March 29, 2016 Show with Stephen Bloom & Bruce Bennet on “The Church & Politics”

from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27, verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 29th day of March 2016.

And I'm sure that most of you listening have been sharing in my amazement as you watch the

Republican primaries and are scratching your head and wondering how we have possibly come to a point like this when the

Republican candidates for President of the United States are at each other's throats very much on occasion like bullies in a schoolyard.

But we are going to have the assessment of the Republican primaries by two men who know far more about politics than I do, and they're both born -again believers in Jesus Christ, and I'm so delighted that they could be on the show today to give their assessment of what is going on in the

Republican primaries and also the Democratic primaries. But it's my honor and privilege, first of all, to welcome back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Pennsylvania State Representative Stephen Bloom.

Thank you, Chris, and thank you for inviting me to be on the show today. Oh, it's my pleasure. And Steve, you've also written a couple of books, haven't you?

I have. The Believer's Guide to Legal Issues, and they've crossed the line, A Patriot's Guide to Religious Freedom, and both of those are still out there in the

Amazons and online retailers, christianbook .com of the world, if anyone's interested in those books, both written from a very practical, readable standpoint on some very important legal issues.

And of course, they're also available through one of my sponsors, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. Indeed. Cvbbs .com,

C -V for Cumberland Valley, B -B -S for BibleBookService .com. And our thanks to Todd and Patty Jennings for helping us out here to make

Iron Sharpens Iron possible. And online, we have, or on the phone

I should say, on the phone line, we have as our co -host today, one of our co -hosts,

Pastor Bruce Bennett of Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island, New York.

He is also, he was a 2002 New York State Senate and our

Right to Life candidate in the Third District. He was a 2006 New York State Assembly Republican and conservative candidate in the

Fourth District. And in 2008, he was a New York State Assembly Republican and conservative candidate in the

Fourth District. And 2009 through the present, he's a Suffolk County Republican committeeman and chairman of Long Island Family Coalition.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back as a co -host, Pastor Bruce Bennett.

Good afternoon, Chris. Thanks so much for having me on. And you want to greet my guest, Steve Long?

Hey, Steve. How's it going? It's going great. How about you, Bruce? Thanks for being the co -host today. Yeah, my pleasure.

How are things going out there in Pennsylvania? We have our challenges. We just got done with a massive nine -month budget fight with our governor.

But the good news is, after all was said and done, we stopped his plan for massive tax and spending hikes in its tracks.

And now we are three months away from next year's budget deadline. And so we'll start the whole process over again.

But out of, he's a brand new Democratic governor. And in his first year, he basically got none of the big tax hikes he wanted.

So that's a win. Excellent. Very good. Let me now also introduce my co -host, who's been in the studio frequently these past several months,

Reverend Buzz Taylor. It's great to have you back on the program as a co -host. Thank you, Chris. And it's nice to have as many participants as listeners now.

In fact, there'll be one less participant next time we do the program, I think, as Buzz will no longer be a part of this broadcast.

But first of all, let me start by asking Steve, what would you like to say, to start the ball rolling, about what you have witnessed in the

Republican primaries so far? Two things I want to start with is, as essentially, I guess, qualifiers or preludes to the discussion.

One is, as a state representative, I'm not real keen on endorsing candidates.

And I'm not on the show today to endorse any candidates. I feel like it's presumptuous of me to tell people how

I think they ought to vote. So my comments are in the context of my personal thoughts.

I'm not trying to endorse or not endorse anyone in terms of my official capacity as a state rep.

More importantly than that, I think this whole process illuminates for us as believers that our hope is not in the political process.

We can get caught up in that. We can begin to think that somehow electing the right candidate is a proxy for following Christ.

And that we will find peace in that or satisfaction or success in having the right candidates elected, whether it be at the state, local or national level.

In a lot of ways, I think many of us get caught up in that. And I'm not saying I'm immune from it either.

A lot of hope and excitement around certain candidates thinking this will be what saves our country. And then sometimes we see the way things are unfolding.

We think to ourselves, what's happening here? And it's in a lot of ways a good reality check for us to remember to place our hope in Christ, not in these worldly creations like the political system, how much as we might love it or venerate it.

So those are just kind of the pre -thoughts I have. The way the process has unfolded, it has been to me personally discouraging.

Months ago, I was optimistic. I felt like we had a lot of hope on our side, a lot of momentum.

Clearly, folks have been jaded and burned out and frustrated with the direction that President Obama has taken the country.

And it seemed like an obvious situation where we could reclaim the high ground and start to fight for some things that are very important, no matter how you slice it.

And when you look at the issues before us, whether they be economic issues that deal with people's livelihoods and the ability of folks to either be forced to live in poverty or to make something of their lives where they can take care of themselves and their families and invest in others, those are big issues.

And then, of course, you have issues like the life issues and the sanctity of marriage and things that are so important to us as believers that we feel have been, in many cases, trampled over the last 8 years.

It seemed like we were going to be able to start fighting back on some of these issues, naming the next

Supreme Court justice, things that do set the tone for the future of our country for many, many years to come.

And now we've kind of watched this whole process turn into essentially a circus, a very vulgar circus, where the ideas that we started out wanting to talk about have kind of been subsumed and absorbed into who said what about so -and -so's wife yesterday and who touched who and who hit who and, you know, who had their hands on who and how big are the hands, just things that are absurd that would never have been the things we'd want to be talking about at this stage.

And meanwhile, our primary opponent, or you're not using the word primary in terms of elections, but our main opponent, whether on the

Democratic side it would appear to be Hillary Clinton, she's under a massive FBI investigation and that's never even talked about.

There's 150 FBI agents working on the case of her possible and likely misuse of emails and all we talk about is the latest little nasty insult that Donald Trump put out on Twitter against Ted Cruz.

So it's been, in a lot of ways, a demoralizing process, but again, the lesson in it,

I think, for Christians is take a step back, this is not what we're about, our hope's not in this process, our hope's in Christ and it can help us to remind us to lean on Christ and not on any candidate that might be our favorite.

And by the way, I want to mention our email address here for listeners who might want to join us with their own questions and comments.

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please include your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old

USA. We do on occasion have folks from all over the world, actually from about 15 different countries right now, who on occasion email us, so if you have any thing that you'd like to say as an observer from the outside, we'd love to have your input as well.

And I know that you were right now for the first hour anyway, Pastor Bruce, you're mainly serving as a co -host, but to start off the program, if you could also answer that question about what your assessment is of what you've seen from the

Republican primaries so far. Few words discussed. It's been very, very, very disappointing to see a man like Donald Trump become the frontrunner of the

Republican field. I think Steve hit it very well when he mentioned that we were very optimistic.

I think we had a lot of momentum on our side going back to last summer. We saw an incredible pool of candidates, whether it be the governor of Wisconsin or Rubio D 'Onofrio.

I mean, just from both borders we had candidates, 17 coming out of the gate, and many of those were really well -qualified.

When I say qualified, I mean their character was godly.

It was good, solid character. That's the number one thing you want to look for in a candidate of any level of government.

And they had solid policy statements. They had solid convictions on how civil governance should steer the country.

And I agree with Steve that politics, civil government is not the answer.

Christ is the answer. His kingdom is the eternal kingdom, the primary kingdom. That's our primary citizenship.

However, civil government is our secondary citizenship.

We're secondarily citizens of the United States of America and the state that we belong to. And it has importance.

It's not primary importance. It still has importance. And it's been very disheartening to see the civil arena now being so jaded, as Steve said before, by a man like Donald Trump, who, again, does not have the character that's commensurate with the office of the

President of the United States. And his policy statements have been so weak and discombobulated and contradictory that, honestly,

I think right now, if Trump is the front -runner, I don't see how we're going to win the

White House. Now, one thing that I hear from Christians, some of whom have surprised me by their giddiness and their enthusiasm over supporting

Donald Trump, they have said, look, we are not trying to get

Donald Trump elected to be the pastor of our church. We're not trying to get

Donald Trump to be elected even as a deacon or a Sunday school teacher at our church.

In fact, Pastor Jeffers or Jeffries, I can't remember how to pronounce his name right now, he's fast becoming a regular on Fox News for a conservative

Christian's commentaries on the politics and other things happening, current events.

And he seems to be a strong supporter of Donald Trump's candidacy.

And he made the comment that we're not, he, in fact, worded it a different way.

He said, we don't want or need a Sunday school teacher to be leader of the free world or something to that effect.

Now, first of all, I think that that's an insult to Sunday school teachers. But it seems that some

Christians have bought into the world's idea of what a strong leader is.

And they almost have acquiesced, it seems to the world, that a

Christian might be too weak to be the leader of the free world or something.

I mean, that's almost the gist of what I'm getting. I may be misinterpreting their comments.

But Steve Blum, if you could comment on that. First of all, as a former Sunday school teacher,

I taught for over 20 years, both kids and adults. So yeah,

Sunday school teachers are one tough group. But, you know, think about that, the absurdity of that statement, that somehow we,

Christians not going to be or Sunday school teachers not going to be equipped to handle the world. Look at our history, look at the history of the

United States. You look at a man like George Washington, who, the one thing that jumps out at you when you think about how our country,

A, became independent and B, established itself as a constitutional republic, the key man, the indispensable man in that process was

George Washington. And what is the number one thing people talk about when it comes to George Washington? It was his character, his moral character.

He was a man of faith. He was a man of extreme self -evaluation.

He would keep journals of his faults and his weaknesses and his goals of trying to become more

Christlike in his character. And he was strong enough to stare down at that time the world's strongest international power,

Great Britain, to lead an army, to fight that battle, to win that battle, and then to set the course of a nation that would survive for over 200 years after his presidency.

He was a tough guy. He wasn't a wimpy guy. He had, I think there was divine providence involved, and he had a deep fundamental

Christian faith. His character mattered. Think of Lincoln, who perhaps wasn't the most

Christian guy when he became president, but certainly no one disputes by the end of his presidency, after the

Civil War and before his assassination, he had become certainly a man of faith and a man who was relying on God for his help in the greatest, most horrible struggle that our nations ever faced, this bloody

Civil War between brothers and cousins, between the North and the South. And Lincoln led through that because he became a man of faith.

He had that strength, that moral character. You look at a Ronald Reagan who stared down the evil empire in the

Soviet Union, who, again, at that time, the strongest rival to the United States in geopolitics, a ruthless, horrible communist dictatorship.

Reagan, a man of devout Christian faith, a man who cared about character, won that battle.

And I don't believe that these guys win these battles in their own human strength. I think it's because God sees fit to bless and to bless the nation when you have strong moral leadership.

So for us to now decide that as Christians, we no longer need that, that we just want a guy who's flashy and talking fancy and, you know, living in a gilded palace and showing off all the time is somehow going to be a substitute for a moral, courageous leader of character.

That's a scary thought in my book. And it's a real concern, Chris. Yeah. In fact, since I can't see you,

Pastor Bruce, chime in any time you want to ask a question. You don't have to worry about interrupting me.

Obviously, you might want to be concerned about interrupting Steve, but just chime in whenever you feel the need to.

So the thing that is baffling to me is that people who are also

God -honoring, God -fearing Christians who must be in large numbers supporting

Donald Trump. Think about a state like South Carolina. Right. Huge evangelical population, so -called self -identified evangelicals.

Voting for a guy that made his fortune in large measure in the gambling industry, an industry that preys upon those who are gullible enough to think they can win in that situation.

It's an industry that destroys many people's lives. I mean, I know a guy locally who some years ago got involved with gambling in Atlantic City and ended up killing himself because of the debts that he got into.

That's not uncommon. Those stories happen frequently in that industry. A guy who ran strip clubs.

He had the first casino with a strip club, from what

I understand. A guy who has sort of made a mockery of marriage and the idea of becoming one flesh for life, just sort of casually tossing away marriages and disdaining the

Christian moral fabric of what we try to live like. And we're all sinners. I'm not saying any of us are more or less of a sinner than Donald Trump, but most of us at least express the hope that we could be more

Christ -like and that the Holy Spirit would help us to become more Christ -like in our walk.

Here's a guy who's basically laughing at that notion. He doesn't need forgiveness. I mean, he spoke in public and said that he felt he hadn't done anything that required forgiveness.

And then yet somehow Christians are choosing him as a leader. It just doesn't make a lot of sense. Yeah, even when you want to consider how you want to represent yourself to the world.

I mean, if we are clamoring around somebody like that, and we claim when we evangelize to the world that many of his attributes are attributes to flee from and abandon and repent of, why aren't these people concerned that Christians in mass are excitedly rallying behind the election of a man that has many of the attributes that we as Christians are supposed to despise and oppose and repent of?

In fact, when you think of the fact that among the things that God hates that he himself had breathed into the very words that we call our infallible inerrant rule of faith, one of the things that he hates is a haughty look.

And I would think that Donald Trump is a haughty look personified. He is the poster boy for haughty looks.

And it's not that any of us don't have ego and we don't have pride.

And these are things we recognize and we try to fight. We try to overcome. We try to let the

Holy Spirit use us in spite of those things. But here he celebrates those things.

He's all about those things. And it is odd and troubling. It's a moment of self -reflection, certainly, for us as the

Christian body in this nation. Are we even serious about what we say we believe in?

Yeah, one of the things that I routinely hear, and I wish that you were with me when they were saying these things, because then

I'd be able to say, well, not all of them, and I could point to you. One of the things I always hear is when

I mention all of these troubling things about Donald Trump, the fact that he clearly has lied on numerous occasions when being interviewed, like not knowing who

David Duke was and being confused about the nature of what the Ku Klux Klan is and things like that, and then later claiming he just didn't hear properly, which he later, well, actually, even during the interview, he revealed that that wasn't true because he mentioned

David Duke by name. But they typically will say that, well, they're all that way.

So you can't negate voting for somebody who's a cheat and a liar and who is self -absorbed, narcissistic, that kind of a thing, because they all are.

Well, obviously, you're not. I've gotten to know you somewhat, and that doesn't seem to be any resemblance of your character, but how do you reply to something like that?

Well, Chris, obviously, I'm a sinner, and I've got, like I said, we all have our weaknesses and our flaws, and I think the difference between a

Christian and a non -Christian is that Christians acknowledge that we are sinners before God.

We go to the cross, we seek redemption through Christ, and we know that his

Holy Spirit then does, in a mysterious process, cleanse our hearts, and we can become more

Christ -like. Not that we achieve that, and not that we ever overcome all the desires to sin, but those are things that we wrestle with, as compared to a person who simply embraces their nature and celebrates it, which is what we seem to be seeing with a character like Donald Trump.

It's a celebration of the sinful nature in a sense that it doesn't matter, that it's okay, and that's the example that we want to put before our kids and our grandkids, that this is what a leader looks like, someone who just has no compunction about any type of sinful behavior and simply celebrates that with no guilt, no acknowledgment even that they've sinned, that they've hurt

God by doing that. So it's a scary situation, and I'm not saying that a president has to be a born -again believer, but certainly as Christians, I tend to want that as when

I think about who I'm going to vote for. Is this a person with character, or is this a person who's simply going to do what's convenient in the moment?

And it's worrisome to me when you see the direction we've gone in that regard. Yeah, you could have a candidate that professes to be a born -again

Christian, who demonstrates all the attributes that Donald Trump possesses, so you do want the most qualified candidate that has a character that is

God -fearing and biblical, even if they are not themselves born again. Because as you and I know, there are people in many spheres of life who are better and have more integrity, and this is an unfortunate fact, but many times they do have a better track record of dealing honestly with the public and with people in their own industry.

Some of these individuals happen to be not Christian, and that's something that just means we have to strive better as a people to be more known as being the go -to people for nearly everything that you can think of.

But if I'm having brain surgery done, I want somebody who's the best surgeon possible to do that, and I don't want to hear any remarks from you,

Buzz, over there. But if I want something that's vastly important done in my life or an age of service of some kind,

I'm going to want the best person. But having said that, character is extremely important, and it is just,

I'm at a loss for words. Even the way that I've been myself attacked for bringing up anything critical against Donald Trump.

But the fact of the matter is we have this race that is now boiled down to two realistic candidates.

Now, I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination on politics, but what happens,

Steve, when these two men do not have the delegates required, and how is the actual candidate going to be chosen from amongst the two of them, most likely?

Well, each state has different rules with respect to the delegates that are elected, so it's a complicated process.

And Pennsylvania is actually one of the oddest states in the mix. Most of our delegates will be essentially unbound delegates that we elect, and they don't necessarily have to follow the outcome of the popular vote contest in Pennsylvania.

So when you go to vote on Election Day and it's wise to go get a look at the ballot ahead of time, you'll see a bunch of names, people you've never heard of in many cases, who are running to be delegates to the

National Convention. And you may not even know who they, if you haven't done your research ahead of time, you might not even know who they are supporting.

But they're free. And other states have different requirements. Some, all the delegates are bound to the candidate that wins the popular vote, some by congressional district.

It's a very complex mix. But basically, you'll have a first ballot at the convention, and if no one reaches 1237, then you're going to have a second ballot.

On that second ballot, some of the delegates who have been bound are going to start to be released according to their particular rules that govern their election.

And if a second ballot doesn't result in someone reaching that majority, that 1237, again, more delegates will start to be released.

And ultimately, you'll have all the delegates, for the most part, being released from their pledges as to who they were supposed to go to the convention and vote for.

And you'll have a process of wooing delegates. And that's how Lincoln got the nomination back in 1860,

I believe it was. That, you know, he went into a convention. He was actually one of the underdogs heading to that convention.

But they didn't get the, no one got the majority. And his friends kept working the room and, you know, encouraging folks to vote for him.

And ultimately, after some, some historian will know the answer to this, but I think it was like 18 ballots, something like that,

Lincoln was finally elected as the Republican standard bearer. So you could see a process like that, where we have ballot after ballot until someone reaches that majority and becomes the nominee.

And a situation like that, it's not unprecedented in our history, but it's something unprecedented in recent history.

So I think most of us would not really know how to handle that. And what would that do, ultimately, to the candidate, to the party?

What kind of divisions would occur? Would we be able to then rally around that candidate, whoever it might be?

Or would there be so many hurt feelings and so much bad blood that we would end up handing the election to Hillary or Bernie?

We have to go to a break right now. And we do have a couple of people who have been waiting to ask a question.

But if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away. We're going to be right back with Pennsylvania State Representative Steve Bloom and Pastor Bruce Bennett as we continue their assessments of the

GOP primaries. Don't go away. That's 717 -254 -6433.

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This is Chris Arms and if you just tuned us in to Iron Sharpens Iron, we have as our guest today Pennsylvania State Representative Stephen Bloom.

He is discussing his assessment of the GOP primary race and we have on the phone with us

Pastor Bruce Bennett who has also had a very experienced life within the political arena and we have in studio with us also the

Reverend Buzz Taylor who has been my co -host a lot lately for the last three months on Iron Sharpens Iron.

And we have Brian from Gardeners, Pennsylvania who wants to know, is it right in your estimation for a

Christian not to vote when they feel like they are violating their consciences to do so? To me, if that's a question for me, absolutely a

Christian can refrain from voting if that's what they feel they should do based on their own prayerful conversation with God about the issue.

I have many friends who are from some of the Anabaptist faiths whether they be

Mennonite, Amish or similar denominations and many of them in accordance with their

Christian faith do not participate at all in the political process. I don't agree with that for myself. I think as Christians it's important for us to be active in the civic life but there are respectable and historically valid streams of our faith where the folks steer away from that for that very reason.

So I have no condemnation for someone who chooses not to participate if they feel it's morally wrong.

Certainly a decision I think is up to the individual voter. Again, for me, my decision has been to participate vigorously in the political process but I get the idea why some

Christians may choose not to. Yeah, there's a difference between just being lazy and apathetic and unconcerned and just self -absorbed so you don't even care what's going on in the world around you and having very seriously strong Christian convictions.

You know, it can become an idol. I mean, like I talked about earlier, I feel like in many cases it sort of has become an idol for many of us and I feel like I'm partly guilty as charged.

My hope had been we're going to get a good strong candidate and that's going to help reestablish the positive future of our nation.

But that's really God's role, not my role in selecting a candidate or any particular candidate's role. So I think we need to make sure that we're not setting up the political process as an idol, as a substitute for Christ.

Well, Bruce, how would you handle that? Yeah, well, conscience has to be clear to do anything as a believer.

So if the Holy Spirit's convicting you not to do something, of course we have to obey the Holy Spirit's prompting.

With that said, I would just caution that person to really make sure that they're really hearing from the

Holy Spirit because I think as Chris had mentioned, there's a lot of people today sort of taking the easy way out and saying, well, it's too grimy, it's too dirty, it's just all this political stuff.

They want to just characterize and just put it in the league of something that's sinful and worldly and I don't want to touch it.

And I would actually say that the Anabaptists and other groups that separate, have a strict separatism on this are actually wrong, biblically speaking.

So I would, of course, say yes, follow your conscience, but make sure it's the Holy Spirit and if it's because of your tradition,

Anabaptist or otherwise, that would not be a correct basis for rejecting your obligation of loving your neighbor by moving the needle closer to justice in a civil arena.

We have an anonymous listener in Cumberland County who wants to know, why is it that the

Democrats seem to have more Christ -like compassion for those who are in poverty and those who are immigrants trying to pursue better jobs in their lives to provide for their children?

Well, I think the operative word there is maybe seems. Yes. Yes. I'll tell you what,

I mean, again, speaking for myself, not anyone else, the reason I became a conservative, the reason

I became a Republican is because I care so much about the poor.

I want to see the poor have the opportunity to be lifted from poverty into prosperity. I want folks who are downtrodden and disadvantaged to have the opportunity for justice and the opportunity to make something of their lives if they so desire.

And if you study world history, it's been those regimes that use the principles of socialism and a heavy -handed government that trap people in poverty, trap them in oppression, trap them in a less high -quality lifestyle.

And it's been the regimes or the governments that allow for the most freedom, the least intrusion from government, but make sure we focus on the key things, the key things of having a proper system of justice, having a strong national defense, having a solid infrastructure, but otherwise get government out of the way where people are able to lift themselves from poverty in a free marketplace.

And that's what's lifted the masses. As we've had a history in the United States of constant economic growth for roughly 250 years, unparalleled anywhere else because of the freedom.

We've lifted people from poverty. We've had a strong history of people reaching from the lowest point on the socioeconomic spectrum during their lives, working their way to tremendous wealth if that's what they were seeking.

Whereas in other parts of the world where there hasn't been that, people have been trapped in poverty. But around the world, as democratic principles, as free economic principles have permeated the thinking, we've seen more and more people being lifted from poverty to prosperity.

Right now in the world, there are more people who are reasonably well off than ever before, and those numbers are growing.

So we're better off because of it. And to me, that's compassion, giving people the opportunity to succeed rather than trapping them in a cycle of dependency where they'll never have a quality life and they'll never get out of it, and it's only going to be the government cronies that end up living a good life, as we've seen everywhere where socialism or communism or any really heavy -handed government -controlled, command -and -control system has been prevalent.

Yeah, it is interesting that, in fact, I saw, I don't know if you're familiar with Todd Freel of Wretched Radio and Wretched Television, but he did a very good analysis recently on socialism because of the claim that many people have that socialism seems to be more in line with the understanding of the first century church and all that kind of thing, and he was talking, and also the claim that capitalism is driven by greed, and he was going into the fact that socialism is really what is driven by greed because it's all based on people coveting what is not there.

Think about the commandments. Exactly. Think about the commandments. You have a commandment against coveting.

What's that? Wanting something that belongs to someone else. You have a commandment against stealing.

What's that? Taking something that belongs to someone else. What do those two things, what do those two commandments imply?

Obviously, God apparently is okay with the concept of you owning property because things can't be stolen from you if they're not yours, and you can't covet your neighbor's property if your neighbor doesn't have a right to it, and so those are principles that are woven into the

Ten Commandments even, the idea that we can own property, and that's okay. And the other irony is that a lot of times, the liberals and the

Democrats will be very much in favor of environmental laws being passed and being forced upon businesses and so forth that actually wind up robbing poor people of jobs, not only even here in the

United States, but all over the world. It seems that the liberals very often have a higher priority for plant life, foliage, and wildlife than they do for the starving indigenous people when the liberals are always claiming to be the champions of the underdog and those in poverty.

Yeah, I mean, you look at what we're doing with the electricity grid, we have an electricity grid in the

United States that's been unparalleled, that we have had relatively cheap abundant power for decades that have allowed us to have hospitals, to have functioning refrigerators, to have comfortable schools.

We've had all these institutions that we take for granted that rely on that power grid. A lot of that power grid's been based on the fact that we've had abundant coal.

Environmentalists have decided that, well, this coal is just so awful because it's potentially going to cause some sort of climate change that might slightly affect the global temperature in 100 years or 1 ,000 years from now, so much so that we need to take drastic measures to put those coal companies out of business today, threaten the stability of our electric grid, make us potentially weak compared to our geopolitical rivals around the world, in which we would be literally at threat of military loss to them, and all because of some theoretical notion that we can predict the impact that this coal today is going to have on some future people who live 500 years from now.

It's scary, though, because people get hurt today by those policies. Someday, someone who has a dialysis machine or who is freezing cold in their home is not going to have power, and they're going to wonder, gosh, how did it get this way?

We used to remember when I was a kid, power was pretty much always on. Now, not so much. And we take that stuff for granted.

Yeah, it is insane. I mean, first of all, somebody has to really organize a really good debate on global warming with the top experts in the field on both sides.

Because from what I have been hearing from the conservative side of this issue,

I've been hearing from the experts that, number one, there is no proof, definitive proof, that global warming is man -made.

And number two, there's no definitive proof that, in reality, it's bad. We all know the climate has fluctuated.

Whether you're an evolutionist or a creationist, whether you believe in a long history of the world or a short history of the world, we know that the climate has fluctuated, and pretty drastically, over the centuries.

And somehow or another, we've kind of worked our way through that. And it's not always bad. If the temperature is a degree warmer, on average, than it was the year before, it's good for some people and bad for some people in most cases.

And there's time to adjust. And where does life thrive? In warmer climates. But if it's real, let's just take it on the case that,

OK, let's say the folks who are predicting that global temperatures will gradually rise over the next several centuries, if they're right, even then, is it still worth it for us to make corrective measures if those measures are going to cause lives and health of people today?

If people are going to die to stave off some modest change for a person who's going to live 500 years from now and will have had ample time to adapt their conditions and where they live and all those things, are we really doing the right thing by hurting someone today to potentially help someone in the future?

Or is it better to focus on solving the problems we can solve here and now for people in an effective way so they can have a better life now?

And they can build up our ability to adjust to future changes, which we know are coming, whether we do anything or not.

The climate will change, always has and always will. By the way, I wanted to quickly announce that for those of you who are pastors who are listening or men in ministry leadership, or perhaps you want to write this down and tell your pastor or pastors that you know about this, the

Iron Sharpens Iron Spring Pastors Luncheon is going to be held on Thursday, April 28th from 11 a .m.

to 3 p .m. at the historic and newly renovated Thornwald Mansion.

This is now a gorgeous building that has been restored to its original beauty.

It was destroyed by fire not long ago and has been recently beautifully restored.

This was a building that was erected in 1909 originally and used by the owner to lavishly entertain national politicians and society's elite in luxury and thankfully we have this facility to bless our pastors with at the

Iron Sharpens Iron Spring Pastors Luncheon. It's absolutely free of charge. The pastors do not pay a penny to get a free gourmet lunch.

You get here a speaker. This year's keynote speaker is David Wood of answeringmuslims .com.

He's a brilliant Christian who was formerly an atheist who converted to Christianity by God's mercy and travels around the world debating the foremost

Muslim clerics and apologists. He is our keynote speaker and we also have my guest today,

Steve Bloom, speaking at this event. So I'm very honored that he was able to come and share a word with the men in ministry who are going to be present.

So if you could email me at chrisarnsen at gmail .com. chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

I will give you all the information that you need. And by the way, every pastor that leaves there also will leave with a very heavy bag or box filled with books that have been donated by major Christian publishers all over the

United States that have been specifically chosen for men in ministry.

And these are, I'm not talking about something from the bargain basement or the used book section somewhere.

I'm talking about newly published works from some of the most brilliant authors that we have today.

So I just wanted to mention that to you and we are thrilled about being able to do this once again.

Do you think that there is a realistic possibility that someone other than Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, or Kasich will actually win the primary?

I don't think there's a realistic chance that anyone other than one of those three will win the primary in terms of ending up with the most delegates.

But I think there's a very good chance that none of them reaches the 1237. They required a number of delegates to actually secure the nomination.

I wanted to ask Bruce a question in a second, if that's okay. Yeah. But thinking about, you know,

I understand the anger that's out there. I understand completely why people are so frustrated with politics as it is and the failure in many cases of the

Republican Party to really live out the conservative platform it talked about a lot.

I get that. I came in on the Tea Party wave in 2010 and at that time

I could feel that. I was part of that anger. That's why I ran for office. I was frustrated. But in 2010, what we were talking about was restoring our constitutional values, restoring the place of the

Constitution and taking the government out of things it doesn't belong in, reigning it in. And it seems like in the short time of six years, a lot of that's been forgotten and we've just got the anger left.

And it's no longer about the Constitution. It's no longer about good, solid free market economic policies.

It's more about just angry and burn it down. And that worries me because there's been a lot of revolutions in history, political revolutions and actual physical battle revolutions.

And a few work out well. The American Revolution worked out very well. But most don't. Most are more like the

French Revolution where a lot of people are killed and treated horribly and you never do get a restoration of freedom.

You just get one horrible regime followed by another. So just wanting to burn things down, that worries me.

I get the anger, but we need to put that anger in a constructive place, not just say, well, let's just vote for Trump because it'll be a big slap and poke in the eye to the

GOP establishment, which I'm all for. I'm all for poking the GOP establishment, but I want to replace it with something of value, something that will restore the

Constitution to its rightful place, something that will be a positive, not a negative replacement.

I'm wondering, in Pennsylvania, we have our primary days is April 26.

So we're about 30 days out and recent polls have come out, statewide polls that show, oddly enough, that John Kasich is ahead of Trump.

It's a 33 to 30 race in Pennsylvania with Cruz somewhere down in the high teens.

And that's odd, but Kasich is actually from Pennsylvania. He's from Western PA. We're right next door to Ohio, demographically similar.

So it kind of makes some sense. So you have that scenario unfolding. And I was curious, in New York, when's the primary in New York?

And what's the lay of the land in New York? Because I think you're seeing some things happening. Wisconsin's dead heat right now.

A lot of things happening that looks like Trump's not going to get the 1237, which is going to open up to an open convention with no delegates getting the majority on the first couple ballots.

And then someone besides one of these three could easily emerge as the consensus candidate. What's happening in New York, Bruce?

We have our primary on April 19th. Here in New York, we do it by congressional district.

So I'm in the first congressional district. And unfortunately, Trump right now is about 65 percent.

And Cruz has got about 15 percent. And Kasich's probably about the same. So in terms of congressional districts,

I think Cruz will pick up. They'll probably get probably five to eight, mostly upstate. Probably Kasich will get maybe three or four.

And then the rest will probably, unfortunately, go to Trump. And how many is the rest? Is that the majority, the vast majority?

Yeah, we have 29. OK. You have a lot more than us. We have, I think, about, I think, 18 in Pennsylvania.

Yeah. So unfortunately, Trump's just got a lot of popularity here. You know, he's from the state and so on.

So I'm just, you know, hoping that the polls aren't right. And because I agree with you,

I think the waves are, you know, going to change. Instead of these tidal waves of Trump coming in, it's like these little smaller waves coming in.

And I'm hoping that even the wind will change completely and flatten the sea and allow my favorite

Ted Cruz to pick up a wind of sale and head out to eventually being in a brokerage convention, because obviously he probably couldn't get there by a miracle, but probably in a brokerage convention, be the nominee or somebody else who has, you know, character and policy statements that, you know, actually make sense and would bring this country forward in terms of progress.

Let's see, we have a listener from, let's see, Arnie from Perry County, Pennsylvania says,

I keep hearing Republicans talk about they believe in small government. Why aren't they libertarians?

I mean, it's a good question. I'm, I'm a conservative, but I'm not a libertarian.

I've always felt like there is a place for some government. And, you know, we need to have a civil orderly society to some degree.

There's a, there's a balance. I mean, there's a guy, James Wilson of Carlisle. He was a signer of the

Declaration of Independence and a signer of the Constitution. And he talked about the need in government to balance liberty with licentiousness.

You want to have enough government that you're not encouraging licentiousness, but not so much government that you're infringing on liberty.

And that's that very delicate balance that we try to walk. But my experience with, with folks who are libertarian is they, they tend to, in most cases, just be a little too, too much tilted toward the licentiousness for my taste.

Now, but I respect them. You don't mean in their own personal life? No, toward the political viewpoint, allowing for too much and allowing for so much to the point where other people ended up getting hurt by it.

And that's the, you know, I don't really, on some level, don't, don't care so much what my neighbor does, as long as it doesn't hurt me or anyone else.

But at some point, if you allow for, for so much liberty that people are doing things that do hurt others, you cross that boundary.

And it's, it's, it's a tough one to define. I have some libertarian leanings, but I've never called myself a libertarian.

I've always felt that I'm a conservative, not, not, not a libertarian. And would your libertarianism that you do have come anywhere close to someone like Ron Paul or Rand Paul?

More, I mean, I'm, I think a little closer to Rand than Ron, but I, I, I'm concerned always about their foreign policy.

I feel like it's, it's a pie in the sky concept that we can be isolationist and still somehow be safe in a very hostile global environment.

I believe we have to have a strong military. I believe we have to be prepared to defend ourselves. And I, and I believe that our best defense is a strong military that no one dares to mess with.

Well, I, I know that unfortunately you have to leave earlier than I was hoping today, but I would like you to wrap up really what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before you leave the program today,

Steve. Well, Chris, again, thank you for having me. I, I would have to go back to what I said at the beginning that all this politics, all this controversy is this national primary season.

It's important, but it's not, it's not as important as Christ. We need to, to keep our priorities straight, realize that, that God is still sovereign, that the most important thing we can be doing is praying, not fretting.

And God will open the doors. He'll, he'll, he'll provide us with what we need as, as a people and as a nation.

And we've got to be faithful. Yeah, it is somewhat puzzling why there are people who strongly will preach and evangelize that God is in control and the sovereignty of God and so forth, but they really act as though the world will end as we know it.

If the, if a Republican does not win the presidential election and as much as it's a horrific and frightening thought to think of Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders as our president,

God is still in control no matter who's in that office. Amen. Amen. Well, I know that your website is repbloom .com,

R -E -P -B -L -O -M dot com. And again, the titles of the books that you have that are available?

The Believer's Guide to Legal Issues. And they've crossed the line, A Patriot's Guide to Religious Freedom. Those books are not on that website.

That's my legislative website. But as you pointed out, and rightfully so, it was my omission at the beginning, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service has those books online and in the shop.

And certainly, in fact, they've typically had a very competitive price on those books. Yes, that's C -V -B -B -S dot com.

That's C -V for Cumberland Valley, B -B -S for Bible Book Service dot com.

And any special events or anything that you want our listeners to know about before you leave?

Again, Election Day, April 26. I'm on the primary ballot. At this point, it doesn't appear

I have any opposition, but I certainly appreciate folks here in the 199th District in Cumberland County coming out to vote.

And still, we need a strong showing for myself and some important choices for voters to make.

So if you're so inclined to be involved in the process, please do come out on April 26. And I just hope and pray that one day that I can drive a stake into my front lawn that has a sign on it that says,

Bloom for President. Let's talk to my wife about that. She does not want to be First Lady.

Well, it's been great having you on the program. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Buzz. Thanks, Bruce. And we're going to be going to a break right now.

And we still have an hour to go with our guest, Bruce Bennett. And we're going to continue the same discussion on, this time, more from Pastor Bruce's perspective as one who has been involved in the political arena for a number of years.

Someone who is also a very conservative Republican and has been himself involved as a candidate in different political races.

But if you'd like to join us on the air, and we do have a couple of people that we're still waiting to have their questions asked and answered.

But if you'd like to join them, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

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That's the Thriving story. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today is, for the second half,

Pastor Bruce Bennett. And Pastor Bruce Bennett is pastor of the Word of Truth Church located in Farmingville, Long Island, New York.

And he has also been involved in a number of candidacies on Long Island in the political arena.

And if you could, Pastor Bruce, remind our listeners who just tuned us in, what offices you ran for in the past.

2002 as a right -to -life candidate for the New York State Senate, and 2006 and 2008 I ran as a Republican conservative candidate for the

New York State Assembly. And tell us about this organization that you're currently involved in.

Well, Family Coalition is an evangelical ministry dedicated to the education and empowerment of believers to better impact, well, first of all, to better understand government from God's perspective, and then better impact it for his

Lord. Great. And let me remind our listeners that our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

If you have a question regarding the Republican primaries, or even the

Democratic primaries for that matter, or just a general question involving a Christian's involvement in politics, that's chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Judging from some things that you were saying before the break, you seem to be right on the same page with me in regarding your astonishment over the popularity amongst

Christians for Donald Trump. Yes, I think it's a barometer of how evangelical

Christianity is right now in America. And it's, sorry to say, low pressure.

It's not looking so good for the church. And it's just a commentary on where we are in terms of our spiritual life in the church.

I'm hoping that people will wake up and follow what

Christ has clearly laid out before us in terms of qualifications for candidates for public office.

I mean, the thing that's amazing is that a lot of this support for Donald Trump appears to be based on the fact that these people, including

Christians, believe he's going to accomplish everything he says. Now, it's ironic, those same people who criticize me and they will tell me, well, how can you be opposed to Trump because he lies and is a narcissist and is greedy when all politicians are?

Well, if all politicians are liars, why do you believe Donald Trump is going to accomplish all of these things that he's claiming he'll accomplish?

It's a great point because he supported politicians. He's an aspiring politician. And that's the funny thing about it.

It doesn't even make sense what's happening here. The people contradict themselves, as you just pointed out.

It also shows, again, tremendous ignorance. And that's what we thought of life was to better educate.

That was my big discovery when I dove into the political arena, just the wonderful ignorance that there is in general in our society, but especially in evangelical

Christianity, because of the pooh -poohing of politics due to mystical, pietistic and dispensationalistic elements of various parts of Christian theology have impacted the

Protestant church. And just a lot of baggage that comes out of that that demonizes the civil arena.

And for that reason, leads us away from even critically thinking regarding any political issue.

People forget that the word politics comes from the root word polis, which is a Greek word that means city.

And that obviously is referring to people. So if you love people, you'll love politics. But it's not seen that way in the evangelical world today, where the sacred and the profane are given this radical distinction.

Everything is sacred under the lordship of Christ, including the political arena. There's nothing profane of anything that God created at all.

We have Harrison Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, is Long Island as liberal as I've always heard it was?

Depends where you are in Long Island. It's a great question. Actually, in Suffolk County, where I reside, where my church is also located, we are actually, believe it or not, somewhat conservative.

In the last gubernatorial election, for example, Rob Astorino, who is actually a very conservative candidate, won

Suffolk County's vote by a bare 1 % majority. But here in Suffolk County, believe it or not, we actually have

Lee Zeldin, who's our congressman, represents most of the county, and he's very conservative as well.

So yeah, Suffolk County is somewhat conservative. Just maybe a slightly majority.

Nassau tends to be fairly liberal. And as you get into Queens and Brooklyn, forget about it.

The needle falls off the gauge as far as how liberal folks tend to be in those sections.

All right. Now, Steve Bloom said that he did not care to endorse the candidate.

You seem to not have that restriction about you. You seem to be wholeheartedly supportive of Ted Cruz.

And if you could tell our listeners why. Well, first of all, I'll qualify as Steve.

In my capacity as a pastor, I'm not making an official endorsement. Let me make that clear.

Right, yes. This is an official endorsement. My endorsement is chairman of Long Island Family Coalition. And another note for the audience that's listening,

I'm a bi -vocational pastor. I've been a social studies teacher for the last 26 years.

And I teach history, government, and law. College level all the way down to seventh grade level over that 10 year of time.

And I'm also studying this issue really almost daily for that job.

As well as where it overlaps with the gospel call I have being a pastor. And from my perspective, from my opinion,

I think Ted Cruz of any announced candidate, at least out there, would be the best choice from a

Christian perspective, from an evangelical perspective, to make. He is really excellent on just about every issue.

And where I disagree with him, it's only minor differences. And compared to Trump, there is no contest on it.

People aren't going to vote for Cruz. And please at least vote for Kasich. But let's keep Trump out of the mix. Because a couple things.

Donald Trump, I don't think can win the general election. I think the polls show it. He's got a 68 % unfavorability rating.

75 % of women will not vote for him. You can't win the White House just those numbers alone.

So just from a pragmatic perspective, to support

Donald Trump is a wasted vote, in my opinion, because he just simply can't win the general election. And now are people just buying into Donald Trump's rhetoric when they will say,

Ted Cruz is a liar. Of course, we all know that that is the nickname that Donald Trump has adopted for Ted Cruz.

Lying Ted. What does he lie about? Am I missing something? I've never heard anything substantiated that he lied about.

Yeah, I honestly can't pinpoint a particular major issue, at least. I mean, we all lie.

Well, I'm talking about particularly in this race, though, I'm speaking of. Yeah, I think perhaps, you know, what happened in Iowa with Ben Carson.

Yeah, it's saying that Ben Carson dropped me on the race. And I think he believes that Trump, that is that fact that it came from the top

Cruz himself, where Cruz said, no, no, no, it was just an aide, who, by the way, was fired after that was done.

You know, so perhaps that's what he's referring to. But yeah, there's nothing that I know of that would back that claim up.

Ted Cruz is unpopular because he's not part of the GOP establishment. That's unfortunately, as Steve pointed out in the prior hour,

I've been capitulating to too many of the democratic ideas for governance. And we haven't been standing up and fighting, for example, for a balanced budget or even to freeze the ceiling, the debt ceiling, with Dave Capes and so on, and not standing up for marriage like we were hoping they would and so on.

But, you know, bottom line is, Trump is a train wreck. I would like to complete the list if I could,

Chris, just listing some of the other things about Donald Trump, reasons why evangelicals should absolutely not vote for this man.

Four bankruptcies, currently facing a federal fraud case for his misrepresentation of Trump University.

His current wife, who appeared virtually naked in a magazine cover. Not releasing his income tax forms for over a decade.

Hiring illegal workers and paying them substandard wages. He's on his third marriage.

He donated millions of dollars to myriads of liberal causes and organizations,

I might add. Uses vulgar and profane length in public speeches.

Defaming women, some minority groups, and even the handicapped. Encouraging violence in his rallies.

Acting like a little child in presidential debates. Throwing around ad hominems, glittering generalities, and appeals to people, fallacies, etc.

Having no or little serious, cogent policy plans that are often contradictory, illegal.

For example, advocating torture for terrorists, and even the murder of their families. Violating, you know, the

Bill of Attainment laws and so on. He has no Christian testimony.

He claims his favorite book is the Bible, but yet can't even give us his favorite verse. He says he has no need to confess his sins to God.

These are all issues that the believer has to look at and say, wait a minute, now

I don't see any supposed conversion to true conservatism as a philosophy. But I don't see any evidence or fruit of your supposed

Christian confession. He claims to belong to a Presbyterian church. I doubt he knows the distinctiveness of Presbyterian thought.

But the standards are proper for him. He probably couldn't identify them. But the point is, he's disqualified on issues of character here, clearly, and on issues of substance of policy.

Why in the world are we supporting this guy? Just because he's an outsider? You don't want an outsider who doesn't know what he's doing.

You don't want an outsider who doesn't have good character. We do have another question from Brian.

Actually, I misattributed this for a previous question to Brian in Gardeners, Pennsylvania.

That was from a different Brian. So I apologize to Brian in Dauphin County who asked the question earlier.

Brian in Gardeners, Pennsylvania asked this question for Steve Bloom who is no longer with us right now.

But I was wondering, perhaps you could somehow, maybe you could think of a way that you could answer this question in regard to anyone living in this country rather than just the

United States. The way that the question has really been posed here is, in light of recent massive federal overreach, i .e.

Common Core, Department of Education, Bureau of Land Management, Obamacare, etc.,

how do you propose to insulate the citizens of this country from these massive overreaches regardless of who is

President of the United States? So, obviously Steve Bloom isn't here to speak to that question as a state representative, but do you have any way of answering that question,

Bruce Bennett? Sure. Department of Education does not have a constitutional mandate for its existence and should be abolished as soon as possible.

There's no constitutional reason, there's no philosophical reason for the federal level of government to control education.

Any control of education, and that's questionable honestly in and of itself, should be through the states.

Education deals with the issues of philosophy and worldview, and these are issues that should be reflected through the state legislatures and the people who can hold their state legislatures accountable for such educational decisions.

At the end of the day, how we train our children in the schools is going to be the next generation of leaders in our political realm, and we have to be careful that we're training them with truth as opposed to a lot of lies that are being told to our children in the schools today on the federal mandated educational policies.

Now, one thing that is really interesting to me, and it also proves to me that there is not a lot different between the democratic platform and that of socialism, is the popularity of Bernie Sanders.

The fact that you could have such a large number of people in this country being so enthusiastic about supporting an open socialist, open and proud socialist like Bernie Sanders, even identifies himself as a socialist.

And it's interesting also that you don't hear the democratic pundits or Hillary Clinton hammering away at socialism when she is debating him or even speaking in public.

She's not really saying, are you serious, ladies and gentlemen? This man's a socialist.

We can't have a socialist as president. You understand what I'm saying? Uh, what do you think that that says about the state that we're in as Americans today?

It's a sorry state, Chris, where of course we're called as Christians to be, you know, salt and light, to be the prophetic voice, if you will, calling the rest of the country to repent and to line up and as God has revealed in his word.

And again, we just don't see, you know, the fire from the

Christian church. As fast as we see lukewarmness, the apathy and the ignorance that goes along with it.

And it's a vicious cycle where we're just allowing this country literally be sucked down the tubes through people who don't fear the

Lord, who have no fear of God, who don't use the Bible as a standard, who have agendas that line up with an evolutionary, materialistic worldview that, like you said, inevitably going to want socialism uh, to be the rule, the rule of the day, like Western Europe, um, has, has fallen under that whole, uh, you know, curtain as well.

And we see what's been over there and right now until, until the church wakes up and discovers that God has spoken on what proper civil governance is, that God has actually given us a template that in Romans 13, it actually calls, uh, people who, who work in the civil government,

God's ministers, that this is not a dirty area. This is not an area to be avoided. This is an area to be impacted with the standards that God has given us.

Men like, uh, Steve that you just had on the radio, a state representative, we need men to fill all the different levels of, uh, who fear

God and use his word as a standard. And, uh, until we wake up to that, that, uh, you know, reality, we're going to continue to add further and further away from, uh, where this country had started off as a

Christian Republic. All right. Not that it was a theocracy, but it was the de facto philosophical system of worldview enforced through the states,

I might add. And we've gotten away from that since the sixties. And now the church has, has capitulated and continues to withdraw from the civil arena.

And the more we withdraw, the more we're going to allow those who hate God and those who use in a, uh, unbiblical system like socialism, which doesn't work, never worked in any country where it's been tried.

It's a form of theft. Uh, it's, it's driven by greed, jealousy, and envy. And, uh, what people don't realize is with socialism also comes an eroding of, uh, the de -civil, uh, liberties that are guaranteed by the constitution, freedom of religion, freedom of press, freedom of speech as well.

But if the church is going to abdicate its proper role and, uh, curse the political arena and, or, uh, vote for, for, um, demagogues, uh, like Donald Trump, just cause he's a very outspoken man who has a lot of, uh, anger and zeal behind him.

And Mussolini and Hitler had that too. And look at where it got those two countries. Yeah, I know this is, uh, this is really my, uh, what

I'm more surprised about and dismayed about is really the Christian reaction. Yes.

Uh, because I expect, uh, many liberals in this country or naive or misled people to, uh, be willing to support a socialist when, as I said earlier, uh,

I don't see really that much difference between, uh, the Democrats that we have in power today than socialists.

Uh, I mean, do you, am I overstating the case with that? No, no. The Democratic Party has become a socialistic party with the adoption of Obamacare.

Um, officially that is. On paper, it became socialistic in 2008. What people may not realize is that political parties actually have beliefs, not saying each person, uh, follows them per se, who's entitled by their political party as far as their party, you know, designation.

However, if you go back to the Democratic Party platform, which was, uh, put together in 2008 in the

Democratic National Convention, the National Convention isn't just to pick a candidate for, uh, by office.

It's also to solidify the latest views and opinions of where the party actually stands. So you can actually go into their platform in 08 and 12.

By the way, in 2012, they also, Democrats decided not to invoke God, the generic

God that is, uh, platonic view of God, you know, or deistic view of God.

And they even chose to suppress that in the implause of those in the convention. So not only is it socialistic, but it's explicitly anti -God now.

Um, and whereas the Republican Party is just the opposite. They have prayer, they have invocation, they have benediction, they have explicitly in their, in their platform, uh, biblical concepts throughout.

I'm not saying every Republican follows on, unfortunately, but there is an actual difference now, uh, between parties, uh, thoroughly.

And like you said, the Democratic Party, in the de facto sense at least, has admitted to becoming a socialistic party.

That's why there is no opposition from Hillary or any other, uh, Democratic commentators, because that's where they've been for the last 10, 15 years.

And that's where we're going if we don't slow this thing down. I had a conservative, uh, believe it or not, a theologically conservative, doctrinally conservative, theologically reformed pastor rebuke me recently for a comical meme

I posted about Bernie Sanders. And he surprised me because I knew,

I don't know the man really at all. I've just heard about him, of him, and about a book that he wrote on theology.

I happen to know that he's a Calvinist, but he said to me that a democracy cannot exist or function without an element of socialism, uh, within it.

Uh, and I didn't know, I didn't have the time or the energy to even begin to respond to his comment to me, but do you have any comment or do you have any idea what he's talking about?

Well, perhaps he's talking about, you know, uh, the Roman, uh, democracy, if you want to call it that, or the

Roman Republic, as it's historically referred to, where there was quite a bit of socialism going on in terms of like welfare programs and so on.

If that's what he's using as a standard, um, I would say that in a limited sense where the church has been, because really there was a socialistic scenario in this country, if you can refer to welfare entitlements, it was done through churches, it was done through community groups,

YMCA, Salvation Army, and so on, and the church institutions that supported them were emboldened and strengthened, their purpose, their mission, their identities were protected, and they were, if he's talking about in that sense, yeah, but that's where it belongs, it belongs in the church, it belongs amongst families, families supposed to take care of themselves first, 1

Timothy 5, it was like, take care of my family, deny the faith, become worse than unbelievers, 2 Thessalonians 3, if a man doesn't work, he shall not eat, there has to be responsibility, and there has to be a responsibility to each other in the sense of holding each other accountable for producing our own, uh, means of support.

God's given us gifts, he's given us talents, we have to use our gifts and talents, uh, in an individual perspective, in a family perspective, and then where those things may fall through cracks, the church should pick up, so if he's talking about in that sense,

I have no problem, but if he's talking about in the sense of the civil government, like today, willy -nilly, without virtually any testing, even now, without even a citizenship requirement, gives you food, clothing, and shelter, just for being a human being, it's ridiculous to make that assertion,

I mean, do we really believe in hell? We believe that hell is what? Punishment for the wicked, well guess what?

We believe in hell but we don't believe in making a person suffer a little bit here so that we'll lead them to repentance to get their life right?

I mean, what's with this? And, uh, do you believe that there is a possibility that, that Kasich could surprise everybody and actually become the

Republican candidate facing either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders? Yes, he could be, uh, my own personal opinion right now is that Trump thankfully will not get the 1237, um,

I, I think Trump was behind this latest attack against Ted Cruz, the five supposed mistresses, because his best friend, one of his close friends who owns the

National Enquirer and so on, and his reputable sources that it was all, you know, something that Trump had tried to do against Cruz, and anyway,

I think that's gonna hurt Trump, I think if people start to smell the coffee about Trump and realize this guy has no substance whatsoever, uh, that he's a broken record of demagogical, fascistic, bigoted remarks that, you know, no real stuff, no real character, and once people start seeing that the emperor has no clothes, and that the wizard is just this little, you know, fat guy behind the curtain like a wizard of oz, then they're gonna start backing off from him, realizing that he can't build a wall and make people pay for it, he can't kick out every illegal alien, ridiculous claims, absolutely ridiculous, no base in reality whatsoever, and, um, yes,

I think it's gonna go to a broker convention, and it's either gonna be Cruz, Kasich, or another person that'll be selected, and people don't realize this, but 1976 was the last broker convention for the

Republicans, and, uh, Reagan and Ford were the two, um, you know, with Dole too as well, but eventually it was

Ford and Dole being chosen, you know, Ford being the presidential candidate and Dole being his running mate, uh, for that, for that year's

Republican ticket, uh, but broker conventions have happened, uh, Steve Blum had made reference to the broken convention in 1860 with Abraham Lincoln, and by the way,

Abraham Lincoln, uh, one of his, you know, main campaign, uh, managers actually put together a winning team for him by basic bribery.

I hope it doesn't come to that in Cleveland in July, but, uh, I do think, yes, Kasich has a good shot, uh,

I think Cruz has a better shot, um, you know, he's the guy I'm hoping for, but, uh, yes,

Kasich, absolutely. We have to go to our final break right now, if you'd like to join us on the air, and, uh,

B .B. in Cumberland County, if you could be patient, we'll get to your question fairly soon after we return from the break, but our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

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That's lindbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our second guest for the day, who is our guest for the remaining half hour, is

Pastor Bruce Bennett, and he is giving his reflections or his assessment of the

GOP primary debates and race, and also including the

Democratic primaries as well, and the state of our nation that we would be, as a people, rallying behind those that seem to militate, not seem to, but actually do very obviously militate against Christian principles and morals and character.

And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

B .B. from Cumberland County, Pennsylvania says, Pastor Bruce, if Donald Trump is really not a conservative and is really a liberal, why do liberals universally despise him so much?

I think liberals despise a lot of people. There's a lot of conservatives who don't like Donald Trump, so I'm not sure using a standard that's worthy of being objective.

You know, Donald Trump has said nothing that is going to really shake any liberal.

I think the parts that liberals don't like about him, the payments on getting illegal immigrants out of the country, his insistence on clamping down on immigrants coming into the country illegally by building a wall and his bigoted statements,

I think really, in a nutshell, his tax policies are actually pretty liberal.

He says he's for traditional social values. He's shown absolutely no history of that whatsoever. He had a conversion on that recently, but there's no evidence he has.

So I'm not sure. I mean, even the way that he is very soft in any kind of criticism against Planned Parenthood, it actually praises them for doing things as if women in this country need

Planned Parenthood to get breast exams and things like that, you know what I mean? Exactly.

But it could be also that there are people on both sides of the aisle who will despise anyone that they think threatens the victory of their own favored candidate.

You know, since most liberals and Democrats are either favoring Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, they would despise anybody that would be in opposition to them.

So I mean, you even have conservatives who despise Ted Cruz and Michael Kasich because of the that they are standing in the way of Donald Trump's victory or whatever the scenario you want to set up there.

That's possible, too, Chris. Good point. Yeah, I just think that Trump is just so inept, so incompetent that maybe for a good reason,

I think the common grace dictates that there's even going to be wisdom on the most liberal person on earth, and they just see that this man is unhinged.

And so, first of all, I want to make sure that before the time runs out, we've got about 25 minutes left.

I really want to make sure that a good portion of this segment, you really unburden your heart and make sure that our listeners hear what you most want them to hear and what you most want to have etched in their hearts and minds before we go to any other listener questions or anything like that.

Yeah, Chris, I appreciate that. I want to plug a book by Wayne Grudem. Wayne Grudem is probably one of the most respected evangelical scholars that's alive today, and he's got probably the best systematic theology available.

I highly recommend it. But he also came out with a book recently entitled

Politics, a Biblical View of Government, and I really, really would encourage a listening audience to consider either getting the book or downloading it, which is cheaper, you know,

Barnes and Nobles or Amazon or something. But this book is worth its weight in gold.

I mean, he really hits the evangelical world in love, rebuking it politely for just disengaging from the political arena.

And it would be such a blessing for people to recognize that men like Grudem have discovered, and not just Grudem, but Vic Lassman with his

Biblical Economics book, Gary DeMaure with his God and Government series, and that's just touching, you know, from the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

You talk about, you know, R .J. Rush doing it and so on. There's a lot of good education materials, and that's really what my biggest burden is,

Chris, that in the church, you know, we just really have allowed the civil arena to go by the wayside, have it get demonized, fall under this sort of spell where we use the word politics, you know, as a dirty word.

And nowhere, not in Scripture, where God is calling politicians ministers, even.

You know, people say we're not electing a pastor. No, we are electing a pastor. Not of a church, but of a country. Pastor means shepherd.

It's a leader. And we're all ministers as Christians. You're a minister of your home at the very least, products of your capacity.

You know, if you're a son, you've got to be a faithful son. If you're a father, be a faithful father, husband, and so on.

We all have a job to do. We all have a responsibility. And the president has the responsibility as God's minister from Romans 13 -6 to what?

To uphold the Constitution. To make sure that laws, federal laws that are passed by Congress, are in line with the

Constitution and the Bible. That is his job. And to defend us and his enemies from within and from without.

So this is what we need to do, is we need to recover a solid understanding, a biblical understanding of government.

Where we start with self -government, family government, church government, and then civil government. Understand where each sphere was called by God, God's sphere to invent civil government.

And then to look for qualifications, those characteristics of either, for example, church government, you know, 1st

Timothy 3, Titus 1, tells us that an elder or deacon, for example, have to meet certain qualifications.

Well, guess what? President, same thing. There has to be certain qualifications. And Mr. Trump certainly failed that test by a long shot.

And we need to, you know, get back to understanding it from a biblical position. So again, Wayne Grudem, Politics According to the

Bible, the name of the book, I highly recommend it. Please get a hold of it. We've got a couple of small books if you can afford the price of that one.

For example, How Christians Should Relate to Government by the same author Wayne A. Grudem, G -R -U -D -E -M.

Please be educated on this and stop cursing an area that God has called us to infiltrate for his glory.

And we have the opportunity of doing it in a Christian republic. We don't live in a democracy, we live in a republic. We have a rule of law.

What's the rule of law? Well, ultimately it's the Bible, the Constitution, and the state constitutions that come under the federal constitution.

And all of our laws should be in accordance with those documents. If they aren't, we have to smoke the smoke bomb. We shouldn't be doing it.

It's unjust. It's unrighteous. It's going to hurt my neighbor. I can't love my neighbor unless I'm actually advocating just and righteous laws.

And here's the lawmaker, God is. Right? But he also calls laws that reflect his character.

We need to be better educated in this area and we'll stop, you know, supporting people like Donald Trump in the future, hopefully, who just have all kinds of delinquent either character issues or policies.

By the way, some of those other books you were mentioning are authors. I thought you were actually sitting in front of my co -host's library shelf there.

Yes, yes. Because he would be a big fan, for lack of a better term, of all those authors you mentioned.

I've got to try to get Wayne Grudem on the show. I did try at one point several months ago, but somehow it slipped through the cracks.

I've got to try again to get him as a guest. By the way,

I misspoke earlier, I think. I think I called John Kasich Michael Kasich, but it was because there's a listener named

Michael who wants to ask you a question. Sorry about that. Let's see here.

Michael asked for Pastor Bruce. Is the

President of the United States really in power of much of anything? Is he really not just a figurehead and those surrounding him are more involved in determining the authority that comes from the

White House? Constitutionally, yes, but practically no.

That's the problem with federal government. Through trial and usage, we've allowed the executive branch and the judicial branch in particular to ascend to places of power that the framers of the

Constitution never in their wildest dreams envisioned, where the President today really has become extremely powerful.

Really, the power of executive orders, which this current President should have preached many times.

Actually, the word President back in 1787 was almost a derogatory term.

House nobility were going to be erected on any office holder, but the President actually was in Oz vernacularly, like a glorified secretary back then.

Unfortunately, we didn't follow the Constitution, and it is very important who becomes in that office now, because really, one key thing we saw today, by the way, if you're listening to the last

Supreme Court decision that was announced today, the President of the United States gets to nominate justices and judges for the federal bench.

The U .S. Supreme Court has ascended to become our ultimate rulemaking body in this country, which again, the framers never envisioned.

You've got to remember, the power of judicial review was given to the U .S. Supreme Court by itself through its own decision in 1803, the

Montclair versus Madison system. That was authored by a man, William, I'm sorry, on Marshall, rather,

Chief Justice at the time, who really wanted to expand federal power, and to the point where now we have an out -of -control

Supreme Court, which today, if you didn't hear the decision, there's a 4 -4 tie case in California dealing with unions, public unions, whether teachers specifically could be forced to join a union that was ideologically against their belief system.

And the answer, unfortunately, through this tie was that, in fact, they had to be part of a closed shop union, where regardless of their opinion, they had to pay union dues and so on.

And it's just tragic, because it would have broken the back of the teachers' unions, the AFC and NEA in this country, which would have been a good thing, because public education right now is in a free fall, because the unions have basically destroyed it, because of their greed, and also promoting systems that clearly are against the scriptures.

So, you know, this is just one example of how powerful the president has become, not because of the

Constitution, but through trial and usage. Yeah. Is there anything that you can say positive about Donald Trump's candidacy for president?

Well, he is a good speaker in the sense of general rhetoric.

His rhetorical skills are actually pretty good. He speaks with a command, he speaks with authority, he speaks with confidence.

These are all, if you're going to take a communications class, you're actually going to turn to a lot of his methods of communication to teach their students when they're running for positions of authority, and they want to move up into leadership positions, because you want to have that air of confidence, you want to have that swagger, you want to have the command of language, not in terms of depth in his case, but in terms of actually talking points that make people listen.

So he is an effective communicator. I have to grant that. So is Obama, so is Hitler. But the point is, yes, he has a very good communication set.

He does apparently have the supposed belief now that pro -life position is correct, that the homosexual marriage decision was bad, that he wants to appoint conservative jurists like Scalia, who

I believe was assassinated, by the way, probably by the teachers union. I'm not joking either. Really? I couldn't understand that last sentence.

No, I, in other words, Chris asked me, is there anything redeeming about Mr. Trump? I said communication is also the fact that, at least on paper, he's had the supposed conservative conversion, because he used to be pro -abortion, he used to be pro -homosexual rights and so on, and he's had the supposed conversion, even though there's no fruit to it.

So on paper, at least, he's at least saying he's that, but we have no evidence of that, and he's lied so many times.

Factcheck .org actually documented that approximately every four and a half minutes in any of his speeches, on average, he tells a lie.

A peer -reviewed, you know, documented lie, and so how can you trust him? But I would say those are about the only things there,

Chris. Well, I'm a bit surprised that you're impressed with his speaking abilities, his public speaking abilities, because it is true that he has a commanding personality that has confidence, but I remember

I used to make sure that I recorded when I knew Trump was going to be giving a speech or something, because I was more like watching a train wreck or something, anticipating what, you know, phenomenally and amazingly ridiculous thing he was going to say or embarrassing thing, but I soon learned

I don't need to see or hear him speak anymore, because he keeps repeating the same five sentences from the very beginning of his candidacy.

He really doesn't diverge from a very small, very short script of interchangeable sentences.

No, I agree, he's a broken record. In terms of substance, you know, as I mentioned before, he's lacking severely, but just in terms of raw communicative ability, he has to admit he does communicate very well.

At least you know what the man is thinking. And well, let me ask you a question.

If this race is down to Donald Trump versus either Hillary Clinton or Sanders, Bernie Sanders, are you going to vote for Donald Trump?

Well, here in New York, my vote, unfortunately, doesn't count as much, because I have liberal New York City that's swamped, you know, over the conservative counties.

The funny thing about New York is, like many states, California and so on, is if you look at it on a poll map, the day after the election, they have all the counties lit up, you know, red or blue.

Most of New York, in fact, most of the country, even liberal California is mostly red, believe it or not, and Suffolk County can go red sometimes.

But unfortunately, my vote doesn't really count. So that's not going to be that. If I don't end up voting for either candidate, because that's my answer right now.

At this present time, I couldn't vote for either candidate. The only way I can consider voting for Trump is if, heaven forbid, he were to get the nomination.

Because I really, sincerely believe he'd be very destructive to this country. He would have to repent.

He'd have to substantively retract many things he said in a full, honest, repentantive fashion and say,

I'm deeply sorry for saying this. I'm deeply sorry for, you know, please, can I regain your confidence? And so on.

So to answer your question, Chris, unless he repented of several key errors that he's made, statements that he's made, and, you know, whether it be statements of fact that were not fact or outright lies or just policy statements that are absurd, outrageous, or unconstitutional, and also that, you know, he said that he's going to work on his character and not curse and things like that, then

I would consider maybe voting for him. But again, my vote doesn't ultimately count that much here in New York.

Yeah, this is, I am just astonished at, I don't think in my lifetime

I've ever seen the hostility amongst conservative, professing

Christians towards one another over a primary candidate. Have you?

Have you ever seen the hostility being expressed by Brethren in Christ towards one another over this before?

No, I haven't. No, I haven't. Again, it's just a spiritual barometer on the church right now where we're just so backslidden, we're so lukewarm, and we're so uneducated when it comes to the civil rights.

Yeah. Yeah, well, the, let me ask you a question.

Do you think that there is a realistic possibility that we could have our first openly socialist president,

Bernie Sanders? Yes, I do. It'll be God's judgment on this country. Yeah.

If Trump gets in, I think it's also going to be a judgment on this country as well. You know, she's a basic socialist.

I mean, Bernie's an outright socialist. She's a minor socialist, but any three of those as of right now, yes, any three of those could get in, and if it is,

I think all three would be a judgment on this country. Yeah. I have been criticized for saying this, but I was wondering what you might have to say about it.

I have said in the past that with different guests and with different people just in casual conversation that I believe one of the reasons why it is disturbing that Christians are so giddily and excitedly rallying behind a man of repugnant character like Donald Trump is the fear.

The reason I'm so concerned primarily, perhaps, is the fear of what

God may do in regarding to his chastisement of this country.

Having someone that we helped in human terms, of course,

God is the one that is sovereign over all people that rise to power, but in the human terms, as far as we who are voting and so on and helping the candidacy of and rallying behind and enthusiastically spreading our support for a person like Donald Trump, that God, the judgment that he could pour on this country, that we would help elect a man that openly and publicly says that he can't even think of one thing to ask

God for forgiveness for, that to me is an extremely realistic and frightening thought of what

God will do next in regard to judgment upon this nation. Indeed, I concur 100%.

It's a frightening prospect, but this stew has been cooking quite a while in the kitchen and it would be very well close to being done at this point.

God's mercy has been incredible. When did America leave God? Essentially, the popular culture in the 60s.

The clock's been ticking. I look at Israel and I see how patient he was with both

Judah and Israel, respectively, but there came a time where that was it and he unleashed the

Assyrians, he unleashed the Babylonians. I don't know if we're that close yet, but economically, we're unsustainable.

Morally, we're unsustainable. We're a Titanic headed to an iceberg and the only question is how close are we to that iceberg?

Well, we're running out of time here. We've got about four minutes left and I'd just basically like you to summarize everything that is most important to you today.

I really want to appeal to the audience, first of all, to pray, just to really seek the

Lord. We desperately need God to invade our lives, invade our families, invade our churches, invade the

United States of America that was dedicated to Jesus Christ. You can read it there in Article 7, the very last sentence in Article 7 of the

U .S. Constitution, the year of our Lord, 1787. People say it's not a

Christian land. I beg to differ with you. We've left the Lord. We've said that his values, his standards are not the way to follow.

That's wrong. We have said that in the church we don't need to follow literal rendering of the scripture.

That's wrong. We've said that our families can be defined any way we want. It's after all love is love and that's wrong.

In so many areas, you know, we just have negotiated the claim to this land which is one nation under the

Lord Jesus Christ. That is the God that is referred to in our cultural parlance and we've got to return back to him and it's got to start with us as Christians.

It's got to start in the church. It's got to start with us being re -educated with the spheres of government, starting with self -government and then family government and church government and then civil government, how

God has ordained all four and the proper role, the proper bounds of their authority and jurisdictions and to avoid the mystical, the pietistic and dispensational influences that have demonized, you know, the civil arena in particular and have made such a strict, rigid separation between our mission as Christians and our obligation to our neighbors and being salt and light in the political arena.

And we need to recover the original vision which was for all of us to be involved in the process, to all move a needle closer to a biblical standard of justice and righteousness.

After all, we only have ourselves to blame if we don't, if we don't take that responsibility that we've been empowered with, we've been, you know, charged with as citizens of this country.

Yes, it's our secondary citizenship. It's still important. We know our citizenship primarily is from heaven and thank

God we have that and we're going to hopefully live that out in its fullness. That should drive us to our secondary citizenship of making this as submitted to the

Lord Jesus Christ as we possibly can do within our own power. And we do have the power. It's we the people.

We live in a republic. The buck stops with us. We the people. We can't blame it on somebody else. All right, we don't live in a monarchy.

We live in a republic where we make the decisions. So if we do, if we do allow a Sanders or a Hillary or somebody else that shouldn't be in there, it's because we didn't do what we should do.

And we'll have ourselves to blame both here in America, you know, with the attending negative things that will come out of an administration like that, or we'll have to face,

I should say, and or what we'll be facing the Lord's judgment on, you know, judgment day.

We'll have to give an account for not being involved for advocating the responsibility that was given to us to keep the needle moving towards a more righteous land and submitting ourselves to Christ Lordship.

So we have to be reminded one day we'll have to give an account of the stewardship that was given to us. We hold in our hands the keys to the civil government.

If we if we drop them or put them in the wrong lock, we only have ourselves to blame. And don't you agree this this kind of statement is anathema amongst many conservatives.

But don't you think that many Christians have made patriotism an idol in this country where they dare not criticize the good old

USA for anything? When, like our mutual friend

Dr. James White has once said, or said many times, God bless

America with repentance. Not just God bless America, God bless America with repentance.

We are actually fulfilling, in many cases, the criticisms and mockery that the

Muslims and other people of the world hurl at us. Yes, absolutely.

And any patriotism is not biblically oriented as a false patriotism. So if it's not biblical patriotism, it's not patriotism at all.

And what's your website for Word of Truth Church in Farmingville? WOTChurch, one word,

WOTChurch .com. WOTChurch .com. Well, thank you so much for being a guest today,

Pastor Bruce Bennett. Thank you, Reverend Buzz Taylor, for being my co -host again. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who wrote questions.

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. God bless you, and we look forward to hearing from you with your own questions for tomorrow's