Trump is on Fire and Open Q&A

It's the fact of I'm sharing with you what I would see as good news. You wouldn't. I get it. But the thing is, there's a difference between saying, this is the freedom of speech to say, this is what the Bible says.

I'm not telling you, you have to believe it. I'm not forcing you to be a Christian. And there's no, no Christians are trying to legislate to force you to be a Christian or go to go to church.

Have you seen Project 2025?

Did you see Black Blue 2025?

No, I have not.

Where does that? Does that legislate that people have to be in church?

I don't know if it does that.

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

We are live Apologetics. Live here to answer your most challenging questions that you have about God and the Bible. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity. We do here each week is to, well, we do apologetics, we teach apologetics, and sometimes we just have fun.

Let me bring in my co-host here, Mr. Tom Shepard.

Hey, everybody. How you doing? How you doing, Andrew?

Yeah, I know. It's very cold where you are. You had to put the air conditioning on in your 85 degree weather.

Yeah.

Thanks.

This entire week is in the 80s here in Texas. It is blistering, but good news, next week it'll be 25 and snow.

Well, the good news is that I happen to know some cold is coming your way because you plan to go to the Built to Conquer conference coming up.

I am planning on that.

That's going to be in Bartsville, Oklahoma, and for the record, everybody here, we're going to hold Tom to this, but Tom said that if Brandon Scalf gets into a cold plunge, he will follow. Well, I got news for you, sir.

Caleb Gordon, who's sponsoring the Built to Conquer conference, and I do want to encourage folks, go to CalebGordon .org to get the details of this conference. Some great speakers, Brandon Scalf, probably one of the best.

He'll be there. I will be there. There's going to be a lot of good speakers there. You can go to CalebGordon .org to check it out, but I will say this, Caleb said jokingly that if I was to find a place where we can do a cold plunge, he will get into one.

He learned not to call my bluff, Tom.

This is not good. As a matter of fact, I kind of want to renege that if I do have to go into a cold plunge, I would rather it not be after Brandon Scalf.

Well, you can go in before. That's your choice.

If I had to do it, I would have to go in first.

I sent a cold plunge down to Caleb Gordon, and he has a cold plunge that he should be setting up or have set up that will be nice and cold for us, getting it ready. And so he thought he would just say that and it wouldn't be a big deal, but he didn't realize calling my bluff.

Yes, there is a cold plunge.

Andrew, when we do this cold plunge thing, or when you do it, or when everybody else does it, is there a time limit? Is there a

Three to five minutes.

That's an awfully long time. We can catch a cold.

You know.

Oh, this will be fun. I am going to record this and maybe we'll play the video for you listeners, watchers. So all right. What do we got tonight? We are going to do tonight is an open Q &A. So we don't have a set topic, though.

If you look at the topic, I said Trump is on fire and open Q &A because we're going to do some things in the beginning where we will talk about some politics, but for an apologetic reason. So I'm going to say this up front.

We are going to go through a number of issues today that we'll go through dealing in the political realm. And I want to show you how these apply, you know, to apologetics, how to look at these with debate, things like that.

So with that, I was going to do some in news segments, but actually some of this will be in the news. But there's there's some character backstage. And I don't know. Should we bring this character in?

He's definitely a character.

I think I think we should only bring him in if he can if he could provide maybe like that wonderful smell of rebound leather. Could you do that?

Oh, yeah.

He could provide it for himself. See, look at him sniffing that Bible.

He sniffs Bibles. He's a Bible sniffer.

This this is an LSB, not a rebound.

That didn't sound good saying it's LSD with sniffing. Oh, wait, that's wrong. Drugs and sorry.

This is better than drugs.

Who in the world came up with the idea with with a initials LSB?

Yeah.

Like just I was like when I heard that, I was like, why don't you do like the legacy standard version LSB?

That would sound like that sounds more like you get higher on that.

I think I like you see standard version. Let's see those ribbons in that in that Bible there, Aaron.

Yeah. Are you sure, Tom? You sure you want to see these ribbons?

Are they flashy?

So these come with short ribbons and they're just like usually brown. And I put these color and longer.

So I think it looks beautiful with the four you got in and four, not three.

I did four because, you know, you got to do a lot more referencing than they really allow originally.

Yeah.

So usually when I do like a three ribbon Bible, I'll put, you know, one in the Old Testament, one, one, you know, in the Psalm or, you know, Proverbs area and then one in the new. So with four, I don't know, you know, that's almost right.

That's nothing special there. Here's. I got long ribbons on mine. I got. I got four.

They provided some good ones on that.

Yeah.

This is my LSB. It's my MacArthur study Bible.

They did some long ribbons on the study Bible. That was good.

But, you know, but I said that's the LSB version of the study Bible.

Yeah, it is.

You could tell, you know, my my striving fraternity LSB has long ribbons to make that STG. This is a Jeffrey Rice. I actually designed this one with him as my name on it. We we we got it, you know, with striving fraternities SFE right there.

I got five ribbons because I wanted that with the purple.

Oh, you're matching Debbie.

Yeah.

My wife has five ribbons as well.

Yeah.

I got the purple, the black, the gold. One of the things I love. I think it's that this is the neatest thing. The neatest thing is that when I hold it flat like this, I don't this shows that it's gold.

And if you open it, it turns purple. It is like it is the coolest thing.

That's probably unicorn leather, too.

Yeah.

I don't know how you guys do that.

This is that's so that the way that works is it's just page die over the gold gilding. So it kind of just works together.

Yeah.

Very cool.

Yeah.

Jeffrey made this one for me. I I this is my my main now my main preaching Bible.

That way, when people ask questions, read that font. I mean, that way, when people actually actually ask you questions, you can go right to John MacArthur study notes and tell you what the passage means.

Well, if I if I choose this blue one.

Yes.

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah.

I had a number of people that were asking. You guys know that I'm selling my library. So I had a number of people that were asking. I had contact me and say, are you selling your Jeffrey Rice Bibles? You know, I said, no, they have my name on it.

Look.

Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, other ones have my name, but still. No, I'm not selling those.

Are you crazy?

Yeah.

Totally. It is fun when you're selling books and people that said that basically I should just give them my books.

I get that, too.

And I should ship it to the Philippines.

Yeah.

Yeah.

OK.

Yeah.

Isn't your wife Filipino?

No.

She's from Hong Kong.

OK.

That's not Filipino.

Yeah.

That's British.

I figured that out.

Right after he said it.

I figured out that.

You laughed. My wife is British.

Is she?

I didn't know that. I thought she was Filipino.

Hong Kong was owned by Great Britain when she was born.

Didn't we have part of that, too? And she's American.

No, we had. We owned Philippines for time.

Yeah.

Along with the Spanish. And so.

But yeah.

No, we have. You know, we have Britain, Britain owned Hong Kong and give back to the Chinese.

Yeah.

Now, we had control over Hong Kong for a while, though, right?

I don't. We didn't.

Wasn't it us that gave it back to the Chinese?

No, that was it was Charles. King Charles was there.

Oh, OK.

Now King Charles.

But yeah.

Right.

All right.

So let's let's get into. So, Aaron, why don't you. We're talking about these Bibles, but some people are going, why? What's Aaron talking about? Why don't you talk about some of what you do?

Bible Rebinding and Preserving Heirlooms

So obviously, you brought up Jeffrey Rice post Tenebrous Lux Bible rebinding, and he's kind of one of the originators, if you will. I'm sure many people before him were rebinding Bibles, of course. However, it definitely popularized after Jeff.

And matter of fact, we talked about this last time with Tom and Braden that the rebinding market, if you will, we're talking about taking either an old Bible that's falling apart and re enforcing the spine and putting the pages back together.

That's that's kind of my my area, less Jeff's Jeff does it. But I think Jeff mostly takes newer text blocks because people will send him the brand new ones and say, hey, I want this in a really nice goatskin or calfskin or cowhide cover.

So what you're what most people are doing with rebinds, the consumer that is, is just wanting to have like a really nice just like you were just showing something that's one going to last a real long time.

Number two, that's just beautiful to hold and works well with whatever they're doing, studying or preaching. And so some people use new text blocks. But what I love doing mostly at Beacon Hill Binding, that's the name of the that's what I named the company Beacon Hill Binding is I got into it because there was people at church that would come up to me and they knew I loved books, not just, you know, of course, the consumption of the content, but they really knew that I loved binding and stuff like that.

I was kind of interested in it. And so and that's the way I've always been with carpentry. And I grew up on a farm doing all sorts of stuff, taking apart cars and dirt bikes and all that stuff. So it just once I got saved, my interest was in the things of God, even as far as the materials.

So what a book was covered in, what a Bible was covered in. So my interest grew out of that. And so people coming up to me at church and saying, hey, do you think you do anything with this? And I was like, I probably could.

But like, I was always so nervous because it was people's precious Bibles. And I didn't have all the tools to do it. Well, finally, about, I don't know, six months ago or so, the Lord opened the door and I got all the tools and all the things that I needed.

I started practicing. And it's just been a blessing to put people's Bibles back in their hands. I love handing them back over to them. And this is what's great about working locally, too. I do work outside, like people send me messages from all over the country, and I love doing that as well.

But when you have it in the local church, it's just awesome bringing a Bible back to a brother or sister. And they're just like, this is amazing. I never expected that I would have my John MacArthur study Bible that I originally was saved under, you know, back in my hands like this.

And then they get to enjoy it for the rest of their life, maybe even give it to their kids, you know?

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, that is the thing.

I mean, I had my New King James, it's still on my shelf behind me, and I thought about doing that. It was just, I couldn't see spending the money, and this is just for that Bible. I don't read that anymore, but it has all my notes in it.

It was like my first real Bible that I took notes in, so I want to keep it. Pages like, all in a part, you could see like pages where my thumb was just rubbing, like reading. You could tell that I was in Matthew five through seven a lot, because as we're teaching it through Sunday school, because my thumb must have been there a lot that the pages wore off.

And so I thought about rebinding it, but it was, I just like, do I really want to pay the money to rebind a Bible I won't use?

Yeah.

A lot of people.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

I mean, I wanted for my kids to have it, but I'm not going to use it. So I was like, so I never did do that.

Yeah.

And I was just going to add that a lot of people, you know, sometimes I counsel them to do the same thing, you know, if you're, if you don't know that this is exactly what you want, don't, don't rebind it.

Just keep it the way it is because it's precious the way all those memories that you're talking.

About.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, you're Jeffrey Rice. Really? I mean, there were a lot of premium Bibles out there, you know, you could get the nice premium leather and, and, and, but they were not handcrafted. And I think really that's what Jeffrey, I mean, people used to do a handcrafted, right?

Then it's all machine crafted. And he, he really revitalized this, the idea of the handcrafted, nice leather, you know,.

Work.

Yeah.

And so, yeah.

And he was also forced to do it. You know, there's a really interesting backstory about how, no pun intended there, that, you know, being a roofer and then not being able to physically do that work. So the Lord opened the door for him to rebind.

So he really did pave the way for rebinders. And I think a lot of rebinders certainly appreciate that foundation. But like I said, the rebinding market has grown. You go on the internet now and you type in, you know, or you just go on one of the Facebook groups on one of the Bible Facebook groups, which there's so many, and you just ask somebody, Hey, does anybody know a good rebinder up?

Here's a list of a thousand is you have so many to choose from, which is great because another thing is, is that it could be, I talked about this last time, it can kind of be a fad just like anything else.

So there's going to be people in it, unfortunately, that aren't going to treat it sort of with with the dignity and respect that it needs to be treated with people's Bibles. And hopefully they can find the right people that love them and want to do that.

And we should say, you know, folks, you're hearing Aaron say, I said this last time I said this last time. So when was the last time? So we're saying, okay, so you may know or may not know, because we're, we're doing this show on two different channels right now, which is open air theology and striving for eternity.

So that's streaming on both. And so Aaron was on the open air theology podcast, which is, you know, on Saturday nights, and he had been on there with, with those guys. And that's why it feels like home for him here being like he was on the same, but this is a totally different show.

Oh, Haps is here. We're in trouble. Big Haps, Haps Addison, Haps Addison should come on in here and ask questions.

All right.

Evaluating Political News Through Apologetics

So let's get to some things. I said, we want to take politics. I wanted to do this because, well, there, there is so much in the news. I like to do a couple minutes of in the news and how to think Christian biblically about stuff in the news.

And the problem is there's just way too much going on in the news. That's why I titled this Trump is on fire. Like I can't keep up with all the good news.

Yes.

I mean, it's just amazing what it's been only two weeks. And all of a sudden, common sense is back. We know what a boy is and we know what a girl is.

Why?

And I would even say it's good news because, because of the discovery of the bad news. A lot of stuff has been revealed that, oh, wow.

Yes.

And that's why some people are completely losing their minds. We're going to get into that. But let me, I want, there's one thing I wanted to address that. I was very shocked when I woke up in the morning and I got several messages from people asking me, did you hear or read what Trump said about Gaza?

And I'm like, and the first person that sent this to me said, did you see that Trump wants to take over Gaza? And I'm like, someone's sending a joke. But then after like five or six, I'm going, I got to go find out what he actually said.

And so it was something that, okay, my first reaction in hearing it, and this is the reason we always, I said, I'm going to bring everything we're going to talk about back to apologetics. This is going to bring back to it.

The thing we always have to do is when we hear something and we're going to do apologetics, do not jump to a knee jerk reaction to it. Do the research. I say that because my knee jerk reaction when I heard that was, that's a really bad idea.

Why?

You have generation after generation of people who were raised to believe that Israel is the cause of all of the bad things that ever happened to them. And you're not going to get people just to turn around quickly.

I mean, there's a reason that if people don't understand the politics of the Middle East, it's really this simple. You have a bunch of Arab countries that used to be warring against each other. And when Israel, when the United Kingdom took over the land we now call Israel, they started talking about a state of Israel.

And all of the Arab countries finally had one thing to be in agreement about. And so they were in agreement to hate Israel and to stop that. So the UK did not do that in what was it, 1914 or whenever they first, that they got control of that land.

But there were many Jewish people that were already living there. Those were called Sephardic Jews. And you had many that were Jewish people that were in the Europe that were coming in. Those are called Ashkenazi Jews, in case you ever hear those terms.

That's basically what it is. Actually, the Sephardic Jewish people did not like the other Jewish people that were moving in. It was like, no, this is our land, not your land. But there used to be Jewish and Arab people there.

By the way, all of those people before 1948 that lived in that land, both Jew and Arab, they were called Palestines. Yeah, just a little thing, if you want to know, there were no Palestinian people. There was no Palestinian country.

There never was. There's no Palestinian language or culture. Palestine was a derogatory term for that land given by the Romans. And it got its name from the Philistines who were always the thorn in the side of the Jewish people in the Old Testament.

That's where the name comes from. And so the UK wanted to make it a state. So what you ended up happening is during a Middle East peace deal, part of that deal was that the Arabs that lived there would get Gaza.

Well, Gaza and Hamas, Gaza and where Hezbollah is, the West Bank. So here's the thing. People talk about this idea that people would be forced out of a land. Well, just some history you may not know. What ended up happening was there was a forced people moving out of their homes into another.

Land.

It was the Jewish, the Israeli army that went into the area Gaza and forced every Jewish person out of that land. People don't want to talk about that much, but that is exactly what happened. It was the Jews that were forced out.

Out of the West Bank and Gaza you're talking about.

They were forced out of West Bank and Gaza because that was going to be controlled by Gaza and the West Bank. They were going to have their own authority, but the land still was owned by Israel. And so this is just the facts of history.

Now, I'm saying that because, you know, when you have people that the only thing that unites them is hating a similar enemy. This is the reason what they ended up doing with, you know, Hamas and Hezbollah is they run these things, these areas.

They stay in power with the hatred for Israel. The rest of the countries stay all kind of, you know, stop fighting one another because of these two groups that are fighting Israel. They have created a group that is their whole mindset is terrorist thinking.

And that's all they know. And that's why Egypt and Jordan and Syria and all these other countries don't want to take these people in. Egypt, which is right on the border of Gaza, closed the border there and won't let anyone in of their own.

These are people that would agree with them in religion. But they don't let them in. I said to say when I first heard Trump say that he was going to take that over, it was like, are you nuts? Like these people are not going to just like the mistake in thinking that like Democrats have is like, well, if we just if we just give people money, they're going to feel they're going to be like Democrats are worth.

Someone gives them money. They they feel they have to keep getting that money.

Right.

And if you don't believe me, this is what Elon Musk just drove the Democrats nuts with, because he basically is exposing where all the money is being spent and they're going they've lost their mind. And we're going to see how much they've lost their mind in a moment.

But when you deal with people that have a religious belief like they do in the Middle East, you can give them money, but that money is not going to influence. They'll say, hey, thanks for the money. But their religion is still their primary thing.

Right.

What do you think? And I don't know if you've heard. I haven't heard. What was Israel's response to Trump's idea about taking over Gaza?

You know, it was interesting. I heard one commentator make the point that if you look at Bibi Netanyahu's face, it almost looked like he like Trump didn't tell him about it. Like it was.

I don't want to let him know.

He did later come out and say that this is Trump is one of the boldest presidents. I mean, he said because he did say we got to do something different. This is you know, what we can't keep doing the same thing.

It never that hasn't worked before. Why do you think it's going to work the next time? But that's what what's been happening. Everyone just keeps trying to say this is how Trump got for peace deals in the Middle East.

Everyone said you can't do a peace deal without first resolving the the differences with the Jewish people, the Palestinians or the Israelites and the Palestinians. And Trump said, no, why don't we do peace deals with all the other Arab countries?

And he was he was on the he did four of them. So, you know, the the thing is, is that I'm saying this to say one of the things that I was concerned about is the you're dealing with people that just because you give them money, like we gave money, I think it was to ISIS for, you know, for food.

Like that's now they're going to be like, oh, we're going to be nice to America because we're getting money. I mean, there's people in North Carolina that still haven't gotten their houses fixed, you know, and and, you know, people in California or people in California, you just wait.

People in California, they're starting to realize now the laws. Oh, boy, are people losing their minds. So California is not always going to be a pain for them to get to rebuild their homes after they burn down because of the fact that there's all the the regulations they have there.

But oh, now now these really wealthy people are discovering that the law is that you can't build a home in like in L .A. County. There's a limit of like how many wealthy homes you can have without having like low income housing in the same area.

So all these people want to build a house, but they have to make sure that there's enough like minorities living in their next door to them. I can't wait to see how that's going to turn out.

That'll be interesting.

But here's the thing at my first thing was to look at this and say Trump's plan is not going to work. Why? Because you can't take people that have been told this is the single cause of all their problems and just say, well, if we build you nice hotels, you're going to you're going to love it and get along with your neighbors.

And then I realize that's not what he's asking. He wants to actually remove them from the area temporarily to go through and get rid of all the bombs and everything else, build the place up and then have them come back to a totally different place.

Is he is he almost wanting to make it like a Kuwait? You know, back in 1991, we go in, you know, and I mean, Kuwait now, I haven't heard the news on them lately, but it's completely Americanized.

Yeah, it's that's what he's claiming. But then again, you know, when it's Trump, there's you always have to remember he whenever he says you have to realize it's part of a deal he's doing right. Like what he says is not always what he wants, like he's negotiating tool.

Yeah, he's saying this and he's mentioning like the other countries should have a say in this, like basically saying you guys want to get in on like fixing this problem. And so that's so I'm saying that to say my first reaction, my gut reaction without listening to it wasn't till later in the day that I actually got to hear what he was actually saying.

And I went, oh, that may not that may work. That may be a thing. Now, here's the thing. Some people lost their mind.

Why?

Well, because he's doing a, you know, basically ethnic cleansing.

All right.

And that, you know, ethnic cleansing is supposedly bad.

Well, he's not doing it in the in the fact killing people, though.

Well, that's there is a difference between, you know, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

OK, OK.

So.

Palestinians, the Hamas, Hezbollah in their charter. Is the elimination of Israelites, it is to it is genocide, it is to wipe them out. That's in their charter. OK, that's genocide. The what he's promoting, proposing, at least, is is ethnic cleansing where you move them out.

By the way, that's happening in South Africa right now. No one seems to mind. In fact, what you have is many people who are calling that are supporting the, you know, river to the sea, which is wipe out all of Israel.

That's genocide. The very same people who are upset with Trump for that are supporting the people that want worse than ethnic cleansing. We want genocide. Right. So let me let me play a clip. Of of one such person.

Now, I'm surprised that it really took a whole two weeks for this. But here's here is some breaking news. And now that I know that Tom is very up on the news, this will be the first time he hears this.

Yeah.

And still I rise, Mr. Speaker. And I rise today, Mr. Speaker, with a to whom it may concern message to whom it may concern. Ethnic cleansing in Gaza is not a joke, especially when it emanates from the president of the United States, the most powerful person in the world, when he has the ability to perfect what he says.

Ethnic cleansing in Gaza is no joke. And the prime minister of Israel should be ashamed, knowing the history of his people, to stand there and allow such things to be said. Ethnic cleansing has been a crime against humanity.

And I stand here today in the well to denounce what he was said, to denounce what the president said, to denounce the complicity of the prime minister of Israel and to remind people that Dr. King was right.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And injustice in Gaza is a threat to justice in the United States of America. I rise to announce that the movement to impeach the president has begun.

I rise to announce that I will bring articles of impeachment against the president for dastardly deeds and dastardly deeds done. I also rise to say that the impeachment movement is going to be a grass up movement, not a top down.

The people have got to move forward. The people have to demand it. And when the people demand it, it will be done. I did it before. I laid the foundation for impeachment and it was done. Nobody knows more about it than I.

And I know that it's time for us to lay the foundation again. On some issues, it is better to stand alone than not stand at all. On this issue, I stand alone, but I stand for justice. I yield back the balance of my time.