Honest Media W/Zach Lautenschlager & Dennis Sarfate

When the scribes and Pharisees asked our Lord about the greatest commandment, He replied, You shall love the

Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.

So, why do we hear some of today's most prominent pastors saying things like this? It had everything to do with how we talk about the

Bible, and specifically, or along with that, what we point to as the foundation of faith, which for most

Christians, unfortunately, is the Bible. We need to do better.

We need to love God with all our hearts and stand unashamedly on the rock of His Word. We need to love the

Lord with all of our souls, and respond to the worldview issues of our day with the wisdom and discernment that comes only from Him.

We need to love the Lord with our minds, and understand the calling of God's people in every area of life in God's world.

We need to love the Lord our God with all our strength, and face the work of building a life -giving, God -honouring culture.

Join us for 10 days at the Runner Academy for Cultural Leadership as we consider how the gospel influences all of life and culture, and the role that we have to play in applying foundational

Christian thinking to every area of life. This is the

Academy. I am Eli Ayala of Revealed Apologetics, and I will be bringing a six -part series on presuppositional apologetics.

What is this called, the Apology Academy? It's just called The Academy. Okay. What's up, everybody?

My name is Pastor Jeff Durbin, and you're watching Collision Today. I'm gonna be interacting with an atheist on TikTok.

So here we go. Unsupervised and unhinged. Welcome back to Cultus the

Aftermath. Hey, everybody.

Welcome back to another episode of Ask Me Anything. You are watching Apologia Radio's after show exclusively for all access.

Non -rockabodas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it. Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie, or are you gonna bite?

We're being delusional. Delusional, yeah. Delusional's okay in your worldview. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional.

You don't chastise pigs for being delusional. So you calling me delusional using your worldview is perfectly okay. It doesn't really hurt.

Is he hung up on me? What? What? Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men.

The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives.

Right. Don't go into the world and make homies. Right. Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle, Nick. That's a joke, pasta.

When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

Wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean. Remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes.

Cease to do evil. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Correct oppression. Bring justice to the fatherless.

Plead the widow's cause. And that is from Isaiah chapter 1.

Welcome everyone to another episode of Apology Radio. Very excited today.

I got a couple good friends with me today. Pastor Jeff is,

I think he might be flying right now. I'm not quite sure. Him and Carmen were in Missouri.

We'll talk about that for a hearing yesterday for a bill there in Missouri. We'll update you on that.

But before I get... Oops, I'm having a hard time with my stuff here.

So forgive me. I was gonna say that today is a sad show because it is Joy the

Girl's last show with us ever. After like ten and a half years. So...

It is. It is. Not, not excited. Can you say never?

Like ever? Would you have me on again? Well, I mean as a host,

I guess. Yeah. I guess we could bring you in. You're gonna be doing Sheologian still anyway. So yeah, you know what

I'm saying. I'll come visit. Maybe I'll sit in this chair again. But you're right, not as a host.

I'll be a guest. Yeah. Which we treat our guests well. We do treat our guests well.

I wouldn't be opposed. Yeah, I'm just not happy. It's just all there is to that.

You'll be seeing a lot more Zach Conover though, that's for sure. He'll be fulfilling that role more frequently.

But yeah, we'll talk more. But it's just a sad day. It's a sad day and Jeff's not even here to be with you, unfortunately.

So yeah, it's definitely the end of an era. Yeah, a decade. Yeah, which

I guess isn't technically an era, but how long is an era? I don't know. Do we know? I bet Lautenschlager knows.

Probably. Undefined. Okay. It's an era. Okay. There you go. An era. Zach, I'll just go ahead.

Speaking of Zach Lautenschlager, he is probably has the most knowledge of unusable facts of any person

I've ever met in my entire life. That is true. That meme of the Roman guy blasting a kid in bed with historical facts is remarkably accurate.

Zach always, that doesn't matter where we're at. And Dennis Sarfatti is with us today, too.

What's up, dude? Dude, I'll second this on Zach. Literally, we'll be walking through the airport and he's like, you want to know how you make this?

And I'll be like, sure. It's like walking with an encyclopedia. Yeah. It doesn't matter where we're at.

I mean, history -wise, too, it's impressive. It doesn't matter where you're at or what you're doing. We were like, remember that little podunk little cafe in Greer?

Yeah. And he's like, oh, this glass is from this year. But you can tell because of the line and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, how did anyone know that?

I mean, he could either be really like honest and he really doesn't know it or he's just making it up because we believe him anyway.

Yeah, if you have the confidence and you're kind of like, I'm supposed to be here. People kind of don't question.

Yeah. When I'm around Luke, I do have a fairly good radar about things he doesn't know about.

It's most things. Tell you what, if you ever want to go visit the

Air Museum in Salt Lake City, he's your tour guide. So I'll tell you that much.

He knew everything about every plane in there. I didn't even have to read the plaques. Or Mount Rushmore. We went to Mount Rushmore.

It was amazing. He was telling us about the making of it, the chisels that they were using and where the chisels were made.

Where they were made. I went to Mount Rushmore one time and it was completely covered in fog.

We like went out of our way to go see it and we got there just in time for the nighttime thing where they like light it up.

Yeah, they do this whole little display and then they shine these huge lights and it was just this wall of fog and we were like, okay.

That's what was the first time I went to the Grand Canyon. It was literally covered in fog. You couldn't see anything.

Yeah. It's kind of creepy actually. You grew up, right Zach? You could like walk to the...

Yeah, I grew up close to Mount Rushmore. For several years, we did a dinner theater at the base. I have a lot of friends whose grandpas worked on the mountain.

Do tell. What does a dinner theater at Mount Rushmore entail?

Well, my siblings and I played American folk music. And I told history stories. And then people paid money for it, which shocked me, but it worked.

Did you play the spoons in the washboard? Yeah, right. Stand -up bass.

He's got a great voice. You ever heard him sing at church? Yeah, I don't know how you can miss it. He belts it. He belts it out.

We need him on worship team over here. He belts it out. So, all that to say,

I'm excited to have these two guys on here. We do so much together. We could spend the whole show just going down the list of things we do together.

But the main reason we want to have Zach and Dennis on today was to talk about their new project, the

Republic Sentinel. But before we do that, I mentioned Action for Life.

So you guys, Dennis is the president, Zach's the vice president, right? Correct? Yep. And I am the chairman of the board.

So, I think a lot of people don't realize that Action for Life is our lobbyist arm of what we're doing with an abortion now.

So, everything's hand -in -hand. We're doing everything together. But we're able to do stuff politically because it's a 5 -1 -c -4.

Before we get into the Sentinel, Dennis, you want to update everyone on what's going on? Yeah, well first, I always call

Zach my VP now. I started out saying he was my partner, and that really ended up not being the best first words

I could use. These days, you've got to be careful with that. I have a wife. So yeah, this past year, 16 states had bills of equal protection.

We had more, I think, before Roe was lifted by the Supreme Court. And I think a lot of that was due to people wanting to fight it.

And now that the Supreme Court has overturned it, they've almost kind of just said, oh well, abortion must be ended because Roe's gone.

And I think that's the reason why we had some states fall off. But at least these bills of equal protection are the ones that are getting put in.

Now they've all died. I know Jeff went and spoke in the committee hearing in Missouri yesterday.

They were given one minute. They were treated very poorly is what I'm hearing. And so that's what you're getting from these committees, right?

If it wasn't from Louisiana last year, where Zach was there for most of that, to listen to how these people treat us when we're trying to fight for the pre -born and to bring light to the situation.

It's an evil that needs to be fought. And I'm just honored that I get to do it, that God has allowed me to be a part of it.

You guys have asked me. But to go through this and to learn the political side from Zach and how this all works, it really makes you angry because you get to see how politics truly is.

It is not good. It's not good. Reminds me of the days of Caligula and all that.

You think about the kings and emperors. I'm teaching the girls at homeschool right now about the early, early years.

It was a mess and I feel like exactly what our government is now. Yeah, Zach, how have you survived?

What's it been, 25 years? Yeah, 26. And you still have some ginger hair.

A little bit. There's a little bit left there. The beard is compensation. For the hair loss up top. Not that you would know anything about that.

Nope, I wouldn't. Not a thing. He never takes his hat off. He sleeps in it. It's not true.

I've actually known Luke for so long that I know what he looks like without a beard. Oh, that was a short period of time.

Please explain what this looks like. I had to because I had to get an ultrasound on my jaw and they went in and they were like, yeah, we can't do this with a beard.

So I had to shave it and that was really sad. But I grew it back quickly. It comes back.

It's been a long time. I've had a long time. An old friend. An old friend. I need to see this,

Luke. I'll find a picture and send it to you. No, let's just do it again. Like you should cut it on air like Joy's last.

It's Joy's last show. I'm like Samson. Do you? I'll wilt. You know, it is a sign of mourning,

Luke. I mean, if you're really serious about this sad act. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man.

Joy, I can't believe you're leaving us. Yeah. Sorry. I keep coming back in. How long have we known each other?

This is about 16 years, right? Fifteen. Something like that. Mm hmm. Yeah, I had.

I was probably 18 years plus three months old.

Yeah. Wow. And now I'm thirty four. You know, Joy lived with us for a little bit of time.

That was a fun experience before I had any kids.

Yeah. But yeah, it's been a long time. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Lots. I am more. Lots has happened.

I'm like, I'm just like in no mood today. It doesn't I think it doesn't totally feel completely real at this point.

So, you know, until you arrive in West Monroe. Yeah. And then and then Tres, Tres, your pastor.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, huh. Everyone here knows Trey. That's actually pretty cool.

Yeah. Yeah. If they if they weren't going to Tres Church, I would. I would not put the stop to it.

I would have. I'm considering church discipline. That's for sure.

Anyway, sorry. Hey, hey, Gabe, I'm going to play something here real quick. Hold on before we get too serious, which

I probably have people complain about in the chat. If it like we aren't serious within 30 seconds. Someone quite literally said, no,

James, Jeff, no me. Bye. Well, just, you know, James is very rarely on this show.

True. I'm going to OK. Christian viewers just don't like watching friends hang out.

OK, and have fun. I'm going to play this video. Forgive me. It's not the best quality, but it's all I could find.

Are you ready, Gabe? Yep. OK, here we go. Oh, there's no volume is not good.

Oh, I see. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

Wow. I dug that one up for Dennis. That's hilarious. That's never made an appearance on apology. Six more people just dropped off the show.

Yeah, that's enough of this. I had to find a good video for you. I like that you queued that up just for your friend.

Yeah, you know, that was nice. He does make me feel really good. Yeah, like all the time with this stuff, like King of Closer comments and this and that.

I've been retired for I don't even know how long now. Four years. And I just feel like he just keeps keeps me in the spirit, you know?

Yeah, always be the king of closer. Yeah, it's not like they're going to give that title to someone else. It's like, you know, like the the great

Bambino or something like that. So, yeah, one person, you know what I mean? Yeah. We watched the last samurai the other day with the girls, and that was fun to kind of see

Japan and know that we lived there and how that whole went down. You know, that was based on true story, true events.

Some of it, not all of it. The part that Tom Cruise played was actually a

French military person who did that, which went over there and trained.

I never thought that the Americans would send over a general or whatever and let him go fight in a war in another country.

That's kind of weird, isn't it, Zach? You're I mean, you're the history buff. Unfortunately, by that time, it was fairly common.

We did it to Hawaii. Wow. And that was actually a big part of the apologies we had to make.

The imperialism really started a little bit before Teddy Roosevelt, and he really put on steroids. But after the

Civil War, when Lincoln did what he did, some of it's good.

But the way they went about it was very bad. Oh, and that imperialism really started to spread. Hmm. Hmm.

Just put another damper on this show. Is leaving imperialism.

What else can we cover? And how about media collapse? Yes. OK, let's have more fun.

OK, so no, it's a good transition, actually. So tell us about the Republic Sentinel, what's going on with that and what the plans are.

And I'm very excited for actually had the pleasure of writing a little article for you guys. I think you might be in this

Sunday. Oh, that the Rooster Cogburn pieces. Oh, sweet. I didn't know that. All right.

Yeah, it's time to come. Sweet. Coming along. So we'll have a proof for you tomorrow. Sweet. But the the

Sentinel is a new news entity. It is growing at a thousand subscribers a day and has been for almost a month.

Wow. We're very excited. Continues to grow dramatically. The Green Dragon Tavern show is our flagship news talk show.

Once a week goes live on Friday mornings. Dennis and I just finished cutting that for this week.

And you guys will be excited about it. Some of the we'll give you a sneak peek here. The legacy media continues to suffer serious, serious consequences for not caring about the truth.

And that's really what's going on, right? You look at them and they're they're saying you can't believe your own eyes. You have to listen to us.

You have to believe what we tell you. And so that is not working out for them. Vice News, appropriately named, is close to bankruptcy.

Almost certainly going there. BuzzFeed is in trouble. WaPo is laying off 7000 people,

I believe. It's in I believe it was 7000. Both Fox and CNN are bleeding viewers.

Tucker Carlson posts a video from his basement and gets 80 million views. Fox gets one point eight million and in a slot that they got three million in yesterday, you know, the day before a couple of days before.

So there is no question people are tired of being being told that you can't you can't believe your own senses.

Yeah, you have to trust us. It doesn't matter whether or not you can observe a mask working. It doesn't matter whether it matter whether or not you believe that the world is going to end in 12 years because of global warming.

You know, it's always 12 years. It was 12 years, 12 years ago. And now it's still 12 years. It's kind of like the the pagans second return.

And you know, 89 reasons why it would be 89. It's Harold camping all over again. Yeah. And so people are looking for other sources of news and we are looking for ways to provide that service.

The Sentinel has up to the minute reporting. We actually were the lead in breaking.

There were a couple other smaller sites, smaller like us, but we broke the

U .N. legalized pedophilia report. We got it. That was before everyone else found that and got it out.

Very excited about our staff of writers now and they're covering topics that that are necessary, that you need to know about in order to interpret and impact the world around you.

So we were very excited about it. And I'm very excited to have Dennis co -hosting the

Green Dragon Tavern show. Awesome. That's exciting. It is. I didn't know that was happening.

Yeah. And it's it's new to me to to be so in tuned with the politics and all the policies that are going on and what people are voting for.

The biggest thing, you know, recently is the debt ceiling. But I think the news thing is such a crazy thing because I was a

Fox News, you know, follower all the time. Especially, you know, Trump versus Hillary.

This last election, that's all we had to listen to. And now, like you've kind of saw after the 2020 election, they really went one way.

And I was starting to think, well, that doesn't seem honest. And then you go to covid and all of these things that if you believe that a mask didn't work or if you thought that the vaccine wasn't a good thing, you were a conspiracy theorist.

All this stuff, you know, it was a man made out of a lab virus.

But if you thought that you were crazy and here we are three years later where they're starting to say, oh, yeah, you know what?

That was right. And then nothing happens to them. Right. Right. They put this hysteria out there into the world.

Everyone's crazy. No one will even go near anyone. And there's no repercussions for them. They can say what they want, do what they want, even if they're five percent accurate.

Yeah. And that's it. Yeah. No accountability. What kind of news is that? Yeah. Yeah. Very boldly, almost without almost like there's this assurance that like, well, they don't remember.

Yeah. Just like not even anticipating anyone to hold them accountable. They're Americans.

Americans are dumb. You know, they'll get over the next thing, you know? Yeah. It's constantly the process, how things work.

Like, think about the Las Vegas shooting. Right. Right. That horrific thing. Have you heard a peep about it?

There was one random thing that came out a few weeks ago. And they just like again, they just they were saying that part of it, they were attributing part of his motive to like being upset with the casino.

And that was however that that article, I remember it stood out to me because you didn't hear anything about it afterwards.

And then what, years later, five, six years later, just one little article and then yet passed by in the news cycle gone again.

Covid was like one of the one of the most permanent installations in the news cycle for I mean, since I've been an adult, like,

I mean, really, I don't think I can't think of anything except for September 11th in my life that like stayed in the news for as long as it did.

But I mean, I'm sure there's other things. But I think that's what's so big about the Sentinel is you have Christians who are doing the reporting.

And, you know, Joy says it in the opening. If we have the truth, how can we stand to let them say they have the truth when they don't?

Right. And it's like we need to report the news like climate change is one of the biggest things. And they they hold climate change up there like it's 100 percent fact.

Still, still to this day. Yep. Bleeding the country for every penny. Billions of dollars poured into it.

And with nothing to show, we were even just saying like, I, I have never not a single time.

Maybe I missed it, but I've never seen someone go. You remember how we had all that stuff for climate change and all the money and everything?

Well, this is what we built. We built a brand new skyscraper that runs off of dreams and hopes.

Not even that. Nothing ever. Nothing. No single building. No, nothing. Just like I'm like, what did you do with all those billions of dollars?

Because I feel like I'd be able to do something with one billion dollars. I feel like that's quite a bit.

Yeah. I mean, like you could. Yeah. You could really do something with it. Well, I think some of you said that it's

I mean, the the media's been probably the cause of this.

But just our our culture is so our attention spans are so short. Right.

And so it's like the media comes on, drops this mass hysteria thing. Everyone freaks out.

And you're right. And then it's like five minutes later. Well, let's move on to the next mass hysteria thing. You know, we forgot about, you know, because we're not able to like step back and look at things objectively and see patterns and history and, you know, look at the big picture and recognize what's happening.

We just get caught up in the moment. And and so that's why they've been able to prey on people for so long.

But I think you're right. I think people just just had enough. I think the I think this last three years of showing that in the election messes and and, you know, going back to all these media places, folding like like Zach was saying, like my thoughts on that is because I don't

I didn't wear the shirt, but woke is broke. Right. Like people have had enough, I think, of of the woke stuff.

And it's not selling. And people, these big, big, massive companies that have been just going full in on the woke stuff, they're they're bleeding.

Like, it's not just the media. It's like Disney, like a place like that. They're losing money left and right. And it's not selling.

And they're like realizing that. And it's like, OK, that was fun for like three years while it lasted. But, you know, it's like like Vice, for example.

I used to really like some of Vice's stuff. They had some really, really good stuff. You know, obviously they had some really awful stuff, too.

But yeah, like that's some really great stuff. You know, we used to always do BuzzFeed every year, every episode.

Remember? And I remember like as a while they have those like fun little games and like quizzes and stuff. And then all of a sudden, like overnight, it switched to like completely woke.

I remember being like, I can't even read BuzzFeed anymore. This is just obscene. So yeah, then it just be kind of it became something to make fun of.

Yeah. But yeah, I think people just want there's a lot of information to know out there.

And so people want to have a resource that they trust. Yep. And I think more people are at least

I hope more people are sort of realizing that like your worldview really shapes what information you find important or even just in terms of how you would read a situation or what's happening and what the implications of that.

You need someone that shares thoughts like you.

Sure. That can help you like sort of wade through all this collective information that's out there.

People just want something that they trust that they. Yeah. They go, well, like I know that this person reported it and I trust that person.

So like I believe what they say. Well, yeah, like you said at the attention span, right? Everyone you can get a news feed on your cell phone.

And right away, most people right now in the world or even in this country alone, see it as,

Oh, that's fact. Like this is definite without like I go back to Jeff Sermon last Sunday. It's like, where's your evidence?

Like where's let's break down the truth before you start jumping onto this and attacking the one side, let's lay out the evidence and let's see like equal weights and measures.

Let's measure this out to make sure that this is honest reporting. And I think you'll go back the last three years.

There's been a lot of dishonesty within the media. Yeah. Well, and we've, we've like kind of collapsed our, our actual justice system in favor of like the court of public opinion.

Nowadays, if you really want to stick it to someone and get justice, all you have to do is make sure the world hates them via the media.

But that kind of ignores, well, every kind of ignores. It totally ignores what, what this country was set up to be.

So, you know, makes sense. We'd see some decline. Yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, this is even a problem within the church, you know, like I'm just,

I was having this conversation with somebody the other day, you know, it's just always seems like there's some big theological controversy on Facebook, you know, and it's just like one thing, you know, and it lasts for five minutes, you know, and then it's like something else pops up a week later and everyone forgot about the thing.

Everyone was up in arms about the week before, you know, and so the conversation I was having was like, honestly, you know, some of these issues are important, but it's like,

I just got too much going on to care sometimes, you know, like probably to a fault. I'm like, I probably should care more, but I'm like,

I got like real world issues I'm dealing with, you know, and, and next week someone's going to be onto the next thing.

And, um, but I, I think that's a problem within the church. You know, if we want to, if we want to change the culture, you know, with the gospel, like it needs to start within the four walls of our churches.

Um, and, uh, yeah, we got to go from there. So, um, I have a question. Yes. Can you guys explain the name of the podcast?

Yes. Zach, go ahead. I'm sure Zach has some history behind that. I figured it's awesome history.

Sit back. So founding father, Samuel Adams, when the, um, royal governor would disband the legislature because he didn't like the fact that they were doing their jobs would say, let us go to the green dragon and talk a little treason.

And by that he meant, uh, we can repair to the green dragon as, as legislators and continue doing our jobs and the crown we'll call it treason, but that's the place we can go.

The green dragon tavern was actually owned by the sons of Liberty, led by Dr. Joseph Warren, the man who sent

Paul Revere on his ride. Revere left from the dragon on the night of April 18th to ride to Lexington Concord.

Um, when the Boston tea party happened, the rally point was the green dragon tavern. They left from there and marched across to the wharfs to where the ships were anchored.

Um, it is the place where Joseph Warren received the news, probably from the military governor

Gage's wife, um, which way the British were going and what their intentions were, uh, during the battles of Lexington Concord.

And so it's always been the place where, um, men who men, women who care about liberty and freedom gather to discuss, uh, the issues of the day and to learn what they need to know in order to move forward and, and impact liberty and freedom.

So that's the inspiration for the name. Um, the building is a new building, but there's still a green dragon tavern there.

It's not just kind of your normal Irish pub kind of looks like a normal Irish pub in there. Um, but the building next door was actually built before 1700.

There are no, there are no building records for it because it was before Boston started keeping them. It's not an oyster house across the street is the bell and hand tavern, which is one of the oldest, uh, concurrently operating taverns in America.

Um, so it's, uh, it's a really great area. Um, if you get a chance to go downtown Boston, that's where it is. Um, go now while you can do it without a mask.

So I'm gonna play a game of stump the loud and slugger. What, uh, do you happen to know where the original name came from?

So no one actually really knows there is a green dragon on a crane. Um, you know, there's iron things that stick out that the signpost sits on.

Yeah. It's part of our logo. And that was there from long before. Um, there is a green dragon tavern in, um, in Lord of the

Rings. And so it was the name of taverns in England. That's where both of them got it.

And it's probably named for some tavern that, that somebody went to in England. All right.

Well, I didn't. There goes your opportunity to stump them. Wait, I thought I'd try. Well, you can try again.

Half an hour. Yeah. Wikipedia is handy, Luca. You're going to be over there reading it. Looking for trivia.

Yeah. Wikipedia, which isn't always your most subjective source of truth. It's true.

It's a public source though. So it's an interesting, it actually is an interesting place. You can go and correct it. So Zach, you were kind of quiet while we were talking about, you know, why a lot of this media stuff is, uh, folding.

I was just curious what your thoughts were on that. If there's anything you want to add to that. You know, yesterday, the New York times in their daily news alert, their daily email had a piece they called the 90 % story.

And they were talking about how the hardest political stories for a reporter to cover and for our pundits to analyze can be those that are neither 100 % stories nor 50 % stories.

They would define a 100 % story as something that everybody knows is true. And here are the examples, um, in that they say, these are a hundred percent stories.

Joe Biden won the 2020 election. The planet is warming. Crime and inflation are higher today than a few years ago.

Well, only one of those things is, is empirically verifiable. You can empirically verify that crime and inflation are higher today than they were a few years ago.

You cannot verify that the planet is warming over anything more than a few years. You could say that the planet is warmer now than it was five years ago, 10 years ago, though that's empirically verifiable information.

There is no information from a hundred years ago. You can't go back 200 years, three, four, any kind of any, any period of time that has any significance whatsoever in defining global warming.

You can't, you can't call that a hundred percent story. Yeah. And you certainly can't call Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

Well, he's president now. So in that case, I guess he won, but that's not the sense in which they meet. Right. So here they are calling, that's a hundred percent story.

And then they say 50 % story is where, you know, typical news story where this side says this, and this side says this, and you just report it both.

And, you know, you leave it there and leave it at that journalism. Their case for the 90 % story is the debt ceiling fight, which is going on in Congress right now.

It's the big news item. The Republicans in Congress are being dragged along by about 20 conservatives who include my, my friends like Thomas Massey, Andy Biggs, who represents

Chandler, Dennis's Congressman, actually. Chip Roy, who's a great guy.

I don't know him as well. Met and worked with him a little bit. And Jim Jordan, who has become quite the stalwart.

These guys required that before McCarthy could pass a debt ceiling hike, increasing how much money the

U .S. could borrow, we're up to nearly 32 trillion now, which is a number you can't wrap your head around.

But before they would allow them to say, OK, we're not going to default on our debt. They required that the

House bill include several initiatives rolling back some of the most egregious spending, including the crazy 400 billion dollar student loan forgiveness thing.

Right. And so the Democrats are calling that a 90 % story. The Democrats in the

New York Times news office are calling that a 90 % story because, well, both sides have some truths, but it's kind of hard to tell.

And then you go into this bushy, gushy, squeezy thing in which they say, well, Republicans have a lot less truth than Democrats. Democrats always just automatically raise the debt ceiling and Republicans don't.

And that makes Democrats better. Anyone who reads that, you sit there and you go, why is it better to to say that we can just spend indefinitely?

Right. When Joe Biden was elected to the Senate 51 years ago, 51 years ago,

Joe Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972. For listeners our age, just wrapping your mind around the fact that 1972 is 51 years ago.

You weren't born yet, right? Not not yet. I got in the last two months of the 70s.

I was born in November of 79. But our debt was, I think, 427 billion.

That's half a trillion dollars. Now it is nearly 32 trillion. So from half a trillion to 32 trillion in 50 years.

Nine percent of that growth has happened since Joe Biden got elected. Think about nine percent of that kind of spending.

And the the self -proclaimed impartial journalists are claiming that that makes

Democrats better, that you could you could have it. It is around if my if my memory serves me correctly and I did the math right.

It's over 27 percent of the entire national debt has been accrued by the current administration.

It sounds like a 50 percent story to me. Yeah, I mean, it kind of does. And they have the effrontery, number one, to define 100 percent story as climate change.

And number two, we're going to say that that the Democrat case for continuing to spend so much money that our entire way of the entire way the

United States exists as we know it is in question. Everyone's looking around going, I'm not sure how long we can do this.

Yeah. And The New York Times is saying, you can't you can't use your own eyes. Don't worry about it.

It's not a big deal. Democrats are 90 percent right. Yeah. And they're still lying. Right. Even now on this whole debt ceiling, they're actually telling people, well, the

Republicans, they just want to take money away from veterans. They want to take money away from this group. And it's like the

White House. Yeah. The White House says this. We literally just want to like true conservatives. And this is like the

Freedom Caucus is what's holding all this up. Right. And there there's less government, more America. Like we need the people to speak up.

And the media is still lying and holding it out now and saying it's their fault for wanting to save money.

Like, yeah, let's keep spending and let inflation go through the roofs and let's just be put our country in a far greater hole instead of just being honest about it and saying we don't want to keep spending.

You have to raise the debt ceiling. We can't default, but you have to cut costs. Right. I use the analogy earlier today.

It's if I when I told the girls about all this, they were trying to figure it out. I said, oh, let's just say our house. Let's say our debt was getting so crazy amounted, like so high, we would cut out certain things like it might be like your third gym membership.

It might be like all these little things that you don't need that if you take out enough of them. OK, we're we're settling back down, but we don't.

We're propagating stuff for transgenderism in India. We're trying to get fit the count, the salmon in the

Northwest Pacific Ocean. You know, it's like, what are we doing? Like, we're spending money freely, just, you know, throwing it out.

And the media is not honest about it. They want to hide it. Yeah. Well, and people are greedy and they want free stuff.

Yeah. So that's why they are allowed to keep extending or growing the debt ceiling, because people are like, well, if you cut that out, then

I got to pay for my education. Go go. Imagine that. Like, I know you can foreign concept, but just that's the kind of stuff.

Yeah. Well, I want my welfare and I want this and I want that. And I don't want to have to pay for it. It's like, no, you're not going to pay for your kids and grandkids and great grandkids are going to be paying for it.

So they actually are paying for it. Right. Yeah. Look at the inflation and the cost of goods when we stop making stuff, which is really what's going on.

All of this has one big effect, right? People are paid to not make stuff, to not do things that people want to pay for.

Yeah. So we don't have to do those things in order to buy what we want to buy for now. You can do it. You're putting it on a credit card.

Yeah, yeah. But the problem is that every time you do that, the dollars that you spend tomorrow are worth less.

Yeah. And it's a very hard it's hard to wrap your mind around all that. Right. Hard for people to kind of understand that the dollars

I have in my bank account are actually worth less because of the dollars that Joe Biden sent me last year as, you know, as whatever whatever dollars that the

IRS, you get these checks in the mail. You like what? Five thousand bucks for what? From the

IRS? This is not a refund. What is this? Yeah, yeah, that this is what we're talking about.

And then you have all the all the programs. This is the first time in a really long time when Republicans have had the wherewithal to stand up and say, we're not going to spend in the same way.

It's been a uniparty when it comes to spending. And it would be a uniparty right now would be the Democrats are no different from the

Republicans, Kevin McCarthy, Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi, it doesn't matter. They're all willing to spend when all of a sudden you've got a razor thin vote difference in the

House. And that means that anyone who's willing to say, yeah, I'm not doing it actually has some power. And it started when

McCarthy was elected. And now you have conservatives controlling the agenda so they can tell McCarthy, if you don't give us these votes on the floor and you don't, then we're not going to allow it to proceed and they can actually carry through, carry out, carry it out for them.

So, you know, there are a lot of things going on congressionally that are actually very exciting. It's the first time in my lifetime that this kind of thing has happened.

The first time in my lifetime, and I kid you not, it's not just since I've been paying attention. I've been working professionally in politics since I graduated high school.

But even before that, you can go back and historically look and go, when's the last time you remember the Republicans going? Yeah, if you don't actually give us these dramatic spending cuts and we're going to stick to it, then you don't get to raise the debt ceiling.

And that's why the Democrats that have to work for news are losing their minds.

And I mean, it doesn't matter, Democrat, Republican. They love big government. They love spending. And they're looking at Google.

No other nation in the world, except for Denmark, actually requires a second vote to borrow money. They just set the budget and then you just borrow until you're done spending.

Right. And in America, we have to thank God. Yeah, seriously. You actually have their Congress is required to vote on whether or not you can borrow more money.

That's actually a really good thing. Yeah. And it's it's shocking to see impartial news like the

New York Times say these things. And then there are a lot of conservatives like we're not shocked. We never paid attention to those guys to start with.

But what's what's fun is there are people who are not hard nut conservatives who started to go that that doesn't add up.

That doesn't make sense. Just like they did when when the federal government started saying or that it was OK. And then your local government says, you can't leave your house.

You can't go to church. You can't go to work. You can't go to the grocery store. Right. Everybody starts going, well, hang on.

I thought they couldn't do that. Sounds like our founding fathers were following some kind of good book that laid all this out for us.

That's 50 percent news. There you go. I think that's 100 percent. Well, we're going to break here in a minute.

I was just going to say, I'm Zach. I imagine you're right behind us. But Arizona has the highest inflation rate in the nation right now.

I think it's 24 percent. Last night, I checked and we're honest. We're feeling it. Trust me.

It's like food, gas. We're like, man, I have seen gas prices. What?

You're at six bucks. It's cheaper to get gas in Tahoe right now.

Is it really? Three dollars and eighty nine cents a gallon than it is in Chandler, Arizona. It's $4 .99

for gas and diesel. Yay. It's actually cheaper than gas in Arizona. But it should be. Oh, there's an interesting.

I want to tell you about why diesel is expensive. Okay, well, do you know what your inflation rate is by chance?

Or is it close to that? I'll look up Utah. Because it's like everybody that's on the east side of California right now.

All the states are feeling it bad. But anyways, let's go to break real quick. And when we come back, we'll talk about diesel costs.

This is the Academy. I am Eli Ayala of Revealed Apologetics. And I will be bringing a six part series on presuppositional apologetics.

Defending the faith is super important. And I'm excited to be able to participate in helping equip you to do that effectively and biblically.

In my series, we're going to be unpacking all different aspects of the presuppositional method. What makes presuppositional apologetics different than other approaches?

How to answer objections to the presuppositional approach. What is the role of the authority of scripture?

What is the role of theology in defending the faith? All of these things we talk about and more. We try to bring it up a notch and not giving you completely introductory material, but kind of digging deep into the ins and outs of this method.

I am looking forward to equipping you and participating with you and training you to be better defenders of the