It is a mission of the Christian to fight Communism. Christians were Karl's number one enemy. And Communism is back in America.

Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thanks for being here. I would like to make the argument today that as Christianity wanes in a nation, communism necessarily will fill the void. Lots of things will fill the void. One of the things is communism and Islam. We saw both of those. 

There's a little foretaste of what could happen in this country with the election of Zohran Mamdani in New York City. There's two voting blocs that voted for Zohran, foreigners. And we went in great detail on my show today about South Asians in particular, like Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh. Countries like that, that Zoran himself is making a big deal of. Couldn't have won without him. So you have South Asians who come from a nation with zero Christian culture and Christian background at all. 

And they come to America with zero assimilation happening. And they either are communist, like literally like they're from Nepal and it's a communist country. And they come here and they're communist and they vote for the foreign communist, of course. Or they come here and they're easy converts to communism. So you have that voting bloc, which was massive for Zoran. And then you have young white women. 

just young women in general, among age and gender breakdowns, it was women 18 to 29, 81 % of them voted for Zoran. And you wonder, well, how could that be? Well, we actually just did a TV show. My opening monologue was about luxury beliefs and how for young women in New York city, many of them very wealthy, college educated. It's a sort of status symbol voting for Zoran. It's a luxury belief in the way that, uh, an expensive purse or skiing in the Alps is a way to prove that, uh, I'm better than you. 

So I explain that in more detail on the TV show. We just recorded it. We'll make it into a podcast here today or tomorrow or sometime here soon. But I want to talk about the relationship between Christianity and communism here for a minute. And Islam thrown in here as well. Communism and Islam have been strange bedfellows for a while. 

During the 20th century, the Soviets and Muslim countries joined forces a lot. And a lot of that was political reasons to ally against the Western nations. But they're also, at the beginning, anti -Christian. So of course they will unite. All you need to know about communism and Marxism, you can learn by studying Karl. We're going to do a segment on this on my radio show, and I'll do it here on the podcast too, about Karl. 

Karl was a wretched person, Karl Marx. Wretched, horrible person in every possible way. He, Karl, hated Christians. A lot of people think of Marxism as a critique of capitalism, and it is. But first and foremost, it is meant to attack Christianity. Karl Marx wrote the famous line that He says religion, so here the full sentence is, religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of a soulless condition. 

It is the opium of the people. He's talking about Christianity. It says Christianity is the opium of the people. Why did he hate Christianity so much? Well, he had personal reasons, which we'll get to when we do a biography of Karl. That's why I call it Karlism. 

I don't call it Marxism. I call it Karlism. When you understand Karl and what a wretched person he was, it's like, well, of course he came up with a wretched philosophy of life. He's a terrible person. But he said that Christianity is the opium of the people and Christianity was the target of his attacks because Christianity caused people and causes people to not care as much about how oppressed they might be. And he hated that. 

He saw that Christianity, it was an opium. It caused people not to feel the pain of oppression as much. It acted as a sort of balm. keeping people asleep in their victimhood. And he couldn't have that. He wanted people to be revolutionaries. 

But instead, Christians are thinking about the kingdom of heaven. He's like, he hated that. He said, you people need to wake up to how oppressed you are. And his whole goal was to make people awake, dare I say woke. Not dare I say, that's what that is. I mean, that's why woke is, how do I word this nicely? You see where it comes from? 

Carl says, oh, we need people to be awake. We need people to wake up to the oppression that they're feeling. And then the modern ghetto slang took wake up and turned it into be woke. And that's the term we've been living with this last, I don't know, five years or so is be woke. But that's what this all is. So Carl wants everyone to be aggrieved and discontent about the conditions that they're in so that he can lead a revolution. 

And the first step is to take down Christianity. Only then will people be properly discontent and aggrieved and become the revolutionaries that Karl wanted. People think of communism, again, as an anti -capitalist system, and it is. It's secondary, though. Primarily, first step, take down Christianity. A major component of Christianity is the heavenly kingdom. 

We're strangers, just a passing through. 1 Peter 2 .11, Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. The world is not our home. It's the classic hymn, this world's not my home. I'm just a passing through. My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. 

The angels beckoned me from heaven's door, heaven's open door, and I can't feel at home in this world anymore. Carl hated that. Carl is a materialist. The only things that exist are material. see and touch, that's it. There's nothing in this world except motion and matter. 

Christians are other worldliness, and communists are this worldliness. Also, Karl had a God complex. Karl wanted to be worshipped himself, and you can't have Christians worshipping God. I mean, the rest of that hymn is, Oh Lord, you know I have no friend like you. If heaven's not my home, then Lord, what will I do? It's about Lord. 

Lordship. And Karl would obviously have nothing of that. Communism is a secular religion. Christians believe that God made the universe and he knows everything. This is our American tradition as well. From the first colonists, pilgrims who came here in the 1600s, all the way through our founding fathers, Ben Franklin, classically, when he was requesting that at the constitutional convention, we open every meeting with a prayer. 

He said, I've lived a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? So our founders, the beginning of our country, the foundations of our country all believed in God and that he was involved in the affairs of man. Communists don't believe in God. They worship themselves. I think this line from a 1954 novel or autobiography, excuse me, called The Invisible Writing was written by a Marxist about his experience as a member of the Communist Party. 

He was talking to Christians. He said, we are believers, not as you are. We do not believe either in God or in men. We manufacture gods and we transform men. We will create a universe in our image without weaknesses. See, Carl was so prideful that he thought being a Christian and humble and all that was weak. 

Thought that was weakness. So communists now, 100 years later, this is in 1954, the person who wrote this, same thing. And the same thing today with people in 2025, they see Christianity as weakness. So he says, we're gonna create a universe in our image without weaknesses, a universe in which man, rid of the old rags of Christianity, will attain his cosmic grandeur in the supreme culmination of the species. That's where evolution fits nicely into the communist worldview. as well. 

But it's about we people, the communism transforming man, not the Holy Spirit. Marxism is a religion. It fills a God -sized hole in people's hearts, oftentimes with the outcasts of a society, which communism, of course, appeals to. It's a shame that quote -unquote outcasts can't find a place in the church. The church is open for everyone who believes. It's not a cool kids club. 

But communism speaks to a lot of people who feel rejected from society. Antifa is the militant wing of the communist party in America. And if you look at all the Antifa mugshots, they're all rejects, pink hair, whole thing. And it's just such a shame that here we have these people who are rejected, feel discontent, grieved against the system. The system's not working for them. And it's not working for them because a whole host of reasons. 

But let me just take a very basic example of you make terrible life decisions. You have no self -control. You have no discipline. You don't show up to work. You have to eventually get some job for minimum wage that you hate. You hate it long enough that then you hate the system itself. 

You hate capitalism. This is all like Karl. This is literally Karl's life, I'm describing it. And you hate the system, and then you have no belief in a higher power or an afterlife. And this is all there is, and you hate it. So you're going to take it all down. 

Do you see how this appeals to someone? How communism appeals to someone who lives like that? Communism also has its own Eden. Marx, Karl talks about the period of time before tribal ownership of land. This is a time when there were no classes, no social classes, no state, no private property. This is when people lived in harmony with each other. 

That's beautiful. And then there was the fall, the introduction of capitalism. And we're now living in a fallen world, according to communists. And it will be fallen until We can bring heaven back to earth. If only the workers of the world would finally unite, darn it. Then we'll have utopia again. 

" Now, after the 1900s, 1940s or so attempt at communism, a lot of communists in Europe said, well, why didn't the workers of the world unite? And they realized, or their thesis is, that we tried to get the workers to unite over class issues. And that wasn't enough to get people to see how aggrieved they are and how oppressed they are. So we also need to come up with all these other ways that people are oppressed. And that's where all the race, sexual orientation, all these other factors come in. This is where the rest of critical, all the other critical theories, critical gender theory, critical race theory, all these other things come in just to tell people, to make sure everyone knows, here's all these other ways you are also oppressed. 

Be aggrieved. Now will you unite us? Not just workers of the world unite, but oppressed peoples everywhere in the world unite? And the communists believe that when that happens, there will be a sort of second coming, not of Karl himself. He's dead, but it will be a return to the garden. In the words of William Foster, he was the leader of the Communist Party in America from 1945 to 1957. 

He said, the hundreds of millions of workers and peasants striking off their age old chains of slavery. He's talking about Christianity, right? The apostles. talk about being a slave to Christ. So he's talking about slavery, he's talking about Christianity. Striking off their old chains of Christianity will construct a society of liberty and prosperity and intelligence. 

Communism will inaugurate a new era for the human race. There's the secular heaven that they're striving for. Our college campuses used to be seminaries, right? All the Ivy League schools were seminaries where they used to teach the word of God. They're all now seminaries of Carl. Nearly every single one of them are all teaching communism. 

Every department in these universities. There are seminaries to Karl, preaching and indoctrinating students with communism. And it's appealing because for someone to be a Christian, you have to realize the depravity of your sin. For someone to be a communist, you have to realize the depravity of everyone else's sin. To be a Christian, you have to deny your sinful nature, as in put it to death. To be a communist, you have to deny the existence of a sinful nature. 

Revel in your pride, which is an easier pitch. We're gonna do a lot more on this moving forward. I dedicate myself to figuring out something, because Zoran, to his credit, he was able to accurately touch on something that is real, and that is he calls it the affordability crisis in New York City, and it's true. And it's not just in New York City, it's across the country. This is a real problem. It's very easy for people who don't have capital to be anti -capitalist. 

It's very easy for young people who are now not that young anymore, 30s, 40s, who don't own anything, are just saddled in student debt, to hate the system. And capitalism is appealing to them. And then it'd be easier if they're not Christians. So I want to be able to speak to that. We need to solve that politically. It's a very, very big problem. 

So we will do more of that. But it is also our job as Christians to fight against communism in every way. I'll end with Pope Pius XI. He said of communism in 1937, he said, communism offers the world as the glad tidings of deliverance and salvation. Everything we've been talking about here. It is a system full of errors and sophisms. 

It's just silly. And it would be, it's, it's also silly. And it would be even sillier if it, if the fruit of it didn't result in the deaths of hundreds of millions of people in nations that have tried it. It is in opposition, both to reason and to divine revelation. It subverts the social order because it means the destruction of its foundations because it ignores the true origin and purpose of the state. because it denies the rights, dignity, and liberty of human personality. 

See to it, venerable brethren, that the faithful do not allow themselves to be deceived. Communism is intrinsically wrong, and no one who would save Christian civilization may collaborate with it in any undertaking whatsoever. Fight against communism. MikeSlater . Locals . com. 

Transcript commercially free on the website MikeSlater .

It's time for my annual lament as to what our holy days have become. But the good news is, we can reclaim them right now.

Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thanks for being here. It is October 31st, so it is time for my annual lament about the holiday season and what the holidays have become in our secular pagan country. All of the holy days that we have on our calendar used to be, I should say, all of our holidays that we still have on our calendar used to be holy days. It's a better way of putting it. Thanksgiving started off as a day of prayer and fasting. 

Fasting. Thanksgiving used to be, used to be a day of not eating. And now it's a day of football and gluttony. Christmas was about the birth of Jesus. Now it's Santa and presents. Easter was about the resurrection of Jesus. 

Now it's an Easter bunny and eggs. St. Patrick's day, even it was a day at St. Patrick or Patrick was this guy. He's born in England. It's not even an Irish. And he was abducted and he was put on a slave ship to Ireland. And he spent six years there, six years there. 

And then he escaped to his home country, became a Christian, went back to the people who enslaved him. to spread the gospel to these lost people. And now it's drink green beer and pinch me. And so I was like, this hit me, I think it was like five years ago. And it was around Halloween. I've never really liked Halloween, but it was like, especially meaningless, whatever shred of meaning there even was. 

And I was like, this is really, like, what is this? Like, what is this silly thing? And I looked it up and turned, Halloween is All Hallows Eve. Hollow, meaning sacred. Webster's original dictionary definition, 1828, to make holy. Hollow means to make holy, to consecrate, to set apart for holy or religious use, to devote to holy or religious exercises, to treat as sacred. 

as in our father hallowed be thy name. And Eve, All Hallows Eve, day before All Saints Day. All Hallows Eve, kind of put it together, Halloween. That's where that came from. But what's All Saints Day? I mean, think about this. 

Even Halloween used to be a religious holiday, and now it's pagan. Even worse than pagan, right? It's like satanic in many ways. So I'm talking about All Saints Day. and give you the encouragement that your house can be whatever you want it to be. Your home does not have to be influenced by culture in any way at all. 

You can do anything. It doesn't matter how you grew up. It doesn't matter the things you did when you were a kid or what your parents did. You can do whatever you want. 

You're an adult. 

Think about it like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone or was it Home Alone 2? No, Home Alone 1 when he got a cheese pizza. He said, I got a large cheese pizza and it's all for me. That's you with the holy days that are in your house. You can do whatever you want. So celebrate All Saints Day if you want. 

So I was reading yesterday a sermon by Jonathan Edwards called The Reality of Conversion. And he was, in this sermon, articulating all the reasons why we know conversion exists. What is conversion? Of course, we'll go from a unbeliever to a believer, being born again, as we would put it today. And one of his proofs for the reality of conversion is martyrs. And I just want to read like three different paragraphs here about the existence of martyrs and how this creates evidence of such a thing as a change of nature by a supernatural power in their enduring such 

suffering for a good conscience and the glory of Christ. A very great alteration in life and manifestations of holiness of heart in doings is a great argument of a change of heart. " He said, many thousands, yay, and millions of professing Christians that have had this trial have acquitted themselves so under it as to give the most remarkable evidences of a supernatural love to God. and a weanedness from the world, like they've weaned themselves off the world. For they have been tried with the most extreme sufferings and cruel tortures that man could invent. I'll give you one of those in a minute. And the sufferings of many of them have been lengthened out to a very great length. Their persecutors have kept them under trying torments that if possible, they might conquer them by wearing out of their spirits. But yet they have rather chosen undergo all and have held out in suffering unto death rather than to deny Christ. Such has been their faith, and their love, and their courage, that their enemies could not by any means overcome it, though they had him in their hands to execute their will upon them. And very often they have suffered all with the greatest composedness of spirit, yea, and with cheerfulness. And many of them have appeared exceedingly joyful under the torments, and have glorified in tribulations." Amazing. Many have braved it out through an extraordinary stoutness and ruggedness of spirit. But so it has been with multitudes of all sort. 

Many that have been under the decays of old age, long after the strength of nature has begun to fail. And they were in that state wherein our want very much to lose their natural courage. And also women, even children, and persons of delicate and weak constitution, such as these have by their faith and love to Christ and courage in his cause conquered the greatest and cruelest monarchs of the earth. In all the most dreadful things that their power could inflict upon them, they have rather chosen to suffer such affliction than in the least to depart from their dear Lord and Savior. " These are just the parts I've underlined. Whoever reads the histories that give an account of these things must needs acknowledge, if they don't put out the light of reason, like if you're not a total fool, that those persons had something in them far above nature. 

that they were influenced by some supernatural and powerful principle that men naturally don't experience. And many of those that have thus patiently and joyfully suffered such things before their change were very loose, vain persons, contenders of all religion. Many that were cruel persecutors themselves have been seized with conviction and have then at last borne witness to Christ and his gospel by a patient suffering his will, a remarkable instance in which they have been blessed, which we have in the blessed apostle Paul. He goes and he talks about the state that people were in before they were saved. And yet here they are now. And one more part here. 

I'll end on this. I'll end on this line. It requires something above nature to make a man love an unseen object. So as cheerfully to lose all things and suffer all things for his sake, nature doesn't work in that manner. It may work so as to cause men to have a strong love to an object that they've seen with their bodily eyes and have conquered and conversed with. But it is beyond the power of nature to beget such a love to an object that they are told of. 

of which they are informed that he lived on earth many hundreds of years ago and now lives in an invisible world. Nature may operate so as to cause transient affections about that which they are so informed of, but not to knit the heart so strongly to an unseen object as to have such great effect as these. Only some mighty work of God alone hearts, changing their natures and infusing principles that strengthen them and carry them far beyond the strength of nature would be possible. Great stuff there from Jonathan Edwards. Now, if that's true for us, if we've been converted, if we've been saved, if we've been born again, do we act like it? 

Do we celebrate it? Are we grateful for it? Do we live like it? Do we tell people about it? Do we tell people about our salvation as if we were going to spend eternity in hell? But instead now we're going to spend eternity in heaven. 

Now it'd be nice if our society were a Christian society again. And we had these holy days set up around the calendar to remind us about what's really important. All the holy days that we had on the calendar have been secularized or eliminated entirely or secularized and become meaningless. So again, I just want to encourage you to make these holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, whatever you want them to be, whatever they should be, whatever they used to be. You don't have to be sucked in by the culture to make them pagan. It's your home. 

It's your family. And I would argue that if we stopped wasting our time with Halloween and made it All Saints Day again, we'd live in a better country. Because people would know the stories. They would know the stories of the people we should be emulating. We'd have heroes. Reminders of what's important. 

I always think of the story Perpetua. I'm gonna share two here, but Perpetua I gotta share. I share it every time. She lived in the year 203 under a brutal Roman emperor. She refused to worship the emperor and she was thrown in jail. She was to be executed at the next gladiator games. 

And her father visited her and begged her, pleaded with her to recant her foolish Christian beliefs, this invisible God and do it for you. You're only 22 and do it for your baby. You have a full life and you need to be here for this baby. So just do it, just recant, even if you don't really believe, or if you do believe, but you just say you don't, just so you can be free and live. Just recant it so you can get out of prison, give up your pride. Just say you're not a Christian, you'll be set free, and then you can continue to do whatever you want, but just say whatever you need to say. 

And she refused. In prison, her father visited her in prison, and she said, Father, do you see that bowl there? What is that? He said, that's a bowl. She said, of course. Could it be called by any other name than what it is? 

She said, well, neither can I. Be called anything other than what I am. 

A Christian. Couldn't lie, even when it led to her death. Which it did. at the Gladiator Games. She couldn't lie. What if we had All Saints Day, a day where we celebrated the martyrs of the Christian faith? 

What if this day was, once again, about heroes, martyrs? What if we changed the stories that we told in our country? There was an emperor in Rome, Julian. One of his main goals was to decrease the influence of Christianity in culture. He wanted to water it down. He wanted to create division in it. 

He wanted, he did, bring in more paganism. In schools, no Christianity. was able to be taught. Also, Christians couldn't be taught the classical texts, like the pagan texts, which means they couldn't rise up into the higher classes of power and influence. He just wanted to keep Christians down as much as he could. His goal was to marginalize Christians. 

So he would do some things, like a lot of unjust things, obviously. One would be if a Christian broke a minor law, then they'd get the book thrown at him. But if pagans committed crimes against Christians, then they'd get a slap on the wrist. We see versions of this today. There's nothing new under the sun. Everyone in our culture should know the name Artemis. 

He was a military leader, was a Christian. Two priests were tormented and executed, or so they were, they were exiled and then they died when they were exiled. And Artemis said that the emperor was possessed by Satan. The emperor didn't like this. So the emperor got him, tortured him. They pressed him between two rocks. 

It was so horrible. His bowels squeezed out and his eyes popped out of his head, but he lived. momentarily, but he lived. He lived enough where he had another chance to denounce Jesus, but he didn't. So the emperor beheaded him. I just think of a society that knows that story and thinks on that story, meditates on that story, lifts up that type of conviction. 

Hebrews 12 21 says, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. How would we act if we knew that these great martyrs were watching? They are our example. They are our model. 

And if we don't lift them up, how will people know what to do? 

We wouldn't. We'd flounder. We'd be tossed to and fro. And we have been. But we can't anymore. We're called for more. 

The truth is out there. The answers are out there. The models are out there. The martyrs are out there. In your home, in your family, let's bring them back. Make sure that your kids know the martyrs of our Lord. MikeSlater . Locals . com. Transcript commercial free. It's on the website MikeSlater .

This is not a sign of a healthy nation. How can we reverse the trend of more people relying on the government dole and return to the way God wants us to help each other?

Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thanks for being here. 42 million Americans are on food stamps. That's not a sign of a strong, healthy country. We talked earlier today about creeds. AOC gave a speech where she talked about how there's countless creeds in America. 

The immigrants and people who speak hundreds of different languages. And I'm like, that's not good. The crowd was cheering. There was a Zohan rally. And they're like, oh, it's amazing, 100 different languages. And I'm like, hmm, that sounds like the Tower of Babel. 

Yay, we can't communicate with each other. Yay, none of us believe the same thing about important principles of life and governance. Yay, I think. That doesn't sound good. So then we read from this thing called the American ethos. It was about 100 years ago. 

This person says, the American ethos, I do not choose, excuse me, the American creed, I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon if I can. I seek opportunity, not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk, to build and to dream, fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence, the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia. 

I will not trade freedom for beneficence, nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat. It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid. to think and act for myself, to enjoy the benefit of my creations, and to face the world boldly and say, this, with God's help, I have done. these 42 million Americans. And I don't want to be cruel. 

I don't want to be mean. But this is not good. One in eight Americans are on food stamps. Now I'm taking a pretty moderate approach here. I'm not saying we got to get rid of entirely. Maybe one day it'd be great if we could get, and I used to make this argument, it'd be great if we could get to the utopian ideal, which is where when someone's down on their luck, first you go to family. 

If you don't have any, you go to friends. And if you don't have any, then you go to church. And if that doesn't work or whatever, then there's other charities, faith, you know, Christian based, like rescue mission, stuff like that. And then like way down the list would be food stamps, but it wouldn't even exist at that point. It wouldn't be necessary. I think one reason why people don't want to go to church is because church requires a relationship and people don't want relationships because the person giving the charity may say, Hey, maybe you should stop doing drugs, or maybe you should make these other changes in your life. 

And people don't want to hear it. They just want the anonymity of getting the free money. So you can continue to live in this way that's clearly not going well. Another benefit of having church be the main means of charity is you don't just get regular water. You get a water where you'll never be thirsty again. People want government cheese. 

When if you go to a church, you'll get a lot more than your regular old bread. Charity through a church is a blessing for everyone. And food stamps are a track for everyone. But people don't want to go to a church because again, relationships, accountability, better to just get it for free in the mail. Better for what? 

Of course. 

So I'm taking a pretty middle of the road approach here. And I think for the next few decades, probably, we should limit food stamps to the elderly, the disabled, and people with an IQ under 80 who can't hold a job. IQ under 80, Jordan Peterson talks about this a lot. You can't fold a paper into thirds to put it in an envelope. That's what that IQ is. 

And everyone else, you gotta get to work. It's probably 60 % of people on food stamps is a combination of fraud and able -bodied adults who can work but don't. Probably 60%. So we'll say 20 million Americans are elderly, disabled, and otherwise unable to hold a job. 20 million. That's a pretty... 

Am I a horrible person for saying, I only want to give food stamps to 20 million Americans? I think if we do that for a while, then maybe, and we change a lot of other things in our culture, in our country, then I think maybe we can start to get to that ultimate ideal. But right now we're nowhere even close. Now we did talk on the radio. And we're going to do more on this tomorrow because someone sent me a article written by John Stuart Mill, or an essay written by John Stuart Mill in 1861 about universal suffrage. And it's very funny because this is 1861. 

This was 60 years before women had a right to vote. So this John Stuart Mill, very progressive guy, says, no, everyone should have a right to vote. Everyone should be allowed to vote. Women, laborers, low -income people, everyone should be allowed to vote. Unless, of course, you're on welfare. If you're on government dole in any way, then no, like definitely. 

And he also said, unless you can read, if you can't read, then obviously you can't vote. He went through all these exceptions that would pretty much accept, exempt or remove everybody's right to vote in America. He said, if you've ever been, if you've ever had bankruptcy, you can't vote. If you're in debt, you can't vote. So like no one in America would be allowed to vote. today if this progressive John Stuart Mill had his way a long time ago. 

But we presented this question of if you, just in an effort to shake this up and try to turn the ship around, if you're on specifically food stamps, you can't vote in federal elections. Again, I know there's problems, there's pros and cons to this, and I get it. I mean, you're still human, you're still a person, you're still all these things, you're still a citizen, but you can't vote in federal elections. So we brought this up as just something to think about. And then John Stuart Mill said the exact same thing back in 1861. But here's what I want to talk about on today's show on Politics by Faith, different than what we do on the radio. 

One last thing, someone wrote on Twitter, they said, my mom is disabled, 78 years old. She would die without food benefits. Oh, wow. Do you hear yourself? Your mom would die without food stamps? Your 78 year old disabled mother would die without food stamps? 

Feed your mom. Feed your mom. Honor your parents by feeding them goodness. All right, here's what I'm talking about here. Isaiah 58. Last night, I was reading a sermon by Jonathan Edwards on Isaiah 58. 

I'm not done with it. So maybe we'll do a part two of this when I'm done with Jonathan Edwards' words on it. But let's run through Isaiah 58. It's fascinating. It's about hypocritical religious observances versus true God -pleasing worship and action. That's what Isaiah 58 is about. 

And this opening section here is entitled, Why Do Our Prayers Go Away? And one of the reasons why our prayers go unanswered is because of our own sin. Isaiah 115 says, When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. This is God talking. I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. 

Your hands are full of blood. Isaiah 59 verse one, behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save or his ear dull that it cannot hear. He's like, well, I'm able to do whatever I want people. Don't don't. I'm not answering your prayers because I'm not able to don't be fooled. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. 

Adam Clark in 1823, he said, how can any nation pretend to fast or worship God at all or dare to profess that they believe in the existence of such a being? while they carry on the slave trade, and traffic in the souls, blood, and bodies of men. O you most criminal of knaves, and worst of hypocrites, cast off at once the mask of your religion, and deepen not your endless perdition by professing the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, while ye continue in this traffic. " Of course, this applies to abortion today. The fasting in Isaiah 58 that's hypocritical is a fasting that You know, you're fasting to hurt your enemies, or you're fasting for selfish needs, or you're fasting to, the scriptures say, make your voice heard on high so to glorify yourself. This is no good. 

So what's true worship? Verse six, is this not the fast that I have chosen, colon, to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry? and that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out when you see the naked that you cover him and not hide yourself from your own flesh? Loose the bonds of wickedness. Don't oppress others. 

Undo heavy burdens. Break every yoke. So stop oppressing others, but then actively love others, right? So stop doing the bad things and then share your bread with the hungry. So I know, hopefully you sense the pivot here. So my opening of this podcast is about, the receivers of the welfare. 

And now Isaiah 58 is talking about the givers of charity. And what happens when you serve others? First, it should be done for its own sake. But then when you do serve others, then your light shall break forth like the morning. Your healing shall spring forth speedily and your righteousness shall go before you. The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. 

Then you shall call and the Lord will answer. How about that? So why are my prayers not going answered? Well, here's why. Okay, fine. What if I do that? 

Well, then you shall call and the Lord will answer. You shall cry and he will say, here I am. If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, if you extend your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light shall dawn in the darkness and your darkness shall be as the noon day. It's great. The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your soul in drought and strengthen your bones. You shall be like a watered garden and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. 

Those from among you shall build the old waste places. You shall rise up, raise up from the foundations of many generations. You shall be called the repairer of the breach. the restorer of streets to dwell in. Wow. If we fast and pray and live a life of righteousness and love, then our prayers will be answered. 

And of course, if you're living that life. then your prayers will be in line with God's will. But I love this line, last part, those from among you shall build the old waste places. So if you do all these good things and you will build the old waste places. Wow, we need a lot of rebuilding today. It's a broken world. 

There are breaches all over the place, but you shall be called the repairer of the breach. There's brokenness, broken homes, broken hearts, a lot of waste places. We need to rebuild a lot. It needs to be a lot of rebuilding. There used to be protections. around sacred institutions or aspects of our life, the family. 

And those have been, protections have been torn down. Therefore the institutions have been torn down. We need to build up the protections again. We need to reclaim these waste places. And I'll leave you with two more scriptures that are convicting to me to be more generous. 1 Timothy 5, 8, anyone who does not provide for their relatives and especially for their own household has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. 

Whoa. In Proverbs 19, 17, whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord and he will reward them for what they have done. MikeSlater . Locals . com for the transcript of this episode and no commercials. MikeSlater .