News Roundup: Evangelical Nazis?, Hegseth's Prayer, Ligonier, Pure Slop, the Duggars, & More

live on the Conversations That Matter podcast where we are forging a bold Christian vision for America.

I'm your host, John Harris, and it is a Friday night. I don't expect a lot of people to be live streaming.

We'll see. We'll see where people are at. I know this is the night so many of you have activities.

I know I was on a podcast earlier today with Andrew Rappaport and Joseph Spurgeon, and he had to go early because he was taking his wife out.

So I'm at home, though. We did our night out, which now includes our little, let's say almost two, but she'll be two in June.

So it's not really almost two. She's so tall, though. People think she's at least two, but she goes with us.

So we content ourselves to Texas Roadhouse and Five Guys. Those are like the two primary spots.

And at Five Guys, you gotta be strategic. So I've developed my price -saving strategy for loading up on the fries, getting small drinks, making sure one of us has a regular hamburger, one of us has a small.

You gotta do those things, right? That's how it is when we got the economy we have. But anyway, anyway, not to bore you with my own food choices but maybe you'll find some useful advice in that.

Anyway, we do have people coming into the stream, though. And I'm sure a lot of you are gonna listen to this tomorrow on the replay as you enjoy your weekend.

There's a lot to cover. And I decided to try to narrow it down to things that are, well, it's conversations that matter, things that I thought mattered the most, especially to American Christians.

There are some things that I thought they're too complicated like Joe Kent, for example. I'm just putting that on the back burner.

We may deal with that at some point and some political things that I thought were important. But there's other stories,

I think, that would be better for us to focus on. So what we're gonna focus on, just to give you a little preview of some of the stories, at least, we are gonna talk a little bit about the ongoing conflict with Iran and what's happening in the region of Lebanon because that actually,

I'm gonna play you a Tucker Carlson clip. I wasn't planning on it. There's been a number of Tucker Carlson clips that I see some issues with over the last two weeks.

But there's one in particular where he insinuated the guys at Liberty University and Franklin Graham are acting like the pastors who lived in Nazi Germany, turning a blind eye to evil.

And I don't think, I mean, this sort of part of what we talk about, I don't think I can just bypass that.

So we're gonna talk about that a little bit. We're gonna talk about this controversial prayer, controversial prayer, that Pete Hegseth gave that liberals are losing their minds over.

We're gonna talk about Ligonier Ministries a little bit, St. Andrew's Chapel, some of the contention and drama surrounding that.

It's hard to find a silver lining in that, but it is part of what I talk about. So I do need to talk about it and I do need to draw some lessons from it.

And we do need to pray for that ministry. No two ways about it. And Reformation Bible College.

We are also going to talk a little bit about sexual ethics, especially discretion.

There's been a number of things. The Duggars are one of them. There's also been a controversy online about a couple who shared, we'll say that they did both share, but initially the post that got a lot of amplification was the husband sharing about his wife's past.

And this became a big controversy. And I wanna talk about that a little bit. There's some revealing things

I haven't seen anyone comment on in observing how this played out that I want to draw your attention to and hopefully get you to think about.

It really does. The way this was, the reaction to this reveals something about where at least

Christians online that are aware of it are at. We're gonna talk about immigration a little bit.

And then of course, some other things as well. And if you have any questions, please do not hesitate. We already have people coming into the chat and making comments.

So cosmic trees, and you've gotta be one of those faithful contributors here.

Of course, you're saying that YouTube deleted your comment already about driving. You know what? I don't know what to tell you.

I don't have control over that. And I don't know, maybe you put something in there that was,

I don't know. I don't know what could be offensive about driving, but I don't know. Was it really about driving?

Was there something else in there that they caught? The algorithm said that's, I don't know.

I don't know. Okay. Well, we're gonna keep going here and start out with just some international stuff.

We're gonna talk about the Iran wars, a little bit of an update here. And these were the headlines from this morning, if I can bring them up.

Israel accelerates strikes on Iran's military industry as ceasefire prospects loom.

Pray for this, pray that there's seems to be a possibility of negotiation here.

But of course with Iran, the previous leaders that Trump was trying to negotiate with were kind of being elusive and saying one thing, doing another and toying with Trump.

And so I don't know, can Trump make a deal? Trump's whole thing with all of this is he sees himself, it seems like to me watching him for years as the guy who can work the corporate office.

He can go into a boardroom and he can work someone over and he applies that to his foreign policy.

That's why he says things like, we're gonna do something really bad to you if you oppose us.

And then he sometimes carries it out. I think it's a tactic.

I mean, if you read the art of the deal, it's basically something he's done for a long time. He will go further in his rhetoric sometimes, then he will go with his actual actions, but he will also back up his rhetoric with actions.

So you don't exactly know where he's gonna strike, what he's gonna do, but there does seem to be a possibility of some negotiation.

And he has reduced the military participation for the time being.

Of course, he's sending more troops to the region, but less strikes in the hopes that maybe there can be some kind of an agreement reach.

So Epoch Times reporting on that. And of course, the New York Times also reported and said, the

Saudi leader is said to push Trump to continue Iran war in recent calls.

So Prince Mohammed bin Salman wants the US and Israel to continue, which

I find interesting. It's like, oh, there's sort of this narrative that, which

I don't think is, I think it's way overplayed, but the narrative is that online, that Trump is just doing whatever

Netanyahu wants him to do. But I think it's worth noticing here that you have others in the region that see this as beneficial.

And the United States, this is kind of the way we are as a superpower. Everyone knows our news, even if we don't know theirs.

We have to become experts right overnight if you're in the commentary business on situations you've never studied before.

And it's like, they know what you're doing though. Like they're looking at your news because your decisions as the world, one of the world's superpowers, the biggest one, affect them.

And they want a piece of that. They wanna influence that. And they wanna benefit from it.

And who is it, John Panetta, the comedian, he always says, if there was an asteroid or whatever come to earth, everyone would rely on the

US. The US would have to figure this out. And all the movies that depict this, it's always the United States.

It's their problem. They gotta go figure out how to defeat the asteroid. And he says, once again,

Canada gets a free pass, which I thought was funny. But other countries want that free pass.

They want to benefit. And of course, Iran was a problem with many people, many nations in that area.

Related to this, it's sort of setting me up for this because this is evangelical news. And I wanna show you something.

This is a post made by someone in Turkey, I'm assuming, based on the name here.

And the post is a Tucker Carlson clip recently. And it says,

Tucker Carlson brutally calls out American evangelical leaders like Franklin Graham for blindly supporting the murder of Christians in Lebanon and the starvation of children in Gaza.

He compares their silence to the Reich church in Nazi Germany. So this is an interesting thing.

There's a, and I remember things that Tucker has said over the last week that are very revealing that I'm not gonna go into detail about.

I'll mention in passing. But this one specifically relates to us. And I wanted to point out this comment right underneath it.

I stopped donating to Samaritan's Purse. People should stop donating. And then

Furkan Gonzoukura, the one who posted this clip initially, says importance and reply to that.

And I just wanna say, look, this is real tangible, real tangible impact on real people.

My church does those shoe boxes every year. It's one of the few ministries that I'm pretty positive about.

That are like, I'm not giving a real vision. We have been supporting a child through Compassion International.

But knowing how some of their stuff works, there's, it's a difficult thing for me.

I'll tell you that much. Like once you know the sausage, how the sausage is made, it becomes difficult. Now, one ministry we do support is equipping the persecuted.

And let me tell you a little bit about that. And then we will come back to Tucker Carlson here. Folks, you know, I'm not much of a coffee guy, but my wife, she's a coffee snob in the best way possible.

And she's got high standards. When she loves something, you know, it's legit. That's why I'm excited to tell you about ETP coffee.

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It can provide food, medical aid, schools, and protection for brothers and sisters suffering for their faith. The Bible says, whether you eat or drink, do it all to the glory of God.

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and spread the word. Invite your friends to join the mission at etpcoffee .com. Let's drink coffee that changes lives.

You know, I'm gonna have to re -record that someday. I don't know what, I was really cold when

I recorded that. And I just look, I remember like I had tears in my eyes because the wind was so cold.

The point though is ETP coffee, if you're a coffee drinker. So check that out. That's a great ministry.

But you know, we do the shoebox thing. We support Samaritan's Purse. I've known people who work with that ministry, a number of people actually.

And everyone that I know who's worked with that ministry has always really been impressed with the way they handle things and the way they're committed to spreading the gospel in each of those shoeboxes.

So I take some, I don't know if offense is the word, but I have some reservations about saying, yeah, you know,

Tucker Carlson said that Franklin Graham, he's like one of those pastors in Nazi Germany who's turning a blind eye to things.

And let's just not give to Samaritan's Purse anymore. Well, let me play you the clip so you can hear what

Tucker said and then we'll talk about it a little bit. So here it is. Here's what Tucker Carlson said just recently.

Religious leaders, the American evangelical leaders, not rank and file evangelicals, who if they knew would be horrified, but the people who run the biggest evangelical associations in the

United States, the people who are in Liberty University, for example, or Franklin Graham, these are household names. Have they said anything about the destruction of churches and ancient

Christian villages in a country in the Middle East with a Christian president? Do they even know

Lebanon had a Christian president? Who knows? They haven't said word one about it. Why?

Well, that's a good question. That was the question a lot of people asked the Reich Church after the

Second World War ended in Germany. How could you have gone along with that? And there was not a good answer other than,

I don't know, didn't want to offend the powerful. There is going to be a consequence to this.

And one of them is very easy to predict. Big evangelical institutions, which have done good things, by the way, if you're for the family and you're pro -life, you're grateful for what they've done, for their personal decency of the people in the pews, a lot of really decent people.

But the leaders of American evangelical Christianity, not all, but some, will have no legitimacy at all when this is over.

Where were you when a country that you pledged fealty to was murdering

Christians, your brothers in Christ in the Middle East? Where were you when people were starving, when kids were starving in Gaza, and the

Gaza aid program was run by some kind of crypto -Christian preacher? Like someone's have to answer for that.

Okay, I'm obviously someone who has been trying to hold evangelical leaders, especially in the more reformed evangelical tradition, accountable for a long time regarding social justice stuff.

And there's a framing that Tucker's using here.

He's saying they've sworn fealty. Are there evangelical pastors who have sworn fealty to Israel?

Well, there are evangelical pastors who support Israel. Is that swearing fealty? The ones he names are the people at Liberty University and Franklin Graham.

Those are the ones he specifies. Has Franklin Graham sworn fealty? If he's sworn fealty and they then murder, that's the word

Tucker uses, Christians, which carries with it an intentionality about it, then they're gonna have to answer and they'll lose credibility.

Now, I do wonder, does Tucker realize the credibility that they've lost, not those people in particular.

In fact, he's highlighting the ones that are the most anti -woke and conservative. That's the interesting thing to me.

The ones who went woke are the ones that I go after. But that's the framing of the whole thing.

And then he compares it to the pastors in Nazi Germany, who presumably, they allowed the

Holocaust to take place without objecting to it too strongly. And I have to say, it is a little surprising to hear that from someone like Tucker.

After all the sensitivity from him about being called a

Nazi or being affiliated with Nazis or being an anti -Semite or any of these things, he's very sensitive about people saying that about him.

And yet he's willing to say that about Franklin Graham. That's a tactic

I thought he perceived to be a leftist tactic. The other thing is, Tucker Carlson, as I've talked about on this program, was probably the largest voice, the biggest microphone to try to assuage fears that there was a

Christian genocide happening in Nigeria. You just heard me play the ad to help Christians in Nigeria who were being persecuted by Boko Haram, a

Muslim terrorist organization. And he did a lot on his podcast to try to dissuade you from thinking that's even happening.

I played the clips on two podcasts already. I had Judd Saul on to talk about the whole issue. He was pretty fuming about it.

I wanna ask where Tucker Carlson was on that. Is someone gonna have to answer for what he's done by chalking it up to tribal warfare of some kind, by saying that this is something

Ted Cruz is just new to and trying to put a shroud of suspicion over it, that Ted never cared about these people until recently and there must be a political agenda behind it.

That's the insinuation. Ted's cared about it since at least 2020 and has worked to try to have the

United States see the Christians in Nigeria as persecuted to categorize them that way.

And I just found the whole thing terrible. It was not just lazy in the research, it was it doing actual damage.

Why would you donate to something like Samaritan's Purse? Why would you donate to something like equipping the persecuted?

What's the point? There's not a real... Samaritan's Purse apparently is compromised because of Franklin Graham.

He's like one of those pastors in Nazi Germany. And equipping the persecuted is trying to get you to donate for a genocide that's apparently not even happening.

And I just, I think it's so hypocritical for him to do that.

And I feel like I need to say something about that. I mean, this is the kind of stuff we cover. So let's get into the details just a little bit here though.

And let's see if this is like the Nazis. So let's start here.

Here's one of the news stories. It's just a recent one. And this is a website, Al Arabiya, which is a

Middle Eastern website. They're taking this though, I think from Reuters. So Reuters must have reported on it initially, but here's the headline, okay?

Airstrike hits Lebanese Christian town north of Beirut. Smoke rises from Beirut's southern suburbs following an

Israeli strike. Now here's a picture of it. There's the smoke. Lebanese state media said on Tuesday that an airstrike hit a

Christian town north of Beirut, an area that has not yet been targeted in the expanding war between Israel and the armed group

Hezbollah. I wanna explain something to everyone here. I have been following the news regarding what's happening, not just with Iran and Israel, but Hezbollah and Israel.

For those who don't know, just very briefly, Hezbollah has been funded by Iran. They are set up in Lebanon and they are not part of the

Lebanese government, but they are more powerful than the Lebanese government. So the Lebanese government has said since the war started that we're gonna deal with them, but they don't have the strength to deal with them.

Hezbollah is too powerful. And so they continue to shoot rockets into Israel and harm people there.

This is something that didn't go widely reported, but it was also happening during the whole Gaza -Israeli war.

Lebanon was firing rockets into the Golan Heights and that kind of thing. Well, when this all started, of course,

Hezbollah starts shooting rockets into Israel along with Iran. It's not just Iran shooting rockets. And so Israel is, there's been sort of a dance going on between the government of Lebanon and Israel as to who's gonna deal with this.

Like, are you gonna deal with it? Because we're gonna have to strike back and we may even have to come in and deal with this ourselves if you're not going to do anything.

That's been the situation since the beginning of the war, essentially. Now, Lebanon, yes, does have a lot of Maronite Christians.

We actually had one on the podcast just a few weeks ago. And the Maronite Christians, pray for them, by the way, pray for them.

They are in that, they're in Northern Israel and they're also, most of them are in Lebanon. And so they are kind of caught in the middle of this thing.

And here's an article. This is, we'll start with this article,

I guess. This is from the Jerusalem Post. And the article's title is, Christians in Lebanon navigate fear and neutrality amid ongoing regional conflict.

Let me just give you the too long, didn't read version of this. There are

Christians in that particular area of Southern Lebanon. And they have around them, the

Hezbollah is operating. And they basically want their government to deal with this.

They would rather not have Israel come in and have to do that. They would rather not have a foreign country come into their country and take out

Hezbollah, but they don't like Hezbollah. This creates a big problem because Israel's got interests here.

They don't want to be shelled by Hezbollah. They're fighting Iran. They don't want to fight Hezbollah. They don't want to fight, certainly they're not trying to fight

Lebanon. The Christians there, they don't have any recourse really. And their government's not powerful enough to really do anything about this.

So that's the summary of kind of how Christians feel there. You can go read the article if you want. Here's another article.

And this will explain, at least this should be taken into account along with what you just heard Tucker say.

And the other article I read about this airstrike. IDF finds Hezbollah tunnel near South Lebanon church as group exploits

Christian population. The IDF also stated that Hezbollah prevents Christian civilians from fleeing combat zones and has even fired at them in the past.

Where are people on that? The IDF uncovered a Hezbollah tunnel stocked with weapons near a church in Southern Lebanon.

The military announced on Friday, emphasizing the threat the terrorist organization poses to Lebanon's Christian population.

The tunnel was discovered by the IDF in the Lebanese village of El Khem, the area that previously had been cleared by the

IDF in December, 2024. Therein three shafts were discovered as well as mattresses and food used by Hezbollah terrorists.

We don't really even need to read anymore. These are the conditions guys. And this is what I wanna say.

Let's talk about just real quick Nazi Germany. The comparison Tucker made here. This isn't about debunking

Tucker, right? This is, Tucker says a lot of things. This is really just about, I'm defending the honor of Franklin Graham and Operation Christmas Child basically here.

Nazi Germany was targeting Jews specifically for initially with the

Nuremberg laws, denying certain civil rights and that kind of thing. And then it got into actually putting them in work camps and then concentration camps that were with the intention of eliminating a portion of their population.

Now, that's the implication Tucker's making. That's the kind of thing happening here.

If that was a parallel case, you would have to have Franklin Graham knowingly, knowing, okay, with knowledge, seeing that the government of Israel is specifically targeting

Christians for elimination. They're denying them civil rights. They're trying to go in there.

The crosshairs are on the Christians to kill them. That is very different than terrorists holding up in churches and in Christian communities and areas and then shooting at Israel and Israel responding.

Now, we should all be open to whatever evidence is out there to, if Israel does something wrong, there's nothing wrong with saying that's wrong.

That's against Christian ethics. That's evil, that's wicked. Sure, that's like the

Nazis, if it really is. But there's no evidence presented here. It's just a claim that's made and it's thrown out there in the most careless fashion.

And it's the same thing that leftists will do. And frankly, I can't tell you in the audience what to do, obviously,

I'm not trying to, but you need to consider what your news sources are. And I've just really been disappointed in the turn so many podcasters have taken recently.

And Tucker's really no exception from that. I didn't wanna just do a show on Tucker, but there's been so many clips he's put out that have been put out there from his shows talking about how

Islamic societies have Sharia law, they're superior to Western societies where all the cities are essentially falling apart.

Talking about, he had a Chinese professor on recently. He literally said, let me just give you a quote.

This professor, Jing Shukin, I think is his name, said that everyone should sit down, including

Russia, China, Iran, and say it's time for a new world order. Does that like ring any bells for anyone anymore?

New world order where we are partners. Before America was the hegemon, meaning the one in control.

What we want to do is open a dialogue where everyone is respected, where America is no longer the bully, but a willing partner in creating a new economic order that benefits everyone and not just the few.

Now I heard that, I'm like, that's exactly what my Marxist professors in college said. And Tucker's response, I think that's the wisest possible advice and probably the only path that preserves civilization.

Like your jaw's on the floor. That was the response. I can't believe that's the response. So America is no longer the superpower.

There's a cooperation going on. America needs to sort of downsize and let these other countries have a joint,

I guess, governance, a joint economic pact of how they're going to operate. That's sort of tip of the iceberg stuff.

There's like something every day. And I've wondered whether that's the strategy. Like before you can really like fact check and analyze something, just put out more and more stuff.

Right, just crank out so much stuff. Like people are just overwhelmed. You're never really settled in your mind on what you just heard because now you're hearing the new thing.

And the new thing's also outrageous and also crazy and also whatever, unverified.

And you're in the middle of verifying it. And another thing, your head's being turned constantly by this stuff and it's not healthy.

So that's why I don't want to share like all of that. If I were, you could easily do a podcast that was just here's today's slop, right?

And that's not going to be good for anyone. So I have to be judicious about this, which you could pray for me. I don't want to, but I'd like a lot of people are listening to this.

And in this case, withdrawing support from Operation Christmas Child from Franklin Graham's ministry.

I don't see that as a net positive. Franklin Graham has actually been one of the few people in that evangelical strata who's actually been relatively conservative.

I mean, do you want Paula White or Franklin Graham influencing Trump? Franklin Graham influences

Trump. He's actually stood up to Trump on things like his language. I don't know what else he's stood up for in private, but I think publicly

Trump's admitted that. Well, yeah, Franklin's talked to me about my potty mouth. I mean, that takes some kind of a backbone.

I mean, he's not simply there to benefit from Trump. He actually cares.

And yeah, he's not maybe perfect. No, I mean, he's a human. I don't, I wouldn't agree with everything in his theology,

I'm sure. But he's a guy who has the gospel who, anyway, that's just my take on all of that, if you wanna know.

So I will take some questions and stuff, but I do wanna get through some more of this because we just have a lot to cover.

Let's talk a little bit. Oh, we're gonna, speaking of sloppy stuff,

I don't even think I'm gonna play the clip. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna make a point. I'm gonna read this to you.

So their right -wing watch, for those who don't know, right -wing watch is, they like to clip people on the right saying things that they consider to be crazy, outrageous, to embarrass you, to say, well, this is what conservative

Christians are like, essentially, or just conservatives. This is what they're like. And so we can dismiss them.

We can look at their craziness. Just like you probably, if you're a conservative in my audience, you might understand libs of TikTok, right?

What is libs of TikTok feeding you? Constant, like, look at the crazy stuff the left's doing.

And it's sort of a reinforcement mechanism to make you, to not just make you against the left, but make you think, oh, they're nuts.

And admittedly so, their philosophies are pretty crazy. So you start toying with gender, for example, you get some really nutty things that happen.

They're not stable people, but they're gonna give you the most extreme examples of that, because they want you to like see the left as that's what the left is, right?

And that may be where it's going. Like not everyone's kind of where the crazy person on libs of TikTok is, but like their philosophy lends itself to that, right?

So right -wing watch is kind of fulfilling a similar urge that left leftists and liberals have to, they wanna feel like they're smart and that the people that they're opposing, they're just really dumb.

And so that's their goal. And they clip people sometimes unfairly, they do all kinds of things.

They will take someone out of context, that those things can certainly happen. But sometimes they do clip things that are legitimately kind of crazy.

And I've had both of these gentlemen on my podcast before, and I feel the need, like as a musician,

I think I especially feel the need to just say, this is rubbish guys, this is just rubbish.

So here is the, I think I have the transcript somewhere.

Okay, here's the transcript, ready? So Calvin Robinson, and I guess it's a quote tweet over him praising

Paula White. So he praises Paula White and they're like, yeah, they don't like Paula White, they don't like Calvin Robinson.

They're like, this is the kind of person Trump surrounds himself with. And then Calvin says this on the,

I don't know what they call the show now. Is it New Christian Right? Anyway, Joel Ebbin's show. Rap music was centered around rebellion against society and it was sexuality, violence, but it's deeper than just the words of the beats, it's the frequencies.

In 1939, the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers came together. The Rockefellers have a big mansion near me.

So I know a little bit about the Rockefellers. I was like, they what? They got together with the

Rothschilds, okay. They got some scientists and some musicians together. All right, so got the

Rothschilds, Rockefellers, scientists and musicians. And they all said, they got in this room, like it's the smoke field room stuff.

They said, let's shift the frequency of A from what it was, 440

Hertz to 453 Hertz. And he's sort of speculating here.

He's saying, I don't know which, he doesn't know which frequency it was, but we're gonna switch it. And he says, look it up.

Essentially, they wanted the masses to be enraged, to be ready for war.

They don't want the masses to be peaceful and seeking God. And so Joel Ebbin, that's so good so that you're telling me, is it's not just the lyrics, but rap.

The music itself is Jewish. So which Calvin Robinson replies in the affirmative.

And I just, I did comment on this publicly already. I just said, I refuse to believe this is a real clip.

So I had to face the music though, and I actually looked it up. And I hate to say this guys, it is a real clip.

And so I'm a musician and I just want, I do wanna explain this to you guys, just so I don't wanna defend you listening to rap music.

I think there's good reasons that that's not good for you. But all the Lecrae and Shilin fans, do

I still have Lecrae and Shilin fans? I don't know if I do in the audience. Here, I had a,

I don't wanna get on this tangent too much. Since I'm a music guy, I'm tempted to, but I did have a professor in college who was very against rap music and made all kinds of platonic arguments.

And some of them, I'm not gonna lie, they're somewhat compelling, but he also argued against country music. And then I had to draw a line and say, wait a minute, professor.

So here's what this is, right? So Hertz is a measurement of frequency. And each note, which you're hearing right now, you have sound waves coming into your ear, are coming into your ear at different frequencies.

And that's how you can tell the difference between notes. That's how you know whether my mood and the words that I'm saying, how you interpret them, you have to have frequency for that.

So before 1939, there were all kinds of different frequencies that were used in orchestrated music throughout the world.

And what happened though, is you started to have during the late 1800s into the turn of the century, a lot more touring because of mass transit of orchestras and instrumentalists.

And when they get together with let's say local instrumentalists, oh, they have to tune differently or their instruments are not built in such a way that they are compatible with one another.

And that's a problem. So it's a very simple problem. And the way to solve this problem was the

International Organization for Standardization came together. And they said, we gotta have a standard here for building instruments.

And so they, at an international conference in London in 1939, they got together and they said, look, let's just base it off of 440

Hertz, the frequency of 440 Hertz will be our A and that will be the standard.

So we can all be on the same page. Now there's a conspiracy that says this was, the

Nazis were there because they sent delegates. They were, Germany was under Nazi rule at the time and they really were trying to get the government to get ready for war.

Like this, the Nazis were behind it. So how did it become Jewish? I don't really know, but certainly,

I mean, the Rockefeller, are the Rockefellers Jewish? I never, I was like, I never knew this. I don't think they are Jewish. The Rothschilds certainly are, but whether,

I don't even know if they were involved in that. I mean, they were involved in so many different things because of their business connections, but this, none of that has to do with this.

And to, I don't know, I can't believe I'm even saying this. I wondered whether I should even say this on the podcast, but it's like one of 50 examples of slop from the last two weeks.

Here's the bottom line. Jews did not invent rap music in 1939 or the frequency that was gonna be used for rap music to make you angry and ready for war for Israel or anything like that.

There's just nothing, anything in that neighborhood. It's just, it's not true.

And here's my thing, right? Some, if you're not a musician and you hear this kind of stuff, I mean, I don't know, there's so many reasons to be suspicious already, but if you're really not a musician, then

I think what you do in a situation like this, if you say something like that, is you come back and you just retract it.

You say, I was wrong, right? That's, you don't double down. And we have a problem right now,

I think, with, and it's like a lot of influencers. This isn't unique to anyone, only having one speed, and that is double down speed.

Anytime you're challenged, especially if it's by the left, especially if they're trying to embarrass you, you just double down.

I'm here to say doubling down is perfectly legitimate when you are in the right. When you are totally in the wrong and your facts are totally wrong, you end up becoming a liability.

You know, if someone says that's really the right wing, that's what Christian conservatives think, yeah, that's become a problem.

And this is, like I said, this is one example that could be used out of many different examples of slop.

And I've put some thought into this, because I'm like, what is driving this? So much of this is so unnecessary.

And I have no personal beef with the people who, Candace Owens, it's like every podcast

I feel like sometimes. I have no problem personally with Candace Owens. If I was

Erica Kirk, I would. If I was any of Charlie Kirk's personal friends, I would, but I'm not, and I feel defensive kind of, but, you know, of at least of Charlie and then like jamming all of this stuff, using his legacy the way she has.

But it's like, what motivates someone to do that? I mean, the sort of typical reaction is always just like clicks, right? It's just, and I don't know,

I was thinking about this and I don't know if any of you feel this way or have noticed this, but I was thinking about it with my daughter, okay?

This is like, bear with me for a moment here. This is a monologue, I just need to get out there, because I think it's important.

My daughter was not walking a year ago, not well, right? Had to help her.

She walks great now, I can barely keep up. She climbs things. How did she get from A to Z?

Well, incremental steps. It wasn't overnight. It actually took a lot of time to go from where she was to where she is.

And she's quite nimble now. And to restore our country to the way it used to be or the way it should be, especially as Christians looking back, it's going to take a lot of intermediate steps.

It's not gonna be instantaneous. It really is gonna be like walking. It's going to be difficult because we have so much to overcome.

We have a lot of instability, a lot of sexual sin, a lot of all kinds of things that our population has participated in.

And you have to start somewhere. And so you can't, the damage doesn't go away.

The damage is there from policies, from the way parents treated children and raised them, from philosophies we believe that were wrong, from just rank pagan stuff, right?

And I think that there's sort of like this way to look at it that sees it all as very boring, that whole process, right?

Trump's been in what, a year and a half before your term. And there's so, like a year in, there was so many people already really turning on him.

And I'm like, well, I understand some dissatisfaction with some things. I understand circumstances are not maybe what we would want in every particular way.

But at the same time, I'm like, it's been a year and he has been fighting really hard in some areas and he's gotten some really key wins, especially in immigration.

And I'm like, what? I mean, there's an alternative timeline we could be on. So what makes sense of this?

And this is just, I wanna just throw this out there as a possibility for maybe some of what we're seeing.

2020 happened. In 2020, a lot of people kind of woke up to the fact that their government was lying to them, maybe their church was lying to them.

And it was a whole host of issues. It was masks, it was, or the whole COVID stuff.

It was also BLM, it was Me Too, it was like a bunch of things people were sitting in their home, doing research on the internet because they couldn't go to work or go to church or anywhere.

And they're trying to figure this stuff out. I know the people that went this route. And so they're like, man, everyone's, seems like so many people are lying to me.

And there was this feeling of like, I remember this. There was even a book I read by Alexander Dugan called

The Great Awakening. And I remember hearing that term thrown out out there, like there's like this wokeness thing going on, but there's also

The Great Awakening. And there was this sort of hope that like trust the plan, like Q would not, not everyone was into Q, but like there was this sort of general disposition that emerged with some people that, and I know them personally, some of them, that like this was the time to correct all the errors.

Like we now our eyes are open and we can see where we went off track. And then people have different theories about when that was and how it was, but we can just set the clock back, go back to this error here, correct it, then we'll be good as gold.

And a lot of people have now, I think, sort of transitioned from that to, you know what the real error was?

It was Jewish influence. It was our alliance with Israel somehow. I mean, woke people are already against Israel now, like a bunch of anti -woke people are also against Israel.

And that's become this sort of explainer for it in a very short period of time. And here's what

I think though, like the real solution wasn't all that. Like it was political victories, but it was also like, it's had to sustain whatever political victories we were going to enjoy, having kids, trying to get married if you're not, you know, if you're not married, don't have kids, helping other people's kids, getting involved in your civil organizations or voluntary associations, getting involved in your church, like being a localist in that sense, like actually making things strong and thick in your community so that you could resist

COVID round two and all of that. Like that stuff's not glamorous though. That stuff's not instant.

That stuff's like teaching my daughter to walk. It's not that exciting. It's everyday waking up and saying,

I'm going to fight today again. I'm going to get up. I'm going to go to work. I'm going to, if you're a stay at home mom or whatever, like I'm going to go get the kids up and I'm going to feed them.

And I'm going to teach them. I'm going to teach them today their ABCs and their one, two, threes. And I'm also going to teach them that Jesus loves them.

And he gave them to mommy and daddy. I mean, it's what I do with my girl, right? So that we would teach the truth about Christianity and Jesus and the truth about the world to her.

That's why she was part of the reason she's in the family that she was in. And that's part of God's love. It's everyday guys.

It's going to church every, some of you every day. Some of you, it's every seven days, whatever.

It's going to church. And it is sacrificing for the good of your fellow man and trying to instill good virtues, right?

Like this stuff is not the glamorous stuff, but that's how we became a strong country in the first place is because those were the people that settled here.

And they really did focus on that kind of thing. They weren't passive. They weren't just sitting around trying to learn about what's really behind the veil, try to get some sort of insight that they're holding back from you.

I'm not saying that all of that is wrong if you're doing the research, actual research, but it's in those little moments that we all collectively participate in that you actually get victory and it takes time and you're not going to see it instantly.

Now, are there some things the government can do instantly that will be good fixes and stuff for some things? Sure. But our culture has a deeper disease than that.

And it's a disease I think only Christ can remedy ultimately. And it's a disease that only

Christ is going to do it through virtuous people. So that's something

I've been thinking about. Like what's the useful but not glamorous stuff, like the hard truth?

Because it's easy to look at other people. It's easy to look at faraway elites, especially, and they may be very wrong and very bad, right?

It's very easy to say like, oh, that's like the source of the problems. And there may be truth to it.

It may be absolutely true that they have contributed their evil. At the same time, like what does that do for you as a listening to this podcast?

What can you do about it? And the answer is get up, feed your kids, teach the

Bible, go to work, live for Christ, pray, exercise your spiritual gifts.

It's the regular, ordinary, everyday stuff. And learning to be satisfied with that and learning to see that as the victory,

I think that's something that means maturity when you get to that point.

And it's just not an instant fix. That's I guess what I'm trying to say. So, you know, and I think too, like there's sort of a drug.

Like when you get, when you start going down some of these rabbit holes, it can be like, you start going to places where like, even the note

A is a conspiracy. I think you're getting to places where like the drug's wearing off and you need a bigger hit or something.

Like that there's, where do you go? Like the rhetoric has to be more extreme, more or more sensational, you know, more like just like outside the box to for someone who's going down that path to really feel like they're still increasing in their learning.

They're still like tracking who the real bad guys are. I don't know where this is all going, but at some point there's gotta be like a crash point where it's like, man, we can't trust anything.

I was actually listening to a radio station the other day, country music station. I don't really listen much, but I turn it on for a second.

And their new tagline was like, you can trust us even if you can't trust the internet.

And I was like, whoa, that's different. Like there's this reputation emerging that you can't trust stuff online now.

And while AI is like fact -checking better than it ever has, and you have all these tools, people are realizing you can't really trust and they're withdrawing.

They're with, I know several people that used to be so active online and stuff. They're not there anymore.

It's like, why, like, I can't, I don't know what I'm looking at anymore. And I think in the return to normal, there's just a lot of people that wanted to like put their mission in that, like the return, whatever returned to normal from 2020 is gonna have this element or that element.

And that's the sort of the key. That's how we're gonna keep ourselves from getting off. And now it's to the point, it's like,

Trump's all corrupt, the administration, like you can't trust literally anything. Like everything is lying to you.

And the only people you can trust are the people that are telling you that everyone's lying to you. But why should you trust them, right?

Like this gets into a situation where you're just gonna like not trust anything ever, which is kind of a dangerous situation to be in because then you're only left with your instincts and personalities and what you wanna hear.

So I think that's the jam we're in. And I think the solution, the correction is ordinary everyday stuff.

You just gotta like focus on, yeah, you're gonna get your news. You're gonna listen to your podcasts and all that.

Like, but like, hey, like have some, like choose those things very wisely if and only if they are gonna help you in your life.

That's my advice. I'll probably say something like that again. And I'm willing to take questions. Maybe now would be a good time for questions.

And we got so much more to cover. This is gonna be a mega edition, guys. Let's go here first.

Goes for $6. The third temple is here and it is the body of believers. Read St. Paul. A physical temple is a convenient lie.

Don't fall for the coming deception. All right, I'll be sure not to fall for that.

I don't, to be fair, I don't know that there's any actual plan to put in a third temple in a practical sense.

There's been a plan for a long time that if the opportunity arose, they could do it very quickly. But I don't know that anything has changed in regard to the

Dome of the Rock and all of that. So I doubt we're gonna be seeing that. And I don't have any plans to support that.

Let's see, what was said about Franklin Graham? Okay, so you gotta just go back in the podcast, sorry. Let's see, do you think this craziness was unleashed with Charlie Kirk's death?

Seems to me Kirk might have been acting as a regular in the 60s and 70s.

I wouldn't say he's like Buckley. I think there's a difference between him and Buckley.

But as far as being, like, I don't think, how do I say this? I do think

Tucker, Tucker, sorry, Charlie, Charlie wanted to keep the crazy out. I think

Charlie, just from everything we know and his clips at universities and the speeches he's made, he seemed like a guy that was very focused on political victory and he understood the left.

Those are two things I don't think are baked into the influencer class right now.

For example, can I just give you an example? I was talking to a friend this morning, a friend high up at a

Christian institution who's very intelligent. And he was saying, look, we're,

I guess we're, I didn't know this, but there's a mission to go back to the moon. And his wife teases him and says, oh, that's, we're gonna go to the moon for the first time.

And he gets annoyed because he says, that's communist propaganda that we never went to the moon. That's something, that's

Soviets wanted you to think that. And it's just been picked up and rearticulated. And the people who rearticulate that, it's not like they're getting into science and they really just don't think like, oh, well, there's no wind on the moon.

Like the things, yeah, there was a wire holding it down. Like that, they're not interested in that as much as they are trying to say you've been lied to and America is not as great as you think it is.

Like we actually didn't accomplish that. And I'm sorry, the evidence is we did. The evidence is we did.

In fact, satellites that are in space can see the evidence on the moon. And we reflect off of things that we left on the moon, you know, for communication and so forth.

It's like, there's so much evidence that we did go, but it doesn't really matter because the point is you've been lied to.

And whoever tells you that you've been lied to and gains your trust, because they're the ones that'll tell you the truth, they can influence you.

And so you gotta do your research. You gotta be careful. And frankly, if sources do not retract, that's my cutoff.

Like, if they say really crazy stuff, even if they do retract, I still have a cutoff. But I think that's a reasonable standard.

Like if you find out something's really not true and you say it, you should cut, that should be a cutoff. But, and I'm gonna get all the people who think we didn't go to the moon now commenting.

Wasn't prepared for that debate today, but I guess we have to go that direction. What is the deal with these people who used to be on your show, like Robinson and Webbin, and used to be solid, are just becoming weird and promoting bizarre ideas?

Well, I tried to give you somewhat of a, like, I don't, it's hard when you don't know everything intimately and personally about everything.

Like why did Tucker go down the path that he went down? Like I can gander at a possibility, like his father, maybe

I can say his father was really pro -Israel and CIA, and his father maybe didn't treat him right, and now he's resentful.

And so, you know, you could psychologize it, but I don't know. Like, there's all these theories about Candace, about Tucker, why they went down these.

I don't know exactly. All I know is when Tucker says things like, you know, Franklin Graham is like the pastors in Nazi Germany, it does damage.

And to a man that, frankly, is one of our better guys at the top. Like, you know, couldn't he have gone after Paula White at least or something, right?

John and Crowder are the only ones I've heard giving a critique from the right of Tucker's inconsistency. There are more, okay?

Who are they? Patrick Casey is one of them. I'm pretty sure Patrick Casey has, I'm pretty sure

John Doyle has. So if you go look at John Doyle and Patrick Casey, none of those guys, they're not neocons or anything, but they will go in on Tucker and on Candace and some of this stuff and say, guys, we need like standards of honesty here, come on.

All right, does supporting Netanyahu, Israel means supporting Netanyahu? And on a broader note, can we distinguish between supporting the people and the government?

For example, I think of the time of Ahab. Of course we can, yes, absolutely. I actually just wrote a paper on this and I made that very point.

No, I think if you want to support Israel, you should support your neighbor who's

Jewish and religiously Jewish and needs the gospel, right? So no, I don't think,

I don't believe in this like loyalty that's like, even if they do bad things, you have to still support it or whatever.

No, absolutely not. And it's gotta be good for our own country, these things. That's really the moral standard here.

All right, are there any other questions? I don't think so. I think we're gonna keep going here.

We got a lot of stuff to talk about here. Let's talk about Hegseth, beat

Hegseth. And on the thumbnail, I'm talking about like, okay, which version of Christianity do you want?

And it's more like what kind of Christians in the public sphere are gonna be the future? Like, is it gonna be

Franklin Graham? Is it gonna be Pete Hegseth? You know, or is like Tucker Carlson, you're like sort of model

Christian. He says he's a Christian all the time. Like, is it, like, who is it? Who is, is it Paula White? Who's gonna be?

And so, oh man, this is not the story I was thinking. Let's start with Hegseth. So, you know, this is interesting to me.

And I'm, I don't know about, I'm just gonna tell you where my limitations are. I don't know about everything

Hegseth has done, but I know a lot of it has been good on social stuff. Against DEI. I mean, he's already gotten, like putting

Robert E. Lee's portrait back up at West Point, I was like, you got me, man. Like, we need those examples of godly, faithful men.

And he seems to get that. And he quotes scripture a lot. And he quoted an imprecatory psalm.

And here's the story from Christian Post. He invoked divine wrath against the enemies of the United States. On Wednesday, every month, it is fitting to be right here, he said, to those gathered at the service.

It was live streamed to all military personnel. All the more fitting this month at this moment, given what tens of thousands of Americans are doing right now.

Reading from a prayer, he said, was given by a military chaplain to the U .S. Navy force that captured

Maduro. And it's Psalm 18. Great Psalm. I pursued my enemies and overtook them and did not turn back till they were consumed.

I thrust them through so that they were not able to rise. They fell under my feet. All right, almighty

God who trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle. You who stirred the nations from the North against Babylon of old, making her land desolate where none dwell.

Behold now the wicked who rise against your justice and peace of the righteous, he prayed. Snap the rod of the oppressor.

Frustrate the wicked plans of the ungodly. By the blast of your anger, let the evil perish. Let their bulls go down to slaughter.

For their day has come, the time of their punishment. Pour out your wrath upon those who plot vain things and blow them away like the chaff before the wind.

He talks about, he keeps going. He talks about giving wisdom in every direction to endure the trials ahead.

Unbreakable unity, overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy. Let's go, let's go.

Let's go. No, like guys, like I'm there. I'm there.

Like, I don't even know what to say. Like, can you even, did you, in your wildest dreams a year and a half ago, think you're gonna have a secretary of war who gives a prayer like this?

And so the libs are losing their minds. Here's John Cleese, just one example. Hegestath is a perfect example of the sort of Christian who loves the

Old Testament more than the New Testament because Christ isn't in it. That's my impression of him. So this is what he says.

I'm like, wait, I just said, look, you don't wanna burst your bubble, John Cleese here, but Christ only quoted the

Old Testament. He didn't mean to quote it himself, because he's Christ, but he, when he's looking at scripture, he's quoting the

Old Testament. So I think Christ would be okay with that. I'm just, like, what do you think the military does, right?

What do you think they do? Like Rush Limbaugh used to say, you kill people, you break things. That's the military. That's what they do.

What is the Psalm talking about? You'll kill people, break things, and do it well. That's why we pay the military, because that's their job.

And Pete Hegseth is giving them encouragement along those lines. Like, what did you expect them to do? Be UN peacekeepers and all sunshine and butterflies all the time?

Like, it's the military. Like, that's their job. And giving that, like, are you discriminating against Pete Hegseth's faith?

Oh, is it not Christian now? Because it's from the Old Testament. I'm hearing a lot of that stuff more recently, by the way. Like, oh, it's

Old Testament. Like, we can sort of like, it's just, it's not, like the New Testament's the real Christianity.

And I'm like, three quarters of the Bible is Old Testament. And guess who the biblical authors all quote?

Yeah, the Old Testament, all the time. I'm sorry. It's not, you can't just throw that away.

Like, it was given to us for a reason. So we learn from the examples of the people who lived during those times.

And we would take the ethical teaching and the theological teaching, and we would apply it. So there you go.

And there's prophecies that are fulfilled. I mean, I don't need to give you an argument, you know. All right. Good on Pete Hegseth.

Figured I'd just let you know about this. I don't really have a place to fit it, but Robert Malone exits the CDC vaccine advisory role.

And basically it's because a federal judge is not letting him do his job. And I just wanted to say, this is so much of the problem.

Like, why can't we have good things? Why are things taking so long? You've had decades to realize what we're up against.

You've had decades of judges being appointed and corrupt elected officials.

I mean, more than decades. It's, to go in there and be a reformer, you're going to get eaten alive.

It is very hard. It's very frustrating. And it takes a lot of patience to go into the government and expect to see change.

So we need men who can hold on and exercise virtue and do the best job they can. Robert Malone, I'm not condemning him at all.

Maybe this was the right thing, but he's saying, I can't work with this. A reminder, we, you know,

God's got to open doors too. We got to pray. We got to work. Those are the only two things we can do. All right,

Ligonier. Let's go to Ligonier now. Speaking of lack of leadership and problems with leadership.

Oh, how do I even summarize this? St. Andrew's Chapel, Ligonier Ministries. And you also have the

Reformation Bible College. All have overlapping interests and people working for them.

And so here's St. Andrew's Chapel, and it's a letter from March 12th. The session writes to inform you of a solemn action taken in the governance and discipline of the congregation.

For those who are not Presbyterian, it's the church. We do so in obedience to Jesus Christ, head of the church, and to scripture, which commands that certain matters be told to the church, and not a pastoral concern for the peace, purity, and unity of the body.

And they go on and they say, look, we're excommunicating Stephen Nichols and Dr. Heidi Nichols, his wife, and they've been excluded from the sacraments and cut off from the fellowship of the church.

Now why? It's this category called contumacy, and it's a willful and persistent refusal to submit to the lawful authority of the church, including refusal to appear before the session when duly summoned.

So basically they're being obstinate. They're not gonna appear before the church to work out differences they have with someone else.

That's at St. Andrew's Chapel as well. Now there's so much, there's also PCA drama kind of with this, because remember

R .C. Sproul keeps them out of the PCA. They joined the PCA, I think it was in 2023. They're in for two years.

Then they vote to leave St. Andrew's Chapel where R .C. Sproul preached. And in that time,

Burke Parshons is brought up on these charges. He's the one that's basically replaced

R .C. Sproul there, and they're related to his temperament and these kinds of things.

And it'll probably be dismissed at the general, what do you call it?

Mixing up SBC and PCA terms here, general assembly. So that all happens.

And then you have Stephen Nichols, who's the head of Reformation Bible College and is a fellow at Ligonier Ministries.

I think I'm getting that right. And Stephen Nichols also leaves to join a

PCA church in the area. So now he's under the care of a PCA minister. And now you have St.

Andrew's Chapel having a conflict with a guy who's now under the care of a PCA church, which makes it more complicated.

Especially if you know how Presbyterian polity works. Now, Stephen Nichols responded to this and gives sort of the reason.

March 13th, the Board of Reformation Bible College has announced that after many years of steadfast leadership,

Nichols will conclude his tenure as president. And so he's leaving basically. And it's all the typical like fond memories, all that.

Well, then you have this. Stephen Adams, this is on March 15th.

Okay, he says this on X. Rumors are being spread, including that I was fired from St. Andrew's Chapel and this compounds slander upon slander.

I have decided that I have no other choice but to explain. This is not a detailed account, though I am fully able to provide one if necessary.

For more than two years, I have been the target of a campaign of harassment and stalking, accompanied by violent, wicked slander. And he says, for all of 2024,

I was secretly and maliciously harassed, stalked, spied upon, wow. Defamed, lied about, and slandered. These are quite the charges here.

He was shocked, he can't believe that some of my fellow pastors and elders had done this to me.

Towards the end of 2024, matters intensified. Thanksgiving to Christmas, and in New Year, things escalated more. He had a troubling text that was sent at odd hours of the night, and there were public confrontation with a family member, and then the discovery that dear friends of ours had been receiving anonymous social media messages insinuating vile things about him, and that he finally filed a police report against who?

Steve and Heidi Nichols. So he goes, so he keeps going about the gossip.

Then he says, the Nichols had never once come forward willingly to make accusations, nor they willingly spoke to any authorities.

So they're going behind his back. He said, it's wicked slander against an innocent man. Well, what's the slander?

Keeps talking about slander. I know what it is, but I'm trying to get it in his words. I wrestled long with the

Lord about it. Okay, came to the point I could no longer endure these things. All right, so his wife is also kind of struggling with this.

All right, so maybe I'll just read, I think Steve and Nichols explains it more. So then you have Steve and Nichols, March 19th.

I'm sorry I'm dragging you through all of this, but if you want to understand the situation, you got to go through all the primary sources. Okay, the narratives and communications circulating about us on social media have been difficult for us too.

So we want to express our gratitude for these organizations, Reformation Bible College, Ligonier Ministries. And then he says,

January, 2024, we learned from a counselor of our daughter, Grace, that he had submitted a report to the

Florida Department of Children and Families of Suspicion of Sexual Abuse of Grace by Stephen Adams.

So on January 10th, we reported the suspicion of sexual abuse to St. Andrew's Chapel. They had meetings.

We realized that we were an impasse with the church. We notified a pastor there that they were going to find a new church.

And they're saying that we're being slandered. So after St. Andrew's Chapel voted to disassociate from the PCA, we immediately resigned our memberships.

We reported suspicion of sexual abuse of our daughter. It doesn't look like they filed a police report or anything though. So this other guy did, who

I think was the youth pastor, Stephen Adams. So here, it's a mess, guys. It's just an absolute mess.

And I can't really make more sense of it, but a few takeaways. Pray for them. Number two, have you noticed that solid ministries and solid voices over the last three, four years, especially the last two years, have been silenced through death, through disqualification, or at least people we thought were solid, and scandal?

How many, we lost, we lost John McCarthy, we lost Hody Bauckham, they died. Obviously, Charlie Kirk is not in this world, but he was growing in his walk with Christ.

He was, sanity, somewhat sanity going on the right. Politically, he dies.

We have Stephen Lawson disqualified, Josh Bice disqualified,

G3 goes down. Thankfully, Shepherd's Conference and all that seems to still be going, and it's on a rotation at Grace Community Church, so they didn't have a guy to come in and replace

John McCarthy. That was probably a very wise decision. Now you have scandal, this drama at Ligonier.

This is just, just think back to like 10 years ago, the amount of expository preaching and theological ministries that were out there, and just sort of the bench.

You had a pretty thick bench of guys, at least it seemed that way, who were pretty solid. You could have at conferences, it was fun sometimes for people,

I was never a big conference guy, but I was around so many people, I went to some of them, and I did enjoy some of those.

I mean, it was great to connect, for networking, it was great, and I just, I'm like, where would you go now?

Where would you go for that? You could still go to the Ligonier Conference, you could still go to the Shepherd's Conference, G3's not around, really.

I mean, it's around, I think, but it's not, they're not doing those big conferences, and they don't have, they just don't have a way to get out from under the shroud of suspicion, and it's like, and I have to wonder to myself,

I can't speak for God, obviously, I don't know what he's doing particularly, but I do wonder about it, like, I pray about it,

Lord, what were you doing with all this? Because the voices that have risen that want to take the place of those people, in some cases, it's just empty, there is no one to take the place, but the voices, the people that have wanted to get into the positions of authority and lead are not the same quality.

It's just, you know, I was thinking about this, like even social media, think about this, 10, 20 years, 10 years ago, 10, 15 years ago, even the woke guys that I critique, like Chandler or Platt, they had to have some success, and they had to have an institutional connection, so it was like Acts 29, or it was like Southern Baptists or something, and they had to show that they were a pastor of a real church with real people and did real things, at least it appeared that way.

Now, you don't really have to have those things. I've been thinking about this a lot.

I've been thinking about like even my own, like getting into podcasting and stuff, I never planned to do that,

I wanted to reform institutions, I wanted to see institutions grow and build them up, and the chaff had to be separated from the wheat.

I never just wanted to rip down stuff, not like a revolutionary, and I was always like concerned with institutional credibility and restoring it, and I'm realizing more and more how there's people who do share that, but I don't know if there's a lot of people who get that, because institutions are more stable, they last, and when you have something like this at Ligonier, just pray for them.

I really want them to weather this. Really would love to see godly, faithful men kind of rise above this, take the helm.

There's sin, I don't know who or what, exactly how this all is shaken out, but there's sin, obviously.

Either both parties or one of the parties, there's just sin going on, and it destroys.

It's what the devil does, too. The devil comes to steal, kill, destroy, and I see so much of that going on, just ripping stuff down with nothing to replace it.

So I don't want to be a Debbie Downer on this, but I do want to just sort of point that out and say, are you gonna be the person, you out there?

Now, maybe you're not the person, but I think the way you become the person is virtue every day, praying to God, Lord, I'm open to whatever it is.

You just show me, I'll do whatever you say. If you open up a door, I'll go through that door. If it's just my local church, if it's just my family,

I'm satisfied with that, Lord. If it's bigger than that and you'll use me, I'm satisfied with that, too. I'm just gonna do whatever you want me to do.

That's the prayer, that's what you do. That's the only way, and then you work on your virtue and on your walk with him, spend time with him.

That's the formula, guys. I got nothing else for you. That's how you do it. It's not with all the strategy.

I don't think it's the strategizing, and the people who are good at strategizing aren't always, they can't fill those big boots, and there are big boots to fill right now.

So, all right, well, sin makes you stupid. That's what Roger says.

I agree with Roger. Roger's so right, sin does make you stupid. Tucker is, oh, we're not going back to Tucker right now.

Sorry. All right, let's, oh, I'll try to get to some of the

Israel stuff at the end, guys, if you have more questions about Israel and stuff, because I know I gave a presentation.

By the way, I was on Andrew Rappaport's podcast, The Rappaport, and I talk a little bit more about that. I think

I'm gonna be on Steve Days talking about it a little more. It's not really my jam, but I did wanna at least create some guardrails to say, hey, look, you know, really all

I was trying to say was five things in my article in my previous podcast. Number one, oh, man, I'm breaking my rule.

I said I'd talk about Israel at the end. Okay, you're gonna have to wait for it. You're gonna have to wait for it, if I remember to come back.

Okay, we're gonna keep going here, because we got more to talk about, and let's talk about it.

We got Sarah Mulally installed as the first female Archbishop of Caterbury, and everyone in England wept.

Um, this is a line crossed, guys. That's why I say, like, this is why

I'm doing the SBC stuff and saying, look, the female pastor thing, you better be careful of that. Speaking of SBC stuff, let's talk about it.

Copperfield Church in Houston, Texas is a member of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Union Baptist Association.

Their lead pastor, John Glass, is a graduate of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Copperfield Church employs two female pastors,

Anne Aguilar and Pam Palmer. Pam Palmer serves as discipleship pastor and loves to work with leaders and teach the

Word of God. Well, good morning. Pastor Casey is in Louisiana, and he's asked me this morning to bring the final message in our series on marriage, and appropriately, we're going to look at 1

Corinthians 13. Which she does regularly during Sunday morning service. Well, happy Mother's Day again.

I am Pam Palmer. I am discipleship pastor here at Copperfield, and I have been given the incredible privilege of bringing a message to you this

Mother's Day. Bible says no women pastors. The Baptist faith and message says no women pastors, but some

SBC churches say no. Okay, well, there it is.

And Willie Rice, who's running for the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention, had this to say, total cooperative program giving to the

Southern Baptist Convention in 2007 to 2008 was $548 ,000, sorry, $1 ,205 ,099.

From 2023 to 2024, it was only $446 ,641 ,957.

I'm sure that's not adjusted for inflation. The SBC is another institution that is not doing well.

And yeah, corruption, all the rest. So yep, we gotta, this is the year.

If you're a Southern Baptist, guys, I hope you're gonna go in June because I haven't said this any other year, really since 20,

I don't know, 2021, maybe. But I think there's a shot here. If Willie Rice can get in, maybe things can start to turn around, but it's gonna be a process.

And it may be a boring process, but it's gonna be in appointing people to committees. It's gonna mean a lot of things.

But that's a problem. And the Anglican Church has gone full throttle down this direction, and the

Southern Baptists are certainly not there, but they are starting to, they dabble with this kind of stuff, and it's not good.

Now, if you wanna be a man of virtue, if you are a young man listening and you say, you know what, John, I wanna take the call,

I wanna do that, let me let you know about the Fearless Men's Summer Internship that is immersive training, study of 1st and 2nd

Timothy, direct mentorship by a pastor and a leader. You get to mentor a young boy, younger man.

You get a foreign mission trip, and you earn nine credits from, I don't know what LBU is actually, but you learn nine college credits, and the cost is 1 ,800 bucks.

So maybe you could raise money for it. But I told the pastor who's been supporting this podcast for a while,

I would let people know, he's the senior pastor, Paul Walker of Woodbridge Baptist Church, and you can go check it out, go to contact.

It's just woodridge .info is the website, and you can see the phone number there, and I'm sure you can probably email, but check it out if you want to do that.

So I'm not being paid or anything, I just wanna let you know about a potential opportunity there.

So let's talk about sexual ethics, shall we? I think this is where we wanna go next, yes.

Joseph and Kendra Duggar charged with child endangerment amid expanding investigation.

So 19 kids and counting star and wife face endangerment, false imprisonment. All right, so Kendra Duggar, the wife of 19 kids and counting

Joshua, Joseph Duggar, sorry, Joshua Duggar is the other one in trouble, was arrested two days after him on separate set of child endangerment and false imprisonment charges, all of which he is also facing, and which are reportedly the result of an investigation of their family home, inappropriate contact with a nine -year -old in 2020, which sent the former reality

TV personality to jail. Kendra is 27, Joseph's 31, they were both charged in March with four counts of endangering the welfare of a minor.

This is terrible, and I don't know the Duggars, I'd never watched the show really.

I know what happened with Josh Duggar, he was discovered, there was a molestation of several underage girls.

There's, you know, clearly there's an issue in that family. And I don't wanna get ahead of my skis here and start gandering at like why that might be.

I do know though, since I've grown up and I've known just homeschool families and stuff, there are several very strange occurrences in some of the most conservative homeschool families that I've seen.

And I wonder like, what is that? What is that when a like very sheltered child, especially not allowed to date, not allowed to watch

TV in many cases and that kind of like, and then they just go off the deep end and they're in like, you know, into just weird, weird stuff.

Like stuff the world is like, that's weird, that's wrong, that's depraved. And in my,

I'm not saying this is the Duggars because I don't know, but I thought it was an opportunity to say like, it could be like, one of the things

I've noticed is like the liberal explanation is they're just suppressed.

And so that suppression makes them do this. Okay, that's one explanation. I think there's something else going on too though.

There is a training going on in many of those homes that spirituality and authentic religion is looking a certain way.

It's keeping certain external rules. And as long as you do that, you're a good person and you can judge other people.

If you get into that mentality, then you end up pushing your sins more and more and more secret.

And you start to get into some weird, weird territory because it's all private.

There's no accountability in private. It's just you. And you don't have like, at least, and this may be where the suppression theory comes in that the liberals say, but I'm saying it's bigger than that.

Like you don't have other people to sort of like, even from the world to measure your sins by. You've already, you already have a measurement that you've adopted that's extra biblical that you think you're good because you live by it.

And so you're not having an affair, technically, I guess. You're not doing anything that would embarrass your family or your church publicly that anyone knows about.

So you go to weird places on the internet and you do weird stuff with the only available people to do weird stuff with, which is like your siblings and that kind of thing.

And I would just caution parents. Like, look, I think, look, I got a daughter now. I'm thinking about this.

Like, I want her protected from the world, but I also do not want her to think like she's so much better than everyone because she keeps an external rule list.

I want it to be about the heart. If it's about the heart and you really focus on that, like, hey,

Jesus forgives your sin, but your sin starts inside of you. That's what he said.

It comes from your heart. Then the manifestation of the outward actions reflect what the heart does.

And when people get discovered, man, it's such a blight. It's such like, you know, there goes the

Christian family. There goes the pastor. Look what he did. And it just, I mean, do me a favor.

If you're going to get into ministry, make sure you're not doing that. Like, get into, become an elder in a church, become representative of Christ.

You're not going to be perfect, but make sure that you're, you have an openness with the leadership of your church and you're, they're not going to be caught by surprise by some kind of secret thing you've cultivated that got really weird.

So that's my encouragement. Now, in this vein, I gotta, let's see,

I'm gonna skip past Duggar's stuff. I gotta just bring a few more stories to your attention. One, this is some

Patreons showed this to me. I guess this is Mark Driscoll's church, Trinity church. In their internship program, they have a requirement that if any romantic interest develops, please bring it to us before going on a date or pursuing the relationship further.

Please understand that we do not think that dating is bad. However, as your spiritual leaders, we love you. I want to make sure that this is the best decision.

If we ask you to not pursue the relationship further, we expect you to honor and trust that decision. What do

I say? I don't know enough about this situation to really weigh in completely.

I will say this. It is a little strange, especially if they're adults and it's an internship. You should naturally be talking to the person mentoring you about a relationship.

To have to create the extra rule usually means there's been problems in the past and now you have to create this rule.

Notify us if you're gonna go on a date or something. I guess my sort of practical take is don't hire people for an internship that you have to be afraid of that.

You should probably treat them like adults. But if you notice that they're not going for wisdom, if they're not interested in wisdom and they're being careless or something, then you confront.

That's, I guess, that's my two cents. And that's really all I have to say about that. I don't, getting into the hyper -legalistic stuff is always a danger in my mind.

You don't wanna, I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad rule. You gotta have standards depending on the situation.

But there is this sort of danger that you have when you start saying, I don't know, what would you even call this?

Hard pastoring, when every decision must run through the pastor or something, every single one.

And it does kind of give you this cushion that is more for children.

Like it's just, you gotta grow up. You gotta be able to make wise decisions with coaches on the sidelines telling you here's a good play, not having to like get permission to go make a goal.

All right, that's my two cents. I was asked about it, so I gave you my two cents. All right, now I gotta weigh in on the

Twitter thing. People are already commenting on it in the chat. So I'm gonna have a take that might surprise you on this.

I'm not gonna mention the couple's name. There's a couple on X that made a post. There's a backstory to the post.

I'm not gonna get into that. But the husband said, look, my wife was formerly promiscuous. I was a virgin.

She was born again. She had grief over her past sexual sins. We got to know each other.

We dated, we didn't sin sexually. Everything's great now. We've been married, we have three children.

And here's the thing that got people crazy online. Like he just like was chumming the fish.

She's more pure than most virgins is what he says. As a biblical purity has less to do with past sins and more to do with one's current posture of the heart and daily decisions to honor the

Lord. So that lost him friends. Like people were going in on him hard because they're like, you're sharing your wife's past sins.

And then you are saying that she's more pure than someone who's a virgin.

Like, do we have, we know shame. Okay, let me weigh in on this. And I don't know if this is,

I don't know that this take was out there, but the takes typically out there, like the Daily Wire guys were dunking on this.

And it's like, the take is basically look at my, there's a word for it that I, it's too crass.

I can't say it, shaming. But there's a word at the beginning. Shaming her for promiscuity and using terms to describe that.

And this ends up blossoming into this big controversy.

And I looked at the quote tweets under this tweet or of this tweet, and it was absolutely sick.

What people were doing to the picture of this woman, to the, it was the most vile, nasty things.

And so here's what I want to say. There are prudential concerns here. This is not normative for a husband to do this on Twitter, because you are asking for your wife's reputation, name, image to be completely abused by sick men online.

And maybe women too. The husband's role is to protect. I very much,

I think we should have discretion. I think a lot of sins should be dealt with very judiciously.

And the focus in a testimony needs to be on God's grace. That said,

I think that probably was the intention of this couple. And I found out later, they were both united in wanting to share this testimony of God's grace.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with a husband complimenting his wife, like the Proverbs 31 woman, like your beauty far surpasses all the others.

I hope he feels that way about his wife. At the same time, and he wasn't saying, not saying this, but at the same time,

I don't know that he needed to say it in the statement, but it probably would have helped him. Yes, there are things that happen in your past that, especially with sexual sin that are against the body that have ongoing ramifications and consequences.

If you get a sexually transmitted disease that doesn't go away, you can get saved, but God might not heal that.

I hope he does, but you may still have that. So what do you do? Do you bring that into a marriage?

I mean, obviously you have to be forthright with whoever you're interested in. Like, look, I had this, I'm ashamed of it.

I did this thing, but getting saved doesn't take care of that necessarily.

It does repair a lot of things. So it changes your mindset. It changes your direction. And yes, we are in a spot right now where there's a lot of men and a lot of women that have done a lot of things and they have pasts.

And like I said, with the analogy earlier of teaching my daughter to walk, like going from A to B, in our society, going from where we are now to a prudent, good, righteous society, it's not gonna be overnight.

And it's gonna take a lot of people marrying each other who have pasts, raising up children to the Lord and not repeating those errors, or at least trying not to.

That's gonna be what it takes. And so in the spot where we are now, we do need someone to say, look, just because you have a past, it's not game over.

And it is interesting to me, I saw some of the same people who were silent or defensive of a situation like Joel Webben's past, for example, as a pastor, and doing things that he shouldn't have been doing, that he admits he shouldn't have been doing.

Details, I'm not getting into that. But I don't know why that wasn't as egregious, but this is so egregious, other than this one factor.

It's a husband who seemed, like it appears at first, initially, like he's just exposing his wife.

That is a difference, and that is wrong, if that's what he's doing. So here's why

I'm not sharing with you the names of this couple. And this is the different take I have, because I actually do believe in discretion.

And in a society that has discretion, the last thing you do is you retweet that and you dunk on it and you say, look at this loose person or look at what this husband is doing to his wife, because now you're calling attention to it.

And that's the very problem you have with it. Why would you call more attention to it? Right, that's, in my mind, when you want to get back to a society that's discreet and has prudence, get back to a society that is like David in Psalm 51, describes,

I sinned, I sinned, I did it with Bathsheba, but I sinned. I'm not going to get into the dirty details.

And hey, Israel, publicly here is my song of repentance. And it's all just about God.

That's a good example of what a testimony should look like in a situation like this.

I don't think it's sinful or wrong for someone to say, I had a past that wasn't good. As long as you're not getting into the dirty details and like glorifying the sin or bringing people's minds through the mud or protecting people, because you don't want people to view that person differently.

And like a sexual way, that's where I'm like, I wouldn't say that about my wife. I don't have that, but obviously, but if I was in a situation like that,

I wouldn't want to do it because I just know what that would subject her to. And that's why

I think that's what discretion would be. If you want to oppose that, the best thing to do is to oppose it in the abstract, not to bring attention to the particulars because that's the issue.

Now I'm willing to take any of the arrows I have coming for that if I have arrows coming, but that's literally how

I view it. I really do think it's kind of, it's a need that we have right now for courageous, godly men.

And let me just give you sort of two things in a short monologue here. We can get back to patriarchal society in two ways.

Way number one, it's gradual. It's not probably that glamorous and people start realizing they can trust men.

Men have power, they have purpose. So they're dangerous when those things are misused. Yeah, because they're powerful.

But if men are virtuous and use that power in the right way, you can trust them again.

They're going to protect you and all of that. So what I would say is this, we can get back to patriarchy, patriarchal society in that way.

We can also go another way where it's just all about pushing the Overton window online, saying as many offensive things as you can.

And things about women that are just terrible, like women are terrible. You could also go that way and just think that you're doing, making progress, but actually it'll probably backfire because people are going to think,

I don't know if we can trust men. Men are acting like boys. If you want to be a virtuous man that has discretion and prudence and protects the reputations of others, then

I would suggest trying to, and you want to get back to a patriarchal society, I would suggest trying to show, demonstrate through actions that men can actually be trusted.

And that is the way that God, there's another problem here, obviously, you have people that don't want to do things God's way. God made the place,

He made men to be leaders. And so when they're virtuous, they're good leaders.

That's kind of my thing. And if we feel God, like if the guys that are rising up, even in Christian circles, aren't going to participate in like a shame, like there should be shame, but like shame in the old days was like, there's things that aren't worth mentioning.

They're not worthy to be mentioned. They're so shameful. We don't talk about that. That's what I think I want to return to as a society.

I know I'm like, this is a bygone era, but like George Washington's rules for civility, man. Like I was just reading this last night.

Like you could just take like any of these and you're like, oh my goodness. Like the thinking of others before yourself is just so ingrained in a society that we used to have.

We're so selfish now. Let me see if I can read one of them to you. Okay, never express anything unbecoming nor act against the rules moral before your inferiors.

So now that's actually a good man. That's like, I'm like stewing on that already. Don't express anything unbecoming.

So play the part of the reputation you're striving for, be the best version of yourself, nor act against the rules, moral rules before your inferiors.

You know how many leaders I know that want to do the locker room talk and yuck it up with the boys in the back room, in the green room, wherever it is.

Look, I'm tempted by this in chat groups, even with my patrons. Like, you know, it's like, you just want to kind of be like,

I'm one of you guys, right? I'm a normal guy. We're gonna need some guys that aren't normal guys.

Have discretion. Robert E. Lee, it was said, his anger would rise to his neck and then it would fall down and never reached his face.

Boy, boy, do I have a long way to go. All right, I hope I made my points.

All right, let's land the plane, as they say.

Good news for you guys. Good news for you. Josh Howerton at Lake Point Church.

52 couples, one altar, how a single sermon sparked a mass wedding at Lake Point Church. Love it. He had guys living together, guys and gals living together.

He said, you better get married, come to church. We're gonna do 52 wedding. That's how it's done. You want to overcome the brokenness?

Go to church and say, you're living together? You're in sin. I know the culture didn't tell you that. I'm telling you that. Jesus is saying that.

The Bible says that. Let's come on and get married this afternoon. We're gonna do a big one.

John Perkins has died. Civil rights activist, Bible teacher. I went after him in my book, Social Justice Goes to Church, but I wanted to just say,

I always thought of all the woke guys I went after, John Perkins was actually like the nicest. And I do hope that he did talk about an incomplete gospel and that kind of stuff, but I really do truly hope he believed the true gospel and I would love to see him in heaven.

He seemed like a very nice man. Immigration. Let's land on some good news here. Maryland woman allegedly targeted roofing crew using undocumented labor, so a thing called

ICE. So there's this lady in Maryland. She's like needed her roof repaired. She calls this contractor.

They come out with a bunch of illegal migrants and she just calls ICE and ICE comes. There's a video of it.

I just wanted to just brighten your day with that. It's big. Some of you, maybe if you're a liberal watching, that is not brightening your day.

But for me, I'm like, this would never have happened under Biden. So I'm like, they're breaking the law.

They're here like illegally. So I mean, why not? The fact that they showed up is funny to me.

And I do hope like the best for them. I really do. But they need to come in legally if they're gonna come in. And right now, well, we got a freeze on immigration thanks to our president,

Donald J. Trump. Number of immigrants in border communities plunges thanks to Trump crackdown, a recent story.

That's really great. Laredo, Texas saw its growth rate tumble from 3 .2 to 0 .2.

Yuma, Arizona dropped from 3 .3 to 1 .4. El Centro, California, 1 .2 to 0 .7. All right.

Trump's policy slash, this is an, I thought it'd be hysterical if I used an Indian website. This is an Indian news website called

Z News. So India is talking about this. Trump's policy slash is 84 ,000 visas for India, China.

Here's who faced the biggest blow. So they're not, India, not too happy with this,

I don't think. And I would just say, you are getting some wins, guys.

It's not all bad. All right, let's go to questions. And then we're done with this particular podcast.

I gotta end it. Let's see, did I already do this one? I did that one.

Let's see, Franklin Graham lost me when he said that Jesus were here on Earth. He would have told us to take the job. I don't remember that, but that's terrible, obviously.

I think there are a lot of people who did various levels of compromise because they trusted the authorities.

That was manipulative and wrong, I think, for him to invoke Jesus, if that's what he did.

I still think on the level, compared to all our other leaders, Franklin Graham, look,

I think he's a good guy. And I think we have a short feel, we have kind of a thin bench, and Franklin's not the guy

I'd be going after. Are you still making a documentary on the Episcopal Church? Yes, I am, Isaiah. I got flights all ready to go for later this month, and we're gonna finish it up.

It's mini -doc, but we are gonna talk about compromising the Episcopal Church. Ray Comfort interviewed the couple.

It was a sweet interview. Hegseth's eschatology is, I think, Postmill, okay.

Did I watch Aaron McIntyre's interview with Tucker? I watched, I think, a clip of it. I didn't watch the interview itself.

I know he pressed him on Islam, and I also have access to things

Tucker, or some of the things Aaron says, Aaron, sorry. So I was glad he went in on that.

So I did see that clip. It's just weird, because after that clip on Aaron's show, all these clips emerged of Tucker saying things like the terrorism in the

Middle East is the places that Western countries have gone, and it's made worse, and that's why there's terror.

It's like the leftist understanding of it. And yeah, of course, occupation and things like that do produce responses, but Islam's been doing this for centuries.

Islam works together for those things. Even beyond the Sunni -Shiite divide, they will work together for pro -Islam.

Sunnis and Shiites both support, for example, Hamas. So no,

I'm sorry. The terrorist organizations like Al -Qaeda, and what else, like Hezbollah, these organizations have a lot of Saudi Arabians in them.

I think I'm right on Hezbollah. I know I'm right on Al -Qaeda, and Saudi Arabia is not a place that has that.

They're not under the thumb of Western rule like other places. So I don't buy it. It's inaccurate, but he says those things, and he says

Sharia law. It's great that they pray five times a day and all this, and that's why their societies,

I guess, are doing better. I don't know how to square that, and that's the thing.

A lot of these influencers, I try to listen, and they say one thing here and one thing there, and then you try to reconcile it, and sometimes it doesn't quite reconcile.

And to me, that's also, there's two ways to frame that. Either you're in motion and you're developing.

Okay, people develop, but then you, usually if you're developing and you're responsible, you kind of shut your mouth until you understand where you're going, and then open your mouth when the convictions are firm.

Anyway, I'm pro big family, but the Duggars make you wonder.

Yeah, I guess they do. All right, we're gonna end the podcast. I, yeah,

Sheila's saying, look it up, Graham. I don't, I'm not doubting you, Sheila. I'm sure you're right about that.

Graham should never have said that, so I'm on the record opposing that. God bless. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend, a wonderful Lord's Day, and more coming.