Rush Limbaugh's Brother David Discusses His Journey Back to Faith and His New Book "Jesus on Trial: A Lawyer Affirms the Truth of the Gospel"

Frank Turek : Sep 18, 2014
Charisma News

"Rush and I were raised in a great Midwest Christian family. We went to church every Sunday. Our parents raised us right..." -David Limbaugh

(West Palm Beach, FL)—When David Limbaugh let his friend Steve know that he had doubts about Christianity, he was surprised by Steve's response. Instead of a blast of arrogant judgmentalism, Steve responded as a Christian should—with grace and evidence. What has happened since that time is told in Limbaugh's excellent new book, Jesus on Trial: A Lawyer Affirms the Truth of the Gospel. Limbaugh artfully tells his journey from skepticism about Christ to skepticism about skepticism and ultimately to trust in Christ.

Limbaugh is a lawyer, but he doesn't write like a lawyer. While he's intellectually precise, he writes as if he's sitting across the table from you, anticipating your questions and objections. This is rare for a book of Christian evidences (often called Christian apologetics). Such books often read like technical manuals, but not Jesus on Trial. Limbaugh not only does a masterful job of highlighting the abundant evidence that supports Christianity, his insights into what the Scriptures actually say will have you marveling at the tapestry of Scripture and the Savior who wove it.

From the very beginning, Limbaugh bares his soul, holding nothing back about how his previous doubts were shielded by an embarrassing lack of knowledge. He writes, "I knew, after all, that I hadn't really given the Bible itself a hearing, much less a fair one.

"To my surprise—and this is embarrassing to admit—Steve showed me how verses of Scripture, in both the Old and New Testaments, were tied to others in content and theme with remarkable frequency. Amazingly, I had never looked at a reference Bible before, and I was blown away. My ignorance was on display, but Steve wasn't remotely judgmental—to help me learn more, he even gave me that Bible. I was genuinely intrigued to discover that the Bible was not simply a mishmash of stories, allegories, alleged historical events, and moral lessons. There was obviously a pattern here, and for the first time in my life the Bible appeared to me to be thematically integrated. The scales on my eyes started peeling away."

His two chapters called "Aha Moments" reveal the numerous tipping points in Limbaugh's journey where scale after scale fell away—tipping points that no honest seeker of truth can ignore. Of course, as Limbaugh admits, many who are not interested in truth, or have their own agenda, ignore or remake Christ in their own image.

He writes, "We must not casually remake Jesus in the image in which we prefer to see Him or which conforms to the popular culture's misperceptions about Him. Our politically correct culture may presumptuously choose to recast Jesus as indifferent to sin and saccharine sweet, no matter the circumstances, but this Jesus is God, and God cannot look upon sin. What do these revisionists make of the Jesus Who made a whip of cords and drove the money changers out of the Temple (John 2:15)? ...What do the revisionists say about the Jesus Whom Paul describes as "revealed from Heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus " (2 Thess. 1: 7-8)? What of the difficult moral standard Jesus laid down in the Sermon on the Mount? Did He show indifference to sin there?"

Limbaugh rightfully concludes: "This idea that Jesus is meek, mild, indifferent, and non-judgmental is the stuff of pure myth."