The Eric Metaxas Show - Elijah Stephens

Episode Date: October 5, 2021

Elijah Stephens manages SendProof.com, a website that tracks and reports on miracles, and he shares some of the amazing stories from his new documentary, "Send Proof."

to the Eric Mettaxas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Folks, everywhere I go, I hear about miracles. Some of them are baloney, but most of them are true. They're people that I know and trust, and they give you details. But we live in a world where people act as though there's no such thing as a miracle, or they say, well, I've never seen proof. I've never, you know, that's sort of legitimate. In any event, I've often said,

to friends of mine like Ken Fish or others that, you know, you've got to document this because people, they won't take your word for it. People are very skeptical. Well, there's good news. I don't know what it is, but there's good news. No, there is good news. I know what the good news is, and I know what the small, g, small, and good news is today. There's a film out called Send Proof. It's about the very thing I have been discussing. I have with me the filmmaker, Elijah, that's you. Yes. Hello, Elisha Stevens.

Thank you. Now, you come to us from Reading, California. Right. That's far away. It's a long trip. That's where my friends of Bill and Benny Johnson live. Mm-hmm. Any relation?

No, no relation. No relation. You made a film called Send Proof about the very thing we're talking about. So I want to find out, first of all, tell my audience in, you know, 30 seconds, What is this film? Okay, this is my journey to go see if there's evidence for miracles, especially healing miracles. What did doctors say? What do doctors say? What do skeptics say?

What does Michael Shermer say? Or James Randy, the guy who called Peter Popoff with an earpiece. Like, I try to hear all sides. Okay, those are super skeptics. Super skeptics. Who are pretending to be like Harry Houdini with the spiritualists and the seances. They're trying to undo that. Now, listen, that's not a bad thing.

Right. Because I get annoyed, would be putting it mildly. If there's any tomfoolery, any phoniness, whatever. Now, I've not seen any, but you know that there are some people out there. But to my mind, almost all of the people who talk about this stuff are straight shooters. But because there are a tiny handful of frauds out there, Hollywood goes with the fraud narrative. And you see all these films about fraudulent faith healing and stuff. So it's a great thing that you decided to make a film like this.

How did you get the idea to do this? Is this your first film? This is my first film. So I went to the ministry school at Bethel, and I was like, God, give me a strategy to reach the world. And I felt in my heart make a film. And then my senior pastor of my former church left the faith, said there's no God, no evidence for miracles. And I felt like I should start researching this stuff. and film might be a medium for showing it.

And then one day I got a prophetic word. I was at my house and my friends texted me and said, a prophet came to the church and called your name out, get here now. And so I drove to the church. He told me my name, my birth date that I lived in Chattanooga, and he's like, God's commission you, go make the film. It's going to touch lots of doctors' lives. And so I, yeah, that's my story.

You know, I'm crazy enough to believe this stuff. because I know you're not making it up, and I love this stuff. So can you share who the prophet was? Sean Bowles. Sean Bolts? Yeah. So that confirmed to you that you need to go do this, and now you've done it. So where can people find the film?

Again, it's called Send Proof. Yeah, Send Proof, S-E-N-D-Proof. If you'll go there.com. So sendproof.com. Is that simple? That's almost too easy. Alvin. Sendproof.

How tough is that, folks? You can't do that, sendproof.com. Now, if you don't use the internet, you're going to have problems. Sendproof.com. All right, so can people watch it there or that tells them where to find it? They can watch it there now. They can watch it there now? What is this, free?

Well, you've got to pay for it. Well, no, I assume you've got to pay for it, but they can go there and pay. Yeah. All right. So give us an overview. Who's in the film? What are you covered? Are there names?

Are there people in the film that we might know? Well, I interview healing ministers like Bill Johnson, Randy Clark, Heidi Baker. Whoa. That's a good reason to see you right there. Bill Johnson, Randy Clark, Heidi Baker, so they're in it. Because they experience this all the time. Okay, keep going. Cheyons in it.

Another friend. Wonderful, brother. And then there's Craig Keener on the theological side. William Lane Craig, J.P. Moreland, Gary Habermott. So I went after the apologist and then the skeptics like John Lof. and Michael Shermer, Michael Ruse, James Randy. What does some of the skeptics say? Show me the evidence.

That is their one cry. I wanted to paint them as honorable as possible. I think sometimes we take pop shots at them, and I wanted to just show their side, hey, I think this is confirmation bias. I think these are going to fall apart. And then we had an organization called the Global Medical Research Institute. they took all the miracles, they researched them,

and pushed for publication in peer-reviewed medical journals, and they got them in. See, this is a big deal. This is the kind of thing. I mean, I guess it's always annoying to me that people say, I want to see this kind of proof or that kind of proof. And I think it's almost like there is a hostility toward the idea that this could be real.

So they force you to go down this path. In some ways, that's wonderful, because that does make things simpler for people. But did you have any doctor? express astonishment at some of these results? Well, yeah. Every case that comes through where the doctor sees what happens, they are astonished,

but they're highly hesitant to go on film because, gosh, you could get sued. You could. Like, there's all types of what will your peers think. And so we just had to validate the stuff with what we had and pull back on their records. Like we could not pull the doctors that treated the patient into the film. I just want to say, though, this is what...

Folks, if you want to know why there's not more proof, it's because of... Let me think of a word, cowardice. I'm amazed at how people... Now, look, many people... Everybody's responsible to be courageous. You don't have to be a Christian. But especially if you're some kind of...

of a Christian, I would kind of say, folks, step up, and why don't you let people worry about what you think instead of worrying about what they think? I mean, the idea that somebody is so hostile to faith or to people of faith, that's most of the people in America have faith in God. They believe in miracles. They don't know the details. But the point is that when doctors or other people, professionals, they're so worried about what their colleagues are going to think. The reason those colleagues think that way is because people like, you don't push back. Isn't that? it because folks like you are quiet. So in any event, I am thrilled. I can't tell you how thrilled I am that you made the film. So people can go to sendproof.com. They can find out all the details.

Can you give us any examples of the kind of things you cover in here? There are people who have been blind for 13 years that get their sight back after you or prayer. And it's not in like a conference setting. That's what I love. I tried to get miracles that are outside of the healing ministries because I think that puts it on the average Joe. So you hear the stories of the non-popular person praying for someone and people getting healed because I want to get the body of Christ back into praying for each other. Yeah. Now, have you ever personally witnessed a healing from your own hands or from? Yeah.

So you have prayed for healing for people? people. Right. And you've seen results. Yes. And you're not a doctor. You're not known to be a faith healer. No, no, not at all. But I am a critical thinker and I can think through the difference between placebo effect or whatever and what would become a real miracle. And a lot of times, miracles don't have evidence. God gives you a dream. There's no evidence afterwards other than it changes your life. But I wanted to go toward the harder cases that seem substantial enough that if you're open-minded, I think you would... Right. So in your mind, this documentary proves that miracles happen. Yes. Yeah. Well, the standard of proof, you know, Elijah, it's interesting. People talk

like proof is always scientific. In the court of law, you don't go by science. You go by testimony, credibility. If somebody says something, you'd have to say either they're lying or they're inventing it or they're hallucinating. So it's a different standard of proof. And when people talk about scientific proof, usually they're the ones blowing smoke. We'll be right back. The film is Send Proof. Go to SendProof.com. Hey, folks, do you wish you remembered names better and thought more clearly? Hey, improve your memory memory with Vivalore. Memory support. Vivalour's founder actually prayed that God would show her the solution to memory loss when her mother had dementia.

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Folks, we're talking about miracles, and we're talking about whether one can prove miracles, what is proof. My guest is Elijah Stevens. Elijah, you grew up in Georgia. Right. And you went to Covenant College there. When did you decide that you might go into making films? Because I've, for years, wanted Christians in particular to go into making films,

but particularly about this kind of thing. Because I said, you've got to show the world this is not, subjective. This is real. This is not people imagining things. When did you get this idea that you might want to make films? When you were in college, what did you think you wanted to do? I thought I wanted to do philosophy and go on to seminary and become a pastor. Philosophy. Yeah. So you're a logical thinker. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's not a bad thing. No. And I got my master's in science and religion. So what happened, though, was I just got this prophetic word and God equipped me. It wasn't, I had this passion for film.

It's I had this passion to display what God's doing in the world. And he put me in film and then surrounded me with an amazing team. I think the film looks phenomenal, but it's not because I'm a great filmmaker. It's because God put the right people around me. So let me get this straight. You stink. Yeah. But God did something cool with you.

Who stink? Yeah, exactly. Isn't that what it's all about? No, you're being really humble, but honestly, this is so important. So people need to go to sendproof.com and check it out. How long is the film? That's about an hour and a half. About an hour and a half.

Perfect. And people can start watching it like today? Today, right now. Okay. When did it come out? The 14th. A couple days ago. A couple days ago.

Oh, so this is fresh. Okay. So when you were making the film, did you think that you would make other films like this? Because I feel like there is such a hunger for this from the point of view where you're coming from for people to get that point of view and to see you go through this. How many people do you talk to in the film about actual miracles? How many examples of miracles do you give, roughly? Uh, four or five, because you've got to take your time with them and build the story out and then like look at both sides. And so it, it, you can only fit a few in.

And there's a lot of the philosophical and theological background that you have to deal with. That's why we're bringing in the Craig Keeners and people like that. Because a lot of people think I can be a naturalist and be open-minded about miracles. And you can't. Naturalism precludes a god from existence. you say naturalism, I would say materialism. Sure. Maybe that word is better.

And explain what that is so people understand. Well, if you say, I believe there's no God, you can't be open to the idea of miracles. And I think that creates a blinder for people. If you precondue God doesn't exist, you can't then go and go, I'm an open-minded skeptic. You're just not. And so it really takes a lot in our culture to show people the blinders they have on a against believing in miracles or even studying it objectively. I only know about this because I wrote a book called miracles where I've read it.

You read my book? Yes. Right on. My book on miracles, I said, I want to show the panoply of miracles. Sure. When we're talking about miracles, we're simply talking about any time God intervenes, whether it's speaking to me, which is a miracle. If God speaks to you folks, that's called a miracle, or healing somebody or whatever it is.

Right. And in writing that book and in my new book, which is called Is Atheism Dead, you start seeing that there are people who are what you just called naturalists or materialists who insist there is nothing in the universe outside of matter, energy. In other words, they're not even allowing the possibility that there's a God. And you're right. When you say that, well, then you're already defining miracles out of existence. Right, right. And I think that's the huge problem for our culture is we set up criteria. We don't go, how could I know if a miracle happened? We focus on, well, where's the amputee that God needs to heal to prove it to me? And so when I talked to naturalists and I was actually talking to a guy and I said, listen, if I lined 10 amputees up, prayed for them, their arms all grew back. Would you believe in God? He said, no, I would believe that you would.

had an arm growing machine. And so that is where our culture is, is it's so ingrained in them that arm growing machines are more probable than God's existence. Right, but that's called illogical. I mean, that's irrational. But that's what I'm saying. We have to call those people out on their lack of reason, on their lack of proof. I mean, it's preposterous.

But the idea of materialism, because I want my audience to understand this, that there are people out there, laboring under this idea that science is the only thing that can show us anything or any proof, which is, I'm just going to say flat out, ridiculous. Like it's totally ridiculous. We don't even operate that way in our own lives. When you go into a court and you try to find the murderer, there may not be scientific DNA evidence, whatever, but you may hear stories from different people. The people are credible.

They have a track record. The people on the other side are liars. And you make the case and you just say, okay, there's no doubt. that guy killed that person. Like you know it. And people say, how can you prove it? Well, it's a court of law. So you can't prove it like on a blackboard.

But the fact of the matter is this is evidence that is not scientific evidence. This is people telling what they saw, eyewitnesses and so on and so forth. So how have we bought into this preposterous, scientific, not scientific, scientific, materialist worldview? When did that come into Western? culture? I think with Darwin and there's this thing where Darwin comes along and a lot of the religious people, you know, B.B. Warfield is accepting Darwinian evolution from a theistic perspective, but Darwin doesn't like that. And so he partners with Huxley who comes along and says,

we won't God out of science. And so we've adopted something called methodological naturalism, which is the idea that no matter what, if we're doing something scientifically, it can never point to God. And that's in the DNA of how we do scientific discourse today. And it creates this lens where, you know, we can't see the fine-tuning of the universe or we can't see that maybe there's a designer at the creation of life. Right. And so we have to attack this philosophically. and people play this game where they say, well, I just want scientific knowledge, but it cuts you off from all forms of thinking.

Look, we have to be clear. If you say the only way to know anything is via science, now science deals with the senses. So the moment imagination enters the picture, you have plenty of scientists in the past who have said, you know what, I'm looking at these chemicals, I'm looking at these things. I'm going to posit a thesis that this is what's going on. They're already going outside of technically science by trying to theorize what is happening. There is no way to even do science according to these ridiculous rules that these scientific scientists, these materialists, are putting out there. And these are the same people that say, well, there can be no miracles. Because it's like a guy who says, I'm a baker, and there can be no food outside of baking. Like it's a completely subjective statement.

Right. And we have to call them out on it. But that's why I'm excited about this film. Yeah. How do you see this film getting out there? I mean, you're doing this program, but how, what other ways are people able to kind of bump into this? We're going into churches. We're going into theaters.

People are showing it in their small group. But this is the secret sauce of it. It's a call to send in your proof. My vision is to see 100 case studies published in the next 10 years because I want to research this stuff and just start mounting the evidence up because it's got to be done. And it's got to be done at a level of rigor that, you know, the world's intellectuals will notice. This is awesome. I didn't know that. That is even more exciting.

So if somebody has what we would consider proof of a miracle or whatever, or a doctor willing to go on the record. Sure. Where would they submit that information? Just go to simproof.com and fill out a form. And a lot of people don't have their medical records at their house. We help you get them. We have medical professionals that work through that entire process.

So we take the burden off of people so that we can get the information. And we de-identify them when we publish. So you won't have people knocking on your doors. But yeah. Let me see the hand that you grew in a flower pot. Come on. So you, this is maybe the most exciting part of this whole film, is that you are using this as a way to get people to send proof.

It's not just the title is send proof, sendproof.com, but you're actually using this to say, okay, folks, we know you're out there. Tell us your stories. Right. We will do the research. Right. This is pretty cool.

I really like this. And when we come back, I want to talk a little bit about Craig Keener, because I used his books, two volumes set of academic work on miracles. It's important, folks. There is a lot of proof out there if you care. If you don't care, we can't help you. We'll be right back. I'm talking to Elijah Stevens. The website is sendproof.com.

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going to challenge you. I often talk, my bet noir, my bug bear is people who claim to be intellectual who have a philosophical bias against faith. It's wrong. It's a philosophical bias. It is illogical. But on the other side, there are people in the world of faith who have somehow, in a knee-jerk way, adopted a bias against the things of the mind, against the intellect. There are people, Christians, they're almost Gnostics, who don't want to hear about reason. They just want to be kind of floating in the ether as though faith and reason are opposed to each other. So tell us Elijah Stevens, you've made the film Send Proof, why do you see that in the church, anti-intellectualism? I think that happened during the Great Awakening's.

It was not a part of the church until people like Finney came along and said, look, to reach the frontiers, we need to make this stuff simple and emotional. And God used that, but it stripped out the mind. And so in the American tradition. Wait, wait, wait. So Finney in the 19th century during the second Great Awakening, he kind of emphasized, let's keep it simple. let's not go into the intellect because we're trying to reach the people on the frontier. I mean, he actually made it a strategic choice to do that. Yes, and that kind of split the church apart where you have high intellectualism on one side

and low focus on the power of spirit and then high focus on the power of the spirit and high emotionalism. And it's like there's this divide, but that hasn't always been the case. You go back right after the apostles, you see a group of apologists right. rise up, they're debunking the gods in Rome, writing letters to the emperors. We still have those to this day. And so what we need is to bring the intellectual and the supernatural back together so that we can talk about it intelligently. We don't make mistakes and mistake natural phenomena for supernatural ones. And at the same time, we're able to articulate what God has done in a way that

open-minded people would be willing to accept. It's fascinating to me that people get these ideas about Christianity or about anything, about science, that are just bad ideas. They're wrong. Right. And they run with it. And it's almost like they've got these invisible enemies. There are a lot of people I know who just they hate the intellectuals or the cultural elites

to the point that they are just reacting against them rather than meeting them on their ground and showing them where they're mistakes. mistaken. But, well, so I came up with a theory when we were talking about materialists. And if you say the only thing that exists is matter, there is no such thing as anything transcendent, any God. Then logically, I mean, if you want to get serious, then nothing matters. Right. If there's only matter, nothing matters. In other words, there's no love, there's no good, there's no evil, but they never want to go there. They act as though I can have those good things and have my

scientific materialist, naturalist view, but logically they can't. Right. And this is where we see the rise of existentialism from is when atheists start going, there's no God, you go, well, how do I live my life in this world? And what they're forced to is just you create your own values. And that's what

we're seeing in Western culture as we become post-Christian, post-truth, is everyone is creating their own values and it's actually tearing down the structures and institutions that gave rise to the West and we're losing our ability to pass on to the next generation truth. Wait now, so explain what is existentialism? Existialism is how do I live in light of reality? So there's Christian existentialists like Kickagard who go, I have to live as a being before

God. And then there's atheist ones who go, there's no God. and I've just got to figure this out. And they all end up talking about the greatest philosophical question is whether or not I commit suicide. Like it becomes really dark, really fast. But most existentialists we think of as like the French existentialists. Yeah. Yeah. Camus, Sartre. Yeah.

Now, I'm going to blow your mind. I think I'm going to blow your mind. You ready for this? Elijah Stevens, you ready, ready, ready, ready? In my new book is atheism dead, I show something that I know almost knowing. one knows this, and I'm so excited I could burst. Camus and Sart, both French atheist existentialists. They're probably the most bold about looking into the abyss of there is no God. How can I live? Both of them, at the end of their lives, came to faith in the God of Scripture.

Really? Yeah. You know, you're shocked. Everybody should be shocked. In my book, I give you the details. But I was shocked, and what I thought to myself was, how is it possible? I've never even heard of this. Right. Now, Camus died, I'm sorry, Sart died like around 1980 or something like that. And there were some people who wrote bitterly. They were angry. They felt betrayed that Sart had come to some kind of faith.

But nobody knows the story of Camus. It was written by, there was a minister in Paris, who literally didn't write about this until he was 92 years old. So he wrote about this maybe 20 years ago, and nobody heard of it. It was, you know, it was like way past the death of Camus. Camus died at age 47 in a car crash. But I find this stuff so exciting that the two people who looked most rigorously into the horror of there is no God, came out on the other side saying this is not possible.

There has to be something. and they both concluded, yes, Camus wanted to be baptized. Sart, I believe, was accepted into the church on his deathbed. But even before that, he wrote about it. We'll be back talking about interesting stuff. Sendproof.com. Hey, folks, Eric Mettaxas here. Joe Biden and the Democrats have laid out the most socialist agenda our country has ever seen.

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Sendproof.com. So people need to go to sendproof.com and they need to share it with their friends on social media folks. People say, what can I do? How can I help? You can help this way. Go to send proof com, share it with people on your social media because we live in a world where the mainstream media or even the conservative media, they don't want to know about this. They don't know about it. They don't care about it. This is important stuff. It really doesn't get more important. Let me be honest. Then are miracles real? Is God real? Do we have proof? You, Elijah Stevens, by the grace of God, I've made a film featuring a lot of people that I respect.

And you say there is evidence. I really think something's happening in the culture where the intellectual and the spiritual are finding common ground. But it's thanks to folks like you. Thank you. I mean, what else? What other intellectuals? You mentioned A.J. Air. You'd heard something about him.

Yeah. And so I think it's A.J. Air. but he had a near-death experience. He's a logical positivist, and he said, you know, I had this near-death experience where I experienced God. And a lot of people, especially in our modernistic age, have very real spiritual experiences. There's a journal that's coming out on near-death experiences.

I think Gary Habermas has looked at 300, of them. So we and there's different types of near-death experiences. There's ones where you report, I saw spiritual beings, and then there's evidential ones where you go, I learned things about the natural world where I would not have known had my spirit not floated out of my body. And you mean like I saw the doctor drop forceps into my chest cavity and he didn't think anybody saw him do that, but I know he did. Or I saw a pair of red shoes on the roof of the building, and someone goes up and can verify that. But you couldn't know that from being on the ground and no one has access, that type of stuff.

Or the back of the lights have this number, serial number on it. So there's that kind of evidence. Yeah. Now that, Gary Habermas, does he talk about this in the film or no? No. But he's written books on near-death experiences. and I think there's just a lot of stuff out there that if you're looking for it, you can find it. That's the question. Are people looking for it or do they maybe not want to see it?

Isn't it interesting? And do they know where to look? Because there's a lot of woo-woo out there and how do you find really thoughtful stuff? That's the problem. I've had guests on this show who I know they're telling the truth, but it sounds like woo-woo. Right. And you know that if you're not on board, you're going to think, this person is nuts.

Because they're not taking the trouble to speak to skeptics. Right. They're not taking the trouble to think about the skeptics listening. And they're only speaking to the choir, so to speak. So what else do we need to know about this film? Send Proof. People can go to SendProof.com, and they will go to SendProof.com and share it on social media. Please, folks, we have to do our part.

But what else have we not covered? I think it's a film skeptics love. The ones that I've shown it to, I had friends that have left the faith, and they're like, I cried throughout this entire film. And so I think it's something that if you have a skeptical friend, they will enjoy it because of how balanced both sides are being treated in it. And it's a call.

It actually puts the burden on us as the Christians. I'm not saying atheists change anything about your life. I'm saying we Christians need to present evidence. Let's do it. Let's step up to the plate. We're being asked for this. And if God's healing people, there should be some. What a wonderful attitude.

I could use some of that. That's because it's hot. I think, no, I think we all have to be honest is that we do react to people on the other side of the equation. And sometimes we're reacting too much. We ought to simply be saying, you want evidence? There is evidence. Yeah. But you've actually taken the trouble to find the evidence and to present the evidence. What are you doing with yourself besides promoting this film? I guess maybe this has become a full-time job for you.

It has. I'm doing that around the clock. I try to do some apologetics on the side, but other than that, this thing has just consumed my life. Right. Well, I want to get you a copy of my book because I want you to be familiar with the SART story and the Camus story. Of course, you know the story of Anthony Flew. Anthony Flew was one of the biggest atheists of the 20th century. He came to faith. I thought it was through one of the Habermasces in any event, but he was not a French existentialist atheist. He was, you know, but the evidence is overwhelming,

and I actually think that the more people look into it, it becomes clear, but it's those people who really don't want to look into it. Right. They're just buying the narrative of no God, without really looking into it. They're scared to look into it because they may find information they don't like. Or they were presented with the Sunday school version of faith and not adult version. And I think that's something we as ministers can do better is how do I present this to audiences with the questions they have?

I went through church my entire life and never saw an archaeological artifact that someone presented verifying the Old Testament. it. And so, well, when I get to seminary, there's all this stuff. Why is it not coming up in the Oh, man, I love it. I totally love it. Did you know that they have discovered biblical Sodom? Oh, you see? This is what I'm saying. If you don't know that, doesn't it explain what we're talking about? The information, in this case, it's overwhelming. Nobody knows it. And you think, well, if even you don't know it, and I didn't hear it until recently, how can we possibly expect the world out there to know that the old is historical. Right.

Because we even were not hearing this. So we need to get this out there. So I think people need to make films, and you just did. Really, congratulations. I'm so excited that you have done this. Now, did you say it will be in theaters, or people need to go to the website? Go to the website. We're talking about theatrical release, and we're in talks about it.

Okay, but sendproof.com is the website. And is there anything else to the website? What will find there? They'll find a place to share their miracle. They'll find just some of the stuff about the cast and crew and how to buy it digitally or on DVD. Okay. Yeah. This is important.

Ministers, lay ministers, got to get this information out there. And if you have a miracle, now is your chance. Go to sendproof.com. Elijah Stevens, I am just tickled to death that you have pulled this off. Congratulations. And I'm not going to say good luck. We don't believe in luck. We are rational.

Thank you, my friend. God bless you. Bless you. Alba Numb. I want to give away copies of Atheism Dead. You do? But I can't. Why not? Because it doesn't come out until October 19th

and the publisher will shoot me. But they don't listen to this program. No. So I could do it. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm not supposed to do this. I've got only a handful of these copies, right? So I'm holding one in my hand now.

It's a gorgeous book. Yes, it is. The list price is $28. I think Amazon has it for $25. I think Baker, if you go to the link on my website, Eric Mataxis.com, I think they've got it for 1497. That's 45% off. So we want people to pre-order it.

If you join the launch team, we'll send you an electronic copy. But if you want this book that I'm holding in my hand, mailed to you, signed to you, if you give $2,500 to ADF tax deductible. Now, folks, I know there are folks out there who can do this easily enough. This is an extraordinary organization. They are fighting for religious liberty. I don't see how you get around knowing that without ADF, we're dead, folks.

They are fighting at the Supreme Court. They are winning key cases of religious liberty at a time never before. My friend and hero, Chuck Holson, would talk about religious liberty all the time, and I kept thinking, what's he talking about? And as the years have passed, I have understood the threats to religious liberty, whether it's vaccine mandates, whether it's telling you what you can and can't say on campus, whether it's telling you that you must use somebody's crazy pronouns or else you'll lose your job, on and on and on. If you don't care about that stuff, you're not paying attention. It's your duty to care about these things. So I want to tell you, ADF is fighting for you. You have to go to our website, metaxistock.com.

That's the radio website. You'll see the banner for ADF, metaxistock.com. We want people to give generously. Actually, they're battling efforts by some local and state governments to close churches during the pandemic. Okay. They're fighting for free speech. Let's listen to ADF's senior counsel, Matt Bowman.

Let's hear that. And these are churches that are following masks and CDC guidelines, but are just saying it is important for us as a congregation to come together and worship together. We've been able to get over a dozen victories on behalf of churches, getting laws struck down, getting victories so that churches are able to meet together once again. We are literally keeping the door open for the gospel in those circumstances. You've got to care about this. I mean, I'm just saying this.

I don't want to tell you what to think, but I want to, I'm enjoining you to take this seriously. We are in a battle for the soul of America, religious liberty. is at the heart. I'm not just saying this. The reason ADF comes to us to raise funds is because they know that this audience cares about that. And now if you don't care about that, I'm just telling you, folks, you must, you should. It's the right thing to do. The nation hangs in the balance. If we don't have religious liberty, everything goes. If they can silence the church, the Nazis did it in the 30s in Germany. That's what any big state government tries to do. You don't push back because you're free because you can in the courts, in the court of public opinion.

You will lose. And so we are losing. Alliance Defending Freedom is fighting for us. They're our last hope. I mean, I'm not kidding. They're going to the Supreme Court. They're winning these cases. So if anybody gives us $2,500.

Now, look, we want everybody to go to the website, mettaxistalk.com and give us something, please. But if anybody gives $2,500, I will get you a copy of this, ASAP. This is like more than two weeks before you can get it yourself. It'll be signed to you. We need your help. Anybody who gives $1,000 will get signed book plates and other things. Anybody who can afford to give $10,000, it would be my honor to join you for an evening to have dinner together with you and as many people as you like, anywhere you like. And by the way, I've had dinner with Eric and it's a blast.

Yeah. So please consider $10,000 is all what's cost. Well, but I mean, this is you're giving to tremendously great organization. Yes, you are. says, what can I do? And I'm just telling you, you could do this. If you, if you can give anything to them, you're doing something, it's absolutely crucial to everything we're going through right now. Real quick, phone number, 855-547-533. Dial it right now, 855-547-533, 855-547-53, or go to the website metaxis talk.com.