The Eric Metaxas Show - Joel Rosernberg

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

Joel Rosenberg joins to give an update on the situation in Israel 

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas 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, protein powder, and a mushy banana. For your mind? Drink it all down. It's nummy. I wub, vanilla.

I wub, I wub, wub, vanilla. Here comes Eric Metaxus. Hey there, folks. I just realized we haven't done an Ask Metaxus in a little while. We have some questions, and even better than that, we have Albin Seder to ask the questions of Metaxus. Albin, go ahead. Oh, I will. But first, I just want to say, if you have not, this is my question to you out there, folks.

If you have not bought my book obvious yet, you better. Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, obvious. I've got a question for people who haven't yet bought obvious. What are you crazy? Yeah. It's a question. What are you crazy? That's the answer.

It's so obvious. Come on. Okay. I don't know. I haven't looked at the questions ahead of time, Albin. So please be gentle. And it has been a while because this question is actually from the Super Bowl. My friends and I are curious, Eric.

I know I'd like, we'd like to know your reaction to the Super Bowl commercials. Okay. I've talked about this on the program before. I did not watch the Super Bowl. I was on a plane coming home from Seattle. He's actually Oregon. I was in Oregon. And I was on a plane coming home.

And on the plane, everybody else on the plane was watching the Super Bowl. I was watching the movie Hacksaw Ridge. And the movie Hacksaw Ridge is such a lot. a great movie. I recommend it very, very highly. I won't say more than that, but that is true. I did not watch the Super Bowl. Okay, next question. Okay, Mr. Metaxa, so this is official. I admire the way you dress. Where do you get your dress shirts? You know, I get dressed shirts from so many different places that I don't, it's not like I have a place. I have a couple from suit supply, like a white shirt. Kamakura, Roger Stone, the menswear officinado, Robert Stone, turned me onto Kamakura shirts.

Those are very nice. I have a number of Ralph Lauren purple label shirts that I invest. It's like an investment. But I've just got all kinds of shirts from so many different places. I'm flattered that somebody would ask me. Thank you. Okay. Here's a...

And I have to recommend Brooks Brothers, but I don't like the no iron shirts. I have to take a stand against the no iron shirts. I'm against them. Okay. I'm a ginum. Okay. A little involved one here.

In your book, Letter to the American Church, if I have understood it correctly, you seem to say that Luther interpreted Romans 13 in a different way than when we should because of the heavy influence of the church and the government of his day. But Paul wrote Romans 13. under a very different governmental circumstance than Luther.

And he still wrote it as though we should obey the authority because they were placed in power by God. I would love to put these questions to rest in my heart because it's very confusing. And I don't want to sit back and do nothing while evil takes over here. But I also want to be clear with my conscience before God. Much respect to you, your book, confused me on this issue, though. Well, it can be confusing. I think scripture is really clear that we're not supposed to obey unjust laws. I mean, if Caesar tells me you're supposed to worship Caesar, I'm going to, as a Christian, say, I'm sorry, no, I will not worship Caesar. I will not put a pinch of incense, you know, in front of a statue of Caesar. That goes against my beliefs.

The government will say, well, we demand that you do it. If you don't, we'll kill you. as a Christian, I would say, well, then you'll have to kill me because I will not obey an unjust law. And so when Paul writes about this in Romans 13, it should be obvious that it's a little bit more complicated than, oh, yeah, obey the government, whatever the government tells you. And there's many other scriptural passages. I mean, I think of the whole book of Esther. It's about Mordecai not doing what Haman says the government is commanding you to do this. And so this idea that we're supposed to just go along with the government, also in America today, we the people are the government.

So this idea that there's some bureaucracy, some government telling me what to do, it's a little more complicated. We're not in first century Rome or first century Palestine. We are in the United States of America. So it's complicated. Now, the story with Luther, Luther basically was saying that the rebellion against the prince, If you read my Luther book, it's all in there. But it's, there was something called the peasants rebellion. And it really was kind of like, you know, Antifa mobs to some extent. And he said that the princes should crush this rebellion. And he said, you know, the princes have been given the power

by God to rule by the sword and they should use it. They use it to protect the innocent. This is their job. And of course, that's correct. But I think over time, people kept looking to Luther, like, that's all that needs to be said on it when Luther was talking about a specific context of the time. And so when you get the Bonhoeffer's day, Bonhofer was saying, we're not supposed to obey the government. The government is Adolf Hitler. It is wicked. And so it becomes more complicated. And we're living at a time now where we have to kind of think for ourselves. And when people say, just do whatever the government tells you to do, just get the jab, just keep your mouth shut about government corruption, about stealing the election. It's none of your business. You say, no,

no, no, no, it is my business. And I'm not going to go along with what the government tells me to do. I'm not going to shut down my church. So it's a little complicated. Yeah. When I was a kid, I mean, there were two things the government was responsible for, and it was really one thing. It was to protect the citizens from enemies outside and within. So when they say, you know, defund the police, that's the inside. We're supposed to protect against the inside enemies. and open the borders, that's the outside enemy. Is this so-called government doing that at all? So should we say something?

And again, we are, we the people government. We're not like we install somebody that because we don't like Trump. We're going to stall somebody else. Yeah, like a dictator. Yeah, exactly like that. Okay, let's move on to the next question. Okay, I'm thoroughly enjoying your book, is atheism dead? Is atheism dead?

Let me say that correctly. I have a question about your reference to the Ark of the Covenant being destroyed when the Romans destroyed the temple. I've always read that there is no indication of what happened to the Ark after the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BC. Other than rumors, it had made its way to Ethiopia. Is there a reference for the Ark being in the temple in 70 AD? Okay, this is one of these questions.

I love it and I hate it because I'm embarrassed that I don't have the answer. and that's what makes it such a good question because I think there was some confusion when I was doing my research on that. That is something I have to look into. I might have gotten that wrong. It wouldn't make a difference in the overall book, but that's a little fact that I might have gotten that wrong. I don't know. So I'm going to have to say a pass temporarily on that. Okay.

Here's a question I have. And I think you might know this off the top of your head. But I didn't look it up. And by the way, people, you're not allowed to Google the answers, okay? No Googling. What two cities are referenced in a tale of two cities? A Tale of Two Cities was written by Charles Dickens in the middle part of the 19th century. And I believe, I've actually never read that of Dickens' books, but I believe that the two cities are London and Paris.

Yes, I think so too. And I, you know what, I was going to Google the answer. So I would have the correct answer when I, when I asked you these questions. But we've got time for one more quick one. And I, and this is just out there. I know that letter to the American church has been made into a incredible film. Ann and I saw it, it just blow away great. It's getting into churches. You're getting into churches with a message. Where can people go, Eric, to find out more about Letter to the American Church, the film, and how to get it into their church and to buy the film and share it with their neighbors. Well, listen, first of all, I hope every single Christian in America will watch this, please, folks. It's just a couple of bucks to watch it yourself. You can watch it with your family. You can watch it multiple times. You can share it with your neighbors. But if you go to letter to the American Church.com, all the information is there. Letter to the American Church.com. there's information on all the free screenings around America. You can go to a free screening if you prefer.

You can sign your church up to do a free screening. So I want to exhort everyone who's listening. Please help us get the word out. Go to letter to the Americanchurch.com. Share that on social media. It's very important, and we'd love you to be a part of helping us get the word out. Albin, thank you. Thank you, Eric, again.

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a lot of people, but you, as soon as I see you, there's only one thing I want to talk to you about. So I'm happy to talk to you about anything you want to talk about, but the thing I want to talk to you about is Israel. You have a very, very close relationship with the state of Israel, what's going on there. You do the Rosenberg report. What is your sense this week? Where are we?

What is happening? Well, you and I sit here in this beautiful hotel that I happen to love. All right. I find it quite charming. Some people like it. I'm glad some people like it. I'm just being honest. You know, differences are good.

I've just literally landed just a couple days ago from Israel. We are in the midst of the worst war in the modern history of Israel, at least since the War of Independence in 1948, which went on a year and a half. So we're only four and a half months into this war, but more civilians have died in this war than at any other time in Israeli history. The October 7th attack, invasion by the Hamas terrorist forces, killed more Jews in one day than any,

other time in history since the Holocaust. So it's, I would say Israel is in its darkest hour. All those things are bad. However, Israel is winning. No thanks to some folks in, you know, in Washington or in Brussels or in other countries around the world, certainly Brazil, which is accusing us of genocide, South Africa's government accusing us, taking us to trial. Can you help me understand. Somehow we are committing genocide. Help me understand. Because, you know, I'm interested in the truth. And so when people say stuff like genocide, where are they coming from? What are they saying?

Because you hear this. And I want to say, you know, if they have a point to make, probably there's something to what they're saying. I always want to know what it is. Why would they say a thing like that? In other words, it strikes me as it could be just anti-Jewish propaganda. They hate Israel, so they use the term genocide. What are they commenting on? civilian casualties in Gaza?

I mean, is that what they're commenting on and they call it genocide, as though Israel actually wants to kill everybody who lives in Gaza? Are they claiming this? Essentially, yes. So the actual definition of genocide, there is an international legal definition. There's a whole convention that Israel is part of the ratification. Why? Because the term genocide was actually created by a Polish Jew during the Holocaust.

Yeah. Come up with a word for. Well, look, genocide as a Greek, I know what it means, right? Genos is a people group, okay? Genocide is the wiping out of a people group. So the Nazis wanted to commit genocide to kill every Jew. We've had this before in history very rarely. But when people throw that term around, as though Israel, like the Nazis, has no values

and wants to wipe out everybody who's... It's an unbelievable thing. I guess the point is... It is unbelievable. When somebody says something like that, I immediately want to discount everything they say because I can't, I just can't believe that, you know. If you throw around the term genocide to mean anything that you don't like in warfare, then it devalues the meaning. Yeah.

It's important meaning. By the own, by the UN's own definition of warfare, the accidental killing of civilians in a war is not a war crime. Obviously. It's bad. Yeah. But sometimes it's tragically inevitable. if your objective is a legitimate legal target. The fact that a lot of Palestinians have died in Gaza isn't because Israel's trying to kill Palestinians,

much less, in an incident, Palestinians, much less wipe them out or even drive them out. And what's happening is the genocidal terrorist organization that we're up against, Hamas, whose actual 1988 charter says we want to wipe all Israel out and kill every Jew and drive them out of the land. That's genocidal. So we're actually up against a defined enemy that claims to be genocidal. And they are wrapping themselves around Palestinian civilians, including babies, women, and children, and our own hostages that they took on October 7th. That's why Palestinian civilians are dying.

But if you look at what is the proof? Let's just give you three or four examples of why it's proof that Israel isn't doing it. Number one, if you're really trying to kill and wipe out all of the Palestinians, why did Israel arm the Palestinian Authority with weapons to have a police force? You wouldn't arm, no Germans armed the Jews in the pursuit of genocide. Number two, if you're pursuing genocide, why would you send 15 million leaflets to land on the population saying, here's a map, here's where you need to leave the home that you're in, because you're in the way of an invasion that's coming, go to these places,

This is where there'll be food, water, shelter, medical supplies. No Jew got the map in the Holocaust, right? And there were five million direct phone calls to families to say, you have to leave the Israeli military is coming in to kill and defeat Hamas. This is where you go. And no military that's trying to commit genocide provides food, water, shelter, and medical supplies. So it's just so obvious. So your point was it is anti-Semitism.

It's Jew hatred. There's no other way that a government, much less an individual, would say any of these things if you didn't hate the Jews and we're looking. You could only see us as the monster when we're defending ourselves from monsters. And I just want to be clear. I always feel like I want to annotate these conversations so that my audience is tracking in case anybody's missing anything. Sure.

Jew hatred is demonic. By definition, the Jews are God's chosen people to hate the Jews, specifically to hate the Jews, is demonic. And when I hear people screaming about genocide, it's the same thing when people say, if you do not affirm me or affirm a trans agenda, you're murdering people, you're causing death. When they play that card, you can't take them seriously because they're basically. basically saying in a fancy way, shut up, unless you agree with me, I'm just going to scream. I'm going to scream. I'm not interested in dialogue. So we're seeing a lot of that. There's no surprise. And let's look at the facts. Hamas, what they did, this was not a military action. This was sadistic, wanton cruelty on October 7th.

And I think that's what's so amazing to me is that anybody who knows a little bit of what happened understands that it was such a wicked act. The hijackers who flew the planes into the buildings on 9-11 didn't do this kind of thing. Right? As horrible as that was, it was not gouging eyes and raping. No, but I think if you fly your plane, I'm not saying that they wouldn't. You kill everybody on the plane and then they try to kill 50,000 people and set them all on fire. Right. But no, but that action, those actions I don't think would have qualified as genocidal because they were one-off.

I mean, there were three of them, admittedly, and four technically, but we were. you know, those heroes took it down. But you're right. Even the idea of chopping off the heads of babies that are sleeping in their cribs, of setting an entire family on fire in their home, of shooting a mother in front of her children, and then killing the children in front of the father, and then kidnapping people.

It's sadistic. A nine-month-old baby and taking them into terror tunnels, which I was just in. Reporting for TBN, the Rosenberg Report, and all Israel news. our digital site. The IDF invited me two weeks ago to go into these terror tunnels and see the cages to step into the cages where people, Israeli civilians, innocent civilians who have no connection to any war or anything like that. Yeah. And actually, quite peace-loving, they would put together a Palestinian state tomorrow politically if they could. But they were, the sexual trauma against women. The list of atrocities is so bad that I am surprised. said you're not surprised. I actually am surprised, not the Hamas did it, but that so much of the

world, so much of the world, so much of the student campuses, so many world governments, so many world leaders have made it seem like we deserve it or that we are responsible for it. I didn't realize we were quite in that place. I know biblically we're heading, you know, towards times where the entire world will turn against Israel. But look, we were in the process of making the peace treaties with one country after. another after another in the Arab world showing that even the Arab world doesn't see us as the enemy. Listen, I've got a very tough question for you before we go to the break. I want you to be honest.

You really like the Gaylord? I like this hotel. All right. We're going to agree to disagree, tough guy. We're going to be right back. Folks, I need you to sign up for Socrates Plus. Do not forget go to Socrates in the city plus.com. A lot of exciting stuff we've just put on there.

in the city plus.com. Please sign up. We'll be right back talking to Joel Rosenberg at the NRB. 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 ingredients, yes, 100% drug-free ingredients, and each one of them helps your body deal with inflammation. Each of the four ingredients deals with inflammation from a different metabolic pathway. That's the point. So approaching from four different angles may be why so many people find such wonderful relief. If you've got back pain,

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Again, Neutrametics, N-U-T-R-A-M-E-D-I-X.com. Nutrametics.com use the code Eric for 15% off. Folks, welcome back. We're at the N-R-B in the controversial Gaylord. Very controversial resort and convention center. Heated controversy. But I'm talking to my friend, Joel Rosenberg, with the Rosenberg Report on TBN.

You can find him at Joel, Rosenberg.com. We're talking about Israel, and I have to say that you just as we went to the break, the idea that people on campuses are turning a blind eye to what we both know happened. Joel, it's actually interesting to me because it gives us a window. Because in history, you say, how could that happen? How could the Holocaust happen? How could these things happen? and we get a picture now. Students today are, it's a combination of ignorance, a combination of just emotion,

that they don't want to hear anything because in their mind the Jews have done these terrible things, and so they don't, you know, it's hard when you're dealing with that kind of emotion. And I'll say it again, I think that it has its roots in the demonic, that this hatred of the Jews has a particularly, demonic aspect to it. It's not just, oh, you know, there's something about it.

There's a way to describe that biblically. I think one of the most important verses in the New Testament that helps explain anti-Semitism is John 1010. That doesn't seem like an obvious verse, but let's play it out. Jesus describes Satan as the thief, right, who comes to rob, kill, and destroy. Jesus describes himself as the exact photographic negative opposite, right? Jesus comes that they may have life and have it abundantly. So in that you see that they're not equal, but they are opposite. And so if God says, as he does in the Bible, that I've chosen the Jews to bless them, Satan is basically saying, since he's the opposite, I'm choosing the Jews to hate you.

And God says, I'm choosing you to bless you. No, no, Satan says, I'm choosing you to curse you. Okay, well, God says, I'm going to give you a land. Satan says, I'm going to take it away. God says, I'm going to make Jerusalem, the city of peace. Satan says, no, I'm going to make it a city of bloodshed. God says, I'm going to make the Temple Mount. holy to my name. Satan says, no, I'm going to desecrate it. In that one verse, you understand that

everything that God wants, Satan comes to rob, kill, and destroy it. And I think that's important because it doesn't mean that every person, Christian, non-Christian, needs to think that every Jewish person in the world is doing something right, or that the state of Israel, that you love Israel, and that you, in a sense of agreeing with everything that Prime Minister Netanyahu does, this is different. You can have stronger. Israelis have strong disagreement. with ourselves. Yeah. This is not the issue.

The issue is, do we have the legitimate right to live like everybody else? Yeah. And at the core, Jew hatred, anti-Semitism, is a belief that Jews don't have the same rights, human rights, as everybody else. So when we defend ourselves, according to every international law, no, no, that's genocide. Like, it isn't. It's self-defense. Again, I want to look at it spiritually, because to try to understand it, it's the same. spirit, let's put it that way, that when it's talking, like when people in this country in the

United States say, you know, white Europeans have no right to settle on the land because, you know, thousands of years ago, there were native people here. It's this, it's, it's a strange attitude in a way. It's sort of, you know, it's, it's almost like people who have an animus against human beings in general. And they say human beings have a, it's, it's a strange attitude in a way. And they say, human beings have no right to be on the planet because they're sucking up the resources. It's perverse, but you're seeing it kind of tracks. It does. The idea that you have people on campuses saying this about the Jews in their homeland, it makes some spiritual sense to me because it's the same spirit that says,

we need to reduce the population to two billion people on the planet or, you know, everybody in California who wasn't the there 500 years ago needs to leave. You know, you hear this kind of mentality. Here's an example. So, so that spirit, so most of the Jewish hatred, the anti-Semitism you're seeing on American campuses or what have you or in the media is coming from the progressive left, right? So first of all, this is not progress. But second of all, you're thinking, so you're calling us genocidal as we defend ourselves from monsters who rape, butcher, behead, and burn people to death. But you don't have any problem with abortion? How does that, if you're saying that if you take a human life that's innocent and that's horrible and we're saying it is horrible, but we're not trying to do it.

But an abortionist and someone getting an abortion and somebody encouraging an abortion, they are trying to do it. Now, but that's fine into the progressive life. In fact, it's a doctrine, it's a religious doctrine for people who, even who are atheists. That's, that's, we think, well, if that's what you believe, then what hope do I have to convince you of anything? But also, I want to say that a sign of hope, I guess, a ray of the silver lining, a lot of students on these campuses, if you ask them, why are you chanting from the river to the sea, which is a genocidal statement, which says that every Jew between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea should be annihilated or driven out?

That's genocide. You're actually preaching a genocidal slogan. But if you ask them, what do you mean by that? Which river? Is it the Mississippi? Is it the Amazon? They look at you, many of them. Are they that ignorant?

They're that ignorant. Are we talking about the Aegean Sea? The Baltic Sea? What are you asking? Why does it appeal? It appeals because in the modern media cultural age, especially social media, Israel is perceived as a Goliath, and the Palestinians who have rejected every peace treaty offered to them for 76 years.

Yeah. are perceived as David. And so Goliath is the monster in the story. It's ironic because the progressive left doesn't even believe in the Bible, but this story they glomdom to. Israel is the bad guy. Why? Didn't we go back to our natal and ancestral?

I was going to say it's kind of funny. It's like if tribes took back, you know, California, the progressive left would cheer. And that's kind of what happened in Israel in 1947, the people who were there thousands of years ago took it back. We'll be right back. We're talking to Joel Rosenberg. Don't go away. Mike Lindell and MyPillow employees want to thank my listeners for all your continued support. To thank you, they're having an overstock clearance sale right now for the best prices ever when you use promo code Eric and you get free shipping for the entire order. Get 50% off the MyPillow 2.0 and the brand new flannel sheets that just arrived and won't last long. six-pack towel sets for only 2998 and take advantage of the free shipping on larger items like

mattresses and mattress toppers 100% made in the USA on sale for as low as 9999. Everything is on sale from the brand new kitchen towels that have the same technology as the bath towels that actually absorb dog beds, blankets, couch pillows and so much more to get the best specials ever go to mypillow.com. Use promo code Eric. Again, mypillow.com. Use promo code Eric. Remember, you get free shipping on your entire order. You can call 800-978-3057. 800-978-3057. Use promo code, Eric.

Folks, welcome back. I'm at the NRB in the controversial Gaylord Convention Center here in Nashville, Tennessee. Talking to Joel Rosenberg, as I said, I want to remind you Socrates in the Cityplus.com, we have just launched my Socrates in the studio conversation with John Smirak. You do not want to...

Just try to imagine John Smirak doing Socrates in the city. You don't have to imagine it. It is up now. Go to Socrates in the city. Okay, Joel Rosenberg, we are here in Nashville talking about Israel. And it's fun to be with you for your last time here at the Gaylord, Opryland Resort and Hotel. It's my final... Yes, this is my final stand at the Gaylord.

I want to ask you if you when I think about the hostages being held right now that that's hard for me to think about because again Hamas these are brutal sadistic monsters these are not people who believe in the Geneva Convention if an American captures a war prisoner we treat them well that's always been the case we have certain values basically biblical values. Same thing with Israel. If they capture someone, they treat them well. If you're captured by Hamas, you're not treated well. They don't believe in anything. They believe in sadistic cruelty in winning. How do you think Prime Minister Netanyahu proposes to get back the hostages? I mean, that to me is the most intractable piece of this. Yes, this was a strategic decision by Hamas, not simply to invade you know, little farms and bedroom communities along the Gaza border inside

Israel on October 7. They didn't want to just kill people. They wanted to take hostages. They took 240. Why? So that they could have leverage to, they thought they could prevent Israel complicated so Israel wouldn't invade. Yeah. And yet

they had killed so many Jews in one day, 1,200, and they'd taken 240 more, and they'd wounded thousands more, that the entire Israeli society became unified in one day, something that the Israeli political system was unable to do for several years. We were such a divided society. And yet everybody thought, we now have to invade the Gaza Strip.

The Gaza Strip, which I would add, in 2005, Israel gave for free without even a peace treaty. We'll just give the Gaza Strip back to the Palestinians. You can have it. We don't want it. To cite the old country Western song, we are at the Opera Land. I don't want her. she's too fat for me so you know we're like we we don't want to govern you we don't want to control the gaza strip yeah it's yours yeah you've got beachfront property on the mediterranean you've got

natural gas off your shores build a palestine in paradise that was 2005 by 2007 chamas was in charge and firing rockets and sending uh suicide bombers in general so it's like what what are we occupying we gave it yeah or gave it i mean you could call it whatever you want but uh the point is But this is a genocide organization, and they are cruel. And we've never faced, I don't think, an enemy quite as cruel. Even in our fights with Egypt or Syria or Jordan, we never had people burning us alive and gouging out eyes and slicing off body parts. I mean, one of the things we're doing here at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention is the Prime Minister's Office asked me, would I help organize with NRB two showings? I mean, they're invitation only.

You can't just walk in. But two showings of about a 45-minute film of Hamas GoPro cameras. Even in the worst of the Nazis, they didn't actually film themselves doing the worst of the atrocities. But Hamas did it and put it on YouTube and celebrate it. And so the Israeli government put together like a 45-minute version. It's not even the worst of the worst, but it's pretty bad. Just so that people who've never been there or aren't going to be going, anytime soon can get a sense, wow, they can be an eyewitness to history from Hamas' own video

cameras. It's unbelievable. Also screening here at the NRB, two films. One of them is Letter to the American Church, the Letter to the American Church documentary film that we made. But on the subject we're discussing, a Bonhofer film is coming out in November distributed by Angel Studios, and I have seen it. It is spectacular. Because you know that story pretty well. It is, what's interesting to me is, you know, people write books about Bonhoeffer or make films about Bonhoeffer that I don't like.

In other words, they're just wrong. This film that's coming out in November is spectacular, and it puts, you know, it puts God in the center. It's not, it's not like a film. You'd say, what's a religious film. It's a film for everybody. It's a European production, independent but it's fantastic. But it's not like walked the line where how did Johnny Cash? Yeah. Oh, we're not going to talk about Jesus. Yeah, we're going to get Jesus out of the Johnny Cash story.

Good luck. They did a good job. But no, this is the bono for film it's going to be showing here. And I'm so, so, so excited about it because it's spectacular. But the reason I'm bringing it up is that how interesting that the film is coming out this year when anti-Semitism has again risen its demonic head in history, in modern history. It's just amazing to me. because I wrote the book, he came out in 2010.

And the idea that it's taken 14 years for somebody to put out a film just at a time when anti-Semitism is again an issue in the world. It's just... And for the church to make decisions. Are you for the Jews, even you may disagree with them, politically, culturally, spiritually? Yeah. But do you believe that God created them in his image?

Even if you don't believe biblically, the prophetic... element of the Jewish people. There are people like the Japanese, like the Brazilians, like the Kurdish people, like the Canadians, the Americans, like they have inherent worth. But Jew hatred, anti-Semitism says no, they actually don't have that inherent. And Christians have to decide. I remember literally, gosh, it could be 30 years ago. I heard Dr. Michael Brown, who's obviously a Jewish believer in Jesus. I heard him talk. I'd been out of Yale for a number of years, but he spoke, he gave us a talk at Yale, and I went up to New Haven. And it was the first time that I heard somebody explained to me, this is Michael Brown talking, but about how Jew

hatred, you see it among white supremacists, you know, these Aryan, A-R-Y-A-N, white supremacists with swastikas tattooed. You see it with them, right? You see it with black supremacists, preaching, you know, on the streets of New York at Times Square that used to be there, whatever. It's this bizarre thing that whenever you find this. this deeply sick irrational hatred, they blame everything on the Jews. I mean, you see this, I've seen this in Europe in conversations with people, and it's one of the ways that you can see there's something special about the Jews. Because if everybody, if all the haters hate them particularly, what does that say?

And we've survived? Well, and, obviously. Four thousand years of Jewish hatred. It's a big deal. Oh, we're going to go to a break. Final segment coming up talking to Joel Rosenberg. You can find them at Joel Rosenberg. dot com. Let's welcome back. Final segment with Joel Rosenberg. Joel, we're talking about Israel.

You spent a lot of time over there. Well, I live there. We're dual citizens. My wife and I, some of our sons are actually living and working there. Two of our four sons have served in the Israeli army, and one in a special forces unit. So yeah, we're dual citizens. It means we get to vote twice. It's like living in Chicago. Yeah. Exactly. But we live there. We're all in. I'm Jewish, and I'm a believer in Jesus, which is an anomaly in Israel. You know, it turns out Jesus was also part Jewish. Isn't that crazy? That is so nuts, but everybody knows Mary was Italian.

Jesus is the most famous Israeli Jew in human history, and most Jews don't really know who he is. The Bible is the greatest export of Israel in human history. Most Jews have not read it. It's interesting because I wrote a book called His Atheism Dead, and the middle part of it is all about archaeology, proving the Bible as history. You know that book?

Well, I ended up not only reading it, but I ended up interviewing Stephen Collins, the archaeologist who discovered Solomon Gamora, because I already knew the story, but you highlighted it again and showed stuff that I had missed over the years, how much has been documented that he's right. Well, actually, I interviewed Stephen Collins for Socrates in the city, which people can see, but he, that's actually what made me write the book. when I met him. I was in Albuquerque a couple days ago,

but five years ago I was in Albuquerque. Somebody said, have you met Dr. Stephen Collins? No, who's that? Oh, he's the guy that discovered biblical Sodom. And I said, come on, I would have heard of that, really? So I meet the guy, he put out a book, you look into it and you're thinking,

this is open and shut. This is not like he's got a great theory. It's open and shut. So that caused me to write the whole book, is atheism dead. I didn't realize it was based on that. Yeah, no, when I met him, and also James Tour in Houston and talking about abiogenesis, that's the science part.

But meeting the two of them, I said, I have got to write a book because nobody knows the James Tour story. And nobody knows, or very almost nobody knows the discovery of biblical Sodom. And I said, I've got to write a book, a popular level book, because we've got to get the word out, that the evidence for God from archaeology, from science is unbelievably over. It's overwhelming. It's not even like, well, we've got a lot of good evidence. It's overwhelming. If you have an open mind, you're dead.

You're not going to try to be an atheist after. Since I'm not a science guy, it's not the thing I love most, but you made the point and build so much evidence that if you love science, it's getting harder and harder, more and more difficult to avoid, at least that there's an intelligent designer. It's totally impossible if you're honest, but a lot of people are not honest. A lot of people have an animus in the same way that they just hate the Jews. Forget about the facts.

I just, you know. But the reason I'm bringing this up is, is that I wanted, we want to film a TV series based on the book as atheism dead, and I am longing to go to Israel and to do filming and all this different stuff, and everything that's been happening. We've only got a minute left, but what is your sense of tourism? And do you think the tourism is going to come back? I cannot wait to go to Israel, but at this point, it just seems obviously unsafe.

It's not unsafe. I mean, it's a challenge. But, no, as we're reporting at all Israel news, allisrael.com, on the Rosenberg Report, which is the only weekly primetime show produced in Israel. There are Christians coming, a small delegation to see what's happening. This is a good time to make films to document what's happening and to talk about the future because it's like going to Disney World without any guests. It's almost like COVID without a pandemic.

It's bad, but just, you know, I'm going to quote by quoting Woody Allen rather than the Bible. If you're ready to that, 90% of life is just. just showing up. Yeah. Sometimes people who love Jesus and show up in the nation of Israel are sending such a powerful message because Jews in Israel and worldwide feel very isolated and very turned against. Yep. Yep.

Yep. So come. Well, I will probably be there in November and December. We have to try to work it out. Joel Rosenberg, thank you, my friend, for being my guest. Folks, go to Joel Rosenberg.com.