Personal Look at Prejudice and Racism and a Solution

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Today on The Rap Report, you're going to get a little bit of a personal view into my life, discussing the topic of prejudice, racism, and other things.

Coming to you now on The Rap Report. Welcome to The Rap Report with your host,

Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the

Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

All right, well, welcome to The Rap Report. I am your host, Andrew Rappaport, and I'm just going to share a little bit of my heart with you guys today.

I know that there has been a lot of turmoil in our country, a lot of people really wondering what in the world is going on.

There's a lot of discussion on the topic of Black Lives Matter and racism, how

America was founded, is it a racist nation, are all whites have a systemic racism, all kinds of things like this.

The simple reality is every group of people face some form of, call it racism, call it prejudice, but I grew up in a

Jewish household. We moved when I was about 10 years old to a very Catholic neighborhood.

When I moved, we were the only Jewish people in town, pretty much, at least on our street, and I had suffered quite a bit because of it, because there weren't many other

Jewish kids. Now, I wasn't at that time wearing a kippah or what's called a yarmulke outside of synagogue.

We at that point became conservative, and so we weren't doing things like that. And for folks who don't know, conservative

Judaism is a little bit more liberal than the Orthodox, which would wear the kippah every day.

And so, there weren't things that specifically identified me as being Jewish, unlike if you're

Chinese or if you're Asian, you're Black, there are things that are easily identifiable.

However, enough people kind of knew very quickly that we were a

Jewish family, and because of that, we ended up having quite a bit of, you could call it a very light persecution, but nonetheless, it was that there were people who in school who would go after me just because I was

Jewish and I was one of the few Jewish kids, and therefore, it gave them something to kind of go after me and it brought others together.

And so, that's some of the reason that I ended up seeing is that they found community, shall we say, in going after the couple of Jewish kids.

And so, that is the thing that I want to talk about here. And the reason

I want to talk about it here is I would like to just share with you some things for us as especially believers to think about, to consider, and one of the things

I want us to do is to work through the issues that we see in our culture right now.

Now, there's no way to look at what's going on in our culture and not recognize that there is a lot,

I mean a lot, of people who are very emotional about the topic right now, call it justice.

The issue that you end up seeing is there are numbers of people who are looking to use different things to promote agendas, and we cannot ignore what is behind a lot of what we see going on.

There is basically Marxism being used.

You look at Black Lives Matter, you look at their organization, and you have to recognize that the slogan,

Black Lives Matter, well, yes, of course that's true. Everyone agrees with that. And this is the thing.

They use slogans that everybody can agree with as if if you disagree with the organization

Black Lives Matter, that means that you are against Black Lives. No. Black Lives Matter, as I've dealt with in detail on Apologetics Live, nine of the 13 goals that they have have to do with homosexuality.

Two of the goals have to do with the destruction of the family. They want to put an end to patriarchal society, to end the nuclear family.

Well, the thing that's been plaguing Black culture is the lack of fathers in the home, and that is not going to help by undoing or making worse the thing that is plaguing it.

So they're not about black lives. If they were about black lives, they would be standing out of abortion clinics demanding that people stop killing the black lives in the largest numbers that we see.

And so I want us to deal with some things. Why did I start with talking about my upbringing?

Because I too, just like an African American or black, I never know what to call people these days.

They keep changing. But just like that, we end up seeing that there are people who basically are going to be persecuted, be identified as different, be called out, set aside, marginalized, treated differently.

Now, I grew up Jewish. My wife from Hong Kong came over to America.

She too had experienced this. Nothing different. She was easily identifiable as being

Asian, and therefore she stayed with other Asians because there was a comfort level.

There was community. There was the fact that you weren't looked differently. So when people try to say, well, in America it's the blacks that have that, that's not true.

Every group has this. And it's a thing that you have to recognize.

Before you can find a solution to this, it needs to be understood that this is something everybody in every culture, everywhere is going to deal with.

Why? Because everywhere you go, no matter where you go, everybody has a sin problem.

That's right. Everybody has a sin problem. There is, no matter where you go in the world, there is sin.

And this is the issue. Racism, showing prejudice toward anyone is a sin problem.

I hope that was kind of clear. That's the issue. It's an issue of the sinful nature of human beings.

And so I want us to consider the fact that this is not unique to America.

It's not a systemic racism. Not all whites are racist. In fact, there was many, many, many whites who fought for the abolition of slavery, who fought and died to free slaves.

There were many whites that did that. Are they racist? The argument would be, yes, they are.

The argument that we hear is that everything in America is based off of a systemic racism.

Now, I don't want this to come off the wrong way. Because I know that this could be taken the wrong way.

But if you were to offer all of the blacks who claim that there's a systemic racism, they're not being treated fairly in America, offer them to relinquish their passport and go back to Africa, which is what some of the leaders of Black Lives Matter and other organizations are claiming, that they're not

Americans. They're Africans that are here held by bondage or that they were taken against their will.

They were born here. No one's holding them here. No one is restricting them to not go back to Africa if they say that's where they're from.

The reality is they're not from there. They're from here. I wouldn't say that I'm from Russia nor Romania, which is where my ancestors would be, because I was born here in America.

And America was to be a melting pot. America was to be a place where people could come from all over the world and fit in.

But unfortunately, more and more what we're seeing is people are trying to divide America. Instead of making it a melting pot, you're either an

African American or Asian American or Irish American or Italian American.

But the reality is you're American. If your citizenship is here, you're

American. We should be proud of the country that we're in. Does it mean it's perfect?

No, it doesn't. It doesn't mean it's perfect. But the reality is that this country is what it is by God's grace.

And we see a lot going on in people who are coming out and trying to basically say that we need to make fundamental changes.

Now, I want you to notice what happened. You have the death of George Floyd. No one is saying that George Floyd's death was justified.

There's no one saying that that I've heard. Everybody is claiming it's an injustice. Everybody was claiming that from what was seen, that the officer was wrong.

We haven't heard anyone that I've heard on the right or the left defend the officer.

Now, there's been other cases. You look at Michael Brown, where they said he had his hands up and was shot in the back.

When the actual evidence came out, no, he wasn't shot in the back. He was actually shot in the chest while the officer was being pummeled by him, a very large man who didn't have fear of the police and was basically beating up a police officer to the point that his eye was basically popped out of his socket.

You have the case with, I forget the young man's name, but you have the

Mexican guy in Florida who shot Trayvon Martin. That's it. Now, Trayvon Martin, they said, oh, the

Hispanic guy was beating him up. Well, the reality is is when they had the evidence, the evidence showed that Trayvon Martin was shot while on top of the other man whose name escapes me.

And the reality is is that when his best friend testified, she said that Trayvon said he was going to go teach this guy a lesson.

So it wasn't an innocent man that was shot. It was someone who was being aggressive in both those cases.

Now, those cases, people came to the defense of the person who did the shooting. Why? Because of the fact that you end up seeing that they ended up having a simple thing of people who, there was evidence there that there was something not awry.

In the case of George Floyd, there's nothing there that says, yeah, maybe the police officer was right.

There's no one trying to justify that. Now, in this country, we wait until the court trial. We wait until the evidence is presented.

And, you know, we don't presume guilt. We presume innocence. But I don't hear anybody saying that what happened was justified.

And I also don't hear anyone saying, other than those that are pushing the Black Lives Matter, that saying that it was racist.

In other words, what you end up seeing is that people are looking at this and saying, you know, just because it's a white officer and a black man, it must be racist.

Well, what we do know is these two men knew each other. They worked together. People who worked with them have testified and stated that the officer was upset and didn't like George Floyd because he made more money and the two of them just didn't get along.

Now, given that scenario, you take an officer who is out of line and thinks he's going to teach a guy a lesson, because that's my guess.

I don't think it had anything to do with him being black. I think it had very much to do with he got his chance to teach this guy a lesson.

He was going to do it. Well, the officer was completely out of line. Now, I don't know if that actually is the case.

That's just my guessing. But it sure fits with the scenario. There's nothing that we've seen that showed that the officer was doing it out of racism.

And there's nothing in his background that has come out yet that shows that he has any racism in his background.

But what we have to recognize is just because blacks in America feel that they are treated differently does not mean that there's a systemic racism any more than I should believe that every

American that's not Jewish, every Gentile has a systemic prejudice against Jews, because that's what

I experienced. And nor should my wife feel that there's a systemic prejudice and racism against Asians, because that's what she experienced.

You see, everyone's experiencing it. There is a big difference, though, between these two.

The difference is that what you end up seeing in the Asian population, the Jewish population, many of these groups that have suffered from persecution, suffered from prejudice, they focused on educating their next generation.

That was the key, was education. Not the education we have in America, in the government systems, where they indoctrinate.

That's the problem. Let's take a little walk down history's road.

Back in the 70s, we started to have a change in the black culture.

Black families were extremely strong. Why? Because they had to be. You know, after all of the racism, and I'm not denying that there isn't racism, there is racism, especially down in the

South. There are places where there are bigots, there are racists. And guess what?

That goes both ways. You have blacks who are racist against whites when they say all whites have a systemic racism.

That actually is racism. That is the prejudging of people based on ethnicity, color of skin, whatever it may be.

That's racism. Now, I don't believe there's races of people. As a Christian, there's one race, the human race.

And I believe that we all stand together. That's what gives us value, is that we're made in the image of God, and we have to remember that.

But this is the thing I want us to think about with the issues that we see in our culture right now, because it is very discouraging to see what we're seeing.

What we see is people who are not turning over to education.

Why? Because in the 70s, after they did have strong families, there was a lot of segregation in the

South, and they weren't allowed to go to families or go to schools that would give them the same quality education.

That was wrong. We've tried in different ways to write that and fix that.

But the biggest area where that's going to get fixed is at home. And so what happened in the 70s?

In the 70s, under the Carter administration, the State Department started to, and this is known, it's been known, this got exposed during the

Reagan administration. But during the Carter administration, the government actually started to become drug dealers.

They started to fund the Nicaraguans in different places with drug money that they had, and they needed a place to dump it.

Where did they dump it? They dumped it in black communities. They got a bunch of people, and that was specific.

They dumped it in black communities, getting lots of people hooked on drugs, becoming drug dealers.

They put abortion clinics into black areas. Basically, what an abortion clinic does is it destroys the sanctity of human life.

You have less value of human life. What's the consequence of those two things? Well, the consequence was guys didn't feel the need or the obligation to take care of family.

And don't worry, because the Democrats, those same Democrats who were the party of the slavery, who fought against slavery, the same

Democrats that were the party of the KKK, the same Democrats that fought against the Civil Rights Movement, yeah, those

Democrats, once the Civil Rights Movement passed, they realized, hey, they could make money and get elected by getting blacks to vote for them.

And so what did they do? They took up a fake cause. Why do I say it's a fake cause?

Because quite frankly, the Democrats have done nothing for the African American community.

Nothing. They've kept them enslaved in voting for them. And what did they do?

Oh, there's fatherlessness because they put the drugs into those communities. So what do they do?

Will do welfare. You can get paid to have more children and sit at home.

And if some guy knocks you up, we'll take care of you and help you.

Now, there is a legitimate need for welfare. I'm not discounting that.

But unfortunately, there's also a lot of abuse where people don't look for welfare. There's a systemic problem in welfare.

There is because there's generation after generation of people who think this is a paycheck. This is how you live, that you go and you just have children and you get on welfare and you're taking care of for life.

Now, I have way more respect for those black mothers who the guy leaves and they're working two, three jobs to take care of their children.

They don't abort their children. They do what they can. They try to get their children a good education.

They focus on trying to educate their children because they value their children.

But guess what? When you're working two, three jobs to make ends meet. Yeah, you're not going to sit home after the kids get home from school and do their homework with them.

That's just not going to happen, even though these mothers would love that opportunity to do that.

It doesn't happen. And that's the failure. And this is the problem is really there needs to be a shaming on these men who would knock up women and leave and not do their manly responsibility.

Now, don't tell me that the government can't shame people into doing what's right. If you doubt that, just go look at all the arguments of wearing a mask or staying home.

What did the government do? They shamed people to stay home and to wear masks when they go out because you're supposed to do this for everybody else's sake.

Of course, that doesn't count if you're protesting. That's right. You can't sing in church, you can't go to church, but you can protest because somehow that is so valuable and that is going to slow the curve of spreading the virus.

How's that going to happen? No, the reality is, is we have a big political game being played right now.

And unfortunately, the blacks are the pawns. It's what whether it was Stalin or Lenin, that said that they referred to useful idiots.

Now, I'm not saying that blacks are idiots. The term useful idiots refers to the fact that when socialists want to take over a open society, they need to get masses of people to do their bidding, masses of people to protest, to rip down statues, to be crying out for justice and all of this.

And as these people do this, you want an example, just go to Venezuela. Look at Venezuela. That's less than 30 years ago that Venezuela collapsed.

They went from being a vibrant, capitalistic country to being basically a dictatorship, a socialist country where those people who fought for freedom, for justice, they're now fighting on the streets for bread.

They're killing one another for bread. They get electricity a couple hours a day.

They get running water, sometimes a couple hours, sometimes just a couple days a week in some places, all because they fought against the government, the capitalistic government, because they thought they wanted better freedoms because it would be right if everyone was treated fairly.

Well, as long as there's sin in the world, no one is going to always be treated fairly.

It's a simple reality. And this is the thing. What you end up seeing is people who deny a sin nature, when you deny a sin nature, you are denying the very thing that helps us explain what's going on.

When you say people are normally or naturally good, no, they're not. And that's the flawed thing.

If you're an atheist and you say there is no God, you can't even say what's going on is injustice because you have no standard to say anything is just or unjust.

By the way, I've never understood why blacks would be supporting evolution and atheism, considering that evolution is based on racism.

Evolution teaches that blacks, we all came from Africa and were black and evolved into more superior white people.

That's idiocy. And yet that's evolution.

So what you end up seeing is just like I suffered, having been, you know, people having prejudice against me, my wife suffered that, so do many blacks.

Actually, so do millions and millions and millions of other Americans. That's not the root of a systemic problem.

It's the root of a sin problem. And we see a world that seems like it's going mad.

And it's something that we need to think about this as Christians.

We need to have a plan, a solution. And what

I'd like to do after this break is to talk about some possible solutions, some things that maybe we could look to, to see where do we find answers for these things.

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Daniel. And what I want to do now is give you some solutions. There's really one solution.

As Christians, we know the answer. The Gospel. The Gospel is the solution. The Gospel is the only thing that God has given us as a thing to bring about reconciliation.

In fact, God says in 2 Corinthians 5 that you and I who believe in Christ, not only have we been the recipients of reconciliation, but that you and I have a ministry given to us by God of reconciliation.

That we should be compelled by the love of Christ to go out and share with people.

This is our ministry, is to bring reconciliation to a lost and dying world, and it is very lost.

So what I want to do is say that we as Christians, please, turn off the news.

Maybe you'll be a happier person. I know I am when I turn it off, but the thing to do is get into your neighborhoods, meet your neighbors, share the

Gospel with them, get to know people. The Gospel is the solution.

Now look, I have someone in my church who is married to someone who is a very big proponent of all of what the

Black Lives Matter, not the organization it's standing for, but the thoughts behind what many people are thinking of with the social justice and things like that.

We can sit and have dialogues. Actually, we do. We sat, we had a church fellowship. I think he and I sat there for four hours.

We never got up. Two of us sat down. It was just two of us talking, and other people kind of came in and listened, but we had a great conversation.

We are diametrically opposed on this issue, and yet he and I can have a very respectful,

I think loving conversation with one another, and this is the thing that needs to happen.

There's people who need to hear each other out. You know, one person who listened to that conversation that I had said to me that he thought that I handled it well because what he thought

I handled well was that he recognized that I sat and listened to what this gentleman's point of view was, because you know what?

I don't know his point of view till he explains it. I don't know his upbringing. I don't know his history. I don't know his thinking, just like he won't know mine, and this is the thing we have to start doing is listening to one another.

There's some people who have some real hurt. They really feel that they've been persecuted.

They feel that they have been wronged. Now, there's some who are just using it. I will admit it that I believe that the folks that are supporting

Black Lives Matter, well, they say they're trained Marxists. They say that they want to bring in socialism, so that's not a guesswork.

They say they want to promote homosexuality. God's nine of their 13 goals, so they're not really about Black Lives.

They're about a Marxist socialist homosexual agenda. That's not necessarily what black lives are about.

You know, the reality is that the reason there's been an issue,

I think, with the perception of the black community is because on average blacks do more crime.

Now, why is that? Well, it's a issue of poverty. It's an issue of the people that are raised to believe that everyone's going to look at them differently, and so they expect it.

There's a perception issue there. There is a perceived thing.

You know, someone asked me, you know, have you ever had a sit down with your father when you got your driver's license of how to behave when a police officer pulls you over?

And answer was, yes. Yes, I did. I did have that talk.

Now, I didn't have that talk where it was, you know, how to get out alive, but the reality is when you look at the numbers, the police are not killing that many blacks.

In fact, when a black person is pulled over, they're more likely to get struck by lightning than shot by the officer.

Now, what is it that, why do you see such a large number of blacks when you compare, do the comparison of blacks to whites that are shot or arrested?

I think there's something else that has to be taken into account, and that is the respect value.

You see, when you're taught that there's going to be, if a white officer pulls you over or any police officer pulls you over, that they're going to be racist when you're taught that way.

Well, when they pull you over, what is your thinking? They're pulling me over because I'm black. And you expect it.

You expect racism. Well, if you are being pulled over in your mind unjustly, even if they have a legitimate cause,

I've been pulled over because my taillight was out. You know what I did? I thanked the officer because I didn't know the taillight was out.

I went home, ordered the part, put it in, no more problem. I didn't think he's pulling me over because I'm white.

You know why? Because I wasn't trained to think that. Now, if I was trained to think that, you know what would happen when he pulled me over?

I'd have an attitude. You know what the officer thinks when I have an attitude? He thinks it's a problem. And it starts to escalate.

And the more it escalates, the more I escalate, the more he escalates, the bigger the problem. That's the bigger issue, is that there's a lack of respect.

I understand that many people say it's wrong to say all lives matter. But they do.

Every single human life matters because every single human life is made in the image of God.

And I've seen these signs that say all lives don't matter until black lives matter.

In other words, we have to lift up black lives because until black lives start mattering, then all lives don't matter.

Well, saying all lives matter means black lives. They're included in the all. That's all -inclusive.

But you know what the reality is? Black lives won't matter until all lives matter.

You see, the biggest problem we have is a disrespect for our fellow man. We don't see anymore people having a genuine

God -honoring respect for another person. And because people don't value all lives, that's why black lives don't matter to some people.

Just like white lives don't matter to some people. And blue lives, police officers don't matter to some people.

See, we have to have a respect for all people. So black lives are not going to start mattering until all lives start mattering.

We have to have respect for one another. We have to hear one another out, listen to one another.

But the biggest thing we need is to share the gospel with people because that's what's going to give them eternal value, eternal life.

Now, this is the thing that I really want us to understand because, you know, we can sit and watch news and there's going to be a reaction.

With all the black lives matter, you're going to get a bunch of people saying this is unjust because there is injustice going on.

You have black people beating up on whites and it's not being, nothing's being done about it. I just heard today how in New York City, a friend of mine, he's got, he's a police officer and here in Jersey and police officer friend of his, they're in New York City and they're told when there's a burglary going on just to show up, not to do anything.

They're not to actually arrest anyone because they're too afraid of what's going to happen. Black Lives Matter has become a terrorist organization.

They really have. They drive everyone to fear so you have to support their agenda or be in fear of the consequences.

That's what terrorism is. You know, people who argue, well, you know, rioting works.

It's worked. It's brought about, you know, the Boston Tea Party or whatever. Well, I was,

I think the Boston Tea Party was sinful. It was, you know, they might have had their reasons, but guess what?

It was against God's word. That was unjust. It was the damaging of property.

Maybe there's a better way to have made their point, but for those who want to say, well, the black lives matter, we should be rioting and looting.

This is, I literally had this conversation with someone justifying rioting and looting because that is what's going to bring attention to the matter to get the change.

Well, if you believe that, then you shouldn't ever speak out against the KKK because that's exactly what they were doing.

They were using extreme measures to bring out an issue that they thought needed to change.

They thought things needed to go back to the way things were and blacks needed to be slaves and they didn't want the new system.

They were trying to use radical ways. Were they wrong? I would say yes, but see,

I'm being consistent because I'm saying both sides are wrong. When you say just one side is wrong, that's racism.

And what you're going to see is you're going to see a knee -jerk reaction from many people who are going to be upset with this black supremacy that's being promoted because that actually is the end game.

You think about it, what's the end game? George Floyd died and the officer had to be arrested, so he's arrested.

Then all four officers had to be arrested, so all four officers are arrested. Then the first officer had to be charged with second degree manslaughter, not third degree.

By the way, side note, third degree means that he didn't premeditate it, it was an act that occurred at the moment.

Second degree is harder to prove and people are going to get upset because now that they moved it to second degree, if they can't prove that he in the moment intended to kill

George Floyd, the officer may get off where he wouldn't have on third degree.

But they wanted second degree because somehow that made it feel like it was more serious. And now the officer, he actually may go free because they might not be able to prove that he intended to kill.

That's the difference between third degree and second degree is the intent to kill. So you have him arrested, the four officers arrested, he's now on second degree, and then when,

I mean, they all stopped, right? There's no more protests? No, the protests continued. Now it became that it had to be a, you know, defunding of the police.

And so you have states saying, let's defund the police. You have New York City, we're going to defund a billion dollars from the police and put it to education.

And then when the police start retiring, they go, nope, we're limiting, we can't do without the police. By the way, that's how you know

Democrats are doing a fake cause for blacks. Because they say they want to defund, and they say they want to get rid of the police, but then they limit the police from retiring.

Well, if you want to defund them and get rid of them, let them retire, then you have less, a smaller police force. But they're actually demanding in New York City that other police come in to help out with the crime situation.

But then they tell their officers not to do anything. It's insane. So they don't actually solve the problem.

So they stopped there, right? No, they didn't. Because even as some of the cities start talking about defunding the police, what are they now saying?

Well, we need to overturn the entire economic system in America. You see, the only place this stops is black supremacy.

That's the end game. That's the only end game that they can have. Because they're still arguing that they're treated like subhumans back in the slavery days, or that they don't have voting rights back in the early part of this century.

And neither of those things are true anymore. You see, you read

James Cone, who's the kind of the father of black liberation theology in the 60s and 70s and 80s, and he's still arguing that blacks are treated like slaves.

Now, I would argue they are slaves to the Democrat Party. They keep voting for these guys who don't actually solve the problems, but keep taking those votes.

And so that is a totally different issue. But here's the thing. We need to have a several -point plan on how to solve this problem.

The ultimate is the gospel. That's the ultimate. But we need to have a common decency and respect for other human beings because they're made in the image of God.

And made in that image, we would recognize that they are human beings just like us and have value just like us.

Every single human being has value because they're made in the image of God.

You say, but what about the criminal? Well, guess what? Apart from the grace of God, you and I would be criminals.

You and I would be doing those same things. Maybe it's we fear the consequence and someone else doesn't, and that's the difference.

It could be. Maybe it's someone grew up with it in their home and they're used to it and you didn't.

That could be. But the reality, it's a sin problem. And if we gave ourselves over to our sin, we would be the same.

So don't think that just because someone's of a criminal element that they don't have the same value that you do.

No, that criminal is also made in the image of God. And so this is where we must find the solution.

We must find the solution in God's Word. And you and I as Christians need to be sharing the gospel, respecting one another, hearing people out, understanding that people have true and perceived grievances.

Now, when people have a perceived grievance, it doesn't matter if it's perceived. To them, it's real.

And that must be understood. That must be thought through. But as I've said many, many times, you're never going to end racism until you end all racism.

You can never end racism. You can never end white supremacy by putting in black supremacy, because all you've done is now created a different type of racism.

And I understand the term racism is now being redefined. It's no longer about the color of your skin and having pro -justice given because the color of skin.

No, it now has to do with economic factors. It has to do with what you believe, because you have blacks that are told they're not really blacks because they don't vote

Democratic. They don't push socialistic ideas. Well, I got news for you. You know who's going to be hurt the most when they bring about socialism?

The very people protesting on the streets calling for it, because they're not going to be the benefactors of it.

It's all those Democrats, all those leaders that are pushing it. They're going to be the recipients.

And all the people protesting on the streets today are going to be on the streets fighting for food tomorrow.

But there is good news. Jesus Christ, Almighty God, came to earth to die on a cross that sinners like us can be forgiven.

If we turn from trusting ourself, trusting our good works, trusting our genealogy, and trust in Almighty God, Jesus Christ, who died on that cross as a punishment for sin that you and I committed, that's my plea for you and I today, that we as Christians would share the gospel and bring genuine reconciliation to a lost and dying world.

I know that many people have been talking about this topic, and I've refrained for quite some time.

I've dealt with it a bit on Apologetics Live. I know that Anthony and Justin have been dealing with it in detail on Apologetics Live, which you can listen to.

Go to apologeticslive .com. Thursday nights you can join the conversation. But I have refrained here, and I just wanted to kind of voice my own heart that everyone suffers from prejudice when anyone is looked at as being different.

And I think that some of the Black Lives Matter people also need to have respect for whites and recognize that, yeah, we suffer too sometimes.

But you know what? You have to move on. You have to recognize that, yes, there's sin in the world.

Just because there's sinners in the world that rob and steal, that doesn't mean you should stay home locked in your house.

No, we go out into the world. We're just cautious. And if there are people who are looking at you differently because of the color of your skin, the way your eyes are formed, because you wear a kippah, whatever it might be, if people look at you different, you do what my father taught me to do.

You be better than everybody else. Excel as best you can in everything that you can so that people would earn respect for you.

Treat people with respect so that they would treat you with respect.

That's a lesson I learned from my father, and I think it's a lesson many of us need to learn. The lesson

I learned from my Heavenly Father is that I have a ministry of reconciliation, and I need to be out there sharing the gospel.

Now before we close out, I want to let you know the next two episodes, what I want to do is

I'm going to do two episodes from a sermons that I preached on the Sabbath. The Sabbath is a big issue many people address, and we've dealt with different topics on this show.

We've dealt with the Sabbath before, but I go into great detail in these sermons as I was preaching through the Gospel of Mark at my church, and what

I realized was that many people didn't understand a

Jewish perspective of the Sabbath. So the next two episodes will deal with the Sabbath going through the

Gospel of Mark in chapter 2, chapter 3, and looking at the issue of the

Sabbath and why that was such an issue that the Jewish leaders brought against Christ, and I hope that's going to be helpful for you.

Now after that, I'm going to take the month of August off. I'm going to be moving.

I'm going to be unpacking. Very, very busy time in my life. I know that I've been telling you guys who have been listening that I will at some point explain what's been going on.

I'm just not ready to be able to do so yet. It's just been very, very busy. I appreciate and covet your prayers.

If you could pray for me and my family, it would be greatly appreciated.

We just have a lot of things—good things. It's not that there's terrible things going on, but I do have a lot going on, and I'm going to take a month break in the month of August.

I'll pick back up in September, I hope, and we'll be back at it for the rap report.

Now before I go, don't get on me for missing the rap reports.

Don't get on me and say, hey, we want you to be doing this. I know you do, and I'm trying to give you good content, but you want to know something?

I've been doing the rap report here weekly for 132 weeks without missing an episode.

132 weeks, and I haven't missed an episode. So cut me a little slack, could you, that I take a month off?

Because I'll be back. I don't want you to miss me, but keep subscribing to this podcast so you don't miss a single episode, especially when we are back.

Till next time, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God, and that's a wrap.

This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Hey Scott, what brings you in at the pharmacy? I'm thinking about getting one of the updated COVID -19 vaccines.

Great. Do you know which type of vaccine you'd like? There's more than one? Yep, there are different types of vaccines available.

You can learn more about them at wedovaccines .com. If you have questions or want to make an appointment, give me a call.

What was that website again? Wedovaccines .com. Thanks, I'll check it out.

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