The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program | Guest: Steve Deace | 12/30/19

Episode Date: December 30, 2019

BlazeTV host Steve Deace and his team join the program to discuss cultural upheaval, the search for truth, principles of America’s founding, and seven worldviews that have threatened the foundations of our culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. Here on the Glenn Beck program, we are the crew from the Steve Day Show. That is me, Steve Days, Todders, and Aaron McIntyre. We are on after Glenn on Blaze TV radio and podcast, noon to 2 Easter. And if you want to check us out at Blaze TV, BlazTV.com slash Dase is how you can do that. You can also subscribe to our podcast over at iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, et cetera. You can follow us on Twitter at Steve Day's show, by the way. That's D-E-A-C-E.

like us on Facebook, although we're shadow ban there, so give it a shot. Okay, but we're not going to give much hope that it'll actually show up that you like this, but you can try it. You can also email me. If we get into anything these next two days that you have questions about, please feel free to email me, Steve at stevedase.com, because we're going to teach some philosophy and some history here today. And over the course of the next couple of days, we're filling in for Glenn, we're going to

give you guys kind of what are the twin people. pillars, if you will, the two towers, although we're more with Gandalf the White than Eisengard and Mordor, but kind of the two towers of our show tomorrow. How do we actually do what we believe? And we're going to talk about the Ten Commandments of Political Warfare. But before we get to application, we first have to talk about foundation. What are we up against? Right?

Any general will survey the battlefield before he sends soldiers in, if you can. You'll do recon. even God sent in Hebrew spies to scout the land. So we're going to give you a chance through us to scout the land. We're going to take you through the seven worldviews in order that they have deconstructed your culture to bring you to the point and bring us to the brink that we are at heading into the end of 2019 right now. Some of these terms are going to seem a little, you know, college. don't let that intimidate you. Okay?

First of all, I barely made it out of community college and found out when they kicked me out of school, they don't give degrees for playing super techmobile an entire semester. So if I can learn this material, all right, so can you. Because I'm going to make it as about as simple as possible for you because that's what it had to be for me. All right?

So we're going to start with the help of a good friend of our show, Dr. Jeremiah Johnson. Some of you may have seen him on Fox News the last few years, and he is with Houston Baptist University. He's also the head of the Christian Thinkers' Society, correct, Aaron? That's correct. Christian Thinkers Society. All right, you're going to hear his voice in some of these intros as well.

We're going to give you a look, a brief look, at the very first worldview that began all of this. And it's called Gnosticism. Well, it'll be based on knowledge. Truth is the fact that is your own faith, your own beliefs, and you are bringing. We think about Gnosticism, of course, it's based on the Greek word nosis, which means knowledge, or indeed salvation through and by knowledge, and short, salvation through a special knowledge. Knowledge that is, as it were, esoteric, and it can be acquired, listen, only by a specific few elite thinkers. I think it's a privilege to call yourself a Scientologist, and it's something that you have to earn. Being a Scientologist, when you drive past an accident, it's not like a scientist.

It's not like anyone else. As you drive past, you know you have to do something about it because you know you're the only one that can really help. The esoteric special knowledge, these individuals who have come up with, if you will, a key that unlocks truth. How do we sift truth from belief? How do we write our own histories personally or culturally?

And thereby define ourselves. How do we penetrate years, centuries of historical, of historical distortion to find original truth. Well, greetings, everyone. Thank you for joining me today as we do a tremendous, incredible study on the Hebrew alphabet and God's words. Now, not just God's word, the Bible, but the individual words and letters of the Old Testament. We've seen iterations both in modern times and historical times, but it is at its essence

salvation just for a privileged view. Jehovah's Witnesses hold the cross in contempt. feeling that it is nothing more than a pagan symbol used by apostate Christendom. When he executes judgment over the world at Armageddon, he will destroy all but the faithful Jehovah's Witnesses. Today I've got a message prepared for you on who are the 144,000. That's a good question. Who are the 144,000?

And it's ultimately very self-righteous and haughty, and make no mistake, there is no place for faith, and there's no place for grace and gnosticism. When we think about the world of the Bible, that is the world of Jesus and Judaism, we think about the New Testament, 138,000 Greek words. The beauty of the Greek New Testament is it was written in a common tongue, a common language, a rather elemental Greek language that, guess what, could be understood, appreciated, assimilated by the entire world. These things were not hidden to us, we hear in the epistles, but they were revealed for all. In fact, in Acts 4, Peter said that you all are witnesses of the fact, the historical fact, of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Indeed, the gospel is good news for the whole world, not an esoteric view.

So that's a brief look at Gnosticism, which is this idea that there is some unattainable or ultimate secret source of knowledge that only a special few can gain access to. One of the first acts of the U.S. Congress when this country was merely a foundling was the commissioning and distribution of Bibles. Take a little shot at my Catholic buddy over here. It was actually Geneva Bible because they viewed that as the best way to continue the themes of the Protestant Reformation. As long as the Czech Clares in the New Year, I can tolerate such things. So that was one of the first acts of the U.S. Congress was the commissioning of Bibles and the distributioning of Bibles and the distribution. of them. It was one of the main textbooks when children were educated, executed, that's a Freudian slip for what we're doing. And too many of our kids today. But when children were educated at the

founding of the country, one of the, the Bible was a primary textbook. One of the foundational textbooks in the 13 colonies, then the 13 states, was what's called the New England Primer. I mean, kids were literally taught the alphabet in the New England Primer with A is for Adam. whose sin stained us all. This is how they were taught in the public schools. You want to blow your mind? Go online. Next commercial break or after the show.

You're going Noah Webster's dictionary, aren't you? See, we've been doing this all too long. It's almost like we share a brain now, okay? Like you even knew I was going to take a shot at you when I mentioned the Bible distributions probably. You knew that was probably coming. That's a day that ends in a while. Yes, yeah.

And you'll get me back later, I'm sure. but one of the I forgot what was I going to say Webster Noah Webster if you want to blow your mind go online and Google Noah Webster's 1828 dictionary his very first edition and you can go in there and type in words on this site that will tell you what Noah Webster

himself hand wrote in his 1828 dictionary compared to how we define them today and then words that are in our everyday language in the news that are part of how we do public policy in America today. We're not even in Noah Webster's 1828 Dictionary. We go into much more detail on these worldviews and topics on our podcast. We've got more time. So today we kind of want to give you practical examples of what all these worldviews are to make it as this information. as accessible to you as possible.

If you want to know what Gnosticism is in the 21st century in America, turn on the history channel. I spent a good amount of time Saturday night because LSU was just destroying Oklahoma and there was nothing else on, waiting for the other college football semi-final to come on. And I probably watched about an hour and a half

of the history channel doing another, you won't talk about stuff that ends in, why? another endless you know montage of shows called ancient aliens and do you guys know where this whole theory

really comes from it comes from a Swiss hotel manager named Eric von Donagan I know I used to believe in this stuff I used to study this stuff I used to be into the occult and all of this secret origin stuff

so I'm pretty well versed on it Eric von Donagan was a Swiss hotel manager when he wrote Chariots of the Gods 50 years ago. And he's, he is now the mastermind behind all of the programming on the history channel, which says there's, there's only some very special information that only the special few would know that aliens came here and seated the earth and we come from them. And if you're not special, then we can't get back to that knowledge and acquire it all for ourselves.

That's what Gnosticism looks like. in your culture today. Aliens are the history channel at Christmas. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. Hi, it's Glenn. If you're a subscriber to the podcast, can you do us a favor and rate us on iTunes? If you're not a subscriber,

become one today and listen on your own time. You can subscribe on iTunes. Thanks. Back here on the Glenn Beck program, we're the crew from the Steve Day show, filling in for Glenn today and tomorrow for the final two days of 2008. If you are a Blaze TV subscriber, you're used to us because we are on each day right after Glenn on Blaze TV radio and podcast from noon to two Eastern if you want to sample our stuff.

BlazTV.com slash dace. That's D-E-A-C-E or you can subscribe to our show on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and all of the various interwebs as well. Today, we're taking a look at the worldviews that brought us to crazy being our new normal. We're going to teach us some philosophy in history today. So we already talked about the very first deadly worldview, this idea that there's only special knowledge for a special few, that the truth is not really out there, that you have to be on a certain road, go through certain gatekeepers in order to acquire it. It's exclusive, not in the way that things that contradict each other cannot be mutually true, but exclusive only to select a company.

and as Pearl Jam once saying on the Vitalogy album, it's not for you. Okay? Now we come to the second. And this is the one that trips us up as a species. This is where when faced with fallacy and error, when faced with something we know just doesn't, something about that doesn't seem right.

So how do we react to it? Because if we react wrong to that which is wrong, then two wrongs, as my mama taught me growing up, do not make a right. Let's discuss with the help of our friend, Dr. Jeremiah Johnston, from Houston Baptist University and the Christian Thinkers Institute. Let's discuss legalism. I think doing the best that I can based on what I understand it to be from myself. Do you believe that if you please God, then you will go to heaven?

Yes. When we talk about legalism, the first thing that I want our viewers to appreciate is the fact that legalism, at its essence, is as bad as liberalism. They both are terrible as it relates to faith, because it is faith or grace plus something else. And there's a fourth point about grace, and that is that it can be resistant. If we don't build our lives around these seven principles, then we're going to have these roots. problems, we'll have surface, wrong attitudes and surface problems, and our life will be one continuous failure. Ultimately with legalism, you establish your own righteousness, your own standing before God by simply coming up with your own man-made religious system, which is a list

of rules that you live by, that you abide by, and that you indeed judge your neighbors through. Was it a fermented wine that Jesus drank or that he made? Remember what's at the wedding? feast in The first miracle There was a big thing about Dungeons and Dragons and people actually got absorbed in that stuff

they took on those rolls and they began doing horrible things and it was almost like an invitation to demonic possession Ariel I cannot let this dance happen Ren McCormick made a lot of people

stop and think I object to that kind of music and I think you know why because people fornicate to it I never said that That's what you told the church board That was not meant for your years It makes you better than other people.

You don't do certain things, so you are a better example of Christ than others. God hates Australia, land of the Sodomite Damned. We boil Christianity down to a list of rules, dues and don'ts, and this is not at all the essence of the Christian faith. Christianity is the beauty that we are not perfect, we are forgiven. There is no place for legalism. In fact, Jesus' toughest words were reserved for the righteous legalistic Pharisees, those that thought they had no need of a Savior and those that were quick to judge and quick to speak

up and condemn the world around them. And I think it's interesting and notable that in almost every place we see the historical Jesus teach in the Gospels. And keep in mind, over 30 times we hear that large crowds traveled with Jesus, there was always a Pharisee in the crowd. I think of the scene in Matthew 2237. where the noeicos, the professor, the expert in the law wants to ask Jesus, what is the greatest commandment? And that Pharisees trying to trap in, and Jesus quotes the shaman, said, we should love the God,

God with our heart, soul, and mind. So the beauty of the Christian faith is that it meets us exactly where we're at, and it saves us right where we're at. It saves us out of the unimaginable experiences. We don't have to do performance because we trust in Christ's performance on our behalf. So here's how this plays out. Here's how legalism is playing out in our culture today. And it's how we helped set the stage for the rest of the other five deadly worldviews that we're going to talk about here later in the program. And it's how we respond to error and fallacy. Do we respond with intuition, opinion?

You know, right now on the American, in the American right. There's a big tactical debate that's taking place. And the tactical debate comes down to, well, there's two tactical debates. There's one that I think is an edifying conversation that is long overdue. That, you know, I've been trying to have that conversation throughout the course of my entire career in conservative media, starting from when I started at WHO Radio, Ronald Reagan was the first sports director there here in Des Moines, Iowa, where I live.

okay this conversation of what ultimately is the purpose of the conservative movement and that has played out if you've followed the David French Sarab Amari debate throughout the course of this year that that's been the debate that they're having is are we here to manage decay are we here to get you know conscience clauses and exemptions to drag queen story time hour or are we here to defeat it which is it I think that's a worthwhile debate the other because here's the thing you all we only get to be better as a movement by having that debate we don't you you may disagree vehemently but it doesn't make you worse at being a conservative meaning you're trying to conserve that's the the root word of a word is always what a word

means so if you're a conservative that means you're trying to conserve that which has proven to be true and beautiful for the human condition for this and future generations that's what you're that's why you're a conservative you're trying to conserve those things things. So the French Omari debate, regardless of which side of it you're on or how frustrated you are with the other side of it, we only get better as a movement because that's the right debate to have, meaning it's edifying. It elevates the purposes and principles we're supposedly all here for. Does that make sense? This other debate, I don't believe, does that. And I think it's destructive. And it really comes down to how much rot-gut and Sol Olensky-esque tactics that the left is used against us, right out of a book dedicated to Satan, literally.

How many of those should we adopt in order to fight fire with fire? How much reprobate should we be? how low should we go? And what ends up happening for those of us that say, I'm not I'm not watering down my beliefs at all. What is the point of that? What is what is what is what is what is the point of giving cultural Marxists 50? Pick a percentage.

60, 70, 80, 40. Pick a number. Pick a number above 10. What is the point of giving them that? and then fighting them. It's a losing battle. These people, this movement hates America. It hates Western civilization.

It's fine with tearing all of this down. It's fine with all of the venom that we could spew like a water hose, a fire hose all throughout the culture. It doesn't care. It doesn't care if you fight their boycott with a boycott and their cancel with a cancel. We're just, you know, zero times zero is zero. We're just going to spread hate to fight hate. I'm not doing any of that. well then that means you're not really a conservative you're not really a Christian Steve if you won't conform to my fallacy in response to a fallacy then you're not really a blank that's what legalism does I get those emails all of the time now thankfully I grew up in a home I didn't have the best dad you know and a given day there in Grand Rapids Michigan shout out

out to Wood AM. I saw you guys tweeted at me earlier today. I listened to that station growing up. So it's a little surreal for me. But on a given day, coming home from Jackson Park Junior High or Rogers High School, man, I didn't know if we were going to Cedar Point, Disney World, or get beat. Because your guess was as good as mine. When you grow up like that, you learn not to need a lot of affirmation from other people. So thankfully, I don't. You can flood my compartment with all of your player hey frankly i feed off of it it just convinces me i'm doing the right thing so i'll do it even more all right but that's this notion that you've got to dress like me or look like me speak like me think exactly like me in order to have access to this larger and supposedly unifying truth meaning

people from disparate beliefs groups languages customs come together around this shared belief. Not that I have to go through your accessoryizing in order to plug into it. You're listening to. Back here on the Glenbeck program, we are the crew from the Steve Day Show, noon to 2 Eastern, right after Glenbeck here on Blaze TV radio and podcast. I'm Steve Dayce, Aaron McIntyre, Totters, and here with me as well. If you want to learn more about us, BlazTV.com slash Dace. That's D-E-A-C-E. You can also follow me on Twitter at Steve

Day's show. Look us up and like us on Facebook. You have any questions about what we're talking about here today with these seven deadly worldviews that are responsible for the brink of cultural extinction that a lot of us feel we're on right now. Feel free to email me, Steve at stevedase.com. And we're talking about these worldviews because we're watching them play out in our headlines every day. Our good buddy Josh Hammer over at The Daily Wire. I saw him tweet out a couple of days ago. I don't know if you two saw this. He said something along the lines. It's getting really difficult for him as a conservative Jew.

It's getting difficult for him to tell the difference between the social justice aims of reform Judaism and the Democratic Party platform. Because there isn't a difference. Because that's their worldview. The Democratic Party platform is the manifestation of worldviews. A lot of them, the worldviews we're talking about today. just as a lot of people with more of an orthodox kind of faith, meaning they believe more in the traditional viewpoints. You look at the Republican Party platform,

that's why it looks like that, because we can't escape our worldview. As we're talking about the seven that have been unleashed on America in this postmodern age, now the first two set the stage for the five to come. We're going to get to those five next with number three, because now that we have deconstructed God, now that we've pulled an Nietzsche and declared God is dead and we have killed him.

Now that we have deconstructed the God that our rights come from, while Blaise Pascal is still correct that something has to fill that void in our culture's heart. Something nature abhors a vacuum. Something will step forward to take the one true God's place. And it begins with our third worldview. Dualism. Vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. And the Dark Lord.

shall mark him as his equal, but he shall have power the dark. Lord knows. Live while the other survives. The emperor has been expecting you. I know, father. So, you have accepted the truth. I've accepted the truth that you were once Anakin, Skywalker, my father. That name no longer has any meaning for me.

It is the name of your true self. You've only forgotten. I know there is good. you. The emperor hasn't driven it from you fully. Search your feelings, Father. You can't do this. I feel the conflict within you. Let go of your hate. It is too late for me, son. Doolism goes back to Plato, the great classical thinker and even Neoplatonism,

which actually underlays much of what we heard about and learned about in Gnosticism. And it really divides reality into two levels or two compartments, if you will. heaven above which is light it's beautiful it's perfect and this carbon copy below that is quite right it is imperfect it is dark murky world this holy river came from the river in heaven that we call the Milky Way they say that milky way actually is a reflection that you see in those waters which are still beyond there are many gods in the trees there is god in the river there is God, even underneath Earth, there is God, the goddess of earth. But those goals are not like the Creator God, because they are still traveling in the cycle of birth

and death. Out of this arises transcendentalism. What is imminent or pre-eminent? Is God transcendent? Is God imminent? This is the big question of dualism. Is God something we can attain to? Is it in some perfect sphere?

Or is he down here in the murky, imminent world? Well, the beauty of the Christian faith is God is both. God is imminent and God is transcendent. We don't have access to him as if he was a scientific specimen, but he is imminent. He is present in our life, and he is indeed transcendent. He created the world. He sustains the world. Colossians tells us in his very hand.

And so I think it's very important that we understand the nature of God as presented in the Judeo-Christian motif that presents God as both transcension. ascendant and imminent. So you see dualism in Aaron's montage there. You saw and heard clips from Harry Potter. You saw and heard clips from Star Wars. If you remember the old George Burns, some of you that are in the older generation, remember the old George Burns?

Oh God, you devil movies. The classic, you know, Jiminy Cricket, Angel on one shoulder, devil on the other. It presents itself one of two ways, that either evil is just as power. as good. That the devil is just as powerful as God, for example. And then they are each vying for equally, with an equal amount of power and ability and access to you and I's affections.

Another way that it presents itself is it has a tendency to take the divine and just place it into the circle of life, we'll call it. How's that? That's a song we all know if you grew up in our era, right? Yeah. And that, by the way, the live action version of that, that this year I thought was fantastic of the Lion King.

But basically it takes the divine and brings it down to our level, or us up to his, depending on the way you want to look at it, Mr. Babel, and puts us all in this circle of life so that essentially there's what we would call oneness, or this idea that there's not really mutually exclusive truth out there, that things that are totally contradictory can both be true. And really, the only bad thing there is in this point of view is to believe that there actually is exclusive truth out there. Now, of course, those that believe in this love exclusive truth when it comes to gravity. Right? I mean, they're not standing at the top of a building, and, you know, the leftist who are telling us, well, you know, I'm not sure Jesus ever lived

when they're writing those columns for Salon this time of year or the writing for Vox this time of year. And if you did, he was really just a social justice warrior Che Guevera in Jewish rabbi first century Palestinian garb. Right? Okay. I noticed, though, that they're totally fine with using their quote-uneness to water down what you believe

and the beliefs they don't like. But if you were to tell them, you know, I thought about it. I prayed about it for a while. and I don't really think gravity is really exclusive. So I'm going to invite you to jump out of this plane while it's in the air. Oddly enough. Weird as it may be, they're suddenly going to find they're not only enamored, but enthralled even by the notion of rather exclusive truth that doesn't just get stirred up Todd in the witch's brew of bleh, meh, that they prefer. Well, the reason they get pushed to that point, though, they're hubris in separating into categories, tribalism, if you will, and that's a very topical world these days.

Much earlier in the game doesn't allow for, Steve talks about hypocrisy and rightly so, but early in the game, it's a Christian, you do need to get comfortable with paradox. And the only way to do that is, you know, is God's God and you're not. It doesn't mean stop asking smart questions. But I'm talking about what arguably is the oldest book in the Bible, the book of Job. And there at the end, after this very long conversation that is very much platonic in many respects. But what does God finally, what... Ultimately, to sum it up, to quote the great prophet, the rock, shut your hole and know your role. All right, as the Stephen Curtis Chapman song says, God is God, you are not.

So I will entertain your questions for a while. but ultimately there has to be an authority. Don't you do this with your own children? Right? Amy and I entertain our children's challenges to a point, but then ultimately there's an authority in the home and they're not you. And so this is why I've said to our children

from the time that they could communicate with me. I let this go on for a while. The moment it becomes disrespectful or disobedient, I look at them and say, Who am I? You're dead. Who are you? Not dad.

Yep. Ultimately, that ultimately is the answer. And if you understand paradox, you can get comfortable there. If you don't, you never will. You need to have to answer everything. The more I grow in my faith, the more mind scrambling questions I have. And that's a fantastic thing. Right.

Are we seeking answers because we want a better idea of who the God is and whose image we're all made? Or because we want to replace him. dualism wants to replace him. That's the difference between healthy skepticism and postmodernism. Hey, it's Glenn, and I want to tell you about something that you should either end your day with or start your morning with, and that is the news and why it matters. If you like this show, you're going to love the news and why it matters. It's a bunch of us that all get together at the end of the day and just talk about the stories that matter to you and your life. The news and why it matters.

Look for it now wherever you download your favorite podcast. The Blaze Radio Network. On Demand.