Navigating Truth: Andrew Rappaport and Dr. Everett Piper on Culture and Faith

Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

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Welcome to another edition of The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, the Executive Director of Striving for Eternity and the

Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is a proud member. We are here to give you biblical interpretations and applications for the

Christian life, and today we're going to have a lot more, maybe, application for, well, culture, education, specifically higher education.

I'm very blessed to have, well, we'll see if he'll agree to this. I want to call him a dear friend, but Everett Piper, Dr.

Piper, I should say. We met, I was out your way in Oklahoma, and we basically had a mutual love.

We sat down with dinner with a mutual friend, Caleb Gordon, of the Caleb Gordon Podcast, and we both immediately knew that we are going to hit it off because we both enjoyed, well, all the ammunition that Caleb gave us to make fun of him.

There you go. There you go. You were the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, which is why we could speak on higher education, but you have really been touching a lot on the issue of culture.

You have podcast videos you do. You have dealt with a lot of books you have written.

I just love the title of the one book that I looked up. It sounded like, Why I'm a Liberal and Other Conservative Ideas.

It sounded like that. That is the title. Okay, good. Your humor just tracks right with mine.

So, welcome to the Rapport. I don't know if you want to introduce yourself any more than that, other than above for horses.

Honored to join you, and yeah, I really had fun getting to know you when we had pizza together with Caleb Gordon here in Oklahoma when you were out speaking.

I believe you were talking about apologetics at his church. So, thanks for inviting me on.

I think we'll have a good time. So, for folks, just to get an idea, I guess we could start with you're president of the university.

Right. You're speaking a lot more, at least recently, on issues of culture, which

I think you and I had some good conversation about, and that's what really intrigued me. But let me just start with the fact of how you get into running a

Christian university, because not many people probably don't get that experience. I think you and I had a mutual friend in Thomas White who runs

Cedarville University, which isn't all that far from you. So, how did that come about?

How did you get to? Well, I could bore you silly, so I'm going to try to give you the abbreviated version on answering that question.

How do you get involved in higher education? I've had people, young guys, ask me, how do you become a college president?

Well, for me, entering into the academy was unusual and unexpected.

I was a blue -collar kid. I grew up in Hillsdale, Michigan. My dad did not have a high school degree, neither did my mom.

When I graduated from high school, that was therefore an accomplishment within our family that was noteworthy.

I went to work in a tool and dye shop and had a second job where I picked apples in the

Michigan fruit industry with seasonal workers. So, that was what I did after graduating from high school.

Long story short, I was working third shift for Hillsdale Tool Manufacturing, auto supply manufacturing, auto parts.

And there was a guy that was a private business owner, small business owner, that was working likewise with me, and I think he was probably one of these guys that was just trying to make a little extra money on the side to make payroll and keep his small business afloat.

And he pulled me aside at lunch that evening, because third shift lunch is at three o 'clock in the morning, and he said, why don't you go to college?

And I had no idea why I should, because I was under the impression that I'm probably making more money in this factory right now than I'll make after I graduate from college, which may have been true, quite frankly.

Anyway, long story short, Andrew, I decided to wash the grease off. I got in my expensive factory -wrapped car, which

I could afford at the time, and I drove up the road to the closest Christian university,

Christian Liberal Arts College, and enrolled in a Bible class, a Gospels and Acts class, to be exact.

And I did okay. I got an A minus, B plus in that particular class, and I kind of enjoyed the whole college gig, but I had no idea what it would do for me in terms of a career or whatever.

But I sold my car, had enough money to go to pay tuition for one or two semesters, and the rest is history.

God opened up a ton of doors as a result of me getting a baccalaureate degree from Spring Harbor University in Michigan, and then a master's degree from Bowling Green State in Ohio, and then ultimately my

PhD from Michigan State. And along the way, I was a director of development.

I was a director of X, Y, and Z functions. I was almost always on the administrative side, didn't do a lot on the faculty side.

Vice president of enrollment, vice president of development. I was in charge of capital projects and that type of thing at one institution, in charge of various different administrative gigs within the ivory tower.

And then when I got my PhD, I got a call to consider the presidency at Oklahoma Wesleyan University, which is a

Christian liberal arts college in northeast Oklahoma, about an hour north of Tulsa. And I came down and the rest is history.

I spent 18 years in the saddle. I took an institution that was about 12 months away from bankruptcy, and God blessed.

And Oklahoma Wesleyan became somewhat of a national discussion as the result of standing for something.

And I think I'll just conclude by saying this to your question. You become a leader, whether it's a church or whether it's a college or whether it's a corporation.

I think you become a leader because you have the capacity to inspire those that need a leader to craft vision, to show courage, and to carry the organization to the next level of success.

And I think what's necessary to do that, especially within the Christian college community, is to go big or go home.

Grow a spine. Call a spade a spade. Stand for something. Because there are so many colleges and universities out there.

If you're nothing but a vanilla carbon copy of the other college down the road or the other

Christian college in Indiana or Ohio or California or New Jersey, if Oklahoma Wesleyan isn't any different than those

Christian colleges in those communities or those states, then why in the world would anybody want to buy what we're selling?

So when I took over Oklahoma Wesleyan University, I was given the blessing, Andrew, of inheriting failure.

And I really mean that. I didn't know it at the time. I was too young to understand that failure is a blessing when you inherit it.

Because if you inherit an organization that is not succeeding, that is in crisis, for example, you're given the latitude to do a lot of stuff as a leader that you would never be able to do if you had inherited a successful organization.

So gaining the presidency of Oklahoma Wesleyan when it was in financial exigency was a blessing.

I was able to do a lot. Now, you could fail. Maybe God in his providence has chosen you to be that guy who hands the keys over to the bank because the bankruptcy was imminent and you didn't turn it around.

But my attitude was, hey, we're going to call a spade a spade. We're going to stand for the truth of Christ and the truth of Scripture.

We crafted a mission statement that was very unique and very bold. It was the primacy of Christ, the priority of Scripture, the pursuit of truth and the practice of wisdom.

Notice the alliteration there, the four P's, the four pillars is what we called them. You sure you're not Baptist? Pardon me?

You sure you're not Baptist with the alliteration? Here, that's a great segue because in the first few months of my presidency.

Now, remember, we're in financial crisis right now. I've inherited an organization that's 12 months away from shutting its doors.

They've told me that. Now, I needed to hire a vice president for development.

Now, for those listening that don't know, in higher education and most non -profits, development means fundraiser, okay?

I needed a vice president for fundraising, i .e. development. And I had narrowed it down to a couple guys that had good resumes.

I did not know them. I just was looking at their resumes. And the number one candidate, the guy with the best experience, the best resume, was a

Baptist. And Oklahoma, Wesleyan. Well, frankly,

Andrew, I didn't care if he was Baptist or Wesleyan. I didn't care if he was...

I didn't care if he loved Jesus, he believed the Bible was true, and if he could raise money, that's what

I cared about. So I went to his reference page on his resume. And the first guy on the top of that page, if I remember correctly, was the president of the

Missouri Southern Baptist Foundation. So I call up this guy. We'll call him George. I called George at the

Missouri Southern Baptist Foundation. I introduced myself, Everett Piper. I'm the new president, Oklahoma Wesleyan University.

You know, over in Oklahoma, about three hours away from you. And Jim has applied for a vice presidency for fundraising development here.

I'd like to talk to you about Jim. And George interrupts me. Okay, this guy at the

Missouri Southern Baptist Foundation interrupts me and he says, well, why would Jim want to work for you?

And I knew what he was saying. I really did. I knew he was suspicious because a lot of the institutions, most of the colleges and universities in the

United States still carry the Wesleyan name. They're not of the Wesleyan church.

They're Methodists. They go back to John and Charles Wesley, the Methodist revivals of the mid 1700s.

So you've got Illinois Wesleyan and Kentucky Wesleyan and Dakota Wesleyan and Texas Wesleyan and Kansas Wesleyan and Ohio Wesleyan.

None of those universities are Wesleyan. They're all Methodists.

And as Methodist institutions, they've become quite progressive and liberal over time. They've got gay and lesbian parades.

They've got a rainbow page on their website and all this kind of nonsense. And I knew this good old

Southern Baptist in Missouri was saying, why would Jim want to work for one of those places? So I interrupted him and I said, sir, we are not

Methodist. We're Wesleyan. We're the conservative Bible believing cousins at the family reunion of John and Charles Wesley's legacy.

And what I want to tell you is because this institution is in crisis, we've made up our minds, sir, that we're going to stand for the truth of Christ and the truth of Scripture.

And we're going to wave that banner courageously and without apology. And sir, if we win waving that banner, great, that's

God's grace. And if we lose waving that banner, I don't care. We're going to go down fighting.

And he starts chuckling over the phone and he says, you really believe that, don't you?

And I said, absolutely. Why would I want to give my career and my time to anything less? And he concludes our conversation by saying this.

And I quote, I really need to get to know you better because I don't need

I don't hear this kind of stuff in our circles much anymore. And I thought at the time, if all it took for me to win over this

Southern Baptist guy in Missouri, who was suspicious of me being a liberal, progressive

Methodist, if all I needed to say is we're going to wave the banner of the truth of Christ and the truth of Scripture, and we're going to do so without apology.

And if we win, great, God's grace. If we lose, I don't care. We'll go down fighting. If that's all I need to do, I'm onto something.

Not just because it's good marketing. It is, but because I believe it.

And he knows I believe it by the way I was presenting it. And I thought, that's it.

Mission matters. That's what matters. We've got to have a mission that's bold and distinct. People can buy vanilla ice cream on any corner.

If you're selling vanilla and if people like it and they want to buy it, they can get it anywhere. But if they want a unique flavor, a

Ben & Jerry's, if you will, you got to go to that ice cream shop to buy that particular flavor of ice cream.

And I decided we're going to sell bold and distinct and different. It's going to be biblical. It's going to stand for the inerrancy of Scripture.

It's going to stand for the lordship of Jesus Christ. It's going to stand for the objectivity of truth. Truth is given by God.

It isn't made up by you or me. And then kind of the Wesleyan, the holiness aspect that's added to it is the practice of wisdom.

That obedience, sanctification, obedience unto the Lord is not optional. God demands it.

He doesn't just say, I'd like you to obey me. God says, you must obey me.

So that's what we did. And God blessed it. And our enrollment almost tripled. Our budget almost tripled.

Our debt went down to zero. We built a bunch of new buildings. And NBC Today and ABC and Tucker Carlson and Glenn Beck and Bill O 'Reilly were sticking microphones in my face and asking me to comment on this stuff.

And it was a blast. Well, and that's the thing that—and we're going to talk about Tucker Carlson in a moment.

The thing is that when we sat down over dinner, that was the thing that intrigued me was what

I've been really frustrated with in Christianity is the tribalism that I think social media brings as people try to build platforms and they get—we got to get people that agree like us so we can get the clicks and the likes and the shares and yada yada.

I didn't see any of that with you. I saw someone who just was like, oh, you know

Christ? I know Christ. We're brothers. That's what I really appreciated and loved.

Before we talk about Tucker, because that's what got me to—I was watching some of your videos and you had one on Tucker.

And I was like, I just got to get him on so we could talk about some of this stuff. But let's talk about getting into culture.

Some of the things that you as a president of Oklahoma Wesleyan took a stand on when even other, well,

Christian universities were hesitant or not taking a stand.

Because I know there were some things you took a stand on early on and said, no, we're planting the flag here. Well, yeah.

Again, even taking a stand on the inerrancy of Scripture, go back to those four pillars that I described, primacy of Christ, priority of Scripture, pursuit of truth, practice of wisdom.

Some people listening right now may be saying, well, duh, that's not unusual. That's not bold.

That's not unique. Yes, it is. That's my industry. I knew. In fact, I did my dissertation on this problem at Michigan State.

I knew that what Christian colleges were saying in their nice four -color brochures, their marketing material and their recruiting material,

I knew that the promises that they were making and the image that they were portraying wasn't necessarily truth in advertising.

In other words, when a school says it's evangelical, what does that mean? Does it mean you believe in the Bible? Does it mean that you're going to be conservative, conserving the time -tested truths, the orthodoxy of the

Christian faith? Or does it mean that you're out there in the progressive left? Well, I knew that so many of the

Christian colleges and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, the CCCU, the umbrella organization that is over some 150 evangelical

Christian colleges in the United States of America. The good news is Striving for Eternity would love to come to your church to spend two days with your folks, teaching them biblical hermeneutics.

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to host a Bible interpretation made easy seminar in your area. I knew that so many of them, if not the majority of them, were leaning left, theologically and politically and economically.

And so I wanted to confront that. And I knew that just saying that we believe in the inerrancy of scripture was controversial, and it still is to this day.

There are Christian colleges, many Christian college faculty out there who would have a problem with me defining the

Bible as inerrant. They'll claim, well, that's fundamentalist, and we're not fundamentalists.

They would say that's anti -intellectual, that that's contrary to the ivory tower and the

Christian liberal arts model. Garbage, garbage. That's just not true. That's not true.

Just because you believe that the Bible is the word of God, it's inerrant, it's infallible, it's authoritative, it's true with a capital

T, and that you trust it accordingly. Just because you say that doesn't mean you're anti -intellectual.

In fact, I would argue that the history of the church and the history of our faith requires us to do what

C .S. Lewis did, and that is trust a measuring rod outside of those things being measured, or you can do no measuring.

In other words, you've got to have a true north. You've got to have truth with a capital T. Your opinion doesn't matter at the end of the day. Like our friend

Ben Shapiro says, the facts don't care about your feelings. There's a lot of truth to that.

You've got to have more than your feelings, your opinions, political fads, what's politically correct to guide you in your pursuit of truth, or you're going to come to some pretty erroneous conclusions.

Andrew, I used to, I don't know, I've counted up, I've probably given some 50 commencement speeches over my career, and one of my go -to's,

I've given it several times, is I tell the graduates, today you're going to graduate. I'm going to give you a short commencement speech.

I'm going to give you a blessing, and you can give me a standing ovation right now for promising that. I'm not going to bore you, because essentially what

I'm going to tell you right now is after I'm done with my speech, me standing up here in my funny cap and gown, and you sitting out there as a graduate ready to come forward and get your diploma,

I'm going to say I'm done, okay? Now come up here, line up on my left at the stage, and when your name is called off alphabetically, come over and get your diploma from me.

I'm going to shake your hand and hand it to you, and then I'm going to lean over while I congratulate you, and I'm going to say good for you, congratulations, you've now got a degree in opinions.

And there's a pregnant pause, you could hear a pin drop when I say that, and I let the silence play on the audience a little bit, and then

I say, that's absurd, isn't it? You've spent four years, some of you five, some of you six, you've spent tens of thousands of dollars to get a degree, and I have the audacity on your graduation day, on commencement morning to tell you congratulations, you've got a diploma in opinions?

That's crazy, because frankly today, graduates, when you walk across the stage and get your diploma from me,

I don't care what your opinion is, and you don't care about mine, because education isn't about opinions, education is about pursuing the truth, education is about truth with a capital

T. Opinions are dangerous, but Jesus said, the truth shall set you free.

Opinions always lead to bad places, students. Pol Pot had an opinion, Mao had an opinion,

Robespierre had an opinion, Chavez and Mussolini and Hitler, all the despots of history had opinions, and it didn't end well for a lot of people.

Opinions always lead to slavery and bondage, and truth will lead to freedom.

So you got an education, you have a degree because you learned something, you learned something that's true in your relative discipline, whether it be accounting or whether it be physics, whether it be biology or sociology or psychology.

You learn something that's true, you know a little bit more about what's true today than you did four years ago when you started, and if you don't, you wasted your money.

And I'm not going to give you a degree in opinions today. So just saying stuff like that causes some people, even in the

Christian colleges and universities, to say, ooh, that's a little too aggressive. And when I called out the

Snowflake Rebellion, you know, some, oh, it's been 10 years ago, 2015, when I dared to be the only college president in the nation.

And that's not hyperbole. I was the only guy who said, this is a university, it's not a daycare.

I'm not going to coddle you. I'm going to confront you. I don't want you to feel comfortable here. I'm going to challenge your character.

And if you want us to give you trigger warnings and say, hey, a microaggression is coming, if you want that, go someplace else.

I'm not going to do it here. I'm not going to give you a security blanket and a teddy bear and Play -Doh and puppy dogs on on finals week.

I'm not going to do that. And Andrew, there were literally there were universities across the land and they still do.

They give kids coloring books and they bring in a petting zoo at the university.

They actually bring in baby goats and puppy dogs for kids to have kids for 20 year old college students to have during final examination so that they can feel comfortable.

They have sleepovers. They have everybody has their sleeping bag and they'll get together to cuddle.

Well, while they're studying for finals, they provide these types of kindergarten daycare experiences for college kids because, well, we don't want them to feel bad or to feel uncomfortable.

And I think that is antithetical. It's the opposite of what the university should be. Yeah. And when

I said this is a university, it's not a daycare. You know what? You know the rest of the story. Literally, I had that story when

I said that to my students was picked up by the national media and NBC Today cited that story, my confrontation of my students and generally the academy at large.

They cited it as one of the top 10 news stories of 2015. And that's kind of crazy because that's not high scholarship.

Anybody could say what I just said. You don't have to have a PhD to say, look, we want you to grow up.

We don't want you to remain an adolescent as the result of going to college. College is to help you become spiritually and intellectually mature, not to cower in the corner because some professor challenged you with an idea you don't like.

So anyway, I could ramble on, but that's part of my story as an educator.

Yeah. I mean, I've always said when I was raising my children that I'm raising adults. I'm not raising children. The problem is the rest of the culture didn't understand that.

They raised a bunch of children. And if you need evidence of that, just go look in Congress. Yeah. Ideas have consequences.

And helicopter parenting has created a bunch of 65 -year -old adolescents that are in Congress, in our colleges, in our corporations.

Our culture is an infantilized adolescent culture. Your chronological age doesn't matter any longer if you're still grabbing a hold of those things for safety and security and comfort, as opposed to feeling a little cognitive dissonance and iron sharpening iron and getting out of the nest and learning how to fly and become an adult.

You know, something you said, the phrase I usually say is our culture now, truth doesn't matter.

It's the narrative that matters. And that would be a good segue into I was recently saw a video you had put out on Tucker Carlson.

Talk about narrative versus truth. A lot of people during COVID was looking at Tucker Carlson because he was a man standing on truth.

You know, you put out a video encouraging people to stop listening to him. And from a position of a conservative people.

Look, I have I have someone in my church who thinks Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens are the bomb.

They are right on. They're seeing what no one else is seeing, regardless, just because they're saying it, not because they're producing.

Well, like you said, facts. Why? What do you see going on in our culture, even within the more conservative branches of our culture, that we should stop listening to it,

Tucker Carlson? Well, here's the thing. Here's here's an axiom that I try to apply to my own life.

Call it an axiom. Just call it instructional. A rule of thumb. Conservatives should care about conserving the truth.

If you're a true conservative, you are conservationist. What is Andrew Rappaport doing?

This might be the most brilliantly insane concept on the Internet. Yeah, I'm talking about the Apologetics Live podcast.

Okay, here's the premise. A live stream on Thursdays from 8 to 10 p .m. Eastern Standard Time, where you can jump in and ask any

Bible or theology question you have and Andrew Rappaport will answer it. But here, listen, it gets even better.

You can debate him live and he doesn't even know the topic. There's been guys who have been prepared for weeks who come on the live stream and you get to watch

Andrew debate a theological subject off the top of his head. It's really fun to watch. I've personally watched viewers jump on the live stream and try to stump

Andrew, but it hasn't happened yet. So each Thursday, get your popcorn and questions ready and tune into Apologetics Live podcast with Andrew Rappaport and be part of one of the most fun live streams on the interwebs.

You can join the fun at www .apologeticslive .com if you want to be part of the show or click the link in the description box of this episode.

As always, Apologetics Live is part of the Christian Podcast Community. Andrew Rappaport I believe in clean air and clean water.

I believe we should conserve those things, but I think there's something equal to, if not more important than that, and that's truth, with a capital

T. The time -tested truths of God. Conservatives believe in conserving truth.

And with that as a premise, I would argue true conservatives, in their effort to conserve what's true, are willing to thank their leaders when they're right, but to criticize them when they're wrong.

It's not about people. It's about principles. It's not about a king.

It's about a constitution, if you want to take that alliteration even further. So take Donald Trump, for example, and then

I'll answer your question on Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. I've voted for Donald Trump three times, but I've also criticized

Donald Trump to the extent that I've had a lot of Trumpers get mad at me, angry with me. How dare you?

For example, I think Donald Trump was absolutely wrong to post that picture of him in flowing white robes with a red sash that anybody with a

Sunday school experience with Christianity is going to recognize as being, and that looks like Jesus.

Now, Donald Trump says that he thought it was a doctor, and it was, I don't know if that passes the smell test or not.

And I say that not to make people mad who voted for Donald Trump, because I voted for Donald Trump.

And I want you to know, I'm thankful for a lot of the things that Donald Trump has done. I think

Donald Trump has honored religious freedom in a way that is stunningly surprising. I didn't think he'd do it, but he has.

I met with Donald Trump during the 2016 election. I was part of about 30 people that was called the

Trump Tower, evangelical thought leaders. Why I was in the group, I don't know, but I was invited to be part of that group.

And as I was sitting there waiting for him to come into the room with my 30 best friends,

Steve Bannon came into the room in advance of Trump, and he said, Mr. Trump's going to be here in a second, and we don't have time for all of you to ask questions.

So we're going to assign five of you to do so. And Bannon looked at a couple other people, and he said, well, so -and -so, you're an economist.

You ask the question on the economy. And Mr. So -and -so, you just wrote a book on X, Y, and Z.

Why don't you ask Mr. Trump about that? And then Bannon looks at me, and he says, Piper, you've been making a big stink about academic freedom in the news lately.

You asked Mr. Trump the question on education. Well, I didn't even know I was supposed to talk. So Trump comes in, and he starts working the crowd, and I'm watching, and then we all get our assigned seats, and I'm seated directly across the table from Trump.

And by the way, Bannon had told us we only had three minutes to ask our question, which that's fine.

I have no problem with living by these rules. And at this point in time in that 2016 election,

Andrew, I was not a fan of Trump. There were other options that I thought were better for Christians.

There was Rubio. There was Carly Fiorina. There was Rand Paul. There was

Ted Cruz. And I wasn't a fan of Trump. I was there because I was,

I think they invited me because, and several others because they knew we were suspicious. They wanted us to, they wanted to win us over.

Anyway, long story short, when it came my turn to ask the question, Andrew, I looked at Mr. Trump across the table.

I said, Mr. Trump, my name is Everett Piper. I'm the president of a small little Christian college in northeast

Oklahoma. And just a couple weeks ago, I received a letter from the Obama administration demanding that effective immediately,

I start providing transgender accommodations on my campus under the auspices of Title IX.

I said, Mr. Trump, I will not do that. I refuse. That is not going to happen.

So Mr. Trump, should you become president of the United States of America, I have one request of you. Leave me alone.

That's all I said. I shut up. And fast forward,

I didn't know whether he would or wouldn't. I didn't know that he even understood why

I was asking. I suspect that he kind of didn't. He probably needed some coaching. I don't care.

He has done exactly what I asked him to do. He has left me alone. He's let me be a

Christian. He let me run a Christian university without interference. And I'm grateful for that.

And I'm going to thank Donald Trump in spite of a lot of his blemishes and things that I think, oh, my land. I'm grateful.

I'm grateful here for his defense of Israel. I'm grateful that he believes our borders should be protected and defended and well defined.

I'm grateful for all of that. And I can tell you why. And I'd be willing to debate anybody on why those are Christian virtues.

Whether he's born again, whether he's a Christian, I do not know. I don't even know that he makes that claim for himself. That's right.

But I'm grateful for Constantine. I'm glad that Constantine released the church to do its good work.

Was Constantine saved? I don't know. We'll find out in eternity. But Constantine was used in the providence of God to release the church to do its good work.

And I'm grateful for that. So I'm grateful for Donald Trump. I'm going to thank him when he's right. But I'm also going to criticize him when he's wrong.

If he posts a picture that makes himself look like Jesus, I'm going to say that is not right. Don't do that.

That's that's blasphemy. And if he some of his language and in his anyway, anyway, we could go on and on.

We could spend two hours talking about Trump. But here's the point. Let me get back to the point I was trying to make.

Thank your leaders when they're right and criticize them when they're wrong. That's what conservatives do, because conservatives are people of principles, not persons or personalities.

You need to remember that. Everybody listening right now, if you fancy yourself as a conservative, the people that are that have been elevated to position at this given time, frankly, don't matter because the principle that you hold as a conservative is time tested and it's enduring.

It's immutable. It's just true with a capital T. So defend that and don't get all hung up on people and personalities and your guy.

So when it came, you know, I was on Tucker Carlson's show and I used to be proud to say that I spent time with Tucker in the green room, a lot of time with him in the green room, and I felt like I I learned a lot about him as a person.

He's smart. He had some very conservative positions. What's happened to him in this particular season?

I don't know. But what really bothers me about Tucker, and I do not apologize for saying it right now, is his blatant anti -Semitism is just stunningly wrong.

Andrew, he actually had the audacity to go on one of his podcasts.

It was last week, maybe the week before, where he suggested that Franklin Graham was wrong to pray with the president of the

United States of America in the White House during Easter week this year because Franklin Graham referenced the book of Esther in his prayer and suggested that as Esther was chosen for such a time as this, so Donald Trump as the leader of America is likewise chosen in God's sovereignty for such a time as this.

I have no problem with that. That prayer, I think, is rock solid biblical. Tucker Carlson criticizes

Franklin Graham for praying that way and then says this. People listen to this.

And if you haven't heard this, if you think I'm making it up, you can go Google it. It's spot on.

Yes, this is the Piper paraphrase because I don't have his direct quote in front of me, but it's almost exact.

Carlson then says on his podcast that Graham's quotation of the book of Esther is interesting because the book of Esther is a

Christian Old Testament book, quote unquote, that's somewhat questionable because a lot of people don't even think it should be in the

Bible. I'm still quoting Tucker Carlson. It shouldn't be in the Bible. And even

Martin Luther himself suggested it shouldn't. And then Carlson, after saying that, goes on and says, but go read it because it's a very interesting book.

And you know what it says? Carlson then says this. The book of Esther is about the

Jews committing a genocide against the Persians and going and killing 75 ,000

Persians in their genocide against them. Now, people, if you went to Sunday school as a in fourth grade or fifth grade, you should know that the book of Esther is about the exact opposite.

It's 180 degrees different than what Tucker Carlson just said. The book of Esther is not about a genocide committed by the

Jews against the Persians. It's about a planned genocide against the

Jews by a guy named Haman, who looked to have all of the

Jews killed in one day. And his manipulation, his conniving, his deceit was revealed to King Xerxes.

Xerxes executed him for that manipulation and that deceit and his plan to kill the

Jews. And then he told Esther and Mordecai and the Jews that they had the right to defend themselves against any of the remnant of the

Haman crowd that still might be out there planning their demise. So the Jews did end up killing 75 ,000

Persians as a means of self -defense. Tucker Carlson flips this thing on its ear and says the exact opposite and criticizes

Franklin Graham for quoting the book. That is crazy talk, people. That is anti -Semitism in the extreme.

And Tucker has gone on and said other things. He said that Israel is a more dangerous place to live for Christians than Qatar and other

Muslim countries. And that's nuts. That's just nuts. I mean, if you convert to Christianity in Saudi Arabia, you could be executed for doing so.

It is illegal to convert to Christianity and the penalty is capital punishment. But yet Tucker's out there making

Islam sound good and Jews sound bad. And then just last week,

Tucker said that, well, Muslims love Jesus. Well, which Jesus? Which Jesus is it that Muslims love?

Is it the second person of the triune God? No, it's not. No, it's not. It's the one that didn't go to the cross either.

Yes, I mean, because they're offended that we would suggest that God could die. Well, how could

God die? Muslims are offended by the Trinity. They're offended that God could have a son.

They're offended that God could die. Yes, Jesus is a prophet for Muslims, but he's nothing more than a prophet.

He's not the second person of the triune God. He's not the creator of the universe. He's not the

Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the king of kings, the Lord of lords, the land of Judah, the lamb of God. He's not the that's not the

Jesus that Muslims respect. And quote, unquote, love,

Tucker. So stop the deception. Stop making it look like Islam is superior to Judaism.

And now you're making it look like Islam is superior to Christianity because Muslims love

Jesus, too, quote, unquote. You know, if people if people doubt that, I'll just say if you go back to my apologetics lives that I did maybe a month ago from when this one's coming out,

I did a couple series on Islam explaining what they believe. And folks that see that will see that there were there were several

Muslims in the chat that were reacting. And it's very clear they they believe that if you believe in the

Trinity, you are going to hell. Yes. That is the one thing that guarantees you hell is believing in a

Trinity. And by the way, the Trinity to them is the father, the mother and the son.

Yet Mary is the second person of the Trinity. That's what they think we believe.

And it's just it's amazing. I mean, Tucker Carlson did with Esther what he did with October 7th.

Israel gets attacked and he blames Israel for it and completely changes the story.

They're not in self -defense. They're the attackers. So I'm not surprised by that. Now, I do want to I want to see your reaction, because I have a little bit of a different take with that.

I totally agree with your your the the photo that you said Trump put out. I think that the doctor thing was just him trying to to to save the story.

However, I don't think he was thinking he was like Christ. Here's what I think. And I think

I know why he wouldn't be able to say this. At the time, what was going on? You had he was arguing with the pope, the pope.

I think he thought he was he was doing an image of the pope. And now he realized he can't insult all these

Catholics that voted for him by saying that he was tweaking the pope. But that's that's what I think he was doing.

I don't think he was trying to be Christ. I think he was you know, this is who the pope claims he is.

And he I think that's who he's doing, because the pope was getting into politics, saying, oh, contact your congressman and put an end to this war.

That's my thinking. I think that's entirely possible. I really do. I think your explanation is possible.

But, Andrew, stop and think about what we're just what we're admitting about the president of the United States. He is so biblically illiterate.

And he doesn't understand some of the basic images that anybody that grew up in the church would understand.

If you see that image of a human being dressed like that, with an orb in his hand, putting his hand on the forehead of people, with people around him kneeling in prayer.

And then the clouds behind him, angels or whoever coming in the clouds surrounding this image, then you're going to conclude, well, that looks like Jesus.

Now, is it possible that Trump that all just blew past him? Yeah, it's possible.

And he thought, oh, I thought it was the pope. It's entirely possible. But whether it was the pope or whether it was even worse blasphemy, because he was portraying himself as Jesus and didn't have any problem with that.

I actually believe that you're probably right. I don't think Trump thought he was posting something to claim to put himself on equal status with Jesus Christ.

The reason I don't think he was intending to do that is because of some of the other things he's done in terms of showing respect to Christianity.

I mean, just this week, he's part of that group that's reading the Bible on a daily basis for America.

I mean, when was the last time that's happened? I mean, that's great stuff. But I know that and I don't have permission to share all of it, but I know the backstory to his second

Corinthians faux pas at Liberty University during 2016. I know what happened there.

Before he went to speak, I'll share as much about this as I can without mentioning my source, because the source has not given me permission.

Before he went to speak at Liberty in 2016, he knew that he was going to be asked about his favorite

Bible verse. So he called up an acquaintance of mine and he said, what should

I do? And the acquaintance of mine said, well, Liberty's verse is 2

Corinthians such and such. I can't even remember what the reference was. 2 Corinthians 2 .16

or whatever it is. So Trump wrote it down. OK, 2

Corinthians. He writes down 2 Corinthians and then he goes there and he reads it off of his notes.

And I'd like to talk about 2 Corinthians 3 .15. That's why he said it.

OK, because he got instructions from one of my friends who had given him a text.

OK, it wasn't oral communication. It was a text. Mr. Trump, you might want to remember that Liberty's key verse is which is exactly how we would write that.

Exactly. So Trump writes down what was in the text and he goes to Liberty and he says 2

Corinthians rather than 2 Corinthians, which ironically enough, if you've studied in, you know this, Andrew, if you've studied in Oxford or any

British school, they actually do say 2 Corinthians, not 2 Corinthians. But trust me, I don't think that's why

Trump said it. No, but there's something else with that that I always thought interesting because it told me something different that I don't think a lot of people picked up on.

It means that because any person that's a speechwriter, if you don't know what speechwriters do, they do a ton of research.

No speechwriter would have written it that way. They they would have known the audience and said 2

Corinthians. So it kind of you saying that is totally believable because when it happened,

I was like, I think Trump saw it somewhere. He did.

And said it that way. It clearly wasn't his favorite. It was, you know, he didn't. And I also was like,

I don't think a speechwriter wrote it. So you saw it from my friend. He saw it from my friend who sent him the text.

And said, remember that this is Liberty's verse. And that makes perfect sense.

The text says 2 Corinthians. So Trump reads it that way.

Why have I just wasted 10 minutes of your time telling me this story? Well, because President Trump, for all of the things that he's doing that are very positive for Christians and religious freedom.

I'm incredibly grateful. And I will not apologize for supporting the man and voting for the man.

He is not well versed in basic Christianity. He's just not. He didn't understand that it was you pronounce it.

You say it 2 Corinthians. In America. Not 2 Corinthians. At least in America, you do.

And he I don't think he immediate. I don't think he immediately recognized this image of him in a white flowing robe with a red sash and an orb in his hand, healing a human being with people praying around.

This kind of looks like a messianic figure, Donald Trump. It looks like Jesus. Don't post that.

You and I would have immediately recoiled and said, oh, do not do that. Don't post that image of me. Donald Trump didn't think that.

Here's the thing. Here's the thing that I think with it. We talk about culture. Here's the thing that I said to folks.

If the image is if it's a doctor, I find that hard to believe. I think that was that that's just damage control.

The and because he's, you know, he explains as a doctor from someone coming to the

White House to drop off food like an Uber Eats or whatever it was like DoorDash or something.

But here's the thing that that bothered me. Would I be offended by that being an image of Christ?

Yes, because it would be blasphemous. But here's the more important thing. I think it's more blasphemous that he sees it says, oh, let me take it down.

But if he's doing what I think mocking the pope, it is blasphemous because the pope actually doesn't he claims he's a vicar of Christ.

Right. And everybody attacks Trump. And I'm like, OK, what Trump did was wrong. Are you going to go after the pope that I think he's mocking?

Because the pope doesn't refrain from that. The pope doesn't say, oh, that was wrong of me.

The pope takes it and says, yes, I hope I I'm the head of a church that can that literally claims it can save you.

Yeah, it can. Well, you and in the meantime, the pope goes in and stands in veneration, silence and prayer at a

Muslim mosque and says that this is a space for God. I mean, talk about blasphemy.

Talk about this. This isn't even implied syncretism. It's radical syncretism to go in there and do that and suggest that a

Muslim mosque is a place for God as the pope represents him, the

Trinity, the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Jesus being the creator of the universe.

No, a Muslim mosque is not a space for that God. That space is antithetical to the one true

God. But yet the pope has confused the whole thing. And we find we find the secular world doesn't have any problem with the pope embracing the syncretism.

And unfortunately, there are a lot of Christians out there that are criticizing me on social media for saying, wait a second, wait a second, the pope shouldn't be doing this.

Nobody that claims Jesus Christ is Lord and savior should ever do this. What's next? Are you going to go to a temple of Baal and say this is a place for God?

I mean, what's the difference? I mean, one false God is the same as another human sacrifices, human sacrifice, folks.

I mean, Andrew, you might you might hope that I don't say this, but I'm going to.

My understanding of Islam is that many, many Muslims have have been taught and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of them believe that Christians and infidels,

Christian Jews and other infidels should die. Mm hmm. OK, and that if Muslims are part of the process of those infidels dying, being executed because they refuse to convert to Islam, then that's a good thing for the

Muslims to be involved in that process of execution. And in fact, they could earn a place in heaven for being part of that.

Am I right? Yeah, Islam is about world domination. I mean, for all the liberals wanting to attack

Christian nationalism, Christians are not looking to dominate the world politically.

We'd look to do it with the gospel. But Islam cannot separate their politics, their governing systems from their religious system.

It is about world dominance. But you actually earn paradise by being a terrorist, right?

By the only guaranteed way to get into paradise in Islam would be to die in a jihad, a holy war.

So if you die flying a plane into a building and thereby kill a bunch of Christians and Jews and infidels that were in that building, you've earned a place in paradise, correct?

Correct. All right. Isn't that human sacrifice? Well, you just sacrificed a bunch of human beings to get your place in paradise.

Yeah. Well, they don't worry about that because the fact that you must be Muslim is the most important thing.

So Islam means to submit, and a Muslim is one who submits. What's more important to them is not human life, but submission to Allah.

And I guess that's why I'm drawing a parallel here, because I had somebody get all fussy with me on social media because I said, what's next, the

Pope to go to temples of Baal? And they got mad about it. And I said, well, the syncretism, what's the difference?

One false god versus another false god. And then I said, human sacrifice is human sacrifice.

For Baal, it was babies. For Islam, it's Christian and Jews, because in both cases, you sacrifice babies to Baal for eternity for the favor of God.

And then in Islam, you're sacrificing other human beings via jihad, flying buildings into planes or cutting off people's heads or doing whatever you do from the river to the sea to eliminate the infidel.

You're basically saying these human lives are forfeitable.

They can be sacrificed for the sake of Allah, for the sake of God and for the sake of our well -being in paradise.

So I don't see much difference. You know, it's as you said, Trump is complete ignorant on the basics of Christianity.

But what this shows is that the Pope is complete ignorant to the history of the

Bible. And so much of what you've talked about is truth, and truth is important.

But where do we get truth? Well, we get our truth from Scripture, from the Bible. That's the only source we can have truth in.

But if we don't know how to study, if we don't have resources to study that Bible, to know how to accurately interpret it, and it should be the most important work we do in our life is to learn

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So, Dr. Piper, I got to ask, as we look at the culture, we're starting to see,

I think, a lot of people who really thought Trump getting elected was going to be this golden age like he talked about.

And we're starting, well, look, just this week as we're recording, we saw people arguing that to save democracy, they have to disenfranchise half of the population.

Right? Virginia, it's 50 -50.

Well, we're just going to say that it's almost all Democrat now, just because we're going to redraw the lines.

But they're doing this to prevent what they say the Republicans would do.

Right? So they're going to actually do what they say would be wrong for the Republicans to do, but they have to do it because the

Republicans will do it. When we look at this, and we have people who are,

I think you and I would both agree, there are way too many, at least we'll say professing Christians, that put their faith in a

Donald Trump or the Republican Party or something like that. And as we're starting to lean back into the wokeness that kind of was just silent for a little while, for these last year or so, it's starting to rear its head up again.

And people are starting to get scared and nervous about the future. When we look at the culture, should we be concerned about that?

Where should we find our hope? Where should we find our direction? We can sit and complain about the culture all day.

That's easy. There's lots going wrong. But as Christians, what should be our focus in a culture that's going, well, insane?

Our focus should always be biblical, not political. But let me clarify that.

I don't think disengagement, what I just said when I say your focus should be biblical, not political, is not a call for disengagement from culture.

It is not. And let me explain why. I know you agree, at least I assume you do.

An anecdote. When I was the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan, because I'm conservative and unapologetically so, and because we were winning, to use

Donald Trump's terminology, we were winning. We were growing. Our budget was good rather than bad.

Our enrollment was up rather than down. Our debt was zero rather than exorbitant. Everything was going well.

And my message never changed. My message was the conservation of God's truth, the inerrancy of Scripture, the deity of Jesus Christ, the objectivity of truth, and then the practice of wisdom, holiness, obedience unto the

Lord, be a man and woman of integrity, integrate head and faith, fact and faith, and belief and behavior.

That's holiness. That's sanctification. I said this stuff over and over again.

Well, because I was saying this stuff, there was cultural stuff going on at the same time.

Gay marriage was rising. And I entered into that debate. And I said, wait a second.

God defines marriage. Government doesn't. Abortion was being debated aggressively. These were the

Obama years. And I said, wait a second. God defines life. We don't.

So I took a stand on these cultural, political issues. Well, one day in a board meeting at Oklahoma Wesleyan University, I had a couple board members that spoke up and said publicly in front of all 30, 35 board members during a meeting, they said,

Everett, we really appreciate your leadership, but we think you're getting too political. My response was almost verbatim what

I'm going to say right now. I said, guys, who decided that the definition of human life was political and not biblical?

Who decided that the definition of marriage is political and not biblical?

Who decided that the definition of truth, the definition of Jesus, the definition of scripture, the definition of morality and holiness and sanctification is political and not biblical?

I want to remind you all as board of trustees of this Wesleyan institution that the Wesleyan church was born out of one of the most politically contentious issues in the history of the

United States of America. It was called the Civil War. It was called the fight to abolish slavery.

That's why our church existed or exists today. The Holiness Church has sprung out of the

Methodist churches in the mid 1800s because the Methodist church was not taking a stand against slavery and it was still charging for its pews.

So if you had money and you were white, you could go to the Methodist church. But if you didn't have money and or you were black, you either couldn't go to church or if you did, you had to sit in the back or stand outside and look through the window.

The Wesleyans, the Nazarenes and some other holiness denominations spoke up and said, wait a second, this isn't biblical.

Government doesn't define what it means to be human. God does.

The Bible does. So it was the conservatives who took a stand against slavery and said, no, the

Bible says that all human beings are human beings and the government doesn't have the right to compromise that definition.

That's where our church came from. And I reminded my board members, wait a second, are you going to suggest that the founders of the

Wesleyan church were too political and they weren't being biblical for taking a stand against slavery?

And the dignity of the poor, that the poor should be able to sit where they want in church, they shouldn't have to pay for their pews? Really, is that what you're going to tell me?

You could hear a pen drop. Nobody ever argued with me again on the obligation, the obligation that we have to engage in the political arena, the cultural arena, not because we care about the politician or the party, but because we care about the enduring, immutable principles of God.

Many people listening right now, Andrew, they're going to churches that were founded on quote unquote political movements because the politics was grounded in the

Bible and you can't have a false dichotomy where you just divorce the two. You can't.

We are to be salt and light. We're to be salt to a rotting culture and light to a dark place and that involves cultural engagement.

Yeah, sorry. Yeah, the leaders of the current cultural leftists would like to be the ones to define this and I remember here in New Jersey when they were having their town halls discussing whether to do same -sex marriage.

Okay, it's not homosexual marriage because homosexuals have been marrying for years, someone of the opposite sex.

It was same -sex marriage and you had a, you know, public can be there and I asked every one of the legislature two questions.

First question I asked, do you believe in a separation of church and state? Every one of them said yes.

Second question, then why are you getting involving yourselves in a church issue?

Marriage is a church issue. So the thing's not that we're getting political, it's that the state is stepping into our realm if they want to believe that there's a separation of church.

I don't believe there's a separation of church and state other than the fact that the state needs to stay out of the church, but they flip that and they want to say the church comes into the state and the church is not allowed in the state.

They reverse it, but the reality is same -sex marriage is them stepping into our arena.

It's not political for me to speak against same -sex marriage. That's a religious issue.

They who believe in a separation of church and state, all I was doing, want to hold them to their own standard. You believe in that separation, stay out of a church issue.

The left always will criticize Christianity until Christianity can be used to their advantage to get their way.

Case in point, case in point. All of a sudden, the left loves Leviticus, right? Because Leviticus says that you're supposed to treat the stranger and the sojourner with dignity.

So all of a sudden, oh, the left, the progressives, the Democrats are all about Leviticus because we're obligated to make sure that the sojourner and the stranger in our midst is treated the same as all other people in that country, which is not biblical, by the way.

That's not what the Old Testament actually says. I'm sure you've covered the difference between ger and nakar, the

Hebrew words that the Old Testament used to describe sojourners and foreigners in our midst.

But all that said, the duplicity here, the hypocrisy that the left will just latch a hold of the

Levitical verses on immigration. But isn't it the left that just two seconds ago mocked

Leviticus when it came to sexual standards and sexual morality and prohibitions of sexual activity beyond heterosexual marriage?

Okay, the left mocks that. But yet, when it comes to Leviticus playing to their advantage, they just grab a hold of the immigration verses.

And they're doing the same thing with the Pope right now. All of a sudden, the left loves the Pope. The Pope's the greatest thing in the world.

Catholic doctrine, oh, we've got to honor Catholic doctrine. We've got to honor Catholic doctrine when it comes to immigration, when it comes to Islam, when it comes to the way we handle the

Muslim countries. We've got to honor Catholic doctrine. Well, okay. If you guys want to play the Catholic doctrine card, well, let's talk about abortion then.

Okay, let's honor Catholic doctrine when it comes to abortion. But no, they're not going to do that.

I don't think I remember hearing them love Leviticus when it talks about slavery with it referring to slaves being, and this is something people have to remember.

Slaves were not the slaves of the African slave trade. They'd get paid a half day's wage because they had to pay someone back.

So a slave is someone who, oh, he makes under minimum wage.

It sounds exactly like what they argue for the immigrants in America, because they're doing the work that no

American would do. Yeah, exactly. No, they don't like that.

I mean, they're arguing for a slave labor. I had someone that said to me, well, what would you do with all these companies?

There's jobs Americans won't do, and companies would go bankrupt trying to pay

Americans. I got a solution. Get rid of the minimum wage and stop doing welfare.

And people, when they get hungry, will do whatever job they have to. You don't have to bring in a class of people to vote

Democrat, because that's what they're here for. You don't have to bring them in as slave labor where they don't have the rights.

They're actually benefiting more because they get all the benefits of you and I working. And so Democrats are like, oh, affordability, affordability.

You want affordability? I could say, well, if I didn't have to pay for all the illegals that are here for their housing and their food and everything else, and you could lower my taxes,

I could live a lot better. Things would be more affordable, you know? You pointed out the duplicity.

They're duplicitous at every turn. And we don't want to, conservatives don't want to fall into that trap.

Just because we think Candace walks on water or Tucker walks on water or whatever your personality, your favorite personality out there is, we can become just as hypocritical if we ignore their missteps, which gets back to one of your first questions.

I really think conservatives can distinguish themselves as honoring the truth and caring about the truth.

And we are attractive to those who haven't yet embraced it if we stay the course. Two examples for me is when

I was on the Dave Rubin show and the Adam Carolla show. Neither of these guys are Christians. People probably know both names.

Dave Rubin is a married, quote unquote, homosexual, but he has leaned conservative in recent years because he has been appalled by the hypocrisy of the left.

So in many ways, he's conservative in his commentary. And you could argue he's conservative in almost all ways right now, except for sex.

OK, that's Dave Rubin. I was on his show. For an hour on his show, just like with you and me in exchange,

I talked about the primacy of Christ, the priority of Scripture, the pursuit of truth, the practice of wisdom. Jesus is the son of God.

The Bible is the word of God. Truth is given by God, Mr. Rubin, and wisdom, holiness, sanctification, integrity is demanded by God.

It's not optional. That's the solution to all that ails us in our culture, Mr. Rubin. You've got to have a measuring rod outside of those things being measured.

C .S. Lewis, Mr. Rubin, or you can do no measuring. And if you want more freedom rather than less, let's go to G .K.

Chesterton. He talked about the paradox of liberty and law, of freedom and fences. And if you want true freedom, you got to have a moral fence around your culture.

Everybody's going to go nuts and everybody's going to kill each other and get hurt. Mr. Rubin, the biblical worldview works.

Do you know what he said when I he tweeted this when I was driving back to the airport at LAX to fly back to God's country here in Oklahoma?

Rubin tweets this. If more guys said what this guy just said, we'd be a freer, braver and wiser nation.

Yeah, people want to hear the truth. Adam Carolla, I'm on his show.

Adam Carolla, his humor is debauched. He's an atheist, but he leans conservative in a libertarian way.

And I was on his show for a half hour. Guess what we talked about? Christ, scripture, truth, wisdom. C .S. Lewis, G .K.

Chesterton, freedom and fences, liberty and law. I talked about the same thing with this atheist

Howard Stern of a comedian. You know what he said when I was done? Thank you,

Dr. Piper. What the world needs today is more of this wisdom. Yeah, the world wants us to hang on to the truth, not to worship personalities and not to sell our soul because Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson or fill in the blank said it.

My land, when Candace Owens comes out and denies the moon landings, I'm going to say that's kind of crazy. I think we've got a lot of evidence that we did land on the moon,

Candace. When she comes out and says that dinosaur bones aren't real and that they're manufactured in some factory in Georgia or wherever she's claiming,

I think that's kind of nutty. I don't see any evidence of that. And when she starts parroting the protocols of the elders of Zion, she has jumped the shark and she's gone way too far.

And I'm sorry, I do not honor her leadership anymore. This is crazy. This is nutty. This is wrong.

And the way she's treated Erica Kirk is absurd. If people can't see that the gossipy nonsense that she's peddling right now at the expense of a widow who watched her husband get executed just a handful of days ago, then there's something wrong with us if we can't see that as wrong.

Well, there's an easy way to explain that. As soon as you recognize that Candace Owens just a jolted wannabe wife, she wanted to be

Erica Kirk and didn't get it. I mean, once you look at it that way, all her behavior seems to make sense.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Yeah, I really think that's what it is.

I think she was always jealous of Erica. And when Charlie died, she finally got her chance to lash out.

She couldn't do it while Charlie was alive, but now she can. There's so much here that with culture, there's so much that wisdom.

I want folks to hear from you and follow you to see more because it's what we're seeing is people focusing on celebrities, as you're saying, and not truth.

And these celebrities that they're looking to are just looking for the platform building, the tribalism, and they'll say whatever, do whatever to get more attention for themselves.

And what we've heard you for an hour explain is that we need to be focused on the truth, because I think about a comment that John MacArthur had made about Larry King.

Larry King would have all these Christians on. Larry King, before they would go alive, would ask a question of each of these

Christians that he had on there, Joel Osteen and others. He would ask, me being

Jewish, am I going to hell? And MacArthur said, unless you put your faith in Jesus Christ, you most surely are.

And Larry King said that the reason he had him back is because he spoke the truth.

He knew MacArthur would say what he believed. And so many of these Christians are out there trying to fit in with the world, and they can't figure out why the world doesn't love them.

Well, it goes back to something you said earlier, Everett. If your university was no different than any other, why would they come to yours?

Well, if you're a Christian university, and decidedly so, that makes a difference.

I think we as Christians need to be, instead of complaining about society, I mean, there's plenty wrong with our culture, but we need to be decidedly

Christian, but not tribal. Not being trying to get attention to ourselves in that sense, but to say, this is what the

Bible teaches, and that I'm going to stand on. Absolutely. And even on denominational spats, and I'm not going to go down this rabbit trail, but I'll just hint at it here.

There's division within the evangelical community right now, not just on politics, but on some key theological disputes that have been around for hundreds of years, if not a couple thousand years.

And we're dividing the body of Christ, and a house divided cannot stand. I'm not suggesting that, if it's heresy, then call heresy out.

If somebody says, well, the Bible is subjective, it's a postmodern construct, like this female bishop for some whack job church down in Arizona or New Mexico this week, that came out and said the

Bible needs a third testament, because the first two are problematic. That's nuts.

That is just nuts. And I'll call that what it is. That's unbiblical. That's wrong.

That's not Christianity. That is defining your own religion. It's not accepting God's definition of who he is and what his truth is.

To say you need a third testament as a Christian bishop, that's nuts, and that's wrong.

Am I being divisive and suggesting that? At this point in time, yeah, I'll separate myself from that heresy.

But some people say, I think, that it was coined by Augustine. Others say that it was coined by John Wesley.

In the essentials, unity. In all else, charity. There's wisdom in that phrase. In the essentials,

Christ, scripture, truth, wisdom, we will be unified. In all else, charity. In some of the debates we're having within the evangelical community, the born -again community right now, where we're raging against one another with a red face and an upheld fist over points of doctrinal dispute.

The way I respond to some of this stuff today, Andrew, people ask, well, where do you stand on this particular issue?

I say, I'm a Christian who believes the Bible is objectively true. It's God's truth.

I'm a Bible -believing, born -again Christian. Well, where do you stand with regard to Wesleyans versus Baptists or Calvinists versus Arminians?

I'm a Christian. I'm born again. I believe the Bible is absolutely objectively true.

Here I stand. I can do no other. I'm not going to compromise on that basic thing.

That is a good point to end on. Folks, I want you to go and check out some of the things, especially his

YouTube channel. But one thing that won't happen, if you go to his YouTube channel, you can find it on YouTube, his podcast.

He goes, it's The Rebellion with Dr. Everett Piper. And one thing that won't happen, if you watch, he's got quick videos.

One thing that's not going to happen is you're not going to fall asleep. But if you do, if you do, like, after you listen, watch a video, it's going to be tough to fall asleep.

So if you want, may I encourage you to go get yourself a MyPillow. It'll help you to sleep after watching his quick videos, okay?

Because he's going to get you thinking, he's going to get you ramped up. You're going to be so wound up, you're going to have a hard time sleeping.

Go to MyPillow, get a mattress topper, get a pillow, get some nice bed sheets, get all of that.

Just go to MyPillow .com. Remember to use the promo code SFE that gets you the discounts and lets them know that you heard about them from us so that they continue to supporting this show.

And I'm just saying, after listening to him, I don't really, I'm not sure if I encourage listening to his videos late at night.

I'm just saying you may not sleep. You may, your brain, maybe it's hard to turn the brain off after you hear him.

So you might need to get a good pillow. MyPillow .com. That is one of the most creative segues

I've ever heard in my life. Now go on, finish your segue. But I've never seen any better.

I've never heard it better. Well, there is one better. There's one that I had. I had, oh, now

I'm drawing a complete blank on her name. Which is really bad. But she was, she has the book selling

Megan Basham. Yeah, she was on Shepherd's for Sale.

Shepherd's for Sale is her book. She works at Daily Wire with Ben Shapiro. She's, I did a segue and she goes, afterwards, she was like, you're almost as good as Ben Shapiro.

I'm like, no, no, I'm not as good as Ben Shapiro with those. They just did a podcast where all the guys from Daily Wire do one together.

And it was funny because I'm sitting there and Ben Shapiro is into an ad and they didn't even realize.

They're arguing over what he's saying. He's like, I'm doing a sponsoree, guys. He's that good.

Your MyPillow segue, it rivals Ben Shapiro. I've got to, I think you deserve a gold star.

A Ben Shapiro gold star for that segue. It must be a Jewish thing. But folks,

I will put the links both to YouTube channel and Everett's website, which if you want to get his books, find out more.

It's dreverettpiper .com. He's very original in the name.

It took him a long time to come up with that website, dreverettpiper .com.

That's my wife's fault. It's so creative. But if you search, if you just search for Everett Piper on YouTube, you'll find

The Rebellion. They're quick. So it's not like this episode where you listen for an hour.

He knows how to be articulate in his views, unlike me, that go long.

So, but anything else? Actually, they're 25 minute hits. I really try to keep them to 25 minutes.

So anything else you want to share, promote? You got some books we didn't talk about. But anything else that you'd like to mention?

Well, I just mentioned to your listeners. Yeah, my website is dreverettpiper .com. And you can go there and be reminded what my books are.

And I write weekly for The Washington Times. I'm one of their weekend columnists. So if you want to read my weekly commentary as an opinion piece for The Washington Times, go there.

And that's not an expensive source of news to subscribe to. If you want good conservative news,

The Washington Times is a good source to subscribe to that. And then finally, I'd welcome speaking at any of your events, whether it be a church or a political venue or perhaps a conference.

I speak on apologetics. I speak on cultural engagement, education, obviously. But one of the things we haven't touched on today is

I try to speak and address leadership dynamics. Organizational leadership, organizational transition, crisis leadership.

These are things that I do speak on. And I'd like to believe I've got a little bit of experience in terms of what

I did at Oklahoma Wesleyan and in the academy to bring some interesting wisdom to the table on that issue.

So you can schedule me to do that by going to my website. Well, Dr. Piper, I am glad that you came on.

Notice he never actually admitted if he considers me a friend, folks. We started that way. We are still out on that.

We'll have to see. Absolutely. I don't know how we missed that. By the way, you started out by saying, by mentioning my book,

Why I'm a Liberal and Other Conservative Ideas. Hopefully people get it by now. It's a double entendre.

Why I'm a Liberal and Other Conservative Ideas. I'm more liberal. You're more classically liberal than our left of center counterpart because we believe in what?

Liberty. Yes. The word liberal is grounded in liberty. A liberal arts institution was founded to educate people in freedom.

A free man, a free woman, a free culture, a free country, a free church, thus the liberal arts academy. That's why

I'm more liberal and because I'm a conservative. Well, see, I mentioned it because that's my type of humor.

And I fear my audience is going to, if they listen to me long enough, they know my humor. That's right up my alley.

You know, but okay. It is kind of interesting that who are conservatives looking to for leadership?

A bunch of libertarians. And Trump is not conservative. Elon Musk is not conservative.

These are libertarians. They're looking to people who were

Democrats because that was more in line with their social views, but they were fiscally conservative.

That's a libertarian. And now we look at them like they're the leaders of the conservative party. We actually, we need actual conservatives to start leading in America.

Well, and I know you want to move on. So I'll just respond and I'll say, yeah. I mean, think about Dave Rubin and Adam Carolla, my anecdotes that I expressed there.

You bring up Trump, you bring up Elon Musk and others.

Libertarians essentially want what? They want freedom. They want to be left alone. And I get that.

That's what I asked Trump to do for me. Leave me alone. Liberty, I believe, is a biblical principle.

OK, but you can't have liberty without some law. That's also a biblical truth.

So I think we can lean into this interest, this fascination of seculars, non -Christian people wanting more liberty, and we can give them the answer.

We really can. And it's found in G .K. Chesterton, liberty, law, freedom, and fences, the paradox of those things.

You are not going to be free if you tear down all the fences of God. G .K. Chesterton said, if you get rid of all the big laws of God, you don't get liberty.

You get less freedom. And God only gave us 10, and Jesus summarized them in two.

And if we can't live by those 10 or two, what do you get? You get reams and reams and reams and reams of little laws that rush in to fill the vacuum.

Get rid of the big laws of God. You don't get liberty. You get more and more little laws that rush in to fill the vacuum. And the seculars, the people that aren't born again, get that because that's what's happening in the world around them right now.

That's right. Well, I appreciate you coming on. I hope to have you back on because you are a wealth of information.

We didn't even get into discussing higher education. That could be fun. So maybe another time we could get in discussing that.

Be honored. Yeah. So, folks, if you have an event you want him to come and speak, go to drevertpiper .com.

Check him out. And with that, 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.