BORDERS, LANGUAGE, CULTURE: WORDS FROM GOD? - #935

0:00And now the world's most exciting podcast, the Savage Nation, home of borders, language, culture. Here he is, Michael Savage. I'm glad I could spend some time with you this afternoon, early evening, around America and the world. As we approach the religious holidays that are so important to both Judaism and Christianity, Easter, of course, being a holiday for Christians and Passover, being a holiday for Jewish people, I thought it's appropriate to talk about God. Where is God? Now, you can turn the show off right now, sad. I don't want to hear this anymore. People ranting on about an invisible force. I don't know where he is. Who's God? How do you find God? Well, I broke the code on that. So if you'll stick with me another minute, give me one more minute. How do we find God in a materialistic world?

1:01In a materialistic world, we want to touch God. We want to feel God. We want to own God. Well, then you could get yourself an idol and you could become an idol worshiper, which mankind has engaged in or still is engaging in in many parts of the world. Or you can think about this invisible force, this invisible force called God. And it's very hard for materialists such as ourselves here in the Western world to envision an invisible God. And as I said, I think I broke the code years back because I've been searching for this answer since I'm a child. And the answer is simple. The search is the finding. The search for God is the finding of God. You look for Him, you pray to Him, the invisible God, and maybe you'll get a reverberation. Maybe you'll find Him.

2:02Maybe you won't. But it doesn't happen easily. You've got to commit yourself to it. It's not that easy to find this God that we call God. Where is it? Savage. Michael Savage. A host like no other. Well, here's something most doctors know that most men never talk about. Stress from work, money and family just doesn't disappear at night. It follows you into the bedroom. You can be lying next to the woman you have loved for years and suddenly your mind will not let your body do what is always done naturally. For situations like that, doctors look for treatments that help both the brain and the body. Once where rougiate ready comes in, unlike Viagra and Sialis, rougiate ready is a next-generation prescription treatment designed to help prime your brain for a rousal and increase blood flow. It combines three clinically proven ingredients in one mint that dissolves under your tongue

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5:10Here it is, that's get.stash.com slash savage. It's simple. Get.stash.com slash savage. Pay non-client endorsement, not representative of all clients and not a guarantee, investment advisory services offered by stash investments LLC and SEC registered investment advisor investing involves risk offers subject to terms and conditions. I've seen people who live with God around them all the time is surrounded by it. I could see it in their eyes. You've seen them. You've seen people that I was certain something about them in aura and you know they're different than you and I. You know that they have something special within and we don't know what that is. Maybe it's a resonance. But the reaching out to God is the finding of God. He's not here. He's not there.

6:10He's not an idol as I said earlier. And I just know that God exists. I've known it for most of my life. There are times I didn't believe that I had any contact with God. And I hope that you turn the show off if you're an atheist and you don't want to hear this. It's fine because I'm like an ancient man come back to life. Yes, in my book, God, Faith and Reason, which I'm so honored to tell you has just been reprinted by the publisher who did my Alzheimer's book post hill press on Amazon because people wanted it. I got the rights back from the original publisher. We changed the cover and certain things inside. It was written that this book is like an ancient mystery text. It's not an academic theological treatise. It's more like an ancient mystery text. And I draw on Christian Jewish Buddhist and other spiritual sources as well as auto biographical material and highlights from my career in the media.

7:15When I tell you this, I'm going to just give you this one opening line. It's a very important line. I don't think I've seen it anywhere else. I know it was original to me. Line one of this book, I never saw God, nor do I pretend to have any special insights. What you'll see in this book are snapshots of God, not a complete film. That's very interesting. Now there are people who are much more knowledgeable than I about theological things. There are people who are far more knowledgeable than I regarding the Bible, the Hebrew, the meaning, the theology, etc. But I don't think it means that they know anything more about God than you or I do. You can take the most ordinary person who is a believer, and I've met them, and they do more for inspiring the unbeliever than does the most intelligent intellectual theology and on the planet. You see, God is about belief and faith. It is not about proving there is a God, for there is no proof.

8:18What proof can there be? You see, if there were a firm proof, there would be no need for this book. It would have been done a thousand times by now. The fact that we're even contemplating whether God exists, which mankind, by the way, questions on a regular basis, if he's a questioning person, indicates that nobody really knows. But I say the adverse, the adverse tells us that God does exist. For example, you come right into a person who says, I'm an atheist, I don't believe God exists. What does that do for the universe? Does God cease to exist because one doubting Thomas out of the billions who are living and the billions who have lived suddenly say God doesn't exist? It means God doesn't exist for him. Is that person so narcissistic as to believe the because he or she says, I don't believe in God that therefore God doesn't exist? That's crazy. That's absurd. God doesn't need that. Individuals need to prove his existence.

9:20He doesn't need individuals to prove his existence. Know my friends, the fact of the matter was stated to me by a hobo I met many years ago in the streets of San Francisco. As we spoke and I looked into his startling the blue eyes with a shock of white hair, I asked him, he told me his name was Moses, by the way, I said, Moses, do you believe in God? He looked at me in a puzzled manner and he said, who do you think created me? Well that's solid for me. I met many believing people who don't need proof. That's where I'm trying to say to you tonight. I'm not trying to prove to you that God exists, not at all. That doesn't need Michael Savage to prove his existence. Michael Savage needs to write this book or needed to write this book to prove to himself that Michael Savage exists. That's an important line. I think therefore I am. I write therefore I am. Now this question of whether God exists has plagued mankind from the beginning of recorded

10:21history. Look at all the 10 commandments. They're right behind me. They're simple. They're simple. They are right here. One through ten. Simple ten commandments. Very simple. Thou shalt not kill. What does that actually mean? Are we told to kill in war? Well, if you read the original Hebrew, the word is murder. The commandment is Thou shalt not murder. It does not say Thou shalt not kill. They are two completely different things. They take some knowledge of the history of both the Hebrew language and of the prophets themselves to properly interpret not only the ten commandments, but mankind's guidebook for life on this earth, the Bible. And as I take you on this journey with me, it's my Odyssey, call me Homer, if you will, not call me Ishmael, call me Homer. That faith and reason by Michael Savage, call me Homer, if you want.

11:25It's my Odyssey. I've been looking for God my whole life. I'm just a person who's thought about the questions that I explore in this book, my whole life. Why was I put here? Why were you put here? Why are we born if we're born to die? Why must we suffer? Why does God forsake even the good among us, amongst us? Why do little children suffer so terribly in cancer wards around the world? Why are so many good men and women slaughtered in war? Why do evil men thrive unpunished in their lifetime? Now many of you have given up on this concept of God. I know that. You think it's nonsense for stupid people and children. And you haven't been in a church or a synagogue for your entire adult life. Some of you may be Jewish. You had a bar mitzvah and that was the last time you were in a temple. Oh, once in a while, you observe a Rosh Hashanah. You do the mumbo jumbo. You put on the hat. Then you go and have a meal and think you did not. You did your thing. Well, you come back to do a thing for the dead.

12:27You read the cottage. You tell yourself you don't really believe in it. But there's a little tiny part of you that does. And what will happen is, as you get older, it will become. That tiny part will become bigger and bigger and bigger. When you're young, you can believe in nothing except your pleasure center. That's the norm. That's the way it's supposed to be. And as you get older, as things happen to you, as things break in your body, you want to turn to something or somebody, but you don't know where to turn. These questions have plagued me to such an extent that I've lost faith many times along the rocky road. We all walk. But we must all walk along this road no matter how much our feet bleed, no matter how they ache. And I think I'll leave it at that. God-faith and reason is now available for Easter and Passover. It was a gift to me by the publisher. He reprinted it and rushed it to print. Just for me, sent me a hundred copies. I got them just, I think, yesterday.

13:27And I'm giving them away to the folks who are coming to the community satire next Wednesday in my community. Want them to all have a copy, which I've photographed. In this book, you'll find childhood stories, my dinner with an atheist and a Buddhist, an interview with a real Jewish gangster. My reflections on selected passages from ancient scriptures. These are some of the eclectic experiences and insights that you'll see in this book. From my days as a boy growing up in New York, to many years searching for healing plants in the South Pacific, to my current incarnation as, let us say, a talk show host of some sort and a blogger of some sort. God-faith and reason presents the reader with one man's perceptions and considerations of the daily presence of God in the world around us and how the search defined God is the finding itself.

14:27The search defined God is the finding itself. I'm not out to convert anyone to anything. I've said it over and over again, practice the religion of your grandparents. That's who you are. You need to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem and see now and know and seek in the broad places thereof. If you could find a man, if there be any to do with justified, that seeketh truth, and I will pardon her. And though they say, ah, as the Lord liveth, surely, surety, they swear falsely. Jeremiah, 512, what does that mean? He says, if you can find a man, if there be any to do with justified, that seeketh truth and I will pardon her, man, I will pardon her. Think about that one. So interspersed in this book brilliantly, I must say, are pieces from the Old Testament. In sitting still and rest shall you be saved.

15:28In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength, Isaiah 30, 15 boys, that ever true. I have learned in sitting still and rest you are saved. In quietness and in confidence, you do find your strength. That is 100% true. But how do you get quiet? How do you learn to turn off the noise? I don't know, that's your problem. I can't tell you. How does God guide your life? How does searching for God help direct your life? How much does God do versus how much does the individual do? So there are little stories in here that are worth sharing with you. And I'm in the mood to read a little bit more tonight than I normally would have. No man is an island. How many of you know, for example, that for whom the bell tolls comes from a great poem which approaches a religious piece by the great dead white male poet John Dunn? It's a short one. He was writing something called devotions upon emergence occasions and said, no man is

16:30an island, no man is an island, an entire of itself. Every man is a piece of a continent, a part of the main. He meant that although we're individuals, we're also part of a whole, which makes living as individuals possible, the death of any one person diminishes the life of every other because it diminishes the whole. That's why his famous saying ends like this, never sent a know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for the. It's such an important phrase for whom the bell tolls, never sent a know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for the. It was a universalist message. It taught us compassion that if a man in your neighborhood dies, you should show some respect for that person, whether you knew him enough, because you too will go by that way one day, we're all part of that same stream of life. That's the meaning of for whom the bell tolls as far as I can tell.

17:31Home of borders, language, culture, the savage nation. What does this have to do with you and I tonight in the midst of a war? All of us are very worried about the war and we're turning some of us to escapism, some turn to drugs, some turn to alcohol, some turn to escapism, some turn to spirituality to religion. I know this, that anyone with a brain is worried about this war right now. We don't know for sure how it's going to go. We know it's not ending soon. We're supposed to be a quick war. We heard that by the way about a lot of wars, a lot of the boys who went smiling into battle in World War I thought they'd be home by Christmas and they came home chopped up in pieces in body bags or coffins at that time. As a man died for the quick war, for the holy war, read about Gallipoli, study the history

18:33of war. It's unpredictable. We all feel we're living through a biblical time. We just don't know if this is an ordinary time. This seems very much like a biblical time. It seems like a war without end. We also have Ukraine and Russia wiping out an entire generation of young men over a land dispute, Russia and Ukraine killing each other, their cousins. Most Russians speak Ukrainian, most Ukrainian speak Russian. They've been murdering each other for a few years now, wiping out an entire generation that will never come back. By the way, who's gathering the crops in Ukraine? Who gathered the crops last spring? They were all at war. The land was chopped up with weapons and pieces of weapons and land mines. What happened to the wheat? Ukraine is the bread basket of Europe. Where did the wheat go? Did they gather the wheat? Is that going to affect us?

19:34Everything is affecting us. Think of a giant spider web. What happens over here on the web, you can see the web over there moving. That's what I'm trying to say for whom the bell tells. You say, I don't care who dies in this war as long as it's not me. That's a human feeling. Know about your business and let the others worry about it. Let them deal with this. I don't care about them. At least, I just don't care anymore. That's what people feel. I just want it over with for whom the bell tells. The bell tells for the God faith and reason. Now can reason exist with faith is the question for most of us. Most of us understand there are religious people who believe in a God that we don't, if we're atheists or agnostics. We don't believe in it. We're too smart for that. We're scientists, we're chemists, engineers, but we don't believe in that stuff. That's for the old people. That's for the children. That's for the super religious, isn't it? It's not for you. Well, when you get older, you may find out that it's a little different than that.

20:36You know, there's a piece in here where I spoke with a Jewish gangster. He was a real big one. He's got a fake gangster like today and he's a real man. I don't even know how I got him on the radio show years ago. Jewish gangster finds God, page 179. I'm not going to read it to you. But this is amazing. It was one of the most amazing men I've ever spoken with in my life and he, his name is Michael Hardy. He's passed away. He was the last the old time Jewish gangsters. Bugs, he seagull was his godfather. He was by his own admission, a cold-hearted murderer. He grew up in a tough section of Brownsville, New York. And he said it made you a hard person. He said it's inescapable. But there's a difference between being very hard-minded, very tough, very uncompromising, and then crossing that line and being able to cut someone's throat with a soda bottle.

21:38I asked him what had driven him to become the criminal he used to be. And you could read about that in this book. It's a phenomenal interview. I don't even know how I got it. I don't remember some of the things that happened in my life and my career in the media. I just don't remember how these things occurred. I'll read this part of it to you, though. I asked the question in God-faith and reason, are killers made or born? Michael Hardy says both. He says, I must accept the answer he gave me as far as his opinion is concerned. But it doesn't really matter whether it was nature or nurture. Even a killer like him could change. He could have decided not to be a killer any longer. It took a personal decision on his part to become a different person for him to be saved. In other words, by turning to God, he saved himself. Listen to what he said. We're not talking about a weakling now. We're talking about a guy who was in a gunfight. He was shot six times in a gunfight and a producer studio in Hollywood, 1978.

22:41He said, we shot it out in front of everybody. People thought we were making a movie. He said, I was looking out of the corner of my eye while I'm getting nine millimeters pumped into me. Okay. In the last bullet that came out of my gun, I ran and I started beating this guy over the head. I had. I was. I was hitting my jugular vein. I was dying. Okay. That's the difference. Everybody with me. This is the kind of man I am talking about. This is not a milk toast type of guy. So this is what he says to me. He says, now what changed my life? He says, I was in Corcoran. Okay. Now, that's one of the toughest prisons in America. I was in Corcoran. Okay. I had sepsis of the spine. Okay. I helped the guy escape out of Donovan prison, a guy named Dave Finney. I got the warden fired. I did it for that reason to get the warden fired. Anyway, what happened is I was dying. Okay. I said, Lord, this cop came in and he started making me sit up. I had sepsis. I had such a pain in my back. I had a few days to go. I said, if you ever did this to me on the yard, I'd kill you.

23:42But now I'm dying. So you're coming here to feed off me. He said, well, I said, but I'm going out. I'm getting out in a few days. He said, no, you're not. You're doing life. I said, no, I get out November 27th. He must have looked at the computer. I never seen him again. I was dying. Okay. I made a prayer that night. I said this. This is Michael. The guy I'm talking about. He said, God, please don't let me die. I promise on my soul. I will change my life. That is after 27 years of prison. Now I finally broke just a couple of days after I'd finished 17 years for murder. Okay. I broke, but I only broke, but I said, I won't take any vengeance on nobody. And I won't do anything except I had to interrupt him at this point and I ask, wait, wait, slow down. You said you broke, Michael. What do you mean you broke? You changed? I broke. Yes. He replied. God broke me. God, I'll denoy. L. He's the one that broke me. He broke me. It's an interesting use of the word broke.

24:45Hardy said God broke him. I asked him what he meant. He said because God comes to you, if you, he sends people to you. If you don't listen to him, okay, he's going to find a way to break you. He's going to bring you to him and be thankful he does. If he doesn't, then you're lost. You go into Gehenna and I know that this is the culture that I come from. He said, this is the Jewish culture, okay. Let me tell you, Michael, I was born into a war zone and he goes on and he said, I started out with the Profachi, Gallo wars and all of that. He was the real McCoy and he has a man as tough as he is talking about God and how God breaks you in order to bring you to him. And there's a way to avoid being broken is what he is saying. There's a way to avoid being broken. You hear what he just said? This is so critical. I've never explained it in this way because I never saw it until right now. He's saying that God broke him because he was so hard and wouldn't come to God.

25:48He had to almost die to reach out to God. But he didn't die and he told us listening to him that there's a way to reach God before you reach that point. Another point of our conversation, he talks about America. He says, when you say you're broken, you say to God, save me and I'll do better. I'll walk the path you've laid out for me in the Bible. I'll turn my back on my previous sinful life. An individual can save himself that way. So I asked him, can a nation? And once it does, it can bring itself out of the hell it has created an earth and into a more just equitable and godly life. Well, that certainly happened from Michael Hardy. His decision to change his life and his willingness to follow through or what saved him. And as he went on to tell me, I've changed my line of thinking, okay? You know, I'm handicapped, he said, I would travel around the streets in San Diego and my wheelchair. People treated me good, real, real good, real good. And I, you know, I look at these people.

26:49They are the people. These are American people. These are good people. Okay, who would want to hurt these people? You know, I'm not in the battle zone anymore. You get out of the army, you stop fighting, okay? I'm not in that army no more. I've been shot 11 times in the streets in this country, okay? I've had 16 gun fights. I've been in two major Mafia gang wars and that's only on this side of the border, okay? But I'm going to tell you something. When you don't need to do that, when you're not a combatant, then you look at the, you smell the flowers and I thank God that I'm not here. You know, listen, I face the gas chamber on my last case and I beat three strikes, three times by the grace of God only. And I, and you know what? You don't have to be a fool to sit around and compliment yourself and say, and he went on and on. I hope I've reached you. If you think God is for weaklings, think again, there's some very, very strong, powerful men who found God. And today on the eve of the two major holidays of the Judeo-Christian traditions that built this nation on the cusp of Easter, Passover, think about the important things that these

27:56holidays represent. It's not about Easter bunnies, it's not about painting eggs, that's for children. It's for you and I to come back to our core self, to our eternal self and connect with the power. Thank you for listening. Thanks for indulging me on this beautiful night. May God save you and may God save me and may God save America. Let's pray for Donald Trump because he's all we got, whether you like him or not, is the only thing standing between us and the hell that he's trying to put down. Thank you for being here. Bye for now. Well, thank you very much for listening to today's podcast. I hope you've enjoyed it and learned something from it. We have about 400 other episodes available for you to listen to absolutely free.

28:56You can go back into our vast library of podcasts, I'll listen to any one of them at any time. And remember this, if you want to listen to my podcast, add free, sign up for the Savage Premium Membership and get access to ad free podcasts as well as some premium content from our Savage Archives. How do you sign up for those ad free podcasts? Please visit michaelsavage.com for a link. Again, thank you for your listenership. This is michaelsavage.