The Eric Metaxas Show - #94 - Larry Taunton and John Zmirak

Episode Date: April 10, 2026

Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, Eric talks with Larry Taunton about Tucker Carlson’s defense of Islam, his attack on the Book of Esther, and why false teaching becomes dangerous when it is dressed up as Christian commentary. Later, Eric speaks with John Zmirak about Baptist Press, Christian morality in public life, the lie of secular neutrality, and why America’s founding was rooted in truths far deeper than modern leftist institutions want to admit. Subscribe for clips from The Eric Metaxas Show to hear politics and culture from a Christian perspective.

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. Hey, folks. welcome. I am talking right now, or I get to talk right now, to my friend Larry Taunton, to continue a conversation from yesterday. Larry, yesterday we were talking about the nature, at the end of our conversation, about the nature of Islam and how wicked it is. And people, I mean, listen, you and I have grown up, you know, at a time where people will say dopey things like, you know, the three great world religions, you know, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, or four, Buddhists, or whatever.

They kind of talk like, the religion is wonderful. And you think, excuse me, excuse me, that religion, Islam is led by a man who was a bloodthirsty, what do you say about him? I mean, he was a warlord. Even if he existed, Jay Smith, my dear friend. Islamic, Islamist, a scholar of Islamic Christian, he has argued that his scholarship concretely demonstrates that Muhammad never existed. Wow. I've never heard that.

Well, let's assume he existed. Who is he? Who is this great prophet? He was someone who married a six-year-old, didn't consummate it because he was a real gentleman. He waited until she was nine. until she was nine before he raped her. And I think that's a fact. Now, listen, you could say,

okay, Eric, you just have different views. Well, yes, but we have to agree on the facts. And we're talking about a religion that is, if you're a Christian, you have to say it is a false religion. It is an anti-Christ religion. So this does not mean that we condemn all Muslims. I know people who are Muslims and they're sweet people,

but what they believe is false. And you know, you don't have to argue all the time, but let's just get our facts straight. So when Tucker Carlson, the other day, was ticked that President Trump mocked Islam by in the end of his crazy tweet, he writes, praise be to Allah. I howled with laughter.

And then a lot of people said, yeah, this is like Elijah mocking the priests of bail. Bale, we wouldn't say worshiping Bail is like, it's one of the great religions. We have our differences. No, we say it's a false, wicked, anti-Christ religion. And I have been, I have to say, really challenged in trying to understand what happened with Tucker. His ignorance when it comes to faith stuff is huge, which is fine. But then you should keep quiet.

You shouldn't. He talks about stuff that he clearly doesn't know anything. I mean, it's kind of breathtaking that he just says stuff. And so he was saying you should never criticize another religion. And he goes on and on and on. And I thought, we're at war with Iran. Iran is led by theocratic mullahs. So even if you don't want to be in a religious war, you are because they are.

So the idea that he shouldn't mention this. It's so crazy, but I guess it brings up the age-old question, what the heck has happened to Tucker Carlson? It's unfathomable. Well, first, let me say, if Tucker sees this, I would relish an opportunity to debate Tucker Carlson. And by that, I don't mean, you know, we get in some kind of playing word games or ad hominum kind of stuff. I mean, let's discuss in a fair and open. exchange. You get as much time as I get the assertions that he's making. He just said the things you you just pointed out. He also attacked the book of Esther as not being canonical. And he accused the Jews of genocide in that particular book. He just affirmed that he believes that socialism is Christianity, that they're the same, they're the same thing at their core. So these are all things. You're that he's saying? You're overwhelming me

because I had actually forgotten mercifully yesterday that he said these things. I for him first of all, this is what I was. Let me pause you right there. Just for your sake, because I know you don't want to date it like that. And you said yesterday. No, no, no. It was, well, two days ago, whatever it was. The point, the point is that it was basically

so breathtaking again. This is what, really what I was alluding to a moment ago. He says things. I mean, he, he, he says, Franklin Graham's not a real Christian. He says, the book of Esther, you know, like I don't trust the book of Esther. And I think he doesn't know anything. I mean, the book of Esther, ladies and gentlemen, is part of what I call the Bible. It's part of what I call the word of God, the inspired word of God. There's no debate about that.

But Tucker Carlson, who's been some kind of a Christian for about 15 minutes, feels that he can just. And I mean, Larry, it has to do. I'm just guessing. He knows that there are tons of people out there too ignorant to challenge him on this. That's his audience. That's become his base. He's making a lot of money off that. Same thing with Candace Owens. And they know that let Larry Taunton and Eric Metaxus say what they want. I am making a ton of money talking to people who do not have a clue about what the issue of canonicity means and have never read the book of Esther. and so he's talking to them. Well, absolutely.

That has become his base. I think that there's a couple of very sinister things that are going on. First, you know, you ask what's going on with Tucker Carlson. You know, I was one of the first people, you'll recall, that went after him, you know, two plus years ago when a lot of people were uncomfortable with me going after Tucker Carlson. I was one of those people. You were. And you were one of those people. Yes, what?

You were, unfortunately, you were right. And the same with Candace Owens. When she still was kind of perceived as a conservative, I was going after her. And it was because I could see the subtle warping of truth that was going on in their messaging. Initially, however, I kind of gave them the benefit of it out. I thought, you know what? He's just wrong on this. He doesn't have any sinister motive.

He's just wrong on this. But now I sense, Eric, that there is something deeply, spiritually sinister going on here. A friend of mine who was talking with him recently, and he said to me, I thought this was very, very perceptive on his part. He said that it brought to mind for him a verse in Second Thessalonians, which speaks of God sending a strong delusion on those who don't believe, a strong delusion that they might believe those things which are not. not true. They believe lies. And I think that's happening. I think we're seeing a strong delusion here. But let's go back to Esther for a moment and why he had to, I mean, why in the world would Tucker Carlson, who, by his own admission, is not a biblical scholar, would then position himself as a biblical scholar and attacked the book of Esther? What's up with that? Why would that even be

of interest to Tucker Carlson for this reason? Tucker wanted to separate out Esther from the rest of the biblical canon and say, you know, it's, it doesn't belong there. It's not an inspired book. And therefore, he could attribute the killing of the 75,000. He says Persians, which is laughable. He says the Jews killed 75,000 Persians. These are the people of Haman. And Haman is an Amalekite.

These were Amalekites. They were the very people who in Deuteronomy chapter 25, Versus 17 through 19, God says to the Jews, you remember the Amalekites? Remember when you were coming out of Egypt, how they attacked you, how they deceived you, how they killed you? My wrath burns against them. I'm paraphrasing here. And so here we have the Amalekites plotting to kill the Jews, not Persians.

You see, Tucker calls them Persians. He may as well call them Iranians because he was trying to draw a parallel between the Book of Esther and what's happening now and saying, see, the Jews have a history of killing Persians, i.e. Iranians. They did it in Esther, and they're doing it again now. And yet he gave a heavily redacted account, so deceptive of an account of what happens in Esther. The reason they were killed, they were killed, by the way, by Xerxes, who was a Persian. He was a Persian king. And when his wife tells him, Esther tells him that Haman and his people are plotting to, he's raised an army in his plotting to slaughter the Jews. Haman is outraged. And he says, hang that man. And then he says that he gives the Jews the right to, quote, defend themselves. Defend themselves. So it was, it was the Amalekites who were plotting a genocide against the Jews. But in Tucker's telling of it, That's never mentioned. He just says that the Jews committed genocide of Persians.

This is so much nonsense, Eric. And so he doesn't want God to be a part of that story. He wants to blame it on the Jews. And let me have this one thing. He says that, oh, and guess what? It just turns out that Esther's the only book in the Old Testament that doesn't mention God. That, in fact, is not true. The Song of Solomon and most translation, does not mention God explicitly either. But in both the Song of Solomon and Esther, God's providential hand is assumed throughout the entire book. And hence the reason a weight of Christian scholarship has always maintained that it belongs in the Old Testament. Well, look, it's ridiculous. We've got to go to a break here. But I mean, if you want to read a

great book about Martin Luther, read my biography of Martin Luther, where I talk about the fact that Luther was crackers on some issues. He was wrong on some issues. He was an answer to semi. He wanted to get rid of at the end of his life, and he wanted to get rid of the epistle of James. I mean, look, how appropriate that Tucker would go there, so to speak, and how sad.

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saving on your purchase. Code metaxis, centuryh2.com. Hey there, folks. I've been saying that 2026 must be the year of accountability, whether talking about government spending or the way we steward our own families, we have a moral duty to seek the truth. But let's be honest, in the world of Medicare, truth is often the first casualty. Seniors, like my 91-year-old mom, are bombarded with mailers and pushy phone calls that feel more like propaganda than helpful guidance. This is why I value my partners at Chapter. They operate on a different principle, independence.

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Carlson. It is, it's bizarre, honestly. I don't know if you know, Larry. He, he had someone on his podcast. I won't even mention her name, but it rhymes with swastika Barbie. And he, he said like, oh, yeah, Eric Mataxis is a very troubled individual. I thought, I was on your podcast. You praised me to high heaven. You've praised my books like crazy. But now, because I guess I disagree with you, I'm a deeply troubled individual. So seriously, I wish him no ill will, but I am horrified at he has become a force for evil in our culture. The things that he is put out there. Thank you for saying that.

That is true. And his claims that he's a Christian, he's not a Christian. Tucker Carl's, there's no fruit there. He's as Christian as Nick Fuentes is a Christian or any of these lunatics. Candice Owens. I mean, if they're Christians, I don't know what the term even means anymore. It's just some tribalist identity. And let me, let me add to that, that some who might be listening to doing, you guys are so self-righteous that you think you can, you know, declare who it does and doesn't get into heaven. That's not what's happening here. Neither Eric nor I are asserting that we are better

people. We are asserting that we are repentant and we're asserting that we've been forgiven by God and that we're not pushing an evil agenda. And that is absolutely what Eric is, excuse me, what Tucker is doing. What he did with the book of Esther, which we were just discussing, was blasphemous. It was blasphemous. It's blasphemous and diabolical. We have to be clear, folks, diabolical stuff. And as I said on my own podcast, ideas have consequences. I think that Tucker is walking a very, a very dangerous path here, not just in the sense of, you know, commercially or what may or may happen to a show, but I mean spiritually, you're now going into a realm where what he was doing in suggesting Esther wasn't canonical is he didn't want to appear to be attacking God. And that is absolutely what he was doing.

He wanted to do that to kind of say to the remaining Christians in his audience, Hey, don't be upset by me attacking the Book of Esther because it really doesn't belong there. I'm not attacking God. I'm not attacking historic Christianity. I'm just going after the Jews. So I saw somebody tweet. I want to be real clear because somebody challenged me. Ken Ham challenged what was really criticizing me the other day.

Really sad that he would do this. But because I had Hugh Ross on who advocates. I know of you, astrophysicist. the old yes the old earth uh whatever um can ham said that i i i don't care about the word of god i care about the word of man and i just want to say publicly folks absolutely the opposite and that's why i'm so offended by what tucker did the word of god is sacred we don't get to pick and choose so we may have slightly different interpretations but it's the word of god so for tucker to try to peel off one of the books of of of of of God's word that's a scary thing or to interpret it that way i mean

it's a big deal that he was willing to do that and again i got i want to be clear he is theologically very ignorant i have no idea where he's getting his information from but he the more i hear him talk the more i realize he he he doesn't seem to know anything or he's forgotten what he did know i have i have no idea no idea you know Tucker carlson um when when conservatives really like him. I always thought that Carlson's appeal, and I say this as somebody who really liked him, I always thought his appeal was that he was kind of the Jimmy Stewart, the every man of conservative commentary. He just brought, he didn't, he wasn't using big words or seemed overly sophisticated or intellectual. He was just, he was just a common man bringing common sense. This is in his days

on Fox News, bringing common sense to the news. and asking the kind of questions most of us would ask. But now where he is feels like he's in a very dark place, and you always know ahead of time where he's going to land. And it's almost comical. He begins with the commentary on Franklin Graham and the Book of Esther, and somehow the Jews are going to come into this. And sure enough, that's where he lands.

The Jews are evil. The Jews are terrible. I don't care if he starts out talking about the Beatles is going to end with him talking about the Jews are evil. It doesn't matter where he starts, men's fashion, you name it. It's all going to end there. But my attitude is even if I were open-minded, even if I were like, okay, maybe the Jews are terrible, please explain.

No one ever explains, like nobody ever explains, like, why are the Jews uniquely evil and at the heart of all the evil in the world? Can you break that down for me? Of course they can't. We'll be right back talking to Larry Taunton. Hey, folks, before we get back to our guests, I just want to say a lot of people donate when there's a headline. But MDA, Magan David Adom, doesn't get to slow down when the news cycle moves on. MDA is Israel's national EMS system.

That means emergencies don't stop today, tomorrow next month, heart attacks, accidents, trauma, surgeries, blood shortages, they're constant. Keeping that system strong requires ongoing support. When you give to the American friends of Magin David Adom, your heart. funding the basics that make everything else possible. Ambulances on the road, blood banks for trauma and surgery, training for first responders, and equipment that's used every single shift. This is not symbolic giving. This is practical life-saving support. If you want your donation to have direct measurable impact, this is one of the clearest ways to do it. Go to savinglifeisrael.org. That's savinglifeisrael.org. Welcome back, folks. Talking to Larry Taunton.

We're talking about Tucker Carlson. So yes. So then the other day he has somebody on who is explaining to anybody without a brain in his audience, which I guess is a significant portion of the audience, explaining that socialism is flat-out Christianity. Christianity is flat-out socialism. It's such a wildly stupid idea. But then I realize young people might not know. They haven't heard that that's not.

not true, and they're drinking it in from Tucker. Thank you very much, Tucker, for spreading another dramatic falsehood. Yeah, and again, isn't it incredible that now suddenly he is embracing everything that conservatism is against? He's embracing Islam. I mean, has he a secret convert to Islam? I mean, it's increasingly looked that way. I defended him for the last couple of years, I've defended him against claims that he had been paid off by the Qataris. I'm now starting to go, you know, that may have legs. That may be true. And now here he is, you know, in this latest interview with a guy who says,

I don't really like to use the word socialism because it's heavy connotations. And then he goes on to say, and I quote, but Christianity is socialist at its core. and Tucker is sitting there like this and he goes, he nods and says, you know, non-dictatorial, you know, it's non-authoritarian. You know what he said? I think I remember this exchange. I think he said, you think.

Yeah, yeah. I think that's what he said. He said that in response to the guy saying that socialism should be nowhere near Christianity. He goes, you think? And what's astonishing to me in that is, I mean, you've just said rightly that Tucker has a very pure-isle understanding of the Christian faith. But

for those who are listening to us, this isn't complicated. Now, there's complicated elements of this, but I'm going to teach you a very simple way of demolishing in one sentence any notion that Christianity is socialist.

Thou shalt not steal. Thank you. In that one line, Christianity demolishes the notion that there's no private property. You see, in socialism, all means of production, there's no private property. It's owned by the state. And I'm not talking about, you know, governments with elements of socialism. I'm talking about actual socialism. So you can't steal stuff if nobody owns it, you see. So it's a firming private property.

Because because I've written this book on the American Revolution, I've been thinking about this night and day that, you know, in 1764, 1765, these American colonists, they're told by Great Britain, you need to pay us X. And they go, okay, why? Tell me why we need to pay you. Because you can't take what's not yours.

So if you tell us reasonably, if you explain to us why we owe you this, otherwise you're just forcing us to give you money. You're stealing. And we're not going to go along with that. That is the foundation of the United States of America, ladies and gentlemen, means that you are free.

And if somebody says, you need to pay me at the point of a gun, you may pay them because you don't want to die, but you're not going to say, I'm fine with that. You want to know why it is that I ought to pay this tax or that tax if I'm free. Socialism says, nah, the state gets to decide, you shut up. And the idea that Tucker Carlson would just veer away from everything we thought he might, have believed about America, about, you know, the free market. It's just, it's inexplicable. Let's let's put it that way. Absolutely inexplicable. And it's, it goes much further than that. You see, socialism is by definition godless. It's atheistic. And this is why socialist regimes

have historically had maintained a great antipathy for the Christian faith. Socialist regimes killed no less than 150 million people in the 20th century alone. That's more than all religious wars from all previous centuries combined. So when you say that they're one and the same thing, they're absolutely not. And that's because socialism, as Dostoevsky put it, in the brothers Karamazov, he says social, by the way, he knew because he was an atheist and a socialist. If he were sitting here, he would say, Larry, just saying I was a socialist is sufficient. You don't even have say atheists because socialism is, by definition, atheistic.

And he said it's about the building of the Tower of Babel, not to Mount Heaven, but to bring heaven down to Earth without God. You see, socialism is a leftist utopian ideology. We're out of time. Larry, it's always a great joy speaking with you. Thank you, my friend. And folks, check out Larry's podcast. You can follow him and Larry, Alex Taunton. Thanks for listening.

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Hey, the folks, welcome to whatever today is. I think it's Thursday in some time zones. And I have wanted to talk about this. Now, if you follow this podcast, you know, unlike the radio show that I was doing with Salem Media, we don't do two hours a day. We do more like an hour a day.

get to cover everything we want to cover. That may change, but for the time being, that's where we are. But do me a favor. Tell your friends about this podcast. We call it the Eric Metaxus show, because that name was not being used and we're able to purchase it for almost nothing. So, but today, I want to talk about something with my friend, our friend, John Zmirak. First of all, and John, welcome, welcome back. Thanks. He's there? Yeah.

People like you, John, is the only reason we have you back. Obviously, I don't care for you, but I listen to the people. It's what the people want that animates me, and I will have on anybody that the people love. And the people have spoken, John, and they like you. And so today I wanted to talk to you about something that you and I discussed on the phone the other day, because I do have private phone calls with people that I dislike, including John's Merrick. and we spoke the other day about an article that I saw in the Baptist Press.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, we got in case he didn't know, a lot of these Christian websites or organizations have been taken over by leftist lunatics, and you have to know which ones. Baptist Press has long been taken over by leftist lunatics, like Christianity today. There are a number of them. They're sort of Christian except not at all, right? What they are is what they are is puppets. In Christianity Today, one of its biggest donors is the Hewlett Packard Foundation, which is also Planned Parenthood's largest donor.

So if somebody who wants to pay for abortions also wants to pay for Christianity today, and you look at the staff of Christianity today and see most of them were Kamala Harris donors, and Joe Biden donors, it kind of gives you an idea of what's really going on. Basically, there's sock puppets. Sock puppets for the life. Okay, and so that's the Baptist Press.

So the other day, they wrote an article in which they excoriated yours truly and in the same article, William Wolfe, whom we've had on this show. Really good, man. Yes. But what they said about me, and this is fascinating, If you watch this show, you know that I often have on Jim Kunstler, who is absolutely brilliant.

And he was on this program. And when he was on the program, he said something that really surprised me. It shocked me a little bit. It's not so much that I disagreed with it. It was that I didn't know what to think of it. It was a shocking proposal. And he said something about we need to go full link. We may need to go full Lincoln on the Democrat Party.

and he made some points and I initially said something like that. Let's explain what going full link in me means, okay? Well, but before we do that, I just want to say that I didn't quite understand

precisely what he was saying, but the concept of what he was saying seemed at least plausible to me. That something like this, what he was talking about, might be necessary. So the Baptist press acted like I was cheering him on and we're ready to take a flame thrower to our enemies on the left,

perhaps literally, which is ridiculous. So, John, go ahead. Well, the point is Abraham Lincoln saw the Democratic Party once the Civil War had started as cooperating with the Confederacy and trying to break America up. Okay. And so he was, he, he had one repos, a Democrat, congressman who was constantly arguing against the war and trying to let the Confederacy leave, Congressman Vowling them, he had him arrested. He suspended habeas corpus. He saw that the Constitution

is not a suicide pact. And he saw as his job as president to hold the country together at all costs. I know. You're talking about the guy on the penny, that Lincoln? Yeah. Yeah, that Abraham The guy in the Lincoln Memorial, you're talking about him, John? Yeah. Yeah. He would never do a thing like that. I think you've got the wrong Lincoln. So at the time that the Democratic Party was trying to foster the breakup of the United States.

I think there is a parallel to be seen today. I do not think the Democratic Party is a mainstream patriotic political party. I think it is a radical extremist party. party that got to be really big. And we've seen that before. Like the Nazis and the communists in Weimar Germany, the two biggest parties were also extremist anti-patriotic parties that didn't believe in the Weimar Republic. They didn't believe in the democracy. They claimed they wanted to run. In fact, they both said they wanted to take power in order to destroy the country and create a totally new regime. The Democrats have been saying that for the last 25 years. Obama,

a call for a fundamental transformation of America. Hillary Clinton called for Trump voters to be put in reeducation camps and for criminal charges to be filed against people who emit, which she calls, disinformation on social media. In other words, this is a totalitarian party. Under Joe Biden, they smuggle in 20 million people who they don't want us to deport because they want to let them vote illegally. or vote in their name using corrupt election machines to steal our elections forever. We saw in Virginia that Spanierman woman, who, by the way, is a long-time CIA agent,

and I think she's actually working for the deep state even now, she runs as a moderate Democrat. Immediately she tries to triple taxes and annel the Second Amendment and force transgender education in all the schools. the Democrats are in the grip of their most radical fringe elements. It's as if imagine the Republican Party were run by Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson. And everybody in the Republican Party bent over and truckled to Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson. And their anti-Semitic rants and their fanatical conspiracy theories. Imagine if the Republican Party were dominated by people like. that, you would have to say something like that about the Republicans.

Did you just use the word truckle on this program? Because it's a family show, and we're going to have to edit that out. I'm sorry to say. Now listen. Now listen. So you've just set this up perfectly. You have said that the Democrats are doing wicked things, things that are undermining the Republic and on and on and on.

and I would agree with that. So the question I think some people would have is, would doing what I guess Jim Consler was suggesting, would that be stooping to their level? In other words, we don't ever want to be guilty of doing what they're doing. So how do you see that? Fundamentally in politics,

you have to be willing to fight by the rules that are governing. if you're in a boxing match and you're obeying the Marquess of Queensberry rules and your opponent starts kicking you and then he takes out a switchblade and brass knuckles and the referee winks at him you know you're no longer in a boxing match

you're in a street fight and if you insist on oh no I'm going to follow the Victorian rules and the judges shall award the victory to be on points or at least I'll perish with honor if you actually care about your children and your grandchildren

And by the way, your ancestors who built this country, if you actually care about something apart from your self-esteem and your sense of personal goodness and I'm a nice person, I don't do mean things. If you have to do mean things in order to stop the bad people, I'm not going to stoop to their level. I won't be mean. Then Hitler wins. Stalin wins. Okay. Now, look, I don't, I don't disagree with any of you said. but a very respected legal scholar who's a friend of mine sent me an email.

I don't want to use his name, but he was very upset, not just by what Jim Kuntler said, but my seeming openness to what Jim Kuntzler was saying. And I think the question is at what point do you stoop to their level, right? Like there's this line. And I guess maybe Jim Kuntzler, when it's, was on the program, was suggesting that we're approaching a line where we will have to do something. He says something about military tribunals, for example. I don't know enough to know what to say about that. I don't know enough about when you have to say, okay, we're going to have military tribunals.

I don't even know what that means. Maybe you do. Well, I think this is, we shouldn't be indulging in these kind of fantasies, okay? We're actually helping our enemies by talking this way. We need to be fundamentally resolve we're not going to give up the country at any cost we're not going to let the race communists take over america but you and i aren't making these decisions so we don't have to sweat these kind of details what we should do is focus on winning republican primaries and beating the rhinos who are traders in our own midst that is the fundamental battle we haven't been fighting donald trump has endorsed far too many of his political enemies in republican primaries so let's not even have these fantasies about should Trump suspend

habeas corbis. This is not the battle. The battle is inside the Republican Party to stop the Democrats in drag people like John Cornyn and John Thune from selling this country down the river in return for a comfortable lifestyle and speaking gigs on MSNBC. Okay. And by the way, it's not pronounced Thune. It's pronounced Unic. We'll be right back. Welcome back, folks, talking to John Smirak. So, John, there was an article I mentioned about we've been discussing about in the Baptist press,

which it took me to task for allowing my guest, Jim Cuncelor, to say what he said. In the same article, they attacked William Wolfe. And I thought they took what he said out of context. And this is part of the problem, again, is folks on the left,

they don't seem, they just seem to want to score points. And I think that's what they did in attacking me in that article. and so what the quotes they gave from William Wolfe runs the Center for Baptist Leadership and he's trying to save the Southern Baptist Convention from turning into the basic PC USA or the United Methodists another woke lavender rainbow dead church and I think Wolf has a lot of intelligent things to say and he's doing a lot of really good important work in the largest Protestant denomination in America.

I think the fate of the Southern Baptist may determine the fate of the Republic. In the quotes they have from William Wolf, he was saying, I want to impose Christian morality. Yes, I want the government to impose Christian morality. I think America was founded on those principles. The separation of church and state, as they now interpret it, is a modern myth invented by the ACLU, which it was originally, by the way, a communist front group, not a lot of people don't know that. The myth that America was founded by Enlightenment Dias to be a secular republic that kept Christianity at a distance, that is a lie that was invented by lawyers in the 20th century and adopted by bad judges who

intentionally were distorting the meaning of our founding documents. All of that is true. There's a great book, did America have a Christian founding? I recommend that did America have a Christian founding? The author's name doesn't occur to me, but look up, did America have a Christian founding? It shows you in detail that all our founders, including the two or three deists in the mix, most of our founders were Calvinists. One was the Catholic and there were a couple of deists, but most of them were hardcore Calvinists like George Whitfield. They believe the government should enforce morality which by which they meant Christian morality. They didn't mean Marxist morality.

They didn't mean queer theory morality. They didn't mean relativists. They meant Christian morality. What most Christians agreed on, the natural law. The natural law is the law God wrote on our heart so we would be without excuse. Even the Gentiles are without excuse. Natural law is protecting the unborn. Marriage between one man and one woman preferably for light.

no stealing private property rights second amendment gun rights so citizens can defend themselves and their families from criminals and from a tyrannical government i wrote a whole book on that no second amendment no first go check it out it's it's the best thing i i could produce on the moral roots of law in america if you don't base your positive laws on the natural law then you're going to base them on whatever power whoever's in power at the time the Nazis were the great enemies of natural law. They didn't want Christian morality.

They said, oh, that holds us back. That stops us from doing what we need to as a nation. We must remove this residue of Christian superstition and govern according to modern science and the will of the people. That's what the Nazis wanted. The communists wanted something comparable using Marxism instead of Darwinism. If you get rid of the natural law written on the human heart, which most of us learn in our churches,

you give way to tyranny, tyranny of the kind we saw in 2020 when people were losing their jobs and be forced to take an abortion-based vaccine. Where are my gloves? Come on, heat. Winter is hard, but your groceries don't have to be. This winter, stay warm.

Tap the banner to order your groceries online at voila.ca. Enjoy in-store prices without leaving your home. You'll find the same regular price. is online as in store. Many promotions are available both in store and online, though some may vary. But so, John, to be clear, though, and we have to be clear about this, we are not talking about imposing Christian theology. We are not talking about theocracy. And we're not talking about Christian nationalism in the pejorative sense. And they implied in the article that that's what

William Wolf was saying. They've implied that that's what I'm saying. What we're talking about is trying to influence the culture and the country, but we're not talking about a theocracy. And this is what they implied. Here's the difference between theocracy and the kind of Christian government we're talking about. We don't base laws on pure divine revelation. As a Catholic, I believe that the Virgin Mary appeared in Fatima, she did at Fatima talk about modesty, modesty of dress for women. I wouldn't want to enforce laws based on the apparitions of Fatima or on the Westminster Confession.

However, the natural law is of law that you can, the morality you can argue using reason alone. It is bad to kill unborn children. It is wrong to have three people in a marriage. It is wrong to do transgender surgery on children. These are moral judgments. law has to be based on some moral morality. We've got to leave it there. Very important distinctions, folks.

Very important distinctions. We'll be right back. Folks, welcome back. You've heard me talk a lot about gold on the program, or at least I know many of you have expressed interest in gold, and we have a sponsor. If you listen to the program, you know it's Genesis Gold Group. And I thought, why don't we get the head?

of Genesis Gold on the program to talk about what Genesis Gold does. And we have right now, Bill Ammore Armour coming to us from, I think, someplace on the left coast. Yeah, I guess, you know, we're both, you know, under pretty strict rule here, communist rule, but so be it. We're talking to a lot of Middle America here, a lot of people that have it better than us. But, you know, I think, you know, as you of all people would know, with your book about Bonhofer, we have to resist from within. So I inactively resist. But absolutely pleasure to be here.

Thanks for having me on. Most gold sponsors wouldn't know anything about my Bonne offer book. So this is why we picked you and Genesis Gold because you actually, you know, you're a person of faith and you understand this stuff. And it is true that being on the coasts in some ways we see even more clearly because we see how bad things can get, you know, when you're dealing with cultural. Marxism and lunatics like Governor Newsom or Mayor Mamdani. So anyway, for folks who have questions about gold or what you do, tell us where you're coming from. And I want to actually, let me say

up front, folks, if you want to get information, please go to metaxis gold IRA.com, metaxusgoldiraira.com. But Bill, talk to us about what you do. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, at its core, we help people steward, you know, what God has given them. You know, the way that I approach this always is understanding that anything we have is a blessing from the Lord, right? And so we want to be good stewards of that. We want to direct that in ways that honor God and the kingdom. And so how do we do that?

Well, one of the most important things is we be responsible and we be prudent with what we've been given. And if you look around, I think it doesn't take a genius to look at the market, the world, you know, the economy, et cetera, and really start to question, wow, what are we heading to? I mean, any fiat currency in history has failed. You look at the dollar and what's become of that, you know, $38, $39 trillion in national debt. You start to look at the inflationary pressures, what your dollar is worth today versus what it was worth 20 years ago.

And you start to gain an understanding that this is not just kind of the cyclical things go up, things go down. We are experiencing a real shift here, a long-term shift that's been occurring, but we're at a sort of precipice. And so people come to me and say, Bill, how do I preserve what I have put my life work? towards, which is, you know, the wealth that we have saved up, you know, for our, you know, for our family, you know, ass down, whatever that might be. And in the true answer there is the same thing that has been good for 4,000 plus years, and that's physical gold and silver. You know, you can read through the Old Testament, they're using gold and silver, and you can read to the very tail end of revelation. And what are they throwing into the street when Christ returns? They're throwing

gold and silver. So I think, you know, using that as an understanding that gold does make it from A all the way to Z and silver. And so that's kind of the one vehicle that can protect your wealth in a way that, you know, a bank, the dollar, stocks, nothing else really can offer that because nothing else has sort of the divine, a blessing in terms of currency that gold and silver does have. I've only begun thinking about it that way recently. But the idea that God gave us gold and silver, it's not just some random thing. and that, yes, for millennia, we've been dealing with gold and silver.

And there's something sort of foundational about it. It's not coincidental. There's something about it. But the idea that even today, you could say, yeah, these fiat currencies, it doesn't work. This is your best investment. The idea that that's true is kind of amazing and that, you know, we can still do that. We're not yet in a world where it's not possible to get gold. Thank God.

Yeah, you're exactly right. And who knows that could come in the future? I know there's a lot of talk about things like central bank digital currencies, you know, and really the dangers that that presents. But at least for now, you look at, you know, what has, you know, occurred over the last year even in metals. And I think that this is a sign of what's to come. As you watch gold's up, you know, 40, 45 percent in the last 12 months, silver's up over 100 percent. And people will ask me sometimes, you know, Bill, is this just, you know, what it's done in the last 12 months is that in a anomaly? Are we at the end of the ride here? And the answer I give is that no, I think if anything, that gold historically is really a financial bloodhound and it's sniffing out the problems in the greater financial world. And we're seeing that today. I mean, just this month, we're seeing huge, huge numbers of the private credit market in that entire world, nine and a half percent default rate, which is a record here through all of the U.S.'s history and private credit. So we're seeing, you know, potential contagion. Powell was on just, I think it was this morning talking. about he says we're you know we're they asked him should we is this going to be okay and he said

we don't really want to comment on that right now which if the people at the top are are avoiding answering that that's that should be you know siren should be blaring i was going to say folks if your interest has been peaked and i hope it has go to metaxas gold ira.comitazes gold ira.com