News Roundup: Iran, Reformed Christian Politics, & More

Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.

I've said that for 15 years, long before I decided to do the political thing.

So Iran can be taken. I would never take the military card off the table. And it's possible that it'll have to be used because Iran cannot have nuclear weapons.

Now you asked about a preemptive strike, Margaret, and I want to answer the question. Look, it is up to Israel what they think they need to do to keep their country safe.

And we should support our allies wherever they are when they're fighting the bad guys. I think that's the right approach to take.

Was forced to strike because of an invented Israeli adjunct? No, first of all, I mean, two things I would say. Number one is no matter what, ultimately this operation needed to happen.

That's the question of why now. But this operation needed to happen because Iran in about a year or a year and a half would cross the line of immunity, meaning they would have so many short range missiles, so many drones, that no one could do anything about it because they could hold the whole world hostage.

Look at the damage they're doing now. And this is a week in Iran. Imagine a year from now. So that had to happen.

Obviously, we were aware of Israeli intentions and understood what that would mean for us and we had to be prepared to act as a result of it.

But this had to happen no matter what. There's just no way that Donald Trump is going to allow this country to get into a multi -year conflict with no clear end in sight and no clear objective.

He's defined that objective as Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and has to commit long term to never trying to rebuild the nuclear capability.

It's pretty clear. It's pretty simple. And I think that means that we're not going to get into the problems that we've had with Iraq and Afghanistan.

The United States military continues to carry out large scale combat operations in Iran to eliminate the grave threats posed to America by this terrible terrorist regime.

Following our obliteration of Iran's nuclear program in Operation Midnight Hammer a short while ago, we warned

Iran not to make any attempt to rebuild at a different location because they were unable to use the ones that we so powerfully blew up.

But they ignored those warnings and refused to cease their pursuit of nuclear weapons. In addition, the regime's conventional ballistic missile program was growing rapidly and dramatically.

And this posed a very clear, colossal threat to America and our forces stationed overseas.

The regime already had missiles capable of hitting Europe and our bases both local and overseas and would soon have had missiles capable of reaching our beautiful America.

The purpose of this fast growing missile program was to shield their nuclear weapon development and make it extraordinarily difficult for anyone to stop them from making these highly forbidden by us nuclear weapons.

There was no imminent threat to the United States of America by the

Iranians. There was a threat to Israel.

If we equate a threat to Israel as the equivalent of an imminent threat to the

United States, then we are in uncharted territory. Mr.

President, did Israel force your hand to launch these strikes against Iran? Did they pull the United States into this war?

No, I might have forced their hand. You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics.

Based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they were going to attack first. And I didn't want that to happen.

So if anything, I might have forced Israel's hand. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the

UAE all condemning the strikes from Iran. All of those nations said they have the right and they plan on defending themselves as well.

There is now indication that European nations could be getting in on this as well. Did we go in because of Israel?

And I said, you asked me, are you from the follow up? And I said, no, I told you this had to happen anyway. The president made a decision and the decision he made was that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ballistic missile program, that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ability to conduct these attacks.

That decision had been made. The president systematically made a decision to systematically destroy this terroristic capability that they had and we carried that out.

I was very clear in that answer. This was a question of timing, of why this had to happen as a joint operation, not the question of the intent.

Once the president made a decision that negotiations were not going to work, that they were playing us on the negotiations and that this was a threat that was untenable, the decision was made to strike them.

That's what I said yesterday. And you guys need to play it. And you're going to play these statements. You need to play the whole statement, not clip it to reach a narrative that you want to do.

All right. Let me explain to you guys this in simple English. OK. Iran is run by lunatics, religious fanatic lunatics.

They have an ambition to have nuclear weapons. They intend to develop those nuclear weapons behind a program of missiles and drones and terrorism that the world will not be able to touch them for fear of those things.

And this is the weakest they've ever been. Now is the time to go after them. The president made the decision to go after them, take away their missiles, take away their

Navy, take away their drones, take away their ability to make those things so that they can never have a nuclear weapon.

That's why the president made this decision. It was the right decision. And the world will be a safer place when these radical clerics no longer have access to these weapons.

You see how they're using them now. Imagine how they would use them a year from now if they had more of these. All right. I got time for one more.

Welcome to the conversations that matter podcast where we are forging a bold Christian vision for America.

I'm your host, John Harris. In that particular montage, you saw a number of things.

You saw statements from some of our leaders, including Donald Trump, J .D. Vance and Marco Rubio on the stated intention of going into Iran.

You saw clips from Donald Trump going back to 2011. If you go online, you can actually find clips going back even farther and news articles going back to the 1980s and 90s of Donald Trump saying that there may come a time when military action is necessary against Iran.

And then you also saw the development of this whole situation and how countries in the

Middle East and now Europe are also joining the efforts. It's a lot happening in a very short period of time.

I was shocked at how much happened in just under 24 hours. I actually wrote a post about it because I'm not someone who wanted this to take place.

I think like a lot of you, I was praying against it. No one wants to see war, obviously, especially when that war could involve very high powered missiles and especially against a regime that is willing to go to.

There's no level at which it seems like they are not willing to stoop to cause damage and wreak havoc.

And it happened anyway. And so we're going to get into some of that. There's obviously a lot of discussion about the role of Israel, the constitution and whether or not this was authorized.

And then as the thumbnail for this video suggests, we'll talk a little bit about some of the way that Christian leaders or self -proclaimed

Christian leaders, as the case may be, are handling this particular situation. And so it is a live broadcast, which means you can interact with me live if you so choose.

I'm a little late to the game on this and not on my sub stack. I actually got an article out on Saturday about this, but I was going to do a podcast yesterday and I was as sick as a dog.

I just I was in Mexico and it was it was actually a

I thought probably the best cost effective way for my wife and I to get away just because I had good air miles and the food there is cheap and staying there is cheap.

Well, obviously, the downside of going to Mexico and everyone warns you this is that you shouldn't drink the water, that if you drink the water there, you're going to get sick.

And so we avoided that like the plague. We're not going to drink the water. I noticed at a restaurant I had ice in my glass and I thought,

I better not drink that. The last day we're at a restaurant, it's the last meal we're having in Mexico and we order smoothies and did not think about the water that they may have used for the smoothies.

So I got really sick and yesterday was bad. I'll just put it that way.

It was just really bad. I'm probably at about 70 percent now. I still feel a bit queasy and just my head's a little bit aching,

I suppose. But I'm well enough to do a podcast. I do appreciate those of you who prayed for me. It could have been a lot worse, obviously.

And I know that the prayers were mostly about the cartels. Cartels did not get me. I did see free

Palestine protesters down there, though, which I was like, can you just not get away from these people? Are they just everywhere?

And they were protesting Mexico City, which was kind of funny. They were upset at the city of Mexico specifically.

I don't know what the city of Mexico is supposed to do about what's happening in Gaza, but there you go.

Anyway, it was a mostly relaxing time and I needed that to kind of rejuvenate and come back.

And we are back and we're ready to talk about not just the news of the day, but also kind of the direction

I think that we need to be thinking. And I want to mention that before I even talk about the news, I want to mention direction really, really quickly.

I'm connected to a lot of pastors, obviously, and Christian leaders online. I mean, a lot of people

I follow are Christians who are professional Christians in some capacity.

I mean, that's what they're known for. That's why they're doing what they do. I have seen, since I started looking for it, some calls from major Christian leaders for prayer, people like Franklin Graham.

I am a little surprised, I'll be honest, and I'm not trying to chide anyone here, just so you know, but I think it's worth noting.

I am surprised that there has been so few calls to prayer over this situation.

There's a lot of fear right now. I can sense that even among my own supporters and people who just talk to me and the various chat groups

I'm in and everything, there's a lot of fear about what could be on the road ahead of us. What's going to happen in the midterms?

What's going to happen in the Middle East? What about the domestic issues that we have?

Are those going to be now on the back burner? Is Trump, is he tanking the

Republican Party? Some think he's doing great things for the Republican Party right now, but there's all kinds of fears about potentially what the future looks like, which

I think is a normal thing in war, to be quite honest. What do we as Christians do with those fears? We go to the

Lord. We pray. We know from the book of Daniel that there are angels that are actually involved.

We don't understand exactly how in the course of nations, in nations battling with nations even, we know that the

Lord is the one who raises up empires and crushes empires. We know that he's sovereign.

We know that history is leading up to something. Eventually, there is going to be peace, but it will be under the reign of the

Messiah. Even in the Middle East, actually, that's going to be the focal point, is in the Middle East there is going to be peace.

These are things Christians believe, and we ought to be praying for these things. We ought to be leading our people that are under our influence, your pastor, your congregation, to reflect on what

God might be doing and taking those fears to him and just asking him to do his will, that there would be peace, that especially the

Christians that are in the region, but everyone who's in the region, would be as safe as possible, that the bad guys would be eliminated, and that there would be a successful outcome.

And especially, I mean, I think of Iran, some of the estimates put it in millions of Christians that are there now.

We don't really know. There's estimates range all over the place. It's kind of like when you try to find out how many protesters died in the protests there in Iran against the government in the last few months.

The estimates range all over the place. Tens of thousands, less than 10 ,000. Well, the

Christians, it's the same thing. Are there 50 ,000, 500 ,000? I think one estimate

I saw said it could be as much as something like 2 million, 3 million.

But we don't really know. We don't have information on it. But I do know from people I know who are in Iran, or I should say have come out of Iran, friends of mine, that the

Christian population there is growing. In fact, 2017, I actually went to Turkey, and the interest

I had in going there was to see how the Lord was working among refugees who were Persian, Iranian mostly.

And the Lord's doing amazing things in that particular community. So is this going to open up the possibility of a government that will be more friendly to them?

I don't know. But there's a sizable amount of the population there that is Western friendly, that doesn't want the clerics running their country anymore.

And hopefully, if that kind of an arrangement that reflects the values of the people there can be acquired somehow, that would be something that would benefit the

Christians who are living there and not living in freedom. They are very persecuted.

So anyway, I just wanted to remind you that. Let's pray. And as we're going about our business and even posting online, if we do that, let's just remind people that God's in control here.

Things are scary. It's not the only time in world history things have been scary, but let's take a breath and let's just pray to him and ask him for his guidance and for his mercy.

And that's what I'm doing. And I hope you're doing the same. So I wanted to just remind you of that.

If we forget that, we're going to be in a very bad spot. We do need to remember who's actually in charge of things and who we must be submitting to and seeking guidance from.

And that is one of the concerns I suppose I do have. If there's more commentary, and I don't want to chat anyone, like I'm providing commentary obviously in this podcast, but if there's only commentary,

I'll put it that way, from coming from Christian influential accounts online and in other places and not calls to prayer and just a recognition that, look, we're only finite human beings.

We're not in the situation room. We don't know everything that's going on. This is a lot of moving parts.

It's just too big. The scale is too massive. It's overwhelming. We can't figure everything out. But God does know all those things.

That's the only source of our comfort. And that's the only source of our success, I think, as Christians in the

United States, which is where I'm podcasting from. And this is our history. We have always looked to God for our inspiration and our direction.

Okay. With that said, let us get into some of the commentary, if that's okay with you. And we do have someone streaming here.

I'm not going to, I guess Gomez, I'll say Mr. Gomez from San Antonio, Texas, where there's lots of possibilities these election days.

And I should mention, I think if I'm not mistaken, there's some local elections happening or some state elections.

I forget which states in this country, but we're obviously leading up to some elections here. We'll be praying for that as well.

We have Spartacus, pray, praise the

Lord and pass the ammunition. All right. Well, let's talk about this. I wrote a blog, a

Substack article, I should say, and it's called The Long Fuse, How Regime Change Became Attractive to the

United States. And I put this out there on Saturday. I actually wrote this while I was mostly, actually entirely while I was in the airport and then on the plane.

So there were a lot of interruptions, but I got it out fairly quickly. And I wanted to do it because I just thought there was going to be a lot of, and I was right, a lot of misinformation and slop and just all kinds of things being thrown out there.

And I just thought, you know what? Let me get this out there, at least for the people who follow me, so that you can get the big picture before zoning in on the specifics.

I did a podcast last year and I go into great detail about the history of the United States in Iran. And those slideshows are available for patrons, but I wanted to summarize some of those things in this.

And so first I say, look, to understand what is happening in Iran is important to understand some history.

And the first thing is that Donald Trump has consistently and publicly opposed Iran possessing nuclear weapons since 2011.

I probably should have said since the 1980s, because I've seen other sources now going back much earlier.

But the clip I played for you at the beginning of this podcast, the first clip was Donald Trump or the second clip,

I suppose, after the destruction in Tehran was Donald Trump in 2011 saying that Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.

So anyone surprised that he would use military action to stop Iran has not been listening closely to his words.

Trump's opposition to Iran did not come out of a vacuum though. And so I'll say one thing, because I know there's another tweet of Trump that's being passed around where he's saying that Obama, he's predicting

Obama would start a war with Iran because of his failure to negotiate. Trump sees himself, if you've just watched him for any length of time, is the great negotiator.

He's the dealmaker. He works over foreign nations like he does a boardroom. I mean, he thinks that he can really get in there and offer them something that they will find appealing.

And he runs into problems when he tries to do this with people like the Iranians or the

Gazans, because I think so often is this is the case.

We assume that everyone else has our same interests. They also want their children to grow up in prosperity and to have a better economic outcome.

They want the things that we want. And sometimes people actually have ideology or religious zealotry.

They have things that actually trump those other interests. And those can be blockages for any kind of negotiation.

I think Trump ran into that with Iran. He couldn't negotiate with them. So maybe there was some naivety there at one point.

I don't know. But the White House actually did post a and this is not exhaustive, but it was just the title is 74 times.

President Trump has made clear that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. And it it's it's mostly 2024, 2025, but it does go back to 2020, 2011, 2015.

So that doesn't even include the statement that I had before. But there Donald Trump's been pretty consistent on this.

And I think that is the first thing about this history that we do need to set the record straight on. He he is the peace candidate.

That's how he ran. But he was also the peace through superior, superior firepower candidate.

He was the guy that made a lot of threats. And if you cross these lines,

I'm going to actually deliver on my promises. I'm not like Biden. I'm not like Obama. I don't just keep warning you and then you do it and we don't do anything.

Trump is the guy that actually does something. And I think he's doing a few things here at once. Is it 40 chess?

I don't know. I've never bought that Trump's doing 40 chess. But I do think Trump is someone who is a lot of bluster.

He has a lot of negotiating tactics that include things like hyperbole. But he will also make good on threats.

And this is something that people across the world are, I think, afraid of. And it does.

Does it benefit the United States for other countries to be afraid of us? Maybe. I suppose it.

I mean, it's such a contrast between him and Obama, who was more of a soft negotiator on all these things.

And so often, I mean, why do we. Why did Iran even have the financial backing that they had?

I mean, Obama was giving them money. I mean, there's there's a lot of problems that Trump inherited, unfortunately. But Trump has been pretty consistent with this, that Iran can't possess a nuclear weapon.

And part of it might be the fact that Trump was an adult, a young man, when the

Iran hostage crisis was happening. I think that had a deep psychological impact on the people who experienced that.

They got to see a foreign country chanting death to America, holding our hostages and our president unable to do anything about it.

And it is probably the major reason that Ronald Reagan got elected over Jimmy Carter. So this is this goes back a long time.

And and I realize I probably should get a move on because I've only gotten through one sentence. But that's,

I think, the first thing to just sort of emphasize, like, look, we did vote for a guy who was potentially going to do this.

We can't really say that we weren't warned or that we didn't know. Like we did. This is the this is the guy we elected

Vance to Vance was saying similar things. So let's go back further, though. Let's talk about the historical roots.

When the British pulled out of Iran in 1951, a competition commenced between the Britain, British, the Russians and eventually the

Americans for Iran's oil. Now, I want to say something here. A lot of the problems that we see around the world in the

Middle East in particular are the result of a power vacuum. When Britain pulled back from many of its colonies, the

United States filled some of those those that gap. But also the

Russians did some of this and there was a competition for other foreign countries not to take over these countries in the same way that Britain had had a government because Britain's model was more government driven, right?

Like it wasn't just economic. They had infrastructure and people living there and they controlled things.

This was more of just getting getting the access to the oil, getting economic deals.

And so this vacuum was filled by others. And so the United States is one of those forces.

And we had a tense relationship with Iran that stretched back to this time because in order to stop

Soviet influence and stop oil nationalization, the United States helped organize a coup against Prime Minister Mohammed.

And I'm probably going to mispronounce his last name. So, you know, I'm not even going to try.

It's most said, I don't know. So I tried, but I don't know if that's actually how you pronounce it.

But it was the prime minister at the time in support of the Shah. So we installed the shawl, essentially, or we helped.

And MI6 was involved in this as well. But this sowed seeds of mistrust towards the United States. And those seeds do endure to this day.

By 1979, the United States had long back Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who was staunchly anti -communist.

It's a problem when I read these books and I don't actually listen to like an audio book or something that has the name. But this is the beginning of the

Iranian revolution and the problems kind of exacerbating. The Ayatollah Khamenei led an

Islamist revolution that was hostile to the United States. This was motivated by clerics, by Shiite Muslims who believed in 12th imam theology, which

I'll explain a little bit more in a second. But throughout the 1990s, Iran's relationship with China and Russia grows in opposition to American dominance.

Iran currently sells more than 80 percent of its oil to China. So if you want to think about this in a global context, who's the big loser in all of this internationally?

If you think about geopolitics, you have the United States, you have China, you have

Russia. These are like the big three, the European Union, if we want to see that as a consolidated force.

And China is getting oil from places like Venezuela and Iran. Now, these places are going to be cut off.

Likely, Iran will be cut off from them, which is over 20 percent of their oil that they import.

That's going to be a problem for them. And so another thing that you'll notice about Donald Trump is he has consistently been very aggressive against China.

Does this play into it? I don't know of quotes recently where he has said that, but a lot of people have speculated this must be part of the strategy and it's possible.

But Russia also has assisted Iran's nuclear program, sold arms and coordinated with Iran to back

Assad in 2015. So the United States has enemies that have close relationships with Iran and they are pursuing regional dominance, and this is viewed as a liability for American interests in the region.

So you have this this issue of our enemies geopolitically are in bed with Iran.

Iran is it's more than just Iran. It's who's also behind Iran that the

United States finds threatening. When the Shah was overthrown, America began sanctions and became the great

Satan to the new regime, which is an interesting term. They'll say death to America. America is the great

Satan. By the way, Israel's the little Satan. So America's got a more of a threat, a bigger outsized influence than Israel.

Just their terminology. America is the great Satan. This goes back before Israel was the main or one of the major threats that they in their mind.

This goes back before that to the Cold War. So they have not liked us for a long time, meaning they, meaning the those who are controlling the government right now.

I think the population, a lot of them probably. I mean, there's no poll that I know that it's been taken, but we've had marches in the

United States and around the world now in support of this military action from Iranians.

Very thankful to President Trump. In 1988, the United States destroyed much of Iran's Navy in the largest naval battle post

World War Two. Did you know that? In order to end an oil embargo, Iran state sponsored terrorism also targeted

American interests. Hezbollah killed 241 U .S. personnel in the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing.

In 1996, Iran bombed the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 more

Americans and they organized attacks on U .S. forces in Iraq and attempted to bomb a restaurant in D .C.

in 2019. The Houthis also use cyberwarfare against U .S.

infrastructure and financial institutions. So these are not just Iran, but the terrorist organizations that they fund and support.

And the White House actually did put out a itemized list of all the actually they say it's a partial record of the

Iranian regime's blood soaked war on Americans starting in 1979 and going to the present.

And it's pretty extensive. You could say that there's already been somewhat of a

I don't know if you want to call it a cold war, but some severe tensions between the United States and Iran going back that far.

And I would just refer you to the White House for those resources there. Let's talk about Israel for a minute.

Meanwhile, Israel's relationship with Iran also deteriorated. Israel had been involved in a joint missile program with Iran in the 1970s and even sent advisors to assist

Iran during the Iran -Iraq War in the 1980s. And can you believe that? Go back to the 1980s and Israel is actually sending military advisors to Iran because they see

Iraq as this greater threat. I mean, this is one of the things that you'll see a lot with Israel is they when you have enemies all around you or at least people who don't like you necessarily, but they also don't like each other.

Sometimes it's to your benefit to try to tip the scales a little. So one side maybe that's not as unfriendly towards you is in a superior position to the other side.

And that must be what they were doing in the 1980s. But I mean, 1970s, a joint missile program, which is incredible that they ever had that.

That all changed as Iran saw Israel more and more as a barrier to their theocratic goals, though, because Iran's Shiite regime believed in the 12th imam, which essentially means they are aggressively in favor of global theocratic control and sponsor proxy terrorism by Hezbollah, Hamas, the

Houthis, etc. They are viewed as a threat by many of their neighbors, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, the

UAE. And this theology is one of the ways which Iran's potential threats differ from North Korea, because North Korea mutually assured destruction might mean something for Iran, according to their belief.

I mean, you see it playing out now before the return of the Mahdi comes a time of chaos and the defeat of Israel are anticipated conditions.

So a nuclear weapon would help accomplish more than regional dominance for them, but also help usher in their ideological goals as well.

Deterrence to accomplishing the school are expected. Now, we have the United States, several bases in the region that Iran had missiles already pointed at, and they were ready to launch.

As Donald Trump said in the clip I played at the beginning, as soon as the war started, it didn't really matter who attacked and they were going to launch these things.

Iran, this is this is the thing that many of us don't like about the great American empire, if you want to call it that, but we really are around the world.

We really do have these bases all over the place. And so the.

The problem for us is if you want to scale that back, which I've been very interested in, I'd like to disentangle ourselves,

I think we have domestic issues, I don't want to spend money over there, right, all these things problem you have is you also have the fact that you

China, Russia, these other places are interested in asserting their own dominance.

And so that's one of the reasons we're over there. It's a Cold War era byproduct that's still with us.

And so Iran is very conscious of this. They want regional dominance. They're against us and they're against Israel because Israel also stops them from within our allies from regional dominance.

But in their eschatology, their theological belief, there's going to be chaos before the end.

And Israel has to be gone, essentially. I mean, Israel, it will be defeated by them.

They believe this. So you have a situation now where they are suffering defeat after defeat.

They're making tons of stupid moves. I know I was reading and I've been reading everything from Russia today, which is

Russia today is probably one of the worst sources on this, by the way. They they were they were doing reports from Iran that like Iran had killed over 200

Americans and stuff like that. It's just like sensational stuff. But I'm trying to read as broadly as I can.

And I'm trying to remember where the story was. I think it was the Jerusalem Post. I think it was the Jerusalem Post. They had a report that an

Iranian official said that the chain of command has already broken down, essentially. And you have these rogue military units basically just doing their thing.

They're just launching missiles. There's really the brain doesn't know what's happening. And they because so many of their leaders have died, which was the

Israeli end of this, right? The United States was focused on annihilating their short term, short range ballistic and naval capabilities.

And Israel was focused on more destroying the leaders in the country, two separate missions that are complementary, not contradictory, by the way.

I've seen a lot of people saying these are all contradictory. You can't say that you want to you want regime change, which could be a byproduct of this.

And then your mission is to take out these short term ballistic missiles, which serve as giving

Iran immunity to continue their nuclear program. Even after we took out their, their, their program last year, they're rebuilding it and they're using these short term, short,

I keep saying short term, short range missiles to create a situation in a year or a year and a half from now, according to Marco Rubio, where they will have immunity, in other words, we can't really do anything because they're going to have so much firepower and.

That's our United States. That's our end of this is taking out those capabilities, stopping them from ever getting a nuclear weapon.

That's basically it for us, but with the added benefit, hopefully it sounds like our leaders want of a better regime getting in there that reflects the values of the pro

Western population in Tehran and these things are not necessarily contradictory.

These, these can compliment themselves, compliment themselves. So, uh, all right.

12th Imam theology. We talked about that a little bit. So this is sort of Messianic thing where the, the Mahdi is going to return.

They're waiting for that. There's going to be chaos before the end. So the chaos right now for them, if they really are true believers is nothing to be surprised about.

This is, this was supposed to happen, right? We're supposed to have some chaos. What ha what's happening right now, though, in the title of my article, the subtitle was why regime change became attractive is there seems to be a window of opportunity here.

Proceeding the Iranian revolution, Iran started to pursue nuclear capabilities, their violation of the

JCPOA in 2015 and subsequent United States pressure sanctions against them deteriorated.

Whatever trust we might've had 2019 Iran backed Hezbollah militants launched a rocket against a

K one air base near Iraq in Iraq. Um, and it killed an American civilian contractor, wounded several us service members, and this escalated tensions.

Eventually we killed, uh, Qasem Soleimani in 2020, he was the brains behind the ring of fire around Israel, which is now it's basically gone.

Um, both Israel and the United States have worked towards managing the threat. I shouldn't say it's basically gone. You still have Hezbollah.

Um, but other than Hezbollah, I think it's basically gone. Both the United States and Israel have worked towards managing the threat

Iran poses through sanctions, sabotage and strikes, but this was never a long -term solution.

And that's, I think the main thing I want to emphasize, it's always been a policy of management. Iran's always kind of there looming as a threat, bad things happen, but we just kind of kick the can down the road.

The only thing you can do is manage this. I think Trump doesn't want to manage it.

He wants to solve this problem. So in 2024, an opportunity opened up after Assad fell in Syria, Iran's ring of fire around Israel collapse, and then tactical strikes were seen as high reward, low risk moves, which is what happened, right?

And this was supposed to send a message to Iran. It not only stopped their nuclear program, but it was supposed to tell them to stop permanently, like, we're going to keep doing this to you.

Just stop. But that's not what happened. Um, the most stable Middle Eastern countries are ruled by dynastic governments, so Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman.

These are all more stable. And the reason for that is because they have governments that are not religiously based.

Where Islamo states proliferate. So does chaos and violence. And Iran's an example. The people of Iran are overwhelmingly young.

They're more secular leaning. And I don't know if this will happen. It's gotten a lot of talk though, that, uh,

Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shot is positioned to take over and potentially return the country to greater stability.

I don't know if it'll be the same system as the Shah was, but there's a hope that a different kind of Iran could emerge from this now, not only was there a military weakness that Iran has right now, like they can't just call in all the forces around Israel and say, go pummel

Israel right now. I mean, Hezbollah is trying, but they don't have the same capabilities they had a few years ago.

But they also have internal problems, right? They have massive protests and tens of thousands potentially of people dying in these protests just in the last two months.

So there's internal dissension. It's a window where they're weak more externally and internally, but they weren't going to stay weak forever.

They, they were building their arsenal up so that they would reach an immunity status in about a year and a half.

And that's why this happened when it happened, essentially. So I do make a few notes about foreign policy.

Um, I talk about how I tend to think that the current conflict sparked mostly by Iran's unwillingness to hold its nuclear program will not end up as bad as the doomsdayers, doomsdayers, uh, unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, there does seem to be a

Western friendly core of the population, including Christians that not only want redeem change, but how they have a history and culture.

Of, uh, sustaining something like a revived Shaw. It will not be easy though. The Sharia law enthusiasts do not want to give up power.

Whoever becomes the next leader is going to have to contend with perhaps accusations that they're a foreign puppet.

I still maintain that America should not be involved in these kinds of conflicts though. So I say all that to say this, um,

I think Donald Trump inherited a relationship with Iran that he did not create. It is not ideal. American involvement must be supported by the people of the country in order to be successful.

And that's one thing that he doesn't have. He, he hasn't gone to Congress. That's the mechanism for determining this, not a poll.

Congress needs to approve this kind of thing. I know the war powers act and people were using that last year to say he could do unilaterally what he did in Venezuela.

I still don't think that. I still think that that would require a constitutional amendment. I know

I'm super old school on this, but Hey, I'm like, I just did Calhoun last week. Okay.

Like I'm, I'm still thinking of like original intent stuff. I'm also realistic though. I know what the ideal is.

I also know what reality is. Reality is we have an imperial presidency and Donald Trump didn't create that.

We've had it for a while. We have an empire. Donald Trump didn't create that either. It's just been there.

He inherited it. This is where we are. I also know that when Donald Trump tries to get his agenda done, which he fights very hard to get done, he is fought by Congress, by judges, by governors, by mayors.

When he does something related to foreign policy, he can get away with it. It's just, he has more latitude as the commander in chief of the military than he does over anything else.

And all the people that are complaining, like, why doesn't he do this in Minneapolis or somewhere like that?

I mean, what do you expect him to do? I mean, it's, this is the hard thing. Um, he can actually do it overseas without all the pushback that ends up happening in the

United States. And it's sad, but that's the way it is. And we're not in the briefing room. We're not in the strategy sessions trying to figure out where to put resources.

But for whatever reason, this was the calculation Trump decided to make. So I'm not saying I would have made it or, or it was good in every way, but I'm saying the situation is what stinks more than Trump himself.

It's not, it's, I don't need so much like blame Trump for all this. I know he made the decision to go in. Uh, I, I would rather he had not done that.

I would rather Israel have done that, which I talk about in this article, but. I also understand that he can't get much done domestically and he's probably, he has information available to him that I don't have, and we're in kind of a post -constitutional time.

So I have to take everything in stride and be measured about it. So I talk about, I assume Trump's initial announcement of the missile strike were targeted at the

Iranian population. So if you remember when this first happened, Trump made an announcement and he was telling Iranians to take over their government, and it sounded like what he was saying, possibly if, if Americans were intended to hear this, cause it was in English, that this is to liberate a people.

And I was like, no, like as good as that by -product might be with the

American people need to know how this directly benefits them, uh, like really quickly they need to know.

And thankfully Trump, Vance, Rubio, the white house itself has made press releases.

They've all been very crystal clear in my opinion, uh, since Sunday on the objectives and what they're doing there.

If you go online, I've noticed you get a lot of bits and pieces, things taken out of context. There's, it's, there's a lot of slop.

There's a lot of, I would just recommend go, go to the actual white house website, look at the press releases and you will see very clearly, uh, or, or if you want to go on social media, follow a spokesperson for the white house,

Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump, you will find JD Vance. You'll find all of it there. Um, and maybe we'll get into that a little bit, but anyway,

I talk about John C Calhoun. Let's see. And how I'm going to just summarize this. Uh, and I'll, I'll say it this way.

Calhoun was a war hawk when he came to Congress. Okay. And if you haven't watched my video on Calhoun from last week, you really should.

Calhoun is probably, he's probably the greatest American political philosopher. And he was in Congress.

He was secretary of war, secretary of, uh, of state. He was vice president. Uh, he was a

Senator. And one of the things that he differentiated between was when he got into Congress, he was a war hawk against Britain because typical

Southerner, our honor had been violated. Uh, British ships were engaging American ships, taking people from those ships and, um, uh, impressing them, putting them in the

British Navy. They were prohibiting our boats from trading with countries that they didn't want to want us trading with.

This wasn't a front and Calhoun was saying, we got to go to war. They're violating our sovereignty.

Now there were other points in time where there were conflicts or potential conflicts and Calhoun did not have the same stance on it because it was not the same situation.

One was the Mexican American war. Uh, and one was potentially the situation, Oregon between the

British again. And the Oregon was a contested border. And he just said, just give it time.

Okay. Don't be rash about this. Uh, it was at 54 or 40 or fight.

It was like, we got a, and it, which would have given us Oregon would have been, um,

Oregon territory would have gone almost to Alaska. Like that's how much of a chunk of Canada, modern day, Canada, we would have gotten.

He said, be patient on this, on the Mexican American war. He was very critical of president

Polk. He said, look, you just can't go in there on a disputed border.

People get killed. And then you ask Congress to declare war and they don't even declare war.

They just, they just say, we have entered a state of war and this gives you now authorization. Like what are the goals?

What are like a lot of the questions some people are asking now he was asking then. But with,

I think probably better reason, like what, why are we here? What are we doing? And are we really going to take over Mexico?

Cause that's a bad idea. There were some people who wanted that. And, um, and I think the difference is the distinction is, uh, when you are attacked or when you are violated in some way, your sovereignty is challenged in Calhoun's framing, your honor is violated.

That is different than a war for economics, for territory.

Um, and I mean, for economics as the pursuit of empire, not, not like someone's cutting off your trade.

I mean, like you're going to go in and take their stuff. Um, it's, it's, it's different than those kinds of more imperialistic actions.

And, and, and so this, and this goes right back into just war theory too. But, uh, Calhoun, I think was probably the best manifestation of what constitutional executive powers look like in wartime scenarios.

He had the best view on it. Now we're downstream from that. We don't live in that same world and we basically have a default imperial presidency.

So the question is, if you want to get out of these foreign conflicts, if you don't want them to happen, which who, who of us wants that, how do we disentangle ourselves?

It's going to take steps. I don't even know exactly what all the steps would be.

Um, it's going to take, you know, if you want to the executive power to scale back, it's going to take steps to get there.

And I don't see those steps happening without a rising level of virtue in our people, self -government, stronger, uh, localist tendencies.

And I don't see any of that happening. I do think we're just going to keep getting more and more. Unfortunately, uh, consolidation and unless something stops it.

Right. So, um, so here's where we are in geopolitical affairs.

And I had a, I have a number of articles, uh, to just share with you. Uh, I don't know how many of them

I will, but I'm going to get to some questions first that might dictate kind of where I go with all of this as we open up the program, because I did promise we're going to talk about Christian reactions to this, and we are going to do that.

Uh, Mr. Morrell says, question, how much weight do you put on Israel? Threat of attack forces our hand to take

American intervention to prevent retaliation against the U S. Um, so I actually played the clip at the beginning of Marco Rubio and Donald Trump, both clarifying that the clip that went around and got viral and that all these news organizations are running with, if you just watch

Marco Rubio speech, he clarified what he meant by that. And it was more of a question of timing.

He was talking about not a question of whether or not to go into Iran. That was already a given. So this was in coordination with the

United States and Israel. Uh, this was something that the intelligence for Israel in taking out the

Khomeini was, uh, was our CIA. So we were the ones giving Israel direction on this is where you go.

This is what you're going to do. Uh, and, um, so that was already all given.

I think what, what in the, in the clip that went viral, uh, I think what Rubio was probably doing, and this is a little, this, this

I'm going to just tell you, I I'll, I'll tell you what I know. And then when I'm speculating, this is my speculation, I think he was trying to prove an imminent threat.

He was trying to say in an international court or even in getting support from Congress that,

Hey, this was something that we needed to do together. And he said, no matter who struck them, whether it would be us or Israel, Iran had plans to come back at us.

So because of that, and we were already planning this action and so forth, but because of that, there was an, the timing of it, there was an imminent threat, we knew what

Iran was going to do, and it would be a better outcome. If we preempted it with our B2 bombers, with capabilities, we have that Israel does not have.

So, um, Israel is taking most of the casualties right now, but we have had a few ourselves, which pray for the troops, pray for, pray for peace, obviously.

Um, it's very sad, but he clarified right after that, that no, Israel is not forcing our hand.

Trump clarified it today. Marco Rubio, Rubio clarified it again and made the, that distinction between the goal, the intention, uh, and then just the specific timing of it.

Um, so I think, I think this was all coordinated. I don't, and Trump said, if anything, he was the one that was, uh,

I guess, forcing Israel's hand. I don't know what that means exactly. But I, I, I told people last night, it was shared in one of the chats that I'm in.

Uh, just, I said, let's be slow on this. And, um, I'm glad that I said that because, um,

I just, I was like, that doesn't sound right, except, and then I watched the full presser that Marco Rubio did and the additional pressers.

And I was like, okay, yeah, that was read incorrectly, unfortunately. Um, and you can see Rubio is kind of upset about it today.

This was a story that was posted by the Politico. This was last week.

This is on the 25th of February. And it says white house officials believe the politics are a lot better.

If Israel strikes Iran first, so you can even see back then, I'm not even going to read it to you because it just really, that's the point of it.

You need to see back then, the coordination going on there between Israel and the United States on this particular mission.

Um, now you do have sort of, you know, your left -wing, uh, paradigm for understanding this is

New York times, how Trump decided to go to war. Here's the first sentence, prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel walking to the oval office on the morning of February 11th, determined to keep

American president on the path to war and the rest of it kind of writes itself, right?

The Iran or Israel is just basically influencing us, pushing us around. Uh, there's a lot of guys.

In fact, I was noticing, uh, guys on the, the, the Groper side of things, especially like there, they really think that this is the case, uh, to the point that Nick Fuentes is saying, don't even vote for Republicans in the midterms, or if you're going to vote, vote for Democrats.

Um, if that's, if you really think that that's the number one thing, if you really believe this narrative completely, that this is exactly what explains everything and that Trump broke his word, violated trust, whatever.

And you think that this issue is the number one issue over all the social issues of all the other domestic issues over immigration, over, uh, even the anti -white

DEI stuff, then okay. Um, but you know, this is, this is not a wise thing for our country to throw out, even if you think that's true,

I'm saying, I don't think it is, but even if you think that's true, is it a wise thing to throw out the domestic victories and the actual things that separate right and left philosophically, uh, just for a certain foreign policy or a, um, really more specifically a certain policy towards Israel.

Um, it's a priority thing. And, you know, I, I would say too, something I was talking to a pastor about yesterday.

A lot of the guys who want to go in that direction specifically, it's interesting to me. They don't really talk about let's get our own guy to run in the primaries.

Let's put up someone who believes what we believe to take the Republicans in a different direction, or let's organize.

In fact, if you go to most, you know, local Republican or conservative type meetings that are political, I know there's exceptions, but for the most part, you're going to see a lot of gray heads and there's a lot of passivity, uh, among that particular population.

And, um, it's, you know, it's like, I don't know, it's rage out against the

Republicans and elected Democrats. So you're just hurting yourself. Why would you do that? But, uh, it's, it's big, it's the same narrative.

Essentially. It's the same narrative that the New York times is putting out there. A national review put out an article, national national review is, um,

I mean, that was Buckley's magazine. There were some good guys in the nineties, but I consider it more of a neocon publication these days.

Um, they did string together some things that I thought were helpful for those of you who, and I'm not saying don't, you don't have to look at the analysis of the article at all.

Just look at the sources they give you. And you can ask yourself whether or not it's true that Israel was just bossing us into this.

Um, I don't think you can look at the sources and think that's what was going on. Um, and I give you some of those, uh, reasons already, but that, that they put a bunch of those, um, in this particular article, uh, let's talk about, let's see, um, where do

I want to go? Okay. Trump says the U S military may begin escorting tankers through the

Strait of Hormuz. This is an interesting development. I just wanted to say, maybe this will calm some fears.

I'll tell you when to freak out. I wouldn't freak out quite yet about oil prices. That was one of the things people were really, really getting upset about the oil is going to go up.

I think it will, I think it temporarily will a little bit, but in a long run, this may end up actually being.

To the benefit of the United States economically. I'm not saying that's a reason to go in or anything like that, but the

Straits of Hormuz aren't, they weren't going to be, uh, closed forever. And it looks like they may not even be closed that long.

So, um, just, I would say just don't, don't believe all the rage, the rage bait stuff online.

Or so we're going to tank the world economy. We're going to tank our economy and all that. It'll hurt China the most in the short term.

We'll probably feel it a little bit at the pump, but by the time the midterms come, if, unless something else happens, that's really big,

I think you're probably going to see everything stabilize and the prices might even go down. Uh, I mean,

Venezuela and then Iran. Um, I mean, it's, and the other thing that's worth mentioning here is you have like the, so much of the middle

East now is aligned with the United States and Israel, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Uh, there's,

I don't know that there's ever been such a unification now. Do they, I mean, Palestine condemned

Iran now. Do they still like Israel? No, they still like the United States.

Some of them might, I don't know, but there is sort of a United spirit right now and we'll see what happens.

Um, it's, this is a Shiite Sunni kind of conflict and the

Shiites right now are getting bombed and so the Sunnis, the Sunnis kind of they're, they're benefiting from this, but they also don't like getting attacked themselves, which

Iran has done. In fact, I have a friend in Kuwait right now. And on Sunday morning, he texted me. He's like, I don't, I gotta leave.

And they bond the airport and Iran did. And there's been over 260 missiles they've shot at Kuwait.

He's like, what did we do? So, uh, this is, they are not making friends and influencing people.

That is for sure. Um, and economically, you know, may end up working out in our favor possibly.

Uh, all right. Let's talk about some Christian stuff. I'll get, if there's any questions, I'll get to those real quick and then we'll keep going.

Uh, why is it when the chips are down and Nick is always pushing people toward the Democrats?

Uh, I don't want to get into psychologizing it exactly. I think I know, but it's, it's a, uh, I think

Nick cares about Nick. That's the bottom line. And if you can wield people's fears and anger and channel it, um, towards your direction,

I mean, you get a lot of power that way. And it's, um, I, I don't know what to say other than that. I mean, it's not a, obviously a, uh, a good move for the country.

Uh, Nick is at best an accelerationist, but it probably is more likely on the take from China. I don't know.

Acceleration ism is the dumbest thing because acceleration ism. If it really were true, it's like communism.

It's never been tried. Right. If acceleration is more true, you would see Europe having a conservative resurgence, a pro pro nation, pro gender, all of it.

Pro religion. You don't see it. And it's you get more liberalism. You end up becoming more and more compromised.

Uh, the acceleration ism is a very dumb idea that what I've always argued for.

And this is really the conservative approach. This is the right approach. Okay. You build on the victories that you have and you expand them.

That's what you do. And if that means running a candidate, who's different on a particular issue in the

Republican primary, you do that, but you don't just blow everything up. That's what mechanisms do you have for beating the left?

Think about it. You have the Republican party, kind of, kind of, you have

TP USA. Okay. Um, you have the Southern Baptist convention and the evangelical, uh, support for conservative causes in our country, something that I'm working very hard this year to try to see if we can write the ship on it.

There's a way if you're still in the convention. Uh, I mean, what, what organizations is a heritage foundation?

I mean, we've got a few think tanks. Like if you start blowing these things up, which those are the two biggest targeted groups.

T part two turning point USA and the GOP right now, right? You can't believe

T turning point USA because they killed Charlie Kirk and they're, uh, they're just a bunch of grifters and taking advantage of you.

And they're evil. And, and the Republican party is just evil as you should vote for it. I mean, this is, you, you, you get in certain circles online.

You, you start imbibing this stuff and it's sort of like the, uh, the familiarity breed breeds contempt.

The fact that they're close to you, or you may be a used to be part of these groups that breeds a contempt that you don't always have towards the, the threat that's more imminent, but also you're less familiar with.

It's not as personal. There's something, there's a personal ax to grind with Donald Trump, with the

Republican party, with Erica Kirk, et cetera, it's not just political calculation and it's obvious if you see the vitriol out there.

Okay. Um, I'll take like one or two more questions. Let's see. Dr. Bob says, how should we respond to Tucker Carlson, wing of the coalition in order to hold things together for the midterms,

I'm not a fan of this operation, unlike Mark Levin, but I support the U S so you're basically exactly where I am,

Dr. Bob. That's exactly where I am. I'm exactly where William Wolfe is. I have seen some of his posts on this.

Like it's basically like, look, I, I didn't want this. Like who, who really wants war anyway, but.

Um, I support the United States. I'm going to back my president. I, you know, I voted for him knowing that he had these beliefs that could lead us into this situation.

And I'm hoping for the best outcome and we may end up getting a better outcome than we realized.

I did not expect the middle East and Europe to now align with the United States on this. I did not expect, um, the

Iran's defenses to fold as quickly as they're folding. I did not expect to get the

Khomeini, uh, that quickly. Um, I, there's just a lot of things

I did not expect to happen in a short period of time, and this could end up being a good thing, even for the midterms.

If things really turn around quick, I don't see this going past two or three months, uh, tops, it might just be weeks.

It might be two or three weeks, but I really don't see this engagement going more than that. Um, there's a lot of slop online about this.

I saw, I stopped following so many accounts. I've muted so many accounts. I've been really curating my new sources because I'm just seeing the dumbest things.

I'm seeing things like. No, an Israeli official saying that he's not going to rule out American boots on the ground.

You click it, you watch it. And he says he doesn't rule out Israel boots on the ground. I'm like, okay, why, why post that?

Why just lie? You know, uh, there there's all, I could go on a long time. I don't want to, but that's the problem.

I think it illustrates the issue when you see things like, you know, here's a stock footage of a seven 47 taking off.

And the caption is Benjamin Netanyahu is leaving the country. Uh, and it's not true at all.

None of it's happening, but, and with the added addendum of he's a pedophile or something.

What do you do? What do you do with that? Especially if you have, you know, 60 ,000 likes on it.

Uh, there's not much you can do. I think, except this is what I've determined. All right. I'll just like sort of give you boil it all down.

I can only talk to the people and help the people who allow themselves to have a conversation about these things that are open.

There are some people that I think they're so far down the layers upon layers of. Conspiracy holes that to get them out is going to take a turning point in their life.

They're going to have to wake up one day and realize how unhealthy the black tolling is. Something's going to have to happen personally to them before they see it.

That's kind of how I see it. I don't, I don't think reason is the thing is the tool that you can use with these things.

Because I've noticed if you just, if you refute one thing, they just come back with another thing and you refute that and they just come back with another thing.

And there's just really no way to have a conversation. Um, there are good reasons. I've said this before to be critical of Israel, but those reasons, uh, like we're so far down the hole past those things at this point, it's, it's almost futile to have a conversation.

And now it's just like against all authority, right? It's like, you just got Republicans got to lose. Uh, Trump's got a, and Trump's not even running, but you know,

Vance and Rubio, they, they can't be in charge of anything. So, um, my advice if you is, if you know people that are really going down these black holes, and I'll give you an illustration real quick, cause

I know several people like this. Um, I knew folks that got deep into Q and on, okay. Uh, Q they would just say

Q they don't like me saying it on. But, uh, what happened was when they got into it, initially it was trust the plan.

Donald Trump is in charge and all of the things you see in 2020 are part of the bigger effort to take out the pedophiles.

The reason that Samaritan's purse has tent set up in New York city for COVID is not because of COVID they're actually helping trafficked children.

You remember all this, some of you, uh, I got up and close and personal to people who really thought this stuff and it, and it, it got odd, right.

It got, am I going to tell you all of it got really odd on some things. And what do you do with that?

I mean, I just, I kept sharing truth. I just kept saying, I kept asking good questions.

Um, Trump was the guy though, who was supposed to eliminate all these problems and everything that was bad happening actually had this silver lining.

Well, for a while after Biden was elected, it, that crowd thought

Biden's not the real president, it's an actor. Trump is the one who's really in the white house, but his white house is in Mar -a -Lago.

And we had people even like Marjorie Taylor green who were into the Q stuff. And it went in all kinds of different directions.

Um, eventually though, it, it turned. And I remember when it turned and it became

Trump is part of them, whoever they are right now,

I think a lot of people think it's world Jewry or something, but it's, it's them, it's the, the person behind the curtain, who's controlling it all, uh,

Trump is in on it. He's one of the bad guys now. And it was like, it was, it was a switch.

And, you know, how do you reason with someone like that? They're it, you have to ask good questions.

You have to point them to the things that are the world right in front of them. What responsibilities do they have?

What kinds of things can they do to make a difference in the world around them? You can't do much about a middle Eastern conflict.

I mean, you could run for school board though, right? You can pray. You can, uh, I don't know. You can be a volunteer at your church.

You can, there's so many things you can do to help real tangible people in front of you and make the world better. If you really want to make those geopolitical decisions, you can run for office, work your way up.

There's so many things you can do. And we don't want to waste energy and time on the things that we can't do.

Right. So that's, I think more of the tact I've taken. If you notice someone who's just getting super black pilled, super detoured from those responsibilities, and now is just obsessing over things that they shouldn't be, um, that's, that's what

I would say. Uh, unfortunately I'll just add this before I move on.

Sometimes knowing how to think is I, in fact, all the time, knowing how to think is better than, than knowing what to think.

And I've noticed that the vast majority of people are more tuned into just what, that what they want to hear, what they want to think.

Um, I think this drives even the biggest accounts online. And we do need to be thinking in terms of how to think when we're raising our children, how do we get them to ask critical questions?

It really starts with understanding anthropology. Who man is, what does the Bible say about man? How does man act?

How does man behave? What are man's interests? Once you know human nature and you can observe it in various circumstances.

And once you know how to evaluate sources to see how primary they are, how, um, how true or false they might be, sometimes it's a percentage in history.

It's a percentage often, right? It's, uh, we, we have two conflicting sources. This one was closer to the situation.

This one was farther away. We're going to put different weights on different sources and we might have an inconclusive result or you may just lean towards one side, but you have to know how to do those things.

I think you learn those things as a young age. I think for Christians, the best way is in studying the Bible. You learn authorial intent, you learn context, uh, you learn how to think basically, and I think that does help you navigate these kinds of things because otherwise you don't know how to adjudicate anything.

And that's one of the things I've striven for strive for on this podcast is how to think, how do we assess these things?

I don't want to just take someone's word for it necessarily. I want to check it out and I have a limited scale, so I can't check out everything, so I have to evaluate what's actually important.

Um, I don't know if that helps. I hope that helps, but that's my advice for how to, uh, do that.

Um, Spartacus says only answer to black pill is reading scripture, the God of the body. That's exactly right.

God, the Bible created a universe where in all the schemes of man come to not the wisest human is a fool. And by his scheming, he will be undone.

Totally right. God is in charge, which means there's something called providence.

And if your life isn't going the way that you'd like it to go, and you're angry at the government, which I noticed a lot more of that too, just being so angry at, and sometimes you have the right to be angry.

I get it at government officials. Sometimes they do things that are terrible, but there is, there's a switch happening and I don't know exactly how to quantify it, but where government government's becoming

God, like we're looking to government to solve everything. There, there are guys I know that just seem to think it's like they can't get a girlfriend in their minds.

They can't get a job. They can't buy a house. There's all these forces lined up. I've tried to address some of this in my sub stack of like, here's some

Trump's even tried actually to enact some of them, but he's got Congress blocking him on things like, uh, capping usury, capping credit cards to 10 % credit card interest.

But, um, I've, I think that there's a switch happening from the conservative mindset that used to have a bumper sticker.

You remember that there was bumper stickers that said how to make a liberal angry, um, be happy and go to work and be happy.

I think it was the, that I was the bumper sticker. I don't see those anymore. I don't see the same, like pull yourself up by your, by your own bootstraps.

In fact, I'll talk about this more in the future, but, um, in Israel, I saw something that I thought was remarkable there.

They have enemies on all sides and you just have to sort of be used to the fact that,

Hey, a bomb might come through your house, not a way that most of us would like to live. And yet they have a high birth rate.

They are very motivated. They seem they're just a very nationalistic and kind of cheerful people.

And whether you like them or not, that's something I want for our country. We can't be playing the victim and we can't be looking to government to solve all the problems.

We do have to believe in Providence that God put us here for a certain time and gave us specific tasks. And we have more charge over our life and our attitude than anyone else.

That's a decision that you make when you get up in the morning, are you going to fight against the forces that are lined up against the good things that maybe

God would have for you? Are you going to take the measures and sacrifice what you need to, to meet your responsibilities, or are you just going to complain about,

I don't like the lot that I was dealt? Um, there's, there is a difference between that and then having legitimate critiques of the government.

That's not, that's not acting responsibly, but anyway, there is a conservative spirit that I grew up in that was very much like self,

I guess, rugged individual, I guess you're just like, um, and it wasn't really individualistic though.

It was more, it was individualistic in the sense that you have responsibilities, but not in the sense that you're not part of a community.

It's like you protect the community, you meet the responsibility. Uh, that can only be nurtured.

I don't think that you can argue people into that. So, all right, I'm going to keep going. And, uh, we're going to talk about Christian reactions to all this.

We've been going about over an hour now. Spiral of violence in Iran threatens already fragile

Christian minority, a charity warn. So the, uh, this is a Catholic charity. The international

Catholic charity has warned aid to the church in need, issued a statement on Monday, expressing concern over the status of Christian communities throughout the middle

East, especially Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Gaza strip and the West bank, and their concern about the effect this war will have, there's a growing anxiety.

Um, civilians suffer the most. Now we should be praying for Christians in these regions.

I will just point out though, that this may end up being a very good thing for the Christians who are in Iran, who will be able to practice their faith without the molestation of the government.

Uh, we'll see, we'll see what happens. I mean, we don't know the future, but we got to pray for that. The Pope, once you know it, the

Pope came out and he called for dialogue, uh, amid what's happening. He said, I am following with deep concern.

What is happening in the middle East and in Iran in these dramatic hours, stability and peace are not built on mutual threats, nor on weapons, which slow destruction, pain and death, but only through reasonable, authentic and responsible dialogue.

All right. Um, it's just, we got to yearn for peaceful coexistence based on justice.

He said when, you know, the Pope just never ceases to, uh, give us those leftist talking points.

Um, sometimes peace really does come through winning a war. That's like the story of half the old

Testament, right? A third of the old Testament is you win a war against your enemies and there's peace.

Sometimes that has to happen. You can't negotiate with all people. There are certain regimes and leaders that aren't going to give you what you want, if what you want is peace.

They might, how do you negotiate with someone who's committed to your destruction or is committed to obtaining something that you're dead set against, like a nuclear weapon?

I don't know. Uh, not much you can do there, but the Pope thinks he knows. He thinks, I guess he should have been among the negotiators there in Iran.

He would have done a better job. Here's what we know about the West six. Oh, you know,

I put this out of order, but I'll cover it now. Yeah. There, there was a shooting. If for those who don't know in Texas, and it was someone who was wearing an

Islamic t -shirt had the, had Allah on it. And, uh,

I know people were going through their social media, trying to figure out, you know, what they, uh, who they followed on social media.

It was an, it was an immigrant. Where are they from? Does it say here? Um, I don't know if it says in this particular article,

I'm trying to remember now. It was from the middle East somewhere. It wasn't Iran, but, um, yes, there was a shooting.

And there's concern. I know Greg Abbott's saying in Texas, there's concern that there might be Iranian terror cells.

Now I will say if Iranian terror cells are not attacking people now, I don't know what the purpose of an

Iranian terror cell is. So, um, I'm kind of optimistic that that problem isn't as bad as we've been told, but we'll see, we need to pray that we, that their safety, that people are not killed by jihadists in our own country who are led in through Biden's open border, but very sad that, uh, at least,

I think at least three people died in that attack, um, very sad. Uh, Trump says us millets.

Okay. I already talked about that. Let's see. All right. Christian leaders. Let's talk about this react to the U S Israeli strikes in Iran, the death of the

Supreme leader, Ali. How many, how do you say it? Common a common a.

I've heard people say hominy and leave the case silent. And then common, I want to say comedy because that's what makes sense, but he is, uh, he is defeated and Christian leaders have issued various reactions.

This article says from the Christian post in a video on his true social platform, president Donald Trump said hundreds of targets in Iran were hit.

Let's see. Um, at least three us service members have been killed in action and five others were seriously wounded.

We pray for their recovery. Sojourners magazine. Uh, so just, so soldiers magazine is like the premier social justice magazine of quote unquote evangelicals.

Do we even want to call them evangelicals? I don't know, but they're, they are the social justice wing.

If there ever was one. And I talk about them a lot in social justice goes to church. And here's what they say about this.

The editor of sojourner says he saw that president Trump ordered attacks on Iran. And by the way, his name is

Tyler Huckabee. I don't think he's related to Mike. I thought about the passage in first Samuel, which the

Israelites elders get fed up with being run by a series of judges and ask for a King. So he goes on about how

Trump is being a King right now. And I mean, that's fair. We have an Imperial presidency to some extent.

Now, if he was a total King, he'd get a lot of his domestic stuff done that he can't get done, but okay. Around the world.

He's a King United States famously has no Kings, but don't tell Trump that. So that's the angle they're going to tank.

Trump is bad. He's a King. United States has a King. And while the King starts wars, they rarely die in them.

As Samuel pointed out to Israel's elders, the dying is usually done by sons and daughters. Okay. So Donald Trump's not paying for any of this.

He's just sending people to die. Uh, Trump may claim that his strikes are intended to defend the

American people. Nobody believes that. So apparently nobody believed, no one believes that Iran was threatening the military bases in that region.

Uh, during his first term in office, Trump ended a treaty with Iran that limited its nuclear capabilities. Um, last summer he bombed its nuclear facilities.

Americans were not in danger of the Iran military until Trump started a war with it. And in any case, war is not effective at eliminating imminent threats.

You can look at the last 30 years. It's kind of like the Pope. You can't, war's not the answer. Uh, war kills people.

That's what it does. War kills and maims and rapes all over the course of history. And this is the

Christian nonviolence argument. Of course it is here that people start accusing Christians of being hippies, which

I guess he's sensitive to. I mean, kind of, yeah. Uh, from there they start offering all sorts of soul coarsening platitudes about all the good things violence can do.

Uh, it's the way this is all framed, the good things violence can do. It's, it's not, it's not the,

I don't even know if I'd phrase it that way. It's, it's not the violence that's doing the good things.

It's the elimination of threats that does the good things. Violence is the means, but, uh, to preserve the soul of America, Hegseth said we must continue to wield not just the physical sword, but the sword of truth.

And so he's mad about that because Hegseth is quoting scripture. He shouldn't be, or he's, he's making biblical allusions.

He shouldn't be doing that. Uh, and yes, he's saying that Spurgeon, Spurgeon apparently had something to say.

He said, this is what Charles Spurgeon quote here. What, what pride flushes the Patriot's cheek when he remembers that his nation can murder faster than any other people off foolish generation, you are groping in the flames of hell to find your heaven, raking a big blood and bones for the foul thing, which you call glory.

Killing is not the path to prosperity. Huge armaments are a curse to the nation itself.

All right. So there you go. Um, Tyler Huckabee, not, not very sojourners, not very happy.

And I would say this would have to apply to now all the other countries in the middle

Eastern Europe that are joining the effort, right? Tyler, like, I guess you have to condemn like everyone who's now reacting to Iran's erratic behavior.

And I mean, it's kind of vindication in a way, like they're crazy. They're they're nuts. And you're like, oh, they're not nuts.

They want self -preservation. And then they just start blowing up random stuff. Um, they're, they're a little nuts.

I will say that they were a little nuts. Okay. Word and way, uh, attacks on Iran draw fire from mainline

Catholic and middle Eastern Christian leaders. Now I'm not going to go through all of this, but the narrative is basically the same here.

Uh, it's, this is all wrong. We shouldn't be going in and all of that. And it's, it's all the, the left, left wing of Christianity.

So like PC USA, um, those, those folks are all condemning it. So evangelicals, not so much, but, uh, all those guys are putting out statements like the

PC USA put out a statement on Monday expressing how they are deeply troubled by the conflict and grieving the lives lost. The statement emphasized the nominations previously held belief that military force must be last resort, which is true.

International disputes must be addressed through diplomacy. Uh, they denounced authoritarian regime that rules

Iran also though, but added that the conflict is not the answer. It's, uh, you know, conflict is just never the answer.

This, this is something we do as Christians. This is something we can say is wrong and it misunderstands man.

Biblical anthropology is man is sinful. Man is capable of doing very wicked, evil things. And when a man has power and they can do wicked, evil things, sometimes they do, and they must be stopped.

And there's plenty of examples. David's mighty men, for example, being one of people who are commended for being men of the sword who were exercising righteousness through their skills in frankly, destroying things and killing people, but doing it to eliminate threats.

Now that doesn't mean you have to have a particular policy prescription on this particular issue.

You can think that there was a way to negotiate that wasn't used or something that would have, we would have gotten a better result and Trump's not doing the right thing.

You you're free to think that. I don't know those conversations, what they were like. Um, I would,

I'm open to that, but we can't be philosophically shut off from violence is just never the answer.

Sometimes the government actually bears the sword and violence is the only remedy they have to protect their people.

Uh, all right. What else? Uh, Marjorie Taylor green. Uh, we're no longer a nation divided by left and right.

We are a nation divided by those who want to fight wars for Israel and those who just want peace to be able to afford their bills and health insurance.

This is like the decent coalition I was telling you from, uh, Tucker Carlson a few months ago.

And I'm seeing all this, I'm seeing this language all over the place. I predicted this. I don't want to, I'm not saying this to vindicate myself, but I'm seeing it all.

Like I saw, uh, is it James Fishback? The guy's running for Florida. Who's who's like kind of a griper.

And he's, he's, uh, saying how appreciative he is of things that Kamala Harris is saying right now, there is a fusion going on.

There is a left, right. Uh, at least on some quarters of the right alliance being formed over this.

And, um, it's, uh, I don't know. I think that left and right philosophically are very different.

And if, if it's this one issue that causes an alliance, if Marjorie Taylor green is correct, then it's like, if it's foreign policy or policy on Israel, that is enough to forge an alliance.

So it's not what the abolitionists said it should be. It's not, you know, sanctity of life stuff.

You're free to, to be a Republican, to be on the right vote for Donald Trump. Even if you don't get everything you want on sanctity of life, because that's a political strategy, right.

Or the border issue or like, that's so important. We got to, I know we don't, we don't get what we want on these other things, but we got to have the border.

That's been the push for like the last few years. I was on that, right? Like the guys, we don't have a country, but we don't have a border. And if we don't have elections, election integrity and a border, we've got to have that stuff.

And, and the other stuff, you know, we can fight about that, but we'll never be able to fight about it if we don't have a country and we don't have an election process, that's our only mechanism here.

So the, uh, the, the strategy seems to be now it's like none of that stuff really matters apparently.

Cause you're like, if you'll, if you'll side with someone who's an open borders, D E I pro abortion

Democrat, because they agree with that we're too supportive of Israel or something like that, then

I don't know. Like, I guess we deserve the losses we're going to get. Like it's, it'd be far preferable to work towards a candidate who represents your beliefs and don't compromise these more fundamental things.

Domestic issues are very important. They're in some ways they're more important than what's happening in terms of foreign policy.

And if we don't get our house in order, then, uh, we won't be able to, to do anything foreign policy wise.

So, um, just, you know, reiterating, I guess I did predict that and it is happening and, uh, all right, let's, let's see,

I had, I thought I had another article and I don't see it now. I'm talking about Christian leaders reactions to this on the

Christian post, but now, now I'm not seeing it, but it went through a bunch of other

Christians. Let me see if it's on the front page here of the Christian post. I don't even see it on the front page.

Oh, is this it? This might be it. Let's see. Um, oh,

I see what I did. I went into reader view and so I lost, here it is. Okay. So it's the article I was on before. I thought that article was short.

All right. Let me give you some more reactions since I promised that in the thumbnail. Uh, I'm going to,

I'm going to go to just ones that are more, I guess, major. So Franklin Graham, he said he made a post and thanked

Trump for giving the Iranian people a chance to be free. He said that those in our military who are risking their lives to protect

America and bring freedom to the Iranian people. Oh, here's Shane Claiborne, Shane Claiborne, red letter

Christians, super progressive guy. He says, let's be very clear. Killing people is wrong. Attacking Iran is terribly wrong.

We will never build a better world by killing other people's children, which I don't think the objective is to kill people's children, but, um, and let's see, let's see what else we got here.

Oh, violence begets violence. So it's, it's basically what the Pope is saying, what the main lines are saying. Uh, Susan Michael of the international

Christian embassy in Jerusalem. Uh, I'm sure she's going to be for this at this sobering moment.

We are calling the church to prayer. We stand firm for the support of the men and women in the U S armed forces. So it's, it's sort of your generic.

Uh, Raphael Warnock, is he a Christian leader? I guess he, he was a pastor, right? Democrat in Georgia, Americans have long been weary of forever wars in the middle

East, which is the one thing that Vance says is not going to happen here. So we, you know, you can hold them to that.

The administration says this isn't a forever war. So if they create a forever war out of it, they are going to have problems.

Trump administration's dramatic and deadly escalation in Iran risks. Yet another sad chapter of decades long entanglements.

Given the lack of a clear plan, it is, it risks increased stability in the region while endangering American troops, harming our national security.

Um, all right. It's when the Democrats are in control, they always hold the

Republicans feet to the fire on constitution stuff. And then when they're in control, it's like, yeah, who cares?

Uh, we got Tony Perkins, family research council. He said it was a bold and decisive action that Donald Trump did going into Iran.

The Islamic regime poses serious threat. All right. Well, there you go. Those are the

Christian posts reactions to the situation there. Uh, let's talk about this.

We're going to switch gears actually before we do, I'll take some comments, questions, and cries of outrage. If you have cries of outrage against me, uh, let's see.

Couldn't believe that Megan Kelly had Marjorie Taylor green on. I can and Megan Kelly has been, that actually makes total sense to me.

Uh, let's see. I think there are foreign agents at work with the left, right anti -Israel horseshoe thing.

Yeah. I don't know. I don't, I still don't see horseshoe. If people say horseshoe theory, I'm like, I don't know if it's horseshoe theory. It's just people that have right -leaning views are able to adopt left -leaning views, especially if you don't have like a fully formed view on these things.

If, um, if you're, I'll put it this way. If you're someone who has got convictions, your, your principles are in order.

Now the situations can change, but you got stable principles. I don't think this thing happens as much, but if you're someone who's more.

Need of the moment and figuring things out as you go, then you, you can be open to all kinds of things.

And, uh, yeah, I'm sure there's funding and stuff going into trying to figure out how to get Republicans to vote

Democrat or to not vote. So Republican voter suppression is a huge way for the

Democrats to get in charge. But it's, I look at it less.

I, like I did in my podcast the other day about like, who's taking over America. I look at this less as a funding thing, even though I'm sure there's funding and stuff and more as like from the, the, the ground level of, okay.

So people who are attracted to that kind of thing, there's probably something already undecided, unstable, and open about them, and they're just adopting left -wing ideas.

I don't see it as like, oh, they went too far, right. They became left. They just adopted some left -leaning ideas. That's all.

Uh, all right. Romans eight says, I don't think it's an Alliance. I think third worlders have flooded the internet and dishonest influencers are tailoring their message to appeal to them for ad revenue.

I'll be honest. I actually totally believe that. I totally believe that. Um, it, there was a, uh,

I don't think I've covered on the podcast, but there was a firm that covered, you remember that momentary like flash in the pan when all of a sudden you could see the countries that people were tweeting from, and you're like, oh my goodness.

It's like all foreigners what's going on here. And they specifically notice

Nick Fuentes his audience was sort of something weird going on with like in the initial minutes of him posting something, it was like bot farms in these places in the middle

East that were supporting his message, which gets him. That's sort of like a rung on the ladder, which gets you to the next one.

We're like, that's how social media works. Just I'm, I'm never, I don't pay for traffic.

I'm not in on those things. I don't study the algorithm. It's just not who I am. I think that's one of the things that gives me some authentic authenticity and I don't want to lose that.

I've had a lot of people wanting me to go in these various directions to build the audience. I'm just not interested really.

I, I, it kind of skeeves me out. Um, but I do know that's how it works.

I've had several conversations with people about like, okay, how do you get to a hundred thousand followers pretty easily? You can actually do it pretty easily.

It's not that hard. And it's a lot of understanding, uh, what, what sells what's usually honestly, what's sensational.

It's expressing to people, their worst fears. If you can do that, channeling their anger, whatever gets people angry and fearful on social media.

That is what, that is what there be there are cued into. And it, the algorithm works that way.

It just harnesses that for you. And you can be part of that. I'm not interested. I'm just not interested in it.

Um, I realized when I first started, I'm, I was probably tapping into some of that, not intentionally doing so, but I was talking about compromises and Christian institutions, and that was making a lot of people fearful.

But as a strategy to build a platform, that's usually what you do. And, and certainly, um, saying outrageous things, saying things that are divisive, uh, that are just really provocative.

This has always been something that people who don't like us want to take advantage of, if you look at the civil rights movement, if you, even if you look at world war two,

I mean, our enemies have always thought the way to divide us is along racial lines or some social thing, like if they can get people angry at each other in the country, then they can weaken us that way and what better way to do it than social media.

Uh, so I totally believe that's happening. But, you know, all you can do is encourage people to, uh, seek better resources.

Um, you grow your audience by hating and blaming the Jews for everything on her. That's unfortunately probably true.

Unfortunately true. Uh, only answer the black pill is, Oh, we already talked about that.

Okay. So I think I got to most of your questions. If you have any more inserted now, cause we're going to switch gears to Christian nationalist stuff.

Uh, let's talk about this. The report on reformed Christian politics, the reports on reformed

Christian politics written by, uh, people I know, uh, friends of mine, actually

Zachary Garris, Sean McGowan, and Stephen Wolfe. And this particular report, um,

I, I actually just went over it this afternoon, I think the most important part to me for Presbyterians specifically are the section on the spirituality of the church and applying the mosaic judicial laws or no, sorry, not that one.

Uh, where is it? It it's chapter three and four, the

American revisions to the Westminster confession of faith, 1646 for 1788 and the spirituality of the church.

So the long and short of it is this. This document was created with the intention.

I think I highlighted it somewhere. Oh, there, um, it aims to steer reformed

Christians, particularly those in these Presbyterian denominations, NAPARC in the right direction with theological, philosophical, and historical clarity.

Let me translate that for you a bit. This is intended ahead of the

PCA's, uh, study document that they are creating on Christian nationalism, which will probably be very critical.

They are getting out ahead of that and giving you a scholarly resource that will likely defend and contradict the majority report report from the

PCA on this particular subject. And what it will do is give some institutional and academic credibility to those who want to hold on to the idea that the civil magistrate can indeed is permitted to, and even should support true religion.

Now the report makes it clear that this is circumstantial, that it's not something that across the board, like one denomination is just going to force everyone to be part of their denomination.

Um, it is, it is the basic syllogism that worshiping the true

God is, well, actually let me get to the syllogism if I can find it here, because I'm not going to remember it exactly.

I know the conclusion of it. Uh, man was created to worship, worshiping man should worship the true

God or the, sorry, the state, the state was created to uphold the good of man, man's good is worshiping the true

God, the state should enforce worship of the true God or support, I should say, worship of the true God, basically. And the

Westminster confession was changed in 1788. Here, here's it. Here it is. Nations ought to acknowledge the true

God. The triune God is a true God. Therefore nations ought to acknowledge the triune God. All right. So I gave a different syllogism just as valid, but you could add to that, that the government is created as a promotion of good and destruction of evil on a moral scale that God gave.

Now the Westminster confession has, it's been argued in the PCA was revised.

And that revision was an attempt to promote some kind of a secularity or a neutrality in the public square.

Whereas before you had language in the Westminster confession where things like the magistrate could call upon the church to resolve an issue or the magistrate, you know, could enforce certain things, the revision was much tamer on that.

Now the reason, and I think it's argued well in this, is that in the developing American world, where you had different states with different official religions with different rules, every state was going to be a little different.

And so in an emerging pan -Protestantism, which is what America was in 1788, you had states that were fundamentally an official church, and then you had states that were multiple churches under a more loose, soft, you could say a soft establishment or a

Christian cultural more that was enforced by the state.

Things like Sabbath rules, blasphemy rules, right? And this was universally supported and at least not opposed by the

Presbyterians at that particular time, if you just read them. And so this particular document makes that case.

It gives you references. It shows you, okay, you go back in history, this is what you find. You find

Presbyterians who believed that in the United States, that the civil government should still be enforcing certain religious things for the good of society, and it's not wrong.

It's not against the spirituality of the church. This idea that the church is a institution of heaven that is in the pursuit of spiritual good, as opposed to the government, which is a ministry of justice exercising the sword, it's not a contradiction of the spirituality of the church to believe that the magistrate has this authority.

And so if you're someone like James Baird and you're in the PCA, you should be able to remain in the PCA without it being a problem that you believe this, because this is historically what

Christians have believed, essentially. So I would just commend it to you.

I think it's worth your read, especially if you're in the PCA, especially with the debates that are going to be happening this year, probably in June, regarding Christian nationalism and all the rest.

And it's fairly well cited. It's well documented. It is a bit thick, especially at the beginning. I texted

Zach Garris and Sean McGowan, their authors, in a little thread with them, and I was like, hey, did

Stephen Wolfe write the beginning of this? Because it's very philosophical, because it was reading like the case for Christian nationalism.

If you get a little bogged down in the beginning, just take it slow and keep reading, and it'll kind of open up when you get to the portions on quotes from founding

Presbyterians, even founding fathers, on the way they viewed the relationship between the church and the government.

And so it's really against secularity, secularism, I should say, as a pursuit and neutrality and principled pluralism in these things.

It's against liberalism, basically. And at the same time, not trying to say, let's institute a state church like European countries have, like America had its own thing.

And these things are prudential concerns. But how do you get away from the government enforcing some kind of a morality that's based on a religion?

You have to have something like that. You can have liberal arrangements, by the way. And I should say this. I think the authors recognize this.

A liberal arrangement is not the same as liberalism. Okay. When I wrote the book Against the

Waves right back there, I was arguing against liberalism. Liberal arrangements don't have to be liberalism.

You can have an arrangement whereby diverse peoples exist in relative harmony for the good of society, and that's the best you can come up with in those conditions, and not be committed to philosophical liberalism.

Philosophical liberalism sees that as the chief good and sees diversity, egalitarianism, some kind of social equality as the end goal for society that must be enforced and promoted.

It sees unlimited individual self -expression without barriers as the ultimate good.

And those are the kinds of things that liberals advocate. You can have a society that doesn't need the rules that other societies have.

So I think this is where, when you have competing isms and competing ideologies that are so firm and rigid, and they talk about theonomy in that way, theonomy being kind of this rigid, there's a whole chapter critiquing that as a conflation of the moral law with the statutory law or civil law of Israel, and then wanting to just kind of import that into a localized modern setting, and that this was not something they argue effectively,

I think, that was widely believed. You can find a few people, like you can find, what did they say in the piece?

I think they cited one of the Puritans that's often cited by Greg Bonson and others as being, was it

Cotton Mather? It was one of those guys as being more or less theonomic, but in general, you had people arguing for civil penalties and these other things, but it was also based on reason, prudence, circumstance.

It wasn't with the understanding that the laws specifically given to Israel during that time period should be imported into modern settings, at least without consideration, you can look at the wisdom in them and you should, as Westminster Confession says, look at the equity behind them.

The increased matter, by the way, I just realized the Puritan was, I think, increased matter, but anyway, you can look at the general equity behind the laws and then implement the principles.

So if you're a theonomist and stuff, maybe you want to argue against that, but that's what's in the document.

And there have there has been a little bit of pushback. I noticed Presby Cast is saying some things.

One of the arguments seems to be that there's Nazis there, I guess.

And maybe I'm reading into this. I don't want to read into this, by the way, but I don't know what

Presby Cast is exactly trying to say here. This was sent to me, though, by someone saying this was a reaction. You do not got to hand it to the

Nazis, other 20th century fascist or resurgent racialists. There's no good reason to run with their sympathizers or rely on their resources.

This should not be a hard call, especially for Christians and churchmen. Yet here we are. You know,

I. I realize Stephen Wolfe especially is a kind of a pariah in some of these circles online, and one thing

I'll say about him knowing him personally before he even got big, if you want to consider him big, he's not really big, but had some influence,

I suppose, in the Christian world. You know, Stephen Stephen's one of these guys that actually has a tremendous amount of hospitality,

I know because I've experienced it. And one of the things that people actually have against him is the fact that and this may sound crazy to some of you, and it is it is kind of it's a little out there.

I'm not going to lie, but based on the Constitution's reference to ourselves and our posterity and the first immigration acts, which highlighted free white people.

They will say that only white people can be Americans, and Stephen Wolfe doesn't believe that.

And so that actually has gotten him in. He him and the group of people who believe that only white people can be

Americans are at odds, essentially. They don't like the fact that he thinks that other racial minorities are part of America.

Now, that may sound insane to some of you. Like, well, how does anyone think that? What do you mean? It's maybe outside your world.

But that is a world that does exist online and it's a growing world in a way. It's actually

I don't know how many people it is, but it's fairly prevalent on X.

And I don't I know Stephen has friends that have gone in these directions and so forth, but I will just say this.

I don't think that there's a. A bone in his body that hates other people because they're of a particular race or anything like that, and to use something like that to try to discredit the scholarship in this document, and there's other there's two other guys working on it to, you know, two other guys that happen to be in.

I don't know if I should say this, but they're going to I'll just put it this way. They just say their their personal life refutes the idea that they are.

A racially, you know, that they hate minorities, I'll put it that way, their personal life obviously refutes it, but to smear the whole thing that there's a connection here, which is a connection here, which is

I just think that it's kind of lazy. I think you need to take it on. It's if you're going to refute it, if you're going to talk about it, take it on its merits.

And, you know, I understand the like sometimes a source can be so spoiled and bad and just they say crazy things.

They believe we're they're geocentrists or whatever. I don't know that you're just like, why would I listen to anything that they had to say?

OK, fair enough. But if you have to realize when you have scholarship.

And you want to engage that scholarship and there's other people looking at that scholarship, you do have to actually get into the scholarship a bit.

You do have to talk about it. You have to give reasons. I don't think this tactic's going to work, to be quite honest with you.

And I think it's seen as a low blow. I think it's seen as unfair. I know I see it as unfair.

And I'm willing to take any questions on that. I understand at least the online controversies that have been around on those things.

I was going to end with a kind of a high note here and then take whatever questions that you might have.

The Supreme Court blocks California schools from hiding students' gender identity from their parents.

The U .S. Supreme Court has ruled against California public school policy that requires the withholding of information from parents about whether their children are transgender identifying at school.

I think that is an excellent development, and I wanted to give you that good news. I'm trying to end the podcast with good news because there are still some good things happening.

And this was a controversy for years in California. This is why some people are moving out of California. And now the

Supreme Court of the United States has made a ruling. And you can thank Donald Trump for the current makeup of the

Supreme Court that this was even possible. It would not have been possible if Trump was not president. So if some of you want to throw that all away, then go ahead.

But I'm content with victories like that. I think that that's a good step in the right direction.

All right. PresbyCast and Dr. Hart are on the same page. Yeah. You know, Darrell Hart is someone I just want to say

I actually like Darrell Hart. I've read some of his books. I think he's actually a good historian.

Some of the clips I've seen and our podcast appearances, I don't quite understand it. I've even thought of asking him to come on my podcast to discuss this stuff.

Maybe we'll do it. I don't know. And maybe I don't know if he'll do it or not, but I do have some mutual friends with him.

And, you know, I just I wish that these bridges were not burned.

I wish that there are ways to kind of connect people. But I think we're past that point. I know this is a bit off topic, but got any advice about dealing with friends who are turning towards Catholicism and are turned off towards reformed

Protestantism? Well, I will say that that is a major trend right now, and it is happening within the reformed community quite a bit.

I have noticed it myself, not just Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. There seems to be an arc and it's what

I'm seeing right now. It starts off with kind of getting thinking that Catholicism is more stable, is more old and ancient and more for some people is just more anti -Jewish in their mind and that the reformed

Protestants have a history of believing in even if they weren't the modern

Zionists, they believed in an ingathering, especially the Anglo Protestants, Puritans, et cetera.

They were restorationists. And so getting away from all that history, getting back to something that promotes itself is rooted.

I think that's a lot of the appeal. And I think a lot of it is from people who were somewhat unmoored.

They did not have a solid religious upbringing or if they did, it was shallow and they're looking for something to belong to and they want roots.

So I think that's a big part of it. And how do you deal with that? I mean, I'll tell you how

I've dealt with it. When people start talking that way in my own life, I just remind them of their own convictions and of truth.

Like, what do you actually believe? Because what we believe should be the thing that guides us. If we need to go back to older forms in our

Protestant churches, if we've neglected or left certain forms, then maybe we should consider returning to those things.

I've often said high church Anglicanism and even high church

Presbyterianism and Lutheranism. These traditions have some beautiful liturgy. And it's

I mean, you can find it. Redeem Zumer talks about this. You can find a lot of the things that you would find in a

Catholic church setting. You can go to those churches and you can find the stained glass and all the rest. But unfortunately, because of the way those traditions were linked with the upper classes and the upper classes went liberal, they lost the

Bible. And what was left standing were the populist, more low church traditions.

The evangelical tradition that I'm a part of. And if evangelical churches want to make some gradual steps to get back to some more older forms,

I think that's actually a good thing. I don't think there's anything bad about that. You have to do it with prudence. You can't just force things on people.

But I think learning and appreciating some confessions and the

Apostles' Creed and getting back to scripture recitations and doing older hymns,

I think those are all good and can be positively used. So those are secondary, though, to the beliefs you have.

What do you actually believe the Bible teaches about Jesus Christ, about salvation, about sanctification and justification and the difference between the two, about Mary and her role?

Is she really a co -redemptress? Should she be venerated as if she's worshipped?

These are all the kinds of things that you have to work through, because when you become

Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, it's not just switching out one church for another, one style for another.

It's switching out one belief system for another. And so I've always made it about that.

At the end of the day, who do you believe Jesus Christ is? Do you believe that it was once and for all when he was sacrificed?

Or do you believe that he has to keep being re -sacrificed every time there's a

Lord's Supper? Right. These are the fundamental things that separate Protestants and Catholics. So if the person doesn't want, doesn't care about that, they're really just after a certain style, there's not much you can do.

And I've had those conversations with friends where they did convert and it's just, you know, it's like they didn't really care about the theology so much.

And at that point, it's like, well, I don't know what conversation to have.

I mean, that's the only one you really can have. This friend of mine says Avers Fudge is currently critical of Sola Scriptura.

He blames a doctrine for progressive Christianity, thinks we need a divinely inspired interpretation of the

Bible. Well, I mean, the Bible's in original languages, right?

I mean, the King James only, maybe he could be King James only. You think that there's a, that's the inspired interpretation.

Some of them think that you can correct the Greek with it. Right. I think that's one of the first things that gets attacked is

Sola Scriptura. And then it's blamed for liberalism. It's, Pandora's box was opened because the assumption is that Sola Scriptura places the authority in every single member of a church or every pastor.

So you have a little Pope at every little church. Whereas if you just have one Pope and it's all consolidated, then everyone's on the same page.

Well, you just saw from earlier in this episode, what the Pope said. So do you really want that as a conservative, but, but, but to not sidestep the issue, the authority in Sola Scriptura is in scripture itself.

So you can misinterpret it. That's possible. You can get it wrong. The authority is not in you. The final authority is what the scripture teaches.

And behind that is God. So God is the final authority. In Roman Catholicism, you have the

Pope, you have tradition and you have scripture and these things, and they have, well, since Trent, they have a extended canon as well, so they don't have the same canon as the

Protestants now, but those three things are more or less on an equal level. And so that's how you can have development in doctrine, uh, by inserting a tradition into it.

In fact, I was just recently at the church of Our Lady of Guadalupe down in Mexico, and there's probably like six or seven churches on that campus.

Now, one of the interesting things you'll see there is a lot of pagan symbolism. There's a four leaf flower that is a pagan symbol that the

Aztecs use, and they use it all over their imagery. Uh, the Aztec calendar is used there.

The forms of worship they sometimes do are reminiscent of the ancient Aztecs. Um, our, we had a tour guide and the tour guide said that, you know, he was raised

Catholic and it's, he had a drinking problem.

His family said he couldn't come home if he kept drinking. And so he went to the priest there, the priest made him sign something.

He paid money. I won't drink for a year. And then he had a party coming up and he wanted to go to the party and drink.

So he went back to the priest, he signed something else that gave him permission for one day to drink.

They think they're fooling God when they do that kind of thing. Right. I mean, it's like, like, wow, that is so different.

Um, there's a lot of syncretism there. They tend to, when Catholics go into a region, it tends to syncretize with the religions that are there.

Protestantism tends to replace the religions that are there. And, and in Catholicism, uh, it's sort of a rigid form of religion whereby you have all these rules that if you keep,

I mean, Jewish people do something similar, right? I was at a Shabbat dinner and I was asking all kinds of challenging questions to the people there about, okay, so what if you have to turn a light on or off?

And it's like, well, you can quarter like snuggle up against it and turn it off. Right. There are all these rigid rules and the heart of the

Bible, the heart of true religion, true Christianity is looking past those rules to get to the heart of things in the heart of things is loving

God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength, that's the basic, uh, goal. And so when you're being sanctified, you are actually after pleasing the

Lord. You're actually after having a real relationship with him. It's not just about keeping rules and fooling

God. And, you know, I'm not saying everyone's trying to fool God, but it's a system that allows for it.

Um, and, and so, yeah, I think, um, I think the solace,

I guess we started at solo scriptura somehow I got here, but I'm going to end here soon. Cause we're almost two hours in,

I think the solo scriptura thing is misunderstood. It's it's they think of solo scriptura. They think that's what they're critiquing and solo scriptura that it's every man is his own authority when it's no, the

Bible's the authority. So we have a standard that doesn't change at all to put everything. The Pope can change tradition develops and changes, but the scripture remains the same.

That's actually more stability than you can ever have. Uh, so hope that helps, um, is the way for now truly

Jesus's body. The wine is blood. And what about a St. Bone relic in every Catholic altar and Mary worship? Hard to imagine taking tradition and the

Pope above God's word. Uh, how are things going with the state level persecution of Zach Garris within the

PCA? You know, I don't know. Uh, I think they're still, I mean, it's a long process.

The process is the punishment. So they're still, um, I think wanting to punish him and trying to, but he,

I, I, from what I understand, he's beating them at every turn. So we'll see what happens with that. 28 years ago,

James White said in justification of reading the spurious, uh, what word is that? Cyto.

Hey, graphic writing, written writings of the church fathers. Oh, pseudographic. Okay. You don't know where you're going unless you know where you came from.

Yep. History's important. I think it was fundamentally misunderstanding. Protestant doctrines, buying into Catholic characters. I think you're right.

I think you're right about that. And a lot of Protestants don't know their history or their theology. Well, so they're open to it and they're looking for something.

They're not satisfied with the community they're in. They're looking for something different. And that arc, by the way, that arc can lead to all kinds of different places.

I think it, for some people, it'll lead to deconstruction. I've got a folder on my computer now of people that I've just screenshotted online saying they were

Christians and now they're pagan because they don't want their kids reading a Jewish book. And Christianity is too

Jewish. Even the new Testament is just too Jewish. I think that some of it's going there. You're going to return to this older pagan quote unquote pro -right white stuff.

And that's not really a doctrinal argument you're having at that point. That's an identity formation issue. They have, and they just have to, like, is their identity in Christ?

Is that a primary thing? And do the other things flow from that? Or is that, are they looking for an identity somewhere else?

Um, all right. Yes. Rubio's comments have been discussed, uh, chief earlier in the podcast.

All right. I think we're, we're done with the podcast now. We're almost two hours in. That was a mega podcast. I hope it helped.

I hope this was, was good. I am about 70 % with my illness.

So you just pray for me that that continues. I was really worried yesterday. I was like on the floor in my, in the restroom.

Like, I don't want to give you details, but I was just like, I can't get up. Like, this is really bad. And overnight

I started feeling a lot better. Um, and today I'm feeling a lot better, but I still haven't eaten hardly anything.

I'm like, my, my mind's a little cloudy. I'm trying to do work and it's not working out as well as I'd like.

So just pray for me that I continue to get better this Sunday. I am going to be teaching on Genesis 15 or Genesis 12 and Genesis 15, the

Abrahamic covenant. And I'm going to try to record it for you because I think that's a topic of discussion and what, what is the fulfillment of that covenant?

What does it mean? What does church history teach? What are the scriptures teach? So pray for me as I'm studying for that.

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