In today's episode, we weave together Trump's idea to spend $3B on trade schools, ending student visas to Chinese and Indian nationals, and the boldness and urgency of Phil Robertson's gospel message to President Trump.
Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thank you very much for being here. I've got a couple of things to do today that I think we can weave all together and make sense of. This is a clip about Phil Robertson that I just came across him meeting President Trump.
He's like, hey, you're not getting any younger. And there's people after you. He was actually kind of predicting actually prophecy about this was back in 16. So yeah, exactly. He was like, hey, somebody, you know, they're, they're going to try to kill you and all that. So it was, it was actually really profound when I think back on that, he shared the story of Jesus and he, he wrote it down down and so he handed the paper to President
Trump and he's like, you need to move on that. This needs to be the core of everything you do. So we're now fast-forwarding four years. He came to Monroe. My dad was there. I think my dad led a prayer at the event. We were all there. My whole family went and President Trump pulled out of his pocket that same gospel presentation that my dad had given to him four years before.
And he's like, I want you to know I still have this. It's beautiful.
Well, that's incredible.
That is really incredible.
Sorry, when I first started I was thinking of Phil Robertson and now I'm thinking about it from Trump's perspective, that Trump kept that and then thought enough to bring it to the event and show it again to Phil. That's really incredible. But let's focus on Phil doing that.
The boldness of Phil Robertson and the urgency. Where's the line here? It's like, you gotta move on this.
And he's like, you need to move on that. This needs to be the core of everything you do.
You need to move on that. Being saved, getting baptized, becoming a Christian. You need to move on this. The urgency, because this is the most important thing. It's the only thing that really matters, actually. So make sure you move on this one fast. Mr. President, if you could meet the president,
or anyone, any high important person, and you only had one chance, you had one opportunity, one moment, you're in a line, you're shaking hands, you got one thing to say, what do you say? What do you tell him? Phil Robertson told him the gospel. And then wrote it down, wrote it down just in case maybe he didn't have time to get all the words out. Or maybe just for the president's reference
so he can come back and look at it later. I'm gonna write it down for you. Man, I'd love to see that piece of paper. I'm gonna write it down for you and give it to you and tell you that you gotta move on this. This is the top priority, not business tax rates
or tax credits for filming in Louisiana instead of California or any other local issue to southern Louisiana. That wasn't it. It is your salvation, Mr. President. That's the top priority. That's what I'm going to tell you about.
It reminded me of this line from Charles Spurgeon. Charles Spurgeon said, we very frequently hear it said that there is no need for so much excitement and exertion. And this too has come from, from our prudent men. Ah, we ought to take it coolly. The thing went rightly enough in our grandfather's day, like back in the day, no one was in an urgency. No one's in a rush. The great men of past, the great men of the past did very well without all this stir. Brethren, I do not know what you think about it, but I for one feel that there's
much work to be done and very little time to do it in. If I plunge into the work with all my might, I shall do none too much. But at any rate, all my little might is demanded by such a cause. There is a blessed leisure of the heart when sits at Jesus' feet, but I'm sure that it is not inconsistent with the violence which the kingdom of heaven suffers and the violent take it by force.
There were people who complained in the days of Wesley and Whitefield because their zeal caused a great deal of fanaticism. But thank God the blessed fanaticism spread throughout the land. And it is not extinct even now, nor shall it be by God's grace, but it shall go on increasing till Christ shall come. Let us bring up our men, the whole of the tribes, weak though they may be, and though their weapons be no better than the axes and colters with
which Israel fought the Philistines. Let us spring upon our foe as one man, even as in the days of old. Let us all go up to Ai, and as surely as God was with his people then, so surely he will be with our complicated hosts today, and the world shall learn again that there is a God in Israel." Here's Charles Spurgeon speaking of the urgency. There's people today being like, whoa, whoa, whoa, calm down, relax, chill out. Don't, no, whoa, there's no need to be so bold.
You don't need to be so, such a rush, so urgent. It's okay, it's all right, everyone relax. And it's like, no, no, no, let's go. You need to move on this. We gotta save it now. Let me do a political thing and then we'll bounce back to the more important biblical point.
Today on the show we talked a lot about the $3 billion that President Trump talked about moving from Harvard and instead investing it in trade schools. So we take the $3 billion that we've been handing over to Harvard to subsidize their efforts of destroying America and now we can instead spend this $3 billion that we've been handing over to Harvard to subsidize their efforts of destroying America, and now we can instead spend this $3 billion towards building up trade schools.
If I may, on Harvard, great Thomas Sowell quote, he said, the main advantage of earning a Harvard degree is that you never again in all your life have to be intimidated by anyone who has a Harvard degree. From the outside, it's like, oh, Harvard, oh, yo, wow. And then once you get in, you're like, that's not, not actually that impressive. And that was great. Thomas
Sola. So the $3 billion that we've been spending on, on Harvard and this grant money. Yeah, of course it goes to this research project over here, but it doesn't really, uh, it's money's fungible. So the money that we give for this research project is money that Harvard doesn't have to give to the research project. So instead they give to their executive director of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. So that's what we're actually subsidizing. If the school had to make proper decisions without $3 billion flowing in,
then obviously they would, well, I don't know, maybe they would cut the research funding in order to keep their director of belonging. But if they were sane, of course, they would get rid of all the bloat and focus on what actually matters. There's a huge bloat in Harvard and every, every, every university, but Harvard specifically just last 20 years, a 43% increase in bureaucrats, administration. So enrollment stayed the same, faculties increased 11%,
admins increased 43%. Admin outnumber faculty three to one, three administrators for every faculty. There's 2,600 more administrators than undergrads. So, and then what does Harvard do with this? Well, they do things that maybe aren't
in the best interest of this country that they're in, that they feel themselves no affinity to. We've quoted a Harvard professor the other day, I think it was on the show too, where the woman said, well, we're situated in the United States.
Just like happen to be merely situated here, but that's it. No actual ties or connection to the place, the people, the culture, the institutions, the government, nothing that they actually love here. They just happen to be situated here. They view themselves first and foremost as an international university, just like the left views themselves as global citizens.
Same idea. And my point this morning was that the left, because we're talking about, again, let's say like liberal arts versus the trade school. The left, because we're talking about again, let's say like liberal arts versus the trade school. The left for decades has said that we need to import more brown people, more foreigners,
to do the lowly jobs in America, like cleaning the toilets and picking the strawberries, and we need to import brown people to do the nuclear engineering jobs. And I think neither are true. We need Americans.
We need Americans to work, to work hard doing everything with our bodies and with our minds. We got into a nice conversation about trade school and the future of trade schools and how we really have to rebuild the entire infrastructure of teaching trades all over again at this point.
And that's a wonderful thing. It's not a burden. This is a great blessing to be able to do this. And we need it because there's a skill gap. There's no question there's a skill gap, but I believe the skill gap is caused by a will gap.
And I think the will gap was caused by or major influence was, well, we don't need this because we can just import a bunch of foreigners to do it. We'll just have a bunch of Indians do it. We don't need to know, we don't need nuclear engineers. We'll just bring in a bunch of Chinese nationals to do it for us.
Okay.
Well, if we're going to do that, then there's no, we don't have a will to do what we need to do and have a long time after no will, then we lose the skill. But if we keep doing that, are we a country? Like how many Indians do you need to bring into America before we're not America in any recognizable way? There has to be a number. There has to be some number. It's not one. It's not like we're a country then we bring in one Indian guy and we're like, oh we're not America anyway. That's not it. But if you bring in a billion Indians, like clearly,
clearly that's different. So what is the limit? I don't know. I don't know, but we've got to figure that out as a country of citizens of this country. We also chatted about, uh, it's not, I don't want this battle between the liberal arts and the trades, right? Where like the liberal art elitists have been looking down on the trades
and now it's time for the trades to look down on the liberal arts. Like that's not what it is. We need both. The trades people need to be able to appreciate art and see their jobs as art and be able to appreciate
Shakespeare and all the liberal arts things. And the liberal arts people should know how to fix an engine. Or at least everyone needs to appreciate what other specialties other people bring to the table. I'll give you an example of this. So on Yale's campus, there's a, I don't even know what it is.
I just had this vision today. Let me see if I can find out what this is. I'm guessing it's a power plant, but I don't even, that seems weird. To have a power plant on campus, but maybe it is. I know exactly where it is. I walked by it every single day.
It's right here, the Hawthorne. Here it is, the Central Power Plant. The Yale Central Plant. No idea what it is, but I walked by it every single day of my life, or for four years, on the way to the gym,
couple of times a day. The people who work at that power plant, who engineered that power plant, built that power plant, work at that power plant, everyone involved there. This building that I walked by, I had no idea what it was. The people who make that thing function,
still today, maintain that and work that, have more, as much if not more to do with the functioning of Yale University than any distinguished professor does. But right across the street, so I'm looking at a Google Street View,
here's the central power plant, right across the street is a classroom. All of our attention is put on this classroom right across the street, but here's the power plant that makes this classroom possible. But all the attention is put on the classroom right across the street, but here's the power plant that makes this classroom
possible. But all the attention is put on the classroom, not on the power plant. And we just need both. We need both and we should appreciate both. We need everyone, all Americans, all in, all in is my point. And here's my biblical example, Joshua. So Joshua, the Israelites just coming after a major victory of Jericho, where they followed God's kind of bizarre orders perfectly, walked around, blew the horn, walls came down.
Great. Awesome. Next battle. Now, Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, Ai, which is beside Beth-Aven, on the east side of Bethel, and spoke to them saying, go up and spy out the country.
So the men went and spied out Ai. And they returned to Joshua and said to him, do not let all the people go up. Right, so here are the spies. Joshua, come on, man, we don't even, no big deal. Don't let everyone go.
Just about two or 3,000 men go up and attack Ai. attack I don't be weary all the people there for the people of I are few it's like a little town we just took down Jericho we're great we don't need everyone to just knock out this little village and because Israel the Israelites sinned Achan disobeyed God's orders stole things from their last victory and they never asked God's wisdom on what to do with I They thought they could handle it themselves. Obviously they couldn't they could do nothing. None of us can do anything without God's help So they got destroyed
By this little town they just took down Jericho and then they got destroyed by this little town Smack across the face of reality of what we're actually capable of without God. Nothing. Nothing. There's another great clip of Phil Robertson going around, bring it back to Phil, where he says, America's biggest problem is we don't know what our problem is.
Our biggest problem is we don't know what our problem is. Sin. Our problem is sin. Just like Achan. And our problem is that we don't ask for God's wisdom. We are just like the Israelites in this scene in Joshua, where we have unrepentant sin, and we don't ask for God's wisdom.
That's where we are right now. And time and time again in the Old Testament, just read it, read right through it. When the Israelites forget God, when they turn away from God, when they worship Baal and these fake gods, it's bad news. Bad things happen for a long time as we talked about in yesterday's
episode. Bad things happen for decades until they return to God and obey His commands and then good things happen. We don't ask for God's wisdom and if we don't it'll never work out for us. But then even when we do act, we do like the Israelites here, bare minimum. You don't need to send everybody, just send a couple guys up, take care of it. Let not all the people go up. It's like two or three thousand, that's fine. Once the people, and it didn't go well right, but once the people repented, God
says, here it is, this is Joshua 8, 1, and the Lord said to Joshua, do not fear and do not be dismayed. Take all the fighting men with you and arise, go up to Ai. See I've given you, I've given into your hand the King of I and his people, his city and his land." See the difference? Take all the people. Charles Spurgeon said, brethren, like Israel we are called to war. We shall meet with the same defeats as they did if we fall into the same sins, and we shall win like victories if we are obedient to the commands which God has given us. Oh yeah, send only a few of us. No, it has to be everyone doing their part in
fighting for America and more importantly, as Charles Spurgeon said, to fight the Lord's battles. Not some people, everyone has their role and everyone can be as bold and with the same urgency as Phil Robertson was with the President of the United States. Mr. President, here, take this. You need to move on this right away. Mr. President, here, take this. You need to move on this right away. Mike Slater.Locals.com. Transcripts commercial free on the website MikeSlater.Locals.com.
