The Eric Metaxas Show - Religionless Christianity Q&A (Encore)

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

The tables are turned and Eric is interviewed by Albin Sadar about his upcoming book "Religionless Christianity" 

Folks, welcome to the Eric Metaxus 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. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. If you're looking for the Eric Metaxe show, you've come to the right place. If you're looking for some other radio show, well, go down the road, two stoplights, make a right at the gas station, go past Billy's fruit stand, hard left, and bingo,

another show. Maybe, or you're terribly lost. Hey, why don't you just stay right here because you found Eric Matt, Texas. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the program. I got to say, I cannot help but be excited because today is the day, finally.

You wait and wait and wait for months and months and months, and then the day comes. Today is the day. My new book comes out. It's called Religionless Christianity. I may have a copy right here. I think I can show a copy of the book right now. Let me see.

Is this going to work? Yeah, not really. Look at this. It's like a weird, blurred background. Well, a couple of important announcements. That's number one, but related to it. So the book is Religinalist Christianity. Today is the day.

It's called Religionless Christianity, God's Answer to Evil. In hour two, I'm going to replay my conversation with Albin, SADAR, Albin interviewed me about the book. This is before he'd read the book. He has now read the book and he retracts everything he said in this thing you're going to hear in an hour. No, actually, he's now read the book and he's made all these notes. So he wants to kind of come back and ask me about stuff in the book. But before I talk about the book, I want to say that, so in hour two, we'll be talking about the book with Albin. In hour one, we're going to be talking about the news of the day. We're going to be talking about Speaker Johnson's unbelievable failure.

We're going to be talking about a lot of stuff. We're going to be talking about what's going on at Columbia University, which brings me to the news right now. I want to say this really clearly. My friend Sean Foyt contacted me. He said, what's going on at Columbia University, the rampant anti-Semitism. I mean, it's so sick. is he said this needs a response. And so he will be in New York Thursday, this Thursday, two days from now.

It starts at 6.30 p.m. I will be there. Sean Foyt will be there. My friend David Englehart will be there. Pastor Mike Signorelli. I'm not sure who else what other churches will be there. But anybody who wants to stand with Israel, you don't need to be a Christian. anybody, anyone that wants to stand with Israel, join us this Thursday at Columbia University. That is basically 116th and Broadway, or what's the street on the other side of Columbia? I think we're going to start on the other side of Columbia. But it is, it's going to be 630. We're going to do a prayer march, you know, and we're going to show solidarity standing with Israel and standing with the Jews because this is a moment, folks. Did we ever think that universities

would block Jews from entering the university? Like, this is right out of Bonhofer. This is what happened in the early 30s in Berlin around Germany. It's happening now at our elite institutions. So it is absolutely evil and sick. We need to stand against it. So that's this Thursday, which is to say the 25th, Thursday, April 25th at Columbia University. I know lots of folks who listen to this can't get there, but you know people in the New York area. You know folks in churches in the New York area in Jersey. Please join us. A massive show of support will send a message.

We need to send this message. So by the way, Chris, I don't know if you know, but Passover has just. started. This is exciting to me that right now. Happy Passover, yes, I did know. It's just started. And it's a funny thing because I realized that there, in my book, religionless Christianity, what I'm trying to do is differentiate between mere religion, including Christian religion. That's not actual Christianity. It's not worshiping Jesus. It's just religion. It's just going through the motions. There are a lot of people who think that they're

Christians who really are just being religious. And that's what the devil wants, if I can say that. That's an interesting concept, right? Because people think, well, what do you mean? What do you mean? Well, that's why I wrote the book, because I have this idea that a lot of people don't understand this and they are, they're getting it wrong. And they're going through these religious motions. what I think accounts for the silence of many of the churches on a lot of the issues around us is this idea that, oh, we just need to do church. We just need to be religious. So I'm kind of trying to make that clear. Bonhofer wrote his famous book, The Cost of Discipleship. He makes it clear in certain ways. I try to do the same in my book. And I try to talk about what are the religious idols of today that we are worshiping in place of Jesus. So it's a kind of a dramatic thing, really, to think that maybe we're worshipping religious idols. We can repent of that. That's the good news is that God wants us to realize what we're doing to repent and to throw

away these worthless idols of religiosity. And in a funny way, I think that this brings us to Speaker Johnson and others. There are many people who identify publicly as Christians. but their behavior is puzzling. And that's where I think sometimes people mistake worshiping an idol of dead religion for actually worshipping Jesus with their whole being. And I think that they don't realize it in most cases.

They simply don't realize it. The Germans who were worshipping in churches as Hitler rose to power, didn't realize that they had a job to do. They thought my job is to just to go to church, to say I'm a Christian, to do these religious things. And God says, no, I have much more for you.

In fact, if you do those things without doing what I've called you to do, it's grievous to me. And so I think we're at a time right now, it's a time where we're seeing the division between religiosity, between dead religion and actually living out your faith. And it ultimately comes to a question of truth versus lies. So I kind of think that that's a lot of what I write about in the book. I also, there's a couple of chapters in the book on cancel culture.

When you partake of cancel culture, even when you think you're on the right side, I noticed this with Alec Baldwin recently. Like people hate him so much. They don't, they're happy for him to be accused of, being a murderer, even though he didn't murder anyone, but they don't care. They're just happy to see somebody get Alec Baldwin, because they disagree with them on many things, as do I. That's the spirit of cancel culture. We are to stand with what is true no matter what. And we're to stand with people who are being persecuted and attacked no matter what. We don't have to agree with them on most

things. But it's the spirit of cancel culture that we're to stand against. And, you know, obviously to really understand that. I hope you'll read my book, Religinalist Christianity, God's answer to evil, because this is very, very important. We're going to be talking about this a lot in the weeks and months ahead, because this to me is at the heart of where we are and at the heart of the parallels between the failed German church of the 30s and the failed American church of today. I believe God is trying to wake us up so we don't make these mistakes. All right. So finally, if you can get a copy of my book today, go to my website. That's the best place to buy it. I think if you get it through my website, you can get it really cheap.

You can even get autographed copies, I think still today, very, very cheap. But I ask you to do that today, please. Religinalist Christianity is the title of the book. My name is Eric Metaxus. Ericmetaxis.com is the website. We've got lots great stuff today. Thank you. I've got a great story to tell you about our friends at Americans for Prosperity.

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Oh, it's also Slovenian. You wanted to ask me questions about my new book, Religinalist Christianity. I did. Wow. Or people have submitted questions. And you've been elected. to read the questions to me? I have. Yes, I am. I'm nervous, but let's do it. Well, here we go. You think you're nervous.

This is a great book, by the way. Religionless Christianity, God's answer to evil. And there's another part of the front of the book that I think is absolutely spot on. It says there is only one hope left to save America and the world, active, robust, and public faith in God. And I think most people out there that listen to the show, another show, shows like it will have to agree because things have gotten so far off the rails that, you know, we're now in the ocean somewhere. Well, not everybody would agree, and that's why I wrote a letter to the American Church

and why I wrote this book. I'm trying to make the biblical case so that people would consider it because not every people are on this page. But anyway, so somebody submit, who has submitted these questions you're going to ask me? They're just from all over. In fact, let me start with the first question. And this is general one to all authors, but what sparked you? and your interest in writing this book?

I needed the bread, man, you know, the rents do, and I had to come up with something. It's all about this, money. Yeah. Well, no, clearly, we hope that's not the case. We hope that I wrote it because God put it on my heart, which, you know what it is? Actually, Letter of the American Church, that book, I know God called me to write that in a way that I had never experienced anything before. Like I knew I had to write that book. And the response to it has been so extraordinary, frankly, very surprising to me, that, you know, the publisher was saying, well, do you have more you want to say on this?

And I thought, well, yes, actually quite a bit. And so the letter of the American church is my shortest book. This is almost as short. But there's some very important things in terms of, you know, when people say, okay, so I'm supposed to live out. I mean, if you agree with the premise of letter to the American Church, I'm supposed to live out my faith. I'm not supposed to be merely religious as a Christian. What does that look like?

Well, religiousness Christianity means to be the answer to that question. What does it look like to actually live out your faith in a way that's not merely religious in the negative sense of religion? And I don't know, should I answer the question about the title now, or is that one of the questions? Well, that's the next question from Mary, Bill, Jill, and Peter. Can you define religious list Christianity? Why is it God's answer to evil? Well, obviously, I write it. I shouldn't say obviously, but I'm happy to say that I do write about all of this in the book,

about the title, the meaning of the phrase. Religionless Christianity is a Bonhofer phrase. Bonhofer was writing to his best friend, Abraham Baidke. I met Abraham Habericka's widow in Germany in 2008. Abraham Barthaker was Bonhofer's closest friend, and he was intellectually brilliant as Bonhofer was brilliant. And in a letter right at the end of his life, Bonhofer is in prison, I believe he was in the Gestapo prison, which was a dark place figuratively and literally. And he wrote a letter to his best friend in which he was asking now in 1944, how did we get where we are that we've sort of lost the battle? the church did not live out its faith. And he says, if only we had had a religion-less Christianity.

And he's using religion in the pejorative term that Carl Bart would have used it. That religion has just dead religiosity, just playing church. And Bonover says what we ought to have had was a religionless Christianity. In other words, instead of going through the motions, you know, the Pharisees went through the motions in the temple. A lot of Christians go through the motions on Sunday morning. He was saying, instead of just doing that, What if we had actually lived out our faith in a heroic way as though we actually believed it? We would have stood against the evil, but the German church didn't do that. And I thought, I need to explain what is religion apart from real faith? What does that look like?

What are some religious idols that Christians worship, thinking that they are being Christians, but actually these are just religious idols? And in the book, I lay out some of these religious idols where you, they're really substitutes for actually worshiping Jesus with our whole being. And so I kind of lay that out. And because it's an example of how Christians have been fooled in the past and the story of Bonhofer, it's the classic case of he was trying to wake up Christians to be to stop being merely religious and to be actually faithful in every sphere, willing to stand. bravely against the Nazis. And they were thinking, no, no, no, we just want to do church. We just want to have our little religious services.

We don't believe it's our job to get into that. So in the book, I kind of, I try to unpack what these religious idols are and how we might be guilty of worshipping them rather than worshiping Jesus. Yeah, because it seems like a lot of churches now have leaned toward becoming more like social clubs. Come on in. We're going to celebrate this activity and that activity. And we're going to have a bake sale. And we're going to, you know, and then they have their flags out there that don't

say, you know, we believe in Jesus. It's like we believe in what the culture is doing. We're going to follow that. And so where did the religion go? Well, there's a lot of that. I mean, that's really the darkest side. But, but to me, it's even churches that wouldn't go there, but neither are there being heroic in the battle for God's purposes. You know, that leads me back to the one of the most dramatic examples you put in letter to the American church about that, what was it, 18,000 churches? Yeah. Yes.

Could you explain that again? Because that is really powerful. I don't know if you redo it here. No, I don't. But it's in the letter of the American church. And in a sense, Letter of the American Church, you need to read that first, I would say, because it kind of tease up what I'd say in this book. But the bottom line was that in Germany, in the early 30s, there were about 18,000 Lutheran pastors in Germany.

By 1935, two years into the Hitler regime, only 3,000 of the 18,000 were. standing heroically, willing to go to concentration camps, really living out their faith. On the other end of the spectrum, you've got about 3,000 that are 100% in for Hitler. But the key is in the middle. You got 12,000 basically saying, you know what, we don't need to choose. We're going to stay right here in the safe religious middle. Except the safe religious middle, that sitting on the fence thinking you're being neutral, I always say over and over, the devil owns the fence.

They believed that they had this kind of religious, you know, carve out, that we could do nothing, that we could be neutral. We're not going to stand heroically against the Nazis the way Bonhofer and others do. We're just going to stay here. You know, it's kind of like somebody saying, I'm not going to vote. Well, you're helping evil to win. And I try to make the case in letter to the American Church that if you think you can avoid making a choice, you have made a choice. You have chosen to allow evil to have its way. but you're pretending you've got this religious objection and you can just be somehow neutral.

And that to me is where many in the American church are today. And I'll say it is where there are many people who go to churches like that, where you're just effectively playing church on Sunday morning rather than saying, this is not the church. We are the church. And we meet on Sunday morning, but then we go out. The church goes out of the building and affects the culture and fights for God's purposes in every sphere, including politically, just as we did when we fought the slave trade, just as we did when we fought

for the abolition of slavery in this country, just as when we fought politically to end Roe v. Wade, that's part of the church's calling. And so in both books, I try to make that clear. Yeah, very good. Thank you. Let's go on to what does it mean to, and I think you covered a lot of this, but what does it mean to live out your faith actively? Yeah.

Well, again, this gets to the core of what I'm calling sort of the American. heresy is this idea that we don't need to live our faith out in all spheres. We can talk about it, but the reality is it's like a hobby. It's something I do in the basement. It has no bearing on what I do when I leave the basement. That's the opposite of what our faith is supposed to be. Our faith is supposed to be lived out in every single sphere. And I think that we kind of make faith, as I say, it's like this part-time thing. But it's supposed to inform everything that we do. My faith is supposed to inform my relationships. It's supposed to it's supposed to inform what I would do with my life professionally. Everything is supposed to be informed by my faith.

And I think that in America we've been so blessed that we've gotten spoiled and complacent. And we kind of act like, well, it's this private thing. And we're supposed to bring God's view of things, the biblical view of things, into every single sphere. And a big part of the way we can do that is politics. We have the gift of self-government where we can advocate for, for the right kind of, for people who are advocating God's policies or we can ourselves run for office. So there are many things. We'll continue that.

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Albin, you're asking questions that the people who follow this program on YouTube, they have submitted. So there's a couple more questions, I think, we have. Oh, yeah. We've got a couple more. And speaking of Bonhoeffer, this next one kind of, I think a lot of people will think about this one. If Dietrich Bonhofer were alive today in 2024, what do you think he would say about the state of America? Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I think it's fair to say that, well, I say this. I think literally in the first page of this new book, that we're in a spiritual war and that we are in the third existential crisis of our history. The first was the revolution. The second was the civil war. And the third is where we are now. And what we're fighting now is the forces of real wickedness. In other words, forces that are deeply hostile to Christian faith.

And it's not like in the old days where, you know, Tip O'Neill is the face of the Democrats, and we've got some differences on taxes and this and that. No, no, no, no, no. We are now dealing with evil. I mean, we had the president of the United States, who is dramatically pro-abortion, who is dramatically pro-transgender. I mean, really sick stuff. He declared Resurrection Sunday, Easter Sunday, as some trans day of visibility.

I thought to myself, I've never in my life seen such an open hostility to Christians. I've never seen it before. And I think if you're a Christian, you need to understand that's what's happening right now. And you need to be awake to it. And Bonhofer was awake to it in Germany. He said that what's happening now in Germany, we need to fight. And many, many, many Christians said, no, no, no, no, no. We think you're just being a hot head and take it easy.

And, you know, Hitler, he'll be around, but he'll leave and we'll move on. And no, Bonhoeffer could see that the Nazis were playing for keeps. They wanted to fundamentally transform Germany. Yeah. Just as the atheist, Marxist, globalist forces in the world and inside America. Now, they want to fundamentally transform America, and they're doing it to make us no longer the nation that our founders brought into being with the Lord's health. to put it mildly, the Lord brought it into being. And it was once meant to be a city, a shining city on a hill in the words of John Winthrop, and that it was supposed to be a beacon of liberty

and a beacon, frankly, of Christian faith. So that people would look at this country and go, what do they have that we don't have? What are they doing that makes them flourish? Why is God blessing them? Well, how come they can govern themselves? That's so beautiful. What is going on over there? I mean, Tocqueville came over here in the 1820s to investigate because this didn't go that way in France. The French Revolution was a bloody, atheistic, to some extent, demonic revolution. It did not go well. It was a bloodbath. So Tocqueville comes over here to say, what do they have? What is his conclusion? The church's vibrant Christian faith, it was at the very heart of America. Now, it wasn't, we weren't officially Christian because why would we need to be officially Christian? We would just need to be actually

Christian. We don't need to be officially Christian. But it was kind of assumed by all the founders, that we're going to be essentially Christian. And we have drifted so far away from that. And we are now being attacked by people that are not just on board, but they are openly hostile to God's values, to God's principles, to biblical values, and to Christians. And so you have things that we never dreamt of in our lifetime, the FBI being weaponized against pro-life people. You have children being taken away from their mother and father.

because the mother and father have a biblical view of sexuality of the human person, and they don't want to use their kids, quote unquote, pronouns. And in Indiana, other places, the kids are being taken away by the state. This is a level of wickedness, a level of evil we've never seen. And if the church doesn't recognize and say, it is our job. God has called us to stand against this. God has called us to get in the fight, then it's over. So I'm afraid that that's kind of, that's where we are in America.

I see some, a simple example of that is this, you know, guy wearing a dress and he's got a beard. And he says, my name's Michelle, and I want you to call me Michelle. And if you call him Michelle and treat him as a woman, not only does he have a problem, you have a problem. And then, of course, the nation has a problem. You've been forced to lie. Exactly. We are self-censoring. We're afraid.

You know, I think if somebody said that to me and I went like this. Yeah. And we go to the Supreme Court. You're not allowed to do that because that's hate speech. That's a hate smirk. But I mean, honestly, that's where we are. But the thing is, and again, the reason I wrote this, both of these books, but specifically this religiouslyst Christianity, is because there are many Christians who feel like they can opt out. They can avoid this.

It's not going to come for them. One of the chapters of the book I talk about the spirit of cancel culture. Yeah. It is a wicked Marxist spirit. and it's coming for you. And so you need to stand against it when it comes for anybody, not just when it comes for you. We'll talk about that later.

But in the book I talk about Bonhofer, I talk about Martin Niemuller. There's a lot of Bonhofer in this book. Yeah, well, he's, of course, all through it, because he gave you the title. He was like, what title can I give Eric? 60, 70 years from now. But when we come back,

a very powerful question about, are you optimistic about the future of America and the world? I can answer that question. It's funny because I say that we're in the third existential crisis of our history. We have survived the last two, but it's a war. You have to fight in a war. And I don't mean just fight with rifles or what I mean. You have to understand what is at stake.

And if you don't, if you don't fight through prayer, through action, you definitely lose. And so when we come back, I'll answer that. And other questions, the new book is Religinalist Christianity. You can get copies at Ericmetaxis.com. I hope you will get a copy there. We'll be right back. And this world won't forget about you. Three-star general, Michael J. Flynn, head of the Pentagon Intelligence Agency, knew all the government's dirty secrets.

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Available now. Watch it today. Go to satem now.com. Saddle now.com. This is the Erkman Texas show, and I'm being interviewed. It's kind of weird, Alba. Yeah. By the way, you turn the tables on me.

Your Spanish is excellent today. Would you call it Bastante bien? Oh, there you go. Let me just say that you're interviewing me Yes, I am. On my new book, Religinalist Christianity. Thank you for doing that. And these questions have been submitted to our YouTube page.

TVN and this program has a YouTube page. So what was the question? Oh, yeah. This was a big one. We ran out of time in the last segment. But here it is. Are you optimistic about the future of America? And there's a part two, what should the church be doing right now?

But let's go with part one. Are you optimistic? The church should stop playing church and get in the game. Stop being religious. Stop being religious. Yeah, and be religious. Yes. Okay, well, am I optimistic about America? It's hard to call that optimism. I am hopeful. I am, I am, at the end of the book, I say that, well, at the beginning of the book, I say we're in a third existential crisis. So I think of George Washington. I think of Lincoln. If you had gone to Washington or to Lincoln in the depths.

of the Civil War and the Revolutionary War and said, how you doing? They would have said, we are doing very, very poorly. This is a horrible, horrible war we are in, and it doesn't look good. If you had asked George Washington in 1776, how's it going? He would have said it's going very, very poorly. It was going very poorly. It was, they were in a war. But he also would have said, I think,

we're in a war and it's going poorly, but if God be with us in this cause of liberty, we can prevail. Our job is to lean on the Lord as we fight on. We don't stop fighting until the Lord says it's over. And there many people would have said, it's looking pretty bad, George. Why don't you just throw in the towel? And he thought, I can't do that. I need to fight on. I've been called to bring a nation into being where we will govern ourselves. It's an extraordinary concept.

It's a beautiful concept. It's God's concept. And if the Lord wants to give us the victory, he can get us, he can give us the victory and pull us out of this difficult spot. So if you said him, how you're doing in 1776, he would have said badly. But we fight on and we fight on and we pray on and we pray on. if you don't fight because things look bad, you're guaranteed to lose, guaranteed. And that's exactly where I think we are today. We're in a battle.

It looks bad. But if the Lord be with us, then we can win. And people who say no, that's the voice of the devil telling you to just throw in the towel. Don't fight. I like the joke about the guy goes to the doctor. The doctor says, you're in really bad shape. You've got to take these pills. And he says, doctor, I'm a Christian.

I believe that God is in charge and predestination and all that. So don't worry about me. I'm not taking any pills. And the doctor says, I'm also a Christian. And I believe that God's in charge. And here's the predestination part. If you take the pills, you're predestined to live. If you don't take the pills, you're predestined to die.

Well, listen, folks, if you don't fight at all, you're going to die. We're going to die. And which side do you want to be on at the end? Do you want to be on the side like the guys in the Alamo, you know, that fought on and fought on? but the victory was ultimately theirs because at some point, you know, God comes in and says, this is what we're going to, this is what's going to happen. You know what? That's exactly right. Would you rather be Bonhofer or would you be rather one of those people who through fear or or some misunderstanding of the scripture sat and did nothing and really brought about the death of Bonhofer?

Yeah. That's what happens, right? If you don't fight with him, you're responsible for enabling his enemies to kill him. and you're responsible for the enemies of Germany to destroy Germany, which they did. And I'll tell you, one of the most beautiful scenes in your book, Bonhoeffer, is when he is going to his death. I had tears in my eyes, and he was going, he was like boldly going to his death, because he knew he was going to a better life. He knew he stood against the evil of his day. And, yeah, he would, oh, my goodness, he would have loved to have lived. He would have loved to have gotten married.

He would love to have a family and have a grandfather and a great-grandfather. but he took a stand for future generations and for the generations in Germany that would hang their head in shame because they did not take a stand. See, that's exactly. That's it right there. Do you want to be like Bonhofer? Then you fight for what is right and true. And you allow the Lord to be the one who determines the outcome.

But your job is to fight. Your job is to stand for truth to speak against evil, not to be silent in the face of evil. That's ultimately what I hope to deal with. in this book. Yeah, and here's a great chapter in this book I want to get to and get your thoughts on this, because, you know, we started out with politically correct. It was kind of like funny. Yeah, you're not politically correct. And then it became woke and then it becomes cancel culture, where now it has a serious, serious charge to it. So what are your further thoughts? And it's from the book on cancel culture. And it's another one of the reasons. I hope people will read the book, Religinalist Christianity, because you need to understand what is happening. What is, cancel culture. It's not just something. What is it? There's a spirit behind it. It's the same spirit, which is evil that was happening during the French Revolution. It happened during the Bolshevik revolution. It happened in the Nazi takeover of Germany. It happened in Mao's cultural revolution in China in the 60s. It is demonic. And it wants power. And it is bloodthirsty. And it's willing to pick

off people. That's part of it. Right. It has no actual standards, what it does, it pretends to care about the poor, pretends to care about racial equality, it pretends to get, it doesn't care about any of these things. All it's doing is using these things as a way to pick people off. And in the book, I talk about my friend Kirk Cameron, he was on Pierce Morgan. I tell the whole story in the book. And he was asked by Pierce Morgan, you know, if he was in favor of same-sex marriage. And he said in the most kind way possible that he had a biblical view of marriage. He was attacked, attacked, attacked, attacked, like he was the devil. And I thought, where were all the leading Christian voices to stand with him to fight back against

these evil forces that had come? They wanted, you know, Kirk Cameron's head on a platter. It was not about Kirk Cameron. It's about when you put up a biblical standard, people are going to come after you. They did not stand with him. And the spirit of cancel culture wants to to pick people off one at a time. I know we're going to a break here, but I just want to say that that is where it starts. So whenever somebody comes after anybody, you don't need to agree with the person on everything. It's the principle. You need to stand against the spirit of cancel culture, which is demonic. You can call it what you want. We're going to a break. Okay, so the book is Religinalist Christianity. Folks, you can get it at Ericmetaxis.com. We'll be

right back. Hey there, folks. Welcome back. I have a new book out, and Albin has asked to interview me on it. So we have just one segment left today. We'll make it quick, but we'll do more later. I want to ask you about chapter nine, but before we get there, when you were talking about Kirk Cameron and speaking the truth and love,

in Ephesians, that's where you're going to find that phrase, speak the truth and love. But the verse right before it says something about there will be a day when there's all kind of deceptive truth out there, and you've got to be smart, and you've got to be wise about confronting it. So it's so funny, it sounds like it was written about today.

A lot of deceptive truth, but you have to confront it and speak the truth in love. Now, getting back to this, chapter nine in your book, this is very mysterious, this title, Bonhofer burns his boats. That's a principle. It happened in Alexander the Great when he was attacking Persia, the empire. He did this radical thing. Cortez also did this. this in the early 16th century where you say we're going to cut off our own escape route because we are going to fight to the death. In other words, we're not going to allow ourselves

a way out. We're going to force ourselves to fight with everything we have. And I think a lot of times that's what the church doesn't do. Like we kind of, we fight a little bit, but then it gets hot and we go, we'll back off. You have to have the discernment to say, no, I'm going to go all in and I'm going to lean on God. Without God, I lose. I need to lean on the Lord. I'm going to burn my boats so that I don't have an escape route. And Bonhofer does that a couple of times, but he does that most specifically in 1939 when he comes back to Germany. He was in America. And he says, you know, I'm going to do, I'm going to go back. And I'm just going to, I'm just going to be there for God's purposes. I'm not going to, I have an escape route. I'm in America, but I'm not going to take it. I'm going to

go there and I'm going to lean on God. And it's an amazing thing, but it's a principle. Yeah. And so I write about it in the book that we need to understand what it means when God wants us all in. Yeah. Not just a little bit, but like this is, it's kind of like saying like, okay, folks, this is it.

There's no tomorrow. This is it. We have to fight with everything we have now. I think we're at that point in America now. That's why I say it's an existential crisis. If we don't use everything we have now, now we're guaranteed to lose. We need to be, we need to use everything we have and we need every Christian.

And I say this, you know, if the church is those of us who call in the name of Jesus, it's not the building that I go to, it's not the denomination. It's those of us who say we're Christians, we're the church. Well, you, Mr. or Mrs. Christian, you might be the tipping point. In other words, you might be the one. If you go all in, that might be. be the tipping point into we will save the nation for God's purposes as a platform for the faith in the world, as a platform for freedom. It might be literally up to you. And when we say,

what is the church, you're the church. Yeah. And the truth is we were all born for such a time as this. So you've got to step up, folks. You're either going to sit on the couch. I was watching a Yankee game the other day. I only watched a couple winnings. And I said, I can't believe this. This is the way America used to be. You used to watch a baseball game, sit back, relax, enjoy yourself and say always right with the world. And I thought to myself, but things are not all right with the world. It's okay. You need some refreshment, but you've got to get back into the fight. And by the way, if Sam Houston had come to the Alamo with reinforcements that they were hoping for, that would have been a different battle. And so we who are in the Alamo now are looking for reinforcements

so we can... That's a beautiful way of putting it. I don't say it in the book. Now I wish I had. That's beautiful. to fight on and fight on. And I just, again, I explain it in the books, A Letter of the American Church, a religiousist Christianity. I recommend you get them at Eric Metaxus.com. Albin, I know we want to continue this conversation. We'll do it another time. But in the meantime, thank you so much for being willing to do this. Thank you, Eric.