WWUTT 1350 Q&A Year in Review

Well, 2020 was sure an interesting year and 2021 may be crazier, but we're going to look back over the events that have taken place in 2020 and continue to cling to Christ when we understand the text.

Happy New Year from your friends at When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of God that we may have the mind of Christ.

Tell all your friends about our ministry at www .wtt .com. Here once again is

Pastor Gabe. Boy, you are just really excited about the fact that we're in a new year. Not yet.

It was 2020. Oh, wait, no, it is. Yes, it is. It is. Happy New Year, everybody. It's 2021, babe.

Yes. Make sure you write your checks accordingly. Right. Ugh. Was it a rough year for you or anything?

You had to get out of that real quick? Let's get out of 2020. I'm not sure if I'm excited to get to the new year or not.

Sometimes I dread it. Sometimes I'm looking forward to it. I hate to break it to you folks, but 2021 is going to be worse.

Yeah. It is going to get worse. So I have a verse for you. As we start off here, this is our end of the year episode.

Yes. Everybody is looking forward to it. We've left 2020 behind. Nope, Gabe and Becky are still stuck in 2020.

We are. So as we're heading into - We're dragging our feet. That's right. As we're heading into 2021,

I procrastinated on everything, even getting into a new year. Yes. I have a verse for you here, and it is in Luke chapter two, verse 10, fear not.

There you go. That's my verse. Awesome. That's the verse that I have for you. That's an excellent verse. Yes. Fear not. That was the, of course,

I went to Luke 2 .10, so you know what that's from, right? Luke 2 .10. What's going on here?

Isn't that where Jesus is? Jesus is? There's not more than one. Jesus is.

Pardon me for slurring. Yeah. Not enunciating correctly.

Yeah. The angel announcing to the shepherds the birth of Christ. Yes. Jesus is born.

It is one of the most repeated commands in the Bible. Yes. And there are variations of it.

Do not be afraid. Be strong and courageous that appear at least a hundred times in scripture.

God spoke to Abraham. He said, fear not. He spoke to Isaac. He said, fear not. Right. The Lord addressed

Isaac's son, Jacob. He said, do not be afraid. So you have our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that all received from the

Lord. Fear not. But then there's Jonah who got swallowed by the big fish. I think he had something to be afraid of, honestly.

He was running away. Yeah, that's right. He was trying. As long as you're being obedient. Yes. Fear not. He was trying to get away from God there at that point.

So yeah. Big old storm comes up. Big old fish swallows him up.

You know. Not a fun time. Anyway, but we as Christians, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

As it says in Romans chapter eight, we have nothing to fear. That's right. Nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our

Lord. So I start off the podcast by saying 2021 is going to be even harder than 2020.

Yes. Lots more bad news is going to happen this year. It's not like bad news goes away. It's not like 2020 was an off year either.

Everything is moving in a particular direction. Yes it is. And it's just going to get worse in this next year. So those -

It just kind of fell down the stairs this year. Yeah. That's right. It was already going down. And we're still falling.

Yes. We've fallen down the stairs this year and now the house is falling in around us is what's going on. That'll be interesting.

Anyway, so I begin by saying it's going to get worse in this next year, but to remind you that we have nothing to fear for the

Lord is on our side. Hold fast to Christ. He is still on his throne, seated at the right hand of God, interceding for us, and we will be welcomed into his eternal kingdom where there will be 2020s no more.

That's right. No more 2020s. How exciting that we can look forward to, it gives us even more reason to look forward to what is to come.

That's right. So store up your treasures there, not here on the earth. Amen. Something to announce here before we go on.

This is our year in review episode. Yes. We're going to go through 40 of the biggest

Christian news stories of the year. Which is different than our normal schedule because our normal schedule is a

Q &A. That's right. We take questions from the listeners. You can still submit those questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com

and right now I have a waiting list. Do you really? We've had, yeah, a couple of weeks where people have submitted questions. We just did

Christmas stuff last week. That's true. Yes. And so I've got a few that I'm waiting on to answer, but you can still submit questions and add to our waiting list.

Anyway, okay, this is year in review. This is a book, 2020 year in review.

It is going to be on Amazon. It is not up yet. I still have some editing that I have to do. So my goal to have that book ready on January 1st didn't happen.

The 20 - Procrastinating again. That's right. Will not procrastinate. That is my New Year's resolution.

That is the resolution that I achieve every year. I'm going to procrastinate this year. Well done.

I do that every year. I noticed that the 2019 year in review did not get posted until January 6th, so that was late last year, too.

Yes, but a lot happened that last week, too. It did, right. I know. Oh my goodness, so much. Well, we were going into 2020, so it was like the wave was just starting to rise.

It was going to come crashing in on us. Tsunami. But everything we're going to go through here is going to be made into 40 articles, about 800 to 1 ,000 words each, going through all of the events, the biggest events of 2020 in Christianity, Christian news headlines, basically, and looking at what the

Bible says. You can still pick up 2019 year in review if you're reading it on your Kindle. It's just 99 cents.

You can't beat that. Awesome. I'm going to make this one the same. I think the books will both be about eight bucks or something like that, but if you want to get it on your digital reader, just a dollar.

Sweet. Pick it up, please. Enjoy it. Leave a review. I would appreciate it. Here we go.

The top 40 Christian headlines of the year. You ready?

Yes. We're not – and this isn't a countdown, so we're not getting to the biggest article. Right. No, no, no, no.

Are we going in chronological order, though? We're going in order from January to December. All right.

Here we go. Number one. Get ready, people. Buckle up. Hands and feet. Aren't we?

How's that? Keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times.

Make sure – Is that right? Yes. I never worked at a theme park, so I don't know. If you have anything that'll fall off, secure it now.

That's right. Secure your children. Don't let them fly out as we go through this list. Yes. Number one.

China exposes the world to COVID -19. Now, of course, this was going to get worse as the year progressed, but January 5th was the day that the genome was released of COVID -19 so that other health organizations of the world could look at it and see, this is the bug that we're dealing with.

China had already been fighting with this thing at the end of 2019, hence why it's called

COVID -19. It is the corona – Yeah, it was for a few months, wasn't it? Yeah.

I think November – well, this is all according to China, so you got to take it with a grain of salt. True. I think

November was their first case. And our media. And our media on top of that. But COVID -19 stands for coronavirus disease 19, because that's when it was discovered was 2019.

Here in the United States, we began calling it the Wuhan virus, because that's what you call a new disease when it shows up.

You call it after the location that it came from. For the most part. Just like Lyme disease, because that came from Lyme, Connecticut.

Oh, right. Uh -huh. What about Spanish flu? That one wasn't – That one actually came from Fort Riley, Kansas, believe it or not.

Yeah, I was going to say, that one didn't follow – I know. That came from our own backyard when we were up there in Kansas.

Yes, it did. But yeah, it didn't originate in Spain. It was from Kansas. Should have been called the Kansas flu.

I would have been totally fine with that. We get a lot of Kansas flu. We got that a lot in Kansas.

We did. Let's see. There was – well, I mean, there's Zika. Yes. There's Ebola. Yes.

There's MERS, which is the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah, that's right. Hmm. It's called MERS. Yeah. Swine flu. Well, that's from a pig.

Yeah, swine. That's not from – yeah. It's not from Swine, Texas or something like that. Bird flu from Bird, California.

I don't know if these towns exist. Anyway – Let's hope not. Bird, Argentina. Because we would name viruses after their places of their origin, we just automatically started calling it

Wuhan. But that was deemed to be politically incorrect. And then everything else fell into place.

So I couldn't call it Kung flu anymore. Yeah. The World Health Organization decided we're going to call this

COVID -19. It came from China. I do believe it was a manufactured disease. I talk about that in the book.

You want the details? You want the evidence? It's going to be in the book. There you go. The links, the sources, all of that good stuff.

It was manufactured in a lab. I believe that China deliberately released it. And I believe that the

United States was the target. So the coronavirus disease 19, because we don't want to have any blame cast upon China.

Where did the blame go instead? Donald Trump. Yep. He got blamed for COVID. Yeah, he did.

That was so ridiculous. Yeah, he did. People are crazy. That was interesting. And listen, I'm not a fan of Trump, but the disease was not his fault.

It came from China. But you couldn't call it Wuhan. You couldn't call it Kung flu.

Our friend Andy Olson with Echo Zoe Radio came up with a good solution to this, though. COVID -19 stands for Chinese originated viral infection disease of 2019.

So now I'm comfortable with calling it COVID -19. That's fine with me. But that's when the genome was released to the medical world back in January 5th.

And that was how the year started. Well, the year started with Trump killing one of the major generals in Iran.

Right. Do you remember that? Yeah, barely. And everybody thought World War III was going to break out and nothing happened.

I love the Babylon Bee article that followed that. It was World War III, January 2020 to January 2020.

Nothing ever happened. Nothing. It never. That really kind of set the stage for what was going to be a very panic inducing year, though.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Trump takes out an enemy. We thought World War III was going to break out, which was just way overhyped.

But COVID -19 was the real culprit that was going to take us this year. And then we would have the COVID panic of 2020.

So let's keep going. Let's keep going here. Number two. That was the number one article. China exposes the world to COVID -19.

Number two. The oil producing Bible stopped producing oil.

What? January the 10th. Do you know this story? Yeah. We answered questions about this on the podcast because this hoax went from 2017 to the start of 2020.

It was a three year hoax. That's a long time. With these guys in Dalton, Georgia, who had this

Bible that they claimed was producing this miraculous oil. And so people were flooding the church to get some of the oil and they were handing it out for free.

It wasn't like these guys were televangelists and they were conning people for money. They were conning people.

But it was a con where they thought they were just being an encouragement to people, which

I think a great deal of charismaticism is that. Yes. The prophecies.

Yeah. I agree with that. That they get. You know, even speaking in tongues and - Growing legs.

Yeah. Growing out your leg or even it with the other one. They just think they're doing something nice for somebody.

It's still a lie. It's still saying the Bible isn't enough to comfort a person.

We have to come up with all these little gimmicks and ploys and cons. And so these guys had this

Bible that was producing oil, but then there was an investigation done by a newspaper out of Chattanooga and they discovered that Jerry, the guy,

Jerry and Johnny were the two guys' names. I can't remember their last names. But Jerry, who had the Bible, was visiting a farm supply store and he was buying gallons of mineral oil and just dumping it in the bin where they had the

Bible that they claimed was producing this oil. Goodness. And Jerry and Johnny estimated they gave away over 400 gallons of this oil in the three years that they were doing that con.

Oh, the Chattanooga investigator, reporter? No, Johnny admitted that.

Oh, he admitted that? Yeah. Wow. He said they gave away over 400. If memory serves,

Johnny was not in on the con. It was entirely Jerry. Oh, interesting. But Johnny was fully convinced that this

Bible was producing oil. Wow. You can read the story in Slate Magazine. I don't want to sit on this for too long, but we did get some questions.

We fielded some questions about it on the podcast and it became a pretty big story in the country, especially after the

Bible stopped producing oil. There were people that were going in there and doing investigations.

I believe they were just interviewing people in the town. And then once the gig was up, once the con kind of came out at the start of the year, that changed everybody's story.

So everybody was writing their exposés differently after that. That was number two. Number three,

Donald Trump is acquitted January the 16th. He was impeached in December by the

House, went to the Senate for the trial, and then acquitted. No, it wasn't

January 16th. It was February 5th. So it was January 16th, if memory serves, that the articles of impeachment were actually given to the

Senate. When we finished 2019, there was kind of a question mark on everybody's mind because Nancy Pelosi had not taken the articles of impeachment and delivered them to the

Senate. Even though the House had impeached Trump. So everybody's going, so is he impeached or not?

Right. I remember that. Yeah. So the articles were delivered to the Senate. They had a trial. And then it was in February, actually, that he was acquitted of all of that.

Now what does that have to do with the church? Well really? I mean. Yeah. What does that have to do with the church, babe?

No, seriously. I'm asking, do I have to explain? Can't you look in your own congregation and see divisions over opinions about Trump?

Oh my goodness. Albert Mueller talked about that on the briefing too. And he had said that this is one of those issues that demonstrated the divisions that exist among us, not just on politics, but even how

Trump and Biden and different issues on Capitol Hill can represent the different ideologies that we're clinging to and different factions in the church.

So we'll talk more about that though, as we continue to go through this list. Let's get to number four.

On March the 15th, churches close. Wow. Yeah. I remember that.

That was the first Sunday. 15 days to slow the spread began the next day.

That was on March 16th. So many churches closed on the 15th. 15 days to slow the spread started on the 16th.

And then the majority of churches in the U .S. were closed the following Sunday. Yeah. That would have been the 22nd,

I guess. Everybody went online and then it was going to church on Facebook, on YouTube and things like that, which now we're in the debate on, no, that's not going to church.

It's not the same. Yeah. And that really, that was one of the frustrating things about it too, because it's like 15 years of making sure people understand you don't go to church on the internet.

And now suddenly we're telling everybody, just go to church on the internet. Yeah. Well, I mean, we had that push from our president, our

SBC president, about staying home and watching it online with your family.

His church is still closed. The president of the Southern Baptist Convention, his church is closed. Yeah. I won't get on that.

Yeah. Okay. Donald Trump came in at the end of March and said that 15 days to slow the spread has turned into 45.

Yeah. And by the way, we're on day 291 as of today. Good job, guys.

291 days to slow the spread. We're in this together, everybody. Yeah. Hold tight. I'll stay six feet apart.

Yeah. Don't hold tight. Six feet apart. Yeah. Six feet apart. Please, get over there. Yeah. Many churches still closed down, which just doesn't make sense.

This is clearly not what we were told it was going to be. When we were in Kansas at the time,

I was pastoring First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City. Remind me, I got an announcement about that when we get to the end of this episode.

But we never shut down the church. I stayed away from cable news, and I even told the congregation, don't listen to any of these sensationalized reports.

Listen to local officials. Well, that was even wrong. I attended the local virtual meetings online with our local health officials, and the estimates that we were being given by our own hospitals in our own county was that by Easter, there would be 10 ,000

COVID cases. This is in our county of 35 ,000 people, and by Easter, we're going to have 10 ,000.

Hospitals will be overran. They won't have any more rooms. That's right. They won't have enough ventilators.

Yeah. Thousands of deaths. Yes. Millions is what we were being told all over the country.

Millions of people were going to die. Right. We got around to Easter in Geary County, Kansas, about 100 people had

COVID. 10 ,000 was the projection. It wasn't even 10 % of that.

Yeah. A hundred. A hundred people had COVID. So this has been way overblown. People have died.

There have been some serious effects on people who have had it and didn't die, you know, and they're stuck with some of the...

Still suffering. Yeah. Some of the after effects from having the disease. So yeah, it's a serious disease. Very much.

I don't mean to downplay it, but we way overplayed it. Right. Yeah. And there is no reason for churches to be closed right now.

It's a virus. It's sad that anybody catches this, even tragic that somebody would die from it, but there has been no reason to shut down the church.

The world is going to hell in a handbasket this year, and there's a sign of the church that says closed. We don't want you to get sick.

We love you too much. Yeah. Sickness. The sickness is sin and the cure is

Christ. I mean, if they're going to die anyway, why not try to save their soul first? Everybody's dying, folks.

Yep. Who knows how you're going to die today, next year, 10 years. Who knows?

God knows. What you need is the gospel. You need Christ. It is faith in Christ.

That is our only salvation. It's not a mask. It's not six feet of social distancing. Which have become like magical things in 2020.

Yeah. Just a mask and six feet of distance, and that's all you need. We're going to talk about that some more in a minute here. So, coming up to article number five, the fifth headline of the year,

March 18th, celebrities serenade us with Imagine by John Lennon.

Oh, boy. I tried to forget. Thank you. Yep. So, tell us, enlighten us, how does this affect the

Christian, how's this a Christian headline? Well, because it starts with the line, imagine there's no heaven.

It's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. Yeah. And this is the song of hope that all these millionaire celebrities wanted to bestow on a bunch of people, starting with Gal Gadot, Wonder Woman, whose movie has just bombed.

Oh, ouch. Wonder Woman 84 is largely panned by critics.

It has been terrible. I never saw it. I didn't care. But, yeah, so she's got two dozen celebrities in this video all singing a different line of imagine.

Yeah. Their total accumulated wealth is $500 million. What? And they're telling us that imagine no possessions, it's easy if you try.

Yeah. It was just the most hypocritical thing ever. And, I mean, even secular leftist newspapers were saying that.

Yeah, that's true. They were all saying this is totally off the mark. That's true. Totally insensitive. But, anyway, what people need is to know that there is a heaven and there is a hell.

Right. And there is Christ who has saved us from the wrath of God that is burning against all the unrighteousness of man.

Amen. Telling people imagine there's no heaven or hell is not a hopeful message. No. Telling them about Christ is giving a person hope.

Yeah. That's interesting. Continuing on to number six, the

Southern Baptist Convention is canceled. That's on March the 24th is when we got that announcement.

J .D. Greer stays president for another year. What on earth? I do not understand.

J .D. Greer is the president that is never going to go away. Watch the convention for 2021.

It's going to get canceled, too. I don't understand how, even with the cancellation, we don't get a mail -in vote?

That's right. I mean, come on, people. We all had to mail in our votes for Trump, but no, not

Greer. Greer just gets to stay president. That bugs me because there were so many complaints that I was hearing.

I mean, I was seeing it online. I was hearing it from other places, yet he still gets a pass?

It's an easy pass. He got the participation trophy. There you go. What on earth?

There have been so many issues under his presidency, but not dwelling on that for too long. Also, this is still under that headline number six.

The United Methodist Church also canceled their annual meeting, which delays their split because we all know the

United Methodist Church is about to split. That's what's going to happen at their next convention, but they canceled it for 2020.

It's coming up in 2021, maybe, and then you're going to have the split of the United Methodist Church into the liberals and the traditionalists,

I think, is how they're breaking it up. But that's what's coming. Maybe. Southern Baptist canceled theirs.

You've got to show love to one another. Yeah. We're in this together, everybody. Number seven.

April 2nd, Kenneth Copeland blows away COVID -19.

COVID -19! Oh, my goodness. Would you go back and watch it now?

Oh, my goodness. It is so funny. No. It's so hilarious. It gives me the willies.

Oh, he's creepy as all get out. Yeah, no kidding about that. I'm not joking. When you watch the whole video, though, everybody was spoofing his whole blowing away thing, came up with some of the best memes that we ever saw in 2020.

And even putting them on masks. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And blowing away COVID -19 on masks.

That was just hilarious. I hope he's not getting any royalties from that. He's already worth over $700 million.

What? He's worth more than all those celebrities singing Imagine. I'm not even kidding. Yep. It's the people that he's conned for decades.

Guys, go out and spread the gospel. Seriously, these people need it. Yeah. I know this is hilarious that he did this, but the sad thing is people truly are conned by Kenneth Copeland.

Yeah. That's a lot of people. Yeah. But anyway, what I wanted to mention about this. Yeah, sorry. If you watch the whole thing, he does this whole thing of blowing away

COVID -19. Once he gets to the end of that, and he's talking with his little co -magicians up there that are all reciting his incantation with him as he's doing this whole

COVID -19 thing. He looks at one of them, and he says, You know, the Lord just revealed this to me.

It's even better if there's no wind at all. So he totally just negated this entire thing that he just did of this ritual.

Yeah, he probably second -guessed himself about blowing on others. And he realized it wasn't a good idea to blow.

The thing he was talking about was that heat would just scorch the virus and kill it. So if there was no wind, it just sits there, and then it gets scorched by the heat and kills it.

You could not write a more ridiculous script for him than just comes out of his face all the time.

But yeah, like you said, he is constantly conning people. That's the sad thing about it. At least some good news came out of Kenneth Copeland for 2020.

He got removed from TBN. Oh, right. The Kenneth Copeland Hour, or whatever it was, is no longer on Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Unfortunately, they replaced it with Stephen Furtick. Number eight.

April the 8th, the first mask mandates got handed down. After we went through the first third of the year with all of these medical professionals telling us, no, you don't need a mask.

In fact, don't get a mask because the health professionals need them. So if you get a mask, then they don't get any.

They don't have enough. Right. You were going to say something else. Oh, no. And now it's just like, if you're not wearing a mask, you're like, whoa.

Yeah. Fortunately, where we are, that's not the case. Well, no, but I mean, it's still awkward whenever the sign says, please wear a mask.

No, it's not. You walk in anyway. I feel just fine. I am not weirded out by this at all.

I feel like I'm not obeying the rules, but the rules are ridiculous. You don't go out as often as I do. No, I don't.

You do it enough times, you don't even think about it anymore. I don't go out. Not often.

I'll have one with me just in case somebody actually does say something. Sir, you need to put on a mask. Right. Okay, fine.

I put my bandana on because the bandana doesn't bother me that much. Yeah. If I put a mask on. But I always get tickled.

Like, it tickles my nose. That's right. And I always touch my face. And like, something about it just dries out my throat and I cough all the time.

I'm like, people probably think I have COVID. Yes. The masks and the social distancing are what is spreading

COVID -19 more than a person not wearing a mask at all. And the reason is because people are wearing these masks and they're distancing from one another, believing that that is some measure of safety.

And so they are not exercising safety anywhere else. Right. Yes. Like washing their hands.

You're washing hands. That's a big one. You got people with masks on that are going out that have some light symptoms.

But they think, hey, I'm wearing a mask, so I'm not going to get anybody else sick. Right. And they're spreading COVID. Right.

They don't have a serious case of COVID. It's just a light case. It's not something that's going to knock me out and put me in bed.

Just a little fever. Yeah, just a little something, little cough. And I go out and I've got a mask on, so I'm fine.

And they're spreading COVID to everybody. The mask doesn't stop it. And the box of masks tells you that.

It's on the box. Yes, it is. It even says COVID -19 on it. Because they know they have to put that on there so they don't get sued when people start getting sick with COVID -19.

Yeah. That's how it's getting spread. So if I feel sick, I'm not going to go out.

And then I'm protecting people. Right. Which, by the way, that's what Leviticus 13 says. Are you even aware that there are laws in the

Bible about quarantine? What? Yeah. Surprise. I'm sure there are. God thinks of everything.

Because they were dealing with leprosy back then, too. Yeah, right. That's what it was, mostly. But you quarantine the sick.

You don't quarantine the healthy. Right. Closing down the church for everyone is not good for anyone.

Tell a person who's sick to stay home. Right. The masks and the distancing don't work. Or the ones who have the immune deficiency.

Yeah, right. You have a compromised immune system. That's it. Right. Healthy people are not spreading

COVID -19. Right. And they've determined that. And you have surveys, the studies and stuff like that, that have been coming out over the last few weeks that have been showing.

Mm -hmm. Asymptomatic persons do not spread COVID -19. Right. Again, it's just more evidence that we've overreacted to this whole thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, moving on then. Next. Number nine, the death of Ravi Zacharias. That was on May 19th.

Now, in the book, when I cover this, I talk not only about his death, but also the scandals that have been uncovered since then.

Yeah. So, we know now that has been confirmed by Christianity Today, an investigation done by World Magazine, and then another investigation that was done by Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

Mm -hmm. All of them have confirmed it is true Ravi Zacharias was a sexual deviant, that he had these massage parlors that he was a co -owner of, and that he would solicit the women there for certain favors.

That's sad. Even Ravi's own family has come out and admitted this. It's just heartbreaking.

Yeah. Devastating for the family to have to come out and admit that. And we should pray for them, we should pray for those who had been affected by what

Ravi has done. Definitely. And I mean, when I say that, I'm not even just talking about those women that he had asked favors from.

I'm even talking about every single person who is now looking at this man with admiration in his life.

Mm -hmm. He died this year, he's gone, and all of this scandal breaks out. Yeah. And there will be hundreds, if not thousands of people that are going to look at the life of Ravi Zacharias and say, it was all fake.

Yeah. He didn't even mean what he preached. Right. Yeah. So, I guess God's not real. People will go that far.

Yep. May we be convicted in our hearts to watch ourselves, that we know that we are just as weak and capable of falling into sins of our flesh.

And never think of yourself too proudly that you're going to be greater or better than any of this. Right. If we do not watch ourselves, if we do not hold fast to Christ.

Keep each other accountable. And keep each other accountable. Any one of us can fall into serious sin. Probably not with the platform that Ravi had.

Right. But still. Yeah. The scripture tells us, the Apostle Paul is saying to the

Thessalonians, see to it that no one wrong his brother in this, in sexual immorality.

Yeah. And when part of the body is sick, that affects the whole body. Yep. So. Spreads like gangrene.

Yeah. Number 10. Lead singer of Hawk Nelson becomes apostate. That was on May the 20th.

He made that announcement on Instagram that he was no longer a believer. Oh, yeah. I remember that.

And admitted in the same article that he had known that for a long time, but continued being the lead singer of a

Christian band anyway. And in my article in response to that, I said, the man's a liar.

He is a liar. He lied to people for years and cashed in on being the lead singer of a

Christian band. John Steingart is his name. He contacted me after that. Oh, yeah. And he was upset that I called him a liar.

I'm like, man, you were. Yeah. You admitted it. Nobody likes being called out on what they're doing.

Yeah. And there were other people that were fans of Hawk Nelson said the same thing to me. You shouldn't call him a liar. He's speaking his truth.

His truth. Yeah. Two plus two does not equal five. Earlier in the year, we didn't talk about this one as much, but you also had

Rhett and Link. Oh, yeah. Of Good Mythical Morning. We used to watch that all the time. Becky and I, we loved it.

The earlier things we loved. Yeah. The earlier things. Right. Yeah. We stopped watching because they did start getting, we could tell something was happening.

Yeah. And then when the news came out at the start of the year that they had apostatized also. Right. They're sharing their deconversion story.

There was an article about it in the Gospel Coalition and all of this. Anyway, very sad to see all of that.

And these people have influences on others. And there are going to be other people that are going to follow as well.

Weren't they on one of the kids shows? Yeah. No, it was the What's in the

Bible. What's in the Bible. Right. By Phil Vischer. Yep. He's in my list, too, by the way.

Yep. Yep. So, I mean, guys, whenever we're saying all this, start putting these things together.

Yeah. They are connected. We got 20 minutes left and we're only a quarter of the way through our list.

All right, let's keep going. Might have to speed it up here. Plug through. Number 11, May the 25th, the death of George Floyd.

Oh, yeah. That was a big one. And then some crazy riots ensued from there. Now, Breonna Taylor's death was on March the 13th.

I didn't include that as a headline because it really did not become a big deal until later. There weren't a lot of people that were paying attention to her death.

And then you also had Ahmaud Arbery, who had been killed earlier in the year. And those three names became some big names in the

Black Lives Matter movement. Right. For 2020. And the Black Lives Matter movement was happening, continued happening from 2019.

Is that right? Oh, yeah. It's been going on. No, it's been going on since before Ferguson, Missouri.

Oh, right. Because there was something that happened. It was before Michael Brown's death.

Right. That started the whole thing. But then that kind of escalated it. Right. So we've been saying. For a few years.

Yeah. A couple years. People have been saying Black Lives Matter for the last few years. But you've had crazy riots that have ensued in response to the whole

George Floyd thing. Everybody lost their heads. Yeah. More people have died over this. Lives have been devastated.

Yeah. Because of the reaction to it. Far worse than what happened in Minnesota on that day.

Yeah. The reaction cannot be worse than the thing that you're protesting.

Thank you. Because then that's nonsense. What good are you actually doing then? Aren't you trying to make it better?

Yeah. You know, like improve the world, not make it worse. People are ruining others' lives.

And George Floyd, you know, was not a saint. The man was breaking the law.

And we also know that he was COVID positive. We also know that he was on drugs at the time.

And he was complaining about not being able to breathe before he was put on the ground. Right. Now, I'm not saying that that justifies the situation.

It's still an ongoing investigation. But all of that to say. Is it really? Yeah. It's still going on. Yeah. There's still a trial for the guy that had his knee on George Floyd's head.

Just checking. I would just encourage you to listen to the Just Thinking podcast. Because their episode on George Floyd and the gospel is the best response that I've heard to this whole thing.

That's awesome. So, go listen to Daryl Harrison and Virgil Walker on Just Thinking. Look up that episode,

George Floyd and the gospel. Number 12. June the 1st.

Donald Trump holds up a Bible. Now, this was in the midst of all of these riots that were going on.

Yeah. And the shutdown and the mask mandate. The whole thing. Yeah. All of this was just kind of bubbling over.

Yeah. Became this massive chaos all across the country. But St.

John's Church, which was right near the White House, got burned down. After a press conference,

Donald Trump walks across the White House lawn. He walks through the park. He goes over to St.

John's Church and he holds up a Bible. Now, there were tons of people, including among evangelicals, who were making fun of Trump for that.

Right. Because it was just like a total photo op. Right. He just stands there with a Bible. So, they're talking about how phony it was and all this kind of thing.

I don't think people understood what he was doing. And, of course, he didn't articulate it well anyway because he doesn't articulate anything well.

Yeah. What he was demonstrating. You have to go back to the press conference that he just had. What he was demonstrating is that we're not going to let these thugs and hooligans that are ransacking the country.

We're not going to let them burn down our churches. And so, the president demonstrates that by walking across the way on foot, standing in front of the cathedral and holding up a

Bible. It wasn't a cathedral. It was St. John's Church. It was not something to do a photo op.

Look how holy and righteous that I could be. It was a demonstration that you're not going to harm our churches.

Right. But everybody totally missed that. Oh, yeah. Then you had Nancy Pelosi and Cuomo, the governor of New York.

All of them start opening their Bibles because they start saying Trump needed to do more than just stand there with a

Bible. If he would open it and read it, then he would have read. And then, like, Pelosi slamming Trump and Cuomo's slamming

Trump. But you did not hear anything from the critics who were criticizing Trump for doing that.

They weren't criticizing Pelosi and Cuomo for doing the same thing.

The exact same thing. That was so hypocritical. But that was that event.

So, you can just imagine how there was division among the church as a result of that. All right.

Keep going. Trump holding up a Bible. June the 1st. Article number 13. June the 7th. The church's march.

The churches are closed. Right. Everybody's masking. Everybody's social distancing.

But they go out and march in the protests. Stay home was still being proclaimed. That's right. David Platt, the beady annual wheelie, organized a march in Washington, D .C.

Not kidding. Ed Stetzer. So, no kidding. I wrote this down because Ed Stetzer deletes his tweets.

You can only see about 70 of his tweets. Okay. I think he deletes everything that is older than two weeks old.

So, I had to write this down because I knew they weren't going to be there anymore. On a Monday, he said, the fact that the

Supreme Court made a bad ruling does not mean your church should rush to meet. That was with the Vegas ruling that came up in July.

Okay. So, that was on a Monday. Just because the Supreme Court made a bad ruling, that doesn't mean you rushed your church to get together for church.

Ed Stetzer. Okay. Now, wait, wait. Explain to me who Ed Stetzer is. Used to be.

It sounds so familiar, but I can't. Yeah. He used to be the director of Lifeway. Okay. Something with Lifeway.

I can't remember what office they created for him to be there. And then he followed up Erwin Lutzer at Moody Church as the interim pastor there.

Okay. But anyway, so then going on. That was on a Monday when he said that. On Tuesday, he wrote an article,

Why I Protest and Encourage You to Do So Too. So, on Monday. Wait, what? Yeah. On Monday, he's telling you don't go to church.

On Tuesday, he's saying go out and protest. This is the seared conscience that exists in American evangelicalism right now.

It's absurd. Make sure you are not being hypocritical.

Yeah. What is it? Don't let your. Two -faced. Two -faced, but it's like your right hand's doing something, but your left hand's doing something else.

Yeah, that's in the Sermon on the Mount. Yeah. But I don't think that's the same thing. Do not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing.

Give in secret. And then the Father who sees in secret will reward you. Okay, yeah, that's not the same thing.

That's about giving. But seriously, I mean, you should not be speaking out of two sides of your face.

Yeah. That's, I mean, you drive yourself insane. Well, that's where the word hypocritical comes from.

You're an actor. So, you give one performance, but then you live this way on another side of yourself.

That was the reference Jesus made even when he said to the hypocrites, or he said to the Pharisees in Matthew chapter 23.

Oh, yeah. You hypocrites. Yep. You tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but you are not willing to move them with your little finger.

That's kind of a paraphrase of verse four. It's not exactly that way, but we're seeing that quite a bit in American evangelicalism right now.

Yeah. Churches are marching while churches are closed. Number 14.

This was on June the 10th. J .D. Greer declares Black Lives Matter.

It was on the same day that he called for the retirement of the Broadus gavel, which is the hammer, the

Broadus gavel. They bring it out to do all the call to order and stuff like that in the Southern Baptist Convention.

But it's named after a guy who was a slave holder, so we need to retire the Broadus gavel. Wow. We also had the story this year.

I can't remember when this happened. It's a gavel. It's a hammer. Yeah, I know. It's a gavel.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why do you need to? Sorry, I thought you said, what's a gavel? No. I don't remember when this happened, but there was the story of Max Likado bowing his knee and asking for forgiveness.

David Platt said that he's part of the problem. His whiteness is what's caused this problem, and he's asked for forgiveness.

Folks, if you're a racist, if you're going to stand in front of people as a pastor and admit that you're a racist, resign.

Yep. You have no place being there. Right. And if you claim that, as somebody who is white, there is no way that I can understand the experience of a person who's black, then what's going to happen when the

LGBTQ people come after the church even harder than they already have? I mean, we're going to hear pastors say,

I'm a straight man, so I can't understand your experience at all and start welcoming LGBTQ persons into the church, positions of leadership, and so on.

It's the same pattern. Yeah. We've seen this happen already over the last 20 years. That's where it went with legalizing gay marriage.

It's going to do the same thing in the church. Yeah. They're coming after every area of life in America and elsewhere.

Be certain of that. They aren't done yet. Nope. Continuing on with June the 14th.

This is our 15th article here, June 14th. That was when Phil Vischer released his

Race in America video. So Phil Vischer, the creator of Veggie Tales, goes woke.

And What's in the Bible. What's in the Bible, yeah. Creator of What's in the Bible, Jelly Telly, all of that. We unsubscribed from Jelly Telly when all of that happened.

I mean, Vischer was already saying some weird things up to that point, but that just kind of was the straw that broke the camel's back.

And in that video, he even says he has no solutions to this problem.

The things that divide us, he has no solutions. No solutions. It's Christ. The gospel is what unites us.

He can't even share the gospel there? It's unbelievable. And all of his sources, by the way, in that video were secular, too, on top of that.

All of his sources were pro -LGBTQ. And I made the comment in my blog responding to it.

If it sounds like, if this video, after you're done watching it, it sounds like something a leftist would say, that's because that's exactly what it is.

That's where Vischer got all of his stuff from. We had a lot of weird comments all year long.

That's just the one that I zeroed in on, because that was one of the most popular videos. But you had Eric Mason's sermon where he was calling for reparations.

You had Charlie Dates, his comment on Twitter that reconciliation was not possible without reparations.

You have Thabiti's comment on Twitter, black solidarity before Christian. You had Ligon Duncan's comments that came out just a few weeks ago where he said, my black friends cannot trust me, and they're not going to be able to for more than 100 years.

He's going to be dead by then. Everything, and in 2020, everything was racist.

Yep. Eskimo pies were racist. Yes. Aunt Jemima was racist. Yes. Everything was.

All the statues. Yeah, tear down the statues, graffiti on everything. Rename the

NFL. Oh, yeah, that's right. So Washington Redskins, now it's just the Washington football team.

Yep. I mean, we're going as PC as possible on all of this stuff. It's still not, the sport is still not correctly named.

It's not even football. Soccer's football. Yeah. All right, we continue on.

Number 16 was the Bostock decision. I'm not going to sit on this one too long. That was on June the 15th, and the

Supreme Court, basically by judicial fiat, had already passed the Equality Rights Act.

So you're hearing Biden and Harris saying that on their first days in office, they're going to pass the

Equality Rights Act. They're going to put it through Congress, and they're going to get this thing passed. Yeah. But, I mean, the

Supreme Court's already done that. It's already done. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. With the Bostock decision, it's now

LGBTQ rights. Yep. And there cannot be any discrimination at all. Now, so far, the churches and Christian entities are protected, like Christian colleges and universities, schools, things like that.

So far. Yeah, so far. That isn't going to last. Number 17, Just Thinking is the number one

Christian podcast in the nation. Boop, boop. That was on June the 22nd. Good work, guys.

They beat out Max Licato, Joel Osteen, Sadie Robertson, the gal from Duck Dynasty.

Yeah. Her podcast, one of the top ten Christian podcasts in the country. Wow. Stephen Furtick, The Bible Project, Just Thinking was number one.

That's awesome. And that happened twice in the year, once in June and once in September. So, well done, guys, and it is well deserved.

Number 18, The Death of J .I. Packer. That was on July the 17th. Your ESV Bible was edited by J .I.

Packer. Yeah. A titan in Christianity, and very sad to lose him.

John Lewis, the representative from Georgia, died that same day. So everybody's emphasis was on John Lewis.

Yeah. It was almost like, unless you really knew who J .I. Packer was, his death got very little mentioned in the news at all.

Number 19, The Calvary Chapel in Vegas decision in the Supreme Court. That was on July the 24th, in which the

Supreme Court ruled in a 5 -4 decision that the governor of Vegas had a right to implement on churches that they could not gather in groups of more than 50.

Meanwhile, casinos could be open. Exactly. It was one of the biggest infringements upon freedom of religion in the history of the

United States of America. Yeah. That was big. There was another decision later on in the year in which – man, we're not going to make it in under an hour here.

There was another decision later on in the year that was the same kind of case, but went the other way.

Yeah. And we'll talk about that here in a little bit. That just kind of shows the finickiness of the

Supreme Court and how grateful we are for Amy Coney Barrett being on the court now as well. Yes.

Yes. Number 20. We're only halfway through our articles here. Halfway. This was on July the 26th.

Todd White repents. But not really. But not really.

Yeah, we covered that for two weeks on our podcast. Yep, we did. Because we listened to it the first time.

Thought maybe. Yeah. We'll see. We're rejoicing. Pretty cool to hear him do this.

Yep. And then the second week. Even some of our friends like Ray Comfort. He's talking about reading

Spurgeon. Yep. It's pretty fascinating what's going on here. Then the next week, no.

It was totally back to his old ways. Totally flipped the switch back.

I will say, I mean, for him to say, I repent. I've never preached the gospel at all up to this point.

That was kind of a gift regardless of whether or not he was truly repentant. Because now we can have it in his own words.

He's been a liar all up to this point. He admitted it. And then after that, he's saying the same stuff.

So you can just reference that again. Just go back to it again. All we have to do. So can I trust

Todd White? Nope. Here's why. Yep. Yep. Number 21. California bands singing in church.

July the 29th. Yeah. Okay, keep going. We've got to speed it up. Well, I was trying to remember

Gavin Newsom's name off the top of my head, the governor of California. All that was coming to my mind was

Governor Kendall. Because that's what Fred Butler calls him. Oh, funny.

So that's all I had. I had Governor Kendall in my head. There you go, Fred. Yeah. And then we would have this wonderful battle all year long, all the rest of the year,

July on through the rest of the year, between Gavin Newsom and John MacArthur. Yes. Yes. That was just awesome.

That was good entertainment for us because we're watching it, but I'm sure for them it was kind of frustrating.

Yeah, Newsom is able to get his way on everything except MacArthur. Yep. He's not getting anything.

Number 22. Very sad. I'm going to mention this one and then it'll be in the book as well, but on August the 4th, the

Beirut explosion. Yeah, that was really sad. You can still find a lot of the videos of that.

And, I mean, Beirut is still hugely affected by that. And we've heard reports from missionaries that have been in that part of the world and talking about the things they're struggling with and what they're doing to help the people and try to rebuild.

And this didn't just result in a massive devastation of an area of land, a huge hit on the economy, loss of life.

The entire government resigned. Oh, that's right. I forgot about that.

That entire governing cabinet at the time resigned because of the mess that this created.

Some of them resigned because they caused the mess and others resigned because they didn't want to clean it up. Right. It was just going to be too much work, too much pressure.

Be in prayer. Continue to pray for Beirut. Number 23. John MacArthur goes to church. August the 9th.

That's the way I titled the article because I just thought it was great. And then everything that's come from that since then.

So John MacArthur goes to church. Yeah, that was great. Yep. And some great sermons.

People started coming. That's right. Thousands, thousands of people come to church. Even our friends.

There's currently an attempt to try to smear MacArthur and Grace Community Church.

Julie Roys is at the tip of the spear of this one right now because it's all these articles about how there's like this

COVID outbreak at the church and there's this big cover up and the staff is afraid to come out and say anything because they're afraid they're going to lose their jobs or whatever else, which is complete gossip.

No, Joe. It is nothing but gossip. I'm friends with people that work over there.

Us too. Yeah, me too. I mean, they'll tell me. They're amazing. Yeah, they're amazing people and they'll tell you.

They'll straight up tell you, yeah, we've had some COVID cases. Yeah. It's not an outbreak. At the time when people were saying there's been an outbreak of COVID at Grace Community, I think they had three cases.

Yeah, they had three out of thousands of people. Out of thousands of people. Three cases. So there's an outbreak.

It is a wonderful blessing of God that out of thousands of people, hardly anybody had been getting sick.

Praise the Lord. And it just further goes to show this is totally overhyped. And even the people that are trying to smear

Grace Community Church and say something sinister is going on there because a dozen people got sick or something like that.

I mean, they're overblowing this whole thing as well. Just for a little bit of gossip, a few extra clicks online, a little more attention, that's all it's for.

Get on the bandwagon. That's right. Number 24. Jerry Falwell Jr. resigns as president of Liberty University.

And that was on August the 25th. And then we had a bunch of scandals that were uncovered as a result of that as well.

Both he and his wife have been involved in adulterous liaisons.

Something else that brings a reproach on Liberty, there are some good Christian people that work there.

And Jerry Falwell is an awful man. So be in prayer for people that work there.

Be in prayer for Jerry and his wife that they would repent. We've seen a lot of scandals with a lot of evangelical leaders this year.

You had Carl Lentz, who was from Hillsong. Oh, right. His adultery was uncovered.

Carl Lentz from Hillsong, New York. He was a pastor of Hillsong, New York. You had

John Gray, used to work at Joel Osteen's church, Lakewood, in Houston.

Then he went and started his own church in North Carolina. We already knew that John Gray had cheated on his wife before.

I guess this happened again. I don't remember all the story behind it. But then there was Darren Patrick's suicide.

Oh, yeah. Now, Art Azurdia, a couple of years ago, it was uncovered that he had an affair.

And he was forced to resign from his church in Oregon. But he's attempting to make a comeback. So he's been out on the circuit in 2020, preaching and doing things like that, and shouldn't be.

He's made a shipwreck of his ministry. It's done. It's over. So what he was gifted in doing as a pastor, he did it.

He blew it. And now he is no longer above reproach. So he cannot have that platform back again.

And it's just kind of sad to see. These guys are totally unable to move on to anything else once they fall into that sin and disgrace themselves and their church.

And their families. And their families. That's the thing with Carl Lentz, too. I know his family is just absolutely devastated.

The wife of one of the other pastors there at Hillsong in New York went after Carl Lentz online, called him a big fake and a phony and all this kind of stuff.

Oh, wow. It was brutal. So, yeah, an entire church breaking up over this whole thing as well.

Number 25, Not the Bee launched on August the 31st. That is, like, the greatest thing ever.

There are so many ridiculous headlines, especially in 2020, that the news was outdoing the satire site, the

Babylon Bee. So they launched a separate site. They've already got Discern, which is great news.

Yeah. Great source for some good news from a Christian worldview.

Great op -eds. Peter Heck does some awesome op -ed pieces for Discern. You've got

Discern. You've got the Babylon Bee. And then they decided to launch another site they came up with, Not the Bee. Perfect.

So this is actual headlines, really in the news, that aren't satire, but they sure look like it.

They sound like it. I always have to double check and make sure it's

Not the Bee or if it's the Bee. Right. The Babylon Bee. Now, this was my favorite Babylon Bee article for the year.

Okay. Ruth Bader Ginsburg had just died. And as a spoof, the

Babylon Bee said that the NBA was paying tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsburg by wearing that little lace frock thing that she would have on her.

Yeah, the collar. The lace collar that she had that went over her black robe. So the NBA was wearing those in her honor, according to the

Babylon Bee. Right. There were people that legitimately believed it. People in the news believed it.

And they started sharing it. And what's even funnier about that is people in secular news hate the

Babylon Bee, but they thought that was real. Oh, my goodness.

It's like, what in the world? You guys just totally... Are you not looking just a little bit to the left to see where that article came from?

That was amazing. That was my favorite Babylon Bee moment of the year. I loved that one.

Now, President Trump apparently retweeted a Babylon Bee article. And there are people that thought that Trump was fooled by the article.

Right. Like he thought it was real and it wasn't. It was satire. We don't actually know. There wasn't enough context given in his tweet to know whether he actually thought that was real or he was retweeting a joke.

That was another overreaction to something. The number one Babylon Bee article of the year is also their most trafficked article that they've ever done.

And it was the one with the hole cut in Joe Biden's mask so his nose...

So he could still smell people's hair. He could still sniff hair. That's terrible.

Joe Biden cuts a hole in his mask so he could still sniff hair. That was...

They said... I talked with a couple of guys behind the scenes over at the Babylon Bee and they said it was just millions and millions of clicks on that video or video on the article.

On the article, yeah. People just love that one. That was hilarious. All right, number 26.

We went long last year, too. We did. I think it was an hour and a half episode. We just have to expect our end of the year episode is going to go long.

Number 26, Cuties hit Netflix on September 9th.

Yeah. Fortunately, we got rid of Netflix over a year ago. Some of the stuff that I've seen since even the

Cuties article just continues to affirm for me. Yeah, I'm glad we don't have

Netflix. Yeah. There's nothing they're doing that I need to have Netflix in order to see. Nobody needs this stuff.

You shouldn't be supporting Netflix. But anyway, yeah. So you had this basically what amounts to child porn that came out with this movie called

Cuties. And I'm not going to give any details, but I did read the parental guidance thing that tells you about the content that's in the movie.

Yeah. And it's child porn. It's awful that they sexualize these little girls in this way for this movie.

And by the way, the film was made in France, and they did that because they could get away with it in France.

You could not have made this movie in the United States. They made it in France and distributed it through Netflix, which is about as much a porn website as it is.

I mean, you've got shows on there for kids, and I think you've got the kids channel and stuff like that. But there sure is a lot of awful stuff on Netflix.

But on the opposite side, like flip side of that, Amazon now has the

American Gospel. Yeah, American Gospels on Amazon. So that's a huge plus this year.

Lots of stuff coming to Amazon. And that medium, that platform has been very advantageous for a lot of Christians to be able to utilize that.

Netflix is not built the same way. Right. Amazon's built in a totally different way. So it's great to see those kinds of shows.

Look for that kind of thing on Amazon, because they'll be on Prime, and they'll be free. It's awesome. Yeah. Check out American Gospel if you haven't seen it.

In addition to cuties, there was also the whole thing with Pornhub that happened this year, having child porn on Pornhub.

Oh. Man, I hate even talking about this. I hate that this is even coming out of my mouth. Anyway, so they ended up dumping a bunch of their stuff.

Yeah, certain words I can't even use without just delving right into awfulness.

Unfortunately, these are not victories, though. Even when that website does that thing, and people are going, yay, finally they knocked out all this content that was on their site, that site should not exist at all.

Right. It exists because of sin. Yeah, right. As long as people are entertained by that kind of thing, there's going to be worse and worse sins that they're going to platform and put out in front of people.

If it's lucrative, they're going to do it. Right. With the child stuff that was on there, that was hurting the business.

That's why it disappeared. Right. It's not because anybody had an attack of conscience. Yeah, or a victory.

Right. It's because it's hurting our bottom line here. That's why they got rid of it. Like we said, everything's going to hell in a handbasket, but keep the doors of the church closed.

Yeah, so next on the list. Number 27, the

Abraham Accords. September the 15th is the date that I have on it, but there's actually several of these.

Okay. This is the Trump administration brokering several peace deals between Arab -majority countries and Israel.

Oh, wow. Peace is spreading. That's huge. In the Middle East. Yeah, it is. It's huge. Now, the

Democrats, the left, they hate this. Why? That gets them, they're no war, you know, because they're against war and everything.

Well, that's the thing. They're not. They're not really against war. There has never been an anti -war president as much as Trump for the last,

I mean, I don't know how many decades. Trump has been the most against conflict of anybody else.

Interesting. But, yeah, the left hates all what he's accomplishing out there in the

Middle East. There have been no new conflicts under Trump, even with the attack at the start of the year where he knocked off that general from Iran.

Yeah. There still has not been any new conflicts under Donald Trump, and he's the first president in I don't know how long.

That's amazing. And his brokering peace deals with Israel. So far in 2020, the

United Arab Emirates, the Persian Gulf Island nation of Bahrain, and the northern

African countries of Sudan and Morocco, they have all agreed to normalize diplomatic relations with the

Jewish state. That's awesome. So, yeah, praise God for that, seeing peace in the

Middle East. Number 28, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg on September the 18th.

If memory serves, I don't know this for certain, I might be speaking out of turn of events here, but if memory serves,

Trump had just returned from one of those peace deals, making one of those peace deals when the announcement was given to him that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had just died.

Yeah, I think so. He was either traveling or just got back from traveling. Got done with a speech or something like that.

But anyway, yeah, so Ginsburg. Because they wanted him to be all riled up or say something dumb.

But he was very. He was a gentleman about it, I thought. He was very respectful. I think so. Now, Ginsburg is the most leftist judge in the history of the

Supreme Court. There has never been anyone as far to the left as she has been. Everything that could benefit abortion, she has been for it.

She voted in favor of legalizing same -sex marriage back in 2015. And anything left,

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a matriarch for it. And a wicked woman.

I mean, yes, it is tragic that she died. Yes. But this was a wicked woman who did wicked things.

And there are lives that are saved by the fact that she is no longer on the bench of the

Supreme Court. In her place came Amy Coney Barrett. We went from Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Amy Coney Barrett.

We'll talk about that here in just a moment. Number 29. Pro -life evangelicals for Biden launches on October the 2nd.

Yeah, that's interesting. And as I pointed out in my article, which you can still go back and read, there is no such thing as a pro -life evangelical for Biden.

You are compromising on a pro -life ethic to say that as a pro -lifer, I am going to vote for Joe Biden.

Yeah. Biden, who has said. And here was the thing about the article that I wrote, too. I pointed out that just days after.

I think it was like two days after pro -life evangelicals for Biden launched their site and the whole like agreement statement that was co -signed by all these liberal people who claim to be

Christians after just days after that happened, Joe Biden says that we're going to codify

Roe v. Wade. So the Roe v. Wade decision from 1973 that legalized abortion on demand.

Right. He's going to make it law. Oh, so it's not just a court decision now in the way that it's interpreted in the

Constitution, because there are all these states that are passing these abortion regulations.

Biden says we combat that by making a federal law that protects the right to kill a child at any stage of development in pregnancy.

They could be minutes away from birth. Doesn't matter. They can still be legally killed, according to the way that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris define this.

And, you know, if they're minutes away from birth, that even if the child is accidentally born, they're going to still perfectly viable human being.

Yes. And they'll still kill it. Right. That's not going to get it to the adoption agency or anything like that.

Yeah. Every Democrat president that becomes president is more liberal on abortion than the previous one.

Obama was worse than Clinton. Yeah. Biden and Kamala are going to be worse than Obama. Hillary was worse than Obama.

Hillary was worse than Clinton. Yeah. And she's a Clinton. Yeah. They are a bloodthirsty party.

And incidentally, no organization has ever been more racist than Planned Parenthood.

Yeah. In the history of the United States. And yet, when we have all these marches going on and defund the police and all this other kind of stuff.

Planned Parenthood is right there. And aren't they supporting? Yeah. And they're supporting the whole thing. Right. They're even supporting

Black Lives Matter. Encouraging it. When there are some cities where more black babies are aborted than born.

Yeah. New York City being one of those. So, yeah, the pro -life evangelicals for Biden, shame on you guys and repent before God.

Number 30, millions of Americans lose their jobs due to the pandemic. I put this on October the 7th because the article that I'm going to cite and talk about this in my book, that was the date of the article was

October the 7th. And of course, we're expecting later in the year, six months after we get to lockdown and all this other kind of stuff, we start to examine.

So what kind of an effect has this had? Right. Well, millions of people have lost their jobs.

Yeah. I think in the. Lost up shops. Yeah. Completely lost businesses. Yes. Have had to leave states entirely.

Yeah. Are still leaving states. Yeah. There are more people moving out of the state of New York than moving into it.

I don't doubt it. California being another one, but, you know, we just left Kansas and Kansas is one of those states.

Yeah. They're in the top 10 of people moving out. And it's not because Kansas is extremely liberal.

It's because there's not any job opportunities there. Right. So as people are losing their jobs and I mean, the governors of those states, well, governors of those states, governors of Kansas have regularly been bad.

Brownback was pretty good. But I mean, right now the governor of Kansas is from New York.

She's from New York city. Yeah. How did she become the governor of Kansas? We've talked about that enough.

I know. Okay. So we're moving on. We're moving on. But, but just the fact that millions of Americans have lost their jobs and, and how many people are displaced as a result of that.

And yet we, as Christians, we're not talking about that as much. Right. The stuff that is permeating.

And loving your neighbor is going and giving them meals and, and helping them. Right. And if you have jobs to give, give them jobs.

But no, what we're talking about is black lives matter, critical race theory, stuff, uh, wokeness, pro -life apparently.

Yeah. Well, yeah. Pro -life for Biden. We're arguing over politics and, and we're saying keep the doors of the church closed, masked and stay six feet away.

By the way, when the whole like shutdown of the church happened, when that all began, when churches were closed down during the lockdown.

Yeah. I was making comments on Twitter about how loving your neighbor means you go over to your neighbor's house and you check on them.

And if there's something that you can do to help them, go run to the store for them. Right. I said this on Twitter, loving your neighbor is not locking yourself in your home isolated.

Loving your neighbor is going and checking on them and ask if there's something you can do for them. Right. And there were people on Twitter.

I rate that. I said that you're going to kill your neighbor. Like, are you people insane?

Your neighbor's going to get very lonely and suicide is up. That's an article I've got coming up here.

That's one of my articles. We've got suicide and drug overdoses that are up in 2020. As a result of all of this isolation, people are dying of isolation.

Yeah. More people have died of isolation. More people have died because of the reaction to COVID -19 than people who have died of COVID -19.

Yes. But that's not the number you see ticking on the news every day. Every single day. We're seeing more, you know, however many hundred lives of people who died today of COVID -19, but of no other cause.

So that's what's on. That's what's on everybody's mind. That's what everybody's obsessed with. Right. Millions of Americans losing jobs, livelihood, things like that.

Number 30 story, number 31, Pope Francis approves of same sex unions.

That was on October the 21st. Now I know I hear you. You're going, well, that doesn't have anything to do with Christianity.

You're right. It does. It's the Pope. That's Roman Catholicism.

That's not Christianity. But nevertheless, it's going to have an effect. Like in talking about how the

LGBTQ movement is just trying to take over everything. Yes. They're getting the Catholic church. They're going to get.

They're rallying the troops. Yep. They're wanting to get Protestantism as well. It's not going to be safe for the

LGBTQ push. And so many churches are going to go right along with it. We're going to see more churches that will go with the

LGBTQ movement than we'll see churches that stand against it. And we'll see that.

I believe that there will be a lot of smaller churches that are going to withstand it. But what we're going to see is mostly.

Yeah. Falling in line. It's just a little bit at a time. But as they continue this, this effort, this push, they take a lot of people with them.

So the, the Catholic church. Oh, and I heard from James White recently that apparently

Pope Francis is thinking about resigning. Oh, that's just a rumor right now. Okay.

So we'll have three. Might have three Popes. Yeah. I mean, not we, but. Well, yeah, the collective we.

Yes. The world. The world. Is going to be looking at the Vatican and seeing three Popes.

That's right. Because, because Pope Benedict is still the Pope. Yep. And then Pope Francis is a

Pope. And then the Catholic church is there. They're going to raise up another Pope. Interesting. Number 32,

Amy Coney Barrett confirmed in the place of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. That was on October the 26th, which was also

Hillary Clinton's birthday. The irony. And she was sworn in by Clarence Thomas, whom

Biden opposed when he was a Senator. Oh, wow. And really made life very complicated for Clarence Thomas during that particular time.

Now, this was just, it was a political statement. It was political theater for Clarence Thomas to swear in Amy Coney Barrett.

On October the 26th, because Clarence Thomas can actually do that. It has to be the chief justice, John Roberts, which happened the next day.

But they were making a political statement. Interesting. Doing it on the 26th and having

Clarence Thomas do it. Interesting. I thought it was hilarious. Interesting. Sure.

I think very, very funny fits as well. Number 33. Christians martyred in record numbers.

Oh, and that's October the 30th. So we have seen some incredible numbers.

And again, this is just not the number that you see on the news. The news doesn't talk about it. We're talking about COVID -19.

We're not talking about Christians being martyred. But one of the stories that was just recently is that 2200

Christians were slaughtered by machetes and bullets of Islamic extremists in Nigeria, bringing an estimated total of 34 ,400 murdered

Christians since 2009. So just in the past decade, that's how many

Christians have been murdered in Nigeria. You have Boko Haram have led attacks on Christians.

You've got in the Republic of the Congo, Islamist militias have come against Christians and killed villagers in the middle of the night.

You've got Christians killed in Indonesia. You have Christians that are killed in Egypt.

Hundreds of Egyptian Muslims burn Christian homes and churches over rumors that a

Facebook post had insulted Islam. Oh, wow. And a bunch of Christians died because of gossip.

Gossip kills. You have Hindu groups that have attacked Christians in India, and we've seen persecution against Christians in India has increased a lot.

Now, our church, First Baptist Church in Lindale, Texas, has done a lot of work in India with doing missions and planting churches there.

So be in prayer for us as well, as we're going to continue those efforts in a very hostile region. China, of course, the

Communist Party organizing a massive attempt to either eradicate Christianity from China, or they're just going to corrupt it until it doesn't even look like Christianity anymore.

I think it was our friend, Justin Bullington that posted an article on Twitter that showed a passage from the

Bible that had been translated a certain way in China or had been rewritten in China.

Right. And it did not even mean the same thing anymore. The way that the

Chinese government is, they're just going to totally rewrite the Bible and make it look like something that goes along with the communist

China, rather than what the Bible actually says. And then, of course, you've heard the stories about Christians being jailed or exiled, fleeing for their lives, put to death.

All that is going on in China as well. North Korea, on and on it goes. So I'm going to chronicle some of these in my book, but you can also find articles out there on them.

And Discerne did one recently about the Christians in Nigeria that had been slaughtered. So that's to keep in mind.

That is a story that could fit with any date. But I put that one on October the 30th, remembering those

Christians that have been martyred, even in 2020. Number 34, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, quote unquote, win the election on November the 7th.

We'll find out soon if that's an actual win or not. Now, that wasn't the day the election was held, but that was when it was declared.

Right. That Biden and Harris are the winners. It took quite a bit longer. Yeah, I think it goes without saying that there is definitely fraud.

But as I said on Twitter, the left has been in control all of 2020.

Trump has not been in control this year. Right. And there are plenty of things that he's done that I've thought are ridiculous.

The lockdowns were ridiculous. The stimulus checks, not a good idea. By the way, the stimulus checks, so we're all expecting what, like $2 ,000 a person?

something ridiculous. Couples will get $4 ,000. Yes. Okay. If this was really stimulating the economy, if this helps us, then get rid of taxes.

Right. Because that's what they're giving you. They're giving you the money that you've paid in taxes. It's your money.

They're giving it back to you. So if that's going to help everybody and stimulate the economy, great, then get rid of taxes.

Right. Stop collecting taxes. Especially that high of taxes. Yes. Yeah.

Reduce it down. Way, way, way, way down from where it is now. Right. At least.

I mean, I understand needing to collect taxes to fund the military infrastructure and things of that nature.

We don't need to be funding the public schools. They can, they can fund themselves. Well, that's yeah.

Infrastructure. That's part of it. Like bridges, roads and things. Yeah. So things like that.

I understand needing to collect taxes for that kind of a thing, but not to the degree that we're collecting taxes.

I mean, we're, we're middle -class Americans and when we budget everything out by the end of the year, 20 to 30 % or something of our income has gone to taxes, you know, adding in income tax and all that other kind of thing.

Right. Taxes that you pay at the gas pump. Yeah. These are taxes that the government takes from you. Things that you buy.

Yeah. It's not just the taxes they collect on April the 15th. There's property tax taxes on your car.

Yes. And in Kansas, they do it ridiculous. They do it every year. Collect taxes for your car.

Yeah. For your automobile. Everybody does it different. Every state does it different. Yeah. Anyway. Anyway, moving on.

The number 35, the Supreme Court ruling defending churches. That was on November the 25th.

So previously the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Vegas and then SCOTUS ruled in defense of some of the

Catholic churches and the synagogues that had taken the state of New York to court. Right. And yeah, they're free to worship how they see fit.

And the state of New York cannot impose or shut down any of those religious entities.

So that's a victory, which by the way, we would not have received if not for Amy Coney Barrett. Right. Because the

Vegas decision went the other way. 5 -4 earlier in the year, back in July. In November, it goes 5 -4 in the direction of the

Catholic church and the synagogues that had taken the state of New York to court. All right.

So next. Number 36, the Southern Baptist Convention seminary presidents condemn critical race theory and then they don't.

So it was on November the 30th that they released their statement condemning critical race theory. All of the presidents of the major seminaries within the

Southern Baptist Convention, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Midwestern, Southwestern, Southeastern, the one in California, the one in New Orleans.

Right. So these condemned critical race theory and intersectionality, but then the pushback on it, because like Charlie dates and his progressive

Baptist church or whatever it's called up in Chicago, they pull out. They're no longer SBC anymore. Right.

So because of the reaction, the seminary presidents issued another statement that went to the Washington Post apologizing for the statement that they made on November the 30th.

Goodness. So anyway, we've also had this year standpoint epistemology being taught at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

And you just have to listen to Tom Buck sermon on that. Yeah. The one that he did with sovereign nations.

Okay. So look that one up on YouTube because he's got a great response to that. Let's see.

There were, I had some other things that were in here. Well, Donald Trump also condemned critical race theory. That kind of goes with that article.

Number 36, Stephen Harris left the ERLC to campaign for Biden. The BD annual buoyantly defended it.

I forgot about that. I even have that in my notes and I forgot about that. Number 37.

Let's, let's buzz through the rest of these years. So number 37, the FDA issues, emergency use authorization for the

COVID -19 vaccine. That was on December the 11th. And so now in the church, we've got the debates over to vaccinate or not to vaccinate.

Yes. To make a person vaccinate, to bind their conscience, according to what scripture says. Right. Here's a good idea.

If you do, or if you don't. Yeah. Here's, here's a good idea, folks. We bind one another's conscience to those things.

The Bible actually says. Yep. Not making up things and putting it in scripture and then binding a person's conscience to that.

Number 38, the Jericho March, December the 12th. And you had Beth Moore's ridiculous viral tweet that went along with that as well.

Condumping, condumping. Condumping. She condumped on, she was condemning

Christian nationalism, whatever that is. Nobody even knows really what the definition of that one is.

I have no idea what that is. Trumpism. Now there's actually another Jericho March coming up. Yes. January 2nd through the 6th.

Yeah. So we haven't heard the last of the Jericho March. Number 39. Social distance, guys, with your mask.

Yeah. Social distance, nobody's social distancing. You social distance when you want to make somebody feel guilty or ridiculous or signal your own virtue.

That's when you're social distancing and wearing a mask, but not, not when you're marching, not when you're protesting, not when you're going.

Because you can't get COVID there. Yeah, right. We're, we're immune to COVID as long as we're protesting.

Yep. Or rioting. Or rioting. Yeah. Or looting. Number 39, record in suicide and drug overdose.

December the 17th. I'll leave the statistics to the article in the book. Don't forget about the book. 2020 year in review, which will be on amazon .com.

Number 40, profits get exactly everything wrong about 2020. December the 31st.

And that's our show. The profits got nothing right about 2020.

Nothing. There should be no one Pentecostal or charismatic at the end of 2020.

Right? That entire movement has been shown to be a complete fraud. No one got any of that right.

Okay. So now I mentioned that I had one more announcement to make when we got to the end of the show.

We are excited to announce that First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City has found a new pastor.

So they, they have found a guy to replace me. His name is Ryan Sickinger.

He's moving up from New Mexico. Knows about when we understand the text. He had even emailed me before he submitted his application to the church.

And he said, just want to let you know, I'm familiar with the ministry, been listening to you for a while and watching the videos.

and I, I would like to, I'm very interested in filling in the pulpit in your place. Yeah. Now, this was not with my influence, hardly at all.

Right. I sat in on the, the, the committee meetings before I left, but I did not pick any of those final candidates.

They picked that on their own. Right. Ryan being one of the questions, like what to ask and how to ask and what answers to listen for.

And that sort of thing. So, just kind of helping them feel their way through hiring a pastor.

Yeah. I, I wrote the final questionnaire. Right. So that was mine, but the, but right. The committee did everything else.

And Ryan is the guy that they chose. He and his family are super excited to move up to Kansas, especially getting out of the tyranny that's going on in New Mexico.

They're just as bad as California. Yeah. Like all the, from the sounds of things, all the restrictions that have been placed on people.

They're shutting down grocery stores there. Yeah. It's pretty bad. Yeah. So, so moving up to a little more red state in Kansas and yeah, very excited to have

Ryan following the pulpit up there. Yes. So yeah, God bless you.

First Southern Baptist church. Again, for their move and everything and the adjustment. Yes, absolutely.

We can't thank you enough for the 10 years that we had there. Yes. And are very grateful to our new church family for receiving us as warmly as they have.

Definitely. We are broadcasting from New York. We're in a, we're in a storage closet at first Baptist church in Lindale, Texas here with Tom buck.

Dr. Buck is the, the senior pastor here. And it's been great. Excited to see where the

Lord is going to continue to take us right now. We need to find a house. Yes, but we do thank them for watching our children again.

Yes, that's right. The bucks are watching our kids again while we recorded this extra long episode for you.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Guys, quick prayer. And then we got to go pick our kids up. We do. So the bucks can go to bed. Yes. Heavenly father, we thank you for your goodness and your grace to us.

There are a lot of things for us to rejoice in at the end of 2020, despite the amount of tragedy that we've seen.

We know that you are still sovereign. You are still in control. You still work all things together for good, for those who love

God and are called according to his purpose for our good and for your glory. And so I pray that we praise

God, even in the midst of the storm, we continue to cling to Christ and long for your kingdom.

As Becky said earlier, where our treasure is there, our heart will be. Also, if our heart is stored up with Christ in heaven above, then that is where we will receive our great reward on that day that we walk through heaven's gates and hear the master say to us, well done, good and faithful servant, keep a steadfast and strong in these days, always holding out the gospel for it is faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That is, that is the power of salvation to everyone who believes it's in Jesus name that we pray.

Amen. We've also had this year standpoint epistemology being taught at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

You got to listen to Joe Buck sermon, Joe Buck. He's the, he's the sports commentator.

What is the matter with me? I don't know. Listen to Joe Buck sermon. I'm telling him you said that.

What are you looking at? No, you're not. You're not going to tell him I said that. All right, fine. I won't. No, you're not going to tell him because this is going to be, uh, an outtake.

Oh, awful.

I'm sorry, Tom. Joe Buck.