Why the Museum of the Bible?  Well, that’s a long story, but as I always say about good government, whether managing a family, a business, a community, or a country, you have to understand what good is.  And there has been no more extraordinary human achievement than the Bible emerging out of Western Civilization to define goodness as it applies to mass society and personal integrity.  I’ve read all the significant works of the world’s religions and studied them in some detail, and I am pretty confident in saying that the Bible and its history have achieved more along the lines of defining good government than any other work to emerge from human culture.  So, once Trump was elected back to office, my wife and I wanted to return to Washington, D.C., and give it another chance with fresh, knowledgeable eyes.  I have never been a no-government guy or an anarchist in any way.  I would say that I have always loved government.  But what I didn’t like were the people who were drawn to it.  And years ago, during the Clinton years, I took my family to a literary conference at the Smithsonian, where I was a big part of their presentation, and the trip was a disaster.  Everywhere we went, there was some horrendous evil that ruined the trip for my wife and kids.  So any interactions I have had with Washington, D.C. over the years had to be without her because she refused to give it a chance after the city let her down so badly in the past, which was unfortunate for me. After all, once I saw the Museum of the Bible open in 2017, during Trump’s first term, I really wanted to go and check it out.  But I did not have a cooperative spouse willing to go and see it. 

But once Trump won in 2024, before his speech was done acknowledging his election victory late on election night, my wife turned to me and said that we should celebrate by going back to Washington D.C.  That’s all I needed to hear, so I started planning and we decided to go once the weather broke in early March of 2025, so we could walk around in comfort.  Since that first Washington trip, we have been to some of the world’s biggest cities and seen plenty of evil in all of them.  But what hit home regarding Washington, D.C. was that it was our city and our government, and we couldn’t stand to see how corrupt it all was.  So it was a lot more personal; other cities were other people’s places.  But with Trump back in office, a key constitutional element had been fulfilled: we did have a Republic that could correct evil by merit of votes, and the system could work and did.  Looking at the city itself from a long perspective, we see that it had the mechanisms to do everything it was designed to do, and we had survived a significant challenge never yet achieved within the human race.  And that deserved a celebration.  So for me, that means something that involves lots of books and time to read about topics many people find boring.  But I get very excited about it, which is the foundation of all law and order.  Specifically, one of the Bible’s main themes is how government should be set up. In the Book of Judges, the Israelites were supposed to have self-government, but the judges kept letting everyone down, leaving the people to cry out for a king.  So God eventually gave them one, and they let everyone down too.  And God became so angry with them that he allowed their destruction by their enemies.  A lot like what had occurred in the American city of Washington D.C. 

The Founding Fathers, especially Washington himself, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, a whole host of characters were trying to create in America a restoration of the Book of Judges, in my view based on the reportings of their voluminous studies, which I think is a very noble effort and one that does take many thousands of years to figure it out.  I felt that the election of Trump during this second term was the first real opportunity for that lofty idea to take hold.  And I think the Green family had a sense of this early in the last decade as Trump was still doing The Apprentice television show and thinking about running for President when they were looking for a place to put their idea for a museum dedicated to the Bible.  The place for it to be would be Washington D.C. along with all the other fantastic museums they have there.  But this one would be the most important because the Bible is the foundation of all Western civilization and the pursuit of good government.  The Bible is the foundation of all law and order, starting with the Ten Commandments.  Such a concept has been successful, and Washington, D.C. was the direct result of that long-established pursuit.  So, if you are thinking about such things, which I do very frequently, when there is a Museum of the Bible, I must see it.  So, upon our visit to America’s capital city, we made the Museum of the Bible our first stop for a long week, and we ended up spending two days there because there was so much to see.

I’ve been to many museums, including some of the best in the world, such as the British Museum and the Louvre in Paris, and I consider the Museum of the Bible to be among the best there is.  It’s right around the corner from the Capitol building itself and was exceptionally well done.  The whole place was put together with much love and passion for the topic.  It was very scholarly and was the perfect way to start a trip to Washington D.C. because once you understand what our government is supposed to be doing, you can’t avoid the Bible in that discussion.  So, a museum dedicated to the history and value of the Bible in human culture is the first criterion for understanding the need for good government at any level.  I could write an entire book about the value of the Museum of the Bible, but to sum things up as concisely as possible, I knew it was a special place when I entered a traveling exhibit they had called the Mosaic of Megiddo which came straight from Israel and was a large floor found in an early Roman building acknowledging Christ as a god around 200 A.D, over 100 years before Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.  To see something like that outside of Israel and so significant only established how vital the Museum of the Bible was in the scheme of things.  As I always say, my favorite thing in the world are my Biblical Archaeology Review magazines I have read since I was a little kid.  And going to the Museum of the Bible was like stepping into that quarterly magazine and living in that world three dimensionally.  It is an incredible place, and I don’t think it will be the last time I go there.  My wife and I are members and must find more reasons to return.  It is a fantastic place worth multiple visits, and a lot of time spent there each time.  It is undoubtedly one of the world’s best and most significant museums on a topic that is the foundation of all good government, and because of that, it is infinitely important to the human race. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707