The Eric Metaxas Show - George Sarris

Episode Date: February 21, 2023

George Sarris, author of "Searching for Truth in Vegas, Hollywood & Bethlehem: The Quest to Discover if God is Real," lets us know what he's discovered.

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mataxis show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. It's a nutritious smoothie of creamy, fresh yogurt, vanilla, vanilla, vanilla, vanilla, and a mushy banana. For your mind? Drink it all down. It's nummy. I wubb, vanilla. I wop. I wab. Here comes Eric Metaxus. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Monday. I'll be on Monday.

Monday. I love it. I feel like it's my day and I'm welcoming you to Monday. But you can welcome me to your Monday. And we can together welcome everyone to Monday. Now, today's what they call President's Day. And I'm an old-fashioned traditional kind of guy. And so I hate the idea of President's Day.

I think it's stupid. And I say stupid in a very positive sense. No, I liked it when we celebrated, February 12th, Lincoln's birthday, February 22nd, Washington's birthday. I want to be very clear. February 22nd is Washington's birthday. February 12th is Lincoln's birthday. That's going to be on the test.

Everyone needs to know. Every American needs to know. February 12th is Lincoln's birthday, 1809. February 22nd is the birthday of George Washington, 1732. Remember, this is going to be on the test. I'm telling you in advance. So it's important we understand that President's Day is just one of those kind of contemporary, I don't know. What would you call it?

I would call it a kind of, it's sort of like deferring to the zeitgeist. Like people are too dumb to remember two dates or let's just mush it together and call it President's Day. And so we can celebrate Miller Fillmore, you know, Gerald Ford with a big asterisk on his forehead. We can celebrate. I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. Now, by the way, President's Day, let's be clear, there were never greater men than George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. That is objectively true.

If you don't believe it, the first chapter of my book on, it's called Seven Men, is about Washington. When you read it, you will be embarrassed for not having appreciated him. as I was when I wrote it. I just said, wow, what a great man. In my book, if you can keep it, about America, which I recommend highly, I write about Lincoln. And again, I honestly didn't, there are things about Lincoln I didn't know. For example, he did not have wooden teeth, as everyone always says. Oh, no?

No, no, he didn't. That was Washington. And he also didn't have wooden teeth. Okay, so the thing we want to talk about. Now, today, let's be clear, today I'm talking to my friend George Saras. We put it out on Rumble a while ago because we recorded it a little while ago. But George is a really dear friend of many, many years, over 20 years. And he's written a delightfully accessible book.

Anyway, we'll talk about that with George in the two hours to come. we have a lot to look forward to. I guess I want to mention we have a Socrates and City event February 28th, which if you can't get to New York, now I know there are people that can't get to New York to go to the event. But honestly, you want to get there if you can get there. Albin, are you going to be there? Oh, definitely. This is a good one. Oh, boy.

Are you going to bring one of your wives? I will. Well, I will see if Anne. can come because it's the beginning of lent and we want to get it started properly. Well, honestly, it's just, I am so excited about this one. I will be there because I have to be there. I'm the host. But it is February 28th.

If you want to meet me or if you don't want to meet me, it's the perfect place to do either one of those two things, February 28th Union League Club. But you got to go to sockdeasuncity.com to sign up. And these are, I don't know that we sell the sizzle properly. on the Socrates and the city website. But these are, the club is so beautiful. We have a patrons dinner afterward. That's really, really special.

Sometimes people come from out of town and they want to come to the patrons dinner. It's a very, it's just really special. And you get to meet some other, you know, special guests that tend to come to these dinners. So that's Socrates and the city.com. That's February 28th. And the speaker is the speaker that, my guest is Dr. Eugenia Constantino, one of the greatest New Testament scholars, but it goes way beyond that. I mean, she has six degrees, graduate degrees in various disciplines.

And she's combined these various disciplines to tell the story of Passion Week of what we call Holy Week in a way that no one ever has done before. And it is unprecedented what she has done in this book. and she's managed to write it in a way that anyone can read, which is very, very rare in the world of, you know, scholarly writing. It doesn't come across as scholarly, although it is. But it actually was a devotional for me when I read it, and I'm going to reread it in preparation of that event.

So that's Octane City February 28th Union League Club. But I do say if you can't come, you can live stream it. We've never done this before. it's super cheap it's like 10 bucks but i i i want people around the country to kind of be all tuned in it's it's going to be kind of it'll be cool it'll be cool yes um and uh we're we're going to have you know we've we've got to hayrides and and bobbing for apples and and a face painting for the kids it's just a festival and i want you to be there yeah i'm going to make some balloon animals too yeah yes that that's right that's right so uh just that kind of fun kind of kooky fun tacky event so we

We want you to be there. It's February 28th. Just go to Soxington City.com. And the live streaming does not include the bobbing for apples. There's no way virtually to bob for apples. And I apologize. We're working on that. I think the metaverse will make it possible in the future that we'll be able to offer that as well.

But at this time, we can't. Okay, Albin, before we go to our guest, my friend George Saris, who is Greek, by the way. I can't remember if we talked about that in the interview. but he and I share a Greek background and a Greek foreground. But let me say that we have a new sponsor on the program. I believe it was Turtullian, the early church father who asked, what does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? So our Greek heritage is important to those of us who are Greek,

like George and me, but we've been grafted in. and we are Jewish by faith on some very serious level. And when you visit the Holy Land, our new sponsor is the Israel Ministry of Tourism. You cannot help but feel like I'm home. There's something, the place belongs to all of us. What happened there happened for all of us. And I just want to encourage people to go to the website,

Holyland.israel. Travel. Holyland. dot Israel. Dot travel. Speaking of traveling, oh my gosh, I just got back from,

well, actually, no, I'm this weekend. I'm going to Ohio, to speak in a church in Ohio. If you want to know my schedule, just go to Ericmetaxis.com. I want to also encourage you.

while you're there, sign up for the newsletter because increasingly there's stuff that I can't share on this program for legal and medical reasons. For some very serious medical reasons, I can't share on this program. But on the website, we got pictures. We got everything. We got everything. Right, Alvin? Yeah, well, we have it all, right there. We're videotaping medical procedures that we're having, really private stuff.

We're putting it on. But you have to go to Ericmetaxis.com and sign up for the newsletter. Otherwise, you don't get to see all that gross stuff. Some of it's very invasive. Some of it's laparoscopic, but you've got to go to Ericmetaxis.com and you'll see it there. I already mentioned that it's President's Day. I want to say, again, the stories of Lincoln and Washington, among others, but the two of them, we ought to celebrate them. And anyone who doesn't understand that is probably ignorant and needs to read more about them,

because we owe them tremendous debts, any of us who calls ourselves, who calls himself an American, each of us. So, okay, this week, we've got a lot of weird stuff coming up, like weird good stuff. I'm talking to our friend Ryan Bithay and an actual Catholic Church exorcist, a leading exorcist, because we know that that world is real. We want to explore that. We're talking to our friend Spencer Claven, our new friend. He's the son of Andrew Claven.

And I'm pretty sure he was, he's been Andrew's son most of his life. So we're speaking to him this week. Really exciting. A lot of stuff to look forward to. So we'll just put a button in it right there. Thank you. We'll be right back with George Saras. In case you haven't been paying attention, the Biden administration has caused a financial

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Get free activation today with the offer code Eric. Hey there, folks. Welcome back. People always joke around with me. Like, Eric, everybody you have on your program, you say they're your friend. Well, usually that's just true. And in some cases, it's dramatically true, as in the case of my guest. today, George Saris. George and I have been friends for a thousand years. I don't know. George,

welcome to the program. Well, thank you very much. It's a privilege to be here. But we've been, I mean, look, we've been friends at least for 23 years, I think. I think, I don't remember when I first met you, but we were part of that Bible study, the Master Media Bible study, which began about 2000, I think. It actually began a little before that. Yes. But not too much before that. Yeah, right around that time. Anyway. But, but. But we've been friends for a long time, and you're tough to sum up. The reason you're on the program today is because you've written a wonderful book called Searching for Truth in Hollywood and Bethlehem.

And Vegas. And Vegas. Right. The quest to discover if God is real. Now, you, to sum you up, I mean, you are, you've had a career as a voiceover actor. You've done voiceovers for, oh, my gosh. like all these huge corporations. So people have heard you.

You've got that kind of a voice. Well, thank you very much. Actually, if people want to listen to, they don't have to listen to it, but they want to hear the Bible. You can go on Biblegay.com, and I narrated the NIV 2011 version. You can get that for free. You can hear me read Leviticus chapter 3, verse 25, if you want to. Listen, it's so funny.

I was just going to say to that. And then the ultimate is, when I go to the audio Bible, I can choose between two people that are friends, Max McLean or George Saris. I mean, this is nuts, but it's totally true. And don't tell Max, I prefer your reading. Thank you, for you. Don't tell Mac. Please. Don't tell them. No, but George, honestly, it's amazing. So you've done tons of voiceover stuff, and it really is your voice at Bible Gateway. But you're, you know, you're not just an actor. You've written books.

I want to talk to you about this book. You care about truth and God. But you also, over the years, have done a one-man show. Talk about that a little bit, because I've seen you do pieces of it before we get into the book searching for truth. Yeah, my one-man show, back in 1983, I think, I was doing a little bit. I was doing a commercial for a storyteller in Boston, and he had a one-man show at a theater, and they asked me if I wanted to have a couple of tickets to his performance. I've never seen a one-man show.

I don't know what a one-man show is. Anyway, this man stood on stage. He had a box, a broom, and an apron, and for two hours you could hear a pin drop. I mean, it was enthralling. And the first thought that came to my mind was, I wonder if that approach would work with Scripture. And so I decided to memorize some passages of scripture, applied the technique that I saw him use, which was pantomiming some actions, used very, very small amount of props, and just do it. And so it turned out to be tremendously successful.

I actually have six audio CDs of Bible stories that I have done with music and sound effects, but it's all straight scripture. the CDs are available in either the original NIV or the King James Version, and then I have performed it for many, many times over the years. Well, if the King James Version was good enough for St. Paul, it should be good enough for us, ladies and gentlemen. And George, people can find you online at george-seris.com. It's George W. Saris.com.

George W. Saris-R-I-S-Greek. That's right. how we first connected. I thought, here's a guy who believes in the Bible and Jesus and he's a Christian, and he's also got a Greek background. And so that's where we first connected. Well, look, we're here to talk about your new book, Searching for Truth in Hollywood and Bethlehem. In Vegas. And Vegas. You can have this one. Doesn't have the... Oh, you know what? No, I see it here because I have an older version of the book. So thank you. I'll trade you. But you and you I care about truth and we care about communicating the truth of God on a simple level so that

everybody can understand yes, yes, yes, it's actually true. So what do you cover about, what do you cover in this book titled Search for Truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem? Well, what I found is that people today are crying out for truth. They, uh, everything is inauthent. You know, they can't trust the schools. They can't trust the government. They can't trust even their churches a lot of times. I think that's one of the reasons why you wrote letters to the churches. Oh, man, to the Christian church. I'm sorry to say that's correct. Right. And so they're looking for truth. And so are the questions of life answered in Vegas, which is representative chance evolution? In other words, are we just a chance mixing of elements

that appear today, we die, and that's it. There's nothing else. Is it in Hollywood, which is representative of the force of Star Wars, Eastern mysticism, are we going to die and become part of a life force that exists out there and lose our individuality, that we become basically nothing? So the people that believe in chance become insignificant, the people that believe in the force become nothing. Or are we going to become, are we a creation of an all-powerful, all-wise creator? But if that's true, why is there so much pain and suffering in the world? And that's the ultimate question, which everyone will always ask. In other words, even if you come to believe in the God of the Bible as we have,

you still, of course, have good questions. And it's just that those questions don't overwhelm the truth of your faith. because you realize, well, I know enough about God and about how much he loves me and how good he is, that even though I have questions, the questions cannot tear me away from what I know. But it's important to have answers to that. And this book really has been designed, not for the Christian audience particularly, it's actually designed for non-Christians. Interestingly, I've been in the media industry as an actor as a voiceover spokesman for over 40 years.

And during that time, I've had many, many conversations with people about God, about the Bible. Some people believe that, how could you be so stupid, George, to believe that there actually is a God? Others were kind of wondering, you know, I got sort of this interest in God, but I'm not sure about the Bible. And then you got a bunch of people that are Christians, but they still have significant answers. And over the years, I wanted to have some book I could give to them. I didn't find any that I really liked. And so I finally decided to write one. Well, I love the idea that you are breaking this up.

In other words, it's, you know, to say, searching for truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem, you're giving us a way into these three modes, basically, right? And other people have written similar things, I think, of Thomas Howard, who wrote his book, Chance of the Dance, 1969. But that's a very kind of high-falute and very literary way into the things. this, and he only deals with two of these ideas. But let's get into it. Actually, before we get into it, I just want to say again that I think you and I, we bump into people all the time that have basic questions, and the culture is not giving them answers. And they're kind of,

they've kind of become convinced that there are no answers, so they sort of stop asking, and they just kind of go with the flow. But you know and I know that there are answers to this. And so in this book, you have those kinds of answers, and it is the kind of thing you can give to somebody who says, like, what about this? What about this? Well, read this book. So when you say searching for truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem, let's go through these three different ways of seeing things. So you use Vegas to say it's a crapshoot, it's completely random. Right. Which, I mean, I've written about this in some of my books. It's, if you actually follow that through to the bottom, that is deeply neolithic and sick.

But most people forget that. They don't follow it through to the bottom. They just go, everything's just random, and the universe came into being through random processes and whatever. So talk about that worldview. Yeah, I try to come up with three basic reasons that evolution is wrong.

What I say is that evolution is contrary to the basic laws of science, And I point out the law of second dynamic. Actually, okay, that's the first one. The second law of thermodynamics. Right. And you're right. The idea that science says, oh, we order emerged out of disorder. It just happened.

And you think, well, wait a second. That's a really high bar. I mean, really? Because you're telling me it never happens, but except in this one time it happened. I was on the subway a long time ago when I was working on this book. actually originally. And I saw a sign up on the subway. It said it was for a technical school.

It said, things break. That's why we always need skilled technicians. You don't drive a car and expect that it's going to get better. In fact, yesterday, my wife came and said, George, the car is running really rough. And it's not running on all the cylinders. Things don't get better. They actually get worse.

They break down. They break down over time. It's called entropy. And it proves, okay, we're out of time. We'll be right back. We're talking to George Saris. You can find him at George W. Saris, S-A-R-I-S-A-R-I-S-Gorch. George W-Saris.com.

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take a chance, I'm the first in life. I'm still free. Take a chance on me. Folks welcome back talking to my friend George Saras, the new book, Searching for Truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem. So the Vegas idea is everything's random, and people actually say that the whole universe and life and human beings emerged from nothingness, from randomness by itself,

kind of created itself or whatever. And you were just talking about how in real life we know that never happens. our cars break down. We die. People die. Really? Yeah. That's amazing.

Everything goes bad at the end. Right. Kind of falls apart. And so most people know that that's the way it is. So the idea that we're supposed to say, yes, but except in the case of evolution, where it just happened to work in the other direction. But, you know, to be fair, I can understand. how people could buy that idea. Because when you talk about natural selection, you know, we've all heard it in school that,

okay, you know, the giraffe with the longest neck can reach the higher leaves. And over generations, giraffes will get longer necks. You can get this idea in your head and you go, okay, that solves it. That makes sense. Except it doesn't, really. It doesn't explain how you go from an amoeba to a whale. Right, exactly. But it pretends to explain it.

Yeah. The problem with that, really, is that until a system is completely in place, it doesn't help an organism, it actually hurts it. So, for example, if you have a half a wing, right, I start out with no wings and I just get a half a wing, well, that's not going to help you. If you have part lung, part gills, that's not going to help you. It's actually going to probably kill you because you don't have what's appropriately there.

So this whole idea that things gradually developed into something new is actually quite foolish. I use the illustration of a car junkyard, or a vehicle junkyard, and I say, if you apply evolutionary principles to a vehicle junkyard, you assume that what started out as a unicycle, suddenly developed on its own into a bicycle, then a tricycle, then it goes to maybe a fiat, like fiat, then to a Chevy Corvette, and ultimately it gets to a Chevy Corvette, and ultimately it gets to a BMW because that's the ultimate driving machine. And then you have offshoots to cars or to trucks and airplanes. Or you can say no, each one of those individual things was designed by a careful designer who was very wise and skillful. So what is the more reasonable conclusion?

And I think, again, we have to say that, you know, there's the common sense approach to this, which is what we're taking right now. But there's also the, you can look into the science. folks. This is not like scientists aren't equally troubled by this, but they just, many of them are so invested in a certain worldview. They wouldn't dare mention anything that might get them in trouble. But the fact of the matter is, I just had at Socrates and the city, we just had David Berlinsky. He wrote a book called, he's written a number of books on this stuff. He's an agnostic, and he recognizes that so-called Darwinian evolution is just lunacy. I mean, it's not like they have no points, but at the end of the day, you would have to conclude, sorry, it can't happen that way.

Because the levels of complexity, if you ignore the levels of complexity, you say, well, I could see stuff happening. But then when you get down into how an eye develops or the idea of flight or any of these things, you realize that we're so far from actually. being able to show that, that we've got to be honest about it. And, you know, this doesn't prove God. But if you're honest, you'd have to say, well, they've been selling this soap for 150-plus years. And the more we learn, the more difficult it is to think that it really happened. But actually, what I love is that even before you get to evolution, is the idea of, because evolution presupposes life. And you say, okay, life, natural selection. But how do you get from, non-life to life, that's even more crazy.

That really is like going to a junkyard and expecting the stuff, the wind, to create a working vehicle or something like that. Like, you know, there's no natural selection. It's just wind and rain and random processes. And you're saying, oh, we'll end up with a cell eventually. It's like, no, you actually won't. You'll never end up with a cell. In fact, if you start with a cell, the cell will break down, which is what you just said.

Should we talk more about that worldview? Because there are three world views. The book is searching for truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem. But Vegas is the random. Right. That's chance. That's why it's Vegas. It's chance.

It's a crapshoot. I'm going to throw the craps, the dice down. Oh, wow, I got seven. You know, but it doesn't work that way in real life. Okay. One of the things I mentioned in there is a hummingbird looking at a sophisticated helicopter. And two hummingbirds are there.

And the one hummingbird says, well, you know, it's big. It's powerful. It can definitely go up and down and move around a lot better than a regular airplane. Hey, I'll give it an A for effort. Well, I mean, when you think of what it takes to design a helicopter, you know, human beings didn't do that until, oh, I don't know, fairly recently in history. and obviously the same with airplanes. And then you look at something like a hummingberg,

which is so small and so efficient and so magnificent. It's mind-bending. Let's talk about the second thing. The book is Searching for Truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem. So Hollywood, what is the Hollywood? When you say Hollywood, what do you mean? What's the worldview there? The worldview there is basically the force of Star Wars.

I mean, I use that. It started out a number of years. Actually, by the way, one little interesting piece of information, the original Star Wars film debuted in 1977. Do you know how many theaters it opened in? No. 32. Wait a minute. Hold on a second. We need to fact check that. We'll be right back talking to George Saras. The book is Searching for Truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem. With the overturn of Roe v. Wade, lots of companies are coming out saying they'll pay for employee abortion travel and expenses. Most of you've heard about some of these companies.

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This biblical investment analysis will educate you on what's really in your investment accounts, like companies paying for abortion travel. You need to go to inspireadvisors.com slash Eric to connect with an InspireAdvisors financial professional who can run your report and help remove companies paying for abortion travel today. Go to inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. That's inspire advisors.com slash Eric. Advisory services are offered through Inspire Advisors LLC, a registered investment advisor with the SEC. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to my friend George Saris, S-A-R-R-I-S. That's a Greek name. The book is Searching for Truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem, the quest to discover if God is real.

So when you talk about Hollywood, you say that's kind of like the force. It's this impersonal force. It's not the God of the Bible. But you were just saying that in 77, when Star Wars arrived, it only opened on 32 screens. Right. But it became so popular because it really combined sort of this idea of science and philosophy. and Eastern mysticism. And it was right during the time when, in fact, I think George Lucas, if I'm not mistaken, was involved in Est, which was Earhart, something, whatever it was.

And so it's kind of his idea that, you know, and it's basically sort of a combination of Hinduism and Buddhism and, you know, a bunch of these Eastern mystic ideas, Zoroastrianism. So you have some of the light in the dark are Zoroastrian, really. you've got a good being and you've got an evil being and they kind of are always fighting with one another, that type of thing. And then it developed more when it became transcendental meditation. Everybody was involved in that in the 70s and then it became the New Age movement.

And so it just kind of has taken over as the basic idea of our culture today. In fact, many of the people I'll talk to, I'll say, by the way, what kind of religious background do you have? Oh, I'm not religious. I'm spiritual. Yeah, it's the cliche. of the century, folks.

Whenever I hear anybody speak a cliche, I die a little bit because it's so pathetic. It's an excuse. I mean, it's an excuse. It's a substitute for actual thinking. So it's embarrassing to me for the person when they say things like that because they've been told that.

They've been told that that's a safe thing to say and that ends the conversation. But part of the reason is because they can't really trust what they've been brought up with. They can't trust the schools. They can't trust their churches, unfortunately. can't trust the government. And so they're really expressing, I don't really know where I am. That's right. And that's the more generous way of looking at it. And then you're right to point it out.

Because I think, and this is why I'm glad you wrote this book searching for truth, I think there's so many people. They have basic questions and they're not getting them answered. They're afraid to, I wrote a series of books, 20 years ago called Everything I Always Wanted to Know About God, but we're afraid to ask. A similar concept that people are afraid to ask whether it's the priest or the minister or their born again neighbor. They're just, they're afraid they're going to get it with both barrels. And so they kind of just are looking for clues in the culture, but they're not getting it. And so that's why people like you write books like searching for truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem. And you wrote, by the way, atheism is dead.

Same kind of idea. Yes, that doesn't answer the questions that you do in this book, but it deals with some of the same stuff. Yeah. But you answer the questions on a simple level. level because there are so many questions that you're you're actually answering the questions in this book. And when you talk about the default mode that has come into American culture, you just said it as Hollywood. And it means it says, well, I believe there's some force, there's some spirituality. I just don't know what it is. I'm a nice guy. I want to be in

tune with good spirituality. It's very sloppy. It doesn't ask anything of anyone. And it also is not logical at the end of the day, but it's the best some people can do. And that's why Oprah Winfrey was so popular and why a lot of these versions of New Age stuff are so popular, because people are just, they're lost, but they know they need something. Nothing, you know, the brave atheist who says, I believe in absolutely nothing, you know, first of all, that's preposterous, but I'm saying that most people just aren't like that. Most people know there's something. and because churches and Christians maybe haven't sufficiently answered that, they kind of gravitate toward what you're talking about in Hollywood.

Yeah, a lot of the people that say they're religious or they're not religious, but they're spiritual. It's not that they're atheist, but they just have real questions. Right. And they're looking for somebody or some group that can tell them answers. In fact, sometimes they're wondering if there even are answers. And so what I was trying to do here was say, yes, there really are. The problem with that whole Eastern mystic idea is that they're basically philosophical musings by thoughtful people, but that's it.

There's nothing transcendent about it. In fact, one other little interesting thing that I found out in my research, which I was kind of surprised at. We've often said the tomb of Jesus was empty, but all the other people they died. Do you know where Muhammad is buried? I do not. He's buried in Medina, Saudi Arabia. I was going to say, I was pretty sure it was Grant's tomb. It's not Grant's tomb?

No, it's not Grant's too. But there actually is a grave of Muhammad. It's protected by people that are, I guess, whatever they do, they protect it. You know, watch it over. It's a covered tomb, and that's where his body is. Confucius is buried in the cemetery of Confucius in Kufu, Shandong province. China. Buddha was actually cremated in, I think it's Kondagar, I can't remember what the name of Kishindigar, whatever it is. Kizenite. Yeah, thank you. But he was actually cremated and the bones,

because when you cremated someone, the bones don't get destroyed, were given out to various people and so they are relics. There are relics around of Buddha. Then of course you have Jesus who, oh, he wasn't there. Hey, whatever happened to him? It is kind of amazing because this is one of the, I mean, I always say this, and this is again why I wanted to have you on and point people to your book searching for truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem is because I think there are a lot of people who really have good questions. And some of them are sort of believers and some of them aren't quite and some of them are definitely believers, but they still have questions. And when somebody asks them, they don't know what to say. And I think it's important for us to. understand what you just said, there are good answers to these things. We shouldn't pretend that, hey, who's to say? There are good answers. And one of the classic things, which I know I've written

about in two of my books, is the evidence, I never thought I'd be saying this. The evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is astonishing. In other words, it's one of those things that the more you look into it, the more you think, hey, wait a minute, I think he did maybe rise from the dead. Logic will lead you to that. Now, it can't force you to believe it. But what I find interesting is that we live in a culture that pretty much says, listen, truth is whatever you want it to be. And if you look too closely, it's just confusing. And you and I have both found the opposite. We found that, no, no, if you actually are searching for the truth, you'll be shocked. You'll be absolutely shocked at how many solid answers you'll get if you're really interested. The book is searching

for truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem. The author is my guest, George Saris. We'll be right back. Folks, welcome back talking to my friend George Saris, whose book is searching for truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem. George, I want to talk to you way more about everything that we're talking about, but I do want to ask you in this shorter segment, when did you find faith? How did that happened for in your life? I grew up a couple of interesting things. I didn't find out until I was in my 40s that my mother's father toward the end of his life was ordained as a Greek Orthodox priest. It was amazing to me. Nobody told me that. It's kind of fascinating. But I grew up, we went to Protestant churches because when he first came over from the old country, he brought his children to

Episcopal churches because they didn't have any Orthodox churches at the time. In New Hampshire. No, this was in upstate New York. That's where you were upstate New York. Yeah, a small town called Johnstown, New York. And anyway, so I grew up in a Protestant background, but I always wondered, is there a God? I think there's a God. Jesus, I'm not too sure what he did. Anyway, so I went to college at Northwestern University from 1966 to 1970.

And there was a professor there who seemed to have as his goal to destroy the faith of any students. and so I just kind of bought into what he said. I mean, he brought up some questions about the Bible and stuff like that. And so I thought, well, it's not whatever's happening. And then at the end of my junior year in college, I met some Christians that had a different focus on life. They were part of a group called Campus Crusade for Christ. They've changed the name now to crew.

But they shared a little booklet with me. A man, in fact, the book is dedicated to Conrad Cook, who was the person that actually changed my life by sharing that little booklet with me. Basically, what it was saying is the reason you don't have power in your life, the reason you're not seeing God answer prayer, the reason you're not experiencing peace and joy, the reason you don't have answers is because you're trying to be the boss of your life instead of allowing God to be the boss. You're the servant, he's the boss. And when that happened, it was like, wow. And so then I decided, I need to check out on the questions that this professor had been challenging me with. And I found there were answers. And then there were more questions. You know, the whole idea of evolution. I started looking at, wow, there are answers to these things. Is the Bible true? Wow, there are answers to all this stuff. It was exciting. And so then I graduated from college, worked with Campus Crusade for Christ for about four years in their headquarters when it was

in California, then went to seminary, got an MDIV at Gordon Conwell Seminary. And while I was in seminary, I thought, you know, there's a need for godly individuals to get into positions of influence within secular institutions. And I was interested in the media, and so I thought, well, I'll just get into the media. Why is that the media is communicating so much junk all the time? Because they're junky people. And what you need is to have some people that can actually have good thoughts, godly thoughts, that are producing the programming. And so at the time, I decided to basically be a tent maker missionary. And so I was working in the Boston area at that time, then in 1991 moved to New York.

And that's how I ended up meeting you and working, trying to share my faith. But it's just amazing to me that this happened in college. I just love when I hear stories like this, that somebody's in college and suddenly the lights go off, or the bulb goes off. And you start, I mean, it happened to me after college. But that moment when you realize, wait a minute, there are tons of great answers and books. And I had no idea that all these objections that people say, well, what about those? What about the way? There are satisfying answers to these things.

And so I started reading all these different books. And as far as I'm concerned, I've written some of those books now. And this book that you've written is one of those books. It's called Searching for Truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem. It answers all kinds of questions that everyone has, you know, did Jesus really rise from the dead? about this thing called pain. Why would God allow pain to exist? All of these important questions have great answers.

We will continue talking as the end of hour one. But my guest is George Saris, and the book is Searching for Truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem.