Ep 236 | Debunking Progressive MYTHS About Christianity | Eric Metaxas | The Glenn Beck Podcast
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And now, a Blaze Media podcast. On the Great Seal of the United States are the words, E Pluribus Unum, which means, out of many, one. But Thomas Jefferson suggested a different motto. It was a more radical motto. In the spirit of liberty, Jefferson proposed the phrase, Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

This is embedded in our nation's founding, the implicit belief that it is not only permissible to resist a tyrant, but it is the moral thing to do. This is the same belief that animated a German theologian named Dietrich Bonhoeffer in World War II. He was a pastor. He was a spy. He was a musician. He was also a conspirator in a plot to assassinate Hitler, acting, as he said, on God's behalf.

So is that acting like a good Christian? And what is a good Christian? In the wake of the red wave, it is clear that Republicans are on top. But what about the church? Are we still a religious people or religious right? Is Christianity losing its influence on our culture? As more and more people are stopping going to church, is that a good thing?

To explore these questions, we welcome to the podcast, radio and television host and best-selling author of many books, including the biography of Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer, the movie is out and it is tremendous. Bonhoeffer, his book inspired the Angel Studios' latest film. Its author, Eric Metaxas. Before we get to Eric, let me talk to you about Preborn.

Is it Christian nationalism to fight against abortion? Is that too political or is that what we're supposed to be doing as Christians? I am part. I'm partnered with preborn and I'm really proud of it. They're the nation's leader in introducing moms to unplanned pregnancies to their babies. Once mom hears the heartbeat and sees that baby inside of her, she's twice as likely to choose life.

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We have to start with Americans' hearts and minds. That's what pre-born is all about. When a woman considering abortion wants to end her baby's life, pre-born is their power of the ultrasound. Then also, most women don't want to have an abortion. They just don't have anyone around them. They don't have any support. Pre-born is there again for two years supporting mom, diapers, formula, books, classes, whatever it is that they need.

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Hi friends, it's Liz, host of the Liz Wheeler Show here on The Blaze. Our motto is challenge everything. And we're effective. When Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer mocked Christians, we got her to apologize. When we held Speaker Johnson's feet to the fire on transgender bathrooms, he changed his tune. We are making a difference.

Plus, we also give you a peek behind the curtains at the juicy political gossip and how it actually impacts policy. I invite you to subscribe and be a change agent with us. That's Liz Wheeler Show everywhere you find your podcasts. So good to see you. Yeah, it's good to see you. It's a joy to see you. It is a great joy and a great blessing. And I...

You know I love you, and I'm in awe of the fact that it's almost exactly 14 years ago that we met to talk about a brand new book that I had just written on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And here we are. And I had no idea who Bonhoeffer was at the time. And I think how you got into my office is a friend of yours,

took a picture of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and put the, not to speak is to speak. Oh, no, no, no. This is like one of my dearest friends, Joel Tusharone. I'll never forget. He says to me, the book comes out and I'd never had any big success or anything. So when he says like, he says, we need to get you on Glenn Beck.

And I remember thinking like, yeah, I need to win the lottery. I need to get on Oprah. Like, what are you talking about? Glenn Beck has this monster show on Fox and everybody wants to get on Glenn Beck. And he's like, no, no, no. I think he would resonate with the story. And Joel had the insight to get that and to realize that we should try.

And so I remember he created the Bonhoeffer poster. People can buy this now, but this gorgeous image and he prints it and frames it with the, the, the quote, which is actually not a Bonhoeffer quote. It's sort of like when they, you know, when they say Tocqueville said this, it's like, well, he said, sort of said that, but he didn't exactly say that. It doesn't matter. Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. God will not hold us guiltless. This amazing thing, whatever. So he sends it to you and somehow, uh,

evidently it touches your heart. Oh yeah, immediately. And you reached out. It came into my office and things just used to appear in my office because I was always so busy. And so I paged everybody like, who dropped this off? Where is this? And we immediately reached out because I thought it was brilliant. I wanted to know who Bonhoeffer was.

And now the movie 14 years later. Now you're sick of them. Now we're all sick of them. Just kidding. I got a kid. I kid. It's so amazing. Now, to be clear, the film, which like officially comes out today, uh,

is not officially based on my book, but guess what? I don't care. It is a magnificent film on Bonhoeffer. So I said anything I can do to get people into the theaters, by the way, this weekend, not next weekend, like now, because the way Hollywood works, they will book theaters in the weeks ahead based on what happens today and tomorrow and Sunday. That's it. And the film I can say upfront is,

I have dreamed not just about a Bonhoeffer film like this, but any Hollywood film like this for somebody to make a film that is about faith, faith in action, this beautiful hero, this B you just think like we've, we've always hoped that somebody would make a film like that and make it on a level. That's not just for people who already agree with us, but that anybody who would see it would go and say, that's a great story. What is that? Yeah.

So I'm happy. So I want to start here. Do you know what this is? I'm always frightened, man. You got stuff like nobody, nobody in the world. Are we joking? You're joking. This is real. I'm touching this. I just handed him a silver ring, napkin ring, and you can tell whose it is. Well, the...

The initials A-H. Let's see, it's not A-L, so it can't be Lincoln. The swastika, let me guess. So now, describe the napkin. I was going to say, I wasn't ready for that, because I noticed that secondarily. There are bloodstains on the napkin. That napkin is said to have been with Hitler during the bombing of

So if you watched Valkyrie,

This movie is the spiritual side. Part of it is the spiritual side of Valkyrie. Yeah. Now, my book on Bonhoeffer, and you know this better than anybody, all of this is in my book, The Valkyrie Plot, whatever, because Bonhoeffer would not have been sentenced to death if not for The Valkyrie Plot. Correct. But you're telling me, Glenn, only you could do this stuff. You're telling me not only is this Hitler's, this is too much for me.

But you're telling me that when the bomb goes off at Wolfesschanz on July 20th, 1944, this was in the room? Yes. That's said to be Hitler's blood. We haven't had it tested yet. But since that time, that was said to be Hitler's blood. This is like, this is like, this is 10 times like this is your life. Are you just trying to freak me out, man? Are you trying to freak me out, brother? Yes.

I can just keep going, but what's the point? What the heck? This is the putsch.

Of July 20th, Maskeblick beteiligt waren durch Verrat hat. Turn it over. This is the execution order for those involved in that signed by Himmler. Glenn?

Of all the people in the world, you really... I don't know what to say. I do not know what to say. And you can see they tried to destroy it at the end of the war. It has burn stains on it. I can't even believe that I get to look at this, much less touch it. So this is Bonhoeffer's story, which is so bizarre because he is a pacifist. Well, yes and no. This is kind of where it gets tricky. And this is why...

The liberals hate my guts. Don't go there yet because I'm going to get... Oh, I've got a lot of hate your guts stuff. Because I told the truth about Bonhoeffer. But I mean, look...

Part of what's interesting about having this in front of me is to say to people, hey, ladies and gentlemen, this is history. This is real. My mother, who I talk to every day, she's 90. She grew up in Nazi Germany. My grandfather was killed in the war. I wrote my Bonhoeffer book. I dedicated it to my grandfather. I'm named after him, Eric Bonhoeffer.

This is real. This is not something that happened, you know, a billion years ago. This is history. And you know, and I know in many ways it's repeating itself and the Jew hatred is on the rise, which is why I think the film is coming out now. This is God's timing because they tried to make the film for years and years and years and boom. Now it's out. It wouldn't have been the same. God's amazing. Well, amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So let's start in the movie here for a second. One of the things that I loved in your book was the...

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

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor who, in the early 30s, knew because of his Christian faith, he needed to wake the church up in Germany that it's your duty as Christians to stand up to the evil of the Nazis. Now, at first, it was not about Jews. It was, wasn't it? It was more about...

You're right. To some extent, so complicated, right? But this is why I hope people read my book because I always think I want people to know the details because the parallels are so crazy to where we are today. But initially...

In Germany, as the Nazis rise, the first thing the Nazis are trying to do, because this is, you know, if you take God out of the equation and you have this Nazi philosophy, what's philosophy? Well, the philosophy is Jews are evil. Germans, Aryans are good. Oh, okay. So what does that mean? It means that the government is now going to try to separate the whole culture along racial lines. And you go, okay, what happens when that comes to the church? When the Nazis say, okay, we're going to have a German church

Reichskirche. We're going to have a German Third Reich Church. And before I read this...

And we are now going to have an official state church. Now in America, we know separation of church and state. They didn't. We don't allow the state, by God's grace, to touch the church. The church is 1000% independent. But in Germany, they had a very happy relationship. The Kaiser had been very pro-church. And so you have this in a lot of European nations where they never had to deal with this issue.

We dealt with it in 1776. We dealt with it in 1787. They...

Didn't need to deal with it until suddenly now the head of the state is Adolf Hitler, who is as anti-Christian as it gets. But he's not stupid. He's not going to pretend to be anti-Christian. He's going to pretend to be, I care about Christian morality and God is with us and all this different stuff. So Bonhoeffer is this rarest of individuals who sees immediately the Nazis are going to try to take over the church and they're going to try to get the church to do whatever

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

That doesn't disqualify you. Most of the church was originally Jewish. And there are many of Bonhoeffer's friends who were ethnically Jewish, who believe in Jesus and their ministers and stuff. So he knows we've got to fight now. And he tries to get the church to see it. And they're kind of like, well, we don't do politics. We just want to do church. We just want to preach the gospel. And he realizes you're missing it. This is your duty before God to stand against evil. So that's the battle between,

That's the first battle with Bonhoeffer was to try to get the church to acknowledge us and to stand. And you know, and I know the church did not do it. And by the time many in the church woke up, it was too late. And that's what I've been talking about

like a maniac for the last two years is that most American evangelicals are utterly guilty, sickeningly guilty of exactly the same thing. Well, I can say that just because I'm an evangelical, but it's all of us. They have the least excuse in my mind. I'm just saying. So read that for a second to yourself. Read that for a second. I was going to say none of this German stuff. While I, while I, uh, set this up. So when Hitler takes over and he starts to, um, uh,

go after the churches. He wants to squeeze all the Jew out of Jesus and out, and he decides to make a case to take the Old Testament and disregard the Old Testament and only have the New Testament. So he didn't have any of these pesky Jews. Yeah, he thought the Old Testament, you know, yeah, it's too Jewish. Too Jewish. Guess what? It's pretty Jewish. Correct. And so there was this...

big movement yeah done by these two yeah um and this is just a letter in reference do you see the important sentence in that by any chance I didn't no so he's just saying hey Rosenberg I know you're having a hard time and they're pushing back on you just keep going and what he's talking about in this is

the pushback that he's getting from moving a little too far, a little too fast. Yeah. And letting people know what they're doing to the Christian church. And he's being encouraged here. Don't, don't worry about it. You just, you know, it's right. I know it's right. We got to get all this Jewish stuff out of the churches. Well, Rosenberg who's listed here, he, he was, he,

In my Bonhoeffer book, I just reread the whole book after 14 years and I found stuff that I had forgotten. And one of it is the Rosenberg thing that he was the one pushing dramatically to completely rip down.

real Christian faith out of the German churches and replace it, will replace the Bible with Mein Kampf. Like the kind of stuff you think that somebody would make it up. It couldn't really be true. It was true. Within six months, some churches had replaced the picture of Christ on the altar with Adolf Hitler. Oh no, it's so sick.

But again, most Germans had no clue. They just kind of went along and went along. And when you really look at it, you understand why Bonhoeffer was screaming like a church. You need to do something now. You have a chance now to do something. So that's who Bonhoeffer was. But where you were going was that early in his life, Bonhoeffer was 24 years old. He knew he wanted to be a pastor.

He couldn't get ordained until he was 25. So he was this brilliant theologian and, you know, he gets his doctorate at age 21. But at age 24, he decides, I want to spend a year in America. And he was like just incredibly culturally sophisticated. So he thought, I'm going to go to America. I'm going to visit, you know, his brother had split the atom with Einstein, was in Chicago doing something that year. So he goes to America. He goes to the horrible Union Theological Seminary, which is totally liberal. And he's already like,

I mean, I write in my book, I quote his letters home and his journals talking about how pathetic this the liberal theology is of Union in 1930. Wow. In 1930. Right. So what happens? He meets an African-American student, Frank Fisher from Alabama. And Frank says, well, come up to this church with me in Abyssinian Baptist Church up in Harlem and Bonhoeffer for the first. And this is in the film.

for the first time in his life, sees a kind of Christian faith, he's like, wow, this is amazing. The worship, they're really worshiping God. They're not just singing songs. Their faith is- - And it was a personal relationship. It shows in the movie. It's a personal relationship, which he doesn't even seem to understand, at least in the movie. He didn't really understand that. - I mean, I think he understood it a little bit, but you're right, not really. And he sees it there.

And it changes his life. So if you read again, and because I just reread my book, you realize there's no doubt that he had, you know, what we would call Orthodox Christian faith up to this point, but it hadn't touched his heart. So he sees this, he's totally changed by what he sees in the black church in Harlem. He goes back to Germany and all his friends can see something happened to this guy. He's reading the Bible. He's going to church. He's not just a theologian.

And then he starts talking to his pupils, to his students about things like saying things like, do you love Jesus? He never would have said that kind of language before. Do you love, do you have this personal relationship? Like all the stuff that you realize is the hallmark of actual faith, not just theological ascent.

So he's different. And then he sees, of course, that what was happening to the blacks in America, because he visited the Jim Crow South, he saw all this stuff. He suddenly sees the Jews being demonized and he makes the connection. Hang on just a second, because we found a letter.

from Bonhoeffer writing to his family after the Scottsboro case, he says, we really don't have an analogous situation in Germany. That's crazy. Well, listen, you've got to understand, and I think I explain this in my book, on some level that's true. In other words, when he's writing that letter, which is the Scottsboro case, what is it? 29 or 30. Sorry, yeah, 30. So 1930. But the point is that

The Jews in Germany up to that point, it's one thing to be anti-Semitic. You know, you had all that in England, they're anti-Semitic. But the point is the Jews were at every place in society. They had money, they had prestige, whatever. So he's thinking the blacks in America are hugely disenfranchised. So he doesn't make that equation. And also he doesn't know how quickly the Nazis are going to make the Jews, you know. Because the Nazi, the Nuremberg laws were based on our laws, much of them.

It's such a joy to talk to you because you know this stuff so deeply. It really, it's such a blessing, Glenn. Thank you. And this stuff is so, so, so important. And again, rereading my own book, I remembered things that I had forgotten because I've talked about Bonhoeffer hundreds of times. But some of this granular stuff, you think, wow.

You know, there's a reason my book is as long as it is because people need to know the details. Yeah. Otherwise you just mythologize it and it becomes a cartoon. It's like, no, you need to know how real this is, but it is. All right. More with Eric in just a second. But if you're somebody living with aches and pains in your life, what, how do you respond to it? Do you do your best to ignore it? Do you take something that masks it?

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

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

And he's, in other words, he saw this. Now in the film, it's much more dramatic. Yeah. But he saw, like, this is America. Wow. Like, this is real. So this was real. You know, people talk about racism today. Ha. In 1930, this is the real thing. So the hotel didn't happen, but the same thing happened without the shotgun. It's the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. And he couldn't relate to it.

At the time, when do you think that kicked in with him over in Germany? Well, this is the other thing that's so fascinating about Bonhoeffer, because many Germans like my family, for example, they had no clue what's going on. They're simple people. They have no connections. They have no whatever. Bonhoeffer's family was so connected. They were saved his life. They were part of it. Yes. They were part of the cultural elites.

And so they knew everybody and knew everything and had a lot of Jewish friends. His sister, and this is in the movie, his twin sister marries a Jewish man. Now, it was a Jewish man who converted to Christian faith, but according to the Nazis, you're a Jew. And she's violated the Nuremberg Law. That's right. So Bonhoeffer's twin sister and her husband and his nieces...

Are Jews who begin to be persecuted. So it's very personal for him. He had many friends. His best friend before Eberhard Baker becomes his best friend. His best friend is Franz Hildebrandt, who's Jewish. And so all this stuff hits him personally. He's forced to see stuff that no Germans would would see. So he sees it early on. He's and also because he's so smart, he sees where it's going. And, you know, the really dramatic thing is Hitler takes power.

January 31st, 1933. Within a couple of months, the church kind of leaders are trying to figure out, well, what do we do about this kind of, the way that the Nazis are dealing with the Jews? How do we respond as the church? Bonhoeffer, being this genius theologian, he is deputized by these church leaders. Go off and tell us what's the answer. What do we do? What's the biblical answer to this? And he writes a famous essay called The Church and the Jewish Question, where he lays out

Okay, number one, and it's kind of funny because I'm reading about the founders again recently, and you realize that the founders wrestled with this in the 1770s. Bonhoeffer's wrestling with this in 1933. He's like, we've never had to face this before. What do we do? And he comes up with exactly what the founders came up with. In other words, that the Bible and the Christian faith means that...

No government has any right to push us around. Our rights are from God. We are free. And as Christians, we have to live that out. So he spells this out for these Germans who are their pastors, right?

But they've never thought about this before. They never had to think about, well, what if the government starts pushing against us? This is such the American story today. It's amazing, right? It's amazing. And so if you don't know your rights and if you don't know what it really means to be a Christian, you're going to let them bully you, which many churches have been doing for the last, let's just say four years, but for much longer than that.

So Bonhoeffer writes this essay and he says, number one, the role of the church is to be the conscience of the state, to tell the state in a sense

This is when you go too far. This is your job. In other words, what is God's idea of the state? God's idea of the state is there should be a state. There should be a government, but it has to be serving righteous purposes. And Barnabas says the first thing is the job of the church is to make that clear. And then if the church, if the state is going wrong, it's the job of God.

the church to help the victims of state action. So anybody hearing him read this essay, as he did read it to these pastors, they right away think like, oh, you mean the Jews? And then he clarifies, oh, and by the way, if the victims of the state are

behaving not the way the state is supposed to be behaving. If those victims are not members of the church, in other words, if they're Jews, it is our duty to do it. So that a lot of, I think a lot of Germans were kind of like, huh, really? That's our duty as Christians? And he's like, yes. But then he goes the final fatal step, step 3.3. And he says, and if...

the state refuses to heed the counsel of the church and to do the right thing and continues to persecute the victims, it then becomes the duty of the church of Christians to, he uses the phrase, to put a stick in the spokes of the wheels of state. In other words, to come against the state itself. And you could see how a lot of patriotic Germans would be like, what? What are you talking about? Because they had this tradition from Martin Luther,

you know, to put this over emphasis on Romans 13, which is, you know, a passage in the New Testament that focuses on, it's our job to, you know, to go along with what the state says to do. And there's a truth there up to a point. And Bonhoeffer's thinking, yes, up to a point, up to this point. And so it was very incendiary. And a lot of pastors and theologians thought, no, no, he's gone too far. We, the church, it's not our job to go against the state. Are you kidding? Right.

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

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

Germany had always had a monarch. They'd always had this wonderful leader, the Kaiser. Suddenly the allies, you know, ham-handedly...

Say that the Kaiser has to abdicate. You can't have a monarchy. We're going to force democracy on you. They never had democracy before. So they're sort of looking around and thinking this is not really, you know, we didn't. If democracy doesn't arise out of, you know, we the people, then it's kind of enforced and it's kind of a mess. So Germany was they were longing for a leader like they used to have in the king, in the Kaiser era.

And if you'd ask them, what kind of a leader are you looking for? They didn't really know. They just know we want a leader. And you can see the devil thinking like, well, I've got a leader just like that waiting on the wings. And they were demoralized. They were demoralized. They were just looking for someone. And you can see on a human level why they would do that. And so Bonhoeffer,

Gets on the radio. This is two days after Hitler takes power and he gives this kind of radio speech about what is leadership like what is Righteous leadership and of course Righteous leadership is that I am deputized by God to lead my family Let's say right now this my authority doesn't come from me. It comes from God I'm the father and I have a duty right and so I am

And so what he talks about is the Fuhrer principle is this idea of a Fuhrer who's an idol. He's under no authority. He's not under God's authority. He is his own authority. It's this messianic, satanic. - What does the word Fuhrer mean? - Fuhrer literally means leader. So think of leader, capital L, the leader. It's kind of like North Korea, the leader, the dear leader.

And so it's to make an idol of the leader. So even the Kaiser was under God's authority, but the leader, this idea of the leader that kind of arises in the 1920s in Germany, is this just a leader? But whose authority is he under?

Nobody and so Bonhoeffer lays this out and he says there's the temptation to make an idol of this leader and for this leader to lead people to kind of worship him as opposed to You know, I mean we don't want our kids to worship us We want them to respect us because we respect God and it's a whole different So he's outlining kind of this biblical view of leadership versus this satanic will to power kind of leadership and Wow, I mean

he's giving this radio address and it gets cut off. We don't know why it gets cut off and stuff, but so he's on the record two days after Hitler takes power. Bonhoeffer is on the record as standing against this kind of false leadership. In fact, he says that leader is a misleader. So let me, let me go through a couple of things here because I'd like your opinion on early on. Um, and especially with the church, a couple of things, uh, happen. You just mentioned one and that is, uh,

When Hitler comes to power, the people are demoralized. They have been kicked by everybody in the world. They are no longer the great nation that they once thought they were. The churches had really hurt themselves in World War I by saying this is God's and it wasn't. And then they go into just decadence with the Weimar. And so...

Let me just drop a marker here for a second. Then I'll give you one more thing. Drop the marker at, gosh, that kind of sounds like America today. Okay. You've been kicked around. You're tired of it. You're looking for somebody. Yeah. And somebody comes to say, oh, I'll take care of that. Okay. The next marker is, as I started doing research on transgenderism,

the college or university of sexology in berlin at the height of the weimar republic right they the first transgender surgery happens in 1925 in berlin uh and that guy has multiple surgeries he dies in 29 as they try to sew a uterus inside of that man okay this

This is the island of Dr. Moreau. Yes, it is. This is so sick. Yes. So, but that university in Berlin starts writing books and papers and starts pushing this out. So it's in the universities. It's even in some of the schools, secondary schools. And that's when it's my understanding. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. That's when.

the people who felt they were being pushed into the background and we had just become this immoral godless state they were looking for someone to get rid of all of this stuff right

And they found them in the brown shirts. Yeah. So the first book burnings were actually the stuff that saying transgenderism, homosexuality, pedophilia, all of that is fine. Well, that's the point is there's going to be true. There's going to be truth in every lie. And that's the way the devil works. There's no such thing as a pure lie. So you have to, you know, uh,

you give somebody something that they like and they go along with it. And again, if you're a Christian, you would recognize pretty quickly, like, wait a minute, can't go along with that, can't go along with that. But the church in Germany, again, it was lost. So Bonhoeffer knew the church was the only hope of Germany to stand against this evil. But if he couldn't get enough German pastors to do that,

And he couldn't. So, but let me go back. Here's why I dropped those two in. When I saw, you know, when you hear people, transgender, homosexuals or whatever, they'll say, those Christians are going to round us up. Yeah.

Historically, they have a point. In Germany, historically, that's what happened. The Christians got in bed with the Germans early on. Were they the Christians? You see what I'm saying? Yeah, the church. But I don't know that that's true. And I think that we're living in a day right now, especially as Americans, I know that

that anything that leans toward theocracy, that leans toward demonizing people with whom we disagree, that is fundamentally anti-Christian. In other words, so this idea that there are people who want to impose their morality, I know that happened in the past. We're not there. In other words, I am very deeply involved in all kinds of Christian communities. I don't see a hint to that. And if you ever do see a hint, it's the Christians that say, no, that's wrong. And

And so I don't see that parallel today, but the fear on the other side is there. There are people think, oh, if people, if Christians and conservatives get in power, they're gonna do this and this and this and this. I know that's not true, but I know that their fear of it is very real, which is why they use the incendiary language that they do, that if Trump gets in power, he's gonna do this and this and this. That is absolute nonsense. I would be screaming from the rooftops, but the point is they're so convinced of this

They so think, oh, no, no, he's Hitler 2.0, that they're willing to put a bullet in his head. They're willing to. In other words, they're willing to do anything because they feel like they know that this is a real threat. I know that it isn't. But those are these are the times in which we live. So how do you convince people who will see these parallels? Yeah. Strong leader. Yeah.

Restore things. It's very surfacy, Glenn. This is the thing. I've been dealing with this since 2016. When I first came out for Trump and there were people thinking, Eric, you idiot. You wrote the Bonhoeffer book. Don't you see that he's an authoritarian nationalist just like Hitler? And I'm thinking, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

His version of nationalism is like George Washington's version of nationalism, not like Hitler's version. So nationalism by itself is not bad. When you make an idol of the nation, it can go bad. But George Washington, Abraham Lincoln loved America. Correct. And that kind of nationalism is beautiful. It doesn't lead to making an idol of patriotism, an idol of the president. It leads away from that.

But people who really don't have a sense of history, they're very simplistic and they go, oh, Hitler was a nationalist. He was an authoritarian. Trump is authoritarian. Even that phrase when people say Trump is authoritarian, that is nonsensical. He for four years, he was the president of the United States. He didn't do the stuff that people are saying. You know, it doesn't mean I agree with everything. But the point is that.

that these people are so emotional that they don't even, the facts are meaningless. As far as they're concerned, if you are in any way like a strong leader, they say, oh, you're an authoritarian. Do they know what an authoritarian is? Have you lived in North Korea? Have you lived in a country with actual authoritarianism where if you dissent,

You're you're rounded up You know the only people I see being rounded up in America is people that dared to Wander through the Capitol and take selfies on j6 those people are in prison while we sit here having this conversation So there's tremendous irony and and it's we're in a dark place. Yeah, let me while we're here in the dark place Let me just ask you Because because you get a lot well, let me ask you this first before we go there if Bonhoeffer were alive today and

What do you think he would be? What he would think about world affairs? Theology would he be engaged? Well, I mean, yeah, I think that we just have to look at how engaged he was. He was willing to get involved in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler. He why? Because he knew that Jews are being destroyed, murdered. He said, I have to do something about this, you know, and he

So I think that this idea, you know, the lie that he was dealing with in his day, it's the same lie we're dealing with in our day, which is what led me to write my book, "Letter to the American Church." What would Bonhoeffer say today? It's the same excuses being given by the church. We don't do politics.

What do you mean you don't do politics? Slavery is an issue. And you say, well, we don't take a position. That's political. We just do church. How can you do church and not take an issue on enslaving human beings? That's politics. My hero, William Wilberforce, I wrote a biography of William Wilberforce.

He was a politician who, because of his Christian faith, said, I must stand against the slave trade. This is a satanic abomination treating human beings like this. I'm going to use politics and culture and whatever I can do to change the laws. That's our duty as Christians. It's our duty as Americans. And so Bonhoeffer was trying to get the church to see it in his day. And again, many were like, we don't want any trouble. We're just going to do church. We'll let the evil take over. We don't care. It's not affecting us. It's affecting the Jews.

God judges that if you don't speak up for those who are being crushed. And so I really think Bonhoeffer gives us a picture of what it is to be involved. And again, our fidelity is to God. But the idea that you can somehow be a person of faith and not take your faith into action is preposterous. We have a duty. You know, I know we're not going to be judged for our deeds. But I do think that if you've been

If you have been redeemed,

You fundamentally change. No, that's... And you want to serve. You want to do the right things. So to some extent, Glenn, when people now say what you just said, like we're not going to be judged by our deeds. But we are. Part of me says that's not right. We are going to be judged by our deeds. In fact, there are many places in the scripture that are clear as a bell. So, you know, yes, technically I'm saved by faith. But the point is the scripture says faith without works is dead. In other words, if you claim to have faith...

God knows whether you have faith by how you live. He sees your heart. And if you're not living like Jesus actually defeated death on the cross and you are freed to live for God and his purposes, if you're not living that way, it proves you don't believe it. So you can claim to have faith. He said, well, I signed a statement of faith and I go to that church and I...

God is not impressed by that. He looks at your life. And I think that this is the heresy that was at the center of the German church during Bonhoeffer's time. It's the same heresy that is at the center of many American churches in our day. They do not understand that God demands of us

to live out what we claim to believe. If you say, I believe this and this and this, and God says, okay, well, are you living it? And if you're not living it, God knows you don't believe it. It's a lie. You're fooling yourself. I've been really wrestling with, you know, blessed is the peacemaker. And my understanding of that, that I've, I've kind of settled on is Bonhoeffer was a peacemaker, not necessarily for his life.

You know, if you're going to be a peacemaker, that means you're standing out in front and you're saying these things are negating the peace of everybody. And I've got to stand against those things. Restore that peace for everybody. That doesn't mean your life is going to be. That's right. It doesn't mean that you shut up and sit down. Right. Right.

It's, it's, yeah, no, it's, it's, it's heavy stuff. I mean, I, I, you know, to get back to the movie, like there's so much here and in a movie you can't tell everything you can't tell, you know, I mean, my book is almost 600 pages long, but they do an amazing job of,

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

then you don't know who God is. God loves you and he wants to say, "Atta boy." And even if you get it wrong, he's like, "Yeah, but I see what you tried to do there." It's not about did you make a mistake? So Bonhoeffer goes out on a limb and says that even if I'm getting something wrong, I've got to do something. I'm going to do my best. And if I'm wrong in being involved in this plot to kill Hitler, then I cast myself on the mercy of a merciful God.

But to do nothing, I know that that's just an excuse. And so many Christians think that if I do nothing, I won't vote for this guy, I won't vote for that, I'm just gonna do nothing.

to get back to the famous quote not to act is to act you don't get some like neutral carve out you know switzerland uh their neutrality is despicable it's not like well they were neutral when you have evil rising and you say well i don't want to i'm not going to take any sides god's going to judge you for that you you got to figure this out and you got to do what you can so that's where we are so is it true that

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

He's trying to get confirmation on this theory of his. Well, there's a few things. Let me say this real quick. Just as we were talking about nationalism a moment ago, right? Like George Washington's idea of nationalism, Lincoln's idea of nationalism is this beautiful thing. It's beautiful. It's about freedom. It's about all this great stuff. And then there's evil nationalism, which is Hitler's idea of nationalism. Okay, similarly with pacifism.

Bonhoeffer, when you look at the world of World War I, I mean, the madness of French killing Germans, Germans killing French, at that point...

he realized nationalism has overtaken Europe. It leads us to World War I. It's destructive. And in that world, he's a pacifist. But he's not a pacifist like John and Yoko, you know, in the bed. We're not talking about, you know, we're against the Vietnam War. We're talking about real pacifism that says if it's not a just war, if it's just about chest beating and, you know, Germany wants to take over and that's wrong. So in that world, he's a pacifist. But

a lot of liberals in the decades past

you know, after Bonhoeffer's death, whatever, they try to pretend like, oh, Bonhoeffer was this liberal, theological liberal and a pacifist. Basically, that's nonsense. And I didn't know when I started writing my book what I would find. But what I found was that that was all nonsense. Bonhoeffer was not any kind of a pacifist along those lines. So we have to be careful when we use terms just like nationalism, when we say pacifism, like just as we would say, if there's a way to avoid war, yes, we want to avoid war. But

If there's this horrible aggressor or something like that, we have a duty to defend the innocent, to defend the, you know, which is different from kind of the purest kind of pacifism. Bonhoeffer was not the kind of a pacifist that says, I will not, you know, take up arms if there's an invader or something like that. And so I just think that it just needs to be clarified. At what point does Bonhoeffer.

Really, I mean he must have known with the pure furor principle, but at what point does he really know they're coming for me? Um

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

He knows that if he says this publicly, being who he is, then the Nazis are gonna come down on all the people associated with him. So he can't say it publicly, he needs a way out. He decides, ah, I'll go back to America. I'll sort of escape the trouble and I'll go back to America. So in 1939, he goes back to America. And while he's in New York, realizes, oops, I made a mistake. I need to go back to Germany to face whatever I have to face. He didn't know what he's facing. Maybe death, probably death, who knows?

His faith was so strong that he just knew, I just need to go back and God will take care of me. And whatever happens, happens. So is this coming from him or is this coming from, because some say it came really from the advice of the pastor. Absolutely not. No, that's one of the things in the film. You know, there's things in films that that's just not true. No, no, no. It totally came from him. In fact, he probably didn't even meet with

with them when he came back. That's one of the things in the film that, you know. - Because he wasn't there long, was he? - He was there 26 days. - Yeah. - And I will say that, no, it completely comes from him. When I say from him, from him talking to God, from him praying and saying, "Lord, lead me. What do I do? What do I do?" The Lord led him and it became his conviction. Okay, I need to go back. So what happens now is what is he going back to? He knows the war is coming. He knows he can't fight in the war. What's he gonna do?

Long story short, his brother-in-law is involved in German military intelligence and he's

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

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

And in the course of that, there's some financial irregularities because the wonderfully neutral Swiss require money to take the Jews. Isn't that great? And that's when the, the Gestapo that kind of notice, Oh, there's some irregularity. So, um,

and his brother-in-law and a few others are sent to prison, but it's just for that. No one knows about the plot to kill Hitler. So he's in prison. He's treated wrongly.

rather well during the season. He's in Tegel military prison. It's not like the Gestapo prison or whatever his uncle, cause he's so well connected is the military commandant over all of Berlin. So when all the guards and everybody find out, Oh, this is the nephew of like the big, big, big, big boss. So he's treated okay. And he's under the impression, everybody's in the impression that they will be able to beat this rap, that this is just a money laundering thing. And he'll be able to, he will get out. Right.

And he gets engaged. Now, none of that's in the film, but he gets engaged and it's this love affair and it's so beautiful. And he's in prison writing letters to his fiance. It's so beautiful. And he has hope. And obviously it's all in my book because it's so moving. It's beautiful. So he's in there. While he's in there, as we've been saying, July 20th, 1944, the Wolf of Shantz Valkyrie plot begins.

happens, the bomb goes off, Hitler is not killed, and not only do they fail to kill Hitler, but suddenly now the whole conspiracy is exposed for the first time ever. Because this has been going on for years, nobody knows. Suddenly it's exposed. So at that point, to answer the question finally, that's when Bonhoeffer knows that

probably my days are numbered now. He didn't know for sure because at the end of my book, I talk about how as the Nazis realized they're probably losing the war, they want to keep a few high-level prisoners as bargaining chips. So there's a good chance that Bonhoeffer will survive. But at the very, very, very end, it's chilling. The Zossen files are exposed and it's clear as a bell to Hitler who's guilty and he just gives the order to

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

and that he is now going home. Like, you know, a lot of times we say this and it kind of sounds nice. He knew this is true. And if you know that's true, as every Christian should know,

You live differently. You live heroically. You live freely and bravely. And so he, to me, is the ultimate model. And what he's saying to all of us is like, this is for you. This is not just for a few. This is not extra credit Christianity. This is the real thing. If you believe this, you're going to live differently and you'll die differently. And it's so, so ultimately. That's how we, one of the reasons why we know when exactly he died, right? Didn't he thank his executioner? Um,

Not exactly, but sort of. In other words, there was this kind of... Kindness. It's in my book that he died with this kind of... I mean, listen, even if we don't get this transcript that says this, because there's been some dispute about that transcript, it doesn't matter. If you look at Bonhoeffer's life carefully, this is who he was. He knew...

he's going into the presence of God. He knew he's going home. This is not like sort of, I hope. He knew it. And people who were with him in the last weeks, and again, I just read my own book, reread it,

So many different people saying exactly the same thing about what he was like under duress. How beautiful has how his soul shown in this dark environment and how they look to him for courage and hope. And I mean, you can't fake that when things are really, really, really bleak. So

it's ultimately very beautiful to see like, that's real, that that's God's will for every one of us. That's not like some fake stories we tell it's it's history. It's real. So. All right. Let me take you to some people that are upset. Relatives of Bonhoeffer. Oh yeah. Distant relatives who are guaranteed relatives.

pro-hamas lunatics so these are jew hating lunatics claiming to speak for the man who died for the jews of europe dietrich bonhoeffer i mean let's be clear so relatives of bonhoeffer wrote that he would never have seen himself anywhere near the right-wing extremist yeah violent movements that are trying to appropriate him today yeah oh the violent movements what's the what's the violent movement like what are we what are we talking about what's the violent movement

Antifa? Oh, sorry. That's Marxist left. Who are we talking about? Look, these people, you've dealt with them longer than I have. They're unhinged. There's no talking to them. They have their view. It's a free country, but they're crazy. Listen, when my book came out in 2010, you had me on your show. Can you imagine how the left wing lunatics who had their own private Bonhoeffer, this fictional Bonhoeffer that they had created,

to have me write a big book that's selling a million copies and I go on the Glenn Beck show, that right wing neo-Nazi Glenn Beck. But they don't care about the facts. They just know they hate you, they hate Trump. They don't know what they think. All they know is...

somebody other than them has put out a book on Bonhoeffer. And so they're going to just demonize and demonize. That's kind of what's happening here. And again, the irony, I mean, it's horrible irony. The liberals who go to see this film are going to love the film. This is not some right wing film. I mean, the guy who wrote the screenplay and directed it is not even conservative. He's probably liberal. I mean, he's

So he made a film for everybody. They made this beautiful film. And these lunatics are coming out and trying to brand it like, you know, it's some neo-Nazi. I mean, again, people who see the film, it's going to be pretty clear because I guarantee you tons of liberals aren't reading this junk and they're going to go see the film and they're going to tell all their friends it was an awesome film.

Christianity Today. Oh, yeah. Well, they've gone over to the dark side in case you didn't know that. No, I know. You know. They also provided some pushback. Here's what they said. What kind of connection is the film making by suggesting that Bonhoeffer changed his mind about the narrow way? Explain what the narrow way is. Well, you see,

Christianity today, actually, in all seriousness, they're getting that wrong. But I can understand when somebody's making a movie, you know, they play fast and loose with some stuff. And it's true that in the film,

You know, you could get the idea that Bonhoeffer saying like, yeah, well, the heck with this, you know, Christian morality. Hitler needs killing, you know, now that that's not true. Right. But you could see that if people aren't sensitive to the whole thing that they would say, well, it sort of implies that that's not true. I mean, it's not true of Bonhoeffer. It's not true of the film. I mean, Angel Studios is distributing the film.

they take faith seriously. This is not about like, well, we don't care. We just want to make a movie. But if you're looking for something like Christianity, they're just looking for something to find a thread to pull and,

So they say this crazy stuff. I mean, in the film, the marketing, and this is Angel Studios, right? They kind of want to make it like it's a sexy spy thriller and Bonhoeffer's an assassin and he's got a gun or whatever like that. That's called marketing, right? That's called marketing. If you watch the film. Come in and see the movie. But so they kind of act like, oh yeah, this kind of right-wing crazy cabal that they want to incite political violence. I mean, the left is...

They're unhinged. So write stuff like this. So here's they finish this. Perhaps it's suggesting that the audience should also lay down their political naivety and take up arms. Yeah. Perhaps it's suggesting the way of Jesus is too soft for the hard realities of modern conflict and should be replaced by a more realistic approach. Yeah. I mean, of course, that's that's nonsense. But what is interesting, of course, there is there's truth in every lie.

I think that there are people, and I'm among them, who feel like there has been this, how do we put this?

there is a warrior side of Jesus, right? That he turns over the tables in the temple and he rails against the religious leaders. They don't know that Jesus. They kind of want, Jesus is very gentlemanly. And so what their version of Jesus is, is just like all of the, like the Prussian military class that said, we're too gentlemanly to push back too hard against Hitler. He's the head of the government.

in other words there's a time to say wait a minute this is evil we got to do something about this right but christianity today and others they're not interested in these nuances so they just have to say oh you're saying you know throw away your christian morality i would say on the contrary it is pick up your true christian morality and stand against and live it now i'm not talking about with a gun but stand against evil the christians in the middle the christians in the middle east

they stand of course they're they're not blowing people up they stand they speak up against it they do what they can to fight against it as well yeah people give their lives for their faith and again i think that there are people you know like the editors of christianity today they kind of like well that's quaint stuff from the past now it's just about being nice and agreeing with people or some some preposterous thing like that by the way what happens if you don't stand against evil children's bodies are being mutilated

We have sex trafficking on our southern border. Does it not bother you that 11 and 12 year old girls are being raped? Doesn't bother you. If that doesn't bother you, what kind of Christian you are. Right. So, you know, I'm just stunned at, you know, you talk about naivete. Wow. Like that's, that's not, that's not politics. That's saving children on our own border. Yeah. In the same article,

Points right directly to you. Metaxas continues to marshal Bonhoeffer's work toward his project of politics as the ultimate end of theology. I mean, that is a vile lie.

And what's interesting though is that they really believe it. You can tell they believe this. And I think to myself, wow, imagine we're abolitionists. We care about blacks and slaves being treated like scum and animals. We get involved politically because we believe it's our moral duty to stand against that.

I'm here to tell you there were people in the 19th century who would say exactly what Christianity today is like. How dare you get political? Just have your nice little church services and let the blacks go to hell. We don't care what happens to them. Just do your nice little Christian thing. And you think,

If I'm going to live out my faith, the first thing I'm going to do is speak up for those who are being treated this way. And so Christianity Today, anytime you do anything that leans toward the political, they just try to demonize you. They don't actually think, are you trying to help people? I mean, you know, so again, this idea of that we're not supposed to be politically involved. Trust me, the editors of Christianity Today are totally politically involved on the other side. They are helping, you know, the communist globalist left

either by doing nothing or if they can actually help them by helping them. So they're hypocrites because they're very politically involved. But when people like you or like me get involved politically, they say, oh, you're just a culture warrior. You don't care about God. And I think, well, you know, God's going to judge me about who I care about. I think in the last six months,

Anybody who is a Christian had to notice that at least to use our founders words, the divine providence that happened. Oh, I mean, it is. That was such a gift. I mean, and I'll tell you something, you know, when that bullet hit Donald Trump's ear and we saw blood, that was God's mercy saying to us, do you get it now? He should be dead.

But he's not. In America, you should be dead. You deserve to be dead. But I have preserved you for my purposes in history. Now go to work. And to me, it's like when George Washington survives the Battle of Brooklyn. The miracle of the fog. It's a miracle of God. They ought to have been...

strangled in the cradle liberty is over the the overwhelming 400 british ships um you know parked outside staten island should have crushed the continental army game over america never comes into being god preserves them and so they can fight on and on and on and on and we win liberty and independence that's what just happened in america this election it was god's

extremely merciful hand preserving us so that now we can fight and we can win back the liberties that we've lost and we can recatechize the culture and teach people what is liberty, what is self-government, why should we be dancing in the streets with gratitude that God would allow us to have liberty and that it's worth fighting for and it's worth dying for. And so I think we're in an extraordinary moment in history and let's

To reiterate, the Trump-hating, America-hating liberals don't like it, and they'll say anything they can. There's a level of desperation. It's amazing to me because I...

I don't have any loyalty to Donald Trump. My loyalty is to the Constitution. And as long as he remains loyal to that and those ideals, I'm with him. But if he starts violating the Bill of Rights, we would be the first ones. Screaming, you're darn right. Right. It's really amazing. What is Christian nationalism? Christian nationalism is an invented term

invented by the devil to demonize actual Christian faith. In other words, Bonhoeffer used the phrase faith in action. When you put your faith in action, the devil doesn't like it. And all of those people who are playing on his team, they don't like it. They want your faith to be in some little neutral corner that has no effect on the world outside your little church or whatever.

So they say, "Oh, you're a Christian nationalist. You're living out your faith." Yes, when people tried to abolish slavery, they would say, "Oh yeah, they're being Christian nationalists. Why don't they just accept slavery and just do their little church service?" And they said, "Well, 'cause we can't. Because of my faith, I need to stand against the evil of slavery." And it goes down the line. And so we're living in a time now where those on the left have to demonize. They have to create a term because it's like, "Oh, you're not supposed to live out your faith. You're just supposed to have it locked in your head

And it has no actual effect beyond your head. And it's amazing to me that they miss that they have created a faith, a church, the planet or transgenderism or whatever is their God. And they, that's their nationalism. They're not saying, Oh, the planet is warming and I worship the planet. Let's not do anything. Right.

- Well, and you understand too, like these terms, they're just silly terms like nationalism. Evil is evil. So if it's nationalistic evil or globalistic evil, in this case, it's globalistic evil, okay? You've got these globalists who are against the idea. I know how the idea of a nation can go wrong.

But I also know how the idea of a nation can go right. They're not interested. They have a globalist agenda and they are at war. Let's be clear as Americans, they're at war with the sovereignty of America. Okay. Patriots have died so that we could have a free nation. We could be a shining city on the hill for the whole world to look at and say, what they have in America. I want that. That's beautiful.

My parents came here, you know, from Europe, from war-torn Europe, because they thought, could we live in America? It's so beautiful. It's so amazing. These folks are at war with that America. They want a globalist tyranny, basically. And so what do they do? They create this term, Christian nationalism, to make it sound like nationalism. I mean, I hear this a lot, where they say...

"Oh, I'm about the kingdom of heaven. "I'm not about America. "I'm about the king." That's like saying like, "I'm about Jesus. "I'm not about my wife and my daughter. "No, no, no, I'm about." And you think, "Wait a minute, if you love Jesus, "you're gonna love your family more." But they're creating this preposterous zero sum game that if you love America, it means you don't love God. And I think, "No, if I love God, "it's gonna make me love my country more. "It's gonna make me love my community more. "It's gonna make me love my family more."

they this is classic marxism it's a zero-sum game you have to pick this or this that's never been the case those in this country the black robe regiment which i first learned about from you because they loved god they loved the idea of imagine if we could have a free country how beautiful that would be how it would reflect god's values in history so it's a totally different thing i think that i understand it to some degree in

In Europe, the European elite. Okay. They don't have this. They never had this. They don't understand what makes America. You know what I mean? Yeah. Those who are American are,

I can't excuse them for their own ignorance. I know they were raised in a school system that didn't teach the principles of America. But all you have to do is read the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights and you get it. OK, I am proud of my country.

I think we're the most amazing country. We've also been some of the darkest people in the world, but we're an amazing country when we live up to those values that are enshrined in those documents. I'm not, I'm not national because I love America. I love the principles of America and in those documents. And that's what makes us so great is,

They don't understand a world without the mixing of church and state. They still are looking at France, you know, at the time of the revolution going, oh, that's evil. No, we're not that. Well, look, you understand this. You have to be rather ignorant. And they are.

They don't know any of this stuff. They don't know any of this stuff that you've been speaking about for all this time, what all your audience knows about. They don't know this stuff. But here's the good news. Many, many Americans, in large part because of you, a little bit because of me, they know about this stuff. And they're not buying this garbage. And so the question is, will enough Americans know the truth to fight against the lunacy? And I really think, especially with regard to the last election, we have just enough people

To win it's kind of like saying I always say in my new book It's called religionless Christianity and I say if you went to George Washington in 1776 and said hey, hey George How's it going? You know, he would say it's going very poorly But if Providence be with us in this cause of Liberty we will fight on because we believe that God can give us the victory our job is to do our job our job is to fight for what is beautiful and good and true and If we don't fight well, then it's on us. I

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

I don't like when people make Donald Trump into our savior. I already have one. But I also understand how the Lord is using this guy. And some people are like, how could he possibly? Because I'm sure the Lord asked a lot of people before he asked him. You know what I mean? And he's like, oh God, who's next?

Don, will you stand? Will you stand? That's it. He's not putting the most righteous person in. He's putting anyone willing to stand. And how many of us, I mean, that's, that's, I think the lasting legacy you have given me is a understanding of not to act is to act.

and how important it is to stand because God's not going to hold it. We have a responsibility and it's not my, it's not my church that's driving it. It's my faith in God that's driving it. It's my understanding of who Jesus Christ is and what I owe him and can never repay. But I'm going to, I know that,

He has a plan. Yeah. I just, I know it. I don't know what it is. That's right. But I know I want to help pave that road for the future.

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

What Tyndale would have said about this? Oh, gosh. And none of us read the scriptures. I mean, few of us read the scriptures. We have every version of the scriptures, every version in every language. Tyndale was burned at the stake for a few pages. I mean, the choices we make are remarkable and how fast we forget. Well, again, this is, you know,

We're all on a journey. You know, we didn't ask to be born at this time in history, but the Lord put us here now. Our job is to say, Lord, what do you want me to do now? And I'll do the best I can. Don't you find, when my father died, I reviewed his life and he didn't serve in World War II. He just turned 18 right at the end of it. And he joined the Marines, but he had flat feet so he couldn't go. Okay. So he missed that.

didn't fight in any war. And he really was living in the greatest time in American history. And we lived in Seattle, which didn't really have the busing issues and the black issues back and forth. And I thought, who could my dad have been if he lived in a time that pushed him up against the wall?

I find this time to be such an honor. Correct. That we've been. Correct. We're here. Correct. And we can see I'm a coward or I'm not. I mean, it's scary because you don't know what your breaking point is. You know, you don't know. Is something right around the corner that's going to make me go, okay, okay, I give. The time we've had. Right. God doesn't.

These things, if you're awake, they don't happen as fast as history makes them look to be. That's where most people are. Hitler's elected and they have no idea. They didn't see it coming. And so all of a sudden they have to make a choice and they make the wrong choice. But some of us who are awake...

have had years to prepare. That must be terrifying for the other side. - Well, listen, I know, I say emphatically, God called me in my mother's womb to write this Bonhoeffer book. It wasn't my idea. I know that God called me to write this book for such a time as this. And when I was writing it, I didn't know that I was writing it for such a time as this, but God knew. And God has prepared me. And the fact is, here we are. We are here now.

And we get to live our lives to God's glory. And what an honor, what a beautiful, beautiful thing. And the thing is we can trust God with the details, you know, whether we die tomorrow or we live, who cares? God knows and we can trust him. And I think that that's one of the reasons the story of Bonhoeffer is so beautiful to me is that he lived it out. He didn't just talk about it. He was given an opportunity by God to live it out and to show us

what that looks like. And that is profoundly inspiring to so many people. So again, you know, I'm stunned that this film is out now. I'm stunned that it's as wonderful as it is because it didn't need to be. It's wonderful. And it's going to, it's going to inspire a lot of people and you know, where we go from here, I don't know, but I just, I just can't believe we're here. Frankly, I can't believe we're here.

More with Eric Metaxas in just a second. When you're facing evil, do you do nothing? Do you hide? Or do you have a responsibility to act, stop evil, or at least protect those around you from that evil? Honestly, I don't know why the Berna launcher is not in every school room in America, or at least every school.

If you're a teacher, some gunman starting to kill people down the hall or wherever, you have a Berna launcher. You could open the door just a little bit and shoot down the direction for 60 feet. You just have to be within like six or eight feet of

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

That gives the time for police to arrive and handle the situation. Gives you time to escape and get away from that danger without killing anybody. Use it in your home. Have it in your car. If you're a teacher, ask your school, why don't we have a Burna launcher? Burna, B-Y-R-N-A dot com slash Glenn. Get an exclusive 10% discount. That's Burna dot com slash Glenn. Stop. Stop.

Stop! Had enough? Kick out mucus and quiet the cough with Mucinex 12-Hour DM for long-lasting cough and chest congestion relief. Buy Mucinex 12-Hour DM at your local retailer. Use as directed. I think it's interesting that, you know me, I hang out with all religions, and I really love all of them. I mean, there's some religions in California I'm not real hip with, but...

I love going to other people's services because I can speak. I can barely speak English, and it's the only language I actually speak, but I can speak different spiritual languages. I know what people are saying, even if the words are different. And for a long time, it was...

everybody was guarding themselves from sheep stealers as some of the pastors say you're going to steal my sheep um and i could break down that wall because nobody wants to be in my faith i mean so you know we're like the jews of christianity so uh so i could get past some of those gates yeah and talk to people and in the 15 years ago it would still break down to at the

At the end, push it, you know? And it would still break down to, well, we have our faith and you're kind of outside of our faith and these people are outside of our faith. Where now, I mean, I felt Amish recently, you know? Watching them, I'm like...

you know what yeah that's a really good faith because look at how they're implementing it and i feel like god is saying yeah i'm going to work all this out guys i'm going to work all this out you have to be doing my work and

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

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

at the heart of Christian faith, what that really is. And he was constantly trying to teach about like, what is it really? Not just like, oh, you were sent to these intellectual theological ideas and you're a Christian. No, you have to really have this personal relationship with Jesus. It's a whole, you know, he understood that as a young man and it got deeper and deeper and deeper. And at the end of his life, 1944,

He's in prison and he's writing these letters to his best friend who understood him like nobody. I mean, just so he's almost using the shorthand or whatever. And in one letter, he's basically saying that we needed a religionless Christianity. In other words, we had all of this religion. We had all this like I'm going to the Lutheran church and I'm going to, you know, and he thought that did not stand against evil. We needed to live out our faith. Correct.

Like the saints of old, like the martyrs of today. We needed to live out our faith 24-7. We needed to put our faith in action, and the German church didn't. And he says, if we'd had a truly religionless Christianity, in other words, all this liturgical stuff and the trappings, and what I write about in my book, and I've been talking about everywhere, is whom did Jesus rail against? The Hellenistic philosophers? The pagans? No. No.

The most religious people of his day were the ones that he called a brood of vipers. You are of your father, the devil. In other words, you can know the Bible backwards and forwards. You can do all the religious stuff, do all the stuff. And then when God sends his son into your midst, you murder him.

That's satanic. He knew that all these religious trappings not only are worth nothing, but they can be marshaled by the devil for his purposes. And so Bonhoeffer saw that all this religious stuff in Germany opened the door to the devil.

and opened the door to the evil of the death camps. And he's saying, we needed a religionless Christianity, people to actually live out their faith. And in every generation, in Jesus's generation, in every single generation, there are people of all the trappings of religion. They're not living it out. And so Bonhoeffer dares to say that, but it's in a letter to a friend and all the liberal people

agnostic academics after his death, they kind of grab this and they kind of create their own fictionalized version of he was drifting into this kind of secular humanist ethics, complete nonsense, total nonsense. And when I wrote my book, I realized this is nonsense. They got it. They didn't just get it a little wrong. They got the opposite of what he was actually doing. He's talking about profound faith in the God of the Bible that lives itself out, that pours itself out with joy and

And so that is where we are today. So when people say to me, well, I've got the right theology or like Glenn Beck, he's a Mormon, his theology is wrong here and here and here. And you, Eric, you believe that you're wrong here. And let me just tell you,

God looks on your heart. C.S. Lewis really understood this better than anybody. God looks on your heart. So you can talk all you want about your theology. God knows your theology by how you live. And so all these people that pretend they've got all this perfect theology, they're worshiping an idol of perfect theology. That's not the same as worshiping Jesus. And you worship Jesus with your life.

And so there is something here. There's a mystery. There are a lot of people that are very uncomfortable with mystery or ambiguity. They want it all buttoned up. And it's like, you believe in this and this and this. You're in. You don't. You're out. That's not the God of the Bible. Churches are a little like political parties. They're to further the mission. But if the people that are running the political party are not Christians,

living what that Abrahamic covenant, Abraham Lincoln covenant, if they're not living that, it means nothing. It means nothing. So the falling of the attendance in church, is that the people's fault or the church's fault? I think it's a good thing.

I think it's a good thing. I do. I do. In other words, if you've been going to church that's been doing like all this religious stuff, I think people are thinking like, you know what? The world is going insane. And if you're not speaking to me where I live, you're not relevant. And guess what? Most churches, I mean, we think of it in the Simpsons, the church that they go to and it's so, that's,

that's many churches in America are like that. Your average person, you know, struggling in life or whatever, they go, you know what? I'll pass. I'll skip that. I'll sleep in on Sunday morning because that's not speaking to me. Churches that are speaking to all these issues are,

their numbers are increasing because people are like, I need that. I can get interested in that. Are you going to stand against the lunacy that my kids are being exposed to in the public school? Are you going to stand against that? Are you going to stand against pornography in my kids' schools? Are you going to get, you know, are you going to have this kind of muscular pushback against this stuff attacking my kids and attacking my guys? I'm with that because that looks to me like somebody actually cares, somebody willing to live out what they say they believe.

And all these other churches that are losing numbers, what I say, because I've been speaking about this incessantly for two years, it's like when Jesus curses the fig tree. People think, oh, Jesus is so nice. He would never do anything like that. He curses the fig tree because it doesn't bear fruit. He says like, you're done. You're over. I curse you. You wither. You die. Those are the churches that are not living out their faith and

that are not living out of religionless Christianity. And I say, when people say, well, what can I do, Eric? What can I do? I say, first off, you're going to one of those churches, get out, take your friends, take God's money and get out of that church. And better that you should be watching, having a home church service or something like that, than going to one of these religious churches

services where they kind of act like well this is about making you a better person and self-actualization and and we don't want to get into any of that controversial stuff god wants you to get into that controversial stuff god's kind of controversial a little a little bit a little bit in fact when he came to earth they murdered him so that's where we are are we at the beginning of a great awakening

I'm sure of it. Yeah, I am too. I'm absolutely sure of it. And the way you see it always, it's like with George Whitefield, right? The establishment church hated George Whitefield. Why? He couldn't even preach inside anybody's church. That's the point, right? They're like, no, you're not welcome here. He's like, okay, well then I'll take it outside.

And so he takes it outside and all these people had never heard the beautiful story of who God really is. They're just like, you know, weeping to hear him tell about the God who loves them and stuff like that. So all of those kinds of churches, and again, it's no different than in Jesus' day, this hyper-religious nonsense, God always works outside the system and it infuriates those inside the system. And in fact, I've said often that God takes a person

a philandering, thrice-married New York real estate developer to humiliate the church, to show the church what courage looks like. People get very angry. And God does this over and over in history. He picks somebody outside to show what he's looking for. Cyrus is an example in the scripture. And we're living in a time right now where God is going outside the church. The other day, I mean, the other day,

Trump goes to Madison Square Garden for one of these, I'm not into that kind of fighting and stuff. He goes there, he brings Bobby Kennedy with him. He brings Tulsi Gabbard, he's there.

And Rogan is there. And when the winner, John Jones, whatever his name is, he comes out. Joe Rogan puts the microphone in his face and the whole world hears him talk about Jesus at length. And I thought, what is happening in America? Something beautiful is happening in America. And if you're not going to give God the glory in your churches the way you should, he'll bring it into the middle of a fight in Madison Square Garden. His mess, the stones will cry out. We are seeing that.

And it's a beautiful thing. It's extraordinary that we get to be alive at this time. Where this is gonna go, I don't know, but I see God's hand in it. I don't say that kind of stuff lightly. And I think God wants to bless this nation. He wants to bless us to be a blessing. This is not about America. This is about the world, but he's blessing us to be a blessing. He's giving us a chance we don't deserve.

to clean, to go scorched earth on this satanic bureaucracy of the deep state, the unelected elites that hate America, that hate freedom. We have an extraordinary moment, but I feel like we've just crossed the starting line. It's just like Washington going across the East River. And now we get to fight and it's a glorious thing we get to do. Yeah.

I'm grateful for you. It's what a great time. I'm back at you, man. I miss you, my friend. I could do this every day. To talk to you is a joy, Glenn. I don't say that kind of stuff lightly. What a joy. Thank you. Thank you. Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people. Thank you.