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This is Apologetics Live to answer your questions, your host from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rapaport.

This is Apologetics Live to answer your questions, your host from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rapaport.

Well, I think we are live.

I am, as you can see, traveling.

But this is Apologetics Live.

I am your host, Andrew Drew Rapoport, coming to you from, well, an undisclosed location probably because we're going to talk about things that, well, could get us in trouble.

No, this is Apologetics Live.

We're here to answer your most challenging questions you have about God and the Bible.

Though tonight we're going to talk about sound a little bit different, though it will relate to apologetics.

And so we tonight's topic is is the United States of America at war with Iran?

I am traveling.

I'm going to look to those in the audience to let me know.

Am.

Are we.

Are you hearing me?

Am I live?

Because I was not hearing the this, the music at all.

And so let's see.

Brother Andrew is saying blessings.

Andrew.

Foreign let's see.

He says we please tell me you please don't tell me you're an infidel.

All right, so can you hear me?

Those in the, in the chat, Let me know if you can hear me just so that you sound great on YouTube.

Okay, great.

And that was said by sleepy as can be that I think you are new.

I don't remember seeing you here before, but hey, glad to have you here with us.

All right, so tonight, if you can't tell, I'm in a hotel room.

So let me start off by saying I am sorry if the sound quality is not where you're what you're used to hearing.

Excuse me, but I wanted to to do a show, but I am traveling.

I'm headed to Oklahoma tomorrow, be with brother Caleb Gordon.

We will be doing a Bible conference at his church, which is a fly into to Oklahoma, but his church is actually in Kansas.

So but if you want to check that out, any details for that, just go to caleb gordon.org and so because of that, I'm in a hotel because I got a very early flight in the morning.

And so because of that, I wanted to make sure that I still did a show for you because you guys in the audience are important.

I don't want to not continue providing for you guys some good content.

I had really hoped that by now I would talk about Iran as a past tense thing and that we would be over it.

Well, I mean, we kind of got used to that.

With the other things Trump did where, you know, his last battle with Iran was one day for the.

The States, for America, Venezuela, one, one night.

So maybe we're getting used to that too much.

All right, so brother Mike says, smash the like button.

I don't know why you want to smash it.

Don't be so violent, Mike.

Come on.

And we, we have someone saying they can hear me really good with their earbuds.

So Jesse is in the, in the chat, he's saying, good evening, brother.

So what I want to do, no one has joined, but if you do want to join the discussion, just go to apologetics live.com or.org.

i think either one will work.

Scroll down to the duck icon.

Click that to join the discussion.

I don't have any of my co hosts with me.

I don't have any guests.

It's just me.

I will see how long we end up going.

But what I do want to do is talk about Iran, because I think that some of the things that people are seeing with Iran are a bit.

Well, let's put it this way.

What we hear in the news and what we see in what we.

We end up seeing is in reality are two sometimes different things.

And when I say the news, I'm even talking about conservative news.

And so for folks who maybe are.

Have been under a rock all this time, it is so the United States over the weekend went in and started a bombing campaign against Iran.

Now, I will admit there was a guy I had to block on Facebook because he just, you know, he, he was claiming that Trump was, like, the only president to be doing it.

An exercise like this, it's completely illegal and we should be calling him out.

And I just said, except for the fact that we had, what, like seven months of this type of warfare with, under Obama and nine months under Biden.

So it's not unusual.

In fact, every single president since Bush has, has done this.

So it's something where I just want us to try to be a little bit balanced as we discuss this.

I know that for some people, they'll be triggered.

And I do recognize that some people are going to say, oh, because I'm Jewish, I'm against Iran.

No, I'm going to take a very different perspective.

And I, I posted this episode as a question.

Is the United States at war with Iran?

Because I'm going to make the argument that that's not where the battle is.

I think there's a different play going on, and I'm going to give you some reasons why.

I think that's the case.

And so as we look at this, I do want to encourage you to listen to what I say, don't assume what I'm going to say, because I think I'm going to have a bit of a different perspective than you're hearing in the media and hearing elsewhere.

So we, we had a bombing campaign.

America and Israel joined together.

Now, this is unique.

I will say this because typically what you see is Israel would go after their enemies.

They would get really close to wiping out their enemies, and America and a bunch of other nations would go, okay, okay, okay, you did enough.

Back off.

You've, you got them on the ropes.

Don't finish them off.

And Israel back off, never finishing off their enemies, only to allow their enemies to build up and attack another day.

That is a crazy thing.

There's no other country I know that does that in warfare.

In warfare, they usually want to finish their enemies, not give them a lifeline.

So that is a bit different.

Now what I, and what I want to mention is the fact that when we look at this, I will argue that I think for Israel, the battle is against Iran.

Iran is the major funding source of many of the terrorists against Israel.

And so I think from Israel's perspective, this is something that is really focused on going after Iran and wiping them out.

I don't think that's America's focus, so I'm going to get to that in a moment.

But there has been some discussion on whether America is just being following Israel and being forced into a war because of Israel.

That may be the talking points of people like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owen and others who are very much against anything Israel does, which is mind boggling to me just because these are conservatives who are used to hearing that.

Excuse me, used to hearing that basically that any, anything Trump does, I mean, Trump could say he has the cure for cancer and there would be people against it.

I mean, I find it amazing that those who were marching just like three, four months ago on no Kings, 88 days after a no Kings protest, were arguing to reinstate a dictator tyrant in Venezuela.

And now they are out there protesting against the killing of a guy who killed 30.

I guess the number right now we're hearing is 35,000 protesters.

So they're protesting against the guy who killed protesters.

Let that sink in.

And so as we discuss this, I, I think there's a different agenda for Israel than the United States.

Right.

And so I think there's those in, even in conservative circles that will argue for, argue for anything that's against Israel.

They've bought into the Marxist view that Israel's.

I mean, look, you could disagree with things Netanyahu does, okay?

You can have a theological position that Israel is not God's chosen people today, and none of that has anything to do with the nation of Israel and what's happening there.

When they're attacked and defending themselves, you could argue that Netanyahu doesn't do a good job defending them.

That's not an issue.

But everything they do is not wrong.

See, when you get to that, it's no different than saying everything Trump does is wrong or everything Obama does is wrong.

There were things that every president and every world leader does that's both good and bad.

And so we have to recognize that we.

When we discuss these issues.

All right, now, what I want to do.

How does this apply to apologetics?

What I want to do is help us reason through a way to evaluate what's being said and what's actually happening and take the step back.

Because I think there's a lot of overlap between this and what we do in apologetics.

Because I think what a lot of people do in situations like this, if they're against Israel, well, Iran is right.

They're being attacked, they're being oppressed, Israel's wrong.

If you think Israel is always right, well, then Israel's right and Iran has to be wiped off the map.

And they're always wrong.

And yet the truth is usually in the middle.

Same with apologetics.

If you get someone that just as a starting point, Christianity is always wrong, well, when you present Christianity, it becomes a problem, right?

Because all of a sudden, they're not going to listen to anything that you have to say, because in their view, Christianity is, say it with me, always wrong.

Thank you.

And so.

Excuse me.

So what we have to do is take a look at this in a balanced view, looking at all angles, and having a couple things that I want you to consider.

I want you to think about some things as you hear on the news.

One of the things I found interesting, I forget if it was someone in the.

In the administration that was asked what the plan was for Iran, and they said, I'm not going to tell you because I'm not going to give the enemy our game plan.

And this is something that I think makes Trump a little bit different.

There is a difference between real leadership and someone that's trying to create something for their legacy.

Let me explain that.

George W. Bush, when he was putting a case together to go after, you know, Iraq, he spent many Months explaining the case, laying out the game plan, explaining here's what we're going to look to do.

We're doing this because there's weapons of mass destruction.

What did that do over those many, many months?

Well, it allowed for Hassam Hussein to take the, the, the gas and the different things he had that were weapons of mass destruction and move them to Syria.

And so there was nothing found in Iraq.

That is true because we gave him time to move it.

This is one of the things in warfare that has really hurt us for many decades is in America we feel this obligation to tell our enemy exactly what our game plan is, what we're going to do, how we're going to do it.

Because we somehow have to get American buy in from the people.

Now this only seems to happen by the way for the right because when Joe Biden or whoever was controlling the auto pen or Barack Obama or Bill Clinton decided to drop bombs, put troops on the ground, even they didn't make a case for it always.

They just sent people in there and nobody balked at that.

But when it's a Republican, somehow they have to make a case to the American people to give the enemy the advantage of knowing what our plan is.

Now, George W. Bush, when we went into Iraq, had a plan and many people in America don't know that plan.

It what I'm going to say is not classified information anymore, but because it was released by CNN International, not CNN in America.

Why did we go to Iraq?

Why did we target that country?

Well, you can see and go look this up historically that CNN International decided on a specific day they had some information and they released it only on their international networks and not in America.

Why?

My guess, purely, my guess is they knew that if they said this within America, Americans would side with them.

But what they announced on CNN International was that the game plan for America was to go after Iraq.

So that all.

How do you get terrorists that hide in hospitals and caves?

Think about that.

We went after the biggest country there that had the strongest defense.

And what happened, hundreds of thousands of terrorists came in to support Iraq.

And in doing so, we were able to capture or kill many terrorists that were in Iraq.

CNN announced it, that that was our game plan that very day.

Within hours of that reporting, you saw the first Americans, whether they were, well, you had Daniel Pearl, who was a journalist, but before him you had contractors that were kidnapped and beheaded and the terrorists disappeared from Iraq.

So CNN worked against America's interests.

They didn't air this on American tv, but they aired it on international tv.

And what happened, it radically changed how that warfare occurred because all of a sudden the purpose of it failed.

It failed because of the fact that our own media was more interested in getting Democrats in power than they were the American agenda.

And we know that, I think, because they aired it only on the international, not on American.

So they didn't want Americans to know that game plan.

So I say that to say that one of the things I want us to do when we look at something like this is I want us to realize that there is a difference between what you hear in the news and what is actually said in classified circles.

Now, I don't know how many in this audience may have a background in, you know, classified work, but if you do, you know that what is what is done in classified circles, you can't talk about to your neighbors or the media and things like that.

It's actually illegal.

And so what you have is a case where when the media says, oh, this is.

Or even Congress, when they're saying things, they're not giving you classified information, unless, of course, they're breaking the law.

And so you have to recognize that the administration, whether Republican or Democrat, has more information than you and I do watching the news.

That is a very, very important distinction.

It's an important distinction because we have to recognize that we don't have all of the information.

Now, my policy has been trust but verify, okay?

So when we have an administration that does something like this, I'm going to trust that they have information that I don't have access to, and therefore I'm going to trust.

Now, there is a time where after things become known and things are now in the public, we can start to look into that and verify and say that wasn't right.

And so there's things that we could agree or disagree with.

But here's the thing.

Whether we like it or not, we are engaged in a conflict with another country.

Why?

Because our federal head has made that decision.

Now, in some countries, the federal head is a king.

In America, that's not the case.

We have a Constitution, we have a president, we have Congress.

And so when we look at this, we have to recognize in America.

Let me actually ask this as a question.

Those who've been following this podcast since 2020, you may know this answer.

What is the law for America?

Think about that.

Is it the president?

Well, kind of been default the President, United States only because we have a Congress that is just not doing their job.

They've kind of been like, oh, we're Just sit around and not do make difficult decisions.

We'll let the presidents do it.

And so that becomes an issue because now we're not running the way we're supposed to run.

Federal headship is not new.

In fact, federal headship goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden.

Eve was the first one to partake of the fruit.

But when Eve partook of the fruit, we did not have the curse of sin.

It was when Adam, our federal head, partook of that fruit that we.

That sin affected all mankind because he's our federal head.

And in the likeness that we have a federal head in Adam, we can have a federal head in the second Adam.

Jesus Christ.

Okay, so federal headship is an important thing to understand.

And our federal head, well, can be the President or can be Congress in that sense, but the law of America is not the President, it's somewhat Congress, but ultimately the federal head.

The, the ultimate law of the land for America is the Constitution of the United states.

So in 2020, when Joe Biden was making executive orders that were unconstitutional, he didn't have the right to do that.

And Romans 13, we didn't submit to the President when he made unconstitutional decrees, we, we obeyed the Constitution.

Okay.

America is a bit different because it is built on Christian values that many other countries are not.

And so Sister Tara says here, for the people and by the people.

And that's true.

Jesse says all authority has been given to Jesus in heaven and on earth.

And as a Christian, that's our ultimate authority.

Okay, but we have to recognize, you know, that.

Let me see if I can find the comment that Melissa had.

Melissa says here, the President knows more than us in this situation.

And that is what I'm trying to get to you.

And I do not have the information that the President has that the generals have.

Now in, in my past life, I have had access to information like that.

I have contributed to several dozen, what's called.

So for those that don't know, the President gets a presidential briefing, a presidential daily briefing of PDB every day.

Many different groups of within the government that do classified work will contribute to that.

There's a lot of different things.

It's basically like an executive summary of a lot of information and they bubble it up and it's like the key points and then he can ask for more information on any of those points.

Okay, so, so I have contributed to many of those.

I know that information I've done has gone to the Presidents, both George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

And so I know that what is what's known in public.

And what's known within classified circles is very different.

Okay?

It always amazed me that the media would demand answers for things they knew either of those two presidents were never going to give.

Why?

It's classified.

Okay?

And so because of that, I'm always going to take a position that the president knows more than me.

Why?

Because he does.

Okay.

It's really that simple.

So when we look at things, when we do apologetics, what do you guys hear me say all the time?

That we.

We have to be fair with other people's views.

We have understand their views.

We have to take into account what.

What they believe in their context.

We can't assume what they believe just because it fits our narrative.

And so when it comes to things like this, we have to do the same thing.

I assume that the president, whether it is Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, George H. Bush, I mean, just keep going.

Bill Clinton.

I have to assume that they have more information than me because I know that they do.

And therefore, the first thing to do is trust, but verify.

Okay?

Now, some of the things you and I are never going to be able to verify, why we don't have the information.

It's just that simple.

And so without that information, we're just kind of guessing we're going off what the media says, things like that.

You see, I hope you're seeing the similarity that we have to do when we do apologetics, because as I've always say here, when we do apologetics, we can't just assume that because I study Islam, like we've talked about for the past couple weeks, that every person that says they're a Muslim believes what Islam teaches.

Same with Catholicism and otherwise, because someone could grow up in some.

In a religion and not have any understanding of it.

They just grew up in a Muslim family, in a Roman Catholic family, or even in a Christian family.

It doesn't mean they have an understanding of what that religion believes.

So the thing we always have to do is listen to what people are saying, hear them out.

Now, it's harder when you have a situation like what's going on in Iran where people just can't tell you what their plan is or what they're doing.

And so we have to give a little bit of leeway in things like this.

All right, so that's just a kind of background on some things that I want us to see.

Now let me see what comments we have.

So Andrew says the Iranians are certainly thankful to be freed by Trump.

That's actually an interesting thing that I've been kind of noticing is that the Iranians, both in America, in Iran and elsewhere in the world, are all celebrating while Americans are basically upset that America has gone after this, this tyrant.

Interesting.

It tells you that the reality for many Americans is they don't really believe what they say.

They're not out there really fighting for the underdog that's being oppressed.

35,000 protesters may have been killed by the Iranians, and people here are protesting for the guy that killed 35,000 protesters.

Keep in mind, if Trump actually was a king and a tyrant, we wouldn't have anyone protesting in America.

They'd be treated the way they were in Iran, killed, shot, for protesting against the tyrant, the king.

Right.

So just something to think about.

This is where common sense comes into play.

We have to reason through these things.

Now, I made the comment, and I'll say again, if anyone wants to come in, I'd love to have discussion.

I don't like to do a monologue here.

And if it's a monologue, we're going to do a shorter show.

But when we look at, when we look at this, we have to recognize that there's different motives that different countries have.

Okay.

And I should mention, if you want to join, just go to apologexlive.com and scroll down to duck icon.

You can join us there.

It's scrolling.

At the bottom is the link, if you want to watch.

Wesley says, hi, Andrew.

Well, hi, Wesley.

You should come in and join us.

Jesse, you should join us, too.

But Jesse is saying the depraved mind of the left never ceases to amaze me.

Well, Jesse, you won't be surprised at this.

They hate God.

I mean, that's really what it comes down to.

All right, so Israel, I think, is focused on Iran.

And I think Israel was happy to work with America.

This is a bit different.

I think this is the first time that I know of where Israel has a partner.

If you look at the history, when Israel went to war and did these different battles in the Arab world, they always did it alone.

Everyone kind of stood back, waited, and then when they're just about to take out their enemy, everyone jumped in and said, okay, okay, you did enough.

Back off.

This is the first time Israel has a partner.

And having the United States as a partner becomes very interesting because what you now have is anyone that's going to tell Israel to stop has to tell America to stop.

And that's a bigger issue.

So Israel has always Kind of done this alone.

Now they have a partner and they have a partner that's not telling them that they have to back off, but saying finish to the job.

That becomes very interesting.

And so I think from an Israeli perspective, Iran has supported, financially and with troops, Hezbollah and you know, and Hamas.

And because of that, if you take Iran out, you take out the financial backing and the, the, the backing with support of soldiers.

And so all of a sudden Hezbollah, Hamas, they'll have nothing.

Now there's been some question if we go after Iran, all the Arab world were joined together and we'd have World War Three.

We heard that when we did the bombing on the third 13, 12 day war, 13 day war, whatever it was where Israel went and went after Iran.

And we had one day.

So 12 or 13 day war was just one day for the U.S. we bombed them, we took out their, you know, the, the nukes.

And there's some debate over that.

How damaging did we do?

Because we, you know, you heard the president say we wiped them out their nukes and now we're going in because they were going to have nukes again.

Now what is that?

Well, I could see some of that being propaganda.

Every administration does that.

They're always going to say that they've, they succeeded in what they were looking to do.

Especially when they, they use the military to do something, it's always going to be they're going to claim victory.

You remember George W. Bush with, you know, he got on the aircraft carrier, you know, saying we won.

Well, yeah, okay, but there was still a battle.

And so we got Wesley coming in.

I'll add him in.

Hello, Wesley, how are you, sir?

I can't hear you now.

This is the problem.

I'm not hearing Wesley.

That's going to be really bad.

Hold on.

Must.

Ah, see, see, I couldn't hear the other.

The output Wesley dropped.

Okay, this is really bad.

I may not, I may have to do a monologue if I can't hear anybody.

But I don't know why I can't hear the dim to know that's really bad.

So this was the thing of trying this on the.

I mean it says that I'm.

My audio is defaulted to the speakers of the laptop.

Let me try this.

Let me add him to the screen.

Wesley, can I hear you now?

Yeah, yeah, I can hear you now.

No, I see you speaking, but I don't hear you.

Oh, oh, come on.

You guys probably hear him online and I don't.

So it's your end, I guess.

I know I'M not muted.

This is the thing I hate about this is one of the things I don't like about doing is the fact that.

Yeah, Jesse's saying we can hear him.

Well, he's probably saying something very brilliant.

I can hear Andrew.

He can't hear me.

What's going on here?

Everything.

All the indicators say that I should be hearing through the speakers.

I have my audio.

I mean, I got it.

The speakers maxed out as loud as I can make them, which makes me really wonder what's going on.

Let's see.

I'm going to try the sound settings.

So.

Hold on, Wesley.

As I keep trying to see if I could figure this out.

I mean, because I'm working off the laptop there.

I don't have my headphones or anything else.

Okay, so.

I'll just hopefully wait so you can hear me.

Let's try.

Let me just see one thing.

Yeah, I don't.

I don't see anything here.

Everything's going through the.

The speakers and I don't hear Wesley.

So I guess it means I'm doing a monologue tonight.

I remove you.

I'm sorry, Wesley.

That's.

This is really a bummer.

And this is one of the problems.

I couldn't test this beforehand.

And, you know, when I.

When I played the music, I was kind of nervous about that.

So.

All right, then we'll do a shorter show and I will just do a monologue.

And so.

Yeah, because otherwise everyone's gonna have to type in the chat what Wesley says and.

And wait for the delay.

That wouldn't be good.

All right, that's the thing with a live show, folks.

So let me.

Let me do this.

Let me explain what I think America's.

So I explained what I think Israel's perspective is.

Let me explain what I think America's perspective.

And I am saying this, saying very clearly.

I don't have any classified information on this.

I don't have anything that I can look to and say that this is somehow.

That this is information that you guys wouldn't have.

It is just something that, as I look at this, having been in a different environment, knowing that there's different game plans.

So Wesley's saying in chat, he says.

He said I should join, but it doesn't work.

Lol.

Maybe next time.

Yes, let's do it next time when I'm back at.

At home and have everything set up.

Right.

I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm not hearing anything.

It really is weird.

But, yeah, that's a bummer so, all right, so I explained what I think is Israel's plan.

What's America's was.

I sit back and I look at what's been going on in America.

I have noticed we went after Venezuela.

Interesting.

We went after Iran.

Hmm, Interesting.

I don't think Trump is doing things like this just whimsically.

But here's an interesting thing.

What do I think we're.

Who do I think I should say that we're really at war with or looking to prevent war and deal with?

Because there's many different ways of dealing with an enemy.

Think of Ronald Reagan.

How did he deal with the enemy of Russia?

He didn't attack Russia.

He talked tough against Russia, but he built up an arsenal of weapons here in America, knowing that Russia would try to compete against us and in the process destroy themselves from within.

If you want to go after a country like Venezuela, Iran, that's very different than going after a country like Russia.

Russia is a big country.

They have a lot more weapons, and it would be a long battle that we would have against a country like Russia.

So when Ronald Reagan decided to go against Russia, the way to do it was to destroy it from within.

What is China doing to destroy America?

They're not attacking us overtly.

No.

They bring in an app like TikTok and convince American children that they should be transgender.

Now, there's a big difference between TikTok in China and TikTok in America.

TikTok in China is very educational.

TikTok in America was all pushing a transgender.

A transgender agenda.

Why?

Because they were looking to destroy America from within.

Now, in the first Trump administration, many of you were not following international news, probably, and probably not following news of my bride's country of Hong Kong, but my bride and I were, because, well, we have a vested interest.

It's where she was born.

And so when we looked at that, what was happening?

Well, because of the first Trump administration, you had China that was on the ropes, they were on the verge of bankruptcy.

And what ended up happening was they took over Hong Kong.

Now, in the agreement between the UK who owned the area known as Hong Kong, they gave it to China in 1999 with the agreement that they would allow Hong Kong to be self governing for 50 years.

They were 25 years in China, was desperate for money and was taking over Hong Kong.

Maybe some of you remember there was some protesting going on.

You probably only know it because of the fact that there were some NFL players or NBA players, I forget which.

And some Hollywood types that were getting in trouble because they called Hong Kong a country of its own, not part of China.

And so they had to backpedal from that.

And maybe you remember some of that.

What also happened at that time, Covid was released.

What happened when Covid was released in Hong Kong, all the protests immediately stopped.

Everyone went indoors.

No more protesting against China.

And while the rest of the world ended up shutting down, China quietly took over Hong Kong and got money.

Now, because of COVID and Joe Biden administration, China did very well.

They were able to recoup themselves so they wouldn't go bankrupt.

And so I'm sure that they did a lot to interfere with the elections of 2020 because it was in their best interests to have Joe Biden as president and not Donald Trump.

Now, look, let's not fault them.

Every country does that.

We do that in other countries.

We're doing that in Iran right now.

Right.

We want a different leadership there.

And so every country does that.

They do what they think is in their best interest.

And so what we see is that right now, China, with the tariff situation, is really struggling from within.

That's right.

Within our.

Trump's battle has always been.

His focus has always been on China in his first administration and now in his second.

Okay, so let's see.

You have a battle with AI.

Trump has been making the argument that the US has to win that battle.

You have a case where China is trying to win that battle, and AI is going to be very important to see who wins, because when you look at the.

The next generation, they're not going to Google or somewhere like that to get answers anymore.

They're going to AI.

Just as China was able to influence an entire culture in America using something like TikTok, they can do the same thing with AI.

So who wins that AI battle is very important.

And so that's one thing, but there's other battles going on for the, for production.

Who's.

Who's making our silicone chips for all your computers?

Well, Taiwan is.

Is China going to go after Taiwan?

That's the big question.

Well, after seeing what happened in Venezuela and Iran, that's kind of a shot over the bow to China and Russia to say, hey, back off.

You don't want to fight us.

And so what you see is, I think a lot of the arguments Trump did with the tariffs were not so much about financial decisions as much as it was a chessboard of trying to put China in a position where they were not financially going to be able to succeed and they would implode from Within.

So I don't think Trump is doing this so much for Iran, although that's a side benefit.

They're a terrorist organization, a terrorist country that supports terrorist organizations.

And I think he sees that it's better to not have the mullahs in charge.

But I think that his real goal is China.

Now, I'm not spreading any government secrets because I don't know any.

I'm just saying that there's usually more things in play than just what we think.

Everyone's just focused over here on Iran and.

And yet the government's usually having a whole lot of other things in play.

That's what I think.

And China's doing the same thing, by the way, so is Russia and everything else.

Russia's bogged down in a war in Iraq, sorry, in Ukraine.

And so there.

Therefore, it is very difficult for countries to, to fight two wars simultaneously.

It's one of the things in America that's always been the standard for our military, that we would be have the readiness.

And readiness is defined by being able to fight two wars on two fronts and win it both.

Russia has been embattled in a war since Joe Biden's administration four or five years now, and it's been a deadlock.

They really haven't been going getting very far in that.

But that means that they've dwindled down their resources in such a way that they can't really fight another front now.

They support Iran, but they can't defend Iran.

Interesting.

You see how this plays out.

You see how there's many different factors.

So where Russia, Iran and China had worked an agreement on things, Russia's tied up, Iran's wiped out, and China just sits back and goes, we don't want that.

And some of the thing that's going on with the AI is going to be who you going to support?

You're going to support the US who's winning right now, or China who's losing right now.

People look at that sort of stuff.

And so I think that what you have is a case here where we have many different things in play.

It is never just one thing.

These sort of things are never just one focused.

It's a multifaceted.

This is what happens in military.

They got to think of a lot of different things.

And so I personally think that our real battle is against China right now.

I think we're.

They are the ones who are.

Have been going after us.

Now.

Why.

Why do I think that?

Well, you had the situation in Venezuela.

Venezuela was providing China with a lot of oil.

Who they providing oil for now?

America.

Which brings down our costs.

Right.

Because we're getting cheap, the cheaper oil now, not China.

Well, where else was China getting oil from?

Iran.

Now all of a sudden, they can't get cheap oil anymore because the two places they got oil from are gone.

And so we're able to get cheaper oil now, at least from Venezuela, maybe in the future, from, from, you know, Iran as well.

But at least there we're getting lots of oil that's inexpensive.

China is now having to pay a lot more for the oil.

And that oil is necessary for them, especially to run the huge data centers to do.

AI, you guys tracking with me.

You seen how these things play out?

It's not just one thing.

It's many things, many chess pieces on the chessboard that have to be moved.

And you got to look at all the possible movements and how things can happen.

And so as we look at this, I think that the battle we're doing right now is really against China and China now all of a sudden, not only has high tariffs, but they can't get cheap oil now.

They're kind of getting stuck again.

And if China, like Russia, many, many years ago, the USSR went bankrupt and collapsed, could that happen in China?

And then Russia still being bogged down in Ukraine, the only world power standing could be the United States of America.

Could be.

All right, and so these are the things that we have to think about.

We, and so just like when we do apologetics, we can't assume one thing.

We have to hear people out and recognize that there's things we don't know.

We have to assume.

Like, okay, so if I'm talking to someone that's Roman Catholic, I'm going to know what the Catholic Church teaches, but I don't know whether they actually believe what the Catholic Church.

Church teaches because there is a difference between those.

So let me, let me try to see if I can get some of the questions we got or things that have been popping up.

Wesley is saying, I think Trump, Trump would want the war to continue as Russia gets weaker the longer they fight.

Well, I, I think that's true, but I don't know that Trump actually wants war.

I, you know, there's some people who do want war because it helps benefit their, you know, they, they make money off it.

But, and, but most people don't want war.

Let's see, Wesley says now that we have oil, it's all strategic.

Yeah, I mean, we're, we're getting the oil.

Troy.

And Troy is saying Good stuff, brother.

Well, thank you for that, Troy.

I appreciate that.

I should say, if you, if you think this is good, would you mind sharing it online?

It, it does help.

Wesley is saying China has Deep Seek as their AI, correct?

That is correct.

We have, we have several different companies that are working on AI.

You have a battle actually right now that just happened with the Trump administration with why am I drawing a blank on the name?

See, on a live show, you can't pause and think what it is Anthropic.

There it is.

So Anthropic was had contracts with the Department of War and they had some terms of agreement that argued that if the president decided to send off missiles, they, with the AI was going to prevent the president from shooting off missiles and they, they were going to have controls in place to not allow things like that.

Well, they are not the president, they're not the executive, and they don't have that right.

And so right now, you see, the US Government is saying they won't do anything with Anthropic.

This is the problem.

When you have AI, it is always biased.

Look, I've been doing AI development since the 90s, okay.

I started in, in actually in like late 80s, early 90s that I started doing AI development.

And so I have a background in this.

I, I understand it to an extent.

It's, it's gone far beyond now with, you know, just a huge leap ahead of where I was working.

But.

And so when we look at this, we have to recognize that these things are programmed, right?

And so they have a bias to them.

And the bias is going to come from the people who are developing it.

Wesley is saying, I think that Deep Seek is better than Chat GPT, though I would say Claude is better than both.

And that's, that's one of the issues that we have is all these, these AIs, these LLMs are different.

They have different benefits and all that.

And so let's see, Wesley is saying, really?

I, I had heard Anthropic said they did not want their AI used for mass surveillance.

I saw it on YouTube.

Well, see, this is where we get into to both sides of an issue.

Both sides are going to have a different argument.

Now anthropical say they don't want to be used for mass surveillance, and yet they are in lots of other ways.

Right?

It's just when the government doesn't want them for mass violence, will they be okay with it when it's a Democrat administration?

You know, see, this is the problem with these things.

So I think that when we look at the issue we have going on with Iran, I think a lot of it goes, boils down to what is happening with China, and that's where.

And we'll see if I'm right in, in hopefully a couple years, maybe a couple decades, we'll see a lot of this stuff, you and I don't know, and won't know maybe for many decades or never.

I mean, who actually killed jfk, do you know?

I mean, it's been enough years and files are released.

But the reality is people go, oh, well, they, they, they got rid of the files that they.

To cover up what they did.

How do you know?

You don't unless you actually saw the files.

Right.

This is no different than Epstein files.

No one's going to be happy with it.

By the way, if you haven't heard, Congress just did a vote where they tied the Epstein files to a bill that was to basically release information about Congress that anyone involved in, you know, sexual abuse, and they voted it down.

Well, I personally think that every single person who voted against that bill to release information from those sitting in Congress that did sexual, that sexually abused people, I think all of them should be investigated.

Okay, but this should end the issue of Jeffrey Epstein's files because clearly the Congress doesn't want their own files known.

Okay?

So that aside, the point I'm saying is that when we look at world events like this, we have to understand that there's a game at play.

And the game that said publicly may not be the game that's done privately.

Now, if you were paying attention the last couple weeks when we've been talking about Islam, you might see a pattern here because Islam can say something publicly that the Quran would disagree with privately.

Why?

Because they have a doctrine known as Taqiyyah where they can lie to defend the faith.

Well, what defines defending the faith?

Well, the ends justify the means, so whatever brings about the right end.

So can a Muslim promote homosexuality even though the Quran says to throw homosexuals off of buildings?

Yes, because the ends justify the means.

As long as their ends are to get Islamic to be dominant and take over the country, they'll use anything.

So what they say publicly is different than what they say privately.

You see a connection here.

Now, that means that.

That doesn't mean I should say that it's always wrong to do that.

When it comes to warfare, there is an ethic where it is a need to know.

Excuse me, a need to know ethic.

Okay.

When we look at ethics, ethically, I'm.

What is Called a non conforming absolutist.

Non conforming absolutist means that I would always say it's wrong to lie.

Whatever the situation.

God will always provide a way not to lie in every situation.

We may not know what it is, we have to find it.

But I don't think it's ever okay to lie to defend yourself.

But there is a, an ethic that says when it comes to military or government, there are times where deception is necessary.

And so there's a difference there that we have to recognize.

Okay.

When you look at things ethically, there's a difference between protection of your people and protection of yourself.

Right.

So deception, if I deceive you to purposely make you think something that I know is wrong, to protect my reputation, to protect my image, whatever it may be, that's wrong.

But if I'm doing it to protect my country and my people, well, I have a responsibility to them.

It suddenly becomes different.

Okay, so let's see what are some comments we got?

Wesley is saying Islam can lie to justify spreading itself.

How do we know any Muslim is telling the truth?

Well, we can't.

And the fact that as we dealt with in previous episodes when we were talking about Islam in the last couple of episodes, the fact that Allah is called the chief deceiver and in fact deceived people, even his own followers, into thinking Jesus was on the cross when it was a lookalike, if he's willing to deceive even his own followers, how could you trust Allah at all?

Answer.

You can't.

Jesse kind of has an answer to this.

He says hypocrisy is a virtue in Islam.

I would agree with that sentiment.

I, I've been saying that last couple of weeks.

So when we look at the situation with Iran, I think the real.

We're promoting publicly the battle of against Iran when the real battle against, I think, is against China.

Okay.

And when you look at it that way, all of a sudden it makes a lot more sense.

Just like when George W. Bush went after Iraq, was it really about the weapons of mass destruction?

Well, that's what he said publicly.

But privately, militarily, his real battle was to get all the terrorists to come out of their hiding places so that we can eliminate them and get rid of terror.

Well, he did say it was a war on terror.

Right.

You see, there's going to be that when it comes to military.

And we have to recognize both sides have that.

China's doing the same thing.

They're doing it for their people, and we can't fault them in that sense, because we do it, too.

And so I think there is a battle that we have going on for dominance.

Now, I grant you, I think a big part of the problem is Americans are not used to having leaders.

I mean, real leaders.

We're used to people who just kind of kowtow to what the.

The majority says or what at least the media says the majority says.

We're not used to a guy that just does what he thinks is right.

Trump didn't make a case to the American people, and a lot of Americans have a hard time with that.

Why would he?

That makes no sense militarily.

To tell.

Go to the American people to make a case.

Give, Give the enemy time and tell the enemy what you're going to do.

That makes no sense militarily.

It's not very smart, but that's what everyone argues we should do.

Dumb move, right?

And so I think what we have to do is recognize the fact that there's going to be things we don't know.

So Wesley's kind of challenging me here.

He says, isn't that what democracy is, doing what the majority wants?

Well, that's not what leadership is, though, Wesley.

See, that's the thing.

Leadership is doing what's right and taking people that may disagree and bringing them along with you so that, you know, a good leader convinces people to do what they don't want to do because it's the right thing.

And so that is the issue that we have to recognize.

And I don't think, look, Republican or Democrat, both sides do this, and both sides have a right to do this, to lead in what they think is best.

And so my challenge is always that we give the benefit of the doubt to those who have more information than you and I trust but verify.

We don't go after them less than a week in and say, you know, this is.

This is what we have to do.

Jesse's making a good point.

He says we're not a democracy, we're a republic.

That's right.

We.

We Rep. We vote people in to represent us, and they make the decisions they make.

You know, that's the reality.

So as we examine this and look at this situation, we as believers have to recognize we don't have all the information.

We have to recognize that we have our own biases.

This is no different than when we do apologetics.

We have to recognize that when we're talking to someone, they may not believe what we think they believe.

So we have to listen to them and we have to Recognize we have a bias, we think they're wrong, we think we have really good arguments against them, and yet they may not believe what we think.

I mean, look, maybe some of you remember times on this show where people tell me what I believe.

Anytime someone tells me what I believe, I basically cut them off.

They're done.

Why?

Because they're not being reasonable.

Right.

If you think you know what I believe better than me, that's just not a reasonable situation.

Well, if I think I know the person I'm sharing the gospel with that I understand what they believe better than them.

No.

Now, what do you do with a Muslim who can lie?

Good question.

I'm glad you asked.

What you do is you go back to what the Quran teaches.

You see if they are in a position where they feel it's okay to lie, to deceive you to win their argument, or in the case, maybe a country, you have to go back to what they.

Their authorities are saying.

And so if you have the Quran and.

And it says that they have to have world domination, and they go, no, no, no, we can work with you.

We.

We could be.

We could work within Western society.

No, no, they can't.

Sharia and Western.

Western Sia, Western politics, I'll say, are mutually exclusive.

And so we have to recognize that you can't have those two.

One is going to win over the other.

Now, when they say that, when you get a guy in New York City that's saying, you know, he supports, you know, socialism and all this, does he really?

No, I doubt it.

He's not a good Muslim if he does, I'll say that.

But see, what am I going to do if I was to talk to him?

I go back to what the Quran teaches.

Now, he's against the Quran.

See, that's where you pit them.

Pit them against their own belief system.

So if someone is arguing for socialism, but this is what socialism teaches.

Right.

Point them to that.

Right.

Let's see.

Wesley is saying.

I'm trying to look at comments while I. I go.

The apologetics analogy is really good.

I know a lot about apologetics, so it helps.

Oh, good.

Georgia is saying, good point.

Well, thank you for that.

Sister Tara says, telling us everything could get us killed, especially in war.

That's the point.

Jesse's picking up on what I'm doing.

It's called precept.

Presuppositional apologetics.

We start with, God exists.

He has spoken.

And so.

So as we look at this, I think that I've taken maybe a different tact than Many, because I'm not focusing so much on Iran.

I'm focusing on where's.

Where do I think America's really focused?

I don't, I mean, look, wiping out the mullahs in Iran is a plus, but that's not the goal, I don't think.

I think the goal is China.

I think the goal of the Trump administration is what it was in the first administration.

It is to get rid of one of the axises of evil, Iran.

Yeah.

But to get rid of another one, China.

And that's where the battle is.

And so we have, we have two major superpowers that are fighting and they know they can't go to war head to head.

So both sides are fighting an internal war.

China is trying to destroy America from the inside and we are trying to destroy China from the inside.

How China's trying to destroy America by destroying our culture to, to promote Marxism and anti Christianity.

We are trying to just to take down China by destroying their economy, by bankruptcy, the way that we did with Russia.

So these are the things in play.

And, and we have to be able to step back and say where we agree or disagree with maybe an administration we voted for.

Didn't.

I mean, one thing that I'm going to have to say is if I look at the past pattern with Donald Trump, he seems to be pretty successful.

He, he, everyone keeps saying every time he's going to bring us into a forever war.

And this forever war stuff is, I remember hearing that for, you know, until recent.

But he's going to bring us into a war.

Right.

He's hasn't done it before and he's gone after a number of countries and they, when we do go in, we're in pretty quickly and out pretty quickly.

And so right now, as I heard the, the head of the Department of War say, I think it's whoever, but that we basically have complete air control.

Now, you may not understand why that's so important, but having complete air control, he said they can't do anything.

They can't shoot missiles up, they can't do anything.

We can fly over Iran, find where their missile bases are, destroy them, and there's nothing they could do about it.

And he said we are going to continue flying Israel and America until Donald Trump says we're done.

And so that's a thing that we recognize.

Let's see, let me see.

Wesley is putting a comment here.

He says we cannot go to war head to head as that would cause nuclear war.

So both sides are attempting to take the others out.

By, with, without causing it.

China is ruining the people and turning them into communists.

And he continues to say in America, as you say, is trying an economic rune to China.

That's the point you're tracking with me, Wesley.

I like it.

This is the thing where we just have to step back and say we don't know.

You know, what's being said on the news is not always everything.

Let me, let me deal with the thing that came out.

You know, it's kind of interesting, people making the case that Rubio said that we only went to, to, to battle here and drop missiles because Israel made us.

He was asked that question.

His answer was no.

And they cut that part off.

He said no, but we, we went in because Israel was going to go in with or without us.

And the President thought, well, then it's better for us to go in first before they do any damage.

Because he, what he is afraid of is that they would just shoot missiles at everybody, which, by the way, they're doing.

In fact, they, they shot missiles into Turkey.

Why is that important?

Because Turkey is a NATO alliance, which means shooting missiles into Turkey.

Every NATO country in their tr, in their agreement, their contract or covenant will say, but, you know, in the treaty, they are now supposed to side with Turkey and indirectly America to defend them.

I think Iran is in a scorched earth right now.

They're, they're using all their missiles to just go after everybody.

And, and now you're seeing the Arab worlds gathering together.

It's crazy to think about.

You have, the Arab world is not going and attacking because the, the great Satan and the little Satan are going after Iran.

You have Qatar shooting missiles into Iran because they shot missiles into Qatar.

So you have them shooting them down, shooting down missiles and things.

So you have the Arab world actually siding with America and Israel.

Crazy.

Now let me deal with the theological issue.

Get it out of the way.

Am I a pre millennialist?

Yes.

Do I think there's a future for Israel?

Yes.

Do I think that Donald Trump is bringing about the peace, as some have told me, the peace that is going to usher in the Antichrist?

I have no idea.

He could be, if that's God's will.

But that could be a thousand years down the road.

That could be.

You see, we won't know that until it happens.

But, and this is, that's a problem with people do when they have a theology and they try to have the newspaper articles define their theology.

The Bible defines our theology, and the Bible is quite clear that we won't know the day or the hour, so we don't know is the answer.

All right, let me see if there's any other questions in the chat.

And if not, I may just try to end here.

Sister Tara says, that's great.

She also says, let's see.

I hate the news.

I usually end up changing the channel because I start getting mad.

But it is important to read the news.

Look, I listen to certain podcast news podcasts that are from a liberal and conservative point of view, so that I would have some balance to it.

You have to recognize that both the right and the left are biased and looking to make you angry.

That's what news does.

Because then you get more.

What's the right word?

I want to say dependent, but that's not the right word.

But more supportive of their.

Of their channel and keep watching them and keep getting them more ratings and getting them more advertising dollars.

Right.

And so what you end up seeing is we have to recognize even what the news's role is.

That's why a good thing to do, read online and get both sides.

It's a good thing to do to be balanced.

All right, so with that, just because I know my voice is.

I keep trying to drink a little bit here of water just to continue to keep my.

My throat moist, but I can hear it.

So since I've been doing a monologue, I'm going to end it there.

I hope this was helpful in evaluating what we're seeing going on, recognizing that everything that's said is not always what's really meant and seeing how this can apply to when we do apologetics.

I hope this was helpful.

I'm sorry that I am traveling and the.

The audio quality is not as good as I might like, but I wanted to make sure that we had something for you.

Next week, I do plan on doing an apologize live, hopefully in the studio.

So I'll be with the good equipment and it will go well.

And so Jesse Heller says, let's see.

Let me for that.

Georgia says, very good.

Thank you, Andrew.

Very, very well needed and helpful.

Well, I appreciate that.

I hope it was.

I. I try to give us all something to think about.

Jesse says, appreciate you, brother.

God bless.

I should mention also really quickly before we sign out, if you are an X Dead Man Walking podcast or I should look up what that.

What his.

It's I think re real Dead Man Walking.

Let me see what it is.

Give me one moment.

It is.

Yeah, Real dmw, which stands for Dead Man Walking Podcast.

Real at real Dead Man DMW Podcast if you check that out he is doing his annual brackets on podcasts.

We the Rap Report well we just barely lost last night and so it was really close.

We were ahead and then it got then my opponent was ahead and then it by morning it was 5050 and then he took it after that he had many ballots come in in the middle of the night.

We tried to make it too big to rig but failed.

But Apologetics Live is still in the running.

So two of my three podcasts were out in the first round.

So be checking that out.

Go check out their every day it's a different bracket.

So if that's the case I believe what today's Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday probably by Monday, Monday or Tuesday Apologetics Live will be back in the brackets because I think he doesn't do anything on Sunday.

And so Monday or Tuesday please check it out and make sure you vote for the Rap Report.

I would greatly appreciate that.

So let's see Sister Tara says oh yes and I know they're both biased.

Very helpful.

I should take notes.

Yeah, that's always good.

She says thanks for your hard work.

I appreciate that.

And so with that folks, I appreciate you guys sharing this letting others know about it.

I pray for me if you would got a Bible conference with Caleb Gordon in Kansas City or Kansas I should say Cedar Vale, Kansas.

And so we will be doing we're going to be focusing on evangelism and then I'll be preaching at his church doing the same.

So I will be traveling really early in the morning.

I think I got to get up at 3 something to get to my flight.

So be be praying for me if you would.

And with that may I just encourage you guys to share this and consider going to striving attorney.

Check out our strivingfaterney.org I should say and check out our articles and maybe consider even supporting us.

It would be wonderful.

We appreciate we've lost a lot of support just people tough times and so we have we've actually had to turn some churches down.

As for those who are regular, you know that what we do here is try to minister to smaller churches that can't afford us.

We we can only do that with monthly support.

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We don't like to do that.

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We would appreciate that.

And remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

And we'll see you next week.

Bye.