The Coming Political Earthquake - Part 1/Program 2

Introduction

Ankerberg: Welcome to our program. We’ve got a great one for you today. And we’re going to talk about the issues that we’re all facing. You can hear about the political conventions in front of us and back of us here in terms of when this program is airing. And you’re listening to the candidates, you’re listening to the parties, you’re listening to what they’re saying. What we want you to do is to bring your biblical values to the floor and to judge what’s being said by those biblical values, because it’s crucial. America’s at a turning point here, we’re trying to explain why. And we’ve got some terrific guests here that are:

Dr. Frank Wright, who’s the President of the National Religious Broadcasters. This is a 1500 member organization representing millions of viewers, listeners, all across our nation, and it also goes into overseas. And prior to coming to the presidency of NRB, for 20 years he worked with Dr. D. James Kennedy at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, worked on the TV program giving ideas and guiding what was going on there, as well as he worked with ministries to the poor and also in the pregnancy area, pregnancy center in Ft. Lauderdale. So he brings a wealth of experience to this. He’s got a Ph.D. in finances, and he knows what he’s talking about. You have to be smart to sit on top of 1500 Christian broadcasters, both radio and television. And he is one godly, smart man. Frank, I’m glad you’re our President.

Janet Parshall has got to be the best talk show host in America. You listen to what she’s saying and it absolutely, day in and day out, she’s on the radio three hours every day, Janet Parshall’s America. And I’ll tell you what, it’s unbelievable. When you are a guest on her program, I feel like she’s Tim Russert who has got all the issues already spelled out before you get there. And you basically just need to say “Uh huh,” and let her actually give the answer after she asks the question. And, Janet, we’re glad that you’re here. President George Bush was so impressed with her that he asked her to represent the White House in the capacity of public delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. She has done every radio and television political talk show that you could list. It’s too long to list. She’s written six books with her husband, Craig, speaks 50 times a year in terms,… I don’t know, you know, how many days are you home if you’re on the radio every day and then you’re going to speak 50 times. I’m not sure that adds up, but she does it. And we’re really glad that, Janet, you are here today.

Craig Parshall is the Senior Vice President, General Counsel, for the NRB. So he’s our legal eagle that watches over all of the issues. He actually has presented cases before the US Supreme Court, the Federal District Courts and Courts of Appeal in Washington, DC, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Denver, Dallas, Richmond, and a host of others. And he’s also worked on Capitol Hill. He drafted the Religious Freedom Amendment to the Constitution, which was introduced to the House of Representatives. He’s an accomplished author. These folks are loaded with talent.

Now, guys, I’m glad you’re here. And I want to get to the issues and we’re talking about the Conventions, what’s being presented. For analyzing what is being said from a biblical point of view, one of the things that has top priority is the family, okay? And people are making great speeches, but we’ve got to dig below what’s being said. And they’re making statements that, actually, if they get into office is going to affect the traditional family as we understand it. Janet, try to explain this for our folks that are listening.

J. Parshall: I think the classic example of this, John, is what took place in California in the infamous 4-3 decision. Basically these four judges thumbed their noses at what four million Californians decided…

Ankerberg: Yeah. Unbelievable.

J. Parshall: … back in 2000, where they said, “Look, marriage is defined as one man and one woman. It’s a transcended absolute universal truth.” But these judges did what was right in their own eyes. Paradoxically that verse happens to come out of the book of Judges, so I find that very interesting. The minority said, “Look, this was a judicial fiat,” translated in common speak that means they pulled that out of thin air. Now what we have to do is see what happens in November, because the California citizens have an opportunity yet again to reaffirm the definition of marriage as one man and one woman.

But here’s the problem. In the marketplace of ideas we hear things like, “Well, don’t I have a right to be happy?” and “Who I marry should have no impact on you.” And all of a sudden instead of it being an intellectually objective argument, it becomes an empathetic argument where you think, “Well, I don’t want to hurt somebody’s feelings. I don’t want somebody to be less than happy.”

But wait a minute. What standard does the government have a right and a mandate to uphold? There are 1100 factors tied back into the definition of marriage in terms of law application around the country. When we begin to chip away at the definition of marriage, that’s just the first pebble thrown in the pond, and now you’re going to see the concentric ripples that go across the country, including right to adopt. This is something they’re going to be debating in California. What’s going to happen in the textbooks? Uh oh! California textbooks can’t say mother and father; that has gender specificity, that will be deemed to be discriminatory. All of a sudden now we’re going to have all kinds of ramifications for this.

But the bottom line is, in the marketplace of ideas as we’re right here between these two Conventions, two dramatically different ideas are being put forward as to what should define the family. One argument is it’s empathetic, it’s you have a right to be happy, anything goes. And the other is, wait a minute, Government’s job is to uphold a standard. And the standard is since the beginning of history the cornerstone institution of any culture that has survived, by the way, has been the union of one man and one woman. We begin to play around with that paradigm and cultures begin to crumble, to say nothing of trampling underfoot the very institution that God Himself ordained and instituted in that place called Eden.

Ankerberg: Yeah. What was the percentage when they voted? 62 percent,…

J. Parshall: Absolutely. Yes.

Ankerberg: …was it, of Californians voted to uphold traditional marriage. That worked out to about 4,800,000 votes. And these guys on the bench, Craig, they just changed it!

C. Parshall: Yes. This shows what a catastrophic effect or a beneficial effect, depending on who the judges are, that this whole process of judging will have on the future of America. One of the most powerful rights that a president has, of course, is to nominate appointments to the United States Supreme Court. But it’s not just the federal judiciary, it’s also the judges in each of our states. And if we don’t get involved in the political process and vote right mindedly, and be able to understand the issues and then apply them when we go into that voting booth, we’re going to have, the effects are going to reap a bad benefits for this country for generations.

I remember when I read the decision from the California Supreme Court. And I looked at the word “tolerance” created by the majority with no citation to legal authority for it, by the way. There is no constitutional right to tolerance, there’s no legal obligation for tolerance of lifestyles of sexuality that are abnormal or other than those created by a Judeo-Christian framework of our view of the world. But this is a right that has been embedded in the Constitution in the State of California. And now the federal Constitution, we’re getting close to it with our federal judges. If you’ll look at what the United States Supreme Court did, they completely reversed the trend from the mid 80s in Bowers vs. Hardwick, where the United States Supreme Court said, “Look, we’ve had one paradigm of marriage and it’s been a man and a woman, not only through the history of America, but all of Western civilization.” And then a few decades later in Lawrence vs. Texas, a different Supreme Court made up of a few different persons on that court suddenly said, “No, Bowers vs. Hardwick got it wrong. We’re now in the 21 ^st century. It’s time for tolerance.” This is the power of judging. That is the power of those voters who put a president in who has the ability to appoint judges.

Ankerberg: Now, Janet, you hear this everyday in your radio program. That is people call and say hey you can’t legislate your morality on us. But the fact is in terms of laws like you can’t murder somebody, you can’t rape somebody, you can’t steal from somebody. Those are all laws that we decided need to be implemented; I don’t care how good we feel about you, you can’t go about murdering people. Okay? We have got to make some standards of how we, together, have a society. We don’t have all green lights in the city, we have some red lights and green lights otherwise we’d have chaos.

J. Parshall: Exactly right.

Ankerberg: Alright, when we get down to choosing the terms of what kind of standards are we going to have? Are we going to have traditional marriage or not, or are we going to expand that definition into something that we don’t even know about? When you get down to that, when you take health issues that relate to it, when you take what happens to children and you put that with it, when you talk studies in terms of does a kid need a mother?

J. Parshall: Exactly.

Ankerberg: When you say we have got same sex marriage, we have got two guys. We don’t need those, any of those girls that are out there, we don’t need you, we just need two guys. And if we have two ladies you guys aren’t important, alright, we don’t need you. What do all of the studies show in terms of just bringing to bear on the family?

J. Parshall: Absolutely correct, John, very astute observation. And you know, I often say this is state sanctioned child abuse. Because what we are saying to a child is, you don’t need that other parent. Craig and I have been married for a long time and have four children. And you know, I could try all my life to try to be a great parent, but I can never be a dad. He can never be a mother. Each of us brings something separate and unique to the table. That is why God in His infinite wisdom designed the family unit to have a mother and a father. The social science says this, look we know that children prosper better in a home where there is a mother and a father. Where there is a mother and a father we know that there is stability, there is the eradication of poverty. The residuals on this are legion. We hear it all the time in Washington, every time there is a witness panel that comes and testifies on Capitol Hill. But the bigger picture here is whether or not we are going to preserve that particular unit that is protective to the society And the problem is in the marketplace of ideas, and Craig used the operative word, it’s this whole idea of tolerance that somehow, if you dare to uphold a standard of moral absolutes, you are therefore intolerant because you happen to subscribe to moral absolutes. Your point about not legislating morality, we three from Washington, DC, can tell you that that’s all they do.

Ankerberg: That’s right.

J. Parshall: But it is whose morality, what morality, what kind of morality do you want to put in place. And so that is really what the definition of politics is. It is people coming into the marketplace of ideas and trying to influence the majority to see their worldview and to get it concretized into law. That is why when our audience decides to sit out, what they are basically saying is, to people who hold an opposite worldview, your morality wins, because I don’t think I want to be intolerant. Tolerance is a bludgeoning tool to silence people who believe in moral absolutes. When we see it through that grid we begin to get a better understanding. If the first directive for us is, “Thou shall have no other gods before me” how intolerant was God to make that declaration? God didn’t tolerate sin, that’s why He sent His Son to the cross. As parents we don’t tolerate disobedience, we wouldn’t tolerate immorality in our marriages, but somehow this has become the new value of the 21 ^st century. But in reality, does a liberal tolerate a conservative’s perspective on traditional values? I think not.

Ankerberg: Alright, we are going to take a break. And when we come back I’m going to ask Janet, okay, the person that’s listening to us right now says, I’ve got one vote. I mean, you know, these issues are humungous, and I mean, I am just one little guy over here sitting here. What difference does my one vote make? Okay, we are going to talk about that and other issues that are attached to that when we come right back, stick with us.

Ankerberg: Welcome back. We are talking with Dr. Frank Wright, the president of the National Religious Broadcasters; Janet Parshall, who is heard on the radio across America three hours every day on Janet Parshall’s America; and Craig Parshall, her husband, who is also the outstanding attorney for the National Religious Broadcasters.

And Janet, we left by asking the question, folks that are listening say these issues are so huge and we are talking about so much money in terms of spending billions here and billions there and the national debt, and this program for this and this program for that. And they say, I am just one little vote out here, just one little vote, so why should I show up and vote?

J. Parshall: Well, first of all because we are responsible for our actions and not somebody else’s reactions. Number two, because we are compelled to be obedient, which means we need to go out and vote. And number three, we don’t know the bigger picture, collectively, how history has been changed by just one single vote. Let me tell you something. There are some people out there with very deep pockets who are funding special interests. And the reality is, you know, sometimes that has a boomerang effect, people can throw all kinds of money after bad ideas. But it is amazing how when people want to stand up for truth, and we saw this in 2004, where multiple states had on the ballot the debate on whether or not marriage should be defined as one man and one woman, and despite deep pockets and lots of money that was thrown after this issues, their worldview didn’t win. The traditional values won big time because people said, “I am just one vote but I am going to stand up for truth.” It is amazing how you can be a majority that way.

Ankerberg: Yeah. George Soros is estimated to have an estimated net worth of around nine billion dollars. He is ranked by Forbes as the 97 ^th richest person in the world. Do you know how much he spent during the one year of 2003-2004 in that election? He spent $23,581,000 dollars on various 527 causes. This is what Soros said by the way, Frank, and it is down your alley. One of the reasons that he spent all of that money, he describes himself as an agnostic. And he contended that President Bush’s religious beliefs are in conflict with America’s democratic traditions. The separation of church and state, the bedrock of our democracy, he said, is clearly undermined by having a born again president. He said, we are concerned about Islamic fundamentalism and that there be no separation between church and state, and yet we are about to erode that here. And he also lamented that in this current climate, he said from his standpoint most American politicians could not risk making such politically incorrect statements. You can see it but you can’t say it, he said. That is going to be a good point in terms of religious freedoms. You ought to be able to say any point of view, he is even to say that one. But I’m saying, you are representing that cause, and he is saying a guy that believes as we do, okay? He shouldn’t be elected President and then it goes right down, you know, Senate, Congress, all the way down the line. How would you respond to that?

Wright: Well, John, in light of the conversation that we had earlier, I was reminded of something that my spiritual mentor and your very good friend, Dr. D. James Kennedy, used to say. He said tolerance is the last dying virtue of a dying society. When all the other virtues are done away with tolerance is the only one that you have left. George Soros has a view of tolerance that is pretty limited. It certainly doesn’t include you and I. In fact, George Soros, it seems to me is the antithetical position to that of the founders, who said there can be no religious test for higher office. And Soros is saying we can’t have born again Christians holding elected office; that is just not something that is acceptable. And yet he recognizes that in the view of the American public he couldn’t say that out loud or the adumbrations of society would come down upon his head.

But day by day we go past the point where it is difficult or even challenging to criticize Christians. It is not anymore. Christians are the only group in America that are open season for any kind of criticism of this type. Imagine, for example, if George Soros had said we can’t have a black holding the highest office in the land. Imagine if he had said that about Jews. Imagine if he had said that about Muslims. He made some oblique reference to Islam in the quote that you read. He is one of the most intolerant persons in the world, he just happens to narrow that intolerance to focus towards you and to me. Why? Because it represents truth. You know, all of this discussion that we have had in these last two programs really boil down to, there is a concerted attack today on truth. What is the source of truth? Can there be an objective source to which we rely and turn our hopes and our guarantee of our freedoms upon? And George Soros would say, I am that hope. If we can just get rid of all of those religious people who rely on religious truth, then you can let the smart people like me run the world.

He is one of the most dangerous people in America in my opinion, perhaps even in the world. As we have discussed before, he is one that has global aspirations for government, he thinks that our freedoms ought to be governed by a world government rather than just the American system of government. And yet here we are in a day that something that Americans have always rejected, the idea that money can buy power and influence, money can buy an election. And George Soros has unabashedly said last time and will say again, I will buy this election cycle myself with my own checkbook.

Ankerberg: Yeah, he spent $23 million and lost.

J. Parshall: That’s right.

Ankerberg: Why did he lose?

J. Parshall: He lost because the church said, “Wait a minute.” We actually have to debate what the definition of marriage is. So even though he was throwing money all over the country trying to literally influence the outcome of the election, sleepy saints who all along had been slipping into the quagmire that somehow politics and religion don’t mix, well, as long as you use that verbiage most people will back off. But if you say, now wait a minute. Does my relationship with Jesus Christ have an impact with the kind of people I would like to see elected and the type of public policy I would like to see passed? Well, the answer to that has to be an overwhelming absolutely. So all of a sudden sleepy saints said, “Wait a minute. You want to redefine that institution that God made way before government? I have to let my voice be heard.” So all across the country on states where that referendum was put on the ballot, people showed up and said absolute truth is in the dock. I am going to vote to support absolute truth.

So the answer, the encouragement for this is look, money doesn’t buy the outcome of the election as long as people are willing to stand in the marketplace of ideas and articulate their belief in truth. But when we pull back and when we say, “I am one vote, my vote doesn’t count. Oh, I’m not quite sure. I’m conflicted. Politics and religion don’t mix.” And we listen to the siren song that will eventually lead to our destruction, then we shouldn’t be surprised at the outcome.

Ankerberg: Do you see this secularization of America happening in the spots where you are actually working?

C. Parshall: You know, it is interesting because if you look at the historical view, John, and I believe that history is one of the greatest teachers that we have. And you look at the old Soviet Union, they used to bang their chest and say with pride, “We have full religious freedom here.” And what they meant by that was that you were free to think religious thoughts, but you could never speak them and you couldn’t act on them.

Now the privatization of religion is one of the most dangerous trends in America. And more and more we are seeing the fact that Christians are able, the government says, to think religious thoughts, but when it comes in conflict with the secular ideas of the mainstream press or our secular institutions, then suddenly our rights are being inhibited. If you look at the homosexual issue as an example, you are seeing that really the homosexual rights movement is really not about equal right for homosexuals. The ultimate destination for that train is going to be in the roundhouse of censorship of Christians because the church is the last and best moral voice in terms of what the Bible says about traditional marriage and what it says about abhorrent lifestyles.

And so Christians around the country in the last two decades or so, my law practice before coming to NRB, I’ve seen an increasing trend. I represented a nurse in Pennsylvania who was fired from her nursing position because as a Bible believing Christian she felt that she might be intolerant towards homosexual clients. Recently a counselor in a psychological clinic was fired as a born again Christian, because they thought they might be intolerant towards the homosexual persons that they dealt with. There is a photographic company down in New Mexico where they were asked to photograph a homosexual and lesbian marriage ceremony and they said, well, my rights as a Christian my beliefs come in conflict, I can’t do this. They were sued by a discrimination tribunal and fined and sanctioned because they were intolerant of that homosexual lifestyle. So Christians really are in the crosshairs of this movement and that is where it is going.

Ankerberg: Janet, wrap this up for us. I believe that we are talking about four or five issues here: who is going to be elected to the Supreme Court; sanctity of human life; we are talking about the defense of our country, are we going to be safe here; we are talking about such things as religious liberty, are we going to be able to express our thoughts wherever we are getting those thoughts from; are we going to change traditional marriage. A lot is at stake. Again to the person who is listening to you right now what would you say to encourage them?

J. Parshall: I would say stop listening to the majority spy report. Too often we think there are giants in the land, but we are just grasshoppers. What we need to do first and foremost is spend time on our knees, understand that God is not in the throne room wringing His hands wondering what the outcome is going to be. Truth is still on the throne. What we have is an unbelievable opportunity, tumultuous though the times may be, we have an unbelievable opportunity to step into the marketplace of ideas, and we can do that so easily at the voting booth and really and truly let our voices be heard. Every single one of us, John, has a sphere of influence. You don’t have to be the head of an organization or practicing before the Supreme Court or even sitting in front of a microphone. In your own sphere of influence live for truth, know what truth is, speak truth, do it in a loving fashion and then let the winds blow though they may, because we will never ever know exactly how profound the influence of truth is until we are standing in front of the one who said Himself, “I am truth.”

Ankerberg: Next week we are going to talk about the first thing that Barack Obama says he would do if he was elected president. We are also going to talk about the things that John McCain says he would do. We are going to talk about some very important issues that are coming up at the conventions. And I hope that you will join us then.