The Eric Metaxas Show - Doug Giles

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

Doug Giles joins us to give us an update on the floods in Texas 

Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. Did you like your gravy thick and rich and loaded with creamy mushrooms? If no one was looking, would you chug the whole gravy boat? Chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug. Stay tuned. Here comes Mr. Chugg-a-lug-lug himself, Eric Mat, Texas. Hey, there, folks. Welcome to July 9th, as I like to call it.

That's just me. What do you call it, Chris Heims? Do you also call it July 9th? I do. I call it, yeah, what is it? Five days after the fourth? I always wonder, because, you know, when you grew up in an immigrant household, you never know, is that just the family thing that we call it that?

And then, you know, you go to school and you realize nobody else refers to it that way. So Greeks can understand that. We had a word in our family, Kolojarto. And when I got to school, I realized that other people call it toilet paper. So we call it. Okay, so everybody calls it July 9th. So today's July 9th. I have to tell you, folks, we've got some amazing guests. In a few minutes, we're talking to our friend Doug Giles. Doug Giles is a maniac. That is my highest compliment. He is amazing. You need to know who he is. A big part of what I do on this program I try to do in my whole life is introduce my audience to these heroes, to these great voices. Doug is one. One of the one. of them. He's just extraordinary. So Doug Giles, we're going to be talking about he lives an hour and a half from where the floods happen in Texas. We're talking about the Texas floods and we're talking about manhood and heroism. I love, every time I talk to him, I just love him, Doug Giles, G-I-L-E-S.

In hour two, I'm talking to the president of Cornerstone University. This is another thing. It's my joy to introduce this audience to Cornerstone University. They're just a handful of colleges worth mentioning at this point. One of them is Cornerstone, obviously Hillsdale, Liberty, just a handful out there where they're actually standing firm, standing against the tide of lunacy. Cornerstone is one of them. So we've got the president. His name is never easy to pronounce.

It's Gerson-Morreino Rionio. So there's three ends, only one till day, very important. Gerson, Moreno, Riano. But he's the president of Cornerstone. In our two, we're talking to him about higher education, the public good. We're talking about the plagiarism scandal at Harvard and how, you know, character is at the heart of all education. You know, if people don't know, there's such a thing as goodness and truth, what are you ending up teaching? them, cynicism, and how to cheat. So two great guests. Also today, we're launching a new segment

in hour two before I talk to the president of Cornerstone University. We're going to have a supercentennial segment. We'll probably be doing these once a week. Some of you know I've announced said on the program that I am calling the 250th anniversary of America the super centennial. I have branded it. Boom. Nobody's going to say semi-quincentennial. Nobody. So we're going to call it the super centennial.

I hope it catches on. It's fun. It's exciting. It's celebratory super centennial. So if you follow me on Instagram, you probably already know. we've launched an Instagram, what do we call it, Handel? I don't know, called Supercentennial. So every single day, if you go to Supercentennial on Instagram, Supercentennial,

we have what happened 250 years ago today or 249 years ago today. So I recommend you follow that and me on Instagram. But once a week on this program, we'll be doing a Supercentennial segment where I talk about a number of things that have happened this week in American history 2050 years ago. And since time travel hasn't been invented to date, I mean, this is the next best thing because you can't go back in time yet, but you can, you know, basically it's like going back. It's like a time machine.

Some of us can go back in time, but I can't speak about that publicly, at least not yet. Yeah, my lawyers tell me I can't talk about that. But the fact of the matter is, we're going to move on. We're going to move on. I can't talk about that. So today we have Doug Giles in a few minutes. We have a super centennial segment, which we're going to be doing once a week. And we've got some fun stuff.

That's the beginning of our two. Then I'm talking to the president of Cornerstone University. Okay, a couple of other things to mention. Some of you are already members. But if you give $25 a month or more to, Metaxus media to the work that we're doing, if you're a donor at the $25 level, you get a number of benefits. So if you go to Eric Mataxis.com, donate slash donate, you can see that. I bring this up because anybody who's a member of the Bonhofer Circle, so that's anybody who donates $25 a month

or more, gets to participate, because we're doing this tonight, that's why I'm mentioning it, in a Zoom. It's pretty exclusive. There's not many of us who are on these calls, but I will give a talk, a short talk, you know, maybe 25 minutes or so, but it's exclusive. It's live tonight at 6.30 p.m. Eastern Time. So if you're a member of the Bonhofer Circle, you can jump on our Zoom. And then you get to ask me anything you want. We have, we open it up for Q and A. I love it. And so we're going to, in the past, we've done it where you had to submit your questions. I don't think that works.

It's more fun to hear from you to, you know, say, ask your question and then I'll answer it. But that's tonight at 6.30 p.m. So if you want to join the Bonhofer circle, today would be a great day to do it because tonight at 6.30 p.m. is the quarterly Zoom call. So you have to go to Eric Mattaxas.com. And you'll see where it says donate. And you can click on Bonhofer. circle. But it really is fun and I get to have, you know, a level of interaction that is rare.

You know, unless you came on the cruise or unless you bump into me at a speaking engagement, I'll be in Salt Lake City at the end of next week. You know, I get around, but this is a, this is a fun thing. And you can ask, I mean, absolutely anything you want. We can, we can have fun. You can, you know, you can do whatever you want. But that's tonight, 6.30 p.m. Eastern. obviously you're listening to me now so you don't have a lot of time if you want to do that. So just go to Ericcontaxis.com and you'll see the donate button on the website and you can join and you'll immediately get the Zoom link to join us tonight, 630 p.m. And it's always fun.

So I hope some of you might join us today on that. Before we go, I want to mention tomorrow, it's a big deal. We have, as my guest tomorrow in hour one, the great Victor Davis Hanson. There are very few people like Victor Davis Hansen. He is absolutely brilliant. He has an academic mind in the best sense. He's an intellectual and an historian. And he really understands where we are now in history.

And so I'm very excited to talk to him tomorrow. It's just a big deal when we can get the famous VDH on the program. And we hope to get him for Socrates in the studio to talk about his book, The End of Everything, which is, I won't go into that right now. Okay, before we go to the break and before we get to Doug Giles, I want to remind you of our friends at the Herzog Foundation. You know, because it's a foundation, they're not asking you for money. they want to help you.

What does the Herzog Foundation want to help you with? Well, homeschooling, Christian education, they are the go-to resource. We trust them. They are friends. They are dependable. There's a lot happening right now. There's a real moment in our history right now where people are fleeing the broken institutions, public schools, and because people have finally woken up to what's going on.

And during COVID, a lot of people woke. up because they were watching what their kids were getting on Zoom and they said, hey, wait a minute. We didn't get this when I was a kid. This is not good. So if you're interested in making the leap to homeschooling or to their number of different options now, hybrid models, go to Herzog Foundation.com. Hertzog Foundation.com. And they have a wonderful website called Reed Lion, R-E-A-D-L-I-O-N, readlion.com. If you've got kids or grandkids, you should at least know about them. Hurtzog Foundation.com and readlion.com.

We'll be right back with Doug Giles. Mike Lindell and my pillow employees want to thank you, my listeners, for all your continued support. Mike has a passion to help everyone get the best sleep of their life. He didn't stop by creating the best pillow. He created the best bed sheets ever. Yes, Mike is offering the best deal on his percale bedsheets. You can get a set now for as low as 2498. The MyPillow Per Cale bed sheets are breathable and have a cool, crisp feel.

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And use promo code Eric. Go to mypillow.com. Use promo code Eric or call 800. 978-3057. Ingredients, when I flip a container around and I can't pronounce or recognize the ingredients, I put it back. That's why you'll find balance of nature's fruits and veggie supplements on a shelf in my home. Because every single ingredient is a fruit or veggie plucked from the soil.

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to get 40% off plus free shipping this week only. You've got to use my discount code Eric. Call them at 800-2468-7-51. Use discount code Eric. Order online at balance of nature.com. Use discount code Eric to get 40% off this week only. I'm excited because I try to get the hippie-dippy weatherman to be my guest today. And I couldn't get him.

But the next best thing is my friend Doug Giles. Doug, welcome back. Eric, how you doing, Big Dog? I'm doing all right. You're very different from the hippie-dippy weatherman, but the way you talk reminds me of the hippie-dippy weatherman. Most people aren't getting that reference. Ask me if I care.

I don't. I don't even get it, but I'm glad to be. It was George Carlin. Early George Carlin. This is like, you know, 1971. He'd come on a TV show, and he would do, he would say, this is your hippie-dippy weatherman.

And he says, tonight, it's going to be. dark, you know, stuff like that. It was just great. It was great. But you, my friend, we've got to get really serious here. You and I, we joke a lot. But today, what happened in the floods, you live near what happened in Texas. So anything you have to say, we are all ears. Go ahead. Yeah, so I'm an hour and a half away from Kerr County. And I know the area in the Guadalupe River very well and hunt and ingram. I'm a hunter, as you can see, by the dead lion behind me. That is an epicenter of great hunting in Texas. I've been through that place, I don't know, how many times. And yeah, so very familiar with that corridor, and it is an epicenter of flooding.

I mean, everybody in their dog knows how dangerous, you know, the Guadalupe can be. And we saw it in real time. We got, what, over 100 people that are dead and 170 that are, who knows, that are still missing. And it's, it's, I mean, look, if they're still missing, we, we guess most of them are likely dead. Right. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. You know, everybody, everybody's like, this is horrible.

Of course it's horrible. I mean, it's a nightmare. But, you know, given all the campers that were down there, Eric, and all the. all the RVs and all the tents. I'm surprised that there wasn't a thousand killed. I mean, the water rose 30 plus feet in 45 minutes. It was a wall of black death, you know, coming down. I mean, I have to say, you know, people, we throw out words like 30 feet.

Ladies and gentlemen, think about that for a second. Think about that. Your ceiling is probably nine feet. imagine 30 feet of water. It is unfathomable, not literally, but I just, I mean, look, I grew up in Connecticut and New York. This kind of stuff is, it's unthinkable. And I mean, I have a lot of questions, but the first one, Doug, is, you know, it's the cliche question. but how is this possible?

How could this happen? How could you have a camp in a place where something like this could conceivably happen? Do you know any, can you say anything about that? Because it's so bizarre to me that we're talking about so many deaths. Yeah, man, I don't get it. Like, this is, again, they're camping right on a floodplain. And, you know, know, the possibility of them getting waylaid, it's way up there. And, you know, prior to this going on,

you know, you see this massive weather system coming towards you. And one of my lessons from the flood is you've got to be your own weatherman. And if you're sitting, if you're, if you're camping or if you're in fixed structures and you're on a river, you need to be checking to see if there's a slow moving front coming at you that's that's loaded down and predicting, you know, five plus inches of rain. And then, you know, you self-preserve, Eric, you get off the bank. You move to higher ground. And, you know, it's going to be interesting to see if they rebuild that close to the Guadalupe because that's just an accident waiting to happen. and I'm not trying to fix blame to anybody, but it's just, you know, common sense, man. I grew up.

Obviously, they've been running this camp summer after summer after summer. Nothing like this has ever happened. That's why, you know, you know, it's kind of like when people build mansions in the dunes, you know, and then a once in a century hurricane comes, and they go, oh, you know,

if things happen that infrequently, things of this nature, it is, you can see how people get lulled into a sense of everything will be, fine because it was my understanding that these things don't happen, things of this nature don't happen, but, you know, maybe once a century. Yeah, it happened in 1987. What happened?

I mean, how bad was it in 87? That's interesting. Not as bad, but pretty dang bad, man, as they'd say down in Texas. Again, they were way late and we're talking about, you know, 87. So it's, you know, just a few decades ago. And again, you know, I'm not trying to Monday morning quarterback this thing, but, man, I'm up on the mountain. I'm not down by the river. And if I want to go frolic in the river, then I'll freaking walk down to the river and do it and then return back uphill to my camp.

And to place, you know, kids down there, I don't know. If they rebuild, it'll be shocking to me because, again, this is not just once in a century or every 200 years. That place floods a lot. And like I said, I'm very familiar with it. You've got tributaries feeding into the Guadalupe. You've got these steep mountains. It's, you know, it's the lap of the Texas Hill country. All that stuff washes down real violently. And this is not a slow-moving Mississippi River. Eric, with the mud bottom. We're talking about limestone bottom. It's a shoot. It's like the L.A. River. So when it comes, it comes with a vengeance.

Again, it's beautiful, you know, but put the camps way far away from the river. When the kids want to, you know, enter tube down the river, get a bus, bring them down, take them back up, you know. I want to ask you if you have heard anything about the supposed cloud seeding. I thought I read something this morning that definitively said there had been cloud seeding. seeding. I wasn't aware that anybody was doing cloud seeding to cause rain. I knew it was something that worked in theory. I didn't know that people did it, but it seems that they did. Do you know anything about that? Yeah, just what I've read off X and stuff. And I talked to a buddy of mine who's younger and way more smarter than I am on the cloud seating topic. And he said that you can't create

that kind of monsoon with the seating that they did. So I don't know. And again, you know, it's floating around there with Epstein-List type conspiracy theories. Yeah. I mean, look, you and I were close to the same age. And in our lifetimes, it seems like we have not seen the level of confusion and conspiracy theories that we have in the last few years. I mean, you know, 9-11 is one thing. I dismissed that completely and still pretty much do.

But in more recent years, what happened in Hawaii with the fires a few years ago, what happened in California with the fires recently. These are things that are completely opaque. We really still do not know if there are nefarious powers. is manipulating things. And I think we know enough to seriously ask those questions. I don't think we want to dismiss them anymore. And so, you know, when I hear about people, I can even think what the term is now,

but, you know, when they're covering the clouds, you know, with plain exhaust, whatever they, what do they call that, geo something, I don't know. Chem trails and. Chem trails, whatever. You know, it's like we've woken up into a world. just in the last few years where we're hearing about this. And you're saying, what? What is going on?

Who's in charge? It's absolutely bizarre that we live in, ideally, the freest country in the history of the world, it seems to me, or ostensibly the freest country in history of the world, where we the people determine things, we govern ourselves. And then you hear about things like this, and nobody has answers, you know, which gets us to the Epstein files, which gets us to a number of things. So I always want to be clear with my audience. I think we have to be sober-minded.

We have to, whenever I hear anybody and you get a lot of this on X, people are ringing their hands and they say, oh, the truth will never come out, whatever. I want to rebuke those people because I don't want to hear hopelessness. If you want to be realistic, if you want to say there is corruption, we need to get to the bottom of it. Heads will roll. People need to go to jail. You want to say that, I'm all in on that.

But when people say, we'll never get to the bottom of that, everybody's in the pocket of somebody else, the deep state. When I hear people speak that kind of hopelessness, I just want to say, folks, you are foolish. You're foolish. It's one thing to be skeptical and wise. It's another thing to tip over into cynicism and nihilism. And I hear some of that when people say,

we'll never get to the bottom of it. Trump's in the pocket of this one and that one. and Pam Bondi and Cash Patel and Bongino. They've been bought. This level of cynicism is so unhelpful. Anyway, we'll be right back talking to Doug Giles. Come back and talk to our friend Doug Giles. That's G-I-L-E-S.

And yet he's a man of no guile. His newest book is called Lion-Harted. Doug, you've written so many great books. Lion-Harted is about raising up young men to be real men. And I'd love you to start if you don't mind with Elon Musk. Could we raise him up to be a little bit more mature? I'm just, I always feel like if you're really, really smart or wealthy or something, you kind of get away with stuff and you're not forced to deal with whatever you know and

I know as married men. Marriage is one of those things that will force you to grow up a little bit, to be less selfish, having kids, God, you know, established families to help us to help us to. And I just think that when the subject in the last week or so of boys becoming men comes up, I think of Elon Musk. Now, I love Elon Musk, but it's disappointing to see the level of his petulance. And I guess just in some sense, it's just immaturity. It's a lack of wisdom.

So he does not lack IQ, but IQ is useless without. character without wisdom. So when you lift up your book, Lionhearted, it just makes me think of that. So I had to say a word. Yeah, it is a little petulant, like you said, but I don't want to say too much because I want to stay on X, you know. I pissed Zuckerberg off in 2018. Well, listen, it's not, no, no, no. I would never put Zuckerberg in the same category as Elon Musk. I think Elon Musk is a good man. I think Zuckerberg, I would not put in that category. But I would say that. Yeah, as far as him going back and forth with Trump, you know, when, you know, from a

biblical standpoint, as a man, I try to take the, the scriptural track when I get insulted. So say Trump insulted me, I'm just going to absorb it, you know. I'm going to let God sort it out. I'm not going to get on social media. Like when I was on Facebook before I got banned from our two million followers, I never engaged man, I never engage. And it's not because I'm a wuss. It's not because I don't have an answer. It's like I have a life. I have books. I have paintings. I have businesses that I want to pursue. And I watched Andrew Breitbart, Eric, who was super close to our family. I watched him pretty much self-destruct.

I mean, he spent, you know, all of his time on Twitter engaging all of these, you know, idiots that were coming against him. And it was, I would say some of it was proper. A lot of it was excessive. And two months before he passed away, I was with him at CPAC. And it was during the Occupy Wall Street protest. And Hannah called me, and I was with Andrew on the balcony, and we're shouting at the Occupy Wall Street protesters, and they're shouting back at us.

And Hannah calls me on the phone. She said, hey, have you seen Andrew? I go, yeah, I'm with him right now. How is he? I go, listen, if he doesn't chill, he's going to be dead within a year. And it was two months. And Michael Walsh, who was the editor of Big Hollywood, one of Andrew's big sites. He completely fled social media, Twitter in particular. He's like, I'm not going to die for this stuff. I'm not going to go back and forth with these people, these anonymous muckrakers. And, you know, I'm going to live for something higher. So that would be my advice to Elon. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you bring this up because I have been astonished over the years at the childish of all kinds of people whose opinions I agree with, but they seem to love to tangle and argue online.

And I have to say, I don't, I very rarely see the benefit. I almost never, like you, I have a life. I'm like too old to behave like an adolescent with nothing better to do. I'm a busy, very busy man trying to steward what God has given me. And so to descend into the muck and the mire with fools, let's be honest. The scripture says, do not answer a fool according to his folly. But there are a lot of people who do precisely that. And they get in there and they tangle.

And I don't know what they think they're accomplishing. Again, if you do it just right, you can get away with it or if God's called you to it. But most of the time, I ignore it. Or if anybody says, I'll bet you, Doug Giles, that I have blocked more people on X than anyone in the world. I will bet you over the years that I've been on X, anytime anybody says anything nasty or really stupid, I immediately block them. I don't mute them. I block them because I don't want this anywhere near my life. If people are so foolish, I just want them to go away.

I don't want them even to follow me. Yeah, there's a, there's a, the scripture says that wrangling is a sin. Yeah. You know, and the Christians are just as involved. They're just as petty and, you know, weasily and stuff like that. Again, I don't have time for this. I'm 62. Selah V, man.

I'm the devil. I killed Abraham Lincoln. I get it. You know, I'm a Nazi, whatever. I don't care. You know, I don't care. And like you, immediately blocked. So, yeah.

No forgiveness. I don't want toxicity in my life whatsoever. No, no. But it's interesting because we're talking about Elon. And the fact is that you see, you know, in his life, and this is really not to denigrate him. He has done some great things. His zeal for free speech is beautiful. It's amazing that he spent billions of dollars of his money for free speech.

Beautiful. His advocacy for Donald Trump during the election, brave and beautiful. His willingness publicly to go after what he calls the woke mind virus, beautiful. So there's so many wonderful things about him. So to see him recently meltdown and to come after Steve Bannon and say that Bannon's on the Epstein list. And when people go there, I just have to say there's nobody in his life who can tell him not to do that. and he needs somebody in his life. We'll be right back talking to Doug Giles.

Welcome back, folks, talking to my friend, Doug Giles, Giles, G-I-L-E-S. He's the author of many books. Doug, what's the best place people can find you online? Yeah, Doug Giles, G-I-L-E-S.org. That's G-O-R-G-G-G. Doug Giles.org. Well, your new book is about manhood.

It's called Lion-Hearted, and we're just talking about that. What does it mean to be a man? And I've thought a lot about character because I've written about these great men and women of history. And it's so fascinating to me when I think, because I'm writing a book in the American Revolution right now, it is hard not to be slack-jawed in awe of the character of George Washington. The first chapter of my book, Seven Men, which is all about manhood, is about George Washington.

And when you look at a character like that, you realize this is a big deal because that is what, is what gave us our nation. That is what enabled us to have a self-governing republic. The character of George Washington, everything else might have failed, but for his extraordinary character, it's such a beautiful thing to look at, to study in history. And I think we're at a point in the culture where we need to have this conversation, which is why I'm glad you wrote your book linehearted because it's at the heart of everything. You cannot have anything good without men and women of a real character. Yeah. Hello. Hey, speaking to George Washington, Eric, according to my aunt who did massive research on where we hail from, I'm a descendant from old

Georgie. Get out. No. Well, now, wait a second. I haven't done it. I haven't done it, but my, You know, it's super brilliant. You know, she did it all. But I just want to be clear because... Or maybe it was George Jefferson. Gosh, I don't know. Oh, stop it. Because George Washington had no biological children,

it's not possible for you to be a direct descendant of George Washington. But certainly you could be related to him. You could be related to... Maybe Steve Washington or something. Maybe, yeah. Maybe... You're others? Maybe Boom, Boom, Washington from the Sweatho.

I'm pretty sure it's boom boom Washington from from the whitehugs. Speaking of, I might be a, I might be related to Gabe Kaplan. Go ahead. Yeah, the heroic aspect, you know,

that we saw during this catastrophic flood, uh, to me is just amazing. Uh, one of the, one of the top guys, uh, petty officer,

Scott Ruskin from the Coast Guard. Bro, he's saved 26 years old. So Gen Z's not made up in entirely of weasels. 26 years old, his first deployment, Eric, he saves 165 people stranded on roofs, stuck in trees, hanging on to telephone poles. And when I was watching this young guy, and man, he was just so fresh, so polite, so well-spoken,

gave credit to his crew because obviously you can't do this kind of stuff alone. and it just goes to show you, man, that heroism is alive and well on planet Earth. And we still see embodied people risking their lives for their friends and neighbors. I mean, that's biblical stuff, man. That's taught, not caught. And again, I'm glad to see this young dude doing stuff that there's very few people step into that kind of fray. and there's another account of a 17-year-old girl that's our worship leader at Liberty Fellowship,

the church I pastor. He's acquainted with her and her family. So they're up in Marble Falls. It's a couple hours north of Hunt and Ingram and Curvill where it was the epicenter of the flood. She was in a minivan, and they're trying to get the heck out of Dodge. It's five o'clock in the morning. they approach a bridge. They didn't know it was wiped out.

Boom, the minivan went into the drink. And again, this is raging rapids. And so they couldn't get out of the minivan. And this 17-year-old girl, she prized open the door. The family gets out, and then she gets swept away. And they found her two days later, the day before yesterday. And she was sitting 160 feet up on the hill. That's how high the water carried her, pushed her.

And she just sitting upright. She passed away. And off to her left were three crosses from a camp that were displayed. And so, you know, is it sad? Duh. It's horrible. But it's heroic. She didn't do the George Costanza, knock children down, knock old ladies down to get out of a burning apartment.

she stayed there, pride open the minivan door, the family leaves, and then she loses her life. You know, that's, again, it's horrible, but if you're going to approach the bema seat and him whose eyes are a flame of fire, that's how you want to approach him. And we're not saved by our works, but she did something, again, she laid down her life, you know, for a family. And again, I just, I dig the fact that heroism is on full display in the Republic of Texas, and it's brilliant and it's beautiful. It's not only first responders and law enforcement, but it's kids. I saw kids, Eric, that testified how they busted out windows from their top bunk and started shoving, you know, their little camper buddies out the window so that they wouldn't drown.

Again, that's beautiful. That's Christian. And I don't know why we don't talk and we don't preach about heroism in the church. We always hear about being nice and being sweet. Why not freaking preach every now and then on being a hero, confronting evil, stepping up to the plate, sacrificing your life if need be. Well, this is why I love you, Doug Giles, because you get this. and I think a lot of people get this,

and a lot of people are hungry to hear people talk about this. And I know a lot of those wonderful folks listen to this program. This is at the heart of everything, folks. If you are not willing to be a heroic self-sacrificial hero, you do not get the Christian faith, and you may not be saved by faith. Because if you don't get that, I don't know what you get. You get some little theological points.

Well, they don't matter to God. God looks on the heart. He understands if you understand this deeper stuff or you don't. And so what we're talking about really is utterly central to the Christian faith. And I would say to people, if you're going to a church that is not on board with this, get out. For the sake of your soul, get out lest you are complicit with evil. On the other hand, every day or every week, I meet people who get this. And it's just not reported in the media. When we come back, we'll talk about that. I have great hope for this country.

We'll be right back. We'll back to talk to our friend, Doug Giles, G-I-L-E-S, look them up. Doug, before I let you speak, I just have to say, I go around the country, I speak all over the country, and I meet people who are the kind of heroes that you were just talking about, people that, if they haven't done something extraordinary, they would if they could. And I think the headline is that we live in a culture that's so messed up, that's so secular liberal, that you don't hear these stories. So we feel like we live in a world where these people don't exist. They're everywhere.

These are the kind of people, most of them voted for Donald Trump. They know right from wrong. They know lunacy from sanity. They get it. But it's like they don't exist in the media landscape. So a big part of God's calling in my life is to give those people a voice. and by God's grace, we will dramatically increase our platform to do that because people need to be encouraged to know, no, you're not crazy, folks. You get it. And just because, you know, the news

is reporting on the Kardashians or whatever it's, forget that. You need to focus on what is real and good and true. And a big part of this program is putting some of that stuff out there. So, yeah. Yeah, again, so, you know, from a pulpit standpoint, I always blame the pulpit. The pulpit is the culprit if there's any kind of problem in culture or inside the beltway or in the body of Christ or in the planet. And a lot of the pulpit, you know, they de-emphasize the heroism that's entwined in the men and women of faith. I mean, when you think of Father Abraham, you think of this doting, you know, old dude, you know, walking around burkingstocks. Abraham was a warlord. He was an Iraqi warlord from Err, the Caledians.

Deans. And when his stupid nephew, Lott got kidnapped, Abraham led 318 soldiers to go out and rescue his dumb butt. Same thing with Moses. You got Moses, 80-year-old dude with a stick confronts Pharaoh. Joshua and Caleb, 85 years old, man. They're up there with Al Pacino, you know, and they conquer the Canaanite warriors who were trained combatants. And then you got the ladies. They're not little sweet, you know, Amish school marms. I mean, you got Deborah and Yael. Look at them. When Barack, which is an apropos name for a coward, when he wouldn't do God's business, Deborah, the prophetess, she took charge and Yael killed Cicera with a tent peg to the head after she plied him and drugged him with milk. And so you get nothing but heroes, heroes, heroes,

heroes, heroes. So here's a challenge for the Christian that's listening to Eric and I this morning or this afternoon. Why don't you Google in your church's sermon archives, okay? Google Hero and see how many times hero sermons pop up on your YouTube channel because I guarantee that probably scant few. And what's interesting is the Old Testament era, it existed based upon their levels that Israel existed based upon their levels of heroes. All nations existed

based upon their levels of heroes. And what's wild is that when God wanted to curse Israel, like if you're not going to pay attention, you're going to ignore my profit, you're going to blow off my law, then according to Isaiah 3, he said, I'll remove the heroes from your midst and the enemies will come in and ransack. And one of the things that I think is interesting, you know, is, you know, how we emphasize Jesus is our purpose. personal savior. Jesus is gentle, meek, and mild. Isaiah said that Jesus in the Godhead were heroes who throw themselves into battle. The eternal one will take on his enemies with passion, shouting out a deafening roar. He will overpower them. That's according to the voice translation.

So Isaiah, man, he just drums into the head of the believer that God's a hero. He's not just gentle Jesus. Boy, this is so important. God bless you, my brother, Doug Giles. Folks, check out Douggiles.org. You need to know who, Doug, is. Doug, that's why I have you on here. It just blesses me to know you're out there. Folks, we're out of time, at least for now. Thank you, Doug. Thank you, Eric.