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.

Trump has announced some major, and surreal, trade deals this week. This could be the beginning of a golden age. Will we match this wealth with wisdom?

Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thank you for being here on this episode. I want to talk about all these trade deals that have been finalized in the last week or so. We still have some big ones to go. India seems to have hit a bit of a roadblock, but the big one is China. So that's the first thing to know that all these trade deals with whoever they're with, Vietnam was one of the first, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, the big ones of this last week. It is all done with the number one priority

of encircling China, surrounding China, getting the whole world to be on Team America so that we can go to China and say, look, you're alone, you're on your own with this. The whole world is finally siding with us or siding with us again in the world order.

So you should fall in line as well. That is the most important thing we've seen this last decade or so of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, this malicious growth investment around the world to the point of all the cranes that we use at our ports, including in our military ports,

were made by China and have Chinese spy technology inside of it. Like what the heck is wrong with us? That's the lengths that China has been able to infiltrate the world. We saw during COVID, how they were able to control

the World Health Organization and the UN. So enough of that, that's not happening anymore. But the best way to combat China was to make sure we had the whole world on our side first. That's the number one priority of all these deals. Now every deal that's been signed so far also benefits us in insane ways. And that's the main theme of what I want to talk about here today.

We saw the Japanese deal about a week or so ago, where Japan's going to give us $550 billion to spend on whatever we want. So we could build 10 nuclear power plants. We could build whatever we want. Japan's gonna pay for it. And then we're gonna split the profits.

Now that seems reasonable. They're gonna put the money up for stuff here in America. We should split the profits, right? What do you think, 50-50? Maybe 60-40, maybe they should get most of the profits, 60, 40, that makes sense, right? No, how about 90, 10, us? 90, 10, you put all the money up and we split it 90, 10, us? That's the deal that the president was able to make

with Japan? That's crazy. And then we don't pay any tariffs, we can sell all of our American goods inside Japan with no tariffs. We made a joke the other day on the radio

that the old expression is, oh, that guy's such a good salesman, he can sell ice to Eskimo. Ice to an Eskimo. Our president just sold rice to Japan. Japan has a 700% tariff on their rice,

or on our rice, to protect their rice industry, and we took it down to zero. We're gonna be selling rice grown in Arkansas to Japan. That's crazy. Then we saw the European deal, European union deal. Same thing.

You see a picture of the, our delegates, our trade delegates, you know, Stephen Miller and then these guys with Trump and then the European union delegates that are all in a big row and they're giving a thumbs up. And our guys look like they just won the Kentucky Derby.

And their guys look like they just got rolled because they did. And then after that was South Korea. Same deal. $350 billion they're gonna give us to invest however we want.

And important about that 350 is, 150 billion of it is gonna go to our ship industry, ship building industry. Months ago, before the election, I was talking to Tim Sheehy, he was running for the Senate in Montana, he won.

So he's the Senator now. And I think he was the first person that informed me that how woefully behind we are on our ship building. And we build all of our ships in South Korea. And if you look at a map of South Korea, they're very tucked into China, more so than I would have thought.

I would have thought the Korean peninsula was kind of sticking out from China, but it's not. It's really tucked in there. So if we're ever in a war with China, China can just block off the East China Sea and that's it. We're not getting any. And South Korea makes 220 vessels a year, we make maybe 10.

Now they're different, we tend to make more of our military ones and they'll make more commercial, but still this is not good. We're not up to par with our shipbuilding. And they are in South Korea,

so South Korea is gonna spend $150 billion to amp up American shipbuilding. That's incredible. Now one point on the European Union, and then we'll bring it to the Bible here. When this first came out, it was signed on Sunday night. So really people got talking about it on Monday.

It was so surreal. It didn't even make any sense. It was so, so crazy how in favor of us it was. The only argument I've heard against these deals is that they're so good for us and by extension perhaps so bad for them that it'll like ruin them. Like France and Germany will be so hurt by how amazing this deal is for us. That's the only argument I've heard against this.

We have pity on Europe after the free ride they've gotten for so long from us. But everyone knows how incredible this was and no one can deny it. This is the Financial Times. There's no hiding the fact that the EU was rolled over by the Trump juggernaut, said one ambassador. Quote, Trump worked out exactly where our pain threshold is.

Absolutely incredible. America had all the cards. We had all the cards and finally, we had a president who had the will and the skill, who knew we had the cards, who was willing to use them, and had the ability to do it right.

Absolutely incredible. And one last point on this before we get to the Bible, keep in mind what 90 or so days ago was, when it was April, liberation day, when Trump first announced the tariffs, and how insane the left one, he's an idiot, he's a fool,

he doesn't know what he's doing, what a joke. And then Trump, a couple days later, issued a 90 day pause. Further, like, oh, he's an idiot, he blew it, he's already failing. The left made up a term, taco.

Trump always chickens out. Oh, what a taco. And now here we are. It's incredible. This could be, I hope it is, the beginning of America's golden age. Now golden age implies a lot of different things. There's a lot of different aspects of a golden age.

I believe it includes art as well, for instance, architecture, music, all these different cultural aspects to a golden age as well, but one of them is going to be economic. So I was thinking of when in the Bible is there a golden age and then I started reading with the kids the story of Solomon. Solomon just took over as king and as God promised him, he was the wealthiest person ever. Now of course Solomon asked for wisdom and God said

great answer I'll give you both. I'll give you wisdom and incredible riches. And the riches that Solomon had were beyond anyone's imagination today. There's been some analyses to try to understand how rich he was by today's standards, but according to the Bible, Solomon received 25 tons of gold as tribute every year.

Let me quote this from 1 Kings 10, starting in verse 14. Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was 666 talents of gold. Besides that, which came from the explorers and from the business of gold that came to Solomon in one year was 666 talents of gold. Besides that, which came from the explorers and from the business of the merchants and from all the kings of the West and from the governors of the land. King Solomon made 200 large shields of beaten gold.

600 shekels of gold is about 300 gold bars. And each shekel is, or excuse me, 600 shekels would be about half a million dollars, something like that. He made 300 shields of of beaten gold. Three minas of gold went into each shield and the king put them in the house of the forest of Lebanon. The king also made a great ivory throne and overlaid it with the finest gold. The throne had six steps and the throne had a round top

and on each of the seat were armrests and two lines standing besides the armrests while 12 lines stood there, one on each end of the six steps. The like of it was never made in any kingdom. All King Solomon's drinking vessels were of gold and all the vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon were pure gold. None were of silver. Silver was not considered as anything in the days of Solomon." They were so wealthy, silver was like, oh, whatever.

It doesn't matter. It's like, it's like, does it get in the way? For the king had a fleet of ships of Tarshish at sea with the fleet of Hiram. Every once every three years, the fleet of ships of Tarshish used to come bringing gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks. Thus King Solomon excelled all the kings of the earth and riches and peacocks. Thus King Solomon excelled all the kings of the earth in riches

and in wisdom. And the whole earth sought the presence of Solomon to hear his wisdom, which God had put into his mind. Every one of them brought his presents, articles of silver and gold, garments, myrrh, spices, horses, and mules, so much year by year." That I believe is a economic golden age. That seems like a lot. How much is Solomon worth? Well, it's about, just in the talents of gold, every year just that he got was about $1.5 billion in gold

given to him every year. But it's believed that his net worth, Solomon's net worth was somewhere around two to three trillion dollars. Elon's was, right now his net worth is 400 billion. So Solomon's five, six times as wealthy as Elon Musk. So I just think it's such a cool story.

The queen of Sheba came to visit. We think that's somewhere like Ethiopia or Yemen today, because she heard all about this king of Solomon and about his God. And I love how the Bible writes this. Now, when the Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to test him with hard questions.

So they spent time together and everything she heard was true and she was amazed. And I love how Jesus mentioned the Queen of Sheba as well. Matthew 12 42, the Queen of the South, that's her, will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon and behold something greater than Solomon is here. So his argument, his point was the Queen of Sheba went from incredible lengths from

prison day, maybe Yemen, all the way to to Israel, to Jerusalem, to hear King Solomon, to see if everything she heard was true. Incredible lengths. But here Jesus says, here you are standing right next to me and you don't care. You don't care to hear the truth from someone who's even greater than Solomon himself. Now wealth doesn't matter. You can be the wealthiest man in the world or you can be the widow with two copper coins.

That part doesn't matter. That's not important to this story. But I did think of it here when I was thinking about an economic golden age. I do believe it is good for a government to have a goal. Maybe not the most important goal or the top priority, but one of its goals. To have prosperity for its people.

The question is, will we match this economic golden age with wisdom. Mike Slater dot Locals dot com. Transcript commercial free on the website Mike Slater dot Locals dot com.

Last night, a murderer committed the worst mass shooting in NYC in 25 years. I do my best to make the point that our world will never seek spiritual solutions because they don't believe these are spiritual problems. 

Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thanks for being here. Sorry I missed yesterday's episode. My phone broke, so I had to go to the phone repair store. We had a flat tire, so I had to go to the tire store. Something else happened. Oh, we had to go to the dump. The garbage was overflowing out of the garage, so we had to make a dump run as well. So I didn't have time for podcasts. Sorry. tomorrow we'll do the episode that I was gonna do yesterday.

I wanted to talk about the trade deal with the European Union, which is just incredible. And I wanted to run that through a biblical filter. And I think I have a story that will be pretty good for that. So we'll do that one tomorrow,

but I wanna do the more urgent story today. And that is the shooting out of New York City yesterday. A man carrying or wearing body armor, high-powered rifle, killed four people, including an off-duty police officer, NYPD, who was working security at this office building. It was on 52nd and Park. Midtown Man at 6.30 p.m. last night. Still no motive.

I've heard some stuff, but I think it's pretty early to tell for sure. The male who did this is from Las Vegas and he first killed the NYPD officer, then shot another security guard, shot a male in a man in the lobby, then called for an elevator. A woman walked out, but he let her live. He then went to the 33rd floor, started shooting there, and then ended up shooting himself in the chest.

So as I'm speaking right now, four people are dead, and then the murderer as well. And that NYPD officer was 36 years old. He had two sons and a pregnant wife. So it's a horrible story. What can one say?

But a couple things came to mind. We'll see if any of this works. So then first came to mind was Jonathan Edwards, the greatest mind that our country ever produced. He said the ruin that the fall brought, because that's the root of it, the root of everything. And people in the world who aren't Christian, they don't see this, they don't get it, they don't have this in their way of understanding,

but it all comes back to the fall. The ruin that the fall brought upon the soul of man consists very much in his losing the nobler and more benevolent principles of his nature and falling wholly under the power and government of self-love. Sin, like some powerful astringent, so like a liquid that binds. So sin 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 and feelings. Selfishness is a major problem in our culture today, for a lot of reasons. Murder is the height of that, the ultimate selfishness. No love of God or anyone made in his image, no love of neighbor, the opposite of love. And it's all about you, totally consumed by your sin. Imagine the mind that obsesses so much with the self and has so much anger and rage is just churning inside of them all the time. People are so lost, so lost that they think murdering an innocent person is

some sort of solution, some sort of answer. Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil. Souls so polluted, they think this is good? They think murder is good or justified or righteous? To see another human being and think that a point blank range defenseless, you can just murder them. God's pretty clear on this.

Said you shall not murder. We've forgotten that. And sin is to blame. It's a great line from the great Puritan John Owen. He said, be killing sin or it will be killing you. And that sin can so be killing you

that you end up killing other people. On Monday's show on SiriusXM Patriot, we do our Gratitude Monday segment, a gentleman called in whose wife passed away three years ago. There's a beautiful story about how his son,

who's a pastor now, spoke to him in such ways, with such truth, that his son was able to pull him out of the depths of despair. Isn't that wonderful? But he said when he was in his depths,

after his wife died, he thought about taking his own life. But he had this great line. He just said it, it was on the radio yesterday. He said, I realized it's not my life to take. You can't take your own life. I mean, you had nothing to do with bringing yourself

into this world. You have no right to decide when you should take yourself out of it, but neither does a murderer who usurps God's power over this. Now, God, of course, isn't caught off guard. He's always in control, but sin has its reign in this fallen world and pride and sin hurt people in terrible ways.

Murder is an attack on God's sovereignty is my point. And it's attack on the, on God himself. I mean, Genesis nine, six says, whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed. That's the severity of this crime for God made man in his own image.

So you are murdering an image bearer.

My final biblical point on this is that if we had a culture that valued life in every way, a culture that was seeped in life, everywhere you turned, instead of there being violence and death everywhere, there would be wholesome, life-affirming TV shows, movies, music, it certainly would be a different world. Is anyone doubting that? I remember making and believing and hearing a lot the libertarian argument.

It's like, oh, you know what, what's the big deal? Just because you watch a movie with shooting in it doesn't mean that people are gonna go shoot up schools. Okay, well some people may, but it's just everywhere. It's everywhere and more graphic and obscene than ever conceived of, ever imaginable.

If we had a Christian culture, one that valued life and justice and dignity, if everyone in our culture

understood the sanctity of life, if everyone in our culture knew the Ten Commandments, again, one of them, they're all pretty clear, but one very, don't murder.

If we knew that, if kids knew that from the youngest of age, and're all pretty clear, but one very, don't murder. If we knew that if kids knew that from the youngest of age, it was just drilled into them always, not even drilled, it's just everywhere.

If we all collectively in our culture, every aspect of it talked about turning away from hate and anger and revenge, and instead focused on forgiveness and repentance. If we had strong families where kids didn't get lost, if kids didn't become alone and isolated and find acceptance whether it's in gangs or the darkest corners of the internet. If we never let Satan get a foothold in the first place we could prevent so much carnage. But our culture doesn't seek spiritual solutions to the problems of our world

Because most people don't think that there are spiritual problems They don't think the things that happen that are bad are spiritual in nature So, of course, they don't seek spiritual solution But that's where we come in. You know that Paul Harvey essay, If I Were the Devil. And it all comes down to,

if I were the devil, I would destroy every aspect of a moral fabric in America. That's the gist of it, and he gives many examples. And it ends with, if I were the devil, I'd just keep right on doing what he's doing. Mike Slater dot Locals dot com, Mike Slater dot Locals dot com, transcript commercial free on the website, what he's doing.