It's an honor to be with so many faith leaders, members of Congress,
and dignitaries from all around the world
as we continue this extraordinary tradition.
Each year, this event reminds us that faith is central to American life
and to liberty.
The National Prayer Breakfast is 100% the Family's event.
An event that is meant to be
this very public display of power.
I mean, to gather all those people--
Tell me, who else can do that?
The President of the United States and the First Lady.
The National Prayer Breakfast: a Washington institution
for Republican and Democratic presidents since Eisenhower.
President Nixon was up early
to attend the National Prayer Breakfast.
And yet, the organization describes itself as invisible.
They've been hiding in plain sight for over 80 years.
There's a little-known organization in Washington
with a worldwide reach
and enormous, and sometimes surprising, political connections.
I'm a representative of Russian Federation here,
and I'm a chairman of The Right to Bear Arms.
Her name is Maria Butina:
the 29 year-old accused of using deception to cozy up to high-level politicians
and steer them toward Moscow's objectives.
That's Butina at the 2017 National Prayer Breakfast,
in the same room as Donald Trump.
We have a prayer breakfast every February.
The President comes,
the Vice President comes,
and everybody is welcome.
If I were a bad-faith actor from another country,
that is exactly the kind of meeting that I would want to exploit.
Hark! All worry will be left behind.
All disappointment, too, will be gone forever.
We adopted a program for a worldwide spiritual offensive.
I know, as never before, that we are all God's children.
There is only one thing we can take with us through that door:
Those whom we have led to the Savior.
Fear him.
Love him. Submit yourself completely.
Then you will be his disciple.
What we have begun, we will finish.
Whenever I get involved in an important meeting or conversation,
I-- I usually try to commit it to prayer,
so would anybody be offended if I-- if I asked for a word of prayer here?
You know, I learned, uh, years ago--
I used to ask people if I could pray for them.
And one of the things I learned from-- from Doug Coe is, uh...
Um...
Instead of doing that, I ask, "How can I ask God to bless you today?"
And, so, does anybody--
How can I ask God to bless anybody here in your crew today?
And we'll pray for that.
Our Father and our God, we just thank you for this opportunity
to talk about a great work, uh, in lifting up the name of Jesus
and representing the kingdom of God around the world, and I just ask that...
Tell me a bit about Doug's background.
Where-- Where did he come from?
How-- How did he come to this, um... powerful idea,
and brought so many people to his vision?
Well, well-- I-- I need to qualify, and if I misspoke I apologize,
but it really wasn't Doug that initiated this.
But, uh-- It was a gentleman named Abraham Vereide,
who immigrated to the U.S. from Norway.
If you go back to the origins of the Family,
they're wholly unique in one singular way:
the central vision with which it begins, which they call "The Idea,"
and the founder, this man named Abraham Vereide.
We are committed to a Fellowship of responsible men,
banded together to promote a leadership led by God.
Christians become leaders and help make leaders Christian.
Abraham was sort of an unlikely founder.
He was Norwegian.
His biography is called Modern Viking. He really looked the part.
♪ When I fell in love with Jesus And he fell in love with me ♪
♪ That's the very reason I felt this victory ♪
Abraham emigrated to Seattle, but he was focused on the poor.
So he convened a breakfast where he brought together businessmen
to pray for the needs of the city.
When I arrived as an immigrant,
I was handed a testament.
Abraham, that was fine.
This group of men encouraged Abraham
about his vision of a leadership led by God.
There was a very strong movement of prayer in Norway,
since the Norwegian Parliament was built.
Abraham brought this idea of politicians praying together to Washington D.C.
He ended up moving to Washington
to start a similar movement among political leaders.
He came to Washington and started to play golf
with the vice president, Henry Wallace.
He brought together Democrats and Republicans,
and they prayed together for good leadership.
I can remember coming home
and finding the women on their knees,
praying for their husbands,
and just calling out for God.
"Help them to be the leaders that God intended them to be."
In 1953, President Eisenhower was in office.
They met with Dwight Eisenhower
and asked Eisenhower to come to a National Prayer Breakfast.
We require faith, self-confidence, devotion.
Tenacity. Always tenacity.
The 1950s, of course, is the Cold War.
Eisenhower understood the Cold War as a holy war.
Abraham's deeply concerned, as well.
Communism is such a powerful ideology.
You can almost sort of think of it as an atheist empire.
What do we have to counter it?
We need something just as strong.
So the idea was,
"Let us find the key men put in positions of power by God.
And let us give them the support they need.
Let us love them."
So the first National Prayer Breakfast, which takes place in 1953,
is an essential turning point.
Abraham is thinking in terms of key men.
Who could be more the key man than the president of the United States?
They went to Eisenhower.
And Eisenhower's first instinct was no,
because the First Amendment, the separation of Church and State...
If a president appears at a Christian event
and gives that endorsement,
this is inappropriate for a president to do.
But pretty quickly, he realizes how effective this is
to fight the Cold War.
This annual breakfast is in commemoration of the organization,
which was first organized in Seattle, Washington.
We believe it's imperative, in order to preserve our sacred freedoms,
that we have a strong and courageous God-fearing people,
and a total mobilization
of all the spiritual forces of this nation.
Thank you, so much Mr. President.
It worked for Eisenhower.
It was advantageous in the fight against Communism,
in which God was weaponized.
But the Prayer Breakfast is potentially advantageous
for all sorts of reasons.
Relationships could grow out of that.
Really surprising ones.
I tell you,
in Russia, before the door was open, we had persecutions.
The police may come to you, three o'clock in the morning,
can search your apartment for Bibles, and...
and arrest you.
I grew up in a persecuted church. I was arrested twice.
I spent 30 days in prison.
I lost my job as an engineer,
and I was unemployed for the year because I was a Christian.
I was a Baptist. It means, uh, enemy of the state.
I grew up in a environment that people hate me
because I was not atheist,
like most of the people in my country at that time.
Tonight, Moscow's skyline was ablaze
with the sound and sights of celebration.
And then, silence.
Breathtaking stillness,
as the crowd stood to remember the victims of the coup.
At the end of the Soviet Union, it was interesting time,
because we grew up in the environment
that it was prohibited to meet with the foreigners.
So, we had a huge interest for everything what is American.
And Americans was like the people from the moon.
♪ Glory, glory, hallelujah ♪
♪ His truth is marching on ♪
In the early '90s, a lot of Evangelicals came to Russia.
Not just Billy Graham.
I've been asked to tell you
that this may be the largest audience in the history of Russia!
A lot of Russians has a spiritual interest.
Is there any hope for you?
For your family?
For your friends?
I read in the paper the other day that more people in Russia
believe in Satan than they do in God, even.
And first question Russian asked, "Who is that God?"
So we live in different society.
Every time that I talk with American about Christianity, they say,
"Christianity became weaker and weaker. We are not a Christian country anymore."
I will say, "No, guys. You don't know what you are talking about.
You're a Christian country.
And that moral system and ethical system saturated your society.
Maybe you don't declare it, but you still use that.
And we don't have it."
Point number one: corruption. It's a huge problem.
And that's how Russian society operates.
And the only future, and the only hope,
they need someone who will present them
the values, what they can believe.
In year 2000,
I was invited first time
for the National Prayer Breakfast in, uh, Washington, D.C.
And I came, and I didn't understand anything.
Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States
and the First Lady.
It was, uh, Bill Clinton.
Hillary was there, Hillary Clinton, and a lot of important people,
congressmen and senators.
But it was absolutely new experience,
so I didn't understand what-- what is all about.
I sit in a table with the prime minister from country in Europe,
and he treat me like a brother,
and I sit with the American congressman next to me,
and he also treat me like a brother.
And then it was my first time that I went to the Capitol Hill,
and I was in a Bible study with members of the Congress and Senate,
and they talk to each other very openly.
Later on, I met with Doug Coe.
That first time I met him,
I had an impression: he looks like a godfather.
Because he had a lot of influence, and people respect him,
and all of us show that respect.
He talked to me like... like a friend.
Like we know each other for years.
He had that kind of talent,
to present himself to people like friend and brother in Christ.
So I was impressed.
Abraham Vereide was a tremendous man
with whom I labored for years before he died.
I loved him like my own father.
In 1969, Abraham Vereide dies.
He is promoted to heaven.
And there's this question,
since he was anointed by God for leadership:
who's going to be the successor?
And there's a number of sort of key lieutenants,
men, older men of accomplishment,
who have been with the movement for a long time.
They're all guys with big egos,
and they want it known when they're in the room.
Then this young, awkward guy from Oregon,
of no great prestige or accomplishment,
really quickly moves up the Fellowship ranks.
Many of them noted the quietness with which he moves.
And somehow, Doug Coe comes up on top.
♪ We can't afford ♪
♪ Any fancy preaching ♪
♪ We can't afford ♪
♪ Any fancy church ♪
♪ But you know Jesus got A lotta poor people out doing his work ♪
He would listen more than he would talk.
And that was his trademark.
Most Evangelists don't.
Most politicians don't.
Doug Coe did.
Maybe the most important Ministry is not necessarily evangelizing
to 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 people,
but actually going to someone's home and sitting on the front porch with them,
and through your actions, words, and deeds,
that you would actually come to love them.
♪ Me and Jesus... ♪
Doug wanted to stay behind the scenes.
He never wanted his name mentioned.
He didn't want his family's name mentioned.
He believed what the word says, that if it's about our flesh
and it's about our fame and it's about our popularity,
then we're getting in the way of what Jesus is trying to do with people,
and he removed himself from it.
Now, that may have led to a period of quiet,
where people thought we're trying to hide something.
The Family of God is working invisibly, all over the world.
And it is invisibly spreading.
You say the Mafia, they keep their organization invisible.
The more you can make your organization invisible,
the more influence it will have.
Around the time when Abraham died in 1969,
Doug started to kind of dismantle this organization,
and make it more invisible.
Make it less of an organization, but more like a... a network of friends.
When it started,
they went the route of a lot of other ministries.
They had a letterhead,
and they had all the trappings of every other religious ministry.
Matter of fact, they were called ICL,
which stood for International Christian Leadership
Well, they got rid of all of that.
It's gone through any number of names.
It was called International Christian Leadership for a long time.
There's a Fellowship Foundation as well.
But Doug sees the branding power
of just getting people internally to refer to it as the Family.
Remaking the organization in his own image,
which is to say, no image at all.
It's a powerful transformation, right down to the little details.
You can see an example in the National Prayer Breakfast.
Now you're no longer invited to National Prayer Breakfasts
by this organization, you're invited by a congressman.
When I would ask people at the Prayer Breakfast who puts it on,
everyone would say Congress.
And then I asked Doug, you know, "Why do you obscure your role?"
And he said something like,
"Well, if people thought we were behind it,
do you think they would come?"
When I came to the Prayer Breakfast,
I couldn't help but think
that this is the government-sanctioned Prayer Breakfast.
It seems as though Congress is privileging Christianity.
It certainly sends an appearance
that has to make you have some First Amendment questions
about blurring the lines between church and state.
It was a central idea going back to 1953.
Their idea was, "What we want is a public ritual
consecrating the United States to Jesus."
Every president since has gone.
So you think you're going to this official event.
This morning's program...
There's an opening speaker, an opening prayer.
...that hundreds of the nation's most respected leaders
have gathered here in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Doug Coe does not speak.
He's always there.
Every now and then, someone nods to him.
This breakfast is a result of years of quiet diplomacy--
I wouldn't say secret diplomacy--
uh, quiet diplomacy,
by an ambassador of faith, Doug Coe, and I salute him.
First Prayer Breakfast that I attended,
I began to see Doug's impact globally.
He started meeting people around the world.
And you kind of realize like, wow, this man is orchestrating all of this.
His hands are on all of it, to the tune of cleaning the fork.
Using the National Prayer Breakfast,
it's almost impossible to overstate
the Family's reach and access to governments all over the world.
And from that, everything blossomed.
All other ministries, all other outreach,
came from the power of that and its influence in the world.
Is there any work
that Jesus Christ expects from every single person in this room?
What is the common work that we are engaged in,
whether together or apart?
Well, the Fellowship is interested in every country around the world.
They would love to have, uh, an active Prayer Breakfast movement
in every nation of the world.
I want him to start Prayer Breakfasts in all the nations.
I want him to start groups that reach leaders.
And then if you reach leaders,
then the whole nation will be influenced for Christ,
and all the people will come to Christ, if we reach these leaders.
And little by little, you share
what we're of one heart about, one mind about.
The work of God, this believing in the Son,
will go in every nation in the world.
I traveled with Doug for a Prayer Breakfast in Japan
and saw his influence over there.
So back then I started to see where Doug's desire was
to take it bigger than Washington,
and now get the globe
taking on more of what he had built.
Clearly they had a vision,
that you could use ties to the most powerful
to evangelize the world, and that never went away.
- Welcome. - Good morning.
There are some statements--
Like, for instance, you say there is no such thing as a "capital F" Fellowship.
But the President gets up and thanks Doug Coe.
Unpack a little bit more for us, what it means to be not an organization,
but clearly, this is organized.
I think it was Jesus that said, "Call no man leader."
So we're very comfortable with the fact that it's kind of invisible.
You know? Doug never wanted to found any organization.
I can say I knew Doug pretty well.
Forty-four years ago, I asked his oldest to marry me,
having no idea what I was getting into.
My particular focus is the former Soviet Union,
where I've been going for the last 52 years.
I speak Russian.
But I've kinda got a lifelong love affair for that part of the world,
that the Lord as a college student sent me
on a National Defense Fellowship in 1965.
And you know, they choreograph all the things you do.
You know, you had a guide and everything. It was very restricted.
But at night, I'd go out in the park.
And of course I could speak Russian, so I'd talk to kids.
And they'd come up and they'd ask me...
Do you believe in God? And I'd tell them about Jesus.
And I found they were so hungry to know him.
And that started a lifelong adventure.
In year... 2008 I believe,
that year Doug Burleigh visited Moscow and share the same vision,
what Doug Coe had for the Prayer Breakfast.
In that time I start to meet with the members of the Russian parliament.
We call it State Duma.
We have four main political parties in Russia.
They are not good friends.
They fight each other every time in State Duma, sometimes physically.
So it was huge risk for us to invite representatives
from different political parties to come to the Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast.
And we met first time, they start to fight,
and they fight for, I don't know, almost for one hour.
And I thought, "That's the end. They will never come again."
But God is God of miracle,
and next month we call and invite them to come again, and they-- they show up.
All of them. It was first experience that they read Scripture aloud.
After that, they start to ask the questions about what we read.
So we start to talk about spiritual things.
And we did it every month for a few years.
Right now, we have people who are on a very high position in Parliament.
If we would like to make changes in society, we should start from the top.
We should explain to people on the top
how it's important to bring positive changes to Russian society.
So we declare that we stand behind traditional family values,
we can bring moral and ethical values to our society.
The topic of my speech today is traditional family values.
This is an institution established by God. This is a union between man and woman.
Everybody present here has stood by and will stand for this.
Mr. Torshin, he attends the National Prayer Breakfast
in Russia, constantly.
He is really concerned about traditional family values.
So Alexander Torshin is a influential Russian politician...
Alexander Torshin...
...who regularly visited the United States
and would show up in conservative Christian circles
He also attended a Russian Prayer Breakfast
with Maria Butina.
Maria Butina is a Russian national,
who very much operated out of Torshin's mold.
She came to the United States
and was also showing up with prominent politicians.
Conservative ones, generally.
But these sorts of connections had, in fact,
already been forged along religious lines
long before Butina arrived.
When the Soviet Union had broken up,
Doug Coe visited 16 countries in 16 days and met with the leaders.
A few years later, Alexander Torshin,
who was very close to Putin,
came to see Doug and said, "Now I need your help.
We want for certain leaders to meet.
We think you are the only person who can get them together."
He was very nervous, and as they sat down,
he started to try to flatter Doug, to say that--
"We know that you are the most powerful person in the world,"
and Doug immediately said,
"I have to protest against that description.
I am just a friend."
And then Doug took his watch and gave it to Torshin.
And Torshin took off the watch he had and said,
"Actually, Putin gave me this watch,
but from now on I will have this American watch."
Roughly around the time of 2012, in the beginning of Putin's third term,
you started to see the party line within certain subsets
of conservative Evangelical Christianity in the United States shifts
from Russia as the great evil
to Russia as an ally for conservative positions.
So who-- who is it?
Which president is the lion of Christianity,
the defender of Christian values?
I look over to Russia.
Russia, Putin, the Russian Orthodox Church
has now lifted themself up as the moral leader of the world.
I was very clear. I supported, uh, Putin
uh, in his decision to protect his nation's children,
and I think our Congress needs to do more.
The president that's calling his nation back to embracing its identity
as a nation founded on Christian values...
As the protectors of moral truth.
Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia.
This is a map of the Eurasian continent.
The Family starts as anti-Communist...
But in the great heartland of Russia itself...
...and has always been thinking about Russia.
Even back when I was at Ivanwald,
the brothers spoke of an Ivanwald-like house in Moscow.
The larger picture is the way
the National Prayer Breakfast in particular played this role
of being a tool to make deals without democracy in the room.
The question then arises:
are they witting or unwitting accomplices
to those who are uninterested in Jesus, but simply want to use this access?
This is a paraphernalia from the 2018 National Prayer Breakfast.
Here's your ticket. I like this ticket 'cause it looks like a Willy Wonka ticket.
Here's your invitation. It says,
"Dear Friends, it is our honor and privilege to welcome you
to the 66th annual National Prayer Breakfast."
So then we have these excerpts from past presidents.
Here's Eisenhower, here's JFK, here's Nixon.
In the beginning, lest we think that they're hiding anything,
we have: "History.
The gathering you are participating in this morning
traces its roots to a local vision.
In April of 1935, 19 business executives in Seattle, Washington,
met together to face a critical situation in the life of their city."
This much is true, it begins in 1935.
It doesn't mention that crisis was organized labor.
In Seattle, in the 1930s, Abraham's been doing good works up until then.
He had been a leader in Goodwill Industries.
Worked for the poor.
Abraham saw the suffering of the Great Depression.
Every day, people started saying,
"We're not going to depend on what is given us.
We're going to organize and share through organized labor."
In 1934, there was a general strike up and down the west coast.
Troops are called in. There's warships off the coast.
You had, essentially, guerrilla warfare.
I saw everywhere sights that made my heart sick.
Subversive forces had taken over. Things were clearly at a low ebb.
What could we do? And who would dare lead on for better things?
By then he had already gravitated toward leaders of industry.
And he has concluded that labor unions are agents of the enemy,
that they are doing Satanic work.
He gathers 19 industrialists, 19 business leaders.
They are united in their belief
that their wealth must be protected by force,
and that the force will be most effective if it is backed up by God.
It began with a meeting of 19 business executives.
A new purpose was recognized.
Producing Christian leadership.
New power came as men believed and obeyed God.
Out of that meeting grows what Abraham would later call
a New World Order.
This was really the beginning of the Prayer Breakfast movement,
where these men would get together and pray
for God to raise up leaders from their group.
Out of that group came the mayor of the city and the governor of the state.
They picked one among them, a man named Arthur Langley.
They elected him mayor, and then they elected him governor.
He crushed labor.
The New York Times marveled over
the just absolutely eradication of the left in Washington state.
In the aftermath of the battle, God comes down and speaks to him.
He says, "You know what the problem is, Abraham?
It's that Christianity has been focusing on those rabble for too long.
What we need to do is fortify men
who will take the strong hand and restore law and order."
Strength.
Christianity is not a weak thing.
Woe to the pussy-footing, namby-pamby, wishy-washy, dilly-dallying individual
who bears the name of Christ
and who fails to recognize that all things are possible
to him that believes with courage and confident boldness.
Put on the whole armor of God.
That's the Prayer Breakfast.
And that's what's in it, for those who attend.
You can't buy a ticket to the Prayer Breakfast.
You get invited. That's intentional.
In a family, you don't buy a ticket
to go to a friend's house for dinner, do you?
You get invited.
In other words, it's all about relationships.
And that's intentional. That was the idea from the beginning.
That was Abraham Vereide's dream.
The Prayer Breakfast is kind of a misnomer.
It really is, um, in some respects--
It could be as much as a week-long series of events,
particularly to accommodate some of the international guests,
hopefully, to develop relationships and maintain those as you go back home.
It is now like a two-and-a-half day extravaganza.
Uh, it's like 25 different sessions,
in different ways that you can plug in or plug out of,
all around the actual breakfast.
There's a Wednesday morning Middle East Prayer Breakfast.
Wednesday at noon, there's a international luncheon.
And then Wednesday evening, regional dinners.
Thursday morning is the Prayer Breakfast.
Thursday noon, we have the Leadership Luncheon.
Thursday night is a family dinner.
Sometimes people start days before, and continue on through the weekend.
They put this on to bring together world leaders to pray,
but also to talk shop, to make connections.
Basically, to spread influence.
If you go to a National Prayer Breakfast, you'd meet foreign heads of State,
you'd meet members of Congress, you'd meet business people.
And many, many attendees see it in just those terms.
One lobbyist, a former U.S. ambassador,
offered to broker a meeting between Trump and the President of Chad.
The price: $220,000.
Within the Family, it's very clearly meant to be
the most open-ended gateway.
Not just in this one morning breakfast.
It's essentially a week-long, off-the-books, de facto lobbying festival.
As one Evangelical leader put it,
"Many people use it for entree, and entree they get."
The more I studied the National Prayer Breakfast,
the more I studied the Fellowship,
the more obvious it became to me
that if I were a bad faith actor from another country,
that is exactly the kind of meeting that I would want to exploit.
It just seems like it's set up
for people to be able to barge into the room, metaphorically,
and be close to power.
In 2018, I noticed that there was a disproportionately large delegation
of as many as 60 Russians that were planning on attending.
This year, uh, we invited 40 young professionals from Russia,
and I started getting texts from all over the country.
"What-- What's the deal with the Russian collusion?"
And I said, "Boy, there's big-time collusion.
It's-- It's the Russians and Jesus. That's the collusion."
How's that one? Okay?
There were certain actors, like Alexander Torshin,
that I was trying to track down,
whether he had been invited to the 2018 Prayer Breakfast,
and as it turns out he was.
A couple months later, new sanctions were issued for Russian actors,
including against Alexander Torshin.
He was alleged to have multiple ties to money laundering
and organized crime in Russia.
There was also an attempt for Alexander Torshin
to meet Trump during the Prayer Breakfast,
but that was canceled last minute.
The Fellowship, they just don't care who's coming
or who they're meeting with when they arrive.
They're primarily fixated on relationship-building
amongst people of power.
And so that told me
the Prayer Breakfast could be a space that could easily be exploited.
I went even deeper. I tried to meet and talk with Doug Burleigh,
and I tracked down that he had,
as of last year, spoken at a Russian Prayer Breakfast...
...alongside Alexander Torshin.
And then the affidavit broke.
Breaking news: The DOJ charging a Russian agent
for trying to create a backchannel
between that country and the United States
so Russia could penetrate American decision-making.
Maria Butina was charged with conspiracy to act as a foreign agent
for the Russian Federation
without registering with the Department of Justice,
which, it turns out, is a crime.
What that meant in practice is that she was
a very visible gun rights activist in the United States,
and it would appear, according to law enforcement officials,
actively tried to infiltrate the National Prayer Breakfast.
America will succeed.
We'll ensure equal rights to every man, woman and child.
Maria Butina's connection to Torshin
had already been reported at some level,
so it is widely assumed
that when you see some of these messages
between her and a mentor figure,
that is Torshin, who's helping direct her.
Butina succeeded in getting a delegation of Russian Nationals in 2017
to come to the National Prayer Breakfast.
People who were described as powerful political advisors of Vladimir Putin,
as well as mayors and university presidents.
And then she later thanked an unnamed National Prayer Breakfast organizer
for allowing her to bring that delegation,
and for the very secret meeting that happened afterwards.
Which, for those who study the Prayer Breakfast,
know that that's actually not that uncommon,
to have a secret side meeting around the Prayer Breakfast.
And she did all of that
with the intention of establishing a backchannel of communication
for political gain.
Particularly for Russia's political gain.
Our great history of Christian religion,
and the things that we have in common--
Like when we talk about Russian and American relationships,
the main point is Christianity in both countries.
In Russia, it's more than 70% people there are Christians,
and there are very few of other religions.
I see that, like Russian, I don't understand what is her fault.
She was trying to build relationship between Russia and America, and...
Oh, it's not a secret we have the worst relationship
in the whole history of Russian-American relationship now,
and why it's-- why it's-- why it's wrong--
What-- what-- what is the crime, to help to fix this relationship? I don't know.
If she was a spy, she was only a spy
in that her intentions were not just simply to get close
to American political groups because she liked them.
She was doing that, according to the affidavit,
to influence American politics.
Some of you will remember about four weeks ago,
a young Russian woman, Maria Butina, was arrested and held without bail.
While it is not stated in the affidavit,
the unnamed person within the National Prayer Breakfast,
the unnamed National Prayer Breakfast organizer--
It's hard to think of who it would be other than Doug Burleigh.
So about five weeks ago,
I get a phone call at my office in Washington, D.C. from the FBI.
That-- That's not a good day, when the FBI calls you.
The first question they asked me was if I knew Maria Butina.
I said, "Yes."
Trying to forge alliances with other countries
to force your country to do a thing? That is a tricky place to be.
Now, I look at it this way. I haven't done anything wrong.
I'm sure that they think they have an answer, that is that...
Everybody's welcome to the Prayer Breakfast.
Anyone who comes,
regardless of their motive or how they were invited...
They're, for three hours, are going to sit in a chair
and hear a message of God's love and grace and redemption,
and who knows how God can convict or-- or inspire,
but, um, however, whyever someone is there,
they're going to hear a message, and will be positively impacted.
By their own acknowledgment, they are witting accomplices.
They say, "We can take these people--
Maybe they're cynical,
and maybe they're using this to corrupt American politics,
but we're just going to love on them,
and eventually some good will come of it."
This is either the most naive theology ever created,
or the most cynical one.
The transcendence of the Family is,
it somehow manages to be both at the same time.
This would be an unusual crowd, if there isn't a number of us
that are walking through some kind of fire in our life.
Things get complicated.
You have to hire a lawyer.
♪ Shadrach... ♪
So, I think I'm kind of like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
People of faith are increasingly isolated,
criticized, misunderstood.
I don't think I did anything wrong,
but there's a fire going on.
♪ The king put the children In the fiery furnace ♪
♪ Shadrach ♪
♪ Meshach, Abednego ♪
♪ Heaped on the coals and red-hot brimstone... ♪
But when you walk through the fire,
the flames will not set you ablaze.
In the years ahead,
the followers of Jesus
are gonna experience more and more of the fire.
♪ Shadrach ♪