September 3, 2026 • 33 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time. Lock and load.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
The Michael Berry Show is on the air. Let's stick
(00:36):
with the Angie Nixon discussion. She is the Democrat nominee
for the U.S. Senate from Florida. She's an absolute and
utter nut. If she was a white woman in a
nut like this, I think people would be more comfortable
calling her out. But there is a fear to say
(00:58):
something bad about a black person, which is so sad, right?
That doesn't happen in professional basketball. I mean, if you
don't like a professional basketball player, you can criticize them
because there's another professional basketball player playing against them for
your favorite team who's also black and that makes it okay.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
But this is a silliness.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
The whole nation is verklempt over the issue of policy
and personality because people are so scared to offend a
black person.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Guess what?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Whatever you do is going to offend a black person
and a white person and plenty of other people. Trust me,
the only reason you don't get more criticism for your
opinions is you either don't state them or you don't
have a platform big enough for.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
People to hear them.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
But I don't care what your opinion is, it's going
to offend people. If you like strawberry better than pistachio
ice cream, That's going to offend some people. Okay, that's
all right. And they're not just going to disagree with you. No, no,
pistachio is better. They're going to call you the worst names.
Americans are passionate about ideas. But when race is involved,
(02:17):
there is a fear to speak out.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
And that's a bad idea.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Because if this happened with your favorite football team, if
your favorite football team ran a quarterback sneak 32 times
in a row, and you were four and out every
single possession, and you lost 14 to nothing every week
or worse, you'd say, hey, this isn't working. But what
if someone said, you better not say that because that's upsetting.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
That's dumb.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
That's no way to run a country that you care
deeply about. So we got Angie Nixon. She's a real dum-dum.
She is the Democrat nominee for Florida. And she likes
her some diversity, equity, and inclusion because that levels the
playing field, you see. The program that says, hey, white people,
(03:05):
you can't have this job because we're going to give
it to someone else.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
But I studied for the exam. I came in. No,
we're going to give it to someone who didn't study.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Who didn't perform as well as you, because it's really,
really important that someone else get the job who's not white.
So we're just replacing racism against black people with racism
in favor of white people. We're replacing sexism against women
with sexism against men.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
That's a great idea, right?
Speaker 2 (03:39):
So here is her telling us that she had no
problem with DEI.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
She likes it.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
You definitely just have to work to level the playing field.
And you've got to get these, you've got to close
these corporate tax loopholes. You have to put the DEI
policies back in place.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
God forbid, it's worse than some curse words these days. Right, right.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
And then you actually have to just make sure that
you are Passing policies that work to level the playing field.
I don't think there's anything wrong with DEI with leveling
the playing field.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
There's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Why do we not want people to start at the
same point and have access to everything? Just because you're
giving me a little bit of access to certain things
doesn't make it whole for generations of trauma, generations of
living in poverty.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
It's going to take me.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
20 more years or whatever to like get caught up
just based on like my family history right and so
uh you know i just would have to definitely say
we got to stop the rollbacks of these anti-dei measures
and that type of.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Thing it's gonna take her 20 more years because of
her family nope you have every opportunity of anybody else
every opportunity of anybody else but you don't want opportunity
and i will tell you this making excuses and seeking
handouts and seeking set-asides and seeking to cut in line,
(05:19):
not only is it unfair to the people who were
next in line or earned their place, not only is
it unfair to them, it's actually not doing you a favor.
People who are given these sorts of special set-asides and bump-ups,
it actually makes you weak. It makes you weak In
(05:40):
the same way that not going out into society and
being exposed to germs doesn't give your body the ability
to build up antibodies to it. If you never have difficulty,
why does our military have a boot camp? To expose
our service members to difficulty. To teach them how to
(06:03):
overcome adversity so that when you are in the theater
of war, you've done it. You've experienced it. You have
the tools and the confidence to know that you can.
When you say to people, we're going to give you
this job because you're part of this class of people
who supposedly has it harder but often doesn't, you're not
(06:27):
only telling someone else that they don't get to do it,
because if it was open to everybody all the time,
then nobody would be left out, right? There's only so
many starting quarterback positions. There's only so many jobs at
the company or the corporation. There's only so many seats
in the class. So how are we going to choose?
(06:48):
Are we going to choose based on race and sex
and background? Or are we going to choose based on
a test that gives everybody the opportunity? Are we going
to say to the white kid, you don't get to
because the race that you're part of does well?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Well, that's what they've done. And in fact.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
And this is always the most fascinating discussion for me.
In California, they've discriminated against Asians. And the reason is
these Asians who came here as immigrants with nothing. The
best example is the Vietnamese. These Vietnamese who came as
boat people, and they gave it all up, came here.
Their poor parents speak terrible English because it's hard to
(07:30):
learn to speak English when you come from Vietnam. I
can tell you that my Vietnamese would sound horrible and
it would sound laughable.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Well, it's hard.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
And they came here and they cleaned people's houses and
they worked in tough jobs. And then a lot of
the women got into the salons and bought the salons.
They worked their butts off. And they drove their kids
as tiger moms to be valedictorians. And that meant that
the other kids who didn't study as hard weren't valedictorian
(08:03):
and so they were angry at the asians so they
started wanting to hold the asians back so it sounds
to me like being poor or all the things that
you made excuses for other minorities about have been disproven
by the asians who came here and worked hard like
the white people did and beat the white people in
many cases oh well we'll discriminate against them.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Too you've got of course michael berry's show.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Well, we welcome back an old friend to the show.
And interestingly, for the first time ever, he's not even
the biggest star in his family. Let's first talk about
the husband of your sweet and beautiful daughter, Congressman Brandon Gill.
And what a splash he is making by simply asking
(08:50):
the kinds of questions you and I have been asking
for years.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
We just haven't seen enough of that. Welcome to the program, Dinesh.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
Hey, great to be on the show. Yes, young Brandon
is demonstrating the power of Socratic questioning, where he asks
the simple question and he puts people up against the wall,
just like Socrates.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
How early?
Speaker 2 (09:13):
I know enough about your daughter to know she's no
shrinking violet. She needed to be intellectually challenged in addition to,
you know, attracted to a man she's going to spend
her life with and raise children with. How early into
their relationship did you say to yourself, ah, this guy,
he's special?
Speaker 4 (09:33):
Well, the two of them met at Dartmouth when Danielle, well,
they actually met earlier as part of Christian Union. And
then they started dating in Danielle's junior year.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
They married right out of college.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
And initially, they seemed very different. Danielle was raised in California. Brandon,
of course, on a ranch in Abilene. So there was
a little bit of California meets Texas. But I think
once the two of them got over that, they realized
that they are very close in the way they think.
They both have strong conservative and Christian convictions. They both
want to sort of help save the country. And so
(10:08):
they're on a mission.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, you know, that's a serious thing because I consider
what I do to be on a mission.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
I know you do as well.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
It is tinged with, as part of my faith, coming
from an evangelical background, which you do, coming from an
American tradition, feeling that, you know, those to whom much
is given, much is expected, feeling that I don't, because
of my birthright, get to assume that will always be there.
I think having a purpose and a true, you use
(10:42):
the word mission purpose, I think that's something we should
all seek out, and I think it's.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Something to embrace. I like that term. I don't think
that's overblown. When I first.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
Came to America, I thought, here's a wonderful country that
some great people have put together, and I just get
to be part of it and to enjoy it. But
I think it's become apparent to me in my later career,
just developments within the country, that the American dream is.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
A little more fragile than I.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
I had first suspected. And therefore, we are living at
a time where we need to do more, put our
talents to the wheel to try to protect this for
future generations. So that's been part of what's motivated me,
the realization not just that I have something to contribute
or I need a mission, but there's actually important work.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
To be done. Well, and if it is to be,
it's up to me.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
You know, that was something that I realized pretty early
on is if A is waiting for B and B
is waiting for C, and who's.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Actually getting it done?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Who's actually going to be the person to step up
and speak out? And when you realize that it's going
to have to be you or it won't be anyone,
that becomes a burden, but it almost simplifies things.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
You don't wait around.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Let's talk about your new book on biblical archaeology called
The Stones Cry Out.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
I asked you this question at the beginning of every book.
Why write this book?
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Debbie and I went to Israel for the first time
in 2022. We were very charmed to be in a
place that kind of felt like the land of the Bible.
But what really made it for me was when I
was exposed to the artifacts, some of the artifacts of
biblical archaeology. Biblical archaeology has been around 150 years, but
it seems to be making spectacular discoveries in recent decades.
(12:32):
not only large events in the Bible, but very tiny
ones as well. The Bible is an historical story. God
chose to reveal himself, but he didn't just do it
by stamping his name on the moon. He did it
through history, through Abraham and Isaac, and then later King
David and Solomon and the prophets, and of course, ultimately Messiah, Jesus.
(12:53):
So this story, which begins around 2000 B.C., and the
Bible itself ends about.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
50 or so AD.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
This is the time scale of the Bible. So I
was exposed to this in Israel and I thought, wow,
like why isn't this shouted from the rooftops of every church?
You know, pastors will typically teach Bible stories as if
they are just stories.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
With a moral.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
But the historical grounding is often lost. And so I
thought to myself, this is kind of what I do.
This is kind of.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
What I'm good at.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Why don't I try to bridge the gap between the
massive discoveries of biblical archaeology, which are mostly publicly unknown,
and write a book sort of broadcasting them.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
To the world?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
It's an interesting approach. I mean, you've been a university president.
You've been in academia. You are a lifelong student, which
I tell everyone we should be. We shouldn't relegate the
learning process to going to get a degree, a certification
so we can get a job.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Learning is exciting. It's thrilling. I've always enjoyed it. And
I know you have too.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Maybe we're just fellow nerds and that's okay too. But
did you have any background in archaeology? I mean, where
did you begin? What was your base level in archaeology?
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Well, the reason you're hearing from me in 2026 is
I've taken three years to study it. But I'll give
you the kind of example that bred in me the
excitement to want to do this. So, you know, the
great scene of Jesus's trial and crucifixion, you've got these
major figures like King Herod and David. the Roman prefect
(14:25):
Pontius Pilate, you've got the high priest Caiaphas, you've got Jesus,
the accused man, and all of them, they're not just
different personalities, they have a different philosophy. Now, there's very
interesting archaeology on all four, by the way, but I
just want to talk for a moment about one, and
that's Caiaphas, the high priest. So the Bible only gives
(14:45):
you his last name, Caiaphas. But the historian Josephus tells
us that his first name was Joseph, Joseph Caiaphas. Now,
fast forward 2,500 years.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
They're digging in.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
The priestly quarter of Jerusalem, the way the aristocrats lived.
And out of the ground comes a stone box.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Many stone boxes called ossuaries.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
And in the first century AD, if you died, you'd
be buried in a tomb. And when your body disintegrated,
they would take your bones out, put it in a
box and put your name on it. So here you've
got these stone boxes all laid out and the archaeologists
are looking at them. One of them is particularly ornate.
And it says on the box, Yehoshaph Bar-Kayapha.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yehoshaph is Joseph.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
Bar is son of. Kayapha, Caiaphas. So they open the box,
and inside are the bones of a 60-year-old man, dated,
as it turns out, to the 1st century AD. So
it's him. Think about it. The guy, when Jesus is arrested,
he's taken to.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
The house of Caiaphas.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
Caiaphas mobilizes the priestly council of the Sanhedrin. They are
the ones who convince Pilate. Pilate is reluctant, but they
make him agree to the crucifixion of Jesus. These great
biblical events. And, you know, here I am. I've believed
this on faith since I was a child. But here
I'm standing and, you know, you're looking at this. And
(16:07):
it's not just some inscription or writing. When you're talking
about Caiaphas, you're looking at his bones. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
I didn't expect you to stop there. I was actually
literally imagining this. And it's the kind of.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Thing that, you know, these, these are topics that, that
I don't think about often until these sorts of things
come up a whole with us for just a moment.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Dinesh D'Souza.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
We're talking to Dinesh D'Souza.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Um, A friend of the show who's been on the
show many times over the years, he's written a new
book on biblical archaeology called The Stones Cry Out. And
it's interesting to me, Dinesh, I've had a number of
(16:57):
friends who will take a trip to the Middle East
and they go to the Holy Land. And whether they
be Jewish or Christian or atheist, for that matter, you
can't help but be overcome by how many important world
events there It's obvious for a Christian why these things
are important or for a Jew, especially in the modern era.
(17:19):
But in any case, it is very important to us
from a religious perspective. But so much of the world
is just the cradle of– it's just fascinating by it.
And I'm interested to know, was there an aha moment
where biblical archaeology, getting outside your areas of core competence,
(17:39):
that you said, yeah, I'm going to dig in. Do
you remember that moment in particular?
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Yeah. Well, looking at these artifacts and looking at the
age or antiquity of them, it occurred to me that
there are three important implications that arise simultaneously. First, the
obvious one, you're vindicating the historicity of the Bible, right?
You're not proving the miracles of the theology, but you're
(18:04):
showing that these are historical events.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
These are real people, real places, real events.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
They actually occurred, and archaeology can show that. Now, the
second thing is, it shows the presence of the Jews
in their ancient homeland. That's unavoidable. And therefore, when you
come back and you hear someone say things like, the
Jews are colonizers, it makes you think, huh, how do
you colonize your own ancestral land? I mean, can the
(18:29):
Indians colonize India? Can the Irish colonize Ireland? There's a
certain peculiarity to that accusation. And third... America and the
West are built on the foundations of Athens and Jerusalem. Now,
Athens doesn't really need a defense because Athens is classical reason.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
It's free speech and Socrates. It's the origins of democracy.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
But Jerusalem is more controversial, right? Because Jerusalem is based
on God's revelation, the creation out of nothing, the Exodus,
the Ten Commandments, the prophets.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
The Psalms and the wisdom Proverbs.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
So Jerusalem is the sort of shaky pillar of Athens
and Jerusalem. And what this biblical archaeology does is it
supports or shores up the Jerusalem pillar. And therefore it
supports the foundations of America and the West.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
I read this in the materials about your book. The
book is called The Stone's Cry Out by Dinesh D'Souza.
And it says, if scripture is true in history, it
deserves to be taken seriously in prophecy, including its warning
that a transvaluation of values will mark the final age
(19:47):
and perhaps even the last days.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
What does this mean?
Speaker 4 (19:52):
What this means is that in the Bible, there are
multiple prophecies. They go back to Isaiah and Daniel. You know,
Isaiah lived in the 8th century BC. He made predictions
that came true after his death. Daniel makes stunning prophecies
where he basically says that the empire of Babylon will
be overthrown by the Medes and the Persians, and they
(20:15):
will be overthrown by the Greeks. And this didn't happen
for centuries after Daniel, so Skeptics couldn't make sense of this.
How can somebody predict the future? The Bible also repeatedly,
by the way, predicts the Jews will return to their
ancestral homeland after being scattered to the ends of the earth.
Think how implausible this would have seemed for so many centuries.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
And yet it's happened.
Speaker 4 (20:37):
So this is my starting point. If the Bible can
be shown to be vindicated in its predictions, then we
have to consider what the Bible says about the so-called
end times. And the Bible does say at the end times,
you know, up will be down and the distinction between
men and women will be obliterated and right will be
wrong and wrong will be put forward as right. This
(20:59):
kind of inversion or transvaluation of values, like look for it.
When you begin to see it and you begin to
see how pervasive it is, be sort of forewarned that
this could.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Be a clue that we are entering the last age.
Is that what you believe to be the case? I
believe it is to be the case.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
Now, I'm not one of these guys who says things like,
you know, the world will end in 2037. I don't
put chronological dates on it. I'm very cautious about prophecy,
and I think we should be. I think the book
of Revelation is deliberately obscure and veiled. So I tend
to look for things that are like obvious and have
(21:40):
come true. And then when people talk about signs of
the end times, I look for clear signs. You know,
I won't say things like there's a phrase in the Bible,
wars and rumors of wars. But, you know, going back
to the Crimean War, World War I, World War II,
the Cold War, you can see people at all those
times going, well, we got a war, therefore the end
of the world is coming. So I resist that kind
(22:02):
of simplification. I'm very cautious about the future because we
don't know the future.
Speaker 5 (22:07):
That's an interesting perspective. It's a very interesting perspective. What
did you learn in this study?
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Because one of the things I've always appreciated about you,
Dinesh D'Souza is our guest, is that you go in
with the idea that you are going to learn and
whatever you learn, you're going to share. As opposed to
assuming you know everything already. And I think that has
served you well. I think people enjoy going along that
journey with you. What was one of the things that
(22:40):
popped out to you in biblical archaeology, the book is
The Stone's Cry Out, that surprised you or that you
didn't already know that wasn't intuitive?
Speaker 4 (22:50):
So I'm a product, going back to my years at Dartmouth,
of a... what was called since the 19th century, the
biblical higher criticism.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
These were skeptics.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
And they basically said the Bible seems to have been
written hundreds of years later than the events it describes.
And therefore, we can expect that a lot of the
Bible is just conjecture.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
It's made up. It's embellished.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
And I think some of the details of archaeology are
so powerful that they absolutely destroy this theory.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Here's one example. In the book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
Is clashing, the prophet Jeremiah is clashing with the king,
a fellow named Zedekiah, and the king rounds up two
of his obscure sidekicks, and I'll give you their names, Jehukal,
son of Shalamiah, Gadalia, son of Pashur, these two guys,
and the king says, basically, go keep an eye on Jeremiah. Now,
these are biblical cameo appearances, they're sidekicks, They follow Jeremiah around.
(23:51):
At one point, they throw him into a pit, and
I've stood in that pit, by the way, and then
they disappear. Now, fast forward to the present, and out
of the ground in Jerusalem, this is earlier in this century,
come out these seals, which are seals.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
They're made of clay.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
They're used to seal correspondence, and the correspondence is lost,
but the clay remains. And one seal has a name, Jehukal,
son of Shalamiah. And two years later, a bunch of
other seals are found, and there's another name, Gadaliah, son
of Pashur. Now, think about this. Not only are these
biblical minor characters now suddenly historically vindicated, But if you
(24:32):
think about the criticism going back to the 19th century
that the Bible is written hundreds of years later, I
ask you, how could someone writing hundreds of years later
know the names of these minor officials of a king
of Judah? in the 6th century BC there's no way
to know them it's like asking you or me to
(24:55):
name the interns at the White House of President Buchanan
using no written records at all so this is the
kind of thing that excites me because not only it's
a little detail but it has huge implications.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Dinesh D'Souza is our guest we'll close the show with
our conversation with him one more segment the book is
called The Stones Cry.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Out They are telling me what's called onesies. These are
little things, clothing for babies. I like Michael Berry's show.
Are you supportive of these onesies?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
We're talking to Dinesh D'Souza about his latest passion project,
pun intended, that is biblical archaeology, The Stones Cry Out. Dinesh,
let me ask you a question that I have. I
don't ask you to solve a problem for me, a
quandary for me. To me, the quandary is half the fun.
It is working through it myself. But I have always
(25:51):
been bothered by fellow Christians who will jump up and say,
here's proof of Jesus. And they want to offer scientific proof.
And my answer to that has always been, I appreciate
your passion.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
I appreciate your pursuit. I appreciate.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
But for me, faith means faith. And faith means the
absence of science. And so the desperate need for science is,
in my opinion, makes you a bad steward, a bad Christian,
because you are pursuing a desire to prove something to yourself.
And that's a failing of humanity. That faith literally means faith.
(26:33):
You're not going to get science or it wouldn't be
faith any longer.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
What's your thought to that? Something I've struggled with my
whole life.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
So again, I think that because the Bible has an
historical side and a theological, prophetic and supernatural side, I
think it is very helpful to verify the things that
can be verified. I mean, think about it this way.
You're a juror in a trial and you're dealing with
(27:02):
a suspect. And the suspect tells you that over the past,
let's just say, two weeks, I did all these things.
And some of them are fantastic and absurd or they
seem very far-fetched. But other times he tells you, you know,
I ate a Chick-fil-A, and here's my receipt, and I
drove cross-country, and here I am on the surveillance tape.
So it turns out that there are certain things about
(27:22):
what he tells you that you are in a position
to verify. And then you ask yourself, are there any
things that he told you that are clearly wrong, that
he was clearly lying? And if the answer is no,
then you go, look– I can't check out everything that
this guy is saying, but he seems like a truthful
guy and probably the rest of it is true also.
(27:44):
So kind of applying this commonsensical approach to the Bible,
I say to myself this. If the history is proven
to be wrong, if archaeology could say, here's an artifact
and clearly this stuff in the Bible never happened or
didn't happen that way, it makes the rest of it
less believable. Conversely, if you can affirm the historicity of
(28:04):
it and go, oh yeah, you don't believe in King
David or we believed in King David by faith, but
guess what? Here's the remains of his palace. You can
go stand in it right now. If you affirm the historicity,
it renders the account.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Of the whole much more plausible.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
So I agree there are certain things that we have
to take on faith. The resurrection, of course, the saving
grace of Jesus. But on the other hand, things like
the historicity of Jesus can easily be proven.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Is it important that they be proven?
Speaker 4 (28:36):
Yes. Yes, because the Bible is really clear that Jesus
was not like a mythical figure. He told parables, but
his own life is not a parable. He really existed
at a particular place in a particular time. And if
that's not true, then the Bible is nothing.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
More than like, I mean, think of it.
Speaker 4 (28:57):
We can get a lot of lessons out of Aesop's fables.
The fables are not true, but they do contain valuable
moral lessons. And a lot of people have tried to portray.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
The Bible that way. But I argue, no, the Bible.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
Has an historical foundation.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Which can be supported.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
And we have 150 years of biblical archaeology that help
us to do that. And not only are those events true,
but it gives the moral lessons that come out of
this a certain.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
I would say, added luminescence and power. I think that's
well said. I.
An icing on the cake, if you will.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Your materials on your book, The Stones Cry Out by
Dinesh D'Souza, say the puzzle is plain. If archaeology confirms
the Bible, why aren't the churches shouting these findings from
their rooftops?
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Do you have an answer to that question? Why aren't they?
Speaker 4 (29:49):
Yes, it's a double answer. The first part of it
is that pastors... go to divinity school, and they learn theology,
but they don't learn archaeology. And so as a result,
they're a little afraid of.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
This whole new discipline.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
They feel like if I wander into it, it may
prove to be a minefield. I would rather stay out
of it. And so they'll do a sermon on Isaiah,
but they'll never tell you what century he lived in,
what was the surrounding context, what other empires were flourishing
at the time. It's treated as a parable or as
a morality tale. The other problem, I think, is that
(30:25):
the archaeologists, by the way, most of them, of course, secular,
they're attached to academic departments at various universities. They don't
want to be seen as in the business of proving
the Bible because they say we're secular, we're social scientists.
We're not trying to prove this book of Revelation or
we're not trying to prove this kind of theological text.
(30:46):
And so even if they make findings that pertain to
the Bible, they will write an archaeological paper that greatly
downplays that fact. And so what I'm basically saying is
there's a kind of diminution of the topic both by
the archaeologists and by the pastors.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
And hence, I think, the need for a book like this.
Why by the archaeologist? I didn't understand that.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
Well, my point is just this. If you're an archaeologist,
let's say at Leeds University in England or Oxford, you
want to maintain your academic bona fides. You don't want
to be seen as proving the Bible because people then
think that you're sort of somehow doing, quote, religious work
and not serious science. So the archaeologists have, in fact,
(31:32):
they've even made motions at their own conventions. Let's not
use the phrase biblical archaeology. Let's call it Near Eastern archaeology.
And you can see what they're trying to do. They're
trying to remove the religious or biblical connotations from their work.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
You know, it's interesting. Dinesh D'Souza is our guest. The
book is The Stones Cry Out. I saw that during
COVID where doctors were afraid to state, which a good
scientist applying that science as medicine should, they were afraid
to say, what I'm seeing with my patients is this.
(32:13):
because it cut against what Fauci said, it cut against
what NIH said, it cut against what the media was reported,
and they didn't want to do that. I think it
was McCullough who first kind of came out and said, hey,
this is a bad deal, and the science tells me,
my own experience practicing medicine, but you would be considered
a kook for doing what a doctor, scientist, Would normally
(32:35):
do and and so I think there's definitely something be
said for that. I've got just a second left I
wanted to ask you I could ask you five more questions,
but It's been your pattern Dinesh D'Souza to when you
write a book like this to then make a movie
about it Do you foresee that happening here?
Speaker 4 (32:52):
Well, in this case, I have made a two-hour documentary
on the greatest discoveries of biblical archaeology. PragerU will release
it alongside the book this fall. So, yes, there's going
to be a film version. It's an abbreviated version because
the book... And I want to point out the book,
by the way, has maps.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
It has timelines. It has a lot of photos.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
And it even has QR codes where you can go
to a you can see on site video of these artifacts.
So I'm not just.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Telling you about them.
Speaker 4 (33:25):
I'm allowing you to see.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Them and interact with them. Very cool. I love it.
Dinesh D'Souza, the book is The Stones Cry Out. We
look forward. I've not read it yet, but I look
forward to reading it. Hopefully, I'll have it printed by
this week. Always my pleasure.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
Thank you.
It's that time. Lock and load.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
The Michael Berry Show is on the air. Let's stick
(00:36):
with the Angie Nixon discussion. She is the Democrat nominee
for the U.S. Senate from Florida. She's an absolute and
utter nut. If she was a white woman in a
nut like this, I think people would be more comfortable
calling her out. But there is a fear to say
(00:58):
something bad about a black person, which is so sad, right?
That doesn't happen in professional basketball. I mean, if you
don't like a professional basketball player, you can criticize them
because there's another professional basketball player playing against them for
your favorite team who's also black and that makes it okay.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
But this is a silliness.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
The whole nation is verklempt over the issue of policy
and personality because people are so scared to offend a
black person.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Guess what?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Whatever you do is going to offend a black person
and a white person and plenty of other people. Trust me,
the only reason you don't get more criticism for your
opinions is you either don't state them or you don't
have a platform big enough for.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
People to hear them.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
But I don't care what your opinion is, it's going
to offend people. If you like strawberry better than pistachio
ice cream, That's going to offend some people. Okay, that's
all right. And they're not just going to disagree with you. No, no,
pistachio is better. They're going to call you the worst names.
Americans are passionate about ideas. But when race is involved,
(02:17):
there is a fear to speak out.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
And that's a bad idea.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Because if this happened with your favorite football team, if
your favorite football team ran a quarterback sneak 32 times
in a row, and you were four and out every
single possession, and you lost 14 to nothing every week
or worse, you'd say, hey, this isn't working. But what
if someone said, you better not say that because that's upsetting.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
That's dumb.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
That's no way to run a country that you care
deeply about. So we got Angie Nixon. She's a real dum-dum.
She is the Democrat nominee for Florida. And she likes
her some diversity, equity, and inclusion because that levels the
playing field, you see. The program that says, hey, white people,
(03:05):
you can't have this job because we're going to give
it to someone else.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
But I studied for the exam. I came in. No,
we're going to give it to someone who didn't study.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Who didn't perform as well as you, because it's really,
really important that someone else get the job who's not white.
So we're just replacing racism against black people with racism
in favor of white people. We're replacing sexism against women
with sexism against men.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
That's a great idea, right?
Speaker 2 (03:39):
So here is her telling us that she had no
problem with DEI.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
She likes it.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
You definitely just have to work to level the playing field.
And you've got to get these, you've got to close
these corporate tax loopholes. You have to put the DEI
policies back in place.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
God forbid, it's worse than some curse words these days. Right, right.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
And then you actually have to just make sure that
you are Passing policies that work to level the playing field.
I don't think there's anything wrong with DEI with leveling
the playing field.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
There's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Why do we not want people to start at the
same point and have access to everything? Just because you're
giving me a little bit of access to certain things
doesn't make it whole for generations of trauma, generations of
living in poverty.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
It's going to take me.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
20 more years or whatever to like get caught up
just based on like my family history right and so
uh you know i just would have to definitely say
we got to stop the rollbacks of these anti-dei measures
and that type of.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Thing it's gonna take her 20 more years because of
her family nope you have every opportunity of anybody else
every opportunity of anybody else but you don't want opportunity
and i will tell you this making excuses and seeking
handouts and seeking set-asides and seeking to cut in line,
(05:19):
not only is it unfair to the people who were
next in line or earned their place, not only is
it unfair to them, it's actually not doing you a favor.
People who are given these sorts of special set-asides and bump-ups,
it actually makes you weak. It makes you weak In
(05:40):
the same way that not going out into society and
being exposed to germs doesn't give your body the ability
to build up antibodies to it. If you never have difficulty,
why does our military have a boot camp? To expose
our service members to difficulty. To teach them how to
(06:03):
overcome adversity so that when you are in the theater
of war, you've done it. You've experienced it. You have
the tools and the confidence to know that you can.
When you say to people, we're going to give you
this job because you're part of this class of people
who supposedly has it harder but often doesn't, you're not
(06:27):
only telling someone else that they don't get to do it,
because if it was open to everybody all the time,
then nobody would be left out, right? There's only so
many starting quarterback positions. There's only so many jobs at
the company or the corporation. There's only so many seats
in the class. So how are we going to choose?
(06:48):
Are we going to choose based on race and sex
and background? Or are we going to choose based on
a test that gives everybody the opportunity? Are we going
to say to the white kid, you don't get to
because the race that you're part of does well?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Well, that's what they've done. And in fact.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
And this is always the most fascinating discussion for me.
In California, they've discriminated against Asians. And the reason is
these Asians who came here as immigrants with nothing. The
best example is the Vietnamese. These Vietnamese who came as
boat people, and they gave it all up, came here.
Their poor parents speak terrible English because it's hard to
(07:30):
learn to speak English when you come from Vietnam. I
can tell you that my Vietnamese would sound horrible and
it would sound laughable.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Well, it's hard.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
And they came here and they cleaned people's houses and
they worked in tough jobs. And then a lot of
the women got into the salons and bought the salons.
They worked their butts off. And they drove their kids
as tiger moms to be valedictorians. And that meant that
the other kids who didn't study as hard weren't valedictorian
(08:03):
and so they were angry at the asians so they
started wanting to hold the asians back so it sounds
to me like being poor or all the things that
you made excuses for other minorities about have been disproven
by the asians who came here and worked hard like
the white people did and beat the white people in
many cases oh well we'll discriminate against them.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Too you've got of course michael berry's show.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Well, we welcome back an old friend to the show.
And interestingly, for the first time ever, he's not even
the biggest star in his family. Let's first talk about
the husband of your sweet and beautiful daughter, Congressman Brandon Gill.
And what a splash he is making by simply asking
(08:50):
the kinds of questions you and I have been asking
for years.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
We just haven't seen enough of that. Welcome to the program, Dinesh.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
Hey, great to be on the show. Yes, young Brandon
is demonstrating the power of Socratic questioning, where he asks
the simple question and he puts people up against the wall,
just like Socrates.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
How early?
Speaker 2 (09:13):
I know enough about your daughter to know she's no
shrinking violet. She needed to be intellectually challenged in addition to,
you know, attracted to a man she's going to spend
her life with and raise children with. How early into
their relationship did you say to yourself, ah, this guy,
he's special?
Speaker 4 (09:33):
Well, the two of them met at Dartmouth when Danielle, well,
they actually met earlier as part of Christian Union. And
then they started dating in Danielle's junior year.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
They married right out of college.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
And initially, they seemed very different. Danielle was raised in California. Brandon,
of course, on a ranch in Abilene. So there was
a little bit of California meets Texas. But I think
once the two of them got over that, they realized
that they are very close in the way they think.
They both have strong conservative and Christian convictions. They both
want to sort of help save the country. And so
(10:08):
they're on a mission.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, you know, that's a serious thing because I consider
what I do to be on a mission.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
I know you do as well.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
It is tinged with, as part of my faith, coming
from an evangelical background, which you do, coming from an
American tradition, feeling that, you know, those to whom much
is given, much is expected, feeling that I don't, because
of my birthright, get to assume that will always be there.
I think having a purpose and a true, you use
(10:42):
the word mission purpose, I think that's something we should
all seek out, and I think it's.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Something to embrace. I like that term. I don't think
that's overblown. When I first.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
Came to America, I thought, here's a wonderful country that
some great people have put together, and I just get
to be part of it and to enjoy it. But
I think it's become apparent to me in my later career,
just developments within the country, that the American dream is.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
A little more fragile than I.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
I had first suspected. And therefore, we are living at
a time where we need to do more, put our
talents to the wheel to try to protect this for
future generations. So that's been part of what's motivated me,
the realization not just that I have something to contribute
or I need a mission, but there's actually important work.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
To be done. Well, and if it is to be,
it's up to me.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
You know, that was something that I realized pretty early
on is if A is waiting for B and B
is waiting for C, and who's.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Actually getting it done?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Who's actually going to be the person to step up
and speak out? And when you realize that it's going
to have to be you or it won't be anyone,
that becomes a burden, but it almost simplifies things.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
You don't wait around.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Let's talk about your new book on biblical archaeology called
The Stones Cry Out.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
I asked you this question at the beginning of every book.
Why write this book?
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Debbie and I went to Israel for the first time
in 2022. We were very charmed to be in a
place that kind of felt like the land of the Bible.
But what really made it for me was when I
was exposed to the artifacts, some of the artifacts of
biblical archaeology. Biblical archaeology has been around 150 years, but
it seems to be making spectacular discoveries in recent decades.
(12:32):
not only large events in the Bible, but very tiny
ones as well. The Bible is an historical story. God
chose to reveal himself, but he didn't just do it
by stamping his name on the moon. He did it
through history, through Abraham and Isaac, and then later King
David and Solomon and the prophets, and of course, ultimately Messiah, Jesus.
(12:53):
So this story, which begins around 2000 B.C., and the
Bible itself ends about.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
50 or so AD.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
This is the time scale of the Bible. So I
was exposed to this in Israel and I thought, wow,
like why isn't this shouted from the rooftops of every church?
You know, pastors will typically teach Bible stories as if
they are just stories.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
With a moral.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
But the historical grounding is often lost. And so I
thought to myself, this is kind of what I do.
This is kind of.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
What I'm good at.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Why don't I try to bridge the gap between the
massive discoveries of biblical archaeology, which are mostly publicly unknown,
and write a book sort of broadcasting them.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
To the world?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
It's an interesting approach. I mean, you've been a university president.
You've been in academia. You are a lifelong student, which
I tell everyone we should be. We shouldn't relegate the
learning process to going to get a degree, a certification
so we can get a job.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Learning is exciting. It's thrilling. I've always enjoyed it. And
I know you have too.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Maybe we're just fellow nerds and that's okay too. But
did you have any background in archaeology? I mean, where
did you begin? What was your base level in archaeology?
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Well, the reason you're hearing from me in 2026 is
I've taken three years to study it. But I'll give
you the kind of example that bred in me the
excitement to want to do this. So, you know, the
great scene of Jesus's trial and crucifixion, you've got these
major figures like King Herod and David. the Roman prefect
(14:25):
Pontius Pilate, you've got the high priest Caiaphas, you've got Jesus,
the accused man, and all of them, they're not just
different personalities, they have a different philosophy. Now, there's very
interesting archaeology on all four, by the way, but I
just want to talk for a moment about one, and
that's Caiaphas, the high priest. So the Bible only gives
(14:45):
you his last name, Caiaphas. But the historian Josephus tells
us that his first name was Joseph, Joseph Caiaphas. Now,
fast forward 2,500 years.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
They're digging in.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
The priestly quarter of Jerusalem, the way the aristocrats lived.
And out of the ground comes a stone box.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Many stone boxes called ossuaries.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
And in the first century AD, if you died, you'd
be buried in a tomb. And when your body disintegrated,
they would take your bones out, put it in a
box and put your name on it. So here you've
got these stone boxes all laid out and the archaeologists
are looking at them. One of them is particularly ornate.
And it says on the box, Yehoshaph Bar-Kayapha.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yehoshaph is Joseph.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
Bar is son of. Kayapha, Caiaphas. So they open the box,
and inside are the bones of a 60-year-old man, dated,
as it turns out, to the 1st century AD. So
it's him. Think about it. The guy, when Jesus is arrested,
he's taken to.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
The house of Caiaphas.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
Caiaphas mobilizes the priestly council of the Sanhedrin. They are
the ones who convince Pilate. Pilate is reluctant, but they
make him agree to the crucifixion of Jesus. These great
biblical events. And, you know, here I am. I've believed
this on faith since I was a child. But here
I'm standing and, you know, you're looking at this. And
(16:07):
it's not just some inscription or writing. When you're talking
about Caiaphas, you're looking at his bones. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
I didn't expect you to stop there. I was actually
literally imagining this. And it's the kind of.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Thing that, you know, these, these are topics that, that
I don't think about often until these sorts of things
come up a whole with us for just a moment.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Dinesh D'Souza.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
We're talking to Dinesh D'Souza.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Um, A friend of the show who's been on the
show many times over the years, he's written a new
book on biblical archaeology called The Stones Cry Out. And
it's interesting to me, Dinesh, I've had a number of
(16:57):
friends who will take a trip to the Middle East
and they go to the Holy Land. And whether they
be Jewish or Christian or atheist, for that matter, you
can't help but be overcome by how many important world
events there It's obvious for a Christian why these things
are important or for a Jew, especially in the modern era.
(17:19):
But in any case, it is very important to us
from a religious perspective. But so much of the world
is just the cradle of– it's just fascinating by it.
And I'm interested to know, was there an aha moment
where biblical archaeology, getting outside your areas of core competence,
(17:39):
that you said, yeah, I'm going to dig in. Do
you remember that moment in particular?
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Yeah. Well, looking at these artifacts and looking at the
age or antiquity of them, it occurred to me that
there are three important implications that arise simultaneously. First, the
obvious one, you're vindicating the historicity of the Bible, right?
You're not proving the miracles of the theology, but you're
(18:04):
showing that these are historical events.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
These are real people, real places, real events.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
They actually occurred, and archaeology can show that. Now, the
second thing is, it shows the presence of the Jews
in their ancient homeland. That's unavoidable. And therefore, when you
come back and you hear someone say things like, the
Jews are colonizers, it makes you think, huh, how do
you colonize your own ancestral land? I mean, can the
(18:29):
Indians colonize India? Can the Irish colonize Ireland? There's a
certain peculiarity to that accusation. And third... America and the
West are built on the foundations of Athens and Jerusalem. Now,
Athens doesn't really need a defense because Athens is classical reason.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
It's free speech and Socrates. It's the origins of democracy.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
But Jerusalem is more controversial, right? Because Jerusalem is based
on God's revelation, the creation out of nothing, the Exodus,
the Ten Commandments, the prophets.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
The Psalms and the wisdom Proverbs.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
So Jerusalem is the sort of shaky pillar of Athens
and Jerusalem. And what this biblical archaeology does is it
supports or shores up the Jerusalem pillar. And therefore it
supports the foundations of America and the West.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
I read this in the materials about your book. The
book is called The Stone's Cry Out by Dinesh D'Souza.
And it says, if scripture is true in history, it
deserves to be taken seriously in prophecy, including its warning
that a transvaluation of values will mark the final age
(19:47):
and perhaps even the last days.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
What does this mean?
Speaker 4 (19:52):
What this means is that in the Bible, there are
multiple prophecies. They go back to Isaiah and Daniel. You know,
Isaiah lived in the 8th century BC. He made predictions
that came true after his death. Daniel makes stunning prophecies
where he basically says that the empire of Babylon will
be overthrown by the Medes and the Persians, and they
(20:15):
will be overthrown by the Greeks. And this didn't happen
for centuries after Daniel, so Skeptics couldn't make sense of this.
How can somebody predict the future? The Bible also repeatedly,
by the way, predicts the Jews will return to their
ancestral homeland after being scattered to the ends of the earth.
Think how implausible this would have seemed for so many centuries.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
And yet it's happened.
Speaker 4 (20:37):
So this is my starting point. If the Bible can
be shown to be vindicated in its predictions, then we
have to consider what the Bible says about the so-called
end times. And the Bible does say at the end times,
you know, up will be down and the distinction between
men and women will be obliterated and right will be
wrong and wrong will be put forward as right. This
(20:59):
kind of inversion or transvaluation of values, like look for it.
When you begin to see it and you begin to
see how pervasive it is, be sort of forewarned that
this could.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Be a clue that we are entering the last age.
Is that what you believe to be the case? I
believe it is to be the case.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
Now, I'm not one of these guys who says things like,
you know, the world will end in 2037. I don't
put chronological dates on it. I'm very cautious about prophecy,
and I think we should be. I think the book
of Revelation is deliberately obscure and veiled. So I tend
to look for things that are like obvious and have
(21:40):
come true. And then when people talk about signs of
the end times, I look for clear signs. You know,
I won't say things like there's a phrase in the Bible,
wars and rumors of wars. But, you know, going back
to the Crimean War, World War I, World War II,
the Cold War, you can see people at all those
times going, well, we got a war, therefore the end
of the world is coming. So I resist that kind
(22:02):
of simplification. I'm very cautious about the future because we
don't know the future.
Speaker 5 (22:07):
That's an interesting perspective. It's a very interesting perspective. What
did you learn in this study?
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Because one of the things I've always appreciated about you,
Dinesh D'Souza is our guest, is that you go in
with the idea that you are going to learn and
whatever you learn, you're going to share. As opposed to
assuming you know everything already. And I think that has
served you well. I think people enjoy going along that
journey with you. What was one of the things that
(22:40):
popped out to you in biblical archaeology, the book is
The Stone's Cry Out, that surprised you or that you
didn't already know that wasn't intuitive?
Speaker 4 (22:50):
So I'm a product, going back to my years at Dartmouth,
of a... what was called since the 19th century, the
biblical higher criticism.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
These were skeptics.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
And they basically said the Bible seems to have been
written hundreds of years later than the events it describes.
And therefore, we can expect that a lot of the
Bible is just conjecture.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
It's made up. It's embellished.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
And I think some of the details of archaeology are
so powerful that they absolutely destroy this theory.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Here's one example. In the book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
Is clashing, the prophet Jeremiah is clashing with the king,
a fellow named Zedekiah, and the king rounds up two
of his obscure sidekicks, and I'll give you their names, Jehukal,
son of Shalamiah, Gadalia, son of Pashur, these two guys,
and the king says, basically, go keep an eye on Jeremiah. Now,
these are biblical cameo appearances, they're sidekicks, They follow Jeremiah around.
(23:51):
At one point, they throw him into a pit, and
I've stood in that pit, by the way, and then
they disappear. Now, fast forward to the present, and out
of the ground in Jerusalem, this is earlier in this century,
come out these seals, which are seals.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
They're made of clay.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
They're used to seal correspondence, and the correspondence is lost,
but the clay remains. And one seal has a name, Jehukal,
son of Shalamiah. And two years later, a bunch of
other seals are found, and there's another name, Gadaliah, son
of Pashur. Now, think about this. Not only are these
biblical minor characters now suddenly historically vindicated, But if you
(24:32):
think about the criticism going back to the 19th century
that the Bible is written hundreds of years later, I
ask you, how could someone writing hundreds of years later
know the names of these minor officials of a king
of Judah? in the 6th century BC there's no way
to know them it's like asking you or me to
(24:55):
name the interns at the White House of President Buchanan
using no written records at all so this is the
kind of thing that excites me because not only it's
a little detail but it has huge implications.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Dinesh D'Souza is our guest we'll close the show with
our conversation with him one more segment the book is
called The Stones Cry.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Out They are telling me what's called onesies. These are
little things, clothing for babies. I like Michael Berry's show.
Are you supportive of these onesies?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
We're talking to Dinesh D'Souza about his latest passion project,
pun intended, that is biblical archaeology, The Stones Cry Out. Dinesh,
let me ask you a question that I have. I
don't ask you to solve a problem for me, a
quandary for me. To me, the quandary is half the fun.
It is working through it myself. But I have always
(25:51):
been bothered by fellow Christians who will jump up and say,
here's proof of Jesus. And they want to offer scientific proof.
And my answer to that has always been, I appreciate
your passion.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
I appreciate your pursuit. I appreciate.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
But for me, faith means faith. And faith means the
absence of science. And so the desperate need for science is,
in my opinion, makes you a bad steward, a bad Christian,
because you are pursuing a desire to prove something to yourself.
And that's a failing of humanity. That faith literally means faith.
(26:33):
You're not going to get science or it wouldn't be
faith any longer.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
What's your thought to that? Something I've struggled with my
whole life.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
So again, I think that because the Bible has an
historical side and a theological, prophetic and supernatural side, I
think it is very helpful to verify the things that
can be verified. I mean, think about it this way.
You're a juror in a trial and you're dealing with
(27:02):
a suspect. And the suspect tells you that over the past,
let's just say, two weeks, I did all these things.
And some of them are fantastic and absurd or they
seem very far-fetched. But other times he tells you, you know,
I ate a Chick-fil-A, and here's my receipt, and I
drove cross-country, and here I am on the surveillance tape.
So it turns out that there are certain things about
(27:22):
what he tells you that you are in a position
to verify. And then you ask yourself, are there any
things that he told you that are clearly wrong, that
he was clearly lying? And if the answer is no,
then you go, look– I can't check out everything that
this guy is saying, but he seems like a truthful
guy and probably the rest of it is true also.
(27:44):
So kind of applying this commonsensical approach to the Bible,
I say to myself this. If the history is proven
to be wrong, if archaeology could say, here's an artifact
and clearly this stuff in the Bible never happened or
didn't happen that way, it makes the rest of it
less believable. Conversely, if you can affirm the historicity of
(28:04):
it and go, oh yeah, you don't believe in King
David or we believed in King David by faith, but
guess what? Here's the remains of his palace. You can
go stand in it right now. If you affirm the historicity,
it renders the account.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Of the whole much more plausible.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
So I agree there are certain things that we have
to take on faith. The resurrection, of course, the saving
grace of Jesus. But on the other hand, things like
the historicity of Jesus can easily be proven.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Is it important that they be proven?
Speaker 4 (28:36):
Yes. Yes, because the Bible is really clear that Jesus
was not like a mythical figure. He told parables, but
his own life is not a parable. He really existed
at a particular place in a particular time. And if
that's not true, then the Bible is nothing.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
More than like, I mean, think of it.
Speaker 4 (28:57):
We can get a lot of lessons out of Aesop's fables.
The fables are not true, but they do contain valuable
moral lessons. And a lot of people have tried to portray.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
The Bible that way. But I argue, no, the Bible.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
Has an historical foundation.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Which can be supported.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
And we have 150 years of biblical archaeology that help
us to do that. And not only are those events true,
but it gives the moral lessons that come out of
this a certain.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
I would say, added luminescence and power. I think that's
well said. I.
An icing on the cake, if you will.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Your materials on your book, The Stones Cry Out by
Dinesh D'Souza, say the puzzle is plain. If archaeology confirms
the Bible, why aren't the churches shouting these findings from
their rooftops?
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Do you have an answer to that question? Why aren't they?
Speaker 4 (29:49):
Yes, it's a double answer. The first part of it
is that pastors... go to divinity school, and they learn theology,
but they don't learn archaeology. And so as a result,
they're a little afraid of.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
This whole new discipline.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
They feel like if I wander into it, it may
prove to be a minefield. I would rather stay out
of it. And so they'll do a sermon on Isaiah,
but they'll never tell you what century he lived in,
what was the surrounding context, what other empires were flourishing
at the time. It's treated as a parable or as
a morality tale. The other problem, I think, is that
(30:25):
the archaeologists, by the way, most of them, of course, secular,
they're attached to academic departments at various universities. They don't
want to be seen as in the business of proving
the Bible because they say we're secular, we're social scientists.
We're not trying to prove this book of Revelation or
we're not trying to prove this kind of theological text.
(30:46):
And so even if they make findings that pertain to
the Bible, they will write an archaeological paper that greatly
downplays that fact. And so what I'm basically saying is
there's a kind of diminution of the topic both by
the archaeologists and by the pastors.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
And hence, I think, the need for a book like this.
Why by the archaeologist? I didn't understand that.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
Well, my point is just this. If you're an archaeologist,
let's say at Leeds University in England or Oxford, you
want to maintain your academic bona fides. You don't want
to be seen as proving the Bible because people then
think that you're sort of somehow doing, quote, religious work
and not serious science. So the archaeologists have, in fact,
(31:32):
they've even made motions at their own conventions. Let's not
use the phrase biblical archaeology. Let's call it Near Eastern archaeology.
And you can see what they're trying to do. They're
trying to remove the religious or biblical connotations from their work.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
You know, it's interesting. Dinesh D'Souza is our guest. The
book is The Stones Cry Out. I saw that during
COVID where doctors were afraid to state, which a good
scientist applying that science as medicine should, they were afraid
to say, what I'm seeing with my patients is this.
(32:13):
because it cut against what Fauci said, it cut against
what NIH said, it cut against what the media was reported,
and they didn't want to do that. I think it
was McCullough who first kind of came out and said, hey,
this is a bad deal, and the science tells me,
my own experience practicing medicine, but you would be considered
a kook for doing what a doctor, scientist, Would normally
(32:35):
do and and so I think there's definitely something be
said for that. I've got just a second left I
wanted to ask you I could ask you five more questions,
but It's been your pattern Dinesh D'Souza to when you
write a book like this to then make a movie
about it Do you foresee that happening here?
Speaker 4 (32:52):
Well, in this case, I have made a two-hour documentary
on the greatest discoveries of biblical archaeology. PragerU will release
it alongside the book this fall. So, yes, there's going
to be a film version. It's an abbreviated version because
the book... And I want to point out the book,
by the way, has maps.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
It has timelines. It has a lot of photos.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
And it even has QR codes where you can go
to a you can see on site video of these artifacts.
So I'm not just.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Telling you about them.
Speaker 4 (33:25):
I'm allowing you to see.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Them and interact with them. Very cool. I love it.
Dinesh D'Souza, the book is The Stones Cry Out. We
look forward. I've not read it yet, but I look
forward to reading it. Hopefully, I'll have it printed by
this week. Always my pleasure.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
Thank you.
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