2026 U.S. Midterm Elections, and Q&A

Welcome to the Bible Answer Man broadcast with the president of the Christian Research Institute, Hank Hanegraaff. Our mission is to equip you with answers to share the hope that you have within you because life and truth matter.

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Because being armed with truth will equip you to counter the corrosive worldviews at work in our world today. While experiencing the authentic Christian life will make you a winsome witness of the purpose of life, which is to experience union with God and Christ, both for today and for all eternity. For more information about CRI and the Bible Answer Man broadcast, our phone number is 888-7000-CRI. You can find us online at equip.org. The following program was pre-recorded.

And now... Here's Hank Hanegraaff.

Thank you very much, Randy. You can find the resources I talk about on the broadcast on the web at equip.org or write me at Box 8500, Charlotte, North Carolina, zip code 28271. We are coming up on a very important election, and I would call on everyone who takes the sacred name of Jesus Christ upon their lips to vote. If we don't legislate morality, someone else will legislate immorality. And thus, we ought not to abdicate our responsibility to vote. It is so important for us to seize every opportunity that our voice might be heard, that our voice might be a clarion call to a culture, a culture that is devolving before our very eyes. We today stand on the cusp of a civilization that is either poised for ruin

or ready for revival, and you are the deciding factor. Pagans adequately express their job description. That is being a pagan. The question is, are you exercising your job description, that of being an ambassador for Jesus Christ. You know, the truth is, most of us have failed in our ambassadorial commission because we have remained secret agents who have never blown our cover within a lost and dying empire. Make no mistake. Make no mistake. We're either going to drift into the spiritual malaise of a biblically bankrupt Europe, or we will experience revival. Revival like that of the persecuted church in China. And you ultimately will be the difference maker, not as an individual, but as a member of the

body of Christ. And so in this November election, We recognize the circumstances surrounding our nation. And in this election, because the reality is that someone's morality will be legislated, we have the opportunity to help ensure it is legitimate morality, hopefully grounded in a biblical worldview. A lot of you hanging on. We'll go right to our phone callers. First up is Bill in Wichita, Kansas.

Hi, Bill.

Hi, I appreciate your ministry. My question is really simple. I've listened to your broadcast a lot, and you say that Jesus is the one who spoke and the universe leapt into existence. Is that the same thing as saying that the Father spoke and the universe leapt into existence? Can you just kind of clarify that?

Yeah, it is not. It is the same thing as saying God spoke and the universe leapt into existence. But here's what we believe about God. And as I explain this to you, it's not something that I comprehend. It's something I apprehend, which is to say this is how God speaks about himself in his word. And that is there's only one God. But the one God revealed in Scripture is revealed in three persons. And That is tantamount to saying there's one what and three who's. When we talk about the whatness of God or the essence or nature of God, we are speaking about one God. When we speak about person, we're talking about relationships within the Godhead, centers of consciousness within the Godhead. So it's not as

though we're talking about three people walking around. We're talking about relationships, identity formed and completed on the basis of relationships within the Godhead. So the father loves the son, the father sends the son, the son prays to the father, and so forth. So we believe in one God revealed in three persons who are eternally distinct. So there are relationships within the Godhead, personal relationships, centers of identity, as it were, but there's only one God. So you can say legitimately that Jesus Christ is overtly called God, and he is said to be the one who laid the foundations of the earth. That's told to us explicitly by the writer of Hebrews in Hebrews 1.10. So the whole of Scripture points to the notion that Jesus Christ spoke

and the universe leapt into existence. And that, of course, is also identifying God Him as God, very God, in nature.

So like in, I think it's Colossians 2 where it says everything was created by Him and for Him?

Yeah, Colossians chapter 1, that's correct.

Yeah, okay, yeah. You would of course know the answer to that, because you're a Bible answer man. Can you kind of hash that out a little bit? That by Him and for Him? Does that mean through Him and for Him?

Well, this again is talking about the supremacy of Christ. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. So he's not referred to as the firstborn in creation, but the firstborn over all creation. In other words, he is the owner or the creator of all things. And then Paul goes on to say, for by him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things were created by him... And for him, in other words, we exist by the pleasure and for the purposes of God. He is before all things, so there was nothing prior to Jesus Christ. In other words, the universe itself is an effect. The cause of that

effect is God. So he's before all things, in him all things hold together, and he is the head of the body of the church. He's the beginning, the firstborn from among the dead. Again, firstborn there has to do with preeminence. It's not first in order, but preeminence. And he has the supremacy in everything. So Paul in Colossians 1 is underscoring the supremacy of Christ in all things. Okay.

Well, I appreciate the clarification and keep up the good work.

Hey, thanks. Appreciate your call. I want to go back to the phone lines and talk to Jeremy listening in Longview, Texas. Hi, Jeremy.

Hi, Hank.

Thanks for taking my call.

You're welcome.

We have a 18-month-old son. He's our first child. And obviously, we're running up on Christmas here. And we haven't put a Christmas tree up yet because we're moving in other circumstances. But My wife mentioned that at work and caught some flack from people saying, oh, you don't have a Christmas tree, you're a poor child, this and that. I was curious what your thoughts were on the modern-day Christmas and Santa in particular and the lie of that.

Well, yeah, I mean, unfortunately the world always steals what's presented by Christianity. In our present epoch, Christmas has been paganized. But it's interesting that you ask about St. Nick, because there's a tradition regarding St. Nick that I talk about in the Heart of Christmas. He lavished gifts on the needy.

According to tradition, he supported the doctrine of the Trinity at the Council of Nicaea. And so he is a legendary hero of the faith. And from St. Nick, we get the Anglicized Santa Claus. It came via Holland, where I was born. Sinterklaas, the Anglicized form is St. Nick. But he was a real person. He was a real bishop in the Christian church. Now the notion that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole and that he has a toy factory and that he sees children at all times and knows whether they've been bad or good, he travels in a sled pulled by reindeer, that's myth and should be traded as such. But this December 25th, as you celebrate the coming of Christ with a Christmas tree surrounded by presents, you can have an icon who points

to selflessness. That's what Saint Nick did. So you can reverse the tradition which is now paganized and talk about the principles inculcated in a real person who personified the heart of what Christianity is all about. And in that sense, remind your child of the Savior who gave the greatest gift of all. So rather than supplant the Savior with Santa, you can use St. Nick as a reminder to generously support God-ordained ministries so that the message of salvation can reach those who as yet have not received salvation.

Okay.

Well, I really appreciate your input. You got it. Appreciate your call. Be right back.

If you were going into combat, what would be more important, the number of those who were for you or the number of those who were with you? Now, apply that question to today's battle for the hearts and minds of literally millions of people at home and abroad. That's what makes members of CRI's support team so vital. They're not simply for CRI's critical mission. They're standing with CRI each and every day. If you want your voice and your values to be heard 24-7 through the outreaches of the Christian Research Institute, become a member of CRI's support team today.

Just call 888-7000-CRI to stand with CRI daily in the battle for life and truth. Hank Hanegraaff will personalize to you a copy of his complete Bible answer book, Collector's Edition, revised and expanded. Call 888-7000-CRI or visit our website at equip.org. Hank will be back right after this. Anyone who's been paying attention knows there's a war going on, not just on traditional morality, civility, and decency, but even more fundamentally on historic notions of truth. And the enemy isn't just the onslaught of fake news facilitated by a post-truth culture and turbocharged by growing legions of ideological spin doctors. No, the real enemies of truth range from postmodernist convictions that there is no objective truth, to militant scientism that claims

that only science can determine truth and religion is little more than primitive superstitions. But CRI support team members are not waving a white flag of surrender. They're holding the fort by undergirding every one of Christian Research Institute's mind-shaping and life-changing outreaches 24-7. To learn how you can make a difference and enjoy all the benefits of support team membership, simply visit equip.org.

To fully grasp the significance of Christ's messianic role, you must drink deeply from the wellspring of Old Testament prophecy. In Hebrews, as in the rest of the New Testament, the Old Testament history of Israel is interpreted as a succession of types that find ultimate fulfillment in the birth, death, resurrection, an ascension of the Christ we celebrate at Christmas.

Hank Hanegraaff has penned The Heart of Christmas, a devotional for the season to ensure that just as you prepare your home for Christmas, you likewise prepare your heart. Order The Heart of Christmas, a devotional for the season by calling 888-7274 or by going online to www.equip.org. Breaking the code of the book of Revelation has become an international obsession.

The result has been rampant misreading of scripture, bad theology, and even bad politics and foreign policy. In The Apocalypse Code, find out what the Bible really says about the end times and why it matters today. Hank Hanegraaff argues that the key to understanding the last book of the Bible is the other 65 books of the Bible, not current events or recent history. The Apocalypse Code offers sane answers to some very controversial questions, such as what does it mean to take the book of Revelation literally? Who are the Antichrist and the great whore of Babylon? And what is the real meaning of 666? Order The Apocalypse Code by Hank Hanegraaff today. Available in softcover, MP3 CD, or MP3 download from equip.org. Or call 888-7000-CRI. Let's return to

your host, Hank Hanegraaff.

Thank you very much, Randy. Let's go back to the phone lines. Let's talk to Anita in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Hi, Anita. Hi.

First of all, I would just really like to thank you for your encouragement, because I find you're a great encourager, that you encourage us with an approach towards suffering, and even that you said, you know, if you become equipped, God will use you. I find that a great encouragement. Another thing was with scripture memory, and I was memorizing 2 Peter chapter 1, and we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it as to a light shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. And so that sounds like I said, okay, I'll pay attention to the word of the prophet. So the reason I'm calling is to ask you for a recommendation on a book of prophecy.

Well, I've actually written one called The Apocalypse Code. And I also have a really interesting section. It's an entire section of a four-section book called Has God Spoken that's devoted to prophecy, prophetic stars in the constellation of biblical prophecy. I'd almost recommend Has God Spoken in that section more highly to give you a really strong primer on how prophecy works.

Okay.

Okay, then. One more question.

Sure.

Is regarding, you know, maybe it's not called prophecy, I'm not sure, but is it possible that God would reveal, you know, or give an assurance to a person about the salvation of someone else, that that will be forthcoming, or does he not work in that way?

It is possible, yes. I mean, I cannot preclude that God would work in that way, that God gives you a very strong sense about something for his own sovereign purposes. I would not preclude that as a possibility.

Okay. Okay, so thank you very much, and I'll order online.

Anita, thank you so much for your encouragement as well. Bless you. I want to go to Dominique next in East Haven, Connecticut. Hi, Dominique.

Hi, Hank. Thank you for accepting my call.

You're welcome.

My question is, does the soul sleep? Because in John 3.13, it says, no man has ascended into heaven, but he who came down from heaven, even the Son of Man, which is in heaven. And I know there's other scriptures that are like to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. I get very confused.

Can you tell me whether the soul sleeps or whether we go live in heaven after we die with Jesus?

No, my dad died in 1997. He's absent from the body, present with the Lord. He is in fellowship with God at the present time. And the verse that you're talking about has nothing to do with soul sleep in John 3. Jesus has authority, heavenly authority, to tell you the things that he's telling you in John chapter 3, and that's what he's telling Nicodemus in context. So Jesus is communicating his knowledge of heavenly verities. He is saying that he is the only one who has brought that message to us from heaven. He is not saying that no one else is in the presence of God. the Bible is replete with evidence that there are people in the presence of God, including Hebrews chapter 12, a great cloud of

witnesses who have gone on before us. They're examples, and they are those who are now absent from the body present with the Lord. So we have all kinds of evidence in the Bible in addition to the passage that you referenced, Philippians 1, You have Paul saying, I am hard-pressed from both directions. Having the desire to depart and be with Christ for that is much better, as well as what he says in 2 Corinthians 5, home in the body means absent from the Lord. Absent from the body means to be at home with the Lord. Now, obviously, you are not in your idealized state because to be fully human means that you're a body-soul unity. When a woman gives birth, that's what she gives birth to, not just a body, but a body-soul unity. So when a

woman gives birth, she gives birth to both a physical and a metaphysical reality. That's what it means, again, to be human. When you are resurrected, you will be, again, a body-soul unity in eternity. So the soul, which is now absent the body, will return to a glorified body.

I see. So right now, in our body, we don't have a soul and a spirit that dwells in our body that goes right to heaven after we die?

Well, yes, I'm saying you do.

Oh, I see.

I'm sorry.

I misunderstood.

Yeah, you do have a soul. So let's just take it from the basics. A woman gives birth. She gives birth to a body-soul unity. So we don't have to wonder when does that soul come into the body. No, when she gives birth, she gives birth to a human being. That means an individual having both a physical and a metaphysical reality. At death, the soul leaves the body. So the body goes back to the ground, the soul goes to be with the Lord. When Jesus returns, the soul returns to a resurrected body.

Okay, I got you.

And then you're a body-soul unity again. So when you die, yes, you're absent from the body, present with the Lord.

Okay. Thank you very much, and God bless you.

God bless you. Back to the phone lines. We'll talk next to Melissa, St. James, Missouri. Hi, Melissa.

Hey, Hank. Thanks for taking my call. I appreciate it.

My pleasure.

My question is, how do we know that, like right now, Allah and the Muslim religion is kind of starting to be pretty big. How do we know that the God that they pray to is not the God that we pray to?

Well, remember that every word takes on its meaning based on the meaning that you pour into the word. So if a Muslim talks about God and you talk about God, you're talking about two entirely different things. In fact, in Islam, to speak about a God who begets a son is the unforgivable sin of shirk. So their sense of who God is, the meaning they pour into that word is entirely different than the meaning we pour into the word.

Same thing is true with Allah. A Palestinian Christian saying Allah is talking about one God revealed in three persons who are eternally distinct. Whereas a Muslim speaking about Allah is speaking about a God who's only transcendent and would never condescend to cloak himself in human flesh. So it's not the word you use, it's the meaning that you pour into the word.

Okay.

So what about... Like we have the Jewish who believe in God, but they don't believe Jesus.

Yeah, that's another classic example of what I'm saying. Judaism, like Christianity, is fiercely monotheistic. In other words, Judaism only believes in one God, as we only believe in one God. But the Bible fully reveals that God as one God revealed in three persons who are eternally distinct. And that is what Judaism abhors. The very notion that Jesus Christ could be God in human flesh is a notion that they have great disdain for. So again, they use the word God, but they pour a different meaning into that word.

Now they do believe that there is going to be a revealed Messiah, but that Messiah has not yet been revealed. So as a Jewish friend of mine said in Israel, the difference between you and me is that when Jesus Christ returns, I'm going to ask him, is this your first trip or your second trip? Not to make light of this, the other thing that I should point out is not all Judaism is the same. So there are different permutations of Judaism. You have conservative, you've got reform, you have Orthodox Judaism today, and they believe vastly different things.

But I've always been taught, though, that you have to believe, you need to believe in Jesus in order to get to heaven, in order to.

Well, that's right. It is absolutely true that the way God set things up is that no matter where we are, we would have the ability to receive him. From one man, God made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth. He determined the exact times and places that they should live. He did that so that men might reach out and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. So God creates the universe and people within the universe in such a way that we can have a relationship with him. And as Paul explains this in Romans 1, he says that we all have the light of creation. So if you look around the universe and you see the sun, moon, and stars, you know there has to be a creator. Every effect

has to have a cause equal to or greater than itself.

I'm just finding that, I'm finding societies kind of, if you, you know, say that you believe in Jesus and that's kind of the way, that's how you get there, especially with the Muslim religion, you're kind of chastised.

For speaking out. Right, right. I mean, if you say Jesus is the only way, you're being very parochial and certainly not well received. But as I was explaining, you know, we have the light of creation, we have the light of conscience. God has written a knowledge of himself on the tablet of our heart. If we respond to that light, we can receive the light of Christ. But Christ was the one. If someone chastises you for saying Christ is the only way, say, I didn't say that, Christ said that.

I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. So now the question is, who is Christ? If he was just another human teacher, we would say, well, he's not a very good teacher when he says he's the only way. But if he demonstrates himself to be the one who spoke in the universe, leapt into existence, and the one who took up his life after dying, demonstrating that he was God, now his words take on transcendent meaning. And the reason that we call Christ the only way is he lived the perfect life which no one can live and offers us his perfection to cover our own imperfection.

So he's the only one that can satisfy the chasm of guilt between us and an altogether righteous and holy God.

Well, thank you so much. That really, really, really helped.

You got it. Thank you so much for tuning in. We'll see you next time with more answers right on The Bible Has Been Broadcast.

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2026 U.S. Midterm Elections, and Q&A

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