The Eric Metaxas Show - John Rankin (Encore)

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

An encore presentation of our late friend John Rankin

Noble gold investments is the official gold sponsor of the Eric Mataxis show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you can protect your wealth with noble gold investments. That's noble gold investments.com. Hey folks, today, since I'm in Greece, we are re-airing an encore with my dear departed friend John Rankin. He was one of my dearest friends, one of the most brilliant, loving Christian men I have ever known. I dedicate my book, Is Atheism Dead, to John Rankin, just one of the most noble souls, brilliant, glorious human being, and one of my dearest friends. I did a lot of shows with him in the last number of years, obviously, before he passed. And so today we're playing one of them for years.

You, God bless you. Welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show. It's a nutritious smoothie of creamy, fresh yogurt, vanilla, protein powder, and a mushy banana. For your mind, drink it all down. It's numby. I wub, vanilla. Here comes Eric Mataxis. Well, folks, it's the Eric Mataxis show.

Now, today, if you listen to the program, lots of people have listened to the program, lots of people have listened to the program and they'll write us and say, oh, we love it when you have your guest on Hugh Ross. We love it when you have your guest on Peter Hitchens. We love it when you have your guest on John Zmirak. No one has ever mentioned John Rankin. That's a lie. Many people have said, when are you going to have John Rankin on again?

And it makes me so happy because a big part of the reason I've wanted to do radio is to introduce people to people that I think are great, and you might not have heard of them. And one of them is John Rankin. And so I'm thrilled to say today in the studio we have my friend John Rankin. John, welcome the program. It's a joy to be here, Eric. Now, before we leap into your – what book are we going to talk about today? Well, I'm going to talk about a book I wrote some years ago called The Six Pillars of Biblical Power.

And basically, it is biblical theology or biblical ethics 101. Okay. I feel like – With a lot of stories of eyeball-to-eyeball ministry. When you and I met in the early 90s, I remember you teaching a course at St. Paul's Dary in Dary in Connecticut. And I remember thinking, this is basic stuff that everyone ought to know. It really helps you to think more clearly. And so I'm excited that we get to do it, that my radio audience gets to hear this stuff.

So let's leap in. So tell us again the title of this book. Okay, it's the six pillars of biblical power. and if people are interested, they can go to John Rankin Books.com, and they will see my nine books that are currently in print. And so what we're going to do is walk through each one of them in a conversational sense, and they're all aiming in a certain direction, and we can get to that a little bit later. Well, actually, I could say it up front.

My calling back to 1982 when I was doing my first seminary degree was a surprise, and it was to quote see theologically educated people in politics which to me back then was an oxymoron. Yeah, this is way before the rise of the moral majority. That was a little, the moral majority was a little bit before me. And what I found out was that many Christians going into politics were basically, didn't know the language of a skeptical society.

And therefore they just tried to bring a Christian doctrine did not know well our constitutional histories. In fact, in my later years right now, after my graduate work at Gordon-Kalwana Harvard, I'm moving toward the completion of a dissertation at the Oxford Center for Mission Studies. And it's on political theology. And I'm bringing all my thoughts together. In fact, I just retitled it. It's called an aggressive hospitality to dissent, which is the nature of political freedom.

An aggressive hospitality to dissent. That is beautiful. Let's leap into the subject of the first book. Yes. So what happens is that in building a foundation to equip Christians to be a theological educated, I've spent 35 years learning the theological education and trying to bring it down to accessibility. So what happened was back in the early 1990s, I was writing a chapter for Kelly Monroe's book on Finding God at Harvard. She was the founder of the Veritas forums, and we studied together at Harvard in the 1980s. And somewhere around that season, at one point, I simply spoke these six pillars.

I didn't call them pillars at the time. I called them six ethical components, how not to market yourself. Right. But these six realities. And in a nutshell, they sum up what it means to love God and love neighbor. So I'll just mention them, and then we can conversation to take it from there. They are, the power to give is number one. Right.

Number two is the power to live in the light. Right. Number three is the power of informed choice. Right. Number four is the power to love hard questions, which is the motto of the TEI. Right. Number five is the power to love enemies. And number six is the toughest one of all, the power to forgive.

Okay. So this is interesting because all of this stuff is at the very heart of what it means to understand the Bible, to be a Christian. But there are many people that would describe themselves as Christians. and I mean, none of them, myself included, could mention these six things. I mean, the way you're phrasing it is new to me. And yet, I think very few of us can live out these things. Even if we hear them, just the way you've said them, we understand that maybe we're not doing this so well. And so this is one of the reasons I get excited because this is something you've perfected over the years.

I was just telling a friend. I wouldn't say perfected. I pursued it. Good enough. But I was telling a friend just the other day. I don't know how you came up, but we were sitting at dinner, and I talked about how you engage people who are hostile to the Bible, maybe they're aggressive atheists or they're aggressively pro-abortion. But what you do, you don't debate them. You have a conversation with them, and you show them the love of Jesus, even as you're explaining how you differ.

with them. That's really tough. Not everyone can do that. Or better than that. The goal is not to win a debate in the face of a real debate. The goal is to win a relationship so you can actually debate with mutual respect. Okay. That's beautiful right there. So you set the foundation, and the foundation only works if your goal is not to win the debate or to have a human ego contest. The goal is to honor the image of God and all people equally and to make sure they know in your presence they are being listened to, and when all is sudden done, they've been given an honest listen, because when someone knows that his or her concerns, and they're all born out of pain and brokenness from one angle another, when they know their concern has been listened to,

the disagreement issue is far less the matter. At that point, it becomes, well, I've been listened to. Maybe I will listen reciprocally. And in about 200 public forums I've done, and you've moderated three of them, I would say in all but two cases, my interlocutor, or the person I was hosting or in sometimes a formal debate, I walked away knowing that they were humanized. In fact, at Kenyon College many years ago, I was doing a forum. In fact, my second oldest son was there came down from Hillsdale College in Michigan at the time. And I was doing a forum with a professor of religious studies that I was told by my sponsor, nobody liked. And after the evening, everyone liked them. And my sponsor walked over and said, you know, and this is a pack

daughter train said and nobody knows here why they like him tonight and they didn't like him before because you so respected him so humanized him that his humanity came forth and to me that is just to the glory of God. And I would say, John, the reason I think sometimes it's hard to communicate with you in these radio programs is, no, but I mean in all seriousness is because you're saying things that are so fundamental and have been so ignored. In other words, when you talk about humanizing someone, that to my mind. mind is the essence of Christian love. Yes.

It doesn't mean that you agree with them, but you really show them the love of God as a full human being. And because the opposite of that, to dehumanize someone or to demonize someone, is to basically flick them away like you're scum. You're wrong and I don't even want to talk to you. That's the precise opposite of what it is to love your enemies. To love your enemies is to say we disagree in some fundamental ways, but I honor you as an image bearer of Christ.

And what happens is this. So often, and the church is guilty of this, we view other people to the prism of their political or religious identities, not to their humanity. Right. So what happens is I start by, first of all, agreeing with their humanity. And once they know that, it changes everything else. Okay. We're going to stop there for this moment.

We'll be right back talking to John Rankin to agree with their humanity, to honor somebody in his humanity. That is the challenge that we have. And if you do that, everything changes. I love it. We'll be right back with John Rankin. It's the Arkmataxis show. There's been a national focus on eating only the healthiest of foods, and that's great news for balance of nature. Their method of producing a vibrant nutritional supplement is second to none. While so many others use chemicals and additives, balance of nature is made solely from whole food ingredients. while other methods sacrifice nutritional quality for the sake of profits and volume. Balance of Nature's advanced vacuum cold process involves freeze drying the fruits and veggies into a fine powder, helping to retain as much nutritional value as possible compared to other inferior methods, which cut corners at your expense.

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Hey, folks. It's the Eric Metaxas show. I'm talking to my friend John Rankin, the Reverend John Rankin, the Reverend Dr. John Rankin. John, again, welcome on the program. I love talking to you because you say things that need. desperately to be said. And I think that we have to be honest, since we know we're all sinners, okay, I know that I screw stuff up, that I don't get it right. And when I hear you say things,

like we're supposed to love our enemies is to humanize them. So if you're talking to somebody and you only see, you reduce the person so that they're no longer human, you reduce them to their political views. That is itself a sin. It is wrong to do. We're not supposed to reduce anyone to their political views, we're supposed to love them as an image bearer of Christ. And there are many people say, well, I could never do that with Hillary Clinton, or I can never do that with Katie Couric, or I could never do that with somebody they think of who's really rubbed them the wrong way. And let's be fair, this doesn't mean that we can always do that. In other words, I think there are times when it becomes difficult or maybe you're talking

about something and we begin to blur the person with their views. You know, I have said many times publicly that I think the Clintons are profoundly corrupt and harmful to America. Now, this doesn't mean that if I were in the room with Hillary, I couldn't love her as a human being. But it does, when you're dealing with public figures, it becomes very difficult to do that unless you're having a one-on-one the way you've done. Well, now, see, the first three books, that we're going to talk about here are actually a trilogy.

So the six pillars of biblical power we're talking about right now, followed by the six pillars of honest politics, and then Jesus in the face of his enemies, his experience during Passion Week. When we get to Jesus in the face of his enemies, we will get the balance you're aiming for. How is it that you love someone, eyeball to eyeball? Jesus is there in the face of its enemies

and loving those who are plotting his death. How does he do that, and how does he deal both affirm their humanity and deal with their evil? And that's exactly what you're aiming at. We can talk about that when we get to that point. Well, whenever, we'll get to it, yeah. So what happens is that these six pillars, as I say,

biblical theology 101 or biblical ethics 101. Let me just sort of mention each of them very briefly. Sure. Okay. And so the first one is the power to give. And this language came to me when I was doing one of my Mars Hill forums at Smith College in 1994 with Patricia Ireland, then president of the National Organization for Women. And so you talked about how I compact a lot in my sentences, and that's true.

That's why these books are written. And I think the Six Pillars of Biblical Power is the introduction. It's in some ways the easiest read. A lot of stories in here as well. And this is one story. So there I was at Smith with 550 mostly feminists in the audience. We recorded this a boatload of witchcraft involved as well. And you're not joking.

I'm not joking. I write about this. I'm not joking. But what happens is that during a discussion of marriage, and I got a letter some months later by a woman who used to be one of her lesbian partners. Who used to be one of Patricia Ireland's lesbian partners. Who had since come to Christ. Wow. She watched the video and said, John, I was waiting all night long for you to say one unkind word and she was going to slaughter you. Instead, you treated her with respect, and she liked your definition of marriage. astounded this woman. I write the letter. I copy the letter she wrote to me in one of my longer books. But anyhow, the point was that in the midst of discussion of marriage, and I won't go

into the details, I looked at Patricia and spontaneously said, Patricia, we have two choices in life. Given and it shall be given or take before you're taken. And what I was saying was this, that in marriage we have three possibilities. Number one is 100-0. That's male chauvidism, and we all rejected it in the feminist audience rejected it with me. Number two is 50-50. I said, that's the egalitarian. I give 50, you give 50, but then I said it doesn't work, and everyone knew it doesn't work. Why?

Because if someone takes 51, you have war. So the 50-50 doesn't work. I said, the third possibility is 100-100. And the audience and Patricia were pensive. They were thinking. 100-100, what is that? And I said, the problem. with the 100-100, where you both give 100% of your best is who goes first.

And I said the answers in Genesis 1 and 2. God gives 100% of his best to Adam. He receives it as lonely, ordained to give 100% of his best to Eve. She receives 100% free to give 100% back to him, and they together 100% back to God. So you either initiate, and the only initiator in all of human history, look at pagan literature, look at secular constructs is Yahweh Elohim. So this is the power to give. And we can only have trust in society relative to the gifts given to us in our upbringing and the trust we learn from mom and dad.

So once you break the marriage, a relationship, brokenness multiplies. So knowing that all of us are broken by this from one angle, another, the redemptive side of the gospel is to give unilaterally. And this is how the Bible starts. The word grace means gift. and what you have in Hain in the Hebrew and Karras from the word Keros or Charismatic in the Greek, it is to give. And that's how the Bible starts. Well, it's the root.

We also get the word charity. Yes, exactly. So Hades, uh, charity. So grace does mean charity to give. To give. Absolutely. So number one is the power to give. Number two is the power to live in the light.

You get all this from the first few verses in Genesis. The bottom line is that out of the darkness. and chaos of what is beyond his existence, he speaks light. And the power to live in the light is all the way through Scripture. And there are three domains. Number one is physics. So wherever light is, darkness cannot exist. So what is the speed of darkness?

It has none. Right. It flees at the speed of light being jettisoned away from us by the light itself. Number two is ethics. We live, if we live in the light, people who live in the darkness either move toward the light this is the hospitality, aggressive hospitality to dissent. They either begin to move toward the light and the gospel advances, or they excuse themselves from the light, but they cannot accuse the light.

And so in all my invitations to various Marcell forums over the years, it's interesting to see who receives them and who rejects them. And all those who receive it are in some capacity, at least, wanting to come into the light. And that's what I seek to do. Number three is Jesus as the light of the world. and we are the light of the world as he gives us His Holy Spirit versus the Prince of Darkness versus Satan. And so I give good examples of that.

So those are the first two pillars. And then we go on to the next four from there. And here's the bottom line is, who doesn't want to be given gifts? Who doesn't want people to live transparently in having no hidden agenda? So if we proactively live this in the face of unbelievers. So, you know, my father, when he was still alive in his 90s, I was reading this to him. He had lost his eyesight from his presbyterian upbringing. And then he wandered into Unitarianism because he couldn't stand judgmentalists in the Presbyterian Church and hypocrisy in a congregational church where the minister was caught sleeping around.

So he wound up in the Unitarian Universalist Church because, A, the minister was intelligent and worth listening to this back in the 50s. and B, he was faithful to his wife. And so that was my father's motivation. So in reading all this stuff to him, he just said, amen to every last bit of this. That was how good his upbringing was before his own wanderings. So I believe, and I've been told this for years, what I'm saying here is nothing new, but the language, I have some new angles, perhaps, but, you know, there's nothing new on of the sun just a change of costume to add to Solomon there.

And so this is a little bit of my costume seeking to be faithful to the word. But what I've found is that in a skeptical society, this language just came naturally over the years. I use this language in the church. I use this language on skeptical campuses. And people want to receive gifts. People want to know that you're being transparent with them. What's so fascinating to me is the very idea that this appealed, to all kinds of people proves that we're dealing with universal truth.

Yes. There's no such thing as Christian truth. There's truth. Every human being, if every one of us is in fact made in the image of God, then we all have the ability to perceive truth. In fact, I would go farther and to say that we have a hunger for truth. We can express it different ways. Sometimes we suppress it in odd ways.

But it's there. And if you appeal to people in these broad ways, you find that many people do respond. surprised in a way that a Christian whom they've already, perhaps in their own way, demonized or dehumanized and reduced to some kind of a caricature, that if you break through and you're not that caricature, they're quietly pleased, sometimes not quietly. Because you've affirmed their humanity. You know, I'm rereading a book right now, The Hebrew Republic by Eric Nelson, who argues that the rediscovery of the Hebrew language just before the Reformation is what empowered the Reformation.

Luther, Erasmus, everyone reading it, even though Erasmus didn't join the Reformation. But at one point, talking about Erasmus and some others, he says that all these people were looking for a, quote, Prisca Theologica, an ancient pristine theology underlying all the great religious systems of the world, pagan, Jewish, and Christian. When I looked at this, reviewing this before I came on the air, this is the biblical order of creation. Okay, we're going to come right back talking to John Rankin. I want to get to that, the biblical order of creation.

That's central to most of your work. We'll be right back at the Eirchmetaxa show. The great George Jones, folks, I'm talking here in the studio today in New York City with my friend. The great John Rank and John, welcome back. We're talking about the biblical order of creation. It's at the heart of everything. Keep it going. So what I was talking about in terms of my book, The Six Pillars of Political Power, I'm sorry, biblical power.

I jumped out to the other book. The Six Pillars of Biblical Power. is language that I discovered over decades of ministry that reaches out to believers and non-believers alike. And then just mentioning a book I'm reading right now, part of my dissertation work, in terms of the reformers in learning Hebrew, we're looking for a Prisca Theologica, a primary pure theology. The answer is it's in the order of creation. Genesis 1 and 2 is everything good that God has given to us. I'll talk about that another one of my books later. everything good that God has given to us before polluted by broken trust.

And if we root ourselves in the order of creation, the height of the goodness given, we understand the depth of brokenness and the height of redemption. Okay, so you're talking, you're going back to the stem cells of the Bible, Genesis 1 and 2. You got it. It's all there. It's all there. It is before the fall. Yes. Okay, so you call it, and others call it the orders of creation.

Not plural, order. The order. The order. The order. Okay, so when you say the order of creation, break that down, what do you mean? Okay, so what this book does in the six pillars of biblical power, the first four pillars are in the order of creation. They sum up 11 positive assumptions I talk about otherwise. I'm just looking at the four simple ones right now because they're ethical, which means how we relate to each other.

Right. How God relates to us, how he's ordained us to relate to each other. So it sets in order, not rules, not legalism, but in order like directions along the path in life. It's always relational. And so what happens is I mentioned that the first two pillars of these six pillars is the power to give. God gives to us, ordains us to give to one another with no broken trust. Then secondly, everything God does in giving us light versus darkness is we live in the light. Everything is transparent, open, accountable. You don't even think about the word accountable in Genesis 1 and 2 because there's no broken trust yet. But on the other side of sin, we can use the

word accountable. So the order of creation is give and it shall be given. Sin is take before you're taken. The order of creation is live in the light with God, with one another. The brokenness of that is live in the darkness because you're seeking to manipulate and deceive others. So the other two pillars, before we get to the last two, or the next two, pillars three and four, are also in the order of creation. And pillar three is the power of informed choice. Now, my dissertation work is arguing that The first covenant in all of the Bible is the covenant of freedom with Adam. Now, we've talked about this in some detail before, but very simply, the first words to Adam from Yahweh Elohim, we see this in English translations is you are free to eat. The actual language is in feasting, you shall continually feast.

It's a level playing field. You can choose from any of the good menus that God gives you in the Garden of Eden. And it's also metaphor for every choice we make in life, choices in marriage, choices. and what we eat and how we build everything. But we also are free to say no to it. And if we eat it, then in dying, we shall continually die. So it's an unending feast on the one hand versus an unending death on the other.

And the grammar is dynamic in giving us these two choices. But here's the radical nature. Okay, the radical nature is there's a level playing field where we are free to say no to God, because unless we're free to say no to God, he would be forcing his love on us, and that's an oxymoron. It cannot happen.

Therefore, we're not free to say yes, unless we're first free to say no. So this is what I talk about an aggressive hospitality to dissent because the devil is invited into the garden at this level playing field. And we are given the wisdom to know what the devil's temptation will be. That's a deeper view of the text, and we blow up. But the point is that the light is always present and we are free. And therefore, the whole nature of every page. pagan religion is imposition and slavery. Secular constructs have a godless cosmos that spits us forth and swallows us up and doesn't

even burp. That there's no concern for our freedom or for our humanity. So the covenant of freedom starts in Genesis 2. And the fourth positive element comes out of this, and that is in the freedom to steward God's creation, we're always in his presence learning, which is the freedom to ask hard questions or the power to ask hard questions. when you go all the way through the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, you have a complete hospitality, and I detail this, you have a complete hospitality for the toughest questions to ask of God, of our leaders, and of one another. No questions are ever off the table.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Screams David in the depth of his pain, of a sense of abandonment and being surrounded by enemies, and Jesus takes those words to his lips on the cross to fulfill David's yearnings and to answer them. or you get Jeremiah screaming out, oh, God, why have you deceived me when he comes out of jail? And actually, that's how it's translated. The word patah in the Hebrew is, oh, God, why have you opened me up? Like opening himself up to be taken advantage of, in this case, being mocked by his enemies. So whatever the question is, an intellectual question, a relational question, there are no restrictions. Outside the Bible, questions are always restricted by those who hold power, whether

The political power. Isn't this fascinating? Or religious power? This is so fascinating because we're talking about the very structure of all reality. Yes. I mean, it sounds crazy, except that's exactly what we're talking about. God has created a universe with a fundamental structure. It reflects him and his nature.

But we tend not to talk about this because the world is so fallen. Everywhere you turn, you think it's going to be one version of falleness or the next. We're talking about something outside of that, something that God has proposed very right in the beginning of scripture. We're talking about being. proactive, not reactive. And most people would say, yeah, that sounds right. Exactly. We're going to be right back talking to John Rankin. Stick around. This is a corporation on the Arkmataxis show. I'm talking to John Rankin. John Rankin, this is deep stuff.

This is important stuff. Let's keep going. You are talking about the heart of Scripture, the first two chapters of Genesis, how God sets up everything. You've really dedicated your life more to that part of the Bible than anything else, really to figure out. To me, these are the stem cells of the Bible. They show us the heart of who God is and what He does.

before the fall. And people tend to ignore it, I think. People kind of move past it pretty quickly. Have many others written on this? Or they assume it. You know, various people have written on it, but I'll tell you, the simple, I don't, I've been told, and I don't have any other experience thus far, that what I've done with it and testing it and living it in the presence of skepticism is the contribution I'm seeking to make. and so doing to be academically rigorous in what I do, but also make it understandable for the broader basis of the church, which is my goal.

And so the six pillars of biblical power. And so when I say the first four are in the order of creation, the power to give, as has been given to us by God and how we treat others, the power to live in the light, to be transparent with God with one another, the power of informed choice which honors people freedom to say yes or no to God's goodness, and the power to love hard questions. Because once people are free to see a transparent believer who wants their toughest questions with relational integrity, it changes the entire equation. And of course, that is how the church, those of us who call ourselves Christians, are supposed to be living. But the kind of modeling of that is rather rare. There are many wonderful men and women out there.

But you're the only person I've ever known who has. taking this as seriously as you take it. And I think that it's one of the reasons I want to have you on this program, because I think it is at the heart in where we are in the culture now. People are more than ever longing to see this. Is it possible to live honestly as a Christian, to be open to hard questions? They've seen a lot of bad examples of it. We don't need to mention names, but that's one of the reasons I think it's so important to lay this out. We can't be encouraging skeptics to ask us hard questions unless first we've asked them of God ourselves and God has asked them of us. In other words, we have no more to give than what we live. And so often, even with seeking to do the good, and I know this well, we can easily rely on human means and human energy and human anxiety. So it really starts with doing that God is good, his provision, the trials we go through the timetable, his resources, all are good. And he knows a tapestry underneath our lives and human history that we don't know. And what does it take for us to, so I am, I am a wired tunnel

view optimist, as my father called. A what? A wired tunnel view optimist. Damn the torpedoes full speed ahead. Right. Even if you get sunk 114 times, you go out the 115th time. Well, that's who I am. I've always bid off more than I can chew. But finally, as the decades of past, I'm learning that the hair doesn't win the race, the tortoise does, okay? And a lot of that is just learning patience. When you are a ton of you optimists as I am, you can so easily become impatient. And I'll tell you, impatience does no good anywhere in life. And so learning to be patient, particularly in New York City traffic this morning.

So because I have timetables, good things to do. No, God has a timetable, and he arranges things that are for the good. So when it comes down to it, it is just trusting God to be good and learning that across our lives. So those are the first four pillars. And the last two pillars that I bring in both come from the Sermon on the Mount, which redeems or buys back out of slavery to sin and restores those first four pillars the way I've organized this language. And they are very simply the power to love enemies and the power to forgive. So if we look at the Sermon of the Mount, you could say the theological apex is when he says,

says, you have heard it said of old, you know, love your friends and hate your enemies. Now, he's not quoting the Bible. He's quoting human tradition. I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. And those who steal from you give them multiple fold and so forth and so on. So what does it mean to love an enemy? Well, first of all, we have to identify enemy. And if we think of enemies in political or human terms, we blow it. Because you and I have no enemies who are human beings if we understand the gospel. Okay. They may think there are enemies because they're looking at it through idolatrous or political or religious terms.

Well, that's the point, right? Now, because I can have somebody who's my political enemy, but I still am called to love them as a human being. And I won't even accept that language. Yeah. I will accept no language regarding anyone as my enemy in any capacity, okay? The only enemy I have, and this is serious stuff, is the devil of hell and is deyphal. demons who come to kill and destroy. I know what you mean by that, but when Jesus says love your enemies, he doesn't mean

love the devils. That's right. He means to love the person that you perceive as your enemy. Actually, let me think that out loud, which I love to do, okay, because you phrase it from a different anger, a different anger, right, a different angle. You know something? The Lord loves the devil to this day and loved him enough to let him choose what he chose and to live with it.

Yeah. Okay. So that, in my book, Jesus in the face of enemies, we look to that a little bit more. And yes, he's talking to Jewish people who have the Roman Empire and all the pagan history surrounding and trying to kill them. So yes, it is their political enemies. And that's all the Hebrew Bible. But what he's doing, and this is really only grasp on the other side of the cross

and the resurrection, is that by dying for those who are his enemies and killing him, He empowers us to no longer regard our political enemies as our enemies, to realize there are demonic powers behind broken nations and persecuting believers and so forth. The point is if you don't get that, if people, if you don't understand that your worst enemy is, in fact, a beloved child of God whom Jesus died for and who is being manipulated by your real enemy, which are spiritual powers that are truly wicked. and damned forever. It's a horrifying thing, and it's an important thing. And because they want to be damned forever, because they are more satisfied. In my book that I wrote that you encourage me to read,

The Freedom to Choose Hell, I concluded with the following. Yeah. Heaven is the community of those who love mercy, and hell is the oxymoronic community of those who guard their bitterness. Incredible. We'll be right back with John Rankin.

Hey, folks, I'm here from Tax the Show. I'm sitting here with John Rankin. And John, which of your sons went to Hillsdale College before we move on to the last part of this? My second oldest son, Stuart. Stewart. He went to Hillsdale. He went to Hillsdale in late 90s, early 2000s. And it was marvelous because in the Christian schooling he had when his little boy, he didn't have a good English teacher.

So they were required of him remedial English. He not only thrived at that, but he thrived in Latin and Greek and Hebrew, and now he's fluent in German because he lives in Germany. Well, there's no place like Hillsdale, and I knew that Stewart had gone there. I want to mention, by the way, folks, you may know that on this show, we're offering you free, and this is genuinely free, okay, if you listen to this show. You go to metaxis for Hillsdale.com. Can you spell that? Metaxus for Hillsdale.com. You get a free subscription to Imprimus.

Imprimus goes to 3.7 million Americans. I get it every month. Many people I know get it. Tremendous stuff in there. Larry Arne, who's the president of Hillsdale, is featured in the current imprimus. And he talks about Winston Churchill. If you're not interested in Winston Churchill, let me ask you a question. What's wrong with you?

So go to metaxis for Hillsdale.com. It is totally free. They don't bug you for fundraising. Believe me, metaxis for Hillsdale.com. Okay, John, we have like two minutes left. We've got to get to the final pillar, the sixth pillar in this book. Which is the power to forgive. Okay.

And so if you want to sum up the entire Bible in a few words, God gave, we blew it, he forgave. God gave, we blew it, he forgave. Seven words. Now, very simply, loving enemies is easier, in my experience, than forgiving people who are close to you. because enemies can be from a distance, okay? And you can honor them in the image of God, you can set the table and how you approach them and so forth or how you react to them. But a friend stabs me in the back.

What do I do? From family on outward. There's long history, so forgiveness is tougher. When I did my forum with Kate Michelman, head of National Abortion Rights Action League, her whole motivation to advance abortion rights was her husband who left her pregnant with three daughters under the age of five for another. woman. Right. And the sense of injustice, the sense of being wounded is so strong, and I would argue so correct, that you're tempted to respond in a way that as though forgiveness of that

horror would be to say that this person really didn't do anything so horrible. And so in my final letter to her after our 1995 forum on C's ban at Georgetown. This is the head of Nairal. Head of Nairal. I said, Kate, I said, you will never be free until you forgive the one who end against you. And out of her unforgiveness comes her advancement of the abortion right ethos. So in fact, I think I mentioned her in the last chapter of this book. So it's the six pillars of biblical power at John Rankin Books.com. And when you go there, you'll see the TEI logo. Click there. You've got my whole website, T-E-I-I-I-D-O. And by the way, your website is T-EI-I-I-O-G. And everything follows from that.

They're all synced. Well, I'm glad we have had this time together just to have a laugh or sing a song. Seems we just got started and before you know it. Nobody knows the answer to that? Nobody knows the last line. No, no, no, no, no. Hold on. I'm pulling my ear.

You can't see because this was not videotaped. John Rankin, my friend, thank you, thank you, thank you. And Eric, thank you. Oh, it's a joy. To be continued, folks. It's the Eric Metaxus show. Metaxistalk.com.