The Eric Metaxas Show - Keith Guinta (continued)

Episode Date: July 27, 2024

With the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Keith Guinta relives his numerous brushes with death through his essay that he shares with Eric.  go to winpatch.org for more 

Welcome to the Eric Mettaxas show. Did you know that the mouth of the Statue of Liberty stretches a full three feet wide? And if that mouth could speak, it would say, I listen to the Eric Mataxis show each and every day. Well, it would. I dare you to prove me wrong. Now listen up. Here comes Eric Mattaxas.

Ola. I'm back. It's Eric Mataxis on the Eric. Mataksa show. Chris Himes, I just want to be real clear. I'm back in the United States of America. Hello. I've been sharing, you know, we're talking a lot about the news. We'll be talking about the news today, of course. But I've been sharing about what I did on my summer vacation, quote unquote. And I don't know if I've shared about this, but we did the better part of a week in England for a special Socrates in the city retreat. and it was only about 40-something people, but it was so wonderful. And I interviewed six people.

I don't know if I can remember them off the top of my head right now, but Tom Holland, who wrote an amazing book called Dominion about how Christianity shaped the West. And I don't even think he's a Christian, but he wrote this amazing book called Dominion. That's Tom Holland. I interviewed Mary Harrington, who's like a new friend, an amazing, brilliant young woman in England, who she writes at Unheard, which is, if you just look up Unheard, UNHERD. And I retweet her stuff.

Brilliant. She calls herself a reactionary feminist. Just brilliant. I interviewed Alistair McGrath, a C.S. Lewis Scholar, a tremendous apologist. He's been at Oxford for many, many years. I interviewed Simon Horibin, a philologist. He wrote a book on the English language, and he wrote a book on C.S. Lewis's Oxford.

We're going to be airing this stuff in the weeks ahead. If you want to see the video, you have to be signed up at Socrates Plus, which I recommend highly. But you have to go to Socratesandcity.com. You'll see Socrates Plus. I interviewed Baroness Caroline Cox, who is a human rights activist and a hero and a friend,

delightful human being. She's just been a tremendous hero. And then I interviewed my friend Michael Ward about. He wrote a book some years ago called Planet Narnia, and I interviewed him, I guess, nine years ago in Oxford about that. If you go to Socrates in the city, watch my interview with Michael Ward. But I did a new one with him, which we'll put up at some point.

where he talks about the abolition of man. That's probably C.S. Lewis's shortest book, but it's a prophetic work. It is really astonishing that he wrote this about 1941, and it is predicting everything about where we are today. So Michael Ward wrote a book about that, and I interviewed him about that. It was just a tremendous time. But the thing about Oxford, I have to say, is that it just puts me in the world of C.S. Lewis because he lived there. And when we were there a couple of weeks ago, we visited his home. It's called the kilns, which has been restored by the C.S. Lewis Foundation. And just to be there, I mean, to be in the bedroom where he lived, to be in the room where he wrote his books, it's crazy. It's really beautiful. We went to the church in, which is very nearby, and the graveyard. You can walk there, obviously, from their house, about 10-minute walk.

But it was really, it was just so beautiful. And the best part for me, well, I shouldn't say the best part, one of the best parts. Some people know, and I think I've told the story here on this program a few times over the years, But C.S. Lewis came to faith as a result of a conversation with his friend, J.R.R. Tolkien, late one night behind Maudlin College. Marlund College was where Lewis taught and where he lived, where his rooms were. And late one night, he and Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, this friend of theirs, took a walk on what's called Addison's walk. It's a path through the woods by a stream behind Maudlin College.

And while he was on that walk, the subject came up. Lewis had already by then, about a year before, become a believer in God, but he was not yet a believer in Jesus. And Tolkien, who was a believer in Jesus, appealed to Lewis's love of myth. He said, you love the Norse myths. You know, Lewis and Tolkien both were devotees of the whole world of northern myths. The Nibulungan, the saga, the story, there's a poem by Longfellow where there's a line, Balder the Beautiful is dead, is dead.

It's sort of pierced C.S. Lewis, these poems, these myths about the North S. sagas. And so Tolkien on this walk with C.S. Lewis late one night says, you know, the reason these myths appeal to you is there's something powerful in them. They're pointing at something. And Tolkien says that I would submit to you that the story of Jesus, God, come to earth, who dies and is risen from the dead. This is a myth that at that. was true in history. It's the only myth that was also historical and actually true. And he submits this idea to Lewis, like, think about that. Is it possible that the story in the gospels, this powerful story could be the one case in the history of the world where a myth is not just mythic, but is true that really happened in history? And this gets Lewis thinking, and I think 10 days later, I write about it in my book Miracles.

He's in the sidecar of his brother Warnie's motorcycle, and they're driving to the Wipsnade Zoo. And Lewis says, all I know is that when I got into the sidecar, I did not believe Jesus Christ was the son of God. And when I get out of the sidecar at the zoo, I did. So that process kind of happened. But there's so much Lewis in Oxford that I thought maybe we'll do this every year. maybe we'll go back next year with the Socrates, a group of folks.

But it was just very special. It was very, very special. And what happened on Addison's walk, so to take a walk on Addison's walk, where this moment happened, where Lewis and Tolkien are having this conversation, it's just so beautiful. And anybody can go to Addison's walk and walk there. And in 1998, I was there for the centi. the 100th anniversary of Lewis's birth because he was born in 1898. And so in 1998, I was there.

Suzanne was there. And they unveiled a plaque of a poem that Lewis wrote. And the plaque is on Addison's walk. It's very beautiful. I think I posted it on my Instagram. And maybe I'll put it on my, when I sent out an email this week, if you go to Eric Mattaxas.com, sign up for my email. I sent out some of these pictures.

But it's a poem that Lewis wrote about Addison's Walk. And the title of the poem is what the bird said early in the year. And I think the first line is, I heard in Addison's Walk a bird sing clear. This year, the summer will come true. This year, this year, I get choked up every time I hear the poem because it's like, it's like a fairy tale about a bird speaking. But he's, that line, this year the summer will come true. In other words, all of creation is pointing beyond itself.

All of the natural world is pointing beyond itself to an eternal world. And Lewis sums it up. I heard in Addison's walk, a bird sing clear, this year the summer will come true. this year, this year, the idea that the summer is a promise of eternal summer. Every summer is a promise of a world where it is eternally beautiful and temperate and, you know, and that's heaven. And so that poem, that's definitely my favorite Lewis poem. I'll publish, I'll send that out with my newsletter this week, the text of that poem.

But it is just so, maybe I sent it out a couple of weeks ago. think I did actually. But it's so beautiful. And I just wanted to share that before we start talking about the news of the day. When we come back, we'll be talking about other stuff. Less eternal. We'll be right back. Hey, folks, hold off on purchasing your first order from Balance of Nature because I've got some information you need to hear. If you go to Balance of Nature.com to buy their popular fruit and veggie supplements, a discount offer will pop up. It may say 20 or 25% off your first order. Don't click that because if you use my code, you'll get a much better offer, 35% off your first order, plus free shipping. My special code is Eric, you guessed it.

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Neutrametics.com, use the code Eric for 15% off. Again, Neutrametics, N-U-T-R-A-M-E-D-I-X. Nutrametics.com, use the code Eric for 15% off. Folks, welcome back. I was just talking about my recent trip to Oxford, the Socrates and the City retreat in Oxford, England. And now I'd like to discuss more of that with John. Zmirak. John, welcome back.

Thanks, Eric. I really wish I could have gone with you on that trip. It looked really fascinating. And some of my favorite thinkers were people you got to talk to, like Tom Holland, the historian. I actually was at a conference with him two years ago in Florence. Fascinating guy, his book Dominion, which explains how Christianity transformed the ethics of the entire world, both basically undoing the aristocratic hierarchical cruelty that was endemic to the ancient pre-Christian world and spreading the ethos of the God of the Bible as sort of of the default morality of most of the world. And then also talking about how when that gets cancer and mutates, it produces the woke virus.

Did you get to talk to Tom about that? I didn't really get to talk to him about that. I had, that's the last chapter of the book, and you and I have discussed that, and I took issue with that for many reasons. But before we get into that, just the basic thesis of the book, it's fascinating because when I spoke to Tom Holland, we will air that conversation at some point in the weeks ahead. but what's interesting is he is not himself a professing Christian, but you can tell that he sort of wishes he were or he wishes it were true. He kind of wants it to be true because if it's not true, if it's not true that these wonderful ideas about equality,

about loving those who are a downcast, about helping the poor, if all those ideas don't come from God and are in fact true, then it's meaningless. And he knows that, in other words, he resonates with the values of the Bible, with the values of the Christian faith in a powerful way, but isn't himself convinced that they're true.

But if they're not true, that's like a nightmare. And he kind of knows that. And then the conversation that came out. So he's like a Matthew Arnold on Dover Beach, you know, pining away for the lost certainties of Christianity. I wrote a column about this for the stream. Atheism is just wishful thinking for people who crave less meaning in life. And in it, I'm addressing people like Tom Holland,

and I'm telling them what you need to do is read intelligent design. Read books like, is atheism dead? Because all these, these are good people, they're in the humanities, people like Douglas Murray. They see that Christian values make human life better. In fact, they're the only thing to make human life livable. But they just, because of the dead weight of Darwinist materialism, they think, oh, Christianity, it's just, I think it's just wishful thinking. It's just we're whistling in the dark, trying to tell ourselves that life has meaning.

But Darwin showed us that, in fact, all our lives are just glitches in a biological system that we accidentally emerged from, you know, random mutations. life accidentally emerged from the dead chemistry of the earth, the universe accidentally emerged from nothing. And as your book is atheism dead shows, and all the books it's based on, most of which I've read, I've read thousands of pages of intelligent design, people like Stephen Meyer and Michael Beahey,

the Darwinist story is false. Darwinism is wishful thinking. For people who don't want there to be any meaning in life, People like Hitler, who was an enthusiastic Darwinist, Margaret Sanger, enthusiastic Darwinist, Karl Marx, enthusiastic Darwinists, Stalin, Lenin, all Darwinists. They wanted life not to have meaning. They wanted human life to have no dignity and value because they had big plans. And those plans entailed killing a lot of people who got in the way. But in fact, Darwinism fails on its own terms. They never found all the fossils Darwin promised. They still haven't found any way that lower forms of life in the timeframes that actually happened could have randomly created all these new organ systems during the Cambrian explosion. But every time you pull at the fabric of Darwinism, it falls apart. And they promise, oh, no, but we'll find those answers. But the more you pull, the more it falls apart. The more

we understand the cell. In Darwin's time, they thought the cell was just a bundle of ooze. Now we know it is a tiny supercomputer, more complicated than what we use to send men to the moon. It's like a cell phone. It's like a 10,000 cell phones piled together. It's a super chip, a super computing chip. And it's asked us to believe that if the wind blows the sand long enough, it'll turn into a computer chip because they're both made of silicon. Well, for details on what John is talking about, you can read my book, Is Atheism Dead? Because I got to tell you, when I wrote that book, I was myself astonished at how dramatic the evidence is. I mean, it's open and shut. But most people don't know about it.

Most people are still going along with this narrative. And some of the folks that you cite, they want to believe in a world without meaning. They want to believe in a world where killing is not wrong so I can kill whoever I like. But somebody like Tom Holland and others like him, clearly they have an affection for Christian values and the Christian story, but they haven't gotten the memo that, oh, yes, it's actually true. Right. The evidence is actually there. The arguments are actually there. And that's why I think intelligent design is the most important intellectual movement there is.

And the work being done by the Discovery Institute at Stephen Meyer and who's that nanotechnology guy? James Tour. A man, James Tour. It's kind of funny because James Tour is the reason I wrote my book is Atheism Dead. I met with him, I don't know, five or six years ago, and he starts sharing with me about how we all kind of

I mean, it's funny because in the book is Atheism Dead, I don't even mention evolution. I think I'm not even going to go there. I'm just going to stick with in other words, this is one thing to talk about okay, we got life, how does life get more complex? That's one conversation. Forget that conversation. Forget the evolution conversation. Let's go back to the beginning.

no life and then suddenly, bing, there's life. How did that leap happen? That's an infinite leap from no life to single cells. Every scientist says, oh yes, it happened four billion years ago. Single cell life appeared. Yes, yes, yes. And you say, okay, explain how. They have no idea how. And what you're saying is that the more science discovers, the more they know it's not possible. In other words, it's just the opposite of what they've been saying, that in time we'll figure it out. It's just the opposite. The more time passes, the more they discover, the more they know this could not have happened. And of course, you just mentioned that with evolution.

The more we learn from the fossil record, the more we say, oh, it's not really looking good. We're not finding the transitional forms. We're finding just the opposite. So it's very dramatic. I didn't get to talk to Tom Holland about this. I wish I had. You also talk to someone I think is maybe the best living writer in English, Mary Harrington. what a

sharing than maybe the best living writer in English John Zmirak, that's very impressive. I'm going to contact her with that blurb. Best living writer, maybe best living writer in English. I think she writes for a magazine called Unheard, UNHERD, as in not of the herd. And she is a recovering feminist who has been down the road

of the multiculturalism and post-structuralism. She's gone all the way down to the bottom of that well and found that there's no watering. And now she's apparently rediscovering all the old truths of Christendom and of Western civilization. And she's writing about them so well, so wittily, so wisely. Her essay on what World War I did to the West just was a real eye-opener for me. And just briefly, World War I discredited all the good stuff in Western civilization. Because the churches, the monarchies, the nobilities, the middle class, democracy capitalism, all said this war, the First World War is a good thing and you need to enlist in it and it will end all war and we will save the world.

And instead, it just murdered 20 million people, spread plagues, destroyed everything, launched communism, made it possible for Nazism. She said, the fact that all the old institutions, church, family, army, nation, lined up behind this useless, futile, stupid war, discredited those things and opened the door for every kind of crackpot crank theory, Marxism, eugenics, Freudianism, neo-Darwinism, Nazism, because all the same things had compromised themselves, by colluding in the First World War, every kind of craziness was suddenly on the table. And I think a lot, we can see something similar in America.

Because the churches and the Republicans were in on the Iraq, and it was all based on lies and produced nothing but destruction and genocide of Christians and hundreds of thousands of dead civilians, we were open to new, insane, utopian garbage like Barack Obama. and the leftist madness, which we now see we're going to have to face in Kamala Harris. Okay. We're at a time today, John. Didn't get a lot of time with you, but I want to follow up on this because this is very rich, rich, rich stuff. John Zmirak, thank you. Folks, we'll be right back. Hey, folks, you asked and My Pillow listened. They're finally bringing you the most requested offer ever. Right now, you can get the Queen's Size Premium My Pillow for only 1998. My Pillow is made with patented, adjustable fill. It adjust to your exact individual needs, regardless of your sleep position.

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Use promo code Metaxus at checkout. Again, 800-9783057. 3057. Use promo code Metaxus. They get huge discounts. Folks, welcome back. Right now I can talk to my friend Keith Junta. You can find him at Wine Patch.org.

Keith, yesterday, whenever it was that it appeared, you wrote a piece at Wine Patch.org. about the assassination attempt on Trump. And in it, you, I mean, you talk about him, obviously, almost dying and how it changes things. And you talk about how you almost died five times. I was, like, chilled to read that. I've known you for many years. It was a chilling thing. So where do we start?

So what's the name of the piece that you wrote about Trump, which people can find at at whinepatch.org? What's the name of that? Yeah, the title is, take up your crime. cross dot dot dot. Okay. And it was specific to the assassination attempt. And I know you had Larry on recently.

And Larry's the only other one I heard reference the fact that when Trump got on stage at the RNC, he exhibited no sign of PTSD. I mean, there he was in the convention reenacting the assassination scenario. He's behind the podium. He's got the teleprompters in place, and he's looking out over tens of thousands of people. And he looked like a changed man that night. And I spent time just thinking about that. And I think that when that bullet clipped his ear and he was dogpiled by the Secret Service agents on the platform in Butler.

We're back to Butler now. I believe something deeply spiritual happened to him in that moment. And I, because I've almost died five times, near-death experiences will do that, period. But when they're done before the Lord, it changes the deepest parts of you. And my sense was, I think we have a new Donald Trump. And Eric, I've been very careful. I don't hang a lot of things on Trump, the man. I've always been more concerned with the kingdom, with two kingdoms,

with the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. And in this political war that we're in, the Christian really should be looking at what are the virtues of each kingdom coming at us? And a lot of flak gets told because we put too much on Trump, the man. But let me tell you something. when that bullet clipped his ear and he hit the deck and he stood up with that fit. I get choked up, Eric, every time I see it. When he said, fight, fight, fight, there was something in that moment that was all about the man.

This was all about the man, Donald Trump. They tried to kill him. I want to annotate some of this. First of all, you said Larry, you mean Larry Taunton, our friend, Martin written about Larry Taunton. What you just said, I think that there's a problem. It's a heresy, basically, in the church, right? It's kind of like if I were to say, like, I don't, oh, no, I don't love my wife.

I love Jesus. You'd be like, what are you an idiot? Your love of Jesus should inform your love of your wife. And people say, you know, well, I'm all about the kingdom. I'm not about America. It's like, well, your love of the kingdom of God will inform your. love of them. It will give you a love for America. And it's the same thing with people when people say, and I often joke around about this, where somebody will say, like, oh, it was all God. It was all God.

And you could take that to a logical extension and say, like, yeah, it's all God. And you're an idiot. There was none of you in it because you're a total idiot. It was all God. And you think, no, God works through people. So this binary choice that it's Trump or it's Jesus, you're thinking, well, wait a minute, Jesus created Trump. And if Trump is available to God, God can use Donald Trump, just as God can use you or me or anybody listening. We don't, you know, in other words, you can take it too far when it says, you know, he must, I must decrease, so he must increase.

Like, that's a concept. This is very important. But at the end of the day, God actually created us. He wants us to be us. He wants us to be we with him informing what we do. And so people don't seem to appreciate, you know, the heroism that Trump show. Whether you like it or not, any good thing is a picture of God, points back to God. So that heroism, that resilience, that, you know, whatever it was that we saw, to me, that points to God.

And so anyway, but what you said in the article at wine patch.org, I mean, you basically say, like, talk about the uptom. That was really cool to me. Yeah, it was, the near-death experience can literally change how you see everything. And I just had the image of an optometrist when you're sitting behind that viewer. And they say, okay, which one's better? This flip or this? And I think that bullet, I think near-death experiences are a flip in our spirit, in our subconscious, in our mind and who we are.

And there was a definite flip that happened in Donald Trump. And I felt it in myself because of these harrowing adventures I've had where I almost died. Well, again, I mean, the idea that the bullets could, I mean, folks, this is chilling. This is a chilling. We need to not just move on too quickly. This is really chilling. that you're standing there and a bullet traveling much faster than the speed of sound. It could take your head apart.

And it just grazed his ear. Blood was shed so that you could see this is real. It was that close to hitting his brain and change history. I mean, it was unbelievable. Anyway, you write about it eloquently. When we come back, I want to talk more about. that I'm talking to Keith Junta. You can find them at wine patch.org.

Welcome back talking to my friend Keith Junta. You can find him at wine patch.org. The article we're talking about is title, take up your cross at wine patch.org. Now you say in the piece, Keith, which I found really compelling, that you almost died five times. And when I read that, I thought, I've known you, you know, for many, many years. And I was thinking, what do you mean? Would you go through some of these

because it's kind of chilling? Yeah, yeah. I don't know how the cats have nine lives. I've used up five of mine so far. And our friend Chris Coglin wrote to me after this piece. He said, Keith, you almost died only five times that you know of. Who knows how many times the Lord spared you and you didn't even know it? And that's very possible. But one time in college, I was free soloing a cliff before free solo.

was even a thing. I was not in a mind of sober state at the time. And me and a buddy headed up this 100-foot cliff. I had no protection, no real experience. Okay. Already, as a parent, like to hear that you did this, I want to kill you just hearing you say this. So you are, so you're a mountaineer.

You're an iron man triathlet. You do all this stuff. You've always been this way. You're a mountaineer. You climb Mount Denali, Mount McKinnelly, in Alaska, but here you are, you're in college and you decide without ropes to climb up up a, I mean, I'm getting chills even hearing about this. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So to not go into the whole story, but I got about 15 feet from the top. So I'm probably 70, 80 feet off the ground. And I got stuck. And I sent my friend, I just said, Matt, I'm stuck. You've got to go get help. And he scurried down the mouth.

Who knows where he was going? I didn't know where he was going. and I had my fingers in a crack. That's all I really had. I'm on a vertical wall, and I had a little nub I could put one foot on, and I stacked my other foot on top of that. And I had it out with the Lord. I was backslidden at the time. That's kind of a used word, but I went to college full of faith, and within a matter of weeks,

I just got stripped of my faith between the partying and the peer pressure and, And so I really had it out with God on that cliff, and it was quite a moving experience. If I can keep going, I was about to let go. We're about an hour hanging. I mean, honestly, this is making me sick even here. I heard you tell this story before, and it's even making me sick, but please continue. So if you fall, you're dead, obviously. This is so sick.

So here you are up there. You're barely holding on the way you described it as totally horrific. fine. You said you stood there waiting for how long? But I didn't know, I didn't know where he went, but it was about an hour. And I finally, an hour. Good thing. I was in good shape. And I finally determined I had to let go. And so I was looking, you know, where I might stop. I might stop there, maybe there, maybe a broken leg, maybe a broken back. And I let go with one hand and one foot. And I was Eric, I was ready to slide down the start of this face and I see two girls in white in the woods. And I grab back on and I wave.

I'm like, hello, hello. And they're like, hi. How are you? And I'm like, no, no, no, no. I'm stuck. I need help. At that minute, I heard the wheels of the Rangers vehicle coming up the access road. and a megaphone said, if you can hear us, we are on our way with a rescue squad.

Hold on. We're almost there. Eric, if I had let go and splattered on a rock below and was still conscious, I would have heard the megaphone because it was a matter of seconds. It was a matter of seconds. And long story, I got rescued. The rescue guy broke his leg. rescuing me. And when I got down to the bottom, those girls were not there. And I have always maintained they were angels of the Lord to get my attention. So I'd hang on for that extra five seconds.

I mean, honestly, that stuff will change you. That will change you. Yes. And obviously Trump. Yeah. I mean, I have to think about this because, you know, he's a very, you know, when you think of him, his personality, you know, he's tough, he's a fighter. Yeah. But there's something undeniably, inescapably humbling that a bullet that could kill you comes that close. That makes you realize, you know what, as amazing as I am, I cannot guarantee that I will live tomorrow.

I cannot get, in other words, you know, I think sometimes people who are very talented or smart or resourceful. And he is all those things times 10. He's amazing. But you can have a kind of pride. Like it's me. I'm the one that's kind of making this stuff happen. And you forget that God gave you your brain.

God gave you the opportunity. God gave you all this stuff. And so suddenly something like this happens. And you know, it's like you suddenly realize you do not know what tomorrow holds. You do not know. And you just found out by the way you did. did not, you did not deserve, you did not deserve to avoid that bullet killing you. But somehow you weren't killed.

Somehow here you are and you're still talking. I mean, that, it's just a chilling thing. And you, you write about it very, and, you know, when, when Trump spoke to the families of the two who were injured and then the deceased, David Dutch, James Copenhaven, and Corey Copenpar. I don't know his name. But you could see it in Trump's eyes. He realized their plight could have been his plight. I mean, he was very emotionally raw when he was talking about he had spoken to the families that day.

I mean, yeah, why did they die and he lived? Like saving Private Ryan. You're like, well, I feel guilty. I'm confused. Like, the bullet was intended for me. Right. And they died and I get to live it. So you have this debt where you feel like, okay, God, what do you?

I deserve to be dead. You let me live. Okay, what can I do? I think that's kind of what we're talking about is it really does. Yeah. It changes things. And you write about it. And again, I want to say to people, they can find your article because the other four times you almost died.

I don't know if we're going to time to get into that. I think we're out of time here. but people can read about it at wine patch.org. This one is called Take Up Your Cross. It's the most recent one. But folks, check it out, winepatch.org. I'll be right back.

Whatever may think that I was number one, I ought to know, easy come, easy go. I'm sitting it out. Welcome back to talking to my friend Keith Jinta. You can find him at whinepatch.org. Okay, Keith, in this article, you talk about Trump, you know, extraordinarily narrowly missing death. You say that you almost died five times. You just told us one of them, which is chilling.

The other four stories are not quite as chilling, thank God. So maybe you could tell us quickly how you almost died four times. Well, I broke a major rule of alpine mountaineering on Mount McKinley, which is Denali. we had been pinned down in a snow cave for three nights. We were at 16,200 feet, high altitude storm, 100-mile-hour sustained winds in a snow cave. The storm breaks and we come out, we emerge from the snow cave. The golden rule is never, ever stand on the glacier with your booties, you know, the things that you use inside the tent in your sleeping bag. And I came out and sure enough, I'm standing there on a steep slope with my booties on.

And I wasn't clipped in. I didn't have my harness on. And my feet went right out from under me. And I started to slide down what is a 4,000 foot, basically cliff. It's an ice rocky slope that goes down to the Peters Glacier below. And it happens so quick. And the scary part is nobody was around. around. Nobody saw it. The weather had broke. Like I said, people were getting stuff packed up.

We're ready to go higher. And I'm standing there enjoying the weather. My feet flip out. And Eric, again, it's the grace of God only. I wasn't clipped in. As I began to fall, I just reached around and grabbed. And there happened to be a fixed rope that was anchored. And I somehow grabbed it. I didn't see it. It just was in my hand. I got. I spun around. around and now I'm hanging. The whole thing's over. I'm hanging. I look down 4,000 feet below and I look around. Nobody on my team had even seen it.

It happened that quick. I would have been missing. They'd be where'd Keith go? And I don't know it would have taken them a long time to figure out what happened. And that was my second time. On behalf of your wife, I'm very angry at you. Oh, my God. I was married when that happened.

Oh, my, I know you were. I remember when this happened. I still can't, I don't know what to say. It's unbelievable. Okay. And then there's a couple of others that you were an Ironman triathlon. Yeah. And you took way too much ibuprofen and almost died.

I was training for an Iron Man. I had really trained hard. Three weeks before the race, I severely sprained my ankle. I was on crutches for two weeks leading into the race. I shouldn't have raced. But my coach said, well, you know, if you space out the Advil, you take this much, take this much every hour, drink. And I didn't realize I was taking double what he prescribed. And he didn't know what he was doing.

So, long story short, the race was over. I did finish. But I didn't pee for two and a half days. and it didn't click at first. And I didn't feel well. I didn't feel right. And I got home. I was an airplane.

I flew home. I'm lying in bed with Jill. And I said, oh, by the way, I haven't peed in a couple days. She said, what? I said, I don't know. I haven't peed. She calls the doctor. They rush me in.

And I was on the verge of renal failure. My kidneys had pretty much shut down. Somehow I was still walking around. And my doctor said, quote, I've seen a lot of people die in very stupid ways. You almost just died in the stupidest way possible. I mean, this is like, okay, folks, you've got to read it. You can read this, wine patch.org.

The only good news, Keith, is that God has obviously preserved you through all these things for his purposes. There's no other way to see. This is an unbelievable stuff. We're out of time. Folks, check out winepatch.org. Keith. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Eric.