The American Churchman: The People Rejoice

Conversations That Matter

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:25

Welcome to the American Churchmen podcast. I am your host, John Harris. We have with us, we have actually a guest and as well as my cohost,

00:34

Matthew Pearson, but Tom Rush is our guest today. Welcome once again, Tom, you've been on before with us.

00:40

Yeah, glad to be here, John, Matt, good to see you guys. Always good to see you. It's a sort of a special day in America and that means a special podcast.

00:48

We're not gonna do the normal format. We're just gonna talk about the inauguration and this first day and our impressions of it, what has changed in the last four years, not just in the country, but in the church landscape,

01:05

Christian landscape. I wanna start off with just maybe talking about the inauguration speech.

01:12

Did you guys both watch that? Sure did. I watched about half of it. I was actually very busy that day and I was listening to a little bit of it, but from what

01:21

I heard, it was good there. When I got through, there were no like calls for any unity or weird things like that.

01:28

It was sort of, he was saying it's time to fix it, which is good while they were all right there, the engineers of the mess we've been in.

01:36

Right, yeah, that was especially rich to watch Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, they're right next to him, hearing him blame them essentially for -

01:45

Yeah, they need to be blamed, it's largely their fault. Yeah. I mean, you can also blame the electorate who voted and put them in office, but it does,

01:56

I think it even calls in to question the results of the election in 2020. I think he said that right afterward because there were several speeches during the course of the day and I think he said it multiple times.

02:06

I know I heard him at least one time say that the 2020 election was rigged, which

02:12

I thought the whole thing was rich to have the CEOs there of these major tech companies who, two of whom, suppressed the vote in, or they at least tried to help the

02:25

Democrats in 2020, Mark Zuckerberg being the first on the list. Sure. They're sitting there in support.

02:32

That's the weirdest thing to me and the most surreal. I can't figure it out. My wife this morning was saying how much she doesn't trust all these guys like Mark Zuckerberg, the

02:42

CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos was there. I think the

02:47

CEO of Google was there. And the guy who's the head of TikTok was also there.

02:54

I don't know what's going on. I'm optimistic on it. I just said, well, maybe they had a bit of a change of heart and they're realizing, because the tech world is so big on free speech and they don't care for the government, especially with Apple.

03:09

They don't like the government coming in and trying to get information from their phones and devices that they sell to us.

03:16

Maybe that's what did it. I don't know, but - Well, you gotta hope that after watching the disaster of the last four years, that maybe people would wake up.

03:28

Maybe somewhat of illustration, I was on another podcast last week where we talked about the article that's up on TruthScript about Jimmy Carter's failed presidency that I wrote.

03:39

And we talked about that and we talked about how the South has changed from blue to red.

03:48

It is solidly democratic. And then we talked about the concept of the yellow dog Democrat, folks that had always been

03:55

Democrats. Now, my family is weird. Growing up 50s and 60s here in Georgia, I remember 1964,

04:04

I was in the fourth grade and I had a three ring binder notebook with all my school stuff in it.

04:11

And right blazing across the front was a Barry Goldwater bumper sticker. So I was completely weird at school because how my family became

04:22

Republicans or decided to be Republicans back in that day, I don't know. But people finally began to see the light and began to realize that we're not talking about personalities and we're not talking about the past.

04:35

We need to understand policy. And it's very interesting. One writer that wrote about Carter said that he, though he had this reputation as being a pious, devout, religious man who taught

04:49

Sunday school and read his Bible, yet he was never able to capture the evangelical vote and specifically the white evangelical vote.

04:59

And in my response to that was evangelicals, regardless of their skin color, have learned that in the voting booth, it needs to be about policy.

05:09

Who's going to do what's best for our Christian values to be championed in the public square.

05:17

And that's what Donald Trump did from 2016 to 2020 when he served as president.

05:24

Yeah, yeah. So you're both actually Southerners, right? Because Matthew, well,

05:29

Matthew, you're a transplanting. You were born in Florida and -

05:35

Yeah, I'm a native Floridian, fifth generation Tampa Floridian. Okay, I think it was one side of your family is from the

05:42

Northeast, right? Actually, no, on both my mom. So my dad is fourth generation.

05:49

My mother's third generation. And so that makes me fifth. So - I think we were talking about like way back.

05:56

We were probably talking way back. I have on both my mom and dad's side, people that settled in Virginia.

06:01

And like I have ancestors kind of scattered throughout North and South. But I mean, that's a question though of whether you consider a

06:08

Tampanian or a Tampan. I don't want to say the other name they call us. A Tampa Floridian is really a

06:14

Southerner because we're pretty, you know, it's like the further South you go in Florida, it's like the less

06:20

South you really are. But, you know - Correct. I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't really identify as a

06:26

Southerner in that regard. I mean, I guess I'm in the South region of the United States, but no.

06:32

But, you know, well, Fort Brook and Tampa, that was a Confederate holdout. So there's that. Yeah.

06:37

Well, I'm thoroughly Southern. In fact, my great -grandfather, great -great -grandfather was in Owensboro, Kentucky.

06:47

He was a Baptist preacher. And he moved to Atlanta because Northern Kentucky had really sided with the

06:54

South. It was weird. Southern Kentucky was kind of sided with the North and Northern Kentucky was sided with the

07:00

South. He was in Owensboro. So he made his way to the South. He was a chaplain to Confederate troops. And so I would say, yeah, and my mom's side of the family,

07:09

Georgia all the way back as far as we can go with our family history.

07:16

I think this election, and it's the same with Trump's first election was, I mean, obviously

07:22

Southern states vote for the Republicans in higher numbers in modern history, as you correctly pointed out.

07:28

But it was a lot of the working class, I mean, people have identified it as a populist movement.

07:34

I think that's right. It was more working class people against the elites. And my grandfather from Mississippi is, you maybe think of him because he voted

07:44

Democrat. I think FDR was the last Democrat though. Maybe, I don't know if he voted for Truman. Well, no one voted for Truman, right?

07:50

Truman was just - Yeah, Truman just stepped in. Stepped in. So anyway,

07:55

I think FDR was the last. And then he realized that he was wrong for even supporting FDR, voted

08:01

Republican. He might've, now this is controversial, but he may have voted Dixie Cratt actually in the election in there.

08:09

But he was a strong Trump supporter. And I'm thinking of my wife's mother.

08:15

He died last year. My wife's mother died a little over a year ago. She was obviously from New York.

08:21

She's not the same culture at all, but very like populist and loved Trump.

08:26

And when he got, when he went up there and gave the inauguration speech, I thought of both those people because I thought they were just diehard

08:33

Trump supporters. They loved him just more than any other president in modern history. They felt like he understood where they were coming from.

08:41

And I just felt like it was some sweet vindication in a way because they had to die during the Biden years.

08:48

Anyway, what he talked about though in his speech was just, I mean, there's things perhaps

08:54

I wish he would have talked about more. I mentioned education as one of them. I'm sure abortion.

08:59

He didn't talk about that as much. I didn't expect him to though. But there's people who are upset that he didn't do that.

09:06

But he did, he talked about a bunch of things. He mentioned God. I put out a little,

09:12

I don't know if you saw like a, I don't know, 11 point list. America first, end weaponized deep state.

09:18

Remember God, deport foreign criminals, fight cartels, drill, less taxes, more tariffs, common sense and efficiency, stop censorship, merit -based society, recognize gender, end

09:28

COVID regime, peace through strength and a new manifest destiny. Anything on there that surprised you, jumps out or maybe something you might disagree with and think, oh,

09:38

I don't think he was gonna talk about that. I'm upset he did. I mean, for me, I just thought that was a great speech.

09:45

It was a fantastic speech, John. And with my military background, just a lot of the things he said about clearing, cleaning house in the

09:56

Pentagon, using our troops to do what they're supposed to do constitutionally and that is protect our nation and to send them to the

10:09

Southern border to end this nonsense that's been going on, this invasion literally of our country and then designating the cartels as terrorist groups, which means we can take military action against them.

10:24

I'm ready to see that happen. It's time that we got serious about the problem at the

10:32

Southern border. And a lot of our evangelical elite do this nonsense of take care of the stranger and all that sort of thing.

10:43

But I do believe that there's a biblical mandate to take care of your own first.

10:49

And so the whole idea of America first really resonates with me. And I think it does with a lot of people.

10:55

I think that's why Donald Trump is our 47th president. Did you see the, Matthew might've seen this, the post that Megan Basham put out there from Marvin Olasky, who is now,

11:09

I guess, one of the editors at Christianity. I think he's the executive editor at Christianity Today. Did you see that?

11:16

I did not see it, no. No, I didn't see that one either. All right, so let me, this is Marvin Olasky.

11:22

So obviously, we're concerned with the church and with what Christians think about these things. This is the head of, second in command, because Russell Moore's the editor in chief.

11:31

So Marvin Olasky's the executive editor. I have no clue how these positions relate to each other, but they're both very high up.

11:38

And Marvin Olasky sent out a mass email to a bunch of different people, apparently, that he thought would be sympathetic to this message.

11:46

And he said, good morning. This note will seem like a blast from the past to several of you, but I'll let you in on my new perspective as executive editor of Christianity Today.

11:57

We have, actually, you know what? Let me pull this up so you can see what I'm looking at, because this is public.

12:02

I didn't even think of that. Hold on, let me just pull it up so everyone can see what

12:09

I'm looking at here. Sorry to interrupt myself. All right, here it is.

12:15

So that's Megan's profile. So he says, we have reporters in New York, Chicago, Washington, and other cities who will be covering what happens to immigrants and refugees beginning on January 20th.

12:27

But I would like to have someone on the ground in or near cities like Minneapolis, Denver, Tampa, Atlanta National, San Francisco, Boston, and others that may experience raids on businesses or schools, separation of parents and children, hurried flights out of the country, churches declaring themselves sanctuaries, et cetera.

12:45

So I'm casting the wide net writing to you because I have respect for your intelligence, honesty, and accuracy.

12:51

If you see something in your own community, would you be willing to say something to our editor who will be pulling together information from around the country?

13:00

I'm not asking for any heavy lifting here, just an email note on an accident, on an incident you may become aware of.

13:06

Let me know if there's something you could do and also indicate whether you might be willing to follow up if Christianity Today asks you to do some actual reporting for which there would be compensation.

13:16

So he is offering money for people to let him know, let

13:24

Christianity Today know about the Trump's policies on deportations.

13:32

And obviously he has a slant here. He wants to make Donald Trump look bad. He wants the stories that are gonna pull the emotional heartstrings.

13:42

And there you go. So that's kind of, I mentioned before that we started recording.

13:47

I think that there weren't a lot of Christian or evangelical reactions that I could see. Christianity Today does have a story, but you go to the

13:55

Gospel Coalition, there's nothing. A lot of these Christian evangelical pastors who were usually very quick to weigh in, especially when a

14:03

Democrat was elected the last few cycles and to talk about their prayers for Obama they're just silent.

14:10

They're not saying much at all, which I think is really interesting. But this is an exception.

14:15

Although this was private, right? This wasn't even supposed to be read on public forums like this.

14:22

So there is, I think, a strategy in play to undermine President Trump.

14:28

I really think that's baked into the cake. And I don't know if it'll be that different than the

14:35

National Cathedral pastor. I don't even know what to call her, a pastor. Pastor.

14:41

What do you call her? Pastorette. Pastrix, you know. Pastrix, yeah.

14:49

Yeah, so, all right, well, we can play that clip, but yeah, you're probably not surprised by any of this.

14:55

No, no, you wouldn't be surprised by it. I'm not surprised. Alaska's been going downhill for a long time and had been on the left edge of Christianity.

15:06

It's really, it's sad to see it, that they want to undermine what President Trump is going to do.

15:13

And a lot of it, I think, John, is just really out of their hatred for him as a person.

15:20

You know, Biden was asked when Carter, President Carter passed away.

15:27

And then, of course, we know that Trump is coming into office. And, you know, is there anything that you think that Trump could learn from the

15:37

Carter years, the Carter presidency? And Biden had a one word answer, decency.

15:44

And, you know, that's the confusion because Jimmy Carter was not a decent man.

15:49

And even worse, he meddled in foreign affairs. He was the most meddling former president ever.

15:59

And, you know, championed a terrorist and hugged on him and loved on him. And it was absolutely ridiculous.

16:06

So neither Biden nor Carter were good men. And so there was no decency there.

16:13

But they just despise Trump's personality. They despise his character.

16:21

And does Trump do things that from a moral standpoint that we as Christians would disagree with?

16:28

Well, yes, but we're all sinners, right? You know, we're not electing the pastor of the

16:36

United States, we're electing the president. And we're looking at policy, not personality.

16:42

So this doesn't, this, you know, stuff coming from Christianity today and guys like Olasky and Russell Moore shouldn't be the least bit of a surprise to us.

16:53

Yeah, I mean, what did they do when Biden was elected? Did he send out or did, you know, he wasn't that Christianity today at the time, but did

17:01

Russell Moore send out a mass email asking for investigations and eyes on the ground because of gender policies.

17:10

And we need to really make sure that this is covered and we can, you know, get the moment that, you know, horrific things happen, surgical operations, kids separated from their parents.

17:23

I mean, I don't think that happened. No, it didn't. And they're more, you know, they're more interested in looking good to the world.

17:33

They wanna be friendly with the world. They think somehow that they can, you know, do the gospel as a subtle influence.

17:40

If they'll kind of get along and go along with the world, that the world will like them.

17:45

So it's kind of like having one foot in the world and one foot in the church. And all you end up in that situation is, is getting attacked from both sides.

17:55

Yeah. Well, Matthew, have you looked at the, by any chance, the, what do you call it?

18:03

Why am I blanking on this? Executive orders? Yes, I was pretty pleased with a lot of them, especially the pardoning of the

18:12

January 6th political prisoners. That was good because you saw like a lot of naysayers because there was a whole contingency of people on the right who were countersignaling

18:21

President Trump and just being very negative, especially like the likes of Nick Fuentes and his followers saying like, oh,

18:29

Trump's not gonna do any of this. He's not gonna. And, you know, day one pardons the political prisoners.

18:36

And there's this one guy who makes these little comics. He's like a right -wing comic maker.

18:41

His name is Stone Toss. And there was like a Stone Toss little piece he put out where it was like a picture of Trump getting sworn in and like the

18:48

January 6th prisoner watching from the sideline. And then, you know, it's like that very clearly did not come to pass.

18:55

And another thing I think of is the people who wouldn't vote for Trump because of his policies on abortion and things like that, thinking that he's essentially like fully pro -choice in a lot of regards.

19:06

But then you go to the United States, like a Department of Health and Human Services, their website, their official website about abortion, reproductiverights .gov.

19:17

If you go on Google and you type in reproductiverights .gov, guess what? Since Trump has been sworn in, you cannot access the website.

19:26

It's down. So, oh yeah, the very, very pro -choice president. Obviously, of course, he'd do a bit more.

19:32

You can be a little bit disappointed how he handles it. But isn't that interesting though? Abortionists like getting upset today.

19:38

I didn't, I was like, what? I saw a post from someone saying that nothing significant has been done to help save babies.

19:46

And Trump's helping all these other people. He's helping all the January 6th prisoners, but he won't help save babies. I saw that earlier today and I was like, well,

19:54

I mean, I understand his policy was to leave that to the states and to, you know.

20:01

Whether you agree with that or not, you know, leave it to the states. I mean, you can't discount, you know, the change at the

20:07

Supreme Court, which led to the end of Roe v. Wade. Sure. And there's a lot of work left to be done.

20:14

There's a lot of work that all of us have to do. But now we have the opportunity to do it. Our religious freedoms are protected once again.

20:23

With Biden and the Democrats in charge, our religious liberty was at stake.

20:30

And I don't think it's at stake right now. I think we've got at least four years where we have, we're gonna see, you know, religious liberty protected.

20:38

You know, for many years, if I was a one issue voter, it would have been on the issue of life.

20:45

But I've since changed that my number one issue is religious liberty, because without religious liberty, you can't speak up for the unborn.

20:54

That to me becomes one of the most critical things that we have to deal with. So, you know, there've been a few other times in history, going back to the 90s, where the

21:06

Republicans had control and didn't do anything with it. They didn't do what we sent them there to do.

21:13

So I am really hopeful and prayerful that they will get behind President Trump and actually make these things happen.

21:23

What's it, Tom? That's a, are you going to go, John? You just told us that actually he did do some things.

21:31

Yeah, yeah. In his life. I thought of the last thing Biden was doing before he left saying that now it's constitutionally protected to have abortion in all the states.

21:41

That was literally one of the last things Biden said before he left. Yeah, ridiculous. And a lot of it's not happening. So anyway, go ahead.

21:47

Sorry, Matthew. No, what I was going to say is, Tom, I believe you bring up a great point about how it's sort of impossible to just be a single issue voter, really, because you have to realize how connected so many different things are with each other, like religious liberty with abortion.

22:04

I used to also say that my number one thing was abortion, but it's just, it's such a politically simplistic way to think, like, let's bring in another issue.

22:13

Immigration. If you have like mass unfettered immigration, both legal and illegal, and you look at the voting patterns, you look at the voting records, you look at how our country, the very cultural fabric of our country starts to fall apart, you're never going to be able to have, you're never going to be able to have an actual pro -life movement if you keep importing all these people en masse who vote a particular way.

22:38

These things are all connected. If you want to preserve life, you also ought to preserve

22:44

American demographics when you look at the patterns. And it's like, you know, people don't realize how interconnected all these things are in that, yes, you may vote for this person who is not as good on issue

22:56

X than you want him to be, but on issue Y, if he's really good on that, and that sets up for the future improvement and progress with issue

23:04

X, you for dang sure must like be willing to go all in with guy who's really good on issue

23:10

Y so that issue X can one day be resolved by the grace of God, by him sparing us, because like, let's just face it, we are in a sense under judgment and have been for a while.

23:21

And so if God is giving us mercy, accept that mercy. Don't say, oh, we're already under judgment. We don't need mercy.

23:27

No, continue to take what God has given you and run with it. Yeah, you can't just look at one issue.

23:33

You're exactly right, Matt. And, you know, another issue that sometimes we fail to throw up to the top that we need to is the economy.

23:42

You know, going back to Jimmy Carter, I keep bringing him up, but you guys are too young to have set in gas lines back in 1979 like I did.

23:50

I mean, we had an energy crisis in 1979. It was caused by Jimmy Carter's failed

23:55

Middle East policies. Everything that you go to the store to try to buy today is much more expensive than it was four years ago.

24:04

And we've got to get that under control. If you don't have the finances to take care of your family, how are you going to stand up for any of these other issues?

24:13

It's gonna become a matter of, you know, trying to make sure your family can survive and you've got the resources to feed your children and, you know, pay your mortgage and all that sort of thing.

24:24

So I think the economy has to be a very high issue for us as evangelicals.

24:29

Yeah, I agree. I think the economy obviously is important and it is an issue.

24:35

It's just that when the left tries to bring that up, and I mean progressive evangelicals, they'll say, oh, we should all think about the economy more.

24:44

They'll either frame it as a life issue and then it's socialism, or they'll say that, you know, socialism is what the

24:50

Bible advocates, some form of that. And obviously what's happened in the last four years is when

24:57

Joe Biden says he inherited a bad economy, he's right. I mean, we had COVID and Trump, I don't know that Trump handled all of that good in every way, but here's the thing.

25:06

Biden then put us into the Green New Deal and spent like drunken sailors, you know, allowed that.

25:13

I mean, we had all these Ukraine bills over and over and over. He depleted our national reserves of oil.

25:19

He, I think he just put a moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico, not the Gulf of America, the Gulf of Mexico.

25:25

So, I mean, he did so many things to make the economy worse.

25:31

And I'm scratching the surface there. And day one, Trump's already pulled us out of the

25:36

Paris Climate Accord. So that's gonna save us billions of dollars. And some of the ridiculous things, like for example, by 20,

25:45

I think it was 32, then 70 % of the cars needed to be electric. Stuff like that isn't gonna happen now, which is really good news.

25:55

That's good news for the auto manufacturers, certainly. Yeah, well, for all of us, really.

26:01

Yeah, and the idea that he's gonna drill. So, you know, we've got the natural resources underneath our feet to take care of us for hundreds of years.

26:10

And we need to be exporting that and making money off of it rather than being beholden to Middle East terrorists for our oil supply.

26:20

And so it's a very good chance that all of that is going to turn around. And the stronger that we are economically, the more that the church can do to spread the gospel.

26:31

And there's nothing wrong with wealth. The issue in the Bible is not how much money you have, it's how, it's your attitude toward it.

26:39

It's your love of it. You know, if you have resources, if the church has resources because Christians are in a good economy and able to give, that makes all the difference in the world for the ministries and the missions that the church can undertake.

26:57

Yeah, well, how about we do this? I'm gonna go through the different executive orders Trump signed today, and we can talk about it.

27:03

So the first is the military's role in protecting territorial integrity. The president ordered the

27:09

US Northern Command to deliver its plan to seal the borders and maintain US sovereignty. So this is the closing the border day one.

27:19

And so, well, actually this is interesting because this is apparently, oh, okay, that's a heading.

27:25

Okay, that's a heading for a bunch of stuff. Okay, so securing the borders is one executive order. Ending the catch and release.

27:32

Did you see that a bunch of people on online were photographing this woman in, where was it,

27:38

Juarez or somewhere who said she had a one o 'clock appointment on MLK Junior Day, which apparently the office is closed.

27:46

So she couldn't have had a one o 'clock appointment, but. Right. I don't know if any mainstream organizations started reporting this.

27:52

It was going around on leftist Twitter accounts though. And. Well, we know that they'll lie about it,

27:59

John. Yeah, they're finding victims. If they can't find something that fits their narrative, they'll make something up.

28:06

Yeah, that was interesting. Rescinding Biden's executive orders on gender identity,

28:12

DEI and more. And I thought this was a really, really good thing because this is like the meritocracy part of the inauguration speech.

28:23

And I'm all for in -group preference among the citizens of the United States, which I think Trump is too.

28:29

He's not gonna, that's the thing people need to understand who are upset about that. Like he's not saying that someone from India can come and take your job.

28:37

At least I don't think that's what he's saying because they perform higher. He's saying he wants Americans to be the best.

28:42

And within America, within American citizenry, we don't need to be trying to put up fake quota systems so that people who are not as competent in these fields end up becoming in charge just because we want a diversity points or something.

29:04

And obviously with that, the transgender stuff, my buddies in the military say it's awful.

29:10

And it's, I think every branch now has Pride Month stuff that they are, if they're not required to participate in, they're surrounded by it.

29:21

So hopefully - Yeah, and 28 years in the military, we weren't having to put up with that.

29:28

I mean, I retired in 2005, so I've been retired for almost 20 years now. But I question right at this point, our military's ability to do the things that Trump wants them to do.

29:40

I know. But it's time for DEI to DIE. Yeah, good way to put it.

29:47

So true. Ability to policy influencing positions. So he's gonna reinstate,

29:54

I guess, a former executive order that he had that created, let's see, a new class of accepted service for career civil servants in positions of a confidential policy determining policymaking or policy advocating character.

30:07

I'm not exactly sure what this means. Calls for guidance from the director of the office of personal management about additional categories of positions.

30:13

I think this must have to do with making sure that the people in these bureaucratic roles are actually doing their job.

30:24

So I don't know if you heard in the, I don't know if it was in the inauguration speech or afterward, because I listened to a few of his speeches yesterday, but he said that he's going to call all the federal workers to come into the office and they need to work full, put in full -time hours.

30:40

Right. This was a problem apparently for the last four years where these bureaucrats were working from home without an accountability and just drawing a salary.

30:49

Yeah. You know, there's plenty of accountable people who can work from home and do their job. In the private sector, they get held accountable for doing their job.

30:57

They don't just get to sit on their rear end at home and goof off. We all know these government agencies are fat.

31:04

There are people being paid exorbitant salaries to essentially and are accomplishing nothing.

31:09

And so I really think the whole idea behind this Department of Government Efficiency is an outstanding idea.

31:17

And I think that we can cut the budget and we can cut, you know, the number of people that are working significantly.

31:27

And if they're genuinely qualified people, they're not going to have any problem getting a job in the private sector.

31:33

Yeah, yeah. The only thing, my wife brought this up this morning that I was like, oh, that's a good point. She goes, if he makes it really efficient again, then what if he's out of office four years from now and he hands over this really sleek, efficient government to our enemies?

31:50

And I thought of, I think Jefferson Davis was in that position, right? Because he was a secretary of war, helped build up the military.

31:58

I know John C. Calhoun before him, you know, from South Carolina, kind of helped really bolster the US military.

32:04

And then they end up, well, Calhoun had died, but Davis has to end up fighting the very military that he made such a well -oiled machine and he couldn't beat them.

32:13

Partially because of his own good leadership in the role. Right, right. That's one of the considerations is like, what if Trump makes it so efficient that in four years, you know, we have a government that's able to do great evil.

32:29

But I mean, that's like saying, you know, we shouldn't make this church good or this home good or this business good because bad guys come in and they like,

32:38

I mean, that's just not how we live life. We have to, we're responsible to God accountable for the things given to us.

32:47

So we gotta be good stewards, right? Yeah, and the problem too is that like, you know, part of the reason we're in the mess that we are is because of so much inefficiency.

32:57

And so it's like, okay, you could either fix a problem or leave the problem because what if the, you leave the problem, then the bad guys have to deal with the problem.

33:05

But you know, you have to think, okay, we have to get as much done as we can right now. And if we do get like, if things go really well, you get all these things done and quality of life goes up significantly across the board, then you ought not worry too much about, you know, people swinging all the way to the other side.

33:23

So, you know, do what you can, show people that you're good at what you do and then maybe you can win over the electorate.

33:29

So that's sort of how I would think about it at least. Yeah, I think if we change people's quality of life, they're gonna be pretty excited about that.

33:37

I think people have more money in the bank and more confidence, faith in the future, you know, that the dollar is gonna be strong and that their retirements are going to be secure.

33:49

I think that gives people an awful lot of confidence in what we have. So, you know, one of the sayings that we had, you know, back when

33:58

I was in the military is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Mm -hmm, yep, that's good.

34:06

There's a bunch of immigration stuff in these executive orders, a bunch of energy stuff.

34:12

It's amazing how many of these things, I mean, I don't remember this from even when I was young, all these executive orders being signed the first day.

34:21

This is somewhat new, I suppose, and probably somewhat unconstitutional to have the executive branch doing all this, but that's like,

34:29

I thought about it this morning. We, like Britain has an unwritten constitution, we have a written constitution, but we function like we have an unwritten constitution in a way at this point, because the executive branch has taken on a lot of responsibilities that really don't belong to it.

34:46

But that, I mean, how else are you gonna reverse some of this stuff? That's the question. So anyway, more on immigration.

34:54

I'm reading through a summation of this stuff. January 6th, obviously we just talked about that.

35:02

He, I know one of the things he's doing is in the military, if you were fired because of not receiving the vaccine, you will now be reinstated.

35:12

With back pay. And with back pay, and you're also being pulled, we're also being pulled out of the World Health Organization.

35:17

So to me, that is the moment of trust, because that was a weak spot for Trump, that he had listened to Fauci, and now we're seeing that he is open, he's listening and he is reversing course on this stuff, which is great to see.

35:34

So anyway, yeah, there's some really good stuff. I mean, we can keep going.

35:39

The cartels are now terrorist organizations according to the government. And I don't know if you heard about this, this one's kind of cool.

35:45

President Donald Trump on Monday signed a Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture Memorandum to revive traditional architecture standards for government buildings.

35:55

You probably didn't hear about that one, have you? No, I hadn't heard about that one, but it sounds like a good idea to me. I'll tell you one of the things that I like the best is getting the

36:06

Panama Canal back. Oh, great. Could have never been given away in the first place, but, you know -

36:13

Oh, can you tell us who gave it away? Yeah, Jimmy Carter. Yep. Of course.

36:19

Yeah. And, you know, Carter was a traitor for crying out loud. You know, it's interesting.

36:26

I was at the John Wayne Museum. John Wayne, you know, he's very conservative. He's a big Reagan guy too. He was though on the other side of that issue.

36:33

He thought that the Panama Canal needed to be given to the Panama people. And what, out of the

36:39

Panamayans, I don't know how. Panamanians, yeah. Yeah, Panamanians. Panamaniacs, I don't know.

36:45

Yeah, that too. Yeah, so he was, I guess there were some conservatives who thought, and I sort of get it, like, oh, it's their country, but Trump made a good point.

36:54

He said, it's not even theirs, it's China's now. We didn't give it to China. Right. So how are we getting that back, by the way?

37:03

I don't know. I mean, one way to get it back would just be to take a couple of Navy ships down there and say, get out the way, it's ours.

37:11

Is that - And we built it. I mean, you know, and then we start taking the revenue off of it.

37:17

You know, we're taxing our people to death. And that's got to change.

37:24

Yeah. And so, of course, you know, politicians, both Democrat and Republican, have been bad about, you know, looking at everything from the standpoint of how much money they can make off of it.

37:36

And I think Trump is approaching things with a different attitude. And that is, you know, let's look at it from the standpoint of what's best for the

37:44

American people, you know, for the safety of our borders and the building of our economy.

37:52

Yeah. And the left is going to say, well, you're just being a bully. I think that's what we need to be, really.

37:59

A bully? They're going to take that clip. They're going to clip that. Yeah. No, it's okay.

38:05

So bad. Yeah, we need more bullying. More, well, more strong, more strength, right?

38:12

More strength and power. Not, you know, unjustifiably harassing people.

38:18

No, we don't need to unjustifiably harass anybody. But, you know, because I would say that Panama has broken the agreement that was entered into and that the canal would be theirs.

38:31

And they've given it to China. I think we have every right to take it back. Yeah. Based on the fact that they didn't keep their end of the bargain.

38:39

Why Congress let Carter get away with that? Who knows? Yeah, Congress lets presidents get away with a lot of things.

38:47

Let's, oh, before we go take questions, I just, I need to let you know this.

38:53

Christianity Today does have an article. And in the beginning of the article, it says this.

38:59

Incoming presidents often strike a balance between cordiality to the outgoing administration, calls for the country to unify as a whole and clarity around their own new direction.

39:09

But that's not Trump's style and never has been according to Amy Black, a professor of political science at Wheaton College.

39:15

So they got this professor of political science from Wheaton to basically disparage

39:21

Trump if you read the whole article. And he's, yeah, he's a bully basically. That is the line.

39:27

And that's somehow out of step with Christianity. I think, so a lot of what we talked about,

39:32

I think those come back down to an American first assumption that because the

39:37

Bible instructs people to love those who are around them, our countrymen, above those who they don't have as much proximity to, that we need to stop essentially giving our resources and even welfare benefits and other things to foreign governments and people who aren't members of our country.

40:03

And we need to start focusing on them because we have all these problems. And it's such a basic principle. It really is.

40:08

There's really, if you're expecting like a long trail of Bible verses and each policy,

40:14

I need to like justify it according to what the Bible says. It really, most of it at least is rooted back in this principle.

40:22

It's not like a big, you don't need to do a lot of exegesis is what

40:28

I'm saying. Like it's very basic. Like you take care of your home. There's a principle there. You should take care of your home above other people's homes.

40:35

You should take care of your country above other people's countries because that's the responsibilities God's given you.

40:42

Yeah, you're pointing out the hypocrisy of billions of dollars to Ukraine to protect their border against Russia and yet letting our own border be overrun.

40:56

Yeah, that's hypocrisy. That's the epitome of hypocrisy. Yeah, but these other policies too,

41:03

I mean, like the Panama Canal, the government efficiency, we're paying for it, right?

41:11

So we should be getting back what we're paying for. It's not just when we pay to compensate people's laziness and their own life is, they have a lot of money to spend and to buy food and we're living in squalor trying to keep up.

41:27

That's not right. And so, I mean, it's a lot of basic stuff like that. I think the oil, drilling for oil,

41:34

I mean, there's an assumption behind that that God has given us, I mean, we have this land, right?

41:39

So God has given us oil reserves in this land that we can use and it's only an environmentalist,

41:46

I think, assumption about the worth of humans versus the worth of the,

41:55

I don't know how to put this, but, cause it's not really animals. They are, it's all of life they're saying is gonna be ended by fossil fuels and so forth.

42:06

But I think it's built on this whole assumption though, that man is bad.

42:11

Man is intrinsically this negative force in the world. God didn't, God made a mistake,

42:16

I think. I mean, really that's, they don't say that, but that's what you would have to conclude, right? That God put man here and man's, it's not man's sin, it's man's consumption of the resources that God has given to man.

42:28

That's the real problem and it's not. So anyway, I think all of this is justifiable from a

42:36

Christian understanding is what I'm trying to say. I agree, absolutely, 100%.

42:44

Yeah, unfortunately Christianity today does not, but that's okay. So we're gonna take questions and then we will end the podcast.

42:52

But did we wanna go through that one article at all that your brother wrote? Oh yeah, well,

42:57

I guess I sort of mentioned it in passing and then we can do that though. I mean, I read it.

43:02

Did you guys read that article? I read it, yeah. I thought David did an excellent job. Okay, yeah, we can do that before we get to questions.

43:09

Yeah, I thought he did a great job too. Let me pull it up. And just as a reminder, since I didn't mention at the beginning, if you wanna donate to TruthScript, it is a 501c3 organization, please consider doing that.

43:21

We appreciate it. We do have conferences that are coming up. The next one is in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, April 25th through 26th.

43:31

And that's the Christianity and the Founding Conference. You can go to Christianityandthefoundingconference .com.

43:39

And, oh, and we're looking for writers. If you're a good writer and you want to write on the topics that we cover, you can scroll down to the bottom right here.

43:47

It's right by the donate tab. It's this little bitty donate tab at the bottom. And then right under that at the bottom is publish, and you can look at our guidelines.

43:54

Okay, so today, my brother, David, who's the president of TruthScript, wrote an article called

44:00

The People Rejoice. And it's a good article. I would encourage you to check it out. It was from his perspective, obviously.

44:07

And the Biden presidency very much affected my brother and his wife. She lost her job in the medical field.

44:17

They had to move partially as a result. His life was terrible because of the policies from the administration, mostly

44:24

COVID -related. So anyway, he talks about this, some of the personal stuff, and then just his assessment of the

44:33

Biden years and how terrible they were, and just relates it to general proverbs. And like the king's heart is like a channel of waters.

44:42

In the hand of the Lord, he turns it wherever he wishes. So there's this idea that there's sovereignty, that God is behind everything.

44:49

But then at the same time, and I think he might've ended it with this proverb, if I can find, yeah, or is it? No, I can't find it now.

44:55

But the one where it says that the people rejoice, right? When there's a righteous -

45:01

Is it at the top? Is it at the top? I mean, did I - Yeah, yeah. There it is, yeah. Proverbs 29 too. In the righteous increase, the people rejoice when the wicked man rules, people groan.

45:10

I don't know if you saw, Owen Strand wanted to remind everyone that Trump is not our savior. So in case everyone was -

45:18

If anyone was confused about Trump, it's Jesus who's our savior, not Donald Trump.

45:24

I forgot. When I look at this article - Thank goodness you remind me. Thank you, John. I actually completely forgot about that.

45:31

All right, appreciate it. It's hard to keep things straight. But the reason I mentioned it is because the article,

45:38

I think, balances these things. Like there are these realities that God is sovereign. He's in control. The Biden years were,

45:43

God wasn't confused by any of that. God wasn't like flummoxed thinking, well, you guys chose this.

45:51

I didn't want you to choose it, but you chose Biden. God knew, God ordained it. And that's true.

45:57

And he's the savior. He's set apart from the government in that capacity. He's a spiritual savior, but he's also the ruler.

46:05

And there's some things that don't change. But at the same time, on a human level, there's a rejoicing when

46:14

God ordains. And I think he does ordain a more righteous ruler. And Trump is, despite whatever personal flaws, he is a more righteous ruler than Joe Biden, his policies, certainly.

46:24

Yeah, there's no question about that, John. And one of my favorite phrases is, has it ever occurred to you that nothing ever occurs to God?

46:33

And I think when we look at the, since we as Americans have a great deal of influence and input into who our political leaders will be,

46:45

I would look at the Biden years, and for that matter, the Obama years, and the

46:52

Clinton years, and the Carter years as God giving us exactly what we deserved. I would look at God putting a man like Trump, or going back to the

47:01

Reagan years, putting Reagan and Trump in place as God's gracious hand of mercy. You know, sometimes

47:08

God is merciful to us in spite of it. I would say at this time, we probably deserved

47:14

Kamala Harris, but we got Donald Trump. We have to be really rejoicing in that. And I think that's exactly what that verse in Proverbs is talking about.

47:22

You know, when the righteous are in control, you know, God's people rejoice. And I think it's certainly a celebratory time for us as believers in that regard.

47:33

And in spite of the evangelical elite, you know, trying to drive evangelicals the other way, it's very clear that evangelicals in very large numbers voted for Donald Trump.

47:46

Yeah. Yeah, they didn't change anything. The fact that their leaders, and that's one of the points he makes, is that the leaders of evangelical institutions were primarily signaling support for the

47:58

Biden administration on the things they felt that they could have camaraderie with him on. And it was fundamentally, though, an evil administration, whether it's

48:07

Mark Milley or Anthony Fauci or the J6 committee, they all subverted justice. That was their whole role, was to subvert justice, to turn everything on its head.

48:17

Good is bad, bad is good, up is down, down is up. And you had evangelicals leaders who thought that they could somehow game the system and be appealing to Democrats and show their support for the refugee and the foreigner and the person with COVID who needs everyone to be vaccine amassed or else they're gonna die.

48:42

And that's what they did. I mean, that's how they signaled. And there doesn't seem to be a, this is the weird thing in evangelicalism.

48:50

Like you rightly said, Tom, they vote for Trump, but their leaders seem to want to signal support, even if it's passively towards the opposition party.

49:05

And I mean, it's like, what do they call that thing, Matthew, that diagram where it looks like a radar, but it shows the proximity preference.

49:15

The in -group, out -group preference. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'd send you that a few months ago, I think in a group chat that we're in.

49:21

I actually was like, I don't know what this is. I see it shared everywhere. And it's this chart that shows conservatives care more about the people around them and liberals or progressives, they seem to have a concern more for people with whom they share less and have less proximity to.

49:39

It's so interesting. You know, one of the things that demonstrates that is I saw comments from Julia Roberts, who you all know is a

49:49

Hollywood star. And she put out some information on social media, very, very critical of the looters in the

49:58

California fires. And yet she's been very much in favor of the, you know, taking care of the immigrants and sanctuary cities and all that sort of thing.

50:10

And, you know, I'm gonna ask some of these people, you know, now that it's come, now that a problem's come to your neighborhood, you seem to have a different attitude.

50:17

You know, when you look at these Hollywood actors that have these mansions and, you know, how many illegal immigrants are they housing?

50:25

Well, none. They have no contact with them whatsoever. And I think in reality could care less whether they live or die.

50:31

Don't want all the rest of us to take care of them. And somehow or another, they feel like that makes them holier than thou,

50:38

I suppose. The hypocrisy of it is just absolutely amazing. Yeah.

50:44

Matthew, you were the one who brought up David's article. Did you have a thought on it that you wanted to share?

50:51

No, nothing in particular, but I just, yeah, I thought it was a very good article. And I especially liked the part of it because sometimes the best articles are ones where, you know, you lay things out clear, but it's also there's that personal touch.

51:04

And so I think that it was good that he wrote it from personal experience, having to, you know, all of us lived under Biden, but I guess some of us were impacted in varying ways.

51:15

And it's sort of, it's good. The reason why it's good to have things like that in there, I feel, especially as a

51:21

Christian or a Christian organization talking about politics is you oftentimes like have this assumption where it's like the church shouldn't be bipartisan, you know, because Christian liberty and things like that.

51:32

But there also needs to be an understanding that, sure, you can have Christian liberty in politics when both parties, like they may have different policies, but they're not like as, you know, neither of them are entirely wicked in the eyes of God.

51:45

But when you have something so wicked, it's a good reminder of like, no, people have gone through horrible things and it's good that we as Christians are speaking out about this and not just on like policy level or saying, this is bad because of this, but saying like, this is how it impacted me.

52:03

And I know other people that are like this. So I thought that was a pretty good angle from the article. Yeah, Matt, I agree with that.

52:10

And the personal touch from David's article, I thought that I'd encourage everybody to read David's article because he's speaking for an awful lot of people out there that were personally impacted in that way.

52:24

My first wife was a nurse and she was already out, you know, medically retired because of physical issues that she had before, you know, that led to her, you know, passing away.

52:37

But had she still been working, she would have refused the vaccine and may well have lost her job.

52:45

So it could have affected my family in that same way. There's a lot of people out there that were affected by those policies.

52:51

And when you look at it from that standpoint, and one of the questions that people were asking as we were, you know, considering who you're gonna vote for, are you better off today than you were four years ago?

53:05

And I don't know anybody that could answer that question in the positive, say, well, yeah, I'm a whole lot better off than I was four years ago.

53:12

Certainly not financially. Nobody was better off financially. Nobody's retirement account was better.

53:18

And so I just think there's just so much to be grateful to God.

53:24

And I really, I think that we should probably look at it from the standpoint of the mercy of God, the loving kindness of God.

53:33

He's been gracious to us. In essence, he has given us another four years to get some things turned around.

53:39

Let's get to some of these comments. And if you have a comment and you're streaming, get it in now. Dr. Bob said, from Neil Shenvey, the

53:46

Bible, he tweeted this today. I don't know if you know who Neil Shenvey is, Tom. Do you know who he is?

53:53

Yes. He's, okay, yeah, he goes to J .D. Greer's church. He's an apologetic. So he goes, the Bible doesn't prescribe a particular immigration policy or a particular response to illegal immigration.

54:03

So what a day to post that, right? What a day to post that. Yeah, actually it does. And, you know,

54:09

I've got an article on TruthScript called Borders, Walls, and Strangers or something like that.

54:14

Go read that if you wanna know what the Bible says actually about borders. God is the one who established the borders.

54:21

Yeah, I mean, their immigration policies are much more strict than ours because the land reverts to the original people who own it during the year of Jubilee.

54:31

Like we allow people to come in and buy our land and stuff. You know, if we were gonna go through the Bible, you shouldn't actually do that, right?

54:37

Right. So it's much, I think the Bible is, it's in a different time period.

54:44

Obviously they're not gonna have the technology, but come on. Let's just say that our friend

54:51

Shinbi is not a Bible scholar. Well, his pastor isn't either, so. True.

54:58

New manifest destiny is different from American exceptionalism of the neocons. It is less outward focused and more about focusing on improving our own nation.

55:06

Yeah, I would agree with that. It's, so I think he's talking about like Greenland and Panama Canal, we're gonna go to Mars.

55:14

And it's, I don't remember who said it. Someone smart told me though that English speaking peoples need goals to accomplish or they just like fight each other.

55:25

And so this is, I don't know if this is like, if they're self -aware of this, but it is true.

55:32

We need like a reason for our existence. Obviously we have that in God, I think, but there's,

55:38

I don't know, there is this like, this mission kind of element to these things that binds people together.

55:45

And so that I, this is my term. I call it, no one else I've heard has said this, but I said, it sounds like a new manifest destiny.

55:52

Like we're supposed to be the best in the world. We're gonna have these resources and we're gonna control trade and we're gonna even take it into other planets and we'll go where no man has gone before, so.

56:05

That's what made America great. We need to go back to what us, the greatest generation that saved the entire world in World War II.

56:15

I was thinking even before that, like the explorers and the adventurers. Oh, that too, yeah. I mean, yeah, you could just keep going back in history and seeing things like that, that exceptionalism that we're talking about.

56:29

And the goal setting and achievement that we strive for, which is another reason why the

56:35

DEI stuff is nonsense because it defeats all of that. So Bevelyn Beauty, have you heard that name before?

56:44

Bevelyn Beauty, I think it's Beauty. She was on the podcast, actually. This is my other podcast,

56:50

Conversations That Matter, years ago. She was one of the pro -life, what do you call it?

56:57

Protestors, I guess, who was arrested. Anyway, this is a comment from Vanna Moller, says,

57:03

Bevelyn Beauty was also pardoned, it looks like, for her activism. Okay, so yeah, at a

57:08

NYC abortion mill. So good. Yes, that's very good. He's a pro -life activist.

57:15

So for the, yeah, the abolitionists who are out there saying that, you know, he's not doing anything.

57:22

Come on. Matt Borish, again, said, 80 said today that some people are angry they don't score touchdown after every touchdown.

57:32

Nothing on the, okay, so Michael, I guess, is not happy. Nothing on the Second Amendment, nothing for ending the poisoning of our food and water, nothing specific on when mass deportations happen, nothing on reversing

57:42

BLM holidays like MLK and Juneteenth, nothing on tariffs. Well, I don't know if he's gonna do all of that, but I wouldn't expect him on day two to have all of these.

57:50

Like, we're literally 48 hours not even into it, so. Let them cook. Yeah, let's, come on, come on.

57:58

Your expectations are a little high there, man. Yeah, that's pressing it a little bit too hard.

58:07

You know, let's give this thing some time. The wheels of justice turn very slowly. Yeah. I was just in Texas last week on a lawsuit that we started four years ago, and we finally got a day in court.

58:22

The wheels of justice turn slow, and the wheels of politics turn even slower. And it's like, you know,

58:29

I have a very dear friend who was a congressman for eight years, and we talk an awful lot, and he's certainly rejoicing in what's happened with Trump's election.

58:39

But, you know, he would always say, tell me when he was up in Washington, I'm one of 435 congressmen.

58:45

I can't come up here. People in the district would be angry with him that he hadn't turned the whole situation in Washington around, because he promised to do certain things, and he carried through on his promises.

58:57

He did everything he could, but there's a process that has to be undertaken. And I'm a big supporter of the

59:05

Second Amendment. I'm not the least bit concerned about it with Trump in office. Yeah, when will David Platt leave his seven -figure home in Northern Virginia to suffer with our undocumented brothers and sisters in Northern Mexico?

59:15

Thank you, Dr. Platt. That's not gonna happen. He's on route right now. He seems to be taking marching orders from Rules for Radical.

59:23

That's Banner Mauler again. Here's someone else. Melly74 says, on election night, Charlie Kirk broke down in tears and said,

59:30

God has mercy on us. I think many of us have the same feeling. I know I did. I couldn't stop smiling.

59:37

Matthews says, will the conference be so USA -focused? He's talking about the Christianity and the founding that Canadians won't get anything from it.

59:44

Well, look, Canadians can always learn a great deal from us in the United States. I think it's prudent to learn from the

59:52

United States if you're a Canadian. No, we're not talking about Canadian history, sorry.

59:57

It's gonna be about United States history, but hey, come on down. It'll be fun. And no offense to Canadians in the audience.

01:00:06

All the conservatives in Canada are welcome to apply for citizenship.

01:00:12

Come on over. Yeah. This is probably not gonna get any better in Canada. Do some self -sorting.

01:00:19

We need to send some of the radicals up to Canada, get some of the conservatives to come down here. But yeah,

01:00:25

I don't see it necessarily happening. Dimitri, yeah,

01:00:31

Mola says, Christians have a lot to learn from Trump. Architectural beauty matters. Gender truth matters.

01:00:36

Borders matter. It's like the conservatives are learning that there is absolute truth in this world. That is an interesting point because I had this thought too that Mark Zuckerberg had gone on Joe Rogan and admitted he got too woke.

01:00:46

And I'm gonna say, I've never seen David Platt, J .D. Greer, Russell Moore, Matt Chandler, any of those guys,

01:00:53

Anthony Bradley, the list goes on. I've never seen any of those guys admit they got too woke. But -

01:00:59

Not even when they're called out and exposed for being too woke. Mark Zuckerberg though, for crying out loud, will come out and say, you know,

01:01:07

I got too woke there. Donald Trump, who's not even, I don't think he's a born again Christian, is boldly proclaiming things that are absolutely, he can boldly say to the whole country, there's only a man and there's a woman.

01:01:21

And we have suffered for how many years with evangelical leaders who will say, technically they agree with that, but they can't boldly say it.

01:01:28

They have to couple it with some kind of, you know, God whispers about sexual sin or, you know, we wanna acknowledge the people who are gender dysphoric in our congregations.

01:01:41

I mean, it's just crazy that Trump can come out there and just say the truth that God has also said. And he's not even a born again

01:01:48

Christian. And so many of our leaders, they can't do it. It's crazy. Well, you know, we're in trouble when you have a church conference as influential as the

01:01:58

United Methodist Church. And then they have their national meeting and everybody has to announce what their pronouns are.

01:02:06

Oh yeah. I just wanna say, you know, pronouns are not that hard. They were assigned when you were born by the

01:02:12

English language. Pronouns aren't hard. So, you know, there's, but there's just so much confusion among people.

01:02:20

And they think that this in their mind expresses love for people and it doesn't, we don't express love for people to allow them to continue in their sin against the

01:02:32

Holy God. The loving thing to do is to say, hey friend, there's a God who can change you, who can save you, who loved you enough to leave heaven and come to this earth and give his life that you could be saved and be forgiven of your sin and have eternal life forever.

01:02:49

That's what's loving. That is what's loving. Matthew, what do you think of this? Will Trump make Israel and Ukraine pay us back for all the billions that we have given them?

01:02:57

What do you think? No idea, but I'd hope so. Yeah. I don't know how he would do it, but.

01:03:03

Yeah, I don't think he'll be able to, but I certainly would be in favor. Is Big Eva still a big evil threat level?

01:03:12

Is Big Eva still a big evil threat? Okay, so I guess maybe rephrase that. What's the threat level of Big Eva? Are they still influential enough to do damage?

01:03:20

That's a good question. Oh, I think they have a lot of influence. I don't think they have it. I don't think they have as much as they think they do because obviously they haven't influenced evangelicals when they walk into the voting booth.

01:03:34

That's very clear. And, you know, we look at the influence of Big Eva through a lot of the mega churches and the mega church pastors, but the average church members go into a church that runs less than a hundred.

01:03:49

And in most of those churches, you're still looking at a fairly conservative group of people that think for themselves and many of whom actually believe the

01:04:00

Bible, you know, means what it says and says what it means. Yeah. We have

01:04:05

Michael saying, are you not concerned about Bondi? Any of you know what Bondi is? He's talking about the attorney general from Florida.

01:04:14

Oh, I'm not. I think that's her last name. Our Floridian, Matthew. Do you have anything to say about this?

01:04:23

I don't. I'm not familiar with her. I'm a super unqualified on this.

01:04:30

She's nominated to be the attorney general of the United States. And, you know, DeSantis has worked well with her.

01:04:36

I think she's done some good things down there. I'm concerned about a lot of people that Trump wants to put in positions because, you know, they're, you know, but we can't expect that every person that's going to go into a position of authority and power is going to be a pro -life

01:04:57

Bible believing Christian. And yes, Michael is correct. She is pro red flag laws, but so no, she wouldn't have been my pick.

01:05:07

So yeah, there's some, there's going to be some concern. Here's the thing too. There's also information

01:05:13

Trump has that we don't and Trump's obviously not going to make all the decisions we would, but the thing is when you're trying to fill government posts and you're trying to find people who are very rock rib conservative

01:05:23

MAGA folks, you've got a very thin rank, a very thin slate of people to choose from.

01:05:30

Right. The left cranks out elites because they go to the top schools. They rub shoulders with those people.

01:05:36

They learn management and they become a managerial elite. That's what they do. Conservatives go into engineering and blue collar jobs.

01:05:44

And we don't have, we can't feel the same amount of players and it's a problem.

01:05:50

And so I just want to say, I think Trump is going to probably put some people in positions because he doesn't have a choice on some of them.

01:05:56

The best options aren't ideal, but the hope I have is that, you know, it's like with RFK. Yeah, he's pro -choice to an extent, although it seems like he's wavering on that now, but he's, he gives a, he gave a guarantee though that he's not going to apply those beliefs he has to the role that he's playing in the administration.

01:06:18

So I think it is a team effort and you're going to see, you know, hopefully guys who are out of step with MAGA, they're not going to foil

01:06:27

MAGA. Because I think Trump's biggest metric is loyalty. You've probably noticed that, like that's his biggest metric.

01:06:34

You know, are you going to do what I asked you to do? And - Right. And he'll remove somebody who doesn't do what he wants them to do.

01:06:41

He did that in his first term, he'll do it again. So yeah, are we concerned about Bondi being the attorney general?

01:06:47

Yes, but I would have enough faith and confidence in Trump that if she gets out of line, she can be replaced.

01:06:56

So last, I think, okay. All right. Second to last, because someone just got one more in.

01:07:02

All right. ACLU has already filed four lawsuits on the executive orders issue, including the issue of birthright citizenship, which we haven't talked about, but basically

01:07:10

Trump said the 14th amendment does not mean that you, that children born in the

01:07:19

United States are citizens just because they were born in the

01:07:25

United States, like it's magic soil. They also have a mother or father who are citizens of the

01:07:32

United States. So I, the tug of war over this goes back to the context of the 14th amendment.

01:07:39

Who is it meant to apply to? Of course, the historical context is these were newly freed slaves in the

01:07:45

United States. This wasn't, the people who framed it didn't have in mind the kind of problem we have now.

01:07:51

But yeah, if we had more time, I might give you a real radical view on that and challenge whether or not it was even passed legally.

01:07:59

I have opinions on the reconstruction amendments. I think, you know, making it a stipulation that states have to endorse these amendments in order to become back, you know, to be included again as participants in the

01:08:12

United States. That doesn't seem to be in the constitution either. I can't, but I digress.

01:08:19

I'm totally with Trump on this one. I think that it's ridiculous that, you know, no, and he's right.

01:08:25

No other country in the world has this policy. So - Well, we know the left operates through the courts.

01:08:31

If they don't get their way, otherwise they're going to start filing lawsuits. I don't think any, this shouldn't be a surprise to anybody.

01:08:38

So to say, they've already filed four lawsuits against executive orders. Of course they will.

01:08:44

And I guess my question might be, why don't conservatives do the same thing when a leftist like Biden, you know, issues executive orders that we can't stomach?

01:08:55

So, and the left may win some in court. We'll just have to see.

01:09:01

But, you know, a big plus that we have is that new judges that are going to get appointed to the bench are going to be appointed under the

01:09:09

Trump administration. That's exactly how we got control of the Supreme Court.

01:09:15

I'm not entirely happy with Trump's Supreme Court appointments. You know, there's some guys there that I've got some concerns about.

01:09:25

So it's not going to be perfect. And everything we want is not going to happen overnight.

01:09:33

But this is where we, you know, get on our face before God, because remember, God can control

01:09:39

Trump. Yeah. Yeah. God's sovereign in this.

01:09:45

Last question here. And then Matthew's got to run. So Matthew, why didn't he remove

01:09:50

Fauci? He should have done more than just remove Fauci, but I don't want to get in trouble.

01:09:56

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think he was kind of taken for a ride. He's not a medical expert. All right.

01:10:02

Well, in closing here, I do want to say, so Matthew, did you want to say anything? Do you want me to mention your -

01:10:11

Oh, yeah. No, I mean, it was just going to be casual, but yeah, no, I'm just, yeah, all I was going to say is just,

01:10:17

I would appreciate, I don't know, just prayers as I just go around job hunting. And if any of you guys have anything that's going on,

01:10:25

I would love to do that. Yeah. So it's not really a big deal. I can probably find something soon, but just something that John and I talked about.

01:10:32

He was like, oh, you're job hunting. Why don't you mention it on the pod? So I'm like, yeah, why not? Give it a shot. So yeah, that's really about it.

01:10:39

And you're in Tampa, I guess. If there's anyone - No, I'm in Sanford. So Central Florida area.

01:10:44

Oh, okay. If there's anyone in Sanford, so where you live that has an opening or, you know, you've done a lot of contract work, right?

01:10:54

Like construction and that kind of thing. Yeah, I'm actually in a little construction gig right now.

01:11:00

So doing that on the side. So just doing a bunch of little things, but yes, if any of you know anybody, that would be much appreciated.

01:11:07

But I think I should lock in on something soon though. But you know, it's why not throw one last little Hail Mary, of course.

01:11:13

So - You're probably gonna be throwing Hail Marys. Oh, that is true. Yeah, yeah.

01:11:19

If you have an opening for a seminarian who's got some construction experience in Sanford, Florida, you could contact me on any of my socials or you could probably even just the general, you know, info at TrueScript and, you know, we'll hook

01:11:33

Matthew up here because we want him to be able to feed himself because he's looking a little thin lately. So we're -

01:11:40

No, I'm doing great, man. I'm doing great. It's just a little Hail Mary. That's it, that's it. Beans and porridge.

01:11:46

It's just off camera, so you can't see it. No, I'm kidding. All right, well, yeah, with that, no,

01:11:52

I appreciate that, Matthew, sharing that. And I feel like I have an announcement

01:11:59

I can't remember. I don't know why I can't. It's gonna like dawn on me and bother me right after the podcast ends, but I'll reiterate.

01:12:06

We do have a conference coming up. Please, if you're in the Pennsylvania area, or, you know, even if you're not and you wanna travel in,

01:12:12

Christianityinthefounding .com. It's gonna be a great time. And we have a VIP dinner set up.

01:12:18

We wanna do more of these events. And just to let everyone know, like our goal at TrueScript is, we're not actually making money.

01:12:25

We're losing a lot of money on these events, which is probably not the way that you're supposed to do it, right? Because most of the organizations that have conferences, they have sponsors and all this.

01:12:33

We're not doing that. We just wanna make it affordable for you to come. I mean, I do the same with my retreats.

01:12:39

I just charge whatever the cost is. All the honorariums, the travel for speakers, all that,

01:12:45

TrueScript's covering all that. And so we want you to be there. And that's, yeah, we try to keep the main thing the main thing.

01:12:52

So if you wanna come and be part of this and learn, I mean, we wanna equip you.

01:12:57

We want you to know your American Christian heritage. Check it out, aprilchristianityandthefoundingconference .com.

01:13:05

Well, while we're making announcements, let me just say, I know that a lot of pastors out there, John, are probably looking for Sunday school material.

01:13:13

I know I've done that for years and I've just found like, you know, organizations like LifeWay and others, they can put out stuff, you know, economically because they print so many, but I've just found the material to be so weak.

01:13:26

So I've undertaken to write material. I just finished up a set of Sunday school lessons on the book of Daniel.

01:13:34

And I can't afford to print them where really people can't afford them, if you know what I mean.

01:13:40

And then we can provide, I can provide printed copies, but they're expensive that way. But if somebody would like to have the material,

01:13:49

I'll send them a PDF for free. All right. Send the material to them. My goal is to get the material out there.

01:13:58

And so we've got James Philippians, Nehemiah and Daniel right now, probably going to start working on the gospel of John here next.

01:14:07

But, you know, if anybody's interested, you can get ahold of me at TREAD, T -R -E -A -D, TREADministries .org.

01:14:14

All right. There you go. We got more questions and we don't have time. So sorry, guys. Next week, we'll have the

01:14:20

American church in the same time and place, six o 'clock on Tuesday, Eastern standard time. See you then.