Trump said they're not going to put up with the lawlessness in DC anymore. A lot more people are going to be put in jail. Is this Biblical?

I've been Politified by Faith. Thank you for being here. We have spent hours so far and I love this topic so much. Donald Trump taking over Washington DC. Real quick on the constitutionality of this, the constitution gives Congress the power. So the states got together, wrote the constitution. The states gave Congress the power to designate a 10 square mile area as the nation's capital and to govern it. So they did Washington DC and fast forward to 1973,

that was in 1788. In 1973, the Congress wrote the Home Rule Act that gave DC, the people of DC a mayor and a city council and they could govern their own affairs. But in that was section 740, which said that in an emergency the president can take over control.

And that's what the president did. And the emergency is in Trump's words, the bloodthirsty slaughter of innocent people, the bedlam, the filth, the squalor of our nation's capital. And we're just not gonna have it anymore. Stephen Miller said,

Washington DC is a nightmare of violence. Our president will rescue our nation's capital. And we're just not gonna have it anymore. Stephen Miller said, Washington DC is a nightmare of violence. Our president will rescue our nation's capital from collapse and usher in a bright and brilliant future. Now some people on the left have such TDS that they're now coming to the defense of DC and of the criminals as they have for a long time.

But instead of just saying, yeah, you're right, crime is a big problem. Let's fix it up. They're not, they're saying crime, no crimes, no crime here. Peter Banker, the White House correspondent for the New York Times and MSNBC. He said, citing a non-existent crime crisis,

Trump plans to take over DC police and put troops in the streets of our nation's Capitol. Contrary to his claims, violent crime in DC is at a 30 year low. There's so much to talk about here. I wanna keep it quick. Cause we've, again, we've talked hours for this and I have many more hours to come on the SiriusXM show

but I wanna keep this pretty concise so we can just get right to the Bible part. But Prop 57 in California said that anyone who commits a non-violent crime can get early parole. Non-violent crime included rape of an unconscious person, domestic violence, assault with a deadly weapon, and human trafficking of children with the intent for prostitution. All nonviolent crimes. So when we see, so

excuse me if I see data that says violent crime in DC is down. We all know that crime isn't getting reported like it used to. People are not getting charged like they used to and people aren't getting convicted like they used to and they can re-qualify different crimes as non-violent to come up with whatever statistic they want.

Let me play this clip right here. This is the district attorney of DC.

Discussion residents did not hold back, voicing their frustrations.

Am I playing the system?

Many questioning why kids aren't being held accountable.

We as a city and a community need to be much more focused on prevention and surrounding young people and their families with resources. If we want to be safer in the long run, we cannot prosecute and arrest our way out of it.

You 100% can arrest your way out of this. In fact, that's the reason why we have arresting. And I think we need to have a lot more of it. This is the best data we have on this. This is the prior arrests of people in state prisons. This is 34 states, people in state prisons.

This is back in, excuse me, 2014, most recent numbers we have. So prior arrests of people in state prisons in 2014. Data's a little old, but I'm sure the principle's the same. Most people in state prison have committed multiple crimes. 80% of people in state prisons

have committed three or more crimes. If we just arrested people who have committed more than three crimes and keep them in prison, then we would live in a totally different society. What percentage of Americans do you think are in jail?

This is a fun game. If you ask most people, I bet if you ask most people, they'd say 30%. 30% of Americans are in jail. We hear about this overpopulation prison crisis, right? What percentage of American adults are in jail?

0.7%. I think we can up that to 2% and our country would be a lot better off. 1% of the population commits 63% of the crimes. This is some numbers out of Atlanta. One thousand people, just 1,000 people are responsible for 40% of the crimes in Atlanta.

In one week, Atlanta police arrested 20 repeat offenders who had a total of 553 previous arrests and 114 felony convictions. What in the world? The sub headline of this article from the Atlanta local news,

others wonder what happens to break the cycle of arrest, convict, repeat. How do we break the cycle of arrest, convict, repeat? It's very simple. Arrest, convict, and imprison. There's a worse life than jail.

All we are is focused on the criminal. Oh, it's so mean to send him to jail. There's a worse life than jail. Living next to a criminal, a normal person, law abiding person, living in a neighborhood with known repeat criminals over and over, that would be worse. But no one cares about that person.

No one cares about that family. No one cares about those children. We only look at the criminals. We only look at their feelings. Again, so much of this we're gonna put on Sirius XM over the last few days and more to come.

But let's pivot to the Bible here. What does the Bible say about prison and putting people in them? Well, the Bible says you should visit people in prison. I think of it similar to the line, the verse, the line, the verse, when you fast. It doesn't say if you fast, it says when you fast, meaning you should be fasting. Matthew 25 36, Jesus says, I was in prison and you came to visit me.

So that means there'll be people in prison. It doesn't mean free the prisoner. Jesus didn't say don't have jails. They're mean. He certainly didn't say let criminals roam the streets all day and murder people. He didn't say give people, I don't know, 28 strikes and then you...

There are prisons and there should be.

The Bible does say don't murder. It also says don't commit crime. First Peter 4.15 says, but let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. This is in a section about suffering in the name of Jesus. Alright, suffering because you're a Christian. And then he says,

well to be clear, you know, this doesn't count if you're suffering because you committed a crime. Sidebar, the word meddler here is really funny. Like what's a meddler? So it's only, this word is only used, it's a very long Greek word, it's only used once in the New Testament. It literally means one who meddles in things that are alien to his calling. So I think a better translation of this

would be a troublemaker. Don't be a troublemaker. So the Bible obviously says don't commit crimes. First point, prisoners are submitting to authority. I should say prisons are a way to submit to authority as the Bible says you should do. Second point, your physical life has been severely restricted if you're in prison because you used your

freedom to make the lives of other people materially worse. This is just, it's just to the law-abiding person who you victimized. Judge Jeanine Pirro at the press conference of the day, she said, the people who matter are the law-abiding citizens. It is time that we reorient our focus back on the law-abiding people. Now while you the prisoner are in jail, yes your physical self is restricted, your freedom in that sense is restricted, but that doesn't

mean your soul was taken from you. While in prison there is still repentance and transformation even and salvation while in prison. Praise God for all the prison ministries. But even then if you're saved in prison, it doesn't mean you should be let back on the street again. The good news for you though, is we all have a life sentence of death. We're all going to die and life is very short and your life, including the part period of

it that is incarcerated, is very short compared to eternity. So even if you're in prison, you should get your soul right. We had a bunch of people calling on Monday, yeah, Monday show. People who went to jail when they were kids, when they were young, and they said it, set them right,

put them on the right track, they needed it. John Piper was asked by someone, by a woman who was about to be sentenced for a crime that she committed and she didn't know what to do and how to handle it. She said she felt terrible for all the pain she's caused her family and everyone. She said, I'm going to prison, I don't know what to do. And John Piper sent over Psalm 107. This is a Psalm about the affliction caused by our own sin.

Psalm 107 says, Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, prisoners in affliction and in irons. So this is literal and spiritual. Prisoners in affliction and in irons. For they had rebelled against the words of God and spurned the counsel of the Most High. So he bowed their hearts down with hard labor, punishment.

They fell down with none to help.

So what did they do?

They cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He brought them out of the darkness and the shadow of death and burst their bonds apart. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man, for he shatters the doors of bronze and cuts into the bars of iron. These people who broke God's law, they felt guilty for what they did.

What Piper pulls out of the story is that the prisoners didn't just complain,

they humbled themselves and they cried to God in their trouble. Piper says you can fix it again. This is the woman who's going to prison. You can fixate on this as a problem and become an embittered, self-pitying, angry, mean-spirited, depressed, hopeless person. And that would be a great tragedy, as it would be a double triumph for Satan. He's already had one triumph. He should not get another in your life. Or instead of fixating on Providence as a problem, you can take hold of Providence as your hope.

That's what the people in the psalm did. They know that God is the one who has bowed their hearts down with hard labor. God did it. How natural, how easy it would be for them to turn all their affliction into anger at the providence of God. But instead they took the other path. It's a sweet path and I encourage you to take it. They believe that God's power would not discipline them forever but that his mercy would return again and deliver. This will require enormous humility and faith on your part, but God will give it to you if you ask him

and patiently wait for his timing. This is all to say it's okay to put people in jail. If they're guilty, of course. It's okay to do that. It keeps them from hurting other people. It's a just form of retribution

for the pain that they cause to others. And it's a deterrence for other people who may commit crimes. It's biblical to have people in prisons. And of course, it's biblical to work to save all souls in prison or not.

And you want the real solution to crime?

Salvation.

MikeSlater.Locals.com, transcript, MikeSlater.Locals.com, transcript, course for free on the website, MikeSlater.Locals.com Transcript, course, and free on the website. MikeSlater.Locals.com

There are 5 guardrails to stop evil behavior. The left has systematically destroyed all of them, so there should be no surprise that 15-year-olds are jacking people's cars. But how do we stop it?

Thank you for being a listener to Politics by Faith. So the other day in our nation's capital, one of the members of DOJ, 19 year old, was carjacked. The reports are 10 kids beat him up, attacked him and his girlfriend. Carjacking. Two people have been arrested, they're both 15 years old.

Washington DC is one of the most dangerous capital cities in the world. As much as we can trust the numbers from around the world, the homicide rate of Mexico City is eight per 100,000. In the capital Brazil, 13 per 100,000. In the capital Brazil 13 per 100,000. The capital of Nigeria 15 per 100,000. The capital of Kenya, Nairobi 5 per 100,000.

Lima, Peru 7 per 100,000. And Washington DC the capital of the United States of America, not eight, not six, not 11, not 15, 41 per 100,000. One of the most dangerous capital cities in the entire world right here. Fifteen-year-olds arrested. This is a major breakdown. I can never express this well and I get frustrated about it. Maybe the iceberg is a good visual for this.

I don't know. But when we hear about dysfunction like this, take two 15 year olds, I mean, there were 10 kids, I don't know how old everyone was, but two 15 year olds, we'll go with just them. Two 15 year olds are carjacking someone.

That means there is 10,000 times as much dysfunction that we don't hear about. For every 15 year old who is carjacking someone, it means going up to someone who's in a car, about to get in a car and ripping them out of it and punching them and kicking them in the head

and then stealing their car. Incredibly brazen. For every one of those that we hear about, there's 10,000 times as much dysfunction that other people have that doesn't quite rise to that level and doesn't make the news.

So when something like this happens, we can fall into the trap of just mourning it. Like, oh man, that is messed up, that's crazy, it's so broken, so awful. No, no, no, you need 10,000 times as much mourning because there's so much more sin.

So don't just mourn the sin and brokenness of the moment, but there's 10,000 times as much degeneracy that we don't see for every carjacking. You know the iceberg analogy right you just see the tip of the iceberg this is just the tip of the iceberg you go underneath the surface and it's incredibly widespread and sad. I often think of this sermon from John MacArthur it's called how God restrains

evil in the world. He said there's four guardrails that society, five, five really, five guardrails. You have the conscience. So this is what restrains evil. The conscience, the family, society, the shame, the law and the church, five.

Every single one of these has been systematically removed from our lives. The conscience has been seared. The family dismantled. Shame eliminated. The church watered down.

All that's left, sort of, is the law.

And in all of our major cities, that doesn't exist either. All that's left, sort of, is the law.

And in all of our major cities, that doesn't exist either. So of course people are carjacking. Of course kids are carjacking. What's stopping them? Ah, well this is where you gotta go back to the root of the human soul, human nature. And that is to be sinful.

And the progressives, they think that everyone's born good and that these carjackers just needed to be sinful and the progressives they think that everyone's born good and that these carjackers just needed to be loved more or something and they wouldn't have done it. No, they don't understand the degeneracy of sin in people's hearts. And when there's no guardrails in place then this is the natural thing for people to do. Now what do we do about this? Well we have to bring back all five of those things. But the most immediate one is the law. Judge Jeanine Pirro from Fox News.

She is the US attorney for Washington DC. Now there's some quirky fact here. The US attorney for DC is also the local DA of DC, automatically, same position. So she's the DA. So where all the other big cities in the country

have a George Soros DA, our nation's capital has Judge Jeanine Pirro. So it's up to you, Judge Jeanine Pirro, US Attorney Jeanine Pirro, local DA Jeanine Pirro, what are you gonna do? She was on an interview with Fox.

She said, we've had 99 homicides so far this year in DC. She said carjackings are up 111%. Here's what she said, she said, the problem in DC and president Trump and his effort to make DC safe and beautiful said to me, I want you to enforce a law

to make sure that there's accountability. And I spoke to the president yesterday at length about what was going on here. I said, if you're 14, 15, 16, or 17 years old, you get coddled as you do in most American Democrat cities. So I can't charge these people. This young kid who worked at the White House was beaten to a pulp, broken nose, severe

concussion, batter all over his head, okay, by a gang of thugs, punks, 10 of them, two arrested, two 15 year olds. None of them come to my office because they're not considered criminals. They go to family court where the effort is rehabilitation. The DC council and the president is right. They've got to stop their coddling.

She said, number one, we've got to lower the age of responsibility to 14.

Wow.

So in almost every circumstance, it's 18 to be tried as an adult. And here's judge Dean Pirro saying, well, we got kids doing it. So got to lower the age. If you give a couple 14 year olds a 20 year prison sentence, this will stop. That sounds harsh. Yes. But this short-term, immediate measure must be made to keep law-abiding people safe. That is justice. Then we can work on the other guardrails so we don't have kids carjacking people at all.

John MacArthur in this sermon said, what is the purpose of this leadership? He says, keep reading in first Peter two 14. Well, let's read a little bit before he said, this is first 13 submit yourself to the Lord's sake for every human authority, whether to the emperor as the supreme authority or to the governors who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God's will that by doing good, you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people." Back to MacArthur.

"'Because they're sent by God for the punishment of evildoers in the praise of those who do right.'" So we as individuals, officers, leaders in the police and law enforcement, you wanna give honor to those who do right.

You wanna reward good citizenship and you do that. We do that on an international scale by giving money, massive amounts of money constantly to nations that we deem are doing the right thing, good things, benefiting their citizens, working hard on that. But at the same time, you also punish evildoers.

It says, by the way, the word punishment there is actually the Greek word for vengeance. You say, well, doesn't the Bible say vengeance is mine, says the Lord? Isn't God the one who's the avenger? Yes, God is the avenger, but he's delegated his vengeance to you. He's delegated his vengeance to the leaders who represent the government for the punishment of evildoers. As it says, for the punishment of evildoers and praise of those who do right for such as the will of God. It is in our authority, it is our duty to punish those who commit horrible crimes like stealing people's cars and physically assaulting them. This has to be done short term and then

longer term we got to take care of all those other guardrails and the ultimate change happens in the church. The church is there to help people stay on the straight and can introduce people properly to the gospel and people can be saved and hearts made new. The real cure for the problems in the world, it's not a 30-year prison sentence. That's not going to solve everything. It's just one of the many guardrails, but the true guardrail, the real change, the real cure is to change human beings from the inside,

because that's where the sin comes from. And that's what the gospel of Jesus Christ does. If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Everything has become new. MacArthur ended the sermon with very few Sundays go by when somebody doesn't come up to me and introduce himself and say, I just got out of prison. I came to Christ. Maybe he was reading or listening or something like

been out of prison a little while and the Lord saved me. And I want to be a part of your church. This church has many people who have been redeemed on the inside. When that true transformation takes place in the heart, what Jesus meant when he said you're born again. It's a new birth. You become a new kind of person. We need to, with as much zeal as the left systematically tore down all the guardrails,

we need to systematically bring them back up. The easiest one is the law. So just do that one, knock it out, be done with it. But all the other ones are the ones that produce real, lasting change. The biggest one, of course, is the church, helping hearts be made new again. Mike Slater dot locals is the website

where we have the transcript for this, and we put it up commercial-free. and we put it up commercial-free. Mike Slater dot locals dot com.

Vegas has seen a downturn in tourism. Unfortunately, I don't think this downturn is for the right reasons.

I want to talk about Vegas in just a moment, but before I do that, I want to play this clip here about legacy, about what really matters in life. This is Jared Allen, who was just inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame. This is at his inductee speech and at his table is his wife and two young daughters. I say young, I don't know how old they are, maybe 18 years old.

And to my wife, I'm reminded of what Tom Lanphier said when we were going through our premarital counseling. He said, the two most important decisions you'll make in life is one, whether you follow Jesus or not, and two is who you marry. Because there's only two types of people.

There's boat anchors who drag you down, and there's people who elevate you. And you are a true game elevator. You're one of the smartest people I know. I am in awe of you every single day, and I love you more than life itself. To my amazing daughters.

Brindley and Lachlan,

through this process, the word legacy has been talked about a lot. The Hall often says they're here to tell my story. Well, I'm here to tell you two you are my greatest accomplishments. When I get called home to heaven one day, if all they talk about is this gold jacket, my career, then I failed miserably as a father, a husband, and a friend.

You two are my legacy. and failed miserably as a father, a husband, and a friend. You two are my legacy. You are both so talented, and I cannot wait to see what you decide to do to conquer this world.

So always put Christ first, find your why, dream big dreams, and always pursue greatness in whatever you do. Thank you all, and may God bless you all Jared Allen inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame perfect

I want to talk about Las Vegas here for a moment and use that as a Springboard into something much bigger than just a city. So apparently there's a lot of headlines I've been reading lately that tourism is down in Las Vegas 11% this last month compared to June of last year, fewer conventions, stuff like that. First of all, it's not really true.

We have this weird thing in America where any, even the slightest downturn for a moment is this huge panic. We're so obsessed with growing that everything has to constantly be going up, up, up all the time, never a moment for gratitude or contentment or any even concept of like comparison to where I was.

So if you made $50,000 a couple of years ago, then you made $100,000, then you made $200,000 and this year you're making $190,000. Oh, it's huge panic downturn, I'm gonna lose all my money. It's like, well, two years ago, you were making 50K. Businesses are like that. We're so obsessed with business growth that even if a company only grows at 3%,

it's a huge disaster. It must constantly be growing all the time. So Vegas revenue, yeah, it's down, but this year was still the second highest year ever. So, I mean, talk to me in a couple of years, Vegas revenue has only gone down twice. A 2008 housing crash

went down for three years. And then COVID went down for like two years, maybe three. And then it just shot right back up. And now the second highest ever, it's like all the death of Vegas. But let's just go on pretending as if this is actually the end of Las Vegas, because it can still highlight some interesting points.

So points made on the radio today, and I'll do this brief and we'll spend more time on the Bible than we do, we'll thump the Bible here more than we do on the radio. Why is Vegas revenue down? Well, a lot of reasons, it's expensive. And not only is it expensive, but they're nickel and diming you a lot more. Vegas in the past used to be something that at least you thought was cheap. Like you thought you were getting away with something.

Give you a cheap room, giant buffets, comp some drinks, and then you blow all your money on the roulette wheel. But you felt like you were getting a deal. And now it's $40 a day parking and resort fees and nickel and diming everything. By the way, I haven't been to Vegas in 13 years, but this is just my understanding of what Vegas is like.

You know when we last went to Vegas? When my dad died and for Christmas, that next Christmas, my mom said, let's do something totally different that is nowhere near anything that we've ever done before or ever do for Christmas. Let's go to Vegas. Vegas also used to be kind of neat hotels, right?

With character. So there used to be the Tropicana and then the Sands and stuff like that. And then there was this era of themed hotels like the Venetian. Oh, we're in Venice. And Caesar's Palace. We're in ancient Rome and Excalibur, we're in medieval castle,

and Luxor, whoa, we're in Egypt, and then New York, New York, and Paris, and all these other themed hotels. And they were kitschy and stupid, but this was like something different. And now, the latest hotels are just like these bland,

corporate, private equity, slop, boring, glass, massive structures that could be anywhere in the world, they mean nothing. Do a search for the cosmopolitan in Vegas and the area, area, A-R-I-A, I don't know. And just like this massive, huge glass blob.

And you're like, well, what's the point of this? So I think all that contributes. And I think that ties in a little bit to what I read as my favorite analysis as to why Vegas is failing. This is from Amy Nixon.

She says, I keep seeing people saying empty Las Vegas is a harbinger of a US recession. No, an empty Las Vegas is a harbinger of a US recession. No, an empty Las Vegas is a harbinger of Las Vegas and casinos being a dying boomer phenomenon. Flashy, loud, tacky, crowded, and inauthentic. The inauthentic speaks, I think,

to the hotels I was talking about a second ago. Younger generations don't want it. If we want bright lights and overstimulation for dopamine hits, we have screens for that. There's no need for slot machines. Such a good point.

She says young people basically live in a slot machine economy. Meme stocks, AI driven labor market for new entrants, dating apps, all of this is rolling the dice and hoping a random algorithm makes you win something, whether it's a job, a windfall, or a girlfriend. I mean, think about that.

Boomers, baby boomers, kind of needed to go to Vegas to get, first of all, an escape. But now our phones are just, we constantly escape in our phones. That's what our phones are, it's a chance to escape.

We're so stuck in our phones that we're never here. Like the escape has been our norm now. But baby boomers needed a place like Vegas to escape from it all, right? That was it. And also all the dopamine, like everything was there.

But now young people today, that's just, it's all on your phone, everything all the time, constantly. You had a dating app, but maybe you'd go to Vegas to find a woman or what, right? And, but now the kids today, they have Tinder. So it's just like, it's all right there.

Just swipe right, and then ding, ding, oh, I win. You don't need to go to Vegas for any of this stuff. Gambling, my goodness, have you seen the amount of gambling that is available today with draft kings and all these gambling apps on your phone? It's crazy. Way bigger problem than anyone is even aware of right now. But my point is you don't need to go to Vegas to find scantily clad women and gamble and

do sinful things. You can do them everywhere. And I don't want to be too inappropriate in this podcast here. If there's any kids listening now, that may want to not listen for about two minutes, you can skip ahead, but there's this person who's famous, famous. She had a viral post nine years ago when she was eight years ago,

when she was nine years old. So nine years, nine years old. And she's like this little Asian girl. And she was using the N word and rapping. Okay. I haven't seen this person in nine years, but I just saw her on the news.

Her name's Lil Tay. The moment she turned 18, she started an OnlyFans account. OnlyFans is where any girl can become an online prostitute. People send them money. And in three hours, when she joined OnlyFans, within three hours, she made a million dollars. Now people can make a critique of her, and there are many, but what is up with one million dollars worth of guys

sitting on their computer at home, sending this total stranger money to see a picture of her? Can you think of a more pathetic thing? What is a more pathetic thing than that? So we can go in a lot of different directions here but my main point is people don't need to go to Vegas for all these things. It's everywhere all the time non-stop and that's not good. It's a

bad thing. The Vegasification of America and putting Vegas in our phones? No good. Now the Bible is very clear about these things that go on in Vegas. First we'll go, Proverbs 5. For the lips of the adulterous woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil. But in the end she's as bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps lead straight to the grave. She gives no thought to the way of

life, her paths wander aimlessly, but she does not know it. Now then my sons, listen to me, do not turn aside from what I say, keep to a path far from her. Do not go near the door of her house." That goes for Vegas, that goes for Tinder, goes for OnlyFans, goes for all of it. Some people say there's no warning against gambling in the Bible. I'm sure there is. Proverbs 13, 11, wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it. It's pretty simple. When I heard about the downfall of Vegas, I got a bit excited. Like, oh, good. People aren't going to Vegas as much for all the right reasons, right? But now it's just because Vegas

is everywhere. I pray one day that the reason Vegas is dying is because we have a culture that doesn't gamble, that doesn't get drunk, that isn't obsessed with prostitution. I pray one day that Vegas has no appeal, that Sin City is a bad place, somewhere where no one would want to go or ever dare to be seen. But that's not enough. The place can go away, but all the things can remain. Let's pray that all of the sinful things that Vegas has been most known for can be

things that our culture rejects and God can rid from our hearts even the desire for these sinful things. That's part of the real revival that we need in our country. Mike Slater dot Locals dot com. Transcript commercial free. Mike Slater dot Locals dot com. Transcript commercial free. It's on the website Mike Slater dot Locals dot com.