What Happens In The World When America Is Weak? – With Rudy Atallah: How have Biden’s policies affected persecuted Christians in the Middle East? Why doesn’t the media cover true human rights violations? What does Hezbollah do with foreign aid? How are weak policies affecting world order? How can you help save persecuted Christians? Tune in to hear Rudy Atallah explain the work the Nazarene Fund is doing around the world!

Air Date: 6/15/2021

Guest: Rudy Atallah

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

Faith and the Culture

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live. We’re taking on the hot topics of the day, but we’re looking at all of them from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. Here with David Barton, America’s premier historian, our founder at WallBuilders, Tim Barton with us, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders, and I’m Rick Green, former Texas legislator and America’s Constitution coach.

Rudy Atallah will be with us later in the program. David and Tim, you know, we’re so focused on America right now. There’s so many struggles, border war, all the things we’ve been talking about, and it’s important for us to pay attention to those things, get a biblical worldview on those things. But obviously, keep an international view as well. And Rudy is going to be great at updating us on the differences in the places around the world where they rescue persecuted Christians and what the Biden policies have done in making that job much more difficult.

ISIS

David:

Yeah, it is much more difficult. And by the way, we’re going to be talking about the Nazarene Fund. Nazarene Fund get started about six and a half years ago when ISIS went in the Middle East and said, we’re going to set up a caliphate here: this is going to be our Messiah returning essentially. 

We’re going to usher that in. And so as that Caliphate got set up in Middle East, they started crushing Christians there, persecuting Christians: went from about 2.5 million Christians in the Middle East down to just a few hundred thousand. There was actual genuine fear that Christianity might be extinguished in the Middle East because of what ISIS was doing.

So under Trump, the ISIS Caliphate was crushed. But that doesn’t mean ISIS was crushed. It’s like if you have a water balloon, and you step on it as splatters everywhere, it’s kind of what ISIS did. They splattered across the Middle East in the different regions where they really didn’t have strongholds: they’d gone in Africa. 

And one of the things, and I’m on the board of Nazarene Fund, and so we keep up with top intelligence out of the Pentagon, out of the military. We know the intelligence there. We actually feed them intelligence, as we see things on the ground across the world where we’re operating, fighting these guys, ISIS and Boko Haram, and Islamic extremist.

And so what we saw just a few years ago, was in order to finance the operations of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and ISIS, etc, part of the way they did that was they took Christians and instead of just killing them, they took them off and harvested organs and sold the organs. And so he could sell, I don’t know, you can sell lungs for $50,000, or heart for $75,000, or whatever. So instead of just slaughtering the Christians, they started these organ harvesting farms. 

And so we discovered those organ harvesting farms, and we’re able to get intelligence to the people to help shut it down. We got pressure from State Department, others on that, we inform them, let them know what’s going on. Even our guys went in and help some of that stuff down.

So now we found that a bunch others are springing up. There’s a big one that’s come up in Nigeria. And you may remember Boko Haram went in and kidnapped all those girls at school a few years ago, and everybody’s looking for them, never found those girls.

Boko Haram

Boko Haram recognize that was a big problem, we drew international attention to ourselves. And so what they do now is they just kidnap one or two girls at a time, one or two boys at a time, they take them off. It’s organ harvesting. And that’s what’s happening.

And that’s going in Africa. I’m not going to say the countries where it’s going, because we want to get that shut down. It’s going in other locations in the Middle East different from where it was before. And so there’s a lot going on now that needs to be shut down. 

And that’s what Nazarene Fund does, is we literally go in and help save and rescue Christians, persecuted Christians, it’s going on across the world. And in America, we just don’t really hear the news about that much. We just don’t get much of that news.

Tim:

Well, yeah, and this is one of the great ironies too, as we look at some of the cultural debates today and we see things being debated in education with critical race theory, or you see the 1619 project being promoted. And it focuses on the fact that back in 1619, a shipload of slaves arrived in America and then entered slavery in America, and therefore America is terrible, and we’re an awful place and America is evil, they claim, because we had slavery in America, forgetting the fact that America signed the very first law in the world to ban the slave trade.

Thomas Jefferson signed that law in March, 1807. The law went into effect January 1st, 1808. England signed a very similar law about three weeks later. Some people give England credit for ending the slave trade first. But if you actually go back and read the laws, their law said that if any of these slave trade vessels had contracts, they could fulfill their contracts. So they still had ships running in the slave trade after January 1st, 1808.

America Started Earlier

America ended it before anybody else in the world. We signed the law first. We actually technically ended it before anybody else in the world. America paid a higher price ending slavery than anywhere else in the world because it happened at the end of the Civil War, where nearly 700,000 lives were lost in the midst of the Civil War. So America started earlier. We paid a higher price.

And even looking today recognizing that there is so much human trafficking, there’s so much sex slavery, there’s so many of these evils happening around the world, America is one of the top nations of the world at opposing these things. And yet, even though these things are still going on today, you have different liberals and progressives saying, yes, but America is ultimately evil because we had slavery years ago. 

We can have an honest conversation about that. And certainly there were impacts felt, there were negative consequences, that that was an evil moment; certainly people were doing evil things at times. Yes, check. We agree that those things that happened were bad things.

However, what we are now seeing is that the people who are arguing that America was bad because we did things decades ago or even 100 plus years ago are not being vocal about the atrocities happening right now around the world, that in many cases are far worse than some of the atrocities that we ever saw committed in America back in the midst of the 17 or 18 hundred’s in slavery, etc.

And so this is where certainly you see a bias in media and reporting, where they don’t cover all of the information. And certainly, if it doesn’t fit their narrative and agenda, they’re not going to cover it. They want to offer political coverage. 

And we see, even with some of our immigration issues, we see some of the smuggling and the sex slave happening across the southern border where people are being brought in and taken out, and so much that’s happening.

But this is what the Nazarene Fund started to help in was to try to help, when Christians are being targeted, and this really goes back to the ISIS days, when they were literally going in and just trying to extinguish Christians from different towns in different areas, the Nazarene Fund would go in and try to help protect those Christians, move them to safe areas. 

But now in the midst of it, they’ve expanded what they do in the Nazarene Fund to say we want to help people that are being targeted and smuggled in human trafficking and sex slavery. And so it really is a human rights organization. And the Nazarene Fund as more than any other organization we’ve ever seen to help fight against these evils.

The Nazarene Fund

David:

And one of the things that we’ve done, we haven’t talked about the Nazarene Fund like this in a long time, but listeners have been extremely generous in giving to support the Nazarene Fund. And that Fund we have at WallBuilders is wallbuilders.com/persecutedchristians,  wallbuilders.com/persecutedchristians. And all the money that comes in, 100% goes downrange. We don’t keep anything. The overhead we cover that. We send this downrange.

And even right now, it’s interesting, while the borders are open in American, we’re telling everybody to come in, we’re not letting persecuted Christians in. And so we have saved a number of persecuted Christians out of Middle East in recent months and we’ve always sent them to Australia. And Australia wants them. They take them. 

They take care of them. But what’s happened, because of COVID, Australia has shut down any incoming flights. And so we have a number of these Christians that we’re housing right now in the Middle East in safe places, got them out of danger safe places, but Australia is waiting with open arms to receive them. We just can’t get them there right now.

We heard that Australia is now going to open borders up in a few weeks, so hopefully, we’ll get them out.

Nevertheless, persecuted Christians and religious minorities, this is what natural and fun really focuses on. So again, if you want to support this, go to wallbuilders.com/persecuted Christians. And Rudy Atallah is the guy that is our kind of ED on the ground. He’s from Lebanon. He’s a strong Christian guy for 14.5 years. 

He was the top intelligence officer for the Secretary of Defense under Secretary Gates and Secretary Rumsfeld. So he has got top intelligence connections all over the world. And so because of that, we’re able to be extremely effective. And we’ve been bold and so many other groups, willing to go in where the danger is really, really heavy, and snatch these people and grab them and get them out of there to safety. 

So, Nazarene Fund is considered one of the most effective groups in the world in being able to save persecute Christians. And Rudy Atallah can tell us more about what’s going on in the Middle East right now.

A Moment from American History

Rick:

Rudy is going to be with us when we come back from the break. If for some reason you’re not going to catch the rest of the day’s program, go to wallbuilders.com/persecutedchristians, that’s the place where you can be a part of the solution as well. wallbuilders.com/persecutedchristian. Stay with us folks, we’ll be right back on WallBuilders Live.

This is David Barton with another moment from America’s history. Christians have always believed that the greatest life changing experience available to any individual is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And the testimonies of numerous converts confirmed the dramatic changes which often accompany salvation.

One such testimony of change comes from Founding Father Noah Webster, who explained “I was led by a spontaneous impulse to repentance, prayer, an entire submission and surrender of myself to my maker and redeemer. I now began to understand and relish many parts of the Scriptures which before appeared mysterious and unintelligible. 

In short, my view of the scriptures of religion, of the whole Christian scheme of salvation, and of God’s moral government are very much changed.” The power of God to change a life yielded to him was just as evident at the time of the Founding Fathers as it still is today.

For more information on God’s hand in American history, contact WallBuilders at 1808REBUILD.

Welcome Rudy Atallah

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. Good to have Rudy Atallah back with us. Rudy, always good to have you, man. Thanks for a little time today.

Rudy:

Thank you for having me on.

Rick:

Hey, man, Nazarene Fund continues to do amazing things around the world. You guys actually have a great website as well where people can keep up with how many folks have been saved, the people that have been blessed by the Nazarene Fund and also, of course, great place to make a donation and help with this incredible difference across the planet. 

Rudy, we hadn’t had you on in a while and a lot has happened since then, so I guess first, just catch us up on Nazarene Fund, let’s talk a little bit of global politics and what’s been happening. But what are you guys doing over Nazarene?

Effects of COVID

Rudy:

So Nazarene, we’re still focused on the Levant in the Middle East, that’s Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, that area. Because of COVID, the Australian Government had slowed down from taking refugees, and so that kind of put a damper on. Some of our workers got COVID as well. I had seven of my guys get COVID, but luckily, they all recovered nicely.

But so far to date, we’ve helped over 140,593 people. We’ve moved a total of 37,545 people to Australia, in other countries. We are still in the throes of rescuing people from inside Syria, which is a total mess. Lebanon is a total mess right now with economic depression. Lebanon, over 50% of the population is living under the poverty line.

If you recall, back in August of last year, there was a massive explosion at the seaport in Beirut, 85% of that explosion impacted the Christian area. So many Christians lost homes, they lost jobs, they lost everything. And Hezbollah continues to control a lot. During the Trump administration, there was so much pressure on Iran that it started to kind of weaken or we start seeing fissures within Hezbollah. 

Unfortunately, with the Biden administration, they decided to kind of dump all those policies and go back to the old JCPOA to negotiate with Iran, which has emboldened Iran and embolden Hezbollah again. So we’re seeing a reverse trend right now. And it’s been very, very difficult for people in Lebanon, and people in Syria.

Hezbollah

What Hezbollah does normally is any of the food aid or packages coming into the sea ports in Lebanon, because Lebanon’s on the Mediterranean Sea and Syria has some ports in the north that the Russians are involved in, but for the most part, they rely on the ports of Lebanon to get some of their food and whatnot. 

So instead of the food going to Lebanon, going to the people that need it, mainly a lot of Christians, a lot of people living up in the mountains, Hezbollah transfers a lot of that aid across the border into Syria to aid the Assad regime to keep him propped up. So it’s created a bigger problem. And so I talked to my family members, just to go out and buy a carton of eggs or buy some milk is very difficult, everything’s expensive through the roof. So that’s Lebanon.

Inside Syria, there’s a lot happening. Turkey in the north continues to bring in folks to occupied Christian areas. So what they’re doing is essentially stealing Christian property as much as they can. And what they do is they pay extremist groups to essentially terrorize Christian areas, Kurdish areas, Yazidis areas and try to force them out. So that’s in the northern part of Syria.

In the western part of Syria, the Russians who are under the so called umbrella of counterterrorism in Syria are propping up the Assad regime, but they do absolutely nothing, zero in the area of counterterrorism. What they’re doing is they’re using Syria as a proving ground for some of their military technologies. And they’re trying to use it as a base for expanding their capabilities along the Mediterranean rim down the Gulf of Aden throughout that whole region in North Africa.

So essentially, we haven’t seen this since the Cold War, and with having weak policies towards that region right now on the US side, I’m afraid that we are going to see some bigger problem, where Russia is going to start now disrupting NATO and disrupting UN operations and essentially starting to call the shots. I mean, Russia has veto power in the UN. And so they are in this big chess game, essentially, to have more of a multi-world order in which they are kings a part of it. So Syria is their proving ground.

Russia is Getting Stronger

And US forces, recently, in the last month, some of them that are based in south eastern Syria have complained of being sick. And we believe that the Russians have been using microwave against some of our US troops, so just like they’ve done in other parts of the world, like Cuba and other places. 

So Russia is getting stronger and stronger. Russia does nothing in counterterrorism. So what’s happening in those areas, in western Syria, where the Russians have control, where they’re propping up the Assad regime, we’re seeing an expansion and a growth, regrowth of ISIS and of Al-Qaeda.

So I would venture to say, we’re going to see Al-Qaeda 3.0 emerge from there. And if we continue to be in an area where we’re not able to, the US and coalition forces are able to put a damper on this snake, we’re going to see a regrowth of Al-Qaeda 3.0, from there. And ISIS is growing as well. They have now expanded. 

They’re between 7,000-10,000 strong and growing under new leadership. And they still have approximately $9.3 million in their coffers to essentially continue to expand.

And what the Russians do is the Russians go out there and get coordinates from the UN posts where they have hospitals and stuff like that, and the Russians target these hospitals. And so what’s happened is like Christian communities and Yazidi communities have no access now to hospitals: they target these hospitals, they destroy them, and they’re stopping food aid from going into these areas. So the Nazarene Fund is essentially costly responding to emergencies where we rescue people. ISIS is…

Rick:

Man, Rudy, there’s so many areas there that we could dive into. But let me just ask you generally, because of the change in policies and lack of leadership or leadership, whichever way you want to look at it from America, it’s obviously made your job and Nazarene Funds job much tougher, but that makes it even that much more important, because the need is even greater there. 

How much of this is, and I don’t want to be simplistic about it, but how much of this is no longer seen as strong hand from American leadership? Is that what these other nations are perceiving at this point?

Results of a Weak America

Rudy:

Absolutely and that’s exactly right. So essentially, when the US is not exerting itself in a strong way in that region, what’s happened now is that Russia sees us as very weak, Iran sees us as extremely weak. Iran is now making a big play to go after some of the communities where they’re pushing their cultural aspects or whatnot.

So Iran has this route that goes through Iraq into Syria into Lebanon, and they’re trying to win the hearts and minds of some of these communities. And because the US is not present the way it was in the previous administration, or at least is waffling in its decisions on what to do, it’s taking advantage.

So Iran is taking advantage, Russia’s taking advantage, and these extremist groups are taking advantage which has made life very, very difficult for Christian communities, for Yazidi communities, and this is where we operate. And then when you compound on top of that, the whole issue of COVID, for example, the Iraqi Government has brought enough vaccines to vaccinate the populations that it counts important.

But there’s nothing in its accountability for vaccinating Christians or Yazidis or Kurds. So we operate in these communities, and oftentimes, we have to take precautions for COVID plus attacks, plus kidnappings plus, plus, plus. So it makes it extremely difficult to operate, but we’re doing it and we’re trying to help as many people as we can.

Rick:

You know, I mean, obviously, the need is huge. And I guess, you’re a master strategist, when you look at these things, and you know you’ve got at least three and a half more years of this administration, whether it’s Biden or Harris and that same weak hand from America. And I know, a lot of things you can’t tell us. But what can you tell us about how you plan for that and how important donations are at this point? 

Because you’re having to stand in the gap even more. I don’t even know how to factor that. I would think not twice as much 5 times, 10 times as much whenever America becomes weak. So how much strategy can you share with us about how you’re planning for the next three or four years to deal with America being in a weaker position?

Rudy:

Yeah, I mean, it’s good. That’s a great question. So in the Nineveh plains, which we find is written in Scripture often many times we have small Christian communities, we’re trying to keep those Christian communities viable. So for example, in a small town of [inaudible 20:49], right now, we are taking care of 60 Christian families, that’s about 240 people. We prop that up. 

Helping the Christians

And we’re trying to do the same thing in other little communities in areas where at least if we can keep those Christian families alive, and well at least established, that will help hopefully, over time we pass these three and a half years, and hopefully policies will reverse, then at least we have these enclaves in which we can work through. 

And the Christians and the Yazidis on the western side that are trapped will go out there and grab them and bring them into these safe havens, and try to keep them going forward and keep them viable, at least for this period of time.

You know, same thing we do in Lebanon, we’re trying to keep those Christian communities alive. It’s been challenging. So we’ve done rebuilds. We’ve fixed homes. We fixed the small villages, where we bring in generators. 

We’ve done food. We’ve trained some people. We have physicians and nurses and whatnot. So we’re just trying to keep this train moving forward as much as we can until we can hopefully get an administration that’s supportive again.

Rescuing, Rebuilding, Restoring

Rick:

Yeah, no doubt. Well, you guys do phenomenal work, you know, to have you and Tim Ballard and Glenn Beck and David Barton and all these people working together on such an important cause, there’s a way for each of us to be a part of that and get to rejoice with you when you save so many lives. And that’s by going on the website, praying for these folks that you’re working with, for your teams that are embedded, and in all of these incredible situations. 

But just the whole process of rescuing, rebuilding, restoring, each of us can be a part of that, donating, participating in what you’re doing. And Rudy, we appreciate your time, man. I know you are slammed right now and just to come on and share with us. But man, we’re praying for you, donating, and getting other people to do the same. Rudy Atallah, always good, man, let’s get you back again soon.

Rudy:

Thank you, sir. God bless you.

Rick:

You too. Stay with us, folks. We’ll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

THE AMERICAN STORY

Hey, guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called The American Story. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that’s just not known or not told today.

And we would say very providentially in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil, and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things, like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not out the statement Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we’re against everything that America was built on, and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There’s so many things attacking America.

Well, is America worth defending? What is the true story of America? We actually have written and told that story starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln, we tell the story of America not as the story of a perfect nation of a perfect people. 

But the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It’s a story you want to check out wallbuilders.com, The American Story.

WallBuilders.com/PersecutedChristians

Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. Special thanks to Rudy Atallah for being on the program and for the amazing, amazing work that they’re doing over at Nazarene Fund. Once again, the website if you’d like to donate and help and be a part of this, wallbuilders.com/persecutedchristians, wallbuilders.com/persecutedchristians, go check it out today. Back with David and Tim.

 Guys, you all been involved in this for years. You get the private briefings, you get to hear a lot of the stuff that we can’t talk about on radio. This is important, important work, and we can’t be so focused. I know you can’t go save somebody else and let your house burn, we got to take care of our house as well. But this is an easy way to make a donation and help save lives around the world.

David:

It is. It makes a difference. And this is really part of the heart and conscience of America. People say America is in such bad shape, why don’t we focus on America? Because you can’t afford to lose your heart. Jesus said that the way you treat others, the least of these is the way we treat him. And I really believe that if we help others, God’s going to help bless us in America.

What Happens In The World When America Is Weak? – With Rudy Atallah

Tim:

And let’s point out that you can walk and chew gum at the same time, right. This is not to say, well, we’re not going to help people in America, and absolutely not. We want to help make a difference in America. 

And there’s all kinds of organizations that we also need to partner with and work with that help make a difference in America, that help end human trafficking and sex slavery, actually, in America, because it does happen in America as well. In fact, in most major cities, have anti-trafficking task force that you can look up in your city and you can volunteer and you can help and you can make a difference there.

But it is intellectually honest to say that you can do two things at once. And certainly, we can help Christians around the rest of the world because we’re supposed to do good to all especially to those of the household of faith, that’s what the Bible tells us. 

So we want help Christians everywhere around the world, really we want to help people everywhere we can. And the Nazarene Fund is a great way to help get involved and help people.

Rick:

But we’re out of time for today, folks, be sure again, the website, go to wallbuilders.com/persecutedchristians, wallbuilders.com/persecutedchristians. Again, an easy way to help, make a contribution right there, the folks that are putting their lives on the line, literally going into the fray, going into the battle to save these persecuted Christians. 

They’re making the really hard sacrifice. We can make an easy sacrifice by making the contribution to give them the tools they need to go in and do this effectively. Wallbuilders.com/persecutedchristians. Thanks so much for listening today. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.