MikeSlater
Politics • Spirituality/Belief • Culture
Too Good or too Bad
September 25, 2023

You can listen to the Politics by Faith podcast anywhere, but the ad-free version, the day before, with the transcript, is only on MikeSlater.Locals.com. Thank you for subscribing!

Which extreme do you fall on? Either way, it's pride. Look for the third way. It's the only way you can properly boast.


Welcome to the Morning Motivation brought to you by Patriot Gold Group and the Public Square App. By the way, this podcast has been going on for a year. Last week was our one year anniversary. It's pretty remarkable. Thank you for all of your support. So a little follow up to last week's theme of the biggest chasm between progressives and conservatives, but also just people, is do you think people are born good or do you think people are born sinful? The next step of that is, and you can of course listen to those podcasts from last week, the next step of that is right now. Forget about the born part. You living right now, are you living good or are you living sinful? Are you living a life where you think you know you're pretty good? I don't need God anything. I don't need God's grace. I'm a good person. I go to church now again. Maybe I don't but whatever. I'm spiritual. Did you see this survey? Pull this up here. It's a Pew survey. Gallup. Excuse me, Gallup, among Democrats. In 1999, 60% considered themselves religious. 60% religious, today it's 37% of Democrats. So a 23 point drop of Democrats who consider themselves religious. So where did they go? Well a lot went to full-blown atheist, but almost half went to spiritual. I'm spiritual. That's not a thing. If someone says, I'm spiritual, I'm not religious, I'm spiritual, that used to be me, that means you're worshiping yourself. That just means you're making up religion, you're making up things, and you have the gall to think, you got to figure it out, not thousands of years of ancient wisdom, or God's word itself. But I'm going to pick and choose, cafeteria style, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and I consider myself spiritual. And get a pass for being a good person. Because anyone who says they're spiritual, the worldview that they've created is that you're born good and I'm good. That's what that is. It's the worship of the self. So people say, oh, like I treat people nicely. I'm a nice person. I don't steal. And I'm not a lot anyway. Maybe I fudge a little bit of my taxes and I steal. I took a pen from work, but like that's not a big deal. Everyone does that.

That was me forever. So there's those people who think they're living a good life. And then there's the other side of the spectrum, or people who think I'm such a bad person. There's no way God can forgive me. God's grace is not for me. The things I've done, the thoughts I've had, the mistakes I've made, I am irredeemable. Both of those are pride. The first one refuses to see the need for Jesus. The second refuses to admit the ability of what Jesus can do. You with it? The first one refuses to see the need, the second one refuses to see the ability. It's both pride. It's both about me, not about Jesus. First Corinthians 131, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. Both of those postures are boasting. Either look how good I am or look how bad I am. It's boasting. But the truth is you can never be good enough and you can also never be too far gone. Alistair Begg, he said, the self-righteous among us need to hear that even our best days are filled with more flaws than we know. That's to the first group. The self-deprecating among us need to hear that even our worst days are never beyond the reach of God's grace. So which group are you in? Are you in the group that thinks, you tend to think that you got to figure it out, it's okay like God. You don't need to, God I know you're busy, go focus on other people, I'll call you if I need you. Are you in that group or are you in the, oh I'm such a horrible person, like this whole religion thing is not for me, like I can't, God can't forgive me for the things I've done. Are you in that group? Just because I was in the first group, I tend to think that's most people, but I don't know, maybe it's a 50-50 split, I don't know. But either way, it's all about salvation, it's all about Jesus, it's not about you, whichever extreme you're on and then when you know Jesus you can boast about him all day long let the one who boasts boast in the Lord tomorrow and I think the rest of the week we're gonna talk about morning routines and the importance of a morning routine and that's not this isn't a life hack it's right out of Psalm 5 we're just gonna go over the first four or five lines. And I love the Bible, because you can spend easily a week talking about just a couple lines. So we'll do that starting tomorrow. MikeSlater.Locals.com is the website for a transcript. Commercial free. Commercial free. And the night before, MikeSlater.Locals.com.

 

community logo
Join the MikeSlater Community
To read more articles like this, sign up and join my community today
0
What else you may like…
Videos
Podcasts
Posts
Articles
Fox & Friends

We were on Fox & Friends talking about all of the train robberies in CA. It's so bad the train company says they may have to ride right THROUGH Los Angeles entirely and never slow down lol. What a joke this state it.

https://archive.org/details/FOXNEWSW_20220122_110000_FOX_and_Friends_Saturday/start/5640/end/5700

That link is a bit odd, I've attached a short video to get the gist.

In short, The rich get richer, the poor get the handouts and the middle class gets out of town.

This causes these progressive politicians to get even more entrenched.

We haven't hit rock bottom yet.

00:00:32
Boys to men, girls to women

How do you do it? Advice please!

Dean Abbott,
"Why contemporary relations between the sexes are so messed up. The problem starts with men because men lead, the masculine pursues and initiates, and problems always start at the level of leadership.

Most men aren't taught that a relationship with a woman means accepting responsibility. No one tells us that a woman represents not only pleasure, but obligation.
The fact that having a relationship with a woman means responsibility and obligation never enters many men's minds.

When these men enter into a relationship with a woman, they are overwhelmed by her needs, her feminine communication style, and her emotions.
Moreover, he unconsciously resents her for having needs at all since he has been conditioned to see her solely as a source of pleasure.
When her anger and disappointment over his irresponsibility gets intense enough, he splits in search of another woman.
He mistakenly believes the problem wasn't his attitude nor that it is a ...

00:07:55
Surly this will be kicked off twitter eventually
00:06:34
Morning Motivation, April 21, 2023

I found a way to easily transcribe the podcasts, so I will post them here first before they go out to iTunes and the rest.

Good morning. Welcome to The Morning Motivation, brought to you by Public Square and Patriot Gold Group. I'm grateful you're here. I was reading a sermon by the great Puritan preacher John Owen in the mid-1600s. I'm so fascinated by this time period, 1600s, early 1700s. We focus a lot on our founding fathers. I think that the Tea Party movement and just conservatism in general has focused a lot on the founding fathers, and that's amazing, but I'm very fascinated by our founding grandfathers or great-grandfathers, the people who created the culture that our founding fathers were raised in.

0:00:44
Isn't that a fascinating era? We got like 1776, like that's great, I love it, I want to know more, I don't know nearly enough. But what about the 1720s? What was going on there? Or the late 1600s? What was going on in America at that time? And you know, we've all heard of the Puritans, but you ...

Morning Motivation, April 21, 2023
Inflation and ANGER

I am angry and frustrated. With our Rulers. For getting us in this terrible economy. It doesn't have to be this way.

How could they never learn from past mistakes! This is ANCIENT history, stop printing money...yet, after COVID, we never printed more. Amazing.

Please leave a 5-star review on Itunes. We have a ton of momentum, this is about to break through! Thank you!

Also, I haven't done any lives anywhere becauase we're hosting a daily TV show "Road to Misterms" on thefirsttv.com, and it's taken all of my extra time. And my wife is giving birth any day now, so...it's been a lot around here. But after the midterms, time will free up.

Inflation and ANGER
Politics by Faith: Parkland and the Death Penalty

I've gone back and forth on the death penalty many times over the years. I've recently come down on the other side.

Should the Parkland murderer have gotten the death penalty or life in prison?

Please leave a review on iTunes! We need to get to 1k :-)
www.thefirsttv.com/mikeslater

Btw, we're getting the momentum we need, more downloads every day, THANK YOU!

Politics by Faith: Parkland and the Death Penalty
November 13, 2025

Mr. Slater,

I can't begin to convey my disappointment and insult regarding your 20+ minute monologue on the end of the Penny and the force-fed vote, mis-vote, re-vote dribble that you subjected your paying followers to.

To think that you blithely force-fed your fans - who follow you for your substance and (albeit fallible) insight - this morning to such pablum is beneath contempt, Sir; more fool me?

To think I could have be podcasting something substantive instead of paying to hear flippant muck. What a waste of time and money.

Who do you think yourself to be? What do you think of your audience??

That's all I got.

David Silva
First Sergeant, USA Retired

Pax Christi in regno Christi

November 11, 2025

Happy Veterans' Day.
Support our Troops. Before. During. After.

St. Martin, Bishop of Tours, Confessor, Soldier of the State, Soldier of Christ
November 11
https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/lives-of-the-saints/volume-xi-november/st-martin-bishop-of-tours-confessor

post photo preview
October 23, 2025

Good day Brother Slater, et al.,

Regarding your mention of Church Bells contra the apostate Muslim Call to Prayer, a deep history article link, below, for your Kit Bag of "what to think".
May God Bless and Keep you and yours

Pax Christi en regno Christi

Exodus 28:33 And beneath at the feet of the same tunic, round about, thou shalt make as it were pomegranates, of violet, and purple, and scarlet twice dyed, with little bells set between:

Exodus 28:34 So that there shall be a golden bell and a pomegranate, and again another golden bell and a pomegranate.

Exodus 39:23 And little bells of the purest gold, which they put between the pomegranates at the bottom of the tunic round about:

Exodus 39:24 To wit, a bell of gold, and a pomegranate, wherewith the high priest went adorned, when he discharged his ministry, as the Lord had commanded Moses.

Sirach 45:10 He put upon him a garment to the feet, and breeches, and an ephod, and he compassed him with many little bells of gold all round about,

The Holy Bible,...

TDS Violence: The Degenerates
Politics By Faith, November 17, 2025

Some details about the would-be Trump assassin came out, and it's too predictable. There is too much degeneracy in our culture today. It all has to be rooted out. 

Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thank you for being here. I just picked up this book, The Existence and Attributes of God, by Stephen Charnock, written in the 1600s by this wonderful Puritan preacher. Like, just a couple pages in. But I got a lot of underlines already. I'll just start off with this line. 

When men deny the God of purity, they must be polluted in soul and body and grow brutish in their actions. When the sense of religion is shaken off, all kinds of wickedness are eagerly rushed into, whereby they become as loathsome to God as putrefied carcasses are to men. " He didn't hold back, didn't hold back. There's a section about this scripture right here, Psalm 14 1. The fool has said in his heart there is no God. It's a fool. 

It's what a fool says. They are corrupt. They have done abominable works. There is none who does good. That's my intro to any topic we could possibly imagine in the realm of politics. It's like, spin around, put a blindfold on, spin around, throw a dart in any direction. 

We're like, great, we'll go that way and go anywhere we want. Let's go this way. New York Post has a story about the guy who was a millimeter away from murdering the president in Butler, Pennsylvania. And it's about how the FBI committed a live omission, saying, oh, we know nothing about this guy's political political motivations from online. Kids warning, if there's any kids listening right now. On one of his accounts, he went by they them. 

So there's some transgender stuff. He also was a furry into this furry stuff. So furry is so wicked and deviant. Actually, the online community is called deviant art. It's like that one website online, it's like his feminist website, it's called Jezebel. They're like, oh man, they literally actively on their own chose to name their website after the most wicked woman ever to have lived. 

And here we have a website where they went out, they called themselves deviant art. Like the pride parade calls themselves pride. It's like they're not even hiding any of this. It's all in the open. Furries are people who dress up like animals as a fetish. So he was engaging in some of this online. 

So total degenerate. The word degenerate, It's interesting, we have to have a pretty firm understanding of this word. On my radio show, this was one of the school shooters, I forget even know what, and a woman called in and said, because we're talking about demons, and she made the point that the demons, demons see weakness, they see prey, and they went after it. And you think of someone who has grown up their whole life with broken family and a school system that she's accommodates every violence or antisocial degenerate whim for 13 years, K through 12. 13 years of no accountability, no masculinity, no discipline, no guardrails, pure poison poured into their brains constantly. Throw in maybe some other horrors and abuse in there, just wicked depraved evil for their entire childhood. 

Of course, that person's soul is going to be ripe for the picking. The word degenerate, the original dictionary definition from Noah Webster, 1828, is to become worse, to decay in good qualities, to pass from a good to a bad or worse state. In the natural world, plants and animals degenerate when they grow to a less size than usual or lose a part of the valuable qualities which belong to the species. In the moral world, men degenerate when they decline in virtue or other good qualities. Manners degenerate when they become corrupt. A coward is a man of degenerate spirit. 

" Isn't that great? And because the original dictionary, Noah Webster, was such a strong Christian, one of our founding fathers, almost every dictionary word has a Bible verse. And he quotes Jeremiah 221. And this is about Israel pursuing false gods, as usual. And Jeremiah says, I had planted you a noble vine, a seed of highest quality. How then have you turned before me into the degenerate plant of an alien vine, degenerate. 

One could say the same about America. Once a shining city upon a hill, how we have turned into a degenerate plant. Now a little added spin to this. The Latin root of the word means birth or descent. So there's a connotation of falling away from the quality of your ancestors. Genius is birth or descent and de means off or away from. 

So genius, degenerate. So you're falling away from your birth. Isn't that interesting? Now I don't know if this stood out to you in the Noah Webster's dictionary definition. The plant. They used the word degenerate to describe a plant. 

It was one of the definitions. And then Jeremiah was also about a plant. 

That's interesting. 

isn't it? So in this book, The Existence and Attributes of God by Stephen Charnock, here's what he says about the word, about the fool. He says the fool, a term in scripture signifying a wicked man. Isn't that interesting? So a fool is not someone who's aloof. A fool is someone who's wicked. 

Also used by the heathen philosophers to signify a vicious person. And then it has a Hebrew word that's coming from a different Hebrew word, signifies the extinction, of life in men, animals and plants. So the word and the Hebrew word is taken a plant that hath lost all that juice, which made it lovely and useful. So a fool is one that had lost his wisdom and right notion of God and divine things, which were communicated to man by creation, one dead in sin, degeneracy. And there's all types of degenerate behavior and it's all wicked. And it has every culture, every group of people. 

It knows no race. There's no bounds of race or income bracket. There's all types. of degeneracy and degenerate behavior. None of it's good. You know, we all know for God to love the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 

We know that. Everyone knows that line. But how many people quote the next line? Let me just jump a few lines down. We'll go to verse 19. And this is the judgment. 

The light has come into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. People love for everyone who does wicked things, hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his work should be exposed. But whoever whoever what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God." " Darkness, light, degeneracy, virtue. I don't know when this will hit fully the way it needs to. 

I pray we're in the beginnings of it because this isn't enough wherever we're at right now. We need such a proper revolution in this country. We did a great show today on SiriusXM. Three hours of the economy, basically. It was great. But make America great again cannot be GDP. 

And I want the economy to do great and all that, but that cannot be it. We need to root out degeneracy in this country. We need to get out and get rid of the darkness. We need to turn the lights on. Scales need to fall from people's eyes. We need to not only make America great again, but we need to aspire to something bigger again. 

I think this is a place here on this podcast where we can talk it out, figure it out. and hopefully spread the word. Mikeslater . locals . com is my website. We just put the transcript up there and no commercials as well.

Read full Article
American Laziness and The Withered Hand
Politics By Faith, November 14, 2025

What is our responsibility to upend the entire economic order of America to accommodate for people's laziness? And, what is our duty to praise God for anything we're ever capable of doing?

 


Okay, politics by faith. Thanks for being here. We had someone call into the Sirius XM show today who I'm not sure if he was the owner or a manager, pretty high up guy who said he can't find good work. He can't find people with hard skills or soft skills, hard skills. I asked him, I was like, well, what do you mean? Like what kind of hard skill? 

What are people, what are Americans not capable of doing? He said, uh, operate and read a tape measure, basic math. And I don't, I think the soft skills are worse. Like that's more concerning. that people don't have soft skills of showing up on time or caring just a little bit, taking a little initiative, a little ownership, wanting to finish the job for the job's sake, just because it is good to finish. Thinking that something is, you know, that's not my problem. 

But that attitude, you know, after Zoran and a bunch of other Democrats won the election a week or so ago, it seems to be a common thought here that this next year, Trump and everyone really needs to focus on the economy. We got to get prices down, got to get the economy humming, got to get wages up, got things got to be good out there in the economy. That's true. But how much of the problems with our economy are so foundationally broken? How much of the problems of our economy, just laziness and maybe not even late, but just our, whatever this is, whatever the sin is, whatever the vice is. And I'm not letting the fat cats off the hook. 

There's plenty of blame to go around. Here's what I was, why I was thinking about this. I saw this, uh, this podcast called financial audit. And I watch these little shorts every once in a while. This guy is broke. He's in debt. 

He does DoorDash. He's got two kids, 10 month old and another kid and a wife. He does DoorDash. He has DoorDash, DoorDash to his car while he's DoorDashing. He said it takes two hours of DoorDashing in order to pay for the DoorDash. So that guy, so lazy and like pathetic. 

But then he's going to complain that he doesn't own a home and he'll complain that he's 40 years old and doesn't have a home and doesn't have any capital. He's in debt. And you're like, listen, man, what do you what do you want me to do? This is a serious question. What is my and our obligation to completely rewrite the entire economic order for people like this? How many bills must we pass? 

Do I have to command and demand our president and Congress people to write bills in order to help people like him? I need to change. We need to make it so home ownership is easier for him. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. There's plenty of biblical wisdom here about how you can't force people to do the right thing. Even when it's right in front of them. 

We're going to do more on Monday's radio show about this and we can report back here. What's the root of this? What is the root of this laziness other than just sin? And how do we get rid of this? Another part of this is our materialist culture where our identity and our life is all about money and how much we have. And we always need more. 

Now we have credit cards. We can get as much as we want, but no one wants to work for it. And then they complain when they don't have it. It's a mess. I read Mark 3 this morning. Mark 3 might apply. 

This might be too much of a stretch. That's fine if it is. If you don't think it's a stretch and you're like, wow, that was a great analysis. Take it. If you think it's a stretch, ignore the first part of this and let's just enjoy Mark 3 verses 1 through 6. Here it is. 

And he, Jesus, entered the synagogue again. And a man was there who had a withered hand. A withered hand? What's a withered hand? This guy's hand was paralyzed. Didn't work, shriveled up, and he couldn't make a living back then. 

So he's probably super poor as well. Withered hand. So they watched him, Jesus, closely, whether he would heal him on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man with the withered hand, step forward. Then he said to them, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill? But they kept silent. 

And when he had looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, He said to the man, stretch out your hand. And he stretched it out and his hand was restored as whole as the other. Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him. So we've got a couple of really interesting things here. If Jesus entering the synagogue, the critics of Jesus were there and they were watching him closely. They knew of Jesus. 

They knew what he could do. They didn't question if he could heal this man's hand. It was just if he was going to do it on the Sabbath. They were hoping it would so that they could accuse him. Isn't that interesting? So they knew of Jesus, they knew what he could do, they didn't question it. 

but none of that brought them, none of knowing what Jesus could do brought them any closer to loving him. I heard it said it was as if a man could fly, but the authorities wanted to know if he had a pilot's license. Do you imagine that? Do you imagine someone flies, someone's flying around like a bird and you're like, I don't know if he's allowed to do that. That's, he needs to check in with the FAA on that one. Let's kill him. 

Like, as opposed to what are you doing? It didn't matter that he was healing people. It was that Jesus was doing something that was taking away their power. And these men had hard hearts. It says that Jesus looked at them with anger, grieved by the hardness of their hearts. You don't hear often or think often about Jesus being angry, but here's the part I wanted to highlight here. 

Jesus said to the man, stretch out your hand. 

Well, hold on. 

How can he stretch out his hand? It's withered. That's the point of the story. Well, first of all, one interesting point too, Jesus said to the man, step forward. So the man's feet work. And his feet work well enough to even bring him to the synagogue. 

So his feet work, praise God for that. But his hand doesn't. But Jesus still says, stretch out your hand. Can't, it's withered. This is Adam Clark, around 1790s or so. He said, this is Bible commentary. 

He said, this man might have reasoned thus, Lord, my hand is withered. How then can I stretch it out? You make it whole first, Jesus. And then afterwards, I'll do as you command. This may appear reasonable, but in his case, it would have been foolishness. At the command of the Lord, he made the effort. 

and in making it, the cure was effective. So he healed the man's hand, and instead of the Pharisees saying, that was awesome, we love you, Jesus, they went immediately to these other people to destroy him. Can't please everyone, can you? This other group, they were not religious. They were Jews who loved the king, King Herod. Got to go kill Jesus now. 

Tons to focus on here. I just want to highlight the faith that it took for this man to stretch out his withered hand. Martin Lloyd -Jones says the ultimate cause of all spiritual depression is unbelief. For if it were not for unbelief, even the devil could do nothing. I wanted to bring all these together here because A, we need to focus on Jesus, less on stuff. Talking to me here. 

And two, we need to thank God for our ability to do things, to do anything. Every single part of me is withered without blessings from God. All of me is withered. Physically, spiritually, every single part of me is withered. So the fact that I can do anything ever, praise God, but it's got to be Sinful, isn't it? If you have the ability and you don't, what a waste, what an insult to God. 

I think it's very important that we encourage people to do as much as they can with their God given abilities. We should rebuke those who do not and praise those who are. Okay, quick time out here. That was the end of the podcast. I stopped recording. I was about to edit in the music before and after. 

I got distracted with something. My TV producer, Matt, sent me a text and said, Jonathan Edwards. This is exactly what happened 10 seconds ago. I said, Jonathan Edwards, what about him? He goes, that was the link I sent you. And I said that wasn't the right link. 

And he's like, oh, let me send you the right link. He sent me the right link. And here's a quote. He sent me a quote from Jonathan Edwards. It's like, oh, this is the perfect quote for what I was just talking about. This is Jonathan Edwards. 

Sin, like some powerful astringent, contracted his soul to the very small dimensions of selfishness. And God was forsaken, and fellow creatures forsaken, and man retired within himself. and became totally governed by narrow and selfish principles of feelings. Self -love became absolute master of his soul, and the more noble and spiritual principles of his being took wings and flew away. " Isn't that it? James 3 .16, where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there's disorder, there's disorder in every evil thing. 

Selfish ambition can either mean I'm going to achieve all the money and get all the money and fame in the world for me, Or it can be the opposite of that in a secular sense, but it's the same idea. It's all about me, me, me, my feelings. Even if that's laziness, which leads to poverty. Either way, you're worshiping the self. Great last second, last second shot from Jonathan Edwards, rate buzzer beater. We had a buzzer beater right at the end there from Jonathan Edwards. 

The idea is whatever we do in all things, glorify God. mikeslater . locals . com. Transcript commercial free on the website, mikeslater .

 

Read full Article
Charlie Kirk's Mentor, Dr. Frank Turek
Politics By Faith, November 13, 2025

15 years ago, before I was a Christian, my friend handed me a book by Dr. Frank Turek. I think about this book all the time. It turns out the author was Charlie Kirk's mentor and spoke at Berkeley the other day amidst the violence. Here is our interview with Dr. Turek on ontology, spistomology and theodicy.

Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thank you for being here with a special episode today. This morning on my Sirius XM radio show, Breitbart News Daily, had the honor of talking with a one Dr. Frank Turek, mentor of Charlie Kirk, standing right next to him when Charlie was assassinated on September 10th. And he spoke at Berkeley University the other day where there was all the riots and protests out front. Great honor to talk to this man who is very influential in my becoming a Christian. 

I had a militant atheist once at Michigan State ask me this question. He said, if there is a good God, why doesn't he stop all the evil in the world? And I said, sir, that is an excellent question. Maybe because if he did, he might start with you and me because we do evil every day. You ever notice we start complaining about evil. We always start complaining about somebody else doing it. 

It's like, hey, God, why don't you stop him? God, why don't you stop her? God, why don't you stop the shooter? God, why don't you stop Hitler? 

God, why don't you stop? 

Why do we never say, God, why don't you stop me? Ladies and gentlemen, if God were to stop evil at midnight tonight, would you still be alive at 1201? 

There you go. America is the greatest country in the world. Good morning. That is Dr. Frank Turek. He is the president of CrossExamined . org and the author of a book that my friend Paul gave to me right before I became a Christian. 

It's the most influential book, other than the Bible, of course. I didn't even know what apologetics was. The book's called I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, and I think about it all the time. It's the book I've given to the most people in my 15 years since it was first handed to me. You also happen to be Charlie Kirk's mentor. And that was a speech last night, or a couple nights ago, at Berkeley University. 

Dr. Turek, how are you, sir? 

Mike, I'm doing fine. But Antifa, want that event to go on, as you know. But God has a plan. More attention was brought to that event because of their crude, vile behavior. And that's one reason why we're having this conversation, I guess. 

Yeah, that's right. Did you feel the chaos? We saw it outside. 

Did you feel it? 

Oh, yeah. We were already inside before all that had begun. But it's amazing to me, the people who say they're fighting for inclusion, tolerance and diversity will not include you and will not tolerate you for holding a diverse view. I mean, if irony could kill, they'd be dead because they're doing exactly what they charge people on the right are doing. You know, I mean, they charge my friend Charlie Kirk with being a fascist because we all know, Mike, that a fascist tactic is to hand the microphone to your opponent and say, please make your case. I will listen. 

I mean, The people against Charlie Kirk are the fascists. The people that shot him or the guy that shot him is a fascist. It's crazy what the left does. They do exactly what they claim you're doing. You're not doing it. 

They are. 

Do these events feel different since Charlie was assassinated? 

Yes. This is the first event where we had mass protest. The other events, I guess I did four or five college events prior to this. They were all scheduled prior to Charlie. Tonight, I'll be at the University of Alabama, Lord willing. And then next Thursday, Boise State. 

But so far, other than this event, the college events have been mostly Christians and people sympathetic to TPUSA showing up. And it's been more cathartic than it has been adversarial. Although I will say everybody's been the room at Berkeley the other night was a supporter. The first guy claimed to be part of Antifa, and he asked Rob Schneider a question, and he was very disrespectful to Rob. And Rob got back to him with some sarcasm of his own, and then later shook his hand, because Rob was saying, You know, we're the peaceful ones in here. 

We're the ones that want to have a conversation. It's the people on your side who are outside of this venue right now, hurling bottles and and lighting off firecrackers and spitting on people. We want to have a conversation and you guys don't. Now, what's the way forward? Let's have a conversation. 

Yeah, that's great. What did you say when the Turning Point people said, hey, Frank, How about Berkeley? 

You want to go? 

Boise is one thing. 

Boise, great. 

Alabama, sure. You're going to go to Berkeley too. 

What was your first thought? 

Well, Charlie and I were talking about it months ago. I said, Charlie, if there's any campus I want to go with you to, it'd be Berkeley. He said, well, let's do it. So it was supposed to be me and Charlie the other night there. He's going to remain in glory, obviously, and did. 

So why did you want to go there? 

Oh, because it's the most liberal school in the country. I want to go into that. Those are the people I want to reach, you know, and the people around that area who are Christians, they need a lifeline. They need someone to come in and say, well, we're going to come into your area and speak, because typically you don't get that kind of speaker there. I mean, you remember, how long ago was this, Mike? Was it five or six years ago, six, seven years ago when Ben Shapiro went there? 

And they had to have 600 police officers protect him. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Let's let's let's talk about how we're all. 

inclusive, tolerant, and diverse, but anybody that disagrees with us, we won't include and we won't tolerate. It's so hypocritical. Lightbulb you lit in my head, which was that people say there's no such thing as truth. Is that true? It's the same illogic right from the very jump for these people. 

What would you say your mission is? 

Are you there to encourage believers or convince the atheists more? 

Yes. How about both? My goal on a college campus is to encourage and equip the Christians and put a stone in the shoe of the skeptics. Look, you're not going to reach people like Antifa because they're totally closed off. And Jesus talked about this. He said, don't cast your pearls before swine because they will trample you to death. 

Now, you need to know who the swine are, who are the people that have their minds completely closed, may even have some sort of demonic activity going on. You're not going to reach them. Nobody's going to reach. They're not open. But there are people in the middle. And look, not everybody on the left agrees with Antifa. 

We can't be like the left and and paint everybody with a broad brush. If you have leftist political views, I hope you don't agree with Antifa on the method of achieving those views, right? 

But about a third of young people who are students think it's okay to use violence to oppose a political idea, whereas only about 3 % of very conservative students think that, and that's 3 % too many. But when you got a third of left -wing students saying violence is okay to advance or to oppose a political idea, we got a big problem here. 

Talking to Dr. Frank Turek, Charlie Kirk's mentor. How often do you think about September 10th? First thing I think about when I wake up is Charlie. Last thing I think about before I go to sleep is Charlie. I was there. It's going to take a while. 

It was just an awful stain on our country, an awful stain on our politics. But, on the other hand, Mike, it's also a demonstration that this world is fallen, that we're all fallen, that we all need a Savior, that evil is real, and if evil is real, that means good is real, because you can't have evil without good, and you can't have good without God. 

So this event actually shows God does exist, not that He doesn't, because it wouldn't even be evil unless God existed, and that's what I was talking about at Berkeley. You played that clip at the top of the show. 

Yeah. You weren't there. You were standing right next to him. Yeah, I mean, I was there because Charlie and I had spent the previous couple of days together, you know, talking about how to answer certain questions, particularly about the Christian faith, and even about Israel. People say, oh, he was waffling on Israel. No, he wasn't. 

I was in a meeting with him the day before he was murdered, talking about that, in fact, with three Israelis. So yeah, there's so much misinformation put out. And Candace Owens, unfortunately, is putting out a lot of it. She says she's asking questions, but she's insinuating that certain people are guilty when they're not. And that's just ethically wrong. I mean, my friend Mikey McCoy is getting death threats. 

I'm having people email me. 

You never know what can happen to you. 

You know, you ought to repent. Of what? You know, I mean, it's amazing. The ask questions. 

Didn't Charlie have a word for that? He had a phrase like the asking questions crowd or something like that. The just asking questions. It's okay to ask questions, it's not okay to insinuate people are guilty when you have no evidence. Okay? There's a difference between a possibility and evidence for a possibility. 

By the way, the same kind of thing happens when people talk about the resurrection. They'll say, oh, you know, somebody stole Jesus's body, or, you know, he swooned, or they went to the wrong tomb, and they come up with all these possibilities. All those things are possible, but you don't have any evidence for those. 

You need evidence to say, yeah, that's what we think happened. I mean, it's possible aliens took his body, Mike. 

But we don't have evidence for that. 

Yeah, but we do have evidence for a different thing. Of course, the truth. Yeah, he rose from the dead. Yeah. 

I asked earlier in the show, I asked if anyone has any questions for the email. And I got a couple of good ones here. This is from Dan. He said, what was Charlie like in the beginning stages of wanting to understand more and improve his wisdom or knowledge? Well, as I said at the memorial service, it can be hard to mentor somebody smarter than you. but not with Charlie Kirk because the only thing that exceeded his intellect was his humility. 

And the few things that I knew that he didn't, he wanted to know. So Charlie was the same always. He was always asking questions. He could learn from anybody because he knew he needed to learn from anybody. I mean, 31 years old, Mike. I mean, look at how accomplished he was at 31. 

Why was he accomplished at 31? Because he knew that he could learn from other people and he took the opportunity to do so. He wasn't a know -it -all. He was somebody that knew he didn't know everything, and wanted to learn so much so he could be a better ambassador for Christ. He wanted to do two things. 

He wanted to bring skeptics to Jesus, and he wanted to bring people on the left to the right, and also affirm people on the right to know that we ought to learn. conserve values, not just values, they're moral truths, they're not just my opinion, to conserve what we know is good, right, true, and beautiful. That's what conservatives are supposed to do, conserve what's right and beautiful. That's what we're supposed to do, and Charlie wanted to do that. Give me an example recently, or whatever, of the stone in the shoe. I love that idea. 

You just want to throw a little, just some little thing that sticks with someone. What has been a stone in the shoe lately that someone's come back to you with and been like, oh man, you got me, Dr. Turek. You got me. That was the stone and I couldn't let it go. Well, evil is a big stone in the shoe of unbelievers because they have no standard by which to even tell you what evil is. Because if there is no standard of good that we're obligated to obey, then evil itself doesn't really exist. 

It's just your opinion. It's just something you don't like. It's just a preference. But the only way there can be a standard that all humanity is obligated to obey is if there is a God whose nature is good and who has said that we needed to obey that nature, otherwise we were immoral or wrong or unjust. You see, in order to say something's unjust, you have to know what justice is. In order to know what – in order to say something's immoral, you have to know what morality is. 

In order to say someone's not right, you have to know what right is. But those things only exist in a theistic world. They don't exist in an atheistic world where we're all just moist robots dancing to our DNA, as Richard Dawkins put it. And so evil is a big stone in the shoe of non -believers. Evil doesn't disprove Christianity. Evil doesn't disprove God. 

In fact, Christianity is the answer to the problem of evil. There'd be no reason for Jesus to be evil. if evil didn't exist. That's why he came. So evil is a big stone in the shoe. What you mentioned earlier is a big stone in the shoe. 

When people say self -defeating things, you know, when they say there's no truth and you ask them, is that true? Or when they say you ought not judge and then you say to them, then why are you judging me for judging? You know, these are self -defeating statements. When they say there are no absolutes and you say, are you absolutely sure? When they say all truth is relative and you say, is that a relative truth? When they say you can't know anything and you say, then how can you know that? 

You see, there's so many illogical things uttered by people on the left that once you unveil the law of non -contradiction on them, they suddenly go – they get all befuddled, and you know what they wind up doing? They don't argue. They wind up emoting, and that's what Antifa does. They can't argue for their position. 

It's wrong. 

It's indefensible. 

So what do they do? They emote. That's all it is. It's just rage. Yeah. Dr. Frank Turek, crossexamine . 

org is the website. 

I want to talk about some of the curriculum that I've since been doing in a moment at the website. Crossexamine . 

org, buy his book, Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. 

By the way, moist robots, are those your words or his words? 

Are those actual Dawkins words? 

Moist robots? Moist robots is my word. Okay, that's your assessment. Yeah. His phrase is dancing to our DNA. Okay. 

Yeah. So we're just like, Just like our chemicals in our brain and the DNA, either one of those are bleak. That's like a bleak worldview. That's so sad. But on the evil point, I'm channeling Bill Maher and people like Bill Maher. 

Two things he'll say. Let me get your first one. 

You say he's good. How can we know evil if we don't know good? 

and God is good? 

Okay. 

He's also corrupt and petty and vicious and cruel. 

What do you say to that? Yeah. I would ask by what standard? 

By what moral standard are you saying those things? My standard. I think it's bad to kill all this giant group of people, which God did. If there's no God, that's just your opinion. Okay. Why is that wrong? 

Because I say it's wrong. Can't I just say it's wrong? What's wrong with that? Yeah, it's just your subjective opinion. It's like saying, I like chocolate, vanilla, and you like, or I like chocolate ice cream and you like vanilla ice cream. Okay, it's just a preference. 

But he doesn't act like it's a preference. You see, he has to steal a standard from God in order to argue against him. That's another book I wrote called Stealing from God, like atheists need God to make their case, okay? You have to steal a standard to say God is immoral. 

Now it turns out when you read the Bible and you see God judging people for evil, that's really what's going on. 

And God has the right to take people out whenever He wants. Look, we don't have the right to do that, but if God wants certain people to be judged now and move from this life into the next life, that's up to Him. You know, if Christianity is true, people don't die, they just change location. They go from this life to the next life. That's up to God, not up to us. So, look, let me say something about Bill Maher. 

I've been on the show years ago, a few times. I think Bill Maher makes more sense than most pastors, many times. Say more. 

He will talk on these issues where pastors won't, like transgenderism. Maher's all over it. He's going, this is crazy. He said, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a pirate. 

Thank God nobody took me seriously and took me for eye removal and peg leg surgery. You know, I mean, Maher gets many things right, even though he's an atheist. He still has. the standard of good on his heart written there by God, as Paul says in Romans chapter 2, the Gentiles and I have the law of the world written on their hearts, so he gets many things right. He just has no way of justifying what right is unless God exists. What's the best atheist argument to that? 

The Sam Harris, what's the Sam Harris argument to what you just said? How do they steal man? Can you steal? Sam Harris's argument is, well, what's right is human flourishing. And we might agree with Sam. Right. 

But what he's confusing is a couple of things. First thing, he has no standard by which to say humans should flourish. He's smuggling in a moral law in order to say that. Right. Why human beings? Why not dolphins? 

Why not roaches? Why not? And which human beings? Why us and not the Nazis? You know, who should flourish? So he's smuggling a moral standard into a system And secondly, he's confusing two things that many atheists confuse. 

They might say something like, hey, Mike, I know right from wrong. I don't need your God. We're not talking about knowing right and wrong. That's epistemology. That's how you know something. 

We're talking about the standard of morality itself. 

Why does that exist? That's not epistemology. That's ontology. 

And they're confusing epistemology, how you know something, with ontology, the existence of the thing you know. You know, you can drive down the street and see the speed limit 70 miles an hour and deny there's a traffic authority, right? You can know the speed limit and still deny that there's a traffic authority, but there would be no speed limit to know unless there was a traffic authority. And that's the problem with atheists. They know right from wrong, but they deny the authority that establishes right and wrong, whose nature is right. and wrong, not wrong, but is right, is the standard of right, and any deviation from that would be what's wrong. 

Okay. 

All right. 

That's a brilliant job explaining that to me like I'm in 10th grade. Can you explain that too? Say everything you just said again, like I'm eight years old. 

Like you're eight years old. 

It might be wrong to punch your sister, okay, if mommy exists. 

But if mommy doesn't exist, it's just your sister's opinion against your opinion, right? In other words, there has to be an authority that establishes what good or right is. And so for you to say, or for someone to say it's wrong to punch your sister, there has to be a standard of good that says it's wrong to punch your sister. If it's just your opinion against your sister's opinion, that's just two opinions. It's a preference. Yes. 

Even if you ignore mommy, the example that we used in the, your homeschool curriculum for second to fifth graders that we did last night was literally, if your mom says clean your room and you ignore her, she still said it. Whether you, whether you pretended to, whether you, you still heard it. Like you can, you can pretend like you didn't, but you did and your room still needs to be cleaned. Yep. Yeah. You can, you can know something is wrong and not do it, obviously. 

But something wouldn't really be wrong unless there was a standard of right that you could define wrong by. Because you see, evil is not a thing in itself, it's a lack and a good thing. So evil is like cancer. If you take all the cancer out of a good body, you have a better body. What happens if you take all the body out of the cancer? You got nothing, doesn't exist. 

Or evil is like rust in a car. If you take all the rust out of a car, you have a better car, but if you take all the car out of the rust, you got a pinto. Now, you got something that doesn't exist, right? In other words, evil is a lack in a good thing. Evil is what we might call anti -creation. God creates good things. 

God created Charlie Kirk, and Tyler Robinson did evil by destroying the good thing that God had created. Now, Charlie Kirk still exists, but his body has been destroyed. He still exists, he's absent from the body present with the Lord, But the bad thing that was done was anti -creation. God creates good things and human beings degrade those good things, and that's what evil is. It's anti -creation. I got one more apologetist question. 

Bill Maher would ask this too. He calls all the stories comically stupid. Floating hands on walls, people turning into salt, all the animals on a boat. Come on, Frank. Talking donkeys. 

Yeah, well, the only reason he thinks that is because he's an anti -supernaturalist. 

He thinks that only natural things can occur, but what he's missing is that this whole natural world was created to begin with and is sustained right now. The natural laws that are governing the universe right now were put there by a lawgiver, and they're sustained by a lawgiver. And they're not even the greatest miracles in the Bible. The greatest miracle in the Bible is the first verse, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. If that verse is true, Mike, every other verse in the Bible is at least possible. And now even atheists are admitting the evidence for the first verse. 

They're admitting the universe had a beginning. Of course, they don't think it's God, but what else could it be? 

If space, time, and matter had a beginning out of nothing, whatever created the universe has to at least be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful to create the universe out of nothing, personal in order to choose to create, and intelligent to have a mind to make a choice. 

So he's asked people, when you think about a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, personal, intelligent cause, who do you think of? God. That's what we call God, okay? So if Genesis 1 -1 is true, if even atheists are admitting the evidence for that verse, then every other verse in the Bible is at least possible. 

Of course it's crazy by natural laws, but we're not saying a natural law caused you know, a hand to write on the wall or Jesus to walk on water or rise from the dead. 

We're not we're not saying you need natural law to even recognize what a miracle is. You know, you wouldn't be able to recognize that hands don't normally write on walls, you know, without a without an arm. You know, you wouldn't normally recognize that a man walks on water unless natural laws existed. You know, you wouldn't recognize you couldn't determine what a miracle was or discover what a miracle was. unless you had these natural laws that did the same thing over and over again, because miracles are an exception to those things. 

Who made God? No one made God, because He is the unmade maker. You don't ask who created the uncreated creator. We just mentioned that God is timeless. If you're timeless, do you have a beginning? No. 

No, you don't have a beginning, you don't have a cause. He is the uncaused first cause. And there has to be an uncaused first cause, otherwise nothing would exist. So it's either the universe is something outside the universe, but all the evidence shows the universe had a beginning, therefore it must be something outside the universe that is the uncaused first cause. Dr. Frank Turk, let me again give the pitch for your book, one of your books, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. 

There's a few more. But I also got to commend you and co -author on the curriculum. So since last time we talked, I immediately bought the second to fifth grade student workbook. And we've been going through it with the kids. We go through it sometimes in the morning or dinnertime or in bed and we just roll through it. It is phenomenal. 

It is so good. The kids are so tracking with it. Dr. Turk, it's like case study, perfect tracking. They'll read it and then they'll ask a question. And it's literally the next part of the thing. 

It's perfectly outlined. I cannot give it, it could not be better. the way it's written and how it's written and the flow of it and the building on top of it. It's just perfection. And every single person with a second to fifth grader, Johnny's Johnny's in kindergarten. He gets it. 

So you can go, you can go below kindergarten to fifth grade. I would say, get that one. I can't vouch for the sixth, eighth or high school. I'm sure it's just as good, but I can only give you the highest approval for everyone listening to get the, uh, at least the very first second to fifth grade, uh, curriculum. How did you guys develop? I think it's called. 

Yes, God, it's real. It's on our website. Cross examine .org. 

Just click on store. You'll find it. Yeah. 

Go get it. Everyone get, I'm not kidding. You got to get that. And then if you're an adult, Start with five copies of I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. 

Might as well get ten, because you'll read it and then you'll give out a bunch to everyone else. 

Dr. Turek, keep up the wonderful work. 

Are you slowing down? Are you going to stop at all? Getting tired? Getting old? Well, University of Alabama tonight, Boise State next week. We'll get a little break over Thanksgiving, but yeah, it's been tiring, but we got to move forward. 

Hearts are tender, Mike. That's what we're doing. Crossexamined . org, Dr. Frank Turek. Dr. Turek, thank you for your time today. Thank 

Thank you, Mike. Appreciate it, God bless. Crossexamined . org, and I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. I'm not exaggerating when I talk about the book. You buy 10 of them, just buy 10 of them, you'll hand them all out. 

And we've had a wonderful time. Truly, it's been a joy reading through his homeschool curriculum because the kids, I'm not, I'm not, whatever I said there is 100 % true. I'll be reading something and the kids will ask a question. And I'll do the best I can to answer it. And then it's the very next paragraph in the curriculum is explaining the question that they just asked. It's so logically and perfectly outlined. 

And the kids get it and they're excited about it. They're excited that they get it. It's really, really good. Crossexamine . org is the website. A lot of information there to click around on and get the resources you need to help you work. 

Mike Slater . locals . com for the transcript and no commercials.

 

Read full Article
See More
Available on mobile and TV devices
google store google store app store app store
google store google store app tv store app tv store amazon store amazon store roku store roku store
Powered by Locals