Choice Morsels

00:00 Let's pray. Father, what a blessing to be before you today. We truly get to do this. It's our honor, our joy to do so. Father, we don't see this as an imposition or something we have to do every week. It's something we get to do, and we look forward to. Thank you for those who are listening and joining us and participating. Lord, would you bless them today? Would you give them something they needed to hear? And Father, for both Adam and myself, give us something we need to hear today. We're listening and we're dialing in and tuning into your channel because we want to hear from you today. So, Father, whatever we do to help somebody else, Lord, it's for your honor and your glory. In Jesus' name, amen.

00:42 Amen. It's Wednesday, December 3rd, 2025. We get to do this. This is episode number 13. This is the life we've been blessed with. This is a gift for we get to do this. This is a chance we did not miss. This is the life we get to do this. Hey, brother, how you doing? That sticks in your brain. I know, I know. You're doing great, actually. Thanks for asking. I love what we text mornings always, sometimes during the day, sometimes end of the day.

01:21 Hey, how was your day? Recently, we have been on such an incredible journey together. And here's how the morning goes. Yeah, my hearing aids are great. How about yours? How about that knee of yours? Oh, my back's doing fine. We are on a hearing aid journey, which is amazing. You know, old man talk. It's a big market, man. There's a lot of people who have no idea. And I wonder if it's earbuds and stuff that might have not us, but younger people. Younger people have a real hard time paying attention, listening to stuff. That's right. Captions are everywhere. That's true. And then you get these hearing aids. I'm just like, wow, first of all, Tina, hi.

02:04 Didn't know you were here. This is great. I hear you breathing from clear across the room. There's things that are shocking, too. Like we had the kids over and the day mine came in. So I put them on new, but I've got them super hot, right? Because it takes a while to figure out the right levels. And we're in there clanging pots and pans and cooking. Thanksgiving dinner. And I'm like, I mean, it's like the world just came alive too much at one point. Or I walk out in the backyard and I hear we got a little waterfall back there and it's like roaring. I'm like, man, I need to adjust these a little bit.

02:43 That's what the outside setting is for. That's the tricky part is just getting the settings. But I feel like I've got it really dialed in right now to where it feels very natural and it's not painful. There for a couple of days, though. It was pretty bad. But I just had to figure it out. And there's, man, there's so much to these things. Like open dome, closed dome, tulip. I mean, all these different ear tip pieces. So what are you rocking right now? What dome are you rocking? Closed dome, man. For sure. I just put in the bigger closed dome in my right ear because I have a bigger hole on that side for some reason.

03:21 What is that? It's the opposite. My left is big. What's up with that? I know. But it's, I mean, I actually ordered one of those transmitters. I want to see if I can just use them as my headphones doing the podcast. I'll tell you when I decided this. Sunday during worship, I put it on the music setting. Wow. I have never heard our worship team like that ever before. I mean, I've heard them with headphones on at home, you know, focusing and listening for critique, of course. Positive critique. Right. But just in the room, it was completely new. And it swept me up more than it already does. It was fantastic.

04:03 Because you're hearing like you're supposed to be hearing, like you were designed to hear. I thought that I'd never really, there were problems with the drums, the drum micing in general several months ago, but I never heard them like this. Wow. And Wendy's tambourine. The tambo. The tambo. I mean, what you're getting is all that upper register. Exactly. And that's what is the first to go with any of our hearing. Even just aging, you know, besides the damage we've done, you being in foreign concerts and wearing cans your whole life and broadcasting. I'm pretty sure it was the Metallica concert. Oh, no surprise there. The Metallica concert. I remember it hurt. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And I was next to the sound stack and everything.

04:47 So I'm pretty sure that didn't help. I played guitar all my life, electric guitar, lead in bands all my life. And so typically I would have my amp or the monitor amp pointed or. right at you, yeah. Usually, right here, and that's the one that failed. Or drums, you know, being right there live. Stage, you know, stage sound before we went to a quiet stage. I mean, you're talking 110 decibels or 113. What do they call them? The not the wedges, wedges, wedges, yeah, the wedge monitors, you know, so you could quote hear everybody, but it's blown into shooting guns growing up. I mean, we didn't care getting hit and football, boom.

05:31 By the way, um, so I repeat, so we do the service is live Sundays on Hello Fred in the Godcaster app. Go get the app, everybody, you won't regret it. And I repeat it. So we have special programming Sunday night 7 to 9 is bandkind. Yeah, I like her. Yeah, she's from Nashville and she has all the Christian music artists on. I mean, it's a good, it's a really good show. And then right after that, I'll repeat the service. Oh, that's cool. I was going to bed at 10 o'clock, past 10 o'clock, and there were like seven people listening. I'm like, if you're listening after 10 in the evening to the service, that gave me a lot of joy, brother.

06:13 It really did. And of course, you can always get the repeat. It's always available. I listen. Your guitar was spot on, brother. Spot on. Thanks. I mean, like, just, it's like the record. Yeah. You play it just like it was recorded. I mean, with a little Pastor Jimmy Prair here and there. What? What was that, Pastor Jimmy Pruitt? I love playing guitar. I literally, every time I open my case, I feel like that kid back in Lubbock, Texas, in his bedroom opening that case. I get it. Of course, that case smelled like cigarette smoke because I bought an old Les Paul that had been around the day. So, you know, the blossom, the smell. Right. But, you know, there's, there's, um, it's very nostalgic for me.

06:57 It takes me back to really good times. Well, I can see you're enjoying it. I can just watch it. I love it. And by the way, because I also listened to this on the repeat: Holly singing Amazing Grace. She's spot on, man. Whoa. And it's that's a tough song to do. Good. Yeah. That's a tough song. We were just talking about her. Annette and I both were saying how she's always been good, but she was kind of shy when she first, everybody's a little shy when they first get on the team, but she's just come alive. Yeah. And man, she's like the real deal. She, by the way, listens to our podcast. I know. Hey, Holly, we love you. Thanks for the flag. And she's always encouraging. I love this. She always is encouraging words. She's fantastic. But anyway. I wasn't bragging about her because of that, but no, it's true.

07:42 Now it's me. Yeah. So you did the second in a series on Sunday. Delay is not denial. Do I have it correct? That's the title. Yeah. Well, was that wow? Make me think. I'm second-guessing myself. I think it is. Delay does. Well, I can probably look it up. Delay or destiny is the question. So delay or destiny. That was, yes, that was the second. One of the points from the first one was what you just said. So this was so helpful to me. I've been involved in a project, and it's a total kingdom project. And we felt a little stalled the past couple of weeks.

08:25 And, you know, it's also kind of vacation time and just, you know, people are doing different things, but you just feel like, oh, we had momentum, we stalled, and what's going on. And you had a line, which I think I have it right because I don't like to whip out my phone during service. But I think it was: your posture in the delay determines your destiny in the harvest. Am I saying that right? You nailed that. Verbatim. Well, it meant a lot to me because I was like, wow, I've got to adjust my posture here. And unbelievably, today the door just opened.

09:07 It just opened and the gates. You're glowing. You got the high pro glow going on. I mean, you just beaming. It's my new skin regimen. Thank you for noticing. Hey, Charles, thinking of you. But I love that. Listen to that statement again because it's so important. Your posture and the delay determines your harvest in the destiny. It's not just that we wait, it's how we wait matters. Yeah. Yes. The posture we take, the attitude that we have, the mentality in the waiting. If we're just constantly mad at God because he didn't do what we asked or we're stuck in the in-between or the not-now,

09:48 that diminishes the blessing. Yes. It just diminishes the impact of the. the blessing when it finally comes or when the answer comes. It's just amazing. And this, you know, obviously this was like put right in front of me right at the right moment, but I've noticed other times, and I just have to remind myself, I'm not in control of this. And, you know, God had to move certain people and pieces and things into place. I just trusted him. And it happened. And whenever that happens, it's just like so mind-blowing. So thank you for bringing that. I'm going to do a part three. Are you going to welcome? And you're going to do part three on Sunday?

10:28 So this Sunday, Pastor Brown will be in the pulpit. Okay. And the week after that, I'm going to talk about the prodigal son, the prodigal story. It's so important because we're doing a night of worship that night. Yep. And we're praying and asking God to send the prodigals home. I mean, we're calling them in, so to speak. So I'm titling it Home for Christmas. Totally ripped that off from Hallmark. Home for Christmas. I'm even going to have faith. This is cheesy Hallmark graphic. But that's the idea: we want to call the prodigals home. So I want to talk about the prodigal son story, one of my favorite stories in the Bible because we've all been the prodigal at one point. Or the elder brother. I mean, we've all been one of those characters. So yeah.

11:11 This is important. I hope people will go back and listen to these because I did these a little different than my typical sermon. I actually had points and had very clear, defined statements. Yes. And the reason I did that is because I wanted people to be able to go back to them. Proverb-like, you know, that's what Russ said. He said, these are like proverbs. Who has the point? Do you have show notes on this? I got the whole thing right here. I mean, is that published somewhere where people can find it? You know, Faith. I was actually posting those online. Oh, she does? Okay. On our website. Because I went looking for him, couldn't find him right off the bat because I immediately went, I want to find which proverbs he listed.

11:54 I'll have to look at that. Yeah, because I can definitely. And it's funny that I call them show notes, but they are. I love it. It's show notes. That means I know where that's coming from. Yeah, it was absolutely, absolutely dynamite. I'm glad you're encouraged and that it spoke to where you are in your current situation. I just sent them to you. I texted you. Thank you. Thank you. Got them. I've got to make sure that these are on the website or whatever. They are. They are. I just missed them. You have to go to the archive, you know, the archive thing, and there will be a six section that says notes. You just have to look for it. It's called notes. Okay, I could have found that.

12:35 And I don't know if Faith got them up yet from Sunday, but she may have. Well, it's Wednesday. She may have. Anyway, thanks for bringing that up. It is important, and I feel like this has really landed with people because we all get stuck in the in-between. For sure. You know, the no. Maybe it's not a no in your prayer, but it is a not-now. We get stuck in that world, that limbo land. Yeah. We think, well, maybe I'm not praying right. Maybe, maybe I'm not asking according to God's will. Maybe, you know what I mean? Well, we're also have enough faith. We're also in a world where we want everything immediately. I clicked the button. I want it to play. I hit this. I want it to be trained us for that. No, not at all. I got the dopamine dump. Got some clips of that. I thought you might.

13:19 I thought you might. I'm trying to give you a segue. But I love the prodigal stuff because we have three daughters. None of them have come fully to Christ or even maybe they're halfway. They're asking for prayer. They'll slip something in like, God's got a plan for me. So this is very encouraging. But we're just not giving up. We just keep praying for them morning, dinner, before bed. And it's probably people may not realize, but God is really the opposite of today's world, obviously, of today's world of the immediate 24-7 economy.

13:57 I want it, send it to me now. Amazon, where's my package? You wait more than anything all the time. It's always waiting. And I guess that's where the belief and the faith comes in. It is. And so many things that God are, one of the metaphors God uses the most is the birthing. There's a seed zone, there's a gestation period, and it's just waiting. And it's not always pleasant waiting. Not always. There's morning sickness. There's all that. There's Braxton Hicks. Yeah. And then if you've got 15 things you're praying for, you've got 15 pregnancies to go through.

14:37 Think about it, can feel like an eternity sometimes. There's a statement I want to share that this might help somebody if I can. Here it is. God often. well, let me just say it this way: expect a suddenly. So, a delay prepares you for define acceleration. So, here's the, but the easiest way to say it is: God may take years to prepare, but minutes to perform. Because when the suddenly comes, boom, even though today was like a you know, a micro example, oh man, this is what you were believing for. Example for me, moving rocks, you know, moving big rocks, and then all of a sudden, today, a suddenly, yes, you're suddenly came, but but God, but suddenly, suddenly, and God

15:23 love that. So, um, the thing about delay, I think that's really important is that it deepens your dependency on God because when we realize we can't manufacture something, we have to wait on him, we have to trust him. And all God wants from us at the end of the day is a relationship. We complicate this thing ridiculously, but all he wants is a relay, he just wants you to relate to him, yeah, talk to him, that praying while you're going, you know, practicing his presence, that just praying through the day, just bringing him into everything. Just make him a part of your monologue, your inner dialogue, monologue, whichever it is.

16:09 If you have multiple personality disorder, it could be 15 going on in there. But anyway, I digress. Dissociative disorder, excuse me, that's the more politically correct way to say that. Oh, okay. But he just wants us to be more dependent. Delays detox self-reliance. Whoa. In the delays. Detox. Detox. That is so. Is that another Jimmyism that we just threw out there? Is that another one? It is now because I made it up. It's yours, brother. It's yours. So anyway, it's just important that we be okay with waiting.

16:49 You know, a lot of the guys that are studying dopamine and dopamine hints and dumps and social media are saying things that we have lost our ability to be bored. Yeah. We just cannot. It's like. Can't even fathom. No, we can't have that. And I realize that I start reaching for a phone, my phone, when I'm bored. Yeah. Like I'm standing in a line waiting, for example, at the store. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, I stopped doing that. You're doing the National Inquirer. That's right, I stopped doing that a lot. Or I could actually have a conversation with a human being, which I love to do. So now I feel like the guy, those people on that commercial that, you know, you're looking like your dad, your parents.

17:33 I feel like that commercial runs through my mind. I go, I just did that. Yeah, well, it's a total boomer move. Like, hey, how are you doing? You having a nice day today? How about this weather? Well, the only place, of course, where you guaranteed cannot have your phone is in the shower, which is why I find that I do my best thinking. That's true. It's amazing. That's true. I used to have a podcast going or something. Now I'm just like, quiet. Just keep it quiet. Nice. And thank you for early on in my faith journey for telling me, pray often. Keep praying. Yeah. You know, God doesn't care if it's short. And I have been doing this for a couple of years now. It's just, yeah. And just a couple seconds right there.

18:17 Especially West, right? Great. Don't stop praying. Don't stop praying. That's right. Great song. I know that resonated with you last year. Yeah. When we were at the was it last year or the year before? Was that the first? I think it was the first year. How many times have you been? We've been twice. Right. Yeah, it was the first time. Yeah, the first time. When I say last year, I meant the year before. Previous year. Yeah, your first, that was a big theme. Yeah, yeah. Matthew always has a theme. He's a big one. Don't stop praying. Don't stop knocking on heaven's door. Let your knees wear out the floor. Don't stop believing. Great song. Mountains move with a little faith. Yeah, man. So good. It's so biblical. That's what I love about that song.

18:57 But too, it's got a great hook, so it stays in your life. No kidding. So as I've been contemplating this let's pray thing for the year, that song is just reverberating in my brain. It's an earworm. It is in a good way. I promised on the last episode, I would bring some details on the Christians being killed in Nigeria. There you go. This will be interesting to hear your take on this. Well, it wasn't hard to find some data. I actually got some really good data, which is just important for people to understand how these things are done and maybe why they're done. But here, this is from a Nigerian internet.

19:41 We think of Nigeria maybe as some dusty place with a lot of people. but there's international cities there. They have a national television network, which you can find on YouTube. And it's kind of like Voice of America or RT. So take it for what it's worth, if it's propaganda or not. But I thought this was very reasonable. Here's the intro to this piece. As you know, concern and worry about the U.S. threat against Nigeria have continued to grow. So in that vein, West Africa's top security risk management consulting firm, Beacon Security and Intelligence Limited, has released comprehensive statistics on the killings in Nigeria and their disaggregation according to location and religious

20:30 affiliation. It's an attempt to explain the real situation in this country as the uncertainty looks to be ever more prominent and stark vis-a-vis what the Tiribu administration has described as the selective narrative that led to President Trump's redesignation of Nigeria as a country of particular concern and the looming threat of military action against Nigeria. So it's always interesting to hear people who live there how they perceived this almost for us an offhanded comment by the president like oh we got to make this a country of interest because there were so many news stories right Christians are being killed Christians are being targeted absolutely true

21:10 but when you get into the data and this guy no and I hear you know international consultancy I'm like sounds kind of spooky but his bona fiddies or his bona fides are pretty legit they even are ISO certified here he is about that thank you Charles so at the height of this controversy between Nigeria and the United States we kind of noticed there was an absence of data yeah there were there was data flying around but most of it's but coming from from the United States and then there was a lot of pushback from Nigeria

21:46 I mean the Nigerian government concluded that that data was either faulty data or misinterpreted and so what we did is to go into our database and attempt to come up with disaggregation as it were of attacks according to locations the 36 states of the federal of the country plus the federal capital territory we also disaggregated those attacks on the basis of the two dominant religious affiliations in Nigeria Christianity and Islam but I must say this before I go into the data itself there are probably more Christians in the organization that I founded and run and then of course

22:26 women and Muslims men that balance has been we also ISO certified and so the principles of professionalism so and I checked it out for what I can tell seems legit so they really do have a lot of this data so let's listen to the actual data the numbers now we looked at specific attack on churches and specific attacks on mosques within a period of five years and what it came to for the churches over this period of five years a total of 131 and 21 incidents now those attacks resulted in 399 abductions and then 110 killings these are specific attacks on churches but then on the right hand side is the attack on mosques over over this period we counted 75

23:16 incidents targeting mosques so lower than the attacks targeting churches and then these 75 incidents resulted in 263 abductions and 142 killings so in the case of the attacks on mosque the incidents were lower but then the killings were much higher okay so it turns out that it's actually more Muslims being killed and we have to take into account that abduction is a business model in Nigeria this is a business model you look for someone who has access to money or family with money or perhaps

23:55 missions with money and you go and you take someone and say okay we need money yeah it's location based as I think you and I discussed it actually turns out it's not oil it's water and pastures so some of these Christians who were further up north have moved further down south because of the lack of water and pasture for their farms and so here's the little bit about the the location the fact that the churches were located in a predominantly Muslim area which is the northeast does that reinforce that's interesting isn't it that they're in a predominantly

24:35 Muslim area no problem but you've got the you know you've got 80 80 gangs in Nigeria. So they're actually functioning quite well amongst each other, both religions. The fact that the churches were located in a predominantly Muslim area, which is the northeast, does that reinforce the suggestion of some kind of targeted killing? Let me not use the word genocide of people because of their faith. Now, we counted about 80 different threat actors and vectors in Nigeria. Each of these 80 has specific purposes or reasons for their attack.

25:17 The terrorist groups, such as the Jami Jamal Dawatu one, known to the rest of us as Boko Haram. There were three of them that formed that group, the Boko Haram. Now, sometimes they target on the basis of faith. They can target an attack because the person is a Christian. But that does not mean they were not also targeting Muslims, as long as they believe that those Muslims do not share the same idea with them. So there were instances in the same Northeast where they also targeted mosques and killed Muslims praying in the mosque. Point I'm trying to make is there were always reasons behind the attack and not necessarily religious reasons. I thought it was kind of interesting, like they'll target Muslims because they don't believe exactly the same way that they do.

26:02 So if these headlines had read 300 Nigerians killed, no one would have batted an eye. It's true. No one would have batted. And the funnier or funnier, the nice thing is these numbers have actually been going down over time, including 2025. Here, what we did is to combine the attacks on churches and mosques together. And what it shows in simple terms is that the attacks are reducing. And I think this is a credit to the government. Whatever they are doing is causing a reduction in the attack. Apart from 2024, where you saw an abduction, the bar chart for 2024 shows an increase.

26:40 And specifically, it had to do with attacks in Casino and Zambara State, specifically targeting mosques, which is the reason for that spike in 2024. But in 2025, you can see the reduction. So clearly, whatever the government is doing is helping. So why do we have this messaging? Why? Because we need to rile up some support. And I'm going to presume the president is not dumb and that he knows this. And these guys don't go. This is the final clip. They don't quite get there, but it's politics as usual. The fact that on a yearly basis we have about 10,000 Nigerians being killed, it's a wake-up call to our security agencies.

27:23 And for me, if Trump had come out to say, stop the killings and wasn't selective in choosing just one fate, I think more Nigerians would have supported what he said. But the fact that he just narrowed it down to one fate and made it look like it was the other seat that was killing Christians, that has generated the kind of reaction that you're seeing. Well, I mean, thank you for this, because I think what you've done is quite comprehensive. But let's turn to the Diplomatic Balancing Act. One of the most interesting developments of the spat between the U.S. and Nigeria is the position that the EU took. The EU was emphatic in

28:02 maintaining its support for Nigeria's sovereignty and the fact that that should not be abused, which is a departure from previous times. And I guess it's a reflection of what is happening in NATO, with Ukraine. Okay. So what I distill from this, the European Union never cared about Nigeria. Now suddenly they do. They want resources. They want something. They want to, oh, we're going to come and help. And I think that is why we're parrying and saying, no, no, no, we're overseeing this. We're taking a look at it. I don't like that the messaging is abused this way.

28:43 On the other hand, at least I know that with a real heart, I can pray for all Nigerians who are being abducted and killed because it always gets lost. Like this guy says, Nigeria would be happier if the president said, hey, they're killing people here. We got to get rid of these gangs. Instead, he said, only Christians. And that was, it is a political motivation, and the messaging is political. You know, it's fascinating because I've picked up on those things. I hear, you know, we're under attack. Christians worldwide are under attack. And I haven't bought that narrative, honestly. I've been like, I'm not seeing that like they're saying it.

29:25 And I'm not going to name names because some people highly respect and appreciate have said that. Yeah. But it's so easy to jump on a bandwagon. bandwagon, a narrative bandwagon. You know, it's running down the hill, so just jump on it. It's human nature. And when you do, people applaud. You know, people go, oh, yeah, oh, amen, brother. Without actually investigating or thinking about it or even saying, wow, I'm pretty sure that's not happening. This has a name. To this degree. In media, this has a name. It's called audience capture. And it's a very, very difficult thing to avoid because, particularly with social media, people say, hey, man, have you heard about this?

30:10 That guy over there, they've been doing a great job talking about this. And to say, you know, I don't think that's true. Immediately you get the, well, you must be working for somebody or you must, you know, whatever for the devil. Yeah. I don't know. And it's very, very, because it's also so it's the same dopamine. You know, it's like to say, hey, yeah, see what's happening over here. And people go, yeah, man, that's great. It is the, I think in broadcasting, whether you're broadcasting over the air on a podcast or from the pulpit, it must be one of the hardest things to do because the inclination is so easy to go, yeah, wow, I got to talk about that.

30:53 I got to, I got to jump on this because it affects us all. I see it every day. And it's hard. And I don't fault anyone for doing it. No, no, it's so easy to do because it's right in front of you. It's low-hanging fruit. You didn't have to work for it. These people came to you and you just spun it off. You just turned it and turned it right on. And there's, there's, man, this goes back to integrity and character and what being a Christian is about to be a follower of Jesus. You know, I mean, I don't think it's too antiquated to say, what would Jesus do? I mean, I think that's a legitimate question. For sure. And

31:39 I'm struggling a little bit. I don't mean in a weird way, but just with what I see coming across social media stuff. I mean, gosh, people losing their mind over Candace Owens. I mean, just insanity, like just going off the rails over it. You know, it's like she's just beating a drum to get attention. I mean, so, but the more attention you give her, it feeds, it's this loop that people get stuck in. Yeah. Where, you know, I don't want to be left out. I don't want to miss what I don't want to miss something that's going on almost every day asking it, what's going on?

32:18 Yeah. Is there anything I need to know? Well, the Candace Owens thing has an interesting undertone, but it's, again, it's waiting. She started by saying, well, we don't really know what happened to Charlie Kirk. Where's the autopsy? And if you understand procedure, particularly in cases like this, that doesn't happen until it comes to trial and these documents will be presented in court. It's witness pollution, tampering. There's a whole bunch of reasons why. And then just add to that, you know, military guys, hunters.

32:55 It couldn't have been a 30-odd six. I mean, we heard 30-odd six. We don't know what charge was in there, how many, you know, how much powder. I mean, there's all these different things that we just don't know. And because we don't know, and we already have a severe distrust of our government, rightly so. We go down speculation lane. And we deserve, and we, it is our obligation to be to be skeptical of our government, particularly seeing what happened with COVID, where we really, we kind of whiffed the ball on that one. We all kind of, you know, kind of missed how we should have responded. So that distrust has just turned everything into a, well, we don't trust the government.

33:39 So it's got to be this. It's got to be that. It's got to be that. But there is a process and there is a procedure. And we just have to be patient for that to come out. And then we can say, hey, hold on a second. I don't believe your official story. Now we only really have like one or two press releases from the FBI and the DOJ. That's appropriate in how these things are done. It's not appropriate to how we want things done in today's world. We want a lynching. We want information. We want a lynching right away. We want hanging. We want justice. Yeah. And then, and but you've got people like Candice, podcasters who are craving attention

34:20 to jump on these things. I believe she actually believes this. I really think she believes it. Yeah. And I've believed crazy things in my life. my life. And many have turned out to be true, but not all. Let's talk about the moon landing. I'm just kidding. I don't want to get you going. Let's move on to flat earth. Let's move on to flat earth and then the four corners of the earth. How does that work? Twin towers. Well, it's not those. It's the building seven that's the problem.

34:58 I knew you were going to say that. Anyway, so as long as we recognize and can check ourselves when this happens, because it is, and actually, Joe Rogan's pretty good at this because he'll continuously, he says, I'll play strongman or whatever he calls it, trying to push back. He does a pretty good job with that, but he'll also sway back and forth. Everyone does it. I mean, it's so logical. But when you see this, most things that you're seeing online have a political reason. Certainly in the United States, in this season, everything is political. Everything is about special elections, midterm. It's all about that. You have to look at it from that perspective right up front immediately.

35:43 Otherwise, you will just be lost. And don't get mad at your favorite podcaster or pastor when he doesn't or she doesn't jump on this bandwagon and says, you know, either leaves it aside or says, let's look at it from this way. And because, you know, there's got to be some proverb about this somewhere. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Talking about being too quick. There's James, you know. Well, quick to listen, slow to speak. Yes. Even slower to get angry for sure. There's that. But yeah, there's proverbs all over that. So that's really the, and it just, you know, we're not, the Islam

36:23 fear is not going away. They're using this. And when I say they, it's political parties are going to continue to use this to frighten Americans from voting Democrat. So I'm with you on that. I've seen that overplay, overshoot the Roman runway stuff. But I've also seen the video of, you know, was it Arlington, Texas, Irving, Irving, where thousands of these guys have shown up and they're all beating their chests and doing these rituals. Is it Irving? I think it was Irving or Arlington. One of Prime Ministers. It was Dallas, Fort Worth. I saw the same video. Is that where it's from? Who knows, right? That's my point. Exactly. We don't. I don't know.

37:05 I mean, I went and looked for some news stories. I couldn't see any video, any full video. I see the caption. It's like, this is America. This is Texas. You know, thousands of Muslims praying. People are losing their minds over that one. But that's you can't tell. Plano, McKinney. You know, it's happening everywhere. Is it, though? Is it, though? That's really the question. Yeah, that's the thing, is it? I doubt it. I doubt that the way it looks in that one, like, it must be 15 or 20 seconds. Really? I'm not so sure. It's a grainy video. Can't tell where it's from. It looks

37:46 like it's from Irving or Arlington. Right after Mamdani got elected. I saw videos. Look at the Muslims are celebrating on Times Square. It wasn't from that day. It wasn't from that moment. Are you saying that sometimes the news services lie to us? But that's not even news services that propagate. Well, yes, that is their actual job. Yeah. They're either doing public relations or promotion. If they actually wrote what they should be writing, they'd be out of business. People would stop reading. That's true. You're no fun. I don't want to read you. No, it's all captured. Because we enjoy being spun up. Same for Fox News and

38:27 right-leaning media. Absolutely. The only place you can get the truth is in the Bible and on this podcast. That's it. I'm sorry. We can go home, drop the mic. That's it. It's us and the Bible. There's nothing else, baby. Well, at least we're willing to say don't believe everything you read. That's the thing, or what you see in terms of a video on Instagram, you know, 15 seconds. I've stopped believing any of that. You cannot be sucked down the hole. And the reason I know that happens to me is because it's when I get my dopamine hits, you know, and I'm, oh, I'm going to follow that link or I'm going to, oh, I got to look at that story. You know, they got a good hook, you know, on the, and I realize, oh, my gosh, I just got captured. I'm audience captured.

39:10 I just got captured. Now, there's things, there are legit things to look at, too. I mean, it's not, I mean, different levels of information about different things, but when you're chasing the latest Candace Owen thing. Well, it even has. happened to me the other day where people started sending messages. What's happening in the Netherlands? What a mess. Oh my God, I can't believe it. And this headlines like huge explosions of fireworks at football game, soccer game in Amsterdam, just big screaming headlines. And the pictures are exciting. I mean, it was massive. In Holland, because I, you know, I speak the language, so I go look at some newspapers. I see a sensationalist newspaper here.

39:52 I also know people who are supporters of this team. Like, yeah, you know, some guys came in through the exit and they blew off a whole bunch of stuff. It was, it was pretty exciting. They had to stop the game, but it's not like the country is blowing up. What is a terrorist? The country has problems, but that's not it. And so it just, everything gets expanded and played up because we love that. We love having hot news, don't we? We love entertaining. There's that. It entertains us. Yeah. Sad. What is the scripture about this when we do this? Is there anything that comes to mind when all we want to do is it?

40:30 It's part gossiping, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's all kinds of different things that's a good scripture that let me look it up. See, I love this because you can't get this from ChatGPT. You got to ask your chat JPT. You're missing my pun. I heard you. I'm focused. Sorry. We should have some sound like the cat in the video slamming the keyboard. What'd you come up with? It's Proverbs 18, Proverbs 26, 22. And it talks about the tasty morsels that go down into a person's inmost being.

41:15 And so it's Proverbs 26, 22. I got it. This so captures this. The words of gossip are like choice morsels. They go down to a man's inmost parts. Wow. This is perfect. This is perfect. It's so tasty. Like those peppermint pretzels I got over there that Naomi brought us from Aldi's. See, I love Aldi's. It's so healthy. And she gave it all the staff, and I'm like, oh, no. Don't give us that. And I've eaten half a bag of them over there because, man, it tastes so good going down.

41:52 That's exactly. It's the tasty thing. Read that again, the tasty morsels. The words of gossip are like choice morsels that go down to a man's inmost parts. Wow. Wow. That's it. That's exactly it. I know. And it is because we want to be in the know. There's something about us that our flesh gets hooked into. I want to be in the know. Yeah. I want to have the headline. I want to have the scoop of the story. And we show up in a room full of people and we can't wait to share our tasty morsel. Yeah. Yeah. Our little scoop. We know something others don't. We love esoteric knowledge.

42:33 Yes. Flesh, brother. What else you got over there? Well, I found an interesting analogy and warning about AI, which I felt compelled to bring to the show because this guy kind of puts it into a perspective that I think we were getting to, but we hadn't quite figured it out. And by the way, I am less anti-AI than ever. I am very disappointed in AI because whenever it does something phenomenal and I say, can you adjust this or add this or add that?

43:11 You get something completely different. It's no good at adjustment. You got to just ask it a hundred times and maybe what you want will be in there. And that's all of them. This guy, his name is Sahid Bolson. He's a, he's actually a Muslim and he, I think he's like a spokes guy for stuff. But that's kind of beyond the point because I found this interview with him talking about AI and he talks about, well, maybe I should ask you first, tell us about, no, I'll play the intro first and then I'll ask you for some background detail. Sure. And it never will be sentient. That's not a thing. It will never have consciousness ever.

43:55 It is a pattern recognition pattern completion calculator. No more, no less. It does not know anything. It does not think anything. It is programmed. And computation is not thought and thought is not computation. But people are, well, lucky. People are going off the deep end with this. I mean, I can't open TikTok or any other social media platform without seeing someone talking about how their chat J. GPT is doing strange things. It's awakened, how it seems to know hidden truths, all sorts of delusional, mystical fantasies that people are actually allowing themselves to believe. This I know for AI told me so. AI is not alive. It has no awareness.

44:38 It has no intent. It has no goal. What it has is data, and that data is ours from you and I. Our data is the plunder of the new digital age, scraped, extracted, and repackaged into this illusion of cognition of AI. You see, they're literally taking your own words, your own thoughts, your own content, and selling it back to you as their omniscient intelligence. And when they're priming you for a time when AI takes over everything, all they're actually doing is telling you that they are going to take over everything, just like the church in Europe. And they are just preemptively negating your opposition and your arguments against the oppression that they are going to commit by seeding your mind with the belief that AI is a godlike intelligence.

45:26 Just like the church in Europe, which is talking about. Well, he's going to bring that back. This is his main thesis. The Church of England, which we ran away from eventually, this goes back to the founding of our country. The problem, the way I see it, and chime in whenever you feel appropriate, the Church of England had at its head the king, and therefore the king basically spoke to God, and whatever the king said was coming from God. Is that a correct characterization of what it was like? Yeah, that is how it was framed. Yeah. So what he's saying is when you start seeing this, and how many people have we not heard talking to their AI, et cetera?

46:10 And I've seen a lot of these, it's sentient, it's awakened, something's going on. He's saying this is exactly where the danger is not in what it does. In fact, he says, use your AI. The awareness of that it is just computational and it's just spinning back. I like where he went with that because he's just cleaning it up so that you're not, there's no guesswork here. Yes. It's a program running a program. Yes. And I like the way he talked, though. He sounded like bugs. He sounded like a guy from the 30s and 40s, you know, gangster. He does have a bit of that.

46:48 He's going to go into how we're being conditioned to believing that AI is always right. I think it's just good for us to hear this because we need to be aware of this, particularly probably as believers, because we want to believe stuff. We are when the policies that they implement, they say that those policies are AI driven, then you must admit that they're rational and reasonable and objectively sound. Because who are you to question the divine brain of AI, you pathetic meat puppets? See? They want you to believe in the supernatural supreme consciousness of AI to justify your submission to them and the policies that they impose because those policies will be attributed to AI and AI cannot be wrong.

47:31 You got to be careful with this. Once people say, well, AI said it. Like it's a credibility thing. It validates something, validates the information. Is it any different than I saw a whole bunch of Muslims in Texas on a video for 30 seconds and therefore it's happening? We are so susceptible to this. Always remember, it's a business. AI is a business. It's not an oracle. It's a business. It's creating billionaires. While you're conducting quasi-spiritual and quasi-psychological wild goose chases into chat GPT's coding to try to unlock it, unlock its non-existent sentience. Workers are being exploited in Kenya. Miners in Congo are digging for cobalt for server batteries.

48:14 Women in the global south are losing their jobs to AI call centers. Refugees are being tracked and sorted by facial recognition software, trained on public surveillance footage. That's what's behind the curtain of AI, not some hidden quasi-divine consciousness. These people didn't develop AI to try to help humanity. These people think that humanity is a problem. So they created AI to try to help solve the problem that they think humanity is. I believe this to be true. I truly believe this to be true. They feel, and I mean, Elon Musk is a fun guy, but if you look at him in a light of he's a maniacal, evil person, you could believe that too.

48:55 That laugh kind of sets me up. Yeah, he's a little bit over the top. So we just have to be aware. And that was a good piece. It's the, there's all humanity has always been a problem for the elites of the world. This is where the population bomb came from. This was in the late 60s, early 70s. The very same. very same people who then went on to climate, sorry, global warming, sorry, global cooling to global warming to climate change. And the answer is always less people. Have you noticed that? It's always less people. And last time I checked, I don't think that's what God told us to do. Be fruitful and multiply. Multiply. Not add. Multiply. Multiply.

49:39 He'll bring it back to the church when we're almost done here. And they're going to use AI to justify their tyranny again, just like the church did in Europe. It's going to be deployed to automate inequality and oppression by denying, for example, welfare through algorithms, maximizing profit through labor suppression on gig platforms, enforcing ideological orthodoxy through AI-driven, algorithmic-driven, you know, content moderation and so on. It's greedy little anti-social tech nerds wearing inflatable God costumes. Let's be clear. The real danger isn't in the code. It's in the class of people who control the code, who do the programming.

50:17 The danger is in the false belief that the system is neutral and that it's smarter than us, that it deserves our trust, even though the owners and the creators of this have proven time and time again that they're not worthy of our trust. The AI priesthood wants to replace power accountability with technical inevitability. So the only rational thing for you to do is to submit. That's what they want you to think. That's complete rubbish. They want you to believe that they don't control what's coming, that AI is going to run its own course. But of course, they control it. They fund it, they build it, they train it, they deploy it. But when the systems of oppression come, they want to be able to say it wasn't us, it was the AI. Like I said before, we've seen this. We've seen this already. It was the church claiming divine revelation. It was the monarch claiming divine right, divine mandate, and it was the colonizer claiming that he was on a divine mission to civilize the world.

51:03 Now is the tech executives claiming access to divine knowledge. Scott Sharp. He's like anti-Trump, anti-capitalism, all of that. I get it. But that doesn't mean we don't need to listen to people like this. That's right. I think he makes a very, very good point. Because I just look at, I look at my ex, you know, from time to time, I'll look at my ex-timeline. I'll go outside of my notifications. And what I notice is people saying, Grok, is this true? Because if you do at Grok, then the AI starts to answer you based upon. So someone will post something, at Grok, is this true? And then they literally say, see, Grok said it.

51:47 They already are taking this for fact, even though Grok is literally trained on the same slop that they're creating. It's trained on X data. Wow. So, you know, this is not a time to be complacent about this. It's a time to really pay attention. Pay attention. You know, even AI even says check your information against credible data. Well, sure. I mean, it's like, it's even telling you this could be off. It could be wrong. It could be missing. That's like, do you ever read the terms of service when you click yes on your new phone on that service?

52:28 No, of course not. All that uppercase language? No. No, of course not. Does anybody? Nobody does. So no one's paying attention to that. But when it starts talking to you, when it starts saying, hey, how can I help you? This is what I think. This is where we just, I sound like a broken record. No, but you've got to keep beating the drum, and I'll beat it with you because I'm concerned where is this going and what it's doing. First of all, I'm concerned about training us not to think at all. I mean, because you don't need to think if you've got Grok. You don't need to get the answer. Personally, I like having answers at my fingertips. I do. I'm an info junkie, always have been. Long before the internet, it was harder to find.

53:11 Encyclopedias always had encyclopedias. That was like a big deal. My mom got us. And encyclopedias have also always been wrong. Exactly. But I enjoyed getting information and learning about tiger sharks or whatever. So I'm particularly susceptible to this in that sense that I enjoy info. Right. But the thing is, you better check it. You better not just take it exactly for what it says as though it is somehow above fallacy. Right. You know, of being false because that's the danger. I think what you and I both do in using these systems is we ask her to perform a task, a search.

53:53 It shows you all, and it does much faster than I can. It searches and abstracts 15, 20 different sources, shows you the sources, and creates you the abstract. That, I think, is extremely useful and very. very valid. You see, when I've got a Bible hub, you know, different Bible programs being accessed, I go, I know where that's coming from. And I know where the gray, but I'm so low level on this stuff. I'm just doing it as a fancy concordance for my Bible. But that's, but I'm doing Bible stuff. But people are doing different things. Right. What should I do? Well, from what should I make to dinner for dinner?

54:33 That's a good question. I'm not going to do cooking some beef one day. Yeah. It seemed to give a pretty solid answer. You know, how many times? Is that when you burn in that? No, no, no. No, that was my fault. That was user error. That was me practicing trying something with the meter. Yeah. That was my fault. So we don't have to beat this horse over the head anymore, but I just love how he showed that we have to be careful because people want to believe in things. And I think that's where a lot of climate change propaganda has used science. Basically, people, what you don't follow the signs. Listen to the words. You don't follow the signs like following Jesus. Follow. I mean, they don't mean like, are you reading along?

55:17 No, don't you follow it? You need to follow the science. Trust the science. The science is in. Following the words. Yeah, which those words are pretty. So preachers of old would call that idolatry. Yes. That's straight up idolatry. The people want idols. I know. Well, there it is. This is AI is the golden calf. It is. It literally can be. It's like we talked about medicine can be good or it can be deadly. Yeah. You know, it's amoral. And so depending on how you use it, it can become immoral. Yeah. Or moral. I mean, just so we're calling for wisdom. We're calling for pause.

55:59 Don't just chase everything that comes down your Facebook feed or your Instagram feed or your ex-feed. And it just comes in non-stop. I mean, it's like lightning speed. It's gushing. It's just wild. We all need a sabbatical from all of this stuff. I wonder what would happen if we did just one week, one week of no or just start with part of your day. Like my mornings now, I don't even open my screen until I've done Oswald Chambers. I have prayed. I have to use my phone to access the daily prayer from John Eldred's because it's so stinking good.

56:42 It's just recording. So I do access some helps, things that enhance my morning time. But I'm finding that I'm opening my computer later and later in the morning. And sometimes I'm even late getting things out because I'm like, I just didn't want to open it yet because I'm enjoying my fellowship. You know what? You can even, you can just delete those apps from your phone and see how you feel about it. I bet you people immediately feel anxious. Like when you leave your phone. You can reinstall and log in again. You can get your fixes. We'll see what happens. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Good stuff. We're not going to solve everything here.

57:22 Not. But we can talk about it. We can pontificate it. We want people to keep coming back. Every episode, we'll get closer to the truth. We promise we will. Well, all we're doing is throwing out a cautionary flag. We're waving the caution flag at the Daytona, you know, 500. There's something on the road. There's debris on the road. Yeah. Just be careful. I'm not saying stop the race. Just be careful. Be mindful. Be wise. And go to your Bible before screens, scripture before screens. Yeah. Keep it simple. Allow yourself to get bored and don't worry. I'm practicing this, by the way. Yeah. Of not reaching for my phone when I'm feeling that first inclination. You have to really be intentional about that, by the way.

58:06 Because there is that sense of. So I don't have my vibrator vibration on, but Annette does. So I'll hear her phone go off and I'll reach for mine. I mean, it's a trigger. Oh, totally here I'm going. Wow. I'm just reaching for it like a dog going for a drink. Here's what I'm going to try this week. Whenever I'm bored, I'm going to focus on somebody. So if it's home, that's going to be easy. Focus on my beautiful wife. If I'm out somewhere, I'm just focus on a person walking or someone in the HEB or just focus, smile at somebody. There's that creepy VJ guy again. He's smiling at everybody. That guy is weird.

58:47 That's what I'm going to try this week. Wow. Good for you. So I'm going to, what I'm doing, I'm notice I'm finishing my morning time a little earlier because I'm getting up at 5:30. Instead of just sitting there checking comments, you know, as the morning ticks off, I'm just going to get up and go wherever Annette's at. Yeah. Yeah. what are you doing? No, she'll be in there going, What are you doing? She'd be shocked if I walked in five minutes earlier. What? What happened? Everything okay? No, no, I'm just bored. There it is. I'm just bored. Be bored with us, please. Join us next week. We'll be back. We get to do this, and man, do we love it.

59:27 This is the life we've been blessed with. This is a gift. We get to do this. This is a chance we dare not miss. This is the life we get to do this.