Culture & Christianity: The Allen Jackson Podcast - Elon Musk Exposes Government Fraud, Abuse & Waste

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

It’s up to us to bring God’s truth back into our culture. It may feel like an impossible assignment, but there’s much we can do. Join Pastor Allen Jackson as he discusses today’s issues from a biblical perspective. Find thought-provoking insight from Pastor Allen and his guests, equipping you to lead with your faith in your home, your school, your community, and wherever God takes you. Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3JsyO6ysUVGOIV70xAjtcm?si=6805fe488cf64a6d Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/culture-christianity-the-allen-jackson-podcast/id1729435597

Welcome back to culture and Christianity. Our objective is to take our faith beyond the walls of the church. I'm grateful for the walls of the church and what we're able to do on our campuses and in our buildings and in our sanctuaries, but our faith has to be vibrant beyond those buildings and those places. And we hope this podcast is helping add some momentum to that. This session, I'm going to give you an update on kind of current events and what's been happening. I've been outside the church a little bit the last couple weeks. I have traveled a bit.

I was in Washington, D.C. for about a day and a half for CPAC, conservative political action something committee. But I got to hear the vice president, J.D. Vance. I heard Elon Musk. I heard the Attorney General, Pam Bondi. It was helpful to hear them make the presentation for their agendas and what they're doing. It was clear that they have the imagination. There are a team of people working together in this season, not something that's easily gleaned from the news. And then last week, I spent a couple of days in Dallas with the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, the NRB.

A lot of the more influential platforms and voices in religious broadcasting. And that was a positive report. They were having record attendance and participation and open doors. There's certainly a new atmosphere for Christian broadcasting since the election. a bit more freedom and opportunities. So all that said that I come to my comments today, not just with the interviews from the television show and the people I engage with,

but a bit broader arena, a lot happening. We were walking through a season of unprecedented discontinuity, kind of a, there are so many breaks with the past. You know, in big picture, if we take a step back for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, thousands of years, the life skills of a grandfather were adequate for his grandson to flourish in the world. So you could take a skill, a trade, a means of earning a livelihood, and a grandfather could pass that down to his grandson and would expect everything to go well. We live in a very different world today.

You know, my grandfather's first job required him to have a team of horses, and he had to bring the team. I doubt very many people listening to this would even know how to harness a team of horses any longer. My dad was a veterinarian, so I got a head start on that. But to understand how dramatic that change is, the Apostle Paul and my grandfather, and for that matter, Genghis Khan, all shared the same thing in common,

the fastest means of land transportation available to them as young men was a horse. And now in a relatively short period of time, the care feeding and how to brought and saddle a horse is lost from us for anything other than a hobby. That rate of change brings tremendous discontinuity. It's disorienting. It leaves us not understanding how to navigate where true north is to maintain our boundaries. And we're walking through that and how we communicate, how we learn, how information is processed. When I began my academic career, I don't need to go back

to Genghis Khan. When I went to the university level, the card catalog in the library was still an essential part of doing research. That sounds really antiquated today. I've got access to more information on my telephone than I had in most of the libraries I visited. All of those things combined leave us in this state where our equilibrium is a little awkward. And what it does is it tends to make you want to restrict what you look at.

If you're dizzy, you don't spin around quickly to see everything you can see. You try to limit your field of view until you regain your equilibrium. Well, it seems to me that we are a bit dizzy. We're dizzy with the boundaries of our lives, with moral perspectives in our lives, with right and wrong, with good and evil, with who do we trust for information, discontinuity, those breaks with the past. And we're seeing things that we're not familiar with, and we're trying to sort it out. So we're going to see if I can help just a bit with God's help. He's the one at the end of the day. You know, the best way I know to maintain your equilibrium, and I'll cut to the chase, I'll come back to it before we're going.

We're done, is stay grounded in your Bible. I know that sounds like such an oversimplification, but it's not. The wisdom of God will guide you through tremendous cultural change. It's timeless. The Bible is address of literature. It was put together hundreds, thousands of years ago, across many different cultures, by many different personalities, and we find it addresses the world that we live in today. Something for that to happen, that requires the spirit of God.

It's worth an investment of your time on a daily basis. join us in our Bible reading plan. It'll change your life. I think I'll start with Ukraine. That's been in the headlines for the last few days. The president of Ukraine made his now infamous visit to the White House and the Oval Office. And it was, I think it was a resounding success. To be honest, I think it was an amazing revelation of the character of what we've been dealing with in Ukraine. Zelensky came in an attempt to force a deal that President Trump and the United States had not agreed to, looking for security concessions that had not been afforded. And when he didn't get them, it really, I think he attempted to embarrass and humiliate the president, knowing that there's a tremendous media audience for that, that he would have tremendous support in Europe if he could humiliate President Trump.

and I was so grateful for President Trump's plain-spoken, clear-minded defense of our nation. We have sent hundreds of billions of dollars to Ukraine. There have been more than a million lives lost. And there was an opportunity to take a significant step towards peace and the ending of that war, which every voice I know that has visited Ukraine and is aware of the circumstances has been saying to me for years now, the war could have been ended. in 30 days if we had had the will to do so. And I thought what that Oval Office meeting and discussion revealed was that Zelensky was not

ready for that piece. And that was important for us to see. I don't think it should have been conducted behind closed doors. I had an unusual experience this week. I'm at the altar at the front of the church after every service to meet the people and talk to people and pray for people. and there was a line of people this weekend, but a man slipped up in the line,

very quiet. He had a gentle spirit. Didn't feel like a passive man at all, but he had a quiet spirit. I've been doing a series on angels, demons, and you. So I'm a little more aware of angels and that set of things. And I have no way of validating this. I'll give you my opinion.

It's worth what you paid for the podcast. It felt like an angelic message to me. The man stepped up to me. me, he introduced himself to me by his first name. He didn't tell me why he was in Middle Tennessee. He had an accent, Eastern European accent. He said, he told me his name, and he said, I'm from Ukraine. I'm a pastor there, and I work with many churches. And he said, Pastor Allen, the war has to stop. And there wasn't a great deal of emotion in him, but there was a tremendous amount of sincerity. and it settled it in me more than any external source,

anything that I would have heard in the broadcast media. I felt like I understood. It confirmed what I'd heard from multiple people who'd been there with military and humanitarian efforts. We've spent a lot of time and money and effort helping people there. I mean, I think it's been worthwhile. But I think what we saw, and the media's take on this, You know, my rule of thumb these days is the legacy media have lost their perspective on the truth.

It isn't always clear to me what the goal of their manipulation is, but it's very clear to me that the majority of the time their goal is manipulation. While they were declaring to us that Trump was such a failure and that he should have been kinder to our allies in the world, they didn't remind us about President Obama and President Biden and the treatment they afforded the Prime Minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, when he visited our country. They did some of the most disrespectful things you could do to a foreign leader. And at the time, Israel was and continues to be our strongest ally in the Middle East. It's not what happened in the Oval Office was unprecedented in the lack of gratitude

that Zelensky showed. He could have begun. with a thank you to the American people. He didn't in the Oval Office, and he didn't that evening when he had an interview on Fox News with Brett Baer. Brett gave him the opportunity on multiple occasions to kind of mend fences and extend an olive branch

or to apologize, and he declined all of those opportunities and continued to double down. I think the conflict in Ukraine needs to stop. I did an interview just last week with a retired naval officer, he'd made over 950 landings on a carriers, a captain. And he was very familiar with the circumstances in Ukraine. And he said that the rare earth deal was not fundamentally economic,

that the place where the rare earth minerals would have been mined was right on the border of the territory that Russia was acquiring in the proposed peace deal. And our presence there for economic purposes was a security declaration for Ukraine. that if the United States was there for those rare earth minerals and we were doing the mining, that our presence would have prohibited any further thought of expansion by Russia. And he said to me on the air, you may have seen the broadcast on Alan Jackson now. He said, don't understand this as a purely economic initiative. He said it's very much about the security of Ukraine.

Again, I think we have to pray for our president and our vice president. I thought they conducted themselves in a stellar fashion of standing. up for our nation and for the people who are dying in that. It's been described to me by military people who spent their lives understanding that as a meat grinder. They said the Russians have a tremendous will to suffer. And they'll go back to Stalingrad and the World War and talk about the horrible suffering that the Russians endured, but they stopped the Germans. And that's happening again in our world today with countless thousands of people losing their lives every month. It needs to stop, and I believe our president is determined to see it stop.

And for that, I believe we should all be praying. The other seems like news leader coming out of Washington for the past several days has been what Elon Musk is doing with Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency. I saw Elon in Washington with his chainsaw. I really didn't think he probably knew how to start the chainsaw, but then I barely know how to start my computer. So I know how to make the chainsaw work, but I would not strike fear in anybody's heart if I came in to do an audit on a federal government department. So I'm grateful for Elon.

I thought for a man of the success he had, the intelligence he has, the wealth he has accumulated. There was a humility of spirit that I was honestly a bit surprised to see. I pray for him. It's a very difficult place. His life is in jeopardy. I'm sure far beyond what we know. I know the kind of threats I get, and I'm a country preacher. I cannot imagine the hatred that is being expressed towards Elon Musk.

If you're not praying for him on a daily basis, you're missing an opportunity. What he is uncovering is unsettling. The fraud, the abuse, the waste, the unimaginable amounts of money that are being siphoned off. and those are our dollars. I would remind you the government doesn't make money. The government simply collects our money. And when you see these crazy numbers, hundreds of billions of dollars being sent to various places,

foreign countries, for in U.S. aid, but also to politicians, you know, I think we should be unhappy. I think we should refuse to tolerate any longer. People who go to Washington, D.C., to serve, You know, the idea of our government was servant leaders, citizens who go and serve for a season and then return to their job and their place in our society. And we have a very lengthy list now of people who go to Washington to serve. And in a very short amount of time, their net worth is multiplied by millions of dollars that cannot be understood by the salaries they're earning.

And they offer no explanation. and then they lecture us on how we should be willing to pay greater percentages of our income or to pay our fair share. And the whole time, they have their snout in the trough, siphoning off the resources that we have sent them to provide for the welfare of our nation. And if you did that in a business, if the leader of a business, if the leader of a church profited by millions and millions of dollars, at the same time the church was being plunged into bankruptcy,

we would recognize that as the worst kind of leadership. Well, that's exactly what's been happening in Washington, D.C. For decades now, it's not about Republican or Democrat. This is a uniparty objective and agenda. It's why I think the current administration has been so hated and so vehemently vilified in the media and elsewhere is they like the situation as it existed, because if you ever got a seat at the table,

You can get your own snout in the trough, and you could change the trajectory of your family tree for generations. It's unacceptable. It's abhorrent. We shouldn't tolerate it. I talked to a friend at the gym the other day, and they said, Alan, you know anybody that has access to money is going to steal. No, I don't know that. Stealing is wrong. We shouldn't accept it. We shouldn't tolerate it. We shouldn't tolerate it in ourselves, in our families. We shouldn't tolerate it in our community. And we certainly shouldn't tolerate it. in our federal government. And I pray that Elon Musk is willing to continue to serve. It's a sacrifice for him. He had a very full life with very significant commitments in the business community. And he stepped aside from that to help our nation. We are $36 trillion in debt, and that's the tip of the iceberg.

We have a set of financial commitments that make that number seem small. What we're doing is unsustainable. if there isn't dramatic, radical change, we will forfeit our freedom and our liberty. And to be candid, it is stupefying to hear the members of Congress on either side of the aisle complaining about that while they crow that they were in charge of the purse strings. You're right, it's their job to oversee the financial expenditures,

which means they're the ones accountable for the 36 trillion-plus dollars of debt that we're in. And for all of the talk and the meandering around and the verbal overspill that they're going to do something about it, they continue to plunge us into more and more debt. And Elon Musk and the Doge crew with the President Trump's permission are pulling back the curtain on the fraud, the abuse, the stealing, the sharing of funds with their like-minded friends, and while they're complaining about it, they're indicting themselves. I think we should pray on a daily basis that they'll continue to find the fraud.

There will be pain involved. If more than 90% of the federal workforce were not working full time in the office and haven't been since COVID, it's going to be painful either to have to go back to work. It's going to be painful to lose a job because you refuse to go to work. Mr. Musk has made the outlandish request that someone submit five bullet points from what you did the previous week. You could submit 105 bullet points if you had a whole week, I would hope. You know, to begin to expect our federal employees to work with efficiency and effectiveness and accountability is not outlandish. Every elected official should expect that of the people that they oversee and should imagine that the American people would expect.

that of them. We should no longer tolerate government excess, abuse, sloppiness, and I don't want to hear any more of the words. I want to see the outcome. And I'll tell you what I'm really watching for. It's a biblical word, but the concept isn't biblical. If there's no repentance, there's no real change. Repentance carries with it two meanings. It's a change of mind. I've been thinking about this the wrong way and a change of behavior. I've been acting the wrong way. And when I hear from the officials in Washington that have been there for decades, real repentance, I have thought about this wrong, and I have behaved wrong, then I will trust them to oversee what's next. Without repentance, they're simply stalling. They're trying to run out the clock until they can

be in power again. They're waiting for some event. They will give them a greater opportunity in the electoral arena, and they can shift the balance of power, and they can dip their snout more deeply into the trough. I'm not impressed. I'm not interested. We cannot sustain what we're doing, and I'm very grateful for what Mr. Musk is doing. A few minutes online with Google or in social media, and you'll see the latest list of the day on where the fraud and the abuse is. Tens of thousands of people on Social Security more than 110 years old. Not only collecting Social Security, but other government benefits because their Social Security account is still alive and open. And then that's just a tiny tip of the iceberg.

It's unbelievable the fraud and the stealing and the waste that has been taking place. We shouldn't tolerate it anymore. A government contract should not be a license to steal. I had a conversation with a state governor when he was newly elected. We weren't close friends, but we were acquainted enough to have a private conversation. And he said to me, Alan, he said, you cannot imagine the amount of waste. He said, I can't even pay attention if it's less than tens of millions of dollars. He said, I try to focus on things that are more than tens of millions of dollars,

so maybe I can make an impact at that arena. We've tolerated this for too long. I don't believe we should be tolerant anymore. You know, another item that's changing pretty dramatically, I've had some conversations in the last few days with friends in Israel. I had the opportunity to sit with Yale Eckstein, with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews a day or two ago and talk about the hostages and the release of the hostages

and that family whose two small children were murdered by Hamas, it's really indescribable. Those two small children were strangled to death. The lack of humanity on behalf of Hamas. And if I can use the previous sentence, there's been no expression of repentance. no remorse, no regret. In fact, they say every time they have the opportunity,

they intend to annihilate the Jewish people and the United States of America. They forfeited their right to Gaza. The people of Gaza, the ones there who are not willing to support Hamas, have suffered horribly because of their presence. They have to be eliminated. President Trump, when he stood up and said that what we've done and said for 70 years in Gaza has not worked,

We need a new approach. It changed the dialogue around the nation of Israel and the people who live there. And I fully expect to see that dialogue walked forward and not just include Gaza. I think it will now include the West Bank. I believe Israel will have to have sovereignty over all the territory on the west side of the Jordan River. I believe there will be people who live there other than Jewish people. there are today. There's almost two million Israeli citizens who are

Arabs or Druze. They have all the rights of citizens. They serve in the Knesset, the Israeli Congress. And I think what Mr. Trump said has changed that dialogue. It's a lot to process. Israel still has wars in Gaza

and war on the northern border and a lot of political turmoil inwardly in the nation of Israel. But I truly believe the only way for the best outcome for the Palestinian people, the people of the West Bank, and those who choose to live in Gaza is to be under Israeli authority. The various attempts to do that otherwise have brought tremendous pain and suffering to the people of the land. And the real, if you need a recent example from history

to help perhaps the civil war in Syria that's been taking place, it led ultimately to the the exit of Assad in Syria, but there was a civil war there for a decade, started back under Obama's presidency. Remember Obama drew a red line and said if they used chemical weapons on their people that he would intervene? They used chemical weapons on their own people and he didn't intervene. So millions of Syrians left Syria and went into Europe, as many as five million of them left. There was no cry from the Muslim world on the Muslim street. from the UN, from the NGOs, there was just, there was no outcry that that group of people who were pushed into Europe as a result of war and bloodshed and violence in Syria, there was no request

that they have the privilege or that they had the right to be resettled in their historic homeland. They have been absorbed into Europe, into the countries of Europe, much to the light of the UN and all those places I mentioned a moment ago. Well, if that was true for the citizens of Syria, why is the conversation that the Palestinian people have to maintain a place in a historic homeland or there can be no peace in the Middle East? It wasn't a prerequisite for peace in Syria. You know, we have heard multiple calls for humanitarian ceasefires in Gaza that the indiscriminate killing cannot go on, that it has to be stopped, that innocent civilians are suffering. our own president, the previous administration, the United Nations, the NGOs. It has been the drumbeat in the legacy media.

At the same time that the war in Ukraine was going forward, and exponentially more people were dying, civilian populations were being slaughtered. I know for a fact, I've had personal conversations that apartment buildings, schools, hospitals were being targeted for destruction. and there wasn't the slightest suggestion of a humanitarian ceasefire. They're even reluctant to end the war today. So there's a new message in Israel. I believe it will lead to a new arrangement that will bring greater freedom and prosperity to all the people in the land of Israel. But I believe between where we are today and that point in time,

there will be some bumpy discussions. You know, the last time Mr. Trump was in the White House, he moved the embassy. All the embassies were in Tel Aviv. Jerusalem, the Muslim world was making claims to Jerusalem because of the temple mount. Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Quran. It's not mentioned at any place that Muhammad was engaged in Jerusalem. What is mentioned is that he made a night journey to heaven. and so they attach Jerusalem as the point from which he made that night journey.

It's not one of the holy cities of Islam. It is the holiest city for the Jewish people and a holy city for the Christian people. And because of that, the nations of the world didn't want to put their embassies in Jerusalem because they didn't want to anger the Muslim world. A number of American presidents, both of the Bushes, Obama, Clinton, all said, they would move the embassy to Jerusalem when they were campaigning for office, and none of them did. Mr. Trump did it, and he did it expeditiously.

He didn't build a new building. He found a building that was there and repurposed it, saving hundreds of millions of dollars. He changed the discussion with the Abraham Accords, and I believe God is going to use him again to change the discussion with his acknowledgement about Gaza. When that plain statement of truth was made, it brought a clarity to what's happening

that had eluded us in the West for decades. So keep watching that. I think you will see a lot of movement there in the weeks and the months to come. Marco Rubio, our Secretary of State, has funneled $4 billion to Israel since he's been appointed, helping them recover from the war

and resupply the munitions that have been exhausted. Our government had not been giving them the munitions they needed the one thing I think you should watch for is Iran and their nuclear weapon. They're determined to have nuclear weapons. If they do, it changes not only the order of the Middle East. It changes the order of the world. They have said they'll use it to destroy Israel.

You should believe them. We should believe them. They've said they will use nuclear weapons on the United States. If they have them, we should believe them. And I believe there will be some attempt to disrupt Iran from completely, leading the circle on that nuclear device. Now, we'll have to see that's in the near future, not the distant future. It's worth praying about.

The other big change since this administration was inaugurated is our southern border. Amazingly, mysteriously, inexplicably, I'm being cynical. The border crossings have almost completely stopped. We've been told for the last four years that our border was secure, that we shouldn't pay attention to the hundreds of thousands of people every month that we're pouring across our border. The tens of thousands of people that we saw in our, we see in our own communities that are impacting education,

they're impacting health care, they're impacting our security and our safety. I think we can say today the border is as secure as it has been in recent decades. Migration across that border is at historic lows. I continue to be asked questions in every format where I'm available, whether it's broadcast, radio, if I do conference calls, if I'm in live settings with seminars, we seem to have a little trouble unpacking our attitude towards

immigration. I don't believe it should be that complicated. If the description of a behavior begins with illegal, that means it's not good. illegal immigration is not good. We have a formal immigration policy. I've helped many people immigrate to this nation from different countries in the world. Over many periods of years, it's not easy. It can be expensive.

There are lines of people waiting to come into our nation legally, many of them in some distressful places around the world. We have taken that and morphed to, into something completely different. We have had multiplied millions. We don't really know how many. The numbers are in the tens of millions of people who've come into our nation illegally. That should no more be acceptable to us than making an illegal withdrawal from the bank or taking groceries out of the grocery store illegally, meaning you didn't pay for them. It's not an issue of whether you're hungry or you wanted a better cut of meat than you could afford

or you were dissatisfied with the person that owns the grocery store, it's illegal. And until we reconcile that by something more than a change of language, we have a problem that will affect not only our lives, but the lives of our children and our grandchildren. The administration is currently doing their best to round up criminal illegal aliens. Not everyone who's here illegally, but the people who have come here illegally and then without, remorse are committing illegal acts. It's difficult to believe, but we are watching. You and I watch this on a daily basis. Major American cities doing everything in their power to stop Tom Holman and his team of people from arresting and deporting people who are here illegally, who are criminals in their behavior. I'll tell you what I think will happen. I mean, over the weekend,

They were tipping off whole regions of the state of Virginia that Holman's crew was coming to arrest the criminal illegal aliens, which makes the job much more difficult for the people working with ICE and law enforcement. It makes them much more vulnerable. In many of the sanctuary cities, if they have already arrested them, they release them before and they won't hand them over to ICE, which means that our border agents and our law enforcement have to go into the country. community, put people at risk, put themselves at risk. It seems like to me, and it's, I pray I'm wrong, but it's only a matter of time until one of those agents suffers horribly because of the behavior of these sanctuary cities and the people who continue to leak this information. We need clarity of thought.

People who are committing crimes need to be taken off the street. and if they're in our nation illegally, they should be removed from our nation. That's not complicated. And if an elected official protects them, supports them, aids and abets them, my humble opinion, they forfeited their right to lead in our nation. Every elected official takes an oath of office to uphold the laws of the city, the state, the nation where we serve. And if they're opposing that, they have forfeited their leadership.

it's not compassion. It truly is not compassion. It's a lack of compassion for the people who are suffering because people have come here by breaking our laws who are come here and are behaving in a criminal fashion that are disrupting education or business or health care. It's not compassionate for the people whose taxes are being used by the hundreds of billions of dollars

to support people who've come here illegally. while we're $36 trillion in debt, that debt has to be paid off either by devaluing our currency and thus devaluing the hard assets that we hold, our homes, and whatever else you consider to be an asset in your life, the only way for that debt to be paid down. We either have to earn the money or we have to devalue the things that we hold so we can pay down with dollars that have less value. And all of that is being contributed to mightily. by the open border policy.

So the closing of that border should be celebrated. I take that collection of things. There's something that's missing in the public square. It's certainly missing in the legacy media. It's missing in much of the political discussion. I would think everybody in our nation would be celebrating that our southern border is closed. That there aren't hundreds of thousands of people pouring into our nation illegally, making our cities left safe, our educational system less effective.

I would think everybody in our nation on either side of the political aisle would be celebrating the exposure of fraud and waste in our government spending, the opportunity to operate more efficiently and effectively, and to target the expenditures of our hard-earned dollars to accomplish the things that we are told by our leaders that they want to accomplish. We don't see those celebrations taking place in the streets. We don't hear them being lauded daily in the media reports. We don't hear the political discussions coming out of Washington or out of many of our state capitals celebrating those things. It's tragic. It is tragic. So let's decide to use our voices.

You know, at the end of the day, I'm a pastor. I serve a local congregation. I have for quite a while. I'm with that group of people every week. And the question that I'm asked 100 to 1 more than anything else is what can we do? You know, most of us don't feel like we've got much power in Washington. The governors aren't calling and asking for our opinion. And I think there's almost a sense of despair that settles on us. And we go, well, my voice doesn't matter. So we step back and just we put blinders on

and we don't pay attention. Well, I want to invite you away from that response. I don't believe it's fueled by the right set of conclusions. I think you do matter. I think our opinions do matter. I think our voices are significant. You see, I believe our names are known in the halls of heaven. And that when we use the authority that we've been given, the God of heaven, the almighty God, who created the heavens and the earth and everything that's in them and oversees the nations of the earth, who sets up rulers, the scripture says, and who removes them, I think that your voice in those halls of heaven has profound influence.

And we can't afford to simply be overwhelmed at that. the discontinuity of the magnitude of the change, or say, I don't understand everything. I don't have to understand everything. I can pray about the things I understand. I can pray about my community. I can pray about the schools that I know about. I can pray about the church where I worship.

You know, all of those places where you have just a bit of insight and understanding, you begin to talk to the Lord about it. If we will do that, it will change. See, I think the best response is to come back. to an intentional commitment to the fundamentals that you and I know undergird our faith. I don't believe it's an oversimplification. If God had wanted me in the White House, he would have put me there. He didn't put me there.

He put me in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. That means prayer is my best resource. And I'm okay with that. In fact, I'm pretty much delighted about that. But those fundamentals that you and I share, a commitment to pray, a commitment to read our Bible in a systematic way, a daily basis, it from the beginning to the end, every year. Join us in our Bible reading, the fellowship with other like-minded believers. I will not give my discretionary time. I work a good bit. I have to do a

lot of things with people across a broad spectrum of life and beliefs and practices. But when I have time that's mine to decide, doesn't belong to somebody else, I spend my discretionary time with people who strengthen my faith, who encourage me to trust God, to honor God with my life. I cannot afford to give that up, and neither can you. Fellowship with like-minded people. People say, I don't have to go to church to be a Christian. No, you're right, you don't. But I don't believe you'll be able to maintain your balance as a Christ follower

without fellowship with like-minded believers. Go to church, find a church where they honor the authority of Scripture, the redemptive work of Jesus. You can be taught and learn a lot of ways. a lot of social media platforms. We've got a wonderful set of tools these days where we can be given information that will feed us spiritually.

You need the strengthens of the support from a local group of like-minded believers. Don't require them to minister or preach or teach at the level of your favorite, whomever, wherever. That's not a fair burden. And if you watch a professional sporting event, a football game, a baseball game, whatever it may be, then you go watch a local high school team. You enjoy the local high school because you know the families and the students that are involved.

You're not expecting them to compete at the same level that you would at a professional level. Well, bring that same sense of joy to the word of God being shared in your community. Don't make the measuring stick Franklin Graham. I'm grateful for Franklin Graham and all that they do with Samaritan. purse, but don't put that burden on your local church. If they honor the authority of scripture and the redemptive work of Jesus, you stand in that place and encourage those people. Put the fundamentals in place. And then let me add one thing to that. Oftentimes now we can see the greater need. You can see a need beyond your church, your community, the waste and frauds

being exposed, the Zelensky's been exposed. You see this greater need. What do you do when you see that. Well, here's my suggestion. Don't be frightened by it. Don't be frustrated by the greater need. Focus on the fundamentals. Focus on the fundamentals that we talked about. Community, fellowship, prayer, reading your Bible. You see, those fundamentals are our preparation. Here's what I've learned about God. I'm not a beginner anymore. That God will issue the assignment when you and I are prepared. He loves us too much to give us an assignment that we haven't prepared for. That's destructive. It's destructive if you do it to a child. We talk about age-appropriate learning. They have age-appropriate diet. We give them age-appropriate responsibilities. All of that is dependent upon good parenting and helping those children to grow up physically, emotionally, spiritually.

Well, in our role with God, if we will commit ourselves to the preparation, the fundamentals that enable us to be able to sustain spiritual responsibility, responsibilities, then God can trust us with greater assignments. So don't allow your awareness of the greater need to frighten you. You spend energy, time, determination to do the best you can, to be prepared in the place you are, given the life season and stage you're in. And then as you're prepared, God will give you assignments to match your preparation. And in that way, we will change our world. It doesn't sound very sexy, I know. We have to choose to put on the whole armor of God. We have to choose to say no to ungodliness. Just don't tolerate it in your life anymore. I can't afford it in mine. Oh, I still face temptations and invitations and shortcuts. And a lot of times they're

appealing. That's why I need godly people around me. And so do you. We've got to have that help so we can say no to ungodliness. And yes, to godliness. It'll make us increasingly different. We'll stand further and further apart from the larger majority of the crowd. It's worth it. We'll be renewed in our mind and we will find ourselves in a place where we can stand and make a difference for the kingdom. I know I've got to wrap it up, but one of the best biblical examples of that I know is Daniel. He's a young man in a foreign country. He's a slave. He has suffered physical mutilation in order to survive and serve

in the role he finds himself in in the Babylonian government. And he's included in the advisors to the king, and the king is angry with his advisors and says they're all to be murdered at sunrise. And the message comes to Daniel. And Daniel says, God will

show me what the king wants to hear, so he won't be angry. Like, wow. He has until sunrise or he's going to be executed. And he has a relationship with God that gives him the confidence to say, God will show me a dream that the king had. But what I'm suggesting is that you and I can begin to prepare for our Daniel moments.

Hopefully it's not where we face execution, but that if we will prepare ourselves, then God can trust us with a place. Daniel changed the direction of an empire. And he did it not because he was elected to a powerful place. He did it from the seat of a slave. You and I don't have to have an elected office that brings great power or the wealth of Elon Musk. We may not be celebrated in the academic world, but if we will give attention to the fundamentals that bring to us a profound awareness of a living God and we recognize the voice of his spirit, he'll send a messenger to you to say the war in Ukraine needs to stop. I don't know if that was a pastor from Ukraine or an angel, but I know God brought me a message yesterday.

so that I understood how to pray for my friends in Ukraine. I want to encourage you not to be overwhelmed, not to be frightened by the change. Change is coming and it's going to come more rapidly, more dramatically, and in a more sweeping way than we've ever seen before. There'll be mistakes made. There always are when great changes are made. But I believe the trajectory of it is going to take us to a better place

if the church, not a particular denomination, not a particular congregation, if the people of God will come back to the fundamentals and we will begin to prepare ourselves. God will use us to bring light into a world where there's been too much darkness. And we will see a future for our children and grandchildren that will cause us to rejoice for all of eternity. The podcast is culture and Christianity. There's never been a greater need for the voice of the church in this nation than there is right now. I want to encourage you, no matter what you're facing, no matter how to grave the challenge,

no matter how difficult the season, our God is faithful, and he will be faithful to you. I look forward to seeing you soon on culture and Christianity or join us on one of other other platforms. You can follow us through the week. God bless you and don't despair. There's a battle raging in the earth, and it's of greater significance in what's taking place between Russia and Ukraine, or even what's happening between Republicans and Democrats, and Democrats are progressives and conservatives, wherever you imagine there's a conflict.

I'm talking about a spiritual battle. Spiritual forces, they'll impact your life today, I assure you. Well, I've written a book, Angels, Demons, and You to help us be prepared to be triumphant in the midst of this conflict. We're not conscientious objectors. We're ambassadors for a kingdom. We're in a spiritual battle, but we don't need to be afraid. We need to prepare. Pastor Allen's new book, Angels, Demons, and You offers compelling biblical evidence about angels and demons and their roles in the heavens on earth and inner lives. Find practical tools to help you live without fear

and stand firm in your faith. Request your copy of Angels, Demons, and You today when you donate $30 or more at allanjaxon.com slash warfare. Hey, thanks for joining me today. Before you go, please like the podcast and leave a comment so more people can hear about this topic too. If you haven't yet, be sure to subscribe to Alan Jackson Ministries YouTube channel

and follow the Culture and Christianity podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Together, let's learn how to lead with our faith and change our culture. I'll see you next time.