Guest Interview with Joel Rosenberg

do hey good evening family if you're willing neighbor would you stand and sing with us we're going to praise our god tonight isaiah says he gives us a spirit of praise for the garment of heaven sing us out that crazy weapon the silence is the enemy let praise be a weapon that conquers all anxiety so let it rise let praise the rise we see your name in the dark and it changes everything we sing with your victory you cannot survive when we praise the god of breakthroughs on our side forever the raging sea let faith be the song that calms the storm inside of me let it rise when we praise you creation cry god we crazy come on listen this is what this is what living looks like this is where freedom feels like this is what heaven sounds like we praise you we praise you this is what living looks like this is what freedom feels like this is what heaven sounds like we this is what freedom feels like this is what healing sounds like we praise you we praise you this this is what freedom feels like this is what heaven sounds we praise you we pray we'll see you break down every the god of breakthroughs on our side forever you cannot survive when we praise him the god of breakthroughs on our side forever lives in heart with all creation cry god we praise you god is he worth come on you glad you came to church come on hallelujah can we just give him praise right now on this place come on hallelujah jesus we give him all the glory we give him all the praise that's why we're here amen it's for you lord it's for you jesus so we worship you come rest on us come rest on us as the spirit was moving over the water spirit can't move over us we see come rest on us we'll come rest on us we sing calm down spirit when you move you make my heart pound when you feel the room you're here and i know you are moving i'm here and i know you will feel me calm down spirit when you move you make my heart pound when you feel the roof you're here and i know come rest on us oh i'm here and i know you feel me oh i believe is holy spirit holy spirit in the world holy spirit holy spirit holy spirit when you move when you move oh we give you praise the lord together one last time in holy spirit you're all we want amen we lift you up lord thank you jesus spirit of worship in this place find me i'm desperate for you i'm just before you i surrendered i is speak to me i surrender i surrender i wanna know you i surrender i want to know lord me god is me oh oh oh i swear i wanna know you more is holy spirit lord we invite you in god we surrender to you god we lay ourselves down before you lord and we just ask that you would fill this place right now holy your glory god is your glory god is what our there's nothing worth more your best of the sweetest of us when my heart becomes free and my shame is holy spirit god is lord let us become more aware of your presence let us experience let us experience away good foreign god of creation here at the start before the beginning of time with no point of reference you spoke to the dark and fleshed out the wonder of a lie and as you speak the hundred billion galaxies are born amen you don't speak in vain no syllable empty your boy for once you ask for nature and science follow the sound of your voice and as you speak responding in pursuit of what you said you said creation still obeys you so alive through foreign in if you again he chased down my heart through the light of the world abandoned in darkness to die and as you speak 100 so i could find it every surrender so time billion times but one measure could amount to your desire you're the one who never the one behind we know it's true thank you so much for watching someone next to you say hello well good evening how are you tonight uh we interrupt our bible study for a very important guest usually a wednesday night is reserved for our expound through the bible we are going through first samuel but we have a guy here tonight that you're going to want to listen to you've ever ever heard of joel rosenberg quick show of hands how many of you ever have seen him i've ever heard him speak so that's that's a lot of you good so you're back you're back for more um before i introduce joel and we begin tonight i just want to let you know that we have a lot of fun activities fun opportunities coming up uh in the next week or so at the church and in town but next tuesday night at seven o'clock at the fairgrounds at expo new mexico franklin graham is going to be here bringing the pure simple gospel message as he has done for decades with him is going to be dennis echagenian with him is going to be the news boys are going to be there too and we um i just want to let you know that you've heard of this we've announced this but bring people with you come yourself but bring unsaved people with you you're going to want to not just hear him yourself and and get the flow of the evening yourself but you're going to want to let unbelievers hear that message because it is the gospel message alone that is the hope it's jesus christ alone that is the hope of this nation and of this world and we want to expose as many people to that as we can now um joel rosenberg is a very interesting person i've known him for many years now what you need to know if you don't already is he is a new york times best-selling author so you know to be an author is one thing you know to write a book is is not easy to be a best-selling author is another thing to be a new york times best-selling author over and over and over again is in like a league all of your own and uh that's the league that he is in um he has written if i'm not mis if i'm not mistaken 16 novels is that correct joel 16 or thereabouts so he doesn't even know himself he's written so many so 16 like political thriller novels and uh they have sold 15 million copies um and he's written a new book that we're going to kind of get into a little bit called enemies and allies let me just show that zoom in on that baby enemies and allies by joel rosenberg so you know if i can get a friend of mine to endorse one of my books i'm really happy the front endorsement on this book is former vice president mike pence so he gets those kind of people to endorse him and i'm just really glad he's here and i'm glad he's my friend would you please welcome our guest joel rosenberg joel you're back we're glad you are 15 years ago this month you and i and lenya met at a pf chang uh and then uh you had me come speak and it was the beginning of a very fun relationship just like the end of casablanca see it all comes back to the middle east and north africa i'm just going to let that lie around for a while just kind of let that simmer don't know what to say so joel we have just commemorated would be a better word than celebrate we have commemorated and remembered 20 years of the um horrific events that happened september 11 2001. i want you to take us back 20 years because um there's a number of things about that that i think are important first of all you wrote about that possibility before it actually happened you wrote about an airplane being hijacked and flown into an american city before 9 11 happen so take us take us back to 20 years ago what were you doing what were you thinking uh maybe even before then what you were writing sure well on in january of 2001 i began writing my first political thriller it was called the last jihad jihad is a term from the quran it means holy war and uh the first pages of those novels of that novel puts you inside the cockpit of a jet plane that's been hijacked by radical islamist terrorists and it's coming in on a kamikaze attack mission into an american city now there are differences for what really happened it was a gulfstream four business jet it wasn't a commercial airliner uh the city's denver colorado not new york or washington or pennsylvania but that's how the book begins and on the morning of september 11th i was finishing that novel which begins with that attack and then my fictional american president is waging war against radical islamist terror cells all across the middle east and then decides he needs to remove saddam hussein from power in iraq and that's the book i was in the final chapters of that book on the morning of september 11th in the townhouse where lynn and the boys and i were living at that time where at that moment flight 77 was being hijacked from dulles airport turned around flown over our house and into the pentagon and the book didn't come out until the next year so those who say i'm prophetic no if i was prophetic it would have come out the year before but there's no question that i even though i was writing a piece of entertainment it was based on this fear i had that if american leaders misunderstood the nature and threat of evil the evil of radical islamism that they could be blindsided that what israel faces every day in the middle east those forces were coming to the united states if american leadership didn't didn't understand it and take preventive actions and obviously it was too late you contend when you wrote that just back to that that you thought what if we took the threats uh from our enemies seriously what could happen and you you in writing the book at least took it seriously in a fictional stance but nonetheless you decided that um if all the threats leveled against america by some of these groups actually happened it might look like this do you feel like we as a nation did not take it seriously until that moment well i think that's self-evident right i mean look to misunderstand the nature and threat of evil is to be is to be is to risk being blindsided by it so we were blindsided on december 7th 1941 we didn't understand the threat of imperial japan uh and it was mixed in with some racism that we thought well even if they hate us there's a whole pacific between us and them there's no way the japanese can come get us and then you know came the day of infamy and obviously we were blindsided by saddam hussein's invasion on august 2nd 1990 of kuwait everybody said oh no he's just he's just saber-rattling he's trying to drive up the price of oil yeah he was massing hundreds of thousands of troops but everybody in washington was saying no he's just you know he's just flexing his muscles it's not going to really happen so and then 9 11. and if you look and if you read the 9 11 commission report which i have you know you you see all the data there it it it's it's eerily you know understandable this was coming and and and i would say this um we learned an awful lot because of what happened but the the conclusion of the 911 commission report was that the the the attacks of 9 11 were not so much a failure of intelligence because when you look and you see all that we actually did have we just weren't connecting the dots but it wasn't so much a failure of intelligence as of that of as of imagination we just couldn't imagine that people would turn a plane into a missile killing themselves and everyone in there and everyone in the target like that that was not something that our leadership thought was possible and my fear and one of the reasons i wrote enemies and allies is 20 years later al qaeda is not our most serious threat it's a it's a threat it's still out there um but the the iranian regime is the biggest threat and they don't want to simply take out towers they want to take out cities they want a second holocaust they want to take out all of israel that's what they've said israel's the little satan in their view and they want to wipe us off the map they're on the record and then but but but the united star israel is only the little satan in that equation in the in the view of the supreme leader of iran the united states is the great satan and they want to take out whole american cities and this you know once you understand why he wants that you begin to realize that no nuclear deal that you could negotiate with him is going to dissuade him from doing what he thinks is bringing about the end of days as we know it and his uh his savior and messiah and a global islamic caliphate or kingdom and that's uh but if you don't understand these things you run the risk of getting blindsided and this is uh a huge problem look we were blindsided by the the taliban leaders in washington didn't understand that you know you could be nice to them they don't want to be nice to us that's not the way they see the world they're not looking for our approval they believe that the wind is at their back that allah is on their side and this is they took down the soviet union the soviet empire in afghanistan in in the in the 70s or the 80s and now they've taken out the the great satan and it's open season now that's how they and all of their colleagues in the region see it so fast forward 20 years from september 11 2001 to now a lot of changes have happened in the middle east um not all negative some positive so kind of give us a rundown on some of those changes 20 years later okay so the the big the the good the bad and the ugly let's start with the ugly iran is the biggest threat not the people but the regime and barely even the regime as the supreme leader and his inner circle they are what i call apocalyptic islamists they want to bring about genocide to bring about their end-of-day scenario see you thought that christians were the only ones with an eschatology uh but we're not uh muslims have it too jews have it too but what he has the supreme leader has is a genocidal apocalypse right jesus said in matthew 24 14 this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations and then the end shall come so in other words our focus is on making sure everyone has at least heard that jesus is the king and the messiah and the only way to heaven and once everyone is at least heard then the lord will come back that's our objective his objective is to kill as many people as possible and then he believes the end of days and end of time will come that's the ugly the mere bad is that washington doesn't seem to understand it 20 years later some some in washington and in other capitals too so that's bad and then the good so yeah there's a lot of hope in this book you just have to maybe skip the first quarter and move i don't want you to skip it but if you can't you know it's too much to bear know that the hope builds as you go and we have four arab-israeli peace agreements normalization agreements just at the end of 2020. we haven't had a single arab israeli agreement uh in a quarter of a century a generation and now we've got four and i think more are coming we have uh arab leaders like president el-sisi in egypt has rescued his country from the reign of terror of the muslim brotherhood literally an arab muslim and his team removed a radical islamist terror regime from egypt the largest arab country in the world 100 million people that liberated them it was messy it was difficult it was painful but they did it on their own they didn't need the marines they didn't ask for the 82nd airborne division they did it on their own and then president el-sisi invited me to bring a delegation of evangelical christian leaders to get to know him and lo and behold what did he tell us right you were there he said he's rebuilt every church that the muslim brotherhood burned down destroyed damaged and he was rebuilt he was building the largest church cathedral in the history of the middle east and he wanted us to come back and be there as he handed it over as a gift to the christians of egypt on christmas eve as a as a present that's a muslim doing this that's not normal that sounds like a novel but it was true and we saw it come to pass okay so you just touched on christians in the middle east and they're they're that's the birthplace right of not just uh islam and judaism but christianity so how is the church doing in these regions well it's been a very dark 20 years if you just measure it from 9 11 to now we have seen war we have seen genocide uh the isis caliphate of course arose in iraq and in syria and and was literally designated uh branded by congress by the obama administration by the u.n as committing genocide against christians a liquidation of christians in those countries and even more muslims were being slaughtered than christians and another minority religious group called the yazidis they were being slaughtered how many people were being crucified they were being beheaded they were being burned in cages alive on youtube i mean it was just horrific uh egyptian christians were uh beheaded on the on the on the shores of uh the libyan desert libyan beaches um on the mediterranean uh so it's just been an ugly ugly season um i think it's unfortunately but i guess just to keep the hope the biblical perspective jesus warns us that the closer we get to his return right uh wars rumors of wars insurrections revolutions check check check check check you know natural disasters economic catastrophes the rebirth of israel but also the persecution of the christians and and of course apostasy and betrayal and we've seen all of it in the middle east and yet remember it's those are birth pangs right now lynn and i well lynn had four children like i you know i was there to i was there in the hospital with her i i'm not saying you know all the women i don't want to revolt okay but i'm just saying contract birth bangs that's the image jesus gives us and what he means is contraction and release right so you expect something really horrible and bad and painful and then i'll release and uh you know i remember my hand being held as i watched the monitor and i'm like no it's okay dear it's all about you and uh and it was but you know and then as you get closer to the moment that you want right you know that pain gets more and you have more less blood in your hand and you're in but you're you know but it's it's not you're not in the most pain so um he said straining the credulity of okay um as bad as it's been we're at the moment of a release in the middle east we're seeing peace break out we're seeing religious freedom being expanded christians are inviting or muslim leaders kings and crown princes are inviting a jewish evangelical israeli citizen with two kids that have served in the israeli army into their palaces for their first time in human history that's not normal that's release but what are we heading to we're heading to a worse set of contractions longer more painful and this will be the cycle until christ comes back for us wow wow that's a great answer you just you got us into a lot of eschatology there which i want to get back to but i want to i want to kind of throw you into the muddy waters here of something that recently happened how significant is america's pulling out of afghanistan recently as it has happened and having the same group at least ideologically the same group in charge what does that mean in terms of future terrorism being staged from there what do we have to worry about i don't want to be political but ezekiel 33 talks about being watchmen on the walls if you see danger coming to a nation you need to say it this is a catastrophe to surrender a country you've already won on the eve of 9 11 20th anniversary betraying all the blood sweat tears hard work sacrifice of all of our forces every man every woman who lost a life who laid down their life who who lost limbs who lost eyes who who invested because their country asked them to protect us and liberate that country and stabilize it for 20 years this is really really bad to leave americans behind enemy lines to leave our allies to leave the afghan citizens who some of them a whole generation grew up only knowing freedom messi though it was and it was stable it wasn't beautiful i've been to afghanistan i've met tribal muslim leaders i've met with afghan christians it's not like we liberated paris from the nazis and you're like oh it's paris let's let's have you know let's sit on the champs-elysees and have a cup of coffee and a and a baguette right it's afghanistan it's not pretty it's it's poor and it's troubled but it was stable americans weren't dying in recent years afghan troops were dying as they fought but anyway this is bad and it's bad because it's going to create a new vacuum a new wasteland that the terror groups can can settle in and use as as launching pads against us and our allies but it's worse because it shows american surrender and it has emboldened our enemies and it's rattling our allies right at the moment when we had you know we were going the other direction we were strengthening our allies and and putting the fear of god in our enemies over the last several years and now it's all been flipped for generations people have talked about or for decades i should say people have talked about we got to get out of afghanistan year after year administration after administration do you think we should have stayed um yes but i don't mean with a hundred thousand soldiers i mean uh you know so again i'm not trying to be partisan because i i have a lot of criticisms of president of donald trump as he was running i just put my cards on the table i was a never trumper right i wrote 38 reasons he would be a catastrophe for the country and you told him this in the oval office well that's true that's another story let's just say for just for that point um how often skip do you think that the term never trumper was used with president trump in the oval office because judging from the look in his eye not that often not that often um but unlike some of my uh never trumper friends i believe in looking at a at a person as a leader and seeing what are they doing right what are they doing wrong if they need to be criticized for wrong things do it respectfully but don't hold your tongue unless the lord tells you but if they're doing something right you have to give them credit uh give them credit where credit is due honor where honors do this is what paul says to the church at rome so i saw trump doing a lot of things i didn't expect him to do he was keeping promises i didn't expect him to make or to keep and he was having successes that i didn't see now it was messy okay it was messy i wasn't a fan of the 4 a.m tweet storms against republicans instead of maybe against putin or you know the iranians but you're in favor of an embassy in jerusalem i was i was and and and i talked to him about that i told him why i had been a never trumper and i told him why i was no longer that and all this list of things that he was doing right but it was interesting and my point is president trump wanted to pull all of our forces out of afghanistan from day one of his presidency but but he did listen to his generals he listened to pompeo he listened to pence who told them if you pull the jenga stick out at the wrong moment the wrong time you've all played what happens it collapses mr president you don't want to be the guy that just pulls out a gender stick just because it seems like just because you're tired of of the of this of the fight and he listened and he drew down cautiously and then he would stop and he would assess and it was going well i didn't agree with his desire to pull all forces out because i felt a stabilizing force 2500 people 7 500 nato forces was bolstering and giving confidence to this this young and still struggling to get their their sea legs there's no c anywhere near them but the afghan army but look at what happened when you pull us out they got they freaked out and they lost their nerve and everything collapsed and you know to the president trump's credit he didn't actually do that um and because he was measured and and i think he just i again i disagree with his his objective why we still have forces in germany uh in south korea in japan it's been a long time since world war ii or the korean war but why because they're stabilizing forces and the rapid reaction forces if you need them and they've been there forever and they give courage to the local government i think that's was the right way to go but nobody asked okay you put a thought on my head when you talked about telling him that you were a never trumper so when you were in the white house and you are introduced as joel rosenberg take us through that conversation well i had had lunch with vice president pence he and karen have been friends for many years back to when he was in the house of representatives he and his wife were friends you know they were readers of my novels so that's how we got to know each other and when he became vice president i used to bring him his and her copies because of the new novels because he was always telling me that well i haven't read your book yet because karen you know came to the house the governor's mansion whatever and karen took off with it i said you got a lot of problems mike vice president um i'm gonna bring you two books every time and anyway that was good so we were having lunch to talk about all these meetings you and i and others were having with these high level arab leaders because he and the president were finalizing the the middle east peace strategy and they were looking for nuances what are we missing what should be in the strategy okay and i described this in the book but then he said at the end of lunch hey would you like to be the president or have you ever met the president i'm like i think we know each other well enough to know no i've been kept a long way away so uh he goes come with me so we walk through the west wing and we open the door and we're in the we're in the oval office now i have written so many scenes in that room i'd never been there i lived in washington dc for 24 years but i was always on the wrong side of whoever was in office um you laugh but it wasn't your resume you would so the first person i see is mike pompeo the secretary of state he'd been a longtime friend and a fan and reader of the novels good grit is good to see him the next person i saw was john bolton the national security advisor he was a friend for a long time doesn't read the novels but that's unconditional love skip you don't you can't expect everybody to read them and then pence introduced me to the president so we we sat down and honestly it was bizarre president trump is behind the resolute desk i'm sitting directly across from him pence pompeo i should have been thinking of some profound thing to say but what i was thinking was the little sesame street ditty i'd grown up with one of these things is not like the other one of these things just doesn't belong like what am i doing here it's unbelievable so trump said did you sing that i didn't i didn't it was an internal monologue that's good internal only i fortunately i have some regulator at 54 years old anyway he says uh so tell me a little bit about yourself joel and i'm like uh you know like marcia brady on the you know with the nevermind it's a long half this audience doesn't even know who marsha brady was anyway but the other half is getting it yeah so we are the point is i didn't know what to say i hadn't been on the schedule to meet with him but he said wait wait wait wait and he turns back to pence and he says mike did you just call joel and an evangelical as you were introducing him yes mr president joel are you an evangelical yes mr president but your name is rosenberg isn't that jewish i said yes mr president my father's side is jewish my mom's not well how can you be jewish and believe in jesus and i was like lord you've got to be kidding me that's the first question in the oval office for the first time i'm going to explain to president trump how to be a jewish follower of jesus get out that's a seinfeld reference okay we're moving on that was very exciting and whatever we talked about from that point four was very fun no we talked about the middle east and all but it was it was pretty cool oh and one other thing my new book at the time was the persian gamble and he said give me the elevator pitch on uh persian gamble and i said okay uh what if the iranians take the 150 billion dollars that your predecessor gave to them for the iran nuclear deal and they go shopping in north korea to buy six fully operational nuclear warheads and then try to get them back to iran without nobody noticing and he goes oh well that's scary i said well yeah that yeah and and he looks out the window into the rose garden for a moment everything's quiet then he turns back he goes how do you know they're not trying to do that already i said well mr president i'm counting on you and the men in this room to make sure my books never come true i mean come on that is beautiful joel i want you to do yeoman's task here i want you to explain to us islam in a nutshell because it's not homogeneous there's not just one belief system it's divided into two branches but then it's fractured even from there so okay 1.8 billion muslims okay they're divided into two houses uh the house and the senate no uh they're divided into this the sunnis that's the majority about 80 or so and then the shias that's about 15 to 20 percent now the sunnis believe that the authority aft the authority spiritually for islam after muhammad died devolved or transferred to the disciples that were around muhammad and that they were in charge of carrying out and building upon his you know his legacy the shias the minority sect said no no no no you have to be a blood relative of muhammad this is a special person and and so they had a series of imams the first imam the second imam the 12th goes up to the 12th and the first imam was actually a blood relative but married also the daughter of muhammad so ali so this is the split and sunnis think that the shias are heretics and the shias think that the sunnis are heretics and that's the that's the broad definition i will just say one other thing on that and that is uh there's been a lot of polling and a lot of study of what muslims think over the years and i've studied a great deal of this 90 percent of muslims in these polls consistently no matter how you ask it don't believe in using violence to achieve their political and religious objectives okay and but those who do are about seven to ten percent okay that's what we call radical islamism okay and you say well okay so the vast majority of muslims are not violent exactly but the problem is that ten percent may not use violence themselves but they support it and that's the pool that you would recruit from and 10 of 1.8 billion is 180 million now if you put them all in their own country the islamic republic of radical stand for example it would be the ninth largest country on the planet larger than russia and so this is what this is why the threat is so big yeah it's not the majority by any stretch of muslims but it's a big universe i want you to say that again because that was significant because most people that you talk to you engage in this conversation they will say yeah but it's a it's a small minority of muslims that believe that it is but that small minority is a big number 180 million wow there abouts and so this is the this is the pool from which hamas and islamic jihad and muslim brotherhood and and the taliban and al qaeda and isis and all these terrorist groups this is the group that they're that they're they're recruiting from that's why you're thinking why have we been in afghanistan for 20 years like didn't we win like in month one yes but this is a problem they they keep coming they keep coming and and so it wasn't like you defeated the nazis and then they were in uniforms and you destroyed their supply lines and you destroyed them enough and then they gave up and the leader killed himself and that's not what happened just more and more and more and no matter how many we arrested imprisoned or killed they've just kept coming and that's why you can't get exhausted you know they're they're trying to wait us out and as i describe in the book they have long time horizons but when you have leadership in any country particularly the world's only superpower going we're tired we're done we don't want to play that game anymore well that wishing doesn't make it so yeah um joel back to september 11th 20 years ago 15 of the 17 hijackers i believe 15 of the 19 of the 19 for saudi arabia from saudi arabia that country has radically changed or at least is changing could you kind of bring us up to speed in with that country in particular sure well i don't think there's any country more hated uh on 912 than saudi arabia now there's no evidence that i've seen that says that the government actually wasn't was trying to do this but were saudi nationals doing this yes osama bin laden saudi right 15 of the 19 hijackers saudi now they weren't living in saudi arabia at the time they they were on the run the saudi government was trying to capture them but still still um that's that's that's what we have imprinted and the culture that they came out of was very radicalized so even though the government was saying wasn't saying go blow up americans they were just trying to sell us oil but they were funding mosques and and clerics and schools that were that were deeply anti-american anti-christian anti-semitic anti-israel and that was a huge problem and all that oil money was funding this type of thinking and teaching all over the planet but saudi arabia is undergoing a tectonic change of thinking of attitude of of desire for direction and partly that's generational right the current crown prince of mohammed bin salman is is certainly the most complicated and consequential leader in the arab world but he's also the most controversial but we sat together and we asked him where were you on 9 11. we thought that'd be an interesting question that we happened to be sitting with him on september 10th of september uh of 2019. that was our second trip to uh the kingdom at his invitation that was kind of amazing again first evangelical delegation first christian delegation ever invited to meet with the leaders of saudi arabia in the 300 years that the saud family has controlled the peninsula then that was november of 2018 and then they didn't hate us they asked us to come back to keep the conversation going at the highest levels the crown prince and his inner circle all that to say we sat with him on 9 10 in 2019 and said where were you 20 you know or whatever it was uh 19 years ago tomorrow or 18 years ago tomorrow and he said i was 16 years old my father was the governor of the riyadh city and province the capital of of saudi arabia and my mother was watching television and she started yelling for us to come running to the television and we saw what was happening and he said instantly and i described this in the book instantly i just thought oh my gosh islam is defamed forever you i will never be able to travel and admit that i'm a muslim wow this was humiliating he said for him and his brothers and cousins and everybody and then as the in the days that emerged where everybody knew it was bin laden and so many saudis involved and he thought i'll never be able to travel none of us will ever be able to travel and admit that we're saudis admit that we're arabs admit that we're muslims and it created anger deep anger and i won't use the language though tyndale my publisher let me quote him precisely you were there he said i'm gonna we my cousins and i we decided to grow up and kick the tails of these people like we are not going to put up with this we are going to when we grow up we're going to change everything both in terms of fighting these types of extremist radicals but also changing a society that he didn't want to be a part of uh no movie theaters no concerts if you were a saudi who had money which was basically everybody and you wanted to go to a movie theater the amc to watch you know mission impossible or whatever where were you going you were going to dubai in the united arab emirates you were flying to london if you wanted to see a play you had to leave the country wanted to see a concert you had to leave the country and he said this is just crazy what the radicals have done to my country no no we're going to change this when i get when i grow up we're going to change this and he is changing it at breakneck pace now he's made some huge mistakes as well and he that's why he's so controversial but it's a fascinating story i think i spend more time on what's happening in saudi arabia in this book than anybody else and and there are literally biographies written about mbs in recent years where the reporters have never met him and they've never talked to him and they've never interviewed him and they've certainly never interviewed him on the record right two wall street journal reporters did an entire biography never met him a new york times reporter never met him a senior cia analyst focused on saudi arabia's entire career never met him this is the only book that exists where he let us talk to him for two hours on the record and put it's in the book and then invited us back and that two-hour conversation was off the record but i went back to the crown prince's office while i was writing i said here's the transcript of our conversation if i'd like you to put all of it on the record but uh let me know and that section specifically on on the 911 had been off the record but um they uh they called me after the deadline and they said his office said yes you can put this whole section on and so in it's a fast you love him or hate him look you're going to meet one of the most consequential people in the entire world an entire arab world and i'll tell you one other thing because this has become a whole sermon and i didn't expect that but i will say he told us on the record in our first trip the supreme leader of iran is quote the new hitler unquote this is a guy who gets the threats in his neighborhood not everybody in our country does wow yeah joel first of all you're a great author you're a good writer and usually i'm just making things up in this case it's no it's just it deserves applause yeah i mean you listen you're you're a great fiction writer but i gotta say and i've talked to some uh people who've read all your books who have said this is the best book you've ever written most consequential book you've ever written um you take us into meetings with heads of state mbs muhammad bin zayed of the uae who told us you were there two years before uh before the he made peace with israel with the abraham accords he told us he was going to do it we're like what but that was off the record at the time we couldn't come out and say you know another arab country is going to make peace the first and a quarter of a century but then he did and then they let us tell the backstory of the inside story again the only book that tells the story yes so you so the abraham accords you knew that was coming we knew that was coming because he said that's what i'm aiming at right yeah so um you you meet al-sisi of egypt uh king abdul of jordan they they've divulged to you joel rosenberg some pretty substantive information and and decisions why do you think you keep getting invited to these places and that they want to kind of spill their soul in a sense or or in ingratiate themselves to you why don't look like oprah right so why would they yeah it's a good question yeah why would you want to as an arab muslim monarch or you know president why would you tell what you think so honestly to no new york times reporter no wall street journal washington post but to a jewish evangelical israeli zionist it's a good question well you know it starts with king abdullah in jordan okay because several years ago i wrote a trilogy of knowledge novels about people trying to assassinate king abdullah isis in fact was the terror group that nobody had actually heard of when i wrote about it but two cia directors said this is a thing you should think about this and you should write about it before anybody knows about it okay president obama at the time was calling isis a jv squad but these two former cia directors said no no no they're the real this is serious so i wrote a novel about isis trying to assassinate king abdullah by name i made him an actual character in the book like i live right across the river from him like that didn't that's not a good they're trying to kill his wife they're trying to kill his children they try they blow up his palace and they they try to take over the kingdom of jordan so that i wrote this series and lo and behold one of his advisors actually read the book saw it in a bookstore in heathrow london at the airport picked it up sat down was flying to washington to meet the king because the king was going to meet president obama starts reading the book like oh my gosh like oh no what this is crazy and when he gets to washington he goes to meet with the king and he says your majesty you have to read this book why because you're in it what do you mean i'm in it it looks like a novel i know but you're a character what do you mean i'm a character well just read it it doesn't go well um so what happened is president obama for some reason i really don't understand it to this day and but i tell the story of the book canceled his meeting with king abdullah ii when the king was already in washington and the press knew he was there and he had other meetings he couldn't just dash off or slip out but suddenly he had two days on his hands with nothing to do he read the book and then he asked this guy hey who is this rosenberg guy because i don't know we'll google him i mean you're in the intelligence business can't you figure it out like and the next thing i knew lynn and i were being invited to come to amman for five days to meet with the king and his inner circle and that set into motion a whole new life because like we we have a few moments to tell the story so so this is interesting and because again this is the first of any of these stories and and so they they we landed in amman they put us in a hotel and they said you've got a meeting for lunch okay it was not it just had lunch on the schedule it didn't say but we started driving through the streets and i leaned over to lynn and i said you know it's funny this route looks like the route that my character takes when the jordanian intelligence takes him to meet the king and almost just as i say this we come up over ridge and there's the palace and the gates are open and all the soldiers are and we're just driving in and they take us into the past we didn't know we had lunch planned with him we were gonna go to you know chick-fil-a or you know no they don't have chick-fil-a there they have kentucky fried chicken but whatever and uh so we end up sitting down with him and have lunch it's just him the adviser that gave him the book lynn and me um again the sesame street did he starts going through mine so he says joel i was i was i was thinking where would it be fun to meet you for the first time he said well you did blow up my palace so uh thought we'd give you a little tour you know we don't want this to happen no i said i and i i got all flustered i said your honor we really don't i mean your majesty i you know i didn't know how to address him and he said uh now i noticed joel that you made me a character by name i said yeah i know and i that was i didn't mean any disrespect he goes no no no you wouldn't be here if i didn't see where you're going with it but but my staff and my advisors they you've given them all fictional names so i said but i can see who's who so i bought a bunch of your books and i give them to my staff and i say here this is you on page 47. you don't make it through the terror attack you might want to you know read that you know who knew he had a sense of humor really great now remember this is a 43rd generation direct descendant of the prophet muhammad that's you know and here we are and after lunch he says well listen i would love to keep talking this is fascinating but i have a military exercise a live fire military exercise this afternoon and it was supposed to be last week when vice president biden was coming to visit me but when the secret service learned that we were using real missiles and bullets to practice taking an isis town they're like i don't think that's going to be a good idea so we rescheduled it for this morning or this afternoon now it's not i didn't reschedule it for you but now you're here and i thought maybe you and lynn would like to go and see this exercise wow now my my wise acre personality's like you know we were gonna go shopping we were gonna take a dip in the pool no i didn't i didn't i was on my best behavior i didn't say that i said sure and he said great well i'm gonna put you in a helicopter and and fly you guys out there i've got to go home and change he said and then i'll i'll meet you there okay now i said oh but but your majesty one thing before we go you read the second book in actually in the trilogy so i brought you some copies of the first book it's in my briefcase out in the other room oh yeah i'd love to have him i said can i just show you the first sentence of the first page of the series he said sure and i showed him the sentence the whole series begins with this sentence i had never met a king before that's how the book starts and he laughs and he pulls out a pen he goes well you have now so the last night he invited me to a private dinner at his private palace with just a couple of his personal friends and we had two and a half hours together she was talking about all kinds of things but the first thing he said was you know i just want to apologize because the uh the queen couldn't make it tonight and i'm thinking i'm in a disney movie i'm in a palace with a queen i mean with the king the queen's not there you know there must be some ball there must be she's looking for glass slippers i don't know but it's just not my normal life and he goes well you know we got a big day tomorrow we've got i got the the un uh secretary general is coming into town and he's bringing the head of the world bank i said well that's yeah that's a very busy day yes i have some of those myself he said i got the turkish prime minister coming in a few hours after that that's gonna be a whole thing we've got an issue with them and the bulgarian foreign minister is coming in a few hours after that and i'm thinking you know why are you with me but i didn't say it but then he said but we just got this call that bono the rock star is just landed at the airport and he wants to go see one of the refugee camps and the queen felt badly for him so she's having a little dinner party for bonnie that's so nice i'm thinking why aren't you with bono i mean why what are you doing with me but it was a fascinating conversation capped off our trip and at the end i said you know i think we've learned so much and our respect for you has grown and i'm just wondering i would think that a lot there would be american christian leaders who would have so much interest even they love israel but they would have so much interest and i think they ought to understand the perspective of an arab monarch who has made peace with israel but doesn't see the world the same way as israel or even as america would you be open to that he said yes that'd be great why don't we put together an even juggle delegation together and that was what set into motion these last several years of six different delegations like this wow wow wow in all of these places and with all of these conversations whether it's with the president in the white house or it's these leaders overseas in a diplomatic way you are able to share your faith or what you believe in and it's received it's well respected i mean well usually i bring you to do that but i appreciate it you don't shy away from it and and and it goes well and they become friends of yours and they invite you back um that's a real that's a gift to be able to do that's like daniel in the old testament to be able to to represent our god so effectively and to have have the the year of world leaders is it's pretty amazing well i appreciate it i i look yeah i i appreciate it but it you know you know me well enough to know that there's really no reason for this except the sovereignty of god i mean we've been praying for our neighbors as we moved to israel became citizen we've been praying for the kings and all those in authority because the bible tells us to we've been praying for open doors to get to know these nations and these leaders and and god has really dramatically opened these doors to build these friendships i believe as i know you do because i see it in your life in lenia's life that every person in the world regardless of what they believe they they deserve having a friend who knows and loves jesus and and we think about that in terms of the poor and we think about that of the power last but it's also true of the powerful and it's also true of the rich that they need somebody who loves jesus in their life now it is harder for them to come to faith because they don't feel that they have need right but they still you know paul was told god spoke to ananias to tell paul your mission and you don't have any choice to accept it or not it wasn't a you know possible movie you're going to go and be my witness to the to gentiles kings and the sons of israel that's interesting i think we often skip over that we think of jews and gentiles but right in the middle of that is kings why kings now paul usually did it in chains so it was a little bit different we had motorcades and uh that was fun but um you know a little bit different but if the door opens and you've been praying for it shouldn't you go through it but sometimes it's very controversial yeah back to this book joel enemies and allies who are our enemies who are our allies um because when you talk about enemies of israel it's not like you have just one here and one there they kind of banded together they formed an alliance which makes it even more dangerous yeah that's true um well i i'm thinking of this both from first and foremost from the american perspective who are american enemies and who are american allies certainly i'm thinking of this from israel's perspective i mean after all if if iran's supreme leader sees israel as the little satan and the united states is the great satan i have now branded a bull's-eye on my chest and on my back right by being a dual citizen um but what's interesting is the arab nations increasingly see the enemies the same way that israel does and and the same way that at least the previous administration sees it in the united states the the forces of radical islamism are an apocalyptic islamism are our most serious allies or enemies rather in the middle east now what's interesting is 20 some years of israeli and cia efforts to thwart iran from getting actual fully operational nuclear warheads has been successful they are dangerously closed possibly within months now of getting there but they haven't gotten there yet because of a lot of creative efforts like i wouldn't recommend being a life insurance agent for a nuclear scientist in iran like it's not a good job like you're gonna have a lot of claims and be and so it's it's a thing they these these guys disappear they they they wind up dead and they wind up uh so it's not a good profession to be an iranian nuclear scientist uh or a terror leader because they just don't survive they don't know their life expectancy not so long and so that's why iran hasn't gotten the bomb yet okay but what have they done and i describe this in the book they are building alliances with countries that already have nuclear weapons and the missiles that deliver them russia china north korea and increasingly iran is building an alliance with turkey turkey which is a nato ally and is now shifting under its new leader erdogan to the dark side and is now buying weapon systems from russia even though they're supposed to be a nato american ally so so some people are crossing lines and um so these are the these are the challenges and and and that has some prophetic implications and overtones as well i don't know that we'll have time to get into it tonight but i'll just say in the book towards the end i say well what do evangelicals believe about the future of the middle east and of course not all evangelicals see the bible exactly the same way but i i give sort of thumbnail sketches of ezekiel 38 and 39 for example where a russian dictator is going to form an alliance with an iranian dictator and a turkish dictator and a libyan dictator and a number of others to come against israel in the last days of history now are we there yet no no i wouldn't say that i i'm more conservative about that do the chess pieces seem like they're being aligned on the board in such a way that's shockingly eerily consistent with that prophecy yes i would say it feels that way is vladimir putin gog i think it's too early to draw that conclusion is he gog-esque yes yes he could be cast in the movie if he you know if we were casting for that role i mean so it's something to watch closely and um but it's very very dangerous it i don't think we're for all of our efforts for the last 20 years i think we're in a more dangerous position today even though we're in a release moment but but another contraction is coming and it's going to be it's going to be brutal this book is available we have several copies signed by joel by the way many of them they're going to be for sale i believe but you get the ones without because the the signature devalues it actually and when you try to sell it on ebay you're not going to be selling it on an ebay i'll get you an unsigned okay so they're available i think they're are they in the foyer is that where they're at yes in the foyer they're they're for sale we have a good stock of them but before you go um joel you do a service to the church by not just writing books like this and others but you have a news source called all israel news and all arab news i think everybody if they want to know what's going on from a christian perspective from an evangelical perspective you want to know what's happening in the world in the middle east you have a very great service tell us about that well i appreciate it um it's a non-profit so uh actually skip serves on our board as we help set up this thing because we feel like there's so much media bias related to israel and related to what's going on in the middle east so many of the stories i tell really ought to have been reported and made a big deal by the mainstream media you just barely even hear about it and it's not just what actually happens it's what is that event or that trend what does it mean and how do we pray about it that's something that all israel news and all arab news does we have exclusive interviews original reporting um and we also link to the credible stories every day that we think yeah these these are other reporters but we think they're doing a good job and this is a story that everybody's talking about in the region so i hope that's useful for you and i also encourage you to sign up for our free email newsletter so the the headlines just get sent directly to you i mean obviously we want you to keep coming back but you can just click you can just scan that every day if you want or if you one really draws your interest you can click on it and goes right to those stories we have advertising on the site but it's pretty limited because we we're a non-profit and we what we want is to provide you with essentially one-stop shopping uh of everything related to israel and the region now you say but you how can it be one-stop shopping if there's two sites well they're cross-linked and the reason is this very quickly because of our arab uh allies and contacts and sources and friends both in the muslim world but also arab christians some of them are just not ready to be quoted cited linked to all israel news it's just a bridge too far for them so out of respect for them we built out um the all arab site both of them are fascinating we consider them like two sections of your you know your daily paper and i hope they will be helpful uh we want to be your uh your one stop shopping source as it were joel rosenberg thank you for coming tonight thank you it's an honor i appreciate it i know you're busy and i know you're traveling to a lot of places and meeting all sorts of people important people thank you for stopping in albuquerque and before we close tonight i'm going to have the worship team come back up would you lead us in prayer sure thank you father thank you so much that you you tell us in the scriptures to pray for kings and those in authority and uh when we do that you answer those prayers you you tell us to pray for open doors and sometimes you open up doors we just well some of them we were praying for but some of them they just blow us away lord help us to all pray more faithfully and think bigger in how we pray not because it's going to accrue to some benefit for us but because we can be a witness yes gentiles to kings to the sons of israel let us trust you that you're a big god and you love to do big things and and even if it's small in our life just opening the door to talk to our best friend uh that has never wanted to talk about jesus or never wanted to look at the scriptures or come to church that's a big deal in many of our lives our parents our our kids who don't want to talk about you we pray for open doors there as well where do i pray for all of these leaders that we described here tonight that you would have mercy on them and their families be gracious to them lord may we have been a good witness to them may this book be interesting to them as they read the book and i just pray that this congregation would would truly remain excited about what you're doing in this world yes darkness is falling but you're on the move your spirit's on the move more muslims and more jews are are reconciling to each other and more muslims and more jews are considering the claims of the gospel of jesus christ and even coming to faith in jesus christ than ever before and lord help us to use this release moment wisely because we know more contractions are coming we ask these things in the name of our great king and our savior our god who's coming soon the name of our lord and savior jesus christ amen amen amen let's all stand would you sing this with us we'll see you break we'll see you break down every word watch the giants fall oh fear cannot survive when we praise you the god of breakthroughs survive when we praise you the god of breakthroughs on our side forever lived in eyes with all creation cry god we praise you we praise you well thank you so much for joining us don't forget we've got books available in the foyer and we'll see you this sunday you

Channel: Calvary Church with Skip Heitzig

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Length: 105min 45sec (6345 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 22 2021