Clearview Today with Dr. Abidan Shah

Most of us pray like everything is under control, as if we're just dropping in to say hi to a buddy. But what if God is looking for a little desperation from us?

We walk through Jesus' two parables on prayer, the friend at midnight in Luke 11 and the unjust judge in Luke 18. Then we ask what "how much more" means for the way we pray, and how we can come to God with real need.

0:00 Is Your Prayer Life Too Casual?
4:49 Are We Ready for What We Ask For?
10:06 Two Parables, One...

Most of us think of sin as a mistake, but what if it's actually a debt we can never repay? And what does Jesus' parable of the two debtors say about the One who paid it for us?

We walk through Luke 7 and the woman who washed Jesus' feet with her tears. Then we look at why Simon the Pharisee missed the point, and how we can avoid missing it too.

0:00 Death, Taxes, and Debt
4:08 Why Good Works Can't Pay the Debt
8:13 Would You Have Done Better Than Adam and Eve?
12:46 Why...

God has already given us blessings that can't be bought, can't be earned, and can't be taken away, and many of us have never noticed them. What are these spiritual blessings, and what do they have to do with why we worship?

We walk through Ephesians 1 and what Paul says we have in Christ, hear a clip from our Ephesians series, and take your calls. Then we look at a scene from heaven that can change how we worship on Sunday.

0:00 What If You Already Have the Greatest Blessings?
3:58 God Is Good Even to...

Why does everyone stand up and sing together before the sermon? Is worship really about the music, or is something much bigger happening when God's people gather?

We head into Ephesians 1, hear Psalm 148 in a clip from our Ephesians series, and take your calls on what worship means to you.

0:00 What Is Worship, Really?
4:34 Why Does Church Singing Seem So Odd?
8:43 If You Don't Like Singing, What About Heaven?
13:44 Worship Together Is Not Optional
18:28 Why We Gather: Callers and Hebrews 10

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You may have wandered away from God, but the story of the prodigal son shows us how God sees us when we come back. It's one of the best-known parables Jesus told, but is it really about the younger son?

We walk through why Jesus told this parable and who he was speaking to in Luke 15. Then we look at the Pharisees, the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the brother who stayed home.

0:00 The Kind of Lost No GPS Can Fix
5:04 The Parable Everyone Misunderstands
9:06 Why the Pharisees Cared Who Jesus Ate...

There's a real place called hell, and a lot of churches won't even preach on it. But Jesus spoke about it often, so why have we gone quiet?

We walk through what salvation really rescues us from and why the stakes matter. Then we look at the parable of the wheat and the tares in Matthew 13 and what it says about the end of the age.

0:00 Why Churches Won't Preach on Hell
4:19 Why Jesus Told Parables and Why Hell Matters
10:41 The Most Misunderstood Parable
17:36 The Message That Saved My Wife
21:27 Why...

Everybody has an opinion on where America is headed, but a lot of Christians plan to stay home on election day. We take your calls live and ask why, and what the Bible says about it.

We walk through why we vote biblical values, why we look at a candidate's platform instead of their offers, and what pastors can say from the pulpit. Then we look at 1 Timothy 2, the lesser of two evils, and what to do if you're thinking of running for office.

0:00 Why Christians Are Talking Politics
4:20 Vote the Platform, Not the...

Who is the parable of the sower really about? We pick up the parables with Nathan's story that caught King David, and see why Jesus held up a mirror instead of offering an explanation.

Then let's walk through Matthew 13 and its four soils, from the hardened wayside to the stony and thorny ground to the good soil, and ask which one is ours.

0:00 Nathan's Parable and "Thou Art the Man"
5:26 Why Parables Work Like a Mirror
11:15 Ryan's Story and the Parable of the Sower
15:25 Understanding vs. Receiving: The Hard Path
19:50 Stony...

Every time we hear one of Jesus's stories, we're supposed to look inward and ask which character we are. Make no mistake, we're in that story somewhere.

Let's look at why Jesus told parables, what most of us miss in the prodigal son, and who the Pharisees, scribes, and Sadducees really were. Then we ask which of their hearts looks most like ours.

0:00 – Why Jesus Told Parables: Revealing and Concealing the Kingdom
4:49 – What the Prodigal Son Is Really About
9:26 – Seeing Yourself in the Story: The Mirror and the Holy Spirit
14:54 – Who the Pharisee...

Why did Jesus tell stories that some people were never meant to understand? The answer runs through one word in the Bible: mystery.

Let's trace "mystery" from the parables in Matthew 13 back to the word raz in Daniel 2, and walk through Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the statue and the stone cut without hands. Then we ask what God's covert operation means for how we live.

0:00 – Wired for Story
2:45 – Why Jesus Spoke in Parables (Matthew 13)
6:30 – What "Mystery" Really Means (and Doesn't)
9:45 – Raz: God's Secret Plan, and Nebuchadnezzar's Dream
15:19 – The Statue, the Stone, and the Kingdo...

Over the past few decades, our culture has made its position on sexual issues very clear. But what does God think about all this?

Let's walk through Sodom and Gomorrah, Jesus and the woman caught in adultery, and Paul's words in Romans and 1 Corinthians, and ask whether the God of the New Testament is any different. Then we look at what it would take for America to turn back to God.

0:00 – What Does God Think About All This?
1:33 – Sodom, the Law, and the "Old Testament vs. New Testament" Argument
8:52 – "Brave Becomes Brash" and 1 Corint...

Who decides when a human life becomes valuable? That question sits behind nearly every major headline right now: Supreme Court shield-law fights over abortion pills crossing state lines, and a case out of the Netherlands where a two-year-old child was euthanized. In this special extended episode, we host Truth Talk Live on the Truth Network for a full hour on the sanctity of human life.

Dr. Abidan Shah makes the case that the real issue underneath abortion and euthanasia debates is ownership: does God hold the copyright on life, or do we? We work through Psalm 139 and...

We tend to think of evangelism as a destination, a finish line called conversion. But what if it's not a goal you're working toward, it's a mindset you live inside of every day? In this episode, Dr. Abidan Shah makes the case that the people who actually share their faith aren't doing it out of guilt. Somewhere along the way, something shifted in how they think.

We talk about why it's the nature of a fire to go out, and what it takes to keep that passion alive, using the example of David Livingstone and his famous...

Jesus commanded us to make disciples of all nations, which means every Christian has an obligation to evangelize. But is that really so different from what other religions do? In this episode, we compare Christianity's evangelism to the spread of Buddhism and Islam, and make the case that only one of them comes without coercion. Islam spread largely by the sword and a tax on those who refused to convert, while Christianity has always come with an invitation, not a threat.

We trace the roots of evangelism all the way back to Genesis 12 and Abraham being "a...

Our salvation is by grace through faith alone — just believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. But surely it can't be that simple. In this episode, we continue the conversation from yesterday's Truth Talk Live and trace one unbroken thread through the whole Bible: from Adam and Eve's covering in the Garden, to Cain and Abel's offerings, to Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah, to the Passover lamb, all the way to the cross. Somebody's blood was always going to be shed.

We talk honestly about why that idea feels so foreign to a...

Everybody wants to go to heaven — but how do you actually get there? In this special extended episode, we host Truth Talk Live on the Truth Network for a full hour on salvation, assurance, and what heaven will really be like.

Dr. Abidan Shah walks through several popular theories of what Jesus accomplished on the cross — that He defeated Satan, paid Satan a ransom, set an example, or undid Adam's failure — showing that each holds some truth but none is the heart of it: Jesus satisfied God's wrath by paying for our sins. Along the way, callers share...

As believers, our judgment is sealed. It is finished. It is done. So why are we still talking about judgment? In this episode, we continue our series on eternity by working through the judgments that are still coming — not for your salvation, which is already settled, but for nations, and for how believers actually lived.

We trace the judgment of the nations through Joel 3, Isaiah 2, and Matthew 25's sheep and the goats, and carefully unpack a hard teaching: that nations and generations will answer for how they treated God's people, without that changing the truth that salvation is...

We are mortal creatures created for eternity — and that should shape how we live. But there's one uncomfortable truth we have to reckon with first: everybody wants to go to heaven, just not right now. In this episode, we launch a new mini-series on eternity, starting with the one place theology has to begin: God as judge.

We work through why holiness, not love or mercy alone, is the hub that everything else about God's character flows from — and why judgment isn't in tension with love but a natural outflow of it. We dig into a real theo...

We know what communion is — but why the bread, why the cup, why this specifically? In this episode, we go deeper into yesterday's conversation and trace communion all the way back to its origins: the very first Passover, when God told the Hebrews to eat standing up, belts fastened, ready to run for their lives.

We work through why God commanded that same meal to be repeated every single generation — not just to remember what happened, but so that each person would see themselves as if they personally were there that night. Dr. Abidan Shah connects that idea...

Believers have disagreed on the form and function of the Lord's Supper for centuries — some churches don't even practice it anymore. In this episode, we pick up right where yesterday's conversation on baptism left off, comparing our own very different memories of communion growing up, and then digging into what it actually is: a symbolic act of remembrance, looking back, around, and forward, not a magical transformation of bread and juice.

We trace it all the way back to the Last Supper and the four cups of the traditional Passover meal, and land on one of the mo...

Believer's baptism should be the one Christian practice we can all agree on — Jesus himself modeled it for us. And yet a sermon clip about baptism went viral for all the wrong reasons, with hundreds of comments and even accusations of heresy. In this episode, we tell that story and then walk through what the Bible actually says about baptism: complete immersion, always after salvation, with no saving power of its own.

We take a quick historical survey through Qumran's purification washings, John the Baptist's call to repentance, and Jesus's own baptism, and land on Romans 6 and wh...

We have full confidence that the blood of Jesus has cleansed us of our sins. But there's still that one dark figure on the horizon that quietly terrifies a lot of Christians: the unpardonable sin. In this episode, we close out our ten-day series on sin by tackling it directly.

We start by correcting a myth that's caused real pain for real families — no, suicide is not the unforgivable sin. From there we walk through what Jesus actually said in Matthew 12:31 and Mark 3:28, and why blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is a matter of willful, deliberate rejection — not...

We know that every sin makes us equally guilty in the eyes of God. But come on — some sins have to be worse than others, right? In this episode, we tackle degrees of sin: legally, there's no difference between a white lie and murder. In consequences, the difference is enormous.

We work through Adam and Eve's single act of disobedience and why one sin carried such catastrophic weight — using the picture of a single speck of gravy ruining an otherwise spotless white tablecloth, because it's a matter of God's holiness, not human proportionality. We look at Jesus's own...

Yesterday we talked about sin. Today we're answering the harder follow-up questions you've been sending in — are all people really sinful, even the good ones? What happens to babies who die? And can generations of unbelief in a family ever really be broken?

We work through Psalm 14 and Romans 3:23 on why every single person stands guilty before God — including history's most admired "good" unbelievers — and why no other world religion makes that same claim about itself. We dig into when sin nature actually takes hold (Psalm 51:5 says at conception, contrasted with John the Baptist being filled with the Ho...

If you're a Christian, you probably do have a genuine desire to worship and obey God. But there's one three-letter word that keeps getting in the way. In this episode, we continue our Systematic Theology series by tackling sin head-on — starting with the ways we all try to rebrand it as a "struggle" or a "character opportunity" rather than call it what it is.

We define sin biblically (any failure to conform to the moral law of God, in act, attitude, or nature), trace it back to Satan's rebellion before it ever reached the Garden, and work th...

We talked yesterday about being made in God's image. But sin distorted that image in every one of us — so what happens now? In this episode, we continue our Systematic Theology series by looking at how Jesus came not just to save us from punishment, but to recover the very image of God that sin warped.

We work through Colossians 3, putting off the old man and putting on the new, and 2 Corinthians 3:18's picture of an unveiled mirror — daily being transformed into the likeness of Christ. Using a long, honest illustration about falling out of a workout rout...

We've spent weeks getting to know God — His holiness, His unchanging nature, all of it. But how does that help us get along with people? In this episode, we launch a new stretch of our Systematic Theology series with the doctrine of humanity, starting with two foundational truths: we were created for God's glory, and we were created in His image.

We use the picture of Michael Jordan at the peak of a dunk — hand raised, tongue out, at his absolute max — to talk about what it means to display God's glory, and the sobering account of Herod...

"I know exactly what the Bible says. I've heard preachers preach about it. I've heard it read to me my entire life. I'm just not gonna obey it." In this episode, we continue our Systematic Theology series by picking up where yesterday left off — the doctrine of Scripture — and turning to authority, clarity, necessity, and sufficiency.

We talk about why treating the Bible like an owner's manual you consult occasionally, rather than the very breath you live on, quietly strips it of its authority in your life. Using the picture of a doctor who names the cure but...

The Bible is the inspired, infallible, unchanging Word of God — but what does that actually mean? In this episode, we continue our Systematic Theology series by turning to the doctrine of Scripture itself: where it came from, why it's trustworthy, and how to answer some of the hardest questions people raise about it.

We tackle a common objection head-on — that the Bible was written by so many different people over so many centuries that it can't really be one unified message — and show why that's actually strong evidence for Scripture rather than against it. We define inspiration (the ve...

We've talked about who the Holy Spirit is — now it's time to dig into what He actually does. In this episode, we continue our Systematic Theology series with the work of the Holy Spirit, including one of the most sobering things Jesus ever said: that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven.

We work through what that unforgivable sin actually means, why functional submission within the Trinity never means anyone is "less than," and why you can't get to the Father except through the Son. Using Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus and a pe...

We've talked about God the Father and God the Son — now it's time for God the Holy Spirit, the person of the Trinity we think we understand but usually don't. In this episode, we continue our Systematic Theology series with a deep dive into who the Holy Spirit actually is.

We start by clearing up a common misunderstanding: the Holy Spirit is not a force, an energy field, or a symbol like a dove — He is a full person, fully God, on the very same level as the Father and the Son. We walk through the Great Comm...

Could Jesus have actually sinned, or was real temptation even possible for someone who is fully God? In this episode, we continue our Systematic Theology series by digging deeper into the two natures of Christ — human and divine, united in one person, yet never merging into some new hybrid nature.

We talk through how Jesus's divine and human natures "gained" from each other, why His humanity means He truly understands our struggles even though He never had our sin nature, and the difference between being commonly human (like us, born with a sin nature) and essentially human (li...

Have you ever tried to explain to a kid that Jesus isn't just God's Son, but God Himself? In this episode, we continue our Systematic Theology series with one of the most important and most misunderstood truths in Christianity: the person of Christ.

We start with the full definition — Jesus, eternally co-equal with the Father, became man at the incarnation, lived a sinless life, died, rose, and will return as King. From there we dig into the Father-Son relationship within the Trinity (without procreation), why the Holy Spirit is a real person and not just a force, an...

Everybody makes mistakes — the question is what you do with them. In this special extended episode, we host Truth Talk Live on the Truth Network for a full hour on mistakes, infractions, and how to actually recover from both.

Dr. Abidan Shah walks through the crucial difference between a mistake (something you can rectify) and an infraction (something that genuinely offends or hurts someone), using the biblical example of Peter and Judas — two disciples who both failed Jesus badly, but responded in completely opposite ways. We also dig into a famous ministry blunder from Billy Graham's life, why...

We all make mistakes — a lot of us make the same ones over and over. In this episode, we welcome back our friend Dr. John Check, pastor and author, to talk about his new book, Experience Is What You Get Right After You Need It, and what real mistake recovery actually looks like.

We dig into the difference between a mistake and an infraction, why Type A personalities have such a hard time processing failure, and why it matters to understand your own wiring and the wiring of the people you lead. Dr. Check shares practical tools he...

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three in one, perfect unity in the Godhead — and yet each has very different roles. In this episode, we wrap up our conversation on the Trinity by looking at two important distinctions: the economic Trinity, how the Father, Son, and Spirit act differently as they relate to creation and redemption, and the immanent Trinity, who each person simply is, eternally, apart from us.

We also dig into one of the most surprising ideas in the whole series: that the family unit isn't just a nice metaphor for the Tr...

The Trinity is three distinct persons and yet one Godhead — but we still can't help but ask, who's really in charge? In this episode, we continue our conversation on the Trinity by naming a few more historic heresies, including Arianism (the belief that the Son was created) and subordinationism (the belief that the Son, while not created, is still less than fully God).

From there we dig into a doctrine that's often misunderstood even by Christians: the eternal functional subordination of the Son. The Son submits to the Father — not because He is lesser in being, but beca...

Every illustration people reach for to explain the Trinity — ice, water, and steam, a three-leaf clover, even "one times one times one" — ends up breaking down somewhere. In this episode, we take on one of the most difficult and most argued-over doctrines in church history: three persons, one Godhead.

We walk through the biblical evidence, starting in the Old Testament with "let us make man in our image," the tower of Babel, and Isaiah's "who will go for us," through the New Testament's baptism of Jesus and the explicit naming of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We talk...

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth from nothing, and that detail matters more than it might seem. If God had used pre-existing material, the real question would just shift to who made that material. Creation ex nihilo points to a Creator who needs nothing outside Himself.

In this episode, we continue our Systematic Theology series by digging into the doctrine of creation: why Scripture points to Jesus, not just "God" in the abstract, as the one who created everything, why God created us at all when He didn't need to, and how even...

Every episode of Clearview Today is special, but not every day do we get to hold in our hands the culmination of fifty years of scholarship. In this episode, Dr. Abidan Shah welcomes back his mentor and professor, Dr. Maurice Robinson, to celebrate the release of the Robinson-Pierpont 2026 Byzantine Textform — the Jubilee Edition, marking fifty years since Dr. Robinson and the late William Pierpont first began this work together in 1976.

Dr. Robinson walks through what makes this edition different: a hardback, library-quality volume that lies flat and can withstand real study, an updated preface, English subtitles running th...