Oskar Schindler was an alcoholic womanizer. MLK cheated on his wife. Moses stuttered. What was it about these unlikely individuals that allowed them to change the world in such powerful ways for good?
Glenn brought historian and theologian Dr. Jim Garlow and his wife - a direct relative of Oskar Schindler - onto his radio program to talk about what set these people apart.
"Do you believe there is something to the idea that it's the ones that have nothing to lose that do it?" Glenn asked.
Garlow replied, "Well, it's the ones who have an obedient responsive heart. They're faithful, they're available, they have a teachable spirit."
Listen to the segment or read the transcript below.
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.
GLENN: I -- I -- I'm a stutterer. Nope. I got the right guy, Moses. It's you. No, you really got the wrong guy.
And you can see that he always selects -- and I'm not convinced that it is that he is selecting as much as he'd like to select all of us. But not all of us are willing to do it. Not all of us are willing to do it. And it's usually the least likely because the most likely is the one that already has the power and the prestige and the money and the following and everything else. It's the rich man that comes into Jesus. And he says, "Hey."
And the way I read this. He comes in and says to Jesus. "You know, Jesus, I can really help you because I'm really well connected. And I can smooth things out for you." And Jesus is like, "No, you don't need to do that. I tell you what, leave all of that. Just come follow me." I see the rich man looking at the apostles going, "Would somebody tell this guy who I am? Doesn't he understand what's coming his way? I can help him. No, listen, Jesus, I can help you."
Yeah, I get it. Leave all of that and come follow me.
No, you're crazy.
That's what happens with the most likely person to do the job is they're going to do it their way because they've had everything. They've already done it. They know how it all works. They can grease the skids. It's always in the case of Oskar Schindler the alcoholic womanizer that is like, here's the call. Like, all right. All right. Okay. Well, I'll do it. They don't have anything to lose. And they're the least likely person.
So welcome to your day to recognize yourself as the least likely person and wear that as a badge of honor. Because now is the time that we are going to see ourselves either step to the plate or be dust away into the dustbin of history.
Jim Garlow is a very good friend of mine. He joined us last hour. He is the head of the Skyline Church. He has his doctorate in what kind of theology?
JIM: Church history and historical theology.
GLENN: Okay. And is fascinating to talk to. He is married to Rosemary, who is Rosemary Schindler. How distant are you in the Schindlers?
ROSEMARY: Like a second or third cousin.
GLENN: So Rosemary Garlow is joining us as well. And Rosemary brought with her something that is truly remarkable. In my hands right now on the radio desk is a Bible. And it is the Schindler family Bible. How old is this?
ROSEMARY: This Bible is this year, 333 years old.
GLENN: And he was Catholic. But this is -- this is a Martin Luther Bible.
ROSEMARY: Yes, Catholic and Lutheran, translated by Martin Luther. One of his first translations on letterpress in Germany.
GLENN: And tell me what else that you have. Because I find this fascinating. One is a passport.
ROSEMARY: Yes. That's a German passport allowing a citizen to be able to travel through and out of -- in and out of the country.
GLENN: And, again, it's a Schindler. It's his brother, right?
ROSEMARY: Yes. Yes.
GLENN: Then there is this -- this is -- a work pass?
ROSEMARY: Yes. It's a passport or a book, certifying that a person could have employment as a Nazi. It's something very valuable because it provided the citizen the chance to provide for their family.
GLENN: Okay. And then there's these two books. And I don't even know -- Aukum Pass (phonetic)?
ROSEMARY: Aryan Pass. It's a genealogy passport. Actually, Oskar Schindler died at age 66 on October 9th, 1974, 46 years ago this week. But genealogy was incredibly important to Adolf Hitler because he had a false theory of racial purity. And he was a father of racism. And in it, the foreword, he signed himself telling how significant it was in his estimation and for all German people to be free, particularly of Jewish blood, and to teach this theory to their children.
GLENN: Okay. I find this interesting in my faith. We are very into genealogy. And we're very into, you know, the hearts of the fathers turn to the sons and vice-versa. And connecting that family. You'll see that in the Scriptures too. The genealogy. I've always hated this part of the Bible where it's like so-and-so begat so-and-so. And you're like, okay, I get it. They're all related. But it's important for some reason. And as I said on yesterday's broadcast just like with the United States. We won't be destroyed by evil. We will be perverted by evil. That's the way -- there's no idea. Evil doesn't have a new idea. He takes what God has built and he perverts it.
Genealogy is very important. And it's interesting that Hitler -- I mean, if you look -- if you look at anything -- we do a genealogy in my church. And what happens is, you fill out a little slip of each person just like this. And you fill it out. You put the name, the date, the birth, the death, all of the details. And then it is signed and it is -- it's just like this. It's just like this. Except it's not for evil. And it is amazing to me how things are perverted. Always evil perverts.
Let's talk a little about the parallels between now and then. Tell me what you -- because you travel all over the world. Just, you have this with you because you just got back from Hawaii?
ROSEMARY: Hmm.
GLENN: Talking about Oskar Schindler and what's happening. You've been to Israel 56 --
ROSEMARY: Three.
GLENN: Fifty-three times. And things are changing in Israel there. You are still bringing survivors of the Holocaust back to Israel.
Tell me the parallels that you are seeing between then and now.
ROSEMARY: What's alarming especially to Germans who are alive in that time is the significant similarities between what is happening in our present government with gun control, socialized medicine, and all the different government regulations to control the populace.
It starts out very innocent. It starts out being promoted that, this is for the best of society. And we're all going to be much more well off if we cooperate together and share our information. And we, the government, are going to protect you. You do not need guns. They're only for criminals. What they did in Germany is begin by having everybody register their weapons. Because they said, that way, if there's a burglary or a crime and somebody gets shot, we get the gun, we know right who it belongs to. So the very obedient German citizens went and registered all their weapons.
Then the government came back and said, "Well, we still have a lot of crime. So I think the next thing is to do, we need to confiscate your weapons, and we'll be in charge of them all." And, of course, by that time, they knew --
GLENN: It was too late.
ROSEMARY: Yeah, everybody's weapon. Nobody could hide anything.
GLENN: Yep.
ROSEMARY: So it goes that way. More and more regulation, even down to having to have a little book to enter every time you bought a stamp in the Post Office and where that letter went. Everything was regulated to its utmost ability 80 years ago.
GLENN: I'm going to do something on either tomorrow's show or Monday's show that is something new out of China that is one of the most terrifying things I've ever seen. And it is now a new social media status. And they're saying by 2020. Right now it's voluntarily. But by 2020, they say it's mandatory in China. And what it is is, you get a ranking a or a rating as a person. What is it you're doing and saying on your social media? How much of it is against the government? How much of it is politically correct? How much of it is for the good of China? How much of it is not? Not only do you get ranked, but your friends get ranked based on what you post. So if you're my friend and I say, "This is a bad policy," you get hurt because you have friended me. So it is a way to isolate entirely. And this is the new thing over in China.
When I show it to you on probably Monday, it will boggle your mind. And if you think that's not coming into the West, you're sadly mistaken. All they need is the information. And people who -- who are not going to take this much metadata and do nothing when they can control populations.
So Oskar Schindler, not a -- not a guy that you would say -- would you agree with -- pastor, let me ask you too? God's last choice, right? That's usually how it works, right?
JIM: He wouldn't have become a member of my church.
GLENN: Right? Right? I love these people -- because a lot of people are like, "Glenn Beck, you're not a Christian. You're not a very -- whatever. A lot of people.
Oskar Schindler would not be on my list either. Martin Luther King, honestly, if I were his -- if I were his bishop or his preacher or pastor, I would have probably been sitting him down a lot saying, "So tell me about how you're treating your wife again." Not the ones that we necessarily pick. But do you believe there is something to -- to the idea that it's the ones that have nothing to lose that do it?
JIM: Well, it's the ones who have an obedient responsive heart. They're faithful, they're available, they have a teachable spirit.
GLENN: Yeah.
JIM: And they're willing not to hold back those things that would cause them to feed their own ego. In other words, there's a bigger cause. I did a study a few years ago on what causes Christian universities to stop being Christian? What causes denominations to slide? What causes local congregations to lose their Christian centricity and stop what they once were? And I was to lecture after the guy who was really an expert on this from Notre Dame. I wasn't the expert. He was. And I had to lecture after him, so I was very paranoid about trying to be in this environment.
So I read the study for like six months. And I could boil everything I studied down to this, a person will lose their Christocentricity. They'll lose their convictional center, once they long for the accolades of other people more than they fear God. It's that simple.
GLENN: So what happened with Oskar Schindler? How did that happen? Who was he before, and why did he do what he did?
ROSEMARY: Well, he was a businessman. And he thought, "What a great opportunity." I'm a Nazi official. And I can take over this factory and have basically slave work for me and make millions of marcs. And he did. But in the process, he got to know his employees. And he had also known Jewish people growing up. So even though all the propaganda was going and trying to persuade the German populace that they were vermin, they didn't deserve to live, he saw for himself, and he knew better. And he kept seeing in them more and more evidence of humanity and kindness under the worst possible conditions. And in his own German people, such as atrocities and sadism, he said they're just acting like pigs. He said, "I had to do something." He said, "I had no choice." So for him, it wasn't a huge dilemma. But when he realized that Hitler's intent was to annihilate all the Jews of Europe, he said, "That's it. I'm going to do everything and give all that I can to save them." And he fought back with all that he had. And he did use all his money and all his resources to preserve the lives of almost 1200 men, women, and children in his factory.
But the significant thing is that even though he cared for them and became like their parent and he called them his children because he had none, when it turned around, they were the ones that saved him. And this is where I think it will come to. As we're being tested right now in the eyes of the Lord, especially the nations. Are you going to stand with me and my people? Are you going to turn your back, America, on little Israel? Because in the end, I believe Israel will come out safe and shining.
GLENN: Oh, yeah.
ROSEMARY: But the other nations are going to reap a judgment. So the rest of his life, the Jewish survivors cared for Oskar Schindler. They provided at least a day's wage, giving him funds for he and his wife, Emily, to have money to live on. They gave them work opportunities, but Oskar was very much persecuted by his own German people.
GLENN: What was his life like? You see the movie ends at the train tracks.
ROSEMARY: Yes.
GLENN: What was his life for the next 10 years after the war?
ROSEMARY: Well, that was kind of his shining moment. But he was called a traitor by his own German people. When he would go back to Germany, they would spit on him and say, "You Jew kisser. You traitor." And he was never made a hero until Steven Spielberg's movie came out. And then it was recognized what he did.
GLENN: But he was recognized by the Jewish people.
ROSEMARY: Always when he went to Israel. He would go every year a few times. He was welcomed as a great hero. And the Jews he saved would just cry. They loved him so much. And I know many of the survivors. And they just said, "He was their messiah. He was their savior. He was their deliverer. He was the closest person they had ever seen to being a real Christian." As flawed as he was morally, they considered him a true Christian.