crown and they're still radioactive.
	They have an energy source coming out of them.
	And then he said that I would transfer my consciousness from one body to the next.
	He would leave another body in there rejuvenating for 100 years, then he'd come back and get it, and he'd do that over and over again.
	And by that method, he lived through eons.
	Pretty interesting.
	So I think maybe they decided to come back through a womb.
	What do you think about what he's saying?
	I think the apocryphal gospels, the pseudopigraphal works, the Gnostic Gospels are not reliable.
	So when I want to find out about Jesus, I go to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
	And Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John do not say that Mary's grandma or Jesus' grandma was a virgin.
	It doesn't say that Mary was a virgin for the rest of her life.
	Jesus had siblings, younger brothers and sisters, probably.
	So you got to be real careful.
	Obviously, Dan Brown made a lot of money with the Da Vinci Code and talking about the Gnostic Gospels and Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus and all that kind of stuff.
	No, Mary Magdalene wasn't married to Jesus.
	And the last temptation of Christ was not to have sex with Mary Magdalene.
	Last temptation of Christ was, as he's bleeding and dying on the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
	He experienced cosmic alienation from his father.
	And Paul explains that in 2 Corinthians 5.
	He says, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us.
	So when God the Father dumped the sins of the world on his son, Jesus, he became sin.
	He was separated from his father, who he had spent eternity with.
	And he cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
	So I think it's important, Patrick, to check our sources.
	And when it comes to Jesus, it's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the writings of Paul and Peter, the 27 New Testament books that are really reliable.
	He seems like he's very, he's got conviction the way he's talking.
	Yeah, the way he's breaking it down for you.
	Last clip I'll show you before we wrap up.
	Kenneth Copeland.
	A lot of times when you talk to people about going to churches, they typically, and they don't want to go back to a church because they had a bad experience at a church.
	A pastor or somebody, here's a clip that you've probably seen.
	This has gotten not hundreds of millions of views, but billions of views.
	Rob, if you can just play this clip for a minute, we're not going to play the whole 11-minute clip.
	Do you ever use your private jets to go visit your vacation homes, for example?
	Yes, I do.
	Okay.
	Again, getting back to the comment.
	You said that you don't like to fly commercial because you don't want to get into a tube with a bunch of demons.
	Do you really believe that human beings are demons?
	No, I do not.
	And don't you ever say I did.
	A little weird.
	We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but principalities and powers.
	Can you explain what you meant by that term then?
	Just explain, because it's really simple.
	You said you didn't want to get into a tube with a bunch of demons.
	What did you mean?
	Well, let me ask you.
	Do you think that people that fly commercial are demons?
	Give me a chance to talk, sweetheart.
	I'll explain this to you.
	But it's a biblical thing.
	It's a spiritual thing.
	It doesn't have anything to do with people.
	People, I love people.
	Jesus loves people.
	But people get pushed in alcohol.
	Do you think that's a good place for a preacher to be and prepare to go preach to a lot of people when somebody in there is dragging some woman down the nile?
	It made me so mad to see that on television.
	I wanted to punch a guy out myself.
	I can't be doing that while I'm getting ready to preach.
	I mean, first of all, what made him think that was a good look?
	How many times has he had to have explained himself here?
	But what's your reaction to this when you see it?
	I don't know the man, so I can't comment on him.
	But I can tell you that every time I step onto a university campus, one of the first things I have to do is smash the stereotype of a follower of Christ, of a Christian.
	And it's embarrassing.
	I don't care if it's the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, some hypocritical televangelists, some sexually immoral priest or minister or evangelist.
	So that's the first stereotype I have to pop.
	And I've got to point out, if anybody on this campus has a right to reject Christ because of Christian hypocrites, it's the African Americans on this campus.
	Because the African Americans on this campus had grandparents and great-grandparents who were enslaved by white Christians.
	And yet you'll notice on this campus, there are a lot of African Americans who have put their faith in Christ.
	They have not given a white Christian racist the power to turn them off to the true Jesus who did not have a racist bone in his body.
	Are there Christian hypocrites?
	Obviously yes.
	Is that tragic?
	Obviously yes.
	Please don't give a Christian hypocrite the power to turn you off to the true Christ who did not have a hypocritical bone in his body.
	How often you've been in this space for a while as a pastor, when you're having dinner with your father and he's sitting there talking to you, what would he say?
	Hey, Cliff, if you ever choose to follow my footsteps and want to become a pastor yourself and preach, you know, keep your eye out for this and for that or for this, you know, you know, like, for example, Charlie Munger, they were interviewing his kids.
	What is it like having dinner with Charlie Munger when you guys were kids?
	He says, dad would always tell horror stories about his best friends that made bad mistakes, right?
	And royally screwed up their lives.
	What were some things your dad would tell you?
	Because you're choosing to become a pastor.
	What would he say?
	Listen, Cliff, if you choose to do it, papa, what would those things be?
	Dad was an immigrant from Switzerland, started at the bottom of the business world in Manhattan, worked his way up to the top of a company.
	And then because he would not cheat on the corporate income tax, he was fired.
	And he said, I've just become a follower of Christ and I cannot cheat on that taxes.
	Secondly, he saw a lot of people in our area get so busy that they were distracted from Christ.
	So he consistently warned me about integrity, don't lose integrity, and about distractions.
	Don't get so caught up in the money race that you lose your focus on Christ and you become distracted.
	So those are the two big warnings.
	Stay passionate for Christ.
	He loves you.
	He gave his life for you.
	You love him and give your life for him.
	Would he debate with you?
	Would he sit there and, you know, push back on certain things?
	Or what was it?
	So, Cliff, what do you think about XYZ?
	What do you think about that?
	Was he somebody that would do that to help raise his kids?
	No, he wouldn't debate too much with us, but he and I did debate about Seventh-day Adventism.
	Those were our intense debates.
	But I have so much love and respect for him.
	He was just incredible the way he lived out the faith.
	And that's the key for a pastor and his kids.
	You know, far too many pastors' kids are wrecks, spiritual disasters, because they hear a guy talking about love and about Jesus and all, and then they watch him live their life in an embarrassing way.
	And so my father's integrity and his consistent love marked me for life.
	Who's the modern day Billy Graham today, Cliff?
	I don't think there is a modern-day Billy Graham today.
	I think there are a bunch of us who are trying, who will never be able to fill his shoes.
	We're just trying to extend his shadow.
	Yeah.
	He was one of a kind.
	Let's give you the final words.
	What's the last thing you want to say to the audience?
	For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
	A comedian in Las Vegas said, how much do you think I have to hate you if I believe that Jesus is the way to heaven and not tell you?
	Wow.
	And we'll finish on that note, gang.
	Is there a website or a place for people to go to?
	Is there a book?
	Is there anything you want the audience to go to to learn more about your work?
	Oh, Patrick, thank you.
	I'm so ignorant, though.
	But on YouTube, it's give me an answer with Stuart and Cliff Connectley.
	On Instagram, it's Stuart lowercase dash Connectley.
	On TikTok, it's just Stuart Connectley.
	And on Facebook, it's give me an answer.
	Okay, Rob, so why don't we put those links below specifically?
	Give me an answer on YouTube and all the other links.
	Pastor Cliff Kinickley, thank you for coming out.
	I really enjoyed it.
	Take care, everybody.
	Bye-bye.
	Bye-bye.
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