The Eric Metaxas Show - George Sarris (continued)

Episode Date: February 21, 2023

George Sarris, author of "Searching for Truth in Vegas, Hollywood & Bethlehem: The Quest to Discover if God is Real," continues revealing his keen discoveries.

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. Do you like your gravy thick and rich and loaded with creamy mushrooms? If no one was looking, would you chug the whole gravy boat? Chug, chug, chug, chug. Stay tuned.

Here comes Mr. Chug-a-lug-lug-lug. himself, Eric Ma, Texas. Folks, welcome back. I continue my conversation now in hour two with my friend George Saris, George W. Saris, in case you want to find George, George's website, George W. Saris.com. The book is Searching for Truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem, the quest to discover if God is real. And so, George, you and I, we've discovered that he is real, but the big news, and that's what you have in this book, is that anyone who wants to can discover the same thing. This is not just for a few religiously minded people.

Every human being has these basic questions. Who am I? Why am I here? Right. I think right now people are beginning to ask those questions. For a while, they weren't asking them. Everything was going fine. You know, we've got this wonderful culture where, you know, I make money, I do this, I do that.

But all of a sudden, everything is falling apart. And so as it's falling apart, people are beginning to wonder, are there answers? And if there are, where are those answers? And they're beginning to, I think, be open to wanting to know them. You are singing my song. I've been saying this at least for the last year that things have gotten so bad that a lot of just normal people going through their lives are saying, hey, wait a minute, what the heck is happening, something's wrong,

where do I look for answers? And the level of evil and confusion is so strong that people who wouldn't ordinarily be inclined to look for a spiritual solution are saying, this feels evil. And I wonder if there's a God who has, maybe he could be the only answer to this, because it's not a political thing. It's not a way. There's something bigger going on. So I agree with you that there has never been, really in our lifetimes, a stronger, desire on the part of just just average folks like what is happening and are their answers where

would I look for those answers yeah I think that's exactly true it's kind of interesting uh as I mentioned I grew up or I went to college from 1966 to 70 during the height of the Vietnam war era and the unrest that we had it was bad back then I mean there was rioting in the streets the the whole culture was really starting to fall apart and all of a sudden out of nowhere you get this Jesus freaks. Jesus people, like, where in the world they come from? I'm convinced that what God is doing right now is shaking the culture and shaking the Christian church. I've said for many, many years, that the evangelical church, which is what I'm a part of, is a mile wide and an inch deep.

And I was praying, I said, God, I think you need to make it a half mile wide and a foot deep. And I think that's exactly what he's doing right now. He's actually shaking the culture and shaking the Christian church. church. Yeah, no, listen, we haven't discussed this, you and I, but I agree absolutely, and I've been saying roughly the same thing, that over the decades, we've drifted and drifted in my book letter to the American Church. I talk about this idea that we've gotten so obsessed with, we say, it's all about faith, it's all about what I believe, and you think, well, yeah, but if you don't live out your faith, then you don't really have faith. You can't fool God, and it's like, well, I have these intellectual

beliefs, but it's just not reflected in how I live. And I think that we are at a time where the church, as you just said, is being shaken and the culture is being shaken. And the only example that we could go back to would be the late 60s. Everything seemed to be falling apart. And enough people turned to Jesus. It becomes the Jesus movement. Our friend Greg Lorry has a film out now called Jesus Revolution, that there was a moment when things were so bad that people, were open to this idea of Jesus, and I do think that we're at that moment again. And in some ways it's worse. I mean, at some ways it really seems to be so dark in the culture without us even having to get into specifics that your average person is saying, you know, what's it all

about? What is going on? I was kind of drifting along, like you just said, things were sort of okay. And yet now what I took for granted for decades is going away rapidly. What do I do? Where do I turn and you and I would say, uh, the God of the Bible. So in your book searching for Truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem, you, you dismiss the idea of Vegas and Hollywood. We've talked about that. So Bethlehem, um, I think for a lot of people, you were one of those people, and I was one of those people, were like, well, I'm okay with the idea of God, but ah, the Jesus thing seems a little, maybe that's too specific or something like that. So where do you take it? Well, one of the things I mentioned is about is Jesus the Messiah.

That's a big question. You know, because you've got a whole realm of Jewish people that don't believe that, right? It suddenly struck me. There's really only three things you need to know to point out a specific individual in the entire world. And then four, if you want to have an extra confirmation. For example, I am the only person in the history of the world before, currently, or ever at will be, who's named George W. Seris, born in a small upstate New York town, between the end of World War II and the beginning of the 2000 millennium. There's nobody else in the history of the world that fits that.

And then a little confirmation is that I wrote a book in 2003 titled, Searching for Truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem, the quest to discover if God is real. Nobody else fits that. Well, you look back at Jesus. All you need to know is, what's his name? He's from the line of David. I'm from the line of Saras. Where was he born? Bethlehem, very specific, that it says that in Scripture.

When was he born? You can get some specific, I talk about Isaac Newton who points out actually the specific date that Jesus was supposed to have risen from the dead. But even in more general terms, you have the prophecy from Jacob that says, before the the Messiah will come when the

ruler staff is taken from Judah that happened in 70 AD prior to that there still was a ruler staff in Israel but when the second temple was destroyed completely that was done so that means that the Messiah had to be from the line of David

he had to be coming sometime prior to 70 AD prior to 70 AD. Prior to 70A. Prior to 70 AD. And then the confirmation is the virgin birth that specifically talks that this person is going to come he's going to be born of a virgin.

Well, there's nobody else in the history of the world that fits that. It's really pretty phenomenal. Well, actually, it's interesting because a lot of people would say, oh, that's mythical, or they just wouldn't believe it. But the point is that there's no one who even claims that and it is specific when you read it in the scripture, it's really clear that it's not just a young woman, because when they referred to a young woman,

they specifically meant a virgin young woman, because if you were not a virgin, you were no longer a young woman, you were now married or you were whatever. And yeah, there's so many things. Again, if somebody dares to look into this stuff, they're going to be shocked at how much evidence there is because if you want to kind of glide through life, you can kind of pretend, well, there's no evidence,

there's a lot of different points of view. Well, I dare you, if you want to know, to look into these things. I mean, you can start with George's book searching for Truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem. But if you really are hungry to know, first of all, can I know? Right? Because we say, like, is there truth? Well, even if there is truth, the first question would be like, hey, if there is a thing called truth and about the God, can I know that truth?

Or is it just some truth that's not accessible to me? and that's part of what you deal with as well. I want to get back to the Isaac Newton thing, just because I love these sorts of things. I mentioned that we have Jeannie Constantine, who's going to be speaking at Soxas and City on February 28th, and she gets into this really cool stuff that you can kind of begin to pull out

from these ancient documents and stuff, and we can learn and we can keep learning things. But so do you remember in the book what you write about Isaac Newton? Yeah, Isaac Newton actually wrote more books or more on theology than he did on science. Really kind of phenomenal. He was a brilliant man, obviously,

but then also very much a very religious person who was committed to the scriptures. And so he looked at when there's a comment that Ezra left to go to the, to start, to rebuild the temple. And then there's a prophecy relating to that of when the Messiah will come. and when he will be cut off.

And so he says, okay, I've got two dates. One of them is if it starts when Ezra left Jerusalem, or left, yeah, no, Babylon, wherever he was, or when he arrived in Jerusalem. Okay, hang on. We're going to put a pin in that. Ladies and gentlemen, in the show business, we call this a cliffhanger. We'll be right back talking to George Saras. The book is searching for truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem.

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The book is Searching for Truth in Vegas, Hollywood. in Bethlehem. So George, we were just talking about, in the book you talk about how Isaac Newton, probably the greatest scientists who ever lived, wrote more about the Bible than he wrote about science. And you were specifically talking about he was trying to figure out when exactly was Jesus crucified and raised from the dead. And he just did a kind of an extraordinary dive into this. So where does he come out? You were just talking about it. Let me just read this one, and it says, for Newton, the prophecy referred to,

from Daniel, referred to 490 years from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem to the time of the crucifixion of Christ. He had to, he had an extensive knowledge of ancient history and identified the decree as occurring in the year 458 BC. Now, depending on whether the prophecy began when Ezra left Babylon or when he arrived in Jerusalem to start building, he offered two dates for when the crucifixion was prophesied to occur. AD 33 or AD 34.

One of the two dates generally accepted by scholars for the crucifixion of Christ on our modern calendars is Friday, April 3rd, AD 33. Well, what's interesting about that, Jeannie Konstantino, whom I mentioned as my Socrates and City guest on February 28th, she talks about this too. And it's so interesting because she says probably it seems like Jesus was 37 or 38 when he was crucise. not 30 or 33 or something. And look, at the end of the day, who cares? It is what it is. But it's fascinating to me how much we can learn. The more you dig in, the more you can discover these things.

And of course, so many people have gone before us and asked these vital questions. So what else do you go into in the book? I know you talk about the idea of, I mean, one of the things that people say, against one of these cliches. They say, oh, the Bible has changed in the Middle Ages by the monks. Okay, that's not true. I've written extensively about how it's ridiculously untrue, but you answer that in this book because a lot of people have been told this. Yeah, it's really kind of interesting. If you look at how the Bible was communicated, one of the things to keep in mind is that there were official copies and then

unofficial copies of the ancient manuscripts. And the Hebrew Bible, the oldest manuscript, I think you mentioned this in your book as well, the oldest manuscript that we had, prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was like 10-something AD. So the Dead Sea Scrolls was a thousand years earlier. They found 95% of it was exactly the same. The other five percent were primarily slips of the pen, changes in place names. For example, we have Cape Canaveral that changed the Cape Kennedy that changed back to Cape Canaveral. So that's what they were doing. But anyway, those were student copies. Those are not the official copies. If you look at what the official copies, the detail of what the scribes had to do, do you know what the middle letter

of the Pentateuch is? I do not. Is it, let me guess, G? Just kidding. No, I think it's Leviticus Chapter 11, verse 42. I think that's the middle letter is in that book. Do you know, that how many letters, now this is, you got to remember, the Hebrew Old Testament has only consonants. Do you know how many consonants there are in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible? I do not. 400,945. 400,000. 945 letters.

945 letters. And those are all consonants in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. So what the scribes had to do was they had this, I mentioned in my book, this extensive list. of things they had to follow through. But one of them was they had to count the number of letters, find the middle letter to make sure that they copied it correctly. Okay, so folks, what we're saying, think about this. They were so dedicated, so ultra, crazy dedicated to accuracy.

We can't even imagine in our sloppy world, where there are typos in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal every day, they took the Word of God so, exceedingly seriously. It was so holy that changing one letter was sacrilegious. Right. In fact, there was a rule that said if the king walks in when the scribe is writing the name of God, the scribe has to ignore the king. That's how serious they took this thing. Do you know what the middle, or they have some interesting little thing. When I was in seminary, in fact, I have it outside. I have a little Hebrew Bible. And I think it's numbers,

chapter 25 verse 10, there's a letter, it's called a wow or vav, depending on which seminary you went to, it has a crack in it. If you look at the letter, it's got a little crack. And there's a little footnote, it's called a circlos, and on the bottom, in Aramaic, is a footnote that says, wow, cracked. They were so careful about how they transmitted the text that if they noticed anything different, they would put a note for it. So some scribe happened to notice this one happened to be cracked. Wow, we've got to make sure that we copy it exactly as it was that I received it. Again, the more you look into this, folks, and this is why I think it was C.S. Lewis and screw tape letters about young atheist has to be very careful what books he reads or whatever.

Because the more you look into this, the more you'll find, you don't really have a leg to stand on because there are extraordinary answers to all these good and honest question. So if you're looking for hope, there is hope, folks. There's more than hope. There's truth. The God of the Bible is real. He wants you to know him. He wants to bless you. He wants to love you. It's so beautiful. And we're living in a culture that says, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. So we're here to say, nah, nah, nah, to those voices and to say, if you're interested, you will be stunned. And this is a popular level book. You wrote this for everybody. This is the kind of thing you can use in a church group or as an outreach to say to people like, hey, are you interested in knowing if there is a God?

And, you know, there's a book called Searching for Truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem. Let's start there. Because you and I were saying that there is a hunger today. People want to know, listen, I just want to know, is there a reason that I'm here? Is life meaningless? What's going to happen in the future? So, George, yeah.

I just say looking at just how different the Bible is from the rest of religious literature. I mentioned the book, some of the other, the Vedas of Hinduism, I think it's Hinduism, whatever they are, the Tripitaka of Buddhism. Most people have never even heard of them. The Bible, the extensive translation and the extensive distribution is phenomenal. Oh. In fact, one of the things I say in the book is, if I were God and I wanted to communicate to mankind who I am, what would I do? Well, number one, I'd want to have something that was in a physical form that could be transmitted from one culture to another, one generation to another, so it doesn't undergo decay. Okay.

Number two, I'd want to specifically tell the people that I am the Lord. I am God. I'm the one that's doing this. Number three, I would want something that was somehow set apart from all other literature by miracles or whatever. Well, you see the Bible, that's exactly what it does. And also I would want something that dates from ancient times because I don't want something late like Joseph Smith coming along in the 1800s with the Book of Mormon. I want something that's going to be affecting people from the beginning of time. Well, the Bible fits that absolutely perfectly.

And the other interesting thing about the Bible is its message about God loves you, which is a phenomenally different message than any other religion. It's radical. And we've so much, our whole culture is so suffused with that concept that we don't appreciate the radicalness of it. The idea that a God who created the universe, the judge of the world loves you, knows you personally, actually loves you? That is as radical as it gets. So much so that many people take it for granted and blow it off. And then the fact that this God actually came personally to tell you about who he was. That's what's so amazing.

because in the person of Christ, God didn't just send a messenger to say, hey, I just want you guys to know I'm God and this is what I'm like. He came himself. That's what is amazing about Christianity. It is. I mean, you know, people call it the greatest story ever told. It actually is. The idea that he came, that he suffered, that he died, that he rose from the dead. I mean, the more you look at it, and this is how I want to encourage people, the more you look at it, the more it blesses you, the more it amazes you, because, again, I think a lot of us, we live in a culture where we say, well, don't look too close. There are no good answers. Science has sort of disproved the Bible or whatever. That's not true. That's absolutely not true. And the more you look into it, the more you'll be astonished at how untrue it is and how you've been gaslit and let astray. There's so much else in this book, George, please stick around because I want to get

to more of it. You've got chapters. Is the Bible God's Word? There's a question. Is the Bible God's word? How about pain and suffering? And pain and suffering is about as big as it gets. So is the Bible God's word? When we come back, I want to talk about that. And then I want to get into the pain and suffering because that's the honest question that everyone has. Because if you've suffered, if you've lost someone you love or whatever, you do ask the question. say, Lord, I don't get it. I don't get it. If you're all loving and all powerful, why would you allow this? And that's a good question. We'll be right back talking to George W. Saras. Tell me why Relief Factor is so successful at lowering or eliminating pain. I'm often asked that question just the other night. I was asked that question. Well, the owners of Relief Factor tell me they believe our bodies were designed to heal. That's right, designed to heal. And I agree with them. And the doctors who formulated Relief Factor for them selected the four best

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discounts on all MyPillow Bedding products, including the Giza Dream Bedsheets for as low as 2998, and get all your shopping done now while quantities last. Again, use code Eric and Save Mypillow.com. Welcome back talking to the author of Searching for Truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem, my friend

George Saris. Okay, George, one of the things that people often ask, like, if you quote the Bible, they go like, okay, you're quoting the Bible. So what? I mean, why are you quoting the Bible? And, you know, the reason reason we're quoting the Bible is because we say it is the word of God, and we believe that's what gives it this kind of ultimate authority. But how can we know whether it's the word of God?

Well, just looking at what it says, number one, it claims to be the word of God, which is very unusual. The only other book, really, that claims to be the word of God that is sort of historical in a long term is the Quran. But that comes along at 600 AD. That's really, really late. got to have something a lot earlier if you're going to be actually impacting the entire world. And generations, all the generations. So God specifically says that it's from him. And then he's got extensive miracles that are occurred. That things that occurred, that God, I go into some specific about Cyrus and Babylon.

You know, when Cyrus defeated Babylon, this is, if you've ever seen the, the film Lord of the Rings, there's a one part where they go in and they blow up this gate at Helms Deep because they go through, there's a water channel. I think that's where Tolkien got it from. Because what happened with Cyrus, he realized that Babylon was the greatest city of the ancient world, phenomenal city. And it was impregnable up until the time of World War II when you had airplanes and you had artillery that could destroy that kind of a wall.

Just phenomenal. Well, it also had the Euphrates River came into the, under the wall, into the city so that the people could actually have, they could withstand a siege for years. Right. Well, what Cyrus did was he diverted the water and he walked underneath the wall. And as he did, he took over the city with hardly any resistance. Just phenomenal. But that was predicted a couple of hundred years before he was.

was even born. And there's a number of other specifics. Now, when you say that, that that was predicted, in the Bible, it says this is going to happen hundreds of years before Cyrus does it. And there are innumerable examples in scripture. Again, if you're honest and you look at it, it'll boggle your mind because you'll say, I don't understand how it could get this kind of thing right over and over. And, you know, even if there's some you don't believe, there's so many. because this stuff was written, you know, 15 centuries BC, 14th centuries BC. I mean, this is a long time ago. This is a thousand years before classical Greece.

And there's all of this stuff that was written. It's so beautiful. You got Alexander the Great who defeats the city of Tyre, which is phenomenal. I tell a little bit about that. And I'm not sure if you mentioned that in your book. I don't think so, no. Okay, the city of Tyre was on an island. Actually, I think it might have been Ezekiel that predicted that it's going to be destroyed.

Well, you have a city on the land, and then they have the second city that's on an island about a half mile off, right? So Nebuchadnezzar comes in, destroys the city on the land, but the people move to Tyre. And the specific comment that Isaiah or Ezekiel makes, I think it might be maybe say whatever. Anyway, is that the land will be scraped, okay, and it's going to be thrown into the sea. Tire is going to be thrown into the sea, and there's going to scrape it. Well, Alexander, the Great, comes along a couple of hundred years later, and he wants to offer some sacrifices on a temple on the island city. The people just blow them off.

So he tells his army to literally scrape with their shields all the dirt that's on the mainland city, throw all the rubble into it, he made a causeway from the mainland to the island, marches over with his army, and defeats it completely. Phenomenal. That happened hundreds of years after the prophecy was done, and a very specific, extremely specific in terms of the details. So the Bible is just amazing. I did not know that, and I look forward to finding that in this book, parts of which I've read

all the way through. You know that? Parts of which I read all the way through, but that part I did not get to. But look, this kind of stuff is at least fascinating because there's so many people that just think, oh, who's to say, who's it? Listen, folks, you can just look into this. And again, the more you look into it. Now, the biggest question of all always has to do with pain and suffering. That's the question that every honest person has. So how do we answer that? Yeah, that is definitely an important question. In fact, in my experience, I remember talking with a Jewish producer one time for a commercial that I was working with.

And he said, well, how can you possibly believe in a God who would allow the millions of Jews to be killed in Nazi Germany? Anger. Well, that's a lot of people have. Or others that are suffering because of why would God allow birth defects? I mean, I talk about one. birth defect, there's these two people, they're called conjoined twins. What people say, Siamese twins, it's actually conjoined twins. Laura and Reba Chappelle, one of them is significantly taller than the other. They're connected at their head. One faces this way, the other faces that way.

How could God allow that? If you need evidence to be angry at the so-called God who would allow this, I mean, you can understand why people have this emotion. Right. How about torture? Why would God allow people to be tort? That's where someone purposefully inflicts pain. That's amazing.

Well, so I discuss all of those kinds of things in the book. Well, let me get that. I'll answer a couple. We're going to go to a break, but I want to say again, folks, the book is searching for truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem. This is important stuff. People are looking for answers. The author is George W. Saras, S-A-R-I-S.

We'll be right back. With the overturn of Rovi, 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. You've decided to stop shopping or doing business there, but did you know that you most likely own stock in those companies through your 401ks, IRAs, and other investment accounts? Folks, this is a huge problem, and we need to do something about this to send a message to Wall Street through our investments. You need to go to inspireadvisors.com and get a free Inspire Impact Report. 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 inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. Advisory services are offered through Inspire Advisors LLC, a registered investment advisor with the SEC. Welcome back, folks, talking to George Saris. The book is searching for truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem. So, George, you were just referring to a couple of things that are, they are genuinely

honest objections to this idea of the God of the Bible, because you say these things are so horrible, it doesn't make sense. If they were a God, surely he would not allow those things. I always say there's no easy answer to that. I, myself, you know, anytime anybody gives an easy answer to you. to it, you say, well, look, you don't appreciate the pain and the whatever. There are no easy answers, but there are answers. So what are some of the things we can say? Yeah, pain is real. And to try to minimize that is not a good idea because, yeah, pain is really real. It's physical sometimes,

sometimes psychological. And sometimes the psychological, emotional pain can be even worse than the physical pain of something coming along. Anyway, but there are a number of reasons why I think God allowed it. Number one is free will. I mean, God chose that he wanted mankind to have a free will. That's extremely important because you can make, he could have made mankind a robot and said, and programmed it. So do you love me?

Yes, I love you. You are absolutely wonderful. That would have been a total sham. Well, because then that's not love. We understand this is the conundrum. Right. But the second thing is, God has placed. a limit on the amount of pain any individual or any culture will be allowed to suffer.

And that's extremely important because there is, in reality, no such thing is unbearable pain from God's perspective. Now, we may think that the limit that God put on is too wide, but from God's perspective, there is a limit. At any point in physical suffering, at some point, the area of pain will go numb, the person will go unconscious or ultimately will die. So there is a limit that God has placed on suffering, physical suffering that any one individual might have. Okay, that doesn't give me much comfort, but please continue. That's right. Well, it actually should give it a little bit of comfort because it means that God is not going to allow you to he knows exactly how much you can handle and he'll never go beyond that. I think that's extremely

important for us to keep in mind. And God has given loving people, loving medicines to be able to deal with pain, physical pain, that kind of thing. But anyway, I deal with a couple of different reasons why God might do it. One is obviously to develop character. When I was on crusade staff back in the early 1970s, I had just gotten there. There was this man going around with a woman. He was in a wheelchair. This woman was pushing him along. He was wearing weird stuff, looked kind of weird, and I always felt sorry for him. Until one day, he's the person that's speaking at our Defotions. I was shocked. And he explained that he had been a competition diver, that he had dove into the pool, broke his back, and he became a quadriplegic, or paraplegic, I think, at that point.

And then he said, and Eric, I was blown away. He said, that was the greatest thing that ever happened in my life. Because if it hadn't been for that accident, my life would have been pursuing trivial things. As a result of that accident, my life has done significant things. He and his wife, the woman that was pushing him along, they were some of the top linguists in the world because of that accident. He then pursued something significant. In fact, he wore these weird outfits. They were all given to him by heads of state at different places around the world. So it provided direction. Why did God allow that to happen? To provide direction for that particular person's life. I mean, it's interesting because there's no question that nobody looks for suffering,

but oftentimes the worst thing that happens to you, in retrospect, you think if it hadn't been for that, I wouldn't have turned that corner to God or to whatever, and I don't know where, I don't want to think where I'd be today. The other thing, and I don't know if you go into it in the book searching for truth that I'm holding here, but the idea that in the Christian faith, God sends his son into the world to suffer and to die, to be with us in suffering and in dying. And no other religion deals with it that way. And that's amazing. My dad owned a restaurant. All Greeks own restaurants. All Greeks are philosophers, right? As you know. Right. And my dad, when I was a little boy, I had to, I worked in my dad's restaurant, right?

like everybody else. Their kids, their whole family works in the restaurant. I had to clean the toilets. You have never seen such dirty toilets as when people come in in a public place and leave them horribly dirty. But my father would go in and clean it before he had me clean it. He would teach me by doing it himself. And so I thought to myself a number of years ago, why did Jesus come and have to die in the cross? Because he wanted to say, hey, look guys, I'm not just telling you to go clean the toilet. I'm not telling you to experience suffering. I will experience that same suffering probably to a greater degree than you ever even considered because I want to show you that I love you and that it's okay. It's part of my plan and there are purposes that I have for that. I tell you the depths

when you just think about all of this stuff. And again, that's to me the beauty of the Christian faith and of you're writing this book about the Christian faith is that there are answers. And And, you know, we don't have cavalier answers, but there are answers. And I'll say this, and this is kind of the point of my book is atheism dead on another level, is that let's say, you say, well, I don't buy all that stuff. Well, you've got a problem because the other side of this, in other words, if you say, well, there's no God, what if I got, is infinitely less plausible. And in those, you might say, well, I don't, I'm not buying your answers. Well, whose answers are you buying? Because if you're buying the idea that we emerged through random processes and that we just got here because of nothing, it's just random accidental stuff, that's lunacy.

And the more we learn from science, the more we know that is absolute lunacy. The idea that life has no meaning, nobody lives that way. Nobody can dare to face a world with no meaning where your life is meaningless, the love you have. have for your children or whatever is just, you know, just hormones and just chemicals designed to prepare. No one can face that. And so I want to challenge people and say, look, if you aren't satisfied with these answers, tell me what are your answers?

And inevitably, I think people get uncomfortable at that point because they're happy to say, well, I'm just going to hang here in the middle while you're being intellectually dishonest. We're going to be right back final segment with George Saris. You can find him at George W.saris.com. The book is searching for truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem, the quest to discover if God is real. We'll be right back.

Folks, I'm talking to George Saras. The book is searching for truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem. So, George, we're talking about the thornyest of the thorny issues. Suffering the misery in the world. people really suffer. And I can see, I want to say, I get how people get angry and they just want to walk away

from the idea of God. They don't get it. But you were just adding something. Yeah, interestingly, one of the reasons God has is to demonstrate his power and his grace. I mentioned Captain, actually I didn't mention his name, but his Captain McDaniels was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, tortured for six years.

He said when he came out of that, that was the greatest time. in his life. He had experienced a closeness with God that he never had before, and he was amazed. Laura and Reba Chappelle, the conjoined twins, somebody asked them, are you, would you like to be separated? They said, oh, why would you ever want to do that? You destroy two people's lives. God is able to give grace to anyone who's going through trouble. Well, see, this is a big one, Because, again, no rational person wants to suffer. But if you understand how much God loves you, you understand that he's going to walk with you and give you grace through whatever you're going through.

And people right now, listening to this program, they're going through stuff. And I want to exhort you. Turn to him. Ask him to reveal himself to you. Ask him to draw you closer. It can be so beautiful. Don't miss that. Don't miss that. George, I'm just so glad that you wrote the book because I know that there are tons of people that are hungry for this.

Let's end. We just got a minute or two to end on a lighter note here. You have done voiceovers. We would recognize your voice. What are some of the commercials where your voice is on TV? Well, the one right now that is the most popular is Puff's Tissues. If you see puff tissues, the puffs plus lotion, it started out a number of years ago with Little Dakota's nose was quivering in fear because she thought an ordinary tissue was near. The fiery tissue made her nose sore and red,

but Dad slayed the problems with puffs plus lotion instead. Anyway, the tagline is a nose in need deserves puffs indeed. So if you see any of those television commercials, or radio commercials, I'm the voice. And if you hate those commercials, don't hate George. He's just trying to make a living. All right, come on. Come on.

That's right. But you have done stuff for, I don't know, at Burger King. I was trying to remember because you and I've known each other so many years, but you've done, it's just an amazing thing, the whole voice overworld that people hear these voices and they don't know. Well, you know, I think of myself sometimes as John the Baptist, the voice crying out in the wilderness. Nobody knows who you are.

They may hear your voice, but they don't know anything about you. Right. It's kind of a nice thing. I can go to places and nobody say, oh, wow, that's George. Well, maybe that's not a nice thing. But anyway, they never know anything. You know, I can go to church. Nobody knows what I do.

They can hear my voice, but they didn't do that. I've done a lot of industrial films where that's even more. Right. Unless you happen to be the person in that industry watching that video, I never know it. Right. Well, it's just extraordinary that you've been doing this for so many years. And you have written books. You've done ministry.

I want to say to people again that I think we are living at a time. We said this earlier where people are just really hungry for answers. And I want to say that George's book would be a spectacular place to start. You know, we answered some of the questions. Is there a God? There's a question. Did Jesus really rise from the dead? How close is the Bible of today to the original Bible?

These are all good questions. And if you want answers, folks, in this and other books, you can find real answers. This book is searching for truth in Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehem. And my guest has been my friend George Saras. George, thank you for writing the book. And thanks for coming into the studio. It is a privilege, and thank you for giving me that privilege.