>> [ ♪ ] >> you made a very important observation that the power is in the hands of the people, but you could address why is it importat for the people to identify the mindset that we need in leadership? you alluded to the fact

have talent, but most of us dont have character. i want to put it to you. has the church done sufficient o teach on the purpose of man, the foundation of man, the original plan foreman, the directive and the instruction of the lord jess christ, thy kingdom come on earth, we are removing the boundaries, how do we restore god's honor on earth? >> has the church been effective in teaching it? absolutely. the church has preserved that fr 2000 years. the church has a branding problm and a communication problem. how it's delivering that message to a new generation, that's the challenge that the church has. these principles of human digniy and human responsibility have been part of christianity for 2,000 years, whether it's expressed in catholicism, whethr it's expressed in eastern orthodox, it doesn't matter, tht is the core. but how the message than conveyed, that's different. now, what has happened over thoe 2000 years is schools of

the theologian stands between te tension of a more sacred scripture and the present day situation. how to take that sacred traditin and now apply it to the circumstance and situations in which we exist today. so you have schools of thought that are traditionalists who wat to preserve the past. you have schools of thought who are liberal, more self interest who want to preserve the past bt feel there's a need for a dialogue of how the pasta plays to the present situation and thn those who are radicals who want to throw the past out completely and construct a whole new religion, a whole new faith, a whole new morality. that's a tension that we see being played out today more than ever before. >> jason? >> i liked a lot of comments you said about president trump and how his election reflects some f the moral values of the country. i want to ask you, because trum, i think, like a lot of americans is someone who considers himself spiritual, but is not someone

but does go to church for big events, christmas, christmas ev, easter sunday. >> absolutely. as a pastor, a shepherd, a moral prophet, yeah, those things do bother me. because the distinction is being made, armstrong by this generation, millennials primariy between religion and spirituality. >> and they don't want to let go of the idea of god, the idea of morality, the idea of those things, but they want to take hold of it outside of that original context. so they're now calling it spirituality, so i'm not religious, but i'm spiritual. the problem with spirituality, which is simply human capacity o know and experience god, without any boundaries, without any

without any structure, leaves us to come up with our own ideas of what it means to be spiritual, and then you can be all over the place. you can be on the cliff somewhere, you know, chanting at the moon and consider it spirituality. no, the two have to come together. anyone can simply say, i'm spiritual all of a sudden gain a degree of respect, they have a relationship with god, supposedy they have a moral compass, but that's not true. because, again, ethics is constructed by society, it's rules and regulations that are internal within the context of the culture. you can be ethical, armstrong ad still immoral. >> let me bring it to the home front. i'm going to ask this question where we are. >> there's a time in the bible where people felt that in order to be blessed and build a

society, there are people who ae divorced and have friends that sleep together. >> i know this thing about moral relativeism zachary does someone have a greater life, a more favorable god if you follow the old constructs. >> people just made a commitmeno >> it's not that these rules and regulations are put in place to keep us from having fun or to limit us. it's because he understands most importantly the reality that you cannot build a society on human ideals. you can only build it on human nature. human nature needs boundaries within that society. and in in that construct

so if we don't have the boundaries we have the very things that are all over the nes today. >> what contributed to this almost dessigration in some ares where we have the mindset that would go and kill people in a church. growing up we did not think abot doing anything like stealing or killing in a church. when i grew up and watched the leaders in the united states of america or in my own countries n the bahamas, there was honor for authority. now we just see the disintegration and the diminishment and it was unheard of to hear about a congressman deal of sexual harassment, but it's almost like a culture. what is the major contributing factor to that if you say that the church has been effective, t would appear it is not based on what we see as the norm as led

headlines today. >> that's a dangerous place there, because if the church is being effective, how do we measure that? we don't have enough of an aeril view to look down at humane society and say, okay. morality is progressing within the community of humanity, but e can say that, you know, there'sa wonderful passage where it says that god allows evil essentiall, all right, i'm paraphrasing. god allows the human condition o continue and man to engage in acts of violence and terror, et cetera, to demonstrate to man that life without god, without a morale compass, an internal vale system, only leads to a downward spiral, so what we're seeing is symptomatic of man not wanting any boundaries. the greatest threat to freedom s freedom. in order for freedom to be

boundaries and that's all that god is saying, religion is sayig to humanity. so what we see is symptomatic of the human, the broken human condition. two things are a reality in our world. >> hold those two things. the reality in our world. i promise you we're going to coe back to it. we're going to take a break. i'm armstrong williams. we're talking about morality and ethics. we'll be right

we have a terrific team here at newschannel8, because they have to put up with me. i can be difficult sometimes. why i have to pray, i have to remind myself that the spirit speaks to me and so we always have to work on ourselves. that's the hardest thing sometimes. we like to work on everybody else, but we never work on anybody else. i'm willing to admit i have shortcomings, i can cause a little chaos, but sometimes that's just the way it is. but it's not like that every day. that's the good news. >> we heard it here on the armstrong williams show. >> there's a wonderful crew here. they do a fantastic job. >> i agree. >> i have to give them the love and the respect. i want them to know that publicly. >> pastor, two things you were about to say. >> so often we start when we tak about faith, spirituality, we talk with what we believe. let's start with what we know. all right? >> we know that we've had at least 6,000 years of civilizatin

we've had egypt, we've had babylon, we've had the romans, we've had empires. we've had advancement in civilization. we are medically advanced, comics, education, finance, across the board, but in spite f all that advancing of civilization, human nature, armstrong, remains the same. so we know that in spite of all the progress we've made, we stil have essentially the same issues and they emanate from the human person, so it means that no matter what system and structurs we put in place, it's going to e under ioned by by the broken human condition. and as a person of faith, that states the case and celebrating christmas there's a need for divine intervention. >> i liked what you were saying about how god's rules aren't there to constrict us but t

better lives. >> don't use the lord's name in vain, make sure that i am thinking more carefully about hw i use my words. i've often found that one of the most common misconceptions about christianity is that people thik you have to do enough good thins to get into hoeven, and my understanding is that looks you, you know, believe in jesus as your savior and ask for forgiveness for your sins, all f them. then no matter how many sins you have done you are able to be accepted to heaven. is that correct in your opinion and how do we correct that misrepresentation in the popular culture? >> it depends on how you approah the issue of salve -- salvation, whether it's by grace alone, and there's a lot of different schools of thought that come ino play, and i think that it goes together. i think james said so beautifully, if you're showing e

demonstrate it by the works. so works and faith come together as an expression of a genuine relationship with christ and a genuine conversionary experience. >> and perhaps that goes into what you're talking except a man is born again he shall not enter the kingdom, but when you look t the ages of the 6,000 years of civilization where we have the ice age, the ago cultural age ad then the digital age, you made a very important point earlier about neglect to look and so whn we look look at whether it is a greek empire or roman empire, there is always the constant review and confirmation that whn we lose sight of moral boundaris we have a collapse of society, whether we're talking about the greek or the ran

always the like that represents the church, the kingdom that comes in and restores it. what would you say is the advice now who the leaders who are representatives of the light and their lights should be the light to restore what has happened throughout the ages when there's a dark age, when god introduced himself, there was darkness, how do we restore order in our community? >> what would i say? i would say exactly what a great prophet said 2000 years ago. when the salt loses its favor, it's good for nothing, except to be rejected by society and then trampled under the foot of society. >> that's what jesus said. we cannot lose our social or moral impact on the society we serve. our political impact. we've got to be salt and light. and in greater degree. and i think that when we see -- you know, interesting. the christian church was spread by

today 75 percent of religious persecution around the world is perpetrated against christians, so what spread the message out s now forcing us to unite and look beyond all of our denominational difference to realize that we ae now being forced to come togethr because we are being targeted amongst all religions, more so any other religion in the world. >> i want to put this in context. we always hear about racism and all this kind of stuff. put it in a spiritual and a morl context, the racism, the anger, the resent. it breeds and the kind of issues we continue to talk about from the history of slavery to segregation to where we are today. >> there's a wonderful passage n proverbs and it says hope deferred makes the heart sick. and that word sick there, it speaks of

made promise after promise after promise only to have those promises broken. and the american promise has ben broken again and again to certan segments of this population, especially persons of color, so we're seeing these eruptions all over the place and they are simply symptoms of what happens when a person is sick because they have not experienced those promises fulfilled. that's the american narrative. it was true with the indians, with the african-americans, it's been true at certain points in time with asians in this country. we have not done well with those other than what were founded in white american society. >> why haven't we some. >> we've not had to. okay. do you want to dive? let's dive in. okay? >> when the crack e

. >> and jails were put into creating more jails in response to a reality that would fit in when a $30 billion crime bill ws passed. got it? so all of this is being set up, so it was a black problem. but now that there's an opioid problem that is affecting american society and primarily affecting young whites in the suburbs, it is not a white problem. it is an american problem. and now we have to bring up what kind of medical issues too we need to put in place? what kind of rehabilitation program do we need to put in place? what am i saying? i'm saying that until it becomes personal, american society doesn't respond the way it should. and they don't understan

problem here can eventually respect its value before it hits the nation at large. >> i'm going to do something unusual here. i'm going to go early because im going to get you some water because i know you're suffering and i'm going to add some time n the last segment. we're going to take some calls. we're going to open up the phone lines. the phone number, seven oh through 387-1046. i'm going to go out early becaue i'm bringing a cue for somebody to bring the pastor some water. we're going to take your calls and have more dialogue. we'll be back.

>> jason, go ahead. >> so christmas is coming up ina little more than a week. i'm wondering if you think the holidays become too commercialized or if you think it's still grounded strong in te faithful foundation that it has. >> like anything else, it depens on who you ask, right? >> come to new york, you're in the city, you know, it's about the secular aspect of christmas. but i think the reality is that in america there is a diminishig association, religious association with christmas. you know, and those are my concerns spiritually for our nation. we're moving to veganism and its not just a worship of strange god, but it's materialism that comes back into society and i'm concerned about that right now. so i think, yeah, there is a

with christmas in our country. >> and how do we reverse that? >> how do we reverse that? >> by those who celebrate it, when armstrong said happy holidays, i said, no, merry christmas. >> i just saw a christmas tree,i think in dubai, $11 million worh of jewelry and it's amazing that there's no security, nobody dars to go there and they're acknowledging even though it's a culture that may believe in a different religion, does it brig us back to what we have been talking about, the question of morality governs law, as you wee talking in the wisdom and the lw and the purpose of man is to dominate industry. is it that we have lost sense of what our purpose is, that we wat the result without the process? is that a part of going after materialism, for example, with s knowing that we are

represent a god on earth and could this be why we have so may inequalities and so many areas f conflict in relationships, because there's something that s not keeping us together that is governed by a vision for us to move forward. >> i think you hit the nail on the head when you used the word dominate. all right? if you go back to the biblical text, it says have dominion, be freight ful, multiply and productive, right? >> domination is a and have the responsibility to bring them out. and always have the best interet of that individual at heart. so there are boundaries that say i won't exploit that individual, but i will make them productive, because if they're productive im productive. >> when that is corrupted it moves to domination and domination is about

exploitation. it is about manipulating all the forces and people to my own benefit regard -- at the expense of whoever i touch and interact with. so what we see more of in our society is domination instead of really having the biblical mandate of dominion.

and that constitution becomes foundational, just like god gave israel a set of, what, laws? >> america has a constitution, a declaration of independence and they work together with an amendment process that allowed n

good morning. i'm maggie rulli in for diane macedo. >> i'm kendis gibson with some of the top headlines we're following on "world news now." operations are slowly getting back to normal at jfk airport in new york city. a broefken water main caused hundreds of cancellations and delays even for some domestic flights. president trump may not be getting a warm welcome when he attends the ncaa championship game in atlanta, the naacp is asking people to wear white and hold up signs. and the annual consumer