Out of Zion

Announcer: Welcome to the Israel Answers series, connecting Israel, the Bible, and you. Join Susan Michael as she explores timely issues and current events from a scriptural perspective to equip the Christian world with a balanced and biblical response. Be sure to subscribe for future episodes, which will ignite your faith and bring the Bible to life in your everyday world. Now, let’s join Susan with your Israel Answers.

Dr. Susan Michael: I want to welcome you to the Out of Zion show with Susan Michael. I am very excited to have with me today a very special friend and special guest, Dean Michele Bachmann, former member of Congress, and now she is the dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University.

She is doing such an amazing work reaching the next generation of Christian leaders and educating them, preparing them, training them, and mentoring them for leadership. It is our real honor and privilege to have you with us today.

Michele Bachmann: Susan, thank you. I love being here with you.

Dr. Susan Michael: We have a great partnership. We've been working together. First, I would like for you to share with our audience a little bit about how you became dean. I know you knew Pat Robertson. Tell that story before we jump in.

Michele Bachmann: The background is that I was in the very first law school class at Regent University. This goes back to 1979, the very first year they had the law school. So, I was completely sold on the university because they combined both high academics with a high biblical worldview.

That was exactly where I wanted to be. It was probably the best legal education I could even imagine. I'm very proud of the school. From there, I went on, practiced as a lawyer, and went into government. That was kind of the track that God put me on.

Later, Pat Robertson called me and kind of closed the circle. He asked me if I would come and be dean at the university of the government school. I told him, "I highly recommend you don't hire me. I don't even know what a dean does. I haven't spent ten seconds in higher ed since I graduated." He said, "No, you're the one. You're the one we want."

I went by faith and it's been just wonderful because the university is so open to new ideas and so open to the new relevant things that are happening. On my heart was to start a PhD program. I had learned that about 30 or 35 years before, the university wanted to start one and they hadn't.

So, we launched one. You were one of the first people who came to my office, Dr. Susan Michael. You already had curriculum. You just so encouraged my soul. My soul just sang when you came in and sat on the couch in my office.

We began the PhD program and we've now welcomed four classes of PhD students, 15 students each year. We've already had our first PhD student graduated from the school. Now we've also launched the Israel Institute. We have five master's degree programs to teach about a biblical worldview perspective on government.

We have our PhD program on government. Now we've launched the Israel Institute because we've seen so many young people don't have the basic understanding of Israel that maybe we did when we were younger. Now we're bringing those students in.

We want to get to everyone, and not just people at Regent. We want to get the knowledge of Israel everywhere—to other universities, to other students, to churches, to high school groups, college groups. That's our vision. It's a big vision. I want to thank you for your participation early on in the school.

Dr. Susan Michael: It's so critical and so strategic. I just want to share the story with the audience. I absolutely love Pat Robertson. What an honor for you to have known him like that and been a part of the initial class. Everything he started has been such a strategic and very impactful work from CBN to Operation Blessing.

I went to Regent University, this is two and a half years ago now, and I said, "You need to raise the Israel flag. You need to have an Israel study program and take the lead because we're losing a lot of our Christian colleges and their support of Israel and their understanding of Israel."

You said, "We want to, we want to! We've been talking about it." I said, "Well, here, here's the first curriculum."

Michele Bachmann: You actually helped with the first seed money as well. You can't fly a rocket ship without fuel. That was a God thing and we're very grateful for that. Pat Robertson was a tremendous student of the Bible. You can't read the Bible and not see that Israel permeates Genesis to Revelation.

He understood that and he saw that. As a matter of fact, the very first CBN broadcast, God put it in Pat Robertson's mind to launch the first satellite into space to bring the Gospel around the world 24/7. He launched that satellite from Jerusalem, Israel.

The very first program was in 1979. Israel has always been on his heart. Really, when we launch this PhD and the Israel Institute, this is just the next step in the line of what Pat Robertson and the ministry has done from the very beginning with the 700 Club and the Christian Broadcasting Network, and now of course his son, Gordon Robertson, is continuing that legacy.

Everything is about Israel. We now have CBN Israel. You'll love this, Susan. We're taking our first tranche of students to Israel in about two weeks' time. We're taking them over and we're taking them on the Ambassador of Israel's tour, Danny Danon.

We're taking them to Auschwitz first, the death camp, and then we're taking them to Israel. For your audience who've been to Israel, they know once you go to Israel, you are forever changed because two things happen.

For one, you feel like you're home. If you're a believer, you just feel like you're at home. The second thing is you know that the Bible is true. You knew the Bible was true before, but you really have it in your heart. The Bible is true and you're never the same again. If you haven't gone to Israel, it's not too late. Go. This is the time to go.

Dr. Susan Michael: This is why I find it so exciting, because I was one of those. I was a 19-year-old student when I got to go to Israel for a study program. It’s exactly the time to go. It changed my life. It affected the rest of my life. I'm so glad I went when I was so young.

How my parents let me, I'm not sure, because I kind of went alone and met up with a group over there. It was worth doing. You and I did a broadcast together. We did a podcast together. My story was like yours. I went at age 18 and lived and worked at Kibbutz Be'eri.

That was back in 1974. I thank God for that baseline experience. It turned and directed the course of my entire life, just like your story. That's why it's so important to get our young people there. It changes their life for the better.

I just want to share that if anybody wants to seed money into the next generation of Christian leaders, Regent University, the Robertson School of Government, they are preparing Christians, getting a PhD in government with an emphasis in Israel.

We've set up a scholarship fund there. If you're interested in seeding, please contact us. We'll have links in the show notes for today.

Michele Bachmann: We would love to do that because we have undergrad, masters, the PhD, the Israel Institute to reach everyone. I know Susan has been extremely generous to seed that money. We need more because I'll tell you one reason why students choose to go to another school is because they don't have scholarship money.

Here's the big little dirty secret: Qatar is out there funding scholarships at universities all across America for students. We need scholarship money for our students too. When they come to our school, you can be assured they will have a biblical background that is pro-Israel with high academics.

That's what we offer the students. When they go to these other schools that are maybe funded by Qatar, they're getting a pro-Islamic view that is anti-biblical. There's a real divide here. Thank you for bringing that up.

A lot of people don't realize that universities are being funded by Islamic nations that don't have American interests at heart, much less Israel's. That's why we're here at Regent to advance the pro-biblical view of Israel.

Dr. Susan Michael: Pat Robertson would be so thrilled.

Michele Bachmann: He would be so thrilled. You said it. I'm so blessed to have been a part of that story and to be partnering with you.

Dr. Susan Michael: Let's talk a little bit about current events. In the young people there at Regent, your students, do you see a certain trend or a lack of knowledge? Do you see something that's influencing them that you could share with us for prayer and for greater understanding of the next generation?

Michele Bachmann: I'd be happy to. There is a real difference. The students are still sweet, wonderful. They profess Jesus Christ. The difference is they lack discipleship. They lack a basic knowledge of the Bible. The more Bible knowledge you have, the more pro-Israel you are.

If you don't have that background and basic discipleship, you tend to not have that understanding of Israel. For instance, when October 7th occurred, we just assumed all the students would know what's going on. They didn't know what's going on.

They didn't really understand. In fact, their world is TikTok. On their phone, it's 17 anti-Israel messages for every pro-Israel message. We immediately started showing pro-Israel movies. We do one pro-Israel event a week on average during the school year.

Not just one event a year; on average, almost every week. We have movies, plays, books, speakers, authors, we Zoom people in. We give a regular diet to our students of reality because they're hearing lies on their social media.

That's the difference that we see. We are very intentional now. We're intentional not only with our Regent students, we have a wonderful cooperation with the local Jewish community. Pat Robertson is the one who was wise enough to see that. We cooperate with them.

We let them know we're here because we want to support you. We'll take students and we'll go to the local Passover or the local feast dinners. We're trying to foster those relationships between Jews and Christians because we serve the God of the Bible, the God of Israel.

Dr. Susan Michael: It's so interesting you're mentioning movies and plays and this kind of thing. One of the difficulties for us reaching the young generation is that, it was actually your professor Dr. A.J. Nolte who I heard say this, he's the director of the Israel Institute, he said that we are now in a post-literate generation.

Not that they can't read, but that they don't read. They take in their information via images and videos on their phone. That has to be very challenging for you at the university.

Michele Bachmann: It is because there's an adaptation on teaching people. Yet, we have standards. We have very high standards. We have to push people toward reading. We do very effectively. Dr. A.J. Nolte, he's completely blind and he's the director of our Israel Institute.

Just an absolutely fabulous person. We have an incredible faculty, a faculty that understands Israel and gets Israel. I used to be in Congress. What I saw when I was in Congress is that a lot of the top credentialed people didn't understand Israel.

What they understood was a very biased view they got during their PhD training. If you're pro-Israel, a lot of times you're blacklisted from even getting in these programs. That's why we need people to come in.

We need to train them. We need to get them credentialed so that they can get out and work in the intelligence community, the Pentagon, the entire bureaucracy of the United States. The reason why you have anti-Israel policies in our government is because you have people who have been trained to be anti-Israel through their education and then they go into government.

We're trying to be a part of the solution, just like you are with your organization. We're partnering together to be pro-Israel, to be pro-biblical. God is pro-Israel. Jesus was pro-Israel. We're just trying to be in alignment with the Word of God.

Dr. Susan Michael: It’s got to be very fulfilling to be a part of that, to know that you are mentoring the next generation of Christian leaders. We're taking our first tranche of students now over to Israel. I'm praying already into that trip because I know, just like you when you were 19 and me when I was 18, our eyes were opened and forever changed.

I'm asking God to be present and open their eyes of their heart so that they will see what we saw. He will. He does that with every generation. What is something else, like a major misunderstanding, that you encounter a lot with the students that you're working with?

Michele Bachmann: A major misunderstanding is they are very sympathetic to the terrorists who kill Jews. They're very sympathetic and they see that the terrorists are victims. This is almost impossible to believe, but this shows how twisted and how Satan has gotten into the messaging.

To show that the people who seek actually the extermination of Jews, the death of Jews—we can't even believe that people would think that—but they've actually gotten Christians to be sympathetic to the point of view of those who want to kill Christians.

We have to go into that world and that understanding and explain that the true victims have been the Jews since 2023 when this happened.

Dr. Susan Michael: Does this mean that they got that in high school and in the school before they actually entered college?

Michele Bachmann: Absolutely. At the youngest ages. Now today, it's since they got their phone. People got their phones in about 2009. For students that are in college right now, that's only 10 years ago. They grew up on their phone.

They've had phones in their possession for about 10 years. They don't know their life without phones. They're getting lies. That's what we need to understand. The good thing is truth prevails over lies. It's nothing to be discouraged about or despair over. It's just a challenge.

At the university level, Veritas, truth, that's what we teach at Regent. The truth does overcome lies. We have to be intentional. We can't just assume they're going to get it or we can't assume that they come in knowing truth.

That's the partnership that we've had with you because your curriculum is excellent. It teaches truth.

Dr. Susan Michael: Pat Robertson was a man of destiny. What he built there at Regent University is just so strategic.

Michele Bachmann: The fruit's incredible. We have over 13,000 students now in many degrees. What people have accomplished, the alumni of our school, are phenomenal what they've accomplished.

Dr. Susan Michael: I want to say you also are a woman of destiny and he knew it. That's why he chose you. No one is more perfect than you with your background in Israel from a young age to that you were of that first law class there at Regent and your time in Congress.

Now you're able to bring all of that experience and knowledge and expertise to these young people. I just want to honor you for your life's work and what you're doing. I pray the Lord bless you and use you there and really prosper.

May you have many more tens of thousands of students and may we be able to have a full scholarship fund for these PhDs there at Regent. That's our number one need. Michele, thank you so much for joining us today. I know that our audience has really enjoyed getting to know you and your work there at Regent.

With that, I encourage you to do a search in our files and find our first interview with Dean Michele Bachmann, which we did about a year ago, where she tells more of her story at 18 years old when she went to Israel, lived there in that Gaza border area in an Israeli kibbutz that became the center of the October 7th attack.

Get to know her and her work there and get behind our partnership between the ICEJ and Regent University. We'll have links in today's show notes or on our website. Please get involved and support this amazing work.

Michele Bachmann: Thank you. What a blessing. Thank you.

Dr. Susan Michael: Give me one more minute. I want to offer you one of our free resources. We have wonderful resources in our show notes and if you go to our website at icejusa.org/shownotes, you'll find links for a number of our free offers.

We have downloads to help root you in Scripture, help you to understand the issues surrounding Israel and the importance of Christian support for Israel. Don't forget, please follow us on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn and stay connected. Thank you and God bless.

Announcer: We hope you have enjoyed this episode of Out of Zion with Susan Michael. Be sure to subscribe to Out of Zion now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, pray.com, Salem1Place, Salem Life Audio. Out of Zion with Susan Michael is a production of ICEJ USA. All rights reserved.