Israel, Judaism, and "Jewish Influence"

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:09] Speaker B: Welcome in to Think Deeper podcast for the first episode of 2025. So, happy new Year to all the listeners. We're excited to kick off a new year. And we're, I would say, starting off with what. What term do I want to use? A little bit of a spicy one, One that is controversial, one that's been brewing for a few years now, and one that, I'll say this up front, this is one of those rare ones where the listenership is going to be divided between, oh, wow, I'm glad they're talking about that and what are they talking about? It's one of those. Either you're aware of this story and you've seen it everywhere or you're not. But if you're not, you're going to be. This is something that is very much coming to the forefront and that is the church's relationship, or really anyone's view and relationship of the nation of Israel, the Jewish people, the Jewish religion, their involvement in US Politics, in religion and Christianity. There's a lot of different angles to go at from this one. This has become a great controversy in recent years as we're about to cover the history of it here in just a minute. And it's one that we need to be ready for. This is especially the young people in your pews probably have views that would shock some of the older people in your pews. And so we're here to kind of give a lay of the land, show people where things stand on all this and help people navigate. What should we do about these conversations that are being held about, again, not just the nation of Israel and Zionism, but Jewish influence in American politics and culture and things like that. Again, somebody might be saying, what are they talking about? You might start to pay attention after this episode. You're going to see things have changed a bit. So what do you guys have for opening thoughts? [00:01:49] Speaker C: Well, Jack, you had said in a recent deep end that this is probably going to be the biggest story of the decade and seems like a big, you know, a big thing to say that. But I agree with you. I think this is huge. The shift in tone, the shift from the, the generations, from the Boomer generation down to generation Alpha. I actually think their generation Beta now are being born in the last year or two, which is crazy. But in that generational shift, and specifically to Gen Z, things have just absolutely imploded when it comes to the view of Israel, the view of the Jews, how we're supposed to handle them. Are they God's people? Not God's people, the dispensationalist, things like that, major shifts are taking place and I think it is something that, you know, for us it's more of we want to get ahead of it a little bit and let people know what's coming because this is about to get a lot worse. It's coming into the mainstream. If you're on X at all, you're seeing these things but it's, I think you're still a little cocooned on mainstream media for the time being, but that's not going to last for very long. So yeah, even if you get your news from CNN or wherever, I hope not. But even if you get your news from there, you will start to see these things come up quite a bit more I think in the next couple years. And so it's good to be talking about it, especially how we as Christians can handle it. [00:03:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I work with a lot of young people at Chick Fil A and yeah, there have been conversations that have come up that I've just kind of turned my head like wow, you know that much about or I maybe I shouldn't say no, but you care that much about, you know, the Jews or Israel. And you know, as for the three of us on here, I'm gonna kind of be the one that is the most call it unplugged. I mean, I'm very aware of all the, you know, conspiracy theories as some would call them. I'm very aware of kind of the, the, the, the outlying parts of this story, I guess I should say. But I do think one thing is you guys are kind of honing in a bit on how the viewpoints of young people here with regards to Israel and the Jews are very different than those who are a couple generations older than them. We're not going to get into them necessarily too much on this episode. But I do think a lot of that has to do with guys like Nick Fuentes, very, very well known political commentator, I guess you could say. I mean he has his own show and he's not really on. He's not an anchor or anything anywhere but he has his own show and he's somebody that Gen Z specifically is listening to. Somebody that has very strong viewpoints on, on Israel and the Jews. And so yeah, I think his people like him and are bringing the discussion to a fervor, I guess I should say because obviously then people then respond to what he has to say. And Jack's about to get into the history of where this, you know, a lot of where a lot of this kind of first started to surface. And so, yeah, it should be an interesting discussion. I'll be asking a lot of questions and kind of play the role of the person who might be aware but might be someone on the outside looking in, going, okay, how big a deal is this really? Like what all is or what is the big deal, essentially? And so, Jack, I'll hand it back to you. Those are just the opening thoughts that I have. [00:04:56] Speaker B: Yeah, one thing I had a link, a poll that was done on favorability views toward Israel itself, specifically the nation of Israel. And it was this incredibly shifting tide. It says 18 to 49 year old Republicans went from 35% unfavorable to 50% unfavorable view of Israel, 18 to 49 year old Democrats from 62 to 71% unfavorable, Democrats 50 or older from 43 to 66% unfavorable. The only ones who had a favorable that really didn't change that much was Republicans 50 and older, 19 to 23. And so this is one of those that it's gonna break along a number of lines. We're gonna talk about that here in a minute. The political differences, the generational differences, the religious differences, but just briefly to cover the history in 2022, Kanye west, the rapper, designer, all the things that he's famous for, also known for being a little bit unhinged, a little bit unpredictable in the things he would say, just started ranting about Jewish influence in the music industry and Jewish handlers being sent to manage his career and all those kinds of things, and had some tweets that got him kicked off of the Twitter platform at the time. And it was pretty wild to watch that unfold. And everyone was looking around going, what, what is he talking about? What's going on here? And then comedian Dave Chappelle got on. He had a Saturday Night Live spot not long after that where he was kind of making fun of Kanye and the ridiculousness of the whole situation. But it was interesting how he did that. He said, there are, you learn from time in Hollywood, there's two words you're never allowed to say together, which is the. And Jews because of influence. And you know, if you don't, if you want to stay out of trouble and things like that. And so it was again, it was one of those, well, that's a weird thing to say then that all kind of died down for a while until October 7, 2023, when Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist attack on Israel, really horrific day that day that, you know, so many Bad things had happened. But then the response to that and Israel, I mean, just flattening Gaza. The war that broke out, that really lasted up until earlier this year. There's been the ceasefire. Well, I say this year is last year, 2025, when President Trump helped broker a ceasefire. But that was kind of a mask off moment for people like Ben Shapiro, conservative commentators of just, well, Israel can do whatever they want. They can kill whoever they want. And these people are animals that need to be exterminated. I mean, the rhetoric on all this made people turn and go, what's going on here? What's the deal with these people? And then you see how much support the US throws behind that. And people are saying, why are we involved in this conflict? And those questions start getting asked because it's put at the forefront this entire time. And so because of that, it started all, I don't know, people who like me, I was not interested in this conversation at all. It's one of those, you kind of had to, if you're plugged in at all, you start noticing, hey, this is, this is a conversation that's being had. And again, why are we involved in all this and what is our role in this whole conflict? And so it escalated very quickly, I would say. [00:08:08] Speaker C: Yeah, I think the Elon buying X and a lot of those ideas getting out was a big deal because there are some fringe things that are. And now the fringe has moved to the. Not fringe, it's moved to the middle. [00:08:24] Speaker A: Not so fringe anymore. [00:08:25] Speaker C: It's not so fringe anymore. And Jack, you had sent a. Just this year of the menorah being lit, I believe in New York City. Is it New York City and just a giant like one of the world's biggest menorahs. And reading the comments underneath is shocking. [00:08:38] Speaker B: No, it was on the lawn of the White House. [00:08:40] Speaker C: Is the lawn of the White House. Yeah. I mean, reading the comments underneath is absolutely shocking. We were dozens in and I don't think I had seen one positive thing about Israel, about the Jewish religion, things like that. And this has really come, like you said, since Kanye kind of cracked things open. And it's one of those once you notice you can't unnotice certain things. And that is what creates, yes, some conspiracy theories. And also there are just some things that are not conspiracy theories but are actually proven facts. And it's difficult to unsee. Once you, once you see some of these things, it's just what do you do with the information, I suppose. And that's, I guess, what we're gonna get into. [00:09:16] Speaker B: That's one to take as an example, is why do we have a gigantic menorah on the White House lawn? I mean, it's. If it's such a small religion in American culture, Islam is as well. Hinduism is as well. And I would have a problem with their religious symbols being put up there. This is where you've got that older, younger generational thing of older people go, oh, well, they're basically cousins to Christianity, so it's very similar. And on the younger end, there's no, we're not having that. And it's interesting, this debate. I think we might be the first in the churches of Christ to address this in this way. The Presbyterians and some of the Baptists. Like, this has been raging for a year or so now, like major names splitting from each other and condemning each other over this very thing of being on different sides of it. And it's over something like that of like, well, why do we have a menorah? Well, why shouldn't we have a menorah? And again, these questions start being put. [00:10:09] Speaker A: Before us because you also have, and I think we did discuss this, at least this aspect of it maybe last year or it feels like it's been a while. But, you know, the idea of Christians that just kind of, for the historical part of it, celebrate Jewish type things, observe the Sabbath, you know, celebrate some of the feasts and things like that is more of a, I don't know, just. Just kind of a way to, you know, reflect historically on that. And to me, this is what. Where I first kind of actually started getting into the discussion a little bit and really becoming plugged in. It was the Tucker Carlson Ted Cruz interview that was all over my timeline for a while there of, you know, Ted Cruz obviously basically saying that is a Christian's duty to not only support Israel, but protect Israel and all those things. And, you know, it was very instructive to me when we watched that video, that that. Or when that. When I watched that video, I should say that Tucker basically was like, where is that in the Bible? And Ted Cruz was basically like, I don't know. Essentially is me paraphrasing, of course. And that really brought to light for me that there are people who have, first of all, have the viewpoint of like, what's the harm in celebrating, you know, the Sabbath or things like that. And really kind of, as you said, Jack, I think that's very well said. They're kind of the first cousin to Christianity, right? They're really close. And so, you know, it's not a big deal to people want to kind of observe those things and then man, they're, they're really close. Plus also then again those who kind of share the ideology of Ted Cruz, I know you're about to get into kind of the different groups, the, the one through five that you wrote about in your article. But those who share his ideology of, you know, hey, even if, if we're a faithful Christian, that is one of the things that we're supposed to do is, is kind of voice our support, show our support for Israel. And I think it's incumbent upon us to kind of as Carlson did in that clip, examine the biblical validity of that. Like why, why do you say that? And I know we studied and, and taught recently on Romans 9 through 11. Very much plays into this from the Christian perspective as well. [00:12:17] Speaker B: Yeah. So let's camp on that a little bit because there are, we mentioned generational differences on this. There are political differences which we'll talk about a little bit in a minute. But there are religious differences within churchgoing people of those that as you said, like Ted Cruz who say well it's our, it's our duty, we have to do this. The Bible says we have to do this. Others who don't view it as that but are open to that. Again we'll break down those groups. But let's talk about the religious side of it here for a minute. There are the dispensationalists which are the people that believe the end times will be when they talk about the rapture and the tribulation and the thousand year reign and all that. They believe it's Jesus coming back to reign as the king of the Israelite people and reign from Jerusalem and the restoration of glorious Israel and all of those things. And the Christians, we can come along with that but we're kind of the second class citizens. It's, it's really about God and his favorite people, Israel and that, that we're just kind of the, basically that the. [00:13:14] Speaker A: Jews are still God's basically like ultimate people. Right? [00:13:18] Speaker B: Yeah. They're the end game of this whole thing. Yeah. Is, is their salvation. And we don't, I guess we don't have to go down that road too much. We have discussed it on thing deeper but it's been a couple years. I also did a video on the Tucker vs. Ted Cruz discussion and broke down kind of the, the Bible verses at play going back to the promise to Abraham that through you all people will be blessed. Whoever blesses you will be blessed. And all of those things and the promises that you have in Genesis 12 and in numbers and things like that, that it's not an eternal guarantee to the people of the lineage of Abraham. As you said in Romans 9, 11, Paul points out not even all of Abraham's children's got children got that. Ishmael didn't, Esau didn't. And so child grandchild and that's not really how this works. It is by faith. And the question of who is Israel and the real Israel and Jesus and John the Baptist saying, hey, bloodline isn't what matters, it's faith that matters. And I mean, that's a really long rabbit trail to say, and this is a thing in the churches of Christ. We don't have a lot of dispensationalism, but this is politically, you see it driven where you've got these churchgoing denominational senators and governors and people of some kind of stripe like that saying, I'm all in for Israel. What Ted Cruz told Tucker is I went to Congress to be Israel's number one defender because of he says that's our duty as Christians. And so again, that raises an eyebrow like, well, no, you're a senator for Texas in the United States. That's your priorities are a lot. But to him it's a religious duty. And so you do have that religious side of it. Let's get into that a little bit, though, that idea that essentially we are cousins, they're exactly like us, except they don't have the New Testament. I'll pass that one to you, Joe, for thoughts on that, because I think that's one of the things at the heart of this is if you think we're basically neck and neck and on the same side, then it just kind of makes sense that, yeah, we're going to be buddy buddy with them nationally and in a lot of different ways. But if you think, no, that's not that basically. Well, what I said a bit ago, we have a menorah, why don't we allow that? But not Muslim, Hindu. And I don't want Muslim or Hindu displays. But why do they get one? And people would say, well, it's because they're a lot like us. Where Muslims and Hindus aren't. Well, that's the question at hand is are they. [00:15:34] Speaker C: Yeah, not at all. The, the Judeo Christian values that people try to put together and people like Ben Shapiro, oh, Judeo Christian values over and over and over like, we are not the same. You reject our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. No, we're not the same. As a matter of fact, I think they're one of the scariest because they're the lie closest to the truth. The one, you know, the lie close to truth does the most harm. They do serve the God of Abraham. They don't see Jesus as Lord. If you don't. That's a pretty big difference. And I don't see how we could be all that aligned when it's like, well, we have the Old Testament. Yeah, you guys are still going off of tradition. All of your records were wiped out in AD 70. You don't know who's who. You have no idea who's part. You can't have a religion based off of what God did in AD 70 in raining fire down basically onto Jerusalem. I mean, it was one of the worst. I think they said it's the worst destruction of a city in history. So when you study Revelation and you take it from a partial predator's point of view, which we do, what you realize is God was pretty much done with that entire system. And he was very upset that they were persecuting. Not just that they put Christ, that they persecuted the bride, they persecuted the church. And I think revelation, if you read it through that perspective is like, yeah, that's not good. The Jewish. The Jewish people. And I know it's a different religion with the Talmud kind of coming out of it, but that's my point is it's not based in the Old Testament the way we think it is. Because that would assume that you have Levites, that would assume you have the 12 tribes figured out, their records have been wiped out. So the only thing that they have is based off of oral tradition for 2,000 years. And they're sticking to a law that God never intended us to stick to. And they've continued to add to the law in a way that, you know, even if we take it from Revelation, which of course they don't because New Testament, but you don't add to. You don't take away from, you don't add to. They've added to it a lot to try to get it right, quote, unquote. It is a religion based off of works. And it's a religion that rejects our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ and rejects the concept of needing grace and everything else. That is a huge deal. So the idea that we're brothers or we're cousins or pretty closely related. No, I really don't think so. [00:17:41] Speaker B: Hey, folks, you've probably heard us talk about Focus plus and the deep end, if you're wondering what that is Focus plus is our subscription service available through Patreon. Every week, members get all kinds of Christian content for your walk, including daily devotionals, a sermon of the week, and our understudied teaching series, which Joe and I lead through obscure and less covered books of the Bible like Leviticus and Revelation. We also have the Deep End, of course, which is our bonus segment exclusively for Think Deeper listeners, where you can submit your comments on an episode and we will respond and have a bit of a Q and A each and every week that drops every Friday. So if you're interested and want to know more, check that out. Go to patreon.com and search focus or go to focuspress.org/to steel man it for. [00:18:26] Speaker A: Just a second because obviously I would agree with. I would imagine the retort would be when compared to other religions. So Islam, for instance, it is essential to their religion to essentially kill you if you're not, if you're an infidel, if you're an unbeliever, obviously terrorist attacks and things like that. The Quran, Allah is not even close to the God that we serve. So they're miles apart, right? You got Buddhists and you got Hindus. You got other religions where maybe they worship multiple gods. The morality is not the same. Again, just to steal man. And I'm curious your response, what your response to this would be. Joe or Jack, I guess you as well. When I hear Judeo Christian values, what I hear is more so there is a moral expectation, there is a moral. There are moral laws that both sets follow. Marriage is between a man and a woman. Family is important. Don't kill people more so than other religions. [00:19:28] Speaker B: Sorry, I'm glad you bring that up because that's exactly what the assumption is. Here's a study from 2023, 2024 of people who say homosexuality should be accepted. Now, when they say Christian on these things, it's incredibly broad. When they say evangelical Christian, that's the most aligned with where we are. And evangelical Christians, 36% say homosexuality should be accepted. Yeah. 61% say it should be discouraged among Christian in general. And so that means people who go to like the gay Methodist churches are included and all that they have, 57 or say 57% should accept it. 40% should believe it should be discouraged. The Jewish people, 82% say homosexuality should be accepted. Only 17% say it should be discouraged. So when you say Judeo Christian values, those numbers don't line up. I mean they are, in fact they are the exact same percentage. 17% say it should be discouraged. And 82% say it should be accepted. Exactly. [00:20:31] Speaker A: Whereas Muslims, that percentage is probably way. [00:20:33] Speaker B: Lower too, because they're Muslims are the other direction. What Jews align perfectly with is the people who say they are nothing in particular religiously. They are also 82, 17. Whereas Muslims, 41% say it should be accepted. So less than broad Christianity, but a little bit more than evangelical Christianity, 55% say it should be discouraged. Now, I'm not saying we're aligned with Muslims, but I'm saying when you say this Judeo Christian value thing on this one, they're not even close. Well, then you go to abortion. This is another one. They did major religious groups positions on abortions, on abortion, opposes abortion rights with few or no exceptions. We would be in that camp. And the Southern Baptists, interestingly, the Hindus, the more conservative Lutherans, of course the Roman Catholics, then you've got support abortion rights with some limits. Episcopals, the more progressive Lutherans, the Methodists supports abortion rights with few or no limits. The conservative Judaism and Reform Judaism. So that's both, you know, like the more conservative wing of Judaism says, no, everybody should be able to get abortions. And when you look at the statistics on homosexuality in the Israeli nation themselves, abortion over there, they're huge on it. I mean, it is incredibly gay and is incredible. I think their state paid for abortions over there. And so this kind of goes to the claim of, okay, well, Judeo Christian values, like, well, what are those? Because they don't share them. And you might find a Ben Shapiro, you might find a commentator, you know, because when you look at how many. That's one of the things that kind of has come out of all this is how many of the conservative commentary people and political activists and all that are of the Jewish faith. And some of them do share these values, but they are the exception among their people and not the rule. And so that, like I said, I'm glad you brought that up because that is most people's assumptions. Like, we can team up with them against gay marriage and abortion. No, we really can't. [00:22:31] Speaker C: You also see that a Jewish rabbi owns pornhub, runs pornhub, and that the Jewish population runs most of the porn sites. [00:22:40] Speaker B: Well, and when we say, like the conservative commentators, you've got Dennis Prager saying, what was this quote about? Like child pornography would be okay as long as a child isn't harmed. Like, and so if they do AI generated was. Was that the discussion along those lines? [00:22:54] Speaker C: Yep. And that they, they don't believe that. [00:22:58] Speaker A: That doesn't sound like a Judeo Christian value. [00:23:00] Speaker C: Yikes. Right? And they don't really have that much of a problem with, with self pleasuring. And the problem is, think about why we as Christians do. Where would you immediately go if I told you that, you know, self pleasuring and looking at a woman with lust, where would you go? [00:23:14] Speaker A: Words of Jesus, Matthew 5, you know. [00:23:17] Speaker C: Which is, hey, if you look at a woman with, with lust in your heart, it's just the same as committing adultery. If you don't take Jesus and you're just going off of the law, I didn't commit adultery. I didn't do anything like that. You know, so they're able to skirt around the law and you'll notice that they do this quite a bit, that they skirt around the law to basically suit their own means. So, no, again, from a religious standpoint of, hey, maybe they're just the same as us. They're not. They don't have a problem with pornography and they've said that multiple times. They don't have a problem with the homosexuality, the lgbtq. And they push it in a lot of instances and fund a lot of it. So, yeah, I think the, you know, trying to put us together on the same page, we are more closely aligned morally. Sounds insane. We are more closely aligned with Islam than we are with them, morally speaking. I'm not saying we're aligned with Islam, so don't misunderstand me, but just in terms of the seriousness of certain things, yes, I think we're more closely aligned. The other thing is because their law, I mean, they have, when you read the Mishnah and things like that, the quote goes around that they think Jesus is burning an excrement and in hell. And it's more of the false teachers, it's heavily implied that they believe that Jesus is one of those. And there's differences back and forth on who's being referred to. And I guess there's different translations of the Mishnah, but either way they pretty much made it clear. And Ben Shapiro, even on was on Tucker or on Joe Rogan where they were asking about it and he was basically like, yeah, Jesus had what he was a common criminal who got what he had coming to him. Like this is Ben Shapiro saying this. And so I would come back around to that discussion of it's going to be really difficult to have this camaraderie when the very basic tenet of our faith is Jesus Christ died, was buried. You know, he's God himself, came down in the flesh. Lived a perfect life, was put to death on a cross, buried and resurrected three days later. And that's who we serve as a risen Savior. And you reject all of that? We don't have anything in common. Well, we have the same God. No, we don't. Because I believe in a Trinity, and Jesus Christ is a part of the Trinity. You don't. So, no, we're not aligned. We're not on the same page. You have denied the Trinity. You denied our Lord and Savior. You denied the Spirit, you denied the baptism. You know, all the seven ones. You basically got God the Father. That's about it. So I don't understand how people can really try to put those two together. But you look at something like a Scofield study Bible, and it starts this dispensationalist. It starts this idea that they are the people of God that we're all trying to get back to and pump millions and millions of dollars to bring the temple back. It ain't coming back. Julian the apostate proved that it ain't coming back. They tried to rebuild the temple and like fire from the ground, sprung up and was killing people centuries after. It's a pretty big deal that, you know, to think that God is going to bring this temple back. It ain't coming back. And it was never intended to come back. And so people that push that. And again, the millions of dollars poured in from these evangelical churches trying to bring that back. It's a complete misunderstanding of Romans 9, 11, complete misunderstanding of the 144,000 revelation and of the promises made to the Jewish people. I think those promises are done. And God proved that in AD 70 when they persecuted the church and tried to kill his bride. It's a pretty serious thing. [00:26:34] Speaker B: So with all of that, it's just laying out and the Dennis Prager quote, I looked that up, and it was about animated child, that kind of stuff. And he said he wouldn't call it evil because. And this is very interesting, again, goes to that split. And he said, thoughts aren't evil behavior is evil. Well, that goes to why Jesus had to tell them in Matthew 5. [00:26:55] Speaker A: That is the heart of Matthew 5. [00:26:56] Speaker C: Right? [00:26:56] Speaker B: That's exactly it. Jesus explaining to them, you think, okay, I didn't commit adultery, but, hey, your heart's in the wrong place. And that is the split. That's where, you know, these are the people that killed Jesus for saying things like that. And the Pharisees and how they turned on him. It's very Pharisaic. It's. It's Essentially the Pharisees won and they continued their hatred of Christ and they are not terribly friendly toward Christianity even over in the Holy Land. And so again, this sense of allyship you're seeing all this come to a head because of these discussions. These are things I didn't realize. I kind of viewed them as ideological cousins. But these statistics are out there, these quotes are out there, these things. And so this is what's leading people to go, what should we do about this? And so that gets us to the five categories of people you're going to have within churches. And I wrote an article on this a while back. I can put the link in the show notes laying this out of within the churches of Christ. One of these I don't think we have. I think we have the other four. And so with those we'll just go one by one. First is the dispensationalists. That is the Ted Cruzes. That's the. As Joe was saying, the people who pray that God would reinstitute the Jewish religion because they believe that will bring about the end times is when Israel is won back, when Jerusalem is won back for the Jewish people. Of course, right now the Dome of the Rock stands on the Temple Mount of Mount Zion. They can't have the Temple there. And there's this view that we can't get Jesus. Jesus is not going to come back until that is restored to Israel. And so the dispensationalists are all in on that. And so that's where you'll see them side with Israel in any conflict. Never question Israel. Israel, basically whatever Israel wants to do is fine. And we don't only have to be okay with it, we have to cheer it on and support it. And basically we are the eternal second fiddle in Christ. Well you look at Galatians 3, 27, 28, if you're baptized into Christ, you're all sons of Abraham. Right. And there's neither Jew nor gentile. And all of the. The different distinctions that are erased there in Christ, they're just totally missing that. [00:28:55] Speaker A: So this just. The dispensationalists are the ones Jack, I would imagine that we're arguing not hardly any of them in the Church of Christ for the most part. [00:29:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Because that's where you get into the pre millennialism, the thousand year reign, the rapture, all of those things. The Left behind series was dispensational. [00:29:11] Speaker A: There's not biblical support for it. Right. [00:29:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And that I don't. There might be some people like because of pop religion if they watch the Left behind videos, they might believe that, but you're not gonna hear that from our pulpits. You're not gonna hear dispensationalism. So that's not really one that we have, but we have people adjacent to that. So we'll get into the second one. The neocons, I'll call them. Joe, do you want to get into that one? [00:29:32] Speaker C: Yeah. So, again, make sure to check out Jack's article. He. He does a very good job of breaking this down. And I'll just read straight from the article. The neocons, this group holds a geopolitical position rather than a religious one, a position based on the idea of ensuring the world has regimes that are favorable to us, our. To us, our desires and our allies. This was the driving ideology of the Bush administration, and it continued on to a degree in the Obama administration. Since Israel is claimed to be our greatest ally, we should always root for and support them in their conflicts. The thinking goes, many conservative Christians who are not dispensationalists in their theology still closely line with the dispies on practical grounds. So, again, removing the. The religious element, this has everything to do with the political, hey, they're our greatest ally. We need to show up for them. We need to support them. We need to send, you know, send our support in no matter what happens. And so October 7th takes place. And this is where the neocons have an opportunity to show up and to help our greatest allies. Because in the Middle east, of course, it's. Without getting too political. You know, it's crazy over there in it, and there's a lot of infighting and things like that. And so the idea that they're our greatest ally is, yes, they're the ones. This is where the religious element does kind of come in. They're the ones close, most closely aligned with us. They're not Muslim, as the rest of the nations that surround them are Muslim. And so they're kind of our hub to be able to go over there, and if we have to have war, we can launch from Israel, basically. So, yeah, the neocon position is one of politically a political strategy. [00:31:01] Speaker A: Correct me if I'm wrong, but this would be the group that most, or consists mostly of boomers, right in the church. That is, people who are older than 60, generally speaking, would hold this position. You know, they're not. They're. They don't believe that Israel is God's ultimate chosen people. But from a political standpoint, Jack, I know you, or Joe, I know you just Read this was kind of the thrust of the Bush administration and then continued on. From my experience, this is what a lot of older Christians believe. Yeah. [00:31:32] Speaker B: And that goes to that survey we looked at earlier where the only people who have not had a major shift in favorability is the 50 year older Republicans and that essentially is the older folks in our churches. So when you say boomer. Yeah, we don't mean like in the slang, it's just literally 50 up, you know, people of a certain age. So yeah, it is pretty common. I mean that's. If you watch certain news channels or podcasts or whatever, that's just the standard view that they have there. And so again, this kind of gets to this divide of. In our own pews, you're going to have the older people view this whole thing. The nation of Israel, the Jewish people, the Jewish religion, all of those things. They're going to view it one way and the younger people are going to be the other, as we're going to see in these other entries. [00:32:19] Speaker A: Yeah, so those are the first two. The third one we're just calling the non interventionists. And when a lot of this was going down, you know, the, the strikes and, or the airstrikes and things like that earlier in the year, this was kind of the camp that, that I fell in was, was group number three. We haven't revealed group number four yet, but I'm, I'm probably 3.5 at this point, maybe 3.3 or something like that. But essentially the viewpoint of the non interventionist is that Jack, you've got in your article, Israel's business and Iran's business are not our business, essentially that we need to stay out of it, that their conflict is their conflict. He's got on his art in the article. George Washington warned us about entangling allegiances and feeling the need to jump in every conflict either as a backup or do the fighting for another nation is not wise. That's definitely where I was earlier in the year is the sense of like why are, why are we entangling ourselves in this conflict? Why is this something that, why is this something that we as Americans are concerning ourselves with? And so people like that do not hold the religious position of the dispensationalists. They don't even hold the political position of the neo cons of they're our ally. We need to support them. It's more like their business is their business. And yet obviously we're about to talk about the groups 4 and 5, but it's, it's more of an indifference, essentially. Kind of a. And not even more. Not even really neutrality. An indifference is the word that I would use again, like, let them. Let them deal with their problems, essentially. Like, we don't need to expend American resources, American military resources or anything like that to go and support them A, for political reason or B, for a religious reason. And then as we continue down this list, there's going to be. There's just not as much cynicism, I guess, with this third group as there is with four and five. And so. Any thoughts on this third group, guys? [00:34:00] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just analogous when you see India and Pakistan, like, yeah, they hate each other. They've always hated each other. It is in our best interest that war doesn't break out, you know, because we don't want nuclear war anywhere on the planet. And so if we can be a catalyst for peace, great. But as far as, like, we have a religious devotion or religious or ideological devotion to one of these and we're going to keep sending them billions of dollars to go bomb the other one. Like, no, that's ridiculous. And so it's like, well, why the other one? Well, you know, we need that spot in the Middle East. Like, well, we were okay without it until 1948. And it's not like things have gone great since it's been there. So, you know, it's been one. We didn't have conflicts in the Middle east until the middle of the last century. And so this idea that it's in our best interest to be involved. No, just let them figure it out, you know, and unfortunately, people shoot at each other all the time there. But there's only one conflict on Earth that we think all right? Or I guess one nation that we. Every single time that happens, we go, all right, we're jumping in. It's just again, looking at that is kind of strange. [00:35:04] Speaker C: Well, an ally is a strong word because allies assumes a reciprocal relationship where it benefits one another. And I'm yet to see one side being benefited here. But the. [00:35:15] Speaker B: You might be getting into the. The number four there. [00:35:16] Speaker C: Yeah. Which is. Which is number four, and that is the noticers. [00:35:21] Speaker A: Gee, I wonder where Joe falls. [00:35:22] Speaker C: Yeah, the noticers. These are the non interventionalists. Non interventionalists. [00:35:28] Speaker B: Interventionists. [00:35:29] Speaker C: Thank you. Sorry, no. [00:35:31] Speaker A: L. In there. [00:35:31] Speaker C: The dispensationalists and non interventionists are. Are messing me up here. But there's a lot of people like this that you just. This is where I think the, the major split is taking place as you're starting to have people who notice, as Jack says in the article, these people who point out that many government officials, as well as numerous influential media talking heads on both sides of the aisle, like Ben Shabir and Jon Stewart, for example, share Jewish heritage and therefore have divided loyalties in a conflict such as this. Seemingly favoring ethnic religious loyalty over their American loyalty. This group and the following are growing exponentially due to the younger generations. Look, when you start seeing these things shared on X, initially you go, okay, I'm skeptical. There's nothing to this. You know, you're seeing that, for instance, pornhub being run by a Jewish rabbi. There's no possible way. Then you go and look it up. It's like, okay, yeah, that's true. You know, when you start looking at some of the things that are shared, I would always encourage people, do your research, make sure that this is not just a conspiracy theory, a meme going around, whatever it is. There's a lot of those things that we talked about, Candace Owens, and she pushes a lot of different stuff. And it's like, you're not gonna find that anywhere else. It seems pretty conspiracy theory ish. [00:36:42] Speaker B: Some of these things, though conspiracy there is a pejorative. It's just one of the unfounded, I would say. [00:36:46] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, maybe unfounded. These things, though, and the noticers. And the reason why this is growing is these things are not unfounded. The concept. And this is also the difficulty of being able to split what is ethnic versus what is religious. Are they the same? You have atheist Jews, you know, people that are of the Jewish heritage or Jewish, not the religion, obviously, but heritage wise and culturally, they are, you know, and as a people, they're Jewish, but they're atheists. They don't believe in God. And so you have it. And that's the difficult dividing line here, is who is what. And some people may make the split and say, well, we support the religious ones. But then if you're talking the neocons and going over to Israel, then that's supporting more of the ethnic. That's kind of the difficulty in knowing if you're going to look at some of these things, who is it referring to? You know, when you talk about them running, you know, certain industries, running Hollywood or running the music industry or things like that, who exactly are we talking about? And that creates somewhat of an issue, but it also. [00:37:44] Speaker A: There's more. There's more skepticism and cynicism with this group. [00:37:47] Speaker C: Correct. [00:37:48] Speaker A: This is the added element. [00:37:50] Speaker C: And so for this, yes, for our number four, the noticers, it's just noticing those things. It's noticing that, wow, you know, they're 2% of American population and 41% of the billionaires. That's interesting. You know, those type of things, like, it's, it's tough to not notice certain things going around. It just is. That doesn't. And this is the very important thing. There's a major difference between noticing and our number five on the list. And I don't know, I don't if we want to jump into it right now. I don't know if it's signed, but there's a huge difference between that and the neo Nazis, the far right that are looking to exterminate and things like that. [00:38:24] Speaker A: Which is number five. Yeah, the. [00:38:26] Speaker C: Yeah, number five. The struggle is for the first two, the neocons and the dispensationalists, they're gonna look at number four and five as basically equal. If you notice, then you're already anti Semitic. If you notice these things and go, hold on a second, I don't think we should be sending billions or I don't think that's right, or maybe we're not similar in religion. Well, then you're obviously a neo Nazi. Like, no, I'm not advocating any of those things. I'm not advocating what Hitler did. I mean, that's horrible. But at the same time, that doesn't keep you from noticing. And that's where the two really get conflated. So the average person in the church, older person who may be most of the church Christ is going to fit into that conservative 50 plus, you know, group of, hey there are allies to some degree. This. They're going to have to be very careful to not throw everybody in number four out with number five. And Jackie, that's kind of a thrust of your article, I suppose. [00:39:18] Speaker B: Well, it is because the whole reason we're talking about this is these groups exist within our churches. And as I said with the Church of Christ, you might not have dispensationalists, you're not going to have a lot of neo Nazis, but some of the young people, I believe are trending in that direction. So you're going to have to figure out how to pull these people in. But the problem is, as you're saying, Joe, if you treat everybody, some people treat somebody who's like, well, we just shouldn't get involved over there as, all right, you're anti Semitic, like, okay, well then you're just pushing everybody. You're basically taking five categories and reducing it to two, like pro Israel or Anti Israel. You can't do that because if you do that, if you just tell everybody, well, you're a Nazi, they're not going to side with you. That's not a way to win them over. So you're going to a split your church. You're going to drive away your young people, but you're also going. You won't be able to keep them from the extremes. You're going to push them to the extreme, which is not what you want to do. Hey, guys, Jack Wilke here. I wanted to tell you about our seminars at Focus Press. Each of us involved in the work have a series of lessons that we have prepared to encourage churches to help you understand the word better, how to navigate this culture. We cover a wide range of topics, from things like evolution and apologetics to cultural issues to the family to the godly young men. Kind of content that Joe and Will do to church reset, which is of course my passion to schedule one of us. Whether Dr. Brad Harab will harb, Joe Wilkie or me, Jack Wilkey, reach out to [email protected] if you'd like to talk to me or if you'd like to talk to one of the others, I'll pass your information along to them. We'd love to come and encourage your church and put on one of our Focus Press seminars. [00:40:57] Speaker A: This is so incredibly. This is so incredibly reminiscent of being called a Nazi or an anti Semite is what being called a racist was five years ago. [00:41:08] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:41:08] Speaker A: You know, when you had, you know, the 2020, the George Floyd stuff. Anytime you were kind of going to kind of raise your hand and say, hang on, first of all, I'm not going to turn my profile picture black. Are you sure we should be preaching Black Lives Matter propaganda from the pulpit? What was the label? Oh, well, you just must be racist. You know, are you, Are you, you know, are you really going to stand up here and be racist? And it's like, hold on, all I'm doing is pointing out or noticing that, you know, the fact that the Black Lives Matter organization, you know, millions, hundreds of millions of dollars sent their way, what's come of it, you know, that type of thing, that to me is kind of what this is reminiscent of. Very much, very much. So it just. Joe, to your point, is somebody, or for somebody who's in group number four of like, just want to point this out or, you know, can we at least discuss this? The anti Semite label is just immediately thrown on there. Just like racist was again, once again, Five years ago. And that's where, to Jack's point, you had people five years ago saying, all right, fine, call me racist, I don't care. Like that. That's not the. That's not the. This isn't doing what you think it's doing to me. They're doing the exact same thing with the anti Semite with the Nazi label. And you're having a lot of young people. This is where the Nick Fuentes people like that come into play who say, I don't care. Call me that. Call me Nazi, I don't care. Call me Nandi Semite, I don't care. Because you're refusing to have the discussion. You're refusing. There's a war on noticing. Right. You're refusing to allow people to notice, ask questions, raise discussions. And this is where to me, the onus is on groups, you know, specifically within the church. Group number two, to be able to differentiate. To be able to distinguish. To be able to ask a. Somebody who's in group number four, obviously, I would not subscribe or support somebody in group number five, but somebody in number four. So what's your position? What do you mean? Elaborate for me. Can you share with me your position as opposed to. Well, you just must be an anti Semite, just like again five years ago when, you know, somebody might have had a different view on the George Floyd incident or on the. The riots or whatever it is. Explain your position. Tell me, Tell me where you're at. Versus Man, I. Man, wow, you sure are racist. It just doesn't work. Like, it's not the pejorative or people aren't. Young people specifically aren't. They're not bothered. They're not scared by it like people used to be. [00:43:20] Speaker B: Well, and it's funny that people, they can understand that how racism can be used as a tool are falling into the same trap with this. And that's a really interesting and good point you brought up there of. Pay attention to the rhetoric. Like it's about the. The facts, not about the. The names that you can slap on somebody. [00:43:39] Speaker C: Yeah, facts don't care about your feelings. Right. [00:43:42] Speaker B: Nobody once said that's original to you, right, Joe? [00:43:45] Speaker C: That is original to me, actually. Yes. Thank you. [00:43:47] Speaker B: Hey, Jewish influence in this podcast, Ben Shapiro. There you go. [00:43:51] Speaker C: No, but I mean, I think. [00:43:53] Speaker B: Go ahead. [00:43:53] Speaker C: Sorry. Just as it pertains to that, you take the brakes off of something when you call it racist. When you call it anti Semitic. If I'm already that on step three, I'm already that. Where are the breaks to go to step five and what, what we know from young people is, and this goes back to punk rock music of the 80s and things like that, when you attempt censorship, it doesn't go well. That's what pushes young people into it going, huh, what is this? It's the same as any kid. Hey, don't go, look at that. What a kid want to do. What does the kid want to do? The more boundaries and parameters. The kid is going to push the boundaries. When you do that to young people and you put them all into your anti Semitic, it's like again, you take the brakes off of it. If I'm anti Semitic here, then I'm just going to keep driving the car. And you may find that they become neo Nazis. And we're seeing this among young generation or younger generations. That's a very serious thing. But it really has started from the censorship, started from putting them in a box that they can't get out of. The only way they can get out of it is if they completely, basically, if they stop noticing, if they stop looking at these things that they're seeing all over social media. And man, I'm telling you, if you're not seeing this, if they just check. [00:44:54] Speaker A: The party line, essentially correct. [00:44:56] Speaker C: And go check the comments, young people are ticked. They are. [00:45:00] Speaker B: On your point about censorship, a few thoughts. Number one, look at what happened with TikTok. That was the big catalyst in the post October 7th thing is TikTok was where all of the anti and a lot of it was pro Palestinian. And that's one of these divides here is there is leftward distrust of Israel and rightward distrust of Israel that are very different. That you can say these things without being from the river to the sea Palestinian, I'm pro Hamas or anything like that. Some people are that, not everyone is. But it was messaging that was kind of highlighting what was happening in Israel. Post October 7th was going out on TikTok and there were calls for censorship, there's calls to shut TikTok down. Well, what happened next? Billionaires of a certain background bought TikTok and Netanyahu comes over and meets with big TikTok influencers to say this is a weapon we have to use to get our messaging out. And you see that and you go, again, this noted. And again, all of this is one Google search away. Some of this sounds like ridiculous. The Dennis Prager thing, I looked it up that we brought up earlier. It's one Google search away. Netanyahu and the TikTok influencers, Larry Ellison and TikTok it's all one Google search away. It's all right there. These are documented facts. And so somebody's going to listen to this and go, whoa, this is nuts. But to the other point of this, you say, well, we're pushing people toward the number five it is on young people to not become neo Nazis and say, we just need to kill all these people. We just need to get rid of. No, they. That's not acceptable in any sense. But when you look at, within our fellowship, essentially, if somebody's rooting for mass death on one side or the other, we need to have a problem with it. If they're not within that, we got to figure out how to agree to disagree and work in with each other. And so you've got the, the neo Nazis. That's horrific. But then you see some of the rhetoric going the other direction about, well, all those Palestinians are animals and they just need to be wiped off of the map. What? Like that's just as bad as the other thing. In fact, it's the exact same thing as the other thing of, hey, we got to get rid of this ethnicity. I don't care what ethnicity is. You can't say that. And there are people who will say that who want to drum the other guys out of the church. Like, I'm sorry, you shouldn't be involved in this either. Like, that's not Christian, and that's not okay. And so, and that's what I said in the article is the hardcore dispensationalists and the hardcore neocons that are basically like, hey, let's go kill whoever Israel wants us to. No, that. That's not an acceptable thing for a Christian to say. The other end of the spectrum, it's not an acceptable thing for a Christian to say, to say, hey, these people all need to be brought to an end. And so that sets the boundaries within that. You can say, you know what? I like Israel. I'm allied with them. I like Ben Shapiro, whatever it may be. And a guy say, I don't, and I don't like the direction they're going. And yet we're still Christian brothers and we can be in the same church and sit in the pew next to each other and disagree on this. That's the question is, are we allowing that level of disagreement or are we just lumping? As I say, have we shrunk the five categories down to two? That's something we really can't do. There has to be room to agree to disagree on this subject. And so again, As I said off the top, this is a pretty spicy discussion because if somebody came into this going, all right, that's a weird thing to talk about. What are these guys doing? They might be like, holy moly, these guys are Nazis. No, absolutely not. And we're drawing that line hard on that side, but saying, hey, your young people are having these conversations and you need to figure out how to engage them without slamming the door in their face. This is something you've got to wrestle with. [00:48:28] Speaker C: Yeah, it's in throwing the blanket anti Semitic, man. You can't do that to people in the church. The same way that I think throwing the boomer as a pejorative, I don't think that's right either. Yeah, we have our struggles, as we've talked about, with the, you know, the older population in some ways, but throwing the pejoratives around the church and, you know, calling people certain names, that's not becoming a Christian. That's not something that we need to be doing with one another. We need to be attempting to understand each other's point of view and be willing for the older generation to listen to some of the things that are going around like, hey, this is not good, and for the younger generations to take the wisdom of the older and to pump the brakes a little bit before they go off the cliff. So, no, I mean, as you said, Jack, as you hit that, the neo Nazi level, it really does take understanding one another more than anything else. I think if you had the older generation not pushing the censorship, not pushing the, you know, the blanket terms, the anti Semitic, things like that, I do think you'd have younger people that as long as you come to the table and talk about it, what can we do about it that keeps people from going to the crazy option? And I'm not saying that that's completely unlike. Yes, younger people have to censor themselves, so to speak, to use the word. We have to pull ourselves back from the cliff if that's the, you know, where they're headed, where people are headed. On the other hand, discussion helps quite a bit of this. So the older people saying, tell me a little more about that. What do you mean? I think that can keep you from going off of the, the cliff. Proverbially speaking, when it comes to the neo Nazis, they need to be understood as to, hey, we don't have answers for these things. We are noticing these things. What do we do about it? Well, extermination is not the answer, but there has to be something, in my opinion, from a younger Generation to older generation. There has to be some give to say that's interesting at least. And we don't fully know what to do about it, but we see your point. [00:50:10] Speaker A: This is an age old concept that as somebody who, you know, I don't know how much longer I get to call myself a young person. I crossed the 25 threshold this year. So I'm going to keep. But yeah, I know as somebody who would consider himself a young, a young person. This is something that for any issue, culturally, societally, biblically, Jack, you were pretty much hitting at this earlier. The more times the older generations just basically said, pipe down, quit asking questions, don't worry about that, man, the worse it is because young people, that is, you know, they want to know, they're inquisitive, they want to ask questions, they want to discuss. And so Joe, you were just talking about this. Open the discussion. Just because, just because you open the discussion does not mean that you are compromising. It doesn't. If. Just because you, you are, if you, again, if you're to use this analogy, if you're a two in a group number two, talking to group number four does not mean that you are compromising in the same way because that you see this with even things like Christian evidences, you know, young people, you know, how do we know there's a God? Or how do, how do we know the Bible's inspired? You'll see older generations that, well, why are you asking that? Like, you know, kind of cast aspersions on them for asking those questions. It's like that's the worst possible thing that you can do is to cast aspersions on the, the people who ask those questions. It's like, hey, the Bible can stand up to anything. If you're confident in your position as a firm number two, the, the, the metaphorical you, not any of you guys, then you should be able to open or to engage in a discussion with somebody. Just like again, biblically speaking, for anything. If we're confident in baptism, if we're confident in being in being the one true church, we should not be scared of people asking questions. And so this is again for any issue, but as it applies specifically to this particular issue, this is where I am such in favor of just having having the discussion of, of open conversation, open dialogue with people. Joe, to your point, tell me more about your idea, tell me more about what you're talking about. That doesn't mean that you are A going to compromise or B have already compromised just by having that discussion. And I Think, man, if, if older and younger generations could get there together. I think that's more of an older generation problem than a younger generation problem. A lot of this, maybe call it disunity, a lot of the conflict within the church is kind of, that's the focus of the episode here, could be mitigated if that was the attitude towards it. It's just often it's not. [00:52:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And that again, there's going to be people like, what are they talking about? Why are they doing an episode on this? This is insanity. Whatever. Talk to your young people. This is going around brewing. This is going to be, as I said, I think the decade defining issue. Because when you see how much of American political, just the entire thing, like what the nation does and what the commentators do and all that, this is at the heart of so much of it. A lot of things are changing as this changes generationally. And you think about how much of our foreign policy has been driven by allegiance to Israel in the last 70 years or so. When people come to power who don't really care about that, that's going to change the world. That is literally going to change the world. And so our only mistake on this might be being early, I think. But we like being early. That's one of the things we aim to do is tell you, hey, these things are coming. These things are an issue that's brewing and you need to know how to handle it. So hopefully we'll take the shock out of it for you that when your child, when your grandchild, when the youth group member at church says, hey, what do you think about X, Y and Z? I think there's a problem with this, that or the other thing. You don't go, oh my goodness, I've got a Nazi in the youth group. Like, we're, we're trying to help you see that these things are certainly brewing. So we're going to wrap right there. Very interested to see the comments, especially if you're in focus. Plus, this, this deep end should be an interesting one, Lord willing. You guys be sure to get your comments in by Wednesday, but I'll be checking on YouTube, Facebook, wherever else you find us as well. With that, let's go ahead and get to a brief. Think fast for this week, which is this Somali daycare scandal. This is one of those developing stories that there's a lot of smoke there. Sure looks like there's some real shady things going on sometimes you don't want to get too early on these things. You want to let the details come out but on the other hand, the idea that there's a lot of fraud going on is entirely believable. The idea that people are coming into this country and just looting, you know, from, from hard working Americans, also entirely believable. Again, there's a lot of smoke there, the, the leering center there in many Minnesota that it was a daycare, that they didn't even spell the name right on the sign and all the money going to them and oh wow, somebody broke in and stole all of our records and somehow they broke in from the inside and really weird stuff going on. So what do you guys, what's your take on this one? Joe, you wanted to bring this one up for, for the not deep end to think fast. So I'll start with you on that one. [00:55:05] Speaker C: Well, I was just wondering if we were going to just because to me it's such a big story. What it speaks to is I think a couple different things. First off, the major lack of trust in government is coming from this which is there's no way that state, and in my opinion national government did not know about this. If they can go after and audit a guy who, you know, cheated on his taxes, cheated the government out of $3,000 on his taxes, we're talking millions and billions of dollars are being scammed here. And they didn't know, they had no idea. There's no possible way. And so this is why people don't trust the government is they let things like this happen. And we're now seeing this in Ohio, we're seeing this in Washington state, we're seeing this in, I thought I saw Washington D.C. but maybe they just meant Washington state. But either way, obviously all over Minnesota, I think this is going to explode. I think you're going to see this going to multiple states and it's going to be a huge story for that reason because people are already losing trust in government. The other thing is as you look back in the old law, it was a judgment on a people to let foreign people rule over you. The Somalians rule over Minnesota. They rule over Minnesota. Just looking up the state flag, I think they changed the, the state flag in. Yeah, in Minnesota. Man, it looks a lot like the Somalian flag. [00:56:21] Speaker B: Foreigners on the mayor of Minneapolis speaking Somalian at his rally and thanking them for getting him elected. [00:56:26] Speaker C: I mean foreigners are reigning over a certain part of America. That's a judgment on a nation. That's not some, wow, America's a melting pot. American is an ideal or it's an idea. No, it's not we are a sovereign nation and being ruled over by another nation's people, that is back in the day, it's the Assyrians coming in, ruling over Israel, that wasn't a good thing. That's a judgment on a people. And so Minnesota being ruled over by the Somalians, which is very much what's coming to light. We already kind of knew this, but especially because of the fraud and all the people getting, you know, millions of dollars to basically do nothing, that's a big deal. And I do think that that's God's judgment coming through. And no, this is not the. Oh, wow. How did that happen? Whoops. Oh, bummer. No, this was a systematic plan that has been brewing for a very long time that everybody turned a blind eye to. No wonder why people don't trust government. [00:57:17] Speaker A: Yeah, obviously I 100% of course agree with that idea. As somebody again on the, on the younger end, I basically my entire life of being somewhat plugged into politics, zero trust in the government for reasons exactly like this. I think a couple takes just to differentiate from Joe because I would agree with a lot of what he said. I think it's very interesting the way this story was broken. Nick Shirley, the YouTuber who basically put this video on X, it's got just millions of views of him just basically doing this investigation himself as a 20 something year old, 23 or something like that, year old. And then I was watching some stuff about how he's now getting death threats and his people are trying to. Basically trying to find out where his family lives and just some, some crazy stuff all because he went in and exposed this. Number one. It just goes to show what, you know, just about anybody can do if they're really trying to uncover the truth. But also shows what people are willing to do to hide things like this, that hide deception and to hide things that are, that are going on that are incorrect. So again, an interesting note there that it was the way it was discovered with this guy, Nick Shirley, the second take, and it's a pessimistic one. It's unfortunate in that we discussed a little bit when we were doing our deep end previously this week, but I don't think, I think this is just another drop in the bucket essentially of a story of a. I don't know that anything will come of it. I will. The people who are responsible for this ever get, ever get punished, ever have to give an account. Obviously before God they will. But when it comes to our government and the legal system, my guess would be no. What I was Sharing yesterday is. You see these stories. Hillary Clinton with her emails in 2016, you know, nothing ever came of that. Obviously, as we discussed in the previous episode, the Epstein files, the Diddy stuff, it just feels like all these stories, they get real big. And man, people. And to your point, Joe, this is a very big story. They get, you know, a lot of press. They get, they're on people's timelines. And then 10 years down the road we'll look back. So whatever happened with that, it's like nothing, you know, that, that part didn't really ever hit the history books essentially. And so that's not a fun take, that's not a very spicy take, but it is unfortunately where my mind went is like, man, that's really bad. Not surprised. Will anything come of it? Probably not. So Jack, I'm curious your thoughts. [00:59:38] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:59:39] Speaker B: As those keep adding up, it does seem to all faith in the system is being lost. [00:59:44] Speaker A: That's for sure. [00:59:46] Speaker B: Joe, what you were bringing up there is, I believe Deuteronomy 28, verse 28:43 to 45 about foreigners will rule over you. And that's where I'm going to go. Oh, welcome the immigrant and the refugee. Like to a point, there's a little bit of that. There is not a, hey, come on in and become a voting bloc and destroy us and rule over us and take all of our stuff. And this goes back to a point I've had for a couple years now. When you see discipline on a nation. What America is going through is not, you know, it's not persecutions and all these things, it's discipline. The church is not disciplining itself. Christianity has become lax and here's where we are and you just kind of think about how far we've fallen from. I mean if you dropped somebody in, you know, from 100 years ago into today and said, alright, here's what, you know, Christians are watching on tv, this story about this kid coming out and all, you know, this language and all these things and this demonic imagery and you know, and just all of that stuff. Here's what they're talking about, here's what's going on online and the Internet. Yeah, of course, this is the punishment we deserve. And oh yeah, we're not really serious about going to church anymore. And people skip all the time for sports and all of these things. This is what happens. I mean like if, if you took the, this whole story and dropped it into the book of judges and said, yep, they turned to idols like sports and money and entertainment and God sent people in to discipline them until they cried out to the Lord and repented. And that's gonna, you know, we want national repentance. We gotta start in our churches. Our churches are not repentant. So of course we have these things. These are literally deuteronomic curses that we have brought on ourselves. And when people say, oh, you're being too negative about the church until repentance happens. And so there's the political solution that I want to have happen. And Will's right, they're not coming because nobody has the will to do it. At this point, the one thing we can impact is to say, hey, let's start getting serious as churches and call people to repentance and tell them, yeah, you don't get to just treat God however you want. That's why we're in this situation. And so that's my recurring hot take on this is all of the problems you're seeing in America are because the church is weak. So do with that what you will. It is an unfortunate situation. I agree it's probably not going to turn into much, but it is just another one where you look and go, yeah, it's. Things are pretty bad out there, so who knows what's going to come of it? Who knows what will happen next? But I'm with Will. I'm not terribly confident, but that's our Think Fast for this week. If you're catching just the Think fast, be sure to tune in for the full episode on Monday where we discuss Israel, Jewish influence, the Jewish religion, Judeo Christianity, Christian values, things like that. And yeah, the online controversy. It'll be a pretty interesting one as we just completed that, so be sure to tune into that if you're catching this on the other end. And as for us, that is the end of the first episode of this year. Be sure you're plugged in on Focus Focus.org/ where you can join us in the deep end, get daily devos and all the things we're doing there. And yeah, and if you'd like to support us, I don't ever put that in enough. FocusPress.org donate. You can always support us for free by clicking like or dropping us a rating as well. And we'll leave it at that and talk to you guys on the next one. Hey guys, Jack Wilke here. If you enjoy our work with podcast.