VIEWPOINT with Chuck Crismier
THE CARTER CONUNDRUM
This is viewpoint with attorney and author Chuck Chris Meyer. Viewpoint is a one hour talk show confronting the issues of America's heart and home. And now with today's edition of Viewpoint here is Chuck Chris Meyer. It was a truly good man declared Donald Trump concerning the passing of the 39th president of the United States, Jimmy Carter, a truly good man. He said, well, I strongly disagreed with him philosophically and politically. I also realized that he truly loved and respected our country and stands for it and all it stands for. Well, today on Viewpoint, we're going to be taking a look at a very interesting person called Jimmy Carter because Jimmy Carter actually represents a whole lot of what is good and not so good about America. In fact, he represents a whole lot of what is troubling concerning the role of Christians and who they are and what we are to do, who we are to be, what we are to stand for and what it all looks like in the context of being an American president. Today we call the program the Carter conundrum, the elusive pursuit of peace because one of the things, if anything, that Jimmy Carter was known for was the pursuit of peace. And yet the prophet said, men will cry peace, peace, but there will be no peace because the Prince of Peace has not yet come. And yet Jimmy Carter was known as the first evangelical, at least self-proclaimed evangelical president in the history of America. Everything to be an agent of the Prince of Peace and therefore pursuing peace. Well, yes indeed, it is good to pursue peace. We all should be agents of peace, but at what price and what does it mean to pursue peace? Does it mean to compromise truth in order to pursue peace? What does it really mean to pursue peace? Does it mean to compromise what the Bible says about what it means to be a follower of Christ and all in the pursuit of peace? Does it mean to compromise what God says concerning Israel as the apple of his eye and therefore to try to compromise that and put Israel down in order to lift up a group of people called Palestinians or Arabs or Muslims or whatever? You see, that unfortunately is where Jimmy Carter got tangled up. No one would ever question the heart, desire and truth pursuit of Jimmy Carter. In fact, evangelical Christians sincere evangelical Christians when Jimmy Carter came on the stage to run for president announced as the first evangelical president, first evangelical candidate for the presidency claiming openly to be a born again Christian. People glommed on to that very quickly, but then also rather quickly they got to discover the holes in that commitment. What did it really mean? Was he actually prepared to be president and what did it look like? No one could ever question the man himself, as Donald Trump said, while I strongly agreed with him, disagree with him philosophically and politically, I also realized that he truly loved and respected our country and all it stands for called him a truly good man. How many presidents out there, former presidents would one say more boldly from the opposite side of the political ledger, he was a truly good man? I certainly would want to be called that. I would want to be called one who operated with love and integrity and patience and endurance and was faithful to the gospel, to the truth of God in his word throughout every decision that I made and of course, Jimmy Carter felt that way. He was elected and then he was radically diselected. He was elected because he was such unapparently good man following after the Nixon affair, the Watergate affair and Nixon was replaced by Gerald Ford by appointment or because he was the vice president and then Jimmy Carter ran on the Democrat ticket and overcame Gerald Ford and become the president, the 39th president of the United States. What happened after that, places the word conundrum truly in a right spot and we want to explore that here further on the program today, Jimmy Carter, former president and Baptist Sunday school teacher dies at 100 years of age, Baptist Sunday school teacher. That's right. He was born in 1924, was a native of a small farming town in Georgia, later obtained a bachelor of science degree at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946. He married his sweetheart Rosalind Smith in 1946. They celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary with their union standing as the longest marriage of any U.S. president. Now that's something remarkable, 77 years, no divorces, no infidelity, straight and true, keeping their vows, wow, that's something to celebrate. Beginning in the 1960s, Carter became involved in politics. He was elected to the Georgia Senate in 1962, became governor of Georgia in 1971, served as a campaign chairman for the Democrat National Committee in 1974. In 1976, he became the first Southern Baptist elected president for the United States, defeating Gerald Ford, the Republican. Significant foreign policy achievements of his administration included the Panama Canal treaties. Has that not come up again just in the last month? And then also the Camp David Accords, the Treaty of Peace between Egypt and Israel, the Salt II Treaty with the Soviet Union, and establishing diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. All of those things are in the news today. Now you can begin to understand the talk about the conundrum of Carter. On the domestic side of things, his administration achievements included a comprehensive energy program conducted by a new Department of Energy. And then as if that were not enough, he established the Department of Education that now is again in the news having corrupted America's education. He only served one term in office because a severe economic recession and international issues, such as the Iranian Revolution in 1979, caused his approval ratings to drop like a stone. After leaving office, Carter became known for many charitable efforts, including decades of volunteering with habitat for humanity alongside his wife. And beginning in the 1980s, he was a regular Sunday school teacher at the Marinatha Baptist Church of Plains, Georgia, overseeing classes, even in 2015 while he was battling melanoma cancer. Quite a man. The conundrum and the elusive, pursued at peace. Stay tuned, friends. This is Viewpoint. Once upon a time, children could pray and read their Bibles in school. Divorces were practically unknown as was child abuse. In our once great America, virginity and chastity were popular virtues and homosexuality was an abomination. So what happened in just one generation? Hi, I'm Chuck Chris Mar and I urge you to join me daily on Viewpoint where we discuss the most challenging issues touching our hearts and homes. Could America's moral slide relate to the fourth commandment? Listen to Viewpoint on this radio station or anytime at saveus.org. However, the longtime Southern Baptist, Jimmy Carter, left that denomination in the year 2000 because he didn't want to line up with their biblical stands on the issues of our time, the conundrum of Jimmy Carter. And so here we are today after Jimmy Carter has just passed at a hundred years of age, the longest living president in American history. I just wonder if perhaps his extended life was not partly due at least to his clean living, to his true genuine beliefs in Jesus Christ and attempting to conform his life accordingly. He was recognized truly as a gentleman, as a kind person, one who was not prone to get involved in scuffles and certainly did not seem to have any open issues concerning corruption, anything like that in his administration or in his own life, no sexual deviances, nothing like that. It would seem that generally speaking, he was a God-fearing man and a righteous man. And to say otherwise, except for his disagreements with certain things that the Bible has to say that took him out of the Southern Baptist Convention in the year 2000, one would have to wonder if he was not just about as straight an arrow as you could find who would ever be able to run for public office and gain the presidency of the United States. And so many evangelical Christians actually voted for him, even Republicans. Many Republicans voted for Jimmy Carter. But he didn't last out much of the term, well, he lasted out his full term, but actually in many respects did not because some very dramatic things happened during his administration. So dramatic that they set the course of the future of America and the world. We're going to talk about that here on the program today, because on the one hand, he seemed to be a tried and true follower of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, it seemed that perhaps his very apparent strength may have been his greatest weakness. In other words, he seemed to have such a pursuit of peace that in reality he couldn't even face reality. So his pursuit of peace led him to a kind of oversight, a willingness to overlook realities that would defeat his very purpose, his very pursuit of peace. And yet he continued to pursue the peace and indeed accomplished a couple of very remarkable things which we're going to talk about here on the program today. So was Jimmy Carter an evangelical Christian as he claimed right out of the starting blocks in his campaign for the presidency? Well, the New York Times in 1976 are years by Centennial. Carter's even, here's the title, Carter's even evangelism, putting religion into politics for first time since the sixties, calling Carter a deeply committed evangelical Christian. That was the New York Times in 1976. Well, that legacy endured even foreign policy magazine, the political magazine, headlined in a recent looking back, said Jimmy Carter was America's evangelical in chief, evangelical in chief, interesting going on to say that Carter's declaration that he was a born again Christian had provoked incredulity from the national press corps, but the statement resonated with many Americans, including evangelicals themselves, including Republican evangelicals. So Carter in short, was a Protestant for whom religion was very important and one who at various times have been referred to as a Southern Baptist and evangelical and is born again. On the other hand, much has changed since Carter was elected president. He's no longer a Southern Baptist wasn't since 2000. It's not clear that he would claim the evangelical label if he were interviewed today in a typical survey and he certainly did not hold a number of the beliefs usually associated with true evangelicals. So Carter's religious pilgrimage highlights the challenges that researchers face in attempting to segment the elusive group of Protestants and other non-Catholic Christians who are loosely referred to in the news as evangelicals. So the word evangelical itself has become a source of confusion, part of the conundrum. Trying to pin down evangelicals can be maddening, said the Gallup poll in an article today. The turn evangelical is widely used in current culture and discourse as a synonym for religious Christians who are conservative Republicans. Well, that may be how news media looks at it, but that's certainly not the way Bible believing Christians look at it. So self-identification as an evangelical provides useful information, but its use is as a way of describing a group based purely on that group's religious beliefs and practices doesn't have quite so much value. So I'm not sure of any recent situations in which Jimmy Carter was asked directly if he would describe himself as an evangelical. And if he were, he would probably try to dissect the word to put his own spin on it. But even if there is a segment on theological agreement on theological criteria for classifying someone as an evangelical, there's the challenge of attempting to operationalize those criteria into questions wording that accurately reflect the underlying concept in a way that respondents would understand. So the question then becomes where does Carter fit? Where did he fit? Well, as one as Gallup says, he might qualify as an evangelical based on some of the beliefs and practices religious scholars use to define an evangelical, but certainly not all. In fact, in 2012, he had an interview with the Southern Baptist Seminary President Albert Mueller. Carter stated in that interview that he does not believe the Bible should be interpreted literally word for word that homosexuality is not a sin and that he would welcome homosexual and lesbian people into his church and that women should be equal with men when it comes to ordination as ministers. And all of these then would disqualify him from being considered an evangelical according to the majority of evangelicals, so you can see the conundrum. You see, Carter wanted so badly to preserve peace that he was willing to embrace viewpoints that were contrary to the word of God, including the acceptance and promotion of homosexuality. The one thing that he would not come into alignment with is abortion. That's the one place where he held the line. He said, "I don't agree with abortion. I don't believe it, but it should be very rare, exceptional, only in the cases of rape and that kind of thing." So he retained a kind of evangelical persuasion with regard to abortion, but on the other issues of sexuality and so on, he capitulated just like the Pope. Why? I'm going to tell you why I think. I can't get inside his mind, but I think I can to a certain extent. Jimmy Carter wanted so badly to make peace, to be a peacemaker, that he was willing to compromise on issues that the Bible specifically spoke about in order to make peace in the Democrat Party, which was his party. And so he became known as a progressive Christian. Now a progressive Christian then would not be known as an evangelical Christian by most evangelicals, except for those who were progressives. So you begin to see how difficult this is in order to understand and get into the mind and heart of Jimmy Carter. That's why I called the program the Carter Conundrum, the elusive pursuit of peace. Fifth law in Baptists left a legacy of faithfulness, compassion and justice in our country, noble, very noble. But when you decide to make peace at all costs and ignore clear instructions and prohibitions from the Bible in order to do so, you now find yourself in a very difficult situation. Looking beyond that, there were seismic world changes that took place that defined Carter's presidential term, that led in many respects to his failed reelection in 1980, when Ronald Reagan was elected president in an absolute unmitigated landslide. Part of it was due to rampant hyperinflation, in part due to the Iran hostage crisis. And so, having lived through those times, having had been involved in a large congregation at Pasadena, California, where the pastor's son was one of those Americans that were taken hostage by Himaney in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, it was right up front and personal for those of us who were in that congregation and for our pastor. But it might not have been so upfront and personal for the rest of the country, but it had a huge effect upon the thinking of how in the world is this man who is this declared pursuer of peace, able to handle such a crisis, is not capable. And the country very quickly came to that position, that the way he held fast to his Christian faith was not sufficient to enable him to stand in the evil day against the wave of unrighteousness that was sweeping the world, particularly from the Islamic arena and from Iran, that was being called now the vanguard of the Islamic Revolution. So Carter is going to be remembered for living out his devout Baptist faith through his pursuit of peace and support for human rights, as well as his amazing acts of service, no other president has ever done what Jimmy Carter did after his presidency, dedicating himself to service of others in a way that is just remarkable. He deserves credit for that. He was also against something called Christians, Christians against Christian nationalism. He didn't like the idea of Christian nationalism, whatever that means. He said he didn't like the idea of the United States being known as a, that he was the most religious president in memory, and that somehow the nation should become a nation of total Christians. He couldn't embrace that. Part of the reason he couldn't embrace that is because of the history of Baptists that didn't want any interaction between the government and the church. So if you were to go back into Virginia history that was heavy with the influx of Baptists back in the 1700s, you would find many Baptists were thrown in jail, Baptist preachers were thrown in jail in Virginia. So supposedly gave us the religious freedom statute. Why? Because they wouldn't cow tout to government. Jimmy Carter inherited that background in his own mind and heart. Who can say he was wrong or he was right? That was his belief. There is so much more about Chuck Chris Meyer and Save America Ministries on our website SaveUS.org. For example, under the marriage section, God has marriage on his mind. Chuck has some great resources to strengthen your marriage. First off, a fact sheet on the state of the marital union, a fact sheet on the state of ministry, marriage and morals, SaveUS.org, marriage, divorce and remarriage. What does the Bible really teach about this? Find all of this at SaveUS.org. Also a letter to pastors, the Hosea Project, SaveUS.org and many more resources to strengthen your marriage. It's all on Chuck's website, SaveUS.org. Again, you can listen to Chuck's viewpoint broadcast live and archive, Save America Ministries website at SaveUS.org. Welcome back to Viewpoint. I'm Chuck Chris Meyer. Today, we're exploring the life and times of Jimmy Carter, who just passed away at the age of 100, the longest living president of the United States, the 39th president of the United States, who served for only one term. People have varying thoughts, ideas about Jimmy Carter. Some say, have said he was the worst president that America had. Then others have said, no, Barack Obama was the worst, the next worst was Joe Biden and the third worst with Jimmy Carter. Well, I guess it depends on how you're defining what was worse, because Jimmy Carter at least was a righteous person and saw in every way through his life to be a gentleman and to not openly invoke all kinds of anger and dividing of American life and heart. He was a peacemaker, and so we call this the Carter conundrum, the elusive pursuit of peace. Because you can pursue peace and still not get it. In fact, you might actually create things that are contrary to the pursuit of peace in the pursuit of peace, particularly if you do not fully comprehend and understand the nature of those antagonists with whom you're trying to preserve peace or create peace. You see, there are some situations where you cannot create peace. So the ancient prophet said men will cry, peace, peace, but there is no peace. True. People who will cry, peace, peace, whether there is no peace or those that want to pretend that they have reached some penultimate expression of peace and that now we're going to have peace in our times going all the way back to World War One, peace in our time. Really, well, it didn't last very long because we had World War Two that was worse than World War One. And the pursuit of peace brought about the United Nations, remember that? And look what's happened with the United Nations. Are they pursuing peace? Well, it depends on how you look at it. If you're hyper liberal, perhaps even a Jimmy Carter, you would say, yes, they're pursuing peace because he's a progressive, was a progressive, but peace at what price and how about the involvement with Israel? We're going to get into that in just a few moments where an article covering the Jerusalem Post today by Michael Oren, who was the ambassador of Israel to the United States, said Jimmy Carter was a Jewish tragedy. Why would he be called a Jewish tragedy if he was supposedly one pursuing peace? It's because he chose to look at the so-called antagonists differently than the Bible did. He did not accept that there were people who were not like him, who were not honorable, who were not desiring of genuine peace, who really would use peace as a sword. He didn't understand that. So let's take a quick look, a quick rundown of the geopolitical ramifications of Jimmy Carter during his four-year presidency from 1977 to 1981. So here we are. He initially sought to continue the policy of detente with the Soviet Union, in other words, go along to get along, aim to ease the geopolitical tensions of the Cold War. Then in 1979, June, he and the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, signed what was called the strategic arms limitation talks, that is, salt to an agreement, which sought to curtail the arms race between the two superpowers. However, the treaty couldn't get past the United States Senate was never ratified, largely due to the escalating tensions following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the end of 1979. Does that sound familiar, Afghanistan? This all started friends during Jimmy Carter's reign. That's not the only thing that started then. So here, Russia invades Afghanistan. Jimmy Carter is trying to establish some sort of detente, go along to get along, to make peace with Russia. Now how is he going to do that when they're invading Afghanistan? So Carter saw the Soviet war in Afghanistan as a threat to American interest in the region, and so he implemented several measures against the USSR, including economic sanctions and the boycott of the 1980s summer Olympics in Moscow. Interesting, Carter initiated a boycott of the Olympics in 1980 as a kind of sanction against Russia or the USSR. It didn't sound much like peace, but he wanted to use that to show that he did not approve of what Russia was doing. In other words, somehow he could somehow convince Russia by us not engaging in the summer Olympics to change his course, yet Russia continue to occupy Afghanistan. Then Carter authorized the CIA to secretly help train and arm the anti-Soviet Islamist Muhadeen fighters. It was covert aid to the Islamists that contributed, though, eventually to withdraw all of Soviet troops, but also the rise of the Taliban. Notice equal and opposite reaction. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. So Jimmy Carter fostered the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Well guess what? The Taliban now rule Afghanistan again, because a guy like Joe Biden was very much like Jimmy Carter, and he pulled all our troops out without remaining anybody in there to maintain some level of control, because both Carter and Biden did not have an honest and strong view of how desperate the opposition really was. Thought that somehow they could make peace when there would be no possibility of peace because the Taliban had no interest in peace. One Carter brokered the 1978 camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, which became the first case of an Arab state, officially recognizing the Jewish state. That was a virtual miracle. So Jimmy Carter did a good thing there. It was amazing. I think he devoted 14 days of presidential, personal presence and focus to make sure that happened. And yet the head of Israel, the president of Israel and the president of Egypt were both assassinated because they agreed to make peace. All that happened under Jimmy Carter. You see, the parties behind the scene were not interested in peace, but Jimmy Carter was interested in peace. And he wanted so bad he thought that other people were like him that really human nature was such that any human being would want peace, that he did not realize the extent of the focus of the Soviet Union. He did not recognize the extent of the hatred within the Muslim world, even the Arab world. He just did not understand it because he see thought that peace could be achieved because he was a peacemaker. He also paved the way for the handover of the Panama Canal to the Panamanian authorities in 1999. So as you know, Donald Trump now has recently threatened to reverse that decision and restore American control of that waterway. At home, Carter focused on reducing inflation and championing environmental policies. So as part of that, he created the Department of Energy and the Department of Education, both of which have created terrible problems in our country. Yet he was his desire was to do good, but he did not understand the minds and the hearts of the people, and so he gave government way too much power over education and even over energy and the environment. Then of course, his office in the last year, in office in 1979, it was marred by the hostage crisis in Iran where supporters of the Islamic Revolution held American diplomats captive for 444 days. They were released, guess what, just minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the next President of the United States. We have a very similar situation about to occur again. And Donald Trump takes office. Notice the difference between world attitudes toward Donald Trump and toward Joe Biden. People would like to tell you, the progressives would like to tell you that Trump is just terrifying the world. No, what Trump is doing is saying, look, I understand how you guys function. I understand how the world works, and we're not going to let you get by with any of this nonsense anymore, like Joe Biden has. You've been abusing us. You've been abusing us. We're not going to let that happen. We're going to bring about a restoration of fairness and justice. And if you don't, you're going to pay the price. Guess what? The world knows that they're going to pay the price, just like the world figured it out. When Ronald Reagan became president, one, just minutes after he became president, the Islamic Revolution released the captives that have been there for 444 days. Have you ever considered what the early church was like? Many people are developing a heart longing for a greater fulfillment in our practices as Christians. A recent study showed 53,000 people a week are leaving the back door of America's churches in frustration. What is going on? Why has there not been even a 1% gain among followers of Christ in the last 25 years? Could it be that God is seeking to restore first century Christianity for the 21st century? Jesus said, I'll build my church. Is Christ by His Spirit stirring to prepare the church for the 21st century? The early church prayed together and broke bread from house to house. They were family and it was said by all who observed, behold how they loved one another. Incredible. But the same can be found right now. Go to sebus.org and click sell church. We can revive first century Christianity for the 21st century. It's about people, not programs. It's about a body, not a building. That's sebus.org. Click sell church. Married for 77 years, giving testimony to a vow that one makes before God and these witnesses to be faithful to his spouse. That's a very important legacy. The only president who has ever accomplished that, 77 years, no divorce, no hanky panky, no adultery, no philandering, no sexual corruption in any way. Maybe that's one of the reasons why Trump called him a truly good man. I agree. He was truly a good man, however, he was not fully good in the eyes of God because in the pursuit, the ultimate pursuit of peace in every situation, he disagreed with some of the fundamental principles of life from God's viewpoint. Not for his own life, but for trying to make peace in the country and the world. So he bought into the practice of homosexuality, said he would welcome lesbians and practicing homosexuals into his church. While not embracing abortion, he was a continued to be against abortion. But as to other issues, the feminist revolution and so on, he bought into much of the feminist revolution because it was endemic to the, to the democrat party. The democrat party was not interested in biblical standards. It was interested into egalitarianism. It was interested in reenacting the French revolution and its liberty, equality and fraternity. And we know what happened with the French revolution, in spite of good intentions. It created one of the greatest horror scenes in the history of the world. And it's going to repeat itself again on the near edge of the second coming. But as we move now toward the final set of the program here today, we're talking about Jimmy Carter, the conundrum, the Carter conundrum and the elusive pursuit of peace. And that brings us to the Middle East. The Middle East was a big thing for Jimmy Carter. Just recently Benjamin Netanyahu said, in fact, just today, he said, there's no hostage deal because Hamas doesn't want one. He's right. There is no hostage deal because Hamas doesn't want one. But that concept would not have flown with Jimmy Carter. He couldn't believe that Hamas would not want peace because he doesn't know Hamas. He doesn't know the depth of the hatred, the depth of the desire to completely destroy and eradicate Israel. He didn't believe that. He couldn't bring himself to believe that because he was a man of peace. But the Jewish people looked at what he did in all of his efforts to supposedly make peace even with the Oslo Accord, or the Camp David Accords, and they thought that in essence, ultimately, he was willing to give away the bank, so to speak. So the Jerusalem Post has a piece today called a look back at Jimmy Carter's complicated relationship with Israel, a former president with a foreign policy focusing on the Middle East during his tenure was outspoken about Middle East politics for the remainder of his life. True. His desire to focus his presidency, his foreign policy on Middle East politics inevitably involved balancing relations with Israel and the Arab neighbors in the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kapoor War. So Carter considered the 1978 Camp David Accords, a peace agreement between the Egyptian president and more sadot, and former president Prime Minister Miham Benin, began to be a major achievement. So because of that, that led Sadot and Benin to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and secure it a peace that remained stable for 46 years, that was a good thing. However, Egypt stood in a very different place in God's mind and heart than the rest of the Muslim/Arab world. If you read the scriptures, you will find that God, even though he was not happy with what Egypt did through Pharaoh, making the children of Israel slaves in bondage, but because Egypt extended hospitality to Israel during a famine and also extended hospitality to Jesus shortly after his birth when God told Joseph, his father, to carry him flee into Egypt. God is giving special dispensation to Egypt, special favor to Egypt, notwithstanding the fact that guys like Nassar and so on hated Israel and sought to destroy her. I do not think that Jimmy Carter fully comprehended that issue. So Jimmy Carter got, shall we say, kind of messed up, confused with regard to his dealing with the so-called Holy Land. He was photographed with Mahmoud Abbas in a meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah in 2006. He met with Ismail Hania, the man who was just killed, heading up Hamas. He met with him in 2009. He had friendly meetings with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and then the then-President Hamas political bureau, Ismail Hania. He did not understand those people. I don't believe he understood them. He did not understand that they could really mean what they said about destroying Israel. So as the peacemaker, Jimmy Carter decided to go on the side of what he perceived to be, well, the low man on the totem pole, the so-called Palestinians. So he went on their side while he continued support for Israel sort of, the Jewish people didn't believe it. They thought that really Jimmy Carter's heart was not with them, but was with the so-called and low man on the totem pole, the so-called Palestinians. He did not seem to understand Hamas, the hatred of Hamas or Hezbollah. He did not understand them because his mind and his heart was fixed on peace. How could we possibly come against someone whose mind and heart was fixed on peace? On the other hand, we have to understand that you cannot make peace with evil because the fear of the Lord, the Bible says, is to hate evil, but he didn't believe people were evil. He believed people were basically good. That's what the Democratic Party was trying to promote. That's progressive Democrat Party. People are basically good. Contrary to the teaching of the Bible that says that people are basically evil, the founders of the United States of America, virtually to a man believe what the Bible said about the character of humankind. That the heart of man is desperately equal, evil who can know it. So you can see then why the problem. There's a problem and Jimmy Carter could not grasp it or is unwilling to grasp it. He just could not believe that there was not the possibility to make peace. On the other hand, Jesus has said, "I came not to bring peace but a sword," to bring division and not just peace. Yet, he was called the Prince of Peace. He would ultimately bring peace, but on different terms, only when the mind and the heart of humankind were transformed through salvation. Jimmy Carter just could not bring himself to understand the depth of the evil and the hatred and the intent to completely destroy Israel, even though the Bible made it very clear. So wrapping this thing up, in 1984, Carter told an interviewer, "I did what I thought was best for the country and I didn't worry much about the domestic political consequences. I do believe he tried to do what he thought was best for the country. He really fell down in many respects with regard to foreign policy because he did not understand the depth of the hatred going back 3,000 years with Israel. And now what we're seeing is the very things that Jimmy Carter tried to resolve in his terms leaving up to 1981 are now coming back to haunt the world, including the Panama Canal, including the Department of Education that has destroyed American education, prevented it politically, including the effort to completely control the environment, including the problems of the Middle East, including what happened with Afghanistan and the Taliban, and might I indicate also, if you're not aware of it, if you did not live in 1979, it was almost impossible to get gasoline for your car. It was cut off because of Iran. And so we had to get in lines and you could only get maybe 8 gallons every time you passed through a line. To get into a line, you had to get into a very, very, very long line that sometimes went around the blocks and you could only get gas on even or odd years, even or odd days depending on your license plate and so on. That's true. Those are realities in Jimmy Carter's world. Not only that, but the inflation went up to, for instance, 21%. Can you imagine in America, inflation going up 21% at that time? So you could get CDs for 10 or 12%. Today, you're lucky to get 5% at best for a CD. Then you could get 10 or 12%, but if you had to get any money anywhere, it was going to cost you so dearly that you could not afford it. Those were the days of Jimmy Carter. Then he got involved with Brzezinski, an outside influence on Carter's foreign policy that actually was hyper-destructive. Jimmy Carter, a man with a good legacy but a weak legacy because he pursued peace at any price. Thanks for joining us here today on Viewpoint. I hope this has been helpful, been instructive, been fair, a fair analysis. You'll become a partner with us and your gifts, friends, by faith to save America Ministries right here at the end of the world. I mean, at the end of this year, God bless you, be of bless. You've been listening to Viewpoint with Chuck Chrismeyer. Viewpoint is supported by the faithful gifts of our listeners. Let me urge you to become a partner with Chuck as a voice to the church declaring vision for the nation. Join us again next time on Viewpoint as we confront the issues of America's heart and hope. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]