TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles - Dr. Laurence White: The New Nazism and the American Church’s Sin of Silence

Episode Date: July 23, 2024

This is Trunews for July 23, 2024.  I'm Doc Burkhart, and I'm sitting in for Trunews host and founder Rick Wiles.Today, we present an interview from February 2015, in which Rick spoke with Dr. Laurence White. Pastor White has served as Senior Pastor of Our Savior Lutheran Church since June of 1981. Pastor White is a regular speaker for national pro-life, pro-family organizations across America. In that connection, he has had the opportunity to address millions of Americans through national radio and television broadcasts and has spoken to nearly 20,000 pastors across the nation.Germany was the cradle of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that championed individual conscience and moral integrity. Yet, by the 1930s, it succumbed to the horrors of Nazism. How did this transformation occur? What role did the German Church play, particularly in its failure to speak out against the rising tide of evil? And looking at the current political climate, is America at risk of following a similar path towards extremism?  On today's episode of Trunews, Dr. Laurence White and Rick Wiles discuss the New Nazism and the American Church's sin of silence. Here is that interview.Doc Burkhart Airdate 07/23/2024Watch this FULL show exclusively on Faith & Values Faith & Values (faithandvalues.com)Join the leading community for Conservative Christians! https://www.faithandvalues.comYou can partner with us by visiting https://www.TruNews.com/donate, calling 1-800-576-2116, or by mail at PO Box 399 Vero Beach, FL 32961.Get high-quality emergency preparedness food today from American Reserves!https://www.AmericanReserves.com  Now is the time to protect your assets with physical gold & silver. Contact Genesis Gold Today!https://www.TruNewsGold.com           It’s the Final Day! The day Jesus Christ bursts into our dimension of time, space, and matter. Now available in eBook and audio formats! Order Final Day from Amazon today!https://www.amazon.com/Final-Day-Characteristics-Second-Coming/dp/0578260816/Apple users, you can download the audio version on Apple Books!https://books.apple.com/us/audiobook/final-day-10-characteristics-of-the-second-coming/id1687129858Purchase the 4-part DVD set or start streaming Sacrificing Liberty today.https://www.sacrificingliberty.com/watchThe Fauci Elf is a hilarious gift guaranteed to make your friends laugh! Order yours today!https://tru.news/faucielf

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Be ready. Be wise. Go to AmericanReserves.com. This is True News for July 23, 2024. I'm Doc Burkhardt. I'm sitting in for new True News host and founder, Rick Wiles. Today we present an interview from February 2015 in which Rick spoke with Dr. Lawrence White. Pastor White has served as senior pastor of Our Savior Lutheran Church in Houston, Texas since June of 1981. Pastor White is a regular speaker for national pro-life and pro-family organizations across America. And in that connection, he has had the opportunity to address literally millions of Americans through national radio and TV broadcasts, and has spoken to nearly 20,000 pastors across the nation.

Now, Germany was once the cradle of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that championed individual conscience and moral integrity. Yet by the 1930s, it succumbed to the horrors of Nazism. How did this transformation occur? What role did the German church play, particularly in its failure to speak out against the rising tide of evil? And looking at today's current political climate, is America at risk of following a similar path towards extremism? On today's episode of True News, Dr. Lawrence White and Rick Wiles discuss the new Nazism and the American church's sin of silence. Here is that interview. In spring of 1998, I was an average Christian man in America,

married, two teenage children in school, and a successful career in television network marketing. The Holy Spirit, however, unexpectedly interrupted my bliss with a life-changing vision of American cities on fire and stunned, bewildered refugees fleeing from the smoking ruins of the destroyed cities. Less than five months later, I resigned as director of marketing for TBN in order to fulfill the call of God in my life, to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God, and to call to the American people to repent and return to the ways of the Lord. In the early years of this radio ministry, that is prior to September 11, 2001, I innocently believed that America's evangelical Christian churches

would rally behind this message of repentance and returning to God. As time went by, however, I realized that they were the problem. I was told countless times by pastors that God would not judge America and that my message was Old Testament theology. We're in the age of grace. God doesn't judge nations anymore, especially America, because God needs America to send the gospel around the world. So it was a lonely road for many years to stay true and faithful to the message and mission that the Holy Spirit gave me in 1998.

In 2015, I don't even recognize this country anymore. I feel like an immigrant in a foreign land. Several months ago, a True News listener recommended I listen to a sermon by a Lutheran pastor in Texas. The sermon was titled, The Soul of America. The sermon was delivered by Dr. Lawrence White, senior pastor of Our Savior Lutheran Church in Houston, Texas. After listening to the entire recorded sermon, I went online and discovered to my surprise that he gave that message in October 1998, a month after I resigned from TBN to preach repentance to America. But as I listened to that message a few months ago, it sounded like he just delivered it because he described the spiritual state of America.

Pastor White is on the telephone. Dr. White, welcome to True News. Thank you, Rick. It's an honor and a pleasure to be with you. Yes, Rick. It's an honor and a pleasure to be with you. Yes, sir. That sermon, I now know, has gone all over the United States and around the world since you first delivered it in 1998. And I think it's more appropriate today than when you gave it. It rings true of where we are at as a nation. You spoke very clearly about the spirit of Hitler and Nazism that you saw back in 1998 coming into the United States. And

this is the message I've been speaking all these years on the radio. We are being taken over by this Nazi spirit. We're becoming like the entity American troops went to war against in the 1940s. Well, I'm afraid that's a fundamentally accurate observation. As a wise man once noted, those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat history's mistakes. Yes. And those mistakes are absolutely being repeated by Christians in our nation today. And I believe after many years of working in a ministry to which God has called me, I'm convinced to rouse a sleeping, indolent church that there's a great deal more at stake here for us than the future of America.

What's at stake for us is the integrity of the people of God and of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. A few years ago, actually it's more than a few years now at my age, the years pass more quickly, about 10 years ago uh we had our savior here in houston we're in process of building a new church and uh i took my two sons who were then in college uh with me on a trip to central europe to germany specifically to study reformation church architecture i took took them along to run the recording equipment, because if it was invented after 1948, I can't work it.

So they went with me. We left the day after Christmas and flew to Berlin, the capital of Germany, and they were having a wonderful time in that world-class city. I was visiting churches, and they were having a wonderful time in that world-class city. I was visiting churches, and they were doing other things. But as we went to those churches, what struck the boys was that they were all empty. They were museums, they were meeting halls, art galleries, concert centers, but they weren't churches anymore. Although they had been adorned and decorated with the finest art of the day in which they had been built

and once had flourishing congregations in them, now they were empty. A couple days after we got there, I rented a car and we drove out into the countryside to a little potato farming village about 50 miles out of town called Oranienburg. No one would ever have heard of this little place, just a crossroads with a general store and a beer hall. It is Germany, after all. And were it not for the fact that Heinrich Himmler, the director of Hitler's SS, chose Oranienburg as the site of one of his first prototype concentration camps, a dreadful place sarcastically called in German Sachsenhausen,

the home of the Saxons. It was perfect for him because it was out of the way and would not be noticed, and it was close to the capital city. There's a memorial there now, and I wanted my sons to see it while we were there in Germany. It was December the 28th, a typical late December day in northern Germany. The sun comes up at 10 o'clock in the morning and goes back down at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. And in between it snows or rains or sleets, and it was doing all three of those that day. We got there about 1 o'clock in the afternoon, and the place was completely deserted. No visitors, no attendants, no guards. But it was open. We went through the wrought iron

gates with their lying slogan, as on the entryways of all the camps, Arbeit macht frei, work makes freedom. They wanted the inmates to believe that if they behaved themselves and cooperated, they just might survive their time at Sachsenhausen. Well, that was a lie. Like everything else the devil does is a lie. You didn't find freedom there. No matter how hard you worked, you found degradation, torture, torment, and death. We walked across a large, now empty, field where hundreds of wooden barracks had once stood to house thousands of inmates, Jews, political dissidents, gypsies, anyone who didn't fit into the National Socialist worldview. It was snow-covered that day, and my two Texas sons were having a great time.

They've only seen snow one or two times in their lives. And so they were slipping and sliding and throwing snowballs and so on. sons were having a great time. They've only seen snow one or two times in their lives. And so they were slipping and sliding and throwing snowballs and so on. And as I walked across that field with a bitter cold winter wind blowing, I imagined what it must have been like for nearly naked inmates in rickety barracks with the wind and the snow blowing through the boards that confined and held them there. We came to the museum on the other side of that field, and the first thing we saw were a stack of bales of human hair shorn from the heads of the inmates. They used it to make canvas for the tents of the soldiers in the German army, the Wehrmacht. The boys got a little quieter.

We walked past that and next came upon piles of thousands of children's shoes, carefully laced together in pairs so that they could be recycled among the German population. Down a flight of steps into a row of immaculately clean medical laboratories with gleaming white tile, surgical suites with the instruments all in place, ready to use. You could almost imagine the screams of the inmates upon whom grotesque medical experiments were being performed. And they didn't use anesthetic because these were not human beings. These were untermenschen, is the German word, subhumans. Lebensunwürdige Leben, life unworthy of being lived.

Non-persons whom the state did not recognize as human beings. Well, now the boys were completely silent, looking down at the floor. We went out the other side of that row of laboratories toward the crematorium, the ovens in the back of the ruins of the camp, and there in front of the iron doorway that still had the slide that they put the bodies on as they cast them into the fire in place was a withered Christmas wreath. As I said, it was December the 28th, just a few days after we celebrated the birth of Christ, and there was that shriveled-up wreath

with a white satin ribbon, gold letters on it, and the inscription said, I translated the German words from my sons, from the Christians of Germany. We kneel before God in bitter regret and humble repentance, and we ask his forgiveness

for the death of the Jews and all the others who perished in this terrible place. Well, I didn't say anything else. I didn't think anything needed to be said, and we walked back across that snow-covered field, and they weren't playing now. My younger son, Aaron, who's now a district attorney here in Houston, came up alongside me and he put his arm around my shoulders in the condescending way that sons have with their fathers. And all he said was, you know, dad, you need to keep giving those speeches you've been giving.

For the first time, there in the ruins of a Nazi concentration camp, my two pampered, protected American sons understood. Now, Rick, those boys have always been pro-life. We vote in every election. We vote for life. But there in Sachsenhausen, for the first time, they got it. They understood. How much is at stake? We got back in the car and started driving back toward Berlin,

and as we came up out of the valley where Oranienburg is located and crested the ridge moving north back toward the city. You could see the skyline and the steeples of all those empty churches. And I felt like God grabbed me by the lapels of my coat and said, do you get it? And I made the connection between the pathetic message on that wreath and those empty churches. God's people, by their failure to stand for that which is good and right and godly, to defend the helpless and the innocent in a time of slaughter, betrayed the Lord Jesus Christ and discredited the gospel.

And the rest of the German people were watching, and they decided that this Jesus isn't real. This gospel these people profess is a lie they're all hypocrites and so this Jesus can't be real because the only Christ most people are going to see is the Christ they see in us and that's why those churches are empty today. And so as we look at what's happening in America and the irrelevance and the impotence of the Christian church in the face of an abortion holocaust that has gone on for 42 years, almost 60 million dead babies, innocent children who could not protect or defend themselves, whose screams could not be heard.

The world is looking at us who bear the name of Christ, and they're concluding this Jesus isn't real. This gospel isn't true. It can't be, because if it was, they'd do something. That's what our failure means, Rick. It's much more profound than God's judgment upon a nation, although that's certainly taking place. But what is at stake for us as Christians is the integrity of our faith and our Jesus in the eyes of the world. And every day we allow this to continue, we are denying the Lord Jesus Christ.

Dr. White, my son Jeremy is a filmmaker in West Palm Beach, and last year he was contacted by a prominent pro-life organization. They wanted him to make a video for the organization. And he went to Europe to film it, and he based it on a true story told by a man in Germany. And this man said that the church that he belonged to was located next to a railroad track. And when the trains carrying the Jews to the concentration camps would come through town, they could hear the Jews screaming, moaning, begging for help as the train made its way through the town.

And he said, when they were in church and the train was coming by the church and they could hear the screaming of the Jews in the cattle cars, he said, we just sang louder. And so my son made a pro-life video based on that true story and just said, that's what they're doing in America. They just sing louder. That's exactly true. The children are screaming. Yes, the innocent babies are screaming. But the churches in America simply sing louder so that they don't hear the screams.

And, of course, the world is always looking for an excuse not to believe in Jesus. And we're handing them that excuse on a silver platter. This isn't just about the survival of America. I'm a patriot. I love my country. I believe I had an ancestor on the Mayflower, born on the Mayflower, and that's on the English side of the family, not the German side of the family. But that's, for us as Christians, for you and I as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, that's not fundamentally what this is about. This is about the integrity of the gospel and the identity of the Christ whom we claim as our own. And when we look the other way, when we let evil triumph because good men do nothing, as Edmund Burke said, then we deny Christ.

And this tragic Holocaust, this unprecedented slaughter of innocent, helpless human beings, is a denial of folks get upset with me when I compare the abortion holocaust to the Nazi slaughter of the Jews. And immediately the response is, well, are you saying that everyone who is pro-choice is a Nazi? Well, no, I'm not saying that. But there is a point of comparison in both instances. A human ideology has taken, as arbitrarily, for no real reason, has taken a portion of the human race and decided they aren't human. For the Nazis, that was done on the basis of race. For modern America, it's done on the basis of how big you are,

how old you are, and where you are. And we have arbitrarily, for no scientific reason, decided that the unborn child is not a human person. Because of an ideology that says, my choosing is my God. I'll do what I want to do. I'll pursue my pleasures wherever I want to pursue them, and nothing and no one can be allowed to limit or restrict that absolute freedom of choice. And that's the point of comparison. We both, here in America and in Nazi Germany, take a portion of the human race

and say, you aren't human anymore. Those words I used earlier describing the Nazi identification of Jews and gypsies and other non-Aryans as subhuman and life unworthy of being lived are the very same terms that abortion defenders use today to describe the unborn child. In both cases, it's done in pursuit of a pagan ideology in which man makes himself his own god. And the church looked then and is looking now the other way, because they don't want to face the controversy. Imagine what would have happened, what history

would say now about Christianity, if when those trains full of Jews started to move through Germany and to the east toward the camps, hundreds of Christians led by their pastors singing hymns of praise and glory to God had blocked the tracks with their own bodies. Now, hundreds of them, perhaps thousands of them, would have been mowed down by machine guns and taken to the camps themselves. But the name of Jesus Christ would have been glorified. And the blood of the martyrs would once again have been, as the early church fathers tell us, the seed of the church.

And those German churches wouldn't be empty today. been, as the early church fathers tell us, the seed of the church. And those German churches wouldn't be empty today. They would be filled with born-again believers singing the praises of the Lord of life. The same thing is happening in America. The churches are empty because the church members are empty. That's right. And the difference between those who call themselves Christians and the pagan world all around them is nonexistent. In the book of Acts, that Roman official, you remember, said these people turned the world upside down. Well, what is happening in America today is that the world has turned the church upside down. Adolf Hitler was first

elected in a free democratic election, first elected Chancellor of Germany in 1933. He immediately began to lead the German nation through a process called, in German, Gleichschaltung, that means accommodation, reshaping every dimension of German life intrusions into the institution of the church. You know, we may not get upset about moral obscenity, but we get upset when they mess with our budgets and what we as institutions are allowed to do. And so Hitler did what politicians always do. He figured out who the most important and prominent preachers in the land were,

and he invited them to the Reich's Chancellery, the German White House in Berlin. And he moved through the crowd that day, patting them on the back and making them feel important and getting his picture taken with them. I bet they've destroyed those pictures. And there was one young preacher there who had always been a troublemaker in his whole life. He came late in life to the ministry. He was a submarine commander, a U-boat commander in the First World War, and then, deciding after seeing the death and destruction of that war that Christ is the only answer, went into the ministry.

His name was Martin Niemöller, and he watched in dismay as his fellow clergymen were manipulated by the clever dictator. And finally he'd had enough, he pushed his way to the front of the crowd until he stood eye to eye with Hitler. He said, Our concern, Herr Hitler, is not for the church. Jesus Christ will take care of his church. Our concern is for the soul of our nation. And an embarrassed

silence fell over the room. Everybody's backing away from the troublemaker. I imagine you've had that experience just like I have. They didn't want to be associated with him. And Hitler watched their reaction. And he smiled. And he said to himself, quietly, thoughtfully, the soul of Germany, you can leave that to me. What a compelling message from Dr. Lawrence White, along with Rick Wiles, for that interview from February of 2015. I hope it encourages you today to stand up for the cross of Christ in a very persecuting culture today. Well, we appreciate you tuning in today, and we would like to invite you to partner with us here on True News. Some information is on the television screen, but for those on radio, you can write us at PO Box 399, Vero Beach, Florida, 32961. That's True News, PO Box 399, Vero Beach, Florida, 32961.

You can also conveniently call us at 1-800-576-2116. That's 1-800-576-2116. And you can always visit us on the True News app or the Faith and Values app, and you can donate directly there. Just look for the heart button, and you'll show your love to us by helping to financially support this ministry. God bless you, and we appreciate you tuning in to True News today. Morning Man is up next here. You don't want to miss it. God bless you. You're listening to WWCR, International Shortwave Radio. You can find True News on frequency 12.160 from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern

and on frequency 4.840 from 10 p.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern. Connect with us on Rumble, Facebook, X, and Getter. Welcome to Morning Manna. I'm Doc Burkhardt, and I'm sitting in here for Rick Walls today. Rick has some outside obligations that he has to be focused on today, and so I'm here with you today for Morning Manna. We're going to open up in a word of prayer, and then we're going to be looking at scriptures from Matthew chapter 15, and we're going to be looking at verses 29 through 39. I seriously doubt we'll get through all of them today, but I do want to try to move forward and get into the feeding

of the 4,000, which is an important narrative in the Gospels, and so let's get started, shall we? Heavenly Father, in Jesus' name, thank you for this glorious day and the wonderful opportunity to praise you and to lift up your name. And Lord, to learn from your word. And today we invite the Holy Spirit to be here with us, to guide us and direct us into all truth. And that's according to the promise of your word, Lord. You said when the Holy Spirit and when he comes would lead us into all truth. So we stand on your word today, believing that. We thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to fellowship together.

In Jesus' name, amen and amen. All right. Well, today we are looking at Matthew chapter 15, and I'll be reading verses 29 through 39 here. And I'm reading from the King James this morning. And Jesus departed from thence and came nigh unto the Sea of Galilee and went up into a mountain and sat down there. And great multitudes came unto him,

having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, many others, and cast them down at Jesus' feet, and he healed them. Insomuch that the multitude wondered, and when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to behold, the dumb to speak, the maimed to

behold, the lame to walk, the blind to see, and they glorified the God of Israel. Then Jesus called his disciples unto him and said, I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me now three days and have nothing to eat, and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way. And his disciples say unto him, When should we have so much bread in the wilderness as to fill so great a multitude? Sounds familiar, doesn't it? And Jesus saith unto them, How many loaves have you?

And they said, Seven, and a few little fishes. And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground. And he took seven loaves and the fishes and gave thanks and break them and gave to his disciples and the disciples to the multitude. And they did all eat and were filled. And they that took up of the broken meat that was left seven baskets full. And they that did eat were 4,000 men besides women and children. And he sent away the multitude and took

ship and came into the coast of magdala all right so um where we're at this morning as far as our gospel narrative chapter 15 of matthew is concerned uh we were yesterday's lesson we were still in Tyre and Sidon with Jesus as he made his journey there to a very Gentile country, very much Gentile country, and he ministered to the Canaanite woman. We don't read of anything else that he did in Tyre and Sidon except heal the Canaanite woman's daughter. That's the only thing we know of. But Jesus made a special appearance. He made a special visit to Tyre and Sidon. Now, before he came to Galilee,

came back across to Galilee there, the Gospel of Mark says that Jesus spent some time in Sidon before moving on to Galilee. And just so you get a picture of the narrative here and the route that he took and everything. So we don't read of any other miracles that he did, but undoubtedly he probably did some miracles. But the only one that's recorded for us, for our sakes, is this narrative of the Canaanite woman coming to Jesus. Remember, the Canaanites were the millennial-long enemies of Israel, and Jesus went and ministered to the Canaanite woman. He sought her out

by letting her seek him out. Isn't that amazing that he did that? He does that for you and I too. He goes looking for us, but he wants us to be looking for him as well. So as we pick up in verse 29 here today, it says that Jesus departed from thence. So what's the thence there? The thence is Tyre and Sidon.

We really don't know how much time that he spent there. The Bible doesn't tell us if he was there for a day, three days, a week, a month. We really don't know. But there came a point in time that he departed from Tyre and Sidon and went along the edge of the coast of Galilee. Now, it depends on what your translation says there. King James says, and came nigh into the coast of galilee now it depends on what your translation says there king james says and came nigh into the city of galilee uh probably the best way to describe that is they traveled along the coast of galilee they didn't make a straight shot across the sea

of galilee okay and so coming along the coast of the sea of galilee uh jesus found a mountain and uh i asked you know and it says that he went up there now what did he do when he was on the mountain well uh he oftentimes went up into the mountains as we've read in the past here in mark and Matthew, to be alone and pray. But it seems like inevitably that no matter when Jesus tried to find some time, some peace, some quiet away from things, the multitudes found him. And that's exactly what happened here. It says, Jesus departed from this and came nigh into the Sea of Galilee, went up into a mountain, sat down there, and great multitudes came unto him. So the crowds follow Jesus.

When they hear of Jesus being in there, they follow him. Now what's interesting about this verse, verse 30, is that word great multitudes is used. Now that seems to imply that this is a period of change in the ministry of Jesus here, in that the word is starting to get out about his miracle-working power, about his gospel message, and crowds are starting to form now. And it says that great multitudes came to him. So even though he tried to briefly get away for a little bit,

he didn't do it permanently. He still had work to do among the great multitudes. Now, understand that along the coast of the Sea of Galilee here, it's predominantly Gentile. It's mostly Gentile. The region of Galilee is mostly Gentile. It's mostly Gentile. The region of Galilee is mostly Gentile. I'm saying like 90-95% Gentile. So Jesus, once again, is making an effort to minister among the Gentile population in the area. This area where they were skirting along the coast of the Sea of Galilee is an area called the Decapolis.

The Decapolis. And you might have heard that name used before, but what it is is a region of ten cities along the Sea of Galilee that kind of had their own government power-sharing opportunity with Rome. Rome let them be self-governing, the Decapolis, these 10 cities. That's what Decapolis means. But they were mostly Gentile cities. They definitely weren't Jewish cities at all. So this was on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee. And even though you had the ten cities there, most of the region there was pretty much barren.

I think somewhere in, yes, in verse 33, the disciples mentioned Jesus, hey, we're out here in the wilderness. How are we going to feed these people? And so not only were they in the region of the decapolis but they were also in a wilderness place too and i've been in that area and it's describes it exactly between the towns it is nothing there's nothing there there's nothing but sand and scrub brush it is definitely wilderness um and as i mentioned this area along the sea of galilee the especially the eastern side of the sea of galilee is mostly

gentile all right these are mostly heathen folks all right so So Jesus was providing a ministry to these Gentile populations here. As Jesus began to heal and provide for this mixed or predominantly Gentile multitude, what Jesus is doing here is he's showing that the Gentiles, in fact, were getting more than just a few crumbs from the table, like we talked about with the Canaanite woman. We have to really understand that even though Jesus was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, that was not the limitation of his ministry. Yes, that was the primary focus of his ministry. But ministering to the whole world really was the outreach of his ministry there. But I want you to understand that when Jesus does these mighty works here in chapter 15, verse 30. These are mostly Gentiles. Okay, they're not Jews.

And so they don't come from a Judaism mindset or anything like that. All they have to go on is they heard about Jesus and that he could heal. And verse 30 says, and great multitudes came unto him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at Jesus' feet, and he healed them. King James uses that word cast there. It makes it sound like they threw

them down at Jesus' feet, but really, they laid them at Jesus' feet. We really don't know anything about these people at all, except that they were probably Gentile. We don't know anything if they'd heard the gospel message before. We don't know anything about them. We don't even know if they had faith, because the Bible doesn't say they had any faith other than the faith of bringing the blind,

the dumb, the maimed, the lame to Jesus. That's the only faith they had. And so there's an element here, if you will, that Jesus will respond to the faith of of anyone if they just believe any part of the word and the word was speaking forth the gospel of the kingdom and healing those that were lame blind dumb maimed and many others so uh this is quite the incident here.

And you have to wonder what was going through the disciples' minds as Jesus ministered among the Gentiles. And that may be reflected in their response to Jesus telling them that we need to feed these folks. I'll get into that later. In verse 30 here, there's a unique word that's in there. And that's that word maimed.

And it comes from the Greek word kous, which means bent. Bent or out of shape. But there's a passage in Matthew chapter 18, verse 8, and I want to read it to you Matthew chapter 18, verse 8, I want to read it to you. Matthew 18, 8. Jesus is ministering,

and he's preaching on the kingdom of heaven. In verse 8, remember this passage, Wherefore, if thy hand or foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee, it is better for thee to, if thy hand or foot offend thee, cut them off and cast them from thee, it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. That's another place where that word maimed is used. And I thought it was significant that it talked about

that you can save your spiritual soul if you remain lame. The passage in Matthew 18, verse 8, the meaning there seems to be more along the lines of mutilated. It would be better to have mutilated limbs than to lose out on the kingdom now some commentators say that when it's talking about maimed rather than lame maimed means that they were missing limbs such as missing a hand or missing a foot, that there's something significantly

different there. Now, it doesn't say that in the passage here. It does not say that. But they do distinguish here in verse 30 between lame and maimed, where it seems like lame were those that had some limited mobility, but the maimed were more serious in their condition. Whether they were lame, maimed, or missing limbs, it didn't matter. Because it says that Jesus healed them all. He healed them when they were laid down at Jesus' feet. And it says in verse 31 there,

In so much that the multitude wondered. And so the miracles that Jesus was doing here were so astounding that the Gentile crowds were made to wonder. It is really, really significant here. And so Jesus was in this intensive ministry to this Gentile region for several days. We're going to read that it was at least three days that we know of. And so, but we'll get in that here in just a moment. Verse 31 says, In so much that the multitudes wondered when they saw the dumb to speak,

the maimed to behold, and that's what kind of implies that it was not only bent and mutilated limbs, maybe they were missing limbs, the lame to walk, notice there's a difference between the maimed and the lame, and the blind to see. And so they wondered at all these things, but that's not all they did. It says they glorified the God of Israel. And it's significant that they've glorified the God of Israel here. Remember, this is a Gentile population, a Gentile population. So it's not, you know, it's not a group of Jewish people that were raised in the Torah, had been taught about God and taught about the prophets and everything. No, these were

Gentiles. Yet these Gentiles had enough faith to not only bring the sick and the lame to Jesus, but also to glorify the God of Israel. I think this is really significant here. Because I can't help but believe that when Jesus was doing the ministry of healing, healing the lame, the maimed, the blind, the dumb, that as he was doing, he himself was glorifying the God of Israel. And in fact, every time that Jesus talked about the kingdom,

he seemed to relate the Father God, the God of Israel, to his message. And I think it's significant here that Jesus, in constantly promoting the kingdom and promoting God the Father, the God of Israel, caused enough faith to be stirred up among these Gentile people along the coast of the Sea of Galilee, where they responded by faith and believed that he could heal, that the God of Israel was moving and operating among them through Jesus Christ.

Now, remember, once again, we're in heathen territory here. We're in Gentile territory, right? All right, so now we move into verse 32. Verse 32 says, Then Jesus called his disciples unto him and said, I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me now three days and have nothing to eat, and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way.

So we know that Jesus was ministering among the Gentiles on the Sea of Galilee for at least three days, at least three, based on this verse right here. All right? So we know how long he was there. And Jesus, after three days of ministering, healing, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, he said, I don't want to send these folks away hungry.

Now, it's interesting that this mention of feeding this group of people, the first group of people, the 5,000 that he fed, were mainly Jews. This group of people that he's going to feed is mainly

Gentiles here. But it's the same basic pattern. It follows the same basic pattern as when he fed the 5,000. Except that it reveals that the disciples were generally slow to believe on this. And I wondered to myself, how is it that the disciples had a problem believing Jesus to feed the 4,000 when they saw him feed the 5,000? And I'm thinking that the reason why the disciples were a bit reluctant there in verse 33, his disciples saying to him, when should we have so much bread in the wilderness as to fill so great a multitude? I'm thinking there might have been some reluctance on the disciples' part to do that because there was a Gentile population. In other words, they had a reluctance, they had a reticence about feeding Gentile believers.

Remember, Jews in this time, they were told to stay separate from Gentiles generally. You didn't want to intermingle with them. You didn't want to do anything. And so there was a definite distinction between people who called themselves Jews and Gentiles. And yet Jesus saw this Gentile crowd. He saw this Gentile crowd and said, they need something to eat. Now, there are some commentators out there that try to say, well, this is just a retelling of the feeding of the 5,000. And these are commentators and scholars that try to find any sort of error in the Bible that they can in order to jump on it.

But these are two distinct accounts that are going on. Jesus fed the 5,000 over in Matthew 8. This is a different crowd altogether. First of all, what do we know about the differences between the two, between the feeding of the 5,000 and the feeding of the 4,000? First of all, there are different numbers of those being fed, okay? In the one case, it's 5,000 plus women and children. In our case here in Matthew 15, it's 4,000 plus women and children. There's definitely different locales. The first feeding took place on the western shore of Galilee.

This feeding is taking place on the eastern shore of the Galilee. Okay? Another clue that we can find, just based on what we read in Matthew chapter 8 and compare it to chapter 15, they were two different times of the year. So in Matthew chapter 8 and the feeding of 5,000, Jesus told them to sit on the grass. In this account, Matthew chapter 15, there's no mention of grass.

So it's not a duplicate retelling of the same story. Another difference between feeding the 5,000 and feeding the 4,000, they had a different supply of food at the beginning. In the first one, they had five loaves and two fishes. This one they had seven fishes, okay. Excuse me, seven loaves. So it's a different supply of food between the two. There's a different number of baskets holding the leftovers. So in the first one, in the first feeding, a feeding of 5,000, how many baskets did they take up? They took up 12 baskets full. Here in Matthew 15, they take up how many baskets? Seven full so there's different numbers there also and this is a really

interesting here in the in the our account before in the feeding of the five thousand there's a different word for basket there than a word for basket here in chapter 15. whereas in the Matthew 8 account, the idea of the baskets were these smaller baskets, about the size of a picnic basket, is what we would compare it to today. Whereas over here in Matthew 15, it's these big, larger baskets, like a bushel basket. So there's even different baskets that are mentioned. Also, we had a different period of time of waiting for the people. In the first one, it was the same day, and they fed the 5,000. Here, they've been together for three days, and Jesus has compassion on them and feeds them. So there's a big difference between these two.

You know, if I could just take a sidebar here for just a moment and talk about commentators and scholars of Scripture. Oftentimes, and you may not realize this as someone that generally has not been formally trained in theology or anything along those lines. That doesn't mean you know less of the word or anything. It's just that some of these folks that operate in theological cemeteries look for every kind of flaw or every kind of thing that they can pick on or try to discount or say this isn't true. And there has been an effort over the past really several years in order to mythologize a lot of the gospel message that some of the things maybe some of the things happened maybe they didn't what's important is the message that's being delivered no what's important is that these things actually occurred that they were recounted by it's multiple gospel writers

that there were eyewitnesses to these events that the gospel writers spoke to and wrote down about. It's very important, folks, to understand that the Word of God is absolutely true, that the gospels are not a myth, they're not made up, they're not fairy tales, they're not anything else, they're the Word of God and one of the biggest obstacles I think a lot of theological scholars have is they they have a great desire to understand the word but they don't have faith in the word and I think it's important to bring this out today because here we have these gentile folks we don't know where where they got enough faith to believe for healing for their friends but they had more faith than a lot of biblical scholars today

they have a lot more faith than a lot of preachers in the pulpit today. So what was Jesus' response? His disciples said unto him, When should we have so much bread in the wilderness as to fill so great a multitude? Jesus said unto them, How many loaves have you? What do you got? What do you got is the key. What do you got? I'll work with what you got. Jesus will work with what you have.

He won't work with what you don't have, but he'll work with what you have when you bring it to him. Do you need a miracle supply? Bring it to him. Bring what you have to him. If you need healing in your life, bring what you have to him. Jesus will work with what you have. Because Jesus operates in the realm of faith.

Faith plus what you got equals miracles. Faith plus what you got equals miracles. All right? Jesus saith unto them, How many loaves have you? And they said, Seven, and a few little fishes. And he commanded the multitude to sit on the ground. In other words, he said, Be prepared. And to me, that's a message to me as well,

in that when Jesus is about to perform a miracle, that he usually gives you an instruction to go along with it. So what was the instruction that Jesus gave? First he gave instruction to his disciples about how many loaves and fish they had. But then he gave an instruction to the multitude. Okay? So Jesus did what only he could do, the creative miracle, but left the disciples to do what they could do, and that was to distribute the miracle.

And what could the crowd do? Well, what the crowd could do is they could sit in submission and receive the miracle. And for some people, that's difficult to do. They don't want to see the miracle fulfilled in their life because they won't follow the instruction. There are probably some people there around there who say, I'm not sitting down. What do I have to sit down for? I heard Jesus fed 5,000 over on the western side of Galilee. He can surely do that to me standing up. No, Jesus, it says he commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground, as if to say, in order for you to receive this miracle, you have to follow my instructions.

In order to receive this miracle, you have to follow my instructions. Folks, and this is a message for you and for me today as well. Whenever we find ourselves in the need of God's miracle-working power, undoubtedly, the Lord himself gives us instructions to follow to meet the demands of the miracle. I'm just going to say it again. Anytime that we're seeking a miracle in our lives, oftentimes, he gives us an instruction,

an instruction to obey and to follow through and to keep his word. Because the Lord wants to see us willing to submit to His leading in order for the miracle to take place in our lives. Well, folks, today is an abbreviated version of Morning Manna, and we appreciate you being with us today. Be in prayer all this week for the ministry. As I mentioned, Rick is out of the office here today and on a very important set of obligations outside of the office. And so we need your prayer for that.

And would also ask for your continued prayers for this ministry. The Lord is on the move in this ministry and God is doing some great things. And you are part of that. By you showing up every day here on Morning Manna, you're making the miracles continue in this ministry. And we thank you so much for that. On behalf of Rick Wiles and the entire ministry team here at Faith and Values, God bless you, and we'll see you on the Wednesday edition of Morning Manor. p.m. Eastern and on frequency 4.840 from 10 p.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern. Connect with us on Rumble, Facebook, X, and Getter.