The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 236 | Is God Using Trump? | Eric Metaxas | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Episode Date: November 23, 2024

“The liberals hate my guts because I told the truth about Bonhoeffer,” says Eric Metaxas, author of “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.” He joined "The Glenn Beck Podcast" to spread the word about Angel Studios' latest film about the German pastor turned coconspirator in a plot to assassinate Hitler. It's a movie, he says, "Jew-hating lunatics" will love to hate, which is why anti-Semites get free tickets. Eric makes the case that Trump is, in fact, not Hitler and explains why Christians should live out their faith in the public square without fear of being called “Christian Nationalists.” Theocracy, Eric says, is “anti-Christian,” but, like in Nazi Germany, there does come a time when the church should oppose a tyrannical state. Church attendance is down, but Eric suggests that just may be a good thing and that perhaps it’s time to consider Bonhoeffer's proposition of “religionless Christianity.” In the end, both Glenn and Eric agree that there is a "warrior side of Jesus,” and “God knows your theology by how you live.”      Sponsors   Get your tickets to "Bonhoeffer" at https://Angel.com/beck.   Relief Factor    Relief Factor can help you live pain-free! The 3-week quick start is only $19.95. Visit https://www.relieffactor.com/ or call 800-4-RELIEF to save on your first order.      Byrna      Byrna is the best alternative to deadly force. Visit https://byrna.com/GLENN for a 10% discount.      PreBorn  By introducing an expecting mother to her unborn baby through a free ultrasound, PreBorn doubles the chances that she will choose life. One lifesaving ultrasound is just $28.00. To donate securely, dial #250 and say the keyword “Baby,” or visit http://preborn.com/glenn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And now, a Blaze Media podcast. On the great seal of the United States are the words e pluribus unum, which means out of many, one. But Thomas Jefferson suggested a different motto. It was a more radical motto. In the spirit of liberty, Jefferson proposed the phrase, Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. This is embedded in our nation's founding, the implicit belief that it is, is not only permissible to resist a tyrant, but it is the moral thing to do.

This is the same belief that animated a German theologian named Dietrich Bonhofer in World War II. He was a pastor. He was a spy. He was a musician. He was also a conspirator in a plot to assassinate Hitler, acting, as he said, on God's behalf. So is that acting like a good Christian? And what is a good Christian? In the wake of the red wave, it is clear that Republicans are on top.

But what about the church? Are we still a religious people or religious right? Is Christianity losing its influence on our culture? As more and more people are stopping going to church, is that a good thing? To explore these questions, we welcome to the podcast, radio and television host and best-selling author of many books, including the biography of Bonhofer. Bonhofer, the movie is out, and it is tremendous. Bonhofer, his book, inspired the Angel Studios' latest film.

Its author, Eric Metaxis. Before we get to Eric, let me talk to you about pre-born. Is it Christian nationalism to fight against abortion? Is that too political? Or is that what we're supposed to be doing as Christian? I am partnered with pre-born and I'm really proud of it. They're the nation's leader in introducing moms to unplanned pregnancies to their babies. Once mom hears the heartbeat and sees that baby inside of her, she's twice as likely to choose life.

64 million lives are gone from abortion in this country. And since Roe v. Wade, since that was first enacted, 64. Now, after it was put away, millions are hanging in the balance, and it's actually becoming worse. We have to change this. We have to start with Americans' hearts and minds. That's what pre-born's all about. When a woman considering abortion wants to end her baby's life, pre-born is there, power of

the ultrasound. Then, also, most women don't want to have an abortion. They just don't have anyone around them. They don't have any support. Pre-born is there again. for two years supporting mom, diapers, formula, books, classes, whatever it is that they need. For $28, you can sponsor one ultrasound. Five would be $140.

And if you have the means, please consider a leadership gift to save babies in a big way. Tax deductible donation of $5,000 will sponsor the entire country's network for 24 hours, helping rescue 200 babies. donate dial pound 250 say the keyword baby that's pound 250 keyword baby or go to preborn.com slash glen uh yeah it's good to see you it's a joy to see you it is a great joy and a great blessing and i uh you know i love you and uh i'm in awe of the fact that it's almost exactly 14 years ago that we met yeah to talk about a brand new book that i had just written on detrick bonho are and here we are and i had no idea who bonhofer was at the time and i think how you got into

my office as a friend of yours took a picture of dietrich bonhoffer and put the oh yeah not to speak is to speak oh no no no this is this is like one of my dearest friends jol tushro and he had i'll never forget he says to me the book comes out and i never had any big success or anything so when he says like he says we need to get you on glenbeck and i remember thinking like yeah i need to win the lottery i need i need i need to get on oprah like what do you're talking about you about Glenn Beck has this monster show on Fox and everybody wants to get on Glenn Beck and he's like, no, no, no, I think I think he would resonate with the story. Yeah. And Joel had the insight to get that. And to realize that we should try. And so I remember he created the Bonhofer poster. People can buy

this now. But this gorgeous image and he prints it and frames it with the quote, which is actually not a Bonhofer quote. It's sort of like when they, you know, when they say Tocqueville said this, It's like, well, he said, sort of said that, but he didn't exactly say that, but it doesn't matter, right? Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak. It's to speak. Not to act is to act. God will not hold us guiltless, this amazing thing, whatever.

So he sends it to you and somehow, evidently it touches your heart. Oh, yeah. Immediately. And you reached out. It came into my office and things just used to appear in my office because I was always so busy. Nobody. And so I paged everything. Like, who dropped this off?

Where is this? And we immediately reached out because I thought it was really. And I wanted to know who Bonhofer was. And now the movie 14 years later. Now you're sick of them. Now we're all sick of them. Just kidding. I got a kid.

I kid. It's so amazing. Now, to be clear, the film, which officially comes out today is not officially based on my book. But guess what? I don't care. It is a magnificent film on. Bonhofer. So I said anything I can do

to get people into the theaters. By the way, this weekend, not next weekend, like now, because the way Hollywood works, they will book theaters in the weeks ahead based on what happens today and tomorrow and Sunday. That's it. And the film I can

say up front, I have dreamed not just about a Bonhofer film like this, but any Hollywood film like this, for somebody to make a film that is about faith, faith in action, this beautiful hero. You just think like, we've always hoped that somebody would make a film like that and make it on a level that's not just for people who already agree with us, but that anybody who would see

it would go and say, that's a great story. What is that? So I'm happy. So I want to start here. Do you know what this is? I'm always frightened, man. You got stuff like nobody, nobody. in the world.

Are we joking? You're joking. This is real. Uh-huh. I'm touching this. Uh-huh. I just handed him a silver ring, napkin ring, and you can tell whose it is.

Well, the initials A-H. My throat. Let's see, it's not AL, so it can't be Lincoln. The swastika. Let me guess. So now, describe the napkin. I was going to say I wasn't ready for that

because I noticed that second secondarily. There are bloodstains on the napkin. That napkin is said to have been with Hitler during the bombing. So if you watched

Von Stauffenburg or Valkyrie, this movie is the spiritual side. Part of it is the spiritual side of Valky. Now my book on Bonhofer, and you know this better than anybody, all of this is in my book, the Valkyry plot, whatever, because Bonhofer would not have been sentenced to death, if not for the Valky plot. Correct. But you're telling me, Glenn, only you could do this stuff. You're telling me not only is this Hitler's, this is too much for me. But you're telling me that

when the bomb goes off at Volfus Schantz on July 20th, 1944, this was in the room. Yes. That's said to be Hitler's blood. We haven't had it tested yet. But since that time, that was said to be Hitler's blood. You read... This is like, this is ten times like this is your life.

Are you just trying to freak me out, man? Are you trying to freak me up, man? Are you trying to freak me up, brother? Yes. Then chef of personnel Hauptemt's Oberkopenfuer from Herf, Berlin, Charlottnburg. I'm going to groupenfehrer Neberwit here with this man degraded and out of the

shudged staphel out of the shuddered. I can just keep going, but what's the point? What the heck? This is the putch of July 20th Maskeblich-briked were and Durschverat. Turn it over. This is the this is the ex.

Oh. This is the execution order for those involved in that signed by Himmler, Himmler. Glenn? I mean, of all the people in the world, you really, I don't know what to say. I do not know what to say. And you can see they tried to destroy it at the end of the war. It has burn stains on it. I can't even believe that I get to look at this, much less touch it.

So this is Bonhofer's story, which is so bizarre because he is. a pacifist. Well, yes and no. This is kind of where it gets tricky. And this is why the liberals hate my guts. Yeah, don't go there yet because I'm going to get, oh, I've got a lot of hate your gut stuff. Because I told the truth about Bonhofer, but I mean, look, part of what's interesting about having this in front of me is to say to people, hey, ladies and gentlemen, this is history, this is real. My mother, who I talked to every day, she's 90, she grew up in Nazi Germany. My grandfather was killed in the war. I wrote my Bonhofer book.

I dedicated it to my grandfather. I'm named after him, Eric. This is real. This is not something that happened, you know, a billion years ago. This is history. And you know and I know in many ways it's repeating itself. And the Jew hatred is on the rise, which is why I think the film is coming out. Now, this is God's timing because they try to make the film for years and years and years.

And boom, now it's out. It wouldn't have been the same. God's amazing. Well, amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So let's just let's start in the movie here for a second.

One of the things that I loved in your book was the human side of Bonhofer, the fact that he comes to America early before, you know, Hitler takes over. And he falls in love with the African American culture in Harlem. and the music. Oh, it changes his life. That's no exaggeration. It changes everything, and it leads to everything that followed. Now, should I just say for people who know nothing about Bonhofer, like two sentences? Yeah, go ahead.

Okay. So Dietrich Bonhofer was a German pastor who in the early 30s knew because of his Christian faith, he needed to wake the church up in Germany that it's your duty as Christians to stand up to the evil of the Nazis. Now, at first it was not about Jews. It was, wasn't it? Well, for him, for him, it, it, you're right, to some extent, so complicated, right? But this is, this is why I hope people read my book, because I always think, I want people to know the details. Yes. Because the parallels are so crazy to where we are today. But initially, in Germany, as the Nazis rise, the first thing the Nazis are trying to do because this is this is you know if you if you take God out of the equation and

you have this Nazi philosophy what's philosophy well the philosophy is Jews are evil Germans Aryans are good good oh okay so what does that mean it means that the government is now going to try to separate the whole culture along racial lines and you go okay what happens when that comes to the church when the Nazis say okay we're going to have a German Reichs Kyrsia we're going to have a German Third Reich Church. And before I read this, and we are now going to have an official state church. Now in America, we know separation of church and state.

They didn't. We don't allow the state, by God's grace, to touch the church. The church is 1,000% independent. But in Germany, they had a very happy relationship. The Kaiser had been very pro-church. And so you have this in a lot of European nations where they never had to deal with this issue. We dealt with it in 1776.

We dealt with it in 1787. They didn't need to deal with it until suddenly now the head of the state is Adolf Hitler, who is as anti-Christian as it gets. But he's not stupid. He's not going to pretend to be anti-Christian. He's going to pretend to be, I care about Christian morality, and God is with us and all this different stuff. So Bonhofer is this rarest of individuals who sees immediately

the Nazis are going to try to take over the church, and they're going to try to get the church to go along with Nazi philosophy, which includes demonizing the Jews and saying that if you have Jewish blood, you can't be a member of the German church. And Bonhofer is like, well, that's a problem because Jesus was Jewish, Mary was Jewish, Joseph was Jewish, you know, Peter was Jewish. It's like the whole church starts out with Jewish roots. So the idea that if you believe in Jesus and you have ethnic Jewish blood,

that doesn't disqualify you. Most of the church was originally Jewish. And there are many of Bonhofer's friends who were ethnically Jewish who believe in Jesus and their ministers and stuff. So he knows we've got to fight now. And he tries to get the church to see it. And they're kind of like, well, we don't do politics. We just want to do church.

We just want to preach the gospel. And he realizes you're missing it. This is your duty before God to stand against evil. So that's the battle. That's the first battle with Bonhofer was to try. to get the church to acknowledge us and to stand. And you know, and I know the church did not do it. And by the time many in the church woke up, it was too late.

And that's what I've been talking about like a maniac for the last two years, is that most American evangelicals are utterly guilty, sickeningly guilty of exactly the same thing. Well, I can say that just because I'm an evangelical. But they have the least excuse in my mind. I'm just saying. So read that for a second. To yourself. Read that for a second.

I was going to say, no, no more of this German stuff. Well, I set this up. So when Hitler takes over and he starts to go after the churches, he wants to squeeze all the Jew out of Jesus and out, and he decides to make a case to take the Old Testament and disregard the Old Testament and only have the New Testament. So we didn't have any of these pesky Jews. The Old Testament, you know, yeah, it's too Jewish.

Too Jewish. Guess what? It's pretty Jewish. Correct. And so there was this big movement done by these two. Yeah. And this is just a letter in reference. Do you see the important sentence in that by any chance?

I didn't, no. So he's just saying, hey, Rosenberg. I know you're having a hard time and they're pushing back on you. Just keep going. And what he's talking about in this is the pushback. that he's getting from moving a little too far, a little too fast. Yeah. And letting people know what they're doing to the Christian church.

And he's being encouraged here. Don't worry about it. You know it's right. I know it's right. We got to get all this Jewish stuff out of the churches. Well, Rosenberg, who's listed here, he was in my Bonhofer book, I just reread the whole book after 14 years. And I found stuff that I had forgotten.

And one of it is the Rosenberg thing. that he was the one pushing dramatically to completely rip real Christian faith out of the German churches and replace it. We'll replace the Bible with mind conflict. The kind of stuff you think that somebody would make it up, it couldn't really be true. It was true. Within six months, some churches had replaced the picture of Christ on the altar with Adolf Hitler. Oh, no, it's so sick. But again, most Germans had no clue.

They just kind of went along. and went along. And when you really look at it, you understand why Bonhofer was, you know, screaming like church. You need to do something now. You have a chance now to do something. So that's who Bonhofer was. But where you were going was that early in his life, Bonhofer was 24 years old. He knew he wanted to be a pastor. He couldn't get ordained until he was 25. So he was this brilliant theologian. And, you know, he gets his doctorate at age 21. But at age 24, he decides, I want to spend a year in America. And he was like just incredibly. incredibly culturally sophisticated. So he thought, I'm going to go to America. I'm going to visit.

You know, his brother had split the atom with Einstein, was in Chicago, doing something that year. So he goes to America. He goes to the horrible Union Theological Seminary, which is totally liberal. And he's already like, I mean, I write in my book. I quote his letters home and his journals talking about how pathetic this, the liberal theology is of union in 1930. Wow. In 1930, right? So what happens? He meets an African American student. Frank Fisher from Alabama. And Frank says, well, come up to this church with me in Abyssinian Baptist Church up in Harlem. And Bonhofer for the first, and this is in the film, for the first time in his life, sees a kind of Christian faith. He's like, wow, this is amazing. The worship, they're really

worshiping God. They're not just singing songs. And it was a personal relationship. It shows in the movie. It's a personal relationship, which he doesn't even seem to understand, at least in the movie. he didn't really under even understand that. I mean, I think he understood it a little bit, but you're right, not really. And he sees it there and it changes his life. So if you read, again, because I just reread my book, you realize there's no doubt that he had, you know, what we would call orthodox Christian faith up to this point. But it hadn't touched his heart. So he sees this, he's totally changed by what he sees in the black church in Harlem. He goes back to Germany and all his friends can see something happened to this guy. He's reading the Bible. He's going to church. He's not

just a theologian. And then he starts talking to his pupils, to his students about things like saying things like, do you love Jesus? He never would have said that kind of language before. Do you love, do you have this personal relationship? Like all the stuff that you realize is the hallmark of actual faith, not just theological assent. So he's different. And then he sees, of course, that what was happening to the blacks in America, because he visited the Jim Crow South, he saw all this stuff. He suddenly sees the Jews being demonized,

and he makes the connection. Hang on just a second, because we found a letter from Bonhofer, writing to his family after the Scottsboro case. He says, we really don't have an analogous situation in Germany. That's the famous. That's crazy.

Well, listen, you've got to understand, and I think I explain this in my book, On some level, that's true. In other words, when he's writing that letter, you know, which is the Scottsburgh case, what is it, 29 or 30. Sorry. Yeah, 30. So 1930. But the point is that the Jews in Germany up to that point is one thing to be anti-Semitic.

You know, you had all that in England. They're anti-Semitic. But the point is the Jews were at every place in society. They had money. They had prestige, whatever. So he's thinking the blacks in America are hugely disenfranchised. So he doesn't make that equation. And also he doesn't know how quickly the Nazis are going to make the Jews, you know.

Because the Nazi, the Nuremberg laws were based on our laws, much of them. It's so, it's such a joy to talk to you because you know this stuff so deeply. It really, it's such a, it's such a blessing, Glenn. Thank you. And this stuff is so, so, so important. And again, rereading my own book, I remembered things that I had forgotten because I've talked about Bonhofer, hundreds of times, but some of this granular stuff, you think, wow, you know, there's a reason my book is as long as it is, because people need to know the details. Otherwise, you just mythologize it

and it becomes a cartoon. It's like, no, you need to know how real this is, but it is. All right, more with Eric in just a second. But if you're somebody living with aches and pains in your life, how do you respond to it? Do you do your best to ignore it? Do you take something that masks it? And then do you spend the rest of the time pretending that it's not there? If you do, I bet you know that's no way to live. It doesn't work. What you need is something that actually does give you relief. Let me tell you about relief factor.

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800, the number four relief, relieffactor. In the movie, um, he walks into, I think, a hotel because his, black pastor friend says you don't know what the rest of America is like. They take a trip. I mean, Bonhofer loved to travel and he was so culturally curious. He would go everywhere. So here he is in New York and his friend says, hey, let's go visit the Jim Crow South. Let's go to Washington, D.C. We can see Howard University. And you can see

like what we have here in America. So that really happened. And in the film, they show him going with Frank Fisher to Washington, D.C. And so in the film, they go into a hotel to book a room. Now, because I just reread my book, I realized this happened with a restaurant. Bonhoeffer goes into a restaurant with his black friend, and they are refused service. And he saw this.

Now, in the film, it's much more dramatic. Yeah. But he saw, like, this is America. Wow. Like, this is real. So this was real. You know, people talk about racism today. Ha, in 1930, this is the real thing.

So the hotel didn't happen, but the same thing happened without the shotgun. It's the same thing, yeah. And he couldn't relate to it at the time. When do you think that kicked in with him over in Germany? Well, this is the other thing that's so fascinating about Bonhoeffer, because many Germans, like my family, for example, They had no clue what's going on. They're simple people.

They have no connections. They have no whatever. Bonhofer's family was so connected. They were part of the, yes, they were part of the cultural elites. And so they knew everybody and knew everything and had a lot of Jewish friends. His sister, and this is in the movie, his twin sister marries a Jewish man. Now, it was a Jewish man who converted to Christian faith, but according to the Nazis, you're a Jew. So. And she's violated the number of lives.

That's right. So Bonhofer's twin sister and her husband and his nieces are Jews who begin to be persecuted. So it's very personal for him. He had many friends. His best friend before Abraham Barthek becomes his best friend. His best friend is Franz Hildebrand, who's Jewish. And so all this stuff hits him personally. He's forced to see stuff that no Germans would would see. So he sees it early on. and also because he's so smart, he sees where it's going. And, you know, the really dramatic thing is Hitler takes power January 31st, 1933. Within a couple of months, the church kind of leaders are trying to figure, well, what do we do about this kind of, the way the Nazis are dealing with the Jews? How do we respond as the church?

Bonhofer, being this genius theologian, he is deputized by these church leaders. Go off and tell us what's the answer. What do we do? What's the biblical answer to this? And he writes a famous essay called the Church and the Jewish question where he lays out, okay, number one. And it's kind of funny because I'm reading about the founders again recently. And you realize that the founders wrestled with this in the 1770s. Bonhofer's wrestling with this in 1933.

He's like, we've never had to face this before. What do we do? And he comes up with exactly what the founders came up with. And that the Bible and the Christian faith means that no government has, any right to push us around. Our rights are from God. We are free. And as Christians, we have to live that out. So he spells this out for these Germans who are their pastors, but they've never thought about this before. They never had to think about, well, what if the government starts pushing against us? Such the American story today. It's amazing, right? It's amazing. And so if you don't know your rights

and if you don't know what it really means to be a Christian, you're going to let them bully you, which many churches have been doing for the last, let's just say, four years. But for much longer than that. So Bonhofer writes this essay and he says, number one, the role of the church is to be the conscience of the state, to tell the state in a sense, this is when you go too far, this is your job. In other words, what is God's idea of the state? God's idea of the state is there should be a state. There should be a government, but it has to be serving righteous purposes. And Barnum says, so the first thing is the job of the church is to make that clear. And then if the church, if the state is going wrong, it's the job of the church to help the victims of state

action. So anybody hearing him read this essay, as he did read it to these pastors, they right away think like, oh, you mean the Jews. And then he clarifies, oh, and by the way, if the victims of the state behaving not the way the state is supposed to be behaving, if those victims are not members of the church. And that was, if they're Jews, it is our duty to do it. So that a lot of, I think a lot of Germans were kind of like, huh, really? That's our duty as Christians? And he's like, yes. But then he goes, the final fatal step, step three, point three. And he says, and if the state refuses to heed the council of the church and to do the right thing and continues to persecute the victims, it then becomes the duty of the church of Christians to, you know,

he uses the phrase to put a stick in the spokes of the wheels of state. In other words, to come against the state itself. And you could see how a lot of patriotic Germans would be like, what? What are you talking about? Because they had this tradition from Martin Luther, you know, to put this over emphasis on Romans 13, which is, you know, a passage in the New Testament that focuses on,

it's our job to, you know, to go along with what the state says to do. And there's a truth there up to a point. And Barnhofer's thinking, yes, up to a point, up to this point. And so it was very incendiary. And a lot of pastors and theologians thought, no, no, he's gone too far. We, the church, it's not our job to go against the state. Are you kidding? And he saw it crystal clear.

And so he tried and tried and tried to get more people to see it. Obviously not enough agreed. When was that? That he wrote that? 33, early in 33. So is it true that he was doing a, broadcast when Hitler was, I think, sworn in that day or something? Two days after Hitler comes to power is elected.

Bonhofer had been, now the mythological, in my book, in all my biographies, I like to clear up stuff that's a little fuzzy, like, because a lot of people would say, like, oh, yeah, Bonhofer was giving a radio speech and the Nazis cut it off. That's not really true. We don't know that's true. But the bottom line is he had been scheduled for some time to give a radio address. On the furor principle. issue of what's called the fear of principle, and I have to explain that, you know, what led to the rise of Adolf Hitler,

Germany had always had a monarch. They'd always had this wonderful leader, the Kaiser. Suddenly, the allies, you know, ham-handedly say that the Kaiser has to abdicate. You can't have a monarchy. We're going to force democracy on you. They never had democracy before. So they're sort of looking around and thinking, this is not really, you know, we didn't, if democracy doesn't arise out of, you know, we the people, then it's kind of enforced and it's kind of a mess. So Germany was, they were longing for a leader like they used to have in the king, in the Kaiser. And if you'd ask them, what kind of a leader are you looking for?

They didn't really know. They just know, we want a leader. And you can see the devil thinking like, well, I've got a leader just like that, waiting in the wings. And they were demoralized. They were demoralized. They were just looking for someone. And you can see on a human level why they would do that.

And so Bonham, offer gets on the radio. This is two days after Hitler takes power. And he gives this kind of radio speech about what is leadership? Like what is righteous leadership? And of course, righteous leadership is that I am deputized by God to lead my family, let's say, right? Now, my authority doesn't come from me. It comes from God. I'm the father and I have a duty. And so I am under authority. And so what he talks about is the furor principle is this idea of a furor who's an idol. He's under no authority. He's not under God's authority.

He is his own authority. It's this messianic satanic. What is the word furor mean? Furor literally means leader. So think of leader capital L, the leader. You know, it's kind of like North Korea, the leader, the leader, the dear leader. And so it's to make an idol of the leader. So even the Kaiser was under God's authority.

But the leader, this idea of the leader that kind of arises, in the 1920s in Germany, is this just a leader? But whose authority is he under nobody? And so Bonhofer lays this out, and he says, there's the temptation to make an idol of this leader. And for this leader to lead people to kind of worship him, as opposed to, you know, I mean, we don't want our kids to worship us. We want them to respect us because we respect God.

And it's a whole different. So he's outlining kind of this biblical view of leadership versus this satanic will to power kind of leadership. And wow, I mean, he's giving this radio address and it gets cut off. We don't know why it gets cut off and stuff. But so he's on the record two days after Hitler takes power. Bonhofer is on the record as standing against this kind of false leadership. In fact, he says that leader is a misleader.

So let me go through a couple of things here because I'd like your opinion on early on. And especially with the church. a couple of things happen. You just mentioned one and that is when Hitler comes to power they are, the people are

demoralized. They have been kicked by everybody in the world. They are no longer the great nation that they once thought they were. The churches had really hurt themselves in World War I by saying this is gods and it wasn't.

And so, and then they go into just decadence with the Vimar. And so let me just drop a marker here for a second. Then I'll give you one more thing. Drop the marker at, gosh, that kind of sounds like America today. Okay. You've been kicked around. You're tired of it. You're looking for somebody.

Yeah. And somebody comes to say, oh, I'll take care of that. Uh-huh. Okay. The next marker is, as I started doing research on transgenderism, the college or university of sexology in Berlin at the height of the Weimar Republic. Right. They, the first transgender surgery happens in 1925 in Berlin. And that guy has multiple surgeries. He dies in 29 as they try to sow a uterus. inside of that man. This is the island of Dr. Moreau.

Yes, it is. This is so sick. Yes. So, but that university in Berlin starts writing books and papers and starts pushing this out. So it's in the universities. It's even in some of the school, secondary schools. And that's when it's my understanding, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, that's when the people who felt they were being pushed into the background and we had just become this immoral godless state,

they were looking for someone to get rid of all of this stuff, right? And they found them in the brown shirts. So the first book burnings were actually the stuff that's saying transgenderism, homosexuality, pedophilia, all of that's fine. Well, that's the point is there's going to be truth. There's going to be truth in every lie. And that's the way the devil works. There's no such thing as a pure lie. So you have to, you know, you give somebody something that they like and they go along with it.

And again, if you're a Christian, you would recognize pretty quickly like, wait a minute, can't go along with that, can't go along with that. And but they, the church in Germany, again, it was lost. It was lost. It was. So Bonhofer knew the church was the only. hope of Germany to stand against this evil. But if he couldn't get enough German pastures to do that, and he couldn't. So, but let me go back. Here's why I dropped those two in. When I saw, you know, when you hear people transgender, homosexuals or whatever, they'll say, those Christians are going to

round us up. Yeah. Historically, they have a point. In Germany, historically, historically, that's what happened. The Christians got in bed with the Germans. Are they? Were they the, Christians? You see what I'm saying? Yeah, in other words, I don't think, but I don't know that that's true. And I think that we're living in a day right now, especially as Americans, I know that anything that leans toward theocracy, that leans toward demonizing people with whom we disagree, that is fundamentally evil, anti-Christian. In other words, so this idea that there are people who want to impose their morality, I know that happened in the past. We're not there. In other words, I don't, I am very, you know,

deeply involved in all kinds of Christian communities, I don't see a hint to that. And if you ever do see a hint, it's the Christians that say, no, that's wrong, you know. And so I don't see that parallel today. But the fear on the other side is there. There are people think, oh, if people, if Christians and conservatives get in power, they're going to do this and this and this and this. I know that's not true, but I know that their fear of it is very real, which is why they use the incendiary language that they do, that if Trump gets in power, he's going to do this and this and this. That is absolute nonsense. I would be screaming from the rooftops. But the point is, they're so convinced of this, they so think, oh, no, no, he's Hitler 2.0, that they're willing to put a bullet in

his head. In other words, they're willing to do anything because they feel like they know that this is a real threat. I know that it isn't, but these are the times in which we live. So how do you convince people who will see these parallels? Strong leader. Yeah. restore things. It's very surfacy, Glenn. This is the thing is I've been dealing with this since 2016. When I first came out for Trump and there were people thinking, don't you, Eric, you idiot, you wrote the Bonhofer book. Don't you see that he's an authoritarian nationalist just like Hitler? And I'm thinking, no, no, no, no, no, no. His version of nationalism is like George Washington's version, not like Hitler's version. So nationalism by itself is not bad. When you make an idol of

the nation, it can go bad. But George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, loved America. Correct. And that kind of nationalism is beautiful. It doesn't lead to making an idol of patriotism, an idol of the president. It leads away from that. But people who really don't have a sense of history, they're very simplistic. And they go, oh, Hitler was a nationalist.

He was an authoritarian. Trump is authoritarian. Even that phrase, when people say Trump is authoritarian, that is nonsensical. For four years, he was the president of the United States. He didn't do the stuff that people are, are essential. You know, it doesn't mean I agree with everything. But the point is that these people are so emotional that they don't even, the facts are meaningless.

As far as they're concerned, if you are in any way like a strong leader, they say, oh, you're an authoritarian. Do they know what an authoritarian is? Have you lived in North Korea? Have you lived in a country with actual authoritarianism where if you dissent, you're rounded up? You know, the only people I see being rounded up in America is people that dared to, wander through the Capitol and take selfies on J6. Those people are in prison while we sit here having this conversation.

So there's tremendous irony. And we're in a dark place, yeah. Let me, while we're here in the dark place, let me just ask you, because you get a lot. Well, let me ask you this first before we go there. If Bonhofer were alive today, what do you think he would be, what he would think about world affairs,

theology, would he be engaged? Well, I mean, yeah, I think that we just have to look at how engaged he was. He was willing to get involved in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler. Why? Because he knew that Jews are being destroyed, murdered. He said, I have to do something about this, you know. And so I think that this idea, you know, the lie that he was dealing with in his day, it's the same lie we're dealing with in our day, which was what led me to write my

letter to the American church. What would Barnhofer say today? It's the same excuses being given by the church. We don't do politics. What do you don't do politics? Slavery is is an issue and you say, well, we don't take a position. That's political. We just do church. How can you do church and not take an issue on enslaving human beings? That's politics. My hero, William Wilberforce, I wrote a biography William Wilberforce. He was a politician who, because of his Christian faith, said, I must stand against the slave trade. This is a satanic abomination treating human beings like this. I'm going to use politics and culture and whatever I can do to change the laws. That's our duty as Christians. This is our duty as Americans. And so Bonhofer was trying to get the church to see it in his day.

And again, many were like, we don't want any trouble. We're just going to do church. We'll let the evil take over. We don't care. It's not affecting us. It's affecting the Jews. God judges that. If you don't speak up for those who are being crushed. And so I really think Bonhofer gives us a of what it is to be involved. And again, our fidelity is to God. But the idea that you can somehow be a person of faith and not take your faith into action is preposterous. We have a duty.

You know, I know we're not going to be judged for our deeds. But I do think that if you've been, if you have been redeemed, you fundamentally change. No, that's. And you want to serve. You want to do the right things. So to some extent, Glenn, you know, when people now say what you just said, like, we're not going to be judged by our deeds. But we are.

Part of me says that's not right. We are going to be judged by our deeds. In fact, there are many places in the scripture that are clear as a bell. So, you know, yes, technically I'm saved by faith. But the point is the scripture says faith without works is dead. In other words, if you claim to have faith, God knows whether you have faith by how you live. He sees your heart. And if you're not living like Jesus.

like Jesus actually defeated death on the cross and you are freed to live for God and his purposes. If you're not living that way, it proves you don't believe it. So you can claim to have faith. He said, well, I signed a statement of faith and I go to that church. God is not impressed by that. He looks at your life.

And I think that this is the heresy that was at the center of the German church during Bonhofer's time. It's the same heresy that is at the center of many American churches in our day. They do not understand that God demands of us, to live out what we claim to believe.

If you say, I believe this and this and this, and God says, okay, well, are you living it? If you're not living it, God knows you don't believe it. It's a lie. You're fooling yourself. I've been really wrestling with, you know, Blessed is the peacemaker. And my understanding of that that I've kind of settled on is

Bonhofer was a peacemaker, but not necessarily for his life. you know if you're going to be a peacemaker that means you're standing out in front and you're saying these things are negating the peace of everybody and i've got to stand against those things restore that peace for everybody that doesn't mean your life is going to be peaceful that's right it doesn't mean that you shut up and sit down right right it's it's yeah no it's it's heavy stuff i mean I, you know, to get back to the movie, like, there's so much here. And in a movie, you can't tell everything. You can't tell, you know, I mean, my book is almost 600 pages long. But they do an

amazing job of sort of summing up the issue, because you understand it, in a two-hour film, you know, to try to tell that story. But that's the central story. Will you live out your faith? And by the way, this is a key point, too, is that I think a lot of Christians, speaking as a Christian, they're big excuses like, oh, I don't want to get anything wrong. And they see God as some kind of a moral policeman who's kind of like, just looking at you,

just to get out of line and he's going to whack you. Then you don't know who God is. God loves you. And he wants to say, out of boy. And even if you get it wrong, he's like, but I see what you tried to do there. It's not about, did you make a mistake? So Bonhofer goes out on a limb

and says that even if I'm getting something wrong, I've got to do something. I'm going to do my best. And if I'm wrong in being involved in this plot to kill Hitler, then I cast myself on the mercy of a merciful God. But to do nothing, I know that that's just an excuse. And so many Christians think that if I do nothing, I won't vote for this guy. I won't for today. I'm just going to do nothing to get back to the famous quote, not to act is to act.

You don't get some like neutral carve out. No. Switzerland, their neutrality is. is despicable, it's not like, well, they were neutral. When you have evil rising and you say, well, I don't want to, I'm not going to take any sides. God's going to judge you for that. You got to figure this out and you've got to do what you can. So that's where we are.

So is it true that he comes back and he knows he has to do something? And it seems to me that when he comes back and he's talking to his pupils, that he's kind of, he's asking, You know, so pacifist. Yeah. I mean, can you be a pacifist? And it seems to me he's almost looking either to send a signal to them to let them know, hey, you're going to hear some things about me, maybe. Yeah.

Or he's trying to get confirmation on this theory of his. Well, there's a few things. Let me say this real quick. Just as we were talking about nationalism a moment ago, right? Like George Washington's idea of nationalism, Lincoln's idea of nationalism, Lincoln's idea of nationalism. Lincoln's idea of nationalism is this beautiful thing. It's beautiful. It's about freedom.

It's about all this great stuff. And then there's evil nationalism, which is Hitler's idea of nationalism. Similarly, with pacifism, Bonhoeffer, when you look at the world of World War I, I mean, the madness of French killing Germans, Germans, killing French. At that point, he realized nationalism has overtaken Europe. It leads us to World War I. It's destructive. And in that world, he's a pacifist.

But he's not a pacifist like John and Yoko, you know, in the bed. We're not talking about, you know, we're against the Vietnam War. We're talking about real pacifism that says if it's not a just war, if it's just about chest beating and, you know, Germany wants to take over and that, that's wrong. So in that world, he's a pacifist. But a lot of liberals in the decades, you know, after Bonhofer's death, whatever, they try to pretend like, oh, Bonhofer was this liberal, theological liberal and a pacifist. Basically, that's nonsense. And I didn't know when I started writing my book what I would find, but what I found was that that was all nonsense. Bonhofer was not any kind of a pacifist along those lines. So we have to

be careful when we use terms just like nationalism, when we say pacifism, like just as we would say, if there's a way to avoid war, yes, we want to avoid war. But if there's this horrible aggressor or something like that, we have a duty to defend the innocent, to defend the way, you know, which is different from kind of a, the purest kind of pacifism. Bonhofer was not the kind of a pacifist that says, I will not, you know, take up arms if there's an invader or something like that. And so I just think that it just needs to be clarified. At what point does Bonhofer really, I mean, he must have known with the purer principle,

but at what point does he really know they're coming for me? Well, it's, I can say this, and you remember the story, right? So he goes, so he's trying to fight in Germany to try to get the church to wake up, try to get the church to wake up. He sees the church hasn't done it. So then he starts this illegal seminary to train up these young men. What does it really mean to be a disciple of Christ, not just a fake, you know, church guy, but to live it out. He does that for a while. Then the war is coming, and he knows he cannot fight in Hitler's war.

he knows but he knows that if he says this publicly being who he is then the Nazis are going to come down on all the people associated with him so he can't say it publicly he needs a way out he decides ah i'll go back to america i'll sort of escape the trouble and i'll go back to america so in 1939 he goes back to america and while he's in new york realizes oops i made a mistake i need to go back to germany to face whatever i have to face he didn't know what he's facing maybe death, probably death, who knows. His faith was so strong that he just knew, I just need to go back and God will take care of me

and whatever happens happens. So is this coming from him or is this coming from, some say it came really from the advice of the pastor? Absolutely not. No, that's one of the things in the film, you know, there's things in films that, that's just not true. No, no, no.

It totally came from him. In fact, he probably didn't even meet with them when he came back. That's one of things in the film that, you know, because he wasn't there or long, was he? He was there 26 days. Yeah. And I will say that, no, it completely comes from him. When I say from him, from him talking to God, from him praying and saying, Lord, lead me, what do I do? What do I do? The Lord led him and it became his conviction, okay, I need to go back. So what happens now is what is he going back to? He knows the war is coming. He knows he can't fight in the war. What's he going to do? Well, long story short, his brother-in-law is involved in German military intelligence. And, the Abver, German military intelligence, was kind of independent.

In fact, they were at odds with the Gestapo. Because we forget that there was, you know, it's not like living in Kim Jong-un's North Korea. There was still some semblance of law and whatever. So he figures if the war comes and I'm working for my brother-in-law in German military intelligence, it'll look like I'm serving the Third Reich. It's a time of war and I'm doing what I can and so on and so forth.

So he does that. And while he's doing that, So the Nazis are kind of leaving him alone and leaving the Abwehr alone. You know, it's kind of like the FBI and the CIA. They're kind of, you know. And he gets involved in the course of his actions effectively as a spy. He gets involved in trying to get seven Jews out of Germany into neutral Switzerland to save their lives. Bottom line.

It's called Operation 7. And in the course of that, there's some financial irregularities because the wonderfully neutral Swiss require money to take the Jews. Isn't that great? And that's when the Gestapo that kind of notice, oh, there's some irregularity. So Bonhofer and his brother-in-law and a few others are sent to prison, but it's just for that. No one knows about the plot to kill Hitler. So he's in prison. He's treated rather well during the season. He's in Tegel military prison. It's not like the Gestapo prison or whatever, his uncle, because he's so well connected, is the military commandant over all of Berlin. So when all the guards and everybody find out, oh, this is the nephew of like the big, big, big, big boss.

So he's treated okay. And he's under the impression, everybody's in the impression that they will be able to beat this rap, that this is just a money laundering thing and he'll be able to. He will get out. Right. And he gets engaged. Now, none of that's in the film, but he gets engaged and this love affair and it's so beautiful. and he's in prison writing letters to his fiance.

It's so beautiful. And he has hope. And obviously it's all in my book because it's so moving. It's beautiful. So he's in there. While he's in there, as we've been saying, July 20th, 1944, the Volfichens-Valcary plot happens. The bomb goes off. Hitler is not killed.

And not only do they fail to kill Hitler, but suddenly now the whole conspiracy. is exposed for the first time ever because this has been going on for years nobody knows suddenly it's exposed so at that point to answer the question finally that's when bonhofer knows probably my days are numbered now he didn't know for sure because at the you know at the end of my book I talk about how as the Nazis realize they're probably losing the war they want to keep a few high level prisoners as bargaining chips so there's a good chance that bonhofer will survive but at the very, very, very end, it's chilling. The Zossin files are exposed, and it's clear as a bell to Hitler, who's guilty, and he just

gives the order, they must be executed. And so on April 9, 1945, Bonhofer is hanged at Flausenburg concentration camp, taken there, I mean, he's only there 12 hours. He's taken 100 miles in a car specifically for this, you know, fake trial through the night, and then to be hanged in the morning. But I mean, at the end of my book, I talk about Bonhofer's view of death. And this is what's so beautiful about it is that he knew. It's not like he hoped.

He knew that Jesus had defeated death and that he is now going home. Like, you know, a lot of times we say this and it kind of sounds nice. He knew this is true. And if you know that's true, as every Christian should know, you live differently. You live heroically. You live freely and bravely. And so he, to me, is the ultimate model. And what he's saying to all of us is like, this is for you.

This is not just for a few. This is not extra credit Christianity. This is the real thing. If you believe this, you're going to live differently and you'll die differently. And it's so ultimately. That's how we, one of the reasons why we know when exactly he died, right? Didn't he thank his executioner? Um, not exactly, but sort of.

In other words, there was this kind of, uh, kindness. It's in my book that, that he, he died with this kind of, I mean, Listen, even if we don't get this transcript that says this, because there's been some dispute about that transcript, it doesn't matter. If you look at Bonhofer's life carefully, this is who he was. He knew he's going into the presence of God. He knew he's going home.

This is not like sort of, I hope. He knew it. And people who were with him in the last weeks, and again, I just read my own book, we read it. So many different people saying exactly the same thing about what he was like under duress. How beautiful has how his soul shown in this dark environment and how they look to him for courage and hope.

And I mean, you can't fake that when things are really, really, really, really bleak. So it's ultimately very beautiful to see like, that's real. That's God's will for every one of us. That's not like some fake stories we tell. It's history. It's real. All right. Let me take you to some people that are upset.

Relatives of Bonhofer. Oh, yeah. Distant relatives who are guaranteed pro-Hamas lunatics. So these are Jew-hating lunatics claiming to speak for the man who died for the Jews of Europe, Dietrich Bonhofer. I mean, let's be clear. So relatives of Bonhofer wrote that he would never have seen himself anywhere near the right wing extremist, violent movements that are trying to appropriate him today.

Yeah. Oh, the violent movements. What's the violent movement? Like, what are we, what are we talking about? What's the violent movement? Antifa? Oh, sorry, that's Marxist left. Who are we talking about? Look, these people, you've dealt with them longer than I have. They're unhinged. There's no talking to them. They have their view. It's a free country. But they're crazy. Listen, when my book came out in 2010. You had me on your show. Can you imagine how the left-wing lunatics who had their own private Bonhofer, this fictional Bonhoeffer that they had created, to have me write a big book that's selling a million copies, and I go on the Glenn Beck show, that right-wing neo-Nazi Glenn Beck. But they don't care about the facts. They just know they hate you, they hate Trump.

they don't know what they think. All they know is somebody other than them has put out a book on Bonhoeffer, and so they're going to just demonize and demonize. That's kind of what's happening here. And again, the irony, I mean, it's horrible irony. The liberals who go to see this film are going to love the film. This is not some right-wing film. I mean, the guy who wrote the screenplay and directed it is not even conservative. He's probably liberal. I mean, he's, so he made a film for everybody. They made this beautiful film. And these lunatics are coming out and trying to brand it like, you know, it's some neo-Nazi.

I mean, again, people who see the film is going to be pretty clear. I mean, because I guarantee you, tons of liberals aren't reading this junk, and they're going to go see the film. And they're going to tell all their friends. It was an awesome film. Christianity Today. Oh, yeah. Well, they've got over to the dark side in case you didn't know that. No, I have.

I know. Yeah, you know. They also provided some pushback. Here's what they said. What kind of connection is the film making by suggesting that Bonhofer changed his mind about the narrow way? Explain what the narrow way is. Well, you see, Christianity today actually, in all seriousness, they're getting that wrong.

But I can understand when somebody's making a movie, you know, they play fast and loose with some stuff. And it's true that in the film, you know, you could get the the idea that Bonhoeffer is saying like, yeah, well, the heck with this, you know, Christian morality, Hitler needs killing, you know. Now, that's not true. But you could see that if people aren't sensitive to the whole thing that they would say, well, it sort of implies that that that's not true. I mean, it's not true of Bonhofer. It's not true of the film. I mean, Angel Studios is distributing the film. They take faith seriously. This is not about, like,

well, we don't care. We just want to make a movie. But, But if you're looking for something, like Christianity, they're just looking for something to find a thread to pull. So they say this crazy stuff. I mean, in the film, the marketing, and this is Angel Studios, right? They, you know, they kind of want to make it like he's a, it's a sexy spy thriller and Bonhoeffer's an assassin and he's got a gun or whatever like that. That's called marketing, right? Right. That's called marketing.

If you watch the film. Come in and see the movie. Right. But so they kind of act like, oh, yeah, this kind of right-wing crazy cabal that they want to incite political. violence. I mean, the left is, they're unhinged and they write stuff like this. So here's they finish this. Perhaps it's suggesting that the audience should also lay down their political naivity and take up arms. Perhaps it's suggesting the way of Jesus is too soft for the hard realities of modern conflict and should be replaced by a more realistic

approach. Yeah. I mean, of course, that's nonsense. But what is interesting, of course, there is there's truth in every lie. I think that there are people, and I'm among them, who feel like there has been this, how do we put this? There is a warrior side of Jesus, right, that he turns over the tables in the temple, and he rails against the religious leaders. They don't know that, Jesus. They kind of want, Jesus is very gentlemanly. Right. And so what their version of Jesus is, is just like all of the, like the Prussian military class that says, said, we're too gentlemanly to push back too hard against Hitler. He's the head of the government.

In other words, there's a time to say, wait a minute, this is evil. We've got to do something about this, right? But Christianity today and others, they're not interested in these nuances. So they just have to say, oh, you're saying, you know, throw away your Christian morality. I would say on the contrary, it is pick up your true Christian morality and stand against evil. Now, I'm not talking about with a gun, but stand against evil. The Christians in the Middle East, they stand. Of course.

They're not blowing people up. They stand. They speak up against it. They do what they can to fight against it as well. Yeah. People give their lives for their faith. And again, I think that there are people, you know, like the editors of Christianity today, they kind of act like, well, that's quaint stuff from the past.

Now it's just about being nice and agreeing with people or some preposterous thing like that. By the way, what happens if you don't stand against evil? Children's bodies are being mutilated. We have sex trapping on our southern border. Does it not bother you that 11 and 12 year old girls are being raped? Doesn't bother you? If that doesn't bother you, I don't know what kind of Christian you are.

Right. So, you know, I'm just stunned at, you know, you talk about naivetea. Wow. Like that's not, that's not politics.

That's saving children on our own border. Yeah. In the same article, points right directly to you, Metaxus continues to marshal Bonhofer's work toward his project of politics as the ultimate end of theology. I mean, that is a vile lie.

And what's interesting, though, is that they really believe it. You can tell, they believe this. And I think to myself, wow, imagine we're abolitionists. We care about blacks and enslaved being treated like scum and animals. We get involved politically because we believe it's our moral duty to stand against that. I'm here to tell you there were people in the 19th century who would say exactly what Christianity today is saying like, how dare you get political? Just have your nice little church services and let the blacks go to hell. We don't care what happens to them. Just do your nice little Christian thing.

And you think, if I'm going to live out my faith, the first thing I'm going to do is speak up for those who are being treated this way. And so Christianity today, anytime you do anything that leans toward the political, they just try to demonize you. they don't actually think, are you trying to help people? I mean, you know, so again, this idea of that we're not supposed to be politically involved, trust me, the editors of Christianity today are totally politically involved on the other side. They are helping, you know, the communist, globalist, left either by doing nothing or if they can actually help them by helping them. So they're hypocrites because they're very politically involved. But when people like you or like me get involved politically, they say, oh, you're just,

a culture warrior, you don't care about God. And I think, well, you know, God's going to judge me about who I care about. I think in the last six months, anybody who is a Christian had to notice that at least, to use our founders' words, the divine providence that happened. Oh, I mean, it is. That was such a gift. I mean, and I'll tell you something, you know, when that bullet hit Donald Trump's ear and we saw blood. That was God's mercy saying to us, do you get it now? He should be dead, but he's not. In America, you should be dead.

You deserve to be dead. But I have preserved you for my purposes in history. Now go to work. And to me, it's like when George Washington, you know, survives the Battle of Brooklyn, okay? The miracle of the fog. Okay, it's a miracle of God. They ought to have been strangled in the cradle. Liberty is over.

The overwhelming 400 British ships, you know, parked outside Staten Island should have crushed the Continental Army. Game over. America never comes into being. God preserves them and so they can fight on and on and on and on. And we win liberty and independence. That's what just happened in America. This election, it was God's. extremely merciful hand preserving us so that now we can fight and we can win back the liberties

that we've lost and we can recatechize the culture and teach people what is liberty, what is self-government, why should we be dancing in the streets with gratitude that God would allow us to have liberty and that it's worth fighting for and it's worth dying for? And so I think we're in an extraordinary moment in history, and let's, to reiterate, the Trump hating, America hating, liberals don't like it, and they'll say anything they can. There's a level of desperation. It's amazing to me because I don't have any loyalty to Donald Trump. My loyalty is to the Constitution, and as long as he remains loyal to that and those ideals, I'm willing. him. Yeah. But if he starts violating the bill of rights, we would be the first ones.

Screaming. Right. You're darn right. Right. It's really amazing. What is Christian nationalism? Christian nationalism is an invented term, invented by the devil, to demonize actual Christian faith. In other was Bonhofer used the phrase faith in action. When you put your faith in action, the devil doesn't like it. And all those people who are playing on his team, they don't like it. They want your faith to be in some little neutral corner that has no effect on the world outside your little church or whatever. So they say, oh, you're a Christian nationalist.

You're living out your faith. Yes. When people try to abolish slavery, you know, they would say, oh, yeah, they're being Christian nationalists. Why don't they just accept slavery and just do their little church service? And they said, well, because we can't because of my faith. faith, I need to stand against the evil of slavery. And it goes down the line. And so we're living in a time now where those on the left

have to demonize. They have to create a term because it's like, oh, you're not supposed to live out your faith. You're just supposed to have it locked in your head. And it has no actual effect beyond your head. And it's amazing to me that they miss that they have created a faith, a church. The planet. Bingo. Or transgenderism or whatever. Is there God? And they, that's their nationalism. They're not saying, oh, the planet is warming and I worship the planet. Let's not do anything. Right. And you understand too, like these terms, they're just silly terms, like nationalism. Evil is evil. So if it's nationalistic evil or globalistic evil, in this case, it's globalistic evil. Okay, you've got these globalists who are against the idea.

I know how the idea of a nation can go wrong, but I also know how the idea of a nation can go right. They're not interested. They have a global. agenda and they are at war, let's be clear as Americans, they're at war with the sovereignty of America. Okay, patriots have died so that we could have a free nation. We could be a shining city on the hill for the whole world to look at and say, what they have in America. I want that. That's beautiful. My parents came here, you know, from Europe, from war-torn Europe because I thought, could we live in America? It's so beautiful. It's so amazing. These folks are at war with that America. They want a globalist tyranny, basically.

And so what do they do? They create this term, Christian nationalism, to make it sound like nationalism. I mean, I hear this a lot where they say, oh, I'm about the kingdom of heaven. I'm not about, you know, America. I'm about the king. That's like saying like, I'm about Jesus. I'm not about my wife and my daughter. No, no, no.

I'm about. And you think, wait a minute, if you love Jesus, you're going to love your family more. But they're creating this preposterous zero-sum game. that if you love America, it means you don't love God. And I think, no, if I love God, it's going to make me love my country more. It's going to make me love my community more. It's going to make me love my family more. This is classic Marxism. It's a zero-sum game. You have to pick this or this. That's never been the case. Those in this country, the Black Robe Regiment, which I first learned about from you, because they loved God, they loved the idea of, imagine if we could have a free country,

how beautiful that would be, how it would reflect God's values in history. So it's a totally different thing. I think that I understand it to some degree in Europe, the European elite. They don't have this. They never have this. They don't understand what makes America. You know what I mean? Those who are American, I can't excuse them for their own ignorance.

I know they were raised in a school system that didn't teach the principles of America. but all you have to do is read the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, and you get it, okay? I am proud of my country. I think we're the most amazing country. We've also been some of the darkest people in the world. Of course.

But we're an amazing country when we live up to those values that are enshrined in those documents. I'm not national because I love America. I love the principles of America. and in those documents. And that's what makes us so great. They don't understand a world without the mixing of church and state.

They still are looking at France, you know, at the time of the revolution going, oh, that's evil. That's got, no, we're not that. Well, look, you understand this. You have to be rather ignorant. And they are. They don't know. They don't know. They don't know any of this stuff.

They don't know any of this stuff that you've been speaking about for all this time with it and all your audience knows about. They don't know this stuff. But here's the good news. Many, many Americans in large part because of you or a little bit because of me, they know about this stuff. And they're not buying this garbage. And so the question is, will enough Americans know the truth to fight against the lunacy? And I really think, especially with regard to the last election, we have just enough to win. It's kind of like saying, I always say, in my new book, it's called Religinalist Christianity.

And I say, if you went to George Washington in 1776 and said, hey, George, how's it going? You know, he would say it's going very poorly. But if Providence be with us in this cause of liberty, we will fight on because we believe that God can give us the victory. Our job is to do our job. Our job is to fight for what is beautiful and good and true. And if we don't fight, well, then it's on us. And there are a lot of Americans who are just like, who cares? I don't want to fight.

I don't want to take it. I mean, there were plenty Tories. There were plenty people just who didn't care. But there were just enough in, you know, during the revolution, just enough willing to fight. And that small group won freedom for everybody. And so here we are. And that's where it always is. Always.

I mean, you know, it's amazing. I don't like when people make dominant. Trump into our savior. Right. I already have one. Right. But I also, I also understand how the Lord is using this guy.

And some people are like, how could he possibly? Because I'm sure the Lord asked a lot of people before he asked him. You know what I mean? And he's like, oh God, who's next? Don, will you stand? Will you stand? That's it. Yeah.

He's not putting the most righteous person in. He's putting anyone willing to stand. And how many of us, I mean, that's, I think, the lasting legacy you have given me is a understanding of not to act is to act. And how important it is to stand. Because God's not going to hold it. We have a responsibility. Yeah. And it's not my, it's not my church that's driving it.

It's my faith in God that's driving it. It's my understanding of who Jesus Christ is and what I owe him and can never repay. But I'm going to, I know he has a plan. Yeah. I just, I know, I don't know what it is. That's right. But I know I want to help pave that road for whatever he's doing. That's the point.

And that's why I say about Washington, you do your job. You fight for what is right and true. You do the best you can. The results ultimately are in God's hands. Right. But to do nothing. I mean, imagine how privileged and out of touch some people must be to think, oh, I don't need to do anything. Patriots have suffered and bled and died so that we can talk about this stuff and we can have the freedom that we have.

To think that I need to do nothing? Have me your phone. Can you imagine what Tyndale would have said about this? Oh, gosh. and none of us read the scriptures. I mean, few of us read the scriptures. We have every version of the scriptures,

every version in every language. Tintail was burned at the stake for a few pages. That's, I mean, the choices we make are remarkable and how fast we forget. Well, again, this is, you know, we're all on a journey,

you know, we didn't ask to be born at this time in history, but the Lord put us, here now. Our job is to say, Lord, what do you want me to do now? Don't you find, when my

father died, I reviewed his life and he didn't serve in World War II. He just turned 18 right at the end of it. And he joined the Marines, but he had flat feet so he couldn't go.

So he missed that. He didn't fight in any war. And he really was living in the greatest time in American history. And we lived in Seattle, which didn't really have the busing issues and the black, you know, issues back and forth. And I thought, who could my dad have been if he lived in a time that pushed him up against the wall? I find this time to be such an honor. Correct. That we've been.

Correct. We're here. Correct. And we can see, I'm a coward or I'm not. I mean, it's scary because you don't know what your breaking point is. You know, you don't know. Is something right around the corner that's going to make me go, okay, okay, I give. But the time.

we've had, God doesn't, these things, if you're awake, they don't happen as fast as history makes them look to be. That's where most people are. Hitler's elected and they have no idea. They didn't see it coming.

And so all of a sudden they have to make a choice and they make the wrong choice. But some of us who are awake have had years to prepare. That must be terrifying for the other side. Well, listen, I know, I say emphatically, God called me in my mother's womb to write this Bonhoeffer book. It wasn't my idea. I know that God called me to write this book for such a time as this. And when I was writing it, I didn't know that I was writing it for such a time as this, but God knew. And God has prepared me. And the fact is here we are. We are here now. And we get to live our lives to God's glory. And what an honor. What a beautiful, beautiful thing. And the thing is we can trust God with the details. You know, whether we die tomorrow or we live, who cares?

God knows and we can trust him. And I think that that's one of the reasons the story of Bonnard is so beautiful to me is that he lived it out. He did just talk about it. He was given an opportunity by God to live it out and to show us what that looks like. And that is profoundly inspiring to so many people. So again, you know, I'm stunned that this film is out now. I'm stunned that it's as wonderful as it is because it didn't need to be.

It's wonderful. And it's going to inspire a lot of people. And, you know, where we go from here, I don't know. But I just, I just can't believe we're here, frankly. I can't believe we're here. More with Eric Metaxus in just a second. When you're facing evil, do you do nothing? Do you hide?

Or do you have a responsibility to act, stop evil, or at least, protect those around you from that evil. Honestly, I don't know why the burn a launcher is not in every school room in America, or at least every school. If you're a teacher, some gunman's starting to kill people down the hall or wherever, if you have a burn a launcher, you could open the door just a little bit and shoot down the direction for 60 feet. You just have to be within like six or eight feet.

If you can get that there, it's tear gas. Yes, some of the kids might cry, but I guarantee you the tears are going to be a lot worse if somebody doesn't stop that guy. You can use this in schools. I don't know if anybody is, but they should be. You can take an attacker and paralyze them on the floor. They're not going to be able to do anything for 40 minutes. That gives the time for police to arrive and handle the situation. It gives you time to escape and get away.

from that danger without killing anybody. Use it in your home, have it in your car. If you're a teacher, ask your school, why don't we have a Burna launcher? Burnah, B-Y-R-N-A dot com slash Glenn. Get an exclusive 10% discount. That's burner.com slash Glenn. I think it's interesting that you know me, I've, I hang out with all of religions. And I really love all.

I mean, not, you know, there's some religions. California I'm not real hip with, but I love going to other people's services because I can I can speak. I can barely speak English and it's the only language I actually speak, but I can speak different spiritual languages. I know what people are saying even if the words are different, you know? And for a long time, it was, it was everybody was, guarding themselves from sheep stealers, as some of the pastors say, you're going to steal my sheep. And I could break down that wall because nobody wants to be in my faith.

I mean, we're like the Jews of Christianity. So I could get past some of those gates and talk to people. And in the 15 years ago, it would still break down to at the end, push it, you know, and it would still break down to, well, we have our faith and you're kind of outside of our faith and these people are outside of our faith. We're now, I mean, I felt Amish recently, you know, when watching them, I'm like, you know what? That's a really good faith. Because look at how they're implementing it. And I feel like God is saying, yeah, I'm going to work all this out guys. I'm going to work all this out. You have to be doing my work. And is that kind of what

religionless Christianity is? Yeah. I think, yeah. So my new book, I mean, the book that I wrote a couple years ago is called Letter to the American Church, which talks about the parallels between what happened in Germany and where we are now. And I had more to say. And I used a Bonhofer term for the title of a book called Religionless Christianity. And all he's trying to say, does that piss a lot of people off? Oh, you have no idea. And I kind of did it in part to piss them off. Right. Because I thought to myself, listen.

And they pissed them people off when he did it. Well, that's, you know what's interesting. I mean, we don't have time to get into it. But the bottom line is this. Bonhofer, and again, rereading my Bonhofer book recently, I saw it more clearly than I've seen it in years. He was consistent from when he was in his early 20s till the day he died. He knew at the heart of Christian faith, what that really is

and he was constantly trying to teach about like what is it really not just like oh you was sent to these intellectual theological ideas and you're a Christian no you have to really have this personal relationship with Jesus it's a whole you know he understood that as a young man and it got

deeper and deeper and deeper and at the end of his life 1994 he's in prison and he's writing these letters to his best friend who understood him like nobody I mean just so he's almost using this shorthand or whatever. And in one letter, he's basically saying that we needed a religionless Christianity. In other words, we had all of this religion. We had all this,

like, I'm going to the Lutheran Church and I'm going to, you know, and he thought that did not stand against evil. We needed to live out our faith. Correct. Like the saints of old, like the martyrs of today. We needed to live at our faith 24-7. We need to put our faith in action and the German church didn't. And he says, if we'd had a truly religionless Christianity, in other words, all this, all this, all this The trappings. The trappings. And what I write about in my book, and I've been talking about everywhere, is

whom did Jesus rail against the Hellenistic philosophers, the pagans? No. The most religious people of his day were the ones that he called a brood of vipers. You are of your father, the devil. In other words, you can know the Bible backwards and forwards. You can do all the religious stuff, do all the stuff. And then when God sends his son into your midst, you murder him. That's satanic.

He knew that all these religious trappings not only are worth nothing, but they can be marshaled by the devil for his purposes. And so Bonhofer saw that all this religious stuff in Germany opened the door to the devil and opened the door to the evil of the death camps. And he's saying, we needed a religious Christianity, people to actually live out their faith. And in every generation, in Jesus's generation, in every single generation, there are people of all the trappings of religion. They're not living it out. And so Bonhofer dares to say that. But it's in a letter to a friend and all the liberal,

agnostic academics after his death, they kind of grab this and they kind of create their own fictionalized version of he was drifting into this kind of secular humanist ethics. Complete nonsense. total nonsense. And when I wrote my book, I realized, this is nonsense. They got it. They didn't just get it a little wrong. They got the opposite of what he was actually doing. He's talking about profound faith in the God of the Bible that lives itself out, that pours itself out with joy. And so that is where we are today. So when people say to me, well, I've got the right theology. Or like Glenn Beck, he's a Mormon. His theology is wrong here and here and here. And you, Eric, you believe that you're wrong here. And let me just tell you, God looks on your heart. CS Lewis really understood this better than anybody. God looks on your heart. So you can talk all you want about your theology. God knows your theology by how you live.

And so all these people that pretend they've got all this perfect theology, they're worshiping an idol of perfect theology. That's not the same as worshiping Jesus. And you worship Jesus with your life. And so there is something here. There's a mystery. There are a lot of people. They're very uncomfortable with mystery or ambiguity.

They want it all buttoned up. And it's like you believe in this and this. You're in. You don't, you're out. That's not the God of the Bible. Churches are a little like political parties. They're to further the mission. But if the people that are running the political party are not living what that

Abrahamic covenant, Abraham Lincoln covenant, if they're not living that, it means nothing. It means nothing. So the falling of the attendance in church, is that the people's fault or the church's fault? I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I do. In other words, if you've been going to church that's been doing like all this religious stuff, I think people are thinking like, you know what?

The world is going insane. And if you're not speaking to me where I live, you're not relevant. And guess what? Most churches, I mean, we think of the in the Simpsons, the church that they go to and it's so that's many churches in America are like that. Your average person, you know, struggling in life or whatever, they go, you know what, I'll pass. I'll skip that. I'll sleep in on Sunday morning because that's not speaking to me. Churches that are speaking to all these issues, their numbers are increasing because people are

like, I need that. I can get interested in that. Are you going to stand against the lunacy that my kids are being exposed to in the public school? You're going to stand against that? Are you going to stand against pornography in my kids' schools? Are you going to get, you know, are you going to have this kind of muscular pushback against this stuff attacking my kids and attacking my guy. I'm with that because that looks to me like

somebody actually cares, somebody willing to live out what they say they believe. And all these other churches that are losing numbers, what I say, because I've been speaking about this incessantly for two years, it's like when Jesus curses the fig tree, people think, oh, Jesus is so nice, he would never do anything like that. He curses the fig tree because it doesn't bear fruit. He says, like, you're done, you're over. I curse you, you wither, you die. Those are the churches that are not living out their faith, that are not living out of religionless Christianity. And I say, when people say, well, what can I do, Eric, what can I do? I say, first of all, if you're going to one of those churches, get out. Take your friends, take God's money and get

out of that church and better that you should be watching, having a home church service or something like that, then going to one of these religious services where they kind of act like, well, this is about making you a better person and self-actualization and we don't want to get into any of controversial stuff. God wants you to get into that controversial stuff. God's kind of controversial. A little bit, a little bit. In fact, when he came to Earth, they murdered him. So that's where we are. Are we at the beginning of a great awakening?

I'm sure of it. Yeah, I am too. I'm absolutely sure of it. And the way you see it always, it's like with George Whitfield, right? The establishment church hated George Whitfield. Why? He couldn't even preach inside anybody's church. That's the point, right?

They're like, no, you're not welcome here. He's like, okay, well, then I'll take it outside. And so he takes it outside and all these people have never heard the beautiful story of who God really is. They're just like, you know, weeping to hear him tell about the God who loves them and stuff like that. So all of those kinds of churches, and again, it's no different than in Jesus' day, this hyper-religious nonsense, God always works outside the system and it infuriates those inside the system. And in fact, I've said often that God takes a, you know, a, you know, a, a philandering thrice-married New York real estate developer to humiliate the church, to show

the church what courage looks like. People get very angry. And God does this over and over in history. He picks somebody outside to show what he's looking for. Cyrus is an example in the scripture. And we're living in a time right now where God is going outside the church. The other day, I mean, the other day, Trump goes to Madison Square Garden for, you know, one of these, I'm not into that kind of fighting and stuff. He goes there. He brings Bobby Kennedy with him. He brings Tulsi Kyi's there. And Rogan is there. And when the winner, John Jones, whatever's name is he comes out, Joe Rogan puts the microphone in his face. And the whole world hears him talk about Jesus at length. And I thought, what is happening in America? something beautiful is happening in America.

And if you're not going to give God the glory in your churches the way you should, he'll bring it into the middle of a fight in Madison Square Garden, his mess. The stones will cry out. We are seeing that. And it's a beautiful thing. It's extraordinary that we get to be alive at this time.

Where this is going to go, I don't know, but I see God's hand in it. I don't say that kind of stuff lightly. And I think God wants to bless this nation. He wants to bless us to be a, blessing. This is not about America. This is about the world, but he's blessing us to be a blessing. He's giving us a chance we don't deserve to clean, to go scorched earth on this satanic bureaucracy of the deep state, the unelected elites that hate America, that hate freedom. We have an extraordinary

moment. But I feel like we've just crossed the starting line. It's just like Washington going across the East River. And now we get to fight and it's a glorious thing we get to do. I'm grateful for you. It's what a great time. I'm back at you, man. I can do this every day. To talk to you is a joy, Glenn. I don't say that kind of stuff lightly.

What a joy. Thank you. Thank you. Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.