How Islam Led Me Back to Christ w/ Charbel Raish

all right we're live we are live right now with char bell g'day g'day first i don't know is this the first time i've had an aussie on my show i don't know why you don't know i haven't watched every single show but i i don't know possibly i'm sorry yeah i've got to catch up i don't know actually if there's ever been an australian on the show you don't remember neil do you i mean i've been on the show i feel like cameron i don't know if there was a priest that was from australia that's great whenever i'm around bishop strickland oh that's true his mother was half aussie i think his mother was an aussie from the same suburb as where i grew up was he yeah what do you mean was he was he do you know what that is 12th man doesn't matter um yeah whenever i'm around australians i realize how non-australian i sound yeah do you notice that about me when i see you like that it's a bit what happened like matthew kelly's accent it's a it's this warped accent it's a merger is that what i have no you're still more aussie than american but but it's not a hundred pure yeah i got to get back to it yeah my theory is that you come over to america you first enjoy the uh the attention you get from your accent from the ladies at the checkout counter things like that um but then you get tired of being misunderstood and so you start kind of giving your words more like giving in yeah that's right but uh so maybe by the end of this episode i'm gonna sound super australian again awesome and you have brought australian lollies yeah absolutely some favorites here minties minty's have these famous cartoons on it moments like these you need minties yes um cherry ripe of course ah that's classic my favorites um i got caramel koalas yep good and tinted [Music] this is the greatest chocolate did you have one yet wasn't it good it was unreal why why is it that american chocolate sucks so badly i don't want to offend anyone so i can't go it's just it's terrible i pro i'm glad i live in america i would rather live here honestly than in australia so there you go i like your country more but your chocolate sucks yeah we have to and can i throw one more thing out there the coffee you don't like the coffee here it's different uh yeah you know australia we become coffee snubs now so that's right you get an espresso and then you have um full milk right yeah so if you have a latte or cappuccino it's like it's as good as italy now yeah yeah and now everything every cafe so we don't have those sort of pots there yeah they sit there all day how old are you i'm 40. i'm 39 just a couple of days ago there you go i'll be 41. so that's cool third of august so we probably have a similar experience of growing up i don't know what it's like in sydney that we grew up sydney yep so i was born in sydney grove and south australia oh okay my dad was in the navy so they were from south australia but dad was stationed in sydney so they were living there i was born in [Music] eastwood eastwood yeah you know that's not too far from where i live now and uh but anyway i grew up and coffee the only coffee we had was instant coffee was that like that in sydney yeah that's right in in the 80s and even early 90s it was all instantly wasn't good i think tea was still strong i think we had that british influence but then by by the 2000s it started to come in and cafe culture victoria sort of led the way melbourne they perfected it yep then sydney followed and uh and now i think everywhere you go you can get a fresh freshly brewed espresso yeah just yeah it's funny my mate todd visited me from canada and he just wanted to drip coffee you know like we have in america here like just drip coffee but all you can get there is like espresso and they add hot water yeah do they call it americanos in australia uh they're americanas yeah yeah yeah yeah i heard that they were called americanos because the americans kept wanting drip coffee in italy and so it was kind of like espresso add hot water for the americans but we have the flat white as well which is basically uh a latte without the froth on the top okay it's just the same thing so a flat white a latte and a cappuccino are made the same they're just finished off differently okay so you love your coffee yeah i do i have a couple a day yeah that's it yeah too i did have like uh amateur yeah i know i had about four a day it's weird when i was a i used to teach in uh pe pd hpe phys ed as they call it um and i never drank coffee but then when i when i went into religion and started teaching religion wearing a suit and a tie and being in the office i just started with tea and then instant coffee and then eventually yeah the rest is history i've become a regular so what do you drink if you go to a flat white flower yeah i like a flat white i just need mine black so black interesting if i get a cup of coffee and i can see the cup through the top of the layer of coffee the black coffee i'm sad like it needs to be oh you have to have the turkish coffee that's what i drink turkish coffee you help me with that yeah that's pretty good stuff turkish coffee or that italian stovetop yeah percolator do you think that's good too yeah that's that's pretty good good yeah pints with aquinas everybody it's uh this is the content you've come for so what are you doing in the states i've come to uh join deakin harold actually at the catholic marketing network are going to launch a new software really christian marketing solution so yeah cmsunlimited.com it's a platform to help influencers uh grow their audience and says unlimited email unlimited social media posts uh unlimited landing pages wow marketing campaigns it's it's very it's dummy proof so to speak so there's no bells and whistles this is very simple but it should be simple enough for a priest or a youth worker to be able to pick it up and and run with so we're launching on monday okay yeah so when you say social media posts who's doing the social media posts well anyone well anyone it's it's dummy proof so it's got templates in there you can just basically swap out the images yep and it will auto post to whatever page you are managed so if you have multiple facebook pages it will auto post a bit like hootsuite yeah and then twitter instagram whatsapp uh text messaging it's all in the same portal so it's uh you've created this software yeah it was actually uh uh yeah uh white labeled uh it was so this this jewish owner uh done it it's a great guide uh jared and about thirty thousand businesses used it and then is uh a kelly i'm so sorry kelly i don't know your last name but kelly um had this idea to um white label it uh for catholics or christians and then um and and and didn't really launch it at its peak i think that the pandemic started at the time and deacon howard got involved and then taken deacon has now taken on and we've partnered with him yes and uh yeah so it's basically a an out-of-the-box marketing tool cool so get ready and the great thing is deacon harold owns the code and so you're not going to be cancelled um and and it's going to be constantly being developed uh with within with investors in you know spending money to develop well this is the first time i'm hearing about it so what's what's the url cmsunlimited.com fantastic because it's unlimited um email addresses unlimited database unlimited tagging unlimited social media posts emails all that so much that's fantastic are you giving your are you talking in the states are you i was on catholic answers um focus yesterday in san diego with psy and then just a little segment promoting a pilgrimage coming up with tim staples uh on catholic answers live yesterday so i was with carlo broussard yeah and i stayed at the yeah the staples place yesterday which is nice and then in la with reuben kazada the author of the book uh for greater glory as a companion to the movie for greater glory yeah he's an expert in that whole christiana warren yeah he was our first international speaker in australia this year we had our first international event in three years and he was a and he kick-started it which is great so so you run an apostolate called a parousia media that's right and yeah real quickly what's that it's basically a catholic uh evangelization of faith formation apostolate so think of your old uh saint joseph lighthouse catholic media augustine institute catholic answers ascension press you know all those guys ignatius press rolled in one with the podcasting and vlogging and all that and events so yeah i love it yeah the first time i heard of you was when i was working at catholic answers so you were there on gillespie way so i used you used to work there yes and you would hire or you would get speakers from america to come down and that's right yeah so you're still doing that still doing it i mean during the the lockdowns yeah that stopped completely but this year we're back again so we're trying what was that like after lockdowns it was so good we had a fundraiser dinner and it was at a in the olympic park so we're in sydney um homebush bay where the 2000 olympics were so there was a formal uh restaurant there and uh it was beautiful water view 350 people were there packed out room and we couldn't get people to sit down and quiet because they just wanted to mingle they just wanted to chat yeah because it was almost like releasing everyone out of the cage and yeah and and we're just the night was more about meeting each other than anything else and then it was a celebration i think and we're able to just you know promote what we're what we did in the pandemic because funny enough as as tough as it was uh god blessed our ministry in other ways so yeah i'll explain that at some point but um yeah we're here and now we can finally open up face to face and yeah i can't wait to bring on more so october we're going to have tim staples come down under and uh deacon harold as well so we're excited about it and do you find that having americans give these presentations is that a is that a hindrance to them in some way or do you find it magnifies the message it does help um yet a prophet's not a prophet in his own home as you know as we've heard and so which is why i've never been here um but it's weird when a guest comes there's there's this urgency like they're only here for a week let's get out there and see him yeah and the american approach is it's quite dynamic it's quite um engaging um yeah and and i think finding the key speakers it's not just any american it's it's those who can communicate the message uh really effectively uh you know they're a little bit entertaining they can they can engage with different age groups they're faithful i mean they've got to be you know faithful to the magisterium and and they have they're just cool to be around you know so they're just normal outgoing yeah like tim staples is yeah just a firecracker absolutely because he did my interview for catholic answers and so i met him for the first time having listened to him on catholic answers live and listening and watching his debates and i met him and i thought there's no way this guy's like this all the time like it's just it's too intense it's too passionate but he was i was there for three years and he was like that every day just he doesn't let anything slip i mean he's um razor sharp when he comes down he'll just pick any heresy out and yeah it just deals with it it's just amazing he's got a great he kick-started our live events with parousia in australia in 2009 he came out and that that really set us up um with events and that's how we got our reputation thanks to tim kick-starting that back then what um like i think there's different different parts in america call for different types of apologetics you know uh in some places kind of like theistic apologetics would be more called for maybe uh evangelizing say muslims or whatever atheist protestants but what's it like in australia well it's a i mean so sydney i mean the main hubs it's a melting pot of all cultures right so in particular suburbs so where i grew up it would have been muslim apologetics but then you go say uh i'm now in the bible belt where hillsong is and so then there's a lot of he called the bible the bible belt of northwest sydney that's where hillsong is that they're in uh balkan hills and the fact the first hillsong church was there and now it's a mega church and yeah and and i drive past it regularly and uh i think that's that's a great opportunity there um but then sadly the census came out two weeks ago and the nuns the n-o-n-e-s are now 40 of australia 40 of australians have said they don't belong to any religion which in fact is probably uh finally they've told the truth because i think for a long time we thought that christians were the majority and scraped it i think it's 49 now christians that's a combination of all denominations but how many of them are practicing 10 10 less than 10 catholics practice that's three sunday uh masses on a month what's the opinion on cardinal george uh pell right yeah mixed uh those who have who who supported him beforehand still support him more than ever today he's a good friend of mine i love him he's a great man of faith strong man very down to earth a lot of people don't see this side of him you know what you see in the media you know might be a dry uh you know man it doesn't seem too you know engaging but my goodness with with young people with he's so social and he's got a memory uh he's very sharp and he'll remember your name he'll remember events like he remembered i didn't see him for so many years and he just remembered that you know my wife was pregnant at the time and he blessed the baby and he knew that babies named it because we we sort of let him know uh you know some family stories and he remembered those little details and still till today uh i saw him only a couple of weeks ago because it was in america yeah two weeks ago father jason had dinner with him a couple of weeks ago good friend of ours here in pittsburgh yeah oh wow but yeah he came to sydney for a clergy conference he was going to come back for the napa institute yeah which i'm going to that after the cms uh and and but he's not coming back is under the weather as we say but but those who who who don't like him um or don't understand him yeah they usually they won't forgive complete travesty and injustice what happened to him yeah yeah i'm it's shame on whoever convicted him of those bogus claims yeah and he feel sorry it's not the the the the claimant or the you know the person who the victim cardinal pills prayed for that that that that man um yeah yeah he he's not actually the one at fault those one whoever behind it um it was a setup absolutely yeah i got to i was speaking in melbourne back when i was in australia i don't know when that was two and a half years ago is that right liam i don't know it was like pre-k well but um i got to pray outside of his prison cell it was an honour you know just to be that close to him yeah i met him once on an airplane i think it was at world youth day 2000 rome i think right yeah did you go there no rome was my conversion that's when i came to christ i just came uh back to christ about nine months before that really wow yeah so very close wow so i got i met him on an airplane bishop hurley wanted me to hell his cardinal oh good day you know that was it i didn't know who he was didn't really care that much at the time you know but uh man he used to play yeah phil really good football he made he made the uh selection to go to the next level uh so top level but he never went ahead he joined the summary instead how do you explain aussie roles football to americans because aussie rules football is one of the greatest sports ever non-stop well okay you're you're from like south australia so here new south wales so rugby league is is a big thing yeah so i'm a rugby boy yep but um but afl is fun you know i learned it uh playing it in in college and so i just for my studies we had to you know study all the game invasion games and all that stuff and it is fun it's non-stop it's non-stop you're constantly running it's a circle right the field is a circle yeah not a rectangle and then the ball is you know an oval ball that bounces anyway and you've got to run you can't run more than 15 meters before having to bounce it then how do you bounce at full speed not a round ball but and then the kicking they kick like 50 meters uh was that 50 close to 50 yards but yeah right through and that's hard especially on the fly um yeah yeah watch it yeah you can find a link to afl and put it in the description so everyone can be blessed it's one of the greatest games ever people find this hard to believe because i grew up in the 80s 90s like you did and small town in south australia so we had like three channels like abc channel 4 sbs came in later and but like rugby was never on the television it was so segregated hey like rugby he was big in queensland new south wales east coast we were like rugby league rugby league got all the media attention rugby union um yeah certain areas played although internationally rugby union's bigger yeah um rugby league is very popular yeah yeah in that site i was just uh on my way to africa a couple of days ago i just got back and uh game of cricket was on in uh where was i johannesburg wow this little smoking room me and my mate went in had a smoke and watched the cricket oh i love cricket yeah i don't like sport usually but cricket is such a great game and i just got to suck right back in i didn't know who the players were it was australia versus i forget sri lanka was it was a test match but yeah wow it was fantastic it won i don't know i was there for 20 minutes uh it looked like sri lanka was doing well but uh just here's a funny story so as you said aussie rules football is played on an oval yes and i think in part that was because you know it's an adaption of gaelic football that's another game yeah that's awesome so it's like gaelic football but like brutal um and violent and i think in part it was meant to keep the cricketers fit in the winter months right so for me growing up every large piece of grass that people would play sports on was called an oval so if you're if you're at lunch you know at school you're like should we go outside on the oval that's right i guess in new south wales you wouldn't call it an oval would you still call it over at school it's called a novel um so i'm in america and i'm walking with cameron back to her house and i walked past this school yard and i i like i thought some bloke was out there on the oval and she went the what when the oval all right you don't call it the oval because it's yeah what is it called the field yeah i guess the playground the field yeah it's it's uh it's so interesting the different things that would take for granted to like rubbish you know a rubbish bin that's what we call it but no it's a trash can yeah this is these little things nappies for for diapers you know those funny differences or even footpaths instead of sidewalk yeah that's right yeah what is it uh park they say parking lot except a car park or where we see where you say car park car park yeah so uh americans would say i say we i'm basically american at this point yeah that's right you've got to foot in both camps though i do yeah it's a weird world to are you are you an american citizen i have a green card okay but it's coming to its terminus so i think i'm going to apply for citizenship okay yeah and you can have the dual citizenship i don't know but i don't care at this point i'd be happy to i mean as much as i love australia and and very nostalgic have beautiful thoughts about it and love to go home uh i like my wife and kids more than australia so i'm happy to live here now and we feel called here you know yeah well no what you're doing is great out here we watch you down under and yeah it's fantastic the impact and so many americans tell me like yeah this aussie guy i met fred yeah i said yeah yeah i was mistaken for matthew kelly once uh i can imagine that i was at a church in san diego and afterwards someone came up to me and told me what an impact i've made on their life and i'm like oh thank you so much oh that really means a lot to me and like yeah yeah you know and they said something that gave it away because at the time all i had done was like written one book on pornography or something you know and they're like yeah be that you know be the best version of yourself or something like that i'm like oh crap they're talking about kelly yeah so i just let it slide walked away took the conference i've never met him i met him in sydney actually twice yeah so he would visit his mother who's also from the same town as uh bishop strickland's mum so okay so yeah i've met him a couple of times and i i try to reach out for him for this trip but he is off to europe so okay just missed him but yeah he's a good man so you said it was several months before rome 2000 when i came to christ that you came to christ that's right tell us a bit about that because you've got a new book just came out we got a link in the description below people should check it out how islam led me back to christ were you raised a christian i was a maronite catholic uh so i was a catholic we did pray the rosary in the early years we did go to mass i did do all the sacraments so baptism confirmation and then holy communion uh but then after that yeah sort of drifted a bit how old were you when you started drifting literally like nine yeah after after yeah my my um my father left home for a while and uh and so for a while he wasn't around about a year and a half and uh but he did come back interesting um mum prayed a lot for him and in that time we we did turn to the rosary did pray but then um we didn't go to sunday mass because he wasn't around he used to take us to sunday mass before that and that stopped and then that stopped the habit and then bit by bit yeah just drifted and um by i remember you know i was in a catholic primary school and most of the students were going to mass on sunday and the priests would come into class and say okay yeah good to see everyone at sunday but i was like the the you know the one that didn't go um but then i went to a public school and i think god did something through that public school that reminded me and of my identity i guess so um i started to go to mass after my reversion and and yeah that that's an amazing uh experience when i rediscovered it what i took for granted so long so when you drifted away is that when you started getting introduced to islam well not right away so i was so between uh ages 9 and 12 so the second half of primary school was at elementary school um yeah i didn't practice my faith just enjoyed life played rugby league i loved my sport i did all that i wasn't i wasn't like a like a you know a troublemaker anymore that was just the ordinary kid but then i went to public school so that's when i was introduced to islam so this public school was belmont boys high it was brent the year i arrived was branded the worst school new south wales it had the lowest uh hsc results it had the highest crimes out of any school uh it just hit the newspapers for the teachers the pe teachers here being a light on fire what the principal's office the the orientation day i rocked up day one and the the principal's office was on fire so that's why yeah someone lit a teacher on fire her hair yeah she had this fuzzy hair and how did they do that just with a lighter yeah she must have had too much hairspray or something just wet off yeah yeah poor thing yeah not good shouldn't laugh we shouldn't laugh but anyway i mean we it was funny at the time were you there when it happened um i no i heard the story it was another class that did it yeah all right so that's the only incident of a teacher being set on fire does that have the hair yeah i mean other incidents where teachers did get um i mean there was violence so they did get hit there were fights there were wow other other things in the office you said the principal's office was set up for okay yeah one of the footballers i used to play against there he did it um and uh and every day there was sort of something like a in the in the in the trash cans or the rubbish bin as we call it uh there's a fire and then there's people right away if you look at someone the wrong way and then all of a sudden there's a fighter in the playground and um and then we have this famous street paxton avenue after three o'clock i'll see you at paxton avenue that was always on um yeah i never really paid attention in class but none of it we just had we had a lot of fun in school nothing to celebrate here but it was it was it was fun you know loitering at shopping centers it was yeah yeah a teenage life but uh yeah it's not it's not something i celebrate but it's something that uh i do remember distinctly but i was around muslim friends basically and these guys were in and out of uh jail they were yeah a lot of our polynesian friends as well were in and out of jail um drugs uh yeah violence um womanising all that sort of stuff so yeah so this became your kind of inner circle these were your close friends circle absolutely and were they practicing their muslim faith not at the time however they ramadan every year comes around a bit like our lent if you like and they will take their face seriously and i was like man i get you fast all day really okay why all right and then it was like they weren't religious at all in between junior high middle school nothing was it was a fun fact that during our area in our area during ramadan the crime rate goes down so it's interesting because i mean a muslim would really take it seriously during that time not just by fasting from food but they even improve their life they'll start to pray commit to the five times a day prayer try not to cause any trouble and you know try not to swear all these sort of things they try to really improve themselves during the month of ramadan which is admirable in a way you know that's great that they um at least take it seriously yeah during during that month okay and so then how did you start i don't know getting introduced to islam was it your friends or well looking at me i am middle eastern so i they thought i was a muslim so those that i don't even ask any questions right away it's an arabic term peace be upon you um and i'll be like uh cheers yeah hello and then no alaikum come on oh okay and then i i did wear a crucifix and they noticed what's that around your neck so just a cross oh is that jesus he said yeah he's on the cross yeah did he die he didn't die on the cross he said yes he did no he didn't yes he did prove it easter and then another be like have you got evidence no don't and and bit by bit they started chipping away at those little things i took for granted sir uh who is jesus i said he's god so god has died on the cross according to christians yeah how can god die oh i don't know if he died then that's the end of us yeah that's true that doesn't make sense does it and then they'll chip away again things like the our father jesus would pray the our father and they said god can't have a son really well their interpretation is that god sort of slept with someone in order to have a son so he can't do that well okay well all right we don't say he slept with someone but he has a son um a divine son but i couldn't describe it i was a young teenager um then then also like the resurrection um he never claimed to be god all these things all these and i learned bit by bit uh all these different um accusations and arguments even muhammad being in the bible you know the prophecy of of of the seal of prophets coming after jesus and and what we would call the holy spirit or the advocate at the pentecost they would think that was actually muhammad and they'll quote scripture so how do you know so much about this bible they study it they actually do a bit of homework how to approach christians and and it's interesting they did that and and as they were getting more and more religious over the time um i noticed uh an interesting change in my friends and then they started getting a little bit more um up front about things and and i was like i didn't really want to go there i wasn't religious but i would listen um and it was the final year of school where they invited a guest ahmed like a leader a teacher um and so he was the imam a muslim imam and he spoke this is a public school not a muslim school but we had time of class we were able to sit down and listen to this religious figure dressed in a white gown had a hat on his head in a long beard and i was amazed looking around the auditorium and saying oh man all these troublemakers all these criminals uh are sitting respecting this religious man why do you think that was they took his they took their face seriously that's what enos said okay what would i say they were they were absolute fans of their faith they they took that they took their identity as muslims seriously when it when a religious man they'll take sit up and take note and respect him now we never respected any teacher let alone a religious figure so i was sort of impacted by that said wow what does this guy have that the teachers don't have and that planted a little seed in my mind and then over then i was invited to the mosque and that's where he went to the next level and um yeah the mus that guy sheikh ahmed he started questioning me we sat down it was interesting um it was a room in the grand mosque of of australia la some joke it's leb camber but lekemba and uh there was a room up in the back i was invited to go in and and i saw this you know these men sitting on the floor and with butcher's paper rolled out on the floor and they're all sharing each other's plates and they're eating and this was during lent of of my final school year and funny enough i don't know why i asked my mum that you what you know muslims have ramadan what do christians have and she said lin and what do christians do you give up meat on friday okay and and that year funnily enough i gave up meat on friday this was a friday for no other reason then that's what christians do i just i was inspired by the muslims doing it i did it and um so i was invited to have some salad i did and then some meat and i didn't i said oh no i'm fasting but you just ate salad i know i'm fasting for meat but that's not fasting what do you mean it's eating yeah that's right well in islam we fast from sunrise to sunset that's so cool and i said you got you're eating clearly you're eating he said that's not fasting and then right away he compared the two he said which is better the muslim fast or the christian fast yeah foreign absolutely that's hard and then you back in my mind one nil to you you look at islam just superficially prima facie it just looks like a far more masculine religion yeah it looks like absolutely here are men and women who take their faith seriously and of course you know i guess it depends on what muslims you're looking at but i remember my wife and i were in new york city making our way back to the airport and we saw some of the airport workers all doing their prayers together there's just something masculine about that it's very attractive that's right they're courageous they're not afraid to to practice their faith in public yeah sometimes on the side of the highway you'll see you'll see the rug go out and they're facing mexico and they're praying and they're witnessing to their faith and that's what inspired me meanwhile we can't we can't find time to do our prayers or we give up meat sometimes on fridays and if we can and we have this side of the crust yeah don't let anyone see and we have this big dispensation culture right in the church was like well it's okay like well i mean technically it's all these technically so we could do the bare minimum unlike people like derek he's orthodox here in the studio today what's up derek hey derek's orthodox so derek's hardcore and you know how to do the trinity right yeah that's right i love this but yeah i mean they they fast like men and that we have so much to learn from them sorry but yeah absolutely i totally agree so that's cool okay so you were kind of inspired by these friends of yours to be like all right mom how did what do we do we fast and then this fella's like that's not fast and that's right so that was the first challenge right away i i was challenged christianity is a week of faith right away yeah we finished lunch we sat down in the corner of this room and then he said okay now my nickname no charbel is my name but i was grow i grew up as charlie and it was it's a common thing a lot of shower bills because in syria it's an arabic or syriac name specifically it's and you say it like this charabil very hard it's a tongue twister and uh and so in kindergarten the teacher my parents said i shoulda billy's name sorry what's that can i just call him charlie so then charlie was my name to the point where my first tax file number and my jobs i was charlie until my license had my birth certificate name show bill but my all my my taxes and stuff and all those forms were charlie so i actually literally would tell people my name is charlie and that's what they knew me as so anyway this muslim imam said charlie how do you christians pray that's how he said it i said and i started reciting the our father about halfway through he stopped and he said so you're calling god father i said yes that don't you have an earthly father i said yes so he said why are you calling god father then um because he's our father well you can't have it both ways what do you mean well that's you're putting on god human attributes that's an insult to god you shouldn't do that fair enough to kneel to islam so in the back of my mind that christianity zero islam too i love my sport scoreboards um then he said who taught you that prayer here we go again oh it's jesus um and who is jesus oh he's the son of god ah so god has a son now how can god have a son i don't know being a father like i told you yeah i wish i had that answer i didn't even have that and he says no god can't have a son um okay two three nil you know and then he said but but hold on is but isn't jesus supposed to be god in christianity he said yes so god is talking to himself yeah that doesn't make sense does it uh yeah four nil to islam and then he said but don't you christians believe in a holy spirit yeah and don't you believe that's god as well he said yeah so you believe in three gods no that's one god no no it's three that's one three explain it and all i could do was the sign of the cross and i i couldn't go any deeper than that that's all i could go that's terrible five nil um and then he says look you know he went he went on and on there's so many different arguments uh like the crucifixion you know uh there's you know you believe that jesus died on the cross he didn't die on the cross because if because if he did die and if you believe his god well then that would be the end in islam he's a prophet but we we don't say he died he was replay substitution so judas iscariot um replaces jesus on the cross i said interesting out of all characters judas but uh so jesus was on the cross but he didn't die on the cross and i didn't i didn't the penny didn't drop till later on but i said okay six nil like they got to about ten points to kneel and i was like uh i was i was in this corner thinking i've got nothing and he even noticed he noticed like are you gonna ask me anything i had nothing and he said i want to invite you to close your eyes and say in arabic there is only one god in his prophet muhammad in arabic and i did it three times in front of witnesses and i opened my eyes and he said welcome brother i said you're a muslim all right i just said the shahada prayer and he gave me a towel a white gown and i went to have a shower wow and that's way easier than rcia yeah that's right just boom are you just witness that's like the baptism basically initiation i went and had the shower but really weird i was nervous have i just become a muslim okay i'm not a religious person but now here i am i'm going to leave christianity what's mom going to say what's that what i mean surely she knew about your muslim friends because i used to ask questions and she'll give me some answers but i never remembered them and i didn't make 100 sense to me so was she concerned that you were gravitating towards islam or was she grateful that you may have been going on a better track from someone who was like you know not really following your christian faith i wonder if she did she may have been concerned yeah she did warn me a few times be careful don't go too far but um but she did notice i was asking questions but i wasn't a hundred percent convinced at the time um but then the final year i did fast for me in lent so but none of us brother i'm one of six boys and uh we all had the same upbringing but none of us were going to church at the time none of us might and yeah we just completely drifted but uh i have to say in that shower i um i was moved to pray and i didn't know how to pray except for the our father and the how mary um and so i set it in the shower while i'm washing myself and and i'm still going i know one hail mary i did another hound mirror and i did ten hail marys i did a decade of the rosary without realizing just coincidence and i finished a shower i put this white gown on and as i'm finishing the tenth hour mary i i just about to say amen and i hear a little whisper not through my ears just an inner voice not yet not yet who was that i took i took it off put my normal clothes back on was that our lady i don't know i was addressing our lady at the time i you know possibly but i came out to the main area and and the muslim man said what's wrong i said look i don't know my faith it's not fair that i leave something i don't know let me investigate and i'll get back to you i just want the truth and he said fair enough i said pray for me i just want the truth he goes all right but i was moved to ask one question finally here comes the question he says okay anything i said in islam a man can marry four wives how is that right in god's eyes how can you do that and he says ah good question first of all not every man can marry four wives well then who can me the prophet muhammad could uh could do eleven i don't have 11 months but uh he said only those who can treat them equally said what do you mean well this was the example he gave me if you buy one a house you buy all four a house if you buy one a car you buy all four a car okay that's it and he said yes um there's gotta be more to it um and then he's i said you can't love them equally that's you're gonna have a favorite you can't and he says well does your mother love all her children equally now i'm only 18 at the time i didn't have any theology behind me no theology body stuff none of that but i knew that that was different the love between a husband and a wife is different to the love between parents and children i said that's a different love and then he said love is love you know it wasn't significant that slogan at the time but it's become very popular today for many reasons so in this case uh love is love was used to justify polygamy and uh i wasn't satisfied with that answer and i said hmm one nil to christians oh i took one off the muslims so yeah so yeah i wasn't satisfied i thought no there's there's more to it than that that's not good enough was this conversation immediately as you were leaving and saying pray for me that's right that's right all there and then i let he thank i thanked him for his time and i went and and can i just say that takes a tremendous amount of courage to do that because i think you know i think one of the reasons people join religions or other ideologies is because of community like we want to be a part of something bigger than us we want people to call us brother like he did to you yes and so for him to welcome you like that presumably there was other people around they were yeah and then you've gone you've had this shower you could have walked out and been embraced and you chose not to that took courage i i have to point it to maybe that prayer that little whisper in my ear just not yet so just like give christianity a chance don't give up yet just just study it first but i wasn't convinced about christianity i was convinced about islam it made sense to me and i left that thinking i'm a muslim i'm not a catholic i'm not practicing i can't call myself a catholic and i got home it was late from school and my mother said where were you i said casually just at the local mosque and you can imagine what she has this huge slap across the face oh i love it right right here and um uh and she says you go now to jesus and you ask him if he wants you to be a muslim or christian he's in the quran i said yes so well if he's a prophet well he's going to tell you the answer right yep go and and i love your mum already yeah she's awesome two things i know about her she slapped you and and that's it yeah she she said jesus to her because it wasn't for that slap life would have been different her name is yvette's i love you to my mother yvette that's right is that how i say your last name that's right thanks for laying the foundations of faith in my life and giving me that slap in the face yeah i needed it i needed it absolutely so i went to the local church so michael's belford was my primary school and and this was one of the very few churches in the country that remained open 24 hours so thank god it's six o'clock at night um it's open and i walk in and there's the red light on and i remember in primary school the teacher told us that when that red light's on jesus is present he said okay all right jesus if you're really here show me and then i asked i kneeled down and i i it was the first time i really directed a question to god or to jesus from my heart wanting an answer i think i gave him lip service all my life our father's home as rattle them off and i didn't really connect but this time i was i was looking at that box the tabernacle the box i didn't know it was a tabernacle then all right if you're really here show me do you want me to be a muslim or christian and do you know what happened nothing well that's significant because it was dead silent and i couldn't get miles off that box and i was waiting for a sign waiting for a sign and that was a miracle in the first place because during high school i never sat still for one minute let alone 30 minutes this went for i believe around 30 minutes and i was just dead locked on that box i just i don't know um i was i was waiting and waiting and then an elderly woman came in the church and she lit a candle and then i thought to myself she's going to heaven what a holy woman but then instantly a flush back to one of my discussions only muslims go to heaven what do i mean i'll just explain uh according to islam when you die you're going to meet your judge everyone's going to be judged uh you'll be judged on on your your more ticks than crosses so if you if you've done more deeds you go to heaven you don't more bad deeds you you if you're a muslim at least uh you'll have temporary punishment and then you'll be purified then you go to heaven but uh for for anyone if you die and you meet your judge you gotta answer three questions very basic stuff here who is god it's allah so um allah is the arabic word for god it's not the muslim god it's just an arabic word for god but you can't say it in any other language it has to be arabic so if you say god elohim dios in spanish or any of these other names that's not good enough it has to be allah so if you get that wrong you go down second question is who is his prophet of course it's not saint john the baptist it's not moses it's not elijah it's not any of those it's muhammad you get that wrong you go down and the third one is what's the true religion and of course it's not judaism buddhism or christianity it's islam you've got to get three out of three and if you don't get three out of three you don't enter heaven that woman is definitely not gonna get three out of three so she's going to hell i can't be right i wasn't satisfied i wasn't convinced so there's that's my second sort of moment oh there's a there's a floor here and i look back at the box and i kid you not matt i i i remember seeing an outline i looked away looked back it was like a shadow of a face i thought i was going crazy look back look away i'm rubbing my eyes about a minute solid there's this shadow what appeared to be a man with a beard and then an inner voice sh shabel not charlie shaw bill my baptismal name which was significant are you going to give up all that i've done for you and i believe at the time that was christ jesus was speaking to me there and then and my little 18 years of my life flashed before me all the time that my mother tilts the rosary all the miracle stories i heard about jesus walking on water healing the the blind the sick and all that and i had to answer that question no lord i'm not going to give you up and this huge weight came off my shoulders i called jesus lord for the first time my life and i could breathe i'm a catholic i'm a catholic i'm going to remain a catholic that's my answer i'm a catholic i'm not a muslim i now need to know why and i walked out of that church on cloud nine and you wouldn't believe it um the very next day uh the um my best friend uh ali at the time he said hey muslim brother how does it feel to be a muslim he thought that's it i was a sign still delivered but i said listen ali i don't know my faith don't look i'm still not gonna i'm not a muslim yet um if god wants me to be uh he'll show me uh please pray for him he said absolutely but then i asked him a question i said if god calls you to be a christian will you answer that call he says he's not going to do that and then he brushed it off and then we never spoke about this again and other other guys tried to convince me and i went to different debates and i did all that but um you wouldn't believe it out of all the parishes in the country this very parish say michaels and billfield had what was called lumen verim apologetics they had friday night classes guest speakers would come and they'll teach the faith and i said i need this and i went now it's funny because in the early years i never sat in um in class i like i said i never had an attention span so i would fall asleep during these classes because uh they'll talk about the second vatican council and the papal encyclical and words like transubstantiation which i could never pronounce and let alone you know spell and and i'd fall asleep i said this is over my head early church fathers and and uh it was too much for me at the time but there was q a time and then i'd wake up from the q a because when people clap and then you wake up question time how do you know god is real how do we know that uh god is trinity how do we describe this how can god die on the cross can you explain how god can have a son why do we call god father all those things i was like a fire hose just i wanted to get out all that stuff that i didn't know how to answer and bit by bit week after week i got my answer and i'll and i was i would go back and just yeah be convinced all right great it was all in the head right now so it's just learning why catholicism made sense christianity made sense it's a trinitarian guide and i get it i get it and i started to um study and and so in in between the fridays i started to listen to here we go a man named scott hahn apparently he's from this area yeah he lives in this area so where did you resist 2000 so in 2000 yeah i was going to the limit of apologetics i heard of him yeah but i never listened to him and it was until a retired priest friend shout out to father chris uh father chris a benedictine monk retired benedict the monk gave me my first scott han cassette wow and that cassette was called calling catholics to become bible christians yeah and vice versa i remember it clearly i've actually got that original set no it's a three a cassette set do you know what cassettes are by the way yeah i do you would at least remember them maybe yeah liam might not yeah i don't know do you know did you you've told scott there's no doubt yes this story absolutely amazing um he says he's amazed because he doesn't he's lost he doesn't know i mean he just shares his story shares the truth and god does the rest and yeah the amount of people he's impacted in this world yeah yeah oh my goodness but that is father ryan no not chris right christian is a good man yes that's right um it's not him it's another father chris okay but he gave you this tape set that's right he said listen to this i said i did and i said oh i want more you got any more and he said what is the covenant which was brilliant because it talked about the trinity love it i needed it and then he gave me his conversion story i love it i caught a protestant minister becomes catholic and not that i was really into the protestant catholic thing i was looking for islamic apologetics um but i i just loved him so much i started to listen to scott hahn common objections and um the lamp's lamb supper the fourth cup i mean all this stuff was just brilliant and i would go to work because i left school by now i started to work and i i um listened to a cassette on the way to work and listened to another one on the way back so i get two hours of of teaching every day plus i'd go to the living room apologetics and then i enrolled in a catholic art education center so this was um father john floyd my current spiritual director he just thought basic catechism the creed all the meat and potatoes of the catholicism and i just soaked it up wrote notes and then i joined um these philosophy classes so actually you'd love this uh saint thomas aquinas classes um uh alice nelson her name was and she followed dr woodbry star so shout out to austin dr arson woodrow's passed away now but in the heyday he used to teach philosophy to adults uh 800 people i understand would turn up every week who just did it for free and will go through thomas philosophy the five proofs and metaphysics uh um eschatology theology uh natural natural theology philosophy all that it was beautiful and i i just i did two years of this and so hang on so you're getting so what's going on with your muslim friends as you're entering into these apologetics classes yeah so we've left school we've graduated i've now we've l we would see less and less of each other but we would still catch up but not talk about religion and i never not talk about it at least a year two years now were your friends having a deepening conversion to this slide wearing the white gown they started wearing the hat they started growing their beard yeah um they started taking it really seriously yeah it was funny i saw the transition um in their lives which look it's in in a sense it's a beautiful thing because they left a a a life of crime and and they entered into this you know uh prayerful life they would pray five times a day which was to me inspiring and getting up before sunrise um i couldn't do that and and to this day i struggled to do that but but that was inspiring you know um and and i would i would respect them for that and i still had a respect for them as i was studying my faith and learning and falling in love and then i came across a tim staples set called uh islam exposed it was just what i needed who gave you that um the same priest so father chris he introduced me to saint joseph communications the funny story there is uh i i didn't know that how much i love this and i would share this so i was already practicing the ministry if you like without knowing but giving free cassettes to people media started he was starting out out of a need to share the faith yeah and it's funny uh i couldn't contain this i was so excited about my new found uh faith it was the same faith but my discovery of appreciation of it and i took all this stuff for granted um in 2001 i met another young young man paul god bless you paul you know who you are um paul chelita he he was the other young person that came in my life on fire he had a radical conversion too and then he started fall in love with our lady dude we would have become best friends if we hadn't met in 2001 wow because 2000 in august was my conversion from like agnosticism religion stupid it's all whatever encounter the person of jesus christ i would show up at parties where i used to get drunk and i'd just bring my bible and i want to tell people about christ and pray with them yeah my drunken friends would knock on my window at my house at two in the morning crying cause i just did something stupid we'd walk down to the church i had the spare key the priest gave me go sit before our lady light candles pray the rosary we're about the same age it's amazing how the lord was working absolutely look at that simultaneously yeah yeah i used to at that early you know 18 19 20 i i did so i had my head i had i had a conversion here i had the encounter but i still needed to deepen my relationship i wasn't there 100 percent yet i was convinced about catholicism but i still had more the lord was still working on me i still going clubbing at the time yeah me too and i remember turning my scapula that's what i did that's right i still wanted to go to the clubs i wasn't willing to leave the world but i really wanted to make everyone feel very uncomfortable by telling them about jesus 24 7. i remember changing the lyrics to the songs because a lot of them provocative i'll turn them into like instead of like a lover it would be god and yeah i'll justify myself like sure yeah this is like a praise and worship right now in the club unfortunately kind of similar yeah but that's right um she's gonna have a minty while we talk here please enjoy anybody let it melt a bit and then you slowly and then you can chew on it later it should take a few minutes you'll love it very refreshing ah the caramel the koala caramel corn i think yeah get ready oh i'll try that again look the caramel this is made with a real koala i understand this is rude [Music] there was a duo in australia not leno and woodley but the scared weird little guys okay and they said um they were pointing out the australian flag you guys know what the australian flag looks like i'm familiar with it and up here in the top corner we have the reebok symbol because i guess reebok used to use the british flag that's funny they they sponsor australia and then we send them koalas to make shoes out of oh my goodness and then when everyone was like oh no don't worry it's only the baby ones that's right naturally drunk our koala's like perpetually drunk that's what yeah is that true they sleep uh 20 hours a day they're always sleeping and they basically they're having eucalyptus leaves all the time which is poisonous but um they they were they got used to it over time it's kind of badass yeah you know hanging out eating poison and surviving that would survive civil disobedience screaming terrible news from google is that koalas are not uh are neither drunk nor high constantly yeah what does it say it's just it says parkwall is drunk it's a common myth they could spread around as an explanation for why they sleep so much uh we're here to debunk that myth koalas only eat gum leaves that part is true but the leaves don't cause them to get drunk or high i think we might need a fact jack uh you feel like that you just contradicted an australian guest on australian you have to test this eat some eucalyptus leaves we'll see what happens and see what happens did you bring anything i didn't because apparently california has some yeah they do actually yeah they didn't realize oh my gosh this is so good yeah it is it is enjoy you know uh when i went down to australia my my now wife i visited me in australia for the first time i took her on this really terrific date and one of the things we did is i she got to hold a koala and you know people people look at koalas i think they're super cute and cuddly and the lady literally gave her the koala and went now just don't touch him on the face or he'll claw you or something like that it's like oh my gosh so she was sitting there nervous the koala crapped in her hand another badass move from a drunken koala who doesn't give a that's me that's so good so how's your mom feeling at this point when you're super into your faith and yeah she was very encouraging at this time i did go to church but i went to confession for the first time since my first confession and the priest knew me he knew me from primary school he fell off his seat in the confessional he still doesn't forgive me today i mean he did forgive me at the confession but but he would still bring it up like you are just crazy what on earth were you doing yeah anyway um it was he's a good man shout out to father slattery god bless you uh retired now but it's good i i needed him i needed someone he was a hard hitter you know those irish priests that just hit you between the eyes i needed it i needed it and he laid down the foundation but i would i would pray the rosary and really it was hard in the first year even though i had the foundations it was just you know it's not enjoyable prayer wasn't enjoyable maths was it enjoyable um i i have to be honest here it wasn't enjoyable and i asked my mother okay you seem to like prayer do you really like it or you just you're just sort of saying that because i don't like it at all um and she's i know we have to pray i know we we should pray i know we have just like vacuuming the carpet you know yeah it's a chore you have to do it you got to turn up but uh i don't like it she goes why don't you ask jesus to help you enjoy prayer your mom is awesome very simple okay is she watching right now i doubt it she doesn't know how to use the internet i like you i'm even more one yeah oh yeah please do um she's she's there on the back of the dvd set uh the face is on there you'll see her um but uh i did all right jesus here we go again help me to enjoy prayer this was in 2001 so two years after the conversion and i said can you help me enjoy prayers this is simple i even i don't even think i was concentrating i just threw it out there that night within three weeks of that prayer it was lent and i made a little promise to turn up to the church on the way to work for a minute and on the way home just to say g'day how are you jesus and go home and i did one minute became two minutes became three minutes i stumbled into daily mass i heard the readings the beatitudes were read that day and i just well that impacted me jesus did what he said what love your enemies what turn the other cheek what who says that what who is this god that says that um you know if someone walks one mile with you walk with him too they want to take your coat give him your shirt as well what blessed are those who persecute you and violate you and speak evil of you what uh and it's like two years here i am studying and i did hear that story i was familiar with that story but it never impacted me like it did that day i need to read the bible even though and this is the weird thing i was listening to scott han but it was funny i was only listening to it to win an argument i was listening to it at the time how do i respond to muslims how do i justify christianity and it stayed up here and it didn't go deeper you know mother teresa says uh the longest journey is from the head to the heart is that interesting just from there to there and that can take the longest and it took two years to go from there to there i was finally impacted and i said oh i want to come back i came back the next day to mass i started to read the bible cover to cover the new testament first the little salvation army bible at the time the little red one the good news translation yes um and in the end yeah look to be honest i read it i loved matthew um um and then i skipped i just skimmed through the rest just to finish it so i didn't give it the proper chance until later on but i fell in love with the beatitude so i just kept reading that and then i my friend this paul shout out to paul again he wanted to go and pray the rosary every day at people's homes so yeah let's do it now i was sort of a shy person then and i never wanted to show my faith publicly i kept it to myself even though i would bring it up at work here and there but i was still shy i couldn't sort of speak to multiple people i could speak to one-on-one to someone but i couldn't do it in masses and here this guy is just larger than life he's going out there saying how what our lady did for him and and that inspired me i said yeah all right so after church we would go to sunday mass back at the maronite show st charbelles and now i'm rediscovering this maronite heritage i had i didn't really practice after 18 years and uh and after mass we would give out rosary beats that was it a little flyer how to pray the rosary that was the little apostle that we had and let's do it we kept finding bees and it's given him out and then we started nightly rosary at the parish and then we then he he had the idea of starting what was happening at lumen verum apologetics at this church with young adults but but instead of doing like a full hour lecture just a half hour break at half hour just have a break have some you know some refreshments and then go again so in 2001 a group called guardians was formed and um we've had many speakers come to that uh and it was great i met my wife there it was a faith formation night every and instead of weekly we did it fortnightly so we just tweaked the model to make it more palatable for young adults and we had 40 people there first speaker father terence uh spoke on the four last things i remember like it was yesterday we're going back 20 years 21 years and um and i remember it 40 people turned up i remember we had a pizza that night celebrating we you know we had a beer as well all right it's underway and and so i would have go to lumen verum i'd go to guardians i'll do the um the philosophy classes adult formation continue to listen to scott han but now this next part of my life was pray pray a lot and the the miracle here is in lent i prayed every day and and an increase in time by the time i got to easter sunday i was praying three hours a day now you have to just pause and remember it was the start of just before lent i hated praying yeah i literally hated it so that you can't explain that other than god's grace what did your three hours of prayer look like so so there was a holy hour so every night 11 o'clock to 12 o'clock at night the uh the pr my mum's prayer group would pray the rosary uh stages of the cross divine mercy chaplet re they do they did the cynical um they read that and uh and yeah that filled an hour and so that was one hour in the morning i'd go to mass excuse me um pray the rosary before mass read the bible so then there was about another hour there and throughout the day i would i would also go to there would be half hour there where i would go to father chris's place and then and then we'll do divine office he actually taught me the liturgy of the hours he was a benedict and monks so we prayed that benedictine way which was seven times a day and and he had this beautiful salter um the the the the psalms where it was hand-written and it was just beautiful and and would he had a a little chapel in his house and would pray and i started to learn the latin responses so my exposure to latin started with father chris and and he would pray the um the vatican to massachusetts but in latin it was interesting a lot of people who would witness it think hey that's the old right no no it's actually the new the new right but in latin and it was oriented he would chant the consecration of that it was beautiful um any and i knew how to serve that mass and uh father fesia god bless him uh produce these little missiles that was basically the latin responses in in the english there so i'll follow in english but father chris would do it and i and that i just fell in love and then ewtn i started i i got to see scott hart for the first time i didn't know what he looked like and uh it was the lamb supper series with mike aquilina and i would watch out with father chris so i would pray divine office mass chaplet you know and and then three rosaries a day so the morning the evening at someone's house and then at night with the prayer group i loved it i can't describe it my friends noticed the difference and now that's where it gets fun they said hey charlie what's going on you're starting to pray a lot you want to be a priest or something you know and what what's come over you you've become really religious i said you know what i know i love god i just love him and and he said well you have us to thank for it is my muslim friend and i said what do you mean he said well if we didn't challenge you you never were religious like this if we never challenged you you wouldn't be like this and he hit me like a ton of bricks i said you know what you're right thank you thank you very much because if it wasn't for you i wouldn't have challenged i wouldn't ask the questions so every day i've thought thank god for my muslim friends it wasn't for them challenging me and me searching for the answers i would have remained a lukewarm catholic christmas and easter just tick the box because that's what catholics do and then that's it and that would have been my life or i would have remained a muslim if i didn't have that encounter if i didn't ask christ so i thank god every day for the muslim friends because that challenge really inspired me and that same friend started to read the bible and then he asked me hey jesus says in the bible uh he doesn't say anywhere that he's the son of god can you show me i said here we go now it's two and a half years of formation with scott hart it's just been i've just stretched myself with prayer he's like yeah you're like revving in a dream in a garage just waiting to go somewhere just dying for anybody to ask you a question like that that's right to hold yourself back yeah it's been two years waiting two and a half years and um and so we sat down at a cafe outside of a woolly's woolworth's you know in colorado first job was it woolies there you go there you go i i worked there too nice stuck in shells nice but he right away he brought his quran i brought my bible and so we opened up page one at this cafe and here we are what are we 20 not not quite 21 in our 20 uh just turned 20 and uh and the quran opens up with you know allah the most merciful one a praise be to allah and and and muhammad peace be upon him the prophet and then he and then he goes on to the sayings like the different sayings of muhammad and and god speaking and it is sort of written in third person it's funny when you read the quran it's not chronological and it sort of does um it's lots and lots of different statements but there's no sort of beginning and end it's sort of sorted out some would say the largest surah to the smaller surah but not every quran is exactly the same and that's another conversation but in the bible it starts in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth and the spirit of god hovered over the waters and then god said let there be light did you notice something the trinity is revealed in the jewish scripture right there and then god the father created god the holy spirit hovered over the waters the spirit of god and then god the son spoke that's jesus christ the word let there be light and it's like deliberately each verse is dedicated to a person of the trinity isn't it interesting not that i want to minimize the trinity to just each role because where the father is the son is i get that but the point is the trinity is stamped right there in genesis i wonder if the jews took note of that but um but then uh the big question i had and thanks to scott hahn again he asked a very profound question what was god doing before that you see because we call god lord and and in arabic you would say instead of so god in arabic is allah but lord in arabic is rabb and spirit in arabic is a bit like the hebrew anyway so what was god doing before he created because he's not the lord of your life if he's no wanted lord over he's not the creator if he hasn't created so who is he in his essence and i asked my muslim friend this what he goes nothing what do you mean nothing so what was allah doing and he said nothing okay one of the names of 99 names of of allah is love he was loving right yeah okay who was he loving himself said that's not love you can't love yourself that's we used to have a term in australia uh i love me dude do you remember that at all no maybe in my region say it again love me dude so you love yourself you're sort of proud and you you look at you you see yourself as i love me dude this is you know in australia but the poor uh what is it the tall poppy syndrome syndrome you know we want to you know anyone who stands out from down hey that's why australians are continually critiquing americans yeah my estimation yeah that's right um but anyway i i asked him and i i said so why think about it if god is loving who is he loving from all eternity when we weren't even created he he initially warned me he said you can't ask that question that's forbidden you know that's outside the quran i said well i'm asking come on we've got to be able to ask and he said i don't know i said okay let's look at it this way if god is eternal and eternally loving let's look at it this way god loved another person an eternal person and that eternal person receives that love he goes yeah but that eternal person is not just going to sit there and take it he's going to respond to that love and so that eternal person number two is going to return back and that return of that love is a number three one two three one two three do you see what's going on here and he says yeah god the father from all eternity love god the son who re receive the love and return the love back to the holy the father is the holy spirit there's three divine persons equally loving now here's the thing did god need us and he says yes to do what to be slaves okay interesting if god needed us for what purpose he said to worship him okay so god needed us to worship him don't you think he was self-sufficient from all eternity uh well no he needed us the whoa now you're diminishing god here now allah from all eternity loved and i just described that he paused he said i know what he liked that description he said look i'm going to lose my religion he stopped he stopped me and he said what you're saying is making sense i can't go any further with that that's right can i ask you some other questions so i'm now i'm on the front foot here asking questions just asking questions and i said so if if god from all eternity create at some point in eternity this is the mystery here he decided to create for what purpose not see if if allah is the master the all-powerful master and we are the slaves so god needed us to do his chores for him was it we are we are we created to make to do jobs for god he says yeah really that so was god bored was god and i was starting to ask him like this this is i'm 20 years old and i said look if god loved think about it this way he he pours out his love and at some point this is the thing that the covenant what is the covenant family that family that marriage he begets children isn't that interesting the consummation if you like like a the marriage the two become one the one becomes three right in the in the marriage imagery and the trinity is like a family and so he gets children we're the children a god doesn't have children no no stay with me now spiritually and so then where we are now the children of god and what's our purpose he has to worship him yes this to to serve him absolutely but it's ultimately to freely love him freely love him and if it's not free it's not love hmm yeah i get what you're saying any any it took it on board then i went on to the next thing i said you know in islam you believe that god didn't have a son can i ask you who the father of jesus is and then he says he has no father so how did mary get pregnant and he said this in arabic which means spirit of god i said bingo we're on the same page here you believe the christians we believe the same thing here we're on common ground the the the spirit of god is the holy spirit and he says it's not the holy spirit it's the holy spirit it's not the holy spirit back and forth come on it's the spirit of god where the spirit of god is that's that's god so if god went into mary who's the father and he i know what you're saying i said come on say it say it just say it who's the father and then he said no it's not it's not it's not god it's not god and the point was i wanted to show that if god impregnated mary as i would say then it stands to reason that if mary is the mother god must be the father but there's this is what i love about christianity we go one step further with mary she she's she's a daughter of god the father like all of us nothing different but the moment she said yes to the angel the same angel that rev spoke to muhammad angel gabriel allegedly that's right um and and she says let it be done unto me according to that moment god the incarnation happens and the holy spirit would overshadow her she becomes a spouse of the holy spirit and mother of god the son i just want to repeat that because i think we miss it mary the theotokos she's the daughter of god the father spouse of god the holy spirit and mother of god the son she radically at that moment is transformed into someone elevated right now she's a human like us a daughter like that but now she's got this huge responsibility he appreciated it and i said look all right so now we're he sort of understood where we were going with it i moved on the next thing i'll just go one more and i know there's a lot i can go i just do one more here i said you teased me in high school about jesus uh not dying on the cross first of all you said there was no evidence actually there's plenty of evidence but before i go there let's let's let's quote the quran and i encourage people to go to this surah chapter 4 157 surah 4 157 read it it it talks about jesus being on the cross or what was made to appear so now here's the weird thing when you read before and after there's no context it's just thrown in there and i asked my friend so jesus was on the cross but he didn't die he goes bingo okay so he was on the cross he said yes but he didn't die he goes not judas replaced him okay but he was on the cross he said yes why is he on the cross and then he said well um i don't know i was on the cross because that's a very important point if you agree that jesus was on the cross we can agree this happened in history yeah now you don't agree he died on the cross fair enough fair enough we won't go there yet but why was he on the cross and he couldn't answer it and i have i've asked many muslims why was jesus on the cross now this is interesting because i think these days they're trying to um sort of explain that away by saying okay now he actually wasn't on the crosshairs but but for many centuries and a lot of muslims will say today he was on the cross and there was a substitution that happened judas replaced him that's one theory there is another theory that jesus was on the cross he didn't die he was unconscious because three days later they saw him walking around on earth ah yes very convenient resurrection but um i said what did jesus do wrong to deserve being on the cross he couldn't answer it we know the answer we know what happened he blasphemed he made himself equal to god and therefore was crucified for that and so it's historical fact that a man from nazareth jesus christ and jews don't agree he was god but they acknowledged a man from nazareth died on a cross roman historians acknowledged that secular history proves a man named jesus and then and bc a d let's look at it it's 20 22 before jesus after jesus i mean come on um so this man existed um and he was on a cross but why and and then then you can go into the c.s lewis the lie lunatic oh lord now that you can establish that then you can keep going it's it's so fun um but the thing is we stopped he agreed to disagree like i don't know he said now to me i don't know my faith i need to go now study he said exactly what i said to him two and a half years ago before that takes humility and praise god yeah so he's been a good friend who came to my wedding um i even launched a book i got a handful of good muslim friends and because we're so good mates in in high school um we still hang out uh he i didn't invite him to the book launch and he called me up and he said why didn't you invite me i said i didn't think you would appreciate the title how islam led me back to christ and he said look i know you as a person um we're mates and we it goes beyond that so i really admired at least there was a mutual respect there and when people i give talks now a lot about this and and they'll ask the first question that typically happens is so isn't uh how do you what's how do you respond to the muslim thing isn't aren't muslims like terrorists or muslims are violent and like how do you reconcile that and here's the distinction we have and we do this today and it's probably a good discussion maybe in the second half but i love muslims god loves muslims they are children of god but when we talk about islam now we're talking about ideology what we have to do is separate the ideology from the person stop putting on muslims this ideology they are children of god searching for salvation like us so that we've got to give them a chance invite them to salvation but what we should do is mutually respect each other's freedom but look at the the idea of of islam as an ideology set in search for the truth because we both want the truth and that's where we can get get somewhere one-on-one not in a group i don't recommend a group setting it has to be one-on-one because there's an element of look hurt shame um and you're stepping out of the boundaries here you're asking questions outside of the quran and you know it's a it's a tough gig you don't you don't ask those questions they're forbidden and when you start doing that it's a bit you're in dangerous territory that's why respectfully do it um and i i would say praise the good in islam where in the sense that they pray praise be to god they fast praise be to god they they believe in a god praise be to god he's the creator the oneness of god so all the things that are in common we we say praise be to god but then there is a point where the rubber hits the road and there's a there's a separation did he die on the cross it's a yes or no answer it can't be maybe he died and why did he die so and why because he claimed to be god is that we have to test that claim is he really god or is he a liar or a lunatic and that's where i love to see a slowest thing and then you can go somewhere with it so any just any differences with with within islam we need to meet that challenge but respectfully um and separating the ideology from the person and i think you can go a long way that way that's awesome all right what we're going to do is take a quick break and when we get back i want to begin by doing three things we're going to teach people what a tim tam slam is and change their lives i'm going to ask you if muhammad was a prophet lunatic or liar and then we're going to take some questions from our patrons and local supporters so if you're watching right now and you support us on locals or patreon head over there ask a question we'll do our best to get to all of those right after this break cool nice exodus 90. you've heard of them haven't you neil i have well the guys behind exodus 90 have started exodus 21 they've caught they're calling it a 21 day restart so for 21 days you along with the friends you invite pray and read through the first two chapters of corinthians while practicing disciplines such as 20 minutes of prayer every day abstaining from unnecessary screen time that doesn't include points with aquinas obviously abstaining from meat on fridays and fasting until 4 p.m on each weekday you can take this short opportunity to introduce your brothers cousins co-workers fellow parishioners and even your neighbors be kind of weird if you didn't know them just assume they're catholic and want to torture themselves for 21 days on how to live like christ and prepare them for exodus 90 in january so check it out go to exodus 90.com matt exodus 90.com matt to get started i did exodus 90 once and i lived like a boss monster for the first 31 days and then failed miserably so exodus 21 sounds super cute at this yeah i would have crushed it although probably because 21 days was the goal i would have like faded out around the 11th day i don't know exodus 90.com matt go check them out to get started people who have done it just says it really rejuvenates their prayer life and helps them exodus nine zero dot com slash matt link is in the description click it and uh and check them out and then i'll starts january you know you can start whenever oh so exodus 90 is going to be starting in january so this 21 day can be like a little test but honestly for me i just do the 21 days so you can do it whenever you want go check it out right now accessnottie.com it's a great way to grow and friendship too with people in your community check them out i also want to say thank you to hallo sorry hello is a really great prayer and meditation app it is just phenomenal whenever i talk about hello i'm always impressed that a catholic group has been able to create one of the greatest apps in the history and catalog of current apps it has sleep stories it allows you to pray the rosary it even has mark wahlberg praying the rosary so you can pray with mark goldberg which is pretty cool um i just got back from a trip to africa and i'm really bad at sleeping on airplanes so i listened to sleep stories and they people read the bible to you and stuff like that it's really really good hello.com matt uh frad and also when you sign up on the website you get three months for free so if you just download the app and sign up that way you gotta start paying monthly but you can try it for three months that's a long time and you can see if you like it and if you don't you can cancel and you won't be charged a cent hello dot com matt fradd finally i want to say a massive thanks to everybody who's beginning to support us on locals locals is a free speech platform that will enable me to continue putting out content long after youtube may choose to ban us or suspend us as twitter did recently so go to locals.com no mathrat.com um and follow us there we have morning podcasts you get access to uh monthly spiritual direction with father gregory pine we release monthly audio books for the month of august we're going to be releasing uh what's it called tree survivalism the interior capacity interior castle um we just commissioned a study on the five ways of thomas aquinas by dr ed fazer hard man to get a hold of but he has recorded the 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access to this newsletter um and you just we just ask that you put your address in so once you sign up to local says something pinned to the top click through that put in your address and we'll just start sending them to you check it out mattford.logos.com also you don't actually have to pay to watch a lot of the content that we put out over on locals so download our locals app it's on ios and android and start following us over there because it's an amazing community of catholics all around the world that are supporting each other it's not just me posting it's also the supporters posting i think people will really really dig it so mattford.locals.com check it out thank you very much final word be great if you subscribed it'd be great if you then rang that bell button because right now we have a 100 000 trophy over here we're over a quarter of a million which sounds more than 250 000 which is why i phrase it that way and once we get a million subscribers they will give us another plaque at which point i will quit the youtube channel sell my house and go live in the forest somewhere and thanks newspapers think on paper newspaper yeah and just read all the newspapers that i put together thanks so much [Music] [Music] all right go for it be back okay so this is a tim tam slam i can't think of fewer things as gross as what we're about to do on live camera maybe if you just do the broad view we won't make people vomit but first of all people need to know that tim tam is what you americans would call a cookie yeah that's right uh thank you and they are the greatest biscuits you can get them at walmart and stuff these days can you yeah but i don't know if they're that as good or are they the originals like from i think so yeah they're good tim yeah i think but it's on my american friends because they they always want me to get some and or they want to take back from australia but okay that's good tonight so walmart i think so okay yeah they do all right so just put the camera on me for this one yes because i don't want you i don't want it not on me on him all right so you wanna take a bite out of each corner right creating something of a straw you see and then what you're going to do is you're going to suck the coffee through the bottom through the top it's going to melt the cookie then you're going to eat it but you the the deal is you're not allowed to look at each other doing it because it's the most disgusting thing ever now you're going to put the camera just on charbelle neal no no just all right on both of us all right here we go ready here we go i'm just melting yeah yep oh my gosh it's like at nine o'clock at night and i'm drinking espresso do you sleep after this yeah i'll sleep i'll sleep yeah how'd you go with jet lag does it smash it when you come over here a little bit because i didn't i never slept on the flight it's not good it's so good i am a bit of a dunker dude as well i do like i do like a bit of a dunk all those little australianisms yeah yeah bit of a duck a bit of a duck you know i see them we could write a little book on australian sayings i know there's a ton but most of the ones i know inappropriate there any good australian sayings that wouldn't offend everybody uh six of six of six sorry six of one half a dozen of the other you say that here don't you yeah oh you do yeah i've never heard about i'm so hungry i could eat the crutch out of a low-flying seagull you know that one i actually don't know that one well you're welcome no thank you um seraphim's like yeah i love the america the shrimp on the barbie is a popular one but we don't we don't say shrimp no i don't say shrimp on the back esky yes is it cooler it's a cooler box that you put things in and yeah keep it cool stubby holder stubby mcdonald's is called mackers knackers yeah you have to call mac actually the cap mccafe started in australia mcdonald's in australia is so much better do you remember liam it's so much better i i've i think i mean the australian beef is pretty good so the beef um industry is very good in australia even though the mac has beef it's great here too but it's i noticed this is a different the bread um um uh vegetables and stuff it's all do you have uh are things like genetically modified is that what happens i don't know i mean what are you laughing about we got somebody i don't know if this is a real one but uh the one we affectionately refer to as moo moo said dry as a dead ding no way no need to no need to read that one but yeah that's one exactly right yeah that one um may your chickens turn into emus and kick your dunny door down the danny can we do do people know what the dunny is toilet the outside toilet yeah oh okay yeah the dunny love that you know what's funny is in australia we have a separate room where the toilet is so you say i'm going to the toilet because the toilet is usually just in one room because in australia we don't think you should crap in the same place that you bathe but whatever you're not gonna get into an argument about that point is i remember i was in canada i would still refer to the toilet as the toilet room you know the toilet even though the bathroom was in there so i went to the toilet and i put my coat on the hook or something and i came out and i went oh hang on i left my coat in the toilet but to americans that sounds like you've put it inside of the bowl [Music] because what would you uh a bathroom or bathroom sorry i have to say bathroom that's right bathroom the bathroom and then w canada i mean in europe restroom in canada water closet is that right i think that might be the case in some places maybe in england some places i'm not sure what you see yeah yeah yeah the water closet all these euphemisms yeah that's right do you like being here in america i do i love it um i i think um there's so much you know the lens i see america is through the connections i have with the catholic apostolates so i'm going straight to where all the good initiatives are yeah so i guess i'm in a bit of a bubble yeah i know you know you go straight to franciscan university catholic answers you've got st john paul the great down there you've got augustine institute you've got all the greater ewtn it's just all beautiful right um but i do watch a bit of the uh the news about american um and why is sky news so obsessed with american politics do you even know what sky news is yeah yeah we have sky news in australia why are they always talking about american things or is that just what comes up on my youtube feed yeah maybe it's because of what you watched i mean yeah i mean we're all of them cnn um uh fox news all that is available in australia because on cable it's if you've got cable or look these days no one's really watching tv it's youtube right so youtube pops up and then how weird would it be if on cable in america you could get australian news channels yeah america's like we don't care that's interesting they even call the world series of baseball the world series even though there's two bloody american teams all canadian i guess that is so funny yeah i love americans so much i really do i love living here i love the pain i mean if they're still there those who still have it the patriots are the center it's definitely here yeah there's a respect uh for the most part i know that's changing lately the whole um woke culture is a very interesting phenomenon now which is creeping into australia yeah and we're picking up from america so yeah i find it funny because i would bring a lot of american speakers to australia and and typically a lot of the aussie like bishops and priests will say hey we look the american accent thing you know we need some more aussies absolutely but you can't deny that the young people are watching um hollywood they're watching mtv and and all the all the music awards and so it's mtv sort of thing you know yeah well i don't know which doesn't it i'm like you i don't know i'm totally that's what i remember yeah i don't watch it but that's what i remember yeah i i remember i saw a clip on youtube of tim staples giving an address maybe in sydney on islam yeah that was that out at the saint charles church um where i met my wife and where we started that young we had over oh boy that's over 1500 people pretty powerful talk and if memory serves someone got up and they were challenging tim quite vigorously how did that go really good um tim responded now because there were sunni and shiite muslims in the room and so we had the first one the classic uh it's the most common question where in the bible does it say does jesus say i am the son of god worship me and and then tim would give an answer and then um uh and then another person will jump up and he invited the muslims as the first question another guy a shiite said because tim quoted some some quotes from the quran where it justifies beating husbands allowed to beat their wives now the explanation is it's not like bash your wife it's just hit her like she's an ordinary yeah that's it and um and and uh you don't hurt her you don't like injure her it's just a hit like a child and and then tim said so you are now justifying hitting your wife whether it's did he double down that would have been he said yeah but we don't hurt him it's just and and so he didn't he didn't see what he just said it's like mate you know you just don't look good for you not a good look at all um but in the end um they all came and thanked him and and a year later we got father mitch paco out and we we gave another talk called uh um uh what was it mary mary in islam and that was a powerful talk and awesome father mitch parker he reads arabic he like um yeah he knows islam inside out and he was quoting quran and then and then a few muslims were in that crowd same church and they would ask him questions and he would then respond things like the um the the errors that the the gospels are not accurate so the gospels we have today the big claim is that every single the original gospels have been burnt and gone and proof of that is because we have the american bible the new international bible the rsv bible christians can't agree on which bible to read therefore there's no authentic bible uh we can go into that i mean that's a that's a fun one but the the idea is that father mitch pacquiao just said hey show me the evidence where's the original bible that you're talking about and then you can make that claim until you show me the original bible that you're talking about that's corrupt that we've corrupted you can't make that claim you've got no evidence and yeah it was a great response they thanked him and at the end they invited him to the mosque and they want him to talk to them what i love love um admire the muslims in general are passionate about their faith and they want to share it and and they invited father mitch knowing that they just want to constantly respond and i guess to affirm their faith or or defend they do want to like convert you and that's fine you know they're trying to evangelize us too but it's great that they don't hold back they really want to just get out there and it's v you can count them on your fingers how many catholics do that yeah you know we're shamed and so so was muhammad a uh prophet uh lunatic or liar i have my answer what's yours is it an either or can it be a both and well you tell me what are the two you want to choose see if they contradict each other so a prophet um oh he would be a false prophet a false prophet because he yeah so he's not a prophet not a prophet all right so you got two other options you can throw one is he a liar i don't to be honest i i don't think he was a liar because he truly believed uh he was possessed in the cave it was his mother it was his wife and uncle that convinced him that that was the prophet gable okay um angel gabriel that that now this is interesting this is a lot of people don't know this part but when moses when muhammad muhammad was in the cave he describes like an experience that his heart was ripped out of his chest that's right split drained and put back and shoved back in his heart basically he felt possessed and um when he went out he was afraid too he was that was what he said to his wife at the time right so i believe he was actually not lying right so that's an option um and then uh they convinced him now you're a prophet of god it's only 40 similar age right here we go this is the age of uh realization so as a 40 year old here he goes and he goes out and he he has to start convincing people about him being a prophet and and that's over time he started build up his followers so he had a lot of different um peasants around and they would come follow and then he would try to convince the jews but then they didn't they didn't buy it and then he got angry with them and started to call them you know infidels and so it's an interesting story when you follow it all but um he did do one thing i have to give him one thing dude again then give us your answer yeah do you still need to i still got one more thing right yeah maybe he's gonna take maybe there's another option so you could come up with that i would say he was possessed and i think that islam has good in it but is demonic ultimately not in that it's has an absence of any good in it yeah or there aren't good teachings or even things that we can agree with muslims that we would disagree with secularists but i do think that i think i think he was possessed or mad or both yeah probably because if you can't call him prophet not right and you don't want to call him a liar and if someone's claiming to receive revelation he's either deluded so maybe you don't want to go all the way and say that he was mad you might say he was deluded you might say he was hallucinating you might say he was possessed i think it's one of those whereas if i look at joseph smith from mormonism i would say i think he's a liar yeah interesting yeah interesting so but i but i think as you say that i i know it's very difficult to say something like that and then at the same time say i really mean no disrespect to those who would follow islam i'm not trying to say bad things about you you know the muslim who's watching the show right now like you might you might have all sorts of objections to level against christianity but you can still give me the benefit of the doubt of being a man of good will and i could give you that benefit of the doubt while still criticizing your religion but i don't mean any personal offense to you perfect don't yeah yeah what's the saying you play the ball not the pla not the player the ball so it's the issue it's the id and we're not making a personal judgment of of muslims right right again a reminder we love muslims the main image and likeness of god they they will face the same judges we will we all face the same judge we'll all be treated the same but um but you cannot be a christian and call muhammad a prophet no can't no have you seen what thomas aquinas has to say about islam can you uh neil if you have time go to pinesforthaquinas.com type in muslim or whatever and there's an episode where we read what aquinas has to say in the summer contra gentiles against it's brutal we won't read it now but if you can put a link in the description to what aquinas has to say about muhammad oh wow yeah saint francis of assisi as well right yeah he went out because he went to try to convert the something or other muslim leader um and that's it you've gotta we we've gotta just do the same thing represent the truth in love and then and never make it personal because no one because no one is super open to the thing you're telling me about if while you're telling me about it you're also insulting me or coming off from yeah do we like it if people are insulting yes no we don't mother all right and then you or you catholics are idle worshipers and all you catholics are this or that no it's not nice it's not it's not it's not right um we were talking about truth here and and it's an objective thing and we have to look at it um in in unity and in peace and and with with an openness yeah there's a great deal we can learn from our muslim friends a great deal i think christianity would become a lot more masculine if it would uh look to how muslims practice their faith they have elements of the truth yeah and that's what we say all religions have elements of the truth some more or less than others and we and we do say not with prayer pride but with joy we found the fullness of truth the catholic church contains the fullness of that truth now we have to continue to discover that and let it penetrate if you don't understand something pray for understanding but but there is the fullness but every other faith would have more or less some aspects of that truth you know so um we're all searching for it and keep searching until you find it because once you find it the truth will in fact set you free and you will be free and and you and you would find peace as well you won't be at peace until you find that freedom you won't find that freedom until you start searching for the truth and you don't find the answers in the truth until you have an open heart and separate yourself to it's not pers it's don't don't get all personal here is this right or wrong and it's it's not either or it's it's not both end it's it's it's one or the other yeah it's right or it's wrong um anyway do you want to take some questions please do um and then derrick or liam or whoever else neil if you have a thing you want to throw out feel free but this question comes from local supporter emily welsh she says very inspirational episodes so far i have to finish the rest tomorrow what would be the single best book aside from the bible y'all would recommend to explain catholicism to someone trying to strengthen their foundations similarly to how charbelle did wow okay um my goodness there's so many options uh yeah see the first the first instinct you say the catechism but it's probably a bit dense uh you say the compendium of the catechism again um but they're good options that's into the faith um there's i mean i do like uh um trent horn's one why we are catholics i just say the same thing it's the most simple entry point uh dr edward tree has another a book um why we are catholic as well which is sort of uh uh was made in with the intention of being part of symbolon so that whole faith explained uh probably a bit heavier than why we're catholic but it's brilliant um our very own in australia dr robert haddad has um uh defend the faith it's an apologetics book but it's a q and answer style with church fathers and catechism quotes that's a really good one available on our website but uh yeah that's defend the faith um yeah that would be right there but there's so many it's very important with all this and this is something i only learned through experience really that we do not um jump ahead too far in our spiritual life we start baby steps take it step by step because once you can understand something you're ready for the next level and then the next off sometimes if you if you if you jump for the heights and you miss everything in between you're going to have no foundation it's going to crumble and you sort of can over commit to some things in your faith and then there's no foundation there and all of a sudden you could be as jesus says you know swept away with the sand so you've got to have a good foundation so the basics the creed you know um the basic uh truths of our faith and i the meat and potato stuff is important i think and there's so much good stuff this podcast is you know as a start but i think we need to learn in a systematic way um as well as as top on topics we've got to do that but we also got to start foundation so i hope that helps there's a few options yeah that's good i would highly recommend why we're catholic yeah by trent horn it's excellent don't tell him i said i would never say that to his face again but just behind his back there and then check out parousiamedia.com which is the uh which is your website where you can learn more uh get books probably mp3s or no uh yeah mp3s uh ebooks are on there yeah um there's a digital platform as well like a link in the description neil yeah cool thank you check it out all right sam says do you think that the catholic communities in the east are the best modes of evangelization for muslims due to them being such a heavy influence on islam certainly helps because they understand firsthand what it's like in the middle east because of the persecution that's happened the majority of the middle east has become muslim um but it's not all muslim and a lot of people forget some countries like my mother is from lebanon and so lebanon itself is still run by a maronite catholic president that and it's in the uh constitution you have to be a maronite catholic to be the president and then the vice president or the prime minister is is a sunni muslim interest and the deputy vice is a shiite muslim so that's the order wow and and it flows that way so if you split that up they pretty much are a third each um a third christian a third sunni now the scary thing there is if you combine the sunni and the shiites then you've got like 60 66 percent muslims in in lebanon itself but then you've got the chaldeans the iraqi christians and it's getting smaller but they're there and they're on fire you've still got some over there in egypt and the coptics doing their thing and um it's so powerful that they're out there that but they have been persecuted for years and um that would help but it's not to be orlando to be honest anyone can can understand but i guess they've got a head start in understanding because of the language as well maybe um those who speak arabic anyway can pick up things in the quran that might help but again i think today with the technology the internet and with the information uh we can get it's it's really even playing field now anyone can learn about it uh thanks lorenzo golow says do moderate muslims he says really condemn their co-religionaries who defile churches in france slaughter christians in nigeria take christian children as sex slaves in pakistan and in general kill priests women children innocent people who had no fault but their christian faith though they would publicly disagree with that so that they'll publicly say um yeah condemn the the violence absolutely um unfortunately if i can say this a bit controversial but you have to be on the inside to understand this you have to understand the the uh how do muslims view the non-muslims they have the truth in their mind the fullness of the truth and we and non-believers are either infidels or just non-believers and they they need to receive islam they need to become muslims they need and so they've got a mission to do now if they are not open to it so you can befriend someone until they deny islam and then something does change you become now an enemy so what happens is you have to you have to unfortunately protect the way to protect the world from this evil that is anti-islamic any non-muslim who's who's publicly denying islam they have to be silenced in some way because they're spreading evil according to a muslim and that's how they're seeing it and that's why the sharia law and all that it's it's whatever you need to do to advance islam and sometimes in history we've seen it it's involved violence it's involved threats it's involved forces and we can't move away from that it's historic fact this has happened um and i've experienced first hand and i've seen and i know the conversations that happen behind the scenes and i know what they say about the west i know what they say about america i know what they say about the jews i know what they say about christians and even the koran itself says things about christians and jews the first half is quite interesting you know befriend the people of the book second half you know it doesn't say that at all you know you you basically um yeah you condemn them um and you know you they're not equal they're not equal to you and even i remember i because i was good friends with them i respected them and i believed in god they saw that they said comments like this i could give you i'm going to give you a glass of water and i said thank you you know we muslims have to be hospitable to those who at least believe in god so you don't do that for an atheist and this is where we okay the christian way is for everyone so mother teresa wouldn't have said if you're not a catholic i'm not going to help you she would help everyone and that's the christian calling in islam it's not necessarily that way it's you help your muslim first and then then believers in god second and then everyone else is lost it's an interesting thing uh since this book's released and since you've been talking about this more and more do you have muslims challenging your representation of islam yes and what's that like it's very brief because uh they don't want to continue i'm very happy to sit down one-on-one with anyone about this because i'm i'm i'm being real it's i'm not here to judge you as a person it's you're born in islam i'm not saying that's bad you're born in it but what i am inviting you to is to to ask these bigger questions and journey towards the fullness of truth and yes i'm going to say it islam doesn't have the fullness of truth it's got elements of it but jesus is either lord or not he can't be a prophet and god it's one of the other we gotta we gotta decide and then you know going through all this we have to be respectful of it so i'm brief discussions but no one's really come out and thank god i haven't had any threats or anything like that so it's not like that a lot of people assume it's no no you we have to be respectful of each other and when you do that we can go a long way who's doing the best work in kind of uh muslim apologetics and the christian or catholic churches today you know there's it's hard because everyone's got their strengths and weaknesses um and so i love i mean you had him on the show i love what um what's his name there um david david david wood knows his stuff yeah but he knows what buttons to press right yeah and he deliberately presses those buttons yes he does um and so then the and and i get it and and so internally we could laugh about things and yeah the only thing you want to be careful of is is how is that received by a muslim and will they go on now i know why he's doing it and i get it and because i understand that the way of thinking and and sometimes it's not being charitable the other way i know muslims what they think of us but um and you gotta you know it's like dishing it back um when you say you understand why he's doing it why is it that he's doing it in that way i guess he's doing it because it will provoke an emotional response and it will get them they're not reasoning that what happens is they become emotional about it and they become defensive about that and that they take it personally and then i start attacking him and all of a sudden it's not a debate anymore it's it's a it's not a debate of ideas it's it's personal attack so the amount of times i mean god bless him he's a courageous man um and i'd love to meet him you know and learn i learn a lot about what he's done yeah with his work he does great work i'll put you in touch with him yeah thank you please um and i'd love to meet more i mean sam shamoon's another one is not a catholic but he's doing great and he invites them to jesus and then um robert spencer which yeah i um yeah he's written a lot on on islam and he just became orthodox really i just heard i just heard yeah um so yeah well yeah he's we'll pray for that can we do that yeah um who also had yeah there's also um oh there's another american lady over here um oh man i forgot her name sorry she's speaks ruthless about about what happens in islamic countries but again it's good stuff but but you you take what you need is information and remember as long as you you don't take it personally we're good let's learn let's go for the ideas one by one and i and so they're three on top of my head father mitch pacquiao i really love his style um he he does a good job of it as well father mitch so i cannot point out father mitch pacquiao i mean yeah yeah that he's definitely up there any good debates it's like the best muslim christian debate online that you come across funny um as much as i wouldn't you i mean robert spencer's had a few and again robert he presses those buttons too did you see that debate between him and craft no so robert spencer and peter craven debated whether muslims are more of a threat than modernists or or you know modern secular people and robert spencer just destroyed craft and i did not expect that to happen at all craith was saying that no muslims are our allies and you know we have more in common with them than we do and you know when was this when you hear that maybe that's true maybe it's not this was a long time ago okay maybe 10 years ago or so oh wow and i love craft i think it's brilliant i think craig came to it more of like i'm just having a conversation and i'm open you know yeah whereas i think uh spencer came in for for blood not in a bad way but just like he was ready to go ready to battle his heart he's highlighting the viewpoint the world view from an islamic perspective i think and that's and that's an interesting insight so he's he is correct in his assessment yeah it's just the the question is that's not the way i would go about it but but it's very effective at what he's doing yeah yeah seraphim you had a question yeah i got to figure out how to sort of phrase it um so like recently in my recommended on youtube all of these dawah channels are popping up with these islamic apologetics videos that are typically based in short form there's an emotional appeal there's somebody has an emotional response to it they say you just have to say this prayer then you know the shahada and now you're a part of the people of god all of your sins are wiped away you're good to go and it just strikes me as how similar that is to like protestant evangelical charismatic churches in the you know you come in on the spot you can pray the sinner's prayer and everything's good to go so i wonder in in doing outreach or apologetics or evangelization to muslims do you do you think who do you think maybe has better footing there you know something similar like that in an evangelical circle or something like a catholic or orthodox who has like a more rigorous life of repentance and uh you know there's work to be done there just maybe your thoughts about that yeah i mean we don't hear of the stories that apparently i heard a stat there's nine nine million muslims are becoming christian every year uh now that's not necessarily catholic but christian at least and i think the protestant uh church is doing great uh in in this space of introducing him to jesus whatever it takes to get to jesus right get to jesus but then once you discover jesus as lord you can't stop there we've got to take him further and further and deeper and deeper and more in love with jesus to the point where you get into his mystical body and all of that and the church but i think then they're both good whatever whatever works right so if you're on that level if what the protestants are doing is working getting them to christ which is brilliant we celebrate the fact that do that but as long as they don't stay at that base level they've got to continue on the journey so i think we can work closely with protestants in this space introducing the divinity of christ to our muslim um brothers and sisters so let's let's work together in this space and and and evangelize uh muslims and and that's one thing we can unite but you're right the strategic way so with the sacraments they're powerful so through through baptism confirmation uh reconciliation you know holy communion all that um that does require formation and rcia the whole process so you want to make sure that they're fair income can i say that fair income about their faith um and and real so you want to journey with them on that uh so maybe it does it's not as you just don't just sort of rush and baptize and but you could i mean look you could but but don't leave them be you've got to sort of journey with them and keep them going and i do regret that certain people i need to go back and catch up with that i i sort of left unfortunately high and dry because i distanced and i didn't follow up and i i feel bad that i haven't done that and i think we all have a duty to do it go back and journey with the people that come across your life and we are supposed to be disciples and we're supposed to be accompanying them and then bring them closer and closer and deeper and deeper in a relationship with with christ and his church and um if we can do that um that's we're going to go a long way so i don't know if i've answered your question it does i mean i have a lot of thoughts on it and like kind of piggybacking off of one of the other questions that came in about like the eastern right churches or the byzantine right churches whether it's eastern catholics or eastern orthodox who the spiritual life would be culturally much more similar where there's a more rigorous fasting rule and there's prostrations there's more of a prayer i mean is there a way even the catholic church could maybe encourage within its own communion to to equip the eastern churches to do a better job i love that i think yeah there is definitely work to be done there in the east um to bridge the gap um and that's that's a key i think there's there's real hope there if we can have more and more uh eastern churches doing that and understanding and they do understand islam but re outreach and doing that is important um the the idea of yeah formation uh we have to form so in the east we have to form we have to realize the history here how did islam get these practices so the five times a day it comes from it's clearly clearly uh from the monastery the monastic life so we've done that from the we face the sun yeah the east and you know they face mecca which is basically the rock so are they praying to allah or the rock and they have to be they have to be honest about themselves there um why do you have to physically face the rock if you say allah is everywhere and then that's the spot where you know muhammad went up to heaven but the idea is uh understanding a little bit about the history and then how we got to where we got to uh and then we can evangelize that because you can see all the influences of uh the muslim um biblical stories and how they came up with the stories so father mitch park was brilliant he picked um there's a chapter uh dedicated to maryam mary but it's it it sort of it mixes mary the mother of jesus and mary the sister of moses and if you don't pick up on it you'll miss it and um so reading that that surah on maryam you'll you'll notice hang on hang on like that's not what mary the mother did so they're mixing bits of history so you've just got to go in there and clarify and fix up the order of things and then we're good to go but when it's very convenient to say all the gospels are uh fabricated they're all they're all they're false and then we've got to start there okay well well then if you're going to say that then don't quote it so if you just said that muhammad's in the bible you just told me that the bible's corrupt so why are you quoting a corrupt book and then ask questions like that to then get them to think why would you ask me where in the bible does jesus say i am the son of god worship me guess what i'll save your time he doesn't say it that way and what's the problem because you've just told me i remember ahmadi that he was a famous evangelist and he said i will challenge every christian out there if you can find in the in the bible your bible uh that jesus says i am the son of god worship me i will give you a thousand dollars i remember that and uh and no one could do it and even i think a few protestant pastors showed him and he says no it doesn't say that what did he just do he tricked us i um he's forcing us and dictating how jesus needs to say it hang on it's not up to you how jesus reveals himself jesus did it he didn't just tell us he showed us i love it he fulfilled the old testament perfectly he was the fulfillment of the old testament he lived the life of virtue he performed the miracles and then he if you want to want to go there i mean not he did say it in a more radical way you know when you say before abraham was i am yahweh the i am the word he's saying the forbidden word he's just made himself equal to god like there's so many things and he proves that he dies on the cross resurrects and then the seven last sayings of the cross oh my goodness just there's so many things you can just point out here that jesus is in charge he didn't get murdered he laid down his life and that's the difference he we didn't we don't follow a god a weak god he's a strong manly figure that that came down to show us what love is all about and he went through it and it was painful but he loved us that much and he did it and if we can get into that a bit more well okay he didn't say it the way you wanted him to say it but nor is the shahada prayer in the quran the way you want us to say it so where in the quran does it say there is only one god and his prophet muhammad in that order now it's in two parts sure that's fine and then you're like no no no no no no i said i said does he say this exactly it's like well so you've got it you've got to play it the same way did i answer that question yeah yeah okay yeah did you ever meet that islamic leader who had you repeat that prayer three times and no i wish i i really wanted because he came from from overseas jordan in fact and i'm going to jordan in september so i wonder if i can find out i've got to get in touch with my friend ali and steve it's been 20 years though i don't know if there's a way of finding him but um i'm going to jordan with tim staples on a pilgrimage so that's going to be fun him and his wife and his brother father staples so that's going to be awesome holy land and jordan so if i can get back to jordan and see uh that that chef that would be amazing so what else you got going on with parusia media and everything else yeah there's that pilgrimage so yeah september 3rd to the 13th plus a little uh add on there oh next month next month you go on home before then i'm going home yeah i go home on the 31st of july and then um and then i'll be home for a month and then and go to holy land with tim and valerie and father terry and that's going to be awesome following the footsteps of christ and we actually think about it like this it's chronologically laid out so we start in bethlehem and we work our way through the sea of galilee and then we end up in jerusalem and we go through the whole passion and and resurrection scenes have you been to the holy land before never me too now steve ray is the man that you know he's the i think he's the leader of the hell he's been in times i think that's right and then some but i'd love to go steve ray one day but um and this is harvest journeys is the company that um that are putting this together and they've partnered with us and we've got about half a bus load of aussies now we need to fill up the other half with americans so come on guys americans where can we go to check it out if you want to join journeys.com it is also via the website and produce your media just look for it but that'll be awesome how's tim doing much better yeah pl a lot of prayers he's he's much better he's not a hundred percent he he describes himself as about 80 85 since his his stroke he had a stroke six months ago and he was really bad he was struggling to walk and he was struggling to to um to do anything um it was really hard on him but thank god he got through it and he's back on on catholic answers live and he's still doing his thing but it's it's just taking it easy he's not as um he's such a faithful guy i got nothing but good things to say about lovely absolutely yeah cool what else yes any question um as you said masculine what do you think that the typical muslim more strong in their faith than typical christian is more strong in the flag faith what do you think christianity is lucky okay just reiterate that the question was so because i mentioned the word masculine muslims what do i think between the muslim approach to being masculine and the christian approach which is more masculine would you say or absolutely as you said yes um yeah i would oh good one yeah you said that they're masculine yeah prima facie it looks like a more masculine on the outside it is on the outside they they pull together they'll defend the the truth um you know the the the ten percent of truth that they have they defend it uh and they'll go to death for it how many christians are ready to do that but i might have to say this um the true man man of honor is one that will stand up for the principles and defend the innocent defend the vulnerable defend truth and and and where i guess when you scratch the surface and i'm just generalizing but my muslim friends where they fall short because they're missing out on the christian message here charity so the idea is we support our own let's let's stand up for each other but not necessarily stand up for the vulnerable or the non-muslim or or the one that need so there's a difference there so um i think there's work to be done so the the christian idea of the christian message is charity is for everyone we have to be charitable to the world we have to be billboards of christ we have to be always outward looking for other people that's what love is love is not inward looking it's outward looking and and we don't live a selfish life imagine that the society if we live a selfish life um it would be anarchy and it's heading that way unfortunately but you know if people started speeding on the road because they didn't want to follow the rules they didn't want to they don't care what anyone else thinks they just want to do their thing and um it would be a chaotic world so we we have to reintroduce the idea of charity which is uh lowering yourself humbling yourself so and elevating others and and i think that's the christian message it is exactly the question this is you think god humbled himself in order to elevate us in grace i mean that's exactly it's powerful and and that's that's that's a man right there i remember i went to abu dhabi about 10 years ago to preach it was such an honor to be invited and uh on the airplane i was sitting next to a fella and he turned out to be a university professor and this was back in the day when i thought because you had a phd a man you knew a lot and we started debating abortion and you know even though i felt pretty confident on the topic this guy's got a phd gurley i better not get into a conversation with him he's going to wipe the floor with me but i entered into it somewhat reluctantly and i was shocked at how terrible his argument was you know and um i was clearly just winning this debate that maybe maybe we shouldn't be killing innocent people and maybe that was never okay and uh he was he was he was uh failing so poorly in our dialogue that he actually reached out to the lady hostess uh what do you call her the flight hostess flight attendant uh for like uh backup you know like well let's bring a woman into this well it turned out she was a good muslim woman and so then the two of us went to town on him like she she went off on him that he would be for abortion it was so cool so me and this muslim air hostess were refuting this uh this professor i don't know what he was a professor and it was interesting as we were exiting the airplane his exact words to me i'm very precise when i try to recount what people say because i hate when people embellish i hate hyperbole even though i know there's a role for it but he actually looked at me and went well i think your arguments are better than mine but i'm not going to change my opinion what oh is that profound if you would say it the truth isn't what matters the most you know but wow but that was the time me and a muslim woman argued that's awesome are you on the same side that's great if we can do more of that i think that'll be good uh yeah so don't don't be afraid to engage with muslims that befriend them bring them over your place do we have a lot of is there a lot of muslims who have you know helped uh push the pro-life perspective or are they there's not um i mean not that i know of a huge uh outward outreaching um apostles but i know individually when you speak to them they are definitely against abortion but yeah i'd like to see more vocal muslims step up to the plate in the pro-life movement i think um they're there they're definitely there they definitely agree with us on that um so let's that's a challenge so anyone watching yeah please we need you uh awesome dude well anything else you want to touch on before we go i i guess uh i guess shout out to my wife my eight children um yeah that's quick she's at home right now yeah with the eight kids how's she handling that blessing yeah she look i don't want to go that far won't canonize it but she's beautiful uh she's very patient patient with me and uh you know she's part of the mission and the ministry with me as you know by supporting it and she's behind it and any big decision i make it's always consulting her and uh you know so she really influences the direction we go so yeah i love her and uh we've we've had 16 years of marriage first of july this year that's awesome 16 years 15 years awesome yeah yeah yeah in august oh so you got married a month before me oh my goodness look at that where were you married what texas texas houston i was married at the church we met saint charles terrific so um it was amazing when i was engaged to her so what happened i was in the seminary i don't know people know that but i was in the seminary because i wanted to ask the question god are you calling me to something radical because people said you should be a priest from all the prayers i was so i better be i better discover that so 2003 i joined the seminary i did meet my wife before that but she was just a friend sister in the lord and then i i spent a year in the seminary loved it is this in sydney sydney and but it was under the marinade epaki but trained with the sydney archdiocese so yeah cardinal pell was the architect of sydney then um loved it and we did a 30 day silent retreat at the end i have to have to share this story i mean it was a miracle 30 days wow so i i knew about six months in i knew from day one i wanted to be married but i needed to explore priesthood was for me if that's what god's calling me so about halfway through i did have a little trip to lebanon met some married priests and i thought oh is it attractive but i couldn't do both i had to be one or the other then i continued the second half and just i asked the question if i was to marry someone who would it be and my wife popped in my head christine and she never left me in my prayer and i would be in adoration and i'd be like okay there's our lord in adoration but christine's there and i feel like i need her to be next to me adoring the lord and i feel just really strong about that vision and it's amazing every time you do go to adoration i always think of that prayer i had in the summary but uh in the final month i i asked my mother to join in a you know the saint teresa five-day it's not a novena because it's five days not nine days but there's the five days what happens if you want something um answered you go to saint teresa of lizzie and it's basically saint teresa of lazio please pluck a flower a rose from heaven and show me and and it's a beautiful prayer i don't know it all off by heart but you say it five days in a row and at the end she will send a rose now to make it even extra difficult i said all right i see lots of red roses i'm going to make it white if i wanted to be married and i said okay if i see a white rose that's marriage and if it's a red rose that's priesthood that was the conditions and my mom did the same and it was in the 30-day silent retreat it was the last five days of the silent retreat i loved that song i was oh it was awesome but the end of it i had a daily spiritual director and in the end he got frustrated with me it was the last day he said shar bill we've been journeying for 30 days and you'll know clearer about your vocation than we were on day one what do you want yeah and i said i want christine and i and he still sat back in his seniors ah and he got up and just walked out and i looked i looked i looked outside the window and there was a a rose bush with a white rose yeah i said wow i got home and i told my mum the good story i saw white rose today and she goes you wouldn't believe it but i also saw a white rose in the garden i've never seen one ever in this garden so we both got confirmation of the right rose now i took that as a nice little all right and then i told the bishop and he said look i'm going to send you to lebanon and study syriac and aramaic and and the maronite spirituality and then make a decision i said okay so i did and again uh about seven months in i just you know uh i i made up my mind he was going to send us off to rome and i really wanted to stay but i had to be true to myself i look i want to be married i'm not going to cheat anyone here and then i went back i thank the bishop and i got home and within a day or two of arriving i just texted christine and then said can we meet at st michael's church and i remember it was a thursday two o'clock we said a prayer it was the first of july and we started to court then and then a year later we got engaged on the first of july i proposed at that there was a park bench down the road from the church i proposed there and then a year later got married at the church we met and a year later we baptized our first son michael and a year later we baptized our second son and then a year every year and a half for the next you know uh seven extra more children we yeah eight children now thank god oldest is 15 and youngest is alexander who turns one on my birthday so we share a birthday birthday third of august okay yeah yeah yeah it's funny you say that about asking god for signs because i moved to texas back in 2005 and was discerning marriage with cameron and uh i prayed for three signs i was in mass one day and i i prayed for uh you know it's funny what you do it's a bit embarrassing saying it out loud but i prayed i wanted to see like i wanted to hear unambiguous scripture i wanted to see a full moon and i wanted to see a bloody deer in the middle of houston and i saw none of it and um that was it so you didn't get your sign nothing but i felt god was saying to me in prayer matt you're old enough and ugly enough to make this decision on your own what do you want to do i want to marry you well bloody do it yet so i did it was the best decision well one of the best decisions i've made yeah awesome that decision for a tim tam probably outranks that but it's still a good decision do you know mark bennett from brizzy mark yes shane uh shane i think he still leads net yeah he's still involved so i used to live with shane oh and mark was a dear friend and i called mark up and i said mark i wanna better this is about a day after i was praying about my wife now wife i said i want to marry her but i'm just you know just not sure you know what if it's the wrong decision and maybe i am called to be a priest and he was just flabbergasted he said what the bloody hell are you talking about you idiot she's better than you are she's better than you are you you better propose before she figures that out that night i proposed to her oh wow so thanks mike bennett that's awesome shaming me into making a good decision yeah it's great that there's good movements now in australia like that and net and the and from that there's the emmaus uh yeah the manual community and there's the unite conference happening all the time and uh there's so many great initiatives you know fire up ministries and oh i'm just so pleased to see more and more um independent ministries starting yeah we need to we need to step up and do the thing um yeah we have to evangelize we have to warn people have to do whatever we're called to and but do you think like you know in america here i don't know if it's because of like hollywood culture right or like celebrity culture i know there's some of that in australia as well but obviously not the same level as america do you think though like american catholicism can fall into that where you've got your celebrities up on stage or behind microphones and oh yeah do you look at that and think gosh you know as as helpful as that might be in the moment that might be there might be something unhealthy there that i don't want australia to necessarily follow in the same place absolutely yeah um i i get what you're saying it's it's not about us as individuals less of me more of christ it's got to be everyone's called the difference doesn't mean it's a cookie cut like not everyone is called to do the pints with aquinas show there's a calling not everyone is called to do catholic answers live not everyone is called to do august institute sort of stuff no you're called to do what god's calling you to do with your skills um yeah i i love to share this you know how do you how do you know what you're called to i think it's a big question and i think there's some clues we can look at um and jesus says in the gospels it's your talents start there your talents so first and foremost what gifts are you have been given to you from god if you're a creative type of person artistic person maybe it's through that form you should be serving the lord if you're a great preacher then maybe that is your your not everyone is called to do that though saint paul reminds us of it as well um you know if you love working um with your hands you know maybe through a trade like jesus christ himself like saint joseph you could be in the construction business if you like managing and organizing things event management or even in the corporate world or leadership so whatever your your skills are i think that's a that's a that's a clear calling that god has planted it now invest it don't bury it invest in it and multiply it so that's one but the second one is um what situ where are you in your life like so if you're are you married or single that's a big because that also will dictate a little bit about the direction to go are you um you know what situations are you know you you've got a the mortgage uh or the all the commitments you might have and there might be certain things where you have to keep your current job to keep paying the bills but then um are there situations where are you ready to step out in the deep and then maybe give up that job and and then and do something different so where are you in your life um the third one would be like what is it that you actually enjoy yeah so if you don't enjoy it then it's obvious clearly not from god so there's got to be some satisfaction there and a desire and then what um not ready to now trust in the lord uh and then can you can you bring that to to to the table to what's an is there a need for what you want to do if it's going to serve a need to fulfill a need there's another sign and then finally you step out in faith and do it and then if it gives you peace fulfillment uh it's from god if you're sort of always uneasy i mean god is a god of peace and i think that peace deep peace is what we're looking for not just pure pleasure or pure enjoyment or that you know um what like you say uh just getting the attention it's it's about uh is what i'm doing not only fulfilling to me but is it effective is it having a difference is it bearing fruit am i enjoying it can i survive doing this all these sort of factors and because it's an important um aspect we have to discern in life and once we do that i think game changer if everyone followed their vocation big v and then followed the second vocation little v you know sort of what god's calling you to do in specifically i think it's we're going to we're going to have a huge impact in this world well thanks charbel uh people should check out your book can they get on amazon i know they shouldn't because amazon sucks no no but they can yeah it is on amazon okay it is on amazon yeah how islam led me back to christ check out charbelle's book check out parousiamedia.com uh once you go there you can check out the pilgrimage that you and tim staples will be leading in in september thanks for all the work that you're doing man yeah for me for my beautiful country and yours too and thank you the great south land of the holy spirit you know who that is there you know yeah everyone knows who that is of course people watch the show yeah i hope so yeah she stood up right she stood up uh and you think you gave me a relic of her oh there is uh yeah is that too audacious a question i could find because i've got that's thomas aquinas in there first class rolex first class wow first class in there cherish that definitely yeah mary you that that um photograph i'll tell you where i got that so my first day at catholic answers jason everett had just left for denver because he was working in san diego and then he was working remotely in denver and i got his office right so i walk into the office and it's completely empty except for his filing cabinet filled with chastity material that he had photocopied he's a he's a machine i love him and then that was on the wall he bought that for me and put it in the room oh how about that yeah he's a speed buyer from australia i don't know he probably just bought it online because he's been to australia a few times it's been great it's very popular over there he's terrific yeah he's a real deal yeah he's a real deal yeah um man of faith awesome cool glory to jesus christ always amen god bless you thank you we're praying for you and keep going and yeah fly the flag of australia and get that up here too you got the map that was great i saw you you did that personally right you actually i just did that up to up upset the tasmanians oh yeah you've knocked them off that's not good so they used to be there but i lost it ouch you know that is the ends of the earth right that's yeah you know what i found crazy right is if australians made the map of the world yeah we like this right not that not nuts this crazy like the only reason right because we obviously don't know what north and south is what is north and south in relation to it's in relation to the map makers right yes so if australians had written the map and drew it up it would be upside down and the north pole would be the south pole etc didn't that blow your mind i don't know about all that yeah there's the radius the border of the world there's a um but that doesn't show what's actually north what do we mean by north like whenever you say something is north that's in relation to something else right north and south pole but it would just probably be flipped that's what i just said you're assuming yeah it'd be flipped i've not thought of it like that but the europeans drew the maps i'm gonna go ahead and disagree with you man yeah don't they have satellite images don't we have satellite images won't that sort of predict that surely that was something yeah but like how were they focusing on the earth like all you have to do with that satellite is turn it around so it would be accurate and australia would look like that does it make sense am i talking crap if you think about like if you started a map in europe everything below it would be lower and everything like that would be the same and that's why right we think of that as up and on top yes yeah so really we're at the top america's down imagery when you get to the point where you exit the atmosphere yeah you take a picture of the world well then your satellite is you're taking a photograph of it the way you've interpreted it you would just send it up yeah wouldn't it be uh what is that that's what i agree with you'd have to send in a space upside down to get that image but what do you mean by upside down like upside down only in reference to the way we've understood how the world looks right see what i mean so look this is good this is where pints really starts we haven't even begun yet this is where it begins like if i say if i say like you know that those lights are high i'm maybe i'm saying that in reference to how we're sitting and the fact that i consider that to be the ceiling because i've decided it is so that's the functional place right i feel like this is the same argument as saying if a colorblind person created the palette green would be blue i'm putting on screen an upside down glow oh yeah what did you look up to find that i searched it and rotated it it's sort of like when people say that the earth like you rotated it that's because it's they're operating within the reference of this so then by rotating it doesn't that make australia up top that way but he had to rotate it like if you leave if you leave the room and then turn around and look at it it's still the same orientation as it were isn't it like this monk and then it's there's down under and then and then what you're saying is you flip it upside down then it will be upside down there's no right way up they put it that way because it looks right because that's what the maps are made to look like and what we're conditioned to expect looking at the globe but they have to like presumably the satellite's rotating to some amount so they're going to have to position it some kind of way when they take a picture let me say this to come at a different angle right so when people say like we now know we're no longer the center of the universe like you don't know that because you don't know where the edges are if i'm in a room and i cannot see any of the walls i cannot say whether i'm in the center of that room right because i have no reference point you make that make sense yeah yeah right so what i'm saying is uh we don't what's the referent point like what's what's north and south what is that in relation to we don't know where we are like maybe we're sideways maybe australia should be on the side okay as far as the experience if something's north you're only saying that in reference to where you are well then you should leave that as it is now on your bookshelf done yes yeah let's keep having this conversation because i feel like maybe i'm speaking crap or maybe i'm saying something really brilliant and i can't tell yet so i'm gonna have a bit more vodka while neil tells me what's happening no you're i think you're right i'm thinking about this when you have to think about how the map was developed you'd have europe and then join us and make more space yeah thank you you get the coffee finish finish the only reason why this like has any second meaning to it is there's when you're looking at a globe the northern ones are kind of on top so resting on the bottom so it's as if like the northern wall so like north america is on top of the world yeah whereas if you flip it upside down then we're on the bottom of the world you don't have to be on the bottom so that's why it has these kind of like you know you're only saying that because it pays you neal no but it can also you know it's also because like europe was unaware of australia and south america when maps were being drawn right no oh the first maps who drew the first maps i don't know some dude in europe probably europe probably wasn't like an african sheila it's probably like a male european if i'm looking at the coastlands right from the ship looking at the coastlines by hand but then what defines the well then you have to think i agree with what you're saying but then what defines the pulse around the world like we have a compass that points to something but we've called that north it's not like a compass came out of nowhere and so the compass points north but that's only because we've said what north is we could have said well this is all that's predicated on the spherical earth what did you say he said the earth is flat oh that's another right might as well just derail it all the way have you heard of that yeah jimmy would know yeah he'll know let me just text him see if i can get him a speaker phone um but while i do that i was going to ask you oh yeah have you seen that website birds aren't real i was just going to talk look it up it's the greatest website and they just changed all the batteries can you look it up neil and then like read about it while i text to jimmy let me turn this towards you birds are not real i see birds all the time what's the magpie cockatoo koala i'm not koala i've seen a lot of dead birds recently what's the deal with that the birds aren't real movement has been active since 1976 one of once a preventative cause our initial goal was to stop the genocide of real birds unfortunately this was unsuccessful and the government has since replaced every living bird with robotic replicas now our movement's prerogative is to make everyone aware of this fact and then i think that they talk about birds uh recharge on phone lines that's why you see them sitting on on or not phone lines power line all right i'm gonna call jimmy aiken right now everybody okay are people still watching the show absolutely all right absolutely we've got more now than we did ever all right jimmy this is jimmy jimmy aiken does he know you he knows of me i met him twice hello hey jimmy you are on pints with aquinas with charbelle reich how you doing nice to meet your acquaintance yeah good to see you i was just at catholic answers yesterday oh cool yes it was great to see everyone so jimmy my son who is an avid listener of your excellent podcast said you'll know the answer to this so i've got a question for you um if australians drew the maps okay the question is how do we know what's north and what's south because we have no reference point to what's actually north and what's actually south so is north and south arbitrary names that we give to different directions or is north actually north for a reason that i don't yet know well um so north and south are semi-arbitrary names for directions um we have the earth as a sphere it turns on on a rotational axis and we arbitrarily call one end of that rotational axis north and the other end of the rotational axis south east and west also are arbitrary names but at least in their case they refer they can be given a meaning with reference to the direction in which the earth turns um because the earth turns in such a way that the sun rises in the in what we call the east and sets in what we call the west so um the names of all these directions are arbitrary but um but they are tied to geophysical facts about the earth north and south however are more arbitrary than east and west because you can always define east and west in terms of is the sun coming up in this direction or is it setting in this direction whereas with north and south um you could flip there's there's no real difference between north and south um geophysically speaking and so you could if you wanted call the south pole the north pole and vice versa and and so that's the basic answer okay yeah that's fascinating so am i right in thinking that if you look at a map the reason it looks that way is because europeans view it that way whereas if you know australians have had written the map we might be looking at australia upside down on a map today correct yes you could take a map of the earth and turn it upside down and it would reflect the perspective of what would have happened if say uh the australian aborigines had been the first to colonize the world and they wrote all the maps from their perspective that's fascinating incidentally the uh the same ambiguity about north and south applies not just to the earth but to the galaxy uh the galaxy has a galactic north and a galactic south which are oriented with the earth's north and south but if you flipped the uh perspective of earth you would flip galactic north and galactic south as well yeah gosh that's that's fabulous thank you so much for giving us that brilliant answer off the cuff yeah no problem just happy i could be a servant yeah what's the next uh jimmy aikens mysterious world episode going to be about uh we just had an episode come out on friday about the biblical mystery of the urem and sumim or as they say in america the urim and femin which were which were two objects that the priest the jewish high priest could use to get answers from god on different questions and then uh this coming friday we're going to be doing an expose on a psychic medium named robert riggy who claims among other things to have interviewed ted bundy and to have participated in two exorcisms authorized by the archdiocese of chicago and so we're going to be using different investigative techniques to look at this gentleman's claims and show what a total liar he is well thank you so much jimmy people go check out jimmy aikens mysterious world thanks a lot jimmy you're the best thank you all right awesome i think you're better off i was right but i'm gonna i'm still not gonna change my mind how does he spit out an answer like that isn't that incredible he's a freak trent horn said that uh trent horn said that jimmy aiken may be a cyborg sent from the future by god to save the church and i think he might be right thank you that is going to be like that forever now thank you i think that's gonna leave it like that and i'll try to find tasmania and hang it up there you know how many times you're gonna have to explain that no i'm never gonna explain it just like that photo i take photos off with my guests so never explain yeah well i guess i could do that i won't but it's possible um isn't that great vodka that's brilliant isn't that the best you've ever had my mate um gave it to me he's made founded this company yeah polish vodka so this is a hazelnut vodka but it's nothing artificial he uses real hazelnuts and maple syrup wow and vodka very bit more i think we can fit a little bit more so you're away from your wife for quite a while two weeks yeah well that's not too bad yeah it's not it's not as long as other i yeah that's probably the longest i would i'd ever be away well i mean if you're gonna come all the way to america you've got to stick around for a little bit i can't do it for you a few days it's brutal i just got back from africa i was on a flight from namibia so i went from namibia to johannesburg to london to atlanta to pittsburgh it was about like 35 hours with stopovers you know you just you i walk out fried not even realizing how friday is worse than going from australia yeah we got the cheapest flights possible but we were in london airport for about 13 hours on the first night just sticking hanging out so yeah you've done a few trips already this year right can you go to poland yeah yeah that was unexpected though that was decided like in a phone call father jason who i've had on the show ukrainian so he he called me up and he was telling me about all that was going on in ukraine and the border and they were being overrun and i said well can i do anything to help and he called me up remember liam we were having sushi it was ash wednesday so you know i was sacrificing and fasting and having sushi and he said matt come to poland and i hung up and called my assistant told her to book me a ticket wow and then told my wife i was going to poland i have a very understanding wife oh that's awesome that's awesome yeah we've got to appreciate our other um our spouses you know i mean they're they're in the ministry right they're without your wife you probably can't do this well i i tend to think that it's my wife's suffering that is the fuel of whatever good this supposedly accomplishes yeah she suffers a great deal she's a lot of pain and a lot of health issues oh wow and she's a good woman she's very patient unlike her husband but uh yeah so hey tell me who saint charbelle is because i i have some maronite friends who would just slap me across the face like your mother did to you if i said who is saint charbelle because uh yeah that's terrible but you're named after him yes i am um i actually there's a fun uh interesting story in the book my mother was was four months pregnant and she was bleeding heavily um and the thing is in chapter one chapter one of the book and and the doctor told her look i'm sorry mrs erase you're going to lose this baby and i don't recommend you continue with this pregnancy basically saying you know terminate the baby and my mom said she just said no way i'm not gonna do that she turned to saint charbelle and said doctor of heaven that's what she's you're the doctor in heaven please pray for this child if he survives i'll name the child after you boy or girl and um and i'll dress the child in a black robe like you so that night the bleeding stopped now she believes uh saint shaw bill pretty much answered the pr answered that prayer or prayed and god answered the prayer um i've got to get that right and um i was born and the doctor was he he was amazed that i i survived um and she went straight to the church after the hospital and and dedicated me to saint charbelle and um i got baptized confirmed there and later on married there and then baptized a few children there it's been amazing it's been a big part met my wife there so all that stuff but who was he was a a hermit um from the from lebanon uh 1898 he died now he wasn't really not like he he joseph was his name growing up and he always had this de version like he'd have a little shrine out in the field and he'll go out and sneak off and pray near a cave um and so apparently when it was really little it was a it was a cheeky boy it was naughty um but then as he grew up he became he found his faith and and would pray a lot and then he wanted to join it was a poor family um and he was supposed to continue the family business but he had a desire to join the monastery and he did um and he became a monk uh i can't remember how many years but uh sit maybe 16 years if not more he then asked to be a hermit and then he he then um went out to a hermitage lived by himself in solitude and uh lived a very simple life he there's images of him with his eyes closed or looking down because he practiced custody of the eyes and and he made a vow never to see his mother again until heaven and there was a story as a if you you know she wanted to see him in the monastery and he wouldn't see her but he spoke to her through the grill and she said why don't you see your own mother i'll see you in heaven please pray for me and and i'll pray for you let's get to heaven i'll see you in heaven to this real desire to get to heaven and it was work it was similar i guess the alamo lebanese marine order similar to the benedict and idea of work and pray and so he was working the fields and he'll get tempted all the time and he would fight off those temptations but there was another little funny story where these young boys wanted to trick him because at night he would ask you would have these wax lamps and you would light them up so you can continue to pray and he asked them to to get the wax lamp and they filled that up with water they gave it gave it to him to play a trick on him and he ended up he just lit it and he lit up and they were like that's a miracle the superior came in and sort of they said who was this man um so in his life though relatively unknown when he died only three people at his funeral but because a patriarch passed away as well and his funerals on the same day but relatively unknown but after his death here's the funny thing he's known around the world now in russia in mexico across south america australia my goodness and the amount of miracles attributed to his intercession is in the i would say i wouldn't tens if not hundreds of thousands the amount because you can go to his site in lebanon you can see all these letters from all over the world and there's heaps of them people riding um and thanks to his intercession and when he the the the miracle when he died was that um it smelled like roses um and he had this oil that came out of his body and people would bottle it up and um and it was like had a healing element to it but then when he was um he was he was incorrupt for 50 years so he's one of the incorruptibles and and they exposed his body and then when he was beatified it started to ooze oil so then they put him back into a like a uh what do you call it a boat not a cot it was not a typical coffin but a you know i don't know what you'd call it yeah anyway but it i like a coffin and um it's in the near now and you can go there and yeah he's and he got canonized in 1977 and yeah he's been a real role model of of prayer fasting fighting off temptations turned to him to to heal people and he's healed many people and including me i'm here because of because he's in the session yes sweet man it's been fun all right thank you for having me and we're going for you guys pleasure how long have you been supervised uh just tonight um and then tomorrow i'm i'm i'll i'll catch up with scott hahn um he's at the clergy conference there and john bergsman oh in uh ogle bay there's a golf club nearby at 40 minute drive okay so i'm uh getting a car and then going down nice and then i'll continue off to philadelphia i'm going to catch up with uh ascension press the team there good basically the ministry what we do is we're trying to um license a lot of these publications in australia because shipping is astronomical you pay more for shipping than the product itself so if we could be the boots on the ground for many of these ministries then that will go a long way and that's what's happening and and and thank god yeah we're organically just expanding slowly and um yes it's it's it's reaching more people in the region so australia new zealand and then the asia pacific as well so very excited we publish books we uh distribute and and you publish this one this is yours yes i'm so this looks great by the way your book thank you good thank you very much i love the opening bit and then i'll wrap up here but uh i love how you started your book i just read it while while you were talking uh i thank god every day for my muslim friends because if it were not for them i would probably have remained a lukewarm catholic living a self-centered empty life focused on myself and indifferent to others what a cool way to start a book yeah sweet dude all right thank you so much for being on the show let's eat some cherry ripe some violet crumbles thanks everybody for watching please uh subscribe ring the bell we're gonna have father gregory pine on the show tomorrow what time is that i'm not sure i'm going to check right now i need to go to bed because i've got father behind coming in what are you picking him up or how is he no he's running a car he's what he's renting a car father gregory pine where is he from two o'clock tomorrow father pine where is he from i don't know pa i don't know okay do you know who he is no oh okay he's a dominican priest beautiful um western eastern province okay he's currently studying in switzerland getting his doctorate he's about i don't know he's young he's 29 30 35 i don't know what he's younger than me but he's one of the most brilliant people i've ever met like he's a really smart dude and really cool okay yeah that's that's usually going together on the youtube he's usually he's on my show a lot okay okay he also i think i do know him yeah yeah yeah i'm terrible with names so sorry father yeah anyway so if you're watching right now click subscribe ring the bell we're gonna have father pine on tomorrow it'll be a live show hope to see you there thanks neil thanks seraphim thanks lee liam thanks chevelle bellum my pleasure

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

Views: 137,684

Keywords: aquinas, catholicism, catholic, pints with aquinas, matt fradd, theology, debate, religion, st. thomas aquinas, thomas aquinas, philosophy

Id: jCD9NB_1abA

Length: 164min 13sec (9853 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 20 2022