Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 232 | 'Tiger King' and the End Times

Episode Date: April 1, 2020

Today I give a personal update, then analyze what "Tiger King" tells us about human nature. We then examine the question: Are the end times near? At the end, an update on the coronavirus and some of the troublesome policies enacted to stop the virus.

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. I hope everyone is having an okay week. Today we're not going to dedicate this episode to the coronavirus because I asked a bunch of you on social media. If that's gotten tiring for you, hearing over and over again about this virus and the policies that are being enacted in order to fight this virus. And the vast majority of you said, yes, I am tired of it. Please talk about literally anything else. And so, because so many of you asked for more lighthearted content, I am going to, give you that but it's going to be substantive because this isn't a podcast where I just talk about vapid things that have no meaning or relevance to your life. I am going to give you a more personal lighthearted update just about what the Stucky family has been doing during this quarantine. And then I

am going to talk about Tiger King, that crazy documentary that everyone's talking about. Not just commentary though, but how it represents parts of human nature and teaches us lessons that I think are pertinent especially right now. And then we are going to very lightly, I would say shallowly answer the question. Are we in the end time? So we're going to do a little Bible matter segment. And then if we have time, we'll talk about some other things. I might answer some questions. But I will give a coronavirus update at the end of this because a lot of you are curious about that. If you're not, like if you have no stomach for coronavirus news, you don't want to hear my thoughts about the things that are going on, some of the problems that are cropping up, not just because of the

the virus but because of the policies that have to do with the virus and stopping the virus, then you might just want to end it right before I talk about it. I'll give you a warning and say, I'm about to talk about coronavirus. If you don't want to hear that, then don't listen to it. But if you're interested in knowing what's going on and some of my thoughts about that, then you can stick around. Okay, so starting this off, just a personal update about how the Stucky family is doing. We have basically been self-quarantining for three or so weeks now.

my husband, his company has been working from home for about three weeks. And so we have been doing this for what seems like an entire year. Like it feels like it should be fall already and like we're gearing up for the holidays. Now it's been really good. It has allowed us to spend a lot of quality time together. We already spend a lot of time together, especially on the weekends. But now there's a lot of quality time. It reminds me of maternity and paternity leave right after our baby.

was born last summer where we were working together and trying to figure out a new normal. Now we are obviously a lot more experienced as parents. And so it's not quite as chaotic as it was when she was first born. And we were just all trying to figure out, all three of us trying to figure out how to survive. But there are new variables now. Like both of us are working. He is, he has a different job. I have a lot more flexibility. And so we are working together to, to make work and it's fun it really is like I will kind of be sad when we have to go back to our normal routine and he has to leave home and we are just learning how to not just to work together but also relate to one another and you think okay you've been living together as long as you have been

married and you've been married for almost five years shouldn't you know how to relate to one another yes but anyone who has been married also knows that it is a continual learning process to figure out how to best love and serve and respect the other person and communicate to the other person effectively. And for all of the inconveniences and the struggles and the burdens that come with this time, that has been a silver lining that we have, and I talked about this on Monday, if you haven't listened to Monday's episode, go listen to that. It's 10 ways to make sure that this quarantine time counts so that we don't look back and say, well, I wasted all of that time. Well, one of the ways that I think that time is being redeemed, not just for us, but hopefully for a lot of couples, is that we are learning how to be even quicker to forgive, to be slow to speak, to be very slow to become angry, quick to listen, quick to extend grace, to be less critical ourselves to try to give the benefit of the doubt.

And we fail at that every day, quarantine or not. but I think that we have realized an important lesson during all of this that if you are in close quarters with someone continually, something that makes that even harder is a held grudge, is resentment, is bitterness, is constant nagging and criticism and the feeling that you can't ever do anything right. And so we have, by the grace of God, tried our best to extend as much graces we can to the other one and realize that we are both trying to do the very best we can to take care of our family and to weather these times and to trust God. My husband, thank goodness, something that has made this a lot better is that he is an amazing cook. He's an amazing cook.

So over the weekend, he grilled, or I think it's smoked. For some reason, I'm supposed to say smoked, he told me. I said that he grilled brisket and grilled ricket. the other day, but he told me it's smoked, but it's on a grill, so I was a little confused about that. But I mean, through the night, he was very dedicated to his brisket and to his ribs. He made two different kinds of ribs. He made sweet ribs and mesquite ribs. He'd never made ribs before. But he really is just a naturally very good cook.

I can cook too, but it doesn't come as naturally to me, and I'm just not as good at it. I do cook, I can cook, but he's just a lot better than I am, not just the grill, which he is good at obviously but also just like normal dinner cooking breakfast cooking he's just good at it so i am very thankful to the lord for that we had some good ribs we had some good brisket and we're still eating that brisket i am so thankful i'm so grateful for a husband that can cook well uh we have been at nights if we've had to catch up on work we've been doing that but we've also just been watching the office which we watch a lot i also mentioned that Monday that we've both probably together watched it all the way through 20 times, but it's one of

those comfort things. It's just so familiar and it's so funny. I still laugh out loud at certain scenes that I know that I've seen a bigillion times. But it's just this, I don't know, this feeling of, okay, at least, you know, the world is falling down around us, but at least we have the office. At least we can trust the office to make us laugh and to make us forget about some of the chaotic and stressful things that are going on. But we also watched, well, one, we watched Love is Blind a couple weeks ago. I'm not sure that I can necessarily recommend Love is Blind, but it was an intriguing show. Very cheesy, but an intriguing show. I mean, it'll make you roll your eyes.

It'll make you say, oh my gosh, this is, people are so crazy. I can't believe that we're watching this. But I mean, it does tell you a lot just about how people are and how petty people are. And, oh, man, like I said, I don't know if I would recommend it. But it made for some easy mind nutmeg TV if you're looking for that. And then we watched Tiger King. Tiger King is a documentary on Netflix about this guy who runs a wildlife zoo in Oklahoma. His name is Joe something.

I don't even know his last name, but he goes by Joe Exotic. And he is a gay, polyamorous redneck from Oklahoma. I don't think that he would take offense to that description. That's literally what he is. He owns this tiger zoo. People can come in. They can pet tigers. They can see other wildlife.

You see in this documentary, again, this is one I'm not sure that I would actually recommend it. Like, I don't think that. that I would recommend this and I'll tell you why. But I do think that I learned something from it. Even though after I finished the series, I was very sad and it felt very heavy and dark to me because you see the cavernous, this cavernous industry that is filled with all kinds of depravity, all kinds of deceit, all kinds of trickery and extortion. This industry that you and I probably really never paid any mind to.

never paid attention to. But it's just like any other industry that is hungry for power and hungry for profit and doesn't care at all about its clients or its people or the animals in this case. But filled with the human depravity that unfortunately is pervasive in all areas of society. It's like the wildlife version of the Sopranos. These are like redneck mobsters. And it's not just Joe Exotic and his zoo in Oklahoma that we see. We also see other places that are similar to this in like South Carolina and Florida.

But the show itself, it shows how hungry human beings are for glory and for power, how much we long to be gods. And we've talked about this before. But how much we demand to be worshipped when our ego goes unchecked. We will do absolutely anything to make sure that we remain on our third. however insignificant in the grand scheme of things that throne may be. Like Joe Exotic really thought or thinks he is the king of the universe just because he is the head of this tiny zoo that the vast majority of the world has never heard about and will never hear about. Now a lot more people know about it thanks to this Netflix documentary, but an industry and a zoo and a place that is so insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

And yet his ego got so inflated to the point that he, was willing to do absolutely anything, no matter how corrupt in order to stay in power. And really all of us at our darkest are the exact same way. We have a very inflated sense of self. And the book club, book club, I think it's book club with Ali Stucky, ladies book club with Ali Stucky, women's book club with Alley Stuckie. I don't even remember what it's called. But the first book that we read was the freedom of self-forgetfulness by Tim Keller.

And he talks about this, how our feelings never get hurt. It's our ego that actually gets hurt and drives us to. to act out of anger, out of defensiveness, out of embarrassment, because we will do anything to protect our ego. And this show, Tiger King, proves that that is absolutely true. It is the perfect embodiment of total depravity. So as a reformed Christian, I believe in total depravity, which means that we are not the worst that we can be. Like, we're not, not every single one of us is going to be, apart from Christ is going to be the absolute worst that we could possibly be. Not everyone who is not a Christian is going to be a murderer,

is going to be Joe Exotic. But that without Christ, we are completely dead in our sin. We cannot do anything good outside of the power of God. And ultimately, we can do nothing to save ourselves. But in the case of Joe Exotic, it's not just that he is like everyone else and that he is dead in his sin apart from Christ, just like everyone else is. But we see, and a lot of the characters in this show that they are really the worst of the worst kind of depraved that you could even imagine.

I think that's why this was such a sensational and shocking documentary because the evil and just the perversion that we see is the kind that we couldn't probably even come up with most of us in our own minds. It is the perfect embodiment of Romans 1 and verses 21 through 25 came to mind in this documentary. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise, they became fools that exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the

truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen, which just goes to show, obviously the book of Romans was written a very long time ago, but it goes to show that there's nothing new under the sun. And Romans one applies to a lot of different groups, a lot of different kinds of people today. But it's also a little bit comforting to know that this kind of corruption and depravity isn't new. People have to be. People have been inventors of evil for a long time. It also shows the existence of this documentary shows our love, the audience's love, the entire world's love of the bizarre, the sensational, the dark, the twisted and corrupt. Like we want to watch the invention of evil. And I'm talking obviously,

I'm indicting myself because my husband and I watched it. Like in the same way that we as humans crane our neck to see a car wreck, we lap up documentary. that put man's depravity on full display. Like, we have a morbid curiosity about it. And I'm always very conflicted about this. Like I said, I'm indicting, I'm condemning myself as I'm talking about how not redemptive a show like this is. And I've talked about redeeming our time on quarantine.

And here I am talking about this awful documentary that was so fascinating, but also so dark. I'm just very conflicted about it. On the one hand, I really like to know the content that's shaping people's public conversations and consequently is shaping our culture so I can comment on it so I can critique it like I'm doing right now so I can point out the lies and then replace them with truth. I think that's important. That's something that a lot of you ask me to do. They say, oh, have you seen this documentary or, oh, have you seen this meme going around? Can you

comment on it or this video or whatever? On the other hand, I know that Christians are called to only dwell on that, which is lovely and pure. That's what Philippians 4 calls us to. I think it's Ephesiansians four that calls us to be children of light to not even speak of the things that they do in secret but the children of light are characterized by what is good and right and true and tiger king and other documentaries like that certainly do not qualify as what is good and right and true what is pure and lovely and excellent the bachelor isn't that there are a lot of shows that are not that and it's hard to see how spending hours that we spent watching something like Tiger King isn't just a waste of time or at least that our time couldn't be better spent

doing something else. If I could go back, I probably wouldn't watch it. To like weighing those two sides of it, I probably wouldn't watch it. I would probably read about it. I'd probably maybe watch a few clips on it so I could talk about it, but I probably wouldn't watch it. Because what I was done, like I said a few minutes ago, I was really sad. I felt heavy. I felt really gross about it. I felt kind of guilty. And that is what consuming sin and watching sin and a glorified version of sin does to you. And honestly, I don't need to watch a show like that to be reminded that man is totally depraved. I already know that. Just look around. Just watch the news. We love deceit. We love power. We love manipulation. And the only remedy to all of that is we know is Jesus. But for the record,

yes, Carol Baskin did kill her husband. I mean, that's just obvious. Now, moving along to our Bible matters. Are we living in the end times? This has been a question that has been circulating on social media a lot. A lot of you've been asking me about this and asking me to comment on the prophecies that people are making on social media. I'm a very skeptical person. I am very slow to believe in conspiracy theories. I am very slow to believe in theories, period. Part of it is because like I just don't have the time to go down that rabbit hole and it just creates anxiety in me. I feel like I can't control it, even if it were true that everything that we see is some giant conspiracy theory. I don't have the power. I don't have the resources and the responsibility

to track that down and solve the grand mystery. And so instead I can look to God's word and I can say, okay, no matter what conspiracies might be happening in the upper echelons of our government, the deep state, whatever it is, I know that there is a very real spiritual battle going on. And I know that God's word is true, that he is coming back one day and that until then we will have trials, we will have tribulation, we will have persecution, we will have pestilence, we will go through very hard things. There will be people that are falling away. There will be people that are coming to Christ.

The Bible is the realest reality that I, can go to when I look around and I don't know who to trust. I don't know what theories to believe. I don't know what's really going on. I don't know the underlying truth that everyone says is there in a million different directions. The realist, most concrete, most trustworthy reality that I can go to is the word of God. So that even though I don't know who to trust, I don't know who's telling the truth, I don't know what numbers to believe, I don't know what statistics I should be relying on. I can go to the word of God and say, okay, I don't know what's happening in all of these areas, but I know this is happening. I know Ephesion 6 is happening. I know that we are struggling against the print of the power of

the air, which is actually Ephesians 2. Ephesion 6 says that we are in, we're fighting against spiritual powers, that this is a fight against darkness, no matter what situation that we're in, pandemic or no pandemic, that Satan is always working, but God is always working much harder. And he is the one that sovereign, Satan is not. Satan does have power, but he has no power that God has not allowed him. And God is in control of all of it. And his plan is moving forward. Every day, every hour, every millisecond, his plan is unfolding.

He is in complete control. He is totally sovereign. And we can look to the Word of God and say, okay, I don't know when, I don't know how, I don't know where, I don't know through whom. But this is happening. Now, the question is, is the coronavirus a sign that Jesus's return is imminent? Is this a surefire way that we can look at the timeline of eternity and say, okay, in times are coming? Well, the fact of the matter is we have been in the end times, technically, for a while.

I mean, the Bible talks about saying that the end is near, it is imminent. So in a way, it has been imminent for a long time. Now, are there signs that have been fulfilled that point us in the direction of saying, okay, maybe it is soon? Yes, the Bible has what might seem a little bit contradictory to the human eye, but isn't actually contradictory. On the one hand, the Bible makes clear that it will, that the end will come as a thief in the night that no one knows the day.

that no one knows the hour, but at the same time, there isn't a point of time and there are signs and there are prophecies that have to be fulfilled before that actually happens. Now, I did a whole very thorough episode titled In Times that I encourage you to go listen to. It was from July of last year, I think it was July. And I also, on Instagram, if you go to my highlights, if you go to my highlights and you see the first little bubble

that says, it should say podcast categories, you can go, I categorize all of my podcast episodes by the subject, the broader subject that they are talking about. And so under, I think it's under other theology, I think is the category, you will see in time. So that should tell you exactly the episode number that it is. So did an entire podcast episode on this. just type in relatable in times on your podcast that's another way that you can find it should come up

so if you need a crash a crash course on eschatology the study of the end times in the different terminology and which eschatological eschatological that's hard to say eschatological position the bible supports you can go and listen to that but i am going to give you a bit of a refresher now but for a more thorough explanation you can go back and listen to that so number one what we we know about the end times is that Jesus is coming back. This is what First Thessalonians 5 calls the day of our Lord. Revelation 1 7 says this, behold, he is coming with the clouds and every eye will see him. Even those who pierced him and all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so, amen. The question is when, first Thessalonians 5 says, for you yourselves are fully aware the day of the Lord

will come like a thief in the night. Matthew 24 also tells us about this. about the tribulation and the things that have to happen before Jesus' return like wars and rumors of wars, a nation's rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom, every nation will hear the gospel, lawlessness will increase, the abomination of desolation will occur via the Antichrist, who will make a covenant with Israel for seven years. There will be a great tribulation like no one has seen before. Then Jesus will return. Here is what verse, verses 29 through 31, say immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light and the stars will fall from heaven and the powers of the heavens will be shaken

then will appear in heaven the sign of the son of man and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn and they will see the son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory and he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call and they will gather his and they will gather his elect from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other. So there are prophecies that must be fulfilled before Jesus returns, but Jesus also says, but concerning that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven nor the son, but the father only. There are several other passages that tell us, like I said, that the day of the Lord will

come like a thief in the night. So what we conclude from that is, though there are tangible signs that we can see and will recognize as pointing to Jesus's return. We don't know exactly how much time will pass between the last. sign that is fulfilled and Jesus's return. So that's why it's hard to say, okay, it's going to happen now. So we still ultimately will not be able to predict down to the day and the hour when Jesus will return. I want to read you, though, a sermon from John McArthur that talks about the signs of the end times, one of them being lawlessness, as the Bible says, as that passage that I

read to you says, lawlessness will be unleashed on earth and the Antichrist will come. He will establish one world government. That's what the Bible says. So here's what John McArthur has to say, and I would play you the audio, but I can't do that, and I will tell you why. So here is what, here's what the sermon says. The Bible says, when you start seeing lawlessness on a worldwide scale, look ahead. The end is near. You see, there's only one way to deal with lawlessness. There's only one way. That's to create a police state. Ultimately, it drives itself to a police state, and that's exactly what happens, and you see that's what the Antichrist has when he comes. He sets up a total world rule.

And why he'll be such a hero evidently from the Word of God is that with all the lawlessness all over the world, lawlessness on a national basis and on an international basis, is that he is evidently going to be able to resolve this and get control of everything. And I believe what the world is going to exist under, according to the Bible, this is John MacArthur speaking, is a tribulation that is a police state. Why? If you don't take the mark of the beast, what happens to you? You get killed. That's the only way he can control lawlessness. And that's what's going to make that great hero out of the Antichrist, possibly the fact that he can resolve the lawlessness into a controlled situation. Let me give you another general sign. Not only is lawlessness a general sign of the coming Christ, but also is a false religion. In the last days, false religion sponsored by demons is going to reign, says John McArthur. Typical demon work can be seen in the pseudo-Christian literature, for example. and then he lists some people. All over America, we have witches covens. All this to an extent never known in the history of the world. And the Bible says that in the end times, watch it,

the doctrine of devils. It's all over the place. And the doctrine of devils in an organized religious way will come to a head in Revelation chapter 17 in that false world church. Apostasy. Not only lawlessness in false religion, but apostasy. Religious liberalism, the rise of liberalism in colleges, seminaries and churches gives abundant evidence that men are departing from the faith fast. And then he talks about some more specific signs that we're going to see. But here's the thing. Here is why I can't show you the audio or have you listened to the audio of that. He said that in 1972. This is a John MacArthur sermon from 1972. He pointed out to, he pointed to the fact that lawlessness was abundant in that we might see a police state. Now,

what's comforting about that is that all of the things that he lists in this particular sermon from 1972 sound very pertinent and sound very real today, which means that, as I've said, there's nothing new under the sun. A lot of the corruption that we think is novel, that we think it's innovative today has actually been around for a lot longer, a lot longer than a lot of us have been alive. But it also, it applies to what we're seeing today. If he thought that we were close to a state of lawlessness then. Just think about what's going on now with prisoners being released from prison for we don't even know. There's no good reason why prisoners are being released from prison and why judges are saying, okay, I'm not actually going to prosecute this person

or this person isn't going to be prosecuted because of coronavirus, which again doesn't make a whole lot of sense. We're already seeing looting. We're already seeing crime abound. We're already seeing violence abound. So if John McArthur thought that we were close to that in 19, I'd be interested to see what he has to say to that today. Now, there's a lot more that we could go into. We could talk about the Mark of the Beast, the Antichrist, the millennial reign, but we don't have time for all of that. You can listen to my full episode in times.

I am for now until I am proven otherwise, which is a possibility. I am a post-tribulation pre-millennialist. So that means that that refers to when I think Christ will return. I believe that Christ will return after the tribulation. So Christians who are alive now will actually endure the tribulation. Now, John McArthur, according to this sermon, doesn't believe that. He believes that Christians are going to be taken out of the tribulation. I believe that Christians are going to endure the tribulation,

that he will call believers to himself after that, that we will reign with him during the millennium while Satan is bound and many more come to Christ. And the final judgment occurs and we will enjoy the eternal state in Christ. I am friends with a lot of post-millennialists. Post-millarists tend to believe that the world is going to conform more and more to the law of God before Christ returns. They believe that we are currently in the millennial rule of Christ. I've had quite a few post-millennialists on my show, and they've really made me think about a lot of things. Like I said, I'm open to being proven and correct.

But right now I don't see how the Bible supports that. I don't see the world headed in that direction. there are a lot of smart people, like I said, who disagree with me, people who know a lot more about the Bible than I do, but there are also people who know a lot more about the Bible than I do who have the same position as me. To me, Matthew 24 makes it clear that Christians will suffer through the tribulation and that Jesus will not call us up before that. But I do know. So I don't know. Saying all that said, could we be in the time that is leading to the imminent return of Christ, yes, we could be in that stage. What we know for sure is that God is doing

something that he is calling people to himself, that he is calling people to repentance, that he is calling us to humble ourselves, that he is doing a mighty work through his church, and that we should want to be a part of that and that we should be watchful. We should be sober-minded. We should be looking for the signs that the Word of God tells us to look for. Now, when people give you extra biblical signs. When people take you down an extra biblical rabbit hole that has nothing to do with what the word of God says has to be accomplished before Christ returns, you need to ignore that. Because the Bible also talks about, like I said, false religion, which we see in abundance with the new age. We see apostasy. We see people preaching a false gospel, preaching false prophecies. We've talked

about these false prophecies on the podcast. Last week, we talked about fear God, not trouble. and that was the title, I think, of last Monday's episode that you should go listen to about how God loathes, false prophets and false prophecies, and that we should reject those. If we want to know the answers, we go to the word of God, but the bottom line is we don't know the day, we don't know the exact hour, but we are called to be watchful, to be ready, to be bold, and I am praying that God would fill me with a sense of urgency. That's why it's important also to study the end times, because we need to be filled with a sense of urgency. We need to make sure that we are doing the things that God has called us to do. And I have kind of woken up in the past few days, I would say, realizing that I have allowed my mind to be filled with a lot of noise from Twitter, from social media, from news, from YouTube videos, rather than being filled with the realist reality that's out there, which is the Word of God. And I've realized that the reason why I'm doing that, the reason why I feel even more of a draw, towards Twitter, towards Instagram, towards these things, towards watching the news is because

I feel isolated, even though I'm with my wonderful family. And I want to be connected to something in real time. I want to be connected to other humans that are doing the same thing. I am, even if it's in a way that just drives up anxiety and outrage, I want to be reminded that there are other people out there. And so I watch the news and I make sure it's live and I'm on Twitter to make sure that I realized that there were other people doing the same things as me that they're, you know, that they're alive to. And I realized that maybe I need to cut out that noise and take a look at what God is actually, what God is actually doing. I was thinking about this metaphor the other day, as I was talking to my husband, I was saying, I'm really sad that,

you know, March Madness isn't happening and we're not going to be able to watch the masters. and baseball games aren't going on. Now, I'm not someone who even cares about sports. I don't really watch sports. My husband loves sports, and of course he's really sad about all those things, but I'm sad too. Why?

It's not because I really care who wins the Masters, honestly, or who won March Madness or any of that stuff. The reason why I care is because all of these things for my entire life or our entire lives have served as background noise, noise, that make us feel comfortable, that put us into context, that let us know what season it is,

what stage of life that we're in. And without it, I feel like I'm in a vacuum. I feel like nothing is real. I feel like I'm in some alternate dystopian universe and I really don't like it. And it reminds me, the analogy that I have is that if any of you sleep with a noisemaker at night, like we sleep with a white noise machine, that when it goes off, it wakes you up. The silence wakes you up.

So it's not a noise that wakes you up. It is the silence. And it kind of freaks you out. and you lay there before you turn the white noise machine back on, you lay there in the total silence and you can hear a pin drop. You can feel and sense the slightest move and you turn it back on because it freaks you out and you want to go back to sleep in real life. Like our white noise machine has turned off and we're sitting there in silence and we're desperately looking for something else to fill the noise so we can just go back into our lull. But maybe, maybe God is trying

to turn off all of the noise makers that are in our life so that we can listen so we can pay attention so we can like when I'm asleep at night and my noise machine goes off and I can hear a pin drop and I am aware of everything that is going on in my house because I'm so not used to this silence and it startles me and it wakes me out but I'm more alert than ever. Maybe in another sense that's what's happening in our real life. Maybe all of these noise makers are are supposed to be off right now. Maybe we're not supposed to be searching for the noise in our phone or on the news. Maybe we're supposed to be cutting all of those things off and we're supposed to be paying attention to the things that are going on. So what I have done, as I've just started to

pray, that I would take notice at the things that God is doing and the things that he's saying. Now, I'm not talking about some extra biblical word. I'm not talking about some extra biblical sign. I'm not talking about some new age feeling thing. I'm talking about what the God of the universe is really doing right now on this timeline of eternity wherever we are on it. However close we are to Christ's return, I want to make sure that I am paying attention, that I am watchful, that I'm not constantly looking for new ways to numb my mind

and to busy myself and to feel connected to other people via the news or Twitter. Because like I've said, the realest thing that's going on is what the Word of God says. is going on, which is that one of these days, whether it's in 100 years or 100 seconds, Jesus is coming back and that we need to be ready. And I want to pay attention to those things. Now, coronavirus updates. There's not a whole lot of good news. So if you're looking for good news, this particular part of the podcast probably isn't the place to get it because things are looking, things are looking, I don't want to say they're looking completely bleak because in some ways, I guess there is some good news and that we were going off a model just a couple weeks ago that

said that if we didn't do anything, 2.2 million people were going to die. And if we did something, 1.1 million people were going to die. And that was really scary. Now we're hearing from Dr. Anthony Fauci that it's going to be 100,000 to 200,000 people in the United States. But Dr. Deborah Burke said, that's only if we do absolutely everything perfectly, which is a little bit troubling. Like, that's still a lot of people. It's a very small percentage of the population, but it's still a lot of people. From swine flu, back in 2009, only 12,000 people died. And we are certainly going to surpass the 12,000 mark, I believe, because right now we've got 3,300 deaths. And what the experts are saying is that we haven't reached the peak yet, that the peak is still a few weeks off,

President Trump extended the social distancing guidelines to April 30th. And what I am hearing is that it's actually going to be longer than that, that it's still probably going to be a few weeks even after that, that it's going to be June 1st. And there's a possibility that they're just telling us April 30th because they know they have to tell us things in doses or else we're going to freak out thinking about eight weeks. And as we talked about last week, last Wednesday,

we did a podcast called Save Lives and Livelihoods, where we talked about the importance of voluntarily, doing what we can to make sure that we are protecting the most vulnerable among us and that we are slowing the spread of this virus. I think that that is so important. I am not someone who takes this lightly, who takes this virus lightly, who takes the weight on our hospitals lightly. I want to do whatever we can to flatten the curve and to listen to the experts. Of course, like I said, we have been in our home almost exclusively for three weeks, except for absolutely having to go out and get groceries or something like that. So I am absolutely taking this seriously.

I also am taking seriously the economic, the social implications of all of this, of people losing their jobs, not being able to feed their children, losing their businesses, being absolutely weighed down in very real intangible ways by shutting down the entire economy. These are two things that I'm thinking about for some reason in this stupid binary binary that we have created. on Twitter, you can either care about the economy or you can care about people. What do you think makes the economy go? What do you think the economy affects? It's people. It's people. And I am also concerned about the suspension of our liberties. If we don't have liberties in a crisis, what are liberties good for? What is the Bill of Rights good for? So I'm concerned about all of

these things. And contrary to popular or stupid media opinion, it is possible to be concerned about all three of these things. My opinion hasn't changed. I still believe that a way to love your neighbor during this time is to socially distance. That's what we've been doing. That's why I encourage other people to do. I don't believe having a glib attitude about this and pretending like, oh, this is no big deal. I'm just going to continue to live my life and you can't tell me what to do because I'm independent. I still think that's the wrong attitude to have. I also think that it is wrong for the government, Bill de Blasio, for example, the mayor of New York City, to say, if you continue to meet as a church, we will close down your building permanently for people

to not be able to purchase a gun. Like, I think that that is also troubling. I want people to voluntarily take responsibility and to be as cautious and to be as compassionate as we possibly can, understanding that some people still have to go to work, some people don't have the option to just stay at home. And I completely understand that. But if we can, to limit our public exposure as much as possible, but I still don't want the government suspending our First Amendment rights, for example, because we're in a crisis saying that I'm going to close down to church and you can't buy a gun because a pandemic is happening. I'm not for that. So I can hold those two thoughts together simultaneously. Some people said that some people said that me making a joke about the

fact that, oh, we're getting our free trial of communism and I really want to cancel after 30 days, but they already have my payment information. Some people are saying that me saying that is hypocritical to what I said earlier of loving your neighbor means in many points staying inside. I don't think so. I'm talking about voluntary versus compulsory. I am not excited about the compulsory actions that are being taken. Now, some of it I think it's necessary. State governments are in a tough position. President Trump is in a really tough position. I don't fault all of the people who have pushed these policies. I think they're trying to do what is best, but I do still think that we have to have some sort of plan and more of a tangible concrete light at the end of the tunnel that

makes way for actual recovery. Congress passed this so-called stimulus bill, this recovery bill that does send checks to people that does help certain businesses, and that's going to do something, but people are going to have to be sustained longer than that in a more, uh, formidable way than what this bill actually offers and it gives millions and millions and millions of dollars to places that don't actually need our money like the Kennedy Center. I mean, it's just absolutely crazy. And Representative Thomas Massey, who I have had on this podcast before, he was against it and President Trump said that he needs to be thrown out of the Republican Party. I cannot disagree with that more. Thomas Massey, the representative is extremely principled.

It wasn't a publicity stunt, and I completely sympathize with his concerns. Unfortunately, this was the position that Congress was in, and they had to get it done, and they did. And hopefully, I do hope that it offers a lot of relief to a lot of you. But unfortunately, I think that it's a band-aid on a much bigger problem that we are going to see from shutting down our entire economy. Just a numbers update. Right now, we've got 174,400,000. 110 confirmed cases. We're going to see that number go up as we get more and more tests. We've got almost 6,000 people who are recovered. We've got 3,300, almost 3,400 people who have

died, which is not great. Now, there are, unfortunately, there are people in the media who are extremely excited about the fact that America is leading the way, apparently, in deaths. So we have coronavirus is overtaking us apparently more than other countries, but of course we cannot trust the numbers coming out of China at all. But you have media who really do just want to see the country in devastation. They are giddy about the fact that we have so many cases and then our death number is climbing. Now, I don't think they actually want people to die, but they want Trump to look bad and they want the United States to look bad so much that they are willing to be at least deceitfully celebratory about the fact that we have so many cases. Of course,

we can't trust the numbers coming out of China. We can't trust anything that the World Health Organization says because they are in bed with China. China is a communist country. They are always going to lie. And so if indeed the numbers that they have reported to us are drastically lower than the reality, if they really have had tens of millions of people die, obviously that's not that's not very good for us either. Now, there are a lot of private companies that are doing amazing things like My Pillow. He is retrofitting his factories to make more than 50,000 masks a day. That's a big problem right now. I know you're seeing probably a lot of conflicting reports, but I've talked to a lot of people around the country who say they're not overwhelmed

yet. Some hospitals are saying that their hospitals are empty right now. That's because they've canceled elective procedures and people are scared to go to the emergency room because they don't want to get sick unless they you know their lives are actually being threatened but a lot of hospitals are saying we are low on supplies we're low on masks we're low on protective gear we are low on the tools that we need and it's really crazy because we constantly hear about millions of masks and equipment being in circulation right now and yet so many hospitals are not getting them apparently there's a lot of red tape. Regulation is just a killer, man. There's a lot of red tape that are preventing these masks from actually getting into the hands of nurses and doctors at these hospitals. But MyPillow

is a business that is trying their best to help these workers get the masks that they need. And what happens? The My Pillo guy, he talks at the press conference with President Trump in the Rose Garden just the other day. And what happens to him? Well, you've got all of blue checkmark liberal Twitter making fun of him for talking about God and for saying that this is wrong that President Trump would bring this guy up there. What have you done? What have you done? Celebrities, blue check marks that are making fun of this guy for sacrificing his own profits, by the way, to make sure that hospital workers have the mass at the knee? What have you done except for sit on your butt and twiddle your thumbs for the past three weeks and make fun of people who are actually helping? See, this is one of the many problems

with leftism, there are problems with conservatives, obviously, as well. They have their own, conservatives have our own issues and our own people who are problematic and stupid. But the problem with leftism as an ideology is that as Dan Crenshaw has said before, it doesn't actually function as a way to govern. It functions as a way to jet up outrage. So it doesn't actually accomplish. Leftism never accomplishes anything. It is very good at igniting emotion and igniting passion, but every time it tries to execute something, it fails. And that is why all of the heroes that leftists hold up aren't people that have done anything productive or have done anything good. They are people who have complained the right way. So those are leftist heroes,

people who complain the right way, not people who actually accomplish anything good. So that's why they have a hard time with Mike Lindell who owns and created My Pillow, because he's not the virtue signaling type of hero that they bow down to. Anyone who actually does something productive and good for people themselves rather than just extorting taxpayers to do it or just ginning up outrage, they are scoffed at. That is what leftism does. Okay, that's the whole podcast for today.

We covered a lot of bases. Thanks for listening. I will be back here on Friday. Have a good day.